A Plague of Shadows (14 page)

She shook her head. That was absurd, how was she able to sense something like that? She rubbed her eyes and looked again through the peripheral vision. This time the figure wasn’t there, and she chalked it up to needing some sleep.

But Leona was being uncharacteristically quiet, and Abagail wasn’t sure why. Maybe the same thing Abagail had realized last night was starting to sink in to her sister. Maybe Leona was realizing that their father sent them away with a promise of something he couldn’t keep. Maybe she realized the danger their father was in now.

Celeste glanced back and saw Abagail studying her sister, and to lighten the mood, she launched into a conversation that Abagail didn’t really want to focus on.

“Singer’s Trail was created ages ago when the first of the sun and moon scepters found their way here. Did you know each of the heavenly bodies radiates with their own vibration?” Abagail didn’t answer. “They pulse with color and to human ears, their own music. So it’s more like this trail was sung into being with the power of the sun and moon.

“When the darklings came, us elves were chased out of the woods, to live along the trail. There are only a few elves left in the forest, most of us built a new city near where the harbingers of light settled.”

“But don’t the scepters protect you from the darklings?” Abagail asked.

“Of course, but it still takes energy to wield the scepters, and we can’t keep them lit against the darklings forever.”

“But you kept it lit all night,” Leona argued.

“Yes, but I wasn’t fighting off darkling all night either.” Celeste smiled at Leona.

Overhead thunder rumbled.

“The storm is getting closer. With any luck we can take shelter in the abandoned elf village up ahead,” Celeste said.

“But I thought we had to stay on the trail,” Rorick said. He cast an eye to the trees above where the shadow birds had settled once more.

“Yes, Landanten isn’t in the woods, it’s a shelter built into a clearing,” Celeste said with a nod. “It will protect us from the storm.”

“What’s it like?” Abagail asked, more to keep someone talking so she didn’t have to focus on the fact that Leona wasn’t talking to her than actually wanting to know.

“Well—”, Celeste started to say, but she was cut short by a commotion at the edge of the trail.

Leona jumped away, her hand flying to her throat to stifle the scream that came out more like a gasp of air. Despite her lack of talking to Abagail, she slid closer to her older sister.

Abagail turned to see what was happening only to watch as a stream of darkling birds hammered into the warding at the edge of the trail. She slipped her arm around Leona, but her younger sister shrugged away from her.

“I’m fine,” she mumbled.

Abagail frowned.
What in the Waking Eye is wrong with her?
Abagail wondered, her heart rate hiking up a couple beats faster. She swallowed back the angry retort and turned back to the birds.

They weren’t letting up.

“You said they couldn’t make it through that, right?” Rorick asked, slipping the hammer from his belt.

“Of course they can’t,” Celeste said, but there was something in her voice that told Abagail she didn’t fully believe that herself.

The birds came harder and faster.

Fear welled up inside Abagail, and she felt the power of the shadow plague answer that fear.

No,
she thought, looking up at Rorick.
He will kill you, you can’t let it through this time.

The plague didn’t listen to her. She gasped in pain as the power took hold of her, and fell to her knees on the frozen road, the hardened tracks beneath her knees bit through her trousers and scratched her skin.

“What is it?” Leona asked, but the worry in her eyes told Abagail her sister didn’t really have to ask that.

“Don’t let it in, Abbie,” Rorick said.

Pain crippled Abagail’s hand and she cried out. The birds hammered harder at the warding keeping them away from Singer’s Trail. The shadow plague within her cried for release, and she could do little to keep it at bay.

“Abbie, you can fight it,” Rorick was saying. Somehow he’d come to kneel beside her where she’d fallen to her knees. “I know you can do it.”

“I don’t know if I can,” she said when she could catch breath through the pain crippling her arm. The glove was slowly slipping from her hand, and she wasn’t doing a thing to move it, or a thing to stop it.

“You
have
to,” Leona said, coming to rest beside her sister. “Father sent us here to get you better, now
fight
dammit!”

Whatever had gotten into Leona had sparked a fire in her toward Abagail, but at least she was talking to her, even if it was in hostility.

“I’m
trying
!” Abagail said, resting back on her heels.

Celeste stood a ways back from them, watching on. Occasionally her finger would drum against the sun scepter, and the light would flare brighter.

It was irritating to Abagail.

“Not hard enough,” Leona told her.

The glove fell off, and Abagail stared down at her fingers. They were no longer webbed with darkness, but were now completely black, like she was staring at the abyss off the edge of Eget Row rather than at her own hand.

She gasped in pain as her hand lifted up, and Leona fell back away from it. Rorick jumped back as the hand swung around precariously close to his face and pointed at the spot where the shadow birds converged on the wall.

The pain in her arm coalesced into her hand, and she felt an acute bite in her palm. She stifled a scream. It hurt more now than it had the day she’d fought off the darkling in the study. Abagail didn’t need to look to know that her hand was opening up like it had that day, opening as if it was an eyeball in the center of her palm.

Celeste stepped near, her eyes a mask of wonder. “The Waking Eye,” she breathed.

Golden light poured forth, showering the warding. The golden light rebounded against the warding like smoke meeting glass. It slipped up around where the birds were, flaring bright and startling the birds back.

“The light can’t make it through,” Celeste said.

“Her arm!” Leona cried. Abagail turned to look and watched as the webbing of shadows solidified around her wrist, turning her entire hand black. She could feel the shadows slither up her arm closer to her elbow.

She gasped in fear, and a pulse of light blasted outward. There was a crack and a rebounding of wyrd and she felt the ward of protection splinter. Fear rippled through her and the power suddenly stopped. Her arm dropped like an iron weight to the ground, numb. She could barely lift it from the power that had coursed through her arm.

“We have a problem,” Rorick said, standing he dragged his hammer closer to him.

Abagail looked up to see a bird perch against the side of the warding, and then push its beak against the shimmering rift her power had opened up. The bird turned to smoke, and through the crack it wafted, slithering down the side of the shield to plop like mud against Singer’s Trail.

Celeste rushed forward and drummed her fingers against the sun scepter. The shadow blob on the trail writhed away from her. The elf began singing in a tone that was nearly too deep for Abagail to even hear. She could feel that she was weaving some kind of wyrd though, and through half closed eyes Abagail watched as the rift in the ward was healed with voice and a pulse from the sun scepter. She hadn’t worked fast enough to close the rift before a second darkling had made it in.

A movement of a man at the edge of the trail caught Abagail’s attention, but when she looked to find him he was gone.

Another darkling,
she thought.

And then the shadows that had slipped through the warding took form.

Daphne flew at them the moment they’d slipped through and started bursting her purple wyrd like Abagail had seen her do before. The darklings retreated, but her power wouldn’t harm them, just push them away. She noticed this, and when they were far enough away for the group to prepare for battle, Daphne came back to them.

They shadows that had slipped through formed together, creating a bigger orb of darkness some feet away from the group. Rorick stepped before Abagail and took a stance with his hammer. Celeste fell in beside him, creating a kind of wall between the darkling and Abagail. Between their bodies, Abagail was able to see the shadowy form meld into something of nightmares.

It appeared to be a dog, but not like any dog she’d ever seen. It was tall, almost as big as a horse, and wraith thin. Its eyes were white, dead, and its teeth were like broken glass. Where its bone-hooves pawed the trail, the snow smoked and burned as if touched by fire.

“Be ready,” Celeste told Rorick. “Abagail, stay back. Don’t do
anything
.”

She nodded, even though they couldn’t see it. She didn’t want to do anything because that meant she would only poison herself more with the shadow plague. She pushed to her feet and drew the short sword her father had given her and took a defensive stance behind Celeste and Rorick.

And then the horse reared up and dove at them.

Abagail stumbled back. Gripping Leona with her left hand, she pulled her sister with her. Leona didn’t shrug away from her this time. Along the trail the darkling birds and snakes started creating havoc and deafening screams.

Celeste drummed her finger against the scepter. The sound of metal hitting metal shimmered through the trail, and the light flared. The horse reared away from it, but didn’t falter. It reared up before Celeste, its hooves beating at the air before the elf, but she seemed unphased.

Rorick sidled to the right, striking out at the darkling horse at the same time. The hammer sunk into the shadowy body, and blobs sloughed from its form, splattering on the ground like acid. Slowly the drops that had been jarred free merged once more with the hooves and the wound the hammer had created healed.

Her hand, clasped around the sword, started to tingle again.

No,
she thought.
Not this time.

“Abbie?” Leona asked.

“Not now Leo,” Abagail said.

“Look at your hand,” her sister insisted.

Abagail couldn’t break her sight from the battle before her. Celeste was keeping the horse at bay with the sun scepter, but it seemed to do little damage to the horse, if any at all. Rorick was pacing around the horse, attacking as he could, but it all seemed so futile.

“Abbie, look!” Leona said.

Abagail frowned and looked down. Her hand was glowing again, but this time not black or gold, but silver. She stared at her hand for a moment, realizing the feeling of this power wasn’t like what she’d experienced before. When the Waking Eye came, she’d felt pain, this time it felt as though she’d dipped her hand in a refreshing spring, and it was being cleaned of the dirt of a hard day’s labor.

“Skuld says it’s ok to let it go,” Leona said.

Abagail looked up to Celeste, to make sure she wasn’t looking, but she and Rorick had too much going on with the horse, who was now backing away from Celeste as if it was looking for another way to attack.

“It’s ok,” Leona told her, resting her hand on Abagail’s shoulder. “Skuld says everything will be alright.”

Abagail squeezed her eyes tight. Until a little while ago, she never believed her sister about Skuld. It was just a damn doll. But then she’d seen that wisp, and what if it wasn’t a conjuring of her tired mind? What if she’d really seen what her sister had been claiming to see for so long?

Skuld.

Abagail swallowed hard and felt the power inside of her. It was different this time. This power didn’t feed off her pain or her fear. This one seemed to thrive when she thought of her sister, and her need to protect those within the group.

“Ok,” she said to herself. “I can do this.”

She stabbed the short sword into the ground and raised her hand high.

“Don’t attack!” Celeste said. “Don’t use the power Abagail!”

But it was too late, Abagail had unleashed the power just at the same moment the darkling decided to take advantage of Celeste’s turned back.

Abagail grunted as the wyrd left her, and a shimmering orb of silver light bounced into existence around the group.

The horse charged headlong into it, and vanished like dust, the same way the other darkling had done that day at the mirror when the Waking Eye had opened from within her palm.

The black dust settled around them, and then quickly melted into the snow leaving no trace behind that it had ever been there. The moment the horse was gone, the darklings at the edge of the trail stopped their screaming and fell silent. The orb winked out of existence and Abagail felt the power leave her.

“I told you
not
to do anything!” Celeste said, pounding the butt of the scepter on the ground.

“It would have killed you,” Leona said.

“Not if she hadn’t distracted me!” Celeste flared.

“What was that?” Rorick asked, ignoring the squabbling two. “How is your arm?” He came to her side, and reached for her plagued hand. She pulled away from him, but still pulled up her sleeve so he could see it better.

“The darkness is reaching up to your elbow,” he told her as if she couldn’t see it.

“I know,” she told him. “But I don’t think it’s as far up this time as it was a moment ago.”

“What do you mean?” he asked her.

“When I blew a hole in the warding, I felt like the shadow was crawling up my arm farther. But it doesn’t seem to be as far up my arm as I felt it before the orb.”

“Hmmm,” he didn’t sound convinced.

“We need to keep moving,” Celeste huffed, and pushed her way through the group and further down the trail.

Leona fell in step once more with Celeste, and resumed her ignorance of her older sister.

The storm was racing closer to them, and snow started falling heavier on the canopy above. By the time morning was upon them the sky was steely gray, and globs of snow showered through the canopy onto them.

“I’ve never seen a harbinger with power like yours,” Celeste said as they stopped to rest and eat some lunch. It was the first thing she’d said to them since they’d been attacked.