“But what if we had someone with experience?” I asked.
“Then we'd be having a different discussion,” Leazar said.
Catching Mordon's eye was a mistake. He shook his head, but I went forward anyway.
“I've done it before,” I said. As their attention returned to me, I continued, “I've done it right here. On this lake. Mordon was with me, he knows. The spell was ancient.”
A mutter of surprise spread through the assembly. Some looked skeptical, as if I'd made the story up to settle the argument. Others seemed excited to have me be the leader. A few flatly rejected the notion as impossible. They silenced to get Mordon's opinion.
“I'd call it old, not ancient. Pioneer-era,” he said at last.
“Right, at least a hundred years old. This Unwritten is days old, perhaps weeks. I can do it.”
Mordon dragged a hand through his hair. “I am loathe to tell you what you can't do.”
“Then don't,” I said.
“Fera, the spell of the pioneers was not done with ill-intent. It was meant to last, but it didn't have a built-in defensive guard.”
“We don't know that the Unwritten does.”
“But we should expect that it does. If it doesn't, that's a blessing.”
“If it does or doesn't is a moot point. Let me put it this way. We can't attack the Unwritten with a direct force, because it will absorb the blow. That eliminates a whole lot of options. The situation will only get worse from now on. The Wildwoods belongs to that spell. That means the Unwritten is the Wildwoods, and presumably there are two strongholds which are not yet in the Unwritten's domain—here, where we've held it back, and in the village where the rest of the battalion is. That's our foothold, and if we lose that foothold, which we will, then the Unwritten has untold-of power. I don't think it's happy with this small kingdom. It wants an empire. We have to stop it now, before that fire progresses and takes even more.”
“I agree with you on those points,” Mordon said. “What I am disagreeing with you on is who will lead the chant.”
“I am the one with Unwritten experience, and the one who pulled off this stunt before. That's two counts in my favor above everyone else.”
“You're not strong enough.”
“That might be an advantage if I fall to it.”
Mordon curled a fist. “You can't even light a flame. How do you expect to do something this big?”
“Because it's not about brute strength. This is about finesse and manipulation.”
“I'll do it. You don't have enough power, it's that simple.”
“You're needed to keep the husks at bay. Your dragon form is perfect.”
Mordon shook his head. “Not if we have a ward up like last time.”
“It'll be worse than last time, so much worse. And this time, their leader will know better than to use any magic at all on the ward. He will batter it until it collapses, and he'll take advantage of the close quarters after that. No, you need to be the aggressor. You've got the head for this, I know you do. You and Sim are needed on the front, same with anyone who is good at hand to hand combat. It'll have to be a small group to go with me. I'm the one who has the wits to go up against the Unwritten. Look me in the eye and tell me that you disagree.”
My words made Mordon scowl into the fire for a moment, then he raised his lion-like eyes to mine. There was resentment, and behind that, there was fear and refusal.
I waited. When someone started to talk, I held up a hand. They quieted mid-word.
Mordon dropped his gaze to his hands. He ran them through his hair again.
“When do you want to do this?”
“As soon as we can. I worry that Magnus' group won't be able to hold off the fire. The longer we wait, the harder it will be to stop. And we're decently rested and fed now.”
“Can't we join Magnus instead?”
“We'll leave this place unguarded, and when it falls, the village might be lost anyway. No, we need to leave this place and go straight for the heart of the Unwritten without haste.”
It was clear that they'd abide by Mordon's ruling. But I watched him nod, and felt my heart sink.
I'd hoped that he'd have found a less desperate alternative.
Chapter Forty
“I wish I would have done this earlier,” I said. “It would have been better for everyone.”
I stretched out on my stomach next to Mordon, gazing through a rippling screen of an illusion at the group of five trees still standing despite everything that had happened all around. We were shivering in the wet fog, the sun up yet hidden behind smoke and storm clouds. It was as if the rain was the final line of defense against the fire and Infection. The chill and stomach-gnawing nerves were already fraying at my strength, but I pretended neither one existed.
Ahead, well beyond the other side of the Unwritten pentangle of trees, rested the husk army. A handful of bat-eagles flew in lazy circles overhead, apparently on watch of the camp, but not doing their job very well. Other, larger animals had joined the ranks: bears and elk, I thought, but they were too badly mutated to know for certain. As far as physical defenses went, there was no wall, no warding spells, nothing to indicate that an attack was anticipated. Just the army strolling around and keeping warm and dry and out of lightning. It was the first good news we'd had all day.
“Can you do a sweep with the wind to check for trouble?” Mordon asked. “I don't like how quiet it is.”
“I'll do it,” I said. “I'm not feeling anything. It hasn't even been visited in a couple of days. Keep an eye out for someone returning to look in on it. It's due for maintenance, which is both good and bad for us.”
The rest of the battalion crawled to the dip in the rocks where Mordon and I observed those below. There were a dozen people to be divvied up between us. While he wanted to give me more people, Mordon had ended up with eight of the dozen. They were talented combatants and I'd argued well enough to be convincing that there had likely been five spell-casters, at maximum, who had constructed the Unwritten, though I thought it was most probable that it had been done by one person working alone.
“Warm up,” Mordon ordered. “We need to be moving to our very best. The fight will be intense and we can't falter at the start. Hit them hard, then back off while they are confused. Keep them disorganized. Our priority is to take out the dominant ones first, doesn't matter who they are. If we can make them scatter, we will have the upper hand. But don't run blindly into a trap. Stick close to formation. Watch for anything that slips past the front guard, the rest of you. I'll spearhead the attacks and break up any organization.
“And as for you,” Mordon said to me, “Keep alive, or I'll seek out Death myself to get you back. Take my word on it.”
Did I dare to tell him that he might succeed if he did as he proposed? I didn't want to encourage him, so I nodded and said, “Yes sir,” just like everyone else did.
From there we said nothing more, just parted ways. The two illusionists who were holding our guise up went one with the soldiering party and one with me. The ground crunched beneath our feet, the charcoal-like ground noisy and nerve wrecking, while the air in front of our mouths puffed with little white ghosts. As soon as we were a few feet away from Mordon's group, we could see them no longer, and it was hard to even hear them.
“I'll take the off-center tree,” I said. “The rest of you sort yourselves out as you please, but you've got to be right at the tip of the corners. Don't go inside. I think there's something happening within the center, so don't set foot within the lines ever.”
I was dimly aware of the illusion fading when we reached the trees. A prickling sensation swept over my skin as we took our positions. It was as if everything, all the magic, that was, was watching us as we made our way through the deepest of the enemy ranks and tried for a final contest with the invader. I felt that the air itself was trying to conceal us from the notice of the husks, and no doubt the presence of the trees helped in that matter. But what would
we do when we were seen? I had to hope that Mordon's strike force happened first, that he would throw their lazy camp into a frightful panic and we would either go unnoticed, or that we wouldn’t be seen until it was much too late.
“They've started,” Lyall said quietly.
It had been against my wishes that I had him in my group, as I sensed he was a good fighter—but he'd intentionally done poorly when he was tested, and Mordon wanted him with me, anyway. I felt the twist of a fire drake cutting through the air, and knew that it was now or never. There was the startled yelps and whoops of the husks from far away. Thin trails of smoke marked where Mordon had started his specialty by flaming his targets.
“Let's start the ritual,” I said.
All around us the Wildwoods waited with an all too still freeze. The husks and their winged companions went straight for Mordon. Lyall hurried to reaffirm people's roles and soon, it was all ready for me to take the center role. I felt a trickle of cold sweat run down my back.
“All ready?”
Silence was in reply, and nervous expressions. Way too late to back out now, so I closed my eyes. For an instant, the needed words fled my mind and I didn't know what I was doing. This almost made me panic, but with it I pushed that aside and waited just a second longer. I didn't know what I was waiting for, but then I knew.
A faint image of the lady of the Wildwoods appeared to my side, visible only to me, and she whispered the start into my ear.
I surrendered my lips to her use, repeating what she said at first, then as the chant picked up faster and faster, we were talking in synchronization. Then I realized I had no control over the words tumbling out of my lips, of the pitch of my voice. It wasn't me controlling them. It was her. And when my arms began to move upwards of their own volition, I let them.
When I felt her step forward, I felt the collective intake of air from my companions, but I didn't realize why until I knew that I wasn't standing on ground. There was no charred grasses beneath my feet. It was nothing. I was walking on air. And my skin changed, shifting without intention, turning thick and pale gray, then silver. It was the brightest thing on the whole Wildwoods. I was clean, pure, as my dirty clothes sort of disappeared and smooth scales took over. Wind burst beneath my wings, the right one aching with every stroke. But the pain wasn't something I felt, it was just something I knew was there. Like everything else that was happening as the lady of the Wildwoods positioned me over the hole which was in the center of the pentacle.
The voices around me weren't those of my companions. They were breathy, lost voices which spoke in a singsong, the rhythm not wanting to be disturbed. A man stood where I had been, his features nothing but a ghostly shadow, and in the same place as my companions there were other ethereal figures, all cloaked and dark. The two chants clashes, conflicting one with the other, the power for the spell-casters far greater than ours, far stronger. It seemed that I could scarcely hear my own voice. A struggle for dominance against great bass drums. The original caster grinned, and his voice boomed.
I wanted to sing along with him.
I almost did. My own song faltered. He grew bolder.
Then I felt it. I felt the source of the power, the source of both our powers. It went down, deep into the earth, drawing strength from the soil and bedrock, going up through the layers of soil and out into the air, past the live animals teeming beneath the tree branches, then up into the graceful branches, out into the buds and leaves, and up, up into the air, up towards the light of the moon and stars, up into the nothingness that we all would be gone without. Into the nothingness we called the air, into the place where gasses resided and where I pulled all of my strength from.
I'd thought mine was the weakest element of all. It had always seemed that way, when I saw the destruction and power that fire held, the happiness or disturbance the light could render. The creepiness of the darkness. The power of water. It had seemed to me, up until that instant, that the only thing the air was good for was breathing.
How wrong I'd been.
With the lady resuming her chant louder and louder, I fell into the air, I became the air, and I reached into the space between the speakers, and remembering that noise was nothing but vibrations through the air, I stopped the spectral voices.
Unhindered, alone, my own choir sang.
In an instant, the spectators were gone. They simply ceased to exist. It was just me and the Lady and my four, and the sudden strength jolted down into the earth and out, up into the sky. I felt my heart lift, and I raised my head towards Mordon. But first I felt the little bit of the Lady slip out of me and tumble to the ground. She went down, down into the hole, and she kept on sinking down into the grave, kept on going down through the soil, then up into the trees and out into the air.
I was back in my body again, and it hurt. It was cold and tingling and everything ached. But I looked out and I saw something dreadful.
The Lady was gone, to reclaim her land and health, and she would help us no more.
And in her place had come the black dragon, and he was diving straight down through the air. He dodged Mordon's flame, and I knew in the way he moved that he would outmaneuver Mordon.
I roared. It wasn't a deep and throaty thing, it was a shrill cry, piercing and startling, like a bird of prey.
He was strong, though he was losing ground to the Wildwoods, he still held most of it within his grasp, and he knew in an instant that if he took me, he could reclaim what was his before he lost it all. Then he knew what I'd do if he had dominion over Mordon and he dove for him.
I beat the air and angled to intercept, not knowing if I'd get there in time.
Chapter Forty-One
The air seemed to resist me, to drag on my movements while I raced to help Mordon. The sounds of the battle became a dull vibration in my ears, everything that I knew was lost to the all-consuming desire to make it in time, and the Immortal did everything in his power to ensure that I failed. As the gap closed between us, the black dragon extended his claws out for Mordon's wings.
I thought of the damage that would do. Of where that would drop Mordon, and how his advantage against the husks and others was in the air. On the ground with ripped wings, he'd be at a distinct disadvantage.
But Mordon wasn't the man I knew for nothing.
At the last possible second, he tucked his wings flat and plummeted, twisting so his claws caught the black dragon's jaw. The both of them tumbled down, Mordon thrashing his tail like a massive whip, beating his opponent about the chest and belly and wings. With a snap, Mordon unfurled his wings, filled them full of an updraft, and shot back into the air again. The black dragon wobbled, his body shaken and battered. With a quick glance behind him, the black dragon sped away from Mordon. It took me a second to realize that his new path was towards me—and that my path should be away from him.
When I'd thought I needed to rescue Mordon, I hadn't remembered that it was he who was better on the wing, and the more experienced aerial combatant. I banked hard, trying to give Mordon time to pursue the black dragon who would be pursuing me.
The husks were coming together in force now, I saw. They were harassing the feys who were showing sign of fatigue. I closed my eyes and focused for a minute, drawing up an illusion from the air around the husks. At the next flash of lightning, they would be blinded and when they opened their eyes next they would see nothing. Nothing at all. The feys would not be so restricted. I dedicated my energy and effort to that, not stopping until I knew it had succeeded.
A disturbance rippled through the air, congealing it. My eyes fluttered open. Before I knew what it was, I felt the slam of air being cut off, like a door swinging shut, except I wasn't in a room, I was—I was in a warding spell! A shriek split through the air as I barely dodged ramming the ward nose-first. My tail skimmed the hard shell enclosing me, sending ricochets of pain through my spine. One lap, then another, confirmed that I was trapped in a solid globe in the air. And the black dragon was with me, trailing
my path with a satisfied twitch of his claws.
At once I saw Mordon diving for the ward, and I doubled back, building speed, to hit the ward just far enough away from his that we might slam a crack into it. Three beats of the wings was all I had the space for, then I tilted my head, to ram with the flat of my forehead. My last glimpse was Mordon in the same position, drawing near. The black dragon darted underneath my wings, hitting me in the ribs and knocking me off-course.
Electricity seared through my wings and left side as I scraped against the ward. It shuddered beneath Mordon's weight but didn't break, and with a quick spell from the immortal, the ward healed itself and became so dark that I couldn't see out of it, and doubted Mordon could see what was happening within. My claws dug into the side of the orb, gaining purchase enough for me to launch back into the air in the center. I hovered there, stationary.
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