The Dark Shadow of Spring (22 page)

“That doesn’t make sense,” Alex said.

“Why not?” Victoria asked.

“Because this town is too small for anyone not to know everyone,” Nina said.

“Well, they certainly see us,” Clark said, gesturing toward the three people they were rapidly approaching. Alex saw that the man had raised his hand toward them in some manner of greeting.

“Let’s ask them if they’ve seen anything,” Alex said to the others. “But stay close together.”

“I never would have thought of that,” Rafael said as he followed Alex off the path and through the tall grass to where the man and the two women stood in the shade. They did not move from their places as Alex and the Guild approached, but the man did lower his arm. Alex stopped about twenty feet away from the three strangers and dismounted his bike. He was cautious about getting any closer to them than was necessary.

“Hi,” Alex said. “Nice day for a walk.” He wiped the sweat from his forehead with the back of his shirtsleeve and looked up at the sun as a friendly way of indicating how lovely the day was. The faces of the man and the women were completely impassive, and they made no response.

“Are you lost?” Alex asked, glancing around at the other Guild members. “I don’t think we’ve seen you around here before.”

The three strangers were silent for a moment and then the man spoke in a deep voice with an eccentric and unrecognizable accent. “We have only recently arrived.”

“Where do you live?” Alex asked. There was something oddly disturbing about the stoicism of the three strangers. Something about the emotionlessness of their faces. As though they could not register normal facial expressions.

“Are you alone?” the woman to the right of the man asked, her voice higher than the man’s, but her accent just as thick and foreign.

“They are,” the other woman said, her voice sounding identical to the first woman’s voice. “And the one who speaks for them is not like them.”

“Yes,” the man said. “Different.”

The three strangers were now staring directly at Alex, their eyes looking darkly human, but probing in a way that was deeply unsettling. Alex’s instincts were screaming at him to flee. To cast the most powerful and destructive spell he knew and run for his life. Just as he opened his mouth to tell the others to run, the three strangers moved. Their motion was so swift and such a contrast from their former stillness that Alex’s words caught in his throat. Those words became a scream as the three strangers crossed the boundary between the shade of the tall birch trees and the sunlight of the open glade. As the sunlight struck them, their human forms fell away like wax melting before the flame of a blowtorch, their faces peeling back to reveal hideous features of leathery obsidian skin pulled tight over misshapen skulls with spike-like bones jutting out at every angle. Their clothes faded as swiftly as their faces to reveal bodies of contorted bone and muscle clad in a scaly black hide riddled with oozing pustule sores.

Even as the scream filled his lungs, Alex grasped for the magical energy of the forest land and struggled to focus his mind. The creatures where so incredibly fast that the beast that had been the man a moment before suddenly had its hand around Alex’s throat. He threw his hands to his throat in a desperate attempted to pry the creature’s fingers free, but it was like trying to bend bolts of iron. Frantically, Alex turned his head, hoping to find some of his friends had escaped. His hope was shattered as he saw that the male creature holding him also held Victoria by the throat while its companions, looking now like nothing that could be called female, held the others in vice-like grasps. One creature held Nina and Daphne crushed to its chest with one arm while it clasped Rafael by the neck. With her affinity for nature magic, Nina had somehow managed to summon a flock of birds to attack the creature, but to no avail. The creature ignored the attacking birds as though they were buzzing gnats. Even Clark was powerless against the strength of the creatures as the third one held him firmly by the throat with one hand while dangling Ben above the ground, its hand wrapped completely around his head.

Alex was becoming desperate for breath as he fought against the creature’s hold and as he watched his friends’ futile attempts to do the same. He was also feeling something else. The creature’s stare bored into him as though it were drilling into the ground in search of water. Alex felt the creature pulling something from him. Slowly, but perceptibly, it was sucking at his essential essence. It was trying to eat his soul.

Alex fought to concentrate on his soul, his very subtle essence, and hold it firm against the vile creature’s silent onslaught, for none of the creatures had made a single sound. As he struggled to keep the essence of his being intact, Alex felt something bubbling up from the deepest recesses of his very subtle consciousness. A rune-word. A word that Alex knew, in a way he could never explain, would open a door between this realm and another. A realm where this creature that was draining his soul had come from. A realm that Alex could send it back to.

“
Kerris’Ta-Gal-Tram
,” Alex said aloud as he focused his will and his being and all of the magic of the land that he could gather into the word. The creature’s oily black eyes went wide as it screeched and shuddered.

“No!” the creature wailed. “I will not go.”

“
Kerris’Ta-Gal-Tram
,” Alex said again and he felt his strength gather as the creature’s pull against his soul weakened. The air around the creature began to shimmer with a flickering blue-white light.

“
Ishoma’Ka
,” the creature hissed and the light around it began to stabilize. Alex could see the other two creatures looking to the one that held him. Their faces were distorted and inhumane, but he could recognize the look of anger that contorted them. The eyes of the one that held him now blazed with viciousness and hatred.

“
Kerris’Ta-Gal-Tram
,” Alex said again, willing the flickering light that surrounded the creature to intensify and engulf it. The light crawled over the creature’s shoulders, but no further.

“You are not strong enough, youngling,” the creature spat, its drool flowing down its chin and across Alex’s face.

“No, but I am,” a slightly melodic voice said from beside them.

Alex twisted in desperation to see a vision of his salvation. Batami stood a few paces away, staring at the vile creature that held Alex with a glare that would have rendered a mortal human quivering to its knees. Beside Batami stood a beast that made Alex gasp even with the creature’s fingers around his neck. Batami’s hand rested on the shoulder of an enormous white wolf the size of a small horse. It stood nearly as tall as Batami herself, its eyes steely gray and its fur the color of fresh-fallen snow. It bared its long fangs in a deep, ground-rumbling growl. Alex noticed something else: The pommel of a sword sticking up over Batami’s shoulder.

Alex felt the creature holding him shiver and he knew it could feel fear. He saw no signal pass between Batami and the giant wolf, but without warning they flowed forward like a single being, Batami reaching up to grasp the handle of the sword and unsheathing it in the same motion she used to bring its blade around her shoulder in an arc that sent it slicing through the head of the creature that held Alex. A moment later the white wolf smashed its jaws into the back of the beast that held Nina, Daphne, and Rafael. Even as Alex watched the two fallen creatures fade away into wisps of rancid-smelling black smoke, the third creature released its captives and started to flee back into the forest. It managed two steps before both Batami and the white wolf set upon it, the wolf’s long fangs tearing at its back as Batami’s sword blade severed its skull in half. Alex thought he heard a strangled cry as the creature evaporated into a rapidly dissipating, inky black vapor.

As the last of the creatures faded from existence in the bright spring sun that fell on the Ivory Glade, Batami stared at Alex. It wasn’t the terrifying glare that she had lain upon the creatures, but it was enough to make him catch his breath and hope that he would never find himself the object of her full wrath. He would rather face the conjoined fury of his mother and father than face that look.

“When I said to come to see me,” Batami said, “this is not what I had in mind.”

“Sorry,” Alex said. “I should have come earlier. We’d heard there was something in the forest and I thought it might have to do with the Shadow Wraith.”

“And so your first thought was to come racing after it?” Batami said as the white wolf padded over to her side.

“In hindsight, it wasn’t the best idea I’ve ever had,” Alex confessed, staring at the blade of the sword she still held in her right hand. She followed the line of his sight and grunted. The sword was not like others that Alex had seen. The blade was long and wide, but curved, and the steel of the blade was white and covered with an intricate pattern like deep black lace running along its contour.

“True Damask steel,” Batami said. “A rune-spell of realm breaking will send a demon back to where it came from, but you have to be a strong enough mage to fight them over the threshold. As you discovered. The blade, however, is much easier.”

Alex looked around at the Guild. They stood in dumbstruck silence, each holding their hands to the places where the demons had touched them. “These are my friends,” Alex said, not knowing what else to say.

“And loyal friends they must be to follow you on such a foolhardy errand,” Batami said. “Loyal or stupid,” she added with a smile. “And this is my friend,” she continued, patting the wolf on the shoulder. “This is Sufina. She’s a Titan Wolf. Last of her kind. Much like me.” The wolf shook its head and Alex wasn’t entirely sure, but he thought it was some manner of greeting. “Further introductions can wait. The flesh where the demons touched you can rot off your bones if not tended to quickly. We can talk more back at my hut. This way. Quickly. I’m not entirely certain those were the only creatures to break into our realm last night.” Those words and Batami’s demeanor were enough to have everyone quickly pick up their bikes and follow her in a line as she led them into the woods along a path that looked like it was rarely used. The wolf walked beside her as they followed the ancient Spirit Mage into the whiteness of the trees. Alex wondered if the rest of the afternoon would go better than the first part had.

Chapter 19: Lunch and Lessons

Batami’s hut seemed tiny and cramped from the outside, but the inside was impossibly larger than it should have been. From outside, it appeared to be a little one-story cabin constructed of white logs, but from within, it more resembled a small, but ornate mansion. There was a wide foyer that led to a sitting room off from a large living area, next to a spacious dining room beside a fully stocked kitchen. A staircase near the entrance led to an impossible second floor.

Even more strangely, from the outside, the tiny cabin seemed to have only three windows, but from inside, every wall had at least two large windows looking out on the small clearing in the middle of the White Forest where Batami made her home. Even in Runewood, Alex had never seen magic so intricate and complex. He tried to sense the way magic had been used to bend space around the house but, while he could discern what aspects of magic were used, he could not grasp how they had been applied.

After administering a magical healing balm where the demons has touched them, Batami left Alex and the Guild seated in the dining room while she went to the kitchen to prepare them something to eat. She had been adamant about serving them lunch when Alex mentioned that they had skipped the midday meal in coming to the forest. Alex looked around the table at the others. No one had said a word since they made their brief introductions during the walk from the Ivory Glade. Alex suspected that they were in shock as much from being saved by Batami and Sufina as by nearly dying at the hands of demons from a dark realm.

Batami and the wolf had been no less awe-inducing on the walk home. Alex had noticed that he was not the only one to find his eyes constantly falling on the sword sheath slung over Batami’s back. He had breathed a sigh of relief when Sufina, the white wolf, had trotted off into the forest after accompanying Batami to her home. Now, seated around a highly polished mahogany table, the Guild seemed subdued, but Alex knew them all well enough, even Victoria, to know that inside they were bursting with excitement just as much as he was.

Finally, Nina could no longer contain herself. “How does she do it?” she whispered.

“Do what?” Alex asked.

“Make the house bigger on the inside,” Nina replied.

“How would I know?” Alex said.

“Hmmm, I think it’s a trick,” Clark said, sniffing the air. “The magic as we passed through the doorway was very strange. I think this is a different house. Someplace else. The foyer is the real cabin maybe, and then once you pass through that, you’re in a house someplace else.”

“Like the magical closets Daddy creates in our house that lead from one floor to another,” Victoria said.

“Windows,” Ben said. “How do you explain the windows?”

“Well, I don’t know,” Clark said scratching his head.

“They could be enchanted to link to something on the outside of the little cabin,” Alex offered.

“I remember seeing small plaques of glass and wood on the side of the cabin,” Victoria said.

“Hermes’ hairballs, that’s tricky,” Daphne said.

“A clever lot of friends you have around you, young Alex,” Batami said as she stepped into the room baring a large silver tray piled high with sandwiches and fruit.

“Hmm, lunch,” Clark said as Batami sat the tray in the middle of the table.

“You with the wicked mouth,” Batami said, pointing to Daphne, whose eyes went wide with a mixture of embarrassment and fear. “There’s a stack of plates in that hutch behind you. Make yourself useful and hand them out. Alex, why don’t you grab yourself a sandwich and join me in the sitting room?”

Batami drifted out of the room as Daphne leapt to her feet and opened the dark wooden doors of the hutch and took out a stack of plates. Alex snagged a plate from her and slid a few sandwiches onto it before following Batami to the sitting room. He glanced back over his shoulder and offered his most reassuring look to his friends. The looks on their faces did nothing to reassure him. It seemed they were wondering if he might become Batami’s lunch.