thread that weaves and bonds with everything else. I find these threads and weave them into something I can use, crafting a spell from the very life around me.”
Hrem’s eyes widened. “Do you mean you take some of our life when you cast a spell?”
Visyna smiled and held up her hands. “It doesn’t work that way. I take only what is free. It’s like the heat from a fire for warmth. All life gives off energy as it lives. I find that energy and use it.”
“What if you can’t find enough energy around you? Couldn’t you tap into someone?”
“That would be horrible,” she said, her voice rising before she remembered where they were. “It would be as if I plunged a knife into you and drained your blood. I weave the energy that lives all around us, but I do so with care. I seek to strengthen and help, not hurt. I only take what is available and will harm no living thing.”
“But could you do it if you had to, if there were no other way?”
Visyna thought she understood what he was getting at. “I wouldn’t be able to use your energy even if I wanted to. The oath is far too strong in all of you now.”
“These elves aren’t bound by the oath,” he said.
She understood his implication. She could weave their energy, killing them in the process. “Even if my weaving were strong enough, I couldn’t kill in that fashion.” The very thought of it made her skin crawl.
Hrem raised a hand and held his thumb and forefinger apart an inch. “Then don’t kill them-weaken them. Drain some of their energy, enough that we can get away when the opportunity presents itself.”
It was an intriguing idea, but already she saw a flaw. “Even if I could do it, and I’m not saying I could, I wouldn’t be able to affect Kritton. He is oath-bound like you. The Shadow Monarch’s power makes it too difficult for me to work with it.”
Hrem smiled. “I’ll take care of Kritton.”
She sat back against the tunnel wall. Choices whirled about inside her head, each one dark and filled with unforeseen dangers. A dull pain settled in her breast bone. Is this what it felt like for Konowa? Faced with nothing but terrible choices? A sudden longing for him filled her. Her heart went out to him as she understood in a way she hadn’t before the constant nightmare of choosing the lesser of two evils.
“You say it so easily,” she said.
“For that piece of filth, killing him will be easy. Doesn’t mean I like it, but it’s something that has to be done. In the end, it’s going to come down to him or us, and I’d rather it be us.”
“It’s just that it seems so barbaric, all this killing. There should be another way.” She knew she sounded naive, but didn’t care.
Hrem’s voice grew stern and leaned toward her as he spoke. “Begging your pardon, but have you tried talking to a rakke? The only thing they understand is brute force. And as for Kritton and the rest of these elves, we tried talking to them back in the library and you saw what happened. No, the time for talking is long past. Kritton has to die, and if the other elves get in the way, they will, too. Maybe you don’t like it, but it won’t be the first time you’ve killed.”
“Actually, it will.”
Hrem sat back in surprise. “You’ve been in the thick of the fighting since we set out. .”
Visyna shook her head. “I’ve done what I could to aid the regiment with my weaving, but I’ve never directly taken a life.” In her months with the Iron Elves, her weaving had certainly made it easier for the regiment to kill its enemies, but they had been monsters, creatures spawned by wickedness. What Hrem suggested was something new. It was a line she had never crossed.
Could she drain just a little energy? And at what cost?
“Are you sure?” he asked.
“I would remember.”
A brown carapaced beetle no bigger than a fly crawled across the sand on the tunnel floor near her foot. She stared at it. Without meaning to she sought out its life presence in the web of energy around her. She glanced up at Hrem and saw that he had seen it, too. He looked at her and shrugged his shoulders a fraction.
“They’re living, breathing men with families. They deserve a chance,” Hrem said.
And there it was. She knew what he was saying was true, and that she was being overly sensitive, but she also understood this is how it begins. Once she began weaving the living energy of another life she would lose a part of herself forever. It dawned on her then that if she were ever to see Konowa again, this was a sacrifice she would have to make.
“Keep watch,” she whispered, leaning forward to concentrate on the beetle. She brought her hands in front of her and concentrated on the energy coursing around her. The men of the squad were easy to pick out, their energy laced with the darkness of the oath. She quickly found the slender thread of the beetle’s energy and with soft, smooth strokes began to tease it apart, looking only to weave a single strand of it in the hopes of slowing it down.
The beetle continued to crawl across the floor, unaffected by her efforts. Her face flushed and she flexed her fingers and started again. She found its thread and gave a gentle pull.
“Impressive,” Hrem said, reaching out and picking up the bug with his huge hand. He studied it for a few seconds then incinerated it with frost fire.
Visyna couldn’t breathe. “I was. . I was only trying to slow it down,” Visyna said, dropping her hands in her lap. “Its energy was too thin.” It was a bug, and she knew Hrem would think she was foolish, but she didn’t care. She had just killed a living creature. Tears welled up in her eyes.
Hrem nodded. “Then slowing down a bunch of elves should be easy.”
Visyna looked at him in shock. “It’s murder.”
He returned her stare. “Then so be it.”
The sound of footsteps echoed off the tunnel walls.
“On your feet,” Private Kritton ordered, coming to stand in front of Visyna’s small group. A makeshift bandage of torn blue cloth covered his left shoulder. A dark, wet stain in the center of the cloth attested to the wound from Chayii’s thrown dagger back at the library. Even now, Visyna felt an urge to want to help the elf. She chided herself for the thought.
No one moved. Kritton’s eyes narrowed as he looked them over, then without warning he lashed out with his boot, kicking Scolly hard in the ribs. The soldier yelped in pain and curled up in a ball clutching his rib cage. “I said on your feet, now.”
Hrem was up in an instant, moving far faster than a man of his bulk should move. Frost fire burned in his hands. Several elves appeared with muskets cocked and ready to fire. Each muzzle was aimed at a different member of Yimt’s old squad. There was no way they’d miss.
“Easy, Hrem, he’s not worth it,” Visyna said, gently laying a hand on his arm. Frost fire arced from his sleeve to her skin. The shock of the magic stung her hand, but she kept it there for several seconds, wincing at the pain.
Teeter helped up a whimpering Scolly, while Zwitty and Inkermon rose to their feet on their own. They grouped close together, each one’s fists clenched. Their bravery was all the more impressive because even as they prepared to fight they swayed on their feet. Chayii remained crouched by Jir, her hands buried deep in the fur on the back of his neck. A deep, rumbling growl echoed throughout the tunnel.
“You have something to say, big man?” Kritton asked, wincing as he clutched his left arm to his side.
“Don’t touch him again. Don’t touch any of us again, ever.”
Kritton sneered. “Or what? Your precious major isn’t here to save you now. All I see are a bunch of misguided fools doing the bidding of a bastard in league with Her.”
“Funny,” Hrem said, his voice low and steady, “I was going to say the same about you lot.”
“It’ll be the last thing you say,” Kritton said, his right hand falling to rest on the hilt of Yimt’s drukar.
Seeing it worn by Kritton angered Visyna, but she knew she couldn’t afford to indulge that emotion, not here, and not now. A few growls from the rest of Yimt’s squad suggested they were not as likely to hold their feelings in
