Shadeborn: A Book of Underrealm (13 page)

A thought came into her mind.
 

The dagger.
 

It was on her belt—Loren never removed it, even while sleeping. But she dismissed that furtive instinct, for it was ridiculous. Mighty knights and kings had tried to battle Elves, but none had survived. What proof would such a tiny knife be against them?

The dagger.
 

This time, the thought came more insistent, like a bellow in her mind.
 

With a start, Loren realized that the idea was not her own. The Elves had given it to her.

She studied them. They had not moved, had not shifted so much as a muscle. Only their clothing and hair swayed, wafting gently as though in a breeze, though the night held no wind. They had not spoken. Words had come from their minds to hers.

Loren reached for her waist, desperately hoping that she was not making a terrible mistake. If they thought she meant to fight them, they would kill her for certain. She drew the dagger then flipped it about, holding it by the blade, hilt forward. She took a tentative step toward them, then another. A few paces away, Loren slowly knelt and placed the dagger on the ground.

One of them stepped away from the others and came forward. Its limbs moved like courtly dancer’s. The Elf swayed with grace, ease, and terrifying power. It held out a hand, fingers curled as though around the dagger. Loren pictured that hand circling her throat, and she quailed. Then the dagger appeared, as if from nowhere, in the Elf’s hand. If it had reached for the blade, or moved the dagger with magic, Loren had not seen. One moment it was not there, and then it
was.

The Elf turned to the others and lifted the weapon. It flashed in the moonslight, and Loren thought she saw the Elves’ silver glow reflected in the steel. And then they began to sing.

Loren burst into tears. Her knees failed, and she fell to the floor in a heap. She buried her face in her hands, wailing, giving no heed to the sound of her voice or whether it might wake the others. The song was too beautiful; incomprehensible, for it was sung in no tongue she had ever heard; soul-shattering, for Loren felt that when it ended its grace would break her and leave her wishing for always to hear it again. She felt as though it were transforming her from the inside out, changing something deep within her, beyond explanation or hope of memory.

The song stopped. Loren lay there, still a wreck, aching to hear another note. And then, though they had sung to it in chorus as though in worship, the Elf took her blade by the tip and dropped it in the dirt.

The dagger.
 

The thought came again, and this time Loren knew it for the Elf’s. She struggled to her hands and knees; the thought of standing seemed more than her body could bear. She slowly crawled forward, searching the ground for her blade. But she was far beyond the fire, and her tear-filled eyes made it hard to find.

A hand gripped her shoulder, and where it touched her she felt an incredible warmth. It was not a warmth of the body, but of the soul, and where it ran through her it filled her with hope and courage. But the hand was uncaring, uncompromising, and it lifted her to her feet without waiting for her to act. She found herself standing before the Elf, looking into its gossamer-white eyes, and then she realized that the glow in those eyes was the same glow she saw in Xain whenever he reached for his magic.

This is the end
.
 

The Elf would kill her now, for she had moved too slowly. She only hoped it would leave the others be.

The dagger
.
 

The Elf was holding it now, its hilt toward her.
 

She grabbed the hilt, though she had not meant to. The Elf released the blade, then Loren’s shoulder, and the world seemed darker and more horrible than it had before she felt the Elf’s touch.

The stones.
 

And now in her mind’s eye Loren saw the magestones, a small packet wrapped in brown cloth resting in one of her pockets.

“What?” she said out loud.

She caught some movement—just the bare twitch of a muscle in the Elf’s jaw. It seized her again. Loren wanted to burst out in hysterical laughter at the feeling, the power and joy. But the Elf, uncaring, reached into her cloak and seized the packet. From the cloth it drew one of the stones, then broke it in half and held it before her.

The stones.

Loren took the stone between thumb and forefinger, gingerly. And in her mind’s eye, saw herself putting the stone in her mouth, crunching down, and swallowing the dust. Her eyes widened, and she thought of Xain.

“No,” she stammered. “I cannot—”

The Elf seized her throat. She felt its skin upon hers, no longer dampened by the cloth on her shoulder.
 

It felt as though her mind would collapse upon itself. She saw herself,
all
of herself, the bone and sinew and flesh beneath the skin and a bright white light at the center of it all. But all was distorted and misshapen, turned about so she could see every angle of it at once. And from each part Loren saw what looked like a thin thread, a silvery wisp of
something
running in
every
direction and none at once, through time and leagues uncounted.
 

With the sight came
knowing,
and Loren knew she beheld the skeins of time, laid out before and behind her, and all of the many twists and turns that had led her to where she stood now. And farther, beyond the place where the camp lay, she saw those threads touching others, one at a time and then great clusters in a group, twisting endlessly around each other in a pattern that covered all the nine lands.

The twisted, broken thing that was Loren’s body twitched, and from its mouth croaked the words, “I cannot . . . I cannot . . .”

The Elf placed the magestone in Loren’s mouth and released her, and the world was as it had been.

She swallowed on instinct and felt the magestone slide down her throat. She gasped,
feeling
it creeping through her. She thought it might be like a black corruption, or some great sickness sliding through her veins. But it was nothing so terrible. It was . . . a sharpening. Her mind had been a dull blade all her life, and the magestone slid through her like a whetstone to hone her edges.

Loren realized with a start that she could see all the world around her, clear as day. She could see
better
than her day-sight. She saw the pores on blades of grass, the threads that made up Gem’s bedroll, and the hairs stubbornly clinging to Xain’s thinning scalp.
 

She looked at the Elves in wonder, and the glow pouring from them seemed thrice as lovely. Now their eyes were black, like Xain’s when he had cast darkfire, and she quailed under their gaze.

The Nightblade,
came the thought in her mind.
The one who walks with death.

Then their eyes turned from her. They looked skyward, to where the moons continued their long path across the sky, west toward the horizon where they would finally set. One of the Elves turned, though Loren did not see their feet move, and they began to wander off into the west. They strayed but traveled westerly, and though they did not seem to hurry, the Elves vanished beyond the horizon in what seemed like mere moments.

When the last of their glow faded from sight, Loren went weak and fell to the grass. She still felt the glamour of their presence in her mind, but she was exhausted without it there to sustain her. Her night vision from the magestones had faded. The world was black, save for the silver moonslight—a glow that would remind Loren of the Elves forever.

At the sound of her dropping, Chet started awake. His head jerked. He blinked, and then he beheld her.

“Loren!” He tried to rise but was still groggy and nearly toppled over. “I fell asleep. Sky above curse me, I am sorry. I hardly thought myself tired, but then a deep weariness overcame me, like . . . what is the matter?”

She looked at him and only then realized that tears were still leaking from her eyes to leave tracks upon her cheeks. She wiped them with her sleeve.

“Nothing. Go, sleep in earnest. I shall take the watch.”

“I have slept enough—too much, it seems.” Still he looked worried and peered at Loren in the night as though trying to read her expression. “I can keep the watch, for a while longer at least.”

“No. I cannot sleep now. Rest yourself. I . . . I wish to be alone.”

She could tell he was still worried, for he did not look away from her face for a while. But he did not argue, only turned and went to his bedroll. Soon, he was asleep like the rest, and Loren noted that Gem’s snores had resumed, loud as ever.

Her hand toyed with the dagger’s hilt. She let it go, then took the remaining half of the magestone. She put it between her lips and bit down, and then swallowed it whole, though her stomach clenched with fear. But the magestone went down, just like the other half given to her by the Elf. Only now, she saw nothing, and the night was dark as ever.

Brow furrowing, Loren reached into her cloak for the magestone packet. But in reaching for it, her hand brushed the dagger’s hilt.
 

The night sprang into daylight, a vision beyond vision where even the horizon seemed near.

Her hand jerked back in surprise, and the vision vanished. She stared at the dagger a moment, then took it again and could see as bright as day.

Jordel had told her that her dagger held many magicks, and one day he would teach them to her. He had died before he could teach her this. But had he even known the dagger held this power, or was it some secret of the Elves? Or had Jordel known but withheld it, because of the magestones?
 

Would they act on Loren the same way they had acted upon Xain?

That thought came with its own terrors, and she shoved the magestones deep into her pocket. Then she pulled them out and stood, intending to hurl them into the darkness. But at the last second she stopped. Mayhap she was wrong. Mayhap the magestones would have no ill effects, if she were not a mage. And the dagger itself might protect her.

She could not know, at least not for a while. And until she did, it seemed foolish to throw away such tremendous wealth—and power.

Loren returned the magestones to her cloak and leaned back against the rock. She put her hand on the dagger, then removed it, over and over, watching the world turn from night to day each time.
 

The vision faded after a while, and Loren saw nothing more with the dagger in hand than she did without. Her thoughts wandered wildly afterward, recalling all she had seen when touched by the Elf, and the words it had slipped inside her mind.

Nightblade. The one who walks with death.

Those words stayed with Loren the longest.

seventeen

Loren woke Chet an hour before dawn, when the sky was beginning to grey. He roused sleepily and moved to wake the others, but she stopped him.

“Come with me. I have something to tell you.”

Chet did as Loren asked, despite the questions in his eyes. She led him up the hill, until they sat on a flat shelf in its northwest side. From there, they could see the camp below and the open plains for many leagues to the north and west. The land was empty, as far as they could see, though Loren wondered if she might spy something different with a magestone in her mouth. But that was something she was not yet ready to test.

Loren told Chet everything that had happened, as best she could remember—for already the memory had begun to fade, a grey and hazy thing, like a half-remembered dream. But all she had to do was remember the Elves’ black eyes when she had eaten the magestones, and Loren knew that they had been real.

Chet went white as the Elves themselves at their mention and made the sign of the plow over his heart. Loren doubted that would have helped, for she guessed the Elves cared little for such superstitions.
 

She did not tell him of the magestones, for Loren had never confessed that she still had a packet on hand. But she told him the rest and how it had felt when the Elf touched her, which she said was because she had not fetched the dagger quickly enough. By the time she finished her tale, Chet was looking at the ground between his feet in thought. Loren waited a while, but when he still said nothing, she began to feel uncomfortable.

“You must promise not to tell the others,” she said.

He looked up in surprise. “Why not?”

She paused, for in truth she had not considered it—Loren only knew she did not want to tell them. “I am not certain. Only it feels like something that was for me alone.”

He chuckled. “Why tell me, then?”

“I had to tell
someone
,” she sighed. “The memory fades even now, against my wishes. I was terrified for every moment, fearing that we might all of us be killed where we lay. Yet at the same time it was beautiful, like something from one of Bracken’s tales, and I would not be the only one to know it happened.”

“I believe you.”
 

“I hoped you would. Come. We have rested long enough and should put as many leagues behind us as we may.”

They descended the hill again and woke the others. When Loren went to shake the wizard awake, his eyes snapped open and fixed upon hers.