Page 150 of The Shadow Wand

“How far do you think we can get before the storm breaks?” This part of Gardneria is famous for its storms, and the longer they gather, the fiercer they are when they finally let loose.

This one has been gathering for a while.

“To the base of the Caledonian Range,” Lukas says, as white bursts of lightning briefly illuminate the angles of his face, giving him a stark look. “We need to put more distance between us and Vogel. We’ve only a small window of time.”

Dread wells up inside me. “Before what?” Thunder cracks as lightning skitters across the sky.

Lukas’s eyes are a flash of warning. “Before night falls and he’s able to hunt you with stronger magic.”

The storm continues to gather, like some enormous beast that’s patiently tracking us. As the day slides closer to night, the clouds thicken and billow angrily, shaking out thunder and lightning like an enraged fist but still holding back the torrent.

Every so often, Lukas signals for me to halt beside him, an urgent look in his eyes as we dismount. He slides his arm around me and pulls me into an impassioned kiss, sending his fire and earth magery into me to bolster the shield beneath my skin in a hard, tangling rush. His all-encompassing magic never fails to make me gasp and shudder against him as the horses fidget beside us. And every time, the trees’ oppressive aura draws back, as if they can sense the staggering level of magic at play.

As we advance through the forest, I find myself hungering for the next time Lukas will pause and pull me into his fiery kiss, the terrible world around us momentarily singed away whenever Lukas’s magic fuses with mine.

A lightning-riddled dusk descends as the forest changes and staggeringly immense trees loom over us, their gigantic, crenulated trunks washed a sullen, flickering red by our Amaz runic lanterns.

The Caledonian Sithoy forest.

I glance around with no small amount of awe and trepidation as we enter forest that’s famed all across Erthia. A forest I’ve only read about in books and sensed when touching its bloodred wood.

We’re only a few paces into the Sithoy when the trees’ surrounding aura begins to change. Their ire begins to envelop us with claustrophobic force, like a deep, weighted rumble pressing against my lines.

I crane my neck up, a slight vertigo taking hold as I view the Sithoy’s distant, lightning-illuminated canopy with mounting concern.

The black-needled Sithoy trees rise taller than Valgard’s cathedral, and both Lukas and I have to force back their hostile aura with double the usual magical effort or it starts to feel like a weighted invasion of our minds, difficult to think around. Even with both of us lashing invisible fire magery in periodic streams, it’s as if we can barely contain these trees.

I’ve the strong sense of them watching us with deep-seated hatred as we weave around their massive trunks. And I’ve the disturbing sensation of their collective aura not only pressing against my lines, but plucking them gently. Directionally.

As if mapping my magic’s flow.

“The trees here,” I say to Lukas as I glance warily around. “They’re dangerous.”

Lukas glances back at me as we ride, giving me a significant look. “I can feel their press of power as well, Elloren. But they’re like a Level One Mage. All power with no access. Don’t let them intimidate you.”

He sends out another blast of his invisible magic, but it barely puts a dent in the trees’ encroaching rancor.

And still, that disturbingly subtle brush against my lines that so easily traverses Lukas’s shield.

You’re not easily intimidated, are you, I sullenly think at the colossal trees, feeling besieged by their rippling invasion.

Thunder has begun a low, more insistent roll, the sky webbed with constant, forking lightning as the storm-dampened air rapidly cools. I’m having a hard time shaking the chill that’s seeped into my bones, no matter how forcefully I pull on my fire affinity or press my hands against my horse’s warm neck.

Night descends as the storm’s winds rise then strengthen with punishing force against the forest’s distant canopy, huge branches swaying overhead as the wind howls through the trees and the sky begins to spit a needling rain. The red-lantern-illuminated landscape grows rocky and hillier as Lukas and I draw ever closer to the edge of the Caledonian Mountain Range, blessedly leaving the Sithoy portion of the forest behind.

The oak, maple, and evergreen trees that now surround us are smaller and sparser.

And less able to infiltrate my magic.

A small clearing opens before us. It’s haphazardly strewn with dark boulders, a rocky hillock at its edge. I flinch as lightning creates an earsplitting crack of thunder and the horses startle, the cold, misting rain turning to harder drops that splatter against the trees and dampen my cloak and my face.

Lukas stops then dismounts, motioning for me to follow his lead as he takes a moment to soothe his fidgety mare. We tether our horses inside the forest edge, under an isolated grove of oak trees with a thick, sheltering canopy.

“Stay with the horses for a moment,” Lukas directs and I comply, wind whipping at my hair as it begins to send up a disconcerting howl and I do my best to calm the restless animals.

Lukas moves to the center of the small clearing, holds his wand aloft, and sounds out a series of spells, low in his throat, as his strong, red-lit form is buffeted by the intensifying rain and wind.

I give a start as loose branches fly in from the woods and circle Lukas in a tight spiral, more branches soaring in to join the cyclone of wood until I can’t make Lukas out. And then thewhooshingspiral abruptly flows toward an indentation in the hillock’s wall of rock, Lukas’s tall form visible once more. Wood crackles against stone as Lukas rapidly weaves the branches into a domed structure against the concavity, lines of his earth magery flowing around the wood in slender vines that cinch the branches tightly together.

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