No longer did she identify with that old self in the slightest. Now Fahren was nothing to her but a slave master.
Fourteen? That had only been six years or so before her death. She felt so much older than she was.
Try the clearing first , sent Fahren. It’s my best guess for where they might have taken him.
Directing power to her heels, she turned and fled. Last time she had been in the wood she had dared not use magic, for fear of being sensed by the enemy. Now she poured it forth with abandon, hoping to be sensed. She also realised that, somewhere along the line, she had failed to maintain the illusion that kept colour in her cheeks, light in her eyes, the wound in her side from showing.
No consequence , she thought, bitter that she had even bothered with it in the first place. Let all see me as I am .
Behind her, Fahren cried out in pain.
Who would release her if he died?
•
Come on , thought Corlas, watching the thrumming Stone. Where are you, boy?
Something was not right with the wood – outside the hut, sunbeams and shadows roved through the clearing in equal measure, and he had no doubt he and the Sprites were under some kind of attack. His power, only partly recovered, seemed to be returning in a mere trickle. He had sensed streams of Old Magic nearby, diverted by Vyasinth, but now even those were beginning to thin. When what he had stored up was gone, it would be gone, and there was no telling when he could replenish again.
He rolled his massive shoulders. ‘Well,’ he rumbled, reaching above the fireplace to heft his axe from the wall, ‘old habits …never did think of myself as much of a mage type anyhow.’
And so Corlas found himself standing in his hut, guarding his boy with an axe, for a second time.
‘The world will have its fancies, I suppose,’ he muttered.
There was a knock at the door.
‘Who is it?’
A voice that seemed dryly amused with itself answered. ‘Representatives of the Open Halls.’
He went to the open window, and grunted in surprise. Elessa Lanclara stood there, her skin a pallid shade of grey, her eyes dry and unblinking, her white dress stained with blood. Vyasinth had told him she’d come back from the dead, but he had not expected to come face to face with her. Behind her in the clearing lay the bodies of Sprites – dead, stunned, or sleeping? It was hard to tell.
‘Well,’ she said, ‘I tell a fib. It’s only me, this time.’
‘And what was it I said?’ he asked, his bushy brows clumping in thought. ‘Ah, yes – warm yourself.’
A hand jumped from his axe to shoot forth a vortex, but she disappeared. A moment later the door blasted inwards off its hinges and she strode into the hut.
‘When are you going to learn,’ she said, ‘that the future of your son affects the whole world, not just your little home in the forest?’
‘The world,’ said Corlas, ‘can kiss my axe.’
He flung it at her, charging it with magic as it left his fingertips. It caught slightly in her hastily erected ward, ricocheting off course, and cut a chunk from her shoulder, exposing bone beneath.
Elessa gave a sickly smile, and warily Corlas raised a ward of his own – but it was not strong, he thought desperately, feeling his pool of power drying up. Elessa held up the hand attached to her damaged shoulder, gave the fingers an experimental waggle – and Corlas slammed against the wall, falling unconscious to the floor.
She went to the bed and scooped up the Stone.
•
Charla considered the strange women she had caught. Having lived her whole life in the wood, she had little experience of races other than her own. She had seen some just now, of course, upon entering the battle to fetch the Stone – but that had been swift and hectic, too much to take in at once.
The smaller of the two, the dark one with wings, had to be a Mire Pixie. As for the other, as Charla drew closer, she saw that the woman had pointy ears and multicoloured eyes. She was not a Varenkai, as Charla had first thought, but a Sprite as well. Did that make her a friend, or foe?
‘I do not recognise you from the wood,’ said Charla. ‘And I know all who dwell within.’
‘I am not from your wood,’ replied the woman, still straining against the vines that bound her.
Charla frowned. ‘But this is the only place where Sprites can live.’
‘I’m only part Sprite.’
‘Let us go!’ demanded the little one, and claws flicked from her fingertips. She managed to slice through some of the vines, but Charla gave a wave and they wound around her more firmly. Charla paused, feeling odd – the small amount of magic used to maintain the living bonds was taking more effort than it usually did. She tried not to let her misgivings show.
‘Let you go?’ she said, arching an eyebrow. ‘Nay, I think not. You are of the folk who sought to deny us our champion, he who will return the Sprites to prominence, and restore Old Magic to the world!’
The tall woman grimaced. ‘That’s why you’ve taken him? You are a third contender for Bel’s auspices?’
‘Third?’ said Charla haughtily. ‘We are the first. It is your people who interfered, your people who –’
‘Never mind any of that,’ snapped the woman. ‘I really could not care less about it right now.’
‘Then why have you invaded our wood?’
‘Because before they were put back in the Stone, Bel and Losara were our men.’
Charla was taken aback. Corlas, of course, had spoken at length about Bel’s life, and so she had heard of the half-caste Sprite with whom he shared it.
‘You’re Jaya?’ she said.
‘Yes.’
‘And I’m Lalenda,’ said the pixie. ‘The Shadowdreamer’s woman.’
‘And you are here …’
‘Because we want to know what’s happened to our men,’ said Jaya. ‘Wouldn’t you?’
Charla bit her lip – this was a bit more complicated than she had expected. She knew what it was like to be bonded to another Sprite, of course, and could not imagine being without Corlas. Also, there was the other, stranger thing.
They were almost family.
Once or twice Corlas had ventured the notion that Charla was the closest thing Bel had to a mother. Charla had stamped him down immediately – while her soul may have been composed partly of another’s, it was only partly , and she fiercely upheld that she was her own person. It was not her womb from which the baby had sprung, not her lovemaking that had put it there. Bel and Losara were the same age as her – she could scarcely imagine dandling them on her knee, or exposing her breast to feed them! That was for her own children, which she did intend to have one day. However, when she was away from Corlas, when he did not require slapping for his offensive ideas, she had thought about the situation more carefully. In a way she had to admit that she was connected to the blue-haired man – not in quite the way that Corlas had suggested, but in a way that was not entirely dissimilar either. And even if she’d had absolutely no hand in his creation, that didn’t change the fact that he was her love’s son, and these women were his son’s loves. For a Sprite, to whom kinship was an important thing indeed, that made them …well, something.
‘I am Charla,’ she told them. ‘Bonded to the Lord of the Wood, Corlas.’
‘ You are with Corlas?’ said Jaya. ‘Well, he hasn’t done badly for himself, has he?’
‘You do not seek to snatch the blue-haired man from us?’ said Charla, ignoring her words.