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The old growth forest ended long before they neared the Haven. They entered a wood of stumps and coppiced growth, thin and thick shoots, sprouting from the other rim of the trunks.
Vrigsmal hunched. “The trees cry.” Then he shook off whatever affected him and stiffly straightened. He lifted his face to the snowing sky. The flakes graced his white skin, creating a glistening rime that neither melted nor drifted away. “Stay near to me.”
Orielle sensed the sparkling magic of Fae power, like the energy released at Vrigsmal’s forest palace—although she hadn’t recognized that subtle energy until he removed the illusions and the palace of golden stone faded back to a timber-framed longhouse and planked outbuildings.
She didn’t know what he did now, only that he worked with the power he’d retrieved from the illusion of his palace.
The icy wind on the heights hadn’t descended to the valley. The withy coppices didn’t stir. The snow fell straight down. It didn’t swirl or dance, just steadily dropped to blanket everything in flaky ice. A trail of footprints revealed their passage toward the palisaded Haven.
The thick snow didn’t muffle the screams. The clash of battle sounded louder as they worked through the coppice. Orielle wanted to urge “Hurry. Faster.” All those children who had played along the lanes teared in her eyes. Until Hackett spoke of them, she hadn’t realized the Haven had so many mundane, defenseless against power. They needed to hurry, but outpacing Vrigsmal’s spell wouldn’t help the innocent.
They reached the wood’s verge. Stretching to the palisade were fields, the sod turned to lie fallow for winter. The clumps of sod were barely visible through the lacy veil of snow. The fields were open, with no places to hide their advance except for a few storage buildings that squatted at the corners of the fields.
Then a screech came, louder than the other screams. A flash gilded the falling snow. The sounds of battle ebbed ... then roared back with shrieking metal and crashing wood.
Grim inhaled sharply. “The towers are gone!”
Wooden watchtowers had vanished from the corners of the palisade. The wall remained, protecting the Haven from the Wilding’s predators.
“Only the towers at the front.” Vrigsmal pointed to a barely visible structure off to their left. He scowled. “No one mans them.”
Orielle couldn’t see the tower. The snow fell too quickly. “Hurry,” she whispered. “The children.”
“Any other entrance?” Vrigsmal asked.
“Only the main gate.”
“A trap when you’re betrayed.”
“We never were. Almost, but yesterday we ended that problem.”
“Not even when the wyre attacked a hand of years ago?”
“Not even then. The lair wasn’t large enough to trap us inside. Tobit did argue for a deep tunnel, coming up in the forest. Only he with his Earth power could have dug it, and keeping up the shaft—.”
“I sense no disruption of the ground.”
How could the Kyrgy lord sense a tunnel that burrowed deep underground? Fae had an uncanny sense of the natural, but she hadn’t realized it extended beneath the surface.
“Come. Near to me,” and Vrigsmal strode out of the sheltering coppice and across the field, his long strides skimming the open area.
Impeded by her skirts, Orielle scrambled to stay abreast. Vrigsmal angled for the front corner of the palisade.
Out of breath, she pressed against the upright timbers that formed the wall as the Kyrgy lord looked around the corner. Then he strode out, not attempting to hide.
She knew the reason when she turned the corner. No one was without the wall. She hiked her skirts and ran to the gate, passing the lord.
There, inside the gate, was the destruction.
A spell had broken the gate. Splintered timbers lay scattered on the ground, digging into the cobbles, piled on each other. Snow dusted the jagged spars that reached up to the heavy clouds. Broken pieces had flown into buildings on both sides of the street, penetrating walls, breaking doors open, and shattering windows and shutters.
She saw legs trapped beneath a support beam. Snow collected on the breeches and boots, blanketing the dead. More bodies lay sprawled beneath the broken timbers. A woman’s skirt. A man. A man in leather.
Nothing moved, just the steadily falling snow.
Then Vrigsmal passed her, Sangrior on her other side, and Grim came behind her and urged her forward.
Her numbness receded. She heard a whoosh of power ahead, the clash of steel, shouts, screams.
“Solsken!”
The word helped break her focus on the crushed bodies. The three men had half-turned to her. Their drawn swords glinted with a strange light. Eldritch green, as if the steel warned of the power that had destroyed the gate.
“The sorceress is there, Solsken.” The Kyrgy lord pointed along the main lane. Buildings crowded in to block the view, but she knew the lane led to the main well square. “The Rhoghieri and I,” Vrigsmal smiled, toothy and manic, “will hunt wyre.” He pointed with the sword to a side lane.
High-pitched screams erupted from there. Children.
“Solsken!” he snapped.
“The sorceress—.” She cleared the salty tears clogging her throat. “She will not see sunset,” she vowed.
The insane glint in those depthless eyes seemed brighter. “To the Hunt!”
Vrigsmal and Grim ran toward the screaming children.
Sangrior turned when she reached him. “A good day to Hunt. Our prey is trapped. The only exit is behind us. We will soon rid the world of this sorceress.”
Orielle nearly laughed at his optimism.
They found more dead Haveners at a shop front where flames burned merrily in the doorway. The fire melted the accumulated snow which froze into a puddle. She recognized one man. He had spoken at the hearing before Volk took her to ride with Lady Bone.
They had hunted the sorceress then. She had ambushed them and reduced the Lady’s riders to three.
Now, again, they hunted the sorceress who would expect their arrival. What trick will she have this time?
The snow gave her ready access to Water. Orielle used it to douse the fire.
Rho fought with elements, Water and Air, Earth and Fire. Tobit had opened the ground under her feet. Fortis had thrown fireballs that incinerated whatever and whoever they struck. Air and Water she had wielded.
The sorceress worked with power, spells.
I need the elements for wyre. Sangrior can’t take them, for Grim had warned that few mundane could fight the wolfen. I need power against the sorceress.
I’m not a named wizard, but I can fight like a wizard and like a Rho. Surely that gives me an edge.
Not far beyond the shop they came on a trail of blood over a threshold and into a darkened shop. She saw the after-image of pale flesh. She stopped Sangrior.
“The battle’s ahead.”
She shook her head. “I want no enemy at my back.” She stepped through the open door and to one side. She thrust an orb of light into the room.
A growl. There, crawling for the passage, an unshifted wyre. Blood covered her naked back. She tore at the floor even as she looked at Orielle and snarled.
A knife flashed past. It hit the wyre’s throat and stayed quivering. Sangrior took long strides to the female. He crouched to ensure the kill then wiped the blood on his sleeve.
Orielle returned to the quiet street before he finished.
And jumped back as a sword slashed down.
The man brought the sword back, a lethal back stroke. She fell away, into Sangrior.
The knight thrust her aside. He met the sword with his knife and deflected it with a screech of steel. Then he dove through the doorway and crashed into the swordsman.
Orielle righted herself. Faster! I must get to the sorceress before she kills more people and destroys more of the Haven.
The men grappled a few paces away. Sangrior had the shorter blade, better at close quarters. The swordsman realized it. He flung away his sword to grab the knight’s knife arm. Sangrior bent the man’s arm back. He laughed.
Trapped in the doorway, Orielle tore her gaze from the fight to the street, watching for trouble. Hoping no one would come on them, hoping she could use the power ready in her hand.
Sangrior and the man fell to the snow-covered cobbles. The knight grunted as he landed on bottom. The swordsman heaved, grunted, bending forward with all his strength.
Then everything quieted, bare seconds before explosions rocked the buildings a few streets over. Shouts, screams, more fighting urged her to hurry. Even more distant were the high-pitched screams of children, not so many now. She heard nothing in this street but her own panicked breathing and the hoarse rasp of a man’s breath.
The swordsman rolled off Sangrior.
The knight sat up. He wiped the knife on the man’s tabard. Then he levered to his feet. When he saw the crackling orb in her hand, he grinned with a manic edge like Vrigsmal. Then he bent and picked up the man’s discarded sword. He drew his own. “Onward.”
Orielle caught her rapid breath, held it deliberately, then let it out with a whoosh. She looked at the straining energy in the orb, fighting her hold, desperate for use.
She stepped over the dead swordsman and headed for the well square.
All streets and lanes bore straight to the Haven’s heart.
When she and Grim had entered, the Haven had seemed crowded. As she and Sangrior covered the last ground, she realized how small the community was. All of the leading adults must have filled the front room in the Elder House, wanting to hear how Grim and she would answer Tobit and the four mentors.
The dwellings near Brok’s had seemed crammed together in a maze, but all the Haven’s dwellings must have tracked along only a few lanes. Shops and work areas were massed on the Haven’s other side, with storage and corrals and pens and the lock-up at the back.
For the Haven’s defense, Grim had expected no more than a dozen fighters, with a few more who could only weakly wield the elements. It’s a community, not a garrison.
They came on more dead as they reached the square. She saw the fighting. An older man in leathers fought one in a tabard—was that Hackett? Another burning shop. Four Rho ranged against someone she couldn’t see. Three men stood behind a petite woman, shaping a Fire spell. One of the men threw an orb filled with flames, but the fire was pale yellow, barely maintaining it circle.
Then she saw power, green-limned and eldritch.
She had found the sorceress.
