by K K Ness
He frowned. “What does it mean if they’re using magic on deadland stones?”
Elania made a sound of negation behind him. “The deadlands are barren in life and energy. Enchantments won’t work on it, no matter how powerful the enchanter or mage.”
“So what was the orange crystal?” Danil asked.
“My guess is a scrying stone,” Elania said. “They’re trying to find their mysterious entrance.”
“Must be pretty desperate to try enchantments on the deadlands itself,” Hafryn said.
“If Kaul created the deadlands, is it possible he hid an orb there?” Danil asked.
The wolf frowned. “If he did, it was likely lost when he destroyed the leylines.”
Danil tilted his head at the unfamiliar word.
Despite the darkness under the tree canopy, Hafryn must have read his confusion. “Leylines are ancient underground pathways. It’s not unusual to find them near the likes of rivers, waterfalls, and hot springs—anywhere nature’s energy is most evident. Even Roldaer has leylines, but only in Amas do kiandrite crystals form on their edges.”
“But people used to mine for mage-crystals in the deadlands before it was tapped out,” Danil argued.
Hafryn shook his head. “In his later years, Kaul was interested in forcing Roldaerian leylines to produce kiandrite. He siphoned off the life force in a Amasian leyline and fed it into a Roldaerian one. That there was kiandrite in the deadlands indicates he had some measure of success, but blending the leylines created a cataclysmic reaction. The explosion that created the deadlands would have also spewed kiandrite in every direction.”
“Hence why kiandrite could be found at random,” Danil mused, thinking of the haphazard warren of tunnels and mineshafts. “Nowadays, it’s whatever the meltwater brings from the Amasian mountains.”
“It’s surprising that you’re even able to find that much,” Hafryn said, throwing him a curious look.
Danil shrugged. Desperation and fear were good motivators. “I usually—” He stopped at the brush of icy fingers across his skin.
Glancing up, he saw the air coalesce into grey light. An image of Brianna smiling as she leaned over a silver bowl flashed in his mind.
A bear shimmered out of the darkness to reveal Blutark. The man shot a bolt of silver at the cloud and watched grim-faced as Brianna’s farseeking dissipated.
“Thanks,” Danil managed.
Elania shared a look with the bear shifter. “I’ll send warning to Sonnen about the extra mages.”
Blutark nodded.
She stepped off the trail to allow the rest of the party to pass her. Cupping her hands, Elaina whispered something into her palms. A few moments later, a tiny spark of light burst free and shot away between the tree trunks back towards the border.
“We should keep moving,” Blutark muttered.
Mouth thin, Hafryn indicated for Danil to follow. They had many hours of walking ahead of them.
The farseekings continued throughout the night and well into the day. It seemed that whenever a respite felt possible, coldness swept over Danil and the cloud with its icy blue specter formed above the party. They’d not paused for more than a handful of moments since the previous day.
Weariness tugged at Danil’s bones as he paused in front of a small ledge of rock, staring up with tired dislike. Elania shimmered into her snow leopard Trueform and launched up onto the ledge with a single, powerful jump. She transformed again and leaned down to offer her hand.
He mustered a smile and allowed himself to be heaved up. “Thanks,” he murmured.
They walked together across the ledge to where it widened beside a large bed of yellow mushrooms.
“Don’t be disheartened by the farseekings, yeah?” Elania said. Dirt streaked her cheek. “The magus does it to track us, but we have the upper hand. She doesn’t know you can farsee her, too. That’s power, Danil.”
He tried to absorb that. If there was a chance to outwit Magus Brianna, he’d take it.
Elania winked, showing dimples. “You’re not what I expected of humans. Kinda thought you’d fall behind by now.”
Danil didn’t take offence. He’d made certain assumptions about Amasians, also. But they weren’t the strange, unwelcoming folk he’d feared. “There’s plenty of things I don’t get about Amasians,” he said.
She threw him a curious look as they made their way across patches of snow clinging about the base of saplings and fernery. “Such as?”
“Okay,” he said, running a few questions in his mind. “Why is it that you keep your clothes on when you shift back from your Trueform?”
Elania paused, dark eyes assessing.
Danil quickly raised his hands. “Hafryn never wore clothes in the deadlands,” he added in a rush.
She abruptly snorted. “That wolf.” Clearly trying not to laugh, she said, “We use glyphs to ensure we don’t lose our clothes each time we shift.”
“Really,” he said, nonplussed.
She tapped a small, angular symbol on the inside of her elbow. “We learn to draw it as younglings. Of course, there are purists in the northern reaches who don’t use the glyphs.”
“I see.” Danil glanced back at Hafryn as the wolf navigated his way up the ledge.
“Hafryn isn’t one of them,” she said, smirking despite the tiredness under her eyes. “If you’ve seen him naked, it’s because he wanted you to.”
Danil felt his cheeks burn.
Hafryn met his gaze as he crossed the stone ledge, green eyes mild.
He quickly turned back around, scowling. “Trickster wolf,” he muttered under his breath.
Elania chuckled. “Trickster wolf, indeed.”
11
The ambush came on a mountainous strip of the trail.
A series of ‘thwacks’ had Danil wheeling about as objects struck the surrounding trees.
“Archers!” someone shouted.
The bolt wedged into the bark closest to Danil had a black shaft veined with kiandrite. The colors swirled and brightened a heartbeat before a white flash blinded him. A boom vibrated through his body and suddenly he pitched sideways. Screams and animal shrieks rang out.
Blinking rapidly, Danil saw a blurred figure reach him and haul him to his feet. Danil gripped the man’s tunic, expecting on the edges of his vision to see a red braid.
“Hafryn—” he began, but then caught sight of white hair and pale blue eyes.
Ronan…
Flailing in a panic, Danil hit out with his fists. Magus Ronan’s head snapped back, and suddenly a white-tailed dove with metal-sheathed talons raked across the mage’s face. The mage screamed in fury.
Danil wrenched loose. His vision cleared to see blue-cloaked soldiers battling against various woodland creatures.
Green sparked about Magus Ronan as he reached for Danil once more. Three gouges scored the side of the mage’s face. He grinned bloodily. “You’re ours now.”
A red wolf catapulted into the mage with a guttural snarl. The impact left Danil staggering. He lost his footing and tumbled head over foot down an embankment. His head struck a rock.
Blackness took him.
Danil woke to the snap of twigs. Something charged through the underbrush. Dazed, he skittered back until he braced against a tangle of roots. The embankment loomed above him, with crushed undergrowth and disturbed snow showing his path down. No sounds of fighting echoed from on high.
A giant red wolf bounded over the thick brush. It saw Danil immediately and trotted over, making distressed whines.
Danil pressed his face into the creature’s pale ruff. “I’m okay, Hafryn,” he gasped out. The side of his face felt sticky with blood.
Hafryn transformed, green eyes worried as he inspected the wound in Danil’s hairline. “That’s a mighty bruise, fala.” He gripped Danil’s chin and studied his eyes with disconcerting intensity.
Danil gently pushed his hand away. “I said I’m fine, wolf.”
Hafryn sat back on his
heels. “We can’t stay here. Can you walk?”
With a nod, he gripped Hafryn’s forearm and let himself be helped upright. The world spun dizzyingly and then settled.
Hafryn watched him closely as he waited for the disorientation to pass. Then he motioned for Danil to start back up the embankment.
At the top, two of Magus Brianna’s soldiers lay dead, but none of the Amasians had fallen. Strangely, Blutark and two other shifters crowded around a blonde-haired companion, who stood with her head bowed. She cried softly.
Danil threw Hafryn a worried glance.
Elania answered from where she sat strapping her arm with a bandage. “It’s her little brother, Talis,” she muttered, tying off the end of the bandage with a vicious tug. Shadows showed under her eyes. “They took him the moment the fight turned against them.”
Danil gaped. “What?”
He tried to remember the shifter. Pale haired, tawny-eyed. His Trueform was a small mountain cat with a black tip on its tail.
“The magi have done it in the past,” Hafryn said in a low murmur. He watched Blutark comfort the woman. “We don’t know where our people go or what happens to them.”
“Only that we never hear of them again,” Elania spat. She rose to her feet, her dark eyes furious.
“I had no idea,” Danil murmured, looking back at the weeping woman in horror. What would the magi want with Amasians?
Elania pointed with her chin. “You need healing?”
Danil touched his tender scalp. It was nothing in the scale of things. “I can keep going.”
“Good.” The snow leopard gathered her pack, before picking up another that lay abandoned in the moss. She let out a whistle.
Blutark looked up and nodded. He murmured something to the woman and squeezed her shoulder. Moments later, she transformed into a panther and bolted from sight.
12
At Hafryn’s signal, Danil hunkered behind a fallen tree.
He peered between the leaves and caught a flash of pale blue amidst the greenery. He ducked down again.
Blutark crouched beside him, crossbow planted atop the frost-rimed bark. This close, Danil could see faint silvery flames writhe above the arrowhead.
The snap of twigs and undergrowth drew his attention back to the approaching soldiers. Every muscle tensed in preparation.
The first soldier marched past, vacant eyed and stony faced. Danil counted ten more soldiers before Magus Ronan stalked into view. Three long gouges marked his face from jaw to eyebrow. A cold fury showed in his eyes as he swept past the underbrush.
A dozen more soldiers flanked him. None appeared fatigued despite an unrelenting march which had lasted three days.
Danil and his companions waited for the crack of branches smashing underfoot to fade.
Hafryn eventually motioned. ‘This way,’ he mouthed before he slinked down into a small gully.
They headed east, where a rugged mountain peak heavy with snow was visible above the treeline.
Exhaustion pulled at Danil with every step, and he watched with envy as a few of the shifters stayed in their Trueforms simply to stay apace. He wasn’t sure how much further he could go without rest.
Three days had passed since the ambush. Despite knowing the terrain, the shifters had been unable to shake Magus Ronan from their path. Blutark muttered darkly under his breath about enchantments designed to make magi-touched soldiers endure more than they should. Even at night, torches cast a mean glow amidst the spruce trees.
With a sense of guilt, Danil wondered if the Amasians could outrun Ronan’s force if they all shifted.
“Some of us, yes,” Hafryn murmured when he tentatively asked. They traversed a stream cleaving a gully in two. “But Castalan is a vole, and Enil’s a badger—not conducive to running. In battle, however, I’d have them at my back any day.”
A panther slinked ahead in the undergrowth before disappearing from view.
“Thankfully, we’re close enough now to Altonas that we can avoid a battle,” Hafryn added.
Danil almost sagged in relief. “We’re close?”
“Half a day at most, Danil. Then we can discover what the magi are really up to.”
Moss-covered stone carved in the shape of a serpent marked the edge of the citadel.
Trees grew thick and wild, with roots splayed over crumbling stone that were perhaps once towers and cobbled paths. Massive blocks of stone lay amongst clover as if tossed there by a giant. Vestiges of buildings were visible through the trees, along with moldering buttresses of intricate detail, some of which were still upright and entangled with vines. Danil looked up as he stepped under an archway stained dark and green. Small glyphs, smoothed to almost nothing, showed between the lichen.
A shifter brushed past him to murmur in Hafryn’s ear. “We need to hurry.”
Amidst the trees behind them, Danil caught a pale flash of a soldier’s tabard. His shoulders sagged. “You’ve got to be kidding,” he muttered.
Elania whispered into her hands. A spark of light shot out to race ahead through the ruins.
“This way,” Hafryn said, breaking into a trot as he changed direction onto a dirt path lined with towering fir trees.
Danil glanced back to see that Ronan and the soldiers still followed. Even in the distance, he could see the deep cuts lining the mage’s cheek. The soldiers about him fanned out, faces expressionless.
The citadel spread out across a trio of undulating hills and gullies, broken up by a craggy peak at its center. Trees, vines and undergrowth grew in wild abandon, masking the full breadth of the broken citadel sprawl. All about were relics of a past life, including tool-making, stone benches and even a hair pin inset with a red jewel lying abandoned under the wide fronds of an elkhorn.
“In here,” Hafryn eventually said, ducking through a collapsed section of lichen-stained wall. They stepped into the remains of a small building, a tree in one corner stretching up past what was once the roof line.
Blutark strung his crossbow and found a gap in the stone-and-mud wall. He murmured under his breath, and a silvery flame licked across the surface of the bolt. Two other shifters joined Blutark, eyes intent on the path threading between the trees a few hundred feet away.
“Quietly,” Hafryn murmured, motioning for everyone to play least in sight. He drew his sword with a slow hiss, then hunched down beside Danil against the crumbling stone.
Danil peered through a tiny gap in the stonework.
A few heartbeats later, pale blue amidst the greenery caught his eye. Five Roldaerian soldiers pushed through the undergrowth, their faces devoid of emotion. Magus Ronan stalked behind them. Another dozen soldiers took up the rear. There was no sign of Talis.
On the opposite side of Hafryn, the panther shifter tightened her grip on her blade, eyes murderous.
They waited in tense silence for the Roldaerians to draw near.
Danil heard the murmur of voices and a strange, repetitive clink of metal striking stone. It seemed to come from behind them in the forest beyond the ruined building.
Hafryn heard it too. Frowning, he pointed. Two shifters dashed across the dirt floor to peer through the remains of what must have once been an arched window.
They ducked down immediately.
One motioned urgently to Hafryn.
The wolf padded over. Danil hesitated, then joined him. The muffled voices were louder, though he couldn’t quite discern the words.
With the shifters crowding the edge of the window, Danil settled on his belly to peer through a small crack. A sea of epiphytes and elkhorn marred much of his view, but between the greenery he made out a broad strip of moss-covered cobblestones and the remnants of more structures.
Danil counted six men with shovels at work beside a little stream that burbled across the cobbles. A pile of dirt marked the side of a trench that ran directly beside the stream. Their shovels made harsh thuds each time they struck against stone.
A seventh man watched them work, his pale b
lue tabard a stark contrast against the lichen-stained ruins.
Danil held his breath in grim realization.
Magus Brianna’s soldiers had already reached Altonas.
With Ronan drawing close, Danil and his companions stood trapped between the two Roldaerian forces.
13
Unaware of their observers, Magus Brianna’s soldiers continued to dig beside the stream. A pair picked through the dirt and inspected pebbles and jagged bits of stone before tossing them into the stream.
With consternation, Danil realized they must be searching for kiandrite. He wondered how these soldiers could tear up part of the citadel with no shifters nearby to stop them.
Crouched beside him, Hafryn glanced skyward through the window. The heavy canopy showed glimpses of dark clouds scudding low between the mountains peaks. Danil thought he saw a bird riding the thermals before it was lost in the clouds.
Blutark hissed softly and adjusted his crossbow.
The sound of soldiers crashing through the underbrush grew loud. Elania transformed into a snow leopard, her golden eyes reflecting in the shadowy light as she edged close to the large section of missing wall.
Hafryn urgently motioned for everyone to hide.
The underbrush rustled as the first of Ronan’s soldiers tracked past the building. She stared straight ahead, eyes set on some distant point. More quickly followed. To Danil’s alarm, they reached the corner of the building and turned toward their digging compatriots as if drawn to them.
From his hiding point, Danil watched as Magus Ronan and his force filtered onto the street where the soldiers continued to dig. The leader straightened and gave the mage a nervous salute.
Reaching the stream, Magus Ronan turned about in a slow circle, annoyance clear on his disfigured face. He questioned the leader, his words unintelligible through the wall. His expression darkened when the man shook his head.
Blue eyes murderous, the mage waved sharply at his troops to spread out, then yelled orders at the milling diggers. The soldiers threw down their shovels and quickly fanned out into the surrounding bushes.