WarDance (Chronicles of the Warlands #5)(17)

Was her master right?

Snowfall reached for more mugs and bowls, and scrubbed each thoroughly before setting them out to dry in the grass.

She’d no desire to leave her master. Now that the Plains was awash in the power—

She paused for a moment, letting herself see the golden glow that lay within the land, pulsing softly, like a long, slow heartbeat. For a moment she considered how one could use it to wash dishes, and then chided herself at the idea. Foolish to waste power in such a way.

Besides, washing gave her time to think. To consider Wild Winds’s position.

The hunting party mounted their horses, and set off at a trot. A weight lifted from her shoulders with their departure.

She glanced at the tent again, considering the man who slept within. Simus was handsome, certainly. Tall, muscular, dark, with a bright smile. But he knew it well, and she wrinkled her nose at his manner. Loud, boisterous, and with an arrogance of his own, much like elder warrior-priests. Snowfall allowed herself a slight quirk of her mouth. He’d expressed his interest in her body with his eyes, and she’d ignored him. She doubted Simus of the Hawk was used to being spurned.

Yet her tattoos had reacted to his presence. Snowfall winced inside. At some point she would have to share that with her master. She knew full well he’d use it to support his argument.

Snowfall sighed, and reached for another bowl. Wild Winds’s insistence that she leave his side felt like he was rejecting her. Now that the power had returned, now that they could use their gifts freely, they could relearn all that had been lost. And yet, he would send her away.

A yawn caught her off guard. Enough thought. She turned back to her work, and finished quickly. Her own tiredness was stalking her now, and she would need to wake soon enough to prepare the evening meal.

The last of the bowls done, she cleaned the cooking area, and stood to stretch. She’d enough time to catch some sleep before—

Movement caught her eye. Lightning Strike was coming, running hard. He ran up to her, with an apologetic look. “Wake the Eldest Elder. There is something he needs to see.”

“He’s weary, as are we all,” Snowfall said, frowning. “Won’t it wait—”

“No.” Lightning Strike shook his head. “It’s Mist.”




Wild Winds stood over Mist’s body, sprawled in the center of her ruined tent. His old friend had made her choices, but it struck hard to see her cold and lifeless. She’d told him that she would seek the snows, but something was wrong—

“I couldn’t sleep,” Lightning Strike said. “I thought to seek her out, since she was special to you, Eldest Elder. I found—”

“Mist.” Wild Winds knelt and reached out to take her left hand as he called her name in a ritual as old as the Plains themselves.

“She didn’t die at her own hand,” Lightning Strike pointed out in a low voice.

Wild Winds looked at the wounds that had been inflicted on her, by a sword nowhere to be seen. But as he touched her cold flesh, his skin crawled. There was a taint on her body, of a life drained with foul intent.

“Blood magic,” he whispered.

Lightning Strike and Snowfall both stiffened, their hands on their weapons. Snowfall scanned the area, her eyes narrowing.

“Mist,” Wild Winds called again, as the ritual required, taking her right ankle in his hand. “Mist, Elder of the Warrior-Priests, answer me.”

Silence, her eyes lifeless and unseeing, stripped of her tattoos.

“Mist,” he called twice again, grasping her left ankle and hand and when silence was his only answer, he leaned over her, and closed her eyes. He stood and looked out over the Plains that now contained a new danger.

“Hail Storm lives?” Snowfall asked softly.

“Hail Storm lives,” Wild Winds confirmed.




Hail Storm crawled under the cover of some low aspens, by a creek bed that ran fast and cold. He lowered his swollen forearm into the water, and hissed as it covered the angry red scratches. He looked about, fearing he’d been overheard, but the area was clear.

Curse them, curse them all: the Sacrifice, his Token-bearer, and that damned animal of theirs that had injured him so. His rage was greater than his pain, and his pain was fierce.

The four scratches ran the length of his forearm, deep and sore. He’d let them bleed, and the cool water helped leach out some of the heat, but it seemed to him that the red was moving up his arm. His fingers felt fat and swollen. It had been hard to grip the hilt of the sword when he’d killed Mist.

At least he’d been able to use her death. Drain her life force to add to his reserve of magic. And that was where the injury was the deepest. Far worse than the loss of his rank, pride, and tattoos. Far worse than his inability to summon a horse, for even that he could deal with.

Hail Storm clenched his jaw, taking up a handful of sand to scrub the pus from his wounds. The pain of his body was incredible, but not more so than what he suffered now. No. The very worst was the magic pulsing in the land, magic that he had once been able to reach out and touch. Drain. Use.

Now the power fled before him, even as he reached, faster even than the horses that avoided his presence. All he had now were the reserves he’d created from the blood magic he’d practiced.

He would have wept, but that his rage filled him with hate. For Wild Winds, for Keir of the Cat, and for any who supported them.