Chris Evans - A Darkness Forged in Fire

And then the siggers came. The soldiers planted a pretty green-and-silver flag on top of the hill and claimed it for the Empire. They labored for months to raise a high mud wall all the way around the top of the hill, festooned it with cactus thorn, and then sat in it, staring out at the river. The elfkynan told the siggers they should not build there, for it would anger the gods. They told them the story of the Star.

And where is this Star? the siggers had asked. Did it fall back up into the sky? The village witch made the appropriate warding signs and warned the siggers that the Star would one day return. The siggers laughed and bought the fish heads from the women and used them to make soup. The spirits would have their revenge one day, the witch had said.

The witch never lived to see the spirits' revenge. A cold black arrow crafted by a magic far older than hers pierced her breast, killing her instantly.

Visyna covered her mouth with her hand as she looked down at the remains of the witch. A twisted black tree grew through her to reach its misshapen branches out to intertwine with the branches of others of its kind dotted all around the village and fortress, forming a U against the river. The trees were already taller than Visyna, their metaled leaves moving menacingly though no wind blew or rain fell. There were hundreds of trees, though it was difficult to tell where one ended and another began. She closed her eyes and immediately sensed their roots crawling deeper into the earth. The land here was changed, far more so than the vines where the faeraugs had sheltered. Her magic would not be sufficient to destroy them.

Not like his.

It was a sobering thought. She opened her eyes and knelt on the earth, placing a hand on the ground. It was like touching cold iron.

"In all my years of reporting, I have never seen anything more foreboding," Rallie said, angling her sketchbook to catch the moonlight as she drew the black forest that now grew where Luuguth Jor had once stood. The two women stood by Rallie's wagon on the edge of the village, while a scouting party moved through the gap in the trees by the river to check out the fortress within. "It fills one with a particular sense of dread, as if winter has arrived early. Great and terrible things are bound to follow. Oh, my, yes."

Visyna took one more look at the dead witch, knowing that could easily be her, and turned away. She was shocked to see a tiny smile on Rallie's face.

"Rallie! Don't you see, Konowa and the Iron Elves are the harbinger of the coming storm. I thought when he felt the natural order, he would finally understand."

"Or when he felt you?" Rallie asked. "Do not give up on the major, Visyna. He cares deeply for you even if he has trouble showing it. Love is a powerful weapon, but like all weapons, it depends on how one uses it."

"I know he cares, but he loves the Iron Elves more. He would do anything for them," she said, bitterness lacing her words.

"As you would for your land and your people. The two of you are more alike than either will admit. As soon as we deal with this little matter," she said, waving at the trees, "I see I am going to have to improve my chaperoning skills."

"Little matter? Rallie, the very world hangs in the balance and you talk as if you enjoy it."

Rallie stopped sketching and turned to look at her, all trace of a smile gone. "Of course I do not enjoy this. But I am a reporter of events, an observer of all things, and most importantly, a writer. I suffer from a disease few, fortunately, will ever contract. I need to be where fire burns hottest, or the wind blows coldest. It's there, where the tapestry of the world gets burned and ripped to shreds and another is woven new, that history lives, and dies. Our major, whether it be fate or by his own design, and the Iron Elves, and I daresay, us, too, have become one of those places."

As she talked, her face flushed and the years of hard living seemed to melt away, revealing a youthful, bright soul, yet one tempered by the sadness of having seen more than any person should. Realizing Visyna was staring at her, she turned back to her sketchbook. Her quill hovered above the paper, though, and she tilted her head to the side.

"Pray, my child, that you never catch this disease of mine. It is both pleasure and horror, and while I would not wish it on anyone, I would fight with every ounce of my strength if someone were to try to cure me of it. But enough of my life story," Rallie said, scratching her nose with the feather end of her quill while looking at Visyna. "You were telling me about the Star."

Visyna shivered. "I shouldn't have said anything."

Rallie cackled lightly, turning back to her drawing. Her hand moved with quick, fluid strokes across the page. "Ah, but you did. I had no idea a Star could talk, or that it would be so feeble as to need to hide itself from view."

"I do not know how to explain it; it is a feeling. The Star has been gone a long time, as have all the Stars. It is energy, but still weak after centuries of being gone." Hearing it said out loud made the entire situation all sound a bit foolish.

"Indeed," Rallie said, clucking as she turned over the page and began a new sketch. "And you are sure this is the Eastern Star?"

"I was," she said truthfully. "It comes to me when I call. It even warned me of the danger Konowa would become, and we have seen it come to pass. This regiment is cursed. The taint of the Shadow Monarch's evil is upon them."

Rallie shrugged her shoulders and continued to draw. "Perhaps. Then again, power is most often neutral, and can be used for good or ill. It depends on the wielder. I have faith in our major, as troubled as he is. For that matter, I have faith in you. You could have burned the faeraugs to a cinder, but you chose not to. That is no small thing, free will." Rallie paused again in her sketching and cast a sidelong glance at Visyna. "Let me know when you speak to this Star again-I'd love the chance to interview it for my story."

Visyna wanted to say no, then stopped herself. Why not? If this truly was the Eastern Star, why should it be secret? She remembered the touch of Kritton's hand on her skin and more riddles emerged.

"Questions to ponder, my dear, questions to ponder," Rallie said softly, the scritch of her quill across paper starting up again.

Visyna knew it was time she took the correspondent's advice.

"The trees won't burn with just fire, and we don't have enough powder to destroy the entire forest, sir," Lorian said, pointedly not looking at Konowa as he directed his answers to the Prince. Lorian gripped his halberd as if it were the only thing keeping him from falling. "For some reason, the area in and around the fortress is clear. It looks like they killed the soldiers there, then dragged their bodies out of the fort to enclose the fortress and the village. We're completely encircled except for right here."

Right here was a twenty-yard gap between the river and the treeline on the other side of the road leading into Luuguth Jor. They stood in the middle of the road looking up at the destroyed fortress. Konowa waited for the Prince to comprehend the folly of entering the forest-ringed position, but the Prince only nodded.

"We really should pull back, sir," Konowa finally said. "We'd be walking into a trap if we go in there. There's no sign of the Star or the previous Viceroy. He may have already found it."

The Prince sniffed and shook his head. He rested a boot on an overturned drum of the Thirty-fifth Foot, its stretched hide skin torn and covered in the blood of the young boy who had carried it. Oblivious, he looked up the hill, crossing his arms on his knee as he bent forward in what Konowa was sure the Prince thought was a martial pose.

"You see that fortress, Major," he said, pointing to the crumbled walls on top of the hill. His boot heel echoed hollowly on the drum, a ghostly accompaniment to his proud speech. "That will be our bastion. What better place to plant the Colors and make our stand. Raise the banner of Calahr high and let the enemy know that Luuguth Jor is once again in Imperial hands. The Star is here, Major, I can feel it! It's waiting for the right moment to reveal itself. Well, when the Colors of the Prince of Calahr fly over Luuguth Jor, the enemy will be drawn here like moths to a flame. And when they show themselves, they will dash themselves against our defenses and be defeated. This forest," he said, sweeping a hand dismissively at the ugly black growth that even now writhed around them, "shall be their undoing. They'll have to funnel through this gap to get to the fortress, and when they do, we will have them."