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.The door slid open and I stepped inside.The slaves gaped at me and then opened their mouths and started shouting for their master, screaming that they were being kidnapped.I cast a freeze spell at once, shutting them up quickly and brutally; they might have had no choice, but the racket could have brought the security team down on our heads.In the sudden silence, I could hear nothing apart from the beating of my heart.The sound hadn’t alerted anyone, I hoped.“Don’t worry,” I said, as I studied the first slave’s collar.It was a nasty little thing.The spell concealed in the iron collar looked as if it wanted to bite me.It was more complex than I had expected – the result, I guessed, of the commands given to the slaves and ingrained within the spell – but it was fairly easy to dismantle and neutralise.“I’ll get you out of here, one way or the other.”Once the first slave was freed, I worked my way through the others, before releasing the freeze spell.The slaves collapsed at once, although more because of the effects of the spell than because of any lingering after-effects from their enslavement.Cardonel helped them to their feet and pointed to the door, ordering them out into the basement.I left the collars there – after rigging them with a spell of my own to give anyone who picked them up a nasty surprise – and followed them.The men were free.Now all we had to do was liberate the women.“Thank you,” one of the boys said.He was around seventeen years old and would have been quite handsome, in a manner of speaking, if his face hadn’t been so haunted by everything he’d seen over the last few days.He looked bitterly vulnerable and distraught.I had been told that slave spells could be addictive at times, with people choosing – as insane as it seemed – to be enslaved and give up their own free will to someone else.It was enough to make me feel sick.“Who are you?”“No names,” Cardonel said, before I could say anything.“We’re not out of the woods yet.”I nodded and resumed the search for the women.It took us several moments to find them and, when we did, it became apparent that rescuing them was going to be harder.They were all gathered in a cell, not unlike the men, but they were protected by layers of more complex spells, each one carefully designed to keep out intruders.I wasn’t too surprised.Female slaves, it seemed, were worth more than male slaves.“I’ll stay on guard,” Cardonel hissed.“You concentrate on the spells.”“Understood,” I said.My heart was pounding away as I started to dismantle the first set of spells.It was far harder than anything I’d done before, because the first set was interlinked with the second and third set, but I had no choice now.I felt sweat running down my back as I isolated the first set, cut the links between the second and third set and then started brushing them away.The owners hadn’t wasted their money on this set of wards.I doubted that anyone else could have brought the wards down quicker.“Hang on…”The fifth and six sets of wards collapsed, almost like a giant spider’s web.I caught and isolated them with my mind, realising that the spell was alarmingly complex and likely to start trying to rebuild itself.Unless it was shattered beyond hope of self-repair…I pulled it apart completely and absorbed the traces of magic into my own magical field.I opened the door and cast the freeze spell at once, without waiting for the women to start screaming.Once was quite enough.“Don’t worry,” I said, as I slipped through the door.“We’re here to get you out of this nightmare.”The women were bound by the same spells as the men, although some of them had more complex spells than others.I guessed that they’d been given different orders, although there was no time to read the spells and find out what they had been…and besides, I didn’t want to know.I was undoing the last set of wards when disaster struck and I broke a ward I hadn’t realised was there.I should have known – the girl was stunningly pretty, yet far too young for trouble and strife – but there was no time to waste in recriminations.The wards would already be sounding the alarm.“We have to get out of here,” I snapped, as I broke the last slave spell and pushed the girls towards the door.A thought crossed my mind as I felt, rather than heard, doors slamming closed above us.I felt the wards around the building coming alive and starting to hunt for the intruders.They’d discover that I’d dismantled too many of them for safety.The owners would have to rebuild everything before their base was secure again.Not that it would matter to us, one way or the other.I heard the sound of heavy footsteps above us and knew that the muscle-men were on their way.“There’s only one way out,” Cardonel said.I didn’t hear any recriminations in his voice, but I knew that they were there.God alone knew what the owners would do to us if they caught us.“How do you think we can get past an army?”I smiled as a thought occurred to me.I could get the women out, at least.I pulled the Sisterhood’s pendant from below my shirt and held it up, triggering it with a single thought [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]