It reminded me of a surveillance setup in a high-rise or a jail, with cameras on multiple locations being projected onto rows of TV monitors. Only instead of TV, these were free-floating images that drifted in the air all around me. And showed a city descending into chaos.
I saw people sloshing through swamped roads, heading for the woods, bags of their possessions thrown over their backs. I saw others huddled in their homes, looking fearfully out of gaps in the shutters. I saw still more fighting alongside the covens, which had arrived in force, with hundreds of witches flooding into the city.
All of whom seemed to have decided that Arthur didn’t really need an amphitheater, after all, because they were trying to burn it down.
The wooden lattice of seats above the great stone base caught fire as I watched. And a moment later, half the arena was engulfed in a roaring blaze that defied the rain. The wind was blowing strongly to the left, and banners of flame three or four stories high started blowing with it, scattering sparks onto the fleeing crowd.
And onto the phalanx of Svarestri reinforcements double-timing it from the direction of the wharf, looking a thousand strong, maybe more. It was hard to tell because of the darkness, and because the scenes weren’t like movies shot with a steady cam. They were rolling and shaking and running, crisscrossed with spell-fire and lightning, and slashed at by rain.
And then I was moving, too, as the space around me suddenly convulsed, sending me rolling across the floor.
And straight into—
* * *
“Round them up! Don’t let them scatter!”
My borrowed neck twisted, but I couldn’t tell who had spoken. A gust of wind had just slapped me in the face, carrying enough rain to blind me. All I could see were a bunch of running, panicked faces, scrambling around the rocky ground near the docks.
“Who?” my current avatar asked, his voice sounding as confused as I was. “The humans?”
“No! Not the damn humans! Our own!”
I turned to the side, pulling up a hood to shield my eyes, while I searched the crowd. Their frightened faces were highlighted by the inferno in the distance, by the spells exploding here and there, and by the lightning gathering in force over the arena. While rain continued to bucket down, not as hard as before, but hard enough to cause the torch I was carrying to sputter and hiss.
And then this body spied a fellow fey on the ground, a little distance off. He had a local girl beneath him, her skirts up around her waist, her face set in horror. Until I ran over and pulled him off. “Get back in formation!”
He shrugged off my hold. “For what? We’ll never get through that.” He gestured at the open plain before us, where what looked like an army of witches were battling to protect the fleeing humans, and to bar our approach to the arena.
It had turned the open ground between the cities into a hell pit of smoke and blood and fire, and drifting clouds of steam that formed whenever a spell hit one of the many puddles of water. The women’s shadows darted among the clouds, concealed one minute, and splashed grotesquely large onto the side of the haze the next, like the field was full of misshapen giants. They looked like the shadow puppets I’d laughed at as a child, only no one was laughing now.
Including the fey on the ground, who had grabbed the frightened girl as she tried to flee, jerking her back. “We may as well amuse ourselves until reinforcements arrive,” he said as I stared down at him. And felt a wash of borrowed anger spread through me.
Borrowed because it wasn’t mine. It wasn’t in response to the girl’s terrified screams as the fey fell on her again. Wasn’t at seeing him rip open her clothes, spreading her naked in the mud. Wasn’t in sympathy as her hands grasped the dirt beneath her, desperately seeking some grounding as her body shook from his renewed thrusts.
No, it was anger that he’d soil himself with such a creature, fury that he’d neglect his duty to do it, and cold determination to stop him.
My right hand jerked him up a second time, throwing him to the side, while my left—
“No!” I yelled as a spear flashed into my hand. One pointed not at the fey, who had scrambled back out of the way, but at his prize. I had a split second to hear the girl scream, to see the spear light reflected in her widened eyes, to feel my borrowed muscles bunch.
And then I threw us to the side—stupidly, because I wasn’t in charge here. I was just an observer, using someone else’s eyes to see. But it didn’t matter; I couldn’t do this. Couldn’t just watch through a murderer’s eyes as he—
And I wasn’t. The ground exploded in front of me, cutting off the view, while the blast from the spear sent me stumbling back into the soldier behind me. We went down, but through the rain of flying earth I glimpsed the girl, snatching up her tattered clothes and staggering to her feet, before abruptly bolting off into the night.
Because the fey’s attack . . .
Had missed.
Chapter Fifty-seven
A moment later, I was back in flickering darkness, thrown there by what felt like an earthquake. And forced to grab for what my mind seemed to have decided was the floor, although it felt more like a bucking bronco. Because the quakes kept coming.
I didn’t know why, and couldn’t even seem to concentrate on the question. I couldn’t seem to concentrate on anything, probably because I’d been away from my body too long and was getting fuzzy-brained. I needed to get back—soon—but there was something telling me not to. Something I’d just seen, but couldn’t currently remember. Something . . . damn it!
I looked away, over to one side where the images were fewer, trying to clear my head.
And got caught up instead with what some witches were doing.