The Will and the Wilds(71)

I fear I’ll need it.

“How many?” My father takes his sword off the mantel.

“Too many.” I’ll hurt myself if I grasp the stone now and attempt to count. Never has it been so cold, so acidic to the touch. They’d felt so close. Closer than the portal ring. Had a scout discovered my home without my knowledge? Had another mysting seen me, or Maekallus, the night I freed him?

Thoughts of Maekallus stab through me, making the broken horn in my breast ache anew. I throw the sack over my shoulder as Papa buckles his scabbard to his belt. He’s donned a cloak as well.

He pauses and studies me. “Elefie, where are we going?”

The backs of my eyes burn. I rush to him and take his hand. “Away, Anchal.” I call my father by his first name, as my mother would have. There’s no time for corrections. “Away.” But though I’m eager to flee, I can’t just abandon Fendell to its fate. The townspeople will think I’m crazy when I ring the warning bell, especially midday. But the wise ones will heed me.

“But the baby—”

“She’s here,” I assure him. “Come.”

I take his hand in mine and bolt out the front door, flying down the dirt path into Fendell. It seems forever away, and yet I reach it quickly. Odd looks assault me as I push through the crowd to the bell tower looming above the well. I have to stand on the well’s lip to reach the rope. It’s heavy, but Papa grabs the length just above my hands and pulls it down.

The bell’s toll is emphatic and reverberates through my body like a living thing. My ears rattle with the sound, but I pull again, and then a third time. Townsfolk are gathering around; I see the apothecary and Tennith’s mother among them.

“Prepare to fight or flee,” I say, ears ringing. “An army of mystings is coming.”

Several stare at me, fear slipping into their countenances. One man actually laughs.

I don’t have time to convince him.

Taking my father’s hand again, but before I can pull him through the crowd, I hear my name over the murmuring of the others. “Enna Rydar!”

I whirl back, panicked, only to spot an unfamiliar face among the townspeople. He is tall, with a strange beard and—

Gods above, I know that face. He is one of the scholars from the library. Jerred, wasn’t it? I drew the vuldor for him.

The horn piercing my middle throbs as memories threaten to sink me into the earth.

Jerred runs up to me. He is elated, his eyes wide, his mouth smiling. “I’ve finally found you! You said a day’s ride, but I didn’t know what direction! My search led me—”

“Run,” I interrupt. There is no time. “If you want to live, run.”

I turn my back on the scholar, on opportunity, a second time and hurry my father out of town, ignoring the questions and jeers that fall upon me from the locals. I answer only, “There is no time!” We head west, parallel to Fendell and away from the wildwood. We do not cover even an eighth of a mile before the shrill giggle of a grinler raises the small hairs on my neck.

My father stops and turns back, drawing his heavy blade.

“Papa, please,” I beg, but his clear eyes narrow at the great forest behind us.

They emerge in broken lines—grinlers, orjans, goblers, freblon. Another serpentine slyser like the one who appeared from the summoning circle in Maekallus’s glade. Even two dark-haired narvals march among them, and the sight of their menacing horns and switch-like tails hits me like a blacksmith’s hammer. They look nothing like him, yet they are so similar. The woman is taller than the man, her hair brushing the ground, her chest exposed.

They leak from the wildwood like mortal corruption, and I wish our realm would devour them faster and turn them into sludge. A strange part of me feels betrayed by the wildwood, that it would let so many of our enemies trespass. Yet I’ve always known what the wildwood was. I’ve always been told to beware it, even when its sun warmed my skin and its land fed my belly.

I hear a scream in the distance, followed by shouts. Some in Fendell have seen the monsters pour from the forest. The small army, at least seventy-five mystings, does not move toward the town, however. They march toward me and my father, and at their head is a tall orjan wearing a gold-plated sash, from which hangs what I assume to be large teeth. Scroud.

He is far more menacing in the sunlight. His black eyes hold eternal depths. His tusked scowl, a thousand promises of suffering.

My father crouches, his sword ready. I grab his elbow. “Stop.”

“We will die valiantly, Shenard,” he whispers. I don’t recognize the name and can only guess it belongs to an old fellow in arms.

The army passes my home. In the distance I see a smattering of men armed with knives and pitchforks on the road from Fendell, but they hesitate. They are outnumbered. Never have we seen so many of these creatures at once.

A chorus of grinler giggling fouls the air as the setting sun turns the sky red, filling me with memories of the Deep. I pull the rag from my wrist. I feel Scroud’s gaze like a poisoned arrow in my cheek.

I grab the stone, gasping as chilly agony shoots up my arm and into my shoulder, instantly immobilizing the joints. It webs across my back, tightening the muscles and twisting bone.

In response, somehow, the conical horn in my breast warms, driving back the worst of the pain. Still, my teeth chatter and my palm burns. I clench my jaw until my head aches.