Wraith (The Scarred Mage of Roseward #3) - Sylvia Mercedes Page 0,3
to be cowed. A whimper trembled on her lips as the latch clicked into place, but she wasn’t about to let Soran face that storm alone.
Biting out curses, she bowed her head and fought her way to the cliff edge. The path down seemed narrower, more treacherous than ever before. She feared with every step that the magic force billowing across the white-capped waves would snatch her feet out from under her and send her crashing to the rocks below.
“It’s not real!” she shouted. “It’s not real, it’s not real, it’s not real!” With an effort, she forced her mind to accept that the wind she felt stinging her skin was nothing more than the salty breeze carried across the ocean waters, not the tremendous, burning force it tried to make itself in her head. It was a battle of balance, a mental game that took up so much of her concentration and energy, she nearly missed her step several times and was obliged to flatten her back against the cliff wall, clinging to rocks until she caught her breath.
The farther she went, however, the more her brain strengthened on the ideas she fed it. By the time she reached the end of the path and gained the rocky beach below, she was able to split her perceptions almost evenly between the magical whirl shocking her senses and the calmer physical reality.
“All right,” she muttered, steadying her balance. “Wyverns.” Her bare feet objected to the sharp landscape, but that was the least of her immediate concerns. A quick glance up and down the beach revealed Soran not many yards away.
He stood at the base of the cliff with his arms upraised, calling in a strange language. Above him, the wyverns peered out of their little cave-like nooks in the stone, rattled their tongues, and flared their crests. At first it looked as though the entire flock would refuse to answer their master’s summons.
Then one bold green creature shot out from its hiding place and, flapping wildly, descended swiftly to its master’s arm. Soran did something Nelle couldn’t quite perceive. It looked as though he performed a swift folding motion . . . and the next moment, the wyvern had vanished, and the mage tucked a piece of parchment safely into the front of his shirt.
“I see,” Nelle muttered. The wyverns were, after all, spell-beasts. Their lives and existence were made up entirely of magic, but that magic was tethered to the physical world by words written down on paper. Which meant they were, in a sense, paper beings as well. Soran called again, and more wyverns descended, one after another, into his waiting hands. Perhaps the mage would be able to catch them all.
And what good was she doing, standing here? Nelle gasped and staggered as another blast of magic assaulted her mind. Her senses throbbed painfully: her skin scorched by what felt like burning embers, her ears assaulted by an endless roll of thunder, and her eyes ablaze with refulgent light in myriad unnatural colors. She fought to drag her awareness back to a proper level of reality.
When a sad, mewling cry caught her ear, she squinted up at the cliffside behind her.
A tiny orange wyvern, smaller than the others, clung to the rocks approximately twenty feet above her. The gale was too strong for its little wings, and it dared not let go of the rocks for fear of being ripped from its perch and hurtled headlong into uncontrollable currents of magic. It craned its long neck, blinking large, pleading eyes down at her, and uttered a despairing meep.
Nelle cast a glance Soran’s way. But he was hard at work catching and folding his wyverns as they descended on him in a mass of terrified brays and flapping wings. He hadn’t seen her yet, much less the poor little wyvern trapped above. She looked back over her shoulder at the storm rolling in, the wild bursts of magic and energy lighting up both sky and sea.
It would strike Roseward’s shores in another ten minutes. Maybe less.
“Boggarts and brags!” she growled, then hurled herself at the cliff. Her hands found holds; her toes found crannies and crevices. Mother’s training flooded through her limbs, and she climbed swiftly, glad in that moment to be barefoot, glad to be wearing trousers rather than a gown that would catch the wind like a sail. She concentrated on the climb, refusing to think of what lurked at her back.