Page 8 of The Shadow Wand

Heavily accented Common Tongue sounds to the side. “Mages.Stop.”

Thierren’s head whips toward the old woman with the white hair. The woman’s arms are now out in supplication, her green eyes full of a fierce urgency. She gestures toward the dark forest behind her as if she’s trying to convey a vital warning.

“Leave our forest alone,” the woman says, an ominous weight to the words. “If the trees die, we die. You die. We all die.”

Her urgency strikes Thierren deep in his heart, and he has the disturbing sense that he’s hearing something true. A fierce, disorienting urge to stop all of this wells up.

“The Shadow is coming,” the old woman warns, her voice low and blazing with inescapable certainty.

“On your knees,” Commander Bane orders the Fae, almost blithely, and Thierren’s eyes snap to his commander’s in amazement that he can remain so unaffected. There’s a wicked gleam in Commander Bane’s eyes. As if he’s excited by all this.

A flash of revulsion rocks Thierren. He looks back to the young Fae woman, and their gazes latch again. As if they’re both unwitting players in a nightmare. Suddenly, Thierren wants nothing more in the world than to grab the woman and the baby and whisk them away from here.

The young woman calls out to Thierren in her Fae dialect, her voice as melodious as it is grief-stricken. Thierren opens his mouth as if to answer her, just as Commander Bane’s voice booms out.

“‘By order of the Gardnerian government,’” he reads from a scroll, “‘you are hereby ordered to stand down and surrender your hold on our sovereign territory.’” Commander Bane sighs, as if this is all too easy, rolls the scroll back up, and slides it into his tunic’s pocket. He steps forward, unsheathes his wand, and loosely points it at the Fae. “Isaid, get on your knees.”

The line of Fae steps defiantly backward with what appears to be great effort, their arms outstretched now, as if fortifying the barrier between the Mages and the thick forest. The hatred in many of the Fae’s expressions hardens. The young boy’s eyes have become rage-filled slits as he hoarsely yells out a stream of furious Dryadin, and the young woman’s mouth is a miserable, trembling frown as she hugs the baby to her chest.

Horror slashes through Thierren. The desperate urge to rescue the young woman and the baby swells. There’s another flash of white birds in the branches above the Fae. A line of the ethereal creatures to mirror the line of birds on some of the Gardnerians’ uniforms. Onhisuniform.

Thierren blinks and wonders if he’s gone completely mad.

“Get on your knees,” Commander Bane snarls.“Now.”

Wait, Thierren wants to cry at Commander Bane, everything in the world suddenly breaking down.Can’t you see? There’s been a mistake and we need to stop. This isn’t what we thought. These aren’t monstrous warriors.

These are families.

The old woman ignores Commander Bane’s threatening stance, his wand. She rises from her knees and steps forward falteringly, pushing her palms out toward Commander Bane in a halting gesture.

Viper fast, Commander Bane whips back his wand, then hurls his arm forward. A spear of ice jets from his wand’s tip and plunges straight into the old woman’s chest.

Her sharp cry turns to a gurgle as she falls backward to the ground with a heavy thud, blood streaming.

Chaos breaks out. Fae scream and struggle against the iron to rush to her. The terrified children shriek.

Commander Bane views the scene impassively. “By order of the Gardnerian government,” he repeats, “you are hereby ordered to stand down and surrender your hold on our sovereign territory.”

“We will never stand down!” the boy screams, his Common Tongue thickly accented, his skinny body rising to his full height. The power of the forest rises with him, like a dark, inescapable tide. Thierren can feel it, right through his bones.

Right through his lines.

The boy’s hands bunch into fists. “We are weak now, but our Guardians are not. They will know what you do to us. The trees will tell them. And they will come for you with the full might of the forest!”

Commander Bane’s eyes widen as he smiles with delighted mirth. He glances at the Mages that surround him, as if to share his incredulous glee. He sneers back at the boy. “Oh, thetreeswill come after us, will they? On their little tree legs?”

Thierren looks up, the canopy of trees on all sides leaning in. Rustling. The hard push against his affinity lines strengthens.

“We stand with the trees!” the boy yells with unbridled ferocity.

Commander Bane spits out a sound of derision and rolls his eyes at the bearded Mage next to him. “Sweet Ancient One, we need to silence them.” Commander Bane stands military straight. “Mages!” he orders, looking to the left then to the right, down the line of soldiers. “Ready your wands!”

The young woman is down on her knees by the dead Fae woman, sobbing, the baby in her arms screaming. She looks up and locks her grief-stricken gaze onto Thierren’s.

Horror bubbles up, and Thierren can contain it no longer. He bursts forward into the clearing and whips around to face the line of Mages.“Stop!”he yells, throwing out his palm.

Commander Bane lowers his wand a fraction and eyes Thierren. “Have you lost your mind?”

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