Frostfell_ The Wizards - Mark Sehestedt [61]
The leader paced round the immediate area, moving from space to space in quick bursts of speed then standing still as the shadows themselves. He sniffed at the air, opened his mouth wide, inhaled, then flinched as if bitten.
He looked down at Jalan. "What are you doing?"
Jalan said nothing. He squeezed his eyes shut and huddled inside his cloak. The something, that odd presence inside of him, trembled, but it was not from fear. It was as if a bell had been struck, and the more the thing in the ash-gray cloak exerted his will, the stronger the chime sang within Jalan.
"Stop that," said the leader.
"I… I…"
"I said stop!" The leader wrenched Jalan up and pulled him close. "I sense what you are doing. I hear it in your heart's beating. Stop now or I'll bleed it out of you."
Jalan heard the rustle of robes and the soft whisk of a blade being drawn. He opened his eyes and tears streamed out. Jalan gasped for air and almost gagged at the stench of the thing holding him.
"Heed me, whelp," said the leader, and he pressed the edge of his knife against Jalan's cheek. The metal was so cold it burned. "I need you alive. Not unscathed. Stop what you are doing now."
"I… can't," Jalan said. "I-"
The knife shifted, the point coming toward Jalan's left eye. He squeezed his eyes shut and tried to pull away, but the thing holding him was too strong. He could feel the point of the blade resting against his clenched eyelid, but he could pull away no further.
"Stop," said the leader, almost a whisper. "I will not say so again."
Jalan's fear had so filled his thoughts that he'd almost forgotten about the thing inside him, that indefinable livingness stirring within. The terror emptied his mind of all else, and in that instant the thing within him resounded, growing from a rhythmic hum to a battle cry. Almost of their own accord his eyes opened. The blade filled his vision, as if all the world had funneled into the knife hovering just beyond his tears. Jalan took the great thing inside of him and focused it there.
The blade blazed. A pure orange light glowed outward, but the blade itself was white as the center of the sun.
The thing in the ash-gray cloak shrieked and hurled Jalan and the knife away. Jalan rolled into the cold ashes of the fire, and the knife, still blazing like the noonday sun, tumbled into the grass.
The howling and frightened whines of wolves filled Jalan's ears as he pushed himself to his hands and knees. He saw a pale blur coming at him-one of the northern barbarians-but he was too stunned to move. The boot caught him in the side, and he went down. Darkness and light and a hundred dancing colors filled his eyes, and his body seemed to squeeze in on itself, craving air but finding only pain.
He took deep, choking breaths, his side clenching. When he could hear and see again, the camp was in turmoil. The huge wolves were running around, many growling and snapping at their fellows. The pale northerners rushed to calm them, and their cloaked leader sat in the grass, huddling away from the light and barking orders in a language that Jalan could not understand. His voice sounded stretched and thin. Desperate.
One of the pale men ripped the outer felt covering off a yurt. He dragged it to where the dagger still blazed like a piece of the sun fallen to earth and threw the thick felt over it. The glow winked out, and darkness fell on the camp again.
The cloaked leader stood, his robes falling around him like tides of night, and bore down on Jalan.
Jalan raised his hands before his face, fearing another dagger or a blast of cold-or worst of all that sharp awareness boring into his mind. Instead, the leader's fist emerged from the folds of his cloak. Jalan saw it, a pallid blur streaking toward his face, then a cold blackness took him.
* * * * *
Akhrasut Neth
The howling had not subsided. In fact, it seemed to Amira that even more wolves had come, and the sounds of their singing came from every direction. Full night had fallen, bringing with it a thick, clinging fog that dampened Amira's cloak and made her