could not escape them. She found herself turning away from the Crowned Horns, fighting to keep from being driven into the deep snow away from the trail.
None of the others fared any better. The younger children cried out in fear as the monstrous bats swooped down through the storm, snatching at them.
She had nearly made up her mind to make a dash back the way she had come when the coldwarg pack arrived.
And they were not alone.
Appearing out of the storm like ghosts were a host of cloaked and hooded figures, their white garb rendering them nearly invisible against the snow. At first she thought they were Elves come to their rescue, then she knew they were not. All carried long spears.
“Do what you must!” she cried to the others. “But run!”
A coldwarg leaped at her. She reared to meet its charge, praying that Hieretsur could hold on. She thrust her horn into the wolf-thing’s belly and shook her head savagely, flinging its dying body aside.
Teeth raked her unarmored flank, and she spun and kicked at the new foe. A yelp told her that her sharp hooves had connected.
Then leathery wings enfolded her head, blinding her. Enormous wings battered at her with punishing force, and she felt Hieretsur’s weight leave her saddle. She could hear baby Kalania wailing in terror and pain. She felt sharp claws scrabbling at her throat and chest, shearing through her armored collar, and raking into the flesh beneath. She shook her head savagely, and felt her horn slide into the leather of its wing, but these were not creatures of Dark Magic to die at the touch of a unicorn’s horn.
Blindly and desperately she fought, hearing screams all around her, and the yelps and howls of the coldwarg.
At last she managed to drag the monster beneath her hooves to trample it.
She heard faint screams overhead. Looking up, she saw two of the bat-creatures soaring away, bodies struggling in their claws.
The snow was red with blood. The other unicorns, some dead, some mortally wounded, lay on the snow. The coldwarg were quarreling over the bodies.
The cloaked figures moved through the carnage, checking for survivors and gathering up fallen weapons.
At the moment, no one was looking at her.
Calmeren moved, silently as only a unicorn could, away from the battlefield. When she was sure she was concealed by the storm she began to run with utter determination, agony lancing through her with every step.
Sentarshadeen must be warned. Whatever the cost.
—«♦»—
WHEN Idalia had brought the rains safely to the Elven Lands with the Wild Magic, there had been, as always, a price. It had been a high one, and a hard one to accept, but she had weighed the cost in lives and pain if she did not, and made her bargain.
The price for the power to save the Nine Cities had been her life—but it seemed that the Gods were slow to collect.
She had been surprised to awaken from her working trance at all, and had spent a sennight in the House of Leaf and Star, recovering from the heavy demands the magic had placed upon her body. Each day had been a gift, and an odd surprise, but she had come to realize that Gods’ time was not the same as mortals’. They had accepted her bargain, and would collect upon it in Their own good time. But she knew that every hour she lived now was borrowed.
When Kellen had returned from the Barrier, and she had healed him, Idalia had almost grown used to that, but then she received another unsettling reminder of how much things had changed. When she summoned up the power to heal her brother, no personal price was asked of her… and there was always a price to the Wildmage over and above the personal power expended.
But no longer. Wildmagery still drained her personal energy, just as it always had, but now no additional obligation was set upon her when she did her work, as if all prices had already been paid.
Perhaps they had. Perhaps accepting the greatest price she could pay had negated the need to pay any other.
