A dozen or so people scurried to do his bidding. I'd never thought of Father as their primary leader, but no one was contesting his orders. I heard a stray spell or two, then a woman yelled and it all went quiet again. A scout, they said. They got it.
“Lay down the inner ward,” Mother said. “Make it so our front watch can enter, but nothing else. Everyone, when the ward is up, toss a small spell to it to feed it.”
Soon a wobbling bubble encased the infected trees, so pale that it didn't even cast a shadow. It looked so foreign, so wet, in a place so thirsty.
“Feed it slowly, one at a time,” someone said. “Line up and go one after the other.”
Person by person, we fired a small spell. Each time it hit the ward, it warped and writhed, then reformed and thickened, stronger with every hit. The feys acted unnerved, as though their magic had never been so weak before. It was as if the very ground were absorbing the strength from them. I fared better than the pure feys, but Mordon and Simbalene alone seemed unaffected by the drain from the environment.
“Husks ahead!” a man shouted from the front ranks, triggering a retreat from the others.
The husks emerged from everywhere, the winged bat-creatures, the silent monkeys swinging from bare limb to bare limb. They flooded from all angles, coming up from the very ground in the form of hairless rodents. The first to clash with the feys went up in a wall of fire, a fey circle with a fire enchantment thrown in, but the husks hurled themselves against it without care for their own lives. With every brutal fling of a body against the outside circle, it weakened, developing cracks. The perimeter watch cast small feeding spells to keep it strong, but it wasn't enough. Before even the first of the watch could back under the protection of the inner ward, there was a snap and a fiery ceiling fell in with the descent of flaming husks.
“Take shelter—power to the ward!” Father yelled from beside me.
A few of the feys were injured after the initial attack, but so far as I could see, there were none dead. The battalion did not keel over so easily. They fell in line with the rest of us, waiting their turn to add strength to the ward which was now the sole thing separating us from the masses with teeth and talons.
A dozen of us broke off to work the disenchantment spell organized by Mother.
“Prepare our retreat,” an older man said, tapping his chosen ones on the shoulder. “The rest of you keep that ward up.”
Beyond the creatures lunging at the surface of the ward, I saw something moving, something different from the rest. “Do you see that?” I asked Leazar who was two people over. “At 3 o'clock.”
“I think so,” Leazar shouted over the sound of a snapping crackle. Mother had imbued the circle with a jolt of electricity, but that one snap had sucked strength out of us all.
My cheek was bleeding where I had started to unconsciously chew on the inside corner of my mouth. I pushed it with my tongue away from my teeth and made an effort to stop biting it. The electric shock had spread through several rows of the assailants, and the ones who hadn't died now withdrew. That brief respite lasted ages as the feys hurried to restore the thickness back to the ward, but each successive round wearied them. By the time Mordon used a flame ball on the ward, his one hit was the same as the last ten had been before him.
“Look at that,” Simbalene whispered, motioning with a jerk of her head so that no one else would be alarmed. At 5 o'clock, there was the outline of a man. And at 7 o'clock, there was a dragon soaring near.
“Behind us, too,” I said.
Coming in at all angles were a repeat of the man and dragon, both of them larger than life, and only one of them in existence. They were too far away for details, but when I skipped my turn and Simbalene threw a spell against the ward, it became resilient and cloudy.
“Disenchant's ready.”
I wasn't sure who said it, or if it mattered. It couldn't have come a second too early. Immediately following the announcement, the dragon outside sounded a roar which made Mordon freeze and his eyes turn into slits. His skin thickened and reddened, but he kept from shifting into dragon form. As if on cue from him, my own skin paled and hinted at the scales to come.
“Watch out!”
The husks swarmed us, blacking out the sun, giving us the first shade we'd had in an hour. It made my skin crawl to see the electricity fail, the husks kicking the bodies off the circle, dumping them into an unceremonious pile at the base of the bubble. My heart thudded in my ears and it took all my self-control to keep from shifting into the dragon form. There just wasn't enough room in here for it. Hand to hand combat was the last line of defense.
And then as one, the blackout lifted, rising up on their haunches, letting in a splattering of filtered light down on us. My mouth went dry. Their fists were high overhead, rocks in hand, ready to rain down a hard blow on the circle in one whack.
“Meadows, Sim!” Father had the same thought, I saw it in his face.
Mordon slammed the circle with a spell which would have, in ordinary circumstances, destabilized it for a few wobbling seconds. But his timing coincided with the fall of hundreds of husk-wielded rocks, meeting it ripple for ripple, so the circle groaned and cracked and bucked, and the husks lost their grip. The noise clashed in my ears, making them ring and sting. A great slide of husks pushed others in a heap on the ground, revealing a beam of pure light in the very center of the infected set of five trees.
Mordon put his hand to his head and winced, breathing harsh and ragged. When I touched his shoulder, I felt the pain radiating through him, the strain he had taken for the circle in order to keep it standing. How he'd done it, I didn't know, but it was costing him dear.
Leazar elbowed me hard. “Fera, look!”
It was the leaders. They were in mid-stroke, each one of them coming down on the circle with jagged fangs of fists. I held my breath, not even having time to think what I should yell.
But then their attack ended in a single spell, and it hit the circle. A blow like that would have destroyed any ward, to have been hit lopsidedly with so much force.
Except this wasn't any ward. It was a fey circle. And while it had struggled beneath the brutal onslaught of a physical attack, it took that burst of energy and sucked the power into its own spell.
The feys let out a cheer while the monsters snarled and whooped and roared.
That made it all too loud for anyone to hear me yelling.
“Stop the disenchant! Stop!”
Even my waving arms wasn't seen. They were looking down at what they were doing or up at the beasts who had lost their fight with the ward.
I was there at the head of the disenchantment spell, grabbing Mother's shoulder. Her eyes went wide.
It was too late. The spell had been triggered and once it started, there was no aborting it as it picked up speed from the power of the casters, zipping along chalk lines, bolting from tree to tree, then arcing between dead limbs, striking the ground in the center. Other feys saw my panic and despair and could do nothing. With a horrified gasp I stepped back. The power built and built. The monsters on the outside of the ward fell quiet then started up a chant, the hummm, hummm, hummm, of a heartbeat.
That didn't sound like a good thing to anyone. And that was because it wasn't. Because the thing which had been right in front of me was this: the Immortal and me, we shared in our triumphs and talents. And I'd never have been able to infect the Wildwoods by pure strength. If I'd had to do it, he'd do what I'd do. And what I'd do would be to use fey magic to tap into the very source of the Wildwoods itself, to use its own might against itself.
And now we'd given it even more, the very same way he'd accidentally given our ward strength.
“Where's the escape portal!” I shouted at no one in particular. “If I can divert some power right now …”
I had just enough time to dive for the portal, to grab at the chalk line for the disenchantment spell as it reached its climax. Pure magic jumped through my body, Mother's electricity using me
as a conduit to zap life into the mostly-finished portal. Air screamed through my ears, wrapping itself around me so tight it was impossible to breathe, impossible for anyone to wade through it and draw me away before the portal spell had all it could take and it exploded, taking all of us with it.
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Hollow carcasses of a bramble patch broke my fall, the thorns embedding and snapping off in my skin, and beneath the prickly branches a thick layer of grasses cushioned my hit. It wasn't as bad as it would have been to, say, dive headlong into a rock, but it still jarred my head and wrenched the shoulder which I'd fallen on. My partial shift might have saved me from serious injury, but I felt a wet trickle from my nose and my skin bled freely. Before I could pass out, I sat up.
Pain shot through my shoulder and neck, a hot, lancing pain accompanied by my arm's almost complete unwillingness to move as I wanted it to. Through the disoriented clouds in my head, I knew that this was far from a good thing. Hand shaking, I pulled my dress off the slope of my neck and exposed the joint. My shoulder had a visible indent about the size of my index finger.
“Mordon?” I called once, my voice an empty plea in the quiet. All over, there wasn't a noise as whatever living things there were took shelter before the impending storm. The sky was gray, the air heavy with humidity and electricity. “Mordon!”
My voice echoed back. I was shuddering so bad that the dried arcs of branches clattered against each other. In the far distance, I heard thunder roll across the nothingness until it reached me.
“Anyone?”
The wind rustled leaves, brushing them against me, that single caress of magic being the only response I would receive. The portal, charged as it had been, hadn't been able to stay in one steady stream, but had flooded its metaphorical riverbed. Perhaps most of the feys had been taken to the right location, but others, like me, had been swept ashore somewhere along the way. Which meant I was alone. Or worse than alone, if my companions were knocked out.
“Ouch.”
The pain went up to my spine, and I already felt it as the muscles spasmed and stiffened in response to the injury. I wasn't a healer, wasn't an emergency medical responder, but I'd taken a couple of classes, enough to know that my shoulder was dislocated—if not completely, then partially. The longer it was out of place, the more damage would occur to my ligaments and muscles, I knew. I also knew that I should set it before my mind came out of shock, which meant I needed to do it now. What I couldn't remember, though, was how to do it.
“Mordon.”
I had no doubt he'd remember. He'd probably have it done by now, within seconds of seeing the joint. Dragging a hand across my eyes, I focused on what I remembered: twisting the arm behind the back, pulling up and straight out.
I was in no condition to consider the situation. Bleeding and dizzy, I had just enough of my wits about me to find a sturdy tree trunk, to wince and use my other hand to guide it up behind me. It hurt so much to bend my arm. To seize the sooty bark, gripping it as hard as I could. Then to try to relax the upper arm and jerk forward, half falling to my knees.
An instant of tear-inducing pain shot through me, along with the accompanying dread that I'd done the wrong thing. Then a pop delivered the sudden agony of relief. I grunted, resisted the temptation to let go of the tree, and, still on my knees, I wriggled my body to test the mobility of my shoulder. It gave a smaller pop, then the muscles sagged. For a minute more, I stretched it out. Gingerly, I let go of the tree, bent my arm back to my front, and cradled it across my chest. The pain was back, and so was the protestation of the muscles.
Breathing in shallow gasps, I set to pulling strips out of the spider silk dress, to bind my arm in tight to my chest like a sling. I shook too much to tie a knot, and was glad the silk pressed itself into a seam for me. My nose frothed with blood, and I treated it by swiping a fist underneath it now and again. Stumbling, I found my way out of the bramble patch to sit as soon as I found a fallen log.
Behind me the rattling branches slowed and stopped. Every now and then the wind whisked through them, giving stir to their leaves. The wind stilled, and aside from the bend of a few brambles, there wasn't a sign of my hard landing. A brief wisp of honeysuckle reminded me I wasn't alone.
Restless thunder rumbled across my skin, continuing on through the quiet after the battle, not even the commotion of an angry squirrel broke the silence following the growl of the clouds overhead. When my breathing slowed, I heard nothing at all.
I hauled myself to my feet again. My body felt like it had been dropped into a container of crystal balls while it was being filled, and it was hard to think with the fuzzy feeling between my ears. After a minute which had stretched into many minutes of consideration, I knew I needed to do a healing spell. Even the plainest incantation fumbled on my tongue and I couldn't even feel a stir of it working. I forced myself to say, “Sally sells sea shells by the sea shore,” even though I wondered if that was how it went. Mother's incantation worked this time. The ground spun for a while, then settled. Newfound exhaustion set in, but the haze which had filled my brain receded.
Reason returned, and dread accompanied it. I had no food, worse, no water, my friends and family may or may not be alive somewhere, and I was surrounded by an army of undead monsters. Panic rose from within me. I concentrated on not letting it get the upper hand.
“Right, first things first. Find water, and shelter,” I said. The words violated the peace, like a cough during a moment of silence. When I stood, the ground swayed. But I couldn't stay here. Scouts might trace the portal, and what was more, I could smell that there wasn't any water to be found. A suitable walking stick snapped off the log beneath my heel, and I paused to assess my position. Low ground. The brambles had been in a swampy area, and I doubted I'd find water unless I looked elsewhere. High ground, then. That was where the rocks were, and if it rained, the water would pool in their bowls. If it didn't rain, I should be able to see if there was anything green surrounding a spring.
Lightning cracked overhead, the boom of thunder sending shivers down my spine. I was standing in a timber box. Yes, there had been one fire already, but all it had done was dry out the biggest trees. I hadn't lived in deserts my whole life for nothing. With a set to my jaw, I began walking.
Though I was battered enough to step carefully, I wasn't so far gone as to not think. Stupid, stupid, stupid. Why hadn't I realized about that Unwritten before? Despair fought with guilt, then guilt with anger, and anger with fear. What if the village kicked me out now for good?
Hiking through the Deadlands did wonders for making me feel like crap. Everywhere there was a dead tree, it had been alive before my arrival. It used to have such thick foliage, now it looked like a volcano had erupted. And the chill brought on by the storm sunk my spirits even lower. Still, where there was life, there was hope. I grimaced at the phrase. Who had said it, Mother or Aunt Linnia? Still, there was truth in it.
What did I have in my favor? Being alive. Nothing broken, able to hike or run or even fight, if needed. My magic worked, though I knew it was as worn as I was. I had the spider silk dress which presumably would be warm as well as cool. Maybe it could even work as an impromptu shelter. What else did I have? My mind was too scattered to think on it. My first priority was to find water. Second was to find the others. Maybe I could round up any strays on the way to meeting up with the battalion. They'd seek out water, too.
Challenges to expect came next. Rest was needed but would be hard to get, between watching for the storm and husks and any ill-meaning animals. Climbing the trail was a hazard in itself. Rocks slipped beneath my feet, and the higher I ascended, the steeper the sides became. The storm clouds themselves were a mixed blessing. While it made the air cool, I could also be struck by lightning. Rare, perhaps, but possible, and going to higher ground might not be the wisest course of action from this perspective. My first landmark was to make the ridge. Once I was there, which might take an hour, I guessed, I could survey the
land and pick my next target.
Dust powdered up in a puff as raindrops slapped the trail, then leaves rattled together in quick bursts. My pace remained steady. The rain stopped. My feet trod over the wet splotches on the path. Then the wind swept up the hillside, tilting me, and immediately after it down fell the rain in hard sheets. Hair plastered to my face, chilled, and hungry, I trudged onward as the lightning and thunder snapped all around.
When I reached the ridge the storm had increased. There was no way to see past fifteen feet to any side and only the leveling out of the trail had let me know I was at my destination. Even my magic, tossed about by the elements, felt sore and weary. The spider silk garment was indeed waterproof, but water found its way inside by washing down my exposed skin. To top it off, every place I could think for shelter, the holes in trees, the overhangs of rocks, was soaked or flooded. Using a strip of the spider silk, I had the idea to press out pouches in the hem of my skirt, which I stood with open until they were full and weighing heavy on my frame, then I sealed closed. Careful not to burst the packets, I sat down with my back against a tree, and fell asleep with a hood drawn up over my head.
Swift Magic (The Swift Codex Book 2) Page 25
