by Lisa Smedman
“What’s happened?” Larajin asked, alarmed.
“Watch,” Rylith said.
Larajin did, and saw that the image inside the amber had changed yet again. Instead of the view being fixed at a single point, like a watcher looking down from above, the objects inside the amber seemed to lunge wildly past while the viewpoint constantly changed. A tree appeared, loomed close for a moment, then was gone. A clump of ferns raced up from below—then tumbled away as the view soared up toward the sky like a bird. The angle shifted wildly to avoid a tree branch that suddenly came into view, then a level course once more.
Watching, Larajin realized that the amber was showing the world from the perspective of the feather. Blown by the breeze, tumbling this way and that, it floated out of the forest and into a clearing, then drifted above an expanse of trampled earth that Larajin recognized as Rauthauvyr’s Road. A palisaded wall loomed ahead—and a moving carriage, the passage of which sent the feather spiraling—and the open gates approached, and passed by.
Dizzy, Larajin had to look away for a moment to clear her head. She watched Leifander instead, marveling at his control. He was drawing air in through his nostrils and blowing it out through pursed lips in a constant stream, like a trained musician. Eyes locked on the amber, he shifted his head ever so slightly this way and that, altering the flow and direction of his magical breeze. His brow was furrowed in a look of intense concentration, and a trickle of sweat rolled down his temple and tattooed cheek, eventually dripping from his jaw. He ignored it, his chest rising and falling slowly, hands still fanning the air.
Larajin turned her attention back to the amber. The feather moved through the town, drifting over rooftops and corrals, seeking the road Maalthiir and his men were walking. As it passed over the chimneys of the temple of Gond, the image inside the amber tumbled wildly as a current of hot air from a chimney caught it, and for several heart-stopping moments Larajin thought Leifander had lost control of the feather. When the view steadied, the street zoomed up from below.
Walking along it were six men. Their figures enlarged inside the amber as the feather drifted down toward them. One of the figures—an officer with a scar running in a vertical line down one cheek—looked up as if sensing something was wrong, and Larajin held her breath. Maalthiir, walking beside him, noticed his officer looking up and glanced in the same direction, a look of bloodthirsty anticipation on his face, as if he was expecting the return of the crow that had spied on him earlier.
As Leifander blew out the last of his breath in a rush Maalthiir’s face enlarged, filling the amber completely. Closer still—a square, stubbled jaw—and closer still—tight, cruel lips—and—
Nothing. The amber was empty.
Leifander slumped, closing his eyes. His breathing became rapid and shallow, and his skin paled. Larajin reached for his shoulder, thinking he was going to fall, but then his eyes opened and his back straightened.
“I did it,” he said in a proud voice. “The feather struck Maalthiir full on the lips. It was amazing. Never have I felt so close to the Lady of Air and Wind. I felt like a nestling, enfolded in her powerful wings.”
“And now it’s up to Doriantha,” Larajin said. “May Hanali Celanil and Sune watch over her, and protect her.”
That brought Leifander down to earth.
He gave Rylith a worried look and asked, “Can you see her in the amber?”
The druid spoke a flowing phrase in Elvish. A figure appeared within the amber. It was Doriantha, walking along Rauthauvyr’s Road. Anxiously, Larajin peered over Rylith’s shoulder, watching as Doriantha was challenged at the gate, then allowed to pass through. Doriantha hurried up the road, toward the manor, then up its steps. The view shifted then, showing her entering the great hall. Figures were clustered at the end of it. Maalthiir, his officers, and Lord Ilmeth of Essembra were there. They were involved in an animated discussion, heads close together, but when Doriantha entered, Maalthiir glanced up and the scowl on his face softened. When Doriantha placed a hand above her heart and gave a graceful bow, the scowl melted from his face. A moment later, after beckoning Doriantha forward and listening to her speak, his expression changed to a dreamy smile.
“The spell worked!” Larajin exclaimed with relief.
“It did indeed,” Leifander added a moment later. He too was staring into the amber, watching Larajin’s plan unfold. “You see? Maalthiir’s drawn away from his men and has led Doriantha to a quiet corner to talk. Just look at the desire, burning in his ugly eyes. He’ll be asking her to lay with him in another moment. Yes, there! They’re leaving the hall together.”
With that last comment, Leifander’s voice had dropped to a low growl. Tearing his eyes away from the amber, he leaped from the boulder and began pacing back and forth across the clearing.
Watching him, Larajin suddenly realized something. Her brother had feelings for Doriantha. The elf warrior, in turn, cared for Leifander. Hanali Celanil had blessed them both, though their love had yet to fully blossom.
Larajin offered up a prayer for Doriantha’s safety, imploring the goddesses to give the archer’s budding romance with Leifander time and tranquility in which to blossom. It would be a grim thing indeed if Maalthiir or his officers were to discover Larajin’s plot and Leifander were to lose a second woman he adored to the Red Plumes’s wrath.
Intent upon her prayer, Larajin at first didn’t pay any attention to Rylith’s quick intake of breath, but then the druid spoke in a strangled whisper.
“No—what was Doriantha thinking? She has stabbed him!”
“Who’s been stabbed?”
A glance into the amber gave Larajin the answer. She saw Maalthiir staggering into the great hall, hands clasped to a stomach that was leaking red. The officer with the scarred face sprang immediately to his side, easing him to the ground and laying hands upon his wound, probably invoking a healing spell. In that same instant, Doriantha came into view.
Leifander, who had joined Larajin and Rylith in peering into the amber, let out an anguished cry.
“What is she doing—why doesn’t she flee? She’ll be killed!”
Doriantha was pointing behind her, at the hallway she’d just emerged from. Two of Maalthiir’s men seized her—strangely, Doriantha did nothing to resist them—while the remaining three ran in the direction she’d been pointing. After a few moments they reappeared, forcing two captives ahead of them at sword point.
Rylith let out a relieved sigh as the two men holding Doriantha released her and gave quick, apologetic bows.
“All is well. It appears that it was not Doriantha who attacked Maalthiir, but someone else—two humans. My guess is they are Sembian spies.”
“Sembians?” Larajin asked in átense, low voice.
A sense of premonition gripping her, she peered more intently at the amber in Rylith’s hands. The two captives were on their knees, one with blood running from a gash in his leg, the other holding his head as if he’d been struck. As Larajin watched, their hands were forced behind their backs, and bound.
Maalthiir, his bloody wound stanched by magic, sat up groggily and said something. The officer who had been tending him nodded, then strode over and slapped the captive with the wounded leg. He barked an order over his shoulder, obviously relaying Maalthiir’s orders. One of the Red Plumes bent his bow, stringing it.
The second captive—the one who had been holding his head—turned to see what was happening. As he did, Larajin recognized his face. Suddenly, she knew what would come next—she’d seen it in her vision.
“Goddess, no!” she said in a high, tight voice. “That captive—it’s Tal. They’re about to execute him!”
Heart pounding, Larajin winged her way toward the town as fast as she could fly. Fear lent an urgency to each stroke of her wings, and determination made her ignore the oldiers in the streets below who were pointing up at her and shouting. An arrow sang past her, barely a pace away, but she only realized the soldiers below were shooting at her when
a second arrow, closer than the first, snagged her wing and sent her tumbling. Furiously, she beat her wing to loosen it from her feathers, then recovered and flew on.
A short distance behind her, a small black shape trailed in her wake. Leifander had skinwalked only a heartbeat or two after Larajin did, but whether he meant to help her or to try to stop her was unclear. Nor did it matter. The only thing Larajin could think of was Tal.
Swooping down to street level, she flew toward Ilmeth’s Manor. With a rush of relief, she saw that Tal was still alive. Two Red Plumes had dragged him out onto the street, and were trying to force the struggling Tal to his knees. The archer—one of the Red Plumes—stood a few paces away, an arrow nocked but the bow held loosely at his side. The other captive lay on his face in the street in a pool of blood, the point of an arrow protruding from his back. The soldiers threw Tal face-first onto the ground beside the body, then took a quick pace back. The archer raised his bow as Tal struggled to rise.
Howling her fury, Larajin dived at the archer. She raked him with all four feet, claws tearing at his face. Above her, she heard a hoarse caw, and from behind her came a stranger sound—the snarl of an angry dog. She risked a glance back, and saw Tal rising to his feet, getting ready to run. There was no time to see if he made it, however. She had to avoid the archer, who flailed at her, cursing.
Larajin scratched his arm, but her claws slid harmlessly off the thick leather bracer that protected it. His fist connected with her head, knocking her spinning through the air. She crashed into a wooden rail in front of the building opposite Ilmeth’s Manor, and felt something crack in one wing, then she fell heavily to the ground. Shaky, unable to rise, she looked up and saw the archer aiming his arrow at her.
So this is how I’m going to die, she thought, vision blurring from the pain of her injured wing. Silently, she began to pray. Goddess enfold my soul in your love, I—
A heartbeat before the archer loosed his arrow, a large dark shape streaked up the street. Leaping into the air, it struck the archer full in the chest, knocking him down.
The other two soldiers—Ilmeth’s men—were also in trouble. Leifander, still in crow form, had landed on the rooftop above Larajin and was flapping his wings furiously. The blast of magical wind he summoned caught the two full on, tumbling them backward like blown leaves against the steps of Ilmeth’s Manor. Inside the manor, Red Plumes officers shouted orders, drew steel, and tried to join the fight. The wind howled in through the open doorway, driving them back.
At last able to rise to her feet but still unable to straighten her injured wing, Larajin looked around. She saw no sign of Tal—she prayed that meant he’d escaped—but she did finally get a good look at her savior. It was an enormous wolf that stared back at her with bright green eyes. Amazingly, the wolf reared up and walked like a man on its two hind legs. Bending at the waist, he reached down with paws that looked like elongated, hairy hands, picked her up, and gently cradled her to his chest, then he ran.
The pain of her injured wing nearly made Larajin faint. Gentle though he was, the wolf-creature couldn’t help but jostle her as he ran. Larajin had a dim sense of buildings flashing past, then a gate, and shouting soldiers, and arrows singing past. Head lolling, she happened to look up and saw Leifander flying low and hard after them, then trees were on either side and the wolf-creature’s run became a series of leaps and zigzags as he made his way deeper into the forest.
The pain in her wing was intense, all consuming. Larajin tried to cast a healing spell, but the prayer would not come to her lips. She found herself unable to maintain concentration, and she began slipping out of tressym form. Her torso and limbs elongated, fur and feathers shrank back into her skin, and her injured wing became an injured left arm. The wolf-creature, suddenly finding his burden increased tenfold, staggered under the increased weight and nearly dropped her. Sagging to his knees, he lowered her to the forest floor.
Behind him, Leifander settled onto a branch, then hopped along it, his head cocked.
The wolf-creature crouched for a moment in silence, still panting from his run. Then, in a voice that was part growl, part yip, he barked out a single word.
“Larajin?”
Larajin peered up at the creature, whose face was thrown into shadow by the moonlight that streamed down from above. The wolf lifted his head to glance up at Leifander, and she got a better look at his features. They were those of a wolf indeed, with pointed ears and a mouth filled with sharp white fangs, but there was something about those green eyes, the way they sparkled with intelligence—and recognition. Larajin suddenly realized that she was looking not at some strange forest creature but at a product of a magical contagion that had shifted an ordinary man into a werewolf—and not just any man.
“Tal?” she asked.
The werewolf nodded.
Behind him, Leifander had shifted back to elf form. He hopped lightly down from the branch.
“I didn’t know your brother could skinwalk,” he said.
Tal spun in place and snarled, exposing teeth and claws. Larajin reached out to stop him with her good arm—then gasped as a fresh wave of pain wracked her body. Tal, however, must have recognized Leifander, for his hands relaxed, then dropped to his side. He grinned, tongue lolling.
“Leifander,” Tal said. “I see my sister found you.”
Leifander dipped his head in a slight bow.
Dizzy with pain, Larajin was also reeling from having learned Tal’s secret. Suddenly, all of Tal’s strange ways made sense: his constant obsession with shaving, his monthly bouts with the “flu” that supposedly confined him to bed, his wolfish appetite, and his reluctance to handle the silver dagger he’d given her—all were explained by the fact that he was infected with lycanthropy.
Larajin hadn’t been the only one in the Uskevren household with a secret. Maybe it was time to share hers.
“Tal,” she began. “There’s something I…”
Moving sent a shock of pain through her injured arm. Before she did anything else, she needed to heal it. Cradling the arm against her chest, she touched her locket and began to pray to both goddesses. Healing a cracked bone wasn’t easy.
“Sune and Hanali Celanil, grant me your blessing. Lend me a little of your healing magic.” The locket began to warm under her fingers, and a hint of floral scent rose from it. “Heal my—”
She gasped as a sharp pain lanced through her foot. It felt as though something sharp had gotten inside the boot, and Larajin had trod upon it. She recognized it as the sharp sting of the thorn.
Tal kneeled by her side, his wide green eyes brimming with concern. “What’s wrong, Larajin? Your face has gone ashen.”
Leifander was a heartbeat behind him. He too kneeled at Larajin’s side. “Isn’t it obvious? Her arm’s injured. Larajin, do you want me to try to—”
“Get away from me, both of you,” Larajin gasped, looking wildly around the forest and groping for the magic dagger in its sheath at her hip. “It’s Drakkar. He’s coming for—”
Before she could complete her warning, a bolt of magical energy hissed through the night. Streaking a line of silvery sparks, it wound its way in a tight spiral around Tal’s torso, solidifying into a sparkling coil that pinned his arms against his sides. Howling, he leaped to his feet, but the coil of energy had rooted itself in the ground like a vine. It tightened around his body, creasing his skin, and the smell of burning flesh filled the air. Crashing to the ground, Tal lay, panting, eyes wide.
“It’s … silver.” he gasped. “It burns like … poison.”
Leifander had reacted swiftly, braid flying out behind as he whipped around to face the spot from which the magical attack had originated. In a voice tight with urgency, he began chanting the words to a spell in the flowing language of the forest elves.
Speedy though his reaction had been, it wasn’t fast enough. A voice in the woods barked three quick, chittering words, and Leifander’s prayer suddenly stopped. His eyes glazed and his tatto
oed face fell into a slack-jawed expression. A moment later, he started to drool. He stared stupidly around, a confused look on his face. His lips moved, trying to form words, but all that came out was a soft grunt.
As soon as she had seen the magic energy streaking toward Tal, Larajin began to pray. The glow around the locket intensified, and the smell of Hanali’s Heart filled the air. Larajin abandoned her healing spell. Instead she beseeched her goddesses for one of the first spells they’d ever bestowed upon her.
As Drakkar stepped out of the forest, she shouted at him with all of the power she could muster: “Flee!”
Though the floral smell intensified and the glow from the locket became as bright as a small campfire, nothing happened. Drakkar stared down at her, unperturbed, then flicked his fingers in her direction. She found herself unable to move, save for blinking and breathing. She resisted his spell with all of her willpower, but though sweat broke out on her brow and her fingers trembled, her body remained rigid. Her jaw was locked shut and her lips wouldn’t even twitch. There would be no more prayers. She looked wildly around, heart hammering in her chest, silently hoping that Rylith, Doriantha—or even Goldheart—would appear to rescue her.
They didn’t.
Blinking back tears of frustration, Larajin stared up at Drakkar. Was his resistance to magic really so strong that he had resisted the combined power of two goddesses? Had her spells failed her?
No, she told herself. The floral scent of Hanali’s Heart still hung in the air, and though the glow from the locket was dimming, Larajin could still feel the warmth of Sune’s magic pulsing from it. The goddesses hadn’t denied Larajin their blessing—they’d just altered the form she’d expected it to take, just as they had at Lake Sember, when they’d granted Larajin a spell that enabled her to breathe water instead of to walk upon it.
They wanted her to cast a different spell, but which?
