“Looks can be deceiving,” another said—the one who was hiding the knife. “Let’s have a peek, see if we can help you out.”
She didn’t think he was talking about her vessel. She raised her hand. “Stop right there.”
Her tone of voice brought them up short. There was iron in it, a clear indication that she believed she was able to back up her warning. The men exchanged glances. “Now, that’s no way to be,” said the first.
“Maybe not, but that’s the way it is. So turn around and walk away.”
The men had sullen, dangerous looks on their faces. “We’re not leaving until we’re ready,” said the one with the knife. “And we ain’t any sort of ready just yet.”
“Don’t be foolish,” the first said to her. “We can do this the easy way or the hard way. Makes no difference to us. But you can be sure of this. It’s going to happen.”
Tarsha shook her head. “No, it isn’t. I’ll say it one more time. Walk away. Don’t make me hurt you. Because if you take one more step, I will.”
“Aw, missy, that ain’t how you should be talking to us.” The knife man was whining. “You should be careful what you say…”
His body uncoiled in a snake-like motion, and the hidden knife flashed through the air. Before she could act, the blade buried itself in her shoulder, knocking her backward and leaving her sprawled on the ground, grimacing with pain.
The men charged her in a flurry of arms and legs and shouts, trying to overwhelm her. They might have done so easily enough if it had been anyone else. But even injured, Tarsha Kaynin was more than a match for them. She howled in fury, and the wishsong instantly halted their charge as suddenly as if they had run into a stone wall. They crumpled to the ground, gasping in anger and pain. One tried to rise, and she used her magic to pick him up and toss him twenty feet away. The other two watched it happen and then scrambled to their feet. Picking up their companion, they staggered away without uttering another word, looks of disbelief etched on their faces.
An odd pang of guilt struck Tarsha in that moment. What she had just done had not been so different from what Tavo had done in that tavern. She had used the wishsong as a weapon. Admittedly, to defend herself—but hadn’t that been true of her brother, as well? The wishsong was a heavy burden; it imbued the user with both great power and great responsibility. But there was one difference in the ways she and her brother had used it. Her victims had been allowed to walk away alive. Tavo’s had not.
Tarsha watched her attackers until they were out of sight and then pulled the blade from her shoulder. She was bleeding freely, and she felt flushed and shaky. She rose and stumbled over to the airship. In the storage bin were bandages and healing ointments, and she quickly tended her wound. The knife was not clean, and she worried about infection. But there was nothing more she could do about it now. What mattered was that she repair the airship so she could fly for help.
She opened the parse tubes and began to test the diapson crystals for effectiveness. The crystals were charged, so she moved to the radian draws. Halfway through her investigation she found the problem. The left parse tube connector had worked its way loose from its seating. She tightened it anew, and within minutes she was setting out once more.
By then it was late in the day. She knew she should stop and rest, but she also knew she should hurry. So she flew on until nightfall before setting down only a few miles below the Rhenn. There she changed her dressing, ate a little food, drank a little water, and went to sleep.
When she woke the next morning, her wound was throbbing painfully, and she knew she was in trouble.
* * *
—
In the city of Arishaig, far to the east of where Tarsha found herself, Ketter Vause sat behind his desk in the Prime Minister’s office and stared silently at the man standing before him. The man was a junior officer of a Federation garrison stationed in Varfleet who had been dispatched to investigate rumors of a disturbance in the vicinity of Paranor several days earlier. Vause’s own first commander of the main body of the Federation army, who had been summoned to hear the junior officer’s report, stood off to one side, listening to his scout.
All bore stunned looks on their faces.
“The Druid’s Keep is gone?” Vause said after long moments, repeating the newcomer’s words in a tone of clear disbelief. “You are certain of this?”
“I was there. I saw for myself.” The other man shifted his feet uncomfortably. He was clearly unhappy with having been delegated by his commanding officer to deliver the news personally. “There’s nothing left of it. The ground on which it stood is empty. It’s as if nothing was ever there.”
The Prime Minister steepled his fingers before him in contemplation. How is this possible? The question frightened him. Did the Skaar invaders possess such terrible power? That envoy seemed to hint they did, although Vause had not for a moment believed it possible. But there it was. This messenger from Varfleet had just said the Skaar had disposed of the Druids, and it appeared they had.
“The Druids are gone, too? All of them?”
“There were no Druids at the site, although it is possible some fled. In any case, there were no witnesses to what happened. None that I could find, at any rate. Paranor and its Druids have disappeared, Prime Minister. Every last vestige of the order is vanished.”
“You searched?”
“There wasn’t much searching required. The truth of it was mostly in what I could see for myself. Or not see.”
Vause’s narrow features tightened. That the Druids were gone, their order wiped out and their members dead or scattered, was the best news he had received in a very long time. Paranor had been a thorn in the Federation’s side for countless generations, but no one had thought it possible to eliminate them altogether. Yet the Skaar had accomplished this practically overnight and the Federation war against magic and its uses appeared to be over. Without the Druids to collect and manage magic in all its various forms, the Elves were left isolated—the only Race solely dependent on such power. Without the Druids, the employment of magic might well be stamped out entirely.
“We can’t be certain exactly when it happened,” Arraxin Dresch, his first commander, observed. “No one seems to know. Word’s gotten back to us quickly enough, but even so—”
“Even so,” Vause interrupted, “not quickly enough for us to find witnesses or survivors, so we are left to imagine the particulars.” He paused. “What’s become of these invaders? Where are they now?”
The messenger glanced at Dresch for support and found none. “I don’t know, Prime Minister.” He spoke quickly, nervously. “I was told to come at once to Arishaig to report what I had seen. But there was no one at the site of the Druid’s Keep. There might be a report by tomorrow.”