Bloodfire Quest (The Dark Legacy of Shannara, #2)(68)

So it crouched in the darkness and waited, and after a while the sisters emerged carrying packs and weapons, cloaked and hooded and moving cautiously so as not to attract attention.

Too late for that, the creature thought with a sense of satisfaction. Way too late for that.

It began tracking them through the city.



Aphenglow walked with her arm about her sister’s shoulders, consoling and reassuring her following their mother’s verbal assault. Arling had stopped crying, but seemed beaten down and was leaning against her, head lowered. Sometimes Aphen forgot how young she was. Still so vulnerable. In the distance, storm clouds were mounting an assault, dark thunderheads filling the skies north and west in huge banks. Cymrian had been right about a change in the weather.

Preoccupied with her sister and not really believing that anything would happen when they were this close to the airfield, Aphen failed to sense the creature’s presence until right before it attacked.

They were passing through a grove of elm and oak when a black shape hurtled out of the darkness ahead of them and slammed into the sisters. Because Cymrian was trailing, he couldn’t respond quickly enough, and the creature was on top of its victims before he could stop it.

All three—the sisters and the creature—went down in a tangled heap. The darkness within the trees was so complete that it was impossible to tell one from the other. Aphen’s magic exploded out of her in a flash of brightness that catapulted both the creature and Arling away. The creature had hold of Arling’s cloak and tore it from her as it tumbled away. But it was up again almost instantly, coming at the girl once more, trying to get at her a second time. Aphen howled in despair and threw her Druid magic at the creature, knocking it off stride, staggering it. Arling was trying to crawl away, to reach her sister, but she was clearly stunned and seemed unable to make her limbs move.

Then Cymrian flew into the attacker, knives flashing, hammering it backward and away from Arling. The combatants thrashed and twisted as they fought each other, and Aphen saw Cymrian bury one of his knives in the creature’s back.

But then the two broke apart, and the creature regained its feet, took a quick look over at Aphen, and raced away into the woods.

Cymrian started to give chase, but Aphen shouted to him. “No! It wants to get you alone!”

The Elven Hunter halted, turning back. “Then let’s get to the airship. Now!”

Aphen helped Arling back to her feet. She might have lost her cloak, but her sister had a death grip on the leather pouch that contained the seed. She gave Aphen a determined smile. Other than scratches and bruises to her face and arms, she seemed to be all right.

The three raced ahead through the woods and out into the open road that led to the airfield. Though they watched for the creature, anticipating a further attack, it did not return.



At the edge of the airfield, the creature watched as the sisters and their protector raced over to the Druid airship. A crew of Elves was already aboard, raising light sheaths and fastening radian draws. A flurry of activity ensued as the newcomers boarded and the last of the baggage and supplies were loaded. The anchors were released seconds later, and the airship began her slow steady ascent into the night sky.

Within minutes, she had turned east toward the Valley of Rhenn.

Which was what the creature had been looking to discover all along, and what its attack had been designed to reveal. It had counted on the attack to disrupt the concentration of the three and cause them to react rather than think.

That way they wouldn’t bother trying to hide their choice of escape routes.

The creature bounded away, moving swiftly into the deep woods. Less than a mile away, a distance it covered in less than ten minutes, it reached a small, windowless blockhouse. The building was constructed of heavy stones, its walls sealed up save for a single iron door that was chained and barred. The roof consisted of heavy metal grates that could be removed if you knew where the locking devices could be found and if you could avoid the poison darts that would be triggered if you stepped wrong. Inside, a clutch of arrow shrikes—the messenger birds favored by magic wielders since the days of the Warlock Lord—huddled together, waiting to be dispatched.

The creature leapt onto the roof, lifted off one of the grates, and chose a bird from the second pen. There were two pens; the birds in the first were meant for the mistress and those in the second for her man. How the bird managed to find either, the creature neither knew nor cared. Holding the bird gently, the way it had been taught, the creature told the bird without speaking but with images formed in its mind what it wanted the bird to tell the man.

Then it released the bird, waited until the winged messenger was out of sight, and silently bounded away, back toward the city.





18





It was just after midnight when Wend-A-Way lifted off, a sleek and silent shadow silhouetted against a sky rapidly filling with dark clouds that already blocked away the quarter moon and stars. Cymrian was at the helm, and the crew of three worked the lines and sails, channeling the power from the diapson crystals nestled in their parse tubes port and starboard, drawing down stored power in the absence of direct light. They rode a southeasterly wind that blew chill and brisk from out of the deeper darkness of an approaching storm that promised heavy weather within the next several hours. Cymrian ordered the light sheaths rolled back and the radian draws made fast as the wind quickened and the yaw of the vessel increased from slight to heavy.