The Darkling Tide (16 page)

“What does she mean?” Leona asked, glancing up at Celeste, but the elf shushed her.

“There’s no way we can make them suffer because of—,” but whatever Celeste was trying to say was cut short by an ear splitting scream that tore from Abagail’s throat.

The forest around them quivered with the wyrd released by her shout. Abagail convulsed, seethed on the forest floor. A cloud of darkness bloomed out from between her parted lips. Leona was pulled backwards by Skye, flung away from her sister.

The cloud rose higher, shaping seeking tendrils of malaise in the air above Abagail. They arched out over the heads of the elves. The light elves were fast, however, and with a drumming of fingers on sun scepters, golden light bloomed around the clearing and contained the shadowed wyrd.

Leona shivered, and Daniken came to her side, placing her hands comfortingly on the younger girl’s shoulders. Leona wanted to jerk away from the elf, but Daniken held firm. Leona was ashamed that the touch was so comforting to her. With everything she’d just learned, how could she find this comforting?

Daphne circled above the scene, blasting down puffs of violet smoke that seemed to do little against the wyrded black cloud issuing up out of Abagail.

Rorick stood on the other side of the clearing, the hammer Dolan had given him clutched in his hands. He waited, for what, Leona wasn’t sure.

“The plague is taking her,” Daniken said.

At the proclamation, tears streamed out of Leona’s eyes. She was sure the elf was right. Abagail was becoming lost to the shadow. Leona tried to see if the plague was spreading across her sister’s face, but she just couldn’t see through the golden light radiating from the three elves stationed around her sister.

“Rorick knows what needs to happen,” Daniken said. “You need to help him. This is hard for him, just as I’m sure it’s hard for you. I told you that this would happen, though, and I hope you readied yourself for it.”

Leona nodded woodenly. It was all happening so suddenly, so fast that she couldn’t make sense of it. How was she expected to kill her sister?

Abagail screamed again. Her quivering body jerked upright into the air amidst a shifting cloud of blackness.

“Be strong,” Daniken said. She drew her scepter, which by now didn’t glow much at all. She neared the gathering of light elves, and took a spot beside her sister. Celeste and her exchanged words, and the light elf nodded.

Daniken raised her scepter, and it shone out a faint silver light. It needed to be recharged before it would be much help, but at that point, Leona imagined any help was at least something.

She gathered Abagail’s sword and inched closer to Rorick, closer to the scene, and closer to Celeste and Daniken. She felt the weight of Abagail’s sword in her hand. A pommel that her sister had held many times. If she really thought about it, it almost seemed like Abagail was holding her hand, comforting her, letting her know that what she was about to do was the right thing.

Abagail rose higher into the air. Daniken watched her, but continued pumping her silver wyrd into the throng of golden light.

The cloud reared higher. Before the shadow wyrd could burst free from the confining light, Daniken grabbed Celeste’s sun scepter. She spun it around like a sword, and stabbed out with it. The tip slammed into Abagail’s stomach and blood shuttled over the length of the golden staff, clouding the light where it touched.

Abagail gasped, and fell back to the ground, the cloud of darkness retreating back into her still body.

“No!” Leona screamed. She acted before she had time to stop herself. She swung her sister’s sword with all of her might, burying it in Daniken’s neck. The steel stuck bone and lodged deep in the elf’s neck. Crimson blood spouted out of the wound, bathing Leona’s face in a scarlet mask.

The dark elf dropped her scepter and stumbled away from the dark cloud, away from the light elves. Leona pulled back on the sword, using the force of her weight against Daniken’s stumbling to dislodge the weapon.

Daniken tripped over a root and fell past the boundary of the trail and into the forest.

Shadows gathered around her, conjured by the smell of her death, by the pulse of her blood as her heart began to slow.

Daniken raised her hands to ward them off, but the shadows converged on her and soon she was lost from sight. There was a sound like trees splitting, and silver light cut through the shadows, pushing them away from Daniken. There was a concussion to the air, and Leona stumbled backwards, the sword dragging across the snow, painting it with the elf’s blood.

Daniken erupted into a cloud of white light that swallowed the shadows gathered around her, and chased away others that were starting to converge on the scene.

And then she was gone.

There was no more trace of Daniken or the shadows that came to feast on her dying. Her scepter lay cold in the snow, all traces of light gone from its surface.

Abagail lay once more on the ground, blood seeping out of her stomach wound and around the sun scepter.

Celeste stepped forward. Her face a mask that Leona couldn’t read, but mostly she saw loss in the elf’s eyes, a sense of mourning so deep that Leona didn’t think she’d ever understand it. Tears spilled out of Celeste’s eyes, as she gripped the sun scepter buried deep in Abagail’s stomach.

As the elf touched the scepter, golden light unfurled from within the staff and wrapped around her arm. It continued up her arm and around her body, like an aura of sunlight. A metallic clang issued into the air and golden dust fell away from the scepter, settling over Abagail like glitter.

Celeste pulled the weapon free. Blood instantly filled the gap in Abagail’s stomach.

“Mari, can you heal her?” Celeste asked.

The younger elf nodded. “I can try.”

“Be careful, don’t set her off again,” Skye said, crouching beside Mari, offering aid however he could.

Celeste plodded over to where her sister had fallen through the boundary of the trail. The snow had been blasted backwards in the light show that had issued from Daniken.

A hand fell on Leona’s shoulder, and she jumped.

“It’s ok,” Rorick said, pulling her close to him. She dropped the sword and clung to his waist as if he were the only thing that held her to her old life. She sobbed into his shirt, and Rorick stroked her hair.

“It’s alright, Celeste is here. If anyone can heal Abagail, it’s her,” he soothed.

At some point Celeste had set the rabbits to cooking over the fire, and when Leona and Rorick settled at the fire, there was no trace of loss on Celeste’s face. Leona wasn’t sure if it was a show for them, or if, once mourned, all sorrow had left the light elf.

The sun scepter stood in the snow behind Celeste, and occasionally she cast a glance back at it.

“Will Abagail be okay?” Rorick asked.

“If anyone can heal her, it’s Mari,” Celeste said, which wasn’t an answer that Leona really wanted to hear. “You did what you needed to do,” Celeste told her. “You were very brave.”

Leona nodded. She didn’t say anything, because as she was trying to think of something to say, a familiar voice came to her head that washed away all grief, all sorrow.

The scepter is yours now,
Skuld spoke to her.

Leona closed her eyes and fresh tears painted her cheeks, but this time they were tears of happiness.
Skuld, where did you go?

Don’t worry about that now,
Skuld said.
Claim the scepter.

Leona pushed to her feet, her knees weak. The scepter lay in the snow at Abagail’s feet. She tried not to look at her sister’s ashen face as she crossed the snow, and instead focused on how the snow crunched under her boots. But her eyes saw the trail of Daniken’s blood Abagail’s sword had left in the snow, and it was over.

She looked up at her sister, hoping that maybe Abagail would be awake, but it wasn’t so. Abagail was still on the ground, the two elves crouched over her. Mari had her hands held over Abbie’s head, and Skye was watching Mari, waiting for her to need something.

The plague had spread. Abagail’s face was a mask of black tendrils. The plague had worked its way around the back of her neck and up the other side of her face so that lashes of the plague met and twined together in the center of her face.

Leona froze where she stood.

She tried to pull her eyes away from Abagail, but she couldn’t.

The scepter was just at her feet now. She wanted to ask how Abagail was, but she didn’t want to interrupt Mari and possibly hurt Abagail.

She will be ok,
Skuld said.
At least, she will be if she pulls out of this. The plague hasn’t consumed her completely.

Leona closed her eyes against the relief that flooded through her.

Now, take the scepter.

Leona remembered how just a few days ago she worried that she didn’t have a weapon of her own. That was still true. Despite
using
Abagail’s short sword, it wasn’t hers. She still didn’t have a weapon other than the knife she was carried.

She opened her eyes, and didn’t look at her sister. Instead, her eyes traveled down to the thin, iron-like staff laying at her sister’s feet.

The moon scepter.

Unclaimed.

Her fingers wrapped around its cool surface. It was heavier now than she remembered. At first, looking at it, she thought that the scepter was dead, devoid of all energy. Now that she held it, Leona could feel the slightest stirring of life within the scepter.

What was more, the scepter called out to her, reached into her hand, and sought out her energy. It wasn’t like it had been before, the scepter didn’t try to overcome her, instead it sought to
become
one with her.

When the wave of music-like energy reached her brain, Leona felt the music sync in time with her thoughts. The music changed slightly to match her own internal energy. Now as Leona listened, the music coming from the scepter wasn’t just the wild music of the moon as it had been when Daniken’s energy infused it. Now it was as if the moon was speaking directly to her soul.

Leona pulled her mind away from the scepter, and carried it back to camp. The fire crackled with warmth and vitality when she sat down.

“Abagail isn’t completely consumed yet,” Leona said by way of breaking the silence.

“No, she has a long way to go before that happens. I was hoping to get her to the harbingers before she got this far...” Celeste looked up at the scepter Leona held, but didn’t comment.

“What is the plan?” Rorick wondered. “Can we go back?”

“No,” Celeste told him. “The forest fire has slowed, but Daniken was right earlier when she said that it was still there. We wouldn’t make it through the fire. We have to press on.”

“To the Frozen North?” Leona asked.

“The frost giants live there,” Celeste said. “With any luck, we won’t catch their eye and can slip around the edge of the forest. It will be a couple week’s travel around the Fay Forest to New Landanten. We won’t have the coverage of Singer’s Trail either. It will be rough.”

“We can make it,” Rorick said.

Leona didn’t respond.

“We don’t have time to wait for Abagail to get better,” Celeste told them. “After we’ve regained our strength, we need to head out and carry her with us.”

Leona remembered the golden cloud Celeste had floated Abagail on earlier and figured it made sense. Even if the fire had slowed, it would still be coming their way.

They were silent for several moments in which Mari could be heard muttering something to herself, whether an incantation or a prayer, Leona wasn’t sure.

“You need to charge that,” Celeste told her, nodding to the scepter in Leona’s hands.

“In the light of the full moon?” Leona asked.

Celeste nodded. “It’s bound to you now. Since Daniken is dead, the next person to touch it becomes its wielder. That only works if the scepter has been opened.”

“She said she would get me a scepter of my own when she taught me to use it,” Leona confessed. “I never thought it would be hers.”

“Daniken probably didn’t think it would be hers either,” Celeste said. “Looking back on it now, I imagine she thought the scepter you would come to control would be mine. I shouldn’t have let her get in on the warding we were doing with Abagail.”

“You can’t change that now,” Rorick said.

Celeste nodded.

Daphne landed on the elf’s shoulder and she must have said something because Celeste smiled a sad smile. She nodded in agreement with the pixie and handed out the rabbits.

“Now we eat. Tomorrow will be soon enough for traveling and thinking about the road ahead.” Celeste told them. She pulled a packet of seeds and nuts out of her pocket and opened it. “We are still in danger. Abagail is a harbinger unclaimed and that will call all kinds of trouble to us.”

Leona didn’t want to think about tomorrow. She ate little of the meat since it turned her stomach to eat anything. Before long she was laying down near the fire.

Once she thought they were asleep, Celeste gathered her sun scepter to herself and looked deep into its crystalline depths. She took a deep, shuddering breath. She looked up at the moon, nearly full now, and Leona could see tears standing out in the elf’s clear blue eyes.