A Darkness Forged in Fire (29 page)

Alwyn backed away. "I'm not drinking blood, I don't
care where it came from."

Irkila pursed her lips and called out to another elf nearby. After a short exchange, she turned back to Alwyn with a smile on her face.
"My use of your language is not as precise as it could be. I believe you call this
‘sap.'"

Alwyn let out a breath and held out his hand to accept the gourd. Other elves were offering the rest of Three Section similar gourds, so it couldn't be that bad. He removed the bark plug from the top of the gourd and took a drink. The sap, and Alwyn was sure it was more than just that, was cool and fresh, a wonderful mix of sweet and tang. Unlike the drake sweat Yimt preferred, this immediately made him feel better without trying to burn a hole in his stomach. He tried to hand the gourd back to Irkila, but she shook her head.

"Keep it and drink from it when you have need. We will
not rest until we reach our destination."

"Thanks," Alwyn said. He walked over to where the others were standing.

"I feel twenty years younger!" Yimt said, rubbing a sleeve across his beard as he took another drink from his gourd.
"Mix in a bit of twelve-year-old Sala brandy and you'd have the perfect elixir
for what ails you. Probably sell it for quite a coin, too."

Inkermon still held his gourd in his hands, not yet taking a drink.

"If they were going to poison you, they would have done it by now," Yimt said, motioning with a thumb toward the elves.
"Drink it."

Inkermon shook his head and held the gourd out to Yimt.
"No spirits except the grace of the Creator shall pass into my body."

He half-expected Yimt to knock Inkermon flat, but instead Yimt just smiled and took the gourd.
"You better keep up or you'll have a gullet full of arrows in your backside along with his grace. Teeter, Scolly, you watch the right side, Ally and me will take the left. The saint can keep an eye to the sky for divine intervention. Them rakkes are still out there, and so is Kritton…and some other creatures, too," he added, nodding at Alwyn.
"Odds are these elves will see them long before we do, but you keep looking
anyway."

Irkila reappeared and motioned for them to follow her. Alwyn put his shako on his head and then turned back to make sure they hadn't left anything behind. The rock in the clearing was bare. Satisfied, he started after Irkila and then remembered the black arrows. Before he could ask he saw them sticking out of the top of Yimt's knapsack.

"They'll see the arrows," he said, grabbing Yimt by the arm and bending down to whisper in his ear.

Yimt paused in the middle of putting a pinch of crute in his mouth.
"Who do you think gave them to me? Ally, I know how to mind my manners among the
fey folk."

"They gave them to you? Why?"

"Miss Red Owl said something about never leaving a
weapon on a battlefield."

"She said that?" Alwyn asked.

Yimt shrugged his shoulders. "Well, that's the gist of it. There was something about dark magic and perversion of nature and the like, but it all adds up to the same thing; don't
leave a weapon around for your enemy to find and use against you."

Alwyn couldn't argue with that logic, but he suspected there was probably a lot more to it.

He looked ahead and saw that the elves were already through the clearing and disappearing into the woods. Irkila motioned for them to hurry. He lengthened his stride, surprised at how well he felt. For someone who had just been shot by an arrow, and probably a cursed one at that, he was keeping up. The elves of the Long Watch could teach the army surgeons a thing or two, though he couldn't really imagine a human doctor using leaves and moss.

"Besides," Yimt continued, setting off at a slow trot while readjusting the bandage under his shako with one hand,
"I think she might be a bit sweet on me. Did you hear how she called me Warm
Breeze?"

To his credit, Alwyn nodded and said nothing, wondering whether it was worth telling Yimt that the elf had politely suggested he was full of hot air.

B
odies weren't supposed to have trees growing out of them.

Five soldiers of the Thirty-fifth Foot lay sprawled in and around the mud-walled hut they'd commandeered as a forward outpost on the western bank of the river guarding the route toward Luuguth Jor. Each was impaled by a black sapling of a type of tree Konowa had only ever seen from a great distance until now.

It was late afternoon, and the Iron Elves were still a good two-hour march away from the village and the tiny fortress, but Konowa figured that even if they were only two minutes away it wouldn't matter. Luuguth Jor would be a forest of death.

Storm clouds threatened, but for the moment the sun did its best to burn everything beneath it, and the smell of the dead was strong. Most curiously, however, no flies buzzed around the bodies.

Konowa bent over in the saddle. The trees were excreting a dark ichor that ran over the deformed limbs and dripped off steel-colored leaves.

"What is this?" Lorian asked, kneeling beside one of the dead soldiers and reaching out a gloved hand toward the black sapling that grew out of his chest.

"A new forest for Her," Konowa said.

Lorian's hand froze just above the tree. "Then the Shadow Monarch really is behind all this," he said, looking up at Konowa and then at his ruined ear.

Konowa ignored his stare. He kicked his feet out of the stirrups and jumped off Zwindarra, throwing the reins over the horse's neck, giving him a pat on the withers, and telling him to stay. He walked to where Lorian was examining the body.

It was a corporal, the silver stripes on his jacket sleeve still visible through the mud—and blood—that covered his uniform. He crouched by the body, silently cursing as his knee tried to buckle beneath him.

"It's a
sarka har
," Konowa said, recognizing the twisted wood at once,
"a blood tree." His father had told him many times of the High Forest and the fell magic that sustained the trees that fed on life.

"Do you think this happened to the scouts?" Lorian asked, voicing a fear that had been building in Konowa from the moment they came upon the scene.

"If they followed the river and were attacked, we would have seen this," he replied, pointing to the tree.
"Either they are still ahead of us or they took a different route. The dwarf's a cagey one—I wouldn't count them out just yet." But Konowa wasn't really sure he believed Arkhorn could save his section from an evil like this.

"I picked them," Lorian said, standing up suddenly, his voice quavering.
"I sentenced them to this fate."

"You've been in battle before—you've given orders and
seen men die." "But not like this! What's happening to them?"

Konowa looked more closely at the body of the corporal. The large vein in his neck pulsed slowly, as if the heart still beat, but he knew better.
"The tree will feed on the blood of the victim, drawing sustenance until it has
consumed it. Whether it also feeds on the soul, I do not know."

That was too much for Lorian. "The
soul
! We have to stop it." He lunged forward to grab the sapling, but Konowa caught him by the arm and restrained him. When Lorian stepped back Konowa let go, then reached out with both his hands and grabbed the trunk. Every midnight fear, every chilling tale told in the dark hours when he was a child, raced through his veins as the cool ichor oozed between his fingers. And then came the anger.

Konowa's rejection in the birthing meadow of the Wolf Oaks flashed in his mind and he clenched the sapling tighter. The acorn against his chest surged with cold fury, infusing his body with its energy. The constant murmur of life evaporated, replaced by the anguished cries of the dead soldier and the voracious hunger of the sapling. Each sensed his presence and dug its need into his mind. Konowa grunted and pulled the tree out, the body jerking as if the strings to a puppet had been cut. Black, clotted earth clung to the roots, which wriggled about in vain trying to find something to latch on to. The smell of death grew worse. The voices in his head grew louder. The fire inside him burned colder still.

Konowa squeezed the trunk harder and forced the frost fire into the sapling. The soldier's screams drowned as the sapling absorbed the burning cold like a sponge, but frost soon began to sparkle along its leaves, and it, too, began to scream. Black flames danced along its length, leaping from branch to leaf, consuming it.

When there was little more than ash, Konowa threw it to the ground, gasping for air. He looked at his hands. The ichor had burned off, leaving them impossibly clean. The voices were gone, the unending murmur of life rushing back into the void.

"Major, are you all right?" Lorian asked, laying a hand on his shoulder. He immediately withdrew it with a shout, his glove covered in hoar frost.

Konowa caught his breath and looked up. "I'm fine. I guess it was cursed after all," he lied, looking back at the pile of ash. Already the heat of the day was returning to his skin, and he wiped a sleeve across his forehead.

"What happened? What does it mean?" Lorian asked, mesmerized by the smoking ash.

"Nothing of importance!" the Prince called out, riding up to them at a canter and bringing his suddenly skittish mount to a halt by sawing back hard on the reins. The horse danced about, refusing to settle. The whites of its eyes showed and the Prince had to constantly pull the reins to keep it from bolting.
"I will not have soldiers of the Empire spooked like dumb horses by these things!" he said, finally reaching forward to slap his mount between the ears with the end of the reins.
"These men were killed by the rebels. Whatever sorcery is at work is ancillary and of no consequence, and that is all the troops need to know. Our primary goal is the Star." The Prince looked back to the column of troops marching toward them.

Konowa rose, gingerly stretching his leg. The sensation of frost fire pouring through his hands made them shake, and he pressed them firmly against his thighs.

"With all due respect, sir," Konowa said, "the men are not stupid. They have a fairly good idea what we're about, and what we might be facing. I always found it better to level with them. They fight better when they know why." Not that he would tell them everything.

The horse danced around in a circle before the Prince got it under control again. He brought it back close to Konowa and leaned down from his saddle until it appeared he would topple right out of it.
"All they need to know is that I am the colonel of this regiment and the Prince of Calahr. My orders will be obeyed or they will swing." He sat up straight again in the saddle.
"The rebels will pay for this," he said loudly, so that the passing soldiers might hear. Lowering his voice, he continued.
"There's no time to bury the bodies. Uproot the trees, put everything in the hut, and burn it all.
Now
."

Konowa silently cursed Marshal Ruwl and his father for making him nursemaid this fool. The urge to reach up and grab the Prince from his saddle and burn him instead flashed through Konowa, but he fought it—barely.

"Yes, sir, right away." He saluted and watched the Prince take off at a gallop as the horse tore away from the macabre scene as fast as it could.

"You heard His Highness," Konowa said, making no attempt to hide his anger and his contempt. He motioned for Lorian to look after the body of the corporal while he moved to the next tree.

It was the same each time. The cold would surge in Konowa and the sapling would try to absorb it, while the soul of the dead soldier cried out in fear and anguish. Each time, both were consumed, and it got easier to focus the energy. He was about to burn the hut in the same manner when he sensed Lorian's presence behind him. There was no threat, yet Konowa grew colder as the frost fire raced through his veins. It was as if the world was a blazing white sheet of snow with red slashes of life staining it. The need to purify it, purify all of it, clawed its way up inside Konowa until he could think of nothing else. He turned.

Lorian stared at him with wide eyes and an open mouth. He was holding one of the razor-edged leaves in his bare hand. Frost crawled along the leaf's surface, sparkling like black diamonds. And then the same consuming flame that burned the saplings flared up, and a moment later the leaf was ash, and Lorian's hand, like Konowa's, showed no injury.

"What have you done to us?" Lorian whispered, flexing his fingers as if seeing his hand for the first time.

It felt like a dam bursting. The sense of power and exhilaration vanished, leaving Konowa staggering.

What
had
he done?

What had his father given him? He looked down at the bodies in the hut and for a moment saw the bodies of the elves he had once known.

This was not his birthright—this was his curse.

The sound of marching feet passing by the hut brought him back. Konowa stood up straight and adjusted his uniform.
"Get a pound of powder and a length of slow match and destroy this." He didn't wait for Lorian to reply, stepping out of the hut just as Rallie's wagon came by. Visyna was sitting beside her, and both of them looked at him as it rolled past.

He'd expected anger, outrage, even threats. Instead, as the wagon creaked past, the brindos honking and swishing their stubby tails, Jir padding alongside still looking up at the top of the wagon for the pelican, Konowa had to turn away. It wasn't rage he saw in their eyes, it was pity…and fear.

L
uuguth Jor hugged a bend in the Baynama River, a thick, dark ribbon of water that meandered through the central plains of Elfkyna like a constrictor, curling around the village set out in a brown crescent on its western bank. A dozen squat mud-and-grass huts sat well protected within the small peninsula created by the oxbow of the forever-changing river beneath a small grass-covered hill that rose a few hundred feet behind the village. Vine-lashed piers made of roughly cut logs jutted out into the water below the huts like fingers of a gnarled old hand. It was here that the villagers got into their tiny, flat-bottomed
kios
and paddled out into the center of the river to string finely woven mesh nets to catch ijuk, river turtles, and bara jogg. The catch was then brought back to the piers where the women gutted and filleted the fish, tossing the entrails back into the water to thank the gods for their bounty. The heads of the fish, however, were taken to the top of the hill and burned there, allowing the spirits of the animals to escape in the smoke and be reborn in the river with the next rain. Legend told of a Star falling from the heavens in that place at the very birth of the world. So they followed the ritual, and the fish remained plentiful and their lives peaceful.

And then the siggers came. The soldiers planted a pretty green-and-silver flag on top of the hill and claimed it for the Empire. They labored for months to raise a high mud wall all the way around the top of the hill, festooned it with cactus thorn, and then sat in it, staring out at the river. The elfkynan told the siggers they should not build there, for it would anger the gods. They told them the story of the Star.

And where is this Star? the siggers had asked. Did it fall back up into the sky? The village witch made the appropriate warding signs and warned the siggers that the Star would one day return. The siggers laughed and bought the fish heads from the women and used them to make soup. The spirits would have their revenge one day, the witch had said.

The witch never lived to see the spirits' revenge. A cold black arrow crafted by a magic far older than hers pierced her breast, killing her instantly.

Visyna covered her mouth with her hand as she looked down at the remains of the witch. A twisted black tree grew through her to reach its misshapen branches out to intertwine with the branches of others of its kind dotted all around the village and fortress, forming a U against the river. The trees were already taller than Visyna, their metaled leaves moving menacingly though no wind blew or rain fell. There were hundreds of trees, though it was difficult to tell where one ended and another began. She closed her eyes and immediately sensed their roots crawling deeper into the earth. The land here was changed, far more so than the vines where the faeraugs had sheltered. Her magic would not be sufficient to destroy them.

Not like his.

It was a sobering thought. She opened her eyes and knelt on the earth, placing a hand on the ground. It was like touching cold iron.

"In all my years of reporting, I have never seen anything more foreboding," Rallie said, angling her sketchbook to catch the moonlight as she drew the black forest that now grew where Luuguth Jor had once stood. The two women stood by Rallie's wagon on the edge of the village, while a scouting party moved through the gap in the trees by the river to check out the fortress within.
"It fills one with a particular sense of dread, as if winter has arrived early.
Great and terrible things are bound to follow. Oh, my, yes."

Visyna took one more look at the dead witch, knowing that could easily be her, and turned away. She was shocked to see a tiny smile on Rallie's face.

"Rallie! Don't you see, Konowa and the Iron Elves are
the harbinger of the coming storm. I thought when he felt the natural order, he
would finally understand."

"Or when he felt
you
?" Rallie asked.
"Do not give up on the major, Visyna. He cares deeply for you even if he has
trouble showing it. Love is a powerful weapon, but like all weapons, it depends
on how one uses it."

"I know he cares, but he loves the Iron Elves more. He would do anything for them," she said, bitterness lacing her words.

"As you would for your land and your people. The two of you are more alike than either will admit. As soon as we deal with this little matter," she said, waving at the trees,
"I see I am going to have to improve my chaperoning skills."

"Little matter? Rallie, the very world hangs in the
balance and you talk as if you enjoy it."

Rallie stopped sketching and turned to look at her, all trace of a smile gone.
"Of course I do not enjoy this. But I am a reporter of events, an observer of all things, and most importantly, a writer. I suffer from a disease few, fortunately, will ever contract. I need to be where fire burns hottest, or the wind blows coldest. It's
there, where the tapestry of the world gets burned and ripped to shreds and
another is woven new, that history lives, and dies. Our major, whether it be
fate or by his own design, and the Iron Elves, and I daresay, us, too, have
become one of those places."

As she talked, her face flushed and the years of hard living seemed to melt away, revealing a youthful, bright soul, yet one tempered by the sadness of having seen more than any person should. Realizing Visyna was staring at her, she turned back to her sketchbook. Her quill hovered above the paper, though, and she tilted her head to the side.

"Pray, my child, that you never catch this disease of mine. It is both pleasure and horror, and while I would not wish it on anyone, I would fight with every ounce of my strength if someone were to try to cure me of it. But enough of my life story," Rallie said, scratching her nose with the feather end of her quill while looking at Visyna.
"You were telling me about the Star."

Visyna shivered. "I shouldn't have said anything."

Rallie cackled lightly, turning back to her drawing. Her hand moved with quick, fluid strokes across the page.
"Ah, but you did. I had no idea a Star could talk, or that it would be so feeble
as to need to hide itself from view."

"I do not know how to explain it; it is a feeling. The Star has been gone a long time, as have all the Stars. It is energy, but still weak after centuries of being gone." Hearing it said out loud made the entire situation all sound a bit foolish.

"Indeed," Rallie said, clucking as she turned over the page and began a new sketch.
"And you are
sure
this is the Eastern
Star?"

"I was," she said truthfully. "It comes to me when I call. It even warned me of the danger Konowa would become, and we have seen it come to pass. This regiment is cursed. The taint of the Shadow Monarch's
evil is upon them."

Rallie shrugged her shoulders and continued to draw. "Perhaps. Then again, power is most often neutral, and can be used for good or ill. It depends on the wielder. I have faith in our major, as troubled as he is. For that matter, I have faith in you. You could have burned the faeraugs to a cinder, but you chose not to. That is no small thing, free will." Rallie paused again in her sketching and cast a sidelong glance at Visyna.
"Let me know when you speak to this Star again—I'd love the chance to interview
it for my story."

Visyna wanted to say no, then stopped herself. Why not? If this truly was the Eastern Star, why should it be secret? She remembered the touch of Kritton's hand on her skin and more riddles emerged.

"Questions to ponder, my dear, questions to ponder," Rallie said softly, the scritch of her quill across paper starting up again.

Visyna knew it was time she took the correspondent's advice.