The Phoenix Ring(25)

With that, he ran out the front gate, followed by two silent bowmen.

"You'd better hurry," Borin said, looking at the mages. "Godspeed, Aidan Dragonslayer."





The three of them ran through the woods, the boys barely keeping up with  Aaliyah. The girl had set off from the camp running, and hadn't slowed  the pace since, even after leaving the main path.

The girl's body seemed to glide as she moved through the forest. She  easily vaulted branches that Timothy and Aidan would have to push aside,  never making a sound. Aidan and Timothy, however, constantly had to  pause to untangle their staffs or robes, and consistently ran into  thorns, vines, and branches.

It didn't make it any easier that both of them were trying to read their  books of magic as they ran. Timothy faintly remembered hearing about a  spell that could detect amoghs, but he didn't remember the wording or  the type of magic.

"How much further?" Timothy asked Aaliyah in between pants.

"How should I know? Whenever we find a good spot to hide."                       
       
           



       

She saw it a few minutes later, in the form of a huge bush growing  around a tree. She grabbed the mages arms and shoved them under it, then  followed herself.

They had just stopped panting when a crossbow bolt slammed into the tree above their heads.

"I know where you are, mages. Come out or the next one goes in your head." said a voice from about twenty feet away.

Timothy tensed himself to stand, but Aaliyah caught him.

"We already know this man isn't afraid to kill. If he knew where you  were, you would already be dead. Any luck on that spell, magic boy?"

"Yes," Aidan whispered, "Give me a moment."

The spell, like so many, only involved one word, vahailen, freedom. That  didn't make it easy. In order to actually complete the magic Aidan  would have to separate his Arror from his body and let it roam free. If  anything happened to his Arror, or he became too separated, then his  body would die, leaving his life magic broken yet stuck, bound to the  place of his death.

"Any time would be great!" Aaliyah hissed through clenched teeth, a blade in each hand.

Aidan closed his eyes and let the magic flow through his veins.

"Vahailen," he whispered.

The spell's reaction was not immediate, but gradual. Slowly Aidan's  hearing faded, and then, though he did not open his eyes, he began to  see.

Everything was a shade of gray, even the vibrant leaves. Aidan turned around, and saw his own body.

He jumped, startled, and flew ten feet in the air, before slowly settling down.

I'm a spirit. I can do whatever I want!

He tried to grab a stick from a nearby tree, but he found he had no  arms. Actually, his entire being consisted of nothing more than a ball  of light.

Now that he looked closely, he could see that all the living creatures  in the forest had a little light inside of them, from the mosquitoes  flying around Timothy's head to the mole underground that no one seemed  to notice.

Timothy had one too, but it was tinged. Black lines ran up and down it  that were identical in color to a little ball of blackness in the packs.

Grogg.

Then Aidan looked at Aaliyah. He hadn't expected to see anything there,  why would an amogh have life magic? He was wrong. Her Arror was the  biggest and strongest of them all, pulsing with a unique sort of power.

I must be looking at our very souls.

Aidan suddenly remembered what he was supposed to be doing and jumped  into the air, above the trees. He saw four souls, hurt and pierced by  anger and greed, three about a mile away and one only fifteen feet.

He fell back to the ground, next to his body. He knew that the  information he had just acquired was important, but he couldn't remember  for what. And it felt so peaceful here, as if he could just lie down  and sleep …

"Ow!" he tried to yell, but a hand was covering his mouth. Aaliyah had been twisting his arm.

"Sorry mate, but you were getting distant. Do you know where he is?" Timothy whispered.

Aidan nodded, his vision beginning to feel more normal.

"He's fifteen feet that way. There are three more a mile back."

Aaliyah let go and slipped out from under the bush, immediately seeming to disappear.

The two mages glimpsed through the leaves, where they could just barely  see the head of the man. He had dark hair, massive muscles, and some  sort of strange clothing that covered most of his body. For a horrible  second, Aidan was reminded of a dragon rider, laughing as he stood over  the broken bodies of Eleanor and Timothy.

Aidan saw movement in the trees above the murderer, a moment before he did. By then it was too late.

Aaliyah dropped down, unsheathing a gleaming knife from somewhere on her  chest in midair, and landed on his back, one hand around his mouth and  the other already making the fatal blow to his neck.

Aidan reeled back in shock. He had been expecting the amogh to knock the  other man out with a blow to the head, maybe even to strangle the  consciousness out of him, but to murder him was inconceivable.

The mage ducked out of the bush and ran forward, grabbing the enemy's hand just as the last of the Arror left his broken body.

"Why would you do that?" Timothy asked, sounding as horrified as Aidan felt.

"He was a threat," Aaliyah said, her eyes cold steel, "This is the man  that killed Cook. I was avenging a friend and protecting my charges at  the same time."

She stood and wiped the blood off of her hands and blade.

"Come, we have a long journey ahead of us."





That night, as the sun set over the canopy, Aidan sat with his back against a tree, sharpening his staff's blade.

Aaliyah was laying in her hammock, twirling a dagger, and Timothy was  cooking something with jerky and a few herbs over a fire. Grogg was  probably sitting near him, unseen to the human eye.

"You're doing it wrong." Aaliyah said, almost offhandedly.                       
       
           



       

Aidan gritted his teeth and kept trying to sharpen the knife. He and  Timothy had been slogging after the amogh all day, and she hadn't said a  word, not even when they stopped for the night.

"No seriously!" Aaliyah said, standing up and walking towards the mage.  "That's Rakka steal. It's way tougher than other metals. Look," she sat  down and put her hand on top of Aidan's forcing him to push down far  harder on the whetstone, right on the tip of the blade. It would have  cracked or bent any other material, but the steel held firm.

"Thanks," Aidan said grudgingly, trying to let some anger flow out of his body. "How did you know?"

"It's anti-magic, just like me." Aaliyah said, fondly touching the tip. "We can feel it."

Aidan held the button and used the whetstone to push the blade into the staff.

"Listen," he said, trying to keep his voice as calm as possible, "I  don't know if I ever did anything to you to make you want to kill me,  but we're in this together whether we like it or not. Can you please try  not to hate me so much?"

Aaliyah opened her mouth, a sharp reply ready, and then closed it again.

"You're right," she said, in a perfectly even tempered voice, "I won't pick any fights, in return for one thing."

"What's that?" Aidan asked, wary of the response.

"When we get to the city, I lead. No matter what. Deal?" She asked, sticking out her hand.

Aidan hesitantly grasped it. "Deal."





It was the next night that Grogg made his appearance. They were all  sitting around a campfire, roasting a rabbit that Aaliyah had managed to  shoot with her bow.

It had been a long day, but they had finally managed to get back on the  main path. At this rate, they should have been able to make it to the  city the next day.

Aaliyah, true to her word, had remained quiet that day, even laughing  halfheartedly at a joke Timothy had told. She had also laid a false  trail for the amogh assassins, though none of them believed that it  would delay them for very long.

Aidan had tried to find them using the vahailen spell, but to no avail.  Either they were too far back for Aidan to see, or they had found a way  to hide their very souls.

He had just settled back into his body when something small and green  shot across the grass in front of the fire. Aaliyah tried to grab it,  but it disappeared into Timothy's pack before her hands could touch it,  hissing angrily.

"So that's the goblin," she said, glaring at the pack.

She never saw Timothy coming from behind. He hit her in the back with his entire body, pinning her to the ground.

"How dare you touch my gnome, you filthy amogh!" he screamed into her ear.

Aidan ran forward, the blood racing through his body, just as Aaliyah threw his friend onto the ground, right beside his staff.

Aidan grabbed his own staff at the same time Timothy grabbed his.