EPIC: Fourteen Books of Fantasy (220 page)

“I’ll go with Killer,” Drake said, surprising me. “Makha can get you back to town.”

“We are splitting the group? But, we do not split the group. It is one of our rules.” Rahiel’s wings beat their own tiny hurricane of distress as she looked up at us.

“You comin’ with us or going with the lovebirds?” Drake’s lighthearted tone was a grand attempt.

“Oh burst you all. I will go with Killer. You cannot go against a magic user without your own caster. She will have you boiled and baked into a man-child and elf pie without my help.”

“Go,” Azyrin said.

“But we’ll be here,” Makha added. “Not goin’ back to town with tails between our legs. We’ll stay and recover and be closer if you need us.”

Azyrin reached into his embroidered bag and took out a tiny silver bell. He handed it to Rahiel. “Ring if trouble. I know. We come. I will rest, pray to Saar. Get stronger.”

Fade yowled again and I turned, seeing that the lights had floated out of sight. I started after the mist-lynx, jogging through the mud to catch up. No point in saying a long goodbye. Trying would only give me stomach cramps and a splitting headache.

Rahiel, riding Bill through the air as though it were an invisible, solid road and Drake caught up to me. We moved with very little noise now, free of Makha’s armor. I found myself missing the reassuring clanging of knowing I had a large, deadly woman guarding my back.

But Azyrin was right. We had made a vow to Hiljen, mine silent but no less binding. Kill the witches. One down. One left.

We caught up to the balls of light and fanned out, staying back far enough that they were just barely in view.
It might be a trap
, I wanted to point out. I wished I could ask Rahiel if the witch would have felt her summoned creatures’ deaths.

The swamp changed again, the water flowing freely now between thin strips of semisolid ground. As the sun rose, the mists burned away. The trees grew further apart, revealing patches of bright blue sky. The dank stench of the swamp lessened, replaced by a light fruity scent that grew stronger as we went. Blue frogs slipped off the banks as we moved past them, sliding almost silently into the myriad of branching streams around us.

The bog cypress and black willows gave way to more spreading oaks and wild apple, which turned out to be the source of the scent as hard green fruits ripened on overladen branches. My stomach clenched, reminding me that I hadn’t eaten since the morning before. I ignored it, intent on studying the landscape and wary of another attack. Up ahead was another clearing, this one a large, somewhat elevated hill. What I had taken from a distance to be a clot of vines around an apple tree revealed itself as a cottage woven from living plants and rough-hewn stone.

The balls of light shimmered and suddenly disappeared. Before Drake could form the words asking Rahiel what had happened, a gentle feminine voice hailed us. A young woman stepped out of the cottage. She wore a rose-colored gown and had soft golden hair that crowded her heart-shaped face in bouncing ringlets and her smile echoed the bright summer sunshine.

I should have shot her. I had my bow raised, the arrow nocked. Something in her tone stayed my hand. She sounded so gentle as she called good day to us, so sweet. I no more wanted to shoot her than I would stab a kitten.

“What brings you to my humble home?” she asked.

“Fair lady,” Drake said, walking forward as he sheathed his rapier with a flourish.

“Stop!” Rahiel cried out as Bill neighed, bucking in the air as his rider clung to his pink mane.

Fade growled beside me and his head slammed into my hip, knocking me back. I had to look away from the lovely woman and as my gaze left her face I felt my wits return.

Too late. Drake was between me and the witch.

“Drake! You idiot weak child!” Rahiel yelled. “Move!”

Drake turned but the witch sprang forward and her hand gripped his arm. For a moment his handsome face went slack, then he drew his rapier and thrust the witch behind him.

“Leave her alone. Are you both crazy?” Green light burned in his eyes. Behind him the witch started chanting under her breath but my keen hearing caught the murmur of the spell.

I tried to strafe right as Rahiel flew higher into the air, both of us searching for an angle on the woman. The ground shook beneath my feet and monsters coalesced from the mossy earth. I sprang back and loosed an arrow at this new enemy. It sank no more than an inch into the creature’s bumpy green-black hide.

They were as tall and broad as Azyrin, walking upright like men but with the thick, toothy heads of crocodiles and long arms that ended in vicious hooks. Their hides were ridged and tough and black ichor dripped from their jaws. Hiljen had mentioned crocodile men.
 

The nearest monster broke the shaft of my arrow with a swipe of one clawed hand and lunged for me.
Splinters
.

“Sorry, Drake,” I heard Rahiel call out as I parried a slashing claw with the stave of my bow and threw myself backward.

Drake turned into a rabbit. A bright, fluffy, pink rabbit.

Her human cover eliminated, the witch squeaked and her dress swirled around her, turning to a swarm of wasps. I sent an arrow arcing into the swarm as I continued my retreat.

The crocodile man was slow but persistent. He lumbered forward, his hooked hands slashing and his jaw snapping, spraying black acidic goop into the air around me. The ichor scorched the vegetation as it splattered, droplets hitting my armor and smoking against the enchanted hide.

A ball of Rahiel’s blue fire slammed into the crocodile man’s side and he crumpled with a hideous yowl. The flames ate at his hide and I squinted against the sudden, intense heat as the air crackled and filled with a smell like burning pork. The monster fell close enough that I had no need to gauge distance or my aim so I sent two arrows at once into his belly, drawing with all the strength in my arm and pulling the string back to my earlobe. The monster stopped yowling and crumpled.

Two more crocodile men lurched and snapped at Rahiel. She had flown Bill down low and the unicorn now had the nape of the rabbit formerly known as Drake clamped in his golden teeth. Now she flew in dizzying spirals, staying just out of reach of the monsters as she sent another bolt of crackling fire into the nearest one.

“Fade!” she yelled at me, pointing to the woods beyond the cottage. “Follow him. Witch getting away.”

Fade was covered in a cloak of angrily buzzing wasps but the cat had a firm grip on the skirt of the witch. She had almost gained the trees and as I started forward, drawing another arrow, her dress tore and Fade disappeared into the swarm.

I had no shot. The witch dove into the trees and I took off running after her. Rahiel and Bill were on their own. This woman had killed off nearly an entire town, had truly doomed Strongwater Barrow. The curse would die with the last of the witches and some good might be salvaged from the wreckage of that unhappy place.
 

If I could catch her. If I could kill her. She had charmed Drake. Almost charmed me, though I was loathe to admit it even in the silence of my own mind.

Shaking the doubts from my head, I entered the forest. The ground here was mostly dry, the swamp seemingly losing its hold on this part of the wood. The witch was fleeing, her progress easy to track as branches snapped ahead of me and her impractical skirts left broken fronds of fern and threads in the scramblebriars that grew along the forest floor.

Then the sounds of her flight stopped and the wood grew eerily silent, the way the swamp had before the first witch attacked us. Warned by the change, I halted and readied my bow, my eyes searching the shifting shadows for her.
Chanting again, but where? Curse you
. I swung my bow to the left, trying to pinpoint the sound, to find a target for my murderous desires.

Glowing green vines erupted from the forest floor and though I sprang into the air and slashed out with my bow, the unnatural vegetation entangled me. Thorns dug into my armor and the vines tightened until all I could do was struggle to breathe. Another vine whipped up and tore Thorn from my weakening fingers. I opened my mouth in a scream no one would ever hear.

Fade burst from the tree cover and slammed into the witch as she revealed herself. For a blessed moment her concentration was broken and I sucked in a desperate breath as the vines loosened.

Then green fire engulfed the mist-lynx as the witch threw the tiger-sized cat from her with impossible strength. Fade hit the wide bowl of a maple tree with a sickening smack and lay still.

Mist, damn you. Go to mist. Heal
, I begged him with helpless eyes. The fire fizzled out but he didn’t move. His silver and black-striped fur smoked faintly in the sunlight.

The thorns on the glowing vines cut into my exposed skin and hot blood trickled down my neck into my armor. I blinked to clear tears and sweat from my eyes and refocused on the witch.

She rose slowly to her feet and smoothed her gown, never taking her glowing green eyes off me. I twisted my left hand, my wrist brushing the smooth pommel of the dagger sheathed in my belt.
 

“No last words, elf?” she said with a laugh I might have found beautiful in wildly different circumstances.

Words. If only I could
.

“No?” Then her eyes narrowed and her nostrils flared. “What are you? I thought wood elf, but that smell. Your blood. That power! It’s like honey and damp grass and starlight.” She laughed and the sound sent shivers through my aching body.

Starlight has a smell? I twisted my hand, trying to get my fingers onto the dagger. My blood helped in that it lubricated my vambrace and let my arm slip higher, but the hilt was slick or my fingers were. I couldn’t look down to tell. Blindly I worked to free my hand enough to get the blade.

“Answer me!” she demanded, coming ever closer, drawn by whatever power she sensed in my blood.

I wasn’t worried she would figure out what I was. Elemental Elves, the World-singers, are a long lost legend in the mortal realms. I was willing to wager my bow that less than twenty beings in this world would know what I was even if I told them and none of them were likely to be as young as this witch appeared.

“What? Can’t you speak? I will make you speak!”

The vines tightened. My ribs grated on each other and the breath I’d taken whooshed out of my lungs with painful force. Oh, how I wished she could make me speak.

In cheye
.
Freedom
. That word would tear these vines from my body.

“Speak. Tell me the secret of your power, what magic fills your blood!” The witch was close enough that I could see the greenish veins beneath her porcelain skin, see the green madness burning in her unnatural eyes.

Lotfahn
.
Rend
. That word would turn the witch inside out.

My fingers closed on the hilt of the dagger. I gritted my teeth and pulled up and forward, loosening the blade from its sheath.

Enshallaa
.
To unmake
. The word that would destroy the very fabric of a person, tearing them from all the songs ever sung. A word even my people had tried to forget. A word I had used only once and to my utter ruin.

A word that now, in my pure hatred of this witch who had cursed the village, who had turned my closest companion into a smoldering corpse and nearly killed the few others who looked past my muteness and aloof ways and welcomed me by their sides. The anger I tried to bury, the same white rage that had caused my life all its grief, surged in me, infusing my limbs with searing strength.

With the scent of Fade’s burnt fur choking my nostrils and my own blood stinging my eyes, I dragged the dagger free and threw it with a flick of my wrist.

The vines almost foiled the shot but the witch had come too close. The dagger sank into her belly. Not her heart at which I had aimed, but enough to distract her. The vines loosened again and this time I was ready.

I tore them asunder with both hands and teeth, leaping onto the shocked witch with animal fury. My blood-slick fingers closed around her scrawny throat and I squeezed and squeezed, my mouth open in a silent howl. She kept fighting, struggling, her hands turning to claws that tore into my thighs and shredded my enchanted vambraces.

I threw my head back to keep it from her slashing hands and dug my fingers in, lifting her head and bashing it down into the soil. The ground was too damp here to do much damage, but my fury slowed her attacks. Her damaged throat coughed out a word and I felt a ripple of power gathering in her. My pants started to smoke and char. Remembering how she had thrown Fade from her, I let go and rolled away.

Something hard jabbed into my back. Thorn. I snatched up the bow and reached for an arrow. No quiver.

The witch had gained her knees. A quick glance showed my quiver only a few feet away, its shoulder strap severed.

“Burn, elf bitch,” screamed the witch as she threw a bolt of burning fire at me.
 

I was already moving, lunging for my arrows. I grabbed one, nocking it and releasing as I straightened up, letting my fury guide my aim.

Baleh
.
True flight
.

The arrow flew true. Its broad steel head punched into her heart and red blood spewed from her surprised, open mouth. She dropped face first onto the loam and lay still.

I stumbled forward, holding my bow in front of me like a stave. With the end of it I turned her over. Her eyes no longer glowed and her chest did not move. Blood trickled from her mouth and soaked the front of her bodice. My arrow had broken beneath her, but I intended to leave it in her heart anyway. I retrieved my dagger from her belly and staggered toward the tree Fade lay beneath.

The mist-lynx was not there. For a stunned moment I looked about. There were charred lines on the tree bark where his burning body had hit. This was the tree. I knew it was.

A cool, rough tongue laved my neck as the mist-lynx materialized behind me. Tears stung my eyes as I turned and threw my arms around his thick, fuzzy neck, burying my face in his charred fur. My stomach rebelled and bile rose in my throat, but I pressed my tongue against the roof of my mouth.