Troy Denning: The Amber Enchantress

Khidar took Sadira in his arms. A terrible chill ran through her body, stinging her skin and freezing her flesh to the bone. A black stain spread outward from where the dark arms enclosed her, bringing with it an icy, deathlike numbness. The sorceress felt her knees buckle, then she collapsed into the shadow’s grasp.

Khidar rose into the air, carrying Sadira’s shivering body with him. Below them, the rest of the shadow people moved toward the center of the room, flitting about in a wild, rhythmic dance. Scintillating flashes of light began to shoot off the mirror, passing through the gems set into the steel ring that had once supported the dark lens.

Khidar took Sadira almost to the crystal cupola before he stopped. The sorceress saw that her body now resembled his: a black silhouette, with no hint of her wiry frame or womanly figure. Below her, a varicolored spray of light danced off the walls of the tower, rising from the gems of the lens to lap at her feet like flames with no heat.

As Sadira watched, the dancing rays came together in a prismatic blast of light. The eruption that followed formed itself into a simmering cloud of color, which came boiling up beneath her feet. A peal of deep, sonorous thunder rumbled from the heart of the storm. Golden rays of brilliance and black streaks of darkness flashed out to strike her, sending searing waves of pain and icy bolts of torment shooting through her body. Sadira felt herself slipping from Khidar’s icy grip. As she sank into the storm of colors, she heard herself scream in agony.

When her voice echoed back to her, it was filled with jubilation and triumph.

As the sun touched its crimson disk to the western horizon, Magnus raised his weary voice to join the lirrs in yet another of their morbid beast-songs. The saurian creatures were all around him, standing on their hind legs and stretching out their thorny tails to balance the weight of their scale-covered bodies. When they sang, they flared their magnificent neck fans, opening their mouths so wide that they seemed nothing but pink gullet and fangs.

Magnus had been singing with the lirr pack since shortly after midday, when they had come trotting through the field. At first, the windsinger had hoped that they would mistake him for a tree and continue on. Unfortunately, the branches that had sprouted on his upper body had begun to quiver in fear, giving him away. One of the lirrs had come over and began clawing at his trunk.

At that moment, Magnus had realized the pack would eventually devour him, but, determined not to die easily, he had cracked the creature’s skull, with a huge fist. The rest of the pack had immediately returned and begun circling, bellowing the eerie notes of their hunting song. It was then that he had hit upon the idea of joining them.

The tactic had worked well, for his voice was more than versatile enough to duplicate the notes of their keening. The saurians had been circling him since, confused as to whether he was prey, a tree, or some kind of strange lirr. There was a limit to how long Magnus could keep stalling the predators, however, and the windsinger knew that he was fast approaching it. Already, he could hear his voice cracking with hoarseness, and before the night was finished he knew it would fail entirely.

To Magnus’s relief, the lirrs suddenly stopped singing. In unison, they dropped to all fours and turned eastward, their amber eyes gleaming hungrily. An instant later, they bounded away together. Following them with his eyes, the windsinger saw that they had gone to attack a solitary figure returning from the Pristine Tower. At this distance, and in the obscure light of dusk, Magnus could not tell whether he was looking at Sadira or Rhayn.

“Watch yourself!” he yelled. “Lirrs!”

The warning came too late, for the beats were already upon their prey. They launched themselves at her, snapping at her throat with sharp fangs and raking her abdomen with long claws. Magnus’s leafy boughs shuddered with horror and he tried to avert his lidless eyes, but constrained as he was by his trunk, he could not turn far enough away to avoid seeing what followed.

To his amazement, the charging beats did not bowl the woman over. Instead, she simply stopped walking and they slipped, clawing and snapping, off her body. Once the lirrs reached the ground, they changed tactics, savaging her legs in an attempt to topple their quarry.

The distant figure stopped and pointed a hand toward the setting sun. By the time she pulled it away, her whole body glowed with a crimson light. She kicked at the voracious lirrs with her feet, trying to drive them away before she unleashed her magic. This act suggested to Magnus that he was looking at Sadira, for no elf would have treated one of the saurians with such kindness.

When the lirr did not avail themselves of her mercy, the sorceress waved her hand at them. A brilliant flash of red flared from beneath her palm. Once the spots had faded from Magnus’s eyes, he saw that the beasts had vanished. As powerful as she had been before entering the tower, the windsinger realized that Sadira had returned with her abilities much enhanced.

The sorceress strolled toward Magnus as though nothing had happened, and soon he could see the highlights of her amber hair glistening in the evening light. Her face, however, remained swathed in shadows until she was almost upon him.

When she finally came close enough, to see, the windsinger could not stop himself from gasping. Where the lirr had raked her, there was not even the faintest sign of a wound. But it was not the sorceress’s immunity to injury that shocked the windsinger the most. Although she was as beautiful as ever, her skin had turned jet black. Her eyes now had no pupils and glowed like burning embers. Whenever she exhaled, a wisp of black steam rose from between her lips, which had changed color to match her blue eyes.

“What’s wrong, Magnus?” Sadira asked, giving him a warm smile. “Don’t you like women in black?”

“As long as you’re still Sadira, I don’t mind,” the windsinger replied, giving her a nervous grin.

This brought a smile to the sorceress’s lips. “It’s me-more or less,” she said. Sadira’s expression saddened, then she added, “I’m sorry to tell you this, but Rhayn won’t be coming back.”

The windsinger nodded. Choking back a lump in his throat, he said, “That’s okay. It’s not like I’d be going anywhere with her.” He shook his branches for emphasis.

Sadira was quiet for a moment, then she asked, “Maybe you’d like to come with me, instead?”

“Don’t mock me,” Magnus said. “It’s going to be difficult enough watching you leave.”

“I’m not mocking you,” Sadira answered.

With that, she moved forward and began plucking branches off the windsinger’s body.

“That hurts!” Magnus objected, trying to push the sorceress’s arms away. To his surprise, he found that he could not. It was not that they were strong, but they just did not yield to force. “Stop it!”

Sadira continued to pluck, ripping even large branches off his body as though they were only shoots. “I suppose you want to spend the rest of your days with leaves all over your back?” she asked, ripping the last bough off.

“That is what trees look like,” the windsinger replied, staring sadly at the pile of limbs she had scattered about his trunk.

“Well, you’re not a tree,” Sadira said, laying her hands on his trunk. “You’re an elf-more or less.”

Deep inside his bole, Magnus felt a strange tingle where his legs had once been. He tried to move his feet and felt muscles responding to his command, though his lower body remained locked in wood.