C. Friedman: Dominion

It was a slim chance, but it was the only one she had.

Taking up a fallen branch to use as a walking stick-shaking off the various foul insects that were clinging to it-the huntress of the One God muttered a prayer under her breath and began to move through the Forest. Promising herself that if she had to die in this foul place, at least she would go down fighting.

The currents of power surrounding the Forest were so strong that by the time Tarrant was within a mile of its border he could feel them pulling at his flesh, threatening to drag him into the whirlpool. Rarely was the earth-power so aggressive, so compelling. Overhead Erna’s largest moon glowed a brilliant white, nearly full in its aspect. But such a display paled in comparison to what that the earth itself was emanating: a cold blue light that rippled across the landscape, lending everything within sight an eerie illumination.

Since the day of his birth Tarrant had been gifted with the ability to see the fae directly, without need for any spell or amulet to aid him. But even he had never seen anything like this. Even the color of the earth-fae seemed different here, streaked with violet, as if streams of dark fae had gotten caught up in it somehow. Was that possible? Could the two powers mingle like that? He longed to gather up enough of it to craft a proper Knowing, to determine the answer to that question. But it was too soon for that. First he needed to learn what lay at the heart of this maelstrom, and then he would know how to harness its power properly. And safely.

This region had been normal once, he knew. Its currents of power had always been strong, but they’d been neutral in tenor, no more dark or dangerous than in any other place. The fae was a natural force, after all, and had no more personality of its own than air or water. But unlike air or water, the fae reflected man’s own fears back at him, and apparently the currents here had accumulated enough human nightmares to manifest this deadly whirlpool… which in turn was now drawing even darker energies to it.

Many sorcerers had come here in recent years, Tarrant knew. None of them had ever returned. His own abilities might exceed theirs by a hundredfold, but that would matter little if he made reckless choices.

In the distance the Forest’s arboreal front loomed high and black, the mountain peaks of its northern border rising up like jagged islands from its thick canopy. Wisps of earth-power played about the treetops like rippling veils, reminding him of the sky-born auroras he had once seen in the far north. It was a strangely beautiful display, despite all its ominous overtones. He wondered what the place would look when true night fell, when neither moon nor stars would be present to provide illumination. The volatile dark fae would be able to rise above the treetops then, to add its eerie purple substance to the glowing display. What a glorious sight that must be!

Be careful, he warned himself. The Forest’s power is said to be seductive in nature. What better way to entrap an adept than to offer him such glorious visions?

He tried to urge his horse into motion again, but it whinnied anxiously and pawed at the ground in protest, struggling against the Workings he had used to bind it. Even its dull equine brain could sense the true nature of what was in front of them now, and a simple Soothing was not going to be enough to reassure it. Tarrant’s first instinct was to increase the power of his Compelling, and he nearly did so. But such an act would require him to tap into the local currents, or else expend a portion of his own limited resources. Neither move was justified yet.

He dismounted in a fluid gesture, the ends of his surcote rippling down over the flanks of the horse like silken waterfalls, and then, stepping back from the animal, he dispelled the Workings that had bound it to his service. Last to go was the Soothing itself, and as the shackles of unnatural calm fell away from the horse’s brain it reared up in terror, its hooves flailing as if striking out at some unseen assailant. Then it hit the ground running and began to gallop west as fast as its legs would carry it. The scent of fear lingered on the breeze in its wake, piquant and pleasing.

Tarrant watched after it for a few minutes, his delicate nostrils flaring as he savored the sweet perfume of its terror. Then he turned his attention to the Forest once more and began to walk toward the heart of the whirlpool.

She managed to find a stream bed at last, though it was currently empty of water. But she could tell from the pattern of detritus left behind which way water had flowed in the past, and that was good enough. All of the running water in the Forest emptied into the Serpent Straits sooner or later, so even if this path didn’t lead her directly to the river, it might still point to some way out of here.

Or so she told herself as she picked her way along the narrow strip of mud and rocks, wary of the slimy black algae that seemed to be everywhere. In the dim light it sometimes seemed to her that a patch of algae shifted its position as she approached, or that a mushroom-like growth by the side of the stream bed twitched when she passed by. She just shuddered and kept on going. Until the point when something actually reached out and grabbed her by the ankle she was not going to stop.

She had jury-rigged a small torch, binding dry brush with a strip of fabric torn from her tabard, and as the shadows about her began to darken she set fire to it. It gave off a foul smell as it burned, possibly from some unwholesome creature she’d failed to shake off when she had assembled the thing. But at least it enabled her to see where she was going.

To her frustration, the sun provided no sense of direction as it set, its low-angled light unable to pierce the tangled brush in enough quantity to cast meaningful shadows. The gloom in the Forest simply thickened little by little as the place began its slow descent into night, a dense soup of darkness that filled her lungs as she breathed it in, making her feel as if she were suffocating.

As darkness came, so did the faeborn. Whispers of fear flitted in the shadows on all sides of her, shards of human emotion that had survived the deaths of their human creators and taken refuge in this place. Her torch held most of them at bay, but the torch would not last all night. She would not last all night.

Don’t think like that. Just walk.

The pain in her side was blinding now, but there was nothing she could do about it save grit her teeth and keep on going. She hadn’t started coughing up blood yet, which was a good sign, but she didn’t have any illusions about just how bad her condition was. She imagined she could feel bone grating on bone whenever she moved too quickly, and she knew she was lucky that her lung had not been pierced. Thus far she had managed to rise above the worst of the pain, but she feared that if her mental focus wavered for so much as an instant it would all crash down on her like a tidal wave and she might never get up again.

She’d had worse injuries than this, she told herself stubbornly. She’d survived them.

But never in a place like this.

Soon the stream bed began to widen out and a gap appeared in the canopy overhead, a tenuous sign of hope. Now she could see the stars for the first time, and the leading edge of a full moon cast thin blue light down onto the stream bed. The sight of it made a knot rise in her throat, and a whispered prayer crossed her lips without her conscious volition. She knew in her heart that merely seeing a glimpse of the open sky didn’t mean she was going to get out of the Forest alive, but the slender beam of moonlight was as refreshing as a spring rain upon her face, and she turned her head upward to let it wash over her, drawing strength from the utter normalcy of the act.