The Darkling Tide (7 page)

It wasn’t a settling thought, but it was an answer, and that’s what Abagail was looking for. She slipped her glove off, exposing her afflicted hand to the cold night air, and shifted her short sword in her blackened palm.

“Leona, start packing up our things so we can move out. I don’t know if this bank can follow us or not, but I don’t want to stick around to find out,” Abagail said.

“Good thinking,” Daniken said. “I will help her, you two keep watch.”

The elf went back to their camp with Leona to help.

Daphne came fluttering out of the dark sky and alighted on Abagail’s shoulder. The pixie sat down, as if she was waiting for something to happen just as Abagail and Rorick were.

Rorick didn’t say anything to Abagail, but kept his eyes forward. Even facing what they were facing, there was an ill silence between them.

“Come on you bastards,” Rorick said.

Abagail cast a glance at her friend, but didn’t say a word. With the tension between them, she wasn’t sure anything she said would be civil, or that he would take it the right way. His growing hatred for darklings concerned her. It bordered on fanatic, and she never thought he’d be like that. She worried that she was losing her friend to his hatred.

And if the plague keeps growing in me, what will he think? What will he do?

The withered old man raised his hands and into the air came a deafening whistle. It rebounded off the trees and made everything that was good about the night shiver in protest. Leaves rained down around them, and Abagail could feel the cold bite of his conjured wind cutting against the fabric of her clothes.

From the darkness of the lime tree grove came more movement, which sounded like little feet. The harpist crooned at the old man, and sidled up to him, laying her head on his shoulder. She smiled at Rorick and Abagail, her teeth as sharp as broken glass.

There were hundreds of little plunking noises and from out of the darkness of the grove came hundreds of little soldiers, spears and swords held high in anger. Their cries called out in protest. The little soldiers converged in the center of the grove. The trees were like skeletal monoliths to their tiny forms. There they talked to the old man in hushed tones.

“I think you were right in saying we need to leave here,” Rorick told Abagail. “There are far too many of them.”

Abagail’s afflicted palm began to cramp at the coming of the darklings. She tried her best to ignore it. Was Rorick offering a truce? Did she even want to accept it? After all, he was in the wrong, he should be apologizing.

Don’t be petty,
she scolded herself.
If you can talk to Daniken, you can talk to him.

“Maybe they won’t be able to breech the warding,” Abagail said. It seemed the elle folk were considering that very thing themselves. They turned and looked back toward the trail. At first Abagail thought they were looking at her and Rorick, but when she studied them further she noticed they were peering at the trail, casting their eyes here and there looking for a breech.

“Do you believe that?” Rorick asked, flexing his grip on the hammer.

“Not at all,” Abagail said.

He chuckled a little and she felt a warmth spread through her body, but tried to ignore it. She was mad at him, and here her body was reacting to him the way it always used to.

“I’m sorry,” Rorick told her.

“You should be,” she told him, but before she could say anything more, Leona and Daniken came back to join them.

Daniken looked down at Abagail’s bare hand, and she waited for the elf to say something to her about it. She didn’t, only nodded like it might be necessary. Abagail felt the same.

“They shouldn’t be able to get on the path,” Daniken said, but it sounded to Abagail an awful lot like the elf was
hoping
they wouldn’t be able to get on to the trail.

There was a sudden stir within the otherworldly grove and the army of elle folk turned back toward Abagail and her group.

“Elle folk!” The old man threw his hands high in the air. “We have intruders in our lime tree grove. Intruders of the
human
kind.” A hostile muttering rippled through the gathered elle folk.

Behind Abagail, she felt Leona stir, and heard her draw her knife. Abagail crouched slightly, easing her weight onto the fronts of her feet for better movement. If the elle folk breached the wardings, she would be ready for them.

“You know what we do with
humans?
” the man asked the group.

“KILL THEM!” the shout rose up around the group of tiny soldiers. Abagail would have thought it was funny if she’d heard someone tell this tale, but at the time, faced with hundreds of tiny people in skin armor, she couldn’t seem to find the humor.

Abagail’s hand cramped painfully around the sword, and she gasped out.

“Let it go,” Daniken told her, nodding her head.

But Abagail didn’t
want
to. Celeste had told her not to cast, to keep the power bottled up. Too often she gave in to the power, it had its way with her, and used her like a puppet. This time she wouldn’t let the power win.

“Do it, Abbie,” Rorick said.

Didn’t he tell me
not
to cast before?
Abagail wanted to scream, but they were right. She might be the only hope they have.

“No,” Abagail said. “Use your scepter.” She rolled her shoulders and ignored the pain swelling through her arm.

Daniken sniffed.

Finally the tension broke and the elle folk surged forward toward the fogbank. Abagail waited, wondering what would happen when they struck the warding. Her heart hammered in her chest, and all she could think of was the warrior from a couple nights before who had found them in Landanten and nearly killed them.

The elle folk weren’t to reach the warding, however, because as the first of them were starting to crest the fogbank as if it were a hill they could climb, Daniken attacked.

The clang of finger on scepter was the same as it had been from Celeste, but instead of a resonant twang to follow, the scepter erupted with a bass hum so low that Abagail felt it in her head, making her feet unsteady and unsettling her stomach.

Silver light burst forth in a wave, crackling and flashing like lightning as it pulsed toward the elle folk. In the trees above the black birds squawked and the wolves bayed, but they both retreated.

When the wave met the warding, it flashed, but melded through the wyrd that kept the trail safe, and traveled beyond. It struck the first of the elle folk, and threw them backwards, further into the grove.

The fogbank dimmed slightly.

“Leo,” Rorick said. “Go grab me that length of wood in the fire, the one that’s sticking out.”

Leona retreated to the camp, and when she came back she was holding a chunk of wood up like a torch.

Abagail gasped and cried out in pain. She swooned where she stood, and stabbed her sword into the ground like a cane. She wouldn’t crumble to the will of the power this time. She kept her back straight and groaned through the pain of the wyrd.

The withered old man righted himself, his cracked lips thinning to a frown. He took a great inhale of breath and swelled up twice his size. There was a gathering of wyrd, and Abagail couldn’t hold her own wyrd back any longer. Before it burst out of her, she commanded it.

Whatever he’s doing, protect us,
she thought.
Like before.
She remembered once before that she hadn’t attacked, but wove some kind of shield around them. This time Abagail tried for the same thing. She pictured the orb around them, protecting them.

She almost had it.

And then the old man blew the air back out in a cloud of green smoke that seemed to decay the air as it came toward them. The deadened trees of the grove beyond the fog withered further, and whatever elle folk was in the way of the cloud when it came, crumpled to the ground, their skin sloughing off their bones and a stink arising from them and blowing on the noxious wyrded wind to rankle her nose.

Fear rippled through her, and this time when the wyrd burst forth, she lost all control.

The sword in her hand throbbed painfully and shock crackled up her arm. She let go of the sword with a yelp.

When the sword top struck the ground, there was a blinding flash. They all cried out in pain and stumbled backwards. Rorick nearly lost the grip on his torch.

Then, the ground began to thunder all around them and they found themselves fighting for purchase on the shifting earth. Suddenly with an ear-splitting rent, the ground gave way before them. Abagail barely had time to grab the sword before the earth toppled in on itself, racing toward the fogbank.

The collapsing ground didn’t touch the foreign forest before them, however, but in a puff of fog it dimmed further, like it were but a dream drifting away before wakefulness. The old man seethed and raged within the confines of his lime grove and the hollow-backed harpist screamed so loud that the air itself shivered in fear of her wrath.

The green smoke broke against the warding, and where it touched the air sizzled.

Daniken looked worried, and pulled them all away from the trail.

“Screw this,” Rorick said, and launched the torch through the warding. It flew true, crashing into the old man, and throwing the wavering fogbank backwards, as if it were a curtain blowing away in the wind. The bank collapsed in on itself and vanished.

For several heartbeats no one could speak. Abagail pulled her glove back on her hand, sealing away the darkness and pretending as if she couldn’t feel the shadow crawling further up her arm.

“Are they gone?” Leona asked.

“For now,” Daniken murmured. She stepped around them all and toward the trail.

The ward was smoking.

“Will it hold?” Abagail asked.

“Not against another attack,” Daniken told them. She turned back around. “The sun is rising, we best press on.”

New Landanten wasn’t like the old Landanten the elves had left behind so many years ago. This one was crafted of marble and gold gilt instead of rough wood and iron. Where old Landanten had been a simple lane of one story buildings, New Landanten was a sprawling settlement of towering monoliths reaching gracefully to the sky.

A human might have a hard time understanding the construction that went into the buildings which would allow them to stand strong, but Celeste knew the buildings were crafted with much more than just marble and gold.

She stood in the icy lane, her feet firm and trying to remember what New Landanten had looked like before the winter that hadn’t ended. Now it stood on a frozen mountain top, overlooking a wintery field with banks and drifts of snow. Before the field had been lush and green, filled with trees and butterflies and insects of all kinds. The wind over the field had brought with it the sweet smell of wild flowers and honey, all rushing up to greet the elves who lived high above it. Now the wind only brought the promise of more snow.

The sun cut through the clouds, dazzlingly bright on the white snow. Celeste squinted against the harsh glare, and pressed forward.

New Landanten was set up in a kind of circle, with the central part being left open for a towering tree to grow. Around the tree’s base was a well none were allowed to gather water from as it was thought to feed the tree. It was a representation of the Tree at Eget Row, and though people couldn’t drink from the well, they were encouraged to go to the well and commune with the All Father, tell him their darkest secrets, and maybe pray for his intervention on matters that troubled them.

In the back of New Landanten sat a shadowy part of the city Celeste never went to. That was where the dark elves lived, and though it wasn’t an official name for those elves that thought different from the majority of the light elves, it was still how a lot of people called them.

It wasn’t hard to see how the dark elves had gotten the name. Over the years since they’d come to guard the moon scepters their physical appearance had changed. Now they were silvery skinned, darker haired, and with startling dark eyes, as opposed to the light elves who’s skin and hair remained fair.

Daniken
, Celeste thought. Her family were dark elves, Celeste being the only one who had chosen to follow the light elves.