Instead I continued to slide, scraping along the flat floor of the entrance hall toward the great doors, one of which now stood open. A new kind of fear hit me. How had I not felt the power tugging at me and dragging me along? I hadn’t slipped at all.
My hands scrabbled uselessly at the slick floor. My body moved faster and faster as I struggled to gain enough breath to speak. A moment later and I burst out into the evening air.
The light had almost entirely faded, but I could still see the shadowy figure I now sped toward across the ground. He wore a cloak pulled low over his face and carried a naked sword.
I gasped in a desperate breath just as I heard a tearing sound and felt a new sensation hit me. My body bucked and writhed, still caught in the grip of the pulling power but now also leaking energy.
A second shadowy figure stood on my peripheral vision, holding a composition instead of a sword. Two attackers. How had they made it into the Academy grounds?
But my chest had recovered from the initial blow, and I had no time for such ponderings. Sucking in a breath, I choked out, “Take control.”
In my desperation and fear, I hadn’t formed the composition in my mind with my usual precision, but my instincts kicked in, directing it toward the working that sucked away my energy.
I had grown enough in my ability over the past months that I could recognize it as a working from the same mage who had attacked me on my way to the Academy, although both of the shadowy figures looked male. Perhaps both attackers had been supplied with compositions by someone else then.
Last time, I had merely thrown the working back blindly at my attacker, but now I took proper control, sending it after both of them. Doing so meant dividing the energy of the working in half, so it was unlikely to put them at risk of being completely drained, but I hoped it would slow them both enough to give me a chance.
Both figures shuddered as the energy hit them, responding by each pulling out a new composition. I braced myself, but though they both ripped them, nothing came for me. Too late, I realized they had been ready for my move and had refreshed their own energy. And in my moment of confusion, I had missed the chance to intercept either of the workings.
Still I slid over the hard ground, moving toward the figure with the drawn sword. There was no way I could draw my own weapon while in such a position. I needed to stop my forward momentum and get my feet under me.
“Take control,” I gasped a second time and connected with the power that dragged me along.
It felt different from any power composition I had controlled before. While the power had shape, it didn’t have the same limits as a normal working—it wasn’t confined in the same way. As quick as thought, my mind raced along the shape of it, moving closer toward the waiting attacker.
With a ripple of shock, I realized what was different about this working. It was an open composition. Rather than confining a finite amount of power into the parchment of the composition, forever separating it from the mage who wrote it, this mage had unleashed a composition that connected back with him once it was worked, continuing to draw on his energy to give the working more and more power. But it didn’t have unlimited power because every mage had their limits—which was what made open compositions so dangerous.
This particular composition didn’t need that much power, though. So why had he composed it to be open? Unless someone who didn’t properly understand how my ability worked had thought to try it as a way to circumvent me.
“Pull that stone,” I wheezed out, pointing toward a large chunk of stone which seemed to have broken off one of the outbuildings and now lay pushed to the side of the courtyard.
The power immediately let go of me, and I rolled through the dirt several times before coming to a stop as it seized on the stone instead and sent it hurtling toward my attacker. But the composition remained open, and my mind followed in the wake of the power, reaching instinctively for the mage at the end of the tether.
I came tantalizingly close before another tearing sound cut off the sensation of power altogether, severing the connection between us. The stone’s momentum carried it the final short distance, but it didn’t have the force I’d envisioned when it collided with the cloaked figure’s chest. He still gave a loud grunt, his own breath now gone.
I pushed my bruised body up onto all fours, scrambling to get to my feet so I could draw my sword and meet my attackers on more equal footing. But pounding steps sounded, and when I pulled my head up, the cloaked figure was already fleeing. I stared after him for a moment, wondering if I had enough breath to pursue, when I remembered the second man.
Spinning, I scanned the moonlit grounds only to see a familiar face hurrying toward me.
Jareth.
Chapter 19
“You!” I drew back as he reached for me.
“Verene! What happened? Are you hurt?”
I frowned, trying to make sense of the unexpected words. I looked back over my shoulder, but the cloaked figure had already disappeared into the darkness. Jareth frowned in the same direction.
“I thought I saw someone running…Should I go after them?” He looked at me, concern filling his face. “But I can’t leave you alone. You’re hurt. I need to get you to Raelynn.”
I shook my head. “No. No healing. Leave me be.”
After the tumultuous last few minutes, I couldn’t seem to make sense of his presence. Jareth had been the second attacker, just as I always feared!
And yet…he wasn’t fleeing like the other man, and he wasn’t talking as if he had just attacked me. I glanced at him doubtfully. He wasn’t wearing a cloak.
“It’s a good thing I was so close,” he was saying. “I think my arrival frightened them off, whoever they were.”
I furrowed my brow. Had he exited the Academy at the end of the fight? I hadn’t seen him do so, but I hadn’t seen him discard a cloak, either. My attention had been on the other attacker.
“I’m going back to my rooms.” I pushed away his helping hand when he tried to steady me.
“I’ll walk you there,” he said quickly. “Although I really think you should go to Raelynn.”
“No, I’m going to my room.” I wanted to be out of his company and somewhere I felt safe as fast as possible.
“If you’re sure…” He easily fell into step beside me, although I was going at the fastest pace I could manage. My chest still protested the abuse it had just received, and my breaths came shallow and fast.
I took each stair slowly and warily, but none of them betrayed me, slipping from under my feet as they had done under the influence of the composition. When I reached the door of my suite, Jareth made one last half-hearted attempt to convince me to see Raelynn. I cut him off unceremoniously by closing the door in his face.
Inside the room, I stood with my back against the door, my eyes closed as I struggled to control my breathing. With so many months since the last attack, I had let down my guard. And this time my attackers had been prepared for me to turn their compositions against them. They knew at least something of my ability. But not everything. It was as if they had been testing me, trying a range of different compositions to see how I would respond, ready to cut them off or replenish themselves when I reversed them.
In the calm of my room I considered what had happened. Two attackers had managed to access the Academy. They had known just when to find me alone and how to get me out of sight. And they had hit me with an attack that robbed me of breath, preventing me from immediately responding. Whoever had planned this had known some of my ability but not all. And perhaps the biggest coincidence of all—one of the very short list of people who had been told of my ability had been there. It all came back to Jareth.