The Darkling Tide

by Travis Simmons

  “Yea, I used to have a doll that talked to me, but she’s gone now,” Leona said.

  “How did the doll talk to you?” Daniken asked.

  Why is she so curious about us? Abagail wondered. What’s she after?

  Leona went through how she used to get impressions about the future from Skuld, her wooden doll, and how she had killed the darkling with the doll and since then she hadn’t heard anything about the future.

  “Sounds like darkling wyrd to me,” Daniken sniffed. The way her eyes studied Leona, as if she was testing her didn’t settle well with Abagail.

  “Or it could be a spirit,” Abagail flared. Her heart was racing in her ears. How dare she suggest that Leona had anything to do with darklings? What was this elf? Was she from O where they jumped at their own shadow thinking it was darkling caused?

  “It could be,” Daniken said as if she didn’t believe her. “But darklings are killed with the fire of the Waking Eye, and the light of Hafaress’ Hearth.

  “Well, this was just fire, it didn’t come from a sanctified hearth,” Rorick said.

  “Nonsense, all the fireplaces in Landanten are blessed by Hafaress, the fire came from his hearth. How else would it have killed the darkling?” Daniken wondered.

  Abagail wasn’t sure that regular old fire wouldn’t do the same thing. Did it really have to be blessed? Didn’t light chase away the shadows anyway? It didn’t have to be special light.

  The anger flared through Abagail and when it sticks Rorick was rubbing together, trying to light sparked violently and a towering flame roared forth from the fire. Rorick fell back away from the fire and stared at Abagail, worried.

  Abagail shot to her feet and stalked away from them. The darklings were back at the edge of the road, howling and cawing into the night. It was a clear night, which meant it was going to be a cold one. Someone would have to sit up through the night watching the fire to make sure it didn’t go out, especially since it was obvious the darklings could affect things on the trail, even if they couldn’t get on the trail themselves.

  “Abbie,” Rorick called, jogging up to her. “What is wrong with you?”

  “Her!” Abagail roared, turning on him. The tone of her voice made Rorick step back a pace and glance at her hand. “Oh, Hafaress’ Fire, Rorick, this has nothing to do with the shadow plague. This is me being angry, on my own, without darkling interference.”

  “Are you sure about that?” he asked her.

  Her blood boiled.

  “Pretty positive about that. She comes along and we all just believe her? Did you forget Celeste? Don’t you think it’s strange that the things Celeste seems against, Daniken wants?” Abagail waited for an answer, but the only one she got was Rorick glancing to his feet. “That’s what I thought. She so much as called Leona a darkling back there.”

  “No she didn’t,” Rorick said.

  “Yes, she suggested that Skuld was a darkling,” Abagail said. “And if there’s a reason Celeste is against opening the scepters, I bet there’s a good reason for it.”

  “Don’t you find it strange that you trust Celeste the way I trust Daniken?”

  “No,” Abagail answered flatly. “I don’t think it’s strange.”

  “And why’s that?” Rorick asked.

  “Because, Celeste didn’t attack us when we first met!” Abagail tossed her hands above her head. “You’ve heard one thing you like, and you’re sold on Daniken.”

  “And what’s that?” Rorick asked, crossing his arms over his chest. Abagail didn’t care if she was pissing him off.

  “That she has a way to destroy all the darklings, and that’s what you want.”

  “Wouldn’t you?” Rorick asked, fire in his voice.

  “All I want is to fix this!” She ripped her glove off. “Cure this plague so I can go home and take care of my family. I don’t want to play hero.”

  “And you think my wanting to avenge my family has me playing the hero?” Rorick asked, his face incredulous.

  “Yes. Why else would you want this holocaust?”

  “We are talking about darklings here, right?” Rorick asked, spreading his hands wide. “The things that are destroying the nine worlds?”

  Abagail shook her head and turned away from him.

  “Are you sure the shadow plague isn’t tainting you?” he asked.

  Abagail scoffed and tugged her glove back on but didn’t answer him.

  “I don’t want to have to make good on our promise,” Rorick told her.

  “Are you threatening me, Rorick?” Abagail asked. “Because I don’t agree with you?”

  He didn’t answer her.

  “You’re no better than the Light Guard at home. Claiming everyone you don’t like is a darkling and disposing of those that go against your wishes.”

  Abagail heard Rorick walk away.

  Come after me, Abagail thought, turning to watch his retreating form against the silver light of the moon scepter and the wavering fire. I’ve always protected what is mine, and you don’t want to threaten that.

  Leona watched Rorick and Abagail stalk away. There was an uneasiness to the camp that night, and Leona just couldn’t understand it. She couldn’t understand how Abagail could trust Celeste but not Daniken. They were both elves, and they were both trying to do the same thing, rid the worlds of the darklings.

  She wished, not for the first time, that Skuld was still around. Even if she hadn’t always spoken to Leona, Skuld had always been there, at least in doll form, and she could talk to her, help herself through these kinds of situations. Now that the doll was gone she felt more alone than ever before.

  She didn’t like it.

  But what if Dani is right? Leona asked herself. What if Skuld really was a darkling, and by burning the doll I had killed her? She had to stop thinking of Skuld as a her and more as it. She wasn’t really sure the being inside the doll was a she.

  Something about that line of thought didn’t sit well with her, and she gathered her arms around herself against the chill creeping through her soul.

  “Does she always do that?” Daniken asked, watching the dark trail Abagail and Rorick had just disappeared into.

  “No,” Leona answered. It was strange for her, she wanted to like Daniken, and she truly did, but she almost felt like she was betraying her sister by doing so. If Abagail didn’t like Daniken, should Leona?

  “It’s the darkling wyrd,” the elf said, nodding her head.

  “How do you figure?” Leona wondered, scooting closer to the fire to warm herself, though it was her thoughts that chilled her more than the coldness of the oncoming night.

  “If she’s only recently started acting like this,” Daniken said. She clapped her finger to the moon scepter once, and a faint wail escaped the weapon in a pulse of light. Before long two rabbits hopped onto the trail and came near the elf. “All we’ve been talking about is killing the darklings once and for all, and she gets like this?” She shook her head sadly. Daniken drew a knife and when the rabbits were close enough, she attacked with lightning speed, killing them both before they had time to register what had happened.

  Leona looked away, refusing to wince. There were many times she’d eaten rabbit before, the only difference was seeing the animal as it died before she ate it. It made her feel funny knowing the elf had just killed these two animals. Everything she’d ever learned about elves were that they were beings of nature, woodland spirits. Why would she have killed the rabbits? They still had the nuts and seeds left to eat that Celeste had given them.

  Leona’s stomach betrayed her thoughts and growled hungrily.

  “Do you think it’s the darkling wyrd?” Leona asked.

  “It’s the only thing that makes sense,” Daniken said. “The difference, as far as I can tell, between Celeste coming to you and my coming to you is that I’ve brought a solution for killing the darklings, and Celeste didn’t. Abagail has been acting strangely toward me since then.”

  Leona nodded. She was r
ight, it did make sense. Celeste had said that the shadow plague would start working against Abagail’s mind, that it might start taking her over like one would expect to be possessed by a spirit.

  “I guess you’re right,” Leona said. It still didn’t sit well with her, not knowing what her sister was going through. Abagail was the one person that Leona had always been able to trust, and now she wasn’t even sure she could do that. What if the plague really was taking her over and corrupting her mind? Was Leona prepared to stand on her own and lose her sister too?

  Leona closed her eyes and tried to chase the thoughts away.

  Abagail had taken first watch over the fire. There hadn’t been much to do, the fire had just been started up and there was no real worry that it would go out within the first few hours.

  She tried to rationalize what had just happened between Rorick and herself. They’d never truly fought before, so it was only that much more startling for her. What was going on with them? She thought Rorick would have been the right choice to watch over her while she got sicker, but she wasn’t sure of that decision any longer.

  And what about Leona. She was young still, and obviously idolized Daniken, would Leo turn on her too? She had to figure out a way to talk to Leona without Daniken being around, but if she did that, she would be leaving Rorick alone with the elf, and that could cause untold amount of damage.

  She was just so uncertain. Abagail felt worse having Daniken with her than she had before the elf came. At least she’d saved them from wandering off the path when the harp music played.

  It was Daniken’s turn to watch the fire next, and Abagail wasn’t sure that she could fully trust the elf to watch the fire and not try to use it to kill Abagail off. Despite her worries, when Daniken took over the watch, Abagail fell fast asleep.

  It only seemed like minutes had passed when a booted foot was nudging her awake. There was no way it was already time to move along, the sky above them was only now starting to turn gray with the coming of dawn.

  Abagail stretched and yawned into the silence of camp. For a moment she could almost forget that Daniken had joined them and that she and Rorick had been fighting, but from somewhere near her feet she could see the soft glow of the moon scepter, and the truth was hard to deny.

  “What’s happening?” Leona said, her voice filled with sleep.

  “I don’t know, it’s just started,” Daniken said.

  Rorick didn’t offer to help Abagail up once he’d woken her, he went back and gathered the hammer and joined Daniken.

  “Darkling?” he asked.

  Why is everything darkling with them? Abagail wondered, sitting up in her blankets and searching for her sword.

  “I believe so, it has the sense of dark wyrd to it,” Daniken answered.

  Of course it does, Abagail thought.

  Leona came closer to Abagail, and it made Abagail feel slightly better to know that in times like this, Leona still sought the safety of her sister. She rubbed Leona’s shoulder encouragingly and her younger sister smiled wanly.

  Abagail peered beyond Rorick and Daniken.

  A silent, dead wind shook the limbs of the trees about, scattering snow around them. Leaves rained down with the snow, and the bare limbs scraped and clattered together, creating a music that was both like and unlike the wildly beautiful, yet terrifying harp music form before.

  There was a fog which seemed oddly otherworldly. Though the wind was blowing, the fog moved at its own pace, slipping over the underbrush and the rocks, roiling up against the shield of the trail like waves breaking along a shore.

  Abagail shivered, and she couldn’t deny that Daniken had been right. This fog had the feeling of darkling wyrd. Her right arm, her afflicted arm, could feel a kinship with it.

  “Is it where the harp music came from before?” she asked.

  Daniken shook her head. “I can’t be sure,” she answered. “Sometimes darklings use fog to travel in, other times, as I think this is, it’s more a rift between worlds. If you look hard enough, you can almost see some other landscape beyond the bank.”

  Abagail looked, and sure enough, Daniken was right. In the fog before them, an awareness of another world was growing. There were trees, but they weren’t the same trees that stood outside of the fog. The very image of the trees within the fog conjured fear in Abagail, fear that she couldn’t explain. It was just as if staring through the fog, they were staring into the deepest recesses of the underworld.

  The grove that grew within the fog was dead, and there was a feel that the grove had always been, and would always be, dead. The fog seemed to open up, to swallow away the vision of the healthy trees of Agaranth beyond the fogbank, and display a seeming cemetery of trees with one living tree in the center.

  The tree was tall, lush, and full of life, though it seemed a perversion of life as Abagail knew it. It was a lime tree, Abagail had seen them before. The base was thick and the green leaves vibrant in contrast to all of the dead trees that stood around it. It was a grove of lime trees, though there was only one that remained alive.

  The terror she felt at seeing the grove came to fruition before her very eyes as darkness so complete, so profound that it actually glowed, gathered in the center of the thicket of lime trees. It formed a globe, spinning and pulsating like an evil heart which dripped black goop onto the ground below it. Where the goop fell, the ground smoked and shivered as if the trees were being consumed, degraded by the substance.

  From out of the shadow of the living tree there came a tiny woman carrying a harp. She smiled at them, a radiant expression that seemed so out of sorts inside the grove. She was the most beautiful woman Abagail had ever seen, though she appeared to stand no taller than her knees. She wore a dress of leaves and grass that didn’t look rudimentary at all, but instead as if it had been fashioned by the most artful of hands. Her long black hair fell in ringlets down her back. Her green eyes flashed once, a repulsive expression that brought Abagail back to herself with a gasp as pain pulsed through her right hand.

  The woman turned from them, and they could see that her back was entirely hollow, as if it were a trough, or some kind of receptacle. Within the recess of her back more darkness gathered, and apparently gave her strength and power. She sat the harp down and raised her hands then, and they were filled with a light that was not light, but an eerie glow that Abagail couldn’t explain. The glow fit within the grove of trees, but was nothing Abagail had ever seen before, and nothing her mind could completely comprehend.

  Abagail reached for her short sword and stood.

  “They can’t get on to the trail, right?” Abagail wondered.

  “That’s right, but these are elle folk, they have bows, and their arrows might be able to reach us,” Daniken answered.

  Abagail was going to say more, but she stopped short, because just then the dark orb in the grove was taking form in response to the harpists glowing hands. The fog seemed to grow thicker around the scene, as if the world they were staring into was trying to bleed through to Agaranth, take over the Fay Forest maybe, or trying to become a permanent part of the forest.

  The black orb settled on the ground and began to take the shape of a human just a diminutive as the one who summoned it.

  In a silent thundering that shook the ground, the darkness stood, and appeared as an emaciated old man. He wore a hat and clothing that looked like withered flesh, though from what kind of creature, Abagail couldn’t tell. But with as damnable as the grove was, she wondered if it couldn’t have been skin of wayward travelers like themselves.

  He stood and smiled at them, his hat low over his face and obscuring his eyes, but not his hooked nose or cracked and bloodied lips. From the air fell a stick which he caught with ease, despite his frail appearance. He was stooped as one would imagine an old man should be, and his skin was wrinkled and spotted with disease. As he stepped forward, Abagail’s group instinctively stepped back.

  “Do you think the trail will hold against him?” Abaga
il asked Daniken, for the time being forgetting how much she disliked the elf.

  “I’m not sure. We’ve only just recently realized that darklings can enter our world in this fashion, and for some time it’s been apparent that Singer’s Trail is weakening. I guess it depends on how strong they are if they can break through or not,” Daniken said.

  It wasn’t a settling thought, but it was an answer, and that’s what Abagail was looking for. She slipped her glove off, exposing her afflicted hand to the cold night air, and shifted her short sword in her blackened palm.

  “Leona, start packing up our things so we can move out. I don’t know if this bank can follow us or not, but I don’t want to stick around to find out,” Abagail said.

  “Good thinking,” Daniken said. “I will help her, you two keep watch.”

  The elf went back to their camp with Leona to help.

  Daphne came fluttering out of the dark sky and alighted on Abagail’s shoulder. The pixie sat down, as if she was waiting for something to happen just as Abagail and Rorick were.

  Rorick didn’t say anything to Abagail, but kept his eyes forward. Even facing what they were facing, there was an ill silence between them.

  “Come on you bastards,” Rorick said.

  Abagail cast a glance at her friend, but didn’t say a word. With the tension between them, she wasn’t sure anything she said would be civil, or that he would take it the right way. His growing hatred for darklings concerned her. It bordered on fanatic, and she never thought he’d be like that. She worried that she was losing her friend to his hatred.

  And if the plague keeps growing in me, what will he think? What will he do?

  The withered old man raised his hands and into the air came a deafening whistle. It rebounded off the trees and made everything that was good about the night shiver in protest. Leaves rained down around them, and Abagail could feel the cold bite of his conjured wind cutting against the fabric of her clothes.

  From the darkness of the lime tree grove came more movement, which sounded like little feet. The harpist crooned at the old man, and sidled up to him, laying her head on his shoulder. She smiled at Rorick and Abagail, her teeth as sharp as broken glass.