“Why does this...thing have so many eyes?” Mage Greer spits out, his own gaze riveted to the bird.
Vogel and the bird turn to him in a uniform motion, and Vyvian is chilled anew.
“An effect of the magic I’ve requisitioned,” Vogel states.
An uneasy rumble of murmurs rise from the Council.
“Are there more of these altered birds?” Mage Greer asks.
“Just the one,” Vogel says coolly as he lifts his chin. The bird takes flight and lands on Mavrik Glass’s shoulder, the young Mage seeming unfazed by the monstrous bird, his knowing smile bright. “For now,” Vogel adds, looking to the Council pointedly, as if mentally transmitting the possibilities.
“A runic spy,” Mage Snowden breathes in awe, looking to Vogel as if with heightened appreciation.
“A military advantage,” Mage Priest Alfex interjects reverently. “That the Ancient One has blessed us with.”
Vyvian takes in the nightmare bird and Vogel’s gray wand. For a moment she’s overcome by the sense that they’re playing with dangerous magic that should have been left alone. Magic that’s corrupted and primordial and wrong.
Magic that can’t be controlled.
But then another, stronger thought arises.
What if this magic was to fall into the hands of the heathen races?
No, Vyvian insists to herself, refuting her reflexive fear of this shadow magery. Vogel is right. Of course he is. The Gardnerians need to control all magic in the Realms. Because the Gardnerians are the only ones led by the Ancient One above.
“Shall I show them more, Your Excellency?” Mavrik Glass asks.
Vogel gestures his approval with a subtle tilt of his head.
Mavrik’s knowing smile widens into a calculating grin. He pulls out another entirely different stone and holds it up for the Council’s perusal. This dark lumenstone disc is marked with a different shadow rune, the inner, undulating designs of the complicated mark whirring against each other like clockworks fashioned from dense fog.
Mavrik clamps his fingers tightly around the stone as he unsheathes the mahogany wand at his hip. Then he closes his eyes, dips his head, and brings the tip of his wand to his own shoulder, his expression tensing with what looks like great concentration.
Vyvian lets out a small gasp as the young man’s form blurs, then turns to dark mist. His body grows amorphous, then once more distinct as it re-forms into a muscular, female Vu Trin soldier with coiled black hair, angular features, and the black military uniform of a Noi soldier, the nightmare bird perched on her shoulder.
More gasps float throughout the room.
“A glamour,” Mage Flood murmurs, sounding awed by Vogel’s newfound advantages, glamouring having always been solely a Fae power, just as portal magic had always been the domain of the Noi’s Vu Trin forces.
There’s a sly look in Mavrik Glass’s falsely Noi-dark eyes. “The portal stones are almost fully charged,” Mavrik tells Vogel, his deep masculine voice at odds with his glamoured female form. He smirks at the entire Council. “I’ll be paying a visit to the Eastern Realm this very evening.”
“The Icaral has yet to come into his full power,” Vogel explains as Mavrik taps his wand to his shoulder and morphs back into his Gardnerian form. “Mage Glass will journey through the portal with the runic eye,” Vogel states. “He will track the Icaral creature down. And slay him.”
Relief floods Vyvian’s shock, overriding her fear of Vogel’s new runic powers as the promise of a world-set-right burns bright in her mind.
Yes, her own niece was unconscionably mixed up with an Icaral demon. The Icaral demon.
But Yvan Guryev will be dead in a matter of days, she consoles herself, forcing even breaths. The Great Prophecy will be smashed to bits under Gardnerian might, and her mother’s death will be avenged.
Gardnerian power has just become unstoppable, Vyvian realizes, goose bumps prickling over her skin. With portal magic, aerial spies, and the ability to glamour now in Mage hands, there will be no stopping the Reaping Times.
The Council members are nodding to each other and conversing in low, reassured tones, as if rapidly adjusting to Vogel’s incredible display of power, their eyes brightening with renewed purpose.
There’s a single, brisk knock at the doors and everyone’s attention is drawn toward the sound.
Vogel nods at the bird, and the creature closes all its eyes except the original two, its shadow runes blinking out of sight. Another wave of awe rushes through Vyvian at the bird’s easy camouflage as the doors are pulled open once more.
A young, skinny military courier steps into the chamber. He seems nervous, his posture rigid as he swallows, his gaze riveted on Vogel as the two guards shut the doors behind him.
Silence descends.
“Highest Mage, we’ve word from the North,” he says, his voice unsteady.
“What word would that be?” Vogel asks, slow and controlled.
“Commander Sylus Bane’s unit...they flushed out another band of Fae from the wilds, Your Excellency.” The courier’s brow tightens. “Eighteen of them this time. Dryads.”
Vyvian inwardly recoils from the word as troubled mutterings fill the room.
“Dryads?” Mage Snowden exclaims.
“The Tree Fae?” Mage Priest Alfex marvels, eyes wide. “That’s not possible.”
“They were supposed to be dead,” Mage Greer spits out. “All of them dead. How is it we keep flushing out more of them?”
Eventually, everyone quiets and looks to Vogel, tension thick on the air.
“It has begun.” Vogel’s tone is low with import as it resonates through the room. His words gain an impassioned edge as he closes his eyes and recites from The Book of the Ancients in a priestly cadence. “‘Lo, the wilds shall be corrupted and cast shadows across the land. And the Ancient One’s flock shall converge on this corruption in power and in glory.’”
Excitement crackles inside Vyvian and she straightens, determined to be included on the righteous side of this dangerous heavenly saga—the First Children set against the full might of the Evil Ones.
There’s an intricately embroidered white bird on the breast of Vogel’s tunic, and on the wall behind him hangs the newly designed Gardnerian flag—the Ancient One’s white bird on black.
The Ancient One’s flock, Vyvian echoes, beatific tears sheening her eyes.
Vogel opens his eyes and peers at the courier. “Have these Dryads been dealt with?”
“Y-yes, Your Excellency,” the youth sputters. “Cut down. Every last one.”
Sounds of relief well up.
“But...there are threats, Your Excellency,” the courier adds, casting an unwelcome note of doubt into the room.
Vyvian’s pulse ratchets higher as they all stare at the courier, who seems to shrink under the combined weight of the Council’s attention.
“Threats?” Vogel asks, unblinking.
“The Dryads that were flushed out,” the young man says, his voice strained, “the ones that can speak the Common Tongue...well, they said they’ve got warriors who will fight for them.”
The hall once again bursts into troubled, angered conversation. Mage Snowden and Mage Flood make the Ancient One’s five-pointed star sign of protection on their chests.
“They’re dangerous, these Fae,” Mage Flood declares grimly.
“They’re no threat to the Magedom,” Mage Greer snaps back at him.
“Some of them can wield branches like wands,” Mage Snowden counters, his white brow knotted. “They can draw a sizable amount of power from the forest.”
“Then we’ll send iron-tipped arrows through them,” Mage Greer sneers. “That should tamp down their power a bit.”
“What else did they say, Mage?” Vogel asks the courier, seeming impervious to the startled and livid reactions aro
und him. The Council Mages quiet and the room falls silent once more.
The courier glances around, as if unnerved by their renewed attention. Like a cornered animal, he looks to Vogel and swallows. “They said that the Dryads threatened that they’re coming for us. With the power of the trees.”
Now all eyes look to Vogel, as if drawn to him for guidance in such troubled times.
Vogel extends his arms as if he’s embracing the room, his expression growing pained as he closes his eyes, his gray wand clasped tight. “Pray with me, Mages.”
Vyvian dips her head alongside everyone in the hushed chamber as Vogel begins the prayer and they all fall into the familiar cadence of the words.
“Oh, most holy Ancient One, purify our minds, purify our hearts, purify Erthia. Protect us from the stain of the Evil Ones.”
Then Vyvian mirrors the entire room in making the sign of the five-pointed blessing star over her chest, one point for each affinity power.
Vogel slowly lowers his arms, but his head remains bowed, the Council silent as stone.
Waiting.
Eventually, Vogel lifts his head and opens his eyes, his stare inescapable. Drawing them all in. Filling Vyvian with a heady euphoria.
His power. She can still feel it emanating from Vogel and his equally powerful wand. Riding the very air.
Vogel fixes his piercing gaze on the courier as lightning flashes above in a staccato burst and a crack of thunder peals through the glass ceiling. “Instruct your commander to send a unit of Level Five Mages into the Northern Forest,” Vogel orders, an ominous finality to his tone. “The Ancient One’s time of reckoning is upon us. These Dryads say they’ll come for our Mages? That they’ll attack the Holy Magedom? That they fight with the trees? Very well. We’ll raze the entire forest.” His stare narrows with lethal precision. “Then we’ll find these remaining Dryads. And annihilate them.”
Vogel turns toward the Council and lifts the tip of his wand as another boom of thunder shakes the building. “Blessed Mages, the Ancient One has called upon us to claim Erthia, league by league. Soon the borders of the Holy Magedom will be rune magicked against every Evil Invader. And Mage soil will be cleansed of their unholy stain.” Lines of shadowy magic curl up from Vogel’s dark wand in an undulating helix of smoke, and Vyvian marvels at the sheer beauty of it.
“The Reaping Times are here,” Vogel intones, eyes flashing along with the lightning above. “The hour has come to destroy every last Evil Invader of our blessed Mage land.”
CHAPTER THREE
HERETIC
THIERREN STONE
Fifth Month
Valgard, Gardneria
“Are you aware, Mage,” Commander Sylus Bane asks Thierren Stone, “that a dishonorable discharge from the Mage Guard will leave you unfit for service? Lock you out of all guilds forever? Not even poor Lower River farmers hire a race traitor.”
Sylus Bane sits at his desk surrounded by high-ranking soldiers, all of them glowering at Thierren.
Thierren glowers back at Sylus Bane, bleary-eyed and numbed to the censure. He doesn’t care what any of them think of him. He doesn’t care about anything.
When Thierren returned home, his parents were distraught and thrown into complete confusion at the staggering change in their eldest son, their golden child—terrified by his chronic nightmares, his frightening screams deep in the night, and then by his insomnia as they found Thierren up at odd hours, in odd places, staring at a wall as if watching a horrific nightmare, his face haunted, dark circles anchoring his eyes.
At first, his parents tried to understand. They even paid for a priest to perform an exorcism, sure their son had been stained by his close contact with the Evil Ones.
But soon, their concern turned to anger as Thierren spun out of control. Wandering the streets all night long. Getting hold of illegal spirits and attempting to drink them openly in their home. His parents confiscated that first bottle of spirits and destroyed it, but Thierren found more, the spirits able to dampen the ghastly scene clinging to him like a sickness.
He couldn’t get the face of the young Dryad woman out of his mind.
The baby.
His parents consulted a multitude of priests and healers, his mother’s face tight with humiliation, her eyes teary as she wrung her hands and recounted her son’s moral weakness. How one encounter with the Evil Ones had broken him and turned him into this sinister thing with increasingly disturbing behavior—cutting up his Gardnerian military uniform. Setting fire to the Gardnerian flag.
Thierren drank as many spirits as he could. Bought nilantyr from a Keltish farmer and started to chew on the bitter berries, sinking into their dark oblivion. Soon it was the only thing that could even slightly alleviate the constant nightmare that was now his world.
Elisen, his fastmate, came to see him once and left hysterical, refusing to come near him ever again, her family desperate for a way to break the fasting. Thierren didn’t care. All he could think about was the young Fae woman and the children. And the sound of their screams.
He started hanging white birds everywhere. Cutting them out of paper, attaching them to strings, and nailing the strings to the rafters. At first this seemed encouraging to his mother and the visiting priests. A sign that perhaps he was being led back to the Ancient One’s path.
But then, perhaps worse than anything that had come before, they caught Thierren in his room surrounded by pages ripped out of The Book of the Ancients as he tore the page in his hands into small, curling ribbons.
That was when his parents started to talk seriously about sending Thierren to the Valgard Sanitorium.
Thierren considers all this impassively as he stands before Commander Sylus Bane and the other soldiers, looking them over as if he’s watching scenery go by from inside a carriage. He doesn’t care about any of this anymore. But he’s not going to play along. He’s not going to let them believe their own lies.
“There were children,” Thierren says unforgivingly, his gaze fixed on Sylus Bane.
Sylus spits out a sound of derision, his mouth curling into a nasty half smile. “No, Thierren, there were heathen spawn. You forget who you are.”
Thierren is unmoved. “There were babies.”
Sylus’s half grin disappears, his eyes narrowing to slits. “There were Fae spawn.”
Anger wakes in Thierren, bracing as an ice storm. When it comes, these days, it’s savage. Cyclonic.
Clearly Sylus Bane can sense this. He, too, knows Thierren has become some other thing. A non-Gardnerian thing. And he wants to cut him down right there. But, unfortunately, protocol is protocol.
“You’re lucky you have such influential parents,” Sylus says, his tone thick with disgust. “They relentlessly pled your case, and they found the only commander in the Guard willing to take you on, stripped of all rank.” Sylus’s mouth turns up in a sly smile, his eyes conspiratorial. “But, trust me, you’d be better placed with a swarm of kraken spawn. Because your magery is child’s play compared to your new commander’s. And he has a reputation for...disciplining the disloyal.”
Who? Thierren wonders blankly. “Who is he?”
Sylus Bane’s grin widens. “Mage Lukas Grey.”
CHAPTER FOUR
ESCAPE
SPARROW TRILLIUM
Fifth Month
Southeastern Fae Island
Sparrow stands on the eastern shore of the Southeastern Fae Island and looks over the turbulent Voltic Sea toward the Western Realm continent.
Storm clouds are gathering overhead. Veins of lightning flash fitfully, illuminating the waves. The boiling clouds move across the vast, wind-tossed sky, making Sparrow feel very small in the face of the threatening seascape before her.
It’s unusually cold this eve. A stiff breeze buffets her thin, gray labor garments, and Sparrow wraps her arms around herself as she shivers. The sal
ty wind tangles her violet hair against her pale, lavender face as she peers across the choppy waters at the dark, hulking landmass just beyond.
The westernmost tip of continental Gardneria.
Sparrow’s brow tenses, her apprehension mounting as she takes in the glowing deep-green line that’s working its way along the edge of the distant coast like a luminescent snake.
Gardneria’s new runic border. Created with the Mages’ mysteriously ramped-up runic magic and fashioned from thousands upon thousands of Gardnerian runes that are being thrown up at astonishing speed.
Especially considering that the Gardnerians have only one elderly Light Mage.
Sparrow squints at the imposing rune barrier, sizing it up like a cruel, worthy foe as she pushes her hair behind her ears’ arcing points.
The magical border the Gardnerians are building now limns continental Gardneria’s western shore as far north as her eyes can see and extends all the way down to where she’s now peering across the short stretch of kraken-infested ocean that lies between the easternmost edge of the Fae Islands and Gardneria.
The full might of Gardneria, set on keeping Urisk, like her and Effrey, on the labor islands and out of continental Gardneria.
And once the entire of Gardneria is surrounded by a runic border, no one will be able to flee through the continent to get to the Eastern Realm.
The runic border creeps farther south each week, and soon continental Gardneria’s entire western coast will be impenetrable. And it’s only a matter of time before the Fae Islands are surrounded by an impenetrable rune border, as well.
The time for escape is running out.
An odd shadow slips through the ocean in Sparrow’s peripheral vision, and she turns her gaze north to follow it, a different chill snaking down her spine.
A kraken monster. Sliding its oily, black body through the waves, headed due north.
They used to be a rare sight here, the creatures usually encountered in deep ocean, far from shore, but for some reason the kraken are being drawn ever closer to continental Gardneria.
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