The Darkling Tide (11 page)

She could attack them with the wyrd. She might even be able to end them all, but she wasn’t sure she wanted to do that.

The decision was taken away from her.

Strong hands yanked her from the water and into the frigid winter air. Rorick pulled her away from the edge as deadened hands splashed out of the water after her like crocuses in the spring pushing through snow.

“What was that?” Abagail asked, careful to keep her hand away from everyone. The humming of power was lessening.

“Nix,” Daniken answered. She stood at the edge of the bank, her eyes dark. She rapped on the moon scepter once, and aimed a bolt of silver light in the water where the nix were congregated. Abagail wasn’t sure if it did anything to them, but the hands quickly sunk beneath the surface.

“So Singer’s Trail is weakening?” Leona asked.

“Nix aren’t darkling, just monsters,” Daniken said. Before she could say more a tiny arrow sunk deep into Rorick’s shoulder.

He cursed in pain and pulled the arrow out.

“What in the Waking Eye is this?” he asked.

“We need to move,” Daniken said.

“What is it?” Abagail asked, pushing to her feet. She was cold and shaking, but the need to move was great inside her.

“The elle folk have found us,” Daniken said.

“Are they poisonous?” Abagail asked once they were in the shelter of the wooded path with more distance between them.

“The arrows?” Daniken asked. “No.”

“No, not the arrows, the nix?” Abagail asked, clutching at her side. The bite wasn’t deep, but it still hurt. Likewise, the one on her leg was debilitating, but it still stung to walk.

“Oh, those, yes,” Daniken said. “But mainly because of their rotten teeth.”

“Why, were you bitten?” Rorick asked, coming to her side and trying to peer at the wound under her clutched hands.

“Yea, in two spots,” she said.

“We will clean it when we stop. As long as we clean the wounds thoroughly, you shouldn’t be in any real trouble.” Daniken kept walking, urging them all forward.

Leona seemed lost in a haze, the encounter with the nix had been almost too much. If she hadn’t been aware that they were very far from home before, the run in with the dead beings in the lake was enough to remind her. She didn’t speak, just kept her eyes rooted to the path before them.

“How deep are the wounds?” Rorick asked her as Daniken pulled ahead of the group. Between them and the elf floated Daphne. The pixie seemed to be more alert of what was going on around them than they were.

“I will survive. Thankfully it was only two bites.”
It could have been so much worse
. Abagail reflected on the multitudes of nix that had been around her at the time.

“Where are the elle folk?” Abagail asked.

Daniken must have heard her, even though she was far ahead of them and Abagail wasn’t speaking loud enough for a human to hear her at that distance.

“They are still in the woods,” the elf called back to Abagail.

The dismal day was giving way to a bright afternoon. Here and there, where snow had broken through the canopy, Abagail could see sunlight dancing along the forest floor off the trail. She just wished it wasn’t so cold. Already her clothes were starting to harden and stick to her. Rorick had shed his cloak for her, and at least she was wrapped now in his dry, navy cloak.

She tried not to think of how good the cold clothing on the fevered skin around the bite felt.

Rorick slipped his arm around her and pulled her closer to him. He smelled of the open air and the woods. She took a deep breath of his scent and smiled. For the moment it was easy for her to forget all of the arguing they’d done lately, and how he’d hurt her feelings by choosing to believe Daniken and even tossing aside Abagail.

She rested her head on his shoulder, trying to ignore the hammering of her heart brought on by their proximity.

How can I really blame him for the way he’s acting?
Abagail wondered.
He’s lost everything to the darklings. I think I would probably act the same way he is if that had happened to me.

And hadn’t she acted similarly? When they were back on O, hadn’t she refused to speak of wyrd and prophecy? Hadn’t she been upset when her family so easily talked about things that would have brought an arm of the Light Guard down on them and burned them all in Hafaress’ Hearth?

She shook her head.

“What?” Rorick said quietly, spoken just for her.

“Nothing. These bites hurt,” she complained, rubbing her side.

“We will stop soon and clean it,” he promised. Abagail wasn’t sure how he could promise such a thing. After her near death experience she wanted nothing more than to continue on and not stop for anything. Behind them were the elle folk, and she’d rather brave infection from her bites than deal with those diminutive beasts.

Rorick cast a glance behind them, as if his thoughts ran parallel to her own.

She caught a glance of Leona again, lost in her own world with no one, not even the doll, to help ease her mind.

Abagail couldn’t help but feel for her sister. Leona had lost more than what Abagail had. She’d lost the last little bit of her childhood that she still had before her. While Abagail had to grow up fast, Leona was doing it at a much faster pace.

Skuld,
Abagail thought.
What happened to that spirit?
She couldn’t believe that it had only been tied to the doll. She’d
seen
the being, and it hadn’t been attached to the doll at all.

Abagail looked away from Leona, hoping that her sister would come out of the shock brought on by the nix. Her gaze drifted past Daphne and toward Daniken, who was now much further ahead of them, the glow of her moon scepter nearly lost in the brightness of the trail.

“I don’t trust her,” Abagail said.

Rorick stiffened slightly. Their old argument was back.

“It’s more than the darkling wyrd inside me,” Abagail told him.

He didn’t relax.

“There’s just this feeling, Rorick. She’s so much like those Light Guard at home who jumped at their own shadow, blaming a stiff wind on darklings.”

Finally Rorick’s shoulder relaxed, the tension in the muscles slackening against her head.

“I know,” he said. “But she has a good plan.”

“But we don’t even know what that plan is, completely. Don’t you think if it was such a good plan, the elves would have done it by now?” Abagail argued.

Rorick shrugged against her ear. “I guess we will just have to wait and see what comes of it. We will talk to Celeste.”

“How much longer do you think we will be in this place?” Abagail asked. She wrapped her arms tighter around herself to fight off a shiver.

“I don’t know. According to Celeste we should have already been far from here.”

“I don’t know if she’s taking us the right way,” Leona said. It was the first she’d spoken since their run in with the nix. Her voice still sounded hollow, but at least it was something.

“How do you know that?” Rorick asked.

Skuld?
Abagail wondered. At one time she wouldn’t have been happy to think the being was with her sister. Now at least it meant some things in their ever-changing life wouldn’t change.

“I just have a feeling,” Leona said.

Abagail’s hopes fell.

“Have you heard from Skuld?” Rorick asked.

Leona just shook her head, and looked away from the trail, into the depths of the forest. “Do you think all of the things we used to think were myth actually used to live here?” Leona changed the subject.

“Like fauns and fairies and the like?” Rorick asked.

“Yea,” Leona said.

“I don’t see why not, those are all considered fay, right?” Abagail said.

“Yea,” Leona nodded. “If the nine worlds are all connected to each other in ways other than Eget Row, do you think maybe our myths were made up from people seeing creatures bleeding through the veil?”

Abagail hadn’t thought about that before now. “I guess that’s possible.”

“Myth has to come from somewhere, right?” Rorick said. “How would our ancestors just happen to come up with something that existed elsewhere if they hadn’t seen it before?”

Leona didn’t respond, but it reminded Abagail of when they were younger, before the darklings had become such a worry. Leona used to like going into the woods and talking to the trees. She always insisted they could hear her, that they were dryads. She also believed that gnomes and other spritely nature spirits lived in the forest.

Abagail used to imagine she was making them all up, just like she had been Skuld. But what it, all this time, Leona had been able to see things few others could? What if, like Skuld, she really
was
talking to nature spirits only she could see?

Abagail sighed and let the thought drift away.

Gorjugan stood before the open window in the mirror room, staring out across the vast white expanse of the yard toward the Fay Forest. He’d summoned dinner moments before from Anster and was expecting them to arrive any moment.

But for now he reflected on what was happening in the Fay Forest. His darklings reported back to him, and just recently he called off the black birds and the wolves. He had great faith that the elle folk would do his bidding. They never failed. But they had been set back.

The elle folk had suffered a great attack, but they would survive. He knew they would survive. Part of him hoped they didn’t, because then he wouldn’t have to worry about repaying them. But if they failed he would have to face Hilda, and that was worse than owing payment to the elle folk.

A wind blew from the Fay Forest and he could smell possibility in the air. It ruffled his long white hair and billowed his long red jacket. It wasn’t a good smell of possibility, but rather the possibility that the elle folk would fail.

The God Slayer is out there,
he thought.
They will fail if they go up against that, and it’s used properly.
He could only hope that the group which harbored the weapon didn’t know how to use it.

But just in case, he should call for reinforcements.

The frost giants weren’t darklings, so he didn’t need to summon his darkling wyrd to control them. Rather, it was more redeeming a favor. He sent out a wyrded call, and moments later the image of a frost giant wavered before him. He knew the man wasn’t physical, but he was still imposing.

With long golden braids and a great horned helm, the giant looked somewhat like the warrior Gorjugan had summoned before. That’s where the similarities ended, though. The giant carried with him a great axe that hung to the ground. His nose was pierced through the center with a hooked bone, and his left eye was missing in a mess of scar tissue that ran down the side of his face.

“What is it, serpent?” the giant asked. At this distance his voice was frail, weakened. The frost giants were far away from Gorjugan, but close to where the God Slayer ventured. They were close to the harbinger settlement and New Landanten, where the accursed elves lived.

“A favor,” Gorjugan said, his voice cold. The giant stiffened. He knew he couldn’t refuse this after what Gorjugan had done for him.