Storm of Spells: Spells of Water, #2

By Remi Black

A menacing watcher lurks in the citadel—with twisted sorcery as a guard.

 

 

The citadel at Saet'Idros Archais guarded a passage from the Wastes into the Great Vale. After centuries of duty, the Fae, Enclave wizards, and mundane men abandoned the outpost … then people began to vanish.

The half-Fae healer Inkeri, Baron Rhodren, and his men crossed old bones to discover the whereabouts of a missing caravan and two troops.

Yet a presence watches their entry into the citadel, a presence more terrible than twisted sorcerers, their shape-shifting wyre, and a traitorous Dark Fae.

Both Inkeri and Rhodren sense the watcher, but neither anticipates the dire threat it represents.

How many will die before the missing are found?

~ ~ ~

The fantasy Storm of Spells is the second novella in the three-part series Spells of Water, part of the greater Fae Mark'd World. The series concludes with Venom of Dragons.

If you enjoy elemental power battling twisted sorcery and cold steel clearing paths through magical monsters, then you will love the adventures in the Fae Mark'd World.

Writer Remi Black has created magical worlds from the time she read a much-battered paperback in the Witch World saga by Andre Norton, the Grand Mistress of Fantasy. She writes determined heroines and strong heroes, both with internal conflicts as dire as the sorcerers and monsters that confront them.

The first trilogy in the Fae Mark'd World is Spells of Air. The young wizard Orielle encounters the proud Dark Fae Lord Skull and Lady Bone as well as a pack of shifted wyre enslaved by a sorceress.

Recently finished is Spells of Earth. Wizardry burnt out and memory gone, Desora re-built her life in an isolated corner of the Northern Reaches. She only elemental Earth. Can she discover new ways to wield Earth before she and Brax become prey for twisted sorcery and magical monsters?

Look for more of Remi Black's fantasy with magical protagonists struggling against twisted sorcery and monsters magical and mundane.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Writers Ink Books
• Release date: Sep 25, 2023
• ISBN: 9798988473954

Book preview

Storm of Spells

Spells of Water ~ 2

In the

Fae Mark’d World

By

Remi Black

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Remi Black’s Storm of Spells

Copyright © 2023 ~ Writers Ink and Emily Dunn

First publishing rights: 2023

All rights are reserved.

No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews. The unauthorized reproduction or distribution of this copyrighted work is illegal. No part of this book may be scanned, uploaded, or distributed via the Internet or any other means, electronic or print, without the author’s or Writers’ Ink permission.

NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR

This book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the writer’s imagination or have been used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, actual events, locale or organizations is entirely coincidental. The author does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for third-party websites or their content.

Published in the United States of America

Cover Illustration by Deranged Doctor Design

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Contents

Storm of Spells

Contents

~ 1 ~ Into the Citadel ~

~ 2 ~ First Night ~

~ 3 ~ Questions with No Answers ~

~ 4 ~ Searching ~

~ 5 ~ `Ware Attack

~ 6 ~ Respite ~

~ 7 ~ Dungeons of the Archais ~

~ 8 ~ Plan of Escape ~

~ 9 ~ Last Battle ~

~ 10 ~ New Danger ~

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Remi Black’s Fantasy

In Torrent of Evil, Inkeri, the baron Rhodren, and his men traveled through the desert Ahdreide to discover the fates of two missing troops as well as a caravan of merchants and their families. They confronted constrictors and venomous lizards and defeated a sorceress who had killed the Enclave adept Almandis.

Now the citadel at Saet’Idros Archais looms before them ... and they must ride across new bones to reach it.

~ 1 ~ Into the Citadel ~

Black birds glared down from the battlements, and everyone remembered the birds’ attack on the village Olheim.

Do we ride into them, my lord? Marshal Gaulter scowled at the prospect, and the men muttered. The archers reached for their crossbows. Snorting the dry air, the horses caught their unease and stomped the bone-strewn sand.

They flew all around while I worked in my garden, Inkeri offered. You said that their attack at Olheim happened in the night.

The baron straightened in his saddle and rose in the stirrups, as if those few inches would give him a better view of the battlements high above. Do you think they only attack at night?

Inkeri cringed inwardly at the question, for it cast her as an authority. I do not know. You told me of the attack. I can only suspect what they will do.

He resettled on his horse. We have to reach the citadel. That’s where Captain Walsing would have taken the troop.

A ramp climbed from the desert flat to a thin bridge which arced over a precipice before gaining the tower gate. Centuries ago, the marvel of Fae power had constructed the bridge, during the age of Dragon Dark. Then the citadel became an outpost keeping watch on the dragons banished into the Wastes.

Don’t like it, my lord, Gaulter muttered. There’s bones there. He pointed to the debris on either side of the ramp and beneath the bridge.

Our men? someone asked, and the mutters started. After the bones they’d found when first they saw the citadel, these additional bones increased the troop’s unease.

The caravan bones had lain uncovered on the windswept flat. Only desert predators had disturbed them, scattering the bones as they fed. Bright cloth and bronze bangles, colored beads and sandals had identified the remains as merchants and their families, not soldiers.

I don’t think those bones are recent. They look bleached by the sun, and look, Inkeri’s hand swept wide, sand has drifted over them.

Hessel, Baron Rhodren said.

The man urged his horse forward. Aye, my lord.

He needed no other command but guided his horse to the starting ramp. Ravens croaked. Crows and jackdaws lifted and fluttered above the crenellated wall then returned to their perches. Hessel kept his horse at a walk as he surveyed the ground beside the ramp. He dismounted and walked a few steps, the intense sun burnishing the red hair of his desert heritage. Then he knelt, turning over bones, before he returned to his horse and slowly rode back to them. He didn’t look over his shoulder at the high walls and attendant black birds.

He stopped before the baron. I’d say old bones, my lord. He held out a tatter. Cloth, faded and rotten. Leather bits looked dry and brittle. Pieces of armor and weapons, all broken, none of it new, but like we carry.

Then old bones it is and not our men. Rhodren raised his voice. Keep your weapons ready. Don’t lift a blade against the birds unless they attack.

Inkeri agreed with the order. Not once on the journey across the Ahdreide had the baron and his men faced mundane opponents. Birds and panthers attacked before they crossed onto the desert plain, and snakes and lizards had struck next. They had adapted each time, fighting with arrows against the sorceress and her magical blasts, fueled by forbidden blood magic.

What awaits us in the citadel? She didn’t know what to fear. More mundane creatures in unnatural attacks? The shapeshifting wyres who guarded sorcerers?

A Kyrgy had to await them, somewhere in that vast citadel. A Dark Fae, who had opened the veil for the sorceress to travel miles with only a few steps. Half-Fae herself, Inkeri didn’t wield that kind of power. She worried that she couldn’t match the Dark Fae’s elemental magic. She wielded only Water. Those Fae that she’d encountered in the past had wielded two elements, sometimes three.

She prayed another sorcerer didn’t lurk in the citadel, waiting to spring a trap.

As they climbed the ramp, Inkeri had a growing sense that other eyes watched them, the birds and something else, something more, something—alien, something that set her nerves crawling.

We are watched, Rhodren muttered.

The birds.

More than that. It ... prickles.

Prickles? But that was the word for the sensation, a spiny sticky presence over her nape. A presence that hid in dark corners, waiting, preparing.

Do you know what it is?

No. No.

He nodded at the gate. I’m going to feel trapped.

The bridge’s ancient