The Skaar Invasion

  A lie, Tarsha thought at once, but nodded agreeably. “What…day?”

  “A day since your battle with Tavo.” She paused. “You inherited the wishsong, didn’t you, Tarsha? That was why Drisker took you on as his student, because you have the use of such powerful magic. You should have told me earlier.”

  “I…know that…now.”

  “Do you? I wonder. You’re a headstrong, independent-minded young lady. I imagine even Drisker had to worm it out of you. But enough of that for now. You need to rest further. You took a terrible beating, and you’re lucky to be alive. Your brother wanted you dead, you know—until I stopped him. By almost any measure, you should be dead, anyway. I was sure he had killed you.”

  In that moment, a strange certainty struck Tarsha. She had died—just as Parlindru said she would—for the first of three times. But instead of dying, she had risen anew. The seer’s prophecy had begun to take form.

  “Your brother is insane, girl,” Clizia was saying. “He blames you for whatever it was that happened to him. He speaks with someone named Fluken, who is invisible to us, but who tells him what to do. A twisted projection of his own identity—a conjuring from his demented mind—or I’m a Troll’s plaything. I asked about Fluken, but he wouldn’t talk about it. He is very cautious, even now that he says he trusts me. He half trusts me, so he will watch whatever I do carefully. We must be circumspect about how we handle him, you and I. We must find a way to try to rehabilitate his mind, to clear it of its madness and make him whole.”

  “Can it…be done?”

  Tarsha realized she was growing weaker just from the effort of speaking, of trying to be understood when the words were flitting about her like wild things. She was drifting away, and she could not help herself.

  Clizia Porse shrugged once more. “Perhaps. Perhaps not. His madness is far advanced and has been part of him for a long time.”

  “You have…to help me…wake up…”

  “Shhh, time enough for that later. For now, sleep.” Cool fingers brushed strands of hair from her forehead. “Sleep, Tarsha. Much awaits you when you wake. You will need all your strength. Sleep, girl.”

  There was something in the words that was more a warning than a comfort. And Tarsha felt it deep in the back of her mind, down where a few things still seemed to make sense to her. Clizia Porse was her enemy, not her friend, and it was a mistake to fall asleep while in the old woman’s care or to listen to what she was saying. It was intended to lull her, but it would lead to something very wrong and very frightening.

  Yet her body betrayed her. Her eyes closed, and she drifted away.

  * * *

  —

  “That’s his cottage,” Dar Leah whispered to Brecon Elessedil.

  They crouched together at the forest’s edge, off to one side of Drisker’s temporary home, watching for signs of life. In the distance, thunder rumbled in a long, slow peal. Dar’s gaze drifted west to the darkening sky. Another storm was moving in and would reach Emberen by nightfall. It would be the third storm in four days.

  His friend nudged him. “Do you think anybody is in there? It looks deserted.”

  “Maybe.” Dar shook his head doubtfully. He didn’t want to make a mistake about this. The home looked deserted, but you never knew. “Let’s watch for a bit. We don’t want to walk into a trap.”

  He said this without any real idea of what sort of trap they might stumble into or who might have set it, but his instincts warned him to be careful. Drisker would not be there, unless he had managed somehow to find a way out of Paranor. Tarsha might have returned and be sleeping. But if so, Dar wanted to make sure she was alone. There were too many enemies out there looking for him since the Keep had fallen.

  It had taken them four days to reach Emberen—impossible on the face of things, given that under normal circumstances it would have taken them one day—but life has a way of dashing expectations.

  They had departed the site of Tarsha’s encounter with the three men as planned, flying north toward Emberen. Things should have gone smoothly after that, but they did not. The day was already cloudy and gray, and within a short time the winds picked up. Within an hour, a fierce storm roared in out of the west, packed with lightning and thunder, dragging in its wake a deluge of such proportions that the friends were forced to seek immediate shelter. The refuge they found was inadequate for their needs; the rain pretty much soaked them through, helped by gusts of wind that blew water at them from all directions.

  The pair had no choice but to hunker down to wait it out.

  But the wait turned out to be much longer than they’d anticipated. It rained all that day and into the night. When it finally wore itself out as dawn approached, the Blade and the Elven prince began their journey anew. They barely got off the ground before the airship lost power. Landing, they began a search to discover what was wrong. Both were experienced fliers and aircraft mechanics, and as such had learned how to fix all sorts of problems. But in this case, the solution was simple enough. Rainwater had soaked through the cracks in the parse tube casings and left them flooded and mud-stained. Both crystals and tubes needed to be dried out before they would function.

  But they had persevered, and eventually gotten the crystals cleaned up sufficiently to supply power. Between the storm and the malfunctioning crystals, they had already lost two days. Then a second storm blew in, every bit as fierce as the first, forcing them to abandon their attempts to set out and to take shelter once more.

  “Is this really happening?” Dar demanded in frustration.

  “It seems Mother Nature has it in for us,” Brecon agreed. He grinned. “What did you do to make her so angry?”

  This second storm lasted through the night and until sunset of the third day, and by then they were soaked through all over again and their airship was once more without power. Working together, they discovered that three of the diapson crystals had gone bad and had to be replaced. By then, night had fallen and clouds masked the sky so thoroughly that they had no way of navigating. Both were cold, hungry, and disgruntled, and too exhausted to do much more than try to get some sleep. They ate first, drying out their clothing by a fire as they sat close to the flames and told stories of what had happened to them since they had last seen each other. Eventually, they slept. But by the time they rolled into their blankets for the remainder of the night, it was close to midnight.

  The morning of the fourth day of travel had dawned bright and clear. Neither had any idea of where they were, but it wasn’t where they had expected to find themselves. The first storm appeared to have blown them far out onto the grasslands of the Tirfing. Undaunted, they boarded their airship once more and began flying north toward Elven country, arriving in Emberen the next morning, tired and hungry.

  Now here they were, crouching in the woods, watching the seemingly empty house in the clearing ahead, frustrated once more. They had not been able to learn anything else about Tarsha’s fate during their travels, and Dar was worried that something very bad had happened to her in spite of Brecon’s encouragements.

  “If she has use of the wishsong, she can take care of herself,” the Elven prince had said. “That sort of magic can stand up to anything, and apparently Drisker thought she had promise. So stop worrying. She’ll be there waiting for us.”

  Dar wasn’t so sure. She was young—still a girl—and magic alone couldn’t always save you. Besides, now that they were at the cottage, she didn’t seem to be there. He felt fidgety and irritable, anxious to do what Brecon wanted and just knock on the door and see who answered. Likely no one—unless Tarsha really was there. It was logical enough that she could be there—that this was where she would go to find either her brother or Drisker or both—but logic didn’t always determine direction or destination.

  Impatience tugged at him, but he held himself in check, and they remained where they were, sitting togeth
er in the woods, tucked back in among the huge dark trunks, tall stands of wild grasses, and brush, and watched. Time slipped by at a glacial pace, marked by the passage of the sun west. Sunset was slowly approaching and the darkness beginning to close in. The sounds of the forest, lively before, quieted in expectation, and a hush settled across the land.

  “So how much longer are we going to sit here?” Brecon whispered, failing to hide his irritation.

  Dar didn’t know. All he knew is that something about the cottage didn’t feel right. Its deserted appearance felt misleading, and he was determined not to rush into anything.

  “When it gets dark,” he whispered back, “we’ll have a look through the windows. If a light comes on, we’ll know someone is in residence. Then we’ll just have to find out who.”

  Brecon was looking off to his right across the clearing where the shadows were deepest. “I thought I saw something move,” he said.

  Dar glanced over to where he was looking, but he didn’t see anything. “Maybe a badger or a fox?”

  “Bigger. Much bigger.”

  Their attention was still focused on the darkness where Brecon had seen the movement when the front door of the cottage opened momentarily and then closed again. Dar put a hand on Brecon’s arm and nodded in that direction.

  A few minutes passed in which nothing happened, and then a black-cloaked figure stepped onto the porch and shuffled over to one of the straight-back chairs. An unlit lamp dangled from one hand and, once seated, the shadowy figure lifted its glass door and reached inside.

  Instantly the lamp flared to life, emitting a soft golden glow that revealed its bearer’s dark features clearly.

  “That’s Clizia Porse!” Dar hissed. “What’s she doing here?”

  Brecon nodded wordlessly, and together they watched for a few minutes as the old woman sat back and stared toward the descending sun, watching as it set.

  Dar Leah realized Clizia must have come here after leaving Paranor. But what was here that would make her choose to occupy Drisker’s residence? He wondered if his suspicions had been right—that Tarsha had returned and was inside. At some point, they would have to find out. But asking Clizia was out of the question. Even if Dar pretended to know nothing of the events at Paranor, she might see through his lie.

  They continued to wait patiently, and after the sun had set, its last brilliant streaks of red and purple disappearing into the gaps below the storm clouds, Clizia rose. Picking up her lamp, she reentered the cottage and closed the door behind her, the latch clicking audibly as the lock was set. No interior lights were lit. The entire cottage remained dark.

  With the latest storm approaching more swiftly now, the winds picking up and the air turning damper and tasting of copper and the peals of thunder coming closer together, Dar and Brecon were left in almost total blackness.

  “Do you have a plan yet?” the Elf asked Dar.

  “No. I’ve still got a few problems to solve first.”

  “Do any of them include the fact that we still don’t know if Tarsha is even inside the cottage? Or that we don’t know who else might be in there? Have you considered that neither your sword nor my Elfstones will work against anyone or anything that doesn’t use magic first? And there are only two of us against a woman who tricked Drisker Arc and left him trapped in Paranor. No easy thing to do, I suspect. Have I missed anything?”

  Dar shook his head. “Not that I care to know about.” He glanced at the darkened house, then off toward the approaching storm. “I’m going down for a look. Wait here for me. Watch my back.”

  Brecon grabbed his arm. “I don’t know about this, Dar…”

  “I don’t know about it, either.” Dar gripped his friend’s hand momentarily. “But I’m going, anyway.”

  He was rising to leave when a voice from behind him said, “That would be a very bad idea.”

  Dar and Brecon whirled about as one and peered into the darkness.

  There was no one there.

  * * *

  —

  Inside the cottage, Tavo Kaynin was waking up. He had fallen asleep right after eating and taking the medication the old woman had suggested. It was still light then, and now it was nighttime. He lay where he was for a moment, supine on a sleeping pad she had arranged for him in the living area, wrapped in a blanket. He did not know how long he had slept, but he knew why he had come awake.

  He’d been dreaming of Tarsha.

  In the dream, she was standing over him with a huge blade gripped in both hands as he lay in his blankets, smiling at him like a predator finding prey. She waited until his eyes were open wide, then she slowly began to lift the blade over her head. It was a broadsword of considerable size, yet she barely seemed to feel its weight. He knew what she intended—how could he not? But when he tried to rise, intending to stop her from killing him, he found he could not move. He was tangled so tightly in his blankets that try as he might, he could not break free of them. He writhed and kicked, but the blankets would not release their grip.

  And the sword kept lifting, the blade gleaming wickedly.

  The smile on his sister’s face grew enormous. “You shouldn’t have come after me, Tavo,” she hissed at him. “You should have stayed where you were!”

  Down came the blade, a whirling, glittering sharpness that would cut him in half, the whistle of its descent through the stillness plainly audible, with nothing to slow it, nothing to stop it from striking…

  And then he woke, in the here and now, and there was no sign of Tarsha in the darkness.

  He breathed heavily for a moment in relief. But fear and rage roiled within him, and he flung aside the blankets and rose from his sleeping pad in a frenzy of need. He should never have listened to the old woman. He should never have let Tarsha live. He had been a fool not to kill her right away and put an end to the reason for his journey to find her.

  Why hadn’t he?

  He paused, his mind a jumble of confusion. Everything was so hard to understand. The only time things were clear was when Fluken was there. But Fluken never came inside strange houses, so he couldn’t help now. Tavo tried hard to think, to remember. He had been persuaded to let Tarsha live, hadn’t he? That old woman—Clizia something—had persuaded him. She had backed him away from his sister and then ordered him to carry her inside so she could be put to bed. He had gone along with this for reasons he couldn’t explain, because it had seemed a good idea. Just as it had seemed a good idea to take the medicine she had insisted he needed. All this without knowing why he was doing it. There was something about her, something both scary and at the same time comforting. He trusted her. He could not have explained the reason for it, but he did. She spoke in a way that convinced him of everything she said. The sound of her voice soothed him. He wanted to believe what she was telling him. He wanted her to be right about what was best for him.

  But now this dream was tearing at him, and he no longer felt so certain.

  He no longer felt like he wanted to listen to her.

  He no longer wanted Tarsha to live another day.

  And he knew how to kill quickly and quietly. He had done so at that tavern when he had used his magic to punish the man who had lied to him. It took almost no effort at all to cause the man to choke to death. He remembered the satisfaction he felt when it was done.

  Tarsha’s life could be snuffed out just as easily. It would all be over in minutes.

  His eyesight had adjusted to the darkness, and a quick glance around the room revealed no sign of the old woman. He stood for a few minutes more, making sure. Then he turned and started down the hallway to Tarsha’s bedroom. He went silently, cautiously, aware that Clizia was somewhere in the cottage. He didn’t want her to find out what he was doing until it was too late. He had made up his mind that he would not allow her to stop him, but he didn’t want to have to confront her if she tried,
either.

  He paused at the bedroom door and listened. His thoughts were suddenly clear. Just do it. Just go inside and do it. A few quick moments is all it will take. Then go back to bed and sleep again.

  He released the latch on the door and opened it a crack. He could see Tarsha lying on the bed asleep, curled on her side, facing away from him. He hesitated once more, gathering his resolve.

  Then he entered the room.

  Leaving the door open behind him, he walked over to the bed and looked down at his sister. She was deep in sleep, so much so she would be dead before she even realized what had happened. He glanced at her curtained window as the branches of bushes slapped against the glass. A storm was coming on, and the night was black and deep. There was no light from either moon or stars. No night sounds from birds or animals. Nothing but the howl of the wind ripping through the trees.

  It was time.

  He was just about to summon his magic, to bring its power to bear, when he sensed another presence. He turned slowly toward the darkness behind him and saw the glimmer of eyes in the darkness at the back of the room. The old woman was sitting in a chair, watching him.

  The magic died in his throat.

  She never moved, she never spoke, but he could feel the force of those eyes bearing down on him. Without stopping to question it, he turned from his sister and left the room.

  * * *

  —

  Dar Leah and Brecon Elessedil exchanged hurried glances in the pitch-black of the forest before turning back to the invisible voice. It was impossible to see anything, and there was no movement of any kind, either visible or audible.

  “Who are you?” Dar asked softly, trying to beat down the surge of adrenaline the voice had caused him and keep calm.

  “No one,” came the answer. “A creature of the forest. An ancient. You don’t know me, but I know you. I saw you before with the russ’hai, Drisker Arc. Where is he?”