I hope you’re not a fireball, she thought.
There was a ripple in the air, and the man stiffened. He didn’t move as Cadrel pulled free.
The throw had incapacitated Thorn’s captor, and Cadrel’s guard was paralyzed. But there were two left. Cazalan pushed the body of his partner aside, reaching for the last gem. Thorn leaped forward-not fast enough. She saw the fourth soldier tracking her movements with his wand, and her muscles went numb. She struck the floor hard, falling to the ground; she felt nothing and she couldn’t move at all.
Thorn had discovered many gifts over the past six months. Once in a truly desperate moment, a moment when she thought she was going to die, she killed a man with her touch. In her time with House Tarkanan, she’d honed that gift and learned to control it more easily. It was painful. More than that, it was somehow connected to the dragon Sarmondelaryx. She could still hear Drego’s whispers… every time you draw on her power, she grows stronger. But it was the only thing she could think of. Dal used us. Tricked us. Thorn tried to harness that rage, focus it into a razor point, smash it against the numbing charm.
Nothing. She saw Cazalan pick up the final shard and slip it into his bag. Fury flowed through her, and that moment of pure anger was all it took. Feeling flooded back through her. There was no time to rise to her feet. Unarmed, on the floor, there was only one thing she could do. She reached out just catching his leg with her outstretched arm. And she called on that anger again.
Tightening her hand around Cazalan’s ankle, she reached out, searching for the fire within him so she could consume it.
She found nothing.
The power was still a mystery. But every time she’d used it in the past, she’d been able to feel a force within her victim, to feel the energy within, to feel it as she snatched that away and consumed it. Searching in Dal was like grasping at water. Her hand was tight around Cazalan’s ankle, but it might have been dead wood.
“Too late,” he said with a smile. Then he was gone, nothing in her hand but air. All of the Covenant soldiers had vanished, even the ones they’d incapacitated. Thorn and Cadrel looked at each other from across the empty room while Drix rubbed a hand over his healing throat.
“This is an outrage!”
Lord Syraen was fuming, his eyes glowing white hot with his anger. All of the fey lords were shouting.
“I placed my trust in you,” Lord Joridal said, glaring at Tira. “My spire is at war, and I left it to pursue this quest of yours. And now you have taken my greatest weapon from me… and set it in the hands of humans!”
“I, too, have wolves at my gates,” Syraen snapped. “With the Stone of Winter in my hands, I had no fear of them. Now what will I do? How could you allow this to happen?”
“I allowed nothing,” Tira said. “You look to the wards on my vault. Our preparations were perfect. It should have been impossible to teleport in or out.”
“And yet they did!”
As Thorn had suspected, the fey had been observing the vault through magical means. They’d responded quickly to the theft-but not quickly enough.
“We did what was necessary!” Tira said. “Unless we can save the Tree, all will fall.”
“So you say!” Syraen snarled. “And yet it was you who placed our gifts within your vault, without even sentries to watch them-”
“There was no need for sentries in the vault. I tell you, teleportation was impossible. Study the seals yourself. The room was anchored!”
“This argument is pointless.” Shan Doresh’s voice rang out across the room, and the others fell silent as he spoke. “What is done is done. It seems you have brought disaster on your people once again, Lady Tira. It was your hand that brought this curse upon the Tree, and your call that led us to this ruin.”
“You placed your trust in me,” Tira said. “And I in you, despite your fantastic claims.”
“Listening to my tale placed you in no danger,” Doresh said coolly. “For my part, my trust has cost me dearly. Once again, I have undertaken a great risk to protect our people, and again, my people have paid the price. I should never have returned to the Silver Tree. And I will not do so again.”
“Wait!” Cadrel shouted. All eyes turned to the old bard, Thorn’s among them.
Cadrel walked between the eladrin, raising his hands. He was indeed a master storyteller, and he drew on all of that presence; even the angry Syraen stilled his rage. “I know that this is your loss, that I am not one of you and cannot truly understand what this has cost you. Yet surely you are stronger together than apart.” He paused in front of Shan Doresh. “You said it was your gift to make dreams manifest, but it was my nightmare that you showed. Now that nightmare has fallen upon you all. If you are the hero you say you are, will you abandon your people when this nightmare is upon them?”
“You know nothing of nightmares,” Doresh said quietly. “While I have spent hundreds of your lifetimes walking among them. My subjects have endured torments you cannot imagine, all because the ancestors of those who stand in this room lacked the courage to stand by my side. I thought this to be the righteous path. I thought I could find common bond with those who abandoned me so long ago. But they are not my people. My people await me, and I will have to tell them that we have suffered again due to the arrogance of our kin. So leave me be, human. And you, ghaele of the Silver Tree. We will not see each other again.”
He threw his dark cloak over his shoulder, and in that instant, he was gone.
“True words,” Syraen said. “This council is broken, Lady Tira. The Silver Tree crumbles, and it is time for us to see what fate awaits the boughs as they fall. I must return to my people, to make ready for the moment these humans attack me. I pray I will not fall prey to their guile as easily as you have.”
Something was nagging at the back of Thorn’s mind. She played the events over in her mind again and again, struggling to fit the pieces together.
“No!” Tira raised her hand, and silvery light gleamed around her fingers. “Do not leave. Not yet. If we cannot face this together, we will surely fall.”
“You will surely fall,” the Rose Queen said. “Perhaps the Tree will grow again in more fertile ground.”
“A pity,” Cadrel whispered to Thorn as he returned to her side. “To come all this way only to see such discord. Still, I suppose their weakness is a boon for our people.”
That’s it, Thorn realized.
“Stop!” she cried. “All of you. Stop fighting. I know what’s happened here.”
All eyes turned to her, but none were friendly. “As do we,” Syraen growled. “Your kind stole our greatest treasures.”
“An impossible theft,” Thorn said. “And one that makes no sense. A nightmare that has turned you against one another. And the one truly responsible is here in this room.”
The ghaele all looked at Tira. “I don’t understand,” the veiled lady said. “What is it you accuse me of?”
“I’m not accusing you,” Thorn said. Steel was in her hand, and his point was pressed against Cadrel’s throat.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
The Mournland B arrakas 24, 999 YK
Cadrel laughed. “Well done, my dear.”
Then he was gone.
But he didn’t go far enough. Thorn had her full attention on the bard, her supernatural senses keyed to any trace of his motion. Even as she felt the air rush in to fill the void in space, she felt a displacement to her left, just at the door to the chamber. It was an excellent trick. Not only did he teleport, but he’d wrapped himself in invisibility; the doorway seemed to be empty. But Thorn could feel his presence, and she let that instinct guide her as she threw Steel.
Cadrel cried out in pain as the blade caught him in the back of the knee. Blood spattered across the floor as he returned to view, falling to the ground. Quickly Syraen was upon him. The winter lord wrapped one hand around Cadrel’s neck and lifted him off the ground. There was a sharp chill in the air, and ice formed around the bard-a layer of frost that grew and spread, becoming a coffin binding Cadrel, leaving only his head free.