Night Elves of Ardani: Book Three: Invocation

by Nina K. Westra

  “Ash,” she muttered.

  “Jump?” Aruna said.

  “Yes.”

  They jumped.

  She tried for a controlled slide and failed almost immediately. Branches tore at her skin and thorns stuck in her clothes. She rolled to a stop at the bottom of the slope, somehow still holding onto Aruna. He winced, putting a hand to his head.

  An arrow stabbed into the undergrowth beside them. Novikke flinched and searched for cover. Another arrow narrowly missed Aruna’s arm, and Novikke twisted aside as another shot into the leaves beside her. They were still a short sprint away from the trees.

  Then a fireball shot out of the woods behind her and landed in the middle of the soldiers at the top of the hill. There was a chorus of frightened shouts, and the archers scattered. Another fireball followed it, and then another, and then the soldiers had all disappeared behind cover.

  Aruna twisted toward the source of the fireballs. “Watch what you’re doing!”

  Neiryn was posted up in the shadow of a atrophied tree. He looked at his fingernails. “I think you meant to say, ‘Thank you for saving my life, Neiryn! I’m totally helpless without you, as usual!’ ”

  Novikke pulled Aruna to his feet and hurried to the cover of the trees. By then Aruna was stumbling on every other step, and it seemed like just keeping himself upright was an effort.

  “How do you always manage to turn up just when I need you?” Novikke said to Neiryn.

  “It’s a skill. And you’re welcome.” He looked Novikke up and down, as if checking for damage. “You were gone longer than we expected. Please tell me you’ve found a way to fix this.”

  Novikke exchanged an uncertain look with Aruna. “We’ll find out soon. I need to get to the ruins.”

  “Then get moving. I’ll hold them off.” He shot another fireball in the soldiers’ direction.

  Aruna grabbed his wrist. “Stop! The forest is weakened. You’ll burn it down.”

  Neiryn gave him a dark look that bordered on sympathetic. “If those Ardanians kill us before we can fix it, it won’t matter anymore, will it?”

  Aruna reluctantly let go of him. He was right.

  “I’ll be careful,” Neiryn said. Aruna raised an eyebrow, unconvinced, and Neiryn smiled.

  “Come on.” Novikke pulled him toward the ruins.

  She’d taken hardly a step when a group of figures appeared, out of nowhere, at the edge of the white stone in front of them.

  In the moonlight, Novikke could see Vissarion holding onto a disheveled Kadaki, and three others standing beside them with swords drawn. For a few seconds they struggled to get their bearings, then they spotted Novikke and the others. She ducked down a little lower, fearing more archers.

  “They have Kadaki,” Neiryn said quietly.

  They’d forced her to transport them there with magic. Her hair was mussed and her hands were cuffed together. Vissarion let go of her, only for one of the others to take hold of her and bring a knife to her throat. She shook her hair from her face, looking more angry than afraid.

  Vissarion took a step toward them, lowering his sword a little. “It’s over, Novikke. Surrender. I don’t want to have to kill you. Your elf friends, too. If they give up peacefully now, we won’t kill them.”

  Neiryn made an offended sound.

  “I’m not inclined to believe that,” Novikke called.

  He shook his head. “I can’t let you help the night elves, Novikke. This is war. There’s no room for softheartedness.”

  “We’re not at war with the night elves, you asshole.”

  “Of course we are. We’ve just never been able to fight them fairly until now.”

  “If you let the forest die, there will be repercussions all across Ardani and beyond. The land will sicken.”

  “Sacrifices are a part of war.”

  “Not sacrifices like this,” Novikke said, almost begging. Her voice was beginning to quake slightly. “This is too far, Vissarion.”

  The soldiers behind them were following them down the slope, carrying swords and bows. They were boxed in. Aruna couldn’t fight. Neiryn wouldn’t attack them while Kadaki was held hostage. Thala was somewhere behind them, maybe still too cowardly to fight with them in earnest.

  Vissarion came closer. “Come out, all of you, or I’ll order them to shoot.”

  There was nowhere to go. There was no hope.

  Novikke’s heart pounded. She put her back against a tree. Panic flooded over her. She surrendered to it. What was the point of fighting?

  “Novikke,” Aruna whispered. He’d noticed immediately. Of course he had.

  She shook her head, and her tense neck muscles resisted the movement. Her throat was closing. She couldn’t breathe, and her skin burned, and she had to run somewhere but there was nowhere to go.

  “You can do this. Come on,” he said gently.

  “I can’t.” He was going to die. All the Varai were going to die. She’d failed. Fear clutched her heart in a grasp as hard and cold as iron. Gods, what a fool Ravi was for choosing her for this.

  Vissarion gave a command, and bowstrings thumped behind them. Novikke flinched. There was a flash of fire, and a lot of commotion. Aruna pulled Novikke aside, putting himself between her and the archers as they ducked behind the tree.

  He clasped her hands and bent to force her to meet his eyes. “Novikke. You’re all right. You can do this. Would I lie to you?”

  She just shook her head.

  Aruna’s face fell. He held onto her. “You promised me. Remember?” There was a tremor in his voice. After a beat, his eyes went to her hands, and he frowned. He held up her own hand in front of her eyes. “Look.”

  The inky stain was still on her skin, and now black vapor was floating slowly off her fingertips. Novikke stared at it.

  “She’s still with you,” Aruna whispered, bringing her hand close to his chest. “She won’t let you fail.”

  She kept looking at her hand, tucked between Aruna’s. Maybe the magic flowing in and over her skin should have frightened her. But instead, it comforted her. She felt those eyes on her again, and this time they held no malice. It was a warm hand on hers, a motherly word of reassurance, an infusion of strength. Was this what the Varai felt when Ravi’s gaze fell upon them?

  “You have to run,” Aruna said.

  She looked up at him.

  Run. Without him. He wouldn’t be able to keep up.

  “I can’t,” she said.

  His voice took on a warning tone. “Novikke, you promised me. Run. Get to the ruins and fix this. Ravi is with you.”

  “I—” She trembled, unable to shake the impression of invisible walls closing in around her. What if she let go of him and he never woke up again?

  “Go.” He squeezed her hand hard and gave a weak smile. “I’ll see you again soon.”

  And then he let go of her hand.

  She reached for him, but he had already dropped to the ground and gone still.

  Asleep. Or dead. She was too frightened to check to find out which one. She stopped breathing. A dark ocean of despair swirled around her, pulling her down. She stared at him, frozen.

  “Novikke!” someone said. She looked up, drawn out of the darkness.

  Neiryn looked down at Aruna, alarmed, then at Novikke. “Go!”

  She looked down at her hand, watching the vapor curling off it, and something warm and strong grew inside her, pressing against the Panic and pushing it away.

  She wasn’t alone. She had the spirit of a goddess with her. And she had a task to complete.

  She turned and ran through the trees toward the ruins.

  She crashed through the brush, vaulting over a log and continuing without slowing down. Branches whipped her and tore at her skin. Vissarion flinched as she passed him, shouting something that she wasn’t paying enough attention to understand. His sword flashed toward her and grazed fabric, putting a rip in her cloak.

  She angled to the side of the group, trying to circle around
them before they could react, but they moved to block her. She swung her sword wildly, hitting nothing but forcing a few of them back.

  Someone moved in behind her, and she dodged sideways. Something hit her side, and she cried out. She felt warm blood dripping down her hip. She whirled to face the attacker and swung until she hit something. As her blade cut into flesh, she felt the wound at her side healing itself.

  Someone pulled at her cloak and she fell, landing in the dirt on her back. Vissarion stood over her. His sword shone above her in the moonlight. He opened his mouth to say something, and Novikke’s hand tingled with the unmistakable energy of magic.

  Before he could speak, a cloud of black, like ink in water, billowed up from her hand and engulfed him. He jumped, trying to wave it away. Novikke saw his mouth open as he tried to shout, but no sound came out.

  She scrambled to her feet and kept running, leaving Vissarion cringing and clutching at his throat. Another soldier reached for her, and another rush of blackness shot out of her hand and shoved him back.

  White stone appeared beneath her feet as she ran. The obelisk at the center of the ruins towered ahead. Shouts rang out behind her. She heard Neiryn yell something, and a flash of flame illuminated the ruins.

  She didn’t stop. She didn’t turn around. She couldn’t turn around.

  She skidded to a stop at the obelisk. The center of the ruins. She’d reached the place where this had all started—where Theros’s device had opened the well of magic in the ruins and set the forest on a path toward extinction.

  “Now what?” she asked the air breathlessly.

  Something quivered within her as if trying to escape. She didn’t know how to release it. She dropped her sword and knelt on the stones, gripping her wrist.

  “Come on,” she whispered to it. “Do something.”

  Footsteps hit the stone and pounded toward her. She looked up, and soldiers were approaching. Vissarion had freed himself of shadow. Behind them, there were more flashes of fire. She saw Neiryn, and then Kadaki wielding her magic alongside him as they fought the incoming group of archers and swordsmen. In the jumble of figures beneath the trees she spotted Thala, sword up, holding back two of the soldiers.

  And Aruna—he was the only one she didn’t see.

  She grasped the wrist of her marked hand, willing it to do whatever it was supposed to do. “Please,” she said. “Please, do something.”

  On an impulse, she raised her hands and pressed them against the obelisk, beseeching.

  For a moment, nothing happened. And then a faint golden light, like the glow of the tree in the temple, grew beneath her fingers.

  Suddenly, as if a dam had been broken, an incredible force pulled at her, sucking the air from her lungs. She would have shouted in fear if she’d had the breath to make a sound.

  Black fog and golden light poured out of her, rushing into the air in a torrent of darkness and lightning. The power and size of it was overwhelming. Kneeling there in the middle of all of that magic, she was a castaway’s raft in a stormy sea, and it was all she could do to keep herself upright and conscious.

  She gasped as the pulling sensation slowed, then snapped, breaking her connection to the obelisk. Finally released, she stumbled backward. The stones on the ground were glowing, giving off the same life-warmth she’d felt from the tree in Vondh Rav. The tornado of blackness was still growing, getting higher and more solid. The earth shook beneath her feet.

  Vissarion and the others had stopped running toward her and were backing away instead, gaping up at the growing shadow-thing in horror. Behind them, the fighting had stopped, and Neiryn and Kadaki and Thala were staring alongside the same soldiers who had just been shooting at them.

  Novikke backed into the trees at the edge of the ruins. The glow on the stones was spreading now, painting veins of light in a spiderweb across the ruins and beyond.

  The blackness was growing tall and thin, into a trunk with four limbs—into a humanoid shape.

  “Five above,” Novikke whispered. The vapor condensed into the shape of a woman, hundreds of feet tall and pitch black, with billowing hair and robes that floated in wind that wasn’t there. Her face was perfect, flat and blank like a statue’s, until she opened a pair of glowing, pupilless eyes.

  The ground stopped shaking. An eerie silence fell over the ruins, like an invisible snowfall had dampened the sound. The avatar of Ravi loomed over them, unmoving. There was something terrifyingly uncanny about it—that such a large thing could be so silent.

  Ravi’s head turned, the movement smooth and slow, and looked directly down at Novikke.

  Her blood ran cold. Was this the part where she was punished for trespassing in Kuda Varai? For desecrating the temple in Vondh Rav and taking a part of a goddess that didn’t belong to her?

  She dropped to her knees, feeling that it was the most appropriate gesture, but she couldn’t tear her eyes away from Ravi’s. Those pale, luminescent eyes pulled at hers, magnetic and terrifying and beautiful. The goddess’s face remained expressionless, and Novikke could only guess at what she was thinking.

  Ravi slowly turned her gaze to Vissarion and the other soldiers. They drew back in fright. Vissarion raised his sword, which shook in his quivering grip.

  Novikke’s heart stuttered. Ravi was going to destroy them. This was an outcome Novikke could not have predicted. She’d never intended for anyone to die.

  Ravi raised an ethereal hand, and the soldiers flinched. Black mist rose from the earth itself, shrouding them. Novikke waited for them to scream in pain or collapse dead, but none of that happened. Through the darkness, she watched their blades and armor dissolve, as if the black vapor were acid eating away at the metal.

  Ravi took a slow step forward, blackness swirling around her, and the disarmed soldiers scattered out of her way. She lifted a hand again, waving it over the trees where Neiryn and the others hid. Neiryn had dropped to the ground, bowing his head, and had pulled Kadaki down with him. He looked up, ashen, as Ravi’s shadow fell over them.

  The rest of the soldiers shouted and ran as tendrils of shadow reached for them. Bows and swords and chest plates dissolved into dust.

  Ravi watched the terrified humans for a moment longer, her thoughts and intentions obfuscated. Then she turned and walked into the forest, towering twice as high as the tallest parts of the canopy. She moved with the silent grace of a shadow, disturbing neither the trees nor even the grass beneath her feet.

  Where she walked, trees stretched taller and thicker, gaining years’ worth of growth in moments. Patches of dead, gnarled branches straightened and sprouted vibrantly black leaves. The spiderweb of glowing lines growing from the center of the ruins followed her, bringing life where they went.

  A light drew Novikke’s attention to the tree above her head. Veins of gold traced up its trunk and along branches. Dry leaves unfurled. The entire tree grew lush and verdant again.

  A hand touched her arm.

  She turned. Aruna stood beside her. His eyes glowed blue with inner light, and she swore she could see sparks of that golden tree-light in them.

  She reached out and crushed him to her chest, squeezing her eyes shut against tears. “Gods, I thought you were…”

  “I’m all right.”

  “Don’t ever do that to me again.”

  “I did try to stay awake. It didn’t work.”

  She pulled back to look at him. “I mean don’t let go of me again.”

  He opened his mouth to argue, then closed it again, glancing away guiltily.

  “I’m sorry,” he said after a moment. He raised his hands to her face, wiping a stray tear away. “Don’t be upset. I wasn’t worried. I knew you’d wake me up again.”

  She hugged him. She never wanted to let him go again.

  She pulled away just enough to turn her head and watch Ravi recede into the darkness.

  “She’s incredible,” Novikke said. Aruna stared with her, his arms still wrapped around her. They watched the giant f
igure until she blended entirely into the darkness, though even then, Novikke could sense her presence in the distance.

  Everyone exchanged bewildered, uncomfortable looks. Vissarion brushed dust from his jacket and glanced up at Novikke, looking torn between angry disappointment and lingering fear. Thala and the other Ardanians shot suspicious looks at Neiryn and Kadaki, who shot them right back, but no one seemed interested in fighting anymore.

  Novikke sagged, suddenly realizing how tired she was.