Extinction - Lisa Smedman [117]
The vipers in Quenthel's whip gave Valas a baleful look.
"You left him?" Quenthel spat.
"Why not? The wraiths are defeated-no thanks to you," Valas grumbled-then realized he'd spoken out loud.
Stepping back a pace, he lowered his eyes, but the reprimand he'd expected did not come. Quenthel's whip was still in her belt, and her attention was entirely on the wall behind him. Her body radiated tension as she waited, silently staring at the wall, as if willing Pharaun to step through it.
A few moments later, Pharaun obliged by emerging from the portal, together with Danifae, whose legs were articulated normally again, Pharaun's spell having ended.
Jeggred growled softly at the mage, but Quenthel silenced him with a curt wave of her hand as she spotted the object Danifae held in her hands. It looked, to Valas's unschooled eyes, like a forked twig, plated in silver, but Quenthel seemed to recognize it at once.
"A wand of location," she said, holding out her hand in silent demand.
"It is indeed, Mistress," said Danifae, her face expressionless. "The rogues who were in the vault before us must have dropped it."
She handed the wand to Quenthel, bowing her head.
Quenthel stroked Danifae's hair in what Valas, had he not known Quenthel as well as he did, would have taken to be a sign of affection.
"At last, Danifae, you've proven your usefulness. This will make finding the ship of chaos much easier."
So fixated on the wand was Quenthel that she missed something that Valas did not: the look on Pharaun's face. Once again, the Master of Sorcere was plotting something. Valas, neither wanting to know nor caring what it might be, turned away and stared, brooding, out at the lake. Then, spotting something in the distance with his keen eyes, he stiffened.
"What is it?" Pharaun asked, peering in the same direction. "More wraiths?"
Valas shook his head, and pointed to a distant spot where bats were frantically circling above a disturbance in the water.
"Something's stirring up the bats… something big. And it's headed this way."
Chapter Twenty-nine
Ryld trudged along the open, treeless plain, following Halisstra's trail. She'd forbidden him from accompanying her, saying the quest for the Crescent Blade was something she had to undertake alone-but she hadn't forbidden him from following her. Not in so many words.
And so he'd bade her farewell when she left Eilistraee's temple, then set out after her as soon as she was out of sight. He'd been able to trail her closely during the three days she'd traveled through the forest, but when she struck out across the Cold Field, he'd been forced to fall back and follow only under cover of darkness. Even with his magical piwafwi there was no way for him to hide on the flat, featureless plain in full daylight.
He followed the faint traces of Halisstra's passage: a blank spot on the frosted ground where a pebble had been kicked out of place; a patch of lichen that had been scuffed off a rock; and a concave fragment of bone, recently kicked over, the frozen dirt clinging to its underside still fresh.
Flicking the fragment of skull aside with the toe of his boot, the weapons master stared across the desolate landscape, looking for Halisstra. As far as he could see the frozen ground was studded with crumbling pieces of bone, rusted lance heads, shield bosses, and chunks of chain mail so rusted the links had fused into a single, solid mass. It was as if the remains of the armies that had fought there centuries past had been seeded into the ground in the hope that they would one day rise again. Yet nothing grew there, save for a few faint traces of lichen on those rocks that hadn't been melted to slag by the fiery breath of dragons.
A bitterly cold wind began to blow, plucking at the ends of Ryld's piwafwi like the ghosts of the dead. Shivering, he peered into the gloom, searching for Halisstra. She must have still been far ahead of him; he couldn't see her. Ryld wondered if the ground had swallowed her up, just as it had the fallen armies, then he realized