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Brax and his men and rangers dashed after the monster. It disappeared into the trees.
The protecting knights held their swords at ready. They faced the forest. Four dames clustered around the Kyrgy lord, beautiful and deadly as they defended Horst and Desora. The others had gone to the riders crumpled on the ground. The latter struggled to sit up. He held his head. The other, the first struck, remained still.
“My lord,” a lady rider urged, “retreat to your palace.”
He tilted back his head and laughed. “I do not fear that monster. It should fear us.” He clapped a hand to Desora’s shoulder. “With you and my riders and the lady de Sora, we can defeat it.”
Desora did not have his view of that battle. “We barely hurt it.”
“On contrary, we damaged it. Not enough, but we know Fire and Earth are its weaknesses. Next we will try Air. Perhaps ice instead of pure Water. And you, Lady de Sora, did well with that Earth sphere. Rocks will crush it.”
“They dented his armor, little more. The cuts were too small.”
He ignored her disagreement. “That armor takes damage. It bleeds. It flees before we can try a greater defense.”
“Yellow blood. Like foul sorcery.”
“A hint of that, aye. That tells us much. Ah, the captain returns.” He pushed through the steely defense around him and strode to the returning men.
Desora followed. The dames trailed her.
Horst ignored the rangers streaming past. Knights stopped before him. She didn’t hear what they said, likely more warnings.
Brax reached her. He caught her in his arms and enfolded her closely, burying his face in her fly-away hair. She didn’t stiffen. She melted into his embrace. She closed her eyes and soaked up his body’s steaming warmth, the solid strength and sturdiness, the smell of sweat and leather.
His arms, his body reminded her of home.
She hadn’t remembered anything about home for years.
The Kyrgy lord and his riders passed them, returning to the forest palace. Two knights carried the fallen one. Others helped the injured away. And Desora pressed away from Brax. He loosened his arms and quickly released her.
“My apologies,” he said immediately. “I forgot the distance between us.”
“Your men? We lost Klemt. Was Ambrois taken? I couldn’t see. Did we lose anyone else?”
“Klemt only. Vanished—like those sheep. Lord Horst lost two men with a third wounded.”
“The monster vanished. Did you find its track?”
“No real track, but we might have a way to follow it. We’ll need wings.”
He turned her toward the palace and the still-burning pyre. She stared at it. She’d forgotten the reason they were all outside when the monster came.
Had they not been grieving those lost to the wyre, would the monster have destroyed animals and structures before they realized it had come? Or would it have taken them unawares in the palace?
Unless Horst had strong wards on the palace, the structure’s destruction would have killed them.
“Desora, what did you hit it with, that last sphere?”
She realized that Brax had repeated the question while she’d gaped at the pyre. “Earth.”
“That’s no Earth power that I’ve ever seen.”
“Rocks. Still limited.”
“The monster cannot defend against it. That’s a weakness we can exploit. That cloud has to be a sorcerous spell to feed it and shield it until it must fight. Maybe not the sorcery we know. We’ve got a chance against it.”
“Do you think it works with the sorcerers of Frost Clime? But how did they ally with it? Where does it come from?”
“Across the sea? We’ve never seen it before. Alwen has traveled to the south, to the desert, but he didn’t travel beyond El Hambre. The rangers haven’t seen it or heard of it. Maorn Harte’s sentinels keep him well informed of any strange creatures who enter the vale.”
“Your swords inflicted no damage.”
“Couldn’t get past that armor. Iron arrows can rip apart that cloud it hides in. Your Earth dented it. And that last sphere of yours—if we can get inside that armor, we can hurt it, kill it. Earth power, that’s the key. Fire, a little. Water not at all.”
“Lord Horst wants to try Air.”
“Maybe, maybe not. Best not to experiment. How much stamina do you have with Earth? I know wizards’ magic can be exhausted and need time to rebuild.” He grinned. “You grumbled about that often enough.”
“As long as the ground beneath me is not sterile, I can draw the life potential. Green growing things.”
“Like the vines when we fought the wyre. What about the rocks? You have any limits using rocks?”
“I don’t know,” she said slowly.
His men, guards and rangers, clustered at the base of the steps. Concern etched their faces. Here was a monster they could not battle, not like they fought bandits and wyre and magic-sucking sorcerers.
Desora fell back as Brax gathered the men to consult. She needed her own gathering-in, not just of what she knew of Earth and what she had always thought of it, but what she’d never contemplated.
For years she’d bemoaned the limits of Earth. No spheres and spears of Fire. No twisting vortex or rushing windstorm of Air. No Water to flood and drown enemies, douse Fire, pour over troubles.
She’d never contemplated the ways to manipulate Earth.
No fiery sphere, but she had entangling vines. No drowning water, but she had crushing rocks. No windstorm, but soil could cave-in or roar down a mountainside.
Only imagination limited her.
That thought frightened her. Thrilled her.
. ~ . ~ . ~ .
Noon found them mounted, the troop and all the riders. Horst rode in lead with Brax on his left flank. Desora kept her horse behind, letting Horst’s captains go before her.
The gelding remained steady under her. She wondered how the horse would react when it faced the monster. None of the animals had had a fear of it. The men had turned the horses out before the monster began feeding. They had no prior knowledge of it as a predator, confirming that it came from elsewhere. How had it come here, to the northernmost reaches of Elsmere?
The pyre had burnt to the wee hours of dawn, watched to the last flame by Horst and his remaining knights and dames. Morcain had stood at his lord’s right hand, just as he rode on his right flank now. With the lightening of the sky, herald of sunrise, the Kyrgy lord sent three spheres of water to dash over the smoking embers, dousing the fire.
The one detour Desora made before she sought the sleep that she desperately needed was to the hay barn.
The monster had swatted her green sphere into the barn where it had exploded. Filled with life potential, the sphere’s power would have poured into the structure and its contents.
Brax reached her as she slid back the barn door. “Where are you going? You need to sleep.”
“I do. I wanted to see—oh.” With the door’s opening and the pyre shafting light into the barn, she could see the contents.
The hay had seeded and grown. Grass poked out of the heaps of straw. Green leaves sprouted from the wooden poles that supported the barn’s roof. Branches had formed on the roof beams and leafed out like trees in springtime. Green pushed out of the planed wall planks.
“What happened—? How did this—? That green sphere the monster hit away. That came here and did this?”
“Everything restored to life.”
He ran a hand over the stalks of grass sticking up from a half-used heap of straw. “It’s growing.”
“The sphere had life potential.” She bent and plucked a blue wildflower that had grown higher than the grass. “That potential came here.”
“You’ll have to tell Horst.”
“He knows. Or he soon will. His power imbues this whole compound.”
“All this, given new life.” He tilted back his head to see all the leaves sprouting across the boards, the beams. Red leaves for an oak’s new growth, the greeny yellow of hickory. The forgotten builder had used chestnut for the center posts, and that wood had rapidly grown branches that leafed and gave buds that promised nuts in autumn. “Impossible.” He turned to her. “Magic of a kind I have never seen.”
“It will die. It’s not rooted. A few sprouts will live. Whatever touches the ground, the boards and posts, the hay. The roof, where it gets sunshine and rain. Most will die, returning to their use in this building.”
“Still magical.”
“Elemental power,” she corrected, distinguishing the element from the wizardry she’d lost. “Not magical.”
He plucked a yellow buttercup that had grown on a straight stem and handed it to her. “Wondrous. And this is the power you used against the monster. The green vines that rooted on it, somehow, and were trying to trap its arms.”
“The sorcerer will soon rid him of those vines.”
“All this is life. How could it make that dent in its breastplate?”
“I don’t know. I didn’t expect that.”
“Life potential. That’s what you once named it to me, have I that right? Life that struck a blow against that monster.” He fell silent a moment then asked, “Because it is death?”
The idea struck her. Much of magic, wizardry against sorcery, worked as opposition. She wielded Earth with its life potential. The green sphere had damaged the monster. The vines had tried to trap it. Would the vines have strangled it?
Desora mused over Brax’s idea as they returned to the forest palace to snatch what sleep they could.
As the horses were saddled and supplies gathered for a long trek, Lord Horst renewed his wards to admit none to his forest palace. Only Desora worried that wards would not stop the monster. Yet the wyre and their master sorcerer remained a danger. Wards would stop them.
Brax ensured she had her leafed stave, fastened along the mount’s saddle.
When they began their trek, Horst declared they would ride to the High Meadow, where the monster had attacked the sprites and the sheep.
Brax pointed out that the monster came from the Wilding, but Horst remained adamant. With no better ideas and no way to track the monster, Brax bowed to the Kyrgy’s plan.
Desora looked back at the forest palace before the trees closed around it. She didn’t expect to return. She had no reason to call Lord Horst a friend and no reason to anticipate that he would desire her visit. Surviving the next days was a faint hope. A monster they didn’t understand, a master sorcerer, wyre to fight—chances were even that they would die. Yet looking at the palace with its gold and silver ornaments atop the roof spires, the geometric red squares and blue balls, the green squares and white orbs, that was fanciful beauty. The diamond-panes of stained-glass that glistened in the sunlight, the carved cross-braced walls, those were special touches.
Horst’s wards gradually obscured the whimsical palace. A gathering of gloom blurred the three roofs. It lowered over the structures, as if a hand swiped down from the heavens. Twisted in her saddle, she watched the palace fade into the cloudy vapor. The other buildings hazed away, becoming smudges in the thickening cloud. Only passing the wards again would return the buildings to view.
She wondered how long the hay barn with its sprouting wood and grass would live?
Desora twisted forward. Challach at her right hand gave her a half-nod. He didn’t talk, but Brax had ordered him to stay with her. She wondered if Brax trusted this guard more than Mannon. He certainly trusted his men more than the rangers—yet they had all depended on each other in their battles.
And what did it say about Brax that he ordered her a personal guard? She wielded elemental power. Knights and dames rode before and behind her. Their swords were keen. The rangers’ arrows were swift. Yet here Challach rode, obeying his captain’s order.
She looked ahead to the forest. Sunlight dappled the track. Birds sang and flitted to a new perch and sang again. Last night’s battle was unknown to them. No monster near, they faced no threat and rejoiced in the day.
A monster that the horses had ignored. A hay barn, growing with magical life. An orb of life potential that damaged the monster. Greeny vines that rooted and tried to impede the monster. A sphere of rocks with obsidian shards that pierced the monster’s armor and wounded it enough to reveal viscid yellow blood.
It ran from them. It feared them.
She’d thought it unstoppable—but they had stopped its attack. Just as she had constricted elemental Earth by thinking of the many ways that she couldn’t wield it instead of letting her imagination create new ways.
Just as she dwelled on those blanks in her memory. The faint echoes of recognition should be her focus.
Desora needed to dig new channels in her mind—for the monster, for elemental Earth, for her memory and lost past and Brax.
Whatever fronted her, she needed to tear down the walls. Then she would examine it—and its potential.
