Swift Magic (The Swift Codex Book 2) (39 page)

It was clear that they'd abide by Mordon's ruling. But I watched him nod, and felt my heart sink.

I'd hoped that he'd have found a less desperate alternative.

“I wish I would have done this earlier,” I said. “It would have been better for everyone.”

I stretched out on my stomach next to Mordon, gazing through a rippling screen of an illusion at the group of five trees still standing despite everything that had happened all around. We were shivering in the wet fog, the sun up yet hidden behind smoke and storm clouds. It was as if the rain was the final line of defense against the fire and Infection. The chill and stomach-gnawing nerves were already fraying at my strength, but I pretended neither one existed.

Ahead, well beyond the other side of the Unwritten pentangle of trees, rested the husk army. A handful of bat-eagles flew in lazy circles overhead, apparently on watch of the camp, but not doing their job very well. Other, larger animals had joined the ranks: bears and elk, I thought, but they were too badly mutated to know for certain. As far as physical defenses went, there was no wall, no warding spells, nothing to indicate that an attack was anticipated. Just the army strolling around and keeping warm and dry and out of lightning. It was the first good news we'd had all day.

“Can you do a sweep with the wind to check for trouble?” Mordon asked. “I don't like how quiet it is.”

“I'll do it,” I said. “I'm not feeling anything. It hasn't even been visited in a couple of days. Keep an eye out for someone returning to look in on it. It's due for maintenance, which is both good and bad for us.”

The rest of the battalion crawled to the dip in the rocks where Mordon and I observed those below. There were a dozen people to be divvied up between us. While he wanted to give me more people, Mordon had ended up with eight of the dozen. They were talented combatants and I'd argued well enough to be convincing that there had likely been five spell-casters, at maximum, who had constructed the Unwritten, though I thought it was most probable that it had been done by one person working alone.

“Warm up,” Mordon ordered. “We need to be moving to our very best. The fight will be intense and we can't falter at the start. Hit them hard, then back off while they are confused. Keep them disorganized. Our priority is to take out the dominant ones first, doesn't matter who they are. If we can make them scatter, we will have the upper hand. But don't run blindly into a trap. Stick close to formation. Watch for anything that slips past the front guard, the rest of you. I'll spearhead the attacks and break up any organization.

“And as for you,” Mordon said to me, “Keep alive, or I'll seek out Death myself to get you back. Take my word on it.”

Did I dare to tell him that he might succeed if he did as he proposed? I didn't want to encourage him, so I nodded and said, “Yes sir,” just like everyone else did.

From there we said nothing more, just parted ways. The two illusionists who were holding our guise up went one with the soldiering party and one with me. The ground crunched beneath our feet, the charcoal-like ground noisy and nerve wrecking, while the air in front of our mouths puffed with little white ghosts. As soon as we were a few feet away from Mordon's group, we could see them no longer, and it was hard to even hear them.

“I'll take the off-center tree,” I said. “The rest of you sort yourselves out as you please, but you've got to be right at the tip of the corners. Don't go inside. I think there's something happening within the center, so don't set foot within the lines ever.”

I was dimly aware of the illusion fading when we reached the trees. A prickling sensation swept over my skin as we took our positions. It was as if everything, all the magic, that was, was watching us as we made our way through the deepest of the enemy ranks and tried for a final contest with the invader. I felt that the air itself was trying to conceal us from the notice of the husks, and no doubt the presence of the trees helped in that matter. But what would we do when we were seen? I had to hope that Mordon's strike force happened first, that he would throw their lazy camp into a frightful panic and we would either go unnoticed, or that we wouldn’t be seen until it was much too late.

“They've started,” Lyall said quietly.

It had been against my wishes that I had him in my group, as I sensed he was a good fighter—but he'd intentionally done poorly when he was tested, and Mordon wanted him with me, anyway. I felt the twist of a fire drake cutting through the air, and knew that it was now or never. There was the startled yelps and whoops of the husks from far away. Thin trails of smoke marked where Mordon had started his specialty by flaming his targets.

“Let's start the ritual,” I said.

All around us the Wildwoods waited with an all too still freeze. The husks and their winged companions went straight for Mordon. Lyall hurried to reaffirm people's roles and soon, it was all ready for me to take the center role. I felt a trickle of cold sweat run down my back.

“All ready?”

Silence was in reply, and nervous expressions. Way too late to back out now, so I closed my eyes. For an instant, the needed words fled my mind and I didn't know what I was doing. This almost made me panic, but with it I pushed that aside and waited just a second longer. I didn't know what I was waiting for, but then I knew.

A faint image of the lady of the Wildwoods appeared to my side, visible only to me, and she whispered the start into my ear.

I surrendered my lips to her use, repeating what she said at first, then as the chant picked up faster and faster, we were talking in synchronization. Then I realized I had no control over the words tumbling out of my lips, of the pitch of my voice. It wasn't me controlling them. It was her. And when my arms began to move upwards of their own volition, I let them.

When I felt her step forward, I felt the collective intake of air from my companions, but I didn't realize why until I knew that I wasn't standing on ground. There was no charred grasses beneath my feet. It was nothing. I was walking on air. And my skin changed, shifting without intention, turning thick and pale gray, then silver. It was the brightest thing on the whole Wildwoods. I was clean, pure, as my dirty clothes sort of disappeared and smooth scales took over. Wind burst beneath my wings, the right one aching with every stroke. But the pain wasn't something I felt, it was just something I knew was there. Like everything else that was happening as the lady of the Wildwoods positioned me over the hole which was in the center of the pentacle.

The voices around me weren't those of my companions. They were breathy, lost voices which spoke in a singsong, the rhythm not wanting to be disturbed. A man stood where I had been, his features nothing but a ghostly shadow, and in the same place as my companions there were other ethereal figures, all cloaked and dark. The two chants clashes, conflicting one with the other, the power for the spell-casters far greater than ours, far stronger. It seemed that I could scarcely hear my own voice. A struggle for dominance against great bass drums. The original caster grinned, and his voice boomed.

I wanted to sing along with him.

I almost did. My own song faltered. He grew bolder.

Then I felt it. I felt the source of the power, the source of both our powers. It went down, deep into the earth, drawing strength from the soil and bedrock, going up through the layers of soil and out into the air, past the live animals teeming beneath the tree branches, then up into the graceful branches, out into the buds and leaves, and up, up into the air, up towards the light of the moon and stars, up into the nothingness that we all would be gone without. Into the nothingness we called the air, into the place where gasses resided and where I pulled all of my strength from.

I'd thought mine was the weakest element of all. It had always seemed that way, when I saw the destruction and power that fire held, the happiness or disturbance the light could render. The creepiness of the darkness. The power of water. It had seemed to me, up until that instant, that the only thing the air was good for was breathing.

How wrong I'd been.

With the lady resuming her chant louder and louder, I fell into the air, I became the air, and I reached into the space between the speakers, and remembering that noise was nothing but vibrations through the air, I stopped the spectral voices.

Unhindered, alone, my own choir sang.

In an instant, the spectators were gone. They simply ceased to exist. It was just me and the Lady and my four, and the sudden strength jolted down into the earth and out, up into the sky. I felt my heart lift, and I raised my head towards Mordon. But first I felt the little bit of the Lady slip out of me and tumble to the ground. She went down, down into the hole, and she kept on sinking down into the grave, kept on going down through the soil, then up into the trees and out into the air.

I was back in my body again, and it hurt. It was cold and tingling and everything ached. But I looked out and I saw something dreadful.

The Lady was gone, to reclaim her land and health, and she would help us no more.

And in her place had come the black dragon, and he was diving straight down through the air. He dodged Mordon's flame, and I knew in the way he moved that he would outmaneuver Mordon.

I roared. It wasn't a deep and throaty thing, it was a shrill cry, piercing and startling, like a bird of prey.

He was strong, though he was losing ground to the Wildwoods, he still held most of it within his grasp, and he knew in an instant that if he took me, he could reclaim what was his before he lost it all. Then he knew what I'd do if he had dominion over Mordon and he dove for him.

I beat the air and angled to intercept, not knowing if I'd get there in time.

The air seemed to resist me, to drag on my movements while I raced to help Mordon. The sounds of the battle became a dull vibration in my ears, everything that I knew was lost to the all-consuming desire to make it in time, and the Immortal did everything in his power to ensure that I failed. As the gap closed between us, the black dragon extended his claws out for Mordon's wings.

I thought of the damage that would do. Of where that would drop Mordon, and how his advantage against the husks and others was in the air. On the ground with ripped wings, he'd be at a distinct disadvantage.

But Mordon wasn't the man I knew for nothing.

At the last possible second, he tucked his wings flat and plummeted, twisting so his claws caught the black dragon's jaw. The both of them tumbled down, Mordon thrashing his tail like a massive whip, beating his opponent about the chest and belly and wings. With a snap, Mordon unfurled his wings, filled them full of an updraft, and shot back into the air again. The black dragon wobbled, his body shaken and battered. With a quick glance behind him, the black dragon sped away from Mordon. It took me a second to realize that his new path was towards me—and that my path should be away from him.

When I'd thought I needed to rescue Mordon, I hadn't remembered that it was he who was better on the wing, and the more experienced aerial combatant. I banked hard, trying to give Mordon time to pursue the black dragon who would be pursuing me.

The husks were coming together in force now, I saw. They were harassing the feys who were showing sign of fatigue. I closed my eyes and focused for a minute, drawing up an illusion from the air around the husks. At the next flash of lightning, they would be blinded and when they opened their eyes next they would see nothing. Nothing at all. The feys would not be so restricted. I dedicated my energy and effort to that, not stopping until I knew it had succeeded.

A disturbance rippled through the air, congealing it. My eyes fluttered open. Before I knew what it was, I felt the slam of air being cut off, like a door swinging shut, except I wasn't in a room, I was—I was in a warding spell! A shriek split through the air as I barely dodged ramming the ward nose-first. My tail skimmed the hard shell enclosing me, sending ricochets of pain through my spine. One lap, then another, confirmed that I was trapped in a solid globe in the air. And the black dragon was with me, trailing my path with a satisfied twitch of his claws.

At once I saw Mordon diving for the ward, and I doubled back, building speed, to hit the ward just far enough away from his that we might slam a crack into it. Three beats of the wings was all I had the space for, then I tilted my head, to ram with the flat of my forehead. My last glimpse was Mordon in the same position, drawing near. The black dragon darted underneath my wings, hitting me in the ribs and knocking me off-course.