Analindë (The Chronicles of Lóresse) (9 page)

She felt the frustration roll off the awareness and through her shields just before it started to spin rapidly around her. It ground a rough surface upon her shield’s exterior where it held on and feasted.

As it ate through the first of her new shields, Analindë frantically searched for a new way to escape. She needed something different. Even though it was taking the awareness three times as long to get through the new shielding, with constraints on her Energy, it was only a matter of time.

The awareness was different than anything the Human wizard had sent her way before. Sometime during the past several minutes she’d decided that it definitely wasn’t him but some kind of spirit he’d summoned to defeat her. It was more authoritative and confident than the night before. It couldn’t have been the wizard. She wondered what he’d promised the spirit in return for its help. Somehow, not only had it found her shields, but it ate right through them. Not even the ones like granite or the new glossy ones could withstand. With a thought, she made two more shields and laced them beneath the others. “How is this different? Where is its weakness?” She puzzled through the facts, trying to ignore the reality that in a few moments the awareness would overwhelm her efforts.

She crouched down, resting, then sat back calmly on her heels, studying the awareness. She ignored the way her joints painfully ground together and the way her skin felt as if on fire; nothing she could do about it now. Wary that the awareness might be able to hear her, she kept her thoughts to herself as she logically thought through the facts she knew about the awareness.

It’s sticky.

It can jump from place to place.

It can speak. Can it listen?

It floats above the cave floor.

It is all around.

It was powerful and adaptive.

Wait, it floats above the ground!

Analindë grimaced as she lowered herself fully to the ground, then pressed her cheek against cold stone to stare at the sliver of space between the awareness and the floor. If she could just make a shield flat enough to fit, maybe she’d be able to hide. Analindë spun off another couple of shields to join the others as she thought of a way to make a flat shield.

A flat shield.

Flat. . . . She’d have to squish her energies as small as possible. She herself wouldn’t have to change, just the essence of herself. The awareness wasn’t physical, so it might not sense her body, but just the energies that signaled her as her. Could she make them small enough?

She thought of the energies built into her home for protection.
Much good they did
, she thought grimly; the energies within an arrow to help it find its target and the great power instilled in her mother’s ring.
Her mother’s ring . . .
she squelched the pain that came with that thought. The jewel in the center of that ring contained and focused more power than she could begin to imagine.

She turned her magesight inward and looked to her own energies. Her reservoir glittered and sparkled as the sun on a wind tossed sea. She was too big! She’d never fit! But maybe size didn’t matter. The swirling, grinding white mass around her cracked and shattered yet another of her shields, momentarily distracting her. If she could just take her energies and squish them within the flat shield, then maybe it could work.

Analindë counted four shields left in place. Between the second and third she began to spin a different set of shields. At first it would be flexible, compacting all the energies inside it, and then it would become hard.

Her intent gave the shield a life of its own as she wove the threads of Energy together. It became something more beautiful than she could ever have imagined. With last flourishing touches she wove herself into the weave, connecting it to herself at key points. The shield glittered like the many facets of a jewel, and was just as strong. The awareness broke through another shield, but she paid it no heed. She was yet safe. Smiling tremulously, she sent a command to her new shield to compact.

And it did.

Taking all feeling with it.

Stunned, she rocked back and forth in shock. Pain was gone, replaced by a cool numbness. She glanced down at herself. Yes, her legs were still there. She wiggled her fingers. Yep, still able to move. She glanced at the rest of herself and she appeared the same, but all of her sensations were gone. Except, that is, for a deep, numbing coldness, which wasn’t so bad considering the excruciating pain she’d been in moments before.

She held her breath as she waited for the awareness to break through the last remaining shield. When it finally shattered, the awareness surged forward only to find, . . . nothing? It swarmed all around her, through her, back and forth searching. Her heart pumped furiously as the white mist passed through her. She could almost hear it shriek in frustration. And then it was gone.

Analindë collapsed against the wall of the cave in relief. Fatigue overwhelmed her. An eerie blankness filled her. It was all she could do to not sag to the ground and pass out. She tried to feel something more than relief at her lucky escape, but failed. The only thing beyond that relief was a hollow emptiness inside.

She felt distanced from herself and realized it must be the flat shield. As her breathing steadied, she looked into the void to find the Humans. They were a few hours journey from the cave and had traveled partway up the broken path. She sighed, adjusted her pack, and thought to herself,
“Must keep moving
.”

Her flagging strength gave her pause; looking to the reservoir deep inside herself she was shocked. The space within her had quadrupled in size, its vastness unlike anything she’d expected. Its bright red walls glittered strangely, almost as if they lived.

The cistern was empty.

A bit of golden yellow Energy pooled at the bottom and a thin stream trickled out toward her new shield. “I am spent.” The hushed whisper echoed harshly off the dark cavern walls. Resigned, she took one last look at the glittery-red surface and the glowing yellow Energy pooled far below before returning to herself and slipping out of magesight.

She could barely move. She needed to rest for a brief moment, to regain a bit of strength before she continued on. The cave no longer felt safe so she moved to the ledge to sit in the sun. She was cold, oh so cold. And as Analindë stiffly lowered herself to the ground, her bones ached with that coldness. Ignoring it the best she could, she tried to find her center as her mother had taught her.

She felt completely lost. Everything was loose and too big, like her great-aunt’s clothes when she played dress-up. Her aunt was taller than most elves and her clothes were magnificent. No matter that the hem, too long, would trip her, or that the sleeves would hang far past her hands.

She felt the same now, a sort of magnificence that thrilled her, but it was all wrong, too vast to settle correctly. She couldn’t quiet the moving parts of herself and couldn’t find center no matter how much she tried or how many deep breaths she took.

Since the moment her flat shield had compressed, hiding her energies, she couldn’t feel and wasn’t connected in the right places. It seemed that all of her senses were inside the shield, but she was too afraid to let it drop lest she be discovered. So she just focused harder.

She calmed her breathing, and with each successive breath focused on settling one more thing in place. She focused on and felt the sun warm her, and corresponding peace fill her, chasing away little parts of coldness where she ached the most.

So passed the early afternoon as the sun moved slowly across the sky.

A long while later Analindë rose, her pack snug on her back, and wound her way through the mountain tunnel to the switchback track on the north face.

She looked behind her into the dark tunnel one last time. She would have spent one more night in the cave, but something told her the awareness would be back, and if it did not come, that somehow the wizard would find a way to transport himself there to confront her.

She shuddered, then began to jog down the trail, hoping to make it off the mountain by nightfall. She kept her pace up, scrambling over boulders, under fallen trees, and jumping over streams as quickly as she was able. Little aches and pains still bothered her, but the flat shield kept most of her soreness at bay. Grateful for that small blessing, she hoped for yet another . . . that there would be enough light from the moon to travel with no need for a magelight. She didn’t have any Energy to spare.

She reached the foot of the peak by twilight, and by true night, she was beneath the canopy of the forest itself. Unlike the shields of the previous night, there was no need to check and recheck the glittering flat shield. If it fell, the rush of feeling back to her body would be all the warning she’d need. Doing anything else other than ignoring the shield was a waste of time and effort. If the shield failed, she’d know it, and frankly, she doubted that she would have enough mental clarity to remind herself to check.

Ever since she’d compacted her energies into the flat shield, an invasive, icy numbness had woven itself through her body, her senses, her heart, and her mind. She didn’t mind, because it had become a familiar companion reassuring her that she was yet safe.

Unfortunately, the only sensation she felt beyond the numbness was utter weariness.

She stopped frequently to find her center and rest, and it slowed her down. Her lack of speed was okay as the Humans were on the other side of the mountain, and she knew that her body must ache terribly even though she couldn’t feel it. So she gentled her movements and slowed her pace ever so slightly.

A persistent thought pestered her, suggesting that she was simply in shock, but then she’d remember how the pain had gone away and numbness descended when she’d flattened the shield. All was well.

She easily found the trail to Mirëdell. The mountain track had catapulted her far in front of the Humans, and with them doubling back to find her trail, she had a day’s lead on them. Every now and then she felt the general sweep of the Human wizard’s wide searches, and only once more did she feel the awareness and sense it travel past her.

It had come late that night, rushing down the trail toward the mountain cave, passing right by her—thanks to the flat shield—and continued on. The flat shield worked; she kept up her pace.

Just before dawn she stopped to sleep. Tearing grasses to make a soft bed within an empty burrow, she snuggled down for a few hours of rest before the sun fully rose again.

The Sixth Chapter

The Valley of Lindënolwë

T
he scouts rose early the
next morning and stealthily fanned out across the valley floor while searching for signs of the human’s passage. Avoiding the main path to the small mountain village, they slinked along using the natural cover of the forest. Thalion and Morcion crept toward the eastern side of the valley, and Sintriel and Urúvion to the west. If it became too dangerous on the ground they would travel along the treetops, for the forest was ancient and many trees interconnected in this pocket of a valley.

Arandur watched intently as his comrades disappeared into the forest as if they had never been, no sign of passage left in their wake. He’d finished doing a light perimeter search of the valley before his team had set off. He hadn’t sensed anyone else within a two day journey of Lindënolwë, but this situation made him unsure.

He wondered if he’d read the signs correctly, that the humans and the survivor were out of range, or if they were somehow shielding against him. Before long, his team’s faint sounds of passage faded into the symphony generated by the forest. Content that his team was safely on their way, Arandur picked his way to the main path that ran down the center of the valley.

Reaching the edge of the path, he crouched behind new growth trees and waited, listening for any sound that did not belong. He heard birds high up in boughs overhead and sent a focused swath of Energy out to thoroughly canvass the mountainside and valley surrounding him. The wash rushed over the landscape, up the steep ridge behind him, then circled back toward himself. He passed a den of mountain lions settling down for the coming winter, rabbits, snakes, a few deer, birds of all sorts, and several big horned sheep, but no humans. He recognized many trip points for wards that he was keyed to; they all seemed to be in working order. The underbrush rattled twenty paces away. He hadn’t sensed anything abnormal but his breath hitched and his pulse quickened as he worried the humans might have somehow shielded against him.

Instead of retracting the large swath of Energy, he sent out a second smaller tendril to identify the sound as friend or foe? . . . Ah, friend.

He focused on calming himself before he continued his work. This assignment meant too much to him; his emotions were running too high. It would be easy to make mistakes. Moments later, a large buck emerged from the tree line across the trail from him. Its antlers stretched proudly into the sky, radiating strength. It was a mighty animal. It paid him no heed and followed the path out of the small valley.

He finished his survey, sensing no one beside his comrades who picked their way along the hillside. He retracted his senses until they pooled around him in a concentrated wash of feeling and redirected them to stay fifteen paces around him in all directions. Confident of his immediate safety, Arandur turned his attention to the trail in front of him. He strode forward searching for any sign of the Human’s passage. Back and forth he went along the side of the path, taking care to leave no sign of his own.

He found nothing. “
No matter, they’ll have eventually used the path,”
he thought as he crept through the forest along the right side of the trail before making his way over to the left, ever alert for sounds in the forest that did not belong and signs of recent passage.

As he pressed his way through yet another of the more aggressive wards, he wondered again how the Humans had made it through the ancient weaves. The ward eventually recognized him, then let him pass. He and Riian had played among these rocks and trails as children, and he knew this valley as well as he knew his own village. Riian had told him many times of the complex warding system that had evolved over the millennia that Mages of Lindënolwë had inhabited this valley.

Some wards had been set up to hide what was there; others, when active, to keep other elves from entering. Some were for defensive purposes and others offensive; they could confuse and misdirect. But among them all, one of the greatest was a ward to keep humans out.
How
the humans had circumvented the wards puzzled him to no end.

Many of the more complex wards originated along the path and were keyed to recognize and accept him. This is why he alone traversed its length. The wards were thinner and less restrictive along the edges of the valley where the other scouts traveled, but the stronger weaves could not be breached for the first time without aid from the inside.

He was crossing the path for the fourth time when he sensed something different. Wrong. His eyes searched the area where he’d felt the incongruous ebbs of power and he found charred rock to one side of the trail. Scorched earth circled the stone, leaving distinct markings on the ground as if . . . he let his thoughts trail off as he dropped to his knees near the marred earth and transmuted a small part of his Energy specifically to pick up any residuals. A ward had been destroyed here. Residue of burnt weaves and recoiled spells saturated the ground, leaving an acrid taste in his thoughts.

“
It must have been the one set against the humans,”
he thought as he studied the seared boulder and earth at his feet.

He turned away from the boulder and a second bundle of energies tugged at his senses. The overpowering wrongness of the broken ward was so strong that he’d almost missed it. The question was, what had he sensed?

He followed faint lines of Energy toward the bushes, and then he found them. Human remains. Shackled human remains.
Atrocity!
He recoiled from the remains as he realized how the ward had been destroyed.

He backed away from the charred and ashy bits of bone and hair and rusty corroded metal, then visually scanned the surrounding area. Not five paces up the path were footprints in the dirt; they circled back and forth as if not knowing which direction to take before heading off toward the village. They abruptly started with no trace from whence they came, solving the question of their arrival. They’d ported here.

He studied the footprints on the path for a moment. They didn’t tell him much. One woman and two men. One of the men was the leader, as evidenced by his confident strides. They were sure of what they would find. The humans hadn’t even bothered to hide their passage . . . what arrogance!

He stared off toward the village and estimated it would have taken them five minutes to travel to the great house from this spot. Not much notice to prepare for their coming. Arandur rose as the footprints on the path drew him on.

At the edge of the village he hid behind a rock that had served that purpose many times before. As a child, he had often played hide and seek with Riian. Images from the past haunted him as he scanned the buildings, searching for signs that the humans yet lingered. The village was tiny, consisting of seven large cottages and an assortment of smaller workshops and out buildings. There were residences for the village farmer, artisanal chef, stonemason, and game warden. A stable, meeting hall, and the great house—which was enormous—made up the rest of the village.

The Mages of Lindënolwë prized seclusion. This is why they’d chosen this tiny valley perched up in the Mountains of Lóresse to call theirs at the conclusion of the most recent incarnation of the Elven Wars. Most of the village’s young people moved elsewhere, with only a few members of each generation staying to make this their home, which was exactly how the Mages liked it.

He’d always envied his friend this home, away from the intrigue and treachery. Those carefree summer days had been some of the happiest of his childhood, traipsing all over these cliffs and hills while outwitting Riian’s younger sister. Without the constant threat of assassins, it had been easy to relax and actually trust. He’d longed to have a home like this someday. Perhaps he’d take his leave of absence next year and start an outpost of his own. Think about building a home, finding a wife, starting a family.

Bittersweet memories assailed him of mock sword fights with Riian that had taken place in the field to his right, falling off the stonemason’s roof, and breaking his arm the time he’d tried to walk along its spine, or the many idyllic afternoons when they’d stolen sweet fruit pies from the cooling racks of Glendariel. Uneasy about what he might find, Arandur took a deep breath to steady himself and focused his thoughts back to the job at hand.

He sat for a long time as his senses stretched out across the village. That the humans had defeated his friends made him wary and unsure of his skills. But he acted how he’d been trained to do; use his powers, then act as if he’d lost their use. It was the only safe way to proceed. While he retracted his senses back to himself, he visually searched for traps or signs of the humans. Finding neither, he edged his way around the rock and covertly slid toward the nearest building, the stable.

Buckets were toppled over, grain sacks slashed, bales of hay upended and untied. Oats fanned out along the floor, doors hung awkwardly from their hinges and tools lay scattered on the ground as if thrown in a fit of rage. There were no horses inside the stable; he hoped they’d all been used to transfer the villagers to the Harvest Festival and not been taken by the humans. He searched the stables for any messages that might have been left or any clue of the human’s intent, but found nothing.

He looked out past the stable doors and scanned the area outside before slipping over to the next building; it was the farmer’s house. He made a quick search of the home; nothing was amiss other than the fact that it looked as if a whirlwind had blown through, scattering things every which way. He found the stonemason’s house and workshop to be much in the same state.

Halfway to the house, the sweet smell of decaying flesh wafted toward him. He rounded the corner of a cottage and stopped in his tracks. An elvish woman lay on the ground in front of him . . . Glendariel. The name rose unbidden to his mind. Darkness stained the ground around her. She must have bled out. Her husband’s crumpled body lay several paces from her. Even with the cool nights their bodies had begun to decompose. He knelt respectfully next to the old woman, thanking the stars for the gift of friendship she and her husband had given him as a child.

Once the village was deemed safe, per elvish custom, Arandur and the rest of the quintet would return to burn the bodies. He left Glendariel and quickly searched her home, finding nothing but the same destruction he’d found in the others. Whatever the humans searched for they must not have found, for nothing was left untouched.

He quickly finished searching the other buildings, leaving the great house until last. Sadness washed over him as he looked to the proud home. An enormous pit sat ominously where the west wing should have been. Arandur had a sneaking suspicion that the Mages of Lindënolwë had destroyed the home themselves in order to protect whatever lay hidden inside. The thought that his friend had outwitted the humans made him happy for a brief moment.

He entered the stately great house and began his search. It was in the worst shape of all the buildings. Portraits had been ripped from the walls along with wall paper, lamps, and decorative woodwork. Holes pitted the walls where the humans had searched for hidden panels and safes. Books lay strewn about the floor, pages torn, bindings broken. Furniture was not just overturned but snapped apart and gutted. The level of malice in the destruction sickened him and made him nervous. He did not linger but methodically and in a detached manner quickly searched the next room.