Page 18 of The Demon Tide

“You saved ours,” she rejoins, as if that settles the matter.

“What’s your name?” I ask.

She hesitates, her stance becoming confrontational. “Nym’ellia,” she answers, and I immediately guess why this fierce girl feels the need to throw her name out like a challenge. Such a distinctly Urisk name. Bestowed on a girl who has the black hair, shimmering green skin and forest green eyes of a Gardnerian. Who looks completely like a Mage.

I’m unable to keep from noticing the ears that poke through Nym’ellia’s stringy, unwashed hair. Jagged scars run atop edges that were obviously once pointed but were likely cropped in the West. Cruelly cut off by a mob like the one that attacked Olilly. I glance at Nym’ellia’s fever-stricken mother and sister, lifting my brow in question.

Some of the girl’s belligerent air draws down. “My mother’s name is Emberlyyn,” she offers with a worried frown, seeming to sense my line of inquiry, “and my sister is Tibryl.” She eyes me levelly. “They have the Red Grippe.”

“I know,” I say. “I had it when I was a child.” I spare another glance at Emberlyyn, who is slumped against one of the enormous purple trees, loosely embracing her child. Both are flushed with fever, spots of the Red Grippe illness cruelly fixed around their mouths.

They need Norfure tincture, and soon.

I turn back to Nym’ellia. “Your course is set for Voloi?”

She nods and draws her gold compass from her tunic’s pocket. “We’re less than a league from the Zonor River.” She reads the compass, then jabs her finger toward a line of forest ahead. “That way.”

East.

I sheathe my weapons and inhale. “Well, then, let’s go.” I give her a pointed look, drawing courage from the feel of warm, tingling energy rising once more from the Wand sheathed at my calf. “Let’s get to Noilaan,” I say. “We’ll find my brother and get your mother and sister some medicine.”

And pray that, over the past weeks, the Mage grandson of the Black Witch has been fully accepted and integrated into Noilaan’s Wyvernguard.

PART ONE

Eastern Realm

One realm month ago

CHAPTER ONE

WYVERNGUARDMAGE

Trystan Gardner & Vothendrile Xanthile

TheWyvernguard

North Wyvernguard Island, Noilaan

Eastern Realm

Sixth Month; longest month of the realm year

Vothendrile

“I hope they blast the Crow to pieces,” rune sorceress Heelyn hisses from beside me as we observe the military exercise with a cluster of sapphire-uniformed soldier-apprentices. We’re assembled on the obsidian river-level terrace, standing near the massive bas-relief marble dragon sculpture that wraps around the entire base of the Wyvernguard’s North Island, a cool breeze gusting in from the expansive Vo River.

Heelyn’s words kick up a tumultuous current through my water and wind auras as I watch Trystan Gardner assume an offensive position, his wand raised toward the six Vu Trin soldiers taking battle stances before him, his green-glimmering face a mask of determination. The black-clad sorceresses murmur a shielding spell in unison, swords and blades drawn, their gazes pinned on the Gardnerian.

The wind intensifies. I breathe in its coolness, joining it to my internal weather-based power in an attempt to smooth out my increasingly unsettled emotions over this grandson of the Black Witch I’ve been charged to guard. By Wyvernguard Commander Ung Li herself.

Her rationale remains unspoken, but I know I’ve been handpicked as the soldier-apprentice guard most likely to drive the reviled Mage out.

Sunlight glints off the soldiers’ raised rune swords, blades, and stars, the sorceresses ready to deflect Trystan’s formidable Level Five magic and strike him down. A magical shield the sorceresses have thrown up adheres to their focused forms, blanketing them in an iridescent sapphire glimmer.

I glance at Heelyn, my friend since childhood and one of Noilaan’s most powerful runic sorceresses. Her close-cropped black hair shines in the bright sunlight, the image of a dragon shaved into the side of it, her muscular body tense with loathing. She looks at me expectantly, obviously waiting for my affirmation of her blistering hatred of the Mage—an affirmation I would have supplied all too readily only weeks ago.

Inexplicably vexed, I turn away from Heelyn, my gaze drawn back to Trystan. The familiar storm of conflict rises.

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