The Shadow Wand

by Laurie Forest

  The thing’s head flies off as its body collapses in a heap, the whole mass twitching and gurgling in a mess of black fluid and guts that smell like sickeningly sweet rotted carrion.

  Lukas drops his sword, cursing under his breath and breathing heavily as he glares at the decimated creature.

  Valasca and Chi Nam go to him, but I can’t move. I can barely breathe. My back is pressed against the stone, and I’m trembling so hard that I can barely control my limbs. Paralyzed with terror over that thing. And Vogel’s power...it’s still writhing around in my lines.

  Lukas sets his intense gaze on me. “Elloren,” he says sharply. “Are you injured?”

  “No,” I choke out.

  “Then get hold of yourself,” he commands.

  I look to the huge, headless monster, another wave of gut-wrenching horror slashing through me.

  “Vogel’s going to enslave my magic,” I rasp, my voice and body trembling, lost to a panic that’s quickly edging into hysteria. Vogel is here. I can feel his dark power still clinging to my lines, slithering through me. “He’s going to take over my lines and kill all of you...”

  “Stop it, Elloren,” Lukas snarls as he takes a step toward me. “This is a long fight. And it just ramped up. You need to be tougher. Right now.”

  “He’s in my lines,” I cry, the panic overtaking me, Vogel’s Shadow tree still reverberating in my mind. “Don’t you understand? He’s going to take over my power...”

  “He’s not here,” Lukas growls. “You’re feeling a thrall. Throw it off.”

  “It’s not a thrall! It’s real!”

  Lukas’s expression turns vicious as he whips his wand out and I’m hit with a blast of Lukas’s affinity power that’s so strong, it’s like being slammed into by a gale-force wind. I recoil against the stone wall, gasping as Lukas’s invisible affinity fire rages through my lines, burning to a scald, overtaking the Shadow tree and singeing it away, his earth magery pummeling in, wresting hold of my branches, pinning me against the stone where I’m crumpled in a trembling mass.

  Shock spirals through me as he keeps hurling magic at me, only strengthening its force, even after he’s burned Vogel’s power from my lines.

  “Fight back!” Lukas growls out. “Fight back against my thrall!”

  My shock intensifies over Lukas’s unexpected magical attack. I look to Valasca for help, imploring. But Valasca’s gaze has gone as hard as Lukas’s. She pulls her rune stylus and levels the tip in my direction, a scarlet Amaz rune springing to life above its tip that she throws toward me, the rune blasting into my chest in a shower of red sparks, forcing my magery back even further.

  Desperate, I turn to Chi Nam, who clamps her fists around her rune staff and jabs it in my direction, a brilliant ray of blue scything from it and into my lines, flattening them until I can barely breathe.

  I gasp for air as their cruel, combined attack relentlessly assaults my lines.

  But then my fear and anguish start a rapid slide into a rage that builds and builds as my fear is burned away by the force of my mounting anger. I draw in a constricted breath, my eyes tight on them, as I pull up power from the earth, from the roots snaking through the ground.

  Forcing power to flow straight into me from the cursed trees as I rise.

  The power grows and grows inside me, just under Lukas and Valasca and Chi Nam’s combined power, until I’m trembling from the force of it, my hands balling into fists, my nails digging into my skin as I tense my whole body. And then I blow out a hard breath that turns into a guttural cry of rage as I force all of my power out toward them in one overwhelming rush.

  Lukas stumbles back, nearly falling over as his fire-and earthlines contract and all of the runes on Chi Nam’s rune staff and Valasca’s rune blades blink out of sight.

  I stalk toward them all, power whipping through me along with my overpowering rage as I close in on them, my anger over being attacked seeming to have taken on a life of its own.

  “Get back!” I cry at them, furious over their cruelty, my words the lash of a whip. “Keep your magic away from me!” My face twists into a grimace, magic slashing through my lines as I stalk to Lukas, furious.

  Lukas is flushed, a sheen of sweat on his skin, his eyes fierce. He leans closer to me, his lips twisting into a feral smile. “Ah, finally. Finally. The Black Witch is here! I wondered when she’d finally show herself!”

  Another flash of rage overtakes me in a blinding rush. I pull my Wand, rip the cloth off it, and jab it to Lukas’s throat, my magic rushing to it. “Don’t ever attack me again,” I snarl as power courses through me with lethal force. “I could cut you down right here, if I wanted to.”

  Lukas moves closer, ignoring the Wand pressed into his neck. “Yes, Elloren,” he hisses back. “You could. Which is why you need to stop acting like you’re weak and start acting like a warrior, no matter what monstrous thing comes at you!”

  A sudden reckoning bears down on me, my anger imploding under the sheer weight of its immensity.

  I pull the Wand away from Lukas’s neck and take a faltering step back, thrown into turmoil over being faced with my first military attack.

  I’m on a collision course with Vogel and the entire Gardnerian military and probably the whole of Alfsigroth and Noilaan and Ishkartaan—and they’re going to send every nightmare thing they can think of out to subdue me.

  I’m disastrously ill prepared to face even a small fraction of this fate.

  How can I be the Black Witch with even my allies set against me? I rage as my emotions circle down toward the rapid loss of faith.

  A face suddenly lights in my mind, halting the descent.

  Fernyllia’s granddaughter—little Fern.

  An image of the child fills my thoughts, her small hand clutching my skirts as she sobbed and protectively hugged her cloth doll, Mee’na. That terrible night when the Gardnerian mobs were attacking Urisk and cutting off the tips of their ears.

  I’ll protect you. We all will, I promised her that night.

  I wonder—is Fern in the Noi lands right now, clutching her beloved doll? Safe for the moment?

  Not safe for long if these insect beasts come for her.

  Not if Vogel comes for her.

  Another vision accosts my mind—an army of the many-eyed insect monsters swarming into the Eastern Realm. And Fern, running from them as a massive foreclaw slams down toward her small frame...

  No.

  I inhale and flex my hand against the Wand.

  I’ll protect you. We all will.

  I scan the darkness of the wilds, the hostile trees, knowing that Lukas is right.

  I need to be strong. Even in the face of impossible odds. Even in the face of a monstrous attack.

  Because this is bigger than all of us.

  A shimmer of light catches my eye, and I look up to find a Watcher sitting high in the dark canopy of forest, the gleaming ivory bird there and then vanishing from sight.

  I pull in a surprised breath, both chastened and inspired by the sight. There’s an echo of anguish still swimming in me, but I find the strength to tamp it down.

  “I need your help in learning how to fight like a soldier,” I admit to Lukas, to all of them. “I’m not trained like all of you. I’m a violin maker and an apothecary. I’ve never seen combat. I need your help.”

  “We’ll train you,” Lukas says, passionate resolve in his gaze as he steps toward me.

  “How much longer until we can get out of here?” Valasca asks Chi Nam, her tone urgent. “We can’t train anyone if we’re eaten by demonic insects.” The portal’s center is now lit with a silver sheen, and I notice that the runes on Chi Nam’s staff and the hilts of Valasca’s rune blades are brightly charged once more.

  “Any minute now,” Chi Nam answers as she scrutinizes the brightening portal, and I push my Wand back into
my tunic’s pocket, my magic’s pull toward it drawing down.

  Lukas cuts a hard look at Chi Nam and Valasca. “Stay sharp. There could be more scorpios. They normally swarm.”

  Valasca brings her black gaze to me. “If that rune on your stomach so much as pricks, you tell us. Understand?”

  I nod as Lukas comes down to one knee and studies the wreckage of the mantis’s body, prodding it with his wand. Revulsion ripples through me at the sight of the grotesque corpse. Tendrils of smoke are curling up from the shadowy runes on its thorax like undulating steam.

  “What is that thing?” I ask, forcing myself to keep looking at it.

  “A desert scorpio,” Lukas says as he eyes the creature’s mangled carcass. “They’re not indigenous to the Western Realm.”

  “They’re common in much of the Eastern Desert, though,” Valasca adds. “But this one...it’s corrupted by some kind of twisted magic. Its appearance is distorted.”

  I look to her. “They’re normally different from this?”

  “Oh, they’re nothing you want to meet without a weapon.” Valasca gives a grim chuckle, not taking her eyes off the thing. “But this one...” She narrows her eyes at the beast’s remains. “This one is bizarrely stretched out.”

  I think of the Marfoir—the horrible Elfin assassins that came for Wynter—and how unnaturally tall and stretched out they were, with horns of undulating smoke and gray insectile eyes...

  I take in the eyes swarming around the scorpio’s two main eyes. “Do they normally have so many eyes?”

  Valasca shakes her head. “No. Normal scorpios have two compound eyes and that’s it.”

  Lukas points to one of the deep-green Gardnerian runes that mark the scorpio’s body. He looks to me. “Elloren, this is a deflection rune. You need to be able to recognize these.”

  I study the circular deep-green rune and its internal telescoping pattern. “What does it do?” I ask, remembering his strident warning to Chi Nam and Valasca.

  “Deflection runes cause wand magic or sorcery to double back and attack the person who cast it,” he explains, poking at the green design. “They take years to charge. It’s very complicated rune sorcery.” His brow tightens as he looks to Chi Nam, a suspicious glint in his eyes. “Quite a lot of runic fabrication going on in the Western Realm when there’s only one Council Light Mage.”

  “Are you thinking Vogel possesses light magery?” Valasca asks, one black brow raised.

  “Possibly,” Lukas answers as he studies the creature. “In addition to possessing a wand that can amplify it.” Lukas slides his wand’s tip over one of the shadowy runes emblazoned on the thing’s huge thorax. Tendrils of smoke still twist up from those runes. Lukas looks to Chi Nam. “I haven’t seen runes like this before.”

  “They must be based in demonic magery.” Chi Nam studies the runes alongside Lukas. “They triggered Elloren’s rune.” She places the tip of her rune staff on one of the Shadow runes. Wraithlike smoke trails up her rune staff, momentarily turning all the blue Noi runes a smoking gray, their internal designs morphing to spiraling shapes that give the illusion of tunneling down into some dark infinity.

  Chi Nam pulls her staff away, seeming uncharacteristically thrown. “These runes are filled with odd elementals.” The runes on Chi Nam’s rune staff snap back to Noi blue and begin to flash out changeable shapes, as if pulsing a complicated warning. Chi Nam sets her dark gaze directly on Lukas. “I think we’re dealing with something new.”

  “Or something very old,” Valasca amends grimly as she eyes the scorpio with heightened alarm. “Cast by the Shadow Wand. Like in the myths.”

  An animalistic shriek sounds in the distance, and all our heads whip toward the sound.

  “The horses,” Valasca rasps out, eyes widened.

  More heart-wrenching shrieks are followed by a chorus of tinny, insectile screeching as a hard sting lights on my abdomen and my gaze whips toward Lukas. “There’re more. They’re coming.”

  Lukas hoists his sword and slides in front of me as Chi Nam moves closer to the portal and I hastily grab more stones, shoving some in my pocket. Valasca pulls a second blade and tightens her grip on both of the weapons, slowly stepping backward toward me as a multi-eyed, rune-covered scorpio slides into the clearing, teeth chattering, its head jerking this way and that.

  Then another.

  And another.

  And another.

  All of them with deflection runes marked on their huge abdomens. All of them bizarrely elongated.

  The creatures pause as they loom over Lukas and Valasca, tilting their heads jerkily as they study them. Lukas and Valasca lower themselves into fighting stances before me, their sword and blades raised.

  “Chi,” Lukas says calmly. Too calmly. “We need that portal to be ready now.”

  “It’s almost fully charged,” Chi Nam says with Lukas’s same unnerving calm, her rune-marked hand, held to the portal’s frame, taking on a blue glow as the ripple of silver in the portal’s center gains strength and begins to streak with gold.

  Strangely, the scorpios all wait, limbs twitching, as they stare Lukas down, stingers raised and quivering.

  Three more of the horrific things slip into the clearing and my pulse ratchets higher.

  Valasca’s gaze darts toward the portal as she takes a step backward, her hand closing tight around my arm, as if she’s ready to hurl me through the portal the second it sets.

  The things are chattering now, their horrible jaws making rapid-fire clicking sounds. I notice the one nearest Lukas, the most stretched-out one, has the biggest swarm of eyes, spread clear down its neck. Two more eyes dot the thing’s forelimb like a disease.

  It turns, a pale green eye in the center of its head riveting onto me.

  I take one small, faltering step back as all the beasts swivel their heads and set their countless eyes on me.

  Terror explodes as they all lunge for me in a unified stampede.

  Valasca yanks me backward, and the largest one knocks Lukas sideways with the blunt side of its forelimb, stingers lashing forward like whips. A cursing Valasca wrenches me farther to the side then releases me and springs forward in a whirlwind of slicing blades as Lukas battles three of the beasts, his sword whirling as he lops off limbs and venomous tails, creatures shrieking and falling as they descend into an unfocused, scuttling attack.

  I pull back my arm to hurl my rock at an advancing scorpio just as its huge pointed forelimb slams down through my cloak and tunic, grazing my shoulder to impale the edge of the cloth, pinning me against the stone wall behind me. I frantically struggle to beat back its forelimb with my rock and pull my arm free as the largest scorpio closes in to peer down at me and I’m overtaken with a horror.

  It’s the most hideous one, with eyes clear down its neck.

  The insect monster slinks its head forward only a hand’s length from mine as every one of its eyes pivot forward to stare hard at me.

  I stare back into the single pale green eye in the center of the thing’s head as recognition blasts through my mind.

  A Vogel eye.

  I cry out as Vogel’s Shadow limbs punch into me in an explosion of pain, Lukas’s shield fracturing, the violent assault quickly followed by the ghastly feel of Vogel’s power slithering into me and around my lines, his invading Shadow rooting me to the spot and wresting away my control over my own body. I’m trapped inside Vogel’s Shadow magic, trapped within his terrifying thrall as wraithlike Shadow smoke rises all around me.

  But then, as I stare into Vogel’s cruel, soulless eye, my fear gives way as an explosion of pure fury sparks then detonates inside me. Fury for the Lupines. Fury for little Fern. Fury for every last person who is running for their lives because of this monster.

  Fight back, everything inside me screams as the fury whips through my lines and ramps up my magic. Fight Vogel with e
very last shred of magic inside you.

  Throw off the thrall.

  Vengeful energy rises, like an inescapable tide, as I pull in a deep breath and gather my power against Vogel’s shadowy grip, my fire rising as my earth magery arranges itself into killing spears.

  Eyes fixed on Vogel’s eye, I exhale hard and force my power toward him in a savage rush.

  The image of Vogel’s dark tree shatters, his Shadow power flying off me as I break through his paralysis with a stinging burst of agony.

  Suddenly and shockingly freed from the thrall, my power whips through my lines, rapidly dampening the pain. I grit my teeth, tighten my grip on my rock, and slam it straight into Vogel’s eye.

  The huge Vogel scorpio rears back with a furious shriek just as Lukas advances, swinging his sword in a flashing arc that cleaves straight through the beast’s neck. The scorpio scuttles sideways then crashes to the ground as Lukas hacks at it in a blur of motion.

  The smaller scorpio closes in, jaws snapping, but I’m ready to fight now. With a snarling cry, I swing my arm at it, aiming my rock at its mass of eyes. The creature flinches, dodging my attack, still pinning me to the wall as its jaws click and a fierce battle cry sounds behind it.

  Valasca leaps onto the creature’s back, throws her arm around its neck, and slices her blade clear across the thing’s large compound eyes. The scorpio rears backward, Valasca hurled off its back as it releases my arm. Dark ichor sprays from its head, the beast shrieking so loudly that I fear my ears will burst.

  Abruptly freed, I lurch away from the scorpio as it levers its forelimb back at me, its limb colliding with the rock wall and just missing my shoulder, as two more scorpios close in and slash their forelimbs at Valasca.

  A brilliant flash of golden light rays out from the portal.

  “It’s charged!” Chi Nam calls out in Noi.

  Valasca turns just as the largest of the remaining scorpios closes in and slashes its serrated forelimb at her with blinding speed. A metallic streak arcs through the air as Lukas’s sword slices through the limb and sends it skittering away before it can impale Valasca. Another scorpio limb swoops toward Lukas in a blur, the forelimb’s knife-edge slamming into his shoulder in a spray of blood, the blow knocking him to the ground as my heart bolts through my body.