Chapter 1 #2
However, not a complete mind twister. It merely confirmed the use of shadow magic further. These two men were made of flesh, yes. And the two on the ground behind me were very much corpses leaking on the moss. But they were decoys.
Maeve caught my eye for a moment. She didn’t need to speak or gesture. She was already on the same page as me.
The real culprits were over there on my right.
There is something to the power of terror. Unlike the good kind of fear, the worst kind undoes an action. Such as the crumbling of the four figures to dust within seconds, the limbs on the ground following. The spell caster saw me and feared me.
Excellent.
A soft wail came from the trees.
“You may as well show your face,” I told it. “It will lessen the chances of me peeling it off.”
Depending on my mood afterward…
No more sound. No more whispers. No more wails.
I had to stop this from getting worse.
Boyd was a bowman. One of the best. His shot would be truer than mine or Maeve’s. However, he’d trained us as well as he could, and I grabbed his bow tied to his back, nocking a quiver to it. Without a word, I fired the arrow into the trees.
A scream confirmed my hit. A male scream.
Another male burst out of the trees. A human male. A rebel. Big and muscular, dressed in brown and battered leather armor and wielding an axe, the lower half of his face hidden by a leather mask.
He charged forward, releasing a war cry. I grabbed another arrow and fired. He dove to his left at the right moment, the arrow missing him by inches.
Clever human.
Maeve jumped into his path and met his axe. Their weapons clashed heavily. My guard drew a shorter sword and went for the kill. He dodged her, spinning out of the way and coming back in with a slice.
She parried him again, growled as I tried to join in with the sword fight.
Foolish of me. There was still that other man screaming and sobbing. All I needed was him.
I skirted around the action, the human bellowing a curse at me. My, what a deep voice he had.
Ignoring him, I made a dash for the trees, tapping into the last quarter of my magic.
The snake-like branches dove into the trees and snagged a scrawny unseelie.
A Fomorian man, looking a similar age to me.
Scrawny, ashen complexion, sunken crimson eyes.
Terribly underfed. Shadows danced at his fingertips, sputtering and useless.
The arrow stuck in his torso, having cut through his pathetic leather armor.
Our leather was elven-made, more like metal than leather.
Far tougher than the rags the enemy loved to dress themselves in.
I wrinkled my nose.
“Look at you,” I said as the trees held him in the air. They stretched his limbs. He formed a star shape in the air. “A sneaky shadow sorcerer in my midst.” I grinned up at him as he wept in pain.
“Seelie dirt,” he managed and even spat. Goodness. I hadn’t expected such a display of strength under the circumstances.
Nevertheless, his power had faded. Whatever was left wouldn’t come back to hurt me today. Pain and fear were too much of a distraction. The unseelie scum’s emotions had overwhelmed him.
Oh, how an emotional wave liked to undo spells. I’d been there myself on occasion.
I glanced behind me toward Maeve, still fighting the big man. Neither of them gained the upper hand.
“Time to share,” I told the sorcerer.
The trees dropped him. He landed hard with a scream loud enough to shake the forest.
“Ren!” Maeve’s opponent bellowed.
I chuckled as some of the branch snakes whipped away from the skinny creature and grabbed themselves a meatier morsel. The rest coiled around this Ren, locking him tightly in a ball of wood.
The branches took the human, stretched him in the air like his friend. I watched his axe slip from his fingers with deep satisfaction.
“Valance, you fucking—”
I commanded a branch to gag him. It ripped off his mask and jammed into his mouth as soft as its serpentine siblings.
“Do not speak my name,” I seethed up at him.
I grabbed his companion by the dirty brown hair, pulling his head back. I rested my blade against his throat.
Muffled cries behind the human’s softened wooden gag.
I could have given a grand speech about the price paid for trespassing, for having the audacity to use shadow magic in seelie lands. To place a spell upon my royal guard. But I held it in. I believed the situation spoke for itself.
Slash the throat of this Fomorian before his human companion? Boyd wasn’t dead. He was still breathing. Would he recover? I prayed to the goddess Danu for her to spare my friend from the cruel magic.
“I’m not done with you yet,” I proclaimed, removing the blade from Ren’s skin. I gestured for Maeve to come over.
“Your Highness?” she said.
“Your healing herbs, please.”
She gave me her pouch of green herbs. I sprinkled some into the sorcerer’s torso wound. He looked up at me with wide crimson eyes moist with tears.
“Wait there,” I ordered. “Try to move, and I’ll feed you to my orchids. I still might, but compliance may save you an extremely painful death.”
We’d see.
He trembled, fixed to the ground. This unseelie would not be moving an inch.
I approached the human, his muffled voice clearly full of vitriol for me. His azure eyes sparkled with hate, brow furrowed in fury. I smiled up at him. Beyond the grime on his olive skin, messy brown hair, and the nest of his dark beard, there was clearly a handsome face there.
“We’ll have to come back for this one,” I told Maeve. She was already carefully lifting Boyd into her arms, her gold leather armor sparkling in the rays of sunshine.
She agreed with a nod.
Giving a command for the branches to lower the human to ground level, I drew two daggers from scabbards at each of my hips.
“All the way down,” I whispered with my magical voice. “Give me his hands.”
The branches laid him out on his belly, arms outstretched. They crushed his hands into the ground by the wrist, palms up. He struggled to close them, the force of my wooden friends too great for him to do so.
The trees receded, reverting to their formerly solid selves. Traces of my magic remained now, but not enough for any more grand displays, only to keep his wooden gag soft.
Until tomorrow…
“Splayed and ready,” I said, looking down at his big hands.
He grunted, tried to kick out, and wriggle free, more muffled curses behind his gag.
You had to admire the tenacity of humans aligned to the unseelie.
They really did believe in that other cause.
Killing my family, turning the seelie into a slave race or kidnapping me or a lesser member of my family for ransom. The plans varied, all with one endgame.
Lasair on the Faerie Throne.
I’d find out the details of this one soon enough.
I crouched down by the human’s hands. He lifted his head to stare up at me. Yes, a handsome face in there somewhere indeed.
“You will wait here,” I said, “until I return for you.” I let my eyes roam his arms clad in dirty leather and cloth, to his callused palms. Rough hands for rougher living.
Goodness, he stank worse than his Fomorian companion. A disgusting blend of sweat and general human dirt—the same scents of living on the road like his friend.
“Do you see these blades?” I asked him. They were silver, adorned with intricate blue filigree. “Forged by the best Gentry blacksmiths in the summer lands, blessed with elven poison.” I tapped the blue.
He wasn’t impressed by my ornate, deadly-sharp instruments.
“I’m going to be honest with you about something, human. Much like this shadow sorcerer you have traveled with, I have plans for you. Well, ideas. You will discover what they are in due course. For now, you will wait for me. Consider your freedom lost, but not your life. For the time being.”
Another grunt and muffled curse. That gag would last for another hour or until we left the forest.
I chuckled. “Amusing.”
I drove the first blade into his left palm. Now he emitted muffled howls of pain.
“And now for the second.” The next blade cut through him like a hot knife through butter. I felt no friction as the silver passed through him and into the dirt, buried to the hilt.
I stood up and regarded my work. Smooth cuts. Only a trickle of blood. Then the hidden surprise kicked in.
The filigree became a living thing, slithering off the silver toward his skin in sapphire rivulets.
As soon as those rivers touched him, his body convulsed.
For three seconds, to be exact. And then he was still, his hands and face a tangle of blue threads.
His head dropped, a cheek resting against the ground.
Folding my hands behind my back, I spoke again.
“Continuing with the theme of honesty, I must inform you of your new predicament. Your binds leave you now, but the blades will not. You are poisoned. Paralyzed. You will not be moving again for a while. So don’t waste your time trying to get back up.
And should you have more friends within the forest, they cannot free you.
” I crouched again, making sure his eyes focused on me. “You are mine now.”