Page 157 of The Shadow Wand

Valasca shakes her head. “They were simply following Chi Nam’s orders.” She raises a black brow in Chi Nam’s direction. “There’s a warrant out for Chi Nam’s arrest, though. Thing is, they’d have to catch her first.” Valasca shoots Chi Nam a wicked grin, which the powerful sorceress meets with a look of unfazed authority.

“I think we found the weapon that took down the Lupines,” I say, and they all glance back at me, a harder tension suddenly in the air.

Chi Nam’s deep-brown lips lower into a frown. “Vogel’s Wand of Shadow. We know of this. It appears Marcus Vogel has resurrected a thing that should never have been brought back into this world. A thing not seen since the Elfin Wars.”

“It sends me a vision of a Shadow tree,” I tell her. “And a dead forest. And there’s demonic power in it.” I tell Valasca and Chi Nam of the Smaragdalfar demon-sensing rune Sage marked on my stomach, and how Vogel’s power lights it up like a stinging beacon.

“I believe it to be the Wor,” Chi Nam states with forbidding gravity.

My brow tenses in confusion. “What’s that?”

“The counterforce to the Zhilin,” Valasca explains, setting her black-eyed stare on me with piercing intensity.

I remember the Noi word for the Wand of Myth—the Zhilin. The sacred tooth of their dragon goddess, Vo, that can be wielded as a rune stylus only by the goddess’s chosen bearer—the Vhion.

To Valasca and Chi Nam, I am the Vhion bearer of the Zhilin.

But I’ve never heard of the Wor.

“Do you still hold the Zhilin,” Valasca asks me, an edge of concern creeping into her normally unflappable tone.

“It’s in my boot.”

Valasca lets out a relieved sigh as she and Chi Nam exchange a quick look.

“You should know that my Wand...it seems like it’s become powerless,” I confess. “I’ve a sense that it’s hiding from Vogel’s Wand.”

“The Woris powerful,” Chi Nam agrees as she shoots me a sober look over her shoulder. “But have faith in the Zhilin, toiya. Perhaps its power at the moment lies in its faith in you.”

I want to hold tight to these words and draw comfort from them, but there’s no comfort to be found. Control over my power is what I need at the moment. Not faith.

“Vogel’s hunting Elloren with his Wand,” Lukas informs Chi Nam. “He’s sending out search spells. And he can do it during the day as well as the night.”

“And the forest is trying to bind up my magic,” I add. “It thinks I’m aligned with Vogel.”

“Sounds like we better hightail it to that portal,” Valasca throws out to us.

Chi Nam prods her horse into a fast gallop, rapidly pulling into the lead.

Before long, we’re veering off the road and riding into the Sitka forest single file, our pace slowing as we skirt the spruce trees’ large trunks.

As we’re enveloped in forest, the sensation of the trees plucking at my lines grows more pronounced, and I look worriedly to Lukas, who rides in front of me. As if sensing my attention, he glances back and meets my gaze, his tense expression echoing my concern, as if he can perceive the trees’ aggressive shift, as well. His shoulders stiffen as he lowers his head and throws out a burst of invisible fire power at the forest, the plucking sensation along my lines easing a bit.

Before long, we reach a clearing near a stony outcropping at the western edge of the Caledonian Range.

Chi Nam rides up to a mammoth wall of rock. The sapphire ball of light hovering over the staff strapped to her back casts bobbing blue illumination over the landmass.

She dismounts, and we all follow her lead.

“Send the horses to the nearest village,” Chi Nam directs Valasca before looking to Lukas and me. “We can’t bring the animals with us, and they can sometimes spook at what I’m about to do.”

As efficiently as we can, we remove the packs from the horses but leave their tack on. Valasca murmurs affectionately to them as she leads them back into the forest, the horses whinnying animatedly as if in conversation with her as she gently talks to them in Uriskal. I’m reminded that Valasca, like all the Amaz, has been rune marked with the ability to speak to horses with her mind.

Chi Nam pulls out a series of Noi rune stones from her pocket as she advances toward the stone wall. She stoops and arranges the stones along its base, then rises and sounds a Noi spell, the fingers of one hand dancing along the luminescent blue runes that mark her staff.

The rune stones at the base of the wall light up.

Chi Nam unsheathes a stylus and begins tapping it against the stone wall’s flat surface in a sweeping arc.

---