“There!” I hissed.
Sarah stopped. “You see them?”
“Not them. Their minds. They’re a few dozen yards ahead.”
“Are they are in a building, or outside?”
I shook my head. “I can’t tell. It’s not X-ray vision.”
“Okay,” she said. “Quiet now.”
We moved forward even slower than before. My hand began to sweat as it gripped the bow, but the wood didn’t grow slippery. Rather, it seemed to absorb the moisture while still sticking firmly to my hand.
The sparks grew brighter as we got closer. We were almost there. I was struck by a thought. Whoever these people were, they weren’t Shadows. Shadows were like black holes in my mind’s eye. And if they weren’t Shadows, then maybe I could take a quick peek into one of their minds. Get an idea of what we were up against. It probably wouldn’t hurt.
I almost opened my mouth to tell Sarah, but I clamped it shut again. I’d already made a fool of myself once. If this didn’t work, I didn’t want to look like an even bigger idiot.
I reached into one of the points of light with my mind. Suddenly I heard the whisper of thoughts, a few random words floating around, the images of the burned buildings and charred corpses that the person was seeing. Then—
I so hope we get to meet some Elves in this place.
I gave a short bark of laughter and released my grip on my powers. “Sarah!” I said. “It’s the others!”
Before she could answer I ran ahead. I took the arrow I’d been holding at the ready and shoved it back into my quiver, then slung the weapon across my back. Nora and Sarah cried out in alarm as I burst out into the open.
“Blade!” I shouted. “Calvin! Miles!”
“Tess?” came Blade’s familiar voice. Then they emerged from between the buildings, and there he was. His hair was disheveled, and his belt and boots were charred at the edges. But he was alive. He was okay.
“Blade!” I ran up to him. For half of an insane moment, I almost threw my arms around him in a hug. But sanity gripped me at the last second, and I pulled to a stop a couple of feet away. “You’re okay,” I said weakly.
“Of course I’m okay,” he said. “How about you?”
The air was filled with whoops and cries of joy. Sarah ran to Miles, and they wrapped each other in a big bear hug. Raven smirked as she came and gave Calvin a fist bump. “Sup, squirt?” she asked.
“Oh, you know,” he said, dusting his fingernails on his shirt. “Laying the smack down on some giant ants.”
“Is that right?” she said with a grin.
Sarah put a hand on Blade’s shoulder. “I’m so happy to see you. All of you. Are you all right?”
“Never been better,” he said, his voice full of swagger and his face all bravado. But I could see it in his eyes. I could practically feel it in all of them, like I was hearing an echo of their minds without even trying. They’d been put through the wringer. I didn’t know what had gone on in the tunnels below that mountain, but it must have been bad.
Sarah missed it. She nodded and turned away. “Cara.”
Cara stepped up. She was the captain of our Runegard, and I knew her to be a solid girl who was more given to sarcasm than anything else. But now she was wearing a look of mixed joy and tremendous relief as she looked Sarah up and down.
“My Lady,” said Cara. “I see that you have taken good care of yourself.”
“Actually, Darren helped with that quite a lot,” said Sarah, turning to him with a little smile. “He’s the best replacement I could have asked for.”
“That is well,” said Cara, looking at Darren and giving him a curt nod. “In that case, you have my gratitude.”
“My duty, Captain,” said Darren, placing a hand over his heart and bowing.
“Oh, Cara, don’t be so serious.” And then Sarah leapt forward and wrapped Cara in a hug. Cara’s eyes widened and her hand jerked back, keeping her drawn blade well clear of Sarah as she swept in for the embrace. Looking truly uncomfortable, Cara gave a reluctant sigh and returned the hug with her shield arm.
“And what about you, little Lord?” said Darren. In contrast to his captain, his face was split with a massive grin. “Have you kept yourself out of trouble?”
“This whole world is nothing but trouble, dude,” said Calvin through a smile. “But yeah, I’ve managed to avoid the worst of it.” He gripped Darren’s arm in a strong shake, wrapping his other arm around to pat him on the back like they were a pair of macho gangsters.
But I hardly saw anything that any of the others were doing. I just kept looking at Blade, wanting to make sure he was okay. And he just looked back at me, making sure of the same thing.
“So, what do you make of this town?” said Sarah. The joyous moment of reunion was over. We were back to business.
Cara turned to look out at the remainder of the burning buildings, the bodies that lay here and there in the streets. “I surmised that this was not the work of Shadows.”
“We thought the same thing,” said Sarah. “But if not them, then what?”
“For the answer to that, I believe we must reach the town’s center,” said Cara. Her face had become stony again. “That appears to be what all of the bodies are fleeing from.”
I felt a little tug at the back of my mind, and my head jerked around in response. But there was nothing there. It was similar to the feeling I got when others used the power of Mind. But it was somehow different, as well. I’d never felt anything quite like it before.
“Let’s go, then,” said Sarah. “This way?”
“I believe so, yes,” said Cara.
The group set off down the street. Blade gave me a final small smile and followed. I scurried to keep up, but as I did, I felt another little tug on my mind. My head jerked left.
What is that?
Again, there was nothing there. But there was something my mind wanted me to pay attention to.
I drifted from the others a bit, heading into the gaps between two buildings. My sleeve brushed a brick wall and came away caked with soot. I just wanted to see what was twinging in my mind. Then I’d get back to the others.
A hand came down softly on my shoulder, and I nearly leapt out of my skin. I spun on the spot to find Nora behind me.
“I noticed you heading off, my Lady,” she said. “You have got to get up pretty early in the morning to slip out of my sight. But I could see you were using Mind, and I did not want to disturb you.”
I blinked. I hadn’t realized I’d tapped into my power until she mentioned it. I blinked, and my eyes returned to normal. “Oh. Thanks.”
“Yes, but now we’ve separated from the others,” said Nora, looking back over her shoulder. “What are we doing, my Lady? I feel that we should return to them.”
“I feel something. Something this way,” I said. “I don’t know what it is, but my mind won’t leave it alone.”
Nora sighed. “All right. But we must be careful. And you must let me go ahead.”
I nodded gratefully, and Nora took her place in front of me. I guided her through the streets, often taking her into the small cramped alleys between houses.
Finally we emerged into an open space again, and I found what I was looking for. A town square with a tall fountain in the center. Littered all around the square, in the fountain and surrounding it, were bodies. Hundreds of them. They were piled atop each other like a mass grave, but they were pointing outward as though fleeing. The stench was almost unbearable, even through the cloth over my mouth. I coughed and took a step back, nearly gagging.
“Chaos take me,” said Nora. “What happened here?”
“I don’t know,” I said, trying to keep my stomach under control. “But we should show the others. This is what they’re looking for.”
“I’ll run and fetch them, my Lady.”
“No need,” I said. “I’ll get them.”
I reached out with Mind and found ten bright sparks wandering in the fog. I reached for o
ne that I knew well.
Sarah. I found it. You need to see this.
Tess? Where are you?
Turn left.
I guided them through the town’s streets until they reached the square with us. Everyone stopped at the edge of the space, staring at the bodies, stunned out of words. I had sunk to a sitting position against the crumbled remains of a stone wall. I couldn’t stop staring at the bodies in the middle. There weren’t just men. There were women. And kids. Some of them were younger than my brother and sister. Kellyn. Nikki. What would I ever do if something like this happened to them?
“Hey!” said Blade. “She shouldn’t be here!”
I looked up and realized suddenly that my vision was blurry. Tears were pouring from my eyes and running down my cheeks. I hadn’t noticed. I wasn’t sobbing. The tears were silent, running in hot rivers down my face. Blade reached me and hauled me up, staring daggers of accusation at Nora. She jerked her stare away from the bodies to see the tears on my face. Her expression melted in an instant.
“My Lady,” she said, swooping in. “Come. Let’s step away for a moment.”
“It’s fine,” said Blade, his voice hard. “I got it.”
He wrapped a muscular arm around my shoulder and gently guided me around the corner of the building, out of sight of the stack of bodies. I scrubbed furiously at my cheeks until my sleeve was soaked and the tears were gone. I hadn’t even meant to start crying. But I couldn’t help but think of all of those people. I knew now that the first person I’d seen, the first body, wouldn’t have anyone to remember them now. And neither would anyone in this town.
“Have a drink of water,” said Blade. “It’ll help clear your head. This smoke sucks.”
I took a drink and found he was almost right. I did feel better, but not for the reasons he said. It was the water from the Elves, and it cleared my head as my thoughts were filled with the Fairgreen forest. For a moment I could almost pretend I was there, wandering through the shafts of light that fell through the leafy canopy above. It was better than being here, in this burning mass tomb.
“Okay,” I said. “Let’s get back there. I want to know what the others are talking about.”
“We can take another minute if you need.”
I forced myself to smile up at him, acting like I didn’t have a care in the world. “No, really. I feel a lot better. Thanks.”
He led me back into the square, where Sarah was standing and surveying the slaughter with a sick look on her face. Cara and the other Runegard looked gingerly through the packed mass of bodies, careful not to disturb their eternal rest. Miles was trying to help, but he looked like he might throw up at any moment.
Barius looked carefully at Cara. “How do you read the tale of this, captain?”
“I was going to ask you,” she said. “I would value your experience in this.”
Barius sighed. “I hoped you wouldn’t say that. This is unlike anything I’ve seen. They were all fleeing the square. But then why were they here in the first place?”
“It must have been horrible,” said Miles softly.
“Is this what drew you here, my Lady?” asked Nora.
I shrugged slowly. “I don’t know. It was like I heard something over here, even though there wasn’t any sound.”
“Maybe it was their pain,” said Melaine. “The turmoil of their deaths. Perhaps it remains, unable to escape.”
“That’s superstition,” said Barius. “It doesn’t work like that. Lady Tess cannot communicate with the dead, nor can she sense their pain once they have passed on. Even the power of Mind has limits.”
“Well then, how do you explain it, then?”
“Captain.”
Samuel straightened, tugging something from one of the bodies at the edge of the square. It was a flag, I saw. It was burned and stained with a dark liquid—I didn’t want to know what—but the color had once been white. And on the white there was a brown bird with red tail feathers.
I heard Nora gasp. “The flag of Morrowdust!” she said.
Samuel nodded. “And this woman bears the sigil of a colonel upon her shoulder. The army has been here.”
“What were soldiers from Morrowdust doing this far from home?” said Calvin. He stepped up beside Samuel, looking at the tattered flag. “Wouldn’t we have known about them?”
“Nestor had many units operating at great distances from the capital,” Cara told him. She went and leaned over Calvin’s shoulder, inspecting the flag with him. “They were given broad, long-term orders. This could be one such unit, drawn here by rumors of conflict. It would seem they tried to help and were defeated.”
Morrowdust.
The word floated into my mind, and I felt the same twinge I’d felt earlier. But this time it was stronger. My head jerked to the left instinctively.
“There it is again,” I whispered.
It was coming from that building. I ran quickly to the door, Nora close at my heels. I went to push open the door, but her hand on my shoulder stopped me.
“My Lady, let me,” she said. She pushed forward and gave the door a shove. Rather than swing inward, its hinges ripped out of the charred wood to send it crashing to the floor of the home.
Inside was a tangled mess of wood and shingles, the remains of the roof that had fallen in days ago. I blinked for a minute, trying to discern shapes in the sudden shade that the walls cast across the interior.
There. A hand.
“There’s someone in here!” I shouted. I was so focused on that hand, I didn’t even realize how loudly I’d spoken. I leapt forward and clutched at the hand, trying to pull the person out. Nora seized the crossbeam that lay across the arm, lifting it up to try and clear a space.
It was no use. The person, whoever they were, was still stuck inside. But I felt the fingers tighten around mine. They moved so slow, I didn’t realize they were moving at all at first. But they closed and gripped my hand tightly as though clinging to a rock.
The others pressed into the room and hauled debris off of the pile. Soon we had enough space cleared. Barius and Samuel helped me drag the person out—a man, for now I could see his beard. His old, wrinkled face was covered in dirt, its right side smeared with blood. His clothes were soaked with the stuff, and I was positive that much of it was his own.
I wasn’t exactly a doctor, but I knew he wasn’t leaving this place.
“He’s from the army!” said Darren. He pointed, and I saw the hawk on the man’s pauldron.
Cara peeled her cloak off and rolled it up, propping it beneath the man’s head. Barius brought forth water, pouring it between the man’s cracked lips. His eyes fluttered open as he gasped at the contact of the cool liquid. They looked around wildly as his body jerked, but Barius and Samuel placed their hands on his chest, holding him down.
“Be at peace, soldier,” said Barius. “We are friends.”
The man blinked wildly. And then as I looked into his eyes, I recognized them. I’d seen them before—but more than that, I’d looked out through those eyes for several weeks in the space of a few minutes.
“Colonel Pieter,” I whispered.
His eyes froze, then locked on mine. They met, and recognition flooded his expression.
“Lady…” he said. His voice was barely there, cracking as it fled his lips. Now steady, his eyes flitted to the others. They grew wider with each passing second as he recognized us and the Runegard. He tried to speak again, but it turned into a weak cough, and flecks of blood flew out between his lips.
Miles looked at me with raised eyebrows. “I’m sorry, fill me in. Who is this?”
“His name is Pieter,” I said. “His last name, I guess. He’s a Colonel in the army. He was the one who found the amulet out in the woods. The one that Terrence used in the siege of Morrowdust.”
Pieter was struggling to move. Barius pushed him back down firmly. “Don’t make it worse, Colonel,” he said. “You are grievously wounded.”
Pieter settled back dow
n. It looked reluctant, but his body was failing him.
“What happened here, Colonel?” said Cara.
Pieter opened his mouth as if to speak, but again he coughed. This time a thick spatter of blood flowed between his lips.
“It will do him no good to speak,” said Barius heavily. “He is not long for this world.”
“We have to find out what happened to the town,” said Cara, her voice steel.
Sarah glanced back and forth between them. Then she looked at me. “Tess,” she said. “Tess, can you read his mind? Find out what happened here?”
I recoiled. “I can’t…I mean, I don’t want to. What if he doesn’t want me to?”
“He does,” said Blade quietly. “Look at him.”
I did. Pieter was staring up at me, and in his eyes I saw a hope and a desperation that broke my heart.
Please. The word impacted on my consciousness like a tolling bell.
“Okay,” I said, trying to make my voice sound soothing. I tried to remember what Raven sounded like when she hummed to the horses. “Settle down. Let me try.”
Pieter’s whole body relaxed, and he closed his eyes as he lay his head back. I reached into my own mind and reached for my power. The world turned to grey fog. Below me, the spark of Pieter’s life was weak, flickering. I tried probing into it, but it was like searching through the ashes of a fire for a dying ember.
“I can’t see anything,” I said, feeling discouraged. “Wait, hold on.”
I sat on the floor beside him. The hem of my pants dipped into his blood on the floor, but I ignored it. I reached out and pressed my hands gently to each side of his temple. His eyes opened briefly in shock, then closed again as he relaxed.
I tapped the power of Mind again, and this time I could see.
We came to the town at daybreak. But she had already struck.
Captain Jak led the charge into the town while I rode in the center of the company. Our horses’ hooves thundered upon the hard packed dirt of Frith’s streets. Already we could see bodies strewn about, hacked down and left to rot where they lay. The houses were all on fire, their roaring glare a sick imitation of the glowing sun’s rays as it rose.
Wyrmspire (Realm Keepers Book 2) Page 35