by Devri Walls
The Tavean and the group he was with had changed direction, talking amongst themselves.
“King Aimon sent word—the preparations are almost in place,” the one who had killed Alcander’s mother said to his companions as they passed. “Then the Shadow will track down the remaining resistance.”
The others laughed as the Tavean stopped, turning to face Alcander whose angry gaze was still glued to him. “Do you have a problem?”
Alcander’s jaw tightened as his fingers twitched at his sides.
“Hey!” Drustan yelled from behind them. “Are you going to finish what you started, Tavean?” He held out his arms in a challenge.
Alcander turned slowly, his eyes fixating on Drustan in murderous frustration.
“What? You are good with killing women and children, but a Shifter is too much for you?” The way he emphasized “women and children,” Kiora knew exactly what he was doing—reminding Alcander of the stakes.
The Tavean Alcander so desperately wanted to kill laughed before sauntering away to rejoin his friends.
Kiora grabbed his arm. “We are leaving. Now!”
Drustan followed them as she pulled Alcander out of camp. Once over the hill, she threw a bubble a second before she dropped the spell. She and Alcander both grunted, falling to the ground in pain as their faces jerked back into place.
Alcander peeled himself up as he broke the enchantment that had called the evil to them. He gave a reluctant sidelong glance at Drustan. “Thank you.”
“You’re welcome.” With a glint in his eyes, Drustan added, “Do you mind if I apply your ‘thank you’ to all of the other times you should have said it?”
Alcander helped Kiora up. “Yes, I mind.”
Drustan shrugged. “It was worth a try.”
“Your eyes,” Kiora said. “They turned red for a second.”
Alcander looked away. “I wasn’t prepared to see him. It…it broke through.”
“Are you all right now?”
Alcander nodded.
“Are you sure?” Drustan asked. “We can’t show you the entrance to this city if you are going to turn on us.”
“That murderer is still alive, and your head is still attached.” He cocked his head to the side. “Answer your question?”
“Oh, good—Alcander is back. I don’t know what I would have done if he had suddenly started thanking me incessantly. That would have been unbearable.”
“Who is King Aimon?” Kiora asked.
“Aimon is my uncle.” Alcander said, making it very clear that he had omitted the title of “king” on purpose. “It looks like the Shadow is prepared to come out of hiding to help her forces.”
“How long do you think we have?”
“I don’t know. But once the Shadow starts roaming, no one is safe. The barriers will all fall—every hideout will be discovered.”
Kiora turned to the black castle that loomed across the meadow between the village and the lake. “Not every one.”
Drustan came up next to her. “Are you sure?”
“Yes. Nestor sealed the magic with his death. It is immune to her talisman.”
“Well then, what are we waiting for?” Drustan said so cheerily she wanted to smack him.
Kiora reached out for threads. “You are right, Alcander. There is only one thread coming from the castle—an Illusionist.”
“Yes. A powerful one, by the feel of it,” Alcander said.
Another burst of red rose up above them, exploding into tiny bits of bubble-shattering magic.
“If we could get to the turrets, maybe we could figure out where it’s hiding,” Kiora said.
Drustan shifted into a dragon. “Done.” At Alcander’s look, he said, “I will fly low, Prince. I am not stupid.”
With Alcander and Kiora on his back, Drustan skimmed the ground until just before the castle walls where he cut upward and swooped in, landing on top of the tallest tower. Grunting, Drustan pulled back his foot in surprise, looking down at the stone.
“What is it?” Alcander asked, sliding off with Kiora right behind him.
“Nothing. It felt strange for a second.”
“Feels fine to me.”
No sooner had she said it than the tower rolled beneath them, the bricks moving like water. Kiora was knocked off her feet.
The edges of the tower began to grow around them.
“Get on!” Drustan yelled. “Now!”
Alcander threw Kiora on Drustan’s back before climbing up himself. Drustan flew straight up.
“Not so high!” Alcander yelled.
Dropping a little, Drustan hovered. “That is the largest Illusionist I have ever seen.”
‘What are you talking about?” Alcander asked.
“The tower is the Illusionist. The whole thing is the Illusionist.”
“But how…” Kiora trailed off as her eyes took in the massive scope of the illusion below them.
“I knew there were some powerful Illusionists,” Drustan continued. “But this—I wouldn’t have believed it if I hadn’t felt it.”
“That doesn’t make any sense—how did it know we were there? We were bubbled,” Kiora asked.
Drustan laughed. “Because we believed it was real.”
“The tower became solid because of our belief,” Alcander ventured.
“Letting the Illusionist know exactly where we were,” Drustan finished.
“We know what it is now,” Kiora said. “All we have to do is walk through it.”
“Right,” Alcander said slowly, sounding unconvinced.
“What? What’s the matter?”
“It’s too easy,” Drustan said. “We are missing something.”
“We are,” Alcander agreed. “But it doesn’t matter—we aren’t going to figure it out until we go in.”
Kiora’s eyes scanned the horizon. “Drustan, land in front of the main gates and let’s hope the grass is real.”
Drustan set them down a small ways from the gate. “All right,” he said, stretching his wings out. “How would you like to do this?”
“Just take us straight in,” Kiora said.
“Are you ready for this?” Drustan asked.
“I think so.”
Drustan’s giant head swiveled slowly back to look at her. “There is no ‘thinking so’ when dealing with an Illusionist. Need I remind you?”
Taking a deep breath, Kiora stared at the massive stonewalls in front of her. It looked very real. This is just an illusion, she reminded herself. Closing her eyes, she breathed out slowly, focusing. “I’m ready.”
Drustan took them a few feet off the ground before barreling forward. They passed through the wall easily. On the other side, Kiora could see hundreds of tree illusions stretching out in front of them. Behind the trees stood what looked like another wall. Drustan cut through the tree illusions easily. The next second, she was unseated, flying through the air. Drustan roared. Crashing into the ground, Kiora rolled. Pain exploded up through her shoulder.
Frantically, she pushed off the ground. Alcander was a few feet to her right, unconscious. Drustan lay crumpled in front of her inside a large dragon-shaped hole where he had slammed into the ground. One of his wings bent at a horrible angle. She realized with horror that she had dropped the bubble, which meant that all of their threads were headed back to the villages.
Running toward Alcander, Kiora threw a bubble up, shaking him frantically. “Alcander! Alcander!”
His eyes flickered open with a moan. “What happened?”
“I don’t know, but we have to get to Drustan. He’s not bubbled.”
Alcander stumbled to his feet. His eyes were glassy and he shook his head as if to clear it.
Running, Kiora fell next to Drustan’s head, pulling a bubble over the three of them. “Drustan, what happened?”
“Somebody started believing,” he growled, thrashing his head to the side. “That’s what happened.”
Kiora looked to Alcander, who was looking at her.
>
“I didn’t believe,” she protested. “Not even a little bit.”
Alcander’s eyebrows pulled themselves together before he vanished under his own bubble.
“Alcander!” Kiora shouted.
Drustan moaned again. “My wing is broken.”
“What does that mean?” she asked, feeling frantic but unable to do anything.
His eyes rolled up to her. “It is broken, Kiora. What else could it possibly mean?”
“No! I mean, if you shift—can you shift?”
“I can. But it’s going to hurt. And I’ll still have a broken arm.”
“We need Emane,” she whispered to herself. “I should have brought him.”
Alcander reappeared within her bubble, cradling his fist. “It’s only half the Illusionist,” he said grimly.
Drustan turned his head, dropping it back to the ground with a thump. “What?”
Alcander held up his bloody knuckles. “I put my fist through five trees, cleanly. The sixth one was actually a tree.”
Drustan chuckled and then started to laugh before wincing from his broken wing. “Brilliant.”
Kiora looked out over the hundreds of trees and the wall behind it. “How do we know what is real and what’s not?”
“We don’t. That’s the problem.” Alcander said. “Drustan is right—it’s brilliant. We are going to have to walk around the trees until we reach the next wall.”
Drustan started shifting. As he did, a yell of absolute pain bellowed forth. A moment later, he lay gasping, pushing up on one arm as the other hung limply at his side—horribly bowed in the middle.
“Drustan,” Kiora moaned. “Why did you shift?”
Alcander jogged to Drustan’s good side, helping pull him up.
“A dragon is too big to maneuver through the trees.” Drustan grunted, sweat beading across his forehead. “Come on—we have to go. The villages surely felt our threads when we were thrown out of the bubble.”
The three moved as fast as they could, weaving around trees. Kiora kept glancing over at Drustan, whose face was contorted and grew paler with each jolt. When they finally reached the next wall, they looked up and down the large black stone structure. It was nearly identical to the first wall the Illusionist put up, but this one had brown wooden doors every two feet running down the wall as far as the eye could see.
Alcander looked one way and then the other before walking straight forward and slamming his fist into the wall. It connected with a thud. “It’s real,” he said tightly.
The wall stretched up, connecting with the top of the castle. Who knew if that part was real or not? There was no going over it.
Kiora walked forward and grabbed at the door handle, but her hand passed right through. “The door isn’t.”
“Good.” Alcander walked straight through it, the door disappearing in a wisp behind him a second before he ran into a solid wall with a thud. “Mother of Creators!” he swore, backing up.
Kiora’s head snapped up. “They are coming.” A hoard of threads was moving toward them.
Alcander ran at the next door, slamming his shoulder into it. The door stayed as solid as it had started. Grimacing, he pulled at the door. It wouldn’t budge.
“It’s no use,” Drustan said. “This isn’t just brilliant—it’s impenetrable.”
“I will not accept that!”
Drustan looked at him with blood-shot eyes, his hair falling lankly in his face. “Think about it, Alcander. It may be this door, or five doors down—but eventually you won’t be able to believe that you can pass through it anymore. The reality mixed in with the illusion will make you question everything. And you will never really know if it’s truly real or an illusion that turned real because you had a shred of doubt from your aching knuckles.”
The threads were coalescing on all sides of them. Alcander’s head jerked up. Whirling in uncharacteristic panic, he yelled at Kiora, “You didn’t tell me they were all coming!” Alcander hit another door, and then another, yelling out in grief. “We are all dead.”
“No,” Kiora whispered, searching their surroundings. “We have to get in—it’s the only hope we have.” The threads were very close now, nearly within range.
There was really only one thing to do. She had hoped to hold this card just a little bit longer. Reaching under her blouse, she pulled out the talisman. With a deep breath, she jerked the gold mesh off. The oncoming hoard slowed to a stop as the walls of the castle faded. A murmur of confusion went up as they looked for the only thing they had ever known to have the effect they were now feeling—the Shadow.
There were fewer trees in the courtyard now that the Illusionist was unable to produce any, and she was surprised to see large, curved pieces of the outer wall wrapping around them in a circle, large gaps in between each piece. Had they not chosen to fly where they did, Drustan would have suffered far more than a broken wing. The wall they were currently trying to pass through stood in its entirety, although one door remained—located about fifty feet from where they stood. Alcander sprinted toward it with Kiora on his heels. Drustan stumbled as fast as he could, cradling his arm against his chest.
The army seemed to have recovered and was running toward them, their roars echoing through the valley. Some Shifters had already changed into dragon form before she had exposed the talisman and were gaining speed. Kiora cursed the fact that they could remain in their form without magic.
Alcander hurled the door open. “Here!” he yelled, motioning to the others.
Once in, they ran through a courtyard, empty except for one enormous oak tree that Kiora had seen before. Her excitement, however, was quelled by a rush of familiar threads. She skidded to a stop, her hand over her mouth. “No!”
“Kiora, come on!” Alcander shouted.
“My talisman—it just took out Lomay’s protection. I can feel the rebels’ threads, all of them.”
Alcander’s eyes widened. “We have to get through that tunnel before they get to them.”
The first Shifter-dragon cleared the wall, roaring, spraying a stream of fire. Being the only one whose magic was unaffected, Kiora threw the shield, yelling over her shoulder. “Gather together!”
Alcander and Dustan made it under the shield’s protection as two more Shifter- dragons came into view. The three moved as a group toward the tree. Drustan grunted in pain when Alcander jostled against his arm.
A simple shield would not protect them from three dragons. Kiora domed her shield so it arched above them. It kept them completely enclosed as the fiery attack sheeted around them. By the time they reached the tree, the first batch of the enemy poured through the tiny door in the wall.
“Now what?” Alcander shouted to Kiora, who was scanning the tree.
“I…” She reached out, running her fingers over the bark.
‘Kiora!” Alcander yelled.
“She is working on it,” Drustan snapped. “Leave her alone.”
Kiora’s eyes frantically jumped around, trying to find anything that looked familiar. And then, a memory. Not hers, but Nestor’s. Shoving herself against the tree, she pushed the talisman into a knot in the bark, a complicated series of incantations flowing unbidden from her mouth. Every word was new to her—they were not her words at all.
The tree didn’t alter in any fashion, but she knew it was finished. Stepping back, Kiora looked over her shoulder at the oncoming crowd.
“Go!” Kiora said. “Straight in. I will be right behind you. I have to seal this behind us.” Drustan shouldered his way through, falling inside. “You too.” Alcander scowled, but ran into the city.
In a lapse of judgment, Kiora dropped her shield while preparing to seal the doorway. She would have been through in a second, but a quick spurt of dragon fire caught her back and shoulder, licking up her cheek. She screamed, falling forward into the trunk before dropping to the ground, rolling, trying to extinguish her burning clothes and skin. Her vulnerability overpowered the pain and she scrambled back to her f
eet, nausea rolling through her stomach as her body began to shake from shock and the smell of her own burned flesh.
The leader of the group—the Tavean Alcander recognized—stopped, holding his arms out for the others to halt as well, a grin spreading across his face. Kiora’s heart sank. The look of triumph on his face told her everything. He felt the threads of Lomay and his party and had unraveled her plans. In a sick confirmation of Kiora’s worst fears, he yelled out orders and half the pack turned to leave the courtyard.
She would not let this happen. Grunting, she threw a wave that exploded with a bang. Thick white magic tore out in all directions, picking up the armies and rolling them backwards. Had they been able to use magic, a simple shielding spell would probably have defended them. As it stood, they were helpless.
An incoming Shifter-dragon swooped down. Kiora blocked the fire, reaching out as he flew by. She didn’t know much about dragons, but all the time spent on Drustan in the air had given her ample study of a dragon’s wing structure. She had noticed that one section of the wing, where it angled in the middle, looked more fragile than the rest. She fired, hoping it would find its target. Her panic helped fuel the shot. The magic connected, and it broke his wing in one burst. The dragon slammed into the ground and didn’t get up.
She hadn’t defeated them all—she could feel the forces outside the wall heading toward the entrance where Lomay and the others sat in the open. The rest of the Shifter-dragons had also readjusted their course.
She sprinted through the tree into Nestor’s city. She needed to sheath the talisman so Lomay and the others could protect themselves, but she couldn’t until she had sealed this end. There was no way she would survive a fight against the hundreds that remained in the courtyard if they regained their magic.
