The Shattered Land_ The Dreaming Dark - Keith Baker [9]
The beast shook with laughter, even as it resumed its shadowy state. “You can’t win this, Daine,” she said, her voice a howling wind. “You cannot begin to comprehend my power. I am the darkness.”
“Scary. Scarier if you were just a little bit faster.” Despite his bravado, Daine was still fighting the fear that clenched at his stomach and cried in the back of his mind.
“My physical strength is the least of your worries. There are greater weapons at my disposal.”
She raised her massive arms, and the ground around Daine erupted in motion. Across the battlefield, corpses were moving: maimed human and broken warforged, all of the fallen were rising to their feet, forming a living wall around Daine.
“Now would be a really good time to wake up,” Daine muttered.
He set his back against the keel of the stormship and grabbed another broken spar. He could see familiar faces among the shuffling masses: Lynna carried the morningstar that had shattered her chest, and Cadrian staggered forward despite his broken face. Daine took his guard position and prepared for the first onslaught …
And then came the light.
A brilliant luminescence flowed over the field, and the lurching corpses paused to shield their eyes—even those with no eyes left to shield. A glowing figure stepped out of the wreckage next to Daine, a woman wrapped in a hooded cloak that shone with the brilliance of the sun.
“Let him go, Tashana.” It was Lakashtai.
Laughter. “You’re a fool to come here, child of Kashtai—as great a fool as your ancient mother. We claim this man and his dreams. Leave now, and you can earn a few more days of life.”
“He will not stand alone.”
The nimbus of light surrounding Lakashtai intensified, and the shadowy figure seemed to wilt in the glow. But even as the monster cringed, tendrils rose from the dark pool, flooding into the beast and restoring its strength. In moments, it was even larger then before—and the aura of light was beginning to fade.
“Then fall together.”
A vast wave of darkness rippled forward from the shadowy figure. It slammed into Daine, enveloping him in cold and silence, and he knew no more.
Lei was working on a wand.
She had a gift for weaving enchantments, creating magical tools to serve the needs of the moment, but these magical infusions were temporary, and the power would quickly fade if it wasn’t used. Binding a permanent enchantment into an object was a more difficult task, and one that could take days. The wand itself was a short stick of livewood—an unusual form of lumber that still held the spark of life even after it was severed from its tree. Lei was weaving a healing enchantment, and the livewood was ideally suited to holding this power. For the last few days she had been preparing the wand, bathing it in a series of alchemical liquids and planting the initial paths into the wood. Now it was time to bind it all together. Holding her hands over the livewood, she reached out with her mind. The world receded until all her senses were focused on the wand and the patterns of mystical energy around it. Slowly, painstakingly, she began to pull at these glittering threads, weaving a web of power that would let her channel the lifeforce of the living wood to heal the wounds of another.
It was a difficult task. The slightest slip in concentration could cause the entire pattern to collapse, ruining days of work, yet Lei found that she was never as relaxed as when she was binding the forces of magic. Challenging as it was, it was clean and logical, and it was as natural to her as breathing. Her daily life, on the other hand, was chaotic and painful. Over the last few years, she’d seen battlefield horrors she’d never forget. She’d lost her parents, her home, and her birthright—everything that