The Wyrded Forest is available now!
This excerpt is chapter 3 of The Wyrded Forest, book 1 in Spells of Earth, part of the Fae Mark'd World series of fantasy novellas.
~ 3 ~ End of the Road
She waited longer, until the Horn Moon had crossed
the sky. Then she left the clearing and returned to the animal trails, veering
away from the one that the wyre had taken. She chose a thin path that meandered
as it worked into the ridges that rippled before the great uplift that had
raised the Claws of Weorth to the sky. Caution walked with her. She dared not
believe she had completely escaped the Prime. Impatient by nature, yet would
the wyre post a guard to capture her or kill her? They intended to remove her
from the Wilding.
Yet why had the Prime not killed her where she
stood, wrapped in illusion, drawing elemental Earth to work the spell?
Defenseless unless she jerked all life from the trees and bushes and grasses of
the clearing. As much as she shuddered against wresting such power from living
plants, she would. No wyre would kill her, that she vowed. She’d seen wyres
kill. She’d watched as men tended by healers died by wyre bite. To kill wyre,
she would kill everything around her.
Even herself.
She increased her pace as she left the beech
forest of the Weorth foothills and entered the oak-dominated forest of the
vale. Her hut was near, backed against the ridge that bordered the Wilding. The
snatch of a sleep, then she must venture to Granny Riding with the news that a
wyre pack and a sorcerer had entered the Wilding.
A Wilding ruled by Lord Horst. How would that Dark
Fae react to the news? Or did he already know? Had he allied with Frost Clime?
Word must also fly to Maorn Harte, Regnant de
Thettis, who ruled Bermarck in Faeron, and to Baron Elsmere who controlled the
whole vale, including the isolated north with its sole village of Mulgrum.
The Horn Moon had cast itself behind the mountains
of the Wilding when she reached her hut.
She crouched in cover, watching the high grasses
of the meadow and the wattle fence that separated her gardens from the forest. Any
ambush would come from those places. The Prime had said an attack would come
after tonight. Not mercy, that delay that Merketh had spoken against, but to keep—what
were his words?—“out of the environs we are warned against.” Places that, on
this night, the sorcerer did not want them to enter.
Odd words. She twisted them about as she waited.
Why had the sorcerer restricted his servant wyre?
To protect them? What chanced then, that he must so confine them?
Not magic. As enchanted beings, the wyre remained
unaffected by any spells of wizardry. Sorcery had power over them only because
the wyre bound themselves to sorcerers. Rescind that binding, and both wizardry
and sorcery rolled off the wyre.
Only the elemental powers of Earth and Fire, Air
and Water—wielded by Fae and Rhoghieri and a few wizards—could attack wyre. When
wielders joined the alliance against Frost Clime’s sorcerers and wyre, the
Citadel forces began to win.
Burnt-Out Magic
Desora had lost her place in that struggle. She
came to understand that only gradually. When she woke in the Healers’ Hall, her
magic burnt out, her soul hollowed, and her life still a tenuous thread, she
grieved for the wizardry she had lost and couldn’t remember. She clutched to
her the futile hope that it would return. It had not. Wielding the elements had
replaced the hopelessness and given her direction. Yet her first tries to wield
Earth fumbled. She had lost more than wizardry; she lost her understanding of
how magic and power worked. The wizard that she was had burnt away to ash. The
wielder she became, was still becoming, slowly seeded and unfurled tendrils of power.
The sorcerer didn’t know that. His wyre thought
she was still a wizard who also wielded the elements. Her death was intended to
be quick, her blood spilled onto the thirsty soil before the Horn Moon set.
Those three wolfen would return to their lair,
safe from whatever the sorcerer had loosed into the night. Like Chaos.
Had the sorcerer loosed Chaos?
Chaos was a magical tenet. Wild, devious,
capricious, eager to wreak havoc. Controlled by wizardry to intensify spells,
loosed by sorcery to any mischief it wanted.
Desora didn’t remember her formal training in wizardry.
The Enclave taught nothing of the elements. Her clan, the D’Aulnois, wielded
Earth and Air with their magic. Any knowledge they imparted about elemental
power would have been an after-thought.
Her time in the Enclave was lost to her, forgotten
when the backlash of a spell incinerated magic and mind. Useless to dwell on
the Enclave and wizardry and the magic burnt out, the wound cauterized into a
scar she’d learned not to rub.
Friends who came to her bedside exclaimed over her
great victory, killing several sorcerers in a magical blast.
How could she celebrate what she didn’t remember?
As her body recovered, she understood the burden
she’d become. Gathering the meager possessions she’d accumulated at her pallet
in Healers’ Hall, she’d crept out of the Citadel and hurried into the Lowlands
as if hellhounds pursued her.
She found no place in the larger towns. Traveling
continually, she stayed with merchant caravans or families uprooting themselves.
A merchanter’s whim found her on the North Road, and she followed it even
though he turned back at the last town. Villages became hamlets. Farms grew
sparser while the forest grew larger, darker, mysterious. Her old learning
remained sparse and lean, mere snippets cut off from main branches, but her
understanding of the Earth power grew deeper, richer.
The element responded to her. Desora found
profound satisfaction in reaching into the soil and prompting seeds to sprout,
increasing a garden’s yield, causing buds to bloom and plants to thrive.
Simple wielding, not great magic that blasted the
enemy.
At Mulgrum, the North Road ended. By then, she’d
accepted that she had no healing art. Earth responded to her. Since she asked
for seclusion, Granny Riding, led her to the hermit’s hut, abandoned when a
monk gave it up, the north winters too harsh for his old bones.
Old courtesies, faint yet insistent, demanded that
she inform other wielders of her presence. Granny Riding she’d met when she
entered Mulgrum. Two great wielders of elements, Fae lucent and dark, ruled the
borders with Mulgrum, east and west.
West came first, sunset and the ending of who she
once was, so she traveled to Faeron and waited to be met. A Fae sentinel took
her to the forest court of Maorn Harte, Regnant de Thettis, ruler of Bermarck
and his sept. He greeted her stiffly, unwelcoming after she described the
reason for her journey to his court. Ever wary, they both spoke with care,
ensuring no vows or obligations passed their lips and bound them.
East and dawning was the Wilding, ruled by Lord
Horst, Dark Fae and mysterious. She ventured over the ridge behind her hut and
tempted discover by playing with her elemental power. That brought a knight who
escorted her to the Kyrgy’s forest palace. With a deep clenching of her elemental
power, she stood before the terrifying Kyrgy lord. He stared at her His black
eyes were deep as an abyss in his marble-white face. His teeth looked sharp as
fangs. He’d braided his silver hair with golden threads, and Fire sparked along
the wires. Only his slashed eyebrows, angled cheekbones, and sharp nose and
chin betrayed any inherent connection to Lucent Fae.
He looked at Desora’s own sharply angled features
and laughed. “Kin! Fae or Kyrgy? Which one, Lady Wizard?”
She didn’t know. She dared not assume or deny. Her
skin never took the sun, almost as pale as his. Her black hair rioted with
curls, more like a Lucent Fae than a Kyrgy with his straight fall of silver
hair.
Desora didn’t breathe freely until she left his
forest palace and walked again in the sunlight shafting through oak leaves.
Fae or Kyrgy, they left her alone, and she left
them alone, never again venturing into their realms unless she collected
special herbs for Granny Riding. She’d spent her years of isolation delving
into the depths of Earth. It had no limits, even in winter when the land slept.
Burrowed underneath the snow to touch the frozen ground, she could still draw
power from it.
Dawn had crept into the sky as those memories caught her.
Desora saw no wyre stirring in the greeny verge of
the clearing. She wanted to link with her wards, but the grounds around her
wattle fence were barren of life. She hadn’t intended that drained void when
she built the wards, but she maintained its protection. Any seekers through the
forest missed her.
Merketh hadn’t, but he knew her. Woodsman, he’d
worked these trees when first she came to Mulgrum. Only in the past two years
had he gone across the vale to the forest bordering Bermarck. He had known how
to find her by mundane means rather than magical scent. In that way he served
his Prime and the sorcerer.
No one had disturbed the hermit’s hut. She glanced
around and sighed with weariness. Yet she had to reach the village. Not knowing
how long she would be away, she released her hens to scratch in the gardens.
She checked her scrip and stuffed it with foodstuffs that wouldn’t preserve and
healing simples that Granny Riding had requested. She brewed tea and scrambled
eggs.
Her hike to Mulgrum would take a few hours. She
weighed sleep against her need to spread word about the wolfen and their master
sorcerer. Then she packed her last necessities and set off, renewing the wards
once she passed the twig gate.
The journey would cross the undulating slopes of
the long ridge that deterred casual visitors. She would break her trek at the
High Meadow. At the meadow’s lower end, a spring formed a crystal-clear pool,
the overflow of icy water cascading over rocks to drop like a bridal veil to
another pool far below. There would be a young shepherd with his recently shorn
flock. She would break bread with him. He might share recent news of the
village.
Desora saw nothing worrisome as she climbed the
ridge. Brave squirrels chittered at her. Birds sang in the canopy. Deer grazed
along the trail and moved off slowly as she neared.
The crest with its radiant sunshine heralded
summer heat, so she did not pause but began her descent, steeper this side and
working downward in switchbacks, irritating but necessary.
An old rockfall marked the High Meadow’s entrance.
One boulder canted steeply across two, its edges weathered by time and rain to
softness. The two uprights on which it rested were sharp-edged, as if cut, and
formed a narrow passage. Rocks too large to move had packed around the old
fall, and tinier hand-sized rocks and pebbles had filled the crevices. Riders
must lean far forward to pass through singly.
The air cooled as she passed through the portal. The
large capstone blocked the hot sunlight.
Lack of sound struck her first. No birds sang, and
the birds loved the High Meadow.
Then she saw white mounds scattered in the sweet
clover and grass. Unmoving white mounds. Fleecy.
Only they were no longer solely white. Red stained
the fleeces.
Something had attacked the sheep.
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