The Darkling Tide (2 page)

“How do you explain the thing we fought last night?” Leona asked.

“I can’t,” Abagail admitted.

“So then we can assume they can get on Singer’s Trail,” Rorick said.

“At least the powerful ones,” Leona agreed.

“I don’t think that’s exactly it, but since I don’t have any other explanation on how we fought darklings while safe inside the wardings of Singer’s Trail, we will go with that.” Abagail sat up in bed and let the blanket fall into her lap. She put the pillow in place behind her and looked out the window. Agaranth had been in three years of winter already. Technically they’d been told this was summer, but the weather said differently.

A storm had kicked up the night before full of lightning, thunder, that dumped several feet of snow through the clearing. Outside the clearing the forest was so thick that the ground was largely barren of snow, but they still had to
make
it back to the forest.

“Leo!” Abagail said. “What happened to your hair?”

Her sister beamed at her. Where once she’d had long blond hair it was now all chopped off short like Abagail’s. It had been done roughly, so it wasn’t pretty in the slightest being made of all angles with some locks shorter than others.

“She noticed,” Leona said.

“How would I miss
that
?”

“Rorick did it for me,” Leona said. “Do you like it?”

“No, but I can fix that,” Abagail said. The first time she’d cut her own dark hair short it had turned out similar. Now she was used to getting it to look orderly. She padded over the straw covered floor to where her sister sat. She tested the edge of the knife, determined that it was sharp enough and started mending her sister’s hair.

“The storm has passed,” Rorick said after a few moments. He placed a seed between his teeth and chewed, casting his blue eyes up to her.

“Good, it will make traveling easier,” Abagail said, the knife clumsy in her gloved hand. She wished she could take the glove off, but then there was the problem of accidentally touching someone with her infected hand and spreading the shadow to them.

“What am I going to do about a weapon?” Leona asked.

“This knife is yours,” Abagail said, brandishing the knife she was using to fix Leona’s hair.

“I need something else,” Leona said with a frown. “Maybe I can take one of his swords.” Leona sat up straighter to look out the window to the lump of the darkling they’d killed hours ago.

“Leo, hold still,” Abagail admonished.

Leona sighed and slumped back down in the chair.

The darkling they faced the night before still rested in the trail outside. It was strange to see such a macabre sight with the splendor of the sun bathing everything in gold. But the darkling lay there, a mass of charred flesh and bones. The snow beneath it had given way to bare ground stained pink with blood and other juices that had melted off the body in the unrelenting fire that had killed it.

Rorick’s booming laughter startled Abagail and she nearly cut herself. She frowned at the burly man, the mirth an odd sight on his bearded face. He was nineteen, only a year older than her, but he appeared in his mid-twenties.

“Leona,” he said, tucking a strand of dirty-blond hair behind his ear. “You’re fourteen with the build of a ten-year old boy, there’s no way you could probably even
drag
one of his swords, let alone use it.”

“What about your short sword,” Leona asked Abagail.

“Then what am I going to use?” She asked.

“The shadow plague,” Leona murmured.

Abagail grimaced. “You know I can’t keep using that, the more I use it the more it spreads.”

Leona let out a long, low sigh. “Alright, the knife then.”

There had been a sudden change about her sister since the night before. It had been Leona who had killed the darkling. She had seemingly thrown all of her childishness out the window by lighting the wooden doll she carried with her and using it to ignite the darkling warrior. If it hadn’t been for Leona, Abagail and Rorick probably wouldn’t have made it out of the fight.

Now Leona seemed bent on growing up as fast as she could. First the hair that looked like Abagail’s and now the need for a better weapon.

Maybe she’s trying to fill the void?
Leona had lost a lot, leaving their home and father behind and then losing the doll he’d gotten her as a child. Leona had long claimed the doll was a being named Skuld who would tell her the future. Abagail didn’t believe her until she caught the shadow plague and had seen the being beside her sister.

But now that the doll was gone, Abagail hadn’t seen evidence of the figure, and she wondered if the being was gone for good.

“There,” Abagail said, stepping away from her sister. “It’s shorter than mine, almost to the scalp in the back, but I had to cut it all that short to make it even.”

“And, now you look even more like a ten-year old boy,” Rorick said, ruffling the short hair on the top of Leona’s head.

“Better a boy than a bear,” she said, poking Rorick in the side.

“Well, you certainly still hit like a girl,” Rorick chuckled, but when Leona looked away he rubbed his side and winced.

“What are we going to do about supplies?” Abagail asked, slumping back down on her cot and pulling her boots on. They were cold, despite the fire, and that only served in making her entire body feel cold. What she wouldn’t give to curl back up on the cot and go to sleep, basking in the warmth of the hut. But the rest of her journey was outside, in the cold.

She shivered.

“We should probably take some wood,” Rorick said. “Without Celeste around, we won’t have the warmth of the sun scepter at night.”

“I hadn’t thought about that,” Abagail said.

“I have been, how much longer did she say it would take us to get to the harbingers?” Rorick asked.

“She quoted us about two days, and we traveled all day yesterday, so it’s safe to say we will reach there tonight?” Abagail said. “But if that’s not the case, we should be prepared.”

“We have enough seeds to last us for another day,” Leona said. “And I didn’t see much around here for food.”

“There’s plenty of snow outside that we can eat so we don’t need water,” Abagail said.

“So that leaves shelter,” Rorick said.

“Yea,” Abagail said.

“The porch was destroyed last night in the fight,” Leona said. “If there was just some way we could haul some of that wood with us.”

“With luck I will be able to scout out some fallen wood on the trail, so really if I can make a pack out of some blankets we can take some of that wood with us,” Rorick said. He set out to do just that.

The cold wind blew into the warmth of their shelter, setting Abagail’s teeth to chattering. To keep warm, she busied herself with gathering what few supplies she thought they’d need. There wasn’t much left in the hut, and besides the seeds they had brought with them, there was no food. She gathered up what blankets were left in the hut, and hoped that it would keep them warm enough through the night with the fire.

At that moment she missed the blonde elf and the sun scepter. The stave had appeared crystalline, but it glowed as if the sun itself were inside the scepter. It was warm, also, and had taken the place of their camp fire at one point.

“Alright,” Rorick said, hefting the makeshift pack onto his wide shoulders. “I think that’s enough wood to keep us warm for a night.”

Abagail observed the bulging pack and hoped that he didn’t fatigue from carrying it. He was the only one strong enough to wield the hammer her father, Dolan, had given them for protection. While Abagail had a short sword, as she’d seen last night, it took more than a blade to fight what was lurking just beyond the protection of the trail.

Without a backwards glance, they left the hut armed with their supplies. The snow was so deep they struggled to break a trail.

Leona lingered at the burned lump of the darkling she’d killed. Abagail pressed on, but slowed her pace so her sister could catch up. She wasn’t sure what Leona was looking at, maybe the darklings’ swords, maybe wondering how she’d actually managed to burn him.

Maybe she’s wondering if she killed Skuld along with the darkling.

Ahead of them Daphne fluttered lazily in the cold air. She no longer looked like the purple butterfly that Abagail had initially thought she was. Though she could change into the butterfly at will, since she’d fought the darklings with them the night before, Daphne remained in the winged humanoid shape. Her soft glow pulled them forth through the streets of the abandoned elf village of Landanten.

“When do you think Celeste will be back?” Rorick asked.

Abagail shrugged. “There’s no real way to tell,” she said. “She told us she’d be back as soon as she could, but then told us to follow the trail and Daphne in case she didn’t make it back that quickly.”

“I was afraid of that,” Rorick said. He glanced back at Leona. “This is a strange place,” he said, appraising the trees.

“No different than what O could be,” she said, indicating the home they’d just come from. “Given a few more hundred darklings and a long winter.”

He nodded. “I guess you’re right,” he said. “I never thought I’d appreciate our home so much.”

“I know what you mean,” she told him. “I used to think everyone was so backwards and scared of their shadows, now I see where they were coming from. A home without wyrd is better than a place run by darkling wyrd.”

Leona caught up with them and they picked up the pace. Daphne took note and started flying in a more or less straight line for the opening of the wood road again. Before long they were in the shadowy shelter of the woods once more, following Singer’s Trail under the thick canopy. There were tufts of snow here and there from last night’s storm, but for the most part, traveling was much easier than it had been moments ago.

“Where are all the darklings?” Leona asked, her green eyes studying the branches above.

“I thought something was different,” Rorick said, glancing up.

“The Waking Eye is up, they are likely hiding,” Abagail said.

“No, I see some, over there,” Leona pointed off in the distance to their right. Abagail didn’t look because she didn’t care to see them. She knew there were darklings out in the woods still. If what Celeste said was true, the Fey Forest they were inside of was filled with darklings. They were bound to be out there somewhere.

“Leo, Celeste said not to look at them, they will try to tempt us off the road,” Abagail reminded her younger sister.

“But, don’t you think, if you keep looking at them you might build up some kind of immunity to their wyrd?” Leona asked coming up behind them.

What happened to my sister?
“Are you feeling alright?” Abagail asked, shaking her head.

Rorick laughed.

“What does that mean? Why wouldn’t I feel ok?” Leona flinched. “Rorick, do I sound sick?”

Abagail tried not to laugh at her sister, and explained. “Well, just a few days before you were all about Skuld and now you’ve cut your hair, you want a weapon and you’re wondering about building an immunity to darkling wyrd.”

At the mention of Skuld, Leona’s gaze darted away from her sister and to the edge of the road. Abagail bit her lip and blushed.
Why did I have to mention Skuld?
Silence fell among the group which was only broken by the sounds of leaves crushing beneath their boots.

“Anyway,” Abagail said in an attempt to break the silence. “I think it would be best if we took advice from those who know more about these woods.”

Helvegr
.

The word came so quickly that Abagail stopped in her tracks. This time it had been palpable. A wind that stirred the leaves of the Fey Forest and carried a cacophony of darkling crows to the air.

“What was that?” Rorick asked, his blue eyes wild. He grabbed Abagail’s arm, pulling her to a stop.

“You heard it too?” Abagail asked. Her heart thundered in her chest. When she was the only one hearing it, she could play it off as a figment of her imagination. Now...

“I don’t know what the word means, but I don’t like it.” Leona wrapped her arms around her chest.

“I know,” Abagail said, staring around them at the trees. She flexed her afflicted hand as a cramp seized it.

“Is it wyrd?” Rorick asked, not missing the movement of her hand, or the wince on her face. “Is it darkling?”

“Couldn’t you feel it?” Leona asked him. “Of course it’s darkling.”

“Whatever that word is, it isn’t good,” Abagail agreed.

Rorick’s lips thinned as he pressed them together in thought.

A deafening noise reached their ears as hundreds of darkling birds took to the trees, their cries and wing beats rising on the air like some ocean of malcontent.

“Alright,” Leona said. “They can’t get on the trail.”

Abagail didn’t want to remind her sister that just last night a darkling
had
made it on the trail. At least that was a powerful one, and not the weaker shadowed forms. She wasn’t exactly sure how that was any better, given that a powerful one could show up at any time.