Burning Up

them, magic lighting her pupils with a warning glow. “Or would you rather go to Korban and tell him why you let his prize captive die?”
    Considering their lord’s reaction to the last guard unit’s irresponsibility, that was a message none of them wanted to carry. “Very well, woman,” the guard sergeant said. “You two, stay in the corridor. Kriso, with me.”
    Drawing his sword, he flung the door wide and stalked inside—where Raniero wrapped a length of broken chain around his neck and broke it with one ruthless jerk. Kriso fell to the magic blast Amaris fired at his head. She grabbed his sword from his hand before he hit the ground.
    The other two guards shouted in alarm and rage, but Raniero was already in the corridor like a cat among pigeons, the sergeant’s sword in his hand. He killed them both in the same smooth motion, cleaving one man’s head from his shoulders before running the other right through the breastplate.
    Raniero turned to aim a wild, glittering grin at Amaris. “I think the sergeant’s armor will just fit.”
    She eyed the carnage. “I doubt he’ll argue. But hurry—I want to get Marin away from her witch of a nurse before someone stumbles on these four.”
     
    B ut they found the nurse just leaving Marin’s room, a bundle of possessions in her arms. She gasped the truth around the fingers Raniero dug in her fat throat. “Milord came for the child. He said he has no more need of me. He told me . . . he told me nothing more!”
    “The Great Barrier,” Amaris whispered in numb horror as Hetram fell unconscious to the steps. “Korban has finished his spell.”

EIGHT
    “C an you find her?” Raniero demanded, his black eyes glittering through the slit in the helm he’d taken from the guardsman. “Track her with magic, since she is your blood?”
    The suggestion arrested the panicked reel of Amaris’s mind, helped her think again. “Yes. I should be able to . . .” Biting her lip, she drew on her magic and reached out for her sister. It was an old, familiar spell, one she’d used a hundred times to keep track of an active child prone to disappearing. Sometimes literally; Marin had particularly loved using that invisibility spell . . .
    There.
    She felt the solid tug of the little girl’s life, and her knees went weak with relief. Not dead, then.
    Not yet.
    “I’ve got her. Come on!” Amaris spun from the room and shot down the snaking stone hallway. Behind her, Raniero’s booted feet rang on the stone, and his armor creaked as he raced after her.
    “Which way?” he demanded as they ran.
    “Up.” She spotted a stairway and took them. “Feels like she’s about fifty feet up, and maybe twice that far to the right.”
    “Battlements,” Raniero grunted. “Makes sense.”
    “The Great Barrier is closest to the castle there.” She knew the spot. Korban had once dragged her there for one of his mad rants. She’d listened to him go on and on about the power the Varil would give him, watching the glowing curtain of magic shift and glitter in the night.
    If the barrier fell, his own people would be the first to pay the price, but Korban really didn’t care.
    Amaris reached the top of the stairs, but before she could charge out onto the battlements, a big hand grabbed her shoulder and dragged her to a stop.
    “Guards,” Raniero murmured. “Where are his guards?”
    “I doubt there are any,” she whispered back. “It’s one thing for his people to know what he intends. But to work the spell in front of them, when they know they’ll be the first the Varil will kill . . . Nay, he’ll not want witnesses.”
    They slipped onto the battlements together, stolen swords in hand, Raniero with a guard’s shield slung over his shoulder. The sky overhead was black with scudding clouds. The icy wind whipped Amaris’s hair, carrying the sound of chanting to her ears. She didn’t recognize the words of the spell, but something about the hissing alien syllables made the hair rise on the back of her neck.
    “I do not like the sound of that,” Raniero said grimly, shrugging his shield down onto his left arm. “Which way?”
    Amaris indicated the direction with a gesture, and the vampire took the lead. She padded after his broad back, straining to hear any approaching enemy over the moan of the wind.
    Abruptly Raniero jerked back and froze, lifting a warning hand. She stopped to peek around his brawny shoulder.
    And caught her breath in dread.
    The two Varil