Aleira Brightleaf's Arc

Chapter 7 of 18

The dead robot cooled at Aleira's feet. She had won her freedom and kept her throne. But the tower had no guard now. Beyond the burning wastes, dust rose on the horizon. Morwenna saw it first and pointed with her skull staff. "They're coming," she said. "Not seven this time. More. Twenty. Maybe thirty. I can feel their dead magic. All of it. Coming here." Aleira gripped the throne arm. "You have magic. You held the spider. You can hold them." "No." Morwenna backed against the throne. Her staff shook. "Too many. I raise ten skeletons, they raise a hundred. They find me. They take me back. I can't. I can't fight my own kind. I'm too scared, I'm too scared, don't ask me." She was undead, but she trembled like a living girl. Aleira had promised to keep her hidden. Now that promise meant nothing if the necromancers reached the door. Hazel stared out at the growing cloud. "My spells don't aim. You know that. Last time I brought down the ceiling." That was it. Aleira turned and looked up. The tower rose above them, black stone laced with glowing veins of lava. The molten rock pulsed inside the walls like blood. She remembered the ceiling falling on the spider. Stone had crushed it flat. "Hazel," Aleira said. "You can't aim. So don't aim at them. Aim at the tower." Hazel's mouth fell open. "That'll bring it down on us." "Not all of it. The mouth. The doorway." Aleira pointed at the narrow gap where the necromancers would enter, one at a time, through the heat. "Break the stone above the door. Seal it. They can't sense Morwenna through a wall of rock. They can't march through a hole too small to pass." Morwenna's white eyes went wide. "Bury the door. Bury it. They lose me. They can't smell me through the spire." The first necromancers reached the base. Robed shapes climbed toward the mouth. Aleira grabbed Hazel's wand hand and aimed it at the archway. "Now. Miss on purpose." Hazel squeezed her eyes shut and fired. The spark curved wild, as always. It struck the veined stone above the door. The lava screamed. A crack raced up the wall. Then the whole archway broke loose. Molten rock and black stone poured down over the mouth of the tower. The entrance vanished under a glowing heap. Heat rolled back at them. Outside, muffled, the necromancers howled and fell back from the burning slide. Then the sensing stopped. Morwenna pressed a hand to her chest. "Gone. They lost me. They lost me." Aleira stood in the sealed tower. She kept her throne and her secret both. But the only door was buried in cooling lava. The necromancers could not get in. And neither, she saw now, could she get out.