Terry Brooks - Witch Wraith

Redden watched as one of the wolves noticed him for the first time and turned his way. It slouched forward, shaggy head lowered, muzzle drawn back to show rows of gleaming teeth. Oriantha was too far away and there were four more wolves between him and her. Redden was on his own.

He again tried to summon the wishsong, and again he failed. The magic would not respond.

The wolf was crouching now, gathering itself, preparing to leap. Oriantha had thrown herself into the midst of the other wolves in an effort to break past them and reach him, but her effort was hopeless. Redden braced himself, fear racing through him, his nerves raw, his terror so strong it had eclipsed all sense of reason. He went down on one knee, fighting his panic, remembering his promise, his word, his determination …

The ogre stumbled back into view right in front of him, cutting off the wolf, then turned toward him as if it could smell his fear. Its face was all bloodied and torn, and it roared in dull recognition of what it had found and might now act against. Great hands groped outward, reaching down.

Abruptly, Redden’s voice exploded out of his throat, the wishsong a primal scream that gathered up the very air and turned it into a savage wind and changed particles of dust into deadly shards. Both tore into the ogre and the wolves, ripped them to shreds and threw them away.

Then Redden regained control of himself and stumbled forward, catching up with Oriantha. Her smooth feline face swung toward him momentarily, and there was satisfaction in her bright eyes. Teeth showed in an attempt at a smile, and the cat bolted ahead onto the open flats.

Redden stumbled after, trying not to look at what was left of the creatures he had just destroyed. He had that sick feeling again—the one had experienced in the Fangs when he had fought back against and destroyed his Goblin attackers—as if something had been stolen from him by using the wishsong this way.

They raced onto the flats and crossed toward a series of low hills marked by clusters of boulders and deep ravines. He was stumbling badly, but forced himself to keep his feet and press on. He glanced back once for pursuit. He could see movement at the perimeter of the camp, but no organized effort was giving chase. Maybe they had given up, he thought. Maybe what he had done to the ogre and the demon-wolves had been enough to discourage them.

He looked away again quickly and tried not to think about anything but keeping up with Oriantha.

Then suddenly Lada appeared, scurrying out from the rocks to greet them, darting this way and that, his eyes bright as he chattered and jumped about. For reasons Redden couldn’t explain, seeing the little Chzyk gave him such pleasure and generated such a strong feeling of hope that he almost wept in response.

“Lada,” he whispered as the Chzyk leapt onto his boot and off again in the blink of an eye.

The little creature chattered in response and darted away again.

Ahead, Tesla Dart popped out from between the rocks, hopping from foot to foot as if impatient with the whole business and in no mood for anything even approaching delay.

“That took a long time!” she snapped at Oriantha.

There was something of an apologetic look reflected in her rough, whisker-fringed features as she shifted her eyes to Redden. “Well,” she said, “it did.”

She started to say something more, became completely flustered, and made a dismissive gesture instead.

“We should get out of sight,” she said finally and turned away.

They hid in the rocks afterward while Oriantha, still in her animal form, licked her wounds with a long black tongue and Tesla Dart sat with Redden, talking softly. Now and again, one or the other would glance over the tops of their shelter to see if there was any activity from the demon camp, but there was still no sign of pursuit.

“Did they hurt you?” the Ulk Bog asked the boy.

“Some.”

“Nothing broken?”

“My pride. My confidence, a little.”

“You were frightened?”

He nodded.

“Tael Riverine is very dangerous. You were lucky.”

“More so than all the others that went with me.”

“He wants Grianne Ohmsford. He wants his Queen. You would bring her to him, he thinks.”

Redden stared. “Why would I do that? Even if I could, why?”

“You are her family. She would come to save you.”

The boy almost laughed. “She’s dead. A hundred years ago dead. If she weren’t, she wouldn’t come for me anyway. She doesn’t even know who I am. What is Tael Riverine thinking?”

The Ulk Bog squinted at him. “Family is important. Especially to the Straken Lord, who has no family. He wants children. She will give them to him.”

Redden shook his head. This argument was going nowhere. “He doesn’t care about Grianne and children. He wants to conquer the Four Lands. He wants to make us all slaves.”

Tesla Dart shrugged. “No one has ever escaped him. Just her. He thinks about nothing else. Everyone knows. He doesn’t want to look weak. Having her bear his children will help.”

“But he doesn’t need to bother with any of that.”

She gave him a look. “He needs what he doesn’t have, what he lost when he lost her. He will never quit searching for her.”

Oriantha had finished cleaning herself and had shape-shifted back to her old form. Pulling on the rest of her clothes and wrapping herself in her travel cloak, she took a quick look back at the enemy camp and said, “We have to be going. They’ll be coming for us.”

“Where do we go?” asked Tesla Dart.

They stared at one another for a moment. Until now, not much consideration had been given to the question.

“We should go to Arborlon,” Redden declared. “That’s where Railing and the others are likely to be. That’s where we can be safe.”

“We can be safe nowhere,” Tesla Dart muttered.

But they set out anyway, Oriantha in the lead, the other two following. They were undecided about how to go, aware of the danger with the demon army so close at hand. Traveling directly north would take them through the Tirfing to Rover communities where they could find an airship offering passage to Arborlon. Without air travel, it would take them days or even weeks to get to their destination. But the terrain north required they pass just to the rear of the attacking army, threatening to expose them in a way none of them was willing to risk. So after a hurried conference, they decided that the safest choice was to go back the way they had come, west toward the rent in the Forbidding until they found an opening in the folded landscape that would allow them to move safely out of sight to the north.

Oriantha had already decided that the attack on Arishaig would keep the enemy locked up where it was for at least another few days, which should give them time enough to make their way to safety. Tesla Dart, on the other hand, was not so sure.

“The battle will end today,” she announced. “The city will fall, the Straken Lord’s army will go elsewhere. Tael Riverine will see it done.”

“That city is heavily defended,” the shape-shifter argued. “It won’t be taken so easily.”

“Today,” the Ulk Bog repeated and refused to say more.

So even though there was a good deal of doubt about the Ulk Bog’s prognostication, it generated a fresh sense of urgency, and the little company moved ahead quickly.

Even so, the three companions had progressed no more than an hour, traveling mostly back toward the Forbidding to find passage north, when Tesla Dart brought them up short.

“Wait,” she cautioned, one hand raised. She sniffed at the air and listened intently for a long time. “We are tracked. Lada! Ari’sho trush! ”

The Chzyk darted back in the direction from which they had come, even as the trio continued moving ahead. He was gone perhaps fifteen minutes before reappearing, racing across the barren landscape in a flash of dark movement, spines flaring out in warning. Tesla Dart dropped to one knee and bent close to the little creature as it charged up to her, and the two of them began chattering away in a mix of non-words and rough grunts.