Witch Wraith

by Terry Brooks

  “Wint!” he called, catching sight of his second as he neared the stations designated for loading the transports. Wint turned at the sound of his voice, and Keeton hurried over. “How many more do we have?”

  The other looked as if he hadn’t slept in days. “You don’t want to know.”

  “Tell me anyway.”

  “Two. Both are in the process of loading. That’s all we have left until the others come back. That won’t happen before nightfall.”

  Keeton shook his head. “That’s not soon enough.”

  Wint laughed. “You don’t think so?” His laughter trailed off. “Nothing is soon enough, Captain. We’ve evacuated maybe half of the population. What we need is another day or two.”

  “Then we’ll start using the warships as transports, too.”

  Wint stared. “If we do that, we can’t hold the city!”

  Keeton gave him a look of disbelief. “We’ve already lost the city! Haven’t you noticed?” He made a dismissive gesture. “I hate this.”

  He glanced around as if the answer to his problems might be found in the growing darkness. “Could you form a command of First Response and regular soldiers to act as a convoy, escorting those who still remain out through the north gates and into the hills?”

  Wint shrugged. “Pretty dangerous, trying to do that. Women and children. Pitch black. Creatures everywhere.”

  “At least they’ll have a chance out there. They can get out through the evacuation tunnels. If we wait for the next attack, there’s a chance they won’t be noticed.”

  “I’ll get on it.” Wint paused. “You’ll be coming with us?”

  Keeton shook his head. “Someone has to stay behind.”

  “That would be you and me, I guess.”

  “I’d rather you went. The convoy will need a capable leader.”

  Wint shook his head no. “It will have to be someone else. Don’t ask me again.”

  Keeton nodded. “Guess I knew you’d say that. Okay. Do what you have to and get back with me. Night is coming. They’ll attack when it does.”

  He was turning away when Wint said, “Been a pleasure serving with you, Captain.”

  Keeton turned. Gave his second a broad smile. “Let’s find a softer duty when this is over, you and me.”

  “You and me, Cap.”

  Keeton waved wordlessly over his shoulder and kept walking.

  He spent a little time with Sefita Rayne, devising an exit strategy for when defending any part of the city was no longer possible, even though by now both knew that escape was reduced to a faint glimmer of hope. After that, he walked the walls, visiting with his Federation soldiers and their unit commanders, joking and laughing, teasing and cajoling, praising and reassuring, saying all the right things and speaking a few hard truths, trying to help them keep it together.

  All the while, he watched the darkness deepen.

  When the last of the sunset was a purple hue balanced on the edge of the western horizon and the darkness was just closing down, the last attack began.

  It was a relief when it did.

  Twenty-one

  It was just approaching midday when Seersha and Crace Coram piloted their two-man out of the north and into the smoky ruins of Arishaig. They city was gone, the defenses breached, the gates forced, and the walls taken. The Druid and the Dwarf Chieftain could still hear the screams and cries of wounded and dying as the victors prowled the ruins in search of whatever caught their eye. Diapson-crystal-powered weapons still flashed here and there at regular intervals as the last of the survivors fought to keep their stalkers at bay. Black smoke coiled skyward in twisted columns and gave the cityscape the look of a volcano heating up for another explosion. Dark shapes darted through the rubble, and it was impossible to tell which army or persuasion they belonged to.

  “We’re too late,” Crace Coram rumbled, the regret and dismay evident in the tremor of his deep voice.

  Seersha nodded. “The Straken Lord’s army must be huge for it to have done this. Arishaig was heavily defended, and the best Federation soldiers in the Four Lands were stationed here.”

  “Do you suppose anyone got out?”

  She shook her head. “Not enough, I’d guess.”

  They were silent for a moment, looking down on the carnage, listening to its still-living voice rise up in a ragged plea. The destruction swept across the whole of the fallen city and well beyond. Thousands of dead lay heaped about the walls. Seersha searched for signs of airships, even small ones, but couldn’t find any. They had either made it out already or been destroyed.

  “Look there!” Crace Coram said suddenly, pointing north behind them.

  She looked obediently. Beyond the immediate destruction, far in the distance west of where the Prekkendorran sprawled and the grasslands below the Tirfing divided in rugged folds, a dark mass seethed. She stared, not sure what she was seeing at first.

  “The Straken Lord’s army,” her companion declared. “Already on the march. Not wasting a moment more on what’s happened here. Why should they? They have a new destination.”

  She took a moment to orient herself. The Borderlands lay in that general direction. The great fortress city of Tyrsis. But the drift of the enemy march to the west suggested another destination entirely.

  “History suggests the demons will want to be certain the key to their prison is destroyed once and for all.” The Dwarf Chieftain shrugged. “Even a madman like Tael Riverine might be able to figure out the importance of that one.”

  She nodded in dismay.

  The demon army was marching on Arborlon.

  Far to the north, Aphenglow and her companions angled their Sprint toward the Tirfing to begin their search for the couple who had stolen the Ellcrys seed from Arling. It was a search that the Elven Druid expected to conclude quickly with the help of the Elfstones, but one that required some caution, as well. After all, none of them knew anything about the couple. Aphen and Cymrian had met them only briefly and Arling, unconscious at the time, remembered nothing at all. All this suggested that rushing in, no matter the urgency, could be a mistake.

  Recovery of the seed was too important to allow for mistakes at this point. With the Forbidding crumbling badly and the demons already breaking free in force, protecting the seed was their foremost concern until it was back in Arling’s hands.

  It was a huge relief for all of them to have gotten clear of Arishaig. For hours after they fled the besieged city they found themselves glancing over their shoulders, unable to banish the images of the battle from their minds. Aphen could not stop thinking about what Edinja had said just before their departure—that perhaps the Straken Lord and his demons had found out that Arling was the bearer of the Ellcrys seed and would come after her. That would explain their decision to attack Arishaig instead of Arborlon.

  She could already imagine what it would mean to the people of the Federation home city if the demons found a way to break through, and that, in turn, suggested Arborlon’s fate was grim, should the enemy then come north to the Elven home city, which she thought likely. Destroying the Ellcrys utterly would permanently secure freedom for the creatures of the Forbidding, and the Straken Lord would actively seek this end. If he could track Arling, he would do so. Hundreds of years ago, the same effort had been made and had very nearly succeeded. It was only the desperate efforts of an Ohmsford boy and an Elessedil girl and a handful of companions that had prevented it from happening.

  History was repeating itself, she thought darkly, and wondered anew about the Ohmsford twins and their allies.

  “Why do you think she let us go?” Arling asked as the landscape sped by beneath them.

  Neither of the other two had to ask who she was talking about. “She had nothing to gain by keeping us,” Cymrian offered. He was slumped back in the rear of the cockpit, stretched out as best he could in the cramped space.

  “She knows what’s at stake,” Aphen added, hands on the controls, eyes forward. “If we don’t find and q
uicken the seed, the whole of the Four Lands will be overrun. Edinja would suffer the same fate as the rest of us.”

  Arling shook her head. “You didn’t spend time with her like I did. You didn’t see those creatures she keeps, locked away like animals. She wouldn’t help us if she didn’t have something else in mind.”

  “You mean something besides saving her own skin?” Cymrian said.

  “She likes controlling things. And people. Yet she just gave us this ship and let us go. It doesn’t feel right.”

  Aphen had to agree. It didn’t. But she couldn’t figure out either what Edinja had to gain by letting them go, or how she thought she could manage to gain it. They had escaped Arishaig, had possession of the Elfstones, were on their way to finding the missing Ellcrys seed, and had told Edinja nothing that would help her find them if for some reason she decided to come after them.

  “She’s a complicated person,” she said quietly.

  “She’s a dangerous person,” Cymrian declared with a snort. “She’s probably behind the attacks you suffered in Arborlon. She’s probably responsible for us being shot down by that Federation warship in the first place.”

  “She told me she had taken me and was keeping me to lure you to Arishaig,” Arling added. “She drugged me to make me tell her everything about what we were doing.”

  The other two said nothing for a moment. “But she didn’t say why she was doing this?” Aphen’s hands rested lightly on the controls as she turned around to look at her sister. “She didn’t say what it was she was trying to accomplish?”

  Arling looked miserable. “No.”

  “Maybe everything changed once she found out about the collapse of the Forbidding and saw the demonkind knocking on the gates of her city,” Cymrian offered. “She didn’t know about any of that before, and it might have made her change her plans. Not because she wanted to, but because she had to.”

  “Cymrian’s right,” Aphen agreed. “Nothing’s the way it was a week ago. Even Edinja Orle would have to take a second look at what she was thinking to see if it still had relevance.”

  Arling nodded, but didn’t say anything in response, and Aphen let the matter drop. She could tell her sister was not convinced, her doubts and fears of Edinja Orle deep-seated and troubling. Letting a little time pass was probably best. Arling had been through a lot—and unless Aphen was badly mistaken, the worst was still to come. Edinja was likely to turn out to be the least of her sister’s problems.

  They piloted the Sprint for several more hours through the darkening night. Close to the the southern fringes of the Duln Forests, Aphen decided they should stop; none of them had slept for more than a few hours in days, and all were exhausted. They would moor their vessel for the night, take turns standing watch, and set out again at daybreak.

  Arling curled up in the aft cushions of the cockpit and was asleep within seconds. Aphen sat with Cymrian in the bow, looking out at the night. The Sprint was anchored perhaps two dozen feet off the ground, and the landscape about them was grassy and flat and open for miles. The sky was clear this night, its dark bowl bright with stars even in the absence of moonlight. The madness they had witnessed in Arishaig had begun to recede into the background.

  “She’s handling all this better than I would,” Cymrian whispered, nodding toward Arling. “I don’t know how.”

  “She’s stronger than she looks.”

  “A lot is being asked of her.”

  Aphen didn’t respond.

  “What do you think is going to happen once we get the seed back and find the Bloodfire?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “She’ll have to decide.”

  “I know.”

  “If there’s even a decision left to be made.”

  “Stop talking about it.”

  “Because maybe there isn’t.”

  She glared at him. “I’m aware of all this. I’m sure she’s aware of it, too. It doesn’t help to talk about it further. There’s no point in speculating. We don’t even know what’s going to happen when we find the Bloodfire. We don’t know how the quickening of the seed works.”

  Cymrian was quiet for a few moments, speculating. “I didn’t think about that.”

  “Well, I did. I’ve thought about everything that could possibly happen and then some. I’ve thought about everything I might do to try to help Arling. Everything. But there’s nothing to be done until we reach the moment of reckoning.”

  “I guess not.” He went silent again, and this time he stayed silent. They sat together, shoulder-to-shoulder, looking back at the sleeping girl and thinking their separate thoughts.

  “Remember when this all began?” she said finally. “You were my protector against whoever was attacking me in Arborlon. That seems a lifetime ago. It doesn’t even seem connected to what’s happening now.”

  “Like the missing Elfstones. This started because of them, and now they don’t have anything to do with anything.”

  She shook her head. “We don’t even talk about them anymore. We don’t even think about them. But hunting for them destroyed the Druid order. Hunting for them changed everything.”

  “It seemed the right thing to do at the time.”

  “It was a mistake.”

  He glanced over. “Hard to know that for sure. Events are connected—sometimes in ways we don’t see. One thing leads to another, but the path isn’t always recognizable. I don’t think you can second-guess yourself.”

  “I can do anything I want. Especially second-guess myself.”

  “It’s pointless, Aphen.”

  “I’m feeling pointless. Everything in my life is feeling pointless—in spite of what I’m trying to do for Arling and the Elves and the Druid order and everyone else in the Four Lands. Pointless and hopeless and overwhelming.”

  “You’ve done pretty well so far.”

  “Have I?”

  “As well as you could. Anyway, that’s the past, and what matters is the future. That’s how life works, because it’s short and precious and kind of doubtful.”

  She looked over at him. He met her gaze and held it. “You constantly surprise me,” she said.

  “You mean that in a good way?”

  “I do.”

  “Then shall I continue to try to surprise you some more?”

  “Like you did that first night in Arishaig?” She smiled, then leaned in and pressed her mouth against his, taking her time, making sure he understood what she was feeling. Then she broke the kiss, cocked an eyebrow, and grinned. “There. I feel much better. Now I’m going to sleep.”

  She rolled into her travel cloak, shifted on the Sprint’s cushions until she was comfortable, and started to drift off. Her last memory before sleep took her was of his voice saying, “I feel pretty good, too.”

  They rose at dawn and flew throughout the day, over the vast stretch of the Tirfing. By nightfall, they had just passed its northern fringes. Though they could have kept going through the night and made their destination by dawn, exhaustion claimed them shortly before midnight, so they once more made camp.

  When Aphen finally brought out of the blue Elfstones the following morning and summoned their magic, she no longer had to stop and think about what she was doing. By now she was familiar with the process and prepared for the magic’s response. When the tingling began in her fingers and the heat washed through her body and out again in swift, insistent waves, she was neither frightened nor intimidated. She didn’t even bother with closing her eyes when she conjured the image of what she wished the Elfstones to find for her.

  She might have chosen to focus her efforts on the silver seed that was the object of their search, but she chose instead to find the two people who had taken it. Her memory of their faces was clear enough that she was able to visualize both easily, and she could tell from the magic’s response that it recognized what it was she was looking for and knew where to find it.

  Thus, she was carried out of her body and across the countryside, thro
ugh woods and over grasslands, down roadways and paths to where the buildings of a tiny village were scattered in either singular isolation or tiny clumps all about a cluster of shabby businesses that included a stable and harness repair, a blacksmith, a mercantile and grocery store, two taverns, a tiny inn, and a meeting hall. Men and women moved through the shadows of trees canopied overhead, and horses stamped and nickered softly in their traces where they were hitched to posts.

  There, right in the midst of it all, the man and the woman who had found Arling and taken her to the Federation walked beside their little wooden cart and donkey on their way up the road and out of town.

  Aphen dismissed the magic and the images. “We have them,” she announced, a grimness to her voice. “Let’s get flying.”

  They flew on throughout the morning then, somewhat past midday, set the airship down in at the edge of a small clearing. Leaving it safely tucked into its leafy concealment, they set out on foot.

  The afternoon was winding down by now, shadows lengthening as the gray day threatened to bring more than brief showers, dark thunderheads beginning to form to the west and move in their direction. They picked up their pace in response, walking more quickly, anxious to reach the shelter of the village before the worst of the storm caught up to them. Hoods lifted, and the collars of their cloaks pulled tight, they bent their heads against the wind and rain and slogged on through the deepening dark like wraiths, as faceless and voiceless as the shadows through which they passed.

  Aphen managed to keep them moving in the right direction, even after the road had disappeared in a muddy smear and they had to reach the village by following a cow path that wound upward through the surrounding hills and came down on the far side. She began searching for the cottage she had seen in her vision, the one the couple had been traveling toward. Sora, she remembered suddenly. That was the man’s name. But she couldn’t remember the woman’s, only the sound of her voice—kind and filled with concern.