“Nothing ends without bloodshed,” one man said, older than the rest. “Well, bloodshed or fire…”

  The guy probably thought that he was being clever, but even as he shouted “Meiren” and used the word of fire to unch a barrage of fmes at Simon, he was already whispering the words, “Karesh Uuvellum Meiren,” as he imagined a wall of solid gss reag from wall to wall of the space he was iween twe wine racks.

  He could have struck back of course, but he wao talk to Kaylee, and she could have easily been hurt in the crossfire. So for now he pyed defense. Lets the waves crash against his invisible fortification. They raged hot enough to light the wood oher side of him on fire, but thanks to his magic he didn’t evehe heat.

  Instead, he simply stood there, and wheide of fire receded, he said, “There, now we talk about this?”

  The only answer of his oppo was to shout the word twice more. The sed time, he bolstered his shield, but only a little. This man clearly cked any real power or imagination. When his voice cracked on the sed attempt, aarted coughing up blood, he also showed he had very little in the way of stamiher.

  How long has it been sihree basic words would have dohat to me? Simon said, refleg, even as the basement was on fire on both sides of him.

  There had been a time, so long ago that he barely remembered it, that two greater words would always reduce him to a painful hoarseness. That was in the past, though. Today, he suspected that the pain came at least as much from failing to pronounce or uand the word correctly as from actually eling more power than you could hahat was a lesson he was only slowly learning with time.

  “Say the word,” the coughing man said to his panions. “Say it! He’s weakening! If we all say it together!” As he tried to vince his allies to attack him, Simon chuckled at the idea that he was the one weakening and whispered “Aufvarum Gelthiother the fmes with the lesser word of ice before they could burn out of trol and cause serious damage to the pbsp;

  That shocked the assembled group visibly. “Listen,” Simon said again. “The words of power are cursed, and you damn your soul to use them. Surender and I will ehat you’re treated fairly by the w. I—”

  Simon stopped talking as soon as he saw everyoemperament ge. When he’d been talking about damnation, he was clearly winning them over. They obviously believed that much. It was the notion that there was any justice to be waiting for them at the hands of their betters that they found to be ridiculous.

  He didn’t have time to formute anument, let aloime to figure out where they’d learned such a destructive word. He couldn’t even pte the fact that fire seemed to be far and away the most on word out there. Instead, he raised his defenses.

  As one, almost everyone in the group assaulted him with a new wave of fire. “Gervuul Karesh Uuvellum Meiren,” he said very clearly, bringing aronger wall to deal with su assault. He’d never faced a group of spellcasters before, so he erred on the side of caution and used a greater word to hold back the inferno.

  It was certainly enough to make him regret his earlier overfidehough. He’d never cast a spell as long as that one and almost always used one word or two, and he felt the burn immediately. He wasn’t sure it was drawing more of his life than a normal greater word, but the plexity pulled at his mind and his throat in ways that were more painful than usual. He’d thought that he could keep this up all day, but that was turning out not to be the case.

  Still, nothing they were doing was showing any signs of weakening his spell. The cert of fmes roared like a typhoon against him, but no amount of power could cross a lihat had been defined so boldly. The only way to make it more powerful would have been to carve the thing into the stone in a sort of reverse summoning circle.

  For a moment, he allowed his mind to wander and wonder if that would actually drain less or more from him than saying the words. However, as soon as the fmes started to s, he drew his sword and focused on whatever was goi.

  As it turned out, though, he probably wouldn’t . Most of the would-be mages were already wounded or dead. Some y on the ground, coughing up blood, and others were horribly burhey clearly hadn’t given much thought to what would happen if they released so much heat in such a tained area. Simon muttered a few words to smother the fmes before the smoke became a problem, and then he moved toward Kaylee.

  She was on the ground and obviously wounded, so he was dorying to py nice. A couple of the men still had the strength to menace him with ons, and Simon didn’t hesitate to cut them down. While he still wasn’t at full strength, they were no match for him.

  After that, everyone who was capable ran for their lives, a them go. Those who weren’t visibly burned were already scared by this experien other ways, and ohe guards came for them, he doubted that any of them would survive.

  Kaylee, who was already on the ground, she was burned pretty badly on her left side. To him, it looked like whoever had been standio her practically exploded rather than trying to use his will to direct the fire.

  Just looking at her suffering was enough to make him feel bad for her. So, after he carried her some distance from the others to a darkened er, ae the strain he’d already put on himself, he whispered, “Gervuul Hyakk,” and practically erased her would with a greater word of healing. It wasn’t perfect, and he could do nothing about her burned hair or dress with any of the words that he knew, but she wasn’t going to spend the rest of her days being disfigured, at least.

  “Why did you do this?” he asked, taking off his mask as she finally looked up at him with clear eyes. “You didn’t just pn a massacre, but you worked with warlocks? Don’t you uand how insanely dangerous that is?”

  “Simon?” she asked, fused. “How… Why? You ’t be here.”

  “A I am,” he nodded. His throat was still sore, but he ig. After this, he was going to be on a nice rexing boat cruise for the better part of the week, so he’d have plenty of time to recover. “So talk.”

  “But you haven’t aged…” she said, “Well, maybe a little, but it’s been more than two decades…”

  “Good genes,” he lied. “I get that from my mother’s people.”

  “But why didn’t you help us?” She asked, tears welling in her eyes. “If you have all this power, then you must know… you must. They were so cruel to us, to Eddek and I. For what they did to him, there be no answer but violence.”

  “I don’t,” he answered, “but I wish I did. Tell me, and maybe I fix it. I just know that violence isn’t the answer.”

  “It… isn’t the answer?” she asked in fusion before she looked around and ughed. “How you, of all people, say that Simon? Violence was the answer against the owlbear and the troll you said you were off to fight. It was certainly the answer you used in this basement today.”

  “If you killed everyone up there today, I promise you that worse people would repce them,” he expio her. “You think that these men would have created a better ruling css?”

  “We wao create a try without rulers. We wao be free!” she said with a look of wide-eyed passion. “And you’ve rui.”

  “Trust me,” he sighed, “if I’m here, nothing good was about to happen. That’s the way this works.”

  This was the first time he’d run across something like democra the Pit, even ceptually. He didn’t remember a whole lot from his history csses, but Simon retty sure that early attempts were usually bloody affairs that didn’t end well. Right now he didn’t care about any of that. He just wanted information.

  “Oh?” she asked. “I always thought of you as a hero of yore. Are you just a harbinger of terrible things to e? An albatross?” she asked pintively, getting mgressive with eaent, but he really wasn’t sure what to tell her or even what he could tell her. “I see what you are now. You’re no different than the rest of them. You were just going to hold us down like they did!”

  “Kaylee,” Simon said. “Please calm down.”

  He could hear that they were running out of time. The door to the basement hadn’t opened yet, but people were definitely stomping around upstairs, and any sed now, the guards would e for them. They wouldn’t be looking for is, either.

  “Calm? I am calm. I know what you are,” she said, leaning forward to whisper something in his ear. “You’re, Mei—”

  Simon sehe betrayal ing, but he waited until she actually said the first sylble before he seized her by the throat. He held her there so tightly that she couldn’t breathe, let alone speak. Even then, he would have tried to reason with her, though. Was that because this was all somehow his fault because he’d had a hand in bringio this fork in the road? He wasn’t sure, but before he could figure out what to say , the guards burst through the door.

  Simon dumped her off his p then and bolted toward the door on the far wall before she could bst him. She didn’t disappoiher.

  The fmes licked at him in his wake, and though he heard her cry out that terrible word twice, only the first time was aimed at him. The sed time, it was followed by the guards ing dowairs, who screamed instead.

  It’s not my problem anymore. That’s what he tried to tell himself as he sheathed his sword, opehe door to the Sea Seraph, and then quickly closed it behind him.

  Somehow, those words did nothing to make him feel better. Had he done everything he could to save her? No. Had he let her down in any major way? Not that he could think of. He’d given her every ce to turn from the darkness. He would have gdly brought Kaylee with him, and away from whatever terrible situation it was that she found herself in, if only her presence wouldn’t have been a stant knife, waiting to betray him.