The Call of Winter (The Harbingers of Light Book 6) Read online

  Muninn whispered something under her breath in a language Leona didn’t understand, but seemed to speak words of farewell to some part buried deep within her.

  Huginn sighed as she watched the remnants of the elf flutter away amid smoke and ash scattering through the dawn air. “Daniken is out there somewhere, and that’s where we need to be. We need to leave this place before more darklings find us!” Huginn rushed her through the door, Rowan close behind, her hands wreathed in a golden glow, ready to discharge more fire when the need arose.

  Leona tried not to look at the fallen guard outside her home. She tried not to notice the gore splattered along the steps, even though she did her best to step around chunks of flesh and washes of blood on the powder blue stairs. So many guards, dead so quickly. The smell of meat was heavy in the air mingled with the smell of coppery blood and acidic stomach bile. It was enough to make her want to vomit, but she wouldn’t allow herself. She picked her way around the elves strewn around the ground at the base of the stairs. When she was away from them, and no longer afraid that opening her mouth would unstop the damn she kept closed over her stomach contents, she spoke.

  “Where are we going?” Leona asked.

  Muninn pointed to her right, down a cobbled street that should have been dark given this time of morning, but the houses on each side were in fiery ruin, casting leaping shadows across the street. Ash and debris had settled onto the street already, and some ruined lumps of roof and walls lay blasted out into the road. It was hard for Leona to tell if some of the shapes she was seeing were darklings or if they were part of the destruction of Haven.

  “That’s the quickest way out of town,” Muninn said.

  Huginn motioned her sister on with a flick of her hand. The other three fell in step behind the raven, Huginn on one side of Leona, Rowan on the other side. The sound of fighting and killing carried to them on the cold morning air. Leona could feel each guttural cry as if it were bubbling through her blood. She shivered and closed her eyes against the sound of swords clanging and people screaming. Fire crackled close by, but it was from rubble that had already been destroyed, not a new attack.

  “Just a few more steps,” Rowan said to her right. The harbinger laid a hand on her shoulder. Leona opened her eyes and jerked away from the older woman. With a sigh, Rowan let her arm fall to her side.

  Through the glow of the debris around them, Leona could see that they were nearing the edge of town. Already the sounds of fighting were drifting away behind them. They were going to make it.

  Trails of burning shadows filled the heavens above. They shuttled over Haven, huge balls of glowing black light, headed straight for the four women.

  “We aren’t going to make it,” Huginn said, drawing to a stop. She drew a thin blade from her side, one Leona hadn’t noticed before then. It was long and black, as if made from the very night itself. Along its hilt were carved silver feathers. Muninn drew a similar blade, her eyes trained on the orbs headed their way.

  Leona settled the moon scepter in her right hand, her gaze drifting down the length of the weapon, taking aim at one of the lead orbs. She felt the power throbbing through the scepter, and when she knew her aim was true and that the power was at its peak, she thrummed her fingers along the crystalline surface. Silver light blasted out of the tip of the scepter, connecting with the targeted orb. The orb burst into black flame and burned into nothingness before it could ever reach the ground.

  Leona took aim on another orb even as Rowan’s hands began glowing white hot with fire. At the same time Leona thrummed her fingers along the scepter, letting loose another bolt of silver light, Rowan hurled a long gout of fire at another orb.

  Leona’s target exploded into fire as the first one had. The scepter was spent. Leona tucked it in the sheath at her back and readied her hammer for a battle.

  Rowan was coming to life beside her, ball of blue-white fire streaming from her hands over and over, but only a few of her wyrded attacks were hitting their mark.

  The streamers of shadows were falling faster than before. Now they were reaching the ground before Rowan could take aim. The ravens readied their attack, their backs to one another, facing in opposite directions. Rowan drew her short sword with her left hand, but kept her right free for the wyrded fire that even now traced its way over her hands.

  The first darkling orb slammed to the ground, the shadowed fire melting into the figure of a woman. Skin hung from her bones, rotten and gray. Her misshapen maw hung open, as if in a rictus of laughter.

  Now that the orbs were resolving themselves into shapes along the burning street, it was easier for Rowan. A blast of fire slammed into the rotten woman, combusting on the spot. She didn’t scream or make any noise. The woman stumbled toward them a few more steps, and then crumbled to the earth, her flesh smoking black as it burned.

  A shadow of a child stood to Leona’s right, watching them. When she turned to see the child, it shivered to the right, just out of eyesight. Again, she turned to look at the creature, and it shivered to the left and closer to her, just out of the range of sight. She turned toward the darkling, keeping it at the edge of her vision. It didn’t drift away from her sight this time, but instead moved closer, it’s form wavering as if she peered at it through a haze of heat. The child came closer, tentatively as if at any moment Leona might notice it, look straight at it, and cause it to waver to the edge of her vision again.

  “These aren’t all harbingers,” Rowan warned.

  The child leapt at Leona, but before the darkling could land a blow, Leona swung to the left and up with the hammer. The hammer took the child-like being in the chest. There was a flash of light, and the darkling was gone.

  She’d spent so much time watching, yet not watching, the child that she didn’t notice the other darklings were closing in on them.

  “We need to get out of here,” Muninn said.

  Leona turned in time to see Huginn drive her shadow blade through the empty eye socket of a corpse. Its flesh sloughed off the side of his face like ragged garments before it crumbled at their feet.

  “Make an opening,” Huginn ordered.

  Muninn darted forward, her sword striking out, taking the head from a harbinger. Rowan stepped in front of Huginn and began her wyrded assault.

  Huginn fell back with Leona, the two of them turned to face behind them, allowing Rowan and Muninn to carve a way for them to leave the town.

  “Won’t they follow us,” Leona asked.

  “We are just four,” Huginn said. “I hope that once we make it out of town they will turn back.”

  Behind them shadows of children shivered here and there, never allowing either woman to look directly at them. To their left and right the children wavered. Whenever one of them would look toward the children, they would vanish, only to reappear at the edge of their vision.

  Leona and Huginn traveled backwards, step by step, casting their gaze here and there, trying to keep the children from converging on them, but there were hundreds of the shadows behind them, silhouetted by the burning debris in the street.

  Fire blasted over Leona’s shoulder, landing amidst the shadows of the child-like darklings. They skittered backwards, the light of Rowan’s fire chasing away a bit of their essence. The light intruded on their shadows, and they became indistinct, skirting backwards and away from the woman.

  “Run!” Rowan commanded.

  Leona didn’t need any urging. Her feet were carrying her toward the edge of town nearly before the order had left Rowan’s lips. The glow of the burning city was fading behind her in the ever brightening morning. The sun was coming up, and Leona was grateful for that. For some reason, the horrors they’d faced that night seemed like they didn’t belong in the waking world. With any luck, all of this would vanish from reality with the light of the sun, just as those diminutive darklings had in the face of Rowan’s fire.

  Silver light flared behind them. A concussion of air slammed into Leona’s back, tumbling her through
the air with a force that knocked the breath from her lungs. The air batted at her, tossing her this way and that as if invisible hands were slapping her back and forth. She landed in a tangled, bruised heap in a pile of snow. She heard three other thumps close by and could only imagine they were her companions.

  “I said she belonged to me, Fen,” the familiar voice of Daniken yelled. Leona struggled to breathe. When she was finally able to get her breath, she pushed to a stand; snow sloughed away from her as she righted herself and gazed back toward the harbinger town. Between Leona and the burning city stood Daniken. The dark elf didn’t look at her though, she was staring back at the shambling, undead horde the four woman had left in their wake.

  The dark elf raised her hands high above her head. A cold wind howled behind Leona, tearing at her back. The wind kicked up snow and ice, driving the wintery maelstrom straight at the undead horde. The wyrded storm was blinding, like a curtain of winter. Leona couldn’t see the darklings who had attacked them only moments before. In fact, the entire visage of Haven was momentarily blotted from sight in the wake of Daniken’s wyrded storm.

  When the wind stopped and the snow cleared from the air, there was no trace of the darklings they’d fought their way through moments before.

  The dark elf whipped around and pointed a long, frozen finger at Leona.

  “You,” she seethed. “Come. HERE!” She snapped her fingers, the sound of ice grating together, and pointed at the spot directly before her.

  Icy wyrd wormed its way around Leona, gripping her like a vise. The desire to obey the dark elf was so great that sweat broke out along Leona’s brow, despite the chill of the morning. Though she battled against the wyrd, she soon found her feet disobeying her, and she took lumbering steps though the towering snow back toward the edge of town.

  Leona tightened her grip on the hammer, and made to reach for the scepter at her back. There wasn’t any energy left in the weapon, but she’d seen the speed of the dark elf before, and two weapons were better than one.

  Daniken’s frozen eyes saw the movement and she flicked her hand dismissively at the scepter. The weapon trembled, shivered, and with a terrible scream, it cracked. The glass scepter splintered like ice with too much weight on it. Along her back, Leona could feel the scepter breaking. She looked to her feet to see silver liquid trailing from the weapon to pool behind her in a small puddle. The liquid dribbled to a stop, and then the scepter crumbled to dust and sloughed from her back.

  Leona tried to raise the hammer, but her arm wouldn’t cooperate with her.

  Daniken’s eyes flashed to the hammer.

  “Ahh, the God Slayer,” she said. “It’s said only one person can lift that.”

  “Depends on who you listen to,” Leona said. “Maybe I’m just lucky.”

  “Or maybe you’re Hafaress,” the dark elf said. The name shivered through Leona with a weight of truth. Her lumbering steps didn’t falter, even though she felt the earth tip slightly beneath her as her head lightened.

  Daniken flicked her hand again, but this time her power didn’t touch the hammer. Instead, it was turned back on her. The silvery light blasted the dark elf in the center, and Daniken tumbled backwards away from Leona, flipping end over end to land unceremoniously several yards away.

  Daniken’s moment of confusion lessened her wyrded hold on Leona, and the young woman shook off the remainder of the dark elf’s enchantment. Leona fell to her knees as sensations and control swept through her body once more.

  “Hafaress . . .” Daniken struggled to her feet, but there was something different about her now. She was still the same dark elf, but Leona had a sense of double vision, as if there was another figure transposed over the image of the elf. The woman was tall and slender, her blond hair hung in waves of honey down her back. Her skin was pale, almost the color of milk. Her horns, made of wood, sprouted from her head and between their boughs the silver disk of the moon rested.

  “Vilda,” Leona whispered, staggering to a stand.

  “You’re needed . . .” Daniken let out a shout, and the image of the moon goddess faded, smothered out by the power of the dark elf. “What power is it you hold?” Daniken asked. “You’ve killed me, you’ve slipped through my grasp, and now you call her out from hiding, just when I got her under control?”

  “What is going on here?” Leona asked, not expecting an answer. “You’re Vilda?”

  “Very astute, but no, I’m not. I can only assume that she came to inhabit me once you killed me, but she was weak,” Daniken flicked her hand and straightened out the folds of her dress. “She seemed inexperienced in taking a physical host. She failed. But something about you brought her out of me.”

  “I have a feeling this will bring her out of you,” Leona held up the hammer. She rushed the dark elf, swinging the hammer with all of her might.

  Daniken didn’t seem to know what was happening; she wasn’t expecting the attack. She stumbled back away from the hammer, her mouth opened in a silent gasp, her frozen eyes trained on the weapon. She tossed up her hands and an orb of silver light blossomed around the elf.

  When the hammer didn’t connect with the elf, the momentum threw Leona off balance. She landed hard on her shoulder and rolled to the side just as a bolt of frost scored the ground where she’d landed.

  Leona rolled to her knees and launched herself at Daniken, the hammer outstretched. All she had to do was hit the elf with it once, even a glancing blow with the intent to harm her, and she knew Daniken would be done for.

  Daniken fell stumbled away from the attack. She scrambled to the side away from Leona. A blast of fire blazed past the elf. Leona didn’t have time to look up to know that the person cutting swaths of fire through the morning light was Rowan.

  Overhead the caw of twin ravens sounded.

  Daniken stumbled away from the fire and raised her hands once more.

  The ravens attacked, streaks of black plummeting from the sky. Their wings battered at the elf, their claws raked at her frozen eyes. She shrieked and batted at them, dazzling blasts of icy wind shooting here and there from her hands. The ravens took to the air once more.

  Rowan loomed up at Leona’s right, her hands wreathed in fire. Her white hair a tangled mess around her thin face. She was breathing hard and snow was crusted to her pants.

  “Go to the left,” Rowan said. She raised her hands, fire bursting from her fingers.

  Daniken drew herself to her full height, her hands clawing the air before her. Wind kicked up around them swirling snow and ice. The maelstrom battered Leona and Rowan, blinding them from where Daniken was.

  Blindly, Rowan shot the fire into the fray. Chances were she wouldn’t hit the dark elf, but every so often a blast of fire illuminated a shadowy figure with horns in the midst of the snow storm.

  Claws bit into Leona’s shoulder and she screamed out as icy fire spread through the wound on her shoulder. Blood bloomed to the surface; a rush of liquid warmth.

  Leona stumbled away from the attack, and turned to face Daniken.

  The dark elf smiled, but then a strange transition came over her face. Her mouth went slack, her posture slumped slightly. The fight wilted from her body.

  Daniken’s eyes glazed over just as she was about to bring her bladed hands down in a killing blow. The figure of the blonde moon goddess ghosted across her face, and Leona knew that if she was going to end this, this moment was her only chance. She launched herself at the dark elf and swung the God Slayer with all of her might. The hammer took Daniken in the back.

  Light flared through the elf. Her eyes flashed white. Her mouth opened in a silent scream. From between her teeth a silver miasma drifted out from the depths of her throat and spiraled toward the sky.

  Her body fell to the ground, empty of all energy that drove her.

  Leona stepped away from the dark elf. The hammer slipped in her grip as a rush of relief and disbelief coursed through her. The blue webbing of frost lightened, melted, and sloughed from Daniken�
��s gray skin. Water sluiced from the branches that protruded from her head. In mere moments the dark elf lay before them, void of all ice, a puddle of rushing water coalescing around her.

  The cry of twin ravens sounded overhead. The sisters, Huginn and Muninn, swooped down behind Leona and Rowan. In a rustle like wind through their feathers, the ravens shivered and formed into the hunched figure of the sisters. They stood, ruffling their feathered cloaks.

  “Did you hear what she said?” Huginn asked, stepping closer to the scene. “Fen.”

  “You heard it too?” Muninn asked. She placed a hand on Leona’s shoulder and steered the younger woman away from the fallen elf.

  “I did,” Rowan nodded. “It seems our fearless leader has been the leader of the darklings in Haven all along.” She frowned. “But there’s not time to discuss these matters. We need to leave before he finds us.”

  As she followed the three older women out of town, Leona cast her eyes to the sky. The night was quickly fading to morning and the streamers of darkness traveling through the clouds weren’t near them. Instead, they loomed over New Landanten. The fires that engulfed Haven burned low and ominous, their crackling and popping sounding demonic; hungry.

  “What’s going to happen now?” Leona asked, turning her attention to the way ahead.

  Rowan shrugged. “I assume we follow what Olice tells us, we join with the dwarves and we take back our cities before the scepters can be opened.”

  “Oh,” Huginn said. “Is that all?”

  “Where’s Rorick?” Leona asked. The smell of blood followed them out of the town and into the nearly unbroken snow fields beyond. She hoped the scent of burning flesh that gathered around Haven was that of darklings and not the harbingers of light she’d come to know as friends.

  “I lost him on the way to you,” Rowan told her. “We have to hope he got out. We can’t go back for him,” she insisted.