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“I wonder how an animal can eat a freesh, and be bothered not by its bones.”
Ailish spit out the water in her mouth as she half-laughed and almost choked. “After almost two hundred years of living, wondering how an animal can eat the bones of a freesh is a question of great importance?”
He stared at her, then shook his head. “Think you not on different subjects?”
“Subjects that are important, yes. But what my aoutem eats ... no. Especially, may I remind you, when we have seven Dark Masters and who-knows-how-many of your black bitches after us.”
Jalil ignored the cynicism lacing her words. “I think you misspeak. I think you have spent your life questing for knowledge, seeking to know more than you do.”
Ailish stared at the Master, trying to understand his point. “Useful knowledge. Important things.”
“You can never know how important a ‘useless’ piece of knowledge can become.”
“About the bones of a freesh? And what is the point if we are going to the edge of the world to freeze and die?”
Jalil stared at her for several long seconds. I realized not the continuing depth of your anger.
Ailish stiffened; her green eyes flared dangerously. Have I not the right to my anger? Am I simply to follow along without real emotions? I have been pulled from my life, I have been asked to leave everything and everyone I love. I have been trying to accept this as my duty, my responsibility to save Nevaeh, to save you, and to save that ... She waved a hand toward the Staff in his hands. That piece of wood you value so highly. “Have I not the right to my anger?” she repeated aloud.
Jalil said nothing for a moment. Then he said “Of course yo—”
He froze. An instant later he swung the Staff upward and released a stream of energy. The energy met a thick tree branch above them. There was a muffled explosion, followed by a snap. The branch split. A large bird, its feathers ablaze, fell to the ground, and flapped about madly.
The moment Jalil had acted, Ailish’s powers flared. When the branch split, her hands turned blue-white with power. She spun, looking everywhere, seeking the cause before turning back.
A spy! Jalil pointed the Staff at the quivering danglore.
Calming her breathing, Ailish knelt by the danglore as its essence left its burned body. She caught just a trace of something dark and evil, and drew back when the danglore spasmed once and died.
She looked at Jalil, who said, “It tried to communicate with its mistress. I sensed its presence then.”
“Were you in time?”
“I know not. It would be foolish for us to think it so.”
“Yar!” she called, packing their things. Scout.
“You think it necessary to move now?”
Nodding, her anger of moments ago forgotten, she said, “I do. Unlike the sqerl, this ... thing’s death will alert the black ones. The witches will come quickly. We need to be away.” Silently she added, I’m certain she was watching and listening through the danglore.
You are right, of course.
She stopped to stare at him, her anger returning, but under control. “I know.”
<><><>
An hour before midnight, Haron knelt next to her danglore. She lifted the burnt remains and brought them to her cheek. “You served me well.”
Throwing the dead bird into the trees, she walked slowly and carefully around the area. It took a few minutes before she picked up both Ailish and the Dark Master’s auras. So fresh were they she was able to determine which direction they’d gone. She stared at the northbound road, closed her eyes, and focused her senses. When she opened her eyes, she called down yet another danglore, which she sent to Irret.
Ignoring the way her kraal shook in exhaustion, she mounted the animal. Its body was so abused from two days of running, and very little food or water, it could barely stand. But the black witch took no notice. Instead, she filled the poor animal with as much dark energy as she could push into the hapless creature, kicked its flanks, and set off in a gallop.
She was determined to catch them before morning. When she did, she would destroy them both! Then she called yet another bird, and sent it northward to seek the woman and the Dark Master. She smiled. She had servants everywhere in Northcrom. As she rode, she used her mind to push her instructions to the three slaves she had summoned earlier.
<><><>
The moon was in full descent and the dawn an hour away when Yar’s warning came. Ailish drew back on the reins and waited for more. She joined with Yar, who crouched behind a tree ahead. Across from him, and a hundred feet further down the road, were two barely discernable outlines almost fully hidden behind tall trees.
Then Yar swiveled his head. His eyes locked on a man not fifty feet away. There are three, not two. Stay, she told Yar, Wait for us. She dismounted and as she went to Jalil she spoke silently. There is something ahead. Three men hide in the trees, waiting.
He searched her face for a moment. Who ... why?
I know not. Perhaps they are more of Irret’s minions.
He grasped the Staff tighter, closed his eyes, and as far as Ailish could tell, Jalil stopped breathing. When his eyelids rose, he nodded. Strange it is: two are controlled by a black one, but the third is ... not fully under her control. Free Blades they are—tools for the dark ones have these become. And in touch with a black sorceress are they. He tapped his temple with a forefinger to emphasize his last words.
Mounting the kraal, Ailish pulled her bow free and notched an arrow. She held both in one hand, resting them against her thigh. She commanded the kraal forward, and it moved in the slow pace she wanted. Her knees tightened on the kraal’s flanks to give her a solid base for using her bow.
She rejoined with Yar, who had been inching forward as silent as only can a hunting rantor.
She had no need to see through Yar’s eyes any longer, as she sensed the three. Two gave off waves of darkness, signaling another’s control, but the third was, as Jalil said, different. To her senses, it was as though the third was fighting the black one’s control, but could not quite free himself.
She stared straight ahead, as if she had not a care in the world. The closer she came to them, the more her powers grew within her lower belly. Prepare, she told Jalil.
The moment they reached the first of the hidden men, he charged out from behind the oak, and raced at her with drawn sword. “Stop or die,” the man shouted.
Ailish sent her command to Yar. The cat screamed its hunting cry, then leapt into the road. He stood ten feet before the Free Blade, who stopped instantly.
Before Yar’s bone-chilling cry faded, Ailish raised the bow, drew back the gut string, and released the feathered shaft.
<><><>
Haron slowed the kraal. She’d caught up with them a bare twenty minutes earlier and had slowed the kraal to match their pace. Locked in a joining with the bird, she watched Ailish approach the ambush.
Dismounting from the trembling kraal, she walked slowly forward. When the first of the Free Blades stepped from behind the tree, the rantor roared, and Ailish raised her bow. Haron lifted her right arm—the entire length of which, from fingers to shoulder, was covered with dark purple light—and released a bolt of pure dark power.
<><><>
The arrow flew at the Free Blade’s head. The instant before it struck, something shattered the air, and the arrow stopped and fell to the ground. The Free Blade kept coming.
Ailish reacted swiftly. Her right hand filled with the heat and fire of her deadliest weapon. With the barest of flicks of her wrists, she sent a stream of deadly blue fire at the man. It struck hard, surrounding him with dancing blue light before lifting him into the air and flinging him back and into a tree.
He hit the tree with a deep thud, and fell to the ground. An instant later he rose, the sword still in his hand.
Without thinking, she released a second arrow the same instant the second Free Blade stepped onto the road and shot an arrow at her. She flicked her wrist, and the arrow went skittering into the woods. Before the man could set another shaft, Yar was in the air.
This time her arrow wasn’t deflected and struck the Free Blade between his eyes. He was dead before his body hit the ground.
The rantor struck the Free Blade hard, his front paws around the man’s neck, and his body slamming him onto the road. The man’s scream echoed through the woods, ending when Yar closed his jaws on the Free Blade’s neck.
When the third Free Blade emerged from behind another tree, Ailish set yet another arrow and raised the bow. The warrior held his sword at the ready.
Yar rose from the body of the second Free Blade and took two steps toward the third.
Ailish raised her hand. Dancing blue fire raced in circles around it. There was a low explosion behind her: she held her concentration on the man.
Contained the black witch have I, came Jalil’s silent words.
Hold, she told Yar. The rantor stopped moving but his eyes did not leave the man.
Ailish pushed at the Blade, testing the control the witch had over him. He was fighting it, as she’d sensed earlier, but the woman was too strong for him. You must deal with the witch, Jalil said.
You have her, deal with her!
Kill her I will not. Question her to learn what she knows is better.
Wha—Ailish shook her head. Just hold her.
She stared at the oncoming Free Blade. Even as he closed toward her, she sensed his internal fight. She exhaled sharply and damped her powers; instead of using them, she snapped her bow to the saddle, dismounted, and drew her sword from the scabbard on her back.
She walked toward the man who stood absolutely still, his sword at the ready should Yar attack.
When she was within a half-dozen feet of the man, she stopped. Like most Nevaen men, he was tall, an inch or so above her own six-foot height. He was broad-shouldered and well-muscled. Even in the darkness she could tell his face was roughhewn and chiseled. She might have called him handsome, except for the scar, which angled from below his eye to his jawline, and then down his neck to his chest, where it disappeared behind his padded tunic. No, rugged and distinctive was he, but handsome he was not.
Even as she took in his appearance, and more than just sensing the darkness with which the black witch was controlling him, she felt it as a physical thing. She sensed as well, the strength of the Free Blade’s mind more than matched the rugged facade of the man as he battled against the control of the witch.
A stream of black energy flashed down from above, and caught her by surprise. It hit hard, knocking her off her feet, but did not injure her as her own power surged to dissipate the attack. She jumped to her feet before the next attack could catch her, raised her arm straight into the air, and sent a bolt of blue fire into the tree.
A crave, its feathers smoking, thudded to the ground at her feet. She stared at it, stunned. She had never been attacked in that way, nor would she ever use an animal so cruelly. She swiveled her head toward the Free Blade, who had not moved against her when she’d been knocked down.
She reached out with her mind, again testing the dark veil surrounding the man, and then pushed a charge at it. The darkness vanished suddenly. “If you want to remain alive ... stay where you are!” She spun and ran back to Jalil.
Standing at the side of the litter, she stared at the black witch, who stood frozen in mid-step. One foot raised, the other preparing to move her forward. Tell me, oh great Dark Master, think you your containment of the witch held?
Jalil looked at her. Your sarcasm is unexpected.
Release her. I need to speak with her.
The instant he released the witch, her foot came down and she stumbled forward. Ailish used the movement to her advantage, releasing a finger-like stream of energy to surround the woman as if it were her hand. Guiding the power, Ailish closed her fist and the power closed tightly around the woman.
Ailish didn’t think about how she was able to do what she was doing; only how her newer powers seemed to intuitively anticipate her moves. There was a sense of familiarity about the black witch. “Who are you?” She looked as close as she could, but was unable to recognize the distorted features of a Dark Woman of Power. “Who are you?”
“Know you not who I used to be?”
“If I recognized you, I would not ask ...” Stop playing games! She squeezed her fist tighter; the Dark Sorceress grunted.
Ailish loosened her hand. Who were you?
“Haron of Freemorn, your highness.” The woman laughed.
Ailish shook her head. She was stunned by the woman’s words, yet now the odd sensation of knowing her returned. Haron of Freemorn, a gentle and wonderful Woman of Power who had not returned from the Island after she had been called.
“You died twenty years ago.”
“No, I never went to the Island. I found my real self on the way there.”
“Found your real self?”
Haron stiffened. Her eyes widened. Ailish felt more than sensed an unquestionable stronger, darker power sweep across her.
Block! Jalil’s silent warning was too late. A second wave of darkness, stronger than the first, swept across the road and flung her to the ground. The litter carrying Jalil was upended. Then Haron, her face turning a dark red, and her eyes glowing with a pale illumination, attacked Ailish. As Ailish had done to her, the black witch sent a stream of power to encircle Ailish, and then she contracted the power until Ailish’s breath exploded from her chest. An instant later, the black filth projected by the witch oozed into her mind. She heard Haron laughing as the black sorceress came toward her.
