Harbinger: Fate's Forsaken: Book One (42 page)

“You could’ve
warned us sooner, mage,” Thelred snapped as he bent over his cousin.

“Am I missing a
tooth?” Lysander said, pulling his lip down in a panic.

“No, they’re all
there,” Thelred assured him.

“It’s nothing
dangerous, just a simple warding spell — one designed to keep would-be
intruders out,” Jake said. He walked up to the doors and studied them for a
moment. “All right, maybe it isn’t a
simple
one.”

“How are we
going to get through?” Aerilyn said. She glanced over her shoulder in the
direction of the falling sun. “Kyleigh, can’t you fly back and tell the others
to wait?”

She snorted.
“And leave you lot here to fend for yourselves? I think not. Besides, most of
the crew isn’t exactly aware of my, ah, less attractive half. I wouldn’t want
to start a panic by soaring around in broad daylight.”

Jake looked at
them curiously, but seemed to think better of asking Kyleigh to explain.
Instead, he turned back to the doors. “I could try to figure out a
counterspell. I’m sure it would be quite simple … if only I knew the language
it was written in.”

“Perfect. I’ve
found the Kingdom’s one illiterate mage,” Lysander grumbled as he got to his
feet. “Can’t you read your own language?”

Jake smiled
wryly. “It’s more complicated than that. There are several dialects, depending
on what material you use for your impetus. Wood,” he held up his staff, “is the
most basic. Silver is the most temperamental but gold, by far, gives you the
most power. Unfortunately, few have discovered how to make spells stick to gold
— and of course they guard the secret jealously.” He frowned, and his lip
curled slightly. “Only the slimiest mages use leather … they’re naught but
common warlocks, if you want my opinion. Iron and steel are the choice of
necromancers and rogue practitioners: people like the Witch of Wendelgrimm.”

“Yes, I see … so
what you’re saying is you can’t get through it,” Lysander said.

Aerilyn made a
frustrated sound. “No, that isn’t what he said at all — he
could
figure it out, but because the
Witch uses steel instead of wood, he’s having a hard time reading it. Honestly,
don’t you listen?”

“Ah … wait a
moment.” Lysander’s eyes went suddenly wide. “What sort of steel does she use?
Have you seen it?”

Jake shrugged.
“Sure, but it just looked like a rusty old cutlass to me.”

Lysander hung
his head. “That’s it, then. We’re done. We might as well head back the way we
came —”

“Why?” Kael
said. He wasn’t about to come this far just to turn around and march back
empty-handed.

“Because, my
dear boy,” he said with over-exaggerated patience, “the Witch is in possession
of Gravy’s Lass, which means she can’t be beaten. If we face her now, we might
as well just slit our own throats —”

“No, she can
definitely be beaten,” Kael insisted, which made Lysander stop.

“Oh? And how do
you figure that?”

He thought
quickly. “Because Sam Gravy was the father of all pirates, wasn’t he?”

Lysander put a
reverent hand over his heart. “Aye, he was.”

“And you
wouldn’t want anybody but a pirate to use your ship, would you?”

“I daresay I
wouldn’t. And he better be a blasted good pirate, at that.”

“Well, I don’t
think the Lass would work for anyone who wasn’t a pirate.”

Lysander was
beginning to realize, slowly, where all this was headed. Understanding crept
across his face. “Go on.”

Kael sighed and
tried to keep the impatience out of his voice. “Sam Gravy wouldn’t want his
Lass falling into the hands of just anyone — he’d want a pirate to
inherit it, a blasted good one. And he’d have been powerful enough to make sure
of it.”

It was an
outright lie, but a necessary one. He didn’t believe there was any sword that
could grant its wielder the ability to win every battle, and he wasn’t going to
let a myth scare Lysander off. The people of Copperdock deserved to be fought
for … even if it was a losing battle.

“You’re right,
of course. You’re absolutely right,” Lysander said, now thoroughly convinced.
“The Witch doesn’t deserve Gravy’s sword — the Lass will be on
our
side! We can’t possibly lose. Now
all we have to do is find a way into the castle.”

“I have an
idea,” Kael said. He stepped up to the doors, and this time he knew what he was
looking for. Yes, if he squinted a bit, he could see the milky white spell that
covered them. He dug into it with the nails of both hands and wrenched a large,
slimy chunk of it off, just enough for them to get through.

“Well done,”
Kyleigh said. And with one powerful kick, she broke through the planks.

They walked into
a courtyard that looked as if it had been the stage for many battles. The
ground was beaten and craggily, the grass was brown and dry. Huge boulders
jutted out of the yard in odd places. Kael realized it was because they’d been
flung over by catapults. In fact, he could match the chinks in the wall to the
shapes of some of the boulders.

“We aren’t the
only ones to try and defeat the Witch,” Thelred murmured. “Whole armies have
marched on Wendelgrimm … never to be seen or heard from again.”

Oddly enough,
his story didn’t do much to steady Kael’s nerves. Though it
did
convince him to get an arrow drawn
and ready.

They were in the
precise middle of the courtyard when the castle doors flung open. They slammed
against the wall, and a wrinkly old crone hobbled out from between them.
“What’s the meaning of this?” she shrieked. “I’ll not have a ragtag bunch of
travelers tromping through me courtyard —
you
!” She stabbed a boney finger at Jake. “Why ain’t you where I
left you?”

“Because he’s
been freed, Witch,” Lysander said.

Kael groaned
aloud.
This
was the dreaded Witch of
Wendelgrimm? This hag with more wrinkles than the backside of his trousers? He
wanted to kick Lysander for dragging him through the tempest to fight an old
woman. It was a waste of a perfectly good arrow.

The Witch’s dark
eyes locked onto Lysander. Then her mouth cracked open and she bared all three
of her yellow teeth in a snarling grin. “Why hello, Captain. Come to keep an
old witch company?”

He made a face.
“Not hardly. My friends and I are here to kill you — to free the good people
of Copperdock and reclaim stolen property!”

“Stolen
property?” Her snarl widened. “You wouldn’t mean this, now would you?” She drew
a cutlass from the folds of her tattered robes. The blade was plain steel with
chinks all along the edge of it. The hilt looked as if it had been whittled by
a child and set by a blind man.

But Lysander
gasped at the sight of it. “That belongs in the hands of a proper pirate! Hand
it over —”

“Or what?” she
hissed. She spun the sword by its hilt — an impressive move for someone
so ancient. “Sorry, Captain, but the Lass belongs to me. And now, so do you.”

She cut the
blade across her chest and black chains shot out of the ground in front of
them. They wrapped around their limbs, pinning them where they stood. Kael
watched his companions grunt and struggle, but even Kyleigh couldn’t wiggle
free. When Jake tried to mutter a spell, a length of chain shot up and slapped
him across the face, knocking his spectacles askew.

“Now, then,” the
Witch said lazily. “The twiggy battlemage will go back to guarding me path, and
I think I’ll keep the handsome captain for company.”

“Nev —
mpft!” A chain stuffed itself in Lysander’s mouth, silencing him mid-protest.

“As for the
rest of you … fish!” She cackled evilly, throwing her head back and whipping
her tattered robes about her.

Kael chose that
moment to step out of his chains. He pulled them off, cringing as the slimy
bits stuck to his palms. By the time the Witch stopped cackling, he had an
arrow trained on her heart.

“No!” she
shrieked, her eyes wide with fear. “It ain’t possible, your kind are all dead!”

Lysander laughed
through the chains in his mouth and said something to the effect of: “Meet your
doom!”

But the Witch
wasn’t going to give up so easily. Kael was a breath from loosing his arrow
when she jabbed her sword at Kyleigh — who grunted as her neck bent
involuntarily backwards. “Let go of that string, and I swear I’ll slit her
throat,” the Witch hissed. “I’ll do it, even if it’s the last spell I ever
cast.”

“Don’t —”
Chains wrapped around Kyleigh’s mouth, snuffing out whatever she’d been about
to say. She redoubled her efforts, squirming and railing on through the gag.

“Go ahead
— shoot me. At least I’ll get to watch the blood drain out of her pretty
little face before I go,” the Witch taunted. She was studying him, her
bottomless eyes digging into every line of his features, trying to find a
weakness.

And she found it
in abundance.

He couldn’t hide
the cold that suddenly sunk into his limbs and made them tremble. He tore his
eyes away from his mark and focused them on Kyleigh’s neck. He could see the
vein throbbing below her chin. It made him weak to think that vein might stop
throbbing, that her heart might stop beating. It terrified him.

But the Witch
never intended to kill her: it was a feint. The second Kael lost his
concentration, she sent a spell screaming for him. It struck his bow and he
felt the weapon tremble, shudder, just before it burst into a thousand pieces.
He was left holding only a jagged remnant of the grip: the wind swept the rest
of it out to sea, taking everything left of Tinnark with it.

“Kael, you have
to free us!” Aerilyn screamed at him.

He looked up in
time to see the Witch drive the Lass into the ground. Green fire spurted up
from the earth and covered her in a protective ball. It raced around the
courtyard, catching onto the walls and trapping them in a circle of flames.
Then the ground began to shake. It tossed and rolled so violently that he had
to dive to make it to Jake. He stuffed the splintered remnant of Roland’s bow
into his pocket and then ripped the chains off of Jake. Together, they freed
the others.

“What were you
thinking?” Kyleigh said when he tore the bindings from her mouth. “Why didn’t
you shoot her? You could have killed her before she even had a chance to cast!”

He glared and
ripped the rest of the chains off. “I don’t know — I got distracted, I
suppose! It was more than a little nerve —”

She clamped a
hand over his mouth. “Do you hear that?”

No, he didn’t
hear anything. The fire still burned around them, but the ground had stopped
shaking. It was eerily quiet.

“Circle! Form a
circle!” Lysander bellowed, and they leapt to obey.

They stood in
silence for a long moment, their weapons facing out into the courtyard and
their breath coming in quick gasps. Every hair on the back of Kael’s neck stood
on end. He gripped his hunting dagger and steeled himself for whatever trick
the Witch had in store. Then a loud noise in the center of their circle made
him spin around.

Dust and bits of
earth flew skywards as a skeletal arm burst out of the ground. It clawed itself
free by the sharp tips of its fingers and Aerilyn screamed when it reared its
horrible, grinning head.

Kyleigh stepped
forward and kicked the skull off its shoulders. It went sailing to the other
side of the courtyard, but the body kept moving.

“Let’s see how
you fair against the cold edge of steel, whisperer!” the Witch cackled.

At her words,
the courtyard erupted. Bony limbs sprouted from the ground, clawing for fresh
air as they pulled their bodies out of the earth. Skeletons climbed out of the
rubble. They wielded rusty swords and wore ancient suits of armor that
screeched when they moved. And Kael thought he might have figured out where all
of those lost armies wound up.

Kyleigh hacked the
skeleton in the middle of the circle to bits, then thrust Harbinger into his
hands. “Treat him well!” she said.

He watched her
charge headlong towards the first wave of skeletons and held his breath. She
leapt up and kicked off one of the boulders, launching herself above the fray.
Wings sprouted from her back, her arms grew long and dagger-like claws curved
out from her hands. By the time she landed — crushing a good number of
skeletons beneath her — she was the white dragon once again.

She opened her
mouth, and a river of yellow flame spewed out. The fire struck a line of
soldiers, reducing them to a charred, twisted pile of bones and steel. Even
from where he stood, Kael could feel the heat rising up from the smoldering
earth.

“No!” the Witch
cried. Kyleigh shot up into the clouds, narrowly missing the Witch’s spell. It
struck a group of skeletons behind her, and they crumbled to ash.

“It’s no good,
my arrows aren’t doing anything!” Aerilyn wailed. She fired a shot that rattled
harmlessly inside a skeleton’s ribcage before falling out onto the ground.

“Here!” Jake
tapped her quiver with his staff, and the fletching of her arrows turned a
bright, dangerous red. “That should do the trick.”

The next shot
she fired hit a pack of soldiers and exploded. Kael’s ears rang with the noise
and it knocked the rest of his companions off their feet. Lysander clamped his
hands over his ears and glared as bits of charred bone bounced off his head.
“Try aiming further away, will you?” he shouted at Aerilyn. “If I must die
today, I’d rather be buried in something a little larger than a stocking!”

Between
Aerilyn’s explosions and Jake’s spells, they were able to keep the skeletons at
bay. When Aerilyn ran out of arrows, Kael gave her his. The second they hit the
bottom of her quiver, their fletching turn red.

Any stray
soldiers that managed to make it to their circle they had to fight off with
swords. Lysander and Thelred worked together, hacking skeletons to bits. The
first time he swung Harbinger, Kael thought he’d missed. The blade was so sharp
that it cleaved through bone and armor with hardly any force. As the sword
shrilled in delight, he felt a wave of fresh energy wash over him. He felt like
he could have chopped skeletons for a fortnight without breaking a sweat.