Page 24 of The Shadow Wand

“I can’t use this,” I tell Kam Vin, my voice shaking. I turn and hold the Wand out to her. “I’ve a sense it’s too powerful. I told you what I can do with a little branch.”

Kam Vin’s expression hardens. “Elloren Gardner, that is why we are in the Agolith.” She motions toward the vast expanse of desert. “There is nothing here,” she points out with a sweep of her hand. “Nothing forleagues.”

Fear gnaws at my insides as I peer back over the red desert sands and my sense that something awful is about to be unleashed grows. I remember how I conjured a great, killing fire with just a slender twig.

I remember how the forest screamed.

“Give me another wand,” I insist, turning my back on the desert expanse and holding out the Wand again to Kam Vin. “A weak one. Then I’ll do it.”

Kam Vin makes a sound of disdain, her fist on her hip. The sun’s ruby light glints off the silver star weapons strapped diagonally across her chest and does nothing to soften the severe look on her face. “You are being foolish, Elloren Gardner.”

“I don’t care,” I counter. “I won’t try the spell. Not without a weak wand.”

She narrows her eyes and glares at me for a protracted moment before gesturing toward young Chim Diec with a jerk of her chin.

Chim Diec is coldly formal and graceful as a heron. Like most of our party, she seems to view me with deep suspicion and has made a point of keeping her distance. She approaches me warily, then reaches inside her black tunic’s pocket and pulls out a simple wooden wand from a cluster of four, this one made of pale wood with a swirling mahogany grain.

Mountain Ash.

“This wand is perhaps one step up from a tree branch,” Chim Diec tells me, her words crisply accented.

Heart pounding, I sheathe the Wand of Myth in the wand-belt around my waist and take this new wand in hand.

I can feel this wand’s lesser power the moment I touch it, my magic drawing down, retreating through my feet and back into the earth. I can sense that the wood has fewer layers, roughly put together, shoddily done.

When I touch my Wand, I can feel layers and layers of wood going on to infinity, and, sometimes, if I have it in hand when I’m surrounded by forest, I can barely hold on to the power that strains up from Erthia to meet with it. It’s been like this whenever I have a wand in my grasp ever since I sent a spell through that small branch. Ever since I discovered what I truly am.

Something within me has been unleashed. And its potential for destruction terrifies me.

And even though this wand in my hand does feel weak, it’s still a wand.

“Step back,” I nervously order the sorceresses, recalling the runic shields they’re capable of creating. “And send up a strong, combined shield.”

Kam Vin seems to be rapidly losing patience, the already tight line of her mouth drawing tighter still. “It’s unnecessary,” she bites out. “And will take well over an hour’s time.”

“Humor me,” I insist.

Runemaster Chi Nam calls out something to Kam Vin in the Noi language, and Kam Vin gives a terse, reluctant nod before shooting me a glare. Then Kam Vin, Ni Vin, and the other Vu Trin back away toward where the horses are tethered to stakes.

Rune sorceresses Chi Nam and Hung Xho set down rune stones on the ground in a circle around the sorceresses, then lower themselves to each stone in turn, tapping runic codes onto the stones with their glowing blue rune styli.

Luminous sapphire lines fly from stone to stone and arc over the sorceresses, strand by delicate strand, as Chi Nam and Hung Xho painstakingly weave the shield’s framework.

Eventually, both elderly sorceresses rise and Chi Nam touches her rune staff to their webbed enclosure.

The shield buzzes to life, a translucent dome of blue coursing from Chi Nam’s staff and over the woven strands until it fully encompasses all of the Vu Trin sorceresses and most of their horses, the pulsating shield casting azure light in a wide radius around itself.

Both Chi Nam and Hung Xho turn to me expectantly, glowing blue rune styli in hand.

“We are shielded,” Kam Vin informs me from underneath the radiant dome, an impatient edge to her sharp tone.

I survey the entire scene anxiously. Ni Vin’s ebony mare is unshielded, but safely tethered far behind the shield at what looks like a safe distance away.

I turn. The sunset’s colors are now dimmed to a blush of red that limns the horizon, our stretch of desert awash in blue rune light. I lower my gaze to the wand, my fastmarked hand firmly clenched around its handle. My throat tightens, and not because of the dry, sandy air.

A rapidscritch, scritch, scritchsounds before me and my eyes flick up. Not far from me, a small desert animal races through brush and down into a sheltering hole.

Yes, that’s right, I think.Run for cover. Tunnel down as far down as you can.

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