The Northern Approach

by Jim Galford

  This was the difficult part, Estin told himself, holding the anger and magic in check only barely. Every instinct told him to run for his friends, to kill everything in his way with the power flooding through his veins. He knew even with all the power he felt, a Turessian would likely defeat him, especially with an army at her side. He was not Oramain, nor did he have all the powers of a Turessian. He had barely survived fighting Arturis with this power and that time, Feanne had been beside him.

  Estin felt as though he were wrestling a cloud, straining to maintain control over the magic within himself. He dragged it forward, bringing it to his hands to form into a spell. Opening his eyes, he saw white flames covered his forearms, each flickering with faces of the dead. Their names and deaths lingered at the edge of his consciousness, making it even more difficult for him to concentrate. Memories of their deaths hinted that if he could calm himself, he could remember every one of them. That was not something he had felt in previous attempts to use Oramain’s powers.

  Just as he thought he was reaching the end of his own endurance, fresh strength flowed into him from the direction of Dalania. Somehow she was contributing her own power to his efforts. Even that only slowed the sensation of being torn apart, but another source of strength abruptly made the entire casting feel almost trivial. Rather than question good fortune, Estin pushed on.

  “Come back to me, Feanne,” he whispered, releasing the magic in a torrent at the spirit standing in front of him.

  The magic leapt of its own accord, trying to free itself of Estin’s control. He struggled with it, trying to shape the stream of white flames into the same pattern as the spells he would have used to bring life back into a fallen ally who had not yet gone cold. For all his effort, the magic seemed to do what it wanted before fading away, leaving the woods quiet and still. With its disappearance a burning and tearing sensation washed across Estin’s lungs and he struggled to catch his breath as the magic ended.

  Looking around, Estin saw only Dalania. Feanne’s spirit had vanished, as had the flames and magic within himself. He felt entirely empty and terrified that he had wasted his most powerful abilities for nothing. Every fiber of his being ached as though he had run for hours, leaving him exhausted to the point of collapse. Even his veins burned, his blood feeling hot within him.

  “Feanne?”

  Estin shifted his vision repeatedly, trying to spot anything magical or mundane that might be happening, but the entire woods seemed still. Beside him, Dalania let out a sad moan and put her face in her hands.

  He had used every ounce of his strength for nothing. In emotional agony at his mistake, Estin fell onto his back, staring up at the sky in dismay. It could be days or weeks before he could try again and no matter how many animals Dalania called, the Turessian would eventually kill Raeln, Yoska, and On’esquin.

  Without warning the bag at Estin’s side containing Feanne’s remains exploded, flipping him onto his side. Ashes flew away from him to where her spirit had been a moment earlier, swirling around like a whirlwind, gathering up more dirt as it spun, until the entire funnel of ash seemed to be thickening. Then, with a crack that sent a rumble through the air, all of the remaining dust and ash fell to the ground around Feanne, who lay on the ground naked and unmoving. Old scars covered her body in thin lines where fur would not grow, brought back as clearly as they had been when she had lived. Slowly she curled into a ball, pulling her knees to her muzzle as she lay on her side. Her whole body tensed as though in pain, tucking her tail and arms close to her torso and curling her toes against her paws, gasping for breath.

  Recovering first, Dalania rushed past Estin, grabbing the traveling cloak from his pack as she went by. She went straight to Feanne and threw the cloak over her, covering Feanne’s nakedness and hugging her tightly.

  Estin was beside himself with shock that it had worked at all. He sat there, staring at Feanne for several seconds before he shook off his surprise and scrambled across the ground to her and pulled her into his arms as Dalania sat back and watched, smiling happily.

  “Feanne?” he whispered, checking her pulse. It was weak, but steady and growing stronger the longer he kept his finger there. Her whole body trembled uncontrollably in his arms. “Wake up, Feanne.”

  Eventually Feanne’s eyes opened and she looked around in confusion. She stared up at Estin and then turned her head and gazed at Dalania. “Where am I?” she asked softly, sitting up and pulling free of Estin’s grip. When he tried to reach for her again, she shoved him away. “Who’re you?”

  That last question stabbed at Estin’s chest like a knife, making him want to scream at the sky. His mate, the only person he had ever loved and who his whole world revolved around, was staring at him like a stranger. He could think of nothing as painful and wished he had been wiser about making this choice. He had done something wrong. He had brought her back incomplete.

  “Can you fight?” Estin asked her, fighting the angry shaking in his body. Grief and sending her home could wait. The others needed help, regardless of how badly he had failed.

  Dalania seemed to pick up on his discomfort and stood up, her eyes on the ground. She looked around nervously as she wrung her hands, clearly at a loss for what to do.

  Raising her hands in front of her face, Feanne flexed her fingers and studied her long claws. She smiled grimly and nodded. “I believe I can. That, I remember. My instincts tell me how. I remember how to bite and claw at my enemy…whoever that is.”

  “Do you remember who you are?” asked Dalania, giving Estin a worried look.

  “I’m…Feanne, I think,” answered Feanne, though she seemed less than sure. “Is that right? I heard him call me that.”

  “Yes, and that will have to be enough for now,” said Estin, offering her a hand up. “There’s no more time to wait. We have to go save the others.”

  “Others? Are they people I care about?” replied Feanne, giving Estin an annoyed look.

  Dalania came up alongside them and motioned toward Estin. “Feanne, do you know who this is? He would never lie to you, let alone about us needing to go help someone.”

  That had been the question Estin did not want to ask after seeing the confused look in Feanne’s eyes. He could convince himself he had done this to save the others so long as he did not think on his relationship with her, but by asking that, Dalania brought it to the forefront.

  “No,” Feanne replied, studying Estin’s face while she continued to sit on the ground. “I do want to chase him up a tree, though. Should I know him or should I eat him?”

  Estin shot Dalania an angry glare, and she lowered her eyes sadly, trying to look anywhere but the two of them. “He is a friend, as am I, Feanne.”

  Feanne eyed Estin’s hand warily but finally took it and stood. Once on her feet, she seemed unsteady for a moment, shifting her weight to one paw and then the other. She gradually straightened up, spreading her toes as if to help maintain her balance, like a child learning how to walk. Looking back, she eyed her own tail with surprise. “I’m a fox?” she asked, turning around in a circle to try to see her tail clearly. “Why do I have claws like this? I don’t remember foxes having sharp claws. What am I? What are the two of you?”

  Estin’s throat tightened and he felt like he was drowning. Asrahn would come back from the dead to kill him if she found out her daughter was living like this, even for a few hours…and on some level, he hoped she would. Through his dismay, he managed to say, “We can worry about that later. We have to go.”

  Raising her nose, Feanne sniffed the air. “I smell death. Is that where we’re going? Is that where I will hunt?”

  “Yes,” Dalania told her, coming over to stand beside Estin. She put a hand on his arm, and through the touch, Estin could feel her own tension. Given how much Dalania had worked to avoid being around the males in Feanne’s old camp, he knew her touch was something significant to her. “We need to go destroy the undead that are attacking our friends.”

  Without anoth
er word, Feanne dropped to all fours and ran toward the village, never hesitating or waiting for the others. The cloak thrown hastily over her earlier fell aside, forgotten.

  “She will be fine in time,” Dalania said, turning and taking Estin’s face in her hands to force him to look her in the eyes. Despite her forcefulness, she sounded far less than confident. “Trust in her strength, Estin. If she is not strong enough to remember herself, we will deal with that then. This is temporary, either way. Once she is dead again, her spirit will return to normal.”

  Clenching his jaw, Estin nodded and pulled away, forcing himself to run after his mate. She had a good head start, but he was steadier on his feet and soon closed on her, though he could not quite catch her. She ran with wild abandon, racing through the last of the woods and leaping over the low wall into the village, landing on all fours, and continuing toward where Estin had last seen the others.

  Estin drew his swords, knowing his strength had been sapped nearly to the point of collapse by his use of magic. He would be almost entirely dependent on his blades, Dalania, and Feanne if he were going to survive the fight. It was a humbling feeling, but he had no time to rest. He could only hope the two females were strong enough to make up for his efforts to bolster their numbers.

  Across the village, the massive group of undead Estin had seen earlier was just returning from the woods—something he would have to thank Dalania for later, given that many appeared to be covered with fresh blood from the animals she had sent. From what he could see, Raeln still hung at the edge of the woods, though Estin could not be certain if he was alive. The others would not be visible until he came around the stable. His biggest immediate concern was not knowing where the Turessian was hiding.

  Feanne led the way toward the undead, leaping as she neared them, coming down with both feet and hands on the first zombie that turned. She tore into the creature with her claws, diving from one corpse to the next in a frenzy of violence that terrified Estin to watch. There was no finesse, no forethought, not even the simplest use of magic. Feanne was an animal, striking at other creatures she considered her enemies without consideration of her own safety. He had seen her reckless and wild, but this was something else entirely. She had no idea how to fight other than what her instincts told her to do.

  It took Estin a few extra seconds to reach the zombies, but he led with one of his swords, taking off part of the first corpse’s head. Reacting to movement in his peripheral vision, he turned and slashed across the neck of another with his other sword, nearly cleaving its head from its shoulders. He continued to dodge and strike, moving farther into the mass of rotting corpses. As his momentum slowed, his attacks became less effective, his muscles already too tired to put enough force behind the blades.

  So close to the mass of zombies, Estin managed to get a clearer glimpse of Raeln, who was still struggling against the rope. He appeared not to have had the noose pulled any tighter since Estin had last seen him, but his eyes were rolled back and he was barely moving. Had Estin taken much longer, the man would have been dead for sure. Again, something he would blame himself for later, if he survived that long. Any losses they suffered would be on him.

  Evading the zombies as they attempted to grab at him, Estin dove and ran, trying to get a clear path to Raeln. That seemingly simple task became more difficult with each of the undead that turned, groaning and stumbling toward him to block his path. At last a gap opened between Estin and Raeln. Dropping one of his swords, Estin pointed at the rope, summoned a small shred of magic, and wrapped tendrils of invisible energy around the rope. With a dismissive sweep of his hand, he snapped the energy taught and severed the rope, though in doing so, Estin pushed himself well past his limits after the earlier use of magic. Dizziness and nausea overtook him as the spell completed, and he only barely noticed Raeln fall to the ground as he himself collapsed, vomiting despite his empty stomach.

  Estin had barely hit the ground before the undead were on him, rotted hands grabbing at his clothing and fur, dragging him to the ground. Half a dozen bodies piled atop him as jagged teeth tore into his shoulder and leg. Within seconds his remaining weapon was pulled away, and he could not get his feet under him as agonizing wounds were torn into his flesh by the undead. Still the urge to keep vomiting made it difficult to even try to fight back.

  “Stop,” said a woman, and the undead mauling Estin stopped trying to kill him and instead held him in place as though frozen. He could not move and he could feel blood flowing from dozens of deep bites. One particular zombie still had its teeth deep in his shoulder, but he could not free himself.

  Booted feet came up in front of Estin, though he could not look up from where he lay, thanks to a corpse’s filthy hand planted on his head. A second later, the speaker sat down in front of him, bending over so she could look him in the face. Her deep hood cast a shadow over Estin, and he could easily see her tattoos and recognized her as the same Turessian woman from Pholithia.

  “You arrived before I had even begun to work,” she told him, slowly lying down so her face was even with his. Smiling childishly, she added, “Your wolf is going to die, but I had hoped to have his screams call you back. I believe I can make him linger for a full day yet. Won’t that be fun?”

  “Just kill us and call it a day,” Estin growled at her, trying to shift enough to see Feanne or Dalania. He could hear Feanne still fighting somewhere nearby, but the fae-kin woman was nowhere he could see.

  “Kill you? I suppose that will come in time. For now you will suffer and beg for mercy that I will not give you. Do you know why?”

  “Because you enjoy hearing yourself talk?”

  The zombies holding Estin tightened their grip until he could barely breathe under their weight.

  The woman smiled prettily. “No, that is something that comes with centuries talking to oneself. Your death was requested by my master, Dorralt, though he meant it for any of your kind. He truly despises your people…especially those with black and white fur. It’s irrational, I know, but what he wishes will happen, and I have a certain fondness for obeying in this.

  “As for why I will torture you,” she went on, her teeth gleaming in the setting sunlight. “You killed some friends of mine, out in that valley your people squatted in. Good fellows, really, plus the girl-child. My understanding is that they fell into one of those glowing clouds. Awful way to go, if you ask me. The least I can do is ensure you suffer more than they did. You are the only living mortal I know of to survive the mists, so I wish to disembowel you to ensure this does not become an easy way for others to escape our rule.”

  The Turessian made a curt gesture and the zombies yanked Estin upright, maintaining their vicelike grip on him to keep him from running. From that position, he could see Yoska and On’esquin, both tied to the stable’s beams with a net. From what Estin could see, the net had been knotted and padlocked behind them. Yoska appeared to be unconscious, but On’esquin watched him nervously.

  “You are getting quite the reputation,” the woman said. “You and the fox over there, who seems enthralled by tearing apart one of my creations. I recognize her from the memories of another member of my clan. How the two of you could have caused so much trouble locally, I will never understand, given how incompetent you have proved yourself to be and how uncontrolled she is.

  “But, before you start feeling special, I’ll have you know there are others all over the lands of Eldvar trying to do the same thing…though you are the first to have the traitor leading you. We have no choice but to hunt all of you down and kill you. Anyone exceptional is put down…wildlings and orcs first, for personal reasons, of course.”

  “Why chase us down if we’re so insignificant?” Estin asked, straining against the zombies but managing to move only slightly. “Go rule over your conquests.”

  The Turessian laughed again, shaking her head. “Dorralt gives us each lands to conquer and rule over, if we are able. He lets us do whatever we want with the people there, shaping the
lands in our image. We could kill them all or spare every life. That is our choice.

  “I was not assigned a land, wildling. My duty is to cross all of those nations, hunting down your kind for my master. Each time I do, he reveals more to me that the others will never know. I will be the general of his armies into this next age because I do what he desires, rather than only what serves my own interests. The others fail because they only needed to know enough to rule over their chosen lands, but I was given access to enough of the whole family’s strength to fight as a champion of our master.”

  Becoming frantic, knowing his life could end at any second, Estin hooked his tail onto the legs of one of the zombies holding him. With a yank, he knocked that undead down, loosening the grip of several others that it fell onto. Before they could recover, Estin threw himself forward into a roll, breaking free of the rest, but as he tried to come up onto his feet, the Turessian’s boot connected with his side, knocked the air from his lungs, and hurled him into the side of the stable.

  With his ribs aching and making it difficult to breathe properly, Estin rolled onto his stomach and used the wall of the stable to pull himself upright. He had barely gotten onto his feet when the woman reached him, grabbed the scruff of his neck, and used that leverage to slam him face-first into the wall of the stable.

  Bursts of light swam in Estin’s vision, though he could tell he was moving, even if it was not under his own power. He struggled to right himself, trying to find where Feanne was and whether she had been able to flee to safety. It took him a few seconds to be able to see anything but the spinning of the world around him, but then he realized he was being dragged into the stable.

  Estin pulled at the hand holding him, trying to make the woman release him, but she would not budge. He kept struggling right up until she brought him to the stable wall opposite Yoska and On’esquin and raised her palm toward him. An invisible force slammed into Estin’s chest and pinned him to the wall as effectively as any rope ever could, as an endless stream of wind pressed against him. He could gasp for breath but do little else, so long as the Turessian kept her spell active.