Swift Magic (The Swift Codex Book 2) (34 page)

“Which church do you think you two will be wed in?” Mother's voice caught my attention.

She was speaking to Mordon. I closed my eyes and hissed out a breath. How he would respond to the interrogation, I didn't know. If they were anyone but my parents, he would tell them very bluntly that it wasn't their business and that he would not answer anything more. But they were my parents, they were both talking to him, under the guise of a casual conversation.

Mordon's fingers stopped putting the final touches on the portal, and he set the chalk down, and put both hands on his knees before looking at the two of them.

“We have not discussed holding a redundant ceremony. If Feraline requests it, we shall do so. But at present, there are no such plans in place.”

Father scowled. “We raised a good Christian girl, Meadows. If you do not respect that, you do not respect her.”

A line formed between Mordon's brows and I quietly urged him not to make a fuss. He didn't have to live with them, just avoid a scene so we could all move on.

Mother said, “If we die and you live, we want her taken care of.”

“And you think I will not do so? That I will corrupt her and take advantage of her innocence, is that your concern?”

Mother lost her temper. “I do not like the way you push her around, just from what I've witnessed in the short time you've been with us. She's too timid for you, and you're too domineering.”

Mordon cocked his head to the side. “I find it odd, that is exactly the sentiment I feel towards the two of you and my mate.”

“You'll take her away from us. I'll not allow it.”

Mordon was furious. I knew it by the way he held too still, by the way his fingers rested flat and relaxed on his thighs. “Feraline is many things to me, but first and foremost she is a friend whom I love very dearly. Since she has come here, she has become passive, insecure, and resentful. I have been with her in various places, but this is the first time I have seen her lose herself. I do not think it is the Wildwoods which makes her so, and I would rather clip my own wings than leave her scared and vulnerable and alone. So, yes, I do intend on taking her away, and I challenge you to stop me.”

Father looked ready to shift and tear him to pieces. I hurried to stand between them, my fingers cold and my muscles shivering. “This is enough. Now is not the time to be fighting amongst ourselves. I will stay or go as I please, and I will do what I wish with whom I wish to do it. I am not a child, I am not incapable, and I am not in need of anyone's rescuing. Nor do I need someone to take care of me.”

Mother reached out for me. “Feraline, I …”

I stepped out of range, of everybody. “This is a ridiculous sidetrack. We need all people to help. And if you can't put aside your imagined injuries long enough to do it, then we might as well all flee now. Is that what you want, to give up because of some petty insults?”

“No,” Father said. “We are ready to head out. You will find a safe place.”

I shook my head. “We're coming, too, Magnus. Mordon and I.”

Father shifted his weight, not approving of the thought. “This isn't safe,” he said. “You'd be better off here, you'll have time to make an escape if need be.”

“There's no escaping the woods now,” I said. “Look how hard it was to make a portal go a short distance. If things go south from here, we're better off with you where we stand a fighting chance.”

“Fall in,” Father said. “But do as you're told. I don't want to lose you.”

“We're coming with you, sis,” said Leazar. How he appeared and disappeared without notice was a trick I would dearly love to learn, and I had suspicions that it originated from Simbalene.

Mordon murmured in my ear, “It's fascinating. You'll stand up for me but not for yourself.”

“They're worried, that's all.”

“I know,” Mordon said. “Do you think I'd have tolerated that for any other reason?”

I rubbed my forehead. “Mordon, what you said…”

“I will take you away, but once you're out from under their thumb, you're free to return to it.” He sounded very gruff about it, but I believed him.

I wanted to talk, but there was just
no time
. We'd wasted too much as it was.

This time around, with more people to be carried and a vague notion of the destination, the portal took several people to form and stabilize it. One of the older members led the way through, followed by other senior ranks, then the least experienced people such as Mordon and myself went through, and we were in turn followed by experienced battalion members.

Though the woods had deteriorated since I'd last seen them, it didn't take me long to identify where we were and motion to where the Unwritten would be.

There was nothing quite like this. Beneath my feet, porous black rocks shifted and crunched and flew off at the lightest touch. What trees and grass remained was stiff and dry, the bark as though it were drift wood baked in a pottery kiln. The sun blistered down on us from a clear sky. Only from my own effort was there a breeze to skitter crisp leaves and cool the sweat off our skin.

I was ready for the desolation and the ache in my heart—but there was another thing surrounding us which I hadn't been ready for. Maybe it was the way I felt the woods all around us still?

“I knew you'd be here,” Lyall said, startling the battalion and ending up the center of pointed wands, staffs, and whatever else people had.

“Lyall Limber-Clan,” I said. “It is good to see you.”

“You appear to be alone in that sentiment.”

Father took the cue and motioned that the others should be at ease. Lyall joined me, Mordon, and Leazar in the center of the group, eyeing Simbalene while she studied him.

“Fire drake, fairy, and fey-humans,” Lyall said. “All hail the melting pot.”

Leazar crossed his arms, not sure if he liked Lyall's tone.

“We don't have time to get into that,” I said. “What's the status on the husks and walking animations and whatnot?”

“Closing in on all quarters, far outnumbering us, and all the wiser for your last attack. Their leader has decoys in place. You'd best do what you came here to do.”

It was a full half an hour before we found the trees—Lyall had been right, the husk leader had been practicing his decoys, and they were good ones, at that. Nothing guarded the real trees and Unwritten spell, which helped it blend in with the others. Father and the rest presently had the disenchantment spell underway.

“Perimeter watch, go—and keep a sharp lookout. They have to know where we are and will be watching for us. Start at max radius and pull back as it gets hot.”

A dozen or so people scurried to do his bidding. I'd never thought of Father as their primary leader, but no one was contesting his orders. I heard a stray spell or two, then a woman yelled and it all went quiet again. A scout, they said. They got it.

“Lay down the inner ward,” Mother said. “Make it so our front watch can enter, but nothing else. Everyone, when the ward is up, toss a small spell to it to feed it.”

Soon a wobbling bubble encased the infected trees, so pale that it didn't even cast a shadow. It looked so foreign, so wet, in a place so thirsty.

“Feed it slowly, one at a time,” someone said. “Line up and go one after the other.”

Person by person, we fired a small spell. Each time it hit the ward, it warped and writhed, then reformed and thickened, stronger with every hit. The feys acted unnerved, as though their magic had never been so weak before. It was as if the very ground were absorbing the strength from them. I fared better than the pure feys, but Mordon and Simbalene alone seemed unaffected by the drain from the environment.

“Husks ahead!” a man shouted from the front ranks, triggering a retreat from the others.

The husks emerged from everywhere, the winged bat-creatures, the silent monkeys swinging from bare limb to bare limb. They flooded from all angles, coming up from the very ground in the form of hairless rodents. The first to clash with the feys went up in a wall of fire, a fey circle with a fire enchantment thrown in, but the husks hurled themselves against it without care for their own lives. With every brutal fling of a body against the outside circle, it weakened, developing cracks. The perimeter watch cast small feeding spells to keep it strong, but it wasn't enough. Before even the first of the watch could back under the protection of the inner ward, there was a snap and a fiery ceiling fell in with the descent of flaming husks.

“Take shelter—power to the ward!” Father yelled from beside me.

A few of the feys were injured after the initial attack, but so far as I could see, there were none dead. The battalion did not keel over so easily. They fell in line with the rest of us, waiting their turn to add strength to the ward which was now the sole thing separating us from the masses with teeth and talons.

A dozen of us broke off to work the disenchantment spell organized by Mother.

“Prepare our retreat,” an older man said, tapping his chosen ones on the shoulder. “The rest of you keep that ward up.”

Beyond the creatures lunging at the surface of the ward, I saw something moving, something different from the rest. “Do you see that?” I asked Leazar who was two people over. “At 3 o'clock.”

“I think so,” Leazar shouted over the sound of a snapping crackle. Mother had imbued the circle with a jolt of electricity, but that one snap had sucked strength out of us all.

My cheek was bleeding where I had started to unconsciously chew on the inside corner of my mouth. I pushed it with my tongue away from my teeth and made an effort to stop biting it. The electric shock had spread through several rows of the assailants, and the ones who hadn't died now withdrew. That brief respite lasted ages as the feys hurried to restore the thickness back to the ward, but each successive round wearied them. By the time Mordon used a flame ball on the ward, his one hit was the same as the last ten had been before him.

“Look at that,” Simbalene whispered, motioning with a jerk of her head so that no one else would be alarmed. At 5 o'clock, there was the outline of a man. And at 7 o'clock, there was a dragon soaring near.

“Behind us, too,” I said.

Coming in at all angles were a repeat of the man and dragon, both of them larger than life, and only one of them in existence. They were too far away for details, but when I skipped my turn and Simbalene threw a spell against the ward, it became resilient and cloudy.

“Disenchant's ready.”

I wasn't sure who said it, or if it mattered. It couldn't have come a second too early. Immediately following the announcement, the dragon outside sounded a roar which made Mordon freeze and his eyes turn into slits. His skin thickened and reddened, but he kept from shifting into dragon form. As if on cue from him, my own skin paled and hinted at the scales to come.

“Watch out!”

The husks swarmed us, blacking out the sun, giving us the first shade we'd had in an hour. It made my skin crawl to see the electricity fail, the husks kicking the bodies off the circle, dumping them into an unceremonious pile at the base of the bubble. My heart thudded in my ears and it took all my self-control to keep from shifting into the dragon form. There just wasn't enough room in here for it. Hand to hand combat was the last line of defense.

And then as one, the blackout lifted, rising up on their haunches, letting in a splattering of filtered light down on us. My mouth went dry. Their fists were high overhead, rocks in hand, ready to rain down a hard blow on the circle in one whack.

“Meadows, Sim!” Father had the same thought, I saw it in his face.

Mordon slammed the circle with a spell which would have, in ordinary circumstances, destabilized it for a few wobbling seconds. But his timing coincided with the fall of hundreds of husk-wielded rocks, meeting it ripple for ripple, so the circle groaned and cracked and bucked, and the husks lost their grip. The noise clashed in my ears, making them ring and sting. A great slide of husks pushed others in a heap on the ground, revealing a beam of pure light in the very center of the infected set of five trees.

Mordon put his hand to his head and winced, breathing harsh and ragged. When I touched his shoulder, I felt the pain radiating through him, the strain he had taken for the circle in order to keep it standing. How he'd done it, I didn't know, but it was costing him dear.