The Shadow Wand

by Laurie Forest

  They’re talking to each other, she realizes with amazement.

  The monster’s talons click back in release, and the boat slams onto the waves with a sudden, bone-jarring force as the kraken rears back, blows out a brackish huff, and sinks down, disappearing below the water’s surface.

  Lightning flashes and thunder sounds above as the rain pelts down.

  Sparrow anxiously searches the waves for the kraken’s dark form as she shivers and clings to sopping-wet Effrey.

  The kraken’s black, ridged island of a head reappears behind them, slowly this time, its giant eyes rising just above the waves as Sparrow’s whole body goes rigid with fright. She pulls Effrey back and readies her knife as the kraken’s tentacles flow back up to latch on to their boat.

  And then they’re moving forward, fast and then faster toward the continent, the kraken almost completely submerged. The tip of the creature’s colossal black tail whips back and forth as their boat picks up speed.

  It dawns on Sparrow in a dizzying rush. It’s pushing us.

  “What’s happening?” Effrey implores, wide-eyed and shivering, hiccuping tears.

  The small dragon shoots Sparrow a look of triumph from the boat’s stern, and Sparrow stares back at him, dumbstruck. She finds her voice just as a relief so immense it’s like vertigo washes over her. “The dragon. I think he talked to the kraken.” She lets out an incredulous breath. “He’s...he’s saving us.”

  A peal of joyous laughter mixed with tears erupts from Effrey. “I told you Raz’zor was good luck!”

  Sparrow gives the beast a smile of overwhelming gratitude. “Thank you,” she says, impassioned. “Thank you, Raz’zor.”

  The dragon dips his head and gives her a fierce, toothy grin, then scuttles back to Effrey, his slender, streamlined body glowing as if lit by internal fire. Raz’zor nestles against Effrey.

  “He’s warm, Sparrow,” Effrey says with a bright grin, hugging the reptilian beast close.

  Raz’zor peeks up at Sparrow, the hope in the beast’s sharp face mirroring Effrey’s, and Sparrow allows herself one joyful smile. Because this moment is a staggeringly, unexpectedly, blessedly good one.

  Sparrow has done the math—a young Urisk seamstress and a male Urisk child disguised as a female escaping the Fae Islands to make a break for Gardneria. And from Gardneria headed for Gardnerian-controlled Verpacia, then to the treacherous eastern desert and from there to the Noi lands.

  Their chances are close to nil.

  It breaks her heart, the hope in Effrey’s eyes. The hope in the bad-luck dragon’s eyes. There are likely to be Gardnerians patrolling the shore, border guards or volunteer bands of angry Mages eager to torment refugees.

  But at least they have this blessed moment, and isn’t that all there is, anyway? A terrifying kraken shepherding them toward the shore. A bad-luck pit dragon saving Effrey from the cold. The storm moving off to the east as gray, scudding clouds thin to reveal a gibbous moon. A wilderness of stars shining down from the widening gaps, the ocean awash in silvery moonlight.

  Sparrow breathes in the cold, salty air and savors their brief moment of freedom.

  Yes, let Effrey have his hope. That will be Sparrow’s gift to him.

  But as they grow closer to the shore and the kraken slips away and disappears into the Voltic Sea’s great depths, a burrowing vulnerability takes hold. Sparrow takes up the oars, her eyes scanning the black shore, looking for potential attackers as freedom fades and the prison of Gardneria begins to reclaim its hold.

  She knows she’s only buying herself and Effrey some time. Titanic forces are gathering, and their days are numbered.

  Because of Fallon Bane. The next Black Witch.

  Next to Marcus Vogel, she’s perhaps the cruelest one of them all.

  Why does it have to be Fallon Bane? Sparrow agonizes. But does it matter, really? She’s heard the soldiers gloating about the flimsy Resistance. And the Icaral of Prophecy, the Urisk people’s only hope, is a helpless babe in his mother’s arms, the Mage Guard tight on his heels. It’s only a matter of time before the Icaral babe is killed, the Prophecy is fulfilled, and all hope dies as the Black Witch rises.

  A cold fear enfolds Sparrow in its dark wings.

  A Black Witch, in her full power, with Marcus Vogel’s forces by her side, will bring the Crows’ Reaping Times to even the farthest reaches of Erthia. Eventually, they’ll kill or enslave everyone who isn’t Gardnerian.

  Sparrow looks to Effrey, despair tightening her chest as she takes in the foolish hope on the child’s face. She will try to save Effrey and his dragon. And she will try to save herself.

  She will try.

  * * *

  Sparrow jumps out of the boat just before they hit the black rocks of the shore. She guides their small vessel into a small, sheltered cove as icy water sloshes around her like ink, the moonlight’s illumination now a threat as the clouds continue to break apart and dissipate. She motions urgently for Effrey to be quiet as she helps the child out of the boat and Effrey conceals the pearl-skinned dragon beneath his cloak.

  The sound of boot heels scuffing up sand freezes Sparrow in her crouch behind boulders.

  “Stop right there!” a hard, masculine voice yells, just past the large rock to their right.

  Trembling, Sparrow dares a look between boulders as she and Effrey cower in the night’s shadows.

  There’s a young Urisk woman on her knees on the sand, blue hands raised in surrender, head down, body shaking.

  In one fearful sweep of her gaze, Sparrow takes in the three male Mages that surround the woman—two young Level Three soldiers and one older, black-bearded Level Four with a lantern in hand. All pointing their wands at the young woman’s head, movable bars of lantern light strafing her cowed figure.

  “Papers?” the Level Four Mage demands.

  The woman doesn’t move.

  The bearded Mage huffs out a sound of contempt and murmurs a spell. Sparrow flinches as black vines shoot out of his wand to collide with the woman’s body. She gives a brief, strangled cry as the vine netting wraps around her mouth and then her entire form, wrenching her down onto the wet beach.

  Outrage bolts through Sparrow as well as the desire to launch herself at the Mages as they drag the woman away, but she knows there’s no winning. Not against three Mages with wand power. And Sparrow has never actually wielded a knife.

  Lit up by a feral desire to survive and remain free, Sparrow grabs Effrey by the arm and they bolt in the opposite direction, the men’s throaty laughs and the woman’s muffled cries kindling Sparrow’s panic as they run through the beach grass, ignoring their bone-deep cold.

  Eventually, they spot what looks like an abandoned structure atop a small bluff.

  Sparrow and Effrey scramble up the bluff and make for what turns out to be a ramshackle stable, Sparrow’s heart picking up speed as men yell to each other down on the beach.

  They round the weathered Ironwood structure, duck into the darkened, deserted stable, then run through it into the last stall and slide the stall’s door closed.

  Sparrow meets Effrey’s fearful eyes in the darkness, a shaft of moonlight spearing in from a nearby window that’s visible through the door’s wooden slats.

  The door to the barn creaks open then slams, and Sparrow’s throat constricts. She hugs Effrey tight, the two of them crouching against the walls in the stall’s farthest shadowy corner, the dragon still hidden beneath Effrey’s wet cloak.

  A tremor kicks up inside Sparrow as footsteps stalk toward them, lamplight arcing chaotically over the walls.

  A young Gardnerian man with severe, elegant features and soldier’s garb comes into view through the iron bars, moving in with a vengeance, the rage trailing off him a palpable thing. Breathing heavily, his jaw set tight, he roughly sets his lantern on the window’s sill. There’s a luminescent deep-g
reen rune stamped on his neck and black unsealed fastlines marking his hands. He snags a crimson glass bottle from behind a hay bale, hoists it, unstoppers it, and takes an angry swig. Sparrow can smell the medicinal stink clear through the stall.

  Spirits.

  Her fear notches higher. Sparrow knows what happens when these Mages drink spirits and find themselves alone with Urisk women.

  She holds her breath as Effrey’s small frame trembles against her.

  Don’t find us. Don’t find us.

  The desperate plea slams out with every beat of Sparrow’s heart. Her sweat-dampened hand slowly moves under her skirt’s hem to find the hilt of her knife as she readies herself to sink her blade straight through the white bird marking the Crow’s chest, even though he has a wand sheathed at his side and Level Five Mage stripes marking his uniform’s sleeves.

  The young man sets down the bottle and angrily yanks off his tunic.

  Alarm bolts through Sparrow as his body is scandalously exposed, hard muscles flexing, his Gardnerian skin glimmering deep green in the lantern light.

  Breathing heavily, the angry young man pauses to peer down at the military tunic fisted in his hand, seeming like he would murder the uniform with his blazing green eyes if he could. Then he takes hold of the bottle and pours the spirits all over the tunic, all over himself, and all over the surrounding straw. He draws his wand and murmurs a spell, and a small fire bursts to life on its tip.

  Sparrow’s alarm explodes into full-blown panic as she realizes what he’s about to do.

  She jumps up, throws the stall’s gate open, and leaps forward through it, palms out. “Stop!”

  The young man’s head whips toward her as he flinches back in obvious shock, his green eyes wild with emotion as Effrey begins to whimper behind Sparrow and Raz’zor lets out a low, threatening growl.

  The Mage swallows, his eyes dazed, the fire on his wand’s tip dying down then blinking out of existence.

  “What are you doing?” Sparrow asks in a choked rasp, feeling as if the ground is giving way beneath her. She’s used to holding her tongue, but what does it matter how she speaks to this Crow? He has them cornered, wand in hand, and likely realizes they’re escapees from the islands.

  The young Mage lowers the wand and stares at Sparrow like she’s an apparition. His gaze slides past her as the dragon’s growl kicks up. Sparrow turns. All the blood drains from her head as a sense of vertigo swamps her.

  The dragon is crouched on the straw floor, pale as a beacon and coiled for attack, his slitted eyes aglow with red fire.

  And Effrey, sweet Effrey.

  The child is holding a rock from the beach in his quivering hand, poised to wield it, the stone shining a bright violet—revealing both Effrey’s forbidden geomancy power and his forbidden gender.

  All is lost, Sparrow realizes with a sensation of spiraling descent. It’s over. Raz’zor and Effrey are courageous, to be sure, but a Level Five Mage stands before them.

  Sparrow slowly turns back to the cursed Mage with absolutely nothing in the world left to lose.

  “Why were you going to explode yourself?” Sparrow demands, ragged voiced, as tears blur her vision.

  The Mage swallows, his deep-green eyes filling with what seems like a wild despair. He fists his military tunic and holds it up. “We killed them,” he chokes out, a grave weight to his tone, his mouth trembling into an anguished frown. “Our Guard went into the forest and killed the Dryads. Women. Children. Babies. I tried...” His whole face tenses, as if against a nightmare too devastating to bear. “I tried to hold them off... I couldn’t stop them...” His deep voice breaks, choking off his words.

  Their eyes lock and hold, Sparrow’s fear of him momentarily subdued as she takes in the abyss of horror there. Whatever happened to these Dryads is like a violent ripple on a faraway lake, telescoping out to encompass them all, leaving nothing free of its fearsome wake.

  “What’s on your neck?” Sparrow asks harshly as she traces a finger along her own neck, then reflexively stops. It’s never a good idea with these Mages to bring attention to one’s body, and this one is already half-undressed. She tightens her grip on her blade’s hilt.

  Ready to go down fighting.

  The young man’s eyes flick toward the blade impassively, as if he doesn’t much care if Sparrow runs it through him. Then he meets her gaze once more, his lips twisting into a bitter scowl. “The Mage Guard marked me with a trackable rune. So I can’t escape them. My parents paid a lot of money to keep me out of military prison and force me back into soldiering.” His mouth curls into a mirthless smile. “But I won’t be part of any of it anymore,” he seethes, his voice low and impassioned, his eyes now sheening with furious tears.

  A flash of understanding passes through the very air between them, and it throws Sparrow into a vortex of confusion.

  She steps toward him, clear out of options as she holds his tortured stare. “If you’re not a part of it,” she forces out in an emphatic demand, “then help us.” Her stomach clenches the moment she says it, knowing full well what dangers she’s opening herself up to by asking for help from this Mage she just stopped from destroying himself. But what choice does she have?

  A fraught silence catches between them and holds, the young Mage’s expression twisting into one of vast confusion. He has the elegant features of their upper class, Sparrow notes.

  He looks her over, and unease prickles through her, even though she can’t detect any lust in his eyes. Then he lifts his green gaze back to hers, his severe face tensing with what seems like genuine, baffled concern. “You’re wet.”

  Sparrow straightens, gripping her blade’s hilt tighter in response to him noticing her body. She keeps a threatening undercurrent to her tone even as her lip trembles. Keep your distance, Mage. “We escaped the islands,” she tells him. “By boat. To try for the East.”

  His eyes widen a fraction. “You came all that way...tonight?”

  Sparrow nods stiffly, unable to suppress the shivering that’s kicked up from both the cold wet of her clothes and her fear of him. Her fear of all of these cursed Mages.

  “There are kraken out there,” he says, and Sparrow suddenly wants to scream at him. Yes, I know full well there are kraken out there, you blazingly stupid Crow. Effrey gives a rattly cough behind her and begins to whimper.

  “Why did you do it?” the Mage suddenly implores, stepping toward her, as if the question is a lifeline. “Why did you risk dying?”

  Sparrow tenses, incredulous, and spits out the truest words she’s ever spoken. “Because you Mages are monsters.”

  CHAPTER FIVE

  SHADOW RISING

  WYNTER EIRLLYN

  Sixth Month

  Amazakaraan

  The birds fly down to Wynter Eirllyn in great, feathery spirals.

  All types of birds.

  Wynter kneels on the cool, dewy grass of the elevated pasture, the darkness of night still clinging to the Caledonian wilds at her back, the Amazakaraan city of Cyme, home to her Amaz protectors, splayed out before her.

  Grief lodges deep in her heart for her beloved Ariel, a grief that is a constant companion now, a yearning that can never be assuaged or comforted.

  I love you, Sweet One, Wynter sends out toward the eastern, predawn sky, as if Ariel were subsumed in it after departing this life and the words will somehow, someday find her there.

  A haze shrouds the edge of the indigo sky, the damask rose color suffusing the peaks of the pale, gleaming Spine that walls the southern edge of the city. Wynter watches the beautiful color inch higher into the sky as soft brushstrokes of rustling feathers envelop her in their caress.

  Wynter has been meeting with her winged friends here in this isolated spot before every dawn these past few weeks, reading their thoughts and speaking to them through her own empathic images. Sending some of them East on a
hopeful quest to search for Naga, her dragon kindred.

  Wynter has sent other wingeds throughout the West to see what they will see. Now the birds are flocking to her in droves.

  Wynter stills, head down, as the birds crowd around her, twitchy and excitable as they press forward to make contact with her slender frame.

  So many types of birds from so many lands.

  Golden Maelorin cranes and blue-eared starlings. Rose finches and silver Alfsigr doves. A pair of huge desert hawks with stripes of bright saffron and vivid scarlet for camouflage against the red sands of the east.

  A tiny, violet-crowned hummingbird buzzes beside Wynter’s ear, its wingbeats a blur that sends a cool breeze against Wynter’s neck before the bird alights on her shoulder and presses its whole self against her alabaster skin.

  Wynter bends her head down farther to listen to all of her kindreds, her eyes closed as her hands find one bird. Then another. Then another.

  A spark of amorphous dread lights in Wynter, hot and urgent, as thousands of images flood her senses from the staccato minds of the birds.

  Something wrong is being sent into nature.

  Something the birds are gleaning from the trees.

  Pools of inky water with no reflection. Shadowy fire that burrows down, not up. A wall of otherworldly fog creeping in, washing away all color.

  A void. Dark and impenetrable, beginning its spread through the natural elements.

  A shadow.

  Wynter takes a deep, quavering breath and opens her empathic mind to her wingeds, willingly falling off a cliff’s edge into an abyss as she surrenders herself to the birds’ collective vision.

  She’s immediately swept into another world, crouched low on an ashen ground, her gaze furtively darting all around a nightmare landscape.

  Dead trees surround her, their twisted, charred branches reaching toward a bloodred sky. And there’s a wall of shadow slowly and silently closing in on the dead forest.

  In her vision, Wynter rises on shaking legs and walks just past the trees into a small clearing to meet with dense, gray mist, as she pulls her wings protectively tight around herself, waiting to see what the birds are so terrified of.