Fairmist by Todd Fahnestock

Author:Todd Fahnestock [Fahnestock, Todd]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: F4 Publishing
Published: 2015-02-26T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter 25

Grei

Darkness dropped over him like the sun had set, thick limbs cutting off the daylight. He sprinted through the trees, dry branches striking his face, his arms. He ran until his lungs and legs burned.

Gasping for breath, he stopped and put his hands on his knees. Sinister whispers slithered through his mind, growing louder, then softer, then louder. Dry pine needles covered the forest floor, and he couldn’t see the bright Badlands anymore.

He would double back, come up with a plan as soon as he could think clearly. His clouded head was slowly returning to normal. What had happened to him at the wagon? The moment he’d used his magic, it had made him stupid. It had never done that before. His mind had dulled until he could barely keep hold of his own name. What had changed?

Something moved ahead, and Grei sank to a crouch behind a tree.

Selicia flitted from one shadow to the next, barely visible. She breathed smoothly and evenly as though she hadn’t just sprinted a mile. He tried to keep his own breathing silent, but her dark gaze fell on him.

“You’re full of surprises, Master Forander,” she said.

“I work hard at it.”

He kept close to the tree in case she threw something.

She opened her hands in a peaceful gesture and stopped twenty feet away from him. She did not make any threatening movements, but he didn’t believe her posturing for a second. He’d seen how fast she had crossed the distance from the caravan to the Dead Woods, and she was barely out of breath. “I don’t want to hurt you,” she said.

“That’s what I want, too. Let’s work together.” Grei’s eye began to twitch.

“Very well.”

“Set my friends free.”

A glimmer in one of her open hands drew him, and there was suddenly a dagger there. These Ringblades and their hidden daggers. Where had it come from?

“You’re very convincing, Master Forander. I felt you in my head at the falls, persuading me. If I feel you again, I will do what I must.”

Grei was overmatched. His only weapon against her was magic, but he wasn’t going to use it until he figured out why his mind had gone numb. He tried to buy time.

“You said the emperor wants to see me. Why?” he asked. He squinched his twitching eye shut, then opened it again, forcing it to stop.

“I think you know why,” she said.

So much for that. “I didn’t know that Ringblades—”

The whispers of the trees suddenly became screams, stabbing his ears. He shouted and put his hands to his head.

“Wait!” He held up a hand to Selicia.

Behind her and all around, the forest suddenly filled with shadows shaped like people. They crept into sight, hundreds of them. Angry eyes glowed in blurred faces. Greens and browns flowed over their black bodies.

The screams vibrated into one, clear tone.

“Kill them.”

Selicia leapt at Grei, taking advantage of his helplessness, oblivious to the horde around them.

The shadows expanded in silent puffs of smoke, their bodies elongating across the distance.

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