The Shadow Wand

by Laurie Forest

  Lukas looks away, and I can feel the slash of intense emotion that flickers through his fireline. My heart twists for him and his lack of any loving family, ever. He turns back to Chi Nam and tells her something in fluent Noi, to which she responds in Noi, just as seriously, as if offering a condolence.

  “Did they take out the Mage Council building?” Lukas asks, switching back to the Common Tongue.

  Chi Nam nods. “And its archives as well as the Valgard and Verpacian bases before our Western forces were cut down by the Mage Guard. Now Vogel’s mobilizing his own ranks east of the Verpacian Pass to prepare for deployment across the desert.” She throws Lukas a weighted look. “He’s declared war on Noilaan and has sent out draft notices to all adult male Mages. And he’s imposed martial law on Gardneria and taken sole control of the government.”

  “That was inevitable,” Lukas cynically returns.

  “Apparently there wasn’t even any mention of trying to form a new Council,” Chi Nam notes, a jaded cast to her tone, as well. “And the Gardnerians aren’t questioning it. In any case, war has begun. Vogel is holding a giant rally tonight in Valgard. Rune hawks have been dispatched to every one of his military bases.”

  “He won’t wait long before he advances on the Eastern Realm,” Lukas warns.

  “Well, he can’t advance on us just yet,” Chi Nam sharply counters, her clipped accent further barbing her words. “He’s got a wide expanse of desert he needs to get through first. And even with his broken dragons, it’s a challenge to get through the central desert’s storm bands.” She purses her lips and shakes her head. “But you’re right. He’ll be coming for our Realm. And we’ll need to meet him with overwhelming power.” Chi Nam turns and gives me a significant look over her shoulder that I strive to fully meet.

  It’s mind-bendingly significant that she’s here. Guarding me against the express command of her own military, when she could have been fighting with the now decimated Vu Trin regiment against Vogel’s army and their dragons.

  Which means that Chi Nam is gambling that I’m strategically more important to the coming fight than the Vu Trin’s entire Western Realm force.

  My lungs tighten as I imagine how she’s viewing me right now—as a cataclysmic weapon.

  Or, perhaps, every weapon on Erthia shoved into human form.

  “Are Kam Vin and Ni Vin all right?” I ask Chi Nam. “And Chim Diec?” I add, concerned to know what became of the women who saved my life in the desert when the other Vu Trin moved to cut me down. Valasca turns her blue-hued face toward me, her expression tensing at the mention of her love, Ni Vin.

  “Nilon is fine,” Valasca informs me, her teasing manner whisked clear away. “She’s back in Noi lands with Kamitra. Chimlon is back in Noi lands too.” Valasca uses the longer, informal version of Ni Vin’s, Kam Vin’s, and Chim Diec’s first names, indicating that she’s on close terms with all three of them.

  “Were they disciplined for helping me escape?” I worriedly ask.

  Valasca shakes her head. “They were simply following Chi Nam’s orders.” She raises a black brow in Chi Nam’s direction. “There’s a warrant out for Chi Nam’s arrest, though. Thing is, they’d have to catch her first.” Valasca shoots Chi Nam a wicked grin, which the powerful sorceress meets with a look of unfazed authority.

  “I think we found the weapon that took down the Lupines,” I say, and they all glance back at me, a harder tension suddenly in the air.

  Chi Nam’s deep-brown lips lower into a frown. “Vogel’s Wand of Shadow. We know of this. It appears Marcus Vogel has resurrected a thing that should never have been brought back into this world. A thing not seen since the Elfin Wars.”

  “It sends me a vision of a Shadow tree,” I tell her. “And a dead forest. And there’s demonic power in it.” I tell Valasca and Chi Nam of the Smaragdalfar demon-sensing rune Sage marked on my stomach, and how Vogel’s power lights it up like a stinging beacon.

  “I believe it to be the Wor,” Chi Nam states with forbidding gravity.

  My brow tenses in confusion. “What’s that?”

  “The counterforce to the Zhilin,” Valasca explains, setting her black-eyed stare on me with piercing intensity.

  I remember the Noi word for the Wand of Myth—the Zhilin. The sacred tooth of their dragon goddess, Vo, that can be wielded as a rune stylus only by the goddess’s chosen bearer—the Vhion.

  To Valasca and Chi Nam, I am the Vhion bearer of the Zhilin.

  But I’ve never heard of the Wor.

  “Do you still hold the Zhilin,” Valasca asks me, an edge of concern creeping into her normally unflappable tone.

  “It’s in my boot.”

  Valasca lets out a relieved sigh as she and Chi Nam exchange a quick look.

  “You should know that my Wand...it seems like it’s become powerless,” I confess. “I’ve a sense that it’s hiding from Vogel’s Wand.”

  “The Wor is powerful,” Chi Nam agrees as she shoots me a sober look over her shoulder. “But have faith in the Zhilin, toiya. Perhaps its power at the moment lies in its faith in you.”

  I want to hold tight to these words and draw comfort from them, but there’s no comfort to be found. Control over my power is what I need at the moment. Not faith.

  “Vogel’s hunting Elloren with his Wand,” Lukas informs Chi Nam. “He’s sending out search spells. And he can do it during the day as well as the night.”

  “And the forest is trying to bind up my magic,” I add. “It thinks I’m aligned with Vogel.”

  “Sounds like we better hightail it to that portal,” Valasca throws out to us.

  Chi Nam prods her horse into a fast gallop, rapidly pulling into the lead.

  Before long, we’re veering off the road and riding into the Sitka forest single file, our pace slowing as we skirt the spruce trees’ large trunks.

  As we’re enveloped in forest, the sensation of the trees plucking at my lines grows more pronounced, and I look worriedly to Lukas, who rides in front of me. As if sensing my attention, he glances back and meets my gaze, his tense expression echoing my concern, as if he can perceive the trees’ aggressive shift, as well. His shoulders stiffen as he lowers his head and throws out a burst of invisible fire power at the forest, the plucking sensation along my lines easing a bit.

  Before long, we reach a clearing near a stony outcropping at the western edge of the Caledonian Range.

  Chi Nam rides up to a mammoth wall of rock. The sapphire ball of light hovering over the staff strapped to her back casts bobbing blue illumination over the landmass.

  She dismounts, and we all follow her lead.

  “Send the horses to the nearest village,” Chi Nam directs Valasca before looking to Lukas and me. “We can’t bring the animals with us, and they can sometimes spook at what I’m about to do.”

  As efficiently as we can, we remove the packs from the horses but leave their tack on. Valasca murmurs affectionately to them as she leads them back into the forest, the horses whinnying animatedly as if in conversation with her as she gently talks to them in Uriskal. I’m reminded that Valasca, like all the Amaz, has been rune marked with the ability to speak to horses with her mind.

  Chi Nam pulls out a series of Noi rune stones from her pocket as she advances toward the stone wall. She stoops and arranges the stones along its base, then rises and sounds a Noi spell, the fingers of one hand dancing along the luminescent blue runes that mark her staff.

  The rune stones at the base of the wall light up.

  Chi Nam unsheathes a stylus and begins tapping it against the stone wall’s flat surface in a sweeping arc.

  My brow lifts in surprise as a line of incandescent runes whoosh into existence, trailing her stylus’s motion, the shape of a doorway made entirely of rotating sapphire runes taking form.

  The portal’s frame is similar to the Noi portals I was led t
hrough during my journey from Verpacia to the Eastern Desert and back again.

  “It will take about an hour’s time for the portal to charge,” Chi Nam says to Lukas over her shoulder, then resumes tapping her stylus along the portal’s frame, the action bringing smaller runes to glowing life.

  “Who else knows about this portal?” Lukas asks her as he strides up beside me, an edge to his tone that sets the hairs on the back of my neck prickling.

  “Only me,” she assures him.

  “Where does it lead?” I ask.

  Chi Nam smiles cryptically. “Somewhere Vogel will have a hard time locating and an even harder time getting to.”

  Valasca strides back into our blue-lit clearing with an air of purpose, a black leather sack slung over one muscular shoulder. She walks to me.

  “Take off your cloak and tunic,” she orders.

  Confusion lights. “Why?”

  “I’m going to glamour you.”

  My eyes widen, but I comply, shrugging out of both my cloak and my loose woolen tunic, dressed only in my thin forest green camisole, riding skirt, and underthings now.

  Valasca reaches into the sack and withdraws a fist that’s now bunched around several long, slim golden chains. The chains reflect pricks of blue light from Chi Nam’s runic sorcery as Valasca sets to work unraveling them. There are tiny, bright green, circular runes attached all along the chains at repeating intervals.

  “Are those Smaragdalfar runes?” I ask.

  Valasca doesn’t look up from her work of untangling. “Yep.”

  My brow lifts at this. Subland Elf runes.

  I remember Professor Fyon Hawkkyn, my Smaragdalfar metallurgy professor, driven out of the university and now covertly active in the Resistance. And the Smaragdalfar refugees I’ve seen, most of them on the run from the Alfsigr Elves. Many of them children and all of them headed East. Just like us.

  Valasca flicks her finger at my camisole. “That needs to come off too.”

  Heat blooms on my cheeks. “You want me to undress...right here?”

  I look at Lukas, who cocks an eyebrow, as if amused that I would care if he saw me without my camisole, considering how wantonly we were wrapped around each other last night, our clothing quite absent.

  “Elloren,” Valasca insists as she holds up the now untangled chains that are draped over her palm and dangling down from her hand. “This is no time for modesty. We’ve got to protect you, and fast.”

  My flush deepening, I reach down and unbutton my camisole, then let it fall off my shoulders, my exposed chest cooled by the night air, a prickle of gooseflesh rising.

  Valasca eyes the runes on my abdomen and forearm with a nod of approval. “Sage Gaffney does nice work,” she says conversationally, which strikes me as bizarre. As if I’m supposed to have a casual conversation about demon-sensing and shield-passage runes while I’m half-naked.

  I nod, so mortified I’m unable to form a coherent sentence.

  Valasca carefully places one of the chains over my head, a look of intense concentration on her face, the necklace draping outrageously around one of my breasts. Then she pulls her rune stylus out and taps it to one of the runes as she sounds a spell. All of the runes on the necklace whir to life and take on a more luminescent emerald glow.

  My skin’s natural deep-green shimmer blinks out of sight, and I gasp.

  Valasca drapes another one of the necklaces over me and touches her stylus to it. The runes spring to glowing life as my skin tone morphs to a pale storm-cloud gray.

  “Are you glamouring me to look like I’m Elfhollen?” I ask her, so astonished I almost forget about my bare-chested state.

  Valasca nods. “I am. Because there’s quite a bit of sympathy for the Elfhollen in Noi lands. And they’re allowed safe passage through the desert.” She places another chain over me and activates it with her stylus.

  A prickle swarms over my scalp. I grab some of my hair and stare at it, stunned to find it’s turned a pale gray hue.

  Another chain is looped over my head, and my ears give a painful stretch. I reach up to find them elongated, with long arcing points.

  Another chain, and a brief sting courses over my eyes, a flash of silver momentarily bursting through my vision.

  And then another chain that’s accompanied by a sharp pinch along my hands and arms. I look down to find both my fastlines and my rune marks fading to nothing.

  I hold up one of my fastmark-free gray hands, astonished. “Does this mean...?”

  “No,” Valasca cuts me off succinctly with a brief glance toward Lukas. “You’re still fasted.” She turns back to me. “And you’re still imprinted with Sage’s runes. It’s all hidden under the glamour.” She gives a few last taps on the chains’ runes, and the necklaces sink into my skin with a static prickle then flatten into tattoos of their design, the runes losing their bright glow.

  Valasca eyes the crumpled camisole I’m now holding against my naked chest. “You won’t be needing any of that clothing.” She leans down and pulls a traditional Elfhollen pale gray tunic and gray pants from her sack, the edges embroidered with a geometric white-star design. She straightens and hands the clothing to me. “Put this on.”

  I slide on the traditional Elfhollen garments, amazed to both appear like and be garbed like one of the Mountain Fae Elves.

  “Is this permanent?” I ask Valasca as I button up the long, formfitting tunic, the Wand of Myth in the side of my boot now hidden under gray pants instead of a long black riding skirt.

  Valasca shakes her head. “I can remove the glamour down the road. But for now, it’s best that you don’t look so much like the Black Witch.”

  “How did you get hold of that glamour?” Lukas asks, seeming deeply impressed as I fasten my cloak over my new garments. “I wasn’t even aware that could be done.”

  She turns to him. “It’s one of a kind. It belonged to Ra’Ven Za’Nor.”

  Recognition rises inside me.

  “Ah, yes,” Lukas says, returning Valasca’s loaded glance. “The Smaragdalfar prince who’s giving the Alfsigr so much trouble.”

  Sage Gaffney’s love. The father of her baby Icaral.

  Valasca’s mouth tilts up as she eyes Lukas shrewdly. “Mmm. He’s stirring things up a bit in both Realms.” She gestures toward my chest. “Ra’Ven used those rune chains to glamour himself as a Kelt for a few years while on the run from the Gardnerians and Alfsigr both. I pulled his glamour out of the necklaces and implanted a new one. And strengthened the binding.”

  “But if we meet any Elfhollen,” I point out, concerned, “they’ll know I’m a fraud. I don’t speak their language.” I look to Lukas, remembering his fluency in Elfhollen and other languages.

  “Ah,” Chi Nam says as she works on the fledgling portal, “we can fix that.” She straightens and surveys her work, the brightening arc of rotating runes now spitting out small veins of blue lightning. Seeming satisfied, she resheathes her stylus, grabs her staff, and walks over to take Valasca’s place in front of me, handing her staff off to Lukas, the ball of blue light still hovering over its top.

  Chi Nam reaches into her cloak’s inner pocket and pulls out a flat, crystalline rune stone that’s marked by the most intricate Noi rune I’ve yet seen, a seemingly infinite number of rotating, circular designs marked inside it, the lines sapphire bright.

  She reaches up to hold the stone just behind my right ear, then closes her eyes and murmurs a stream of Noi that’s unintelligible to me, save for a smattering of disjointed words.

  Lines of warmth radiate out from the stone and fan out through my head to encompass my ears in a heated rush.

  “Koi na vu’lon nishun ta’noi. Koi na vu’lon nishun ta’noi. Koi na vu’lon nishunderstand me. Tell me when you can understand me.”

  I startle as the words of her Noi tongue morph into meaning.

&nbs
p; “I understand you!” I blurt out, flabbergasted.

  Chi Nam pulls the stone away from my head then steps back a fraction and speaks to me in Noi. “I’ve placed a koi’lon rune just behind your ear. So now you will understand all of the major tongues of both Realms.” She holds the crystalline stone up, loosely gripped in her palm, its sapphire runes rotating slowly, their bright glow now dampened as if spent. “These koi’lon are powerful. It takes years of concentrated sorcery to form the translation power embedded in them. And the power in this stone is now in you.”

  I gape at her, not able to get over my amazement of being able to understand her.

  Fluently.

  “Place your fingers over the rune behind your ear,” Chi Nam encourages, seeming amused by my shock. “And think of a word you know in Noi. This will trigger the translation, and you’ll be able to speak Noi as well as understand it. Then say something to me in my language.”

  My heartbeat quickens with excitement. I reach up and press my fingers to the rune, sounding out the Noi words for no and thank you in my mind—nush and khuy lon. Then I take a deep breath and say, “I’m going to speak Noi to you now...” I suck in a hard inhalation of surprise. The Noi words are flowing right off my tongue. “I can’t believe I can do this!” I marvel in Noi, breathless. I glance at Lukas. “Are you going to mark him with the koi’lon?” I ask, looking to Chi Nam.

  “I speak Noi,” Lukas tells me in effortless, fluent Noi, amusement dancing in his eyes. He gestures toward my ear with his finger, continuing on in Chi Nam’s language. “And the koi’lon she used to mark you will have to be recharged with translations before it can be used again. That takes years.” He looks to Chi Nam. “You don’t have additional koi’lon, I’m assuming? With the tight hold your Wyvernguard keeps on them.”

  Chi Nam shakes her head. “No. We’ll have to get one for you in Noilaan.”

  “Why would they keep a tight hold on them?” I ask in Noi, thrown.

  Lukas looks to me. “Language is powerful. This sorcery gives their military and their ruling council an advantage.”

  I turn to Valasca. “Do you have one of these rune marks?”