Page 104 of Mountain of Mirrors and Starlight
He felt it now, felt it like water against a dam.
He let it break.
The rodent slumped his hand, and toppled to the floor.
Venus let out a clap. A few others joined in, gasping and twittering.
“Amazing!” she declared. “Now… bring one back.”
Caer sighed, picking up another. He’d barely learned to masterjustkilling them with Diana before he’d left the cottage. If anything, this was easier—like dabbing a candle rather than extinguishing it. His power almost didn’t want to kill. It wanted them to rise again.
The power was a separate thing, not his. It would never be fullyhis.No matter how hard he practised.
He reached out again with his tendrils of magic, as real to him as a separate limb, and dabbed at that light inside the rodent. The creature greyed and stilled, only for a few seconds whilst Caer drained the life from it, and then rose again, a scuttling, pulsatingthing.
Caer dropped it in revulsion.
The crowd gasped. A few even screamed. It scuttled forward, driven towards the noise.
A guard leapt forward and speared it through the middle. It squirmed on the edge of the blade, twisting manically, not bleeding.
There were a few more cries and sounds of disgust.
“Get its head!” Diana called. “Take off its head!”
The guard lowered her spear towards the ground and another one came forward to slice off its head. What little of the blood that came out was black and oily.
“Impressive, young prince,” Venus continued. “Can you do several at once?”
Caer gritted his teeth, wishing he didn’t know the answer to that one. He thought of Dillon, and the other bodies in the snow. The ones he hadn’t even had to touch. “Yes.”
Venus leaned forward. “Show me.”
Caer swallowed, hovering over the cage. Five of the beasts remained, wriggling against the bars. Could he kill them without touching them? The others had already been dead…
And yet he’d felt their bodies anyway, felt the echo of them under the earth…
He could always feel it.
He held out his hand. He thought about how Aislinn had spoken about magic, the way that nature had a pulse. He felt only a whisper of something beneath the trees, but the lifeforce of these things rippled beneath him now. He could even feel a ripple of it from the crowd, muted and faraway, like covered by a thick layer of something. He could not harm them, mercifully.
He tensed his fingers. For some reason, that helped, tying a physical action to the power winding through him. He watched their bodies still, their eyes cloud over.
They leapt out of the box.
Shrieks went up as they hurtled across the ground. The guards darted after them, but they were too quick, too sudden. Caer sprung forward, a silent, ‘no’ on his lips. He had no idea what these creatures could do if they bit someone, if their bite was infectious.
He did not want to find out.
He flung out his hand. “Stop.”
The creatures stilled, straining against his grip. He felt their pulse beneath his hands, as if tied to them by invisible strings.
He flicked his wrists, like snapping the head of a bird.
They fell down dead.
Minerva was on her feet. So were most ofhisdwarves. So was Aislinn.
