Asunder Read online

  Asunder

  Melody’s Song Book 2

  Tanya Schofield

  TEXT COPYRIGHT © 2018 TANYA SCHOFIELD

  ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

  ISBN: 9781947683099

  Cobble Publishing LLC

  Sugar Land, TX

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Thank You and How to Contact Me

  For my mom, my first and fiercest fan:

  “You asked for everything. This is my everything.

  I love you.”

  1

  Melody surveyed the scene before her, and remembered the scene behind her. She looked up to the left, and saw archers training their bows in her direction. She looked out, and saw Garen standing by the fire that was still consuming Aellielle, his expression unreadable. She looked to the sky, seeing the thick, angry clouds that threatened overhead.

  With a deep breath, Melody tasted the rain that refused to fall, and closed her eyes. The magic came. She stepped out into the street and raised her arms, her staff held high.

  Enough was enough.

  Garen caught sight of Melody through the smoke and for an instant, he hoped she had come back to him, that she had returned willingly to be at his side. Then he saw her open her eyes, leveled directly at his. There was blood on her mouth, he noticed, and magic shimmered in the air around her. His gut went cold. He looked from the archers to the fires to the soldiers, then back to her.

  She was walking now, slowly, directly towards him.

  “As you love your life, Sedrik, I advise you to run.” Garen threw his torch into the already blazing fire and followed his own advice, bolting into the cover of the smoke without a glance behind.

  Melody did not lose sight of him. With a silent flick of her fingers, she commanded the fire beside him, and it obeyed. Flames leapt out, finding purchase in his clothes and hair. He stumbled, fell, and still the fire flowed to him. It surged around him, stealing the air. His skin crackled as he scrambled on his hands and knees to escape the flames.

  Burn, she told him, filling his mind with the word, remembering all he had done and how it had felt. How it still felt.

  Ving let out an undignified yelp as he saw the flames reach for Chancellor Garen, and backpedaled away from the fire. He stumbled over his own feet, landing on his backside, but he kept hold of his torch. It wasn’t possible, his mind insisted. There was no wind; the fire could not have done that. He found his feet again and looked from the staggering, burning figure of Chancellor Garen to the girl who seemed to be the center of it all.

  She looked back.

  Melody had paused in the middle of the wide street, knowing Garen had managed to survive but no longer caring. She was lit only by the fires as the sky grew darker by the moment, and her hair lifted in the hot breeze. There was no sound - the cheering crowd had fallen silent in response to the magic they sensed but did not understand.

  She surveyed the scene, surrounded by the overpowering scent of the burning flesh of the innocent, and brought her gaze to bear on Sedrik Ving. He stopped in his tracks when she looked at him, his breathing shallow and panicked. His fear pleased her.

  You ordered this. Her voice in his head was huge and deafening, and it was the last thing he would ever experience. Melody raised her hand, pointing at him. Archers loosed their arrows, and she spared a fraction of her attention to slap them from the sky, never taking her eyes from the cowering Earl. He could have stopped the slaughter. He chose not to.

  “Die.”

  Gasps rippled through the crowd as the power of her voice hit them, gasps that turned to screams when a bolt of lightning cracked from the troubled sky directly into Sedrik Ving. He died instantly, his body smoking when it hit the ground. A few of the people fell to their knees, praying and wailing as Melody turned her gaze from the smoldering Earl to them.

  “You,” she said, reaching towards the crowd with one hand. Her fingers were splayed wide. The people shuffled and stumbled, trying to back away from the darkness in her gaze. Arrows came in a rain now, none of them able to hit her.

  “All of you.” Her staff glowed and pulsed at her side, the power coursing through it and through her and spilling out amongst the people who shifted like so many cattle under her stare.

  They had watched. They had allowed. They were guilty.

  Without warning, she clenched the fingers of her outstretched hand and the magic surged to obey. The ground itself tightened and rippled, rolling under the feet of the crowd with a sound that mirrored the thunder in the clouds above them. People screamed as they were thrown to the dirt. Loose stones from nearby buildings caught in the wave began to fall.

  It wasn’t enough.

  Melody gave full reign to her anger and brought both hands to her staff, raising it above her head. When she slammed it down in front of her, the earth cracked under the force. The crevasse began at her feet, streaking out into the crowd with a shuddering groan that gave voice to Melody’s aching heart. It widened as it split. She sent one fissure under the feet of the approaching soldiers who had thought to rush her. They screamed as they fell into the roaring blackness.

  Panic drove the crowd in every direction, but there was nowhere safe. Archers above dropped their bows and headed for ladders and stairs, but the structures themselves were shaking apart beneath them. Wood and stone and soldiers rained down onto those people that hadn’t been swallowed by the crevasse. The earth heaved and bucked, mimicking the hitching sobs wracking Melody’s body.

  She raised her face to the cloud-black sky and wept. She cried for Kaeliph and Jovan, for Aellielle and Rhodoban, for Pashu, for her friends and family among the Dwellers, for Calder, even for herself. They were tears of sorrow and anger, and they flowed from her eyes like water.

  As if in answer, the rains began. The downpour was torrential, extinguishing the bonfires in mere minutes and creating mud so slick that even those who did not try to run lost their footing.

  In the midst of it all, Melody stood.

  She wanted it gone. Erased. All of it. And she knew without question that she could do it.

  Ving’s residence, his seat of power, sat on the hill. Melody tipped her head, and with nothing more than her intention she outlined the keep in glowing blue flames. When the entire building was enveloped in the magic, when she knew every room and outbuilding and occupant was soaked in the power, Melody clenched her fist, and the flames followed suit. The distant rumble of the keep as it crumbled in on itself was lost in the storm whipping around her.

  It was all so easy.

  She took a deep breath, and saw the power bursting out from her in a circle – and as she imagined it, it was. The magic built within her for a moment, filling her to overflowing as it fed on her bottomless anger. It erupted in a sudden pulse that simply disintegrated the few remaining soldiers and knocked wooden buildings into splinters in a radius as far as
she could see.

  Melody walked further into the town, not slowed by the treacherous mud beneath her feet. The blackened, rain-drenched bodies piled on the once-blazing bonfires recalled for her the bodies of the Dwellers, her family, scattered haphazardly across the glade that had been her home. So much death.

  The arena loomed before her, unmistakable. The sight of it rekindled the pain of Kaeliph’s death and Jovan’s furious dismissal. Magic surged up in her, and she gritted her teeth. Not you, he had said. Never you. Pain transformed into power, and the structure cracked at her unspoken command.

  Two men, catlike, appeared from the shadows in a blur of speed, their weapons glinting in the half-light. Lightning crashed around them as the two men leapt towards her, easily finding their footing in the mud. One’s sword slashed towards her in a wide overhand arc, the other’s was poised at the ready just where she should have dodged the first— but neither weapon struck.

  The twins found themselves paralyzed by the magic that surrounded her, unable to press their attack … and unable to run.

  Melody turned her attention from the arena to consider them, listening to their hummingbird heartbeats as they strained against the power - her power - that held them. She could practically smell Garen on them. She found him in their thoughts, and that was enough. With a jerk of her head, Melody threw the two men backward into the groaning walls of the arena.

  The impact didn’t kill them. She outlined them in the same cold blue flame she sent into the arena, letting them try to run as she poured more power out and up and into every corner and support of the building. The former Captains of the Guard had barely reached what remained of the road before she tightened the magic down into itself, breaking the walls and crushing the twins where they stood.

  It still wasn’t enough.

  She brought the lightning to bear, bolt after bolt striking the arena. Lightning struck until the walls were no more than rubble and the banners were burned black. Again she pulled at the ground and again it answered, heaving and shaking until the arena and everything around it was nothing more than debris.

  Melody’s circuit of the town brought her to the stable and she paused outside, listening to the horses in their stalls scream in fear. She remembered the stable. She remembered the fear.

  She broke open every door at once with just a lift of her chin, and let her memories burn. In moments, raging flames drove the terrified horses out into the transformed town— the fire so hot that not even the steady rain could ease it. The stable would burn into nothing. The room beneath it would do the same.

  Nothing was safe, no structure escaped her notice. Tents were uprooted. Shops were destroyed. By the time she realized how exhausted she was, most of the town had been leveled. She released the thunder and let the rain slow as she stepped through the wreckage of the Inn where she and Jovan had lain together just hours before, before Garen had—

  A thought occurred to Melody as she looked at the few buildings still standing. The warehouses over the subterranean homes of the magic users were only partially destroyed, several walls still stood and the lightning had spared many of them. Aellielle’s body had been the only one near Garen. Every burned body she had seen on the other bonfires had been an adult.

  Where were the children?

  Melody’s gut twisted, and she began to make her way towards the warehouses.

  2

  The girl grew stronger.

  So did he. The ancient man - though no longer a man - existed in a place that was not a place, waiting. He had first felt the girl as a threat he was unable to name, merely a shadow he could not directly discern, hovering on the farthest edge of his awareness. But that was changing.

  In the halls of his Witherin she had been nothing, a guttering candle in an endless void. On his island, though, she had been more. And now… He could feel her progress, and the speed of it. Power moved to her and through her in ways unseen since he himself walked the world. She must die - before he manifested. He could not risk her learning to control the staggering depths of the magic within her.

  He exerted his will, and drew one of his attendants close. Get her. The command had to be simple, for the dead did not think, they merely obeyed. Kill her. He implanted the taste of the girl’s magic into the creature’s consciousness. Appearances changed, but that kind of power was unmistakable. The servant would hunt the girl, and then it would kill her. He almost envied it.

  The time was drawing near when he would again have physical form instead of this accursed, drifting half-life. No longer would he have to experience the world through the dull senses of the dead. That time was so close. He had already selected the body he would inhabit when he reclaimed his power.

  And reclaim it he would, that was certain. There was no one to stop him. None would even know how. Their foolish, predictable rejection of magic had all but invited him to return.

  He seized another attendant’s mind. Find him. He burned a picture of the tall, muscular man with the long black hair into the creature’s knowing. Bring him.

  He lingered over the image, taken from the eyes of a different servant before it had been slain. The man had fought well, he had protected the girl from the undead who had been sent to destroy her. The broad chest, the muscular arms, the set jaw - this was a warrior, this was a worthy host. When the picture was nearly real in the creature’s mind, he repeated the command. Bring him unharmed.

  To walk, and touch, and breathe? He could imagine what that would be like, and he imagined it would be glorious.

  To do that, to inhabit a body that wasn’t his own… it should not be possible, of course. Half the things he had done in his lifetime were impossible. But the single luxury afforded him by these endless years was an accumulation of knowledge. Despite their efforts to destroy the information he had left behind, he had learned. They burned centuries of painstaking record keeping to ensure that no other would rise as he had, but humanity had failed. Knowledge remained.

  His connections with his servants let him read through their eyes, and over the years he had sent hundreds of them in search of the knowledge he sought. They read it all, every scrap of text in every journal. The records of history had been kept by fools too blind to understand what they were writing, the authors had no idea how close they were to a real breakthrough. Slaves to their weak, absurd sense of morality, they had stopped.

  But he didn’t. He alone understood the larger implications of their incomplete research. He had always possessed a vision beyond the comprehension of his peers. Only he could have taken their findings and turned their nervous theories into his reality. It had taken centuries, but he was finally ready.

  When he walked again it would not be as an awkwardly animated corpse, like his servants. No, he would step into the world as a living, breathing man - no more the pale, wasted scholar he had been, but a warrior, powerful and fierce.

  Go, he told several more servants, giving some of them images of the warrior, and some the taste of the girl’s magic. Get him, he commanded. Kill her. The time is now.

  They moved to obey, slow and steady, consumed with seeing his will done.

  Logannus.

  The black shape entered the spaceless void in immediate response to the summons, a consciousness nearly equal to the man it had once been. Logannus had been one of the Five, the small group of mages who thought to save the world and destroy him with magic. Logannus had been the first to fall, and remained the most powerful - and loyal - of his followers.

  Monitor them, Semaj instructed.

  He would not say, but he was weary. Something of his former physical frailty had carried through to this dark no-place. Without the streams of magic coursing through the land all around him, he would not have the power for any of this.

  Logannus bowed without moving, and slipped away.

  Phelwen Semaj, the Lich King, the Lord of the Dead, slept.

  3

  Melody woke.

  The immediate throbbing ache in her h
ead came as a surprise, and she took a long, measured breath. The pain was enormous and nauseating, radiating from the top of her skull, down her neck, and even extending into both of her arms. She lay still, concentrating on not being sick, and realized that her whole body hurt - not as badly as her head, but everywhere.

  Her fingers were cramped into claws. Her feet and legs felt stiff and heavy, the muscles of her belly and back burned with each breath she took. Her nose and mouth felt thick and numb, and she licked her lips gingerly. The skin was dry and chapped, and her tongue felt swollen and unfamiliar. The exploration reopened a barely closed split in her tongue, and the sharp metallic taste focused her confused mind.

  Jovan. She remembered him shoving her, remembered his terrifying rage. Not you, never you. He had broken his promise, but …why?

  Kaeliph. Hot tears stung her eyes. Kaeliph was dead. She saw again the blood, blossoming on his chest, heard his hitching gasps. She couldn’t save him. She had tried.

  More flashes came to her, soaked in pain and remembered fear. Jovan, gentle. Garen, brutal. The room under the stable. The collar Garen had locked on her, Jovan’s blood flowing as he cut it free, the fear and concern for Kaeliph that drove them from Foley—

  Foley.

  Melody gasped, full memory returning in a flood that crashed into her and swept her into tumbling undercurrents of visions. Aellielle, burning. Rhodoban, falling. Herself… She remembered the power and the storm - her storm. She remembered her anger, the all-consuming rage and the cold dark certainty that her will would be done. Her will was to destroy, and destroy she had. She remembered the screaming. She imagined she could still hear it, as much as her head hurt.