by Sam Bowring
‘Others in the spirit plane here,’ muttered Grimra.
The Sprite’s gaze came to rest on the ferns. She raised a hand and violet bands began to twine through her fingers.
‘Who’s there?’ she called. ‘Show yourselves.’
Jaya stiffened, unsure what to do. Was this woman an enemy? She had her answer quickly, for without saying anything else, the woman shot her hand forth and a vortex rushed towards them. Jaya seized Lalenda by the wrist and propelled them out of the ferns to land in a tangle. Grimra roared and there was a flash of white as he surged towards the Sprite. A howling wind rose out of nowhere and slammed against him, and together they whirled away, engaged in some ephemeral battle.
As the ferns crackled with strange magic that seemed to do them no harm, Lalenda stared up at Jaya. ‘Thank you,’ she wheezed.
‘Save your breath,’ said Jaya. ‘We must flee!’
She rose to her feet, hauling Lalenda up with her, but they had no chance to do anything more. Vines burst from the forest floor beneath them, tightly winding up their legs, rooting them in place. Jaya tried to draw her sword, but sprouts leaped from her waist to encircle her wrist and draw it in, pinning it to her side.
As they grunted and struggled, the Sprite woman walked around in front of them. ‘Well, well,’ she said cheerfully. ‘Look what strange manner of beasts my hunting brings today.’
Fate’s Echoes
Vyasinth whirled up to the treetops, beyond which the sky was a tapestry of shadow and light. In the belly of clouds lightning flashed, while sunbeams so hot they were almost white wilted the leaves of her branches.
Have you no shame ? she raged. This place is mine, given as sanctuary for my people!
You have interfered in events that do not concern you , came Arkus’s reply. Return what you have stolen.
Hypocrisy still comes to you easily, I see , she said. It was the both of you who stole the child from me!
There is no ownership , said Assedrynn. Only what we are strong enough to keep. And you have done well, Lady Vyasinth, to keep your people alive all this time since the breaking. Why place them in peril now? What use is this resistance?
You imperious marauders , said Vyasinth. Meant to watch over this world, we were, and instead you tore it apart. No wonder fate has delivered me a champion!
Arkus laughed, booming harshly from the heavens, a gratingly ugly sound. Your champion? You really think your little briar patch can stand against our might? I have the endless sun to draw on.
And I the seas , said Assedrynn, and the underneath of every rock.
Your power is so finite , said Arkus, I almost pity you.
Now it was Vyasinth’s turn to laugh. Pity? she said. Maybe I have naught but a few trees on my side, yet I do not have to outlast you long. Soon the blue-haired man will return, then all that’s left is to wake his blood, and he will be mine, cold forever to your plans.
She felt their ire build at her words, and the pressure they exerted on her barriers increased. She channelled more of the wood’s power to maintain them, yet feared there would be none left for her people to fight with. They would not need to fight, however, if she could but keep the minions of Arkus and Assedrynn at bay.
Leaving her age-old adversaries to continue battering her defences, she went down into the clearing, into Corlas’s hut. Still the Stone lay pulsing, and still nothing had emerged.
•
‘Try again,’ said Tyrellan, and Fazel obliged. It did not matter to him that he made no headway. As long as he stood here plying this Old Magic barrier with spell upon useless spell, the shadow’s will was not being served. Once more he sent tendrils pushing against it, trying to worm their way in. The barrier wobbled as usual …and then, just for a second, the tip of a shadow seemed to curl through. Fazel paused uncertainly, then regretted having done so, for Tyrellan picked up on it immediately.
‘What is it?’
‘Made some progress,’ muttered Fazel.
‘Again,’ said Tyrellan fiercely.
Fazel obeyed, and this time the barrier did not seem as strong; it seemed as if it was failing somehow. He searched for weak points and found a place that gave a little. Shaping his power to a sharp point, he forced it through to the other side, then expanded it. Wedging the hole wider, it was soon big enough for them to step through.
‘Try there,’ he said dully, pointing.
Tyrellan reached a hand into the wood unimpeded. Giving a grunt of approval he stepped through bodily, and Fazel followed. Once they were both inside, Fazel released his spell, but the barrier did not close behind them.
Somebody’s magic wasn’t holding.
‘Well,’ said Fazel. ‘We’re back.’
‘No time to reminisce,’ snarled Tyrellan, heading into the trees.
•
‘It’s breaking,’ said Elessa.
Fahren, who was sitting with his chin on his fist trying to think of another solution, looked up. His pose reminded her of herself, when she had once sat at his feet.
‘Pardon?’ he said.
‘The ward,’ she said. ‘It’s giving way.’ To demonstrate, she sent a beam of light through the pinhole she’d created. Fahren rose, vitality returning to his movements.
‘All together!’ he said.
Elessa took aim again at the pinhole, joined by the other two – and inexplicably, moments after seeming strong enough to hold back a thousand mages, it tore open.
‘Quickly, get through!’ said Fahren, and through they went, coming to stand beyond the barrier inside the wood.
‘Wonder what’s happened?’ said Battu, glancing at the sky.
He didn’t have long to wonder, for almost straightaway up in the trees, three Sprites swung into view. ‘Attack!’ shouted one, and they released their holds, casting violet vortexes even as they fell to the forest floor. Old Magic slammed against Elessa’s ward, but not as strongly as she would have expected, unfortunately. Why had she not been obliterated completely? Earlier the Sprites had been strong enough to hold back an entire battle’s worth of lightfists and shadow mages!
By her side Fahren moved so that his own ward overlapped hers, while Battu stood all by himself. Vines wound out of the ground at his feet and he sent power at them. They flopped away limply, but he was already sweating profusely, as further spells shook his defence.
They are not as powerful as before , she sent Fahren.
Interesting , said Fahren. He issued forth a glowing orb that dodged erratically through the air and planted itself right on target, bludgeoning a Sprite’s ward and interrupting her casting.
Now is not the time for ‘interesting’ , said Battu. They are still more than our match.
Elessa , said Fahren, we may not survive this.
Good.
You are the hardiest of us all! He was angry again, and it made her even angrier that he dared to be. You must leave us here. Do your best to find the Stone and retrieve it for our people! We will join you if we can.
Elessa felt the command take hold and knew she must obey. Once upon a time she had looked up to this man, had sat at his feet with her chin on her fist while he read to her from books, or showed her how to conjure creatures from the air. She had been hand-picked by him, and had been both excited and nervous to take her place as a student with promise, though quickly comfortable in his kindly presence. How delighted she had been to surprise him by casting her first dodge spell, an infamously difficult trick that many great mages would never master – she had been only fourteen at the time.
No longer did she identify with that old self in the slightest. Now Fahren was nothing to her but a slave master.
Fourteen? That had only been six years or so before her death. She felt so much older than she was.
Try the clearing first , sent Fahren. It’s my best guess for where they might have taken him.
Directing power to her heels, she turned and fled. Last time she had been in the wood she had dared not use magic, for fear of
being sensed by the enemy. Now she poured it forth with abandon, hoping to be sensed. She also realised that, somewhere along the line, she had failed to maintain the illusion that kept colour in her cheeks, light in her eyes, the wound in her side from showing.
No consequence , she thought, bitter that she had even bothered with it in the first place. Let all see me as I am .
Behind her, Fahren cried out in pain.
Who would release her if he died?
•
Come on , thought Corlas, watching the thrumming Stone. Where are you, boy?
Something was not right with the wood – outside the hut, sunbeams and shadows roved through the clearing in equal measure, and he had no doubt he and the Sprites were under some kind of attack. His power, only partly recovered, seemed to be returning in a mere trickle. He had sensed streams of Old Magic nearby, diverted by Vyasinth, but now even those were beginning to thin. When what he had stored up was gone, it would be gone, and there was no telling when he could replenish again.
He rolled his massive shoulders. ‘Well,’ he rumbled, reaching above the fireplace to heft his axe from the wall, ‘old habits …never did think of myself as much of a mage type anyhow.’
And so Corlas found himself standing in his hut, guarding his boy with an axe, for a second time.
‘The world will have its fancies, I suppose,’ he muttered.
There was a knock at the door.
‘Who is it?’
A voice that seemed dryly amused with itself answered. ‘Representatives of the Open Halls.’
He went to the open window, and grunted in surprise. Elessa Lanclara stood there, her skin a pallid shade of grey, her eyes dry and unblinking, her white dress stained with blood. Vyasinth had told him she’d come back from the dead, but he had not expected to come face to face with her. Behind her in the clearing lay the bodies of Sprites – dead, stunned, or sleeping? It was hard to tell.
‘Well,’ she said, ‘I tell a fib. It’s only me, this time.’
‘And what was it I said?’ he asked, his bushy brows clumping in thought. ‘Ah, yes – warm yourself.’
A hand jumped from his axe to shoot forth a vortex, but she disappeared. A moment later the door blasted inwards off its hinges and she strode into the hut.
‘When are you going to learn,’ she said, ‘that the future of your son affects the whole world, not just your little home in the forest?’
‘The world,’ said Corlas, ‘can kiss my axe.’
He flung it at her, charging it with magic as it left his fingertips. It caught slightly in her hastily erected ward, ricocheting off course, and cut a chunk from her shoulder, exposing bone beneath.
Elessa gave a sickly smile, and warily Corlas raised a ward of his own – but it was not strong, he thought desperately, feeling his pool of power drying up. Elessa held up the hand attached to her damaged shoulder, gave the fingers an experimental waggle – and Corlas slammed against the wall, falling unconscious to the floor.
She went to the bed and scooped up the Stone.
•
Charla considered the strange women she had caught. Having lived her whole life in the wood, she had little experience of races other than her own. She had seen some just now, of course, upon entering the battle to fetch the Stone – but that had been swift and hectic, too much to take in at once.
The smaller of the two, the dark one with wings, had to be a Mire Pixie. As for the other, as Charla drew closer, she saw that the woman had pointy ears and multicoloured eyes. She was not a Varenkai, as Charla had first thought, but a Sprite as well. Did that make her a friend, or foe?
‘I do not recognise you from the wood,’ said Charla. ‘And I know all who dwell within.’
‘I am not from your wood,’ replied the woman, still straining against the vines that bound her.
Charla frowned. ‘But this is the only place where Sprites can live.’
‘I’m only part Sprite.’
‘Let us go!’ demanded the little one, and claws flicked from her fingertips. She managed to slice through some of the vines, but Charla gave a wave and they wound around her more firmly. Charla paused, feeling odd – the small amount of magic used to maintain the living bonds was taking more effort than it usually did. She tried not to let her misgivings show.
‘Let you go?’ she said, arching an eyebrow. ‘Nay, I think not. You are of the folk who sought to deny us our champion, he who will return the Sprites to prominence, and restore Old Magic to the world!’
The tall woman grimaced. ‘That’s why you’ve taken him? You are a third contender for Bel’s auspices?’
‘Third?’ said Charla haughtily. ‘We are the first. It is your people who interfered, your people who –’
‘Never mind any of that,’ snapped the woman. ‘I really could not care less about it right now.’
‘Then why have you invaded our wood?’
‘Because before they were put back in the Stone, Bel and Losara were our men.’
Charla was taken aback. Corlas, of course, had spoken at length about Bel’s life, and so she had heard of the half-caste Sprite with whom he shared it.
‘You’re Jaya?’ she said.
‘Yes.’
‘And I’m Lalenda,’ said the pixie. ‘The Shadowdreamer’s woman.’
‘And you are here …’
‘Because we want to know what’s happened to our men,’ said Jaya. ‘Wouldn’t you?’
Charla bit her lip – this was a bit more complicated than she had expected. She knew what it was like to be bonded to another Sprite, of course, and could not imagine being without Corlas. Also, there was the other, stranger thing.
They were almost family.
Once or twice Corlas had ventured the notion that Charla was the closest thing Bel had to a mother. Charla had stamped him down immediately – while her soul may have been composed partly of another’s, it was only partly , and she fiercely upheld that she was her own person. It was not her womb from which the baby had sprung, not her lovemaking that had put it there. Bel and Losara were the same age as her – she could scarcely imagine dandling them on her knee, or exposing her breast to feed them! That was for her own children, which she did intend to have one day. However, when she was away from Corlas, when he did not require slapping for his offensive ideas, she had thought about the situation more carefully. In a way she had to admit that she was connected to the blue-haired man – not in quite the way that Corlas had suggested, but in a way that was not entirely dissimilar either. And even if she’d had absolutely no hand in his creation, that didn’t change the fact that he was her love’s son, and these women were his son’s loves. For a Sprite, to whom kinship was an important thing indeed, that made them …well, something.
‘I am Charla,’ she told them. ‘Bonded to the Lord of the Wood, Corlas.’
‘ You are with Corlas?’ said Jaya. ‘Well, he hasn’t done badly for himself, has he?’
‘You do not seek to snatch the blue-haired man from us?’ said Charla, ignoring her words.
‘All we want,’ said Lalenda, and shot a glance at Jaya, ‘is to discover what has become of him. Would you not be concerned if Corlas was squished into a tiny rock?’
Charla nodded thoughtfully. She raised a hand, noting again with unease how her power had lessened, and the vines fell loose from Jaya and Lalenda and slipped back into the ground.
‘Come,’ she said. ‘I will take you to him. But try nothing sneaky, or it will be a branch through the ribs for you, understand?’
The women nodded and, hoping she had not made a mistake, Charla set out for the clearing.
•
Fahren ignored the pain in his arm. One of their assailants had flung a thorny wreath to wrap around it, which had squeezed tighter and tighter until he’d ripped it off. The attacks from the three Sprites had become easier to deal with for some reason. The wood folk seemed confused about that themselves. Now they were focusing on defence, yet even their sunset wards w
ere not proving impenetrable.
We can finish them , came Battu’s voice.
Fahren conjured a sunwing, which flew at the Sprites, notching an arrow to its bow. Quickly vortexes came up to meet it, and it was knocked backwards, fading.
Your thinking is limited, Throne. The ancient enemy of the Sprites was always the Ebon Elves.
Cackling, Battu weaved his hands, and from out of the air stepped a figure of legend – a humanoid with dark skin, and crystals for eyes. The Ebon stalked forward, and the Sprites’ eyes filled with fright.
There was a reason Ebons were the Sprites’ enemies , said Fahren. They wielded Old Magic also. But you cannot imbue your creature with such ability.
Still , said Battu, they are scared of it.
Sure enough, the three Sprites backed away from the advancing conjuration, all channelling together. As one they expended a large vortex, which flattened the Ebon instantly. It was a waste of power when dealing with such an insubstantial foe, and as a result the Sprites’ wards faltered. Fahren seized the opportunity. A white-hot beam sprang from his outstretched hand, puncturing a wavering ward to hit a Sprite full in the chest. The Sprite did not even have time to cry out, collapsing with a smoking hole through his heart. Fahren directed the beam onto the others, cutting through their wards easily. A second fell, sliced in half, and the third shrieked in alarm and pelted off through the trees, dropping her ward in exchange for speed.
Fahren released the beam, puffing from his exertions.
‘Hold still,’ said Battu. He set a hand over Fahren’s cut arm, rejoining the skin and even knitting the flesh beneath.
‘You have a gift for healing?’ said Fahren incredulously.
‘One of my lesser-used talents,’ admitted Battu. ‘Only because I’m sworn to help, I can assure you.’