“So predictable,” the Tyrant King said, shaking his graying head. “Spend a night in some backwoods manor and every rat with a minor claim to the old nobility comes crawling out of his hole.”

Roark’s grip on the Lyuko dagger tightened until the leather straps around its handle creaked. His mouth was dry. His heart thundered in his ears. Crossbow bolts and spell scrolls were trained on him, but he couldn’t look away from the aging man with the salt-and-pepper hair. The first time he’d seen Marek Konig Ustar, he’d been a child and the despot had been a monster, pulling spells from thin air without paper or writing, completely disregarding the basic laws of magic.

Now, standing this close to the man in his fur-line robes, the Tyrant King looked like nothing more than a bored aristocrat. If not for the deadly glint in his eye, it would be almost hard to believe that this was the same sorcerer who had conquered the entire continent of Terho in less than five years and kept it clutched in his bloody fist for the next fifteen

Marek turned to the red-hooded mage standing at his right hand. “Looks as if I owe you that purse, Lowen. The T’verzet was in Korvo all along.”

Roark scowled. Lowen von Reich—heir to the first of the noble houses to flip allegiances when the Ustar Empire invaded and even more of a horse’s ass than Albrecht when they’d been at academy together. Though, unfortunately, Lowen was a far better scholar. Arrogant, cruel, and just competent enough to avoid blowing himself up by accident, which would have been a true favor to the world.

“Take him alive,” the Tyrant King said lazily, waving a dismissive hand at Roark. “We’ll need the usual who, where, and what out of him in case his accomplices try to flee the city.”

The armed Ustars started around the bed, heavy armor clanking. The mage and crossbowman held their positions, covering Roark to make sure he didn’t try to run for it.

With a great effort of will, Roark forced his fingers to fall open. The Lyuko dagger dropped harmlessly onto the empty bed.

“I surrender,” he said, scrubbing his palms up and down his woolen jacket as if to wipe frantic sweat from them. On an upward swipe, he snagged a scrap of paper from his pocket and palmed it. “I’ll tell you anything you want to know.”

Inside the hood, Lowen’s face twisted into a condescending smirk. “Funny, that doesn’t sound like the mouthy little von Graf brat I remember.”

“Probably because I beat your ass badly enough that last day at academy that it knocked you stupid,” Roark said, tossing down his spell.

At the sudden movement, the crossbowman let loose, but Roark was already throwing himself out of the ten-foot blast radius. The bolt tore through the shoulder of his jacket, barely scratching his flesh.

A concussion wave shook the bedroom. Armor and weapons clattered like a tinker’s cart caught in a tornado as the approaching guards were hurled into the wall. One hit the fireplace and screamed as embers found their way through the chinks in his armor.

Roark rolled to his feet in front of the false panel, a spell in each hand and a new plan forming in his mind. He would lead them into the tunnels, lose them in the maze, then double back for the Tyrant.

Lowen was already in motion, having protected himself from the burst of compressed air with a prepared shield spell. The red-hooded mage threw a ball of paper at Roark’s feet.

Roark darted into the passageway a moment before a trio of iron bolas screamed through the air at knee-height and splintered the panel behind him.

Roark grinned as he leapt to the bottom of the stairs. “I think you over-wrote it, mate!”

“You don’t need legs to tell us everything we want to know,” Lowen replied.

Three of the heavily armored Ustars pushed down into the passageway after Roark, their shoulders so wide that they had to come one at a time. The blades of their halberds glinted in the glow from the firelight above.

“Send the muscle in first to soak up the deadly spells, is that it?” Roark taunted them. “Not a bad plan unless you’re the muscle.”

With a practiced flick of his wrist, he threw the spell in his right fist at the stairs. Green light flashed when it hit. Thorny brambles erupted from the stone steps, entangling the brutes’ legs. The shocked Ustars struggled and chopped at the brambles, trying to free themselves, but for every branch they cut off, five more sprang up. In seconds, their halberds were tangled in the fast-growing thicket.

Effective, but not enough to take them out of the fight. Any mage with even basic training could write a dispel.

Roark tossed the spell in his left fist toward the stairs. This flashed an inflamed red where it landed.

“Nothing personal, gents,” he said as the sickly scarlet smoke drifted up to meet them. Then he laughed. “Well, actually, it’s incredibly personal. Enjoy your larva pox.”

“You hex-slinging cur!” the Ustar nearest the smoke shouted, the fury in his voice nearly concealing the panic. “I’ll rip your limbs off one at a time!”

“I doubt that,” Roark said with a malicious grin, retreating down the passageway and melting into the shadows. Within moments, their shouts morphed into cries of pain and choked guttural noises as the vomiting took hold.

A great boom rattled the manor on its foundations. Dirt and debris rained down from above. Firelight filled the staircase and spilled into the passageway as the bedchamber’s wall splintered.

Roark dug through his pockets searching out a shield spell in case the whole tunnel collapsed on top of him, but miraculously the braces held.

“Stop tearing up my manor, you over-writing dimwit!” he hollered back up the passageway.

“This estate and everything on it belongs to the Ustari Empire,” Lowen called down. “But if you surrender now like a good mutt, we’ll leave what’s left of your body on the grounds when we’re done with you.”

Roark knew that wouldn’t happen. The mage was just playing for time while he wrote another spell.

“Come down here and get me,” Roark replied.

A moment later, a flash of gold light on the stairs dispelled the brambles around the pox-ridden Ustars. The crossbowman appeared at the top of the stairs, letting a bolt fly into the shadows.

Roark pressed himself to the stone wall as the bolt whistled past and clattered down the passage.

“A little to your left, mate,” he said, stepping into the light.

The crossbowman slapped another bolt into his bow and stomped on the stirrup, cranking the screw like mad in his rush to get the contraption cocked.

Roark pressed the shield writ to his chest, then flung another spell at the stairs. Brilliant white fingers of lightning sizzled from the paper, searching out the closest sources of metal. The crossbowman and the vomiting Ustars seized and shook as the electricity danced through their bodies.

The lightning had barely dissipated when the thick-bearded brute with the battleax leapt through the gaping hole Lowen had blown in the wall. He landed with a weighty clang in the passageway, mere feet from Roark. With a ululating screech, the brute swung his battleax at Roark’s chest.

The wind of the swing ruffled Roark’s hair as he backpedaled. He pulled out another concussion spell and tossed it at the bearded berserker. The spell rebounded off an invisible barrier, and the blast threw Roark backward down the corridor.

All the air left his lungs in a whoof when he hit, and his head bounced off the stone floor. Bright lights that had nothing to do with magic flashed in his vision. Rebound spell. Lowen must’ve written it for the berserker before sending him down. No more spell attacks that could backfire, then.

Roark rolled onto his side, trying to coax his lungs to breathe again while he pushed himself up onto arms and legs still prickling from the impact.

Stolen story; please report.

“What’s the matter, von Graf?” Lowen’s voice rang down the stairs. “Did you outsmart yourself?”

With that idiot’s taunting, Roark almost didn’t hear the whistle of the blade at his back. He threw himself into a clumsy roll. The bearded berserker’s ax buried itself in the stone floor, slinging up sparks.

Finally, Roark’s throbbing lungs reopened, and he gulped down sweet oxygen like water. He fumbled in his pockets, searching out a defensive writ that wouldn’t ricochet.

He dropped the paper and stumbled farther down the passage as it floated to the floor. Blue light flashed onto the stone walls when it hit. The air crackled and the temperature in the tunnel plummeted. A thick layer of black ice covered the ground fifteen feet from the edges of the paper in all directions.

The berserker cursed as he tried to wrench his ax from the stone only to find it frozen in place.

Roark smiled. An unintended consequence, but a lucky one.

From the stairs came the clomp of boots running with entirely too much confidence.

“Rebound spells for everyone, then,” Roark hissed bitterly, digging into his pocket for his own version of the barrier. He stuck the spell to his chest, sending up a flash of purple light.

A moment later, the singing whine of a projectile cut through the air. His barrier tolled like a bell as a spear bounced harmlessly off.

Shouts echoed behind him as running boots found the black ice and armored bodies crashed to the floor. He chuckled and dropped another entanglement spell for any of the brutes not tripped up by the ice.

The flash of green from the brambles lit up the intersection ahead. He was only yards from the maze. Roark glanced over his shoulder.

With a flash of gold, Lowen dispelled the ice. The red-hooded mage scribbled furiously at a parchment as he approached the tangle of thorny brambles. The Ustars—bearded berserker included—had grouped behind the mage, waiting for the passageway to clear so they could charge.

Lowen ripped the spell off and tossed it at the brambles.

Instead of dispelling the thicket, the branches slithered down the passage toward Roark, gaining speed as they went.

Roark sprinted into the maze, cursing the red-hooded bastard’s cleverness. Now he either had to dispel his own entanglement or abandon his plan to lose these goons in the maze while he tried to outrun the thorny whips. Damn. With a begrudging grunt, Roark threw a dispel writ at the racing brambles. They disappeared in a flash of gold.

The clamor of running feet reverberated off the walls of the maze as they followed him in.

Roark hooked left, then right, dropping an explosive spell that would lie dormant until someone bearing the winged serpent crossed paths with it. The detonation would collapse the maze on their heads, hopefully taking Lowen by surprise and buying himself enough time to get back to the Tyrant King.

Roark raced through the last intersection, grabbing the wall to redirect his momentum around the corner. A weak glimmer of silver moonlight filtered through the hidden window above as he dashed up the steps toward the blue sitting room.

As he reached for the catch, the false wall swung open. The Tyrant King stepped into the gap.

Roark stopped so quickly that he nearly fell on his face. He threw out his hands instinctively, slapping palms to the stairs and jamming several fingers in the process.

Behind him, the explosive spell detonated. The stone steps shook beneath his feet as the tunnels fell in, blocking off any means of retreat.

At the top of the stairs, Marek chuckled. “No way out now but through me.”

Roark righted himself and straightened up, glaring back at the tyrant.

“Just as well,” he said, affecting a confidence he didn’t feel. “I came here to end your worthless life, not run away.”

“Big words to hide bigger fears.” Marek descended a step, and Roark backed away as if magnetically repelled. The man he’d been so unimpressed with before now looked every inch the deadly monster he remembered from childhood. “You know what they called me before I took the throne, boy?”

Roark swallowed hard, unable to stop himself. He knew. He was the sole survivor of the massacre that had earned Marek the nickname.

“The Butcher of Korvo,” he replied in a hoarse whisper.

“Just so.” Marek dipped his head in acknowledgement. “And now I’ll finish the job properly.”

The Tyrant King surged forward, a flash of amber light filling the stairwell. Electricity seared through Roark’s nerves, passing through his barrier spell as if it didn’t exist. Just beyond the pain and disbelief, he felt himself tumbling down the stairs.

What felt like lifetimes of agony later, the electricity abated. Roark opened his eyes, blinking away the purple-green afterimages left on his retinas and struggling to get his bearings. He was lying on debris from the collapsed tunnels.

“I’ll give you one chance, boy,” Marek said. “Tell me where the Rebel Council’s hiding out and I’ll make your death quick. Refuse and I’ll draw your life out until you’re begging to die.”

Roark’s muscles shuddered and twitched with aftershocks as he pulled himself to his feet. He bowed his head, not trusting his voice, and raised one trembling palm as if to surrender. With his other hand, he dipped into his pocket and whipped out a spell.

Another flash of amber light. The scrap of parchment was incinerated. As the ashes crumbled in his grasp, Roark followed the light to the Tyrant King’s chest—a glowing topaz stone set in an intricately worked silver pendant.

“I tried to be merciful,” Marek said with a half-hearted shrug, his indifferent tone more suited to discussing a boring day in court than doling out excruciating torture. “You brought this on yourself. Remember that.”

This time when the pendant flashed that blinding amber light, Roark tried to dodge. It was a futile effort. There was nothing to dodge. No arc of electricity, no projectile or blast or bolt, just pure unadulterated agony destroying him from the inside out. It was like magma running through veins. Like a skinner’s knife slicing off flesh an inch at a time. Like acid melting his guts and dissolving his bones. All of it at once. As if from far away, he heard himself screaming. He willed himself to lose consciousness or die—one or the other, anything but awareness—but the same amber magic torturing him was blocking those too-easy escape routes. He couldn’t take this. He would lose his mind if it didn’t end soon.

He had to end it however he could. Death or betrayal, whichever one would stop the pain faster.

Without warning, the agony dropped down to a nearly bearable level. Roark realized he was on his knees at the foot of the stairs, his upper body held up by some force other than himself, sweat rolling down his face and back. The pendant glowed furious amber on the Tyrant King’s chest.

“You were saying about the T’verzet?” Marek prompted.

“Th-the T’ver-zet,” Roark stuttered, struggling to form words through the constant stream of pain. “Th-th-they’re—”

Marek nodded like a patient tutor with a particularly slow student. The only hint that he was interested was the slight bend of his neck, leaning in closer as if he could will the information out faster.

“They’re—” Roark’s shaking hand plunged into his last-ditch pocket and scooped out sand mixed with pepper powder. He flung the mixture into the Tyrant King’s face.

Marek howled, pawing desperately at his eyes. Arrogant bastard was used to facing down academy-trained mages who relied entirely on magical attacks, not hedge mages who’d had to finish teaching themselves. And certainly not hedge mages who had grown up around the dirtiest thieves in Traisbin. The tyrant’s concentration broken, the amber light faded and the pain running through every muscle fiber of Roark’s body dissipated.

He nearly collapsed, overwhelmed by the relief, but forced himself back to his feet. He couldn’t waste this momentary advantage.

While Marek reeled from the attack, Roark stumbled up the stairs, using his hands as well as his feet like a dog. He shouldered clumsily past Marek, knocking the sorcerer into the stone wall. With a last surge of adrenaline, he reached up and snatched the pendant, ripping it from the Tyrant King’s neck.

“I’ll destroy you!” Marek screamed, any semblance of control gone. He groped blindly after Roark as the younger man staggered away. “You’ll know nothing but agony from now until eternity! Only in your wildest pain-induced hallucinations will you be able to dream of the sweet release of death!”

Roark’s strength gave out at the top of the stairs, and he fell into the blue sitting room. He could hear Marek stumbling up the stairs after him. From the sound of it, the Tyrant King was recovering quickly.

There was only one recourse left. It was beyond dangerous, but he didn’t have any other options.

With shaking hands, Roark pulled the pen knife from its hidden pocket inside his leather jerkin. He slashed the sleeve of his woolen jacket open from wrist to elbow and started carving the spell into his forearm, trying to picture the pub that doubled as a resistance safehouse with as much clarity as his exhausted mind could manage.

A portal opens in front of me, leading to the topmost floor of the Hearth of the World.

As he finished punctuating the sentence, the air before him shimmered and a violet portal split the air with the ripping sound of torn cloth.

It was a dangerous play. Reckless.

Portals were the least understood of all the branches of magic. Even with perfect spelling and grammar and the most clear and accurate wording in the world, mages often stepped through to find themselves trapped inside trees or half out of walls or creatures or other people or crushed at the bottom of the Great Sea. Or a few miles away from the destination they had in mind, mildly inconvenienced but otherwise fine. Two hundred years after the founding of the academy and no one had discovered any difference between the portals that worked and the ones that killed the traveler in a variety of gruesome ways.

Roark pushed himself to his feet, ribbons of hot blood running down his arm and off his fingers. The dripping red shined black in the violet light from the portal.

“You fool,” came Marek’s harsh whisper from behind him. “You’ll kill yourself.”

The words were almost funny coming from the sorcerer who’d threatened him with an eternal life filled with pain only moments before. In the face of that, a grisly death in a tangle of limbs and organs or under hundreds of millions of tons of water didn’t seem like much of a risk.

“You’re as much a coward as the council,” Roark called over his shoulder. “If I survive this, I’ll find a way to make you pay for every drop of innocent blood you’ve spilled.”

Bracing himself for the worst, Roark jumped into the portal.