Chris Evans - The Light of Burning Shadows

“Something wrong?” Alwyn asked.

Griz shook his head and smiled. “What, no, just thinking it’s a bit funny you lot being Iron Elves when the real ones is out in the desert.”

“No,” Alwyn said, “it’s really not that funny at all.”

Griz’s smile wavered, then he winked at Alwyn. “No, I suppose it isn’t. Now, sonny, lose the jacket and roll up your sleeve. You want the right or left arm?”

“Right,” Yimt said, looking around the room as he walked over to watch. Trij returned through the secret opening carrying two fistfuls of pewter mugs with beer froth dripping down the sides. He handed them out quickly, saving Yimt’s for last.

“Good weapon,” Trij remarked.

Yimt took a drink from his mug, then set it down on a bench. Foam covered his beard. “Yours, too,” he said, looking at Trij’s drukar.

“Forged in the Maiden Works under Schrakkart Peak.” Trij unsheathed it and held it up to the light.

Yimt peered at it and nodded. “Those gals do good work.”

Trij sheathed the blade. “You do not carry one?”

Yimt scowled. “I did, and I will again.”

Trij nodded, walked away, and began clearing the plates and mugs from the table.

“Nice enough fellow, bit on the talky side, though,” Yimt said, picking up his mug and taking another swig.

Griz chuckled. “That’s the most he’s said in three days.”

Alwyn looked from Griz to Yimt. “How can you be so calm? Evil is-”

“Easy, lad, easy,” Griz said, patting Alwyn on the arm. “You’ll rupture yourself if you keep gettin’ all excited like this.” He looked over to Yimt. “You’d think this was the first time the world hung in the balance.”

“Kids these days,” Yimt said, taking another drink from his mug and winking at Alwyn. “I tell them you gotta take a breath once in a while and stop and smell the nuns, but do they listen?”

“The thing you have to remember,” Griz said, reaching underneath a stool and pulling out a small, black leather valise, “is that there’s always trouble brewing somewhere. An elf-witch on a mountain. A dead wizard in a desert. Stars tumbling to earth. It’s the way of the world.” He opened the valise and brought out a quill with a metal tip and a jar of black ink.

Alwyn gulped. “But if Kaman Rhal’s magic really is back, we need to find it. This is important.”

Griz nodded. “Aye, I can see that. Trij is off looking for a map now. I’m pretty sure I got an old survey map from a hundred years ago or so. Should help you a bit if the cartographer knew what he was doing.”

Alwyn looked over to where Trij was busing the table, but the dwarf was gone. “Where’d he go?”

“Quiet, that one. Don’t tell him I said so, but I’d wager there’s a little elf in his blood. Never met a dwarf that could move as quiet as him.” Griz grabbed a small bottle out of the valise and uncorked it. “This might sting a bit.”

“Wait, what are you going to tattoo on me?” Alwyn asked. He felt like screaming that this wasn’t the time, but he was clearly outnumbered.

Griz sat back and looked at him. “Mercy me, your first one? Lad, I have no idea. It ain’t me that decides, it’s you. I just wait to see what appears.” He sprinkled a few drops of the liquid onto Alwyn’s arm, then sat back. “See, a good artist lets the canvas-in this case, you -speak to him.”

“But I haven’t told you what I want,” Alwyn said, watching the skin on his upper arm. The area where the liquid touched tingled. “I’m not really sure I want anything, to be honest. I just-ow!”

Alwyn stopped talking as tiny tongues of black flame flared up, then quickly vanished on his arm. Griz stroked his beard a couple of times and looked over at Yimt. “That’s new. Still, the potion never lies.” The dwarf picked up his quill and dipped it into the ink. “Odd though, I figured you for crossed muskets like the other-” Griz caught himself, then smiled. “Like the other soldiers that have been through here. Now, let’s get you inked,” he said, jabbing the quill into Alwyn’s arm as he began to trace the faint outline of a black acorn that appeared just underneath the skin.

Visyna lightly descended from Rallie’s wagon and walked to the center of the open space between the buildings and alleyways. Between the moonlight and flickering lanterns, she was able to see well enough. Jir padded alongside her, providing additional comfort that no one, or no thing, was going to surprise her. Visyna raised her hands and began to gently tease at the fabrics of natural energy around her. Light shone from between her hands as she sorted through the many threads, searching for traces that would tell her what had happened. Clearly, a fight had taken place here, and recently. Old, bitter threads marked the three piles of ash that dotted the ground, but just what those piles had been, she couldn’t tell. She concentrated harder, searching for telltale signs of the Shadow Monarch’s power.

“I don’t think you’ll find it here,” Rallie said, still sitting in the wagon and looking down. “This is something else entirely.”

Chayii knelt a few yards away, thoughtfully sifting sand through her hands. She grimaced and stood up, throwing the dirt away. “The magic used here was ancient. Much older than Hers. Tyul was here, and my husband,” she added.

Visyna wasn’t sure if it was annoyance or concern in her voice. Probably both. “Then is this Kaman Rhal’s doing?” she asked. She stretched her senses a little further, worrying at a thread so thin she couldn’t quite grasp it with her mind. She let out a deep sigh and lowered her hands.

“That,” Rallie said, “is what we’re going to find out. We still have a few hours of darkness, so let’s make the most of it and get out of Nazalla with as few eyes watching us as possible. I assume we’re still heading south?”

Chayii nodded. “Tyul is all but untrackable, but Rising Dawn is not. They are definitely heading for the desert.”

“Why, though? Why would Tyul and Jurwan leave the ship and come here?” Visyna asked, climbing back onto the wagon and turning to help Chayii up. The elf smiled her thanks and sat down beside her.

“Tyul sees things differently than us. To him, the world is simple, or should be simple. Things are either in their natural state or they are not. That is why he is still with me. He understands the threat the Shadow Monarch poses and seeks to restore Her mountain to its pure form. If he detected something equally wrong, he would have sought it out. In his mind he would be helping it, even if that meant killing it.”

“And Jurwan?”

Chayii shook her head. “My husband is a fool. Brave, intelligent, loving, but a fool. No one else could have survived Her mountain, and I’m not entirely sure he did. What he wants, what he knows, I can no longer say.”

The brindos lurched forward and the wagon began rolling again. Visyna continued to weave the air around her, puzzling through the various energies and trying to make sense of them. Being tricked by Her Emissary in Elfkyna had been deeply humiliating to her, and she wasn’t about to let it happen again.

It wasn’t easy to weave magic this late at night on a moving wagon in a large city. Visyna yawned and had begun to let the threads go when something caught her attention. She tried to pinpoint it, but it was too difficult to grasp.

“Do you-” she started to ask the other two women, but had gotten no further when she turned toward them. Both were looking to the southern sky. A thin blue light glimmered among the stars.

“I feel it, too,” Chayii said, her eyes unblinking as they watched the night sky. “The Jewel of the Desert is returning.”

Rallie snapped at the reins and the brindos picked up their pace. “That’s not the only thing that’s coming. There’s a change in the weather, masking a power out in the desert.”