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“She said the herbs she finds here are more powerful,” Daine remarked when Numair patted her shoulder and moved to another seat, one not so close.
The badger settled across the fire from the two mortals. Broad Foot was there already, half tucked under a fallen log.
“Daine, what in the name of all the gods was going on at that bridge?” the badger demanded. “It looked as if you were dancing!”
The girl rubbed an aching temple and sipped her tea. She felt weak and watery, a bit like tea herself. “It’s these darkings.” She explained what had taken place, while the darking that had saved her arrows nodded vigorously. Somewhere it had acquired a faint streak of gold through its body, color that filled the tiny head that it fashioned for itself. “Seemingly they were fighting, or disagreeing,” the girl finished. “And then I saw Ozorne.” She bit her lip. “There was another time, when the tauros almost got me. A darking was in the water—was that you?” she asked. The gold-smeared blot nodded. “I saw Ozorne then, too, inside him.” She pointed to the darking.
“You never mentioned this,” Numair remarked, eyes glittering dangerously.
She stiffened. “I had other things to worry about! I thought maybe I saw Ozorne because the darkings are liquid, kind of, but they aren’t, are they?” Her gold-streaked companion shook its head.
“We need answers,” said Broad Foot. “Where is the spy—in your pouch still?”
The leather purse thumped at the girl’s belt, the creature inside trying to free itself. “Oh—and I’ve another one.”
“Another—?” asked Numair, his brows coming together in a frown.
“It dropped off the hurrok that cut my head. I think it deserted to our side.”
Broad Foot waddled over to Daine and cut a circle in the earth with a claw. Before he closed it, he told the gold-touched darking, “Inside, you.” The shadowy thing cowered away from him.
“It won’t hurt,” the badger said. “Getting answers in other ways takes too long.”
“But Ma tried that,” protested the girl. “She only got its name.”
“Because that was what she asked for,” Broad Foot replied. “We’re doing something else. Stop dawdling!” Flattening itself like an anxious dog, the gold-streaked darking trickled across the ground unwillingly. It hesitated outside the mark in the earth, then flowed into the circle. The duckmole looked up at the girl. “Where’s this new darking?”
Daine fished out the deserter. “Go with your friend.” She put it on the ground, and the darking rolled into the circle.
“Now the third,” said Broad Foot.
Quickly the girl upended her belt purse over the circle. Her captive fell out with a plop; Broad Foot closed the circle. The darking from the pouch surged against the line in the ground, and flattened as if it had met a wall of glass.
“Stand back,” ordered the duckmole. Opening his bill, he uttered a strange noise, half croak, half bark. Silver fire bloomed over the darkings, who shrank away from it. The glittering light stretched; deep within, a picture began to form.
There was Ozorne, streaked with soot, cuts on his face and chest, a clump of braids singed. At his throat he wore a black, glassy stone on a frayed cord. His lips moved as if he talked to himself. The view spread: The former Emperor Mage stood alone in a cave, a pool of water at his feet. Outside the entrance, snow fell in a thick veil.
An image formed in the water. It showed Daine as she read a book. Ozorne reached for her. When his outstretched wing touched the water, she disappeared. Though the image was soundless, they could see him shriek, baring sharp, silver teeth. Veins in his chest, neck, and face stood against his skin. He spun, and came to an abrupt halt, a look of sudden cleverness on his face.
His lips moved. A thick worm of gold-edged scarlet fire appeared before him.
“So he’d mastered Stormwing magic by winter,” murmured Numair. “Possibly even before the barriers between the realms collapsed.”
“This is months ago,” said the badger. “I remember this blizzard. We don’t have that many, even here in the colder climates—it was the first full moon after Midwinter, the Wolf Moon.”
Neatly, Ozorne cut his cheek on a razor-edged feather. The fiery worm flew to the cut, battening on it as a leech might. Ozorne spoke again. The tube fell away, turning into a bowl as it moved back. It brimmed with dark blood.
Lurching to the pool, Ozorne drank. When he straightened, his eyes were bright; he grinned. Returning to the magical bowl, he breathed a red-gold mist on its surface. It sank into the depths of the blood and swirled, making wavy patterns. Quickly the Stormwing cut both lips, flicking the blood drops into the bowl.
“For speaking,” guessed Numair, engrossed. “Blood also for life, and to bind the fruits of the working to him. He couldn’t have done it as a mortal, but here —”
“Here magical laws are what you make them,” Broad Foot said. “He seems to have learned that better than most who are born immortal.”
Numair raised an eyebrow. “I doubt that he learned that at all,” Ozorne’s one-time friend replied. “He merely wanted to do the thing, and so he forced it to happen. Subtlety has never been his strong suit.”
Again that delicate flick of a feather edge, this time across each ear. The blood went into the bowl. Closing both eyes, Ozorne raised the same wing feather. Even more carefully, he just nicked the skin of his eyelids, producing two scant drops to add to what he’d already gathered.
Slowly, he raised his wings, pointing at the cave’s ceiling. As he did, the liquid surged upward. Ozorne lowered his wings; the bulge remained. Twice more he repeated the motion; each time the liquid in the bowl rose higher. After the third raising, it formed a red-black column nearly eighteen inches tall.
Ozorne was sweating. Now he shouted; the bowl vanished. Its contents dropped, breaking into a myriad of blobs. Each turned black. The Stormwing’s face was mirrored in each newborn darking.
The vision dissolved. Only the trio of darkings remained.
“There you have it,” said the duckmole. He broke the circle to release the captives. “Your enemy made them to serve as his voice, eyes, and ears.”
Free, the darkings did not try to escape. Instead they created heads for themselves so that they could nod. Again Daine noticed that one still contained a streak of gold. Somehow, while in the circle, another had picked up a small leaf. This it wore on its head, like an absurd hat. She was nearly positive that the third—the plain, shivering one—was the darking that had dropped from the hurrok.
“So you are Ozorne’s spies,” she said.
The answer was a head shake, first on the gold one’s part, then on that of the one that bore a leaf. The third blot shrank lower to the ground, trembling.
“You showed Ozorne that we were at the bridge,” Numair reminded them.
Gold-streak pointed an accusatory tentacle at Leaf. “You’ll do it again when he summons you,” growled the badger.
The answer was emphatic head shakes from the gold-tinged and leaf-wearing blots. The third shrank against the other two.
“But he created you,” Numair said.
Gold-streak began to tremble.
“Don’t be afraid,” Daine said. “You needn’t—”
“I don’t think it’s fear,” interrupted Numair.
“It’s trying something new,” added the duckmole. “Wait.”
The streaked darking’s companions leaned against it to somehow give it strength. An image formed in Gold-streak’s depths, growing to cover its surface. There was the Stormwing Ozorne: He glared at a darking on the ground before him.
“Obey,” hissed Ozorne. Its victim began to shrill; the darkings with Daine and her friends shrilled, too, tiny voices rising and falling. When the image vanished, they stopped.
“He hurts you,” Daine said. “Is that why?”
Gold-streak showed a fresh image: a red-clad female giant—a blot’s-eye view of Daine—as she tugged an arrow shaft away from the onlooker’s v
ision. That picture blurred, to form a fresh image.
“Your leg, isn’t it?” asked Numair, grinning. “From the foot up?”
A large hand came into view, cheese in its fingers. It dropped the scrap and pulled away.
“You fed it.” The badger sighed. “Sometimes I think you’ll feed anything.”
“You were trying to warn me, in the pond?” asked Daine. The visions disappeared. The tinted darking nodded. “And on the bridge? Your friend here—Leaf, and you’re Gold-streak, and this little fellow—” She scratched her head, looking at the trembling creature— “you’ll be Jelly.”
The darking’s shivers slowed, though they didn’t stop. It rose a bit in the middle, no longer trying to merge with the ground.
“So on the bridge, Leaf was reporting to Ozorne. Gold-streak, you tried to put Leaf in the pouch to keep Ozorne from seeing where I was, but it was too late—Ozorne had already sent the hurroks. You hadn’t told Leaf not to do as Ozorne bids you.”
