Warlord by Robert J. Crane

“The mining tower, if you will.”
    “Save me the trouble of attempting to improve my elvish,” Cyrus said with a shrug. He looked at Vara again. “Now can we …?”
    “Oh,” Cora said and snapped her fingers. “Certainly.”
    Vara lurched only slightly, as though her footing had suddenly gone uneven, although she hadn’t taken so much as a step. Cyrus moved to catch her and grasped her elbow as she recovered her balance. She looked up at him, nearly doubled over, and blinked a few times as her cool blue eyes looked into his. “Oh. There you are.”
    “Here I am,” Cyrus said, concern causing his lips to press closer together than they might normally have. “How do you feel?”
    “Quite well,” Vara said with a smile, “thanks to you.” She blinked and looked at their surroundings, a hint of confusion blossoming on her sculpted features. “Wait … where are we?”
    “Amti,” Cyrus said as he relinquished her elbow.
    She pulled upright again, and her brows knitted together. “How did …?” She cast her eyes about until they settled on Cora. “You …” she said, sounding more than a little irritated.
    “I had to mesmerize you,” Cora said neutrally. “It is a requirement.”
    “You could have asked,” Vara said, sounding more than a little put out.
    “What happened?” Martaina said, brushing brown hair out of her eyes with a calloused hand. She peered through her fingers. “That was a mesmerization spell?” Her voice sounded far away, encrusted in sleep like eyes after a long rest. “I wouldn’t mind going back in for another round of that.”
    “That was the strangest thing,” Mendicant said, quietly, dropping a hand to his chest and scratching his claws against his scales, muffled slightly by his robes. “I was … I felt so …”
    “Happy, yes,” Vara said, not sounding remotely in the realm of that particular emotion. “That’s the trick of the spell, isn’t it?”
    “You don’t seem quite as … drowsy as we are,” Martaina said, looking at Cyrus and then Curatio in turn.
    “Her spell didn’t work on me,” Cyrus said tautly.
    Vara wheeled on him and he saw the fury in her eyes. She looked ready to say something, danger flashing, but it disappeared almost as abruptly, receding like thunderclouds rolling away under the skies above the plains.
    “We’re going to talk about this later, aren’t we?” Cyrus asked, feeling the tension tighten up his insides.
    Vara blew air noiselessly between her lips. “Did you ask her to stop it on my behalf?”
    “Many times,” Cyrus said.
    “He was most concerned for you,” Cora affirmed.
    “But not for us?” Martaina asked, more than a little sour.
    “For all of you,” Cyrus said, looking at her then Mendicant. “I considered telling her to go to the Realm of Fire, but …”
    “But your natural tendency to lead us into madness won out, of course,” Martaina said with her lips in a thin line.
    “It always does,” Vara agreed, though she did not seem nearly so angry as she had been a moment before. She sighed and shook her head. “I refuse to let my rather pleasant daydream become a source of irritation.” She clamped a hand on Cyrus’s vambrace right on his upper arm. “Come along then, you, and let’s be about this business we came here for.”
    Cyrus did not protest, and they followed Cora along the darkened corridor. Cyrus let Vara guide him, though he suspected she was not clamping hold of him because she had any idea he could no longer see. This is her way of reasserting her control over a situation after losing it for a time. She tugged on his arm a little harder than was probably necessary, but it only hurt a little, so he accepted it with grace as the price for what he’d done—or failed to do.
    They came to a point in the hollow bough where a ladder led upward and Cyrus climbed with the others. He passed out into warm, sticky air for a few seconds before the ladder was once again swallowed by a tree