flitted away faster than his mortal eyes-elven or not- could follow. But there was more: alarm, the hint of fear at being discovered. How many years had it been since anyone had looked upon it? How many lives had been consumed by this thing of evil? Now it stood exposed, and if it was afraid, then it could be defeated. Temken took heart from its panicked flight.
His courage was ripped from him by the soul-rending scream that shook the bayou.
This time it did not take the shadow's influence to cast a pallor over the elven mage. He had acted too soon, he realized. Weak from the last attack, his defenses only half-ready, he had challenged the shadow and set it loose upon the village of Survivors. It hated, and it was afraid. In nature, no beast was so terrible as when it was cornered.
Another scream came, a solitary call of pain and anguish. Temken heard no answering challenge from the elves, no wails of sorrow or anger. There was merely a despondent silence, interrupted only by the cries of the victims. The elf rose, his jaw clenched and muscles tight. He spat against the foulness of the bayou's corruption.
This was no way to live, domesticated prey to some unnatural force. One way or another, he would find a way to set these Survivors free to rejoin the cycle of life.
Gwenna stood between huts in the open space that fronted the bayou's heart, rooted to the spot in a mixture of fear and black desolation. Sweat beaded on her forehead, and a caustic taste of bile burned at the back of her throat. The muted gray light filtering down through breaks in the overhead canopy dimmed as if from an early sunset. Cook fires burned low and went out, as if doused, when the shadow swept nearer. People, her people, lay in the muck or sprawled, their breath shallow and eyes vacant, as if staring into a void. They screamed only as the chill finally took them. Otherwise they bore their suffering in silence, trying not to draw attention to themselves. The elves retreated deeper within themselves in an effort to escape.
Except for Gwenna. Untouched, she tried to make sense of the situation, but the confusion within her mind argued against any fair effort to understand.
The sickness, the madness, the chill, the shadow; how many times had it swept their small, dying community? It came whenever someone brought forth the idea of moving on, of leaving. It brought madness among them, infecting others, until the bayou claimed its terrible price in a night of terror. Her stomach churned. So many lives, so many of Gaea's children, wasted away to nothing over the decades. How many times? Dozens, certainly, but Gwenna could only remember the first night when she had decided that the bayou's embrace must be endured. Hadn't they learned already? The law was set, and to challenge it brought only misfortune. One did not question the law or take action against it. What was the point? Better to succumb, better that you lived in ignorance. So she had led her enclave.
Another scream tore through her mind, the shriek tapering off to a whimper. No, there was no magic. No song or savior. There was only a hand on her arm.
Temken.
'Where is it?' he asked, voice frantic and insistent.
The shadow's shroud blanketed her mind, distorting the words to barely recognizable sounds. Gwenna felt silent tears slide down her cheeks. 'Gone,' she answered. 'All gone. Destroyed.'
His bright, hazel eyes searched the gloom. 'I know it's here.' His grip on her arm grew tighter and more painful. 'I can't hold it in place, can't beat it, without you. Gwenna, where's the Shadow?'
It was there at the edge of her vision, teasing her with a shape she could never quite define. It reeked of the bayou, its stagnant waters and diseased animals, and decay. She shook her head and swallowed. Her throat was raw and tasted of blood. To name it invited punishment. Better to stay quiet and hope the chill would pass her by.
'Well, I know one way of getting its attention.' Temken bent forward, splaying his hands out and driving fingers down into the moist earth. Immediately an aura of deep green wrapped itself about his body.
Gwenna remembered he had done this before, when he raised the orchid of jade and lavender from the cursed land. Now he seemed stronger, steeped in the power. This time the aura flared at once and dove down into the earth to raise the orchid instantly. In a blink it grew and flowered. Its petals swayed softly in tune to Gaea's song.
Savior, song… and magic.
Gwenna felt the hold over her slip a fraction as the darkness drew back to build strength and rally. The sweet perfume of the orchid drowned out the bayou's corrupt stench. Its color tinted the land around her-the wonderful green of a bright sun diffused by heavy forest leaves. She tried to flinch away. Better to live in ignorance…
No, the song whispered; better to live.
She turned, reaching out to Temken in support. She froze as the shadow once again revealed to her the darkest of her memories: the loss of Argoth-trees burned, the land razed, her people dying. But she did not see it with the detachment that time offers against all wounds. She remembered it as if it were happening now. She saw it, feeling the guilt of her decisions, her actions, which had cost the Argothians everything they held dear. The guilt locked up every joint in her body. Anguish froze her muscles, and despair blanketed her thoughts. The orchid began to wilt, its beauty fading once again. She didn't want this. She would do anything to be rid of it.
This time, Temken stood ready. He reached out, slowly, the tip of his finger touching hers in the simplest of gestures. Warmth flooded her, the magic coursing through her with energy. It was enough to break the hold once again, to give her the choice of action or withdrawal, courage or despair. She looked to the wilting orchid. Its fading sight reminded her too much of the broken promises of before and almost pulled her down with it as the darkness swept in closer to claim her. She fought against it. She did not want this.
She would do anything she could to kill the shadow.
In the snatch of song that haunted her, echoing within her mind from long ago, Gwenna responded to the reminder that a wilting flower was as much a cause for joy as for sadness. The cycle of life controlled everything in nature's world. Everything born of the earth returned to the earth eventually, and from death always came new life. Gwenna reached out, as Temken had tried to teach her, accepting the orchid's death as the turn of nature's wheel. From it something else could grow, and she drew upon it for herself, soaking it in as the ground drinks fresh rainwater. She allowed it to strengthen her, to give her the resolve to meet the shadow's corrupt embrace as it moved through her and was caught.
Whispering Gaea's song, Gwenna drew the shadow into her snare. It struggled, railing at her with the cold touch of death. Gwenna felt its pains and fears. Just as despair had so many times worked to sap her will and her strength, so now the fear of the shadow worked against it, making it vulnerable. The song in her mind and in her heart grew stronger until it wrapped about them both. It lured the shadow deeper into Gaea's embrace, where it screamed inside Gwenna's mind.
Temken brought his fingers from the earth. The heavy residue had stained them black. Not the foul black of the bayou, this time it was the rich, loamy color of fertile farmland. That, too, would fade as his magic lost its hold and the orchid died, but it was enough for now to remind him of the cycle and the cost that life sometimes demanded. He stared at his hands, at the slowly fading orchid, at anything but the figure standing just over his shoulder.
He rose and turned in one fluid motion, meeting Gwenna's tortured gaze. Her eyes stared ahead, unblinking. A single tear of bright red blood welled at the corner of her eye and then trailed down her cheek. The gaunt-ness of her face had faded, drawn inward with the shadow's poison, leaving her with a touch of her youth in these final hours-perhaps her final moments.
'You should hurry,' she said, the words softly slipping between lips that barely moved. 'I can hold it only so long.'
The mage frowned, biting his lower lip as he considered. 'We could try to kill it,' he offered, sensing even as he put the idea into words that it would not work.
Gwenna blinked away a ripple of pain, her opaline eyes falling on Temken. 'It is already dead,' she said.
The magic still wrapped about him, Temken felt Gwenna's life-force draining away as she used it to hold the Shadow imprisoned. Piece by piece she sold herself to counter its attempts to escape. Temken felt the struggle raging, just as he had originally sensed her final decision to lure the shadow to her and hold it fast. He had thought to try such a tactic himself, binding both his own life-force and the primal essence of the shadow to the orchid's
