The Darkling Tide (4 page)

“I’ve already got the burden of the wood,” Rorick said. “Tugging her along is all your department, Leo.”

“No sweat, I need to build some muscle anyway.”

The wolves howled menacingly. Leona’s smile faded, her face turning pale. She took a step closer to Abagail and glanced behind her at the warding of the trail.

Abagail hoped she was wrong that there really wasn’t a rift in the warding along the trail, but that was the only thing that could explain the darkling they’d fought the night before.

All Father, keep us safe,
Abagail said, casting her eyes up to the heavens. The fog was too thick for her to even see much of the scarlet canopy above them.

Rorick shouldered the pack of wood and Abagail gave one more tug on her work glove before they fell into line behind Daphne.

A few times the pixie would fly too far ahead and get lost in the fog. The trees around them changed from the scarlet grove they had been walking through, back to the normal green needles and barren branches covered in snow of the Fey Forest they’d entered. The road was carpeted with orange and brown leaves once more, but the going was rougher now. They were going up a hill dotted with stones and boulders. At times the ground was so uneven that they had to use hands and knees to climb.

Rorick was having a hard time of it, the pack of wood slumping forward at the most inopportune times, creating havoc for his climbing. When they reached the top of the hill the fog had thinned considerably, and they were able to glimpse a cold blue sky above them. Sun dazzled over the tops of snow covered trees some ways in the distance, a vantage point they could see from the top of the hill.

The wolves, noticing they were not going to startle the humans, had quieted down.

“I hope we don’t have to go all that way,” Rorick said, panting. He bent at the waist, placing his hands on his knees and gave in to the respite.

“The forest seems to go on for miles,” Abagail agreed. “I’m sure the trail doesn’t extend all the way in that direction. It must veer off. There’s no way we would make it all the way through that in two days.”

“Unless we had some kind of elf wyrd,” Leona commented.

It reminded Abagail of how Celeste had vanished so suddenly. What if what the elf had meant was that they would get there in two days with the way elves travel, not with the way humans did? That was absurd.

“Wait, do you hear that?” Leona asked.

Rorick started shaking his head before he’d even listened, but then he stopped. His eyebrows furrowed together, and a look of concentration fell over his face.

Abagail turned her head to hear better. The fog was still thick enough to muffle sound, but from somewhere deep in the forest she could hear the melodic strumming of a harp.

“It’s coming from that way,” Leona said, pointing to the right of the path. Her feet took her closer to the edge of the trail.

“What are you doing?” Abagail asked her rushing after Leona.

Daphne came fluttering back and placed herself between Leona and the warding. She swatted at the pixie, to get her out of the way. “The music, it’s so lovely,” Leona said.

“Great, they can’t get on the trail, so they are going to lure us off?” Rorick asked.

“Leona,” Abagail said, pulling on her sister’s arm. Leona tried to shrug her off. It didn’t work. “Listen to me, you can’t go out there, that’s what the darklings want.”

“But what if it’s a person?” Leona wondered.

“It’s not,” Rorick told her, coming to stand beside the sisters. “Who would be out in the middle of a darkling forest with a harp in such cold conditions?”

Abagail had to confess the music was very alluring. It infused her senses with desire, and she wanted to see where the sound came from. What gifted fingers created the song? There was a sense that if she joined with the music then all of this would be over.

Helvegr.
Came the word, but it didn’t matter now. If she were just to get to the music the shadow plague would be a distant memory. She wouldn’t have to struggle with it any longer. She’d be free.

The harp music drew her on, and she dropped her sister’s arm. Abagail glanced over at Rorick and noticed that he, too, was having a change of mind.

“Maybe it’s not all that bad,” he said.

The music twanged once, and that stirred something in Abagail. A memory of something, but it didn’t matter. Daphne swirled before her face, but she paid the pixie no mind. The fog was lifting, and as it parted the forest seemed to come to life.

The snow faded away and in its wake was left verdant, velvety moss covered ground. The trees were tall and shrugged up toward the warm sun. There were no shadows in the tree, but countless birds all singing their mating songs. There were no wolves, but there were fauns and fairies chasing one another around.

All of it waited for her, just off the edge of the trail.

All she had to do was exit the trail and she would be with them. She wouldn’t have to worry about the harbingers any longer. There were no darklings to consider. There was just the music.

“It can’t be real,” she heard herself say, but even as she said it, she knew she didn’t mean it. There existed nothing outside of the music.

Her glove fell off from her hand and she reached forward. Her hand was cramping, but even through the pain she only had a mind for the music. The pain didn’t matter. All she had to do was bring down the warding and the music would be with them.

“You can do it Abagail,” Leona said, her eyes dreamy, far away. “Just a little bit. You’ve fractured the trail before.”

The memory swam up to the surface of her mind. The darkling wyrd having blasted from her hand had splintered the warding, cracked it and allowed two darklings through. Even as she remembered seeing the shadows slip through the shield and onto the trail, the memory changed.

No, not shadows, radiant beings. Didn’t they help us?

The memory was hazy. Had they been shadows, or had they been elves?

Her hand began to glow golden. She could feel the Waking Eye rousing to the surface of her palm. Abagail felt the bite and knew that the power was coming to her, knew that the darkling wyrd was working over the surface of her palm.

Rorick and Leona gathered around her, waiting for the power to burst forth, collapse the protective boundaries of Singer’s Trail, and unite them with the music that wafted through the living forest before them.

The Fey Forest, in all its splendor, what it must be like without all of the snow, without the endless winter.
It was another thought that seemed out of place. There wasn’t any winter, not now. Now there was only springtime, summer blooms and insects pollinating the flowers.

Her palm split open, and the Waking Eye began to stir.

There was a loud crack behind them, startling Abagail back to the present.

The music changed from melodic to haphazard, wild, corrupt like some kind of chaotic strumming or banging on strings. Sharp and staccato the music drummed through the frozen trees.

Silver light overtook them from behind, washing forward like a breeze. On the silver wind Abagail could feel the cold bight of winter. The trees were no longer lived. The vision wavered and collapsed. The verdant ground was replaced by dead leaves and banks of snow. The trees no longer blooming with life and teeming with birds, but rife with darkling birds and in the same hibernation they’d been in for years.

Her palm quailed. The light faltered. The Waking Eye closed.

“It seems I’ve arrived just in time,” a crisp voice said from behind them.

The woman was tall, slender, and severe. She held a scepter in her hands much like the sun scepter they’d seen Celeste carry, but this one was silver, the light of the Sleeping Eye where the sun scepter had shown the light of the Waking Eye.

A moon scepter?
Abagail wondered.

“Darkness has crept into the forest of the wise, and the world is in peril,” the woman said. “My name is Daniken. You’ve met my sister already, Celeste.”

Where Celeste had been pale and seemingly sculpted out of sunlight, Daniken was the complete opposite. Daniken’s hair was long and pulled back in a wild kind of braid which showed off her pointed ears, and interwoven with vines and leaves. The hair, like her skin was a dark gray that bordered on being blue. Her eyes were vivid, and the color of a stormy sky. Her lips were full and proud. Where Celeste wore a dress, Daniken wore a tunic and trousers.

“What do you mean, the forest of the wise?” Abagail asked, her heart hammering in her chest, frightened by the sudden coming of the woman.

“The Fey Forest, this forest, used to be home to all the elder races, until the darklings came. It links all of the worlds together, and through this forest, the darklings are able to slip through to other worlds.”

Abagail looked around. Could it be that’s how they were getting from one world to another? Not through the black mirrors, but through other portals in this forest? It made sense to her. How in the world would they make it past Heimdall?

“How?” Leona asked.

“Rifts created between the worlds. Places where the veil between one world and another is weaker.”

Rorick had been studying the darkling wolves before them, his hand tightening on the handle of the hammer and his jaws bunching up as he clenched his teeth. Only force of will was keeping him from lashing out at the wolves and the birds. Likely he figured it would harm the warding if he attacked through it, like it had fractured it when Abagail had sent the darkling wyrd through before.

“How do we know you’re not a darkling?” Rorick asked, turning to Daniken.

She shrugged. “I guess you don’t.”

Rorick stepped closer, and the elf appraised him with a crooked eyebrow. She didn’t move away from him though, she held her ground. She turned to him more fully as he came closer, resting her scepter on the ground, she placed her other hand on her hip.

“I used to think darklings were only shadows, but last night we were proved wrong,” Rorick said.

“Rorick,” Abagail warned.

Daphne fluttered above them, seemingly at peace now that she knew they weren’t leaving the safety of the trail.

Rorick didn’t seem to hear Abagail. She put a restraining hand on his shoulder, but he shrugged it off. Leona sidled up to Abagail, slightly behind her as if her older sister might shield her from what was about to come.

“She has a scepter like Celeste,” Abagail told him. “She can’t be darkling.”

“That’s not true. Darklings thrive in the light of the Sleeping Eye, and that’s
not
a scepter of the sun.”

He had a point.

“But she’s an elf,” Leona argued, shrugging her hands.

No one paid her any mind. The shadow plague didn’t just effect humans, right? Abagail wasn’t sure because there weren’t any other races on her home world of O.

“Believe me,” Daniken started, “I want to see the darkling dead just as much as you.”

Rorick lashed out at her, bringing the hammer down hard toward her head in a motion that Abagail could barely track.

Leona and Abagail cried out in unison. Leona covered her eyes, but Abagail watched. She saw Daniken move faster that she thought was possible, stepping backwards and out of the way of the hammer. The weapon sunk into the ground and the elf lifted the scepter. She drummed her fingers against the crystalline surface, and a deep resonance erupted from the scepter, a sound so deep it was felt more than heard.

Silver light blasted out in a beam, striking Rorick and flinging him backwards. End over end he tumbled down the hill they had just crested.

Abagail drew her sword and stepped before Daniken. The elf rested the scepter on the ground and looked at her.

“Harbinger, are you giving into the shadow plague within you? Are you going to strike one of the guardians of light?” the elf asked, her voice not betraying her true emotions.

Abagail didn’t answer. The truth was, she didn’t intend on striking out at the elf, she just wanted to insure that Daniken wasn’t going to attack Rorick further.

When Daniken didn’t show any hostility toward them, or that she was going to continue her attack, Abagail relaxed a little. From behind her, she heard Rorick climbing the hill again. The hammer was still stuck in the ground before her.