by Thomas Locke
In the space of half a breath, Dally saw that the beasts were controlled by a different sort of enemy . . .
And then the enemy realized she was out there. Exposed. Vulnerable.
The fury that swerved toward her was terrifying, like she had slipped over the edge of a volcano and was blistered by the rising heat.
Dally withdrew as swift as her cry for life. She clutched at the man. “Help me!”
Edlyn rushed back. “What is it?”
“There is something back there,” she said, shredding the words. “A force or beast of a different kind. Something. In control.”
“And the fiends?”
“So many.” Shudders wracked her frame. “Hundreds.”
It was only when Dally heard Shona’s voice that she realized the young queen had joined them. “Go back and warn Ainya.”
“At once, my lady.” Then the man’s hands were gone. The loss of his strength caused Dally to whimper.
“I have you, child. Myron, rush ahead and alert the others. The rest of you, to your positions. Hurry!”
Dally tried to clear her vision and find the man who had held her upright. She felt bonded to him in a manner she could not describe, not even to herself. But she merely caught a glimpse of his back as he raced away. She wanted to turn around and follow him. Speak words she could not bring herself to form.
23
They gathered on the tallest roof in Elmtree. Two rows of dwellings separated them from the western fields. Beyond the verdant summer countryside rose the forest. Farther away, distant cliffs formed a darkening silhouette. The last lingering traces of sunset painted an umber wash across the western sky.
Their rooftop belonged to the village hall. To their right, a stone watchtower pointed at the first evening stars. The roof’s opposite end extended into a broad balcony, from which wandering minstrels performed in happier times. This Dally learned from the greybeard elder, who spoke of his village in fractured sentences. He and a female elder and Alembord and their escort had been found upon the road by Elven scouts, who had ordered them to abandon their mounts, as most animals refused to enter the forbidden realm. Then the company was returned to Elmtree by way of an emerald lane. The experience of traveling along the magical road had rendered the female elder mute and turned the greybeard into a man who sought to apologize without actually speaking the words.
All the villagers were barricaded in their homes, save those who were handy with a hunter’s bow or blade. The outlying homes and hamlets were emptied. Those refugees were safely housed farther back in the village.
Dally was very glad indeed not to have a major role. She held back from the leaders clustered by the rear railing and wished she knew a healing spell. One that would knit her mind and heart back together again. Or, failing that, one that could offer some temporary comfort. She felt as though a vital piece of herself had been torn away by her bodiless search. Several of them, in fact—one for each time she had moved beyond the reach of her physical senses.
Dally feared this internal cavity would only grow larger. Each impact of these far-reaching images cost her another essential component of her being.
She tried to tell herself that it was merely a passing sorrow. She would heal, she would move on, she would serve a vital purpose. She had a place. And a future. She tried to make these words real in her mind through repetition. Just as she had done in her darkest hours, fashioning her little light against the surrounding night and cold and damp. And yet this fear gnawed at her. Just as it had when she cowered inside the mayor’s shed.
Was this to be her destiny? To use a gift of such immense potential only to have it nibble at the very core of her being? Had she escaped one misery only to sink into another?
As dusk faded, Dally saw herself as she would be years from now. A crabby old woman bent over a cane, her back as twisted as her scowl. She screeched at everyone, dogs and birds included. The children laughed and threw stones at her. No one even bothered to know her name. Mad, babbling about voices and events that mattered to no one but her. Alone.
Dally turned from the group of leaders and did her best to push away the unwelcome thoughts. But in their place rose an even bleaker image.
She recalled the moment she had sensed the enemy.
Dally knew with utter certainty that she had barely escaped with her life. Just recalling the instant when the enemy had turned her way filled Dally with a sense of inevitability. Sooner or later, she feared, the enemy would find her. Then he would consume her mind and heart and . . .
Turn her into a slave. Only half alive. Never to be free again.
She did not think this. She knew. That brief glimpse of the enemy’s fury and lust for destruction still blistered her.
Then Nabu and the one other remaining wolfhound pressed their noses into her thighs.
At first Dally thought it was because they sensed her distress. Then she realized that was not the case at all.
These were wolfhounds with the white streak of war-blood. They were bred for combat. They sensed what Dally had been unable to detect in her current state.
At that same moment, the dogs now belonging to Edlyn and Shona growled softly.
Dally said, “They’re coming.”
24
Edlyn’s mages and Shona’s own archers manned the roofs closest to the meadow, forming a magic-enforced semicircle. Behind them, the village militia and archers gathered behind secondary barricades. For a dozen breaths, there was no change. The dusk was almost gone now, the last lingering light fashioning a sea of murky images from the fields and forest.
Edlyn asked, “The Elves are ready?”
Ainya did not shift her gaze from the empty pastures. “For the third time, yes.”
The strategy was Shona’s, the planning Meda’s, with some rather heated input from Darwain, Myron, Alembord, and various village elders who were determined to defend their village as they saw fit. But Shona silenced the arguments by issuing a calm series of orders, showing that her voice was the only one they all would heed.
Her plan was simple in the extreme. As most brilliant plans were, according to Edlyn.
Layer upon layer upon layer.
Force the enemy to fully commit. Reveal themselves and their tactics and their full power in the process. Shona and her forces would then be better prepared for the next assault.
The prospect that this was not the last battle, nor the worst, was what silenced the most rebellious of voices. This was merely preparation for what was yet to come. And to succeed, they had to support their ruler. They had to unite.
Shona’s strategy was immediately proven to be not merely accurate, but vital.
As the last light of dusk shone dimly, three tunnels opened in the thorn wall. The shift would no doubt have gone completely unnoticed had the gathered forces not been so intently focused.
Three rows of vague lingering shadows separated themselves from the forest. It would have been far too easy to ignore them entirely, pretend they were nothing more than the spread of night’s reach. These lumpish wraiths poured silently forth.
One of Shona’s personal guards muttered, “Would you just look at that.”
“Hush now,” Edlyn said.
The invasion was impossibly silent, as though the shadows had no physical presence at all. Instead, the gloom reached farther and farther, aiming at the silent village.
Ainya whispered, “My lady . . .”
“Not yet,” Shona replied. “Hold.”
And hold they did. Shona’s soldiers, dressed as village farmers, left the fields and trudged in mock weariness across the last remaining stretch of meadow. Drawing the enemy farther from the forest’s safety.
Shona said, “Sound the first alert.”
At a signal from a guard, the watchtower bell rang once.
These false villagers appeared to retreat in utter disarray. They shouted with alarm as they ran, calling questions back and forth, demanding to know what was the problem, why they w
ere running, what was out there.
The lumpish shadows accelerated.
The soldiers poured through openings, then the barricades were sealed shut.
The fiends struck the barricades, and the defenders’ fury was revealed.
25
Archers,” Shona said. “Shields.”
It seemed to Dally as though even before the bell struck twice, the sky was filled with a rain of arrows. They hummed through the air, softly whispering chords of death.
The fiends responded with bellows and flames.
Shona shouted, “Halberds to the fore!”
There were only a few wands among them, and those were kept hidden. But all the mages could manage shields. The troops armed with the long spears were protected from the belching fireballs as they reached across the barricades and stabbed hard.
And still the arrows flew.
In the chaos of battle, the town hall’s roof remained a haven of quiet intent. Ainya said, “My lady, it appears the rearmost enemies are returning to the forest.”
Shona said, “Mistress Edlyn, signal your team.”
In response, Edlyn stepped well back from the railing and murmured briefly. A few seconds passed where nothing changed. Then Dally felt the air begin to coalesce around her.
A lightning bolt seared down from a perfectly clear sky.
Even though she had known what was about to happen, still the shock caused her to jump. They had discussed the tactic at length. How to alert Edlyn’s most distant mages when the watchtower bell would be overwhelmed by the clamor of battle. And not, if at all possible, alert their foe to the leaders’ position.
The flash came and went, but it was enough for them all to see the fiends massed upon the meadow. Hundreds of them. More.
They waited in silent tension.
Then two meager spells shot forth from positions to either side of their station. Silent blasts of force that rippled across the field, strong enough to cause the fiends in their path to tumble about. The masking shadows were blown away. But the spells did no real damage.
Nor were they meant to.
Two of Edlyn’s mages and their supporting troops had all scratched themselves deep enough for the wounds to bleed freely. And then the same spell as Dally had used was cast forth. An insignificant display of magery. One that sprayed mists of fresh blood over the entire field, attempting to drive the enemy into an uncontrolled bloodlust and draw them to their doom.
The fiends bellowed with one insane voice and threw themselves at the village.
Shona screamed, “Now!”
26
Ainya stepped to the balcony railing. She lifted her hands and chanted words that sounded to Dally as melodious as death.
Edlyn murmured, “We hear words not spoken for a thousand years.”
A crown appeared upon Ainya’s head, with a stone of emerald fire at the center of her forehead. Her entire being glowed, brighter and brighter, until the village and meadow and thorns and forest and cliffs were all burnished by her light.
Then the stars turned green and began to fall from the sky.
At least, that was how it appeared to Dally. One after another descended to earth, a graceful display of silent power.
But wherever they touched the earth, the ground was blasted by green fire.
The fiends were taking terrible losses. And still the arrows fell.
From the forest came a low moan, a wordless howl that went on and on. Those beasts still standing turned as one and raced back toward the forest.
Then the thorn wall burst into flames.
The light was blinding, an intense green inferno that rimmed the village on all sides. As far in every direction as Dally could see, the thorn barrier was ablaze.
And through the flames stepped the Elven army.
Shona called, “Archers cease firing!”
Both the arrows and Ainya’s rain of destruction ended. The village’s barricades were cast aside so that Shona’s troops could attack, joining the Elves. Together the armies flung themselves at the beasts.
The assault turned into a rout.
Edlyn walked to Dally and said, “It is time, my dear. I want you to search without reaching out. I know that sounds impossible. But just the same, you mustn’t make yourself . . .”
Even before Edlyn finished, Dally knew the answer. She ran to the railing and pointed at the darkest point in the forest. “There! He is there!”
Edlyn stepped up to her right, Ainya to her left. “Dally, raise your wand! On my mark, one, two, and fire!”
Dally only had the one spell. And she had never applied that with the wand in her hand. She had no idea what to expect.
The blast catapulted her backwards, but not before she saw a sheet of tightly focused fire stream out from her wand. Dally struck her head as she fell, and the last thing she saw was the final traces of her rainbow-colored fire streaming straight up—a fountain rush aimed at the stars. Then the night went blank.
27
Dally’s first thought when she opened her eyes was, the man seated by her bed appeared to be everything she was not.
Self-assured, poised, handsome. And rich, by the look of things. He wore the warrior mage’s grey uniform, only his was in the form of tailored trousers and overmantle and matching boots, with the Oberon insignia sewn into one side of his shirt and Shona’s on the other.
He managed a regal bow even while seated. “A very good morning, Lady Dally.”
She pried apart her dry lips and rasped, “Please don’t call me that.”
“Thirsty?”
“Very.”
“Let me help you sit up.”
When his hands settled upon her arm and the back of her neck, Dally realized it was the man who had aided her before the attack. She found it mildly remarkable how it was not his good looks nor his deep voice but rather his touch that she recognized. She felt once more an intense bonding. Which caused her to blush. She did her best to hide behind her cup.
“More?”
“Please.”
“How shall I call you?”
“Dally is the only name I’ve ever known. Unless a childhood dream is real, and Dahlrin was indeed the name I was given at birth. As Mistress Edlyn suspects.” She drained the cup. The water tasted exquisite. “Thank you for your gift of strength yesterday.”
He offered another of his seated bows. “You are most welcome, Dally. I am Connell.”
“You are a wizard?”
His smile was magnetic. “Some would dispute that claim, but yes. I am.”
Dally looked around. Her pallet was surrounded on three sides by sunlit cloth. “I’m in the infirmary.”
A grey-haired mage chose that moment to walk past. He saw Dally was awake, scowled at Connell, then asked her, “How are you feeling?”
She took stock and replied, “I’m not sure.”
Connell asked, “Do you remember last night?”
The images were disjointed, all save the blast of multicolored power she had sent up into the stars. “Did I hurt someone?”
At a gesture from the medic, Connell rose and stepped away from her bed. “None of our company, if that’s what you mean.”
Cool fingers inspected the base of her skull. Only then did Dally feel the distant pain.
The healer asked, “Does that hurt?”
“A little.”
“A little is good. A lot is bad. If the pain grows worse you must tell me.”
Connell asked, “Can she go?”
Clearly the medic disliked Connell’s presence. “There is no apparent damage. But head injuries surprise us from time to time.” He said to Dally, “Remember, the first sign of rising discomfort, you must alert me or another medic.”
When they were alone, Dally asked, “What did you do to upset the man?”
“Not me, but our leaders.” Connell did not resume his seat. “If you are ready, there’s something they desperately need for you to do.”
Dally felt a shock of
rising dread with the realization of why he was there. “Oh no.”
“I’m afraid so.” He offered his hand. “Will you come?”
The medic protested again as they departed the infirmary, but no one made a move to stop them. A low mist clung to the village of Elmtree, turning all edges soft and making it impossible for Dally to tell where sounds came from. Then a soft rush of footfalls was followed by a wet nose pressing into her side. Dally knelt in the damp earth and allowed Nabu to lick her face. The simple act helped immensely to anchor her to the moment.
When she lifted her head from the dog’s fur, she saw the last remaining unnamed dog hovering just out of reach, waiting her turn. Dally reached out one arm. The dogs smelled of damp pelts and life. She gave in to the simple pleasure for a time, then rose and asked, “Why now?”
“They never tell me anything.” Connell gestured toward the unseen camp. “Shall we?”
Beneath his glib words, Dally detected a faint bitterness. She knew the question was valid. Why did they want her to hunt for answers now? Somewhere in the distance she heard a pair of fiddlers practicing a jig and knew the village was preparing a fete. The battle was won. The legends had come alive before their very eyes. The thorn barrier was no more.
Dally walked alongside the tall mage and asked, “Couldn’t their questions wait just one day?”
“Apparently not.”
Gingerly she touched the point where she had struck the stone. “My head hurts.”
Connell pointed into the mist. “Which is why an Elven healer is standing just beyond the portal. Or so they claim.”
Dally said, “You know something.”
“I suspect,” he corrected. “I have watched powerful people not say things all my life. It has granted me a hard-earned ability to deduce what they keep unspoken.”
His words almost made sense. “All your life you’ve been surrounded by power?”
“My earliest memories are of a prince’s audience chamber. My family members are wealthy traders with a heritage stretching back to Falmouth Port’s earliest days. They were the first to offer fealty after the Oberons retreated there. And they have reaped the whirlwind ever since.”