The raiders dragged her through the dark woods. The lantern swinging in the hand of the one in front of Ash made light and shadow tilt and spin dizzyingly around her.
The sudden exertion of climbing through brush and over logs and stumps compounded her exhaustion from spellcasting. Her legs felt weak beneath her, as if they might buckle at any moment. As they marched, she had the odd sensation of simultaneously floating and sinking, and at times she could hardly feel her feet on the ground.
The man behind her used the sword at her neck to pull her back when she fell off-balance, which was the main reason she'd managed to keep herself conscious during their trek through the hills. Her neck stung and grew slick with blood.
"You keep doing that and I'm not going to make it to wherever we're going," she muttered to him once.
He responded by lightly jabbing the blade under her chin, and seemed amused when she jumped. "Keeping you alive isn't a priority," he said. "Best keep that in mind."
She was not foolish enough to believe she'd get out of this alive, and though she hadn't quite given up looking for a way out, the reality of her situation was settling on her. She feared for Drizzt more than anything. What would he do without her, if he made it through? Had she taught him enough common for him to make it in the world on his own? Would he be able to find anyone patient enough to listen to him before they attacked or ran? What would the other villagers do when all the fighting stopped? She did not think they would be interested in helping him, even now.
She should have spent more time teaching him. She'd known there was a possibility of them being split up sooner than they wanted. She should have planned for it better. She should have done more to prepare him, or introduced him to more people, or…
The flat of the blade choked her again as she tripped over a fallen branch. Steadying herself, she searched herself for an inkling of magic energy. This time, she felt a tingle of magic at her fingertips, ready to be cast. Her heart skipped a beat. It was not enough yet, but her strength was slowly coming back.
They rounded the top of a slope, and slowed. The had come upon the mouth of a small gorge filled with armed men and women. A few of them were having their wounds wrapped by others, but the majority of them were uninjured. They had retreated, Ash realized, to draw Drizzt and the others out into a fight on their own terms.
At the mouth of the gorge, Kelle Millpond was scattering something on the ground under the careful watch of several guards. Two swords pressed against her, one on her back and one under her ribs, and three archers stood nearby with bows half readied. Even with all that, the men holding swords to her looked nervous to be standing so close to her.
She turned, and Ash saw her face lit in the light of the solitary torch that was providing light in the gorge. She wore a dour expression that looked somehow ill-fitting on her face. She was dropping a pale powder on the ground, her movements very slow so as not to elicit any unwanted jabs or arrows from her jumpy guards. Her lips moved slightly as she went, but no sound came out.
As she finished, she straightened and looked up for the first time. Her eyes alighted on Ash, and she blinked in blank surprise. Then she brightened. One eyebrow quirked up with interest, rather than dismay, which was what Ash was feeling at that moment.
"You kill me, and the spell will fail," Kelle reminded the raiders. "The magic will drain from the ashes."
Ash looked down the path Kelle had followed. When she looked closely, she could make out a subtle line of ashes stretching all along the entrance of the gorge, from wall to wall.
"Prove it works," growled one of the raiders, a young man with a thick beard.
"It will affect any solid object that disturbs the ash. Try it yourself."
The man gave her a suspicious look before bending down to pick up a rock. He backed up a few steps, then tossed it underhand onto the ashes.
Where the rock hit, an enormous gout of flame erupted straight into the air, bathing the entire gorge in brilliant orange light and a rush of heat. Ash staggered back, shielding her face. Most of the raiders did the same. Kelle blinked a few times, but didn't flinch. When the flames died down after a few seconds, she turned to the beaded man, who Ash began to suspect was some kind of leader.
"Satisfied?" she asked dully.
The bearded man gave a nod to the guards, and gestured toward the other end of the gorge.
"I would tread carefully," Kelle warned quickly as the swordsmen beside her moved closer to the line of ashes. They stepped over the line—very carefully—and led Kelle deeper into the gorge. The man holding Ash prodded her forward, and they followed.
"The other mage," Ash's captor explained to the leader as they passed near him.
"There are two?" the bearded man asked.
Ash felt the man behind her shrug.
The bearded man looked her up and down distantly, like a slaver appraising new merchandise. He didn't look impressed. "We only need the one," he decided.
The man behind Ash paused, then obediently moved his sword up in preparation to draw it across her throat. Ash thrashed against him ineffectually. She managed to bring her foot down hard on his boot, and he cried out in annoyance but didn't let go of her.
"Wait a minute," Kelle said in a rush. "You do need another mage."
The bearded man crossed his arms over his chest. "What for?" he said, sounding like he was not inclined to believe whatever answer was about to be offered.
"Well," Kelle began hesitantly. "I wasn't going to say anything—for obvious reasons, I hope—" She spread her hands in an innocent sort of shrug, and one of the swordsmen beside her pressed his sword a little tighter against her back. She glanced down at him, keeping her hands raised and still now. "But after setting up that enchantment, I've nearly depleted my magic reserves. I won't be able to maintain it for more than a minute or so without help."
The man looked unconvinced. "And this one can help you with that?"
"She can channel magic for me and I can draw it out of her. Like squeezing a sponge."
Ash, and the man holding a sword at her throat, looked to the bearded man. He gave Kelle a tired look, clearly suspecting a lie. Kelle's face stayed unnaturally still, her eyes big. She was a bad liar.
The man shook his head, and gave a careless wave. "Fine. Keep them both, then. It'll make no difference."
Kelle looked like she wanted to argue for even further concessions, but knew better than to press her luck. The man holding Ash gave her an angry shove. She stumbled after Kelle, and her limping guard shuffled behind her.
The raiders tied them to a skinny tree in the center of the gorge. They wound twine around their hands in a way that left their fingers completely immobile. The raiders didn't know much about magic, it seemed, but they knew enough to respect a powerful magic user and restrain them accordingly.
As soon as they finished, the raiders quickly scurried away, climbing up the sides of the small cliffs on either side or running about telling each other where to go or making sure their bits of armor were on straight. When they had all scattered out of hearing range, Ash tilted her head to peer sideways at Kelle. Her eyes looked more tired now, as if she'd been making an effort to hide her exhaustion before, and there were smudges of dirt and blood on her face, though she seemed mostly unhurt. Ash doubted that they could have captured her unless there was no more magic at her disposal. If she was here, it meant that she really was as worn out as Ash.
"We meet again," Kelle murmured, and Ash could hear the smile in her voice.
"Yes," Ash said very softly, afraid that their captors would stop them if they heard them speaking.
"How's the studying coming? Are you a wizard yet?"
Ash twitched her hands against the rough rope and twine. The circulation to her fingers was getting cut off. She searched herself for the energy to cast-and found hardly enough for a simple light spell. Magic energy stirred lazily around her fingers, but seemed reluctant to come to her call.
"Could be better, I suppose," she said mildly.
"That's alright." Kelle shifted, trying to ease the discomfort in her limbs. "I was beginning to worry that no one was going to come for me in time. But now the gods have sent me you. I shouldn't be surprised. Fate has a plan for you and I. Ever since we first met, I could sense it."
Ash blushed. She didn't know that she believed in things like fate, but the sentiment was flattering, coming from someone like her. "The gods should have sent someone else," she whispered regretfully. "I won't be much help to you in this state."
"Fear not," Kelle said, leaning her head back against the tree with a confident air. "I've been in worse trouble than this before. We'll get out of this. We need only wait for the right moment."
"What if there's no right moment?"
"There always is."
Ash raised her eyebrows to herself, but didn't argue.
"Was that true, what you said about the spell breaking if you die?"
"Not even a little. If you place a spell somewhere, the magic is already there. It stays until it's removed. It also isn't true that I need you to maintain it."
"I know. Thank you for that." She continued to wriggle her fingers, trying to free herself without much success. "So...Erith found you after all, to bring you here?"
"No. A very flustered, very frightened farm boy did. Came running into Longsaddle searching for a mercenary. He found one. I was surprised to find Erith here waiting for me."
She couldn't suppress her curiosity. "Did the two of you…make up?"
Kelle glanced over at her. "What do you mean by that?"
"You were arguing before," she said with a shrug. "Did he tell you that we ran into him, a week or so ago?"
She frowned. "No."
Ash smirked. He'd been too embarrassed about it to recount the story, apparently. But he had come back to help, after all, even when he'd thought Kelle wasn't coming. It was more than she'd expected of him.
Kelle watched Ash's face closely, her head craned sideways to look at her. "Did he...say something to you?"
"He said a lot of things."
"What do you know that I don't, Ash?"
"Nothing."
"Nothing?"
"You should probably ask him, not me."
She gave Ash a long look, somewhere on the border of intrigued and concerned. She bit her lip. After a few moments, she shook her head, dismissing the matter. "Look-I'm sorry about all of that nonsense before. Things got a little out of hand."
'A little' was an understatement, Ash thought. "Let's not worry about it just now, maybe?"
"My thoughts exactly."
After a while, Ash realized that the area around them had gone still. Everyone was hidden in dark corners or up the walls on either side of the gorge. She and Kelle were sitting under the only torch in the middle of the canyon, with archers looking down on them from above. They were bait for a trap.
"If someone comes for us—" Ash began.
"They will."
"Then they'll be killed by that awful spell you just set," she snapped, annoyed by her cavalier tone and apparent failure to realize the obvious.
"Have some faith, girl. We'll escape and get past the enchantment before any of our friends can trigger it." She looked around, with only her eyes. "In fact, it looks like our opportunity has come. Give me your hand."
Ash's eyes widened. Still skeptical, she carefully twisted her hand until it was touching Kelle's. That was as close as she could get. "I don't know if I can—"
"You're going to have to," Kelle cut her off flatly, as if it were as simple as that.
"What do we do?"
"Make fire."
Ash's heart dropped. "I don't know how to make fire," she whispered.
"Don't worry about that. Just lend me your strength."
"How—"
"Don't think," Kelle hissed, curving her hand around closer to Ash's. "Just do it."
Ash opened her mouth to say something else, but Kelle was already whispering the words to a spell under her breath. Ash closed her eyes, and concentrated.
Don't think.
She felt the spell rising in Kelle's hands. She could sense the magic slowly, painfully growing, but growing nonetheless. She focused on the contact between her skin and Kelle's, on the tingling of magic at her fingertips, grasping at tiny traces of energy. She pictured the power flowing from her hand to Kelle's, and she felt the frame of the spell coalescing under Kelle's skillful guidance.
Suddenly, she smelled a sharp, bitter scent. There was heat against her hands, and then pain. She suppressed a yelp that came out as a gasp instead. She felt the twine on her fingers loosen. Blood rushed through her fingers, and her hands throbbed with pain from the fresh burn, but she hardly noticed.
"I can't believe that worked," she said, glancing around at the raiders to see if any had noticed what had happened. She kept her freed hands carefully hidden between her back and the tree.
"Did I not tell you that it would?" Kelle replied, but there was a certain delighted surprise on her face that betrayed her own lack of confidence.
"What now?"
"Wind. From the northeast."
Ash gave a short nod, and chanted under her breath. Her words flowed with Kelle's as the magic rose up in her chest and poured through her palms. Somehow, when they cast together, their small reserves of magic grew to more than the sum of their parts. The wind came as only a ripple of the air at first, and then a rush that blew everything in sight sideways. The force of it was greater than anything Ash could have summoned on her own, even at full strength. Trees bent, branches broke, and bows flew from hands as people stumbled and fell.
Kelle gripped the weakened ropes around them and, with a jerk, they were released. Ash fell sideways in surprise, barely managing to catch herself before she hit the ground. Kelle had already leapt to her feet. She reached down and pulled Ash up beside her. There was a sudden flourishing of movement as everyone raised swords and drew bows. Arrows flew over their heads and then tumbled sideways end over end in the wind.
Kelle was gasping for breath and holding her side in exhaustion. "Now," she said, short hair whipping around her face, "we run." Before Ash could reply, she had turned and started unsteadily toward the line of ashes at the mouth of the gorge, her body leaning unnaturally forward and sideways against the wind. Seeing the raiders around them slowly making their way through the wind, Ash quickly followed.
A man holding a sword in one hand and a small shield in the other had stumbled into the center of the gorge and stopped in front of them. Kelle slowed. When he raised the sword, she reached into a pouch at her side and threw a large handful of ash into the wind, which flew into his face in a thick puff. He coughed and blinked and swung his sword wildly. In between swings, Kelle leapt forward and kicked him-unnecessarily hard, even for the circumstances, Ash thought-between the legs. When he staggered, she punched him in the chin, ripped the sword from his hand, and turned back to Ash, making sure she was still there.
"Let's go!" she yelled over the wind, and kept running.
Ash stared after her. After a moment, she realized her jaw was hanging open, and closed it.
She had started to follow the other woman when she felt a slender hand close around her wrist and pull her backward. Fear spiked through her. She wrenched her hand away as she whirled and hit her assailant hard in the face. It was only after she'd made contact that her eyes adjusted and she saw the black skin and white hair.
"Oh! I'm sorry!" she gasped.
Drizzt stumbled, surprise painted on his face. He released her wrist to carefully touch his nose, which was bleeding. Ash recoiled in embarrassment at first, then came back and held his face in her hands. She was relieved when he looked up at her and looked torn between pain and laughter.
"Are you sure you will not try your hand at martial arts?" he asked. "You can hit awfully hard, for a mage."
"I'm sorry," she said again. The skin under her hands was damp with sweat and blood, but he looked no worse off than the last time she'd seen him. Her spell on him had expired. He was himself again, and neither magic nor bad memories clouded his mind-for the moment, at least. "Are you...alright?" she asked.
He seemed to sense that she was asking about his mind, not his face. He nodded once.
"You spotted the trap," she said, relieved. He'd circled around the line of ashes and come from the other end of the gorge to free them.
He tilted his head a little, glancing at the line of ashes several leaps away, and looked amused. "That was supposed to be a trap?"
A number of moving figures drew her attention to the front of the gorge. To her surprise, she saw not only Erith there, but Orin, Elva, Holly, Reyna, and several others from the village. As she watched, Reyna, who Ash had heard had been quite a swordswoman in her younger years, deftly deflected a blow from one of the raiders and returned her own. Holly, pressed against her back, watched her flank as Orin came to join them.
She turned to Drizzt. "You brought all of them?"
He shot them a vaguely disapproving look, and gave a small shrug. "I told them to stay in the village. They wanted to follow."
She began to smile, then she saw a swordsman quickly approaching Drizzt from behind. She didn't have to speak a warning-he saw her face, turned, and made short work of a rather unprepared opponent. Ash took a nervous step back, keeping Drizzt between her and the other raiders. With no magic or weapons, she was defenseless.
"I can't cast any more," she said.
"Stay near me."
Another raider approached, swinging a sword toward Ash. She flinched, but before the sword had gotten anywhere near her, a curved blade had flashed out and knocked the sword from the man's hand, then quickly ended the attacker's life.
Over the wind, Ash heard more fighting behind her. She looked up, and saw Kelle standing on the other side of the line of ashes. The powder had stuck to the damp ground, undisturbed by the wind, and now waited to be activated.
Several raiders had approached Kelle, carefully avoiding the ashes. She leapt back across the line and waited out of reach-daring them to follow. The raiders exchanged a glance, then moved toward her. They stepped high, avoiding disturbing the ashes, but as they did, Kelle stepped forward and casually drew her sword through the ashes at their feet. The blaze that followed was immense. The less quick to react of the men was incinerated immediately. Ash didn't even hear him scream.
"Gods," she murmured as the fire died down again. There were some types of magic that she was still not sure she ever wanted to learn. Out of the corner of her eye she saw Drizzt's eyebrows come together, and she guessed he had similar feelings.
"This way," he said, starting toward Kelle. Ash hurried to follow. As they neared the line, she ducked into a dark corner where a boulder met a tree. Drizzt glanced at her, and nodded in approval. "Stay under cover," he said, and then he was gone, into the fray.
As the wind finally began to slow, Ash ducked further into the protection offered by the stone behind her, and kept an eye out for archers. A path opened for Drizzt wherever he walked as everyone moved to avoid his whirling blades. Orin, Reyna, and Holly fought nearby, protecting each other's backs. Elva stood back at the edge of the clearing, ducking behind a tree, and shot arrows into the clearing with surprising accuracy. In two shots, he downed two.
Nearby, Erith ran to Kelle's side, nocking an arrow.
"Are you alright?" he said, his voice and his face betraying his fear for her.
" 'Alright', and no better, that's for certain," Kelle said, still short of breath. "You took your time coming to find us."
Erith suddenly seemed to notice that Ash was there as well, and gave her a look that started off annoyed and then faded to neutral. Which, coming from him, felt almost friendly. "It took us some time to realize you were gone. We had enough trouble on our hands without having to cover for you as well." He raised the bow suddenly, took aim very quickly, and then shot. In the distance there was a scream in the darkness. He glanced at Kelle as he drew another arrow. He hesitated, and some of the sharpness left his voice. "I'm glad to see you're unhurt."
Kelle gave him a slow, amused smile. She didn't say anything, but Ash got the impression that there was a silent joke in her expression that only Erith understood.
"Can we safely assume you aren't going to shoot either of us in the back this time?" Ash said dryly, interrupting the moment of quiet.
"Some other time, maybe," he agreed.
Behind him, in the clearing, Ash caught sight of a familiar face in the flickering torchlight. The man who'd seemed to be the leader of the remaining raiders was approaching the area where most of the fighting was taking place-near the ashes. He was grasping something small in his hand. Ash frowned at it. Something was off about the way he was approaching. He was preparing for something that was about to happen.
"What is…" Ash began. The man shouted something, and threw the object in his hand before she could finish the thought, or think to shout a warning of her own. The raiders around them all averted their faces or covered their eyes. Drizzt and the others looked up, confused. The object hit the ground in the center of the line of ashes, right beside Drizzt.
There was a blaze of fire, and then a brilliant flash of light that consumed the entire gorge, turning everything to indistinct white. Ash flinched and covered her eyes, but not in time to keep herself from being blinded.
It was some kind of light bomb. As the light faded, her vision erupted into bright spots. Kelle and Erith were similarly incapacitated. But Drizzt had taken the brunt of the glare, shielding Ash and the others from it by coincidence.
She looked up, still blinking away pain, and could see the vague, dark outline that was Drizzt in the middle of the gorge, bent over as if injured. Then the entire scene turned an impenetrable black as a globe of darkness appeared over him and the five raiders closest to him.
Ash pried a sword from the hand of a dead man nearby. The weight felt strange and unbalanced, and though she didn't find it particularly heavy, it was as difficult to wield as ever. She moved toward the darkness, ducking low to avoid stray arrows.
The clearing in the center of the gorge was chaos. Several of the raiders had been caught in the burst of light as well, and were still trying to recover their vision in the low light of the night. One of them was trying to put out a fire on their sleeve. Several archers took aim at the ball of darkness, but hesitated to shoot for fear of hitting their own people.
Around the edge of the darkness, the fighting resumed where it had left off. Erith began taking shots again. Kelle ran in with her sword to fight beside the others from the village, and Ash was afraid for her until she started swinging. She cut a man down in two strikes, then moved on to the next. Ash spared a moment to watch, awestruck. She was incredible with a sword. Ash was beginning to wonder if there was anything she wasn't good at.
"I didn't know you could use a sword," she said to her, impressed and a little insecure.
"Any adventurer worth their salt has got to be able to use a weapon half-decently," Kelle said, tossing a glance over her shoulder.
With the sphere of darkness shading her, Ash managed to stay out of the torch light and approached the edge of the magical darkness, holding her sword out in front of her. Inside the darkness there was an odd quiet, as though the spell had created silence as well as darkness, though she knew that was not the case. Everyone inside had gone quiet, for fear of giving away their location to the others.
Then, suddenly, there was a shout of pain from inside the darkness, and then a roar of flame, and then another shout. Ash's throat tightened. She couldn't tell for sure whether it was Drizzt who had cried out, or one of the others.
Then his voice came, calm but with a strained note. "Ash?"
"Here," she called back immediately. There was another scuffle from within the darkness, and another short cry. Ash took a step back, fearing what might step out of the darkness.
A dark silhouette emerged from the black. It was hunched, favoring one side. Ash hesitated, fearful, as her eyes adjusted. Dark spots still danced in her vision.
"Ash?" the silhouette repeated, softly.
She lowered her sword and hurried to his side. "Here," she said again, then took his arm and pulled him behind the scant cover of a narrow tree. He gratefully leaned against it.
"I cannot see," he said, with a sort of resigned panic in the words.
"Neither can anyone else."
"That spell—"
"Not a spell," Ash said. "Just a bright light. You'll be alright. Give it some time."
His wide eyes darted around at the woods around them, and he seemed to realize that she was right. He looked in her direction, though it was clear he couldn't really see her well yet. He pressed a hand over his left side, and his jaw clenched in pain. Ash looked down, dreading and knowing what she would see there. In the darkness she could just make out the dark wetness on his clothes and dripping over his hands.
"You're—" She looked at the blood, then at his face. She did not even bother to try a healing spell. She knew she didn't have the strength for such a complex spell. A feeling of helpless despair crept over her, cold and heavy. "I can't—"
"It is not so bad," he said, and Ash didn't believe him.
"I'll get Kelle," she said. "If we cast together, maybe we can—"
He shook his head. "Kill them first. If they win, then this will all have been for nothing. Kill them."
Ash looked at him for a long moment. She had a horrible feeling that if she left now, he might not be alive when she came back. But if she didn't help fight now, then Drizzt wouldn't be the only one who was lost.
Tears welled in her eyes, and she grit her teeth against them. Drizzt leaned back against the tree in exhaustion. There was a sadness in his face that reflected her own, but he tried to smile anyway.
"Don't die," Ash said.
"I will try not to."
Ash clenched her jaw, still trying to keep tears in check. She adjusted her grip on her sword and turned to go to the others before she could change her mind.