Page 114 of The Dryad Storm

Viger gives her a discomfited look, and she can sense him struggling against the bond’s draw, as well. Both ensnared and disconcerted, Tierney averts her eyes from Viger’s rattled look only to meet Or’myr’s green gaze shot through with purple lightning. A shock of Or’myr’s power crackles against hers in a forking array, and Tierney shivers, stunned by her new bond-fueled ability to read Or’myr’s emotions in his magic like an empath, the intensity of his feelings for her blasting through his lightning in an ardent line of longing.

A color-streaked Rainbow Trout speeds past them and snares Tierney’s attention, her Vo-kindreds pulsingwarning, warning, warningthrough her bond to her Waters. Tierney’s focus on her River’s life sharpens, a school of violet-glittering Noi Minnows as well as a multitude of other aquatic creatures swimming past them in panicked flight.

All of them fleeing south.

Concern eddies through Tierney’s water power, cutting through her mind-scattering bond-pull to Viger, Or’myr, and Fyordin, the fishes’ collective terrified energy prompting a surge of alarm.

Tierney’lin!

Every one of Tierney’s nerves spikes to alert as her kelpies’ cries flow in, along with a wavering, watery image of them trapped inside a ring of iron spikes hammered into the Vo’s bed.

Tierney glances up, frantically scanning the water above them, a more intense alarm racing through her power as she spots a line of glowing gray runes shiveringto life on the Vo’s surface to the far north. She squints, her gaze snagging on a slowly advancing tide of gray in the distance, seeping toward them through the Vo’s pristine water, gradually overtaking the Deathkin-and-Asrai runes marked on the Vo’s surface that she and Viger set down to wall off Shadow power, the runes incrementally morphing to gray.

The sense of a nightmare descending shocks through Tierney’s system as she takes in the dead fish and crustaceans floating in the gray tide, the creatures multi-eyed and oddly grayed...

Fyordin’s flood of shock rushes through Tierney with typhoon force, their eyes meeting in a flash of Asrai horror. Her stunned gaze pivots to Viger, who has gone preternaturally still, his eyes narrowed on the incoming threat, as Or’myr draws his stone-encrusted violet wand, a stark look overtaking his expression. Or’myr’s neck tightens, his power bursting into desperate, lightning-flashing chaos.

A dire thought pierces Tierney—Or’myr can’t breathe underwater. And if he surfaces... he’ll fall into the hands of whatever evil lies above.

Urgency exploding through their power, Tierney and Fyordin launch themselves at Or’myr at the same moment Viger’s ropes of Darkness lash around them all, pulling Tierney, Or’myr, and Fyordin in tight before speeding them south in a blur, away from the killing tide of gray.

Viger tugs them upward, and they surface inside a sheltered rocky inlet, the surrounding black stone shot through with lines of dark purple. The water is waist deep, an overcast twilight above, steely clouds roiling across the heavens.

Or’myr’s hand slaps down on the wet stone as he pulls in gasping breaths, brusquely nodding his thanks to Viger, as Tierney finds herself swept up in a sense of the elemental power of the Northern Vo’s headwaters being consumed and siphonedwest.

“The Shadow power...” she sputters “...it’s feeding on my River and killing the river life and my kelpies—”

Her words choke off as Viger raises a silencing hand and opens his mouth slightly, his forked, purple tongue flickering toward the Shadow threat to the north of them, as if he’s reading it on the very air.

Slowly, carefully, they rise and peer over the bank’s purple-veined, obsidian stones.

Alarm eddies through Tierney as she takes in the swarms of Mage soldiers gathered on the Northern Vo’s western and eastern banks, this narrow northernmost section of the Vo splitting into multiple tributaries just beyond.

Most of the Mage soldiers are massed around the bases of a great arc of Shadow runes that spans the River. The rune arc resembles a giant half portal, projecting a rippling pewter flow of Shadow into her Vo’s waters to create the poisonous tide that’s slowly advancing south toward them—the tide incrementally overtaking her and Viger’s warding, a small grove of Vo Cypress trees that grow beside the arc beginning to gray, the other trees edging her River’s banks graying, as well...

Tierney pivots her hand in the water, fully connecting with her Vo, instantly able to sense her kelpies’ weakened, dissolved forms at the base of the rune arc’s eastern side. The image of a spiraling Wand made of Shadow ripples through Tierney’s water power, the poisonous tide siphoning her River’s life into that Wand—the siphoning a full, consuming drain without any replenishing.

Bringing Void Death to her Waters.

A cyclonic whirlpool of rage gathers inside Tierney, a primal scream readying itself in her throat. She moves to launch herself toward the Mages as the Vo’s own avenger, Fyordin’s power rising beside hers, their combined Asrai might ready to break into a storming mass above them both.

Viger leaps at them, hurling out lashings of Darkness, forcefully binding not only Tierney and Fyordin, but Or’myr as well, his arms clamping around Tierney’s upper body.

Tierney opens her mouth to let loose a ferocious snarl of protest, but it gets lost as Viger dissolves them all into his swirling Dark once more, sweeping them down into a tunneling retreat.

Viger swiftly remanifests them all underwater, Tierney hissing and bucking against his iron grip as they surface within another stone-sheltered bank a much farther distance south from the invading Shadow tide.

“Let mego!” she snarls at Viger, wrestling against his hold as he keeps both her and Fyordin bound but flicks a hand and releases Or’myr.

BE STILL!Viger’s words strike through Tierney’s mind with bone-vibrating force.

Both Fyordin’s and Tierney’s water auras burgeon inside them, Fyordin’s expression like a gathering thunderhead. “Release usright now, Deathling,” Fyordin growls, “or we will send the Vo’s powerstraight through you!”

Or’myr levels his wand at Viger, his green eyes afire with purple lightning. “What are you doing, Viger?” he inquires, lethally calm.

“Keeping Tierney’s and Fyordin’s storms at bay,” Viger hisses as Tierney andFyordin draw up cyclones of power. “If we are sighted,” Viger bites out, “we will bedestroyed.”

Fyordin’s cyclonic might stills, prompting Tierney’s out-of-control fury to intensify as a swift, dire look passes between the three men.

---