“Fie!” cried the butcher. “We all heard talk of what a strange child she is, skulking in the woods by herself. Consorting with demons, I don’t doubt! She just now tried to bewit’ch me!”
“Lies!” Aunt Fila pointed a finger toward the butcher, her lips tight with suppressed anger. “There lies your evil. His behavior speaks of his own foulness—not the children’s. To assault a small girl in such a manner! That is evil, not the child!”
By now many eyes had turned toward the butcher with disgust. Elena allowed herself a moment of hope that perhaps Aunt Fila would win past this insanity. But then she heard words sound behind her in a voice from a moldy tomb: a familiar voice.
“Good woman, stand back from the girl. She has tricked you, tricked you all. She is a wit’ch, and I will give you proof!”
Elena twisted around to see the cowled figure of the old man who had murdered her parents. Soldiers stood behind him. Elena’s knees weakened as his dead eyes settled upon her.
Using his poi’wood staff, the old man hobbled toward her. “Stand back!” he suddenly hissed toward the crowd.
Aunt Fila ignored him and stepped between the crooked man and Elena. “You! You were the one who accused these children!”
Elena’s tongue froze with fear. She nudged her aunt’s arm with her elbow, trying to warn her away from the man, but was ignored.
The old man waved his staff to his dark partner. “Rockingham, remove this child to the garrison. There, we will conduct our interrogation and prove her demonic heart.”
Rockingham strode forward with four guards beside him.
Aunt Fila grabbed Elena’s shoulder and tugged her away toward the crowd. “Like you did the Sesha girl two years ago. Her screaming still rings in my ears!” Aunt Fila raised an arm and waved it to the crowd. “Who is willing to give another child to these monsters? This is our valley, our town!”
Around Elena, townsfolk erupted with echoes of her aunt’s words. Elena’s heart stirred, freeing her tongue. “Aunt Fila! They are the ones who murdered Mother and Father.”
The crowd heard her words. A gasp arose from the mingled townspeople.
Rockingham and the four soldiers balked as the crowd grew belligerent. Several townsmen unsheathed knives. Elena saw the town’s tailor slice free Joach’s ropes. He dashed to Elena’s side and untied her bonds. Freed, she rubbed her raw wrists.
“I told you Aunt Fila would help us,” Joach said, his face flushed.
Elena noticed Aunt Fila’s eyes widen at the sight of her stained right hand. Her aunt reached to cover it. “Keep this hidden,” she whispered quickly and drew the oversized shirt-sleeve down around Elena’s hand. Her aunt then turned her attention back to the brewing altercation.
The soldiers took a tentative step forward but were outnumbered by the townspeople.
“Leave the child be!” someone yelled.
Another raised a knife in the air and cried, “Protect the children!”
Aunt Fila bent to Elena’s ear. “You’re safe now, dear. Don’t fear. I won’t let them harm our family anymore.”
But Elena hardly heard her aunt’s words. Her eyes were glued to the old man. She watched him raise his staff and tap it twice on the cobblestones. No one else took notice of the decrepit man’s action. But Elena remembered the signal. It was the same one he had used when he called the white worms upon her and her brother.
“No,” Elena’s voice squeaked. She clutched Joach’s arm, causing him to wince. “We must run!”
But it was already too late.
Someone in the crowd screamed in terror. All eyes turned to the smoke-stained skies.
From beyond the roofline, it came. A huge shape flew into view. Wide wings smote the air. Elena recognized the leathery beat of its wings. Its screech scattered the townspeople, who scurried like mice before a pouncing barn cat. Though previously invisible in the night skies, there was no mistaking the sound of the creature that had plagued her and her brother as they fled through the burning orchard. Now revealed, Elena wished for darkness to return again and remove the loathsome sight from her eyes. Its very image seemed to taint her spirit.
“See!” the robed man screamed. He pointed with his other arm, revealing a smooth stump where his right hand had once sprouted. “There is her demon consort, come to rescue her!”
The crowd erupted with screams, fleeing as the beast dove toward Elena. Only Joach and her aunt remained as it crashed to the street, taloned feet clawing the cobblestones. Through its skin, black blood could be seen churning in thick rivers. It folded its wings back and hissed at the townsfolk crammed into doorways and behind shop displays. Then its poisonous black eyes, glowing with malice, swung toward Elena.
Aunt Fila moved between her and the beast. “Run, children!” she said as she faced the creature. “Seek your uncle Bol!” Even before Aunt Fila had finished her command, Joach was yanking Elena toward the burned shell of the bakery.
Like a snake, the creature sprang forward and snatched up Aunt Fila.
“No!” Elena cried as it broke her aunt’s back, the snap distinct among the yelling. Then it tore Aunt Fila’s throat open with pointed teeth and flung her body to the ground. “No,” she moaned again as Joach pushed Elena away.
He was too slow. The creature shot out a claw and seized her brother by the neck.
“Joach!” she screamed as her brother was ripped from her side and hauled away choking, his eyes bulging.
13
BOL LEANED OVER his dusty book. The weak midday light shed only feeble fingers through the grimed window. The single candle on his desk, melted to a nub, waved a small yellow flame. He had been reading all night, striving to glean the knowledge he needed. The stacks of moldy books and rows of cubbyholed scrolls were his only company.
“Fire will mark her coming,” he mumbled as he combed white hair from his tired eyes. He squinted at the other words on the page. His lips, hidden under a thick mustache, slowly translated the ancient words. The portents of the Sisterhood spoke of this day. He glanced outside. The windows of his cottage, built high above the valley in a lonesome place called Winter’s Eyrie, had glowed red all night with the flames of burning trees.
Poor child. She should have been better prepared, warned.
Rubbing his white beard, Bol turned back to his tome, but as he paused with a finger gently turning a rat-nibbled page, his heart trembled a beat; then a loss larger than his house filled his chest. He placed both palms on his desk, keeping himself from tumbling to the plank floor. An intense sorrow threatened to swallow him away as he felt his twin sister die.
“Fila!” he moaned to his empty room.
Tears rose to his lids and fell to the yellowed pages. Usually so fiercely protective of these fragile texts, he let the salt of his tears smear old ink across the page.
He clutched an amulet through the coarse weave of his shirt. “Fila!” he called again.
And as always, she came to him.
The corner of the room by the hearth glowed softly like a will-o’-the-wisp. The weak glow retreated inward, growing brighter as it shrank in size, until finally it formed the figure of his sister. Dressed only in sweeping eddies of white light, she frowned at him, more exasperated than sad.
“It’s time, Bol.”
As his tears welled, her image swirled. “Then it’s true!” he said.
“No tears.” She still wore her no-nonsense grimness. “Are you prepared?”
“I … I expected more time, years still.”
“We all did. But it begins now. Time to put aside your books, old man.”
“You leave me this chore?” he asked pleadingly. “To do alone?”
Her stern look softened. “Brother, you know I have my own role.”
“I know: to seek the cursed bridge. But do you truly think you can find it?”
“If it exists, I will find it,” she said fiercely.
He sighed and looked upon his sister. “Always the will of cold iron,” he said w
ith sadness, “even in death.”
“Always the caster of dreams,” she answered with a hint of a smile, “even alive.”
Their lips formed twin smiles at the old argument, both so alike and yet so different. The pain of loss shone clear in each one’s eyes.
Fila’s apparition began to grow faint at the edges. “I can’t hold here any longer. Watch over her.” Her image faded to a vague glow. Her last words trailed as the light was vanquished by the library’s shadows. “I love you, Bol.”
“Goodbye, Sister,” he mumbled to a room far emptier and lonelier than before.
ELENA RUSHED TOWARDS her struggling brother. Time seemed to thicken and slow like sap in a winter’s maple. She watched Joach’s face turn a purplish hue, his throat closed in the claws of the skal’tum. Elena leaped and grabbed at the creature’s wrist, a cry trapped in her chest. Blind with fear, she dug her fingers into its clammy skin, refusing to lose her brother to the beast. “Let go!” she shrieked to the world.
In answer, her hand burst with flame. Heat like the touch of molten rock flowed from her fingers. She clenched her fist and found her fingers flowing through the beast’s wrist—through skin, muscle, and bone.
The creature howled and tugged its arm away, pulling back only a seared stump. Screeching, panicked by its maiming, it tumbled away from Elena and her brother.
Joach stumbled forward, pawing the severed hand from his neck. He threw it to the street. “Sweet Mother!” he blurted and dashed to Elena’s side.
Elena’s eyes flashed to her hand, expecting to see blackened bones and burned flesh, but all was normal—not even a hint of the red stain remained. Was she free of that curse?
“Run, El!” Joach cried. He hauled Elena toward the charred beams of the bakery.
But the howling beast was not the only menace on this street.
Joach skidded to a stop and pulled Elena to him. Between them and refuge stood the cowled man leaning on his staff. He wore a smile, as if this all served his purpose perfectly.
“Come to me, child. I’ve waited long enough.” With surprising speed, he whipped the heel of his staff toward Elena’s head.
Elena, her mind still muddled by the flow of power through her hand, could not quite comprehend the danger.
She stood frozen until Joach knocked her aside. With a gasp, she fell to the street, her knee striking the hard cobblestones. From the corner of her eye, she saw the staff smite Joach a glancing blow on the shoulder.
She scrambled to her feet, roused now, and began to flee. Joach, however, failed to follow. Elena swung to a stop and stared. Her brother’s upper body tried to heave his legs into motion, but like two rooted trees, his legs would not obey.
He looked up, eyes filled with horror, and saw that Elena had stopped running. “Go!” he yelled.
She stumbled back as she saw the bewit’ching spread through her brother’s body. Now even his arms couldn’t move, and in a heartbeat, his neck and head froze in position. Only a single tear rolled down his cheek.
“Do you abandon your brother, child?” The old man beckoned to her with a gnarled finger. “Come!”
TOWNSPEOPLE FLED PAST Er’ril as he fought his way toward the screaming. Like a rock in a fast-flowing river, he was buffeted by elbows and knees and could make no headway. Finally, Kral pushed forward and used his large bulk to forge a path ahead.
One of the townspeople, Er’ril judged him a butcher from his bloody apron, tried to pound Kral aside. But with a shrug of the mountain man’s shoulder, the heavy man flew far. His head hit the brick wall, and he fell limp to the ground. Kral ignored him and continued on.
“Run!” another townsman called to them. “The demon has come!”
Kral gave Er’ril a stern stare, then hastened his pace forward. Er’ril, with Nee’lahn in his shadow, followed in the mountain man’s wake. After several heartbeats, the street emptied around them, the crowd now fleeing behind.
“Use caution, Kral,” Er’ril said softly. “We’re close.”
They crept to the next corner and used a farrier’s wagon for cover. Er’ril peered over the edge of the cart to the street beyond.
His blood went cold. Only a stone’s toss away, before the burned-out skeleton of a building, stood a beast he had hoped never to see again. Wings stretched taut in pain, the skal’tum howled and held a wounded arm to its chest.
Wounded? Er’ril slunk back undercover. Who could harm such a beast?
Er’ril saw Kral begin to pull the ax from his belt. It was too small a weapon against a dreadlord. Er’ril raised a palm toward the mountain man, warning caution and patience. Kral’s brows knitted heavily.
Nee’lahn knelt beside them, peering down the street from under the wagon. “There are the children,” she whispered, pointing between the spokes of the wagon’s wheel. “Who is that man, the robed one?”
Er’ril looked and spied the two youngsters crouched before a cowled figure near the edge of a scorched building. Though the cowled one’s face was hidden in shadow, Er’ril recognized the black robe. His lips thinned with menace. “A darkmage.”
“Come to me, child,” the robed figure said, his voice finally carrying to them as the shrieking of the skal’tum waned. “Or your brother dies.”
The skal’tum stalked toward the young people. Its voice cut through the air like a thrown dagger. “Give me the boy. I will rip his limbss, one by one, from his body as the other brat watchess.”
Another man, dressed in the red and black of the garrison, quaked by a rain barrel. “Do what the master’s beast says, Dismarum! We don’t need the boy.”
“Still your tongue, Rockingham,” the one called Dismarum spat. Whatever look the darkmage gave the man caused him to pull farther behind his barrel.
The skal’tum repeated his demand. “Give me the boy! I will taste his young heart.”
“Demon!” Kral growled beside Er’ril, his voice thick with venom. Before Er’ril could raise a hand to stop him, Kral leaped forward over the wagon, his ax already raised above his head.
The skal’tum twisted to face the sudden assault.
The darkmage retreated toward the shadows of the burned building, his hand reaching for the young girl still frozen in place.
Fool of a mountain man! Before Er’ril could ponder his own response, his feet and heart betrayed him. He found himself springing after Kral, his own sword drawn, prepared to join the battle.
ELENA’S EYES WERE fixed on Joach’s. Though she was not bewit’ched like him, she could not flee. Other ties held her trapped to this spot. She refused to leave her brother’s side, even when the cowled man reached a clawed hand toward her.
But before his fingers could touch her skin, an elbow suddenly struck her chest and threw her backward. A one-armed swordsman thrust between her and the old man. Tall, wide-shouldered, with the ruddy complexion of the plains people, he raised his sword. “You won’t have her, darkmage!”
Before the cowled man could react, the winged beast screeched, drawing all eyes. The swordsman shoved Elena down as a wide wing ripped over their heads. “Flee, girl!” he yelled in her ear.
But her legs did not obey. Her heart, still attached by invisible bonds to the frozen Joach, would not budge. She crouched numb in the street.
Cringing, Elena saw a giant attack the winged monster, wielding an ax in a blurring pattern of honed edge and muscle. The winged demon retreated from his assault.
Suddenly a new hand rested on her shoulder. She looked up into the concerned face of a tiny woman.
“Come with me. Leave Er’ril to rescue your companion.”
She shook her head. “My brother!” was all that came to her tongue, an arm pointing toward Joach.
But the woman was stronger than she appeared and pulled Elena to her feet.
“Nee’lahn!” the swordsman called. He crouched on one knee, his sword raised toward the robed figure. “Get her to safety!”
The woman called Nee’lahn laid an arm over her shoulder
s and whispered in her ear. Her words, almost a soft song, were unintelligible, yet somehow pierced through the cloud in her mind. They reminded her of the words whispered to her by the Old Man in the orchard. Elena found the woman’s song freeing her legs, and she allowed herself to be guided away from the battle.
NEE’LAHN COAXED THE girl to the wagon’s shadow. Could this be the one? the nyphai wondered. She sang in the child’s ear, words she had been taught to woo the minds of humans. She brushed a strand of red hair from the child’s face and stared into eyes the color of green growth. Could it be?
Once the girl was safely hidden, Nee’lahn returned her attention to the street. Er’ril had climbed back to his feet, and now the darkmage cringed from the sword’s touch. Er’ril kept the cowled one from slipping away, but Nee’lahn noticed that they were both watching the battle raging between the skal’tum and the mountain man.
Kral attacked savagely, his swings wild and furious. But every strike was simply repelled by the beast’s tough skin. No blood was shed.
Yet even though Kral’s ax simply bounced off the creature, Nee’lahn noticed that the skal’tum appeared shaken by its previous injury. It kept the stumped arm far from harm, using wings to protect its flanks.
“Drive the skal’tum into the sunlight!” Er’ril called to his large companion. “There, you can wound it!”
With a furious feint, Kral switched the direction of his assault and soon had the creature retreating toward a square of sunlight. But the skal’tum seemed to realize the approaching danger and began to fight back. Its intact hand swiped black claws at the axman. Kral danced back. Quick and agile on his feet, the mountain man managed to escape injury, but he also lost ground. The beast now stood farther from the sunlight.
The skal’tum screeched in satisfaction, regained its confidence, and continued to thrust toward Kral, driving him around, almost toying with him. Soon their positions were reversed. The mountain man, sweating fiercely now, backed step by step toward the sunlight. Kral gasped for air, bent in exhaustion.