by Aldrea Alien
“Off you go, now.”
She hadn’t really just spoken to him like he was some child, had she? “I think you’ve misunderstood my intentions.” He hadn’t mentioned magic, hadn’t managed to mention anything, when it came down to it. “See, I’ve done extensive research on ancient dwarven ruins. I’ve translated hundreds of texts into their language for the hedgewitches. I’m quite capable of aiding in the cataloguing of—”
“Just let me do my job so we can leave.” Her hand flapped as if she aimed to shoo a bird from its perch. “Quickly, if you please. That’s a good boy.”
Dylan jerked back. Never in his life had he been so flippantly dismissed. Not by his guardian or the teachers, not even by those who’d turned him down.
Uncertain what action she would take if he further pressed the issue, he aimlessly wandered along the wall, eventually finding himself crossing the clearing to stand at the sergeant’s side.
The man seemed uninterested in Dylan’s return, opting to glare out at the grass and stumps littering the clearing. “I don’t like this,” he muttered to the scout who had first alerted them of the ruin. “There’s something about this clearing that just isn’t right. It’s too exposed.” He pointed near the ruin walls. “Just look at those stumps. This place has been cleared. And none too recently, judging by the growth. Have our scouts found this place before?”
The woman shook her head. “It’s all new territory, sir. I don’t think a Demarner’s set foot in these parts for decades without tripping over the Empire.”
“And there’s been no sign of the bastards?”
Her lips twisted with distaste. “Not even a wisp, sir.”
Grunting, the sergeant rubbed at his chin. He eyed the ruin as if expecting it to burst forth with demons at any second. “Alliance with Dvärghem be damned,” he growled. “Take a few of the sharper eyes and keep watch. I’m pulling the rest back to the rendezvous point. Meet us there when the other elf’s done.”
The scout saluted and, towing an elven man in her wake, rushed towards the ruins. The woman’s hand came up. Her fingers flashed in a signal of some sort, but the other scouts were all nearby and Jasilla had her back to them, still examining the carvings.
At Dylan’s side, another scout’s eyes widened. “Sir?” The man nodded at the trio just as Jasilla turned to face the two scouts joining her as he pulled forth his bow and nocked an arrow. “We need to leave, now.”
The sergeant gave the man a curt nod. “Scatter, men!” he roared. “Spell—” Before he could spit out the order, an arrow sliced through the warden’s throat. The sergeant fell, gurgling and clutching at his neck. Blood gushed out the wound, staining the grass and soil as the man gasped.
Fire exploded across the clearing.
Heat engulfed them. Dylan threw up a hand, trying to form a shield. His collar sparked and held. Around him, screams. He tried to determine their sources, to see if there was anyone who could give him the order that would release the collar’s hold on him. Who had been next in command? There had to be someone.
More cries came. None sounded like the one he needed to use his magic. He tried anyway. I’m allowed. Surely, he could grant himself sanction if there was no one else. He could protect them, himself. Everyone.
Dylan staggered back as another blast hit, blindly feeling for the collar.
“Get down!”
Someone slammed into him, bearing them to the ground. More arrows sprouted around them like deadly weeds. He turned his head, ready to thank the woman.
Dead eyes stared back. Blood trickled out a hole punched in her forehead. The tip of an arrow poked through the bone and bits of brain.
Bile slid up his throat at the sight. He tried to swallow it, coughing everything back up as he failed. Liquid, thick and acidic, poured out his mouth. The bitter scent clogged his nose and coated his tongue. Smoke choked the air. Flames and heat assaulted him from all around. Screams filled his ears.
Dylan dared to lift his head, his stomach already quaking at what it might see. He still lived for now, thanks to the scout. That wouldn’t be for much longer if he couldn’t find a place to lay low long enough to figure out a way of fighting back.
Ahead of him stood the ruins. Devoid of the three scouts that had vacated so hastily. The stones were untouched by the attacks. Even in the midst of battle, Udynea didn’t dare antagonise the dwarves by violating their relics. He hoped that would continue to remain true.
He clambered to his feet and ran for the archway. Fire and arrows followed in his wake. They caught on his robe, tearing and singeing the hem. Barbs tore at his shins, flames burnt his skin. He didn’t dare slow to deal with them.
Dylan flung himself through the archway. He scrambled along the pebbled yard within to flatten his back against the inner wall. Only then did he bat away the licks of flame clinging to his skirts and haul out the arrow shafts.
What was he meant to do? Defend. Attack. But how? He was leashed and with no one to give him sanction. His fingers brushed the collar. There had to be a way, cowering behind a wall whilst everyone died around him was not an option.
He grabbed the collar and forced his fingers beneath the links. The metal hummed. Dylan sank to his knees, peering through the archway whilst still fumbling to find where the two ends joined. Come on.
An inhuman shriek drew his gaze. Moving fire. A figure engulfed in flames. They staggered across the clearing, flailing and screeching.
Panic sealed his throat. Shaking, he crushed the metal in his grasp. Come on! He tried to push out, to douse the flames before they consumed the figure. His collar sparked. The links moulded beneath his fingers like hot, searing clay. His throat burned. Tears blurred the world. The all-too-close scent of charring flesh filled his nose. Liquid pooled in his mouth. He clenched his teeth, pushing down whatever was left in his stomach. Come. On!
The figure fell, no longer batting at the flames.
Dylan watched, breathless and still, not even daring to blink lest he missed some sign of movement.
None.
No… He was too late. No! He couldn’t be. He was meant to be stopping this. It was his duty to protect these people. But how could he with this stupid piece of metal hindering him? He might as well be lighting the fires himself for all the use he was.
The screams of the dying wadded his ears, echoes of the inhuman shriek.
He pawed at the collar, desperately fighting to dispel the barrier between him and his magic. The metal grew hotter. He had to win free of it. They’d all die without him to fight back, to save them. There had to be a way. There just had to.
Power touched him. Slowly. A pinhole in a dam. He pushed harder.
Great white arcs flew off the metal. Each jolt was another serrated needle digging into his flesh. Pain wracked his body. It emptied his stomach and crushed his lungs. He had to get the damn thing off before it killed him. The metal in his hands was twig-thin now. And molten.
A shield. Screaming breathlessly, he gave the collar one final wrench and pushed with everything he had left. Just a little more and—
Sudden light, blinding and blue, filled his vision. Then there was only darkness.
Darkness slowly drained away.
His head ached. His throat did, too. Dylan rubbed his neck. Skin greeted his seeking fingers. The patch at his throat seemed different. Smooth like the marks the lightning left on Nestria’s shoulder. No sign of—
The collar! He jerked upright to the sound of another’s frightened scream.
A woman crouched just outside the archway of the dwarven ruin, her eyes wide and her hand gripping the dagger sheathed at her hip. She looked so… vibrant. Everything had a sort of vivid halo. From the woman’s light brown skin and hair to the way the sky seemed to bleed its intensely blue shade into the stone walls and blackened trees.
The woman shuffled closer and he wordlessly took in her attire. The buckskin leather apron-like dress atop another dress of ashen brown—runic symbols embroidered along th
e cuffs and neckline of both. She was from the neighbouring country of Dvärghem. And, if he was to judge by the intricate tree sigils stamped into the faces of her apron brooches—gorgeous discs of brass that glittered in the sunlight—she was a hedgewitch. Their land’s scholars, sent abroad to learn all they could about the ancient dwarves.
She frowned and pressed the inside of her wrist to his forehead. “Are you all right?” Although she spoke his language easily enough—each word leaving her lips precise and whole—there was a melodious hint to her accent, a sort of slight breathiness that he’d long associated with the dwarves.
Dylan slowly raised his hand, cupping her jaw. She was so very bright and beautiful, like a spirit from beyond. Was he dead, then? Had the Seven Sisters sent this angel to show him the way?
The woman’s frown deepened. “Do you understand me?”
He did. Although she now chose to speak Udynean rather than his native tongue, he understood every word. His gaze slid from her mussed hair to her face. A neat slice, caked in blood and dirt, ran from her forehead to her cheek, bisecting the freckled skin between her large, hazel eyes. Not an angel, then. She was just as mortal as he and…
Alive.
He lived. All that heat, the burning at his throat, the screaming fates of the unfortunate… He’d survived it all.
The woman took hold of his chin. Concern altered the crease in her brow as she tilted his head this way and that. “Can you hear me?” she asked, first in Demarner before repeating the phrase in Udynean. She was gorgeous, alive and breathtakingly gentle.
He grabbed her head, drawing her mouth down onto his. Her lips tasted of soot with a faint hint of sweat and the heavenly addictive glow of life.
She stiffened in his grasp and reality flopped onto his head like a dying bird.
Dylan jerked away, releasing her and scurrying back across the ground in one hurried movement. “I’m sorry!” Shock and shame mingled in his gut. What in the world was wrong with him? No one just up and kissed a hedgewitch. They weren’t even meant to engage in intimacy. And I just forced myself on her. “That was wrong of me, I know. I am so very sorry. I’ve no excuse as to…”
The dwarf gave him a wavering smile and brushed back a wayward lock of her hair. Wisps remained, dancing on the breeze. “I am admittedly unfamiliar with a great number of Demarn customs.” The language she spoke changed again, abandoning the harsher foreign words of the enemy and returning to his native tongue. “Does everyone here kiss before knowing the other’s name?” She extended her arm. “I’m Katarina, by the way.”
The heat flooding his face grew hotter. He grasped the offered hand and shook it. “Dylan,” he mumbled. “And I am completely mortified.” A barbarian. That’s what he was. Some savage too vile to even be considered an animal much less a civilised being. “I cannot apologise enough. I know hedgewitches are sacred, that they’re not to be touched. I—”
Katarina clasped his hand in both of hers. “Be still.” Her gaze drifted to their surroundings, settling on the archway. “You survived all that? I think a kiss is well-earned.”
He clambered to his feet and, managing a few wobbling steps, leant in the archway to take in the full view of what lay around them, of what had become of the clearing. The fire.
Blackness dominated the land. Some trees standing just on the edge of the aftermath of the attack still smoked. The grass was gone and strange charred clumps dotted the—
His stomach came to the realisation far faster than the rest of him. Dylan collapsed to all fours, heaving even though nothing came up. The twisted charred lumps surrounding them were bodies. His mind rang with the memory of their cries. A sword the lieutenant had called him. He’d been less useful than that. A sword could be wielded by another without permission.
“I thought everyone was…” Katarina knelt next to him. “Where do we go now?”
He jerked his head up, incredulous. “You’re asking me?” This had been his first time beyond the camp grounds. No one had told him much of anything, certainly not the direction they were heading. “I don’t—” Hadn’t the sergeant mentioned a rendezvous point? That could be anywhere.
Why wasn’t he dead alongside them? He ran his fingers around his bare neck. The collar. Where had it gone? His gaze darted frantically about them. He recalled struggling to remove the metal band, clearly he’d been successful. Only now, there was nothing to distinguish him from a Udynean spellster beyond his rather tatty robes.
He didn’t have to search far to find the collar. Two twisted lumps of purple metal lay where he’d woken. Unthinking, Dylan grabbed the pieces. Much like the shield back at the tower, they smouldered and sparked. Hissing, he dropped them before they could burn his hands.
“Careful now,” Katarina said. “Just leave them.”
“I can’t,” he croaked, gently coaxing a funnel of cold air over the pieces. “I need them.” His superiors would kill him if he returned to the army camp unleashed. As it was, he’d require some sort of proof that he wasn’t a spy. The collar wouldn’t be enough on its own and explaining how he had managed to free himself was going to be difficult when he wasn’t entirely sure, but it was all he had. Then, if they believed him, he’d be sent back to the tower. To be leashed again.
Frowning, the dwarf gently placed the pieces into one of the many pouches she carried.
He dared another look over his shoulder and out the archway, trying to make out anything familiar that would lead him back to the front line. He rubbed at his neck. How strange that, even after only a few weeks of wearing the collar, he almost missed the tepid touch of the metal.
“Where did you come from?” he asked. There’d been no dwarves amongst their scouts.
“I came with an escort to survey these ruins.” She gestured to the surrounding soot-caked stone. “But… I think they either got caught up in this mess or abandoned their posts at the first attack.” Her lips twisted. “Whoever gave the order for this did so knowing these ruins were here.” The woman thumped her fist into her other hand. “And in direct violation of our alliance. I must report the transgression to the Coven, but I can’t go back to the border and I won’t reach my homeland unaided.” Those hazel eyes—earthy brown in the centres fading into a thick ring of pine green—settled on him. “You have people down here. Scouts, guides. I need you to take me to your camp.”
Dylan shook his head. “And exactly which way would that camp be?”
The hedgewitch jerked back. “You mean you don’t know? Did you not take note of markers, any abnormalities that’d help you get back if you were separated from your troop?”
Blinking, he scanned the tree line. What sort of markers could he possibly use in a forest? One clump of trees looked pretty much the same from another clump. “No?”
Sighing, Katarina stood. She dug into the large pouch hanging in the front of her belt, rummaging about until her search produced a small wooden hemisphere. Dylan got to his feet as the hedgewitch unscrewed the top. Inside sat a metal disc and a little arrow, which wobbled and swung the same way no matter how the woman turned it.
“Is that a compass?” He’d seen drawings of them, cruder designs than this. It was some sort of old dwarven technology, always sought to be improved upon by Dvärghem’s greatest. Never did he dare to believe he’d actually see one in action.
The woman laughed, clear and musical. “It is. Not many are able to recognise one at a glance.” She swung about and pointed in a seemingly arbitrary direction. “North is that way and your camp is…?”
“To the east.” Somewhere. The sergeant’s path had meandered so much that anything beyond the man travelling in a vague westerly direction could be a fair bet. “A few hours away, maybe?”
“Then we go east.” She strode out of the ruin and across the clearing in what he assumed was the correct way.
Dylan gingerly followed. His boots crunched across the ash-covered space between the dwarven ruins and the trees. He focused on the line of charred trunks and b
ranches ahead, uncertain if his stomach wouldn’t try to leap from his mouth if he dared to look anywhere else.
Katarina waited at the tree line. “We’ve several hours before nightfall, it’d be best to get as far from this place as possible.” She absently rubbed at her face, hissing as her finger slid over the wound on the bridge of her nose.
“Wait.” He slipped his hand into the crook of her elbow, halting and turning her in one gentle movement. “Let me see to that.” Cupping her jaw, he focused his magic on the injury. Warmth flowed through him. The bliss of life poured out his fingertips and into her skin. Beneath the encrusted blood and dirt, the slice down her cheek slowly knitted itself back together. “How did you manage this, anyway?”
A fresh bloom of red adorned her cheeks. “Certainly not through some daring deed. My escorts and I were marching through the forest when one of them caught sign of smoke through a break in the canopy. We rushed this way and—” She flashed him another wobbly smile. “Well, I was so focused on trying to see the smoke and worried over what effect it might have on the ruins that I… didn’t see the hole. I must’ve been knocked out, because the next thing I remember, it was morning.”
Dread knotted his stomach. He hadn’t realised it was a different day. That meant whoever had ambushed the scouting party would have a considerable lead on them should they be part of the Udynea Empire’s vanguard.
Taking a deep breath, he withdrew his magic and his hand from the hedgewitch. “That should do it.” Never had he noticed how much his blood sang when he used his birthright. He wet his lips. How tempting it was to let the song continue.
She felt along her face, running a finger down the scar. “I wouldn’t have thought they’d put a healer on scouting duty.”
“There aren’t any healers in the army. I’m a weapon.” But, very soon, the army would be in need of both talents. “We should leave. East is this way, yes?” He jerked his chin in the direction the woman had originally set out for.