Read Jake's Justice, Book Three of Wizards for Free Online Page B

Knight’s sword. The speed he got to his feet was beyond belief. The sword cut three inches into the spade’s stainless steel blade and when he twisted his sword he wrenched the thing from my hands.
    “Worthy indeed,” the Knight mumbled as he used the momentum of the sword to wrench the spade from it. It flew thirty feet across the field before landing, startling an unsuspecting cow who ambled off. I inched back as he advanced upon me. I forced magical power through my retreating feet just before they left the ground, turning the earth beneath them into a bog. The Knight stepped into it unawares and sank to his waist. The ground hardened around him as his amour stripped the magic from it.
    “Trickery.”
    I stood out of blade range and caught my breath. Betty had retrieved the spade and was standing some way away, watching us. She must be either very brave or very stupid.
    “Can’t we talk this over?” I suggested.
    “In a hundred years, no wizard has lasted this long against Sir Grendon. I will give you that, wizard.” He seemed more amused than upset. That was worrying.
    “I don’t want to hurt you.”
    That brought a full throated laugh. The amusement had turned to contempt.
    “It is you that’s trapped,” I pointed out; a little wounded he wasn’t more impressed.
    He dropped the sword and put his hands flat on the ground. This was going to be fumy because no one could push themselves out of the ground like that. When he flew out of the ground the laughter died in my throat. He dusted down his chain mail and reached for his sword. It flew into his hand like a broomstick in a Potter film.
    Time for Plan B, except I hadn’t even come up with a Plan A. The thing with the ground had been pure improvisation. I’d done something similar to an army once.
    My magic reserves were still growing at a fair pace. Damping my powers stopped me using them and nothing was currently sloshing out.
    When I describe these things, it’s all metaphor because I don’t have the words, but now that the magic wasn’t sloshing around I could see what my subconscious had been using it for. That only left the embarrassing question of ‘why’.
    I shot fifty feet into the air as Sir Grendon charged at me. As he gazed up, he didn’t seem bothered by the fact I was well out of his reach. He pointed his sword at me and I started to descend. Nothing I tried could stop it, though I slowed my descent down. I couldn’t even fly away. The sword was negating my magic and gravity was doing its job.
    It might take me two minutes before I got within reach. I had to think of something.
    ‘What did I know?’ The sword and the amour suppressed magic around them. He could extend the range of the sword’s power by pointing it. Magic used near my skin still worked for me, but the sword and amour were pure anti-magic. ‘And what help was knowing all that?’
    ‘Something about the term Anti-magic?’ Inspiration struck and in any case I was out of any other ideas. Concentrating as if my life depended on it, I drained the magic from my reserves into my right hand, fashioning it into an invisible sword. Magic doesn’t do anything on its own, that requires will. But this was the densest purest magic ever seen in the real world. I needed it to be visible so I gave it a metallic glamour. When the sword appeared in my hand I was still twenty feet above the ground. I released my intent to float and fell to the ground.
    The impact knocked the wind out of me and forced me down onto all fours. The sword slid into the ground without leaving a mark of its passing. It came clear without any sense of it being inside something when I raised my hand. I didn’t even need to hold it as it was part of me.
    Sir Grendon paused. He hadn’t been expecting my fall and he might have struck me while I got to my feet, but I had hoped he was not that kind of man and I was right.
    “I see you plan to fight with honor,” he said, nodding towards my sword.
    “I intend