All Spell Breaks Loose by Lisa Shearin

the old man’s head, I could hear his muffled screams coming from inside.
    I wouldn’t let that happen to Talon.
    Tam lunged forward and threw Talon behind him, thrusting his hands palms out toward the Magh’Sceadu.
    The thing stopped.
    Tam and his power didn’t.
    Black magic was about as close to the Saghred as mortals could get. However, the power of the strongest black mage was a grain of sand on the beach compared to what the fully fed Saghred could do, though the penalty for using that magic was the same. You used it, and it used you. The payback wasn’t immediate, but the magic would get what it wanted. Like borrowing money from loan sharks—when it came time to pay, you could run, but you couldn’t hide. They’d get back what they loaned you, with interest, and they’d be perfectly happy taking it out of your hide.
    Black magic would gleefully carve it out of your soul.
    Tam got the power boost now. He knew he’d pay later.
    A dark shimmer, like morning mist rising off a harbor, formed around Tam’s extended hands. The Magh’Sceadu shifted uneasily. At least that was the way it looked to me. The air in the tunnel grew heavy, pressing down on us. Tam wasn’t immune to his own spell; his shoulders bowed under the strain of increasing its power. The tunnel got darker, even darker than it already was. Shadows spread like oil outward from Tam’s hands to coat the floor, walls, and ceiling. I shook with sudden cold, as if the darkness suffocated not only the light, but what little warmth the air held. Normally when a mage of Tam’s strength gathered their power, the air around them was charged with it, crackling with the intensity of magic about to be unleashed.
    This was different. This was wrong.
    Anti-magic.
    I couldn’t imagine anything else that would work on a Magh’Sceadu.
    Emptiness spread from Tam’s fingers, radiated from his body. In the sphere of his spell, in the spreading shadows was a void, an emptiness where magic was not, where lifedid not exist. Death was an absence of life; this was an absence of everything.
    The Magh’Sceadu recoiled.
    I wanted to.
    “Run!” Tam’s voice was tight with the strain of holding the spell.
    An oily, glistening fog spread up the tunnel walls, flowing with increasing speed toward the Magh’Sceadu. It lapped hungrily at the edge of the creature’s feet, base, whatever, sending it skittering backward a good ten feet. It stopped there, hovering.
    It was too late to run.
    From the tunnel where the first Magh’Sceadu had gone, more shadows separated from the dark. More Magh’Sceadu. Coming for us.
    They charged. A roar of wordless fury ripped itself from Tam’s throat, taking with it every last bit of endurance, strength, and power that he possessed, channeling it through his body and slamming it into the oncoming Magh’Sceadu. The darkness of Tam’s black magic swallowed them in a wave. Magh’Sceadu didn’t have voices, but that didn’t stop them from screaming from inside that darkness, screaming like their countless victims had screamed. I didn’t hear it; I felt it. Their screams climbed to a fevered, panicked pitch that vibrated in my bones.
    Then silence. Nothing moved in the shifting darkness where the Magh’Sceadu and Tam had been.
    Imala shoved Carnades aside. “Tam!”
    Tam staggered out of the dark. He managed one step toward Imala before he collapsed.
    The darkness of Tam’s spell dissipated enough to see where the Magh’Sceadu had been.
    Gone.
    It’d taken the Saghred for me to destroy six Magh’Sceadu in The Ruins. Tam had taken out four by himself.
    I didn’t know how he’d done it, and right now it didn’tmatter. Getting out of here did. Black magic made just as much noise as, if not more than, the regular variety. Sarad Nukpana and his Khrynsani minions would be listening for any and all of it. Worse, Nukpana knew that Tam was a dark mage.
    The residue from the spell clung to Tam, spreading up his arms and over his chest. Tam