Eighteen Moons

Chapter 2

At peace. In a better place.

However, that didn’t help him personally. He was not in a better place. He was in a terrible one—he was trapped, and his only company was Sebaris Wavewould. For the moment, terror and shock had stilled her lashing tongue. But the peace didn’t last long.

“What are you going to do about getting us out of here?” she asked at length, clawing her cobalt-blue hair away from her pallid cheeks where sweat had plastered it.

“Why are you asking me?” His voice was dead and flat.

Her eyes flashed in the phoenixlight as she glared at him. “Because you’re the only one in this coffin who’s in any condition to use magic. The phoenix exhausted his source and I’m too badly injured. Get us out. I don’t know how much air is left in here.”

“I’m not that strong,” he said wearily. “Wait til Roxanne wakes up.”

“She’s in no state to wield.”

Fletcher bit his lip. Roxanne was in terrible shape . . . then again, she was also powerful. It probably wouldn’t be any trouble for her to wield them free once she woke.

If she woke.

Taeleia and Danisan, his elf friends, had taught him to fend for himself while they’d traveled the Smarlands together. He believed he’d proven to be a worthy pupil. Maybe it was his turn to save his friends. Maybe the time had come for him to fight.

But how could he? What was he fighting for? Thorion and Keriya were dead, and Roxanne was close to it. If Fletcher waited a few more hours, he’d be gone too. He could peacefully slip out of this world and into the next.

“Fletcher, please. I need your help.” Seba’s voice was soft and desperate. He’d never heard her ask for something politely before.

The phoenix hooted, low and musical. It was staring at him with deep, soulful eyes. Slowly, it tilted its sparkling head toward Roxanne.

Fletcher’s jaw clenched. He was fighting for the same thing he’d been fighting for all along: his friends. Roxanne needed him. Seba needed him. Even this phoenix was doomed without him, for it was as surely trapped as the humans were.

With that, Fletcher surged to his feet. He swayed, spots winking across his vision from the sudden movement. The phoenix watched him, but never left Roxanne’s knee.

Fletcher closed his eyes and retreated inside himself, sinking through his consciousness until he reached his magicsource. Its soft greenish glow had never been strong, since Fletcher wasn’t a strong wielder, but it was more diminished now in his weakened state.

It doesn’t matter. I have strength enough for this.

Inelegantly grabbing two mental fistfuls of threads, he opened his eyes and turned his attention to the frozen magma. Luckily this type of rock was light and airy, filled with pockets of space. It would be easy to shatter . . . at least, it would be for Roxanne. For Fletcher, it presented more of a challenge.

The phoenix chirped encouragement and Fletcher nodded. The faint tingle of energy in his veins helped him focus his intent and steel his resolve. He squared his shoulders and forced invisible magicthreads through the rock, mentally weaving them through every tiny crack and crevice until they reached the outside world. Gritting his teeth, he yanked each mental fistful apart. A crack appeared in the wall of their prison.

“It’s working,” Seba gasped. “Keep going!”

Sweat beaded on Fletcher’s brow. He dug into his source and pulled out more threads, snaking them along the fault lines he’d created. Again he ripped them apart, forcing energy outwards, and the crack widened. Pieces of pumice crumbled and fell.

“Again,” said Seba.

Fletcher’s breath was coming in short gasps. This would be hard work even if he hadn’t been on the brink of death, but he rallied. He pulled one final handful of threads from his source, depleting it entirely. The shallow mine of power within him was spent.

He threaded the last of his energy into the wall and, with an almighty effort, envisioned the internal fissures fracturing.

A section of the wall collapsed and a blast of hot air smacked Fletcher. It was scalding and sour, and he had never tasted anything better.

“You did it!” Seba gaped at the outside world.

“Didn’t you think I could?” he wheezed.

She said nothing to this, but pushed herself upright and limped toward the exit. Fletcher had just taken a step when an indignant squawk reminded him that Roxanne was unconscious.

“Sorry,” he mumbled to the phoenix. It gave him a disapproving look and shifted its weight on her knee, moving only when Fletcher bent to pull her over his shoulders. She wasn’t particularly heavy—and his time on the road with the elves had strengthened his muscles—but he’d never had to carry the dead weight of a body before.

“I’ve got her,” Fletcher grunted, once he’d unceremoniously hefted Roxanne. He staggered toward the hole, his tired limbs trembling beneath the added weight, and emerged.

The lava had cooled and dried. They must have been trapped for ages. The ledge had vanished beneath a thick layer of new pumice, flattening the ground. Seba stood transfixed, gawping at something to the west. Fletcher followed her gaze.

“What in Shivnath’s name is that?” he breathed. A league downhill, a huge building was slowly being wielded into existence. The pumice slope of the volcano was twisting and contorting into fearsome shapes. Walls and ramparts and spindly towers were forming before his eyes, all of them a terrifying, hopeless shade of midnight.

“My guess would be Indrath Necros,” Seba replied. “The Shadow’s citadel.”

Fletcher’s stomach dropped. At the base of the monstrosity, he saw dark shapes flitting to and fro. Necrovar’s servants were swarming. Somehow, someway, the Shadow had returned to Selaras. Perhaps Keriya’s death had allowed him to step through the Rift. Perhaps he’d been on the verge of his return and the explosion had been a violent side-effect.

“He’s won,” Fletcher whispered. “Necrovar won. He’s back.”

They had been reborn into a different world—and they were stuck in it.

Seba slowly retreated from the looming monstrosity. “We need to get out of here.”

“We can go to the Smarlands,” Fletcher suggested, though upon seeing the chthonic horrors writhing below, he privately thought it wouldn’t matter where they ran. The Shadow would follow, and sooner or later it would catch them.

Seba stumbled in the opposite direction from Indrath Necros, too weak and weary to walk in a straight line. Fletcher followed, testing the ground with each step before transferring his weight. He didn’t want to slip when he was carrying the injured Roxanne. The phoenix fluttered overhead, crooning encouragement.

“Halt! Who goes there?”

A harsh voice cracked like a whip on the wind. Seba gasped and spun. Fletcher couldn’t react as quickly and couldn’t see who had yelled, but the princess’s eyes widened and she grabbed him.

“Run!” she yelled, and she tore down the mountain. Fletcher followed for exactly three steps before he overbalanced. He tripped and fell flat on his face, adding new cuts and scrapes to his collection of injuries. Roxanne rolled limply, flopping away from him.

The phoenix screeched, rising into the sky. In its absence, coldness washed over Fletcher. But the ice frosting his veins wasn’t because the warm bird had abandoned him—someone was wielding a dark spell against him, a spell that sank through his flesh and turned his bones brittle.

A shrill, pained cry from Seba told Fletcher that the princess had also been attacked. He struggled against the spell that bound him. He wanted to sit up and face his foes, but the cold had sapped him of his last vestiges of energy.

“Humans,” said the harsh voice. A boot pressed into Fletcher’s ribs and flipped him over. He rolled onto his back and found himself staring at three shadowy monsters.

“Some of Tanthflame’s lackeys?” a second man asked, tilting his head. His eyes, flesh, and garments were uniformly pitch-black, darker than the deepest chasm.

The third shadowbeast shook her head. She had a vaguely humanoid shape, but she wasn’t human—though Fletcher, whose vision was blurred without his glasses, couldn’t quite tell what she was. Long hair spiraled around her face in wild whorls, giving her a wraithlike appearance. “No uniforms. These aren’t soldiers.”

“This one’s hurt,” the second shadowman observed, toeing Roxanne. “Looks bad.”

“They all look bad,” said the harsh-voiced one. “Might be refugees from Rahxan. Burn the injured one and take the others to camp.”

“No!” Fletcher struggled in vain against the necromagical spell that had leached his strength. He reached inside himself to grab threads, but came up empty. He had nothing left to give, and he could do nothing to save Roxanne.

Before the shadowmen could strike, a terrible screech cleaved the air. Fletcher’s eyes flickered away from three demons and focused on a point beyond them. There, plummeting through the clouds, was the phoenix—and it had brought reinforcements. Four others flanked it in a fiery arrow formation.

The harsh-voiced shadowman wielded a black current of air against the animals. They scattered and retaliated with blasts of fire. The woman conjured a spiral of furious shadows to counter. Black met red in an explosion of sparks that showered onto Fletcher, peppering him with gnawing burns.

The original phoenix, the one who’d saved them from the lava, landed beside Roxanne and spread its wings. A solid wall of fire spread from it in a whirling hurricane, pure and blinding. The flames surrounded Roxanne, hemming her in, protecting her from the shadowbeasts.

“Blasted birds,” the wraith-woman screeched. She shot a spell into the midst of the phoenixes and got lucky. Her spear of solidified darkness struck one bird in its chest. The animal burst into an inferno of golden-red flames, withering to ash.

Its companions turned on her at once, and though she wielded to defend herself, she was no match for their wrath. They struck her down—and she, too, turned to ash, dying in the usual way of shadowbeasts.

Cursing, the harsh-voiced shadowman knelt between Fletcher and Seba and grabbed hold of both of them. Ice enveloped Fletcher again, radiating from the demon’s vise-like grip on his arm. The cold stole the breath from his lungs, leaving him gasping.

“Leave her,” the harsh-voiced one snapped at his partner, who was blasting necromagical attacks at Roxanne and her phoenix. “She’s as good as dead, anyway!”

The other shadowman didn’t listen, and a moment later he was destroyed by phoenix fire. He burst into black dust and his ashy remains were borne away on the wind.

With an angry growl, the harsh-voiced one wielded. Fletcher felt himself disintegrating—not into dust like the dead demons, but into shadow itself. He was weightless, incorporeal, and blissfully free of pain or thought.

He floated pleasantly in the nothingness for a moment, an eternity; then sensation tiptoed back to him bit by bit, prickling along his nerves, burning through skin and muscle and bone as he rematerialized in a new place.

He, Seba, and their shadowy captor had arrived at the foot of Mount Arax. Its glowing red peak loomed high above, smearing the dark clouds with bloody light. The horrible citadel was shaping itself on the slope, its contortions visible from this distance.

Fletcher twisted his stiff neck. He was in a makeshift camp. Shadowmen and traitorous Imperial Guards alike were striding about, shouting orders. Humans were wielding stone buildings out of the ground and staking metal poles into the pumice at the camp’s boundaries.

“Welcome to your new home,” said the shadowman, leering at Fletcher and Seba. “Where you will serve the Shadow Lord here until your dying breath.”

CHAPTER TWOEffrax Emberwill was stricken with horror, watching as Thorion—now a shadowbeast—rose above the Fironian troops. Men fell beneath the dragon’s deadly black talons and fangs. Anguished screams pierced the air, lancing into Effrax’s heart.