Blades Of Illusion: Crown Service #2 by Terah Edun Read Free Book Online

the imperial court agreed upon, it was that speaking of the Kade mages with any sort of reverence amounted to treason. And talks about the extents of their powers could sound like reverence to unassuming ears. So Sara and her former friends had only heard rumors and innuendos. Myths that she was starting to believe were true. Even if Nissa Sardonien had yet to show even a spark of the powers to influence the rays of the sun, as she was supposedly capable of.
    Then the call for everyone to mount up and move out flowed back over the standing group. With a sigh, Sara shouldered the weight she helped carry and turned back north to march onwards.
    Despite being fed up with grain bars, feverish from the heat, and damned tired of marching forward, Sara knew that regardless of the length of the swamp and the distance ahead, she had to go on. Each step forward drew her closer to a healer. Closer to dry land, and closer to safety. They couldn’t turn around. They had come too far already. There was nothing but more swamp to the west and east. So they kept going north. North to safety.
    She almost laughed at that. Safety . It was almost a ridiculous concept to think of a battlefield as safe. But this mysterious swampland was riddled with traps, and Sara knew that if she didn’t leave soon, she might never. She had faith that they would make it through. Whether or not they’d be half-dead when they emerged was another question entirely.
    “What a fickle thing hope is”, she murmured to herself in a tired manner while shifting the heavy weight of her backpack from one shoulder to another.
    One foot in front of the other.
    Because you see, Sara Fairchild and over two hundred hail men and women had journeyed through the portal way on faith. Faith that they would be transported to the edge of the battlefield on Kade-claimed lands. Faith that they could surge out of the portal way, ready to take on any Kade enemies that confronted them while staying in point formation. Regardless of her disgust at the captain’s leadership, she knew that if they could just plough through any resistance like a sharp arrow through flesh, then they could join forces with the thousands of imperial troops already stationed on the front.
    And so that had been the plan. Nissa had been moved to a secure spot in the middle and surrounded on all sides by observant guards. If the Kade mages wanted to free her, they’d have to go through dozens of Corcoran mercenaries to do so. Unfortunately, that plan to lay waste their enemies in a quick assault hadn’t come about. Not because their enemies had lain in wait for them. No, instead a trap had been set. A devious one.
    Instead of being transported to the outskirts of the battlefield or even directly in the middle, the portal way had malfunctioned.
    Or been tampered with , Sara thought to herself as she recalled the whispers among the troops. Whispers that had stopped the moment the captain had gotten wind of them. Either way, she was certain that they had been transported over fifty miles south of their destination. At the entrance to a freaking swamp that didn’t belong in the middle of the bread basket of the Algardis lands.
    When she had asked a fellow mercenary about the mysteriously dense mixture of fog and swamp that lay directly in their path between the open field they stood in and the battlefield far off in the distance, the woman had answered, “Kade tricks. That all it be. We’ll march through double-time in three days and be where we belong soon enough.”
    The woman had been only one-quarter right. It had been a Kade enchantment—that much Nissa had confirmed. But not one she had conjured. Another Kade mage, one with ties to nature and land, had built the bog. The captain had shrugged it off and ordered them to forge through. It was a day later that Sara and the entire division had learned that this ‘Kade trick’ was more like a Kade deathtrap. 
    Miles out from the battlefield, Sara squinted