Page 182 of The Shadow Wand

Like it’s emerging from dormancy.

“It feels like it’s waking up,” I tell Lukas, a bit breathless with surprise as I hand it to him.

Gripping the Wand, Lukas strides away from us over the red sands until he’s a fair distance away. He stills, raises his wand arm, then brings it down, pointing the wand at the stormwall lining the horizon.

Nothing.

He tries this a few more times to no effect, the Wand’s vivid green glow settling into a deeper green luminescence.

Lukas turns and walks back to us. “It seems to slip back into a state of dormancy when I hold it,” he says to Chi Nam as he hands the Wand back to me and I resheathe it.

“Because you are not the true bearer of the Zhilin,” Chi Nam says before regarding me with a probing, quizzical look. “Give her another target to aim for,” she directs Lukas and Valasca, not taking her eyes off me.

Lukas unsheathes the Noi rune blades strapped to his arms. “Here,” he says before handing them both to me, hilt-first.

He motions to another dead Baobab tree with a hollowed-out center, his other hand touching the back of my waist lightly. “Aim toward either side of that hole,” he says. “Halfway down. Both blades at the same time. No rune power.”

I take a moment, fumbling, as I position the fingers of both my hands on the blades just like Valasca showed me as Lukas steps back.

I straighten, take a long look at the tree, then rear both my arms back as the luminous green lines spring to life once more, this time forming two clear tracks that arc from the blades to either side of the tree’s hollow middle, everything else blurring beyond the twin trajectories. Teeth gritted, I thrust my arms forward and release the blades just as the verdant paths contract, the blades zooming along the lines to impale my targets with a firmcrackat exactly the same time.

Stunned, I turn back to them all, my heart racing as Valasca spits out an expletive in the Noi language that’s so outrageously off-color that it warms my cheeks.

Lukas laughs and shoots Valasca an incredulous look. “Do they let you say that in Amazakaraan?”

Valasca snorts and eyes him sideways. “We’re not there, are we?”

“Well, this presents some interesting possibilities,” Chi Nam says as her lip quirks up.

“That it does,” Valasca agrees slyly. “Perfect aim and advanced rune amplification.” She turns to me and grins. “It appears we have a new plan, Elloren Grey, since you can’t be the Black Witch as of yet.”

I blink at her in question, stunned by my new abilities.

Valasca’s grin widens. “We’re going to turn you into the equivalent of an Amaz warrior.”

For the rest of the morning, Valasca and Lukas have me deploy a variety of weapons on the cluster of dead Baobab trees as Chi Nam quietly watches, all with the same results.

Perfect aim.

The bright sunlight beats warmth down on us like a kiln, as I step back and eye the rune spear I’ve just thrown. It has impaled the center of a circle Valasca chalked onto the dark trunk quite a distance away from me.

And the results are the same even if I hand the Wand off to Lukas.

Perfect aim. Fully conferred to me by the Wand of Myth. Even if I’m not in contact with it or holding it.

Like a gift of power.

My mind struggles to adjust to my sudden transformation.

I’ve felt physically powerless my whole life. And I was so quickly thrust back into that state by my total lack of control over my magic, and then by the trees wresting hold of it. But now, the Wand has granted me somereal power. Small, compared to the power of a Black Witch, but power nonetheless.

A heady sense of possibility rises within me, impossible to contain.

Valasca throws Lukas and Chi Nam a dangerous grin. “Let’s throw rune sorcery back into the mix.”

She pulls out the large blade sheathed against her thigh. There are countless very small, rotating Amaz runes along one side of the hilt, an intricate etching of the Amaz goddess on the other, the goddess’s image gorgeously worked in gleaming mother-of-pearl and decorated with small garnets. Valasca hands the blade to me.

I close my fingers around the hilt and press my fingertip onto one of the runes. The motion briefly stops the runes’ rotation.

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