Balid met her gaze and grinned.
The conjurors drew up their hands, fingers splayed, lean muscles bunching. The shadows gathered, leaching the world of color as the sky dimmed back to twilight. Then, like ravens spreading their wings, they descended.
Ellina ripped her sword from its sheath, sliced at the nearest enemy. She felt the blade make contact, saw the elf’s arm laid open from wrist to elbow. Blood sprang forth, and the elf hissed, clenching the injury to his chest. His conjured shadows dissolved around him, stripping him back to skin and bone.
“You witch,” he snarled. “You traitorous, human loving—”
She cut off that thought with a blade to his throat.
Beside her, Venick sparred with a long-faced female. To her right, Artis was swinging his mace at a pair of identical elves—twins—in a graceful arc. Across the clearing, Balid was in a skirmish with Lin Lill, the two of them moving so quickly that their hands seemed little more than a blur. Ellina started in that direction but was intercepted by another conjuror, this one taller than her by a head. She swerved, kicked his knee. He grunted but did not fall, opening his fingers as if reaching towards her, his shadow seeming to reach with him. Ellina tried to skitter out of range, but was distracted when she felt her sword fly unbidden from her fist. She looked down at her empty hand. Heard the blade clatter to the ground a dozen paces away.
The elf had summoned away her weapon.
Ellina breathed around her shock. Conjured shadows could be used to steal the senses, to build storms and bring darkness, butthis,disarming an opponent, yanking a blade right from their grasp…
This was new.
Ellina reached into her quiver, grabbed an arrow, and sank the point into the conjuror’s thigh. He screamed as she blew past, unhooking her bow and nocking another arrow. Ellina’s earlier doubts were not gone, exactly, but they were diminished, tamped down by the rush of the fight, and by the fact that she was now wielding her best weapon. Bow and arrows. The smooth curve of wood under her palm, the hard tension of the bowstring, the smell of hemp and wax. She drew the arrow to her cheek and set her sights on Balid, but Lin Lill was in the way. Ellina did not have a clear shot.
Venick’s voice rang through the clearing. “Ellina!”
She spun. The male whose throat she had slit was upright again, a sword in hand, coming for her. Blood oozed from the open wound, coating his neck like a red tongue. Ellina jerked back a step, floundering. But, how?How could he possibly be alive when…?
No, Ellina corrected. Not alive.Controlled.Ellina had created a corpse, and these conjurors were corpse-benders. The elf had become one of the undead.
Ellina cast around for the wielder, but then the corpse was on her, demanding her attention. His eyes were unseeing, but his body was able, his grip firm on his sword. That explained why these elves carried weapons when conjurors rarely did. Their blades were not meant to be used in life, but in death.
Ellina ducked to avoid the incoming blow, swung her leg to catch the corpse at the ankles. Hejumped,an agile leap to avoid her maneuver, and Ellina’s thoughts scrambled. She had never seen such a fluid, natural movement from a corpse.
The conjurors were getting stronger.
The creature came in again. Ellina shot four arrows in quick succession, piercing the undead in the chest, the shoulder, the stomach, but it did nothing, did not even slow the corpse, who was past the point of feeling. Ellina knew that it was pointless to attack the dead elf—she needed to find its master. Yet, the scene was chaotic, and it was impossible to tell who was doing what. There was Balid, who was now fighting both Artis andLin Lill. Venick, still engaged in combat with that female. Branton, sinking his sword into an elf’s hip just across the low, glowing embers of the campfire…
Ellina was moving. She was unbuckling her armor, tearing her cuirass away from her body, then her tunic, leaving nothing but a tight chest wrap. She caught Venick’s horrified look, saw reflected in his eyes the insanity of what she was doing, yet there was no time for second thoughts, because her opponent was still swinging, and Ellina had to duck and dodge and move and strip, all while keeping her attention on that blade, which would slice through her bare skin as easily as ripe fruit.
She threw her tunic into the campfire.
The fabric smoked. It caught. Low red embers were rekindled, springing into true flames. Ellina reached into the fire, grabbed the blazing tunic, and flung it over the corpse.
The creature wailed. It clawed at the fabric, but the shirt tangled around its neck, and its bender—whoever they were—was not dexterous enough to lift it free. The stench of searing flesh hit Ellina as the undead dropped to its knees, limp now, as if cut from puppet strings. It pitched forward like a felled tree, denting the earth where it landed.
Ellina’s hand throbbed from reaching into the fire. Her whole body trembled. She swung her gaze back to Balid, still in combat with Lin Lill and Artis. He was in Ellina’s range. The shot was wide open.
But—her hand.
Ellina dared to look at it. Angry purple blisters had sprouted like a fungus, reaching all the way from palm to fingertips. The pain tunneled up her arm, turning her hot all over. She fought a well of nausea.
Around the clearing, the fighting seemed to be gaining new fervor. Though they had killed two enemy elves while somehow managing to stay on their feet, things were not looking good. They were still outnumbered. The sun appeared no higher than before. The conjurors were tireless and could reanimate their dead. Ellina was hurt, and down to her last arrow.
A well of fear rooted her to the spot. Then, sadness, that she could not be stronger than her fear. She saw her friends battling for their lives. She saw Venick, the person who, when asked if she was worth it, had not hesitated to say yes. His face was stripped with exhaustion. His sword arm strained with every swing. Ellina imagined him dying there, how his grey eyes would go blank, his mouth never again quirking with amusement, or telling her secrets, or saying her name.
A memory settled over her shoulders. It was the same memory that infiltrated Ellina’s mind whenever she felt helpless, latching into her skin like hooks to pull her under: a black mind in a black prison in a black night. But could that memory hurt her, really, whenthisnightmare stood before her? Could fear dig those hooks any deeper when they had already reached her bones? Ellina would not be more afraid than she was now. There was nowhere left for her terror to go.
That, somehow, seemed to change things.
She stopped trembling. She ignored the agony of gripping her bow with an injured hand, the way the blisters burst and wept. She nocked her last arrow, exhaled slowly, and aimed at Balid.
“Help!”
