Bloodfire Quest (The Dark Legacy of Shannara, #2)(104)

Her owl eyes fixed and steady, her fingers splayed to either side of the wound so as to pull back the skin, Aphenglow Elessedil reached downward into the wound with her magic, wrapped its strands around the length of the metal shard, softened the edges and the razor-sharp spurs, and began to pull it out. She had only heard of the procedure; she had never done it herself and never seen it done. The Ard Rhys, it was rumored, had twice performed this form of extraction—but only once successfully. It was immensely difficult. Her invisible grip on the sliver of metal slipped repeatedly. More times than she cared to remember later, it twisted free entirely.

Her face felt hot and damp, and the effort of keeping her eyes open and fixed caused her to experience an ache that threatened to flatten her. But she held firm, stayed steady, and continued her task.

She heard Arling groan. She felt her start to move. No! She stopped what she was doing, waited without breathing, without doing anything but willing her sister to sleep.

After a few mind-numbing seconds, Arling did. Aphen went back to work at once. She was close, so close.

In the distance, another howl. This one was much worse, chilling and raw.

Then the sliver came free, and as it did so she heard Arling give a long, soft sigh. She let the metal shard drop and used her magic to close the wound so that healing could begin. She bent to her sister, feeling for her pulse, listening for her breath.

Both were smooth and even again. She was resting quietly, asleep but no longer threatened.

Aphen removed her tattered cloak and laid it across her sister’s body. Then she was on her feet, racing into the trees.





27





Stoon loped through the forest, working hard to keep pace with the animals ahead of him. The mutants were moving swiftly now, the scent they were following clearly growing stronger as their prey grew nearer. For such large creatures, they were surprisingly agile and silent, bounding ahead like great cats at the hunt. Even as disgusted as he was by what they were, and as contemptuous as he felt of their reduced state, Stoon could admire their athletic skills and feral instincts.

Maybe they would be as good as Edinja had promised. Maybe they would put an end to the Elves and to this foolish and pointless pursuit.

The mist was thickening, swirling close to the ground, wrapping about the tree trunks and filtering through the gloom in tendrils. The way was sufficiently obscured that Stoon had to work hard to keep up. If he fell here, he would lose the mutants completely by the time he regained his footing. So while haste was important, caution was equally so.

Fortunately, the beasts ahead seemed to sense this and reduced their speed just enough to allow him to keep up. The thought of it irritated him—that such creatures would condescend to him—but he managed to soothe his discomfort by assuring himself that the end result would make up for it. A few minutes more and it would all be over, and he would—

A cry of rage and dismay reverberated through the silence of the mists and brought him up short, his nerve endings instantly jagged and raw. What had happened? Had his creatures brought the Elves to bay? He dropped into a crouch, searching the surrounding haze. One thing he knew: Someone or something was dead. He waited for a further indication of the source, but no other sounds reached him. He had lost sight of all three creatures, and he couldn’t hear them now, either. The gloom muffled and enfolded everything more than a few feet away, a swirling soup creating phantasms and wraiths that appeared and vanished in the blink of an eye. Stoon wasn’t used to such conditions, and didn’t like to hunt when the weather was a factor.

He rose and started ahead once more. He wouldn’t find out anything by staying put. He kept his pace deliberately slow. Since he could no longer see the mutants, there was no point in stumbling ahead blindly and finding himself unexpectedly in the middle of a dangerous situation. After only a few yards, he found evidence of his creatures’ passing—crushed grasses and heavy footprints in the damp earth. The mutants had thrown aside caution and were charging ahead wildly. Something had happened to change the nature of their hunt, and Stoon didn’t like what that meant.

He kept listening, waiting for a sound that would give him a direction in which to go. But everything remained silent, expectant.

He found the first mutant a hundred yards farther on, its body sprawled amid a cluster of hardwoods, decapitated. Its head lay twenty feet from its body, cleanly severed at the neck. From the placement of head and body and the look of the wound, the mutant had never even seen its attacker, and the force of the blow that had killed it must have been very great indeed. A quick survey of the area gave Stoon no clue as to who or what might have done this, or why the mutant had failed to realize the danger until it was too late.

Stoon hesitated once more. If he were up against a hunter this proficient, he might want to wait until he saw how the other two mutants fared. But then he risked losing contact with the hunt.

So he set off anew, following a trail of matted grasses and vague footprints, doing his best to stay alert for any indication of the danger he was up against. He moved more cautiously than before, stopping often to listen, calling on his vast experience to avoid detection, staying hidden within the mist. He had his favorite knife out—a long slender blade forged of carbon-infused steel rendered hard enough by fire and hammer to penetrate armor. It was the killing weapon he used most frequently, the blade he knew he could depend upon to stop anything.