“Then I was well protected.” She reached out and turned his head to see the wound. “This doesn’t look so good.”

“I’m all right now. I’ll be better when I get this thing off from around my neck.”

“Can you use your gift to break it?”

“No,” he said. “It’s shielded to prevent a gifted person from using magic to escape.”

“Shielded,” she said. She remembered the shielded shackles on Naja. “I think I might have a key that would work on it.”

She retrieved the sword and worked the blade under one of the iron cuffs. She turned her face away. With a mighty pull the iron exploded in a shower of pieces. Merritt held the bar to stabilize it for her to break the collar. In short order she had the rest of the immobilizing apparatus off him.

Once he was free, she threw her arms around him. “I was so afraid. I thought you were lost. I was so afraid that they would kill you.”

He pushed her away for a moment. “‘You are surrounded. Do as I say or you will all die.’ That was your plan? Are you out of your mind?”

Magda winced self-consciously. “It was the best I could come up with on the spot.” She frowned. “And it turned out to be true, didn’t it?”

“It certainly did,” he said with a smile as he pulled her back to hold her tight in a grateful hug. “Thank you, Magda. I have to tell you, that was quite something to behold.”

She felt shaky in the wake of the fear from the fight, but it felt good to have his arms around her. “It was the sword,” she said. “Your creation is magnificent.”

“The sword is just a tool. The one wielding it has to be the right person. That’s what matters most.”

She cast him a skeptical look as he stood. “If you say so.”

The clouds were beginning to break up and the moon had emerged to cast light over the landscape.

“We need to get rid of these bodies,” Merritt said as he surveyed the area. “If they’re found it will bring the whole army looking for who was responsible. They’ll look for the missing men soon enough as it is.”

“It’s quite a drop over there,” Magda said, gesturing. “We can roll them over the edge. No one is likely to spot them, at least not for a time. That should buy us a day or two at least.”