by Shelley Cass
Agrona’s bony fingers were curling, readying with magic, but Kiana tore her eyes away from the ghouls and squinted at the Willow, listening to the creaky words with a frown. Her eyes flickered back to the little ghost boy, then focused more closely on all of the illuminated ghosts as they swarmed in chaotically.
Suddenly relief fluttered across Kiana’s face. She fearlessly waved away the white form of the little boy, as if he was nothing more than smoke.
“That’s impossible,” Agrona gasped incredulously, her steps faltering. “Their touch is poison!”
“Perhaps they’d have been potent if I’d believed in them. But you made a mistake,” Kiana told the confounded Witch simply. “I recognise none of these figures.”
I gasped in understanding, but Agrona drew back from Kiana, suddenly unsure.
“No mortal can see through my tricks …”
But as the Witch whirled around, the glowing figures began to fall apart, melting into white shapes in the air. Their voices started to fade as they bobbed in uncertainty, bumping each other in confusion.
Agrona roared and threw her arms upward violently. Two things instantly followed her motion: the storm burst back to life as the sea of spirits dissipated into nothingness. And Kiana was thrown up into the air.
With a fiercely clenched fist, Agrona punched the air and Kiana flipped wildly higher. Then the Witch brought her fist roughly downward and Kiana plummeted at incredible speed, falling and twisting, only to be jolted to a halt – suspended an arm span away from the ground.
With a motion Agrona lifted Kiana and turned her to hang upright in the air. Then the Witch threw back her arm as though reaching over her shoulder for a weapon. As she drew her arm downward a sword seemed to appear in her hand out of thin air and she moved toward Kiana.
Kiana’s heated gaze never faltered. But the Witch did, when an incredible, booming voice nearly threw her from her feet.
YOU SHALL NOT HARM THE ONE!
The ground shook and the gale force created by the shout knocked Noal and I out of the air. We suddenly found ourselves freed, but now soaring backwards, seeing blurring rotations of the grass below and dark clouds above as we were blown like toppling leaves in the wind.
At last I bounced and skidded to a stop beside Noal, where we both dizzily sat up, gasping and holding our heads.
“How are our necks not broken?” Noal puffed in wonder, looking at grass stains rather than mortal wounds covering his body. “How did the Witch not kill us?”
“What in the Gods’ names …” I gaped across the distance at the sight of the Willow. A powerful silver light was emanating from its trunk now, and unlike the false glow that the ghosts had created, this illumination was pure and overwhelming. It spread in increasing strength to brighten the night, and everything the light touched seemed to become clean and fresh.
In complete awe we watched the Willow’s roots break from the ground. Its creaking trunk swayed and stretched out and its arm-like branches reached for the Witch.
Agrona shrieked in terror, sending blasts of red magic into the face of the Willow while roots as thick as normal sized tree trunks wrapped themselves like snakes about her waist and legs. Quickly the Witch was enveloped by branch fingers and gnarled, leafy arms.
“Let’s go,” a voice from behind us said calmly.
We whipped around to find Kiana with sword in hand.
“Kiana!” I groaned in relief.
“Tree! It’s talking! Battling the Witch … magic!” Noal stuttered in disbelief.
“We have to leave for Sylthanryn now,” Kiana told him steadily. “The Willow can’t fight the darkness forever. She can only slow Agrona down. And the Witch is too strong for any of us to face.”
“Ila and Amala?” Noal blurted, still in a state of loss.
“We’ll have to leave them. I have our packs,” she said with a grim face. “Let’s go.”
The bellowing screeches and blasts of power colliding against each other were loud enough to shake the foundations of the earth. Explosions of silver and red dazzled my eyes, but Kiana slung her packs over her shoulder and we followed her lead speechlessly while the ground lurched under our feet.
We ran, hand in hand, against the wind and rain and through the lightning and thunder until the flashing battle and the explosions of power were far behind us.
Chapter Fifty Nine
Agrona’s eyes were wide as she turned to see the glaring eyes of the Willow. The tree entity had truly, finally awoken now – after years of inaction. And too late, the Witch realised that the first place that she should have sunken her sword into was that wooden face.
Her three prisoners had been freed and lost and Agrona was wide mouthed as she saw Kiana stand and dust herself off not far away. The girl looked from the Willow to Agrona, and made a graceful bow to the Willow before walking away.
Agrona could do nothing though, as the earth beneath her began to surge. A silver light, brighter and more horrible than anything Agrona had ever seen, was growing from the Willow’s roots to its top most leaves. She had not felt the pure magic of an ancient creature of goodness since Darziates had cleansed the other magical races from this part of the world. And as the night seemed to flee before the Dryad’s light, Agrona knew that now she would be the one fighting for her life.
Eyes wide, rotten heart thumping, Agrona lifted her sword, and it burst into red flames. But her conjuring paled in comparison to the brightness of the Willow.
With black hair whirling about her skull-like face, the Witch poised herself, holding her ground as the Willow’s roots broke free, the earth simply crumpling away in a rumbling movement.
Agrona didn’t wait, but lunged with her glowing, crimson sword, scratching up and down the trunk so that the voice screamed.
The Willow whipped her with a branch, and then tripped her with a root, at once trying to wrap more roots around her body before she could get up.
Agrona blasted the roots away from her torso, turning them into blazing, withering ropes that shrivelled before her eyes. Then she screeched, running forward again to try to hack at the aged face on the trunk once more. She thrust her burning blade deep into one kindly eye, laughing as the Willow tried to pull her away with a branch.
The potent magic burst out of Agrona now like a glowing red dust storm, whipping around the two of them, lighting up the snarl on Agrona’s face. The red light swelled gloriously, rushing like a triumphant tornado. The red magic even began to overflow – the darkness oozing out like wisps of smoke from the Witch’s nostrils, and it rolled down her face like smoky tears. But Agrona didn’t relent, hoping she could at least claim this victory to please her master.
The Willow managed to push Agrona away, and she took the blade with her, wrenching it free savagely so that the entire Willow shuddered.
Agrona was lifted off her feet and swung high into the air by a branch, but freed herself and threw a red lightning bolt so that the Willow nearly lost its strangling grip and toppled like a felled tree for firewood.
The Witch spun and sliced and jabbed and burned, trying with all her might to set the tree alight. But, no matter how hard she tried, the Willow continued to smother her attacks.
The ground rumbled as the two powers clashed in battle. The sky was lit with flashes of red and blasts of silver that could be seen from all across Awyalkna, and that made even the stars themselves cringe and hold tighter to the velvety night.
At last Agrona managed to throw flames into the tops of the charred branches so that the Willow’s whole sea of leaves caught fire, but one of the Willow’s undamaged roots took a firm grip around the Witch’s ankle, and as soon as she had fallen, she knew she had lost.
The Willow pinned her to the ground with massive roots that were intent on strangling her, and she couldn’t get away.
One root stabbed its way through Agrona’s thigh, and another quickly sliced into her wrist, pinning two of her limbs to the ground. The pure magic was vicious as it flowed
into her rotten veins.
More roots as thick as normal sized tree trunks wrapped themselves like snakes about her waist and legs, pinning her hands too so she couldn’t get loose. Agrona felt herself being enveloped by branch fingers and gnarled arms covered in burning leaves. She screamed as she was swallowed whole …
Until, she felt an unexpected blast of comforting malevolence.
One bolt. Stronger than anything Agrona had been able to achieve while fighting the Willow herself.
Then the Willow shivered. And the Dryad began to sag.
Agrona was shrieking as the Willow began to fold in over her. The Witch was still writhing as she felt the familiar rushing sensation and found herself falling backward into the Other Realm.
She was sent soaring across space and time, her limbs ripped free from impalement, before she was slammed hard onto a cold stone floor – and found her King sitting in his steel throne, staring at her coolly.
“You return to me shamed.”
So simple. So scathing.
She felt her world collapsing in. The game had gone wrong. She had failed.
“They are going to make it to the Lady’s Forest, where neither you nor I can enter.”
Darziates’ voice was even, controlled, composed. His face was blank. But she could hardly breathe with the frothing malice and darkness storming around the large room.
“The five are still there!” Agrona pleaded, “I will send them on a chase!”
“I will have to send men into the Forest to capture them now.” His eyes pierced her as if she were a pig being spit through the stomach. “Because you have failed me.”
She scrambled to her knees, grovelling with her head cowed as he watched her impassively. His power swept her easily from the floor and into the stone wall, hard enough for her skull to crack and hard enough for her arm to snap.
Physical injuries could be healed, but the scorn of his punishment, and her disgrace, would take years of recovery.
“Leave.” His voice was low. “You have proven your magic and your wits to be inadequate.”
She peeled herself from the floor and stood, turning toward the door.
His final words were like lashes across her back. “This is why you will never be my Queen.”
Chapter Sixty
Kiana
My feet pounded the earth, and though the slippery ground was no longer quaking, every footfall was jarring beyond words.
The night broke into a stormy grey dawn and I tried to forget the impossibilities we’d left behind, and to focus only on the fact that I couldn’t stop running, or let go of Noal and Dalin’s hands as they gripped mine on either side.
The pain in my shoulder sometimes made me lose clarity and stumble for a moment, but the two strong hands holding mine never let me fall, and the billions of tree trunks spanning before us like a wall of brown and green were now so close.
We were panting and crying out in exhaustion, just a league away from the ancient shelter of Sylthanryn when we heard the chilling calls of the beasts.
Close. And coming fast.
I squeezed Dalin and Noal’s hands. “Run as hard as you can and for as long as you can to the trees,” I called between my gasps. “Perhaps we can lose them. This is just another chase!”
I heard Noal groan to the Gods over the thunder, but we all let go of each other and somehow managed to increase our pace.
I squinted behind as I ran. The beasts were still just inky specks in the distance. But they were sprinting and leaping closer, gaining incredible lengths of ground with every stride, or loping on all fours like hounds of the Other Realm.
It seemed they were not playing Agrona’s odd game of cat and mouse anymore, and would no longer be merely herding us. We were being hunted.
Even as I watched, two of them crouched to the ground and lunged in a spidery jump into the air, arcing across the sky toward us. They would land on our tails.
“Frarshk,” I panted. “Keep running!” I called to Dalin and Noal, and pushed them forward before I skidded around in time to see the two shadow beasts landing before me.
Long spiked legs straightened from their heavy landings and I unsheathed my sword as my eyes followed their extending height. Then the creatures lashed out.
Instinctively I dived below them and then swung my sword as they lunged again.
One beast caught my blade in its clawed hand mid swing and wrenched it from my grasp, sending it hurtling all the way to the trees behind us. Then the three others caught up.
It was clear that I couldn’t fight the five of these things now. I had only lived previously because I hadn’t been taken seriously. Nevertheless, I quickly drew my dagger.
Almost at once I felt the freezing grip of one of the first two beasts close around my waist and I was hefted from one beast to instantly be caught by another. Another lurched over and seized my feet while a third clasped one of my wrists.
I desperately flung my little dagger about and knew that while it was making slices in the skins of my attackers, there was barely any damage being done. Their icy coldness sent sharp shards of pins and needles throughout my body so that sheerly through touch they were delivering more painful blows to me than I could deliver them.
I was wheezing with each useless stabbing motion until finally the other two beasts joined in. One wrapped its clawed hand around my chest while the other clenched my free wrist and I felt my dagger slip uselessly to the grass below.
Then, purposefully, they began to pull my body taut so I could not even wriggle. Just as their predecessors had done when I’d first saved Dalin and Noal in the woods, these beasts sought to wrench me apart. But this time the injuries would be final.
My mind went blank with the excruciation of being torn in five different directions, but I screamed in agony as I felt my spine, joints and sockets all crackling.
One stray talon would have done it – would have punctured my soft, unprotected body. But the beasts didn’t seem to want to take any chances.
This entire scene had only spanned across moments, but I felt aware of each torturous move from the beasts. And I also became aware of a terrible thought – that once they were done tearing me apart, these fiends would move onto Noal and Dalin, and then the Quest would be ended.
Something within me was bolstered and galvanised into mental resistance. I had never let physical pain, or allowed any unnatural beast created by the Sorcerer, to get the best of me.
I felt my jaw clench as I fought unconsciousness. I heard the squelching, snapping sound of my shoulder getting ready to dislocate, then with a pop, my good shoulder was loose. Next, my second shoulder wrenched out of the socket.
Bit by bit, I would break, and so would the Quest …
“No!” my own voice cried out above the pain, and the clouds in my mind cleared with lucidity and need.
Fight! I told myself.
Yes.
Fight.
Live.
Live to fight.
I imagined my burning desire to survive and resist the darkness was being joined with my mother’s strength, my father’s, and that of everyone I had ever known and loved. Rising as a single goal. That one driving purpose of mine, joined by that of hundreds of others, was so clear. So strong. It tripled my own energy, seeming to gush outward and spread through my body, heating up every muscle fibre, every bone and hair follicle.
It swelled within me so much that I suddenly felt I was on fire with the need. New life burst through my stretched, breaking body, sent out from my mind, and my eyes opened with blazing motivation.
Every ounce of me was concentrated wholly on how I had to be free.
I needed to be free.
I wanted to be free.
Suddenly it was as if white hot sparks were dancing over my skin. I felt my loose shoulders reconnect with the sockets. The arms had somehow been drawn back in.
Each of the beasts lurched forward as if I had yanked them back in close.
A burst of
silvery light engulfed us. Lightning from the storm?
I felt clawing hands drop away as if they had been burnt.
Then unexpectedly I was lying upon the lush grass, cushioned safely.
I blinked rain from my eyes and sprang up to find five sprawling bodies scattered over the ground, covered in burns that were already starting to heal. One spiked arm reached to swipe at me weakly.
I didn’t pause to wonder. I grabbed my dagger from where it had fallen and shot away from the strange scene to race towards the trees of the Great Forest. I heard a scrambling chase and confused screeches from beasts in pursuit behind me.
I could see Noal and Dalin shouting and reaching out to me from between the trees as I ran for them.
I was spurred on by the sense that one beast was breaking ahead of the others, and was reaching out a clawed hand.
I felt the beast grab hold of the end of my cloak which billowed behind as I sprinted desperately, but I felt the material shredding and tearing free.
And then I dived head first into the outstretched arms of my comrades, crashing into them, between the trees and into the Forest.
But as soon as we fell in a heap, there was immediate silence.
Chapter Sixty One
Kiana
“What in the Gods’ names?” I panted incredulously, looking over my shoulder at the beasts – all snorting and beating manically against the trees.
Dalin and Noal scrambled to untangle themselves, turning to gape at the towering monsters that were gibbering in frustration, ramming at the trunks as if barred by them.
“They aren’t following?” asked Dalin in confusion.
“They aren’t following!” rejoiced Noal, and they both took hold of my arms to pull me up.
“Why aren’t they?” I asked, gasping and wincing as they dragged me back hastily to be cautious.
The beasts howled in outrage and flung themselves towards us again, shaking the trunks ferociously so that leaves dropped and bark splintered from the trees. But somehow they were unable to cross into the Forest.