Witch Wraith

Twenty-one

It was just approaching midday when Seersha and Crace Coram piloted their two-man out of the north and into the smoky ruins of Arishaig. They city was gone, the defenses breached, the gates forced, and the walls taken. The Druid and the Dwarf Chieftain could still hear the screams and cries of wounded and dying as the victors prowled the ruins in search of whatever caught their eye. Diapson-crystal-powered weapons still flashed here and there at regular intervals as the last of the survivors fought to keep their stalkers at bay. Black smoke coiled skyward in twisted columns and gave the cityscape the look of a volcano heating up for another explosion. Dark shapes darted through the rubble, and it was impossible to tell which army or persuasion they belonged to.

“We’re too late,” Crace Coram rumbled, the regret and dismay evident in the tremor of his deep voice.

Seersha nodded. “The Straken Lord’s army must be huge for it to have done this. Arishaig was heavily defended, and the best Federation soldiers in the Four Lands were stationed here.”

“Do you suppose anyone got out?”

She shook her head. “Not enough, I’d guess.”

They were silent for a moment, looking down on the carnage, listening to its still-living voice rise up in a ragged plea. The destruction swept across the whole of the fallen city and well beyond. Thousands of dead lay heaped about the walls. Seersha searched for signs of airships, even small ones, but couldn’t find any. They had either made it out already or been destroyed.

“Look there!” Crace Coram said suddenly, pointing north behind them.

She looked obediently. Beyond the immediate destruction, far in the distance west of where the Prekkendorran sprawled and the grasslands below the Tirfing divided in rugged folds, a dark mass seethed. She stared, not sure what she was seeing at first.

“The Straken Lord’s army,” her companion declared. “Already on the march. Not wasting a moment more on what’s happened here. Why should they? They have a new destination.”

She took a moment to orient herself. The Borderlands lay in that general direction. The great fortress city of Tyrsis. But the drift of the enemy march to the west suggested another destination entirely.

“History suggests the demons will want to be certain the key to their prison is destroyed once and for all.” The Dwarf Chieftain shrugged. “Even a madman like Tael Riverine might be able to figure out the importance of that one.”

She nodded in dismay.

The demon army was marching on Arborlon.

Far to the north, Aphenglow and her companions angled their Sprint toward the Tirfing to begin their search for the couple who had stolen the Ellcrys seed from Arling. It was a search that the Elven Druid expected to conclude quickly with the help of the Elfstones, but one that required some caution, as well. After all, none of them knew anything about the couple. Aphen and Cymrian had met them only briefly and Arling, unconscious at the time, remembered nothing at all. All this suggested that rushing in, no matter the urgency, could be a mistake.

Recovery of the seed was too important to allow for mistakes at this point. With the Forbidding crumbling badly and the demons already breaking free in force, protecting the seed was their foremost concern until it was back in Arling’s hands.

It was a huge relief for all of them to have gotten clear of Arishaig. For hours after they fled the besieged city they found themselves glancing over their shoulders, unable to banish the images of the battle from their minds. Aphen could not stop thinking about what Edinja had said just before their departure—that perhaps the Straken Lord and his demons had found out that Arling was the bearer of the Ellcrys seed and would come after her. That would explain their decision to attack Arishaig instead of Arborlon.

She could already imagine what it would mean to the people of the Federation home city if the demons found a way to break through, and that, in turn, suggested Arborlon’s fate was grim, should the enemy then come north to the Elven home city, which she thought likely. Destroying the Ellcrys utterly would permanently secure freedom for the creatures of the Forbidding, and the Straken Lord would actively seek this end. If he could track Arling, he would do so. Hundreds of years ago, the same effort had been made and had very nearly succeeded. It was only the desperate efforts of an Ohmsford boy and an Elessedil girl and a handful of companions that had prevented it from happening.

History was repeating itself, she thought darkly, and wondered anew about the Ohmsford twins and their allies.

“Why do you think she let us go?” Arling asked as the landscape sped by beneath them.

Neither of the other two had to ask who she was talking about. “She had nothing to gain by keeping us,” Cymrian offered. He was slumped back in the rear of the cockpit, stretched out as best he could in the cramped space.

“She knows what’s at stake,” Aphen added, hands on the controls, eyes forward. “If we don’t find and quicken the seed, the whole of the Four Lands will be overrun. Edinja would suffer the same fate as the rest of us.”

Arling shook her head. “You didn’t spend time with her like I did. You didn’t see those creatures she keeps, locked away like animals. She wouldn’t help us if she didn’t have something else in mind.”

“You mean something besides saving her own skin?” Cymrian said.

“She likes controlling things. And people. Yet she just gave us this ship and let us go. It doesn’t feel right.”

Aphen had to agree. It didn’t. But she couldn’t figure out either what Edinja had to gain by letting them go, or how she thought she could manage to gain it. They had escaped Arishaig, had possession of the Elfstones, were on their way to finding the missing Ellcrys seed, and had told Edinja nothing that would help her find them if for some reason she decided to come after them.

“She’s a complicated person,” she said quietly.

“She’s a dangerous person,” Cymrian declared with a snort. “She’s probably behind the attacks you suffered in Arborlon. She’s probably responsible for us being shot down by that Federation warship in the first place.”

“She told me she had taken me and was keeping me to lure you to Arishaig,” Arling added. “She drugged me to make me tell her everything about what we were doing.”

The other two said nothing for a moment. “But she didn’t say why she was doing this?” Aphen’s hands rested lightly on the controls as she turned around to look at her sister. “She didn’t say what it was she was trying to accomplish?”

Arling looked miserable. “No.”

“Maybe everything changed once she found out about the collapse of the Forbidding and saw the demonkind knocking on the gates of her city,” Cymrian offered. “She didn’t know about any of that before, and it might have made her change her plans. Not because she wanted to, but because she had to.”

“Cymrian’s right,” Aphen agreed. “Nothing’s the way it was a week ago. Even Edinja Orle would have to take a second look at what she was thinking to see if it still had relevance.”

Arling nodded, but didn’t say anything in response, and Aphen let the matter drop. She could tell her sister was not convinced, her doubts and fears of Edinja Orle deep-seated and troubling. Letting a little time pass was probably best. Arling had been through a lot—and unless Aphen was badly mistaken, the worst was still to come. Edinja was likely to turn out to be the least of her sister’s problems.

They piloted the Sprint for several more hours through the darkening night. Close to the the southern fringes of the Duln Forests, Aphen decided they should stop; none of them had slept for more than a few hours in days, and all were exhausted. They would moor their vessel for the night, take turns standing watch, and set out again at daybreak.

Arling curled up in the aft cushions of the cockpit and was asleep within seconds. Aphen sat with Cymrian in the bow, looking out at the night. The Sprint was anchored perhaps two dozen feet off the ground, and the landscape about them was grassy and flat and open for miles. The sky was clear this night, its dark bowl bright with stars even in the absence of moonlight. The madness they had witnessed in Arishaig had begun to recede into the background.

“She’s handling all this better than I would,” Cymrian whispered, nodding toward Arling. “I don’t know how.”

“She’s stronger than she looks.”

“A lot is being asked of her.”

Aphen didn’t respond.

“What do you think is going to happen once we get the seed back and find the Bloodfire?”

“I don’t know.”

“She’ll have to decide.”

“I know.”

“If there’s even a decision left to be made.”

“Stop talking about it.”

“Because maybe there isn’t.”

She glared at him. “I’m aware of all this. I’m sure she’s aware of it, too. It doesn’t help to talk about it further. There’s no point in speculating. We don’t even know what’s going to happen when we find the Bloodfire. We don’t know how the quickening of the seed works.”

Cymrian was quiet for a few moments, speculating. “I didn’t think about that.”

“Well, I did. I’ve thought about everything that could possibly happen and then some. I’ve thought about everything I might do to try to help Arling. Everything. But there’s nothing to be done until we reach the moment of reckoning.”

“I guess not.” He went silent again, and this time he stayed silent. They sat together, shoulder-to-shoulder, looking back at the sleeping girl and thinking their separate thoughts.

“Remember when this all began?” she said finally. “You were my protector against whoever was attacking me in Arborlon. That seems a lifetime ago. It doesn’t even seem connected to what’s happening now.”

“Like the missing Elfstones. This started because of them, and now they don’t have anything to do with anything.”

She shook her head. “We don’t even talk about them anymore. We don’t even think about them. But hunting for them destroyed the Druid order. Hunting for them changed everything.”

“It seemed the right thing to do at the time.”

“It was a mistake.”

He glanced over. “Hard to know that for sure. Events are connected—sometimes in ways we don’t see. One thing leads to another, but the path isn’t always recognizable. I don’t think you can second-guess yourself.”

“I can do anything I want. Especially second-guess myself.”

“It’s pointless, Aphen.”

“I’m feeling pointless. Everything in my life is feeling pointless—in spite of what I’m trying to do for Arling and the Elves and the Druid order and everyone else in the Four Lands. Pointless and hopeless and overwhelming.”

“You’ve done pretty well so far.”

“Have I?”

“As well as you could. Anyway, that’s the past, and what matters is the future. That’s how life works, because it’s short and precious and kind of doubtful.”

She looked over at him. He met her gaze and held it. “You constantly surprise me,” she said.

“You mean that in a good way?”

“I do.”

“Then shall I continue to try to surprise you some more?”

“Like you did that first night in Arishaig?” She smiled, then leaned in and pressed her mouth against his, taking her time, making sure he understood what she was feeling. Then she broke the kiss, cocked an eyebrow, and grinned. “There. I feel much better. Now I’m going to sleep.”

She rolled into her travel cloak, shifted on the Sprint’s cushions until she was comfortable, and started to drift off. Her last memory before sleep took her was of his voice saying, “I feel pretty good, too.”

They rose at dawn and flew throughout the day, over the vast stretch of the Tirfing. By nightfall, they had just passed its northern fringes. Though they could have kept going through the night and made their destination by dawn, exhaustion claimed them shortly before midnight, so they once more made camp.

When Aphen finally brought out of the blue Elfstones the following morning and summoned their magic, she no longer had to stop and think about what she was doing. By now she was familiar with the process and prepared for the magic’s response. When the tingling began in her fingers and the heat washed through her body and out again in swift, insistent waves, she was neither frightened nor intimidated. She didn’t even bother with closing her eyes when she conjured the image of what she wished the Elfstones to find for her.

She might have chosen to focus her efforts on the silver seed that was the object of their search, but she chose instead to find the two people who had taken it. Her memory of their faces was clear enough that she was able to visualize both easily, and she could tell from the magic’s response that it recognized what it was she was looking for and knew where to find it.

Thus, she was carried out of her body and across the countryside, through woods and over grasslands, down roadways and paths to where the buildings of a tiny village were scattered in either singular isolation or tiny clumps all about a cluster of shabby businesses that included a stable and harness repair, a blacksmith, a mercantile and grocery store, two taverns, a tiny inn, and a meeting hall. Men and women moved through the shadows of trees canopied overhead, and horses stamped and nickered softly in their traces where they were hitched to posts.

There, right in the midst of it all, the man and the woman who had found Arling and taken her to the Federation walked beside their little wooden cart and donkey on their way up the road and out of town.

Aphen dismissed the magic and the images. “We have them,” she announced, a grimness to her voice. “Let’s get flying.”

They flew on throughout the morning then, somewhat past midday, set the airship down in at the edge of a small clearing. Leaving it safely tucked into its leafy concealment, they set out on foot.

The afternoon was winding down by now, shadows lengthening as the gray day threatened to bring more than brief showers, dark thunderheads beginning to form to the west and move in their direction. They picked up their pace in response, walking more quickly, anxious to reach the shelter of the village before the worst of the storm caught up to them. Hoods lifted, and the collars of their cloaks pulled tight, they bent their heads against the wind and rain and slogged on through the deepening dark like wraiths, as faceless and voiceless as the shadows through which they passed.

Aphen managed to keep them moving in the right direction, even after the road had disappeared in a muddy smear and they had to reach the village by following a cow path that wound upward through the surrounding hills and came down on the far side. She began searching for the cottage she had seen in her vision, the one the couple had been traveling toward. Sora, she remembered suddenly. That was the man’s name. But she couldn’t remember the woman’s, only the sound of her voice—kind and filled with concern.

She darkened her heart against such feelings. These people had taken Arling and given her to the Federation. They had stolen the Ellcrys seed.

They were not entitled to any consideration.

They were perhaps a quarter mile outside the village when they came upon the cottage Aphen had been looking for. Leading the way, she entered the yard and walked up to the door. She was aware of how poorly constructed the house was, how shabby the few outbuildings. She looked for farm animals and saw several chickens and the donkey looking out the door of a small shed. She saw a tiny vegetable garden.

These people had very little. They were just barely getting by on foraging and whatever they could grow.

She felt her dislike softening.

She knocked on the door, and heard a voice call out to her. “Coming!” When the door opened, the woman with the kind voice was standing there. She was wearing an old dress and apron, and her hair was done up in a farm wife’s bun.

“Oh!” she gasped in genuine shock. She took a step back and then caught sight of Arling peering at her over Aphen’s shoulder. “Oh, my goodness, child—it’s you! Are you all right?”

Arling nodded, smiling uncertainly.

“Thank goodness! I’m so sorry for what we did. We didn’t know. Sora said you needed medical care and we didn’t have any to offer. Not even here, in our village. No Healer, not even a midwife. But look at you! You seem fine. And your sister and her friend have bought you safely back. I’m so relieved.” She glanced from face to face. “Come in, come in. I have hot tea on the stove.”

They stepped inside, where the girls were ushered to seats at a tiny kitchen table. There were only three chairs, so Cymrian declined the offer of the third and said he would stand, moving off to warm himself in front of a small stone fireplace. The woman poured them each a mug of tea and then joined the girls at the table.

“Sora had business at the tavern, but he should be back soon.” She seemed genuinely pleased that they were there. “He will be so surprised. How did you find us?”

Then she saw something in Aphen’s face and hesitated. “What’s the matter? Something’s wrong, isn’t it? That’s why you’ve come. Something’s wrong.”

Aphen nodded. “My sister was carrying a silver stone when you found her. It was taken while she slept but before she was given over to the men on that Federation warship. Do you have that stone?”

The woman stared. “A stone? No. I never saw a stone. It was taken, you say …”

She trailed off abruptly, and right away Aphen could tell what had happened. “Your husband has it, doesn’t he?” she said.

The woman was trembling. “He’s a good man, really. But he thinks things should belong to him just because he’s found them. He’s been trying to sell something in the village for several days now. When he left today, he said he thought he had a buyer. I don’t pay much attention to that sort of thing. Mostly, it never comes to anything, even when he thinks it will.”

She shook her head, flushed and angry. “But stealing! I’m so sorry. I would have made him give it back if I had known.”

She was crying freely now, her face streaked with tears.

Aphen and Arling exchanged a quick glance. Arling looked at if she might cry herself.

Not so Cymrian. “Where can we find him?” he asked.

The tavern was a single room with a bar, some stools, a few tables and chairs and not much more. It didn’t even have a fireplace. What heat there was emanated from a small wood-burning stove in one corner and from the bodies of the men clustered about the tables and pressed up against the bar. Tankards of ale were being passed around, and voices were loud and insistent.

But the voices died into mutterings and the eyes of the patrons shifted to the doorway when the Elessedil sisters and Cymrian entered. They were Elves in a community populated mostly by Southlanders who had drifted west to find a better life and only found more of the same. There was a Dwarf in one corner, bent over his drink. There were a handful of Rovers at another table. But no Elves.

A Borderman leaning against the bar a few feet away from her took one look at her black Druid robes, pushed away from the bar, and left without a word. Another, a hunter dressed in leather, followed him out.

At a table near the back of the room, Sora was seated with a pair of men. Another four stood just behind the two in what appeared to Aphen to be a protective circle. As she watched, Sora counted coins from a stack that had been shoved in front of him, taking his time, not even bothering to look up from his task when they entered and the noise level dropped.

But as Aphen and her companions started across the room, one of the men seated said something to Sora, who looked up, saw who was approaching, quickly produced the leather pouch in which the Ellcrys seed had been placed, and shoved it across the table to the man who had spoken. The man snatched up the pouch and tucked it into his jacket.

“There, now,” Sora said, rather too loudly, “our business is concluded! I must be on my way. A pleasure seeing you.”

He scooped the coins off the table and into his pockets and rose hurriedly, nearly tripping over his own feet as he tried to move away.

Cymrian was on top of him before he’d taken his second step, seizing him by his shoulders and shoving him back down into his chair. “Your business isn’t quite finished,” the Elven Hunter said, reaching down and extracting the hunting knife from Sora’s wide leather belt and flinging it across the room.

“Don’t move,” Aphen said to the men seated at the table, her hand stretched out in warning. Her eyes lifted to take in the bunch clustered at the back of the table. “Don’t any of you move.”

She tried to keep Arling behind her, out of harm’s way, but Arling had other ideas and pushed forward. “Where is the seed you stole from me?” she snapped at Sora. “While I was injured and unconscious, you took it. Where is it?”

The big man squirmed. “I was owed something for saving your life,” he snapped. “You would have died without Aquinel and me!”

“You were owed much for saving me, but you had no right to steal what wasn’t yours,” Arling persisted. “Give me the seed!”

Sora’s mouth tightened. “I can’t. I sold it to this gentleman right here. He’s the lawful owner now. You’ll have to take it up with him.”

He tried once again to get to his feet, and again Cymrian shoved him back down. “He is not the lawful owner if he bought stolen property,” the Elven Hunter pointed out, eyes fixing on the man in question.

Arling’s gaze, white-hot with anger, shifted to the man with the pouch. “Give it back to me.”

The man was not intimidated. He was long and lean and had the look of someone who had not willingly given up much in his life. “What about my money? I paid for that silver orb. I’m owed.”

Cymrian reached down and pulled the coins from Sora’s pocket, casting them across the table. “There. We are even. Give back the seed.”

The man looked down at the coins and shook his head. “I don’t want the money. I want the seed. I bought it. It’s mine.”

“You have no right to it!” Arling shouted, her voice shrill enough to make Aphen flinch. “It was sold to you by someone who didn’t own it! You have to give it back. You don’t understand what’s at stake!”

“Arling,” Aphen said quietly, making a calming motion. “They don’t need to know everything.”

One of the men standing behind the pair seated at the table started to reach beneath his cloak. Aphen gestured, snapping her fingers as she did, and the man dropped to the floor, writhing in excruciating pain. The knife he had been reaching for clattered on the wooden floorboards.

The men at the table backed up, muttering and looking left and right at their fellows. They clearly anticipated doing something, but were undecided as to what that should be. Their leader kept watching Aphen, making no move to interfere. She didn’t like the look on his face. He was enjoying this.

“Let’s be fair about this,” he said, not sounding as if he intended to be fair at all. “You.” He pointed to Sora. “You sold me the orb for a fixed amount and I paid that amount. Isn’t that so?”

Sora nodded reluctantly. “That’s so.”

“Did you steal it from them?”

“I … It sort of just dropped out of the girl’s pocket while we was helping her. I actually saved it from being lost.”

“So it’s yours, after all. You see?” He smiled at Aphen. “Your claim is suspect. But if you want it back—orb, stone, seed, whatever—I’m willing to negotiate. Pay me four times what I gave up. Wait, five times. Then you can have it.”

Aphen stepped forward, eyes fixed on the man. “Take out the pouch and set it on the table. Do it right now.”

The man shook his head. “I don’t take orders from anyone. Especially Elves. I don’t care who you are or what sort of tricks you can do. A word from me, and you and your friends will be cut to—”

He never finished. Aphen’s fingers made a curious twisting motion, and the man’s words choked in his throat as he was lifted out of his chair by invisible hands and hauled across the tabletop. He thrashed momentarily, but could gain no purchase, and his efforts at calling for help failed. The men with him backed against the wall, then broke and fled toward the doors. Cymrian moved quickly to the second man seated across from Sora and put him down with a single blow to the temple. Sora tried to run yet again, but he was hemmed in on all sides by the Elves.

Shouts rose from the other patrons, but Arling wheeled on them and screamed at them to be silent. The force of her words was enough. The room went absolutely still.

Aphen flipped the man she had ensnared with her magic onto his back without touching him, her wrist twisting slightly to complete the task. Then she reached inside his robes as he flopped and thrashed like a fish out of water and took back the pouch with the Ellcrys seed.

She leaned close. “I ought to kill you and be done with it. You deserve no better. But men like you should to live out their lives until the misery they cause to others comes back to find them—as it surely will in your case.”

She cast him away as if he weighed nothing. He flew off the table and onto the floor, collapsing in a motionless heap.

Aphen and Arling were already moving toward the tavern door. Cymrian was a step behind, hauling Sora along by his collar, shoving him forward. A few angry mutterings rose from the tavern patrons, but no one tried to stop them.

Moments later they were outside, trudging down the road toward the end of the village. Rain sheeted down, soaking them through. No one spoke. Cymrian released his grip on Sora, but the latter made no attempt at running away again. He simply kept pace as if this were the only choice open to him.

“I’m finished here, you know that?” he said to Aphen without looking at her. “Finished and done. I can’t go back. Not to those men. They’ll blame me for this.”

“You should have thought of that before you stole the seed,” she snapped at him.

He went silent for a moment. “Aquinel didn’t have anything to do with this, you know. It was all me. I took it when she wasn’t looking. I just wanted to sell it and give her something nice, something more than what I’ve been able to for all these years she’s stuck with me.” He trailed off. “You just need to know. It wasn’t her fault. She’s a good woman.”

Aphen wheeled on him and shoved him up against the side of a building. “Then take her and leave. Now. Pack a few things and go before they come for you. It will take them a day or so to muster the courage. Go somewhere far away, but get out of here!”

She reached in her cloak, brought out a handful of coins, and shoved them into his pocket. “Take these. Consider the matter of the seed settled. But don’t forget what happened here. Don’t try stealing from anyone again.”

She pulled him away from the wall and pointed him down the road toward his cottage. “She’s waiting. Look after her.”

She stood watching as he stumbled down the road and disappeared into the rain. She wondered if he would do what she had told him. She wondered if he would heed her advice about stealing.

She wondered if there was any hope for these people.

Then she grabbed Arling’s arm and, with Cymrian trailing, started back down the road toward the waiting Sprint.