Abigail nodded to herself, weighing her options. “The question is, where? I could really use Alexander’s help right now. I hope he’s all right.”
“Your brother is quite resourceful; I’m sure he’s fine. As for the Sin’Rath, it’s hard to say where she might be.”
Abigail sighed and sat down, pulling her blanket out of her pack. “I guess we wait then.”
They took turns watching during the cold night. Abigail got some sleep but not much. Each time she woke, she was sore and cramped from sitting on the cold ground. Finally, as dawn neared, she packed her blanket and started pacing, partly from anxiety and partly to loosen her sore muscles and to warm herself.
“Have you thought about your future?” Magda asked.
Abigail frowned, stopping to consider the question. “Not really, I mean not past this war anyway.”
“I only ask because I have a vial of Wizard’s Dust set aside for you, but we’ve never discussed it.”
“Honestly, I’d forgotten about that. Now that you bring it up, I’m not sure that I really want it.”
“May I ask why?”
Abigail hesitated, her frown deepening. “It’s a really big decision, and it would change everything-if I survived.”
“I’m confident that with the proper preparation, you would succeed,” Magda said. “But I sense there’s something else.”
“Jack,” Abigail whispered. “I’m not sure I want to outlive him.”
Magda nodded with a sad smile. “That is one of the more significant sacrifices a witch or wizard must endure. However, I suspect that Jack would be welcome to undergo the fast if he wished to.”
“I hadn’t considered that,” Abigail said, but before she could finish her thought, the sound of horses clopping through the streets broke the morning calm. It was just before dawn, only the brightest stars still piercing the deep blue sky. A few windows were starting to glow as the village’s residents began their day.
Abigail nocked an arrow and peeked around the corner.
“It’s them,” she whispered. Magda started casting a spell.
A party of eight, the witch, Prince Torin and six of his royal guard slowly and cautiously rode through town, looking this way and that for any sign of danger. Abigail caught her breath when she saw the Sin’Rath witch for the first time. She looked vaguely human but with grey skin. Long, sharp canine teeth protruded past her lips, leaving raw, red sores where they rubbed against her chin. Her eyes were completely black. A single horn jutted from the right side of her forehead, curving up over long, greasy jet-black hair.
With a single word, the men surrounding the witch stopped before the bridge. Her barbed tail flicked about nervously like a cat’s. Abigail withdrew around the corner.
“She’s not human.”
“No,” Magda said. “I could unhorse them all, but my spell might injure Torin, possibly even kill him if he falls wrong.”
“I don’t have a clean shot,” Abigail said. “Torin’s guards are in the way. Go ahead with your spell.”
Magda crept up to the corner and began whispering. Several moments later, she stepped out and released a pea-sized sphere of bright blue light that streaked to her target and then stopped, hovering in the midst of the guards for just a moment before expanding to twenty feet in diameter in an instant, toppling horses and tossing everyone to the ground, shattering the morning stillness with shouts of surprise and panic.
Abigail stepped out and raised her bow, but the enemy was scattered across the road, all of them still down. She raced onto the bridge, angling for a clean shot at the witch, with Magda following close behind her. They stopped when the Sin’Rath regained her feet, cackling with a mixture of glee and malice.
“I’ve waited a long time to face one of the Reishi Coven,” she said in a very reasonable tone, motioning for a guard who had regained his feet to attack. Abigail drew but couldn’t get a clean shot past the charging soldier until Magda knocked him over with a force-push.
The arrow flew true but turned suddenly a few feet from the witch, clattering harmlessly onto the road, a plane of shadowy grey magic no more than a foot in diameter becoming visible for just a moment where the arrow had been deflected.
The witch laughed. “Your weapons are of no use against me,” she said, raising her clawed hand toward Abigail. Magda stepped forward just in time to take a swirling bolt of black magic, wispy like smoke yet unnatural. It hit her shield and splattered away, dissipating a moment later.
Abigail sent another arrow at the Sin’Rath, using Magda’s shield as cover, but the result was the same. Several more of Torin’s men were coming to their senses and beginning to form up in front of the witch when Magda launched her next spell. A constellation of seven points of brilliant light, each trailing a shower of sparks, formed in front of her, then rose overhead, spinning around a common point until they reached a height of a hundred feet. They held there, spinning faster and faster for several seconds before, one by one, they targeted the Sin’Rath, slamming into her shield and exploding in a shower of sparks with each hit.
The witch shrieked in fury. Each blinding explosion illuminated another panel in her dark and angular shield. It looked like a swirling collection of panes of glass, each joined with the next at a seam much like stained glass, each shaped differently, many with five or six sides and each imbued with powerful dark magic … but not powerful enough. With each impact, a pane shattered, leaving gaps in the Sin’Rath’s defenses.
Abigail took careful aim, threading the needle between two of Torin’s guards and timing her shot to coincide with an opening in the rotating shield. Perfect calm flowed into her, confidence in her skill as an archer filled her mind. She released her arrow into that stillness and it flew true, slipping past the charmed soldiers, through the narrow opening in the shield, into the witch’s left eye socket and out the back of her head.
What happened next threatened Abigail’s sanity. Her perfect shot should have killed the creature, but instead, the witch froze as if time itself had stopped, and then she exploded into a cloud of locusts, black and angry, thousands strong, all trace of her true form vanishing into the swarm. Abigail watched in stunned amazement as the swarm of devouring insects wrapped itself around Prince Torin and carried him away into the morning sky, over the river and into the forest south of the town.
The guards watched as well, a mixture of fear and revulsion soaking into them after the insects vanished from sight. The lead man looked at Abigail and Magda, confusion vying with growing awareness in his expression.
“Lady Abigail? What just happened?”
“Captain, you and your men have been under the influence of a witch.”
“Where’s Prince Torin?” he asked, alarm rising in his voice.
“She took him,” Abigail said.
The captain turned to his men. “Round up the horses and prepare to ride.”
“No, Captain,” Abigail said.
“But we’re sworn to protect him.”
“Yes, and you are all powerless to do so.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Tell me about the witch,” Magda said.
“Mistress Peti? She’s not a witch, she’s the most beautiful woman I’ve ever met.”
“And yet, she just transformed into a swarm of insects and flew away,” Magda said.
The captain shook his head, trying to reconcile recent events with his understanding of the world.
“How is that possible?” he asked
“It had to be a constructed spell,” Magda said.
“I don’t understand.”
“Some spells are cast in the moment they are required, while others are cast well before they’re needed and set to be triggered by an event or a command. Such spells can be extraordinarily powerful because the caster has much more time to visualize a desired outcome. Constructed spells are typically linked to an item that is often destroyed in the activation of the spell.”
He shook his head, still confused.