Ronith

“No!” cried Ronith, struggling against her bonds as the soldiers installed Gorlo’s target beside hers. “Don’t hurt him, he’s innocent!”

“What is it, anyway?” a young Imperial soldier, little more than a boy, asked his superior.

“A baby gorilla,” the man replied.

“A troll,” someone else said, “like from storybooks.”

“It’s Zerloin’s long lost son,” a raucous Dwarf suggested, clapping another Dwarf jovially on the shoulder. The training grounds erupted in guffaws.

“Enough! This is an interrogation, remember?” The Imperial soldier inspected her crossbow and took her place opposite Gorlo’s target. She aimed at him and shut one eye. “How do we get past the magic that’s hiding the crash site?” she asked Ronith.

“I don’t know!” Ronith cried in desperation, fighting against her bonds. “I haven’t been to the crash site.”

The arrow zinged and thudded into the target. Gorlo yelped.

“No!” Ronith cried. She craned her neck, but the creature appeared unharmed, only frightened.

“Try again,” the Imperial said.

Yelora hadn’t sent her a message, even. Ronith wouldn’t know where to go even if she wanted to. Although she was an excellent tracker.

The Imperial chambered a new arrow.

“You could take me there.” The words tumbled over one another out of Ronith’s mouth. “I could find it for you.”

“Not good enough.” Another arrow zinged and thunked. Its feathered end vibrated next to Gorlo’s deformed, pointed ear. “It’ll be nothing for me to put this nasty thing in the ground,” the Imperial said, her lip curling. “Whatever it is.”

Gorlo’s head was turned to the side, looking at Ronith with pleading and terror.

“If I knew where the crash site was, I would tell you!”

“How do we get past Elven shade spells?” The Imperial checked her weapon, ensuring the next arrow was properly nocked. In three long strides she had the tip of it pressed against Gorlo’s skull. “No chance of me missing this time, Elf girl.”

Gorlo whimpered. He was counting on her. But how could she betray her people?

Were they her people, though. Really? Yelora despised her, and Ronith had abandoned her queen to protect Gorlo. Would she be welcomed back?

She had no choice. She couldn’t let Gorlo die. “You’ll find the crash site not by looking, but by listening,” Ronith said.

“No bleedin’ riddles!” The Dwarf bellowed.

“It’s not a riddle! Shade spells mask what you can see. They don’t mask what you can hear. You listen carefully. When you hear something that shouldn’t be there—birdcall but there’s no bird; wind in a tree that isn’t there. That’s when you’ll know you’ve found it.”

The Dwarf and the Imperial exchanged looks. “Ye wanna test it out first?” The Dwarf asked.

“Naw. I believe her,” the Imperial replied. “We can dispatch them both.” She twitched her head toward Ronith. “Her first. I don’t wanna hear her bellyaching when I shoot her dog.”

A moment of panic gripped Ronith as the Dwarf adjusted and re-adjusted the crossbow, frowning as he searched for the trigger. Elves lived a long time, but it also took them a long time to die from an injury. Is this how she was to pass from this world? The target of a poorly aimed arrow, her final act a betrayal of her people? And Gorlo would die alongside her. But there was nothing she could do. With her wrists bound, she could form no token, and the disruptor aimed at her silenced any magical words.

“Hold ye steeds a mite!” rumbled the Dwarf with the disruptor. “This needs fresh crystals.” He opened the box and let the spent ones fall to the sand.

“We won’t need it. She’s tied up, can’t ye see?” her executioner grumbled.

It was an opportunity. Ronith tugged against the horseshoes holding her wrists. Her wrists, slick with sweat, budged, her right one more than the left.

“Give me two more crystals, will ye?” The Dwarf turned behind himself to yell at his comrade.

Ronith hissed a spell through her teeth, testing her magic. The disruptor was, indeed, down.

“Hey! She’s breaking free!”

Ronith felt the arrow before she heard the click of its release. A fiery pain erupted in her left shoulder. The Dwarf was a bad shot, as she’d suspected. Yet he’d done her a favor. The burning in her shoulder overshadowed the pain in her hand as the bones ground together and she yanked it free.

“Malesonch’a thlessel ipsi!” Ronith voiced the spell, twisting her hand in the token. It was a one-handed spell, weak. The shadow of an owl hovered in the indigo sky above before changing its course.

One owl. It would not be enough.

And yet it would have to.

Called to its purpose, the night hunter swooped down upon the Dwarf with the crossbow. It would provide a delay, at least. Ronith seized her bound wrist with her free hand and pulled as hard as she could.

“Are you kidding me?” The female Imperial growled, watching the Dwarf and the owl struggle. She picked up an axe. “I’ll take care of them myself.”

Ronith watched in horror as, with three long strides, the Imperial closed the distance to Gorlo, raised the weapon, and swung.

“No!” Ronith shrieked.

The scream transformed in her throat, echoing from deep within her like a strange geyser coming to life. A flash of purple caught her eye on the ground. It was the spent crystals, which had long turned to dust, crystallizing once more. Ronith’s ears hummed as the female Imperial slumped to the ground. A split-second later, the sky was black with owls, a tornado of them, barrelling down on her enemies.

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Through curses, the Dwarf raised his weapon again, aiming at Ronith. She tugged her second hand free despite the fiery pain in her shoulder, but her feet were still held fast. With voice and hands now at her disposal, she sent the owls for him. They were like bolts of beaked lightning, answering to her will. But the Dwarf got off his shot anyway.

Ronith’s voice was not her own, unrecognizably deep and resonant, as she called upon a spell she knew but had never been given the power to speak, for she’d never wielded a Riverstone. The air thinned around her. The arrow coming for her throat, slowed, a victim of the time-lapse spell. Ronith snatched it from the air and used it to pry the horseshoes from her ankles.

Around her, the frozen world moaned with its slow-motion noises of animals and people in battle. Ronith stumbled and cried out from the pain inflicted by the arrows in her groin and shoulder. Inside the eye of a hurricane of black and brown feathers, she used the metal crossbow arrow to free a paralyzed Gorlo. The pile of spent crystals throbbed purple in time to her racing heart.

It would not last. Ronith could feel the magic waning. She had to get Gorlo out of here. But where could they go?

He was too heavy to carry, and so she dragged him by the ropes still wrapped around his stout body. She cried out from the pain with every step. She could not keep this up. The power she’d tapped into, it was strong but it was fleeting. And it pulled from her, too. It was not completely a gift. It was something more... symbiotic.

But she just needed to get Gorlo clear of the time-lapse bubble, then he could walk on his own. But how far did this crystal-enhanced spell reach? And she was weak, so weak. She was losing more and more blood with every lurching step.

Up ahead, a figure in dark robes peeled away from the shadows.

No, Ronith thought, willing it to be a mirage. She did not have the strength for another fight.

The figure came toward her, but it wielded no weapon, nor were its hands twisting into the tokens of material magic. Ronith recognized it.

“Oh dear,” the Alchemist said, staring at her tunic. “Perhaps I am too late.”

Ronith looked down, and her vision went black.

***

Ronith awoke warm, on musty-smelling cushions, in a room with a low ceiling and porthole windows. She was on a boat, although she felt no boat-like motion. She pushed upright, wincing at the twinge in her shoulder.

“Now, now, you must rest.” The Alchemist’s voice was calming. He was across the room, sitting at a small desk. The faint scent of tobacco wafted through the room. A magical fire crackled in a metal dish on the floor.

“Where’s Gorlo?” Ronith asked.

The Alchemist’s pipe waved vaguely in her direction. “Asleep there, just beside you. Although I do believe you’ve just woken him.”

Ronith twisted and found his wide eyes peering up at her from the cushions. He’d pulled a blanket all around him into a little nest.

All was well. They were safe. Ronith checked the wound in her shoulder and the one in her groin. The skin was healed, but it was sore underneath.

“Your wounds will heal the rest of the way on their own,” the Alchemist said.

“Thank you for saving us.” Ronith adjusted the cushions so she could remain in a comfortable seated position near Gorlo. “They were going to kill us.”

“And wouldn’t that have been a shame.” The Alchemist’s mouth smiled, but his eyes didn’t.

“Where are we?” Ronith looked around. “This boat isn’t moving.”

“An old river barge ran aground a long time ago and has been mostly forgotten,” the Alchemist said. He winked at Gorlo through rings of smoke. “It has become our haven now that our enemies have taken over the Lair.” He turned his chair toward her. “I’m not sure we’ve had a proper introduction. I’m Mol Morin, the Alchemist. And you are the Dark Elf, I believe?”

“Ronith.” Ronith peered through the porthole window at the morning light. It reminded her of a moment, not a long while back, when she’d looked up into a blue sky and seen the Alchemist’s dark face peering down at her. “Why did you save us?”

“Perhaps I’m not used to living in wartime.” The Alchemist’s face hardened, like a hunk of petrified wood. “No, that’s not true at all. I remember it well.” He produced two metal cups of water and handed them both to Ronith.

“You were alive during the Rift War?” Ronith accepted the cups and handed one to Gorlo, who snatched it greedily. “I didn’t think Imperials lived that long.”

“We Wizards have our ways.” His voice drifted off. “I never thought I’d have to live through another war, though.” He puffed on his pipe, his brows low and knotted. “But I’ll never be imprisoned again. That will never happen. And that’s why I rescued you and Gorlo.”

The water tasted clear and delicious. She wiped her chin. “They weren’t going to imprison us. They were going to execute us.”

“A kindness not offered to many during the Rift War,” the Alchemist said darkly. “But, no, I rescued you so that you could help us. Many Wizards were killed during the Council Meeting. I plan to replace those lost numbers. And to grow them. To ally with the Elves—”

“I don’t speak for the Elves,” Ronith interrupted.

“I’m not asking you to speak for the Elves. I have confidence that my Summoner will bring Queen Yelora into our fold soon enough.” Red firelight flickered in his eyes as he reached beside the desk and produced a wizard’s staff capped by a bright red stone. “I’m inviting you to become one of us. You have a power I’ve not seen before.”

His gaze was testing her, but Ronith was too tired for games. “What power?”

“The crystals have never recharged before.”

She recalled the flash of purple. The way the shards fused back together from dust. “You think that was me?”

“I know it was you.”

Ronith was not so certain of this, even though it was odd how the owls had swarmed in just at that moment. And how the Imperial soldier had slumped, lifeless, to the ground. Not even the Riverstone could do that.

But whether the Alchemist was right about her mattered not. This could be an opportunity for her. If the Elves didn’t want her; if Yelora couldn’t stand to even look at her, why not? And, if she were with the Wizards, if she were one of them, she could protect Gorlo here.

But that would mean leaving behind who she was. Truly turning her back on the Elven Faire. Forever. Ronith’s heart trotted in her chest.

“As the Dark Elf of the Elven Faire, you are already gifted in the magical arts,” the Alchemist continued. “We would teach you more. You would master material magic in the natural and celestial realms. Become more powerful than you ever could dwelling amongst your own people.”

Ronith felt something open up inside her. While Gorlo was signing no, every cell in her body was crying yes. What if the Alchemist was correct? She could be as powerful as Yelora. Maybe even more so.

“What would it take?”

“In wartime, the ceremony is simplified. I can swear you in tonight, amongst all those present from the Wizard faction, and give you your title as well. You’ll not be called Disciple like a brand-new student of magic. I would never insult you as such.”

Ronith was perched on the edge of her seat now. The red stone in the staff across the Alchemist’s knees reflected the flames in an elegant, beautiful, powerful dance.

The leader of the Wizards saw potential in her. He respected her. He had gone into a war camp to rescue her. And he hadn’t left Gorlo behind.

The truth was, Ronith had never fully belonged among the Elves. She’d never found a place there. How was it a betrayal to carve one out amongst people who truly appreciated her? Wanted her? Yelora had rejected her. Now Ronith would repay that bitter favor.

“What is my title to be, Alchemist?” she asked.

The Alchemist’s eyes twinkled. “Call me Mol Morin, won’t you?”

He handed her the staff. The wood was pale and smooth in her hands, almost slippery with secrets.

“And you, my dear, shall have a very special title. Singular, even. You are to be my Blood Mage.”