The creature swung a huge, fiery tendril at her, and Arya drew up her shield desperately. The ghostfire arm, however, passed right through the stout steel shield and struck Arya's arm full force. The knight screamed as the ghostfire tore at her flesh, her strength, and her spirit. Arya fell to her knees.
The scream jolted Walker from his stunned daze and the ghostwalker climbed to his feet. He ran toward the elemental, retrieving his blade from the ground. The elemental raised a fist in the air, preparing to bring it down on the staggering knight, but Walker lunged in and stabbed his shatterspike into its fiery depths. The creature whipped away from Arya.
Walker snapped his blade up to block the elemental's swipe. Its punch did not pass through the weapon, enchanted as the shatterspike was, but the force threw Walker to the ground. The ghostwalker struggled to rise, but the elemental slammed its arm down on his sword again, crushing him to his knees. The elemental flowed over him and held him down, manifesting entirely into the Material world, preventing him from rising.
The forest was suddenly lit with red, raging, material flame, and those flames licked at Walker around the sword. He gritted his teeth against the heat. Walker delved into his ghostly focus and distanced himself from his body so that he could ignore the pain.
Arya, seizing her opportunity, slashed at the elemental with two hands on her sword hilt. The temporarily enhanced blade cut into its fiery body but had little effect. The elemental countered and the knight managed to block the incoming punch with her shield. Though the fire did not strike her flesh, the force of the blow sent her reeling back. A second strike sent her flying into a fir tree on the other side of the clearing, where she crumpled to the ground, thrashing and moaning.
Amidst the pain of the flames, Walker blinked through the blood in his eyes and looked at the elemental standing over him. He stopped moving, allowing his body to go limp as though he had died from the flames. It was not a difficult task, for Walker could feel his flesh blistering and blackening and see that his bracers were white hot. He could endure, though, if only he could convince the elemental to leave-
Sure enough, the weight on Walker's chest vanished as the ghostfire elemental faded from the Material. His tearing eyes could see that it was not gone. Rather, the creature had turned from Walker's inert form and now flowed toward Arya.
With the elemental no longer standing on him, Walker struggled to push himself to his feet. It was, however, to no avail. Scorched and blackened, his body would not obey his commands.
"Ar-Arya…" he called, but the knight was unconscious.
Walker felt his concentration wavering and his burned body crying out in pain. The burning specter loomed over Arya and raised its two fiery appendages to crush her. He tried again to move, but he could not even lift his scalding sword from the ground.
Arya was about to die, and there was nothing Walker could do.
Nothing, except for the last action he would ever consider.
"Gylther'yel!" Walker shouted, blood spurting from his lips. "Aid us! Gylther'yel!''
He called for his mentor with all the breath he could muster. He knew that she was watching and he knew how much she hated humans such as Arya, but he knew that she could not leave him to die, not after she had spent fifteen years to mold him as her guardian.
Nothing happened.
The elemental paused in its attack as though to laugh at him, though it made no sound.
In that moment, Walker felt hope die. Gylther'yel was too far away. This creature would slay them both. He felt like a fool.
The beast turned and raised its fiery tendrils to batter the knight to a scorched pulp.
Then the forest became utterly black as a dark cloud moved over the moon. The ghostfire provided the only light.
The air around the elemental chilled and hail began to fall. The creature paused, as though it heard something Walker and Arya could not, and shifted again, shedding its body. Hail battered at its suddenly diminished flames. The magic struck it even though it was incorporeal-the spells were halfway between the planes.
"Gyl… Gylther'yel…" rasped Walker.
Then a bolt of lightning shot from the sky and slammed the elemental to the earth. The elemental burned low, stunned, and another bolt struck it. The elemental struggled to rise and lash out at the knight, but a third bolt struck it, then a fourth, and a fifth. Lightning bolts flew from the clouds and battered the beast to the ground.
The elemental, reeling from the blows, managed to rise, but then the hail increased and a veritable ice storm descended upon the creature, icy shards tearing apart the flames.
When the dust and fog cleared, the elemental was no more. The last flickers of ghostly flames licked up into the sky and vanished. Arya slumped against the tree, knocked out cold but unscathed save for several burns and a thin stream of blood that trickled slowly from her split lip.
Gray-green cloak billowing and whipping around her slender figure, the gold-skinned Ghostly Lady stood in the elemental's place, hugging her arms around her stomach. Her waist-length golden hair wafted around her cold face like fire. She looked down upon Arya exactly as the elemental had.
Walker, as he watched, was not sure he was any less afraid for the unconscious knight.
"I am your teacher and your friend," Gylther'yel said to him. The slow, beautiful Elvish sounded out of place on the battlefield. "I brought you back from death and raised you as my child, taught you all your skills and powers, and this is how you repay me? With betrayal?" With the last word, Gylther'yel's voice rose in volume above an undertone-it was the loudest Walker had ever heard her speak.
She stared down at Arya, and her hand pulsed with black energy, the killing magic that she had wielded against the Quaervarr soldiers.
"Gylther'yel, please," croaked Walker. His voice was broken and wretched. "Spare her… She saved me… If you must be angry… be angry at me…"
"I am not angered that you disobey," replied the Ghost Druid. Her fingers, blazing with destructive power, twitched idly. "I am merely… disappointed that you do not heed."
Then she waved, like brushing aside a flea, and the power crackled out of her hand. She walked over to Walker and placed her hand upon his forehead. He might have flinched, having seen the terrible magic she had just held, but he trusted the ruthless sun elf. The same hand that dispensed death so easily could also caress life into mortified flesh.
Gylther'yel's druidic magic soothed his mortal burns and he sensed-rather than felt, for his focus separated mind and body-his flesh re-knitting.
"I will allow you this diversion, while it lasts," said Gylther'yel. She stood, watching his wounds heal. "But know that you have brought this, my disappointment, upon yourself, and remember that the next time you cry to me for help, I will not be so quick to answer."
With that, the Ghostly Lady was gone. She vanished into the air as quickly as she had come, blown away with the passing mist and clouds.
Walker, his body healed such that he could move, pushed himself to his feet. He crossed to where Arya had fallen and, slinging the unconscious knight over his shoulder, began the trek west through the dark woods, on foot, seeking the sanctuary of his grove.
He prayed that he would have the strength to make it that far before he collapsed.
Chapter 11
29 Tarsakh
A heavy rap at the door awakened him. Stirring from troubled dreams, at first Greyt thought the knock was the sound of ribs crunching under a blow and he gave a startled gasp. He awoke but could see nothing in the darkness, as though he were blind. He soon realized, however, that he was alone in his bed and, exploring with his hands, that his body was whole. After a few tense breaths, the rap sounded again.