I’d lost sight of Hulanna. I’d lost sight of all the Fae. Cursing, I pulled my blindfold down again.
I was running in the wrong direction.
But I had no other choice. I pulled the axe handle from my belt, swishing it through the air and holding it high so I could see. I’d lost time doing that.
The orcs behind me let up a hoot of delight and I ran faster, skidding around the turns and stumbling over tangles of raspberry bushes and mossy fallen logs, trying to stay in the light of the torch in my spirit sight.
Faster, Allie! Faster!
I couldn’t stay ahead of them for long. I needed a place to hide. And fast.
Wasn’t there a little knoll along here where a bear had made a den a few years ago? That would be a decade ago and more now.
I hurried toward it, zig-zagging, trying to lose them.
Please don’t have a bear in you, knoll!
I scrambled through a stand of birch and leapt over the edge of the knoll, turning to push into the small cave. I yanked my blindfold up, but my normal vision showed nothing, and the den felt cold, smelling of nothing but fresh mountain air. I pulled it back down again.
The den was unoccupied.
I tried to get my breath under control. They were right behind me and I only just fit in this little cave made by a tangle of roots above and heavy stones along the sides and back of the den.
There was a shower of moss and earth at the entrance that kicked back over me. I held my torch high and watched as a dozen orcs leapt over the mossy knoll, followed by the glowing stag.
One breath.
No one had turned.
Two breaths.
Whew.
“We’re hiding in a cave,” Werex said.
I ripped off my rat cloak and jammed it over the cage. He’d better be quiet! He’d better be!
I watched the entrance, fear washing over me, but no one turned around. When my heart finally calmed, I pulled the rat cloak off the cage.
“Quiet or I will make you quiet.”
“We’re missing all the fun,” he protested, but at least he did it quietly.
“Shall I assume you are unhappy with this turn of events?” I whispered to Werex between my teeth. “I thought you wanted a Feast of Ravens.”
“I wanted to lead it, not be carried in a cage! The Lady of Cups gave the order too soon. She tricked me.”
“Isn’t that what Fae do?”
“We also drown people we don’t like in wine,” he reminded me. “We do a lot of things. I will show her many of them if I am ever freed of this cage.”
I snorted. “But you won’t be free of this cage unless you do what I say.”
“Not a chance,” he said.
This cave was as good a place as any to hide my things. I couldn’t carry them all with me in the middle of a battle. I slid the pack off my back. What would I need with me?
The bow and arrows.
The sword.
It was cold out there and the rat cloak would help.
I pushed the rest into the back of the cave. I’d have to come back for it.
I held the ax up. If I brought it, one hand would be occupied. I couldn’t use my bow. With a sigh, I shoved it into the cave with my pack. The world went dark. I missed it already.
What about the cage. What should I do with that?
“Stare all you like,” Werex growled. “I will not change my mind.”
“I’m merely deciding whether to leave you here or bring you with me,” I said, pursing my lips.
Without the cage, I couldn’t catch Hulanna. With the cage, I was stuck with a noisy Werex. It seemed to be an impossible choice.
There was no point in chasing her if I didn’t bring the cage. It was my only chance.
With a sigh, I tied it to my belt and left the cave.
Chapter Thirty-Two
The hot chaos of battle was entirely unfamiliar to me.
I was used to waiting patiently, to picking my shot, to controlling my breathing.
I was not used to stags charging through the woods with three Fae on their backs shooting darts wildly into the trees. I’d barely dodged a dart and I nocked an arrow before they were gone, leaping through the trees.
I kept my blindfold down. It made the landscape blurry and nausea-inducing, but the Fae were clear and bright. Better to see the enemy than see every tree and stump.
I’d made it maybe three steps before a group of three orcs carrying axes rushed past. Werex shouted for them and they spun.
Oh, for the love of all that’s good!
I shot the first arrow without thinking, picking my spot by instinct – the unarmored throat – and had a second arrow out and nocked by the time the remaining two charged.
A second throat shot. I didn’t wait to see whether he dropped.
My hands were shaking.
The third orc was on me. I grabbed the cage, raising it to take the blow.
Werex screamed from within and I turned the blow well enough to leap to the side. I dropped the cage and it tugged on my belt as I grabbed another arrow, nocking it. No time to aim.
My shot went wide.
And turned – impossibly – twisting in the air to hit the target right in the eye.
I gasped as he stumbled backward, quickly grabbing another arrow and firing again. This time, I hit his neck, severing the artery in it. He fell to the ground.
I leaned over, gasping, retching into the grass. Killing sentient creatures was not something I was used to. Not even orcs.
I couldn’t calm down. My breath was coming too fast, my head swimming too wildly.
“Impossible,” Werex hissed.
The Travelers had said it would pierce the heart of the evil. I’d thought it was metaphorical. It was, in a way, since it had not pierced the heart, but it had turned in the air to find that which was evil.
Magic.
Magic was impossible and frustrating ... and my only hope right now.
Calmly, I lifted my blindfold and collected the arrows, quickly pulling it back down when I was done and watching furtively around me for more surprises. I tried to ignore Werex’s loud cursing.
“Who gave you this magic, mortal? It is not for the hands of those of your kind. I shall rend them to pieces and stamp out every last one of their kin.”
“Is that a threat, orc?”
“I will do more than threaten. I will gut you.”
I hit the cage against a tree, sending him sprawling.
“I said to be quiet,” I hissed. “And I meant it. Be quiet, or I will find out if this arrow can slide through those bars and pierce your evil heart.”
I leaned with my back solidly against the tree, catching my breath in huge gulps. Everything seemed to be too fast. There were knots of Fae everywhere, moving through my woods like they owned the place.
My hands were shaking. I couldn’t calm them.
I didn’t like battle and I didn’t like killing.
I wiped my brow with the back of my hand, checked that my arrow was nocked on the string and stalked out from my cover, keeping low, watching carefully.
Why hadn’t I just put them all in the cage? Instinct had reared up and demanded that I shoot, but I could just as easily imprison them.
I crept around a rock that stood behind a massive fir tree.
A clash of steel on steel made me freeze, but I shook my head, lifted my blindfold and looked out around the knoll. A knot of about ten humans fought together, Corne among them. They held their shields high, polearms slashing out from the knot, but even with so much thought given to their defense, they were losing.
I pulled the blindfold off and looked again.
Four orc Fae danced around them whooping and laughing as their curved axes slammed into the edges of the shields, denting, splintering and even splitting them. Growling, I focused on the nearest one, narrowed my eyes and imagined him small and in my cage.
He disappeared. Now, why hadn’t I been able to do that to Hulanna
?
I adjusted my blindfold so it covered just one eye. It made me dizzy, but that was better than blind.
The other two Fae looked at each other with puzzled expressions and at that moment Corne yelled, “Retreat to the barricades!”
Barricades?
The knot began to move at the same time that I heard a scuffle in the cage at my waist. No time for that.
One of the orcs raised a horn to his lips and blew and in the distance, I heard a war cry. A loud crash sounded from my left and another from my right.
Great. They’d be converging here. Right where I was.
The orc raised his horn to his lips again and I thought of him as small, willed him into my cage.
Poof. He was gone.
One of the human soldiers thrust with his polearm at the last orc. His fellows leaned in with grunts of their own and he was down on the ground, bleeding.
I scurried under the fir tree, keeping low. I needed to get to the town. That’s where my sister would go. That’s where everything would happen. I was just wasting time out here.
I lifted my cage and gasped.
“What have you done?”
Werex stood beside the corpses of the other two Fae.
“Can none of you be in a cage together without killing each other?” I whispered.
“They were in the battle rage. They could not stop,” Werex said.
“And you? Aren’t you their Lord of Twilight or something?”
“Exactly. It’s not my job to act as nursemaid.”
The Fae were insane.
And it was going to be no kinder to put one of them in that cage than it would be to shoot him. I shook my head, frustrated.
“Make a bargain with me,” I whispered to Werex.
“You’d only ask for that if you were weak.”
Something crashed close to us and I flinched as a dozen stags thundered past, leaping over dead trees as if they were nothing and sliding between slender birches like they were born for this. The Fae on their backs were masked like they were going to a ball, their wings fluttering behind them in dragonfly iridescence.
I had to keep moving. I pulled the blindfold down again.
“I’ll let you out of the cage if you promise not to kill, injure, wound or capture me,” I said grimly. I needed quiet and I needed him gone. Better to release him into the world than to deal with him here.
“You’ll kill me once you free me.”
“I’ll promise not to for at least an hour after I set you free.”
He barked a laugh. “Not a chance. If it benefits you, it does not benefit me. I have a feeling that you are a key to solving our little Faewald problem, mortal, in a way that a single Feast of Ravens will not solve it. I’m of a mind to carry on with you and watch.”
“In a cage?” I asked.
He shrugged. “What does it matter?”
I sighed.
“I also think you might bring me to wherever the Knave is hiding,” Werex said with an evil grin. “And I have wanted him dead for a very long time.”
“Why?” I asked, leaving the tree and sneaking to the next clump of cover.
“I mislike the prophecy that was spoken over him during his Glory – that he would ‘by great sacrifice and in the giving of what is most precious to him, untangle the Fae.’ I like being tangled. I like the Faewald exactly as it is.”
“Great,” I said. “You sound like a fantastic leader.”
He laughed.
I could almost see the town from here as I slipped through the trees. I pulled my blindfold up for a moment to study it.
They really had set up barricades between the houses and on the only road I could glimpse from here. The barricades were manned by soldiers, but there were just as many villagers standing on the shaky piles of timber and furniture and overturned carts. I recognized boys I’d played with before – men now – and boys I’d watched as children who were about my age now. They looked terrified.
They had every right to be terrified.
At least I wasn’t seeing children.
I pulled the blindfold back down.
The Fae hung back from the barricades, arranging themselves in a circle around the town, their faces almost shining with excitement. They loved this. They lived for this.
“There’s nothing quite like a Feast of Ravens,” Werex murmured happily from the cage.
I spat as my response.
And then Sir Eckelmeyer climbed up on top of a hastily- built scaffold just inside the barricade that stretched over the North Road and my heart skipped a beat.
Chapter Thirty-Three
Sir Eckelmeyer stood on the platform in the center of the town, a bannerman behind him with the flowing white and gold banner of Queen Anabetha in his hands, her golden hawk emblazoned on it.
“Know this, foul creatures,” he called out to the opposing army. “Your evil has no hold here. Our Queen has already sent a full battalion to aid us here. You cannot win! Surrender by nightfall or the family of Hulanna Hunter will pay the price.”
Was he kidding?
I felt a stab of terror. He didn’t have my parents, did he? Had he found them fleeing through the woods with the village children? Had he captured them? Sweat broke out on my brow, but no. He couldn’t have. This had to be a bluff.
Werex began to laugh in the cage.
He must know – as I knew – that Hulanna didn’t care about my parents. And that I had no way to stop this battle. He was threatening the wrong people with the wrong things. I made a frustrated sound in the back of my throat, but there was nothing I could do. Yet.
I needed to find my sister.
Oh, and I had to be sure I did it by nightfall or every human would want me as dead as the Fae did.
I looked up through the white skies and drifting snow, trying to determine what time it was, but the sky was too thick with clouds to see the sun. It was day. That was all I knew. And I was already running out of time.
I had to find my sister.
I pushed through a tangle of raspberry bushes, scanning the gathering crowd and feeling dizzy with my blindfold half on and half off.
Maybe if I pulled my hood up, I could pretend to be a Fae. Maybe they wouldn’t notice me. Maybe ...
A horn sounded. Not like the horn the orc had blown. This one tinkled like small bells, a glorious song that made me feel like I would follow it anywhere.
A shudder ran down the ring of gathered Fae and then, all at once, they plunged forward.
The humans stood firm, unaware of what was happening. Then suddenly their eyes opened. The Fae must have decided it was more fun if their prey could see them coming.
Swords hit axes in a loud clash. Grunts and moans filled the air and I ran forward, staying behind the armies, searching their ranks. My sister was in this tangle somewhere, I knew it.
Another clash filled the air as axes hit shields and tiny Fae crossbows shot out darts from the backs of hinds and unicorns. Hot breath gusted in the cold winter air. Hot blood ran red into the white drifting snow.
No sign of my sister. No sign of Cavariel. No sign of Ghadrot. Or any of the Fae I knew.
Someone shouted near me and I spun to see a Fae on a stag, her eyes lighting with excitement at the sight of me. She began to aim her small crossbow, but I drew my arrow and nocked it in a single practiced motion, loosing it first and rolling to the side to avoid her dart.
Everything hurt. My hands, my ribs. That roll had taken me over a rocky patch of ground. But I was up on my feet again before I could stop to think, leather boots slipping in the wet snow-filled grass.
I scrambled across the slippery surface, running behind the nearest tree and then through the tangled woods and scattered combatants as I slipped away from that fight.
I tried to ignore the screams – far too human, far too real – as I tore past astonished groups of Fae. Their eyes widened when they saw me – rat cloak and all – and they paused temporarily in their laughter and merriment. These edge
s of the battle didn’t look like a battle at all – more like the edges of a sporting event like our Summer Picnic in Skundton where families would bring wide blankets to sit on and sip cool water and eat sweet berries and sliced roasted meat with cheese.
This was a game for them. I was surprised none of them were flying over the town for a better view.
“Why don’t they fly?” I asked Werex as we passed a group of winged females, their monarch butterfly wings delicate and lovely as they flicked gathering snow from their wings. “They could seize the town in a heartbeat if they did.”
“Can’t fly in the mortal world. Too much earthiness. Not enough airiness,” Werex scoffed.
“That makes no sense,” I said.
“War does not make sense, bloodthirsty mortal. Nor does peace. Love does not make sense and nor does hate. Magic does not make sense. But a life without any of them is a miserable echo of a thing.”
“Sure,” I agreed, flinching as I watched a boy my age topple from a barricade between two houses. The Fae around him roared, pushing through the feeble excuse for a wall and rushing into the town. “Boring. Just what I was afraid of.”
“You’ve lived too short a life to lecture me,” Werex replied. He had none of Scouvrel’s sense of humor and all of his violence. “This little ‘war’ is nothing more than a party game to us. Look at the Fae around you. Are they grim and afraid? No. They laugh and jest and most of them ignore you – one single boring mortal. This is not a challenge for us. It is not a concern. It’s just a party. We came to play with the mortals like a cat plays with mice. The cat is not the one who needs to fear.”
“Fascinating,” I replied dryly.
Through the trees toward the East Road, I thought I saw a huge white stag and was that a glimmer of red hair?
My sister!
I hurried along, sliding through drifts of fresh snow, skirting a group of golems who were painstakingly setting up a striped pavilion. Maybe the Fae really did think this was a party. I could have sworn that was a crate of wine bottles one of them was carrying.
There were peals of laughter from the other side of the pavilion and then a horrific scream. I rounded the tent cautiously, keeping from view.
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