Mack vanished the silver cord binding Owen’s wrists. I was just moving to go stand at Owen’s side when Ramsay gave a roar of fury and rushed at Owen, magic shooting in violent sparks from his outstretched hands. Owen staggered backward, unable to defend himself, and Mack stepped in to shield him, counterattacking against Ramsay.
But Ramsay seemed entirely unaffected. He kept advancing on the circle. I heard Merlin cry out behind me at the Council table, and I turned to see him nearly fall out of his seat again. I whirled back to face the room. “Stop! Don’t!” I called out to Mack while I tried to block out the noise and chaos to think.
Owen was within the circle of tile on the floor that kept prisoners from using magic, but he had used magic instinctively against Idris, and it had worked, but it had harmed Merlin instead of Idris. Mack was sticking close to Owen and had one foot still within the circle, and his magic had also hurt Merlin. That was it! It looked like instead of preventing magic use, the circle now turned magic used within it into an attack on Merlin. That must have been what Ramsay planned to make it look like Owen was the bad guy. But how? We’d swept the room before the hearing. Nothing had been altered or out of place.
The Council’s guards rushed forward to grab Ramsay, but the remaining loyalists in the audience got in their way. James, Gloria, and Rod left their seats to help defend Owen. “Stay out of the circle,” I called to them. They were able to protect Owen from most of the fighting, but Mack apparently didn’t have the power to take Owen out of the prisoner’s circle. Owen was stuck there as securely as if there were iron bars around him, and while he was, he couldn’t do anything magically without hurting Merlin.
The Council members were now getting into the fray, mostly in a vain attempt to restore order. Merlin, looking a little pale and shaken but otherwise unharmed, came down from the high table and headed straight for Ramsay, and Ramsay turned to face him. “This is what you wanted, isn’t it, Ivor?” Merlin said. “You wanted to face me so that nothing would stand in the way between you and total power.” He held his arms out to the side. “Here I am.”
I’d seen some big magical battles in the past, but this was a clash of the titans. Even though Merlin wasn’t wearing his mystical robe, I felt like I could see the aura of it around him. He and Ramsay were more evenly matched than I would have thought. Ramsay held his own and showed no sign of tiring as they flung spell after spell at each other. Fights against Merlin usually didn’t last very long, but this one kept going.
Idris moved to join his boss, which surprised me. He was the type to switch to the winning side, especially after learning that Ramsay was using him. It had to be that compulsion spell. He didn’t have a choice but to fight—probably even to the death—alongside his master. I told myself that meant I was actually doing him a favor when I grabbed the ceremonial gavel from the high table and whacked Idris on the back of the head. He crumpled, and I dragged him under a bench, out of the way of the fight. I looked around for one of the enforcers to watch or bind Idris, but they had their hands full.
Apparently, there were some true Ramsay loyalists even without the charms and amulets—or else he had some people under more direct compulsion spells, like Idris—since there were still people trying to get to the front of the room, either to help Ramsay against Merlin or to attack Owen.
Since I wasn’t much use in a magical battle and wasn’t affected by all the magic flying around me, I focused on figuring out how Ramsay had rigged the circle to make magic deflect onto Merlin. If the spell wasn’t there before the hearing, then he must have brought it in after our search. His briefcase, I realized. That had to be it.
I wove my way around combatants to get back to the front of the seating area, and there I saw the briefcase, which rested right on the edge of that tile circle. I kicked it to move it out of the way, but the only thing that happened was my foot going numb from the direct contact with powerful magic. If I’d been wearing my magic-detecting necklace, I’d have probably passed out. The case didn’t move even a fraction of an inch.
Owen had dropped to the ground to get below the worst of the magical attacks, and he crawled over to the perimeter of the circle where I was. “What is it?” he asked.
I pointed to the briefcase. “Ramsay brought this in. See how it’s sitting right there on the edge of the circle? And it won’t budge—I tried. My guess is this has something to do with that redirect spell.”
Frowning, he tried to move it, and I had to jump into the circle to grab him when he nearly collapsed just from touching it. He blinked rapidly and shook his head to clear it. “Whoa,” he said. “That’s not just redirecting power. It’s also working something like an amplifier. The circle is part of this room’s defensive and protective systems, and whatever’s in that case is tapped into the whole system. He’s drawing power from the building itself, and from all power being used in the building.”
