With a sound like hammer on stone, the staff in Amalynde’s hand connected with its target. The hairy tarachnomite scurried back, chittering in outrage, waving two of its eight legs in defiance. Yet retreat it did, undamaged by her blow, but cautious now, having been reminded of its own mortality.
Amalynde crept forward, staff held high and visible. Twelve times her reflection glistened back at her from six pairs of dull black eyes, stacked in vertical rows above a mouth with jaws capable of crushing stone. The tarachnomite were venomous, too. If the bite itself didn’t kill, the neurotoxin would.
She reached for the vale swallow struggling against thick strands of web. So bound it couldn’t move wing or leg, it flopped helplessly with gaping beak and rolling eyes. Amalynde ripped it free, leaving fabric of the tarachnomite’s web dangling, sticky strings loose on the breeze. The swallow screeched in her ruddy hand, drawing the tarachnomite’s attention. Amalynde backed away, holding the swallow’s body up with her long, thin fingers, until it caught the wind and flitted off toward the vermillion upper story of the Red Forest.
Two steps into the clearing and she understood—what she’d left hours earlier on her search for tanabym root had become something else. Not safe. Not home. Not now.
Amalynde retreated into the darkness at the edge of the forest. Stop. Observe. Think. The Wavelengths spoke to her, plucked the strings of her heart. Tingled through her brain with a warning—death was everywhere. In the ground. In the air. No living thing moved and no breeze stirred. Still as a grave, in the clearing and under the grassy thatch that covered her simple dwelling. But where were they, the remains?
She lowered her basket to the ground, carefully, so she would make no sound. Floxy the burble—not tethered in the grass. The animal’s long rope still hung from the burled branch of the whispering oak, but no Floxy on the other end. The pickeroons who combed the yard for pests and crawling things picked no more. Panter pups who’d tumbled and played in the loam had all disappeared, vanished, like they’d never lived there at all.
Dwarves. Those mean, spiteful little creatures with their rumblings and ironwork—hateful, ugly, twisted creatures bent on mayhem and destruction of all good things—surely this was their doing. It seemed fitting to their nature. A thousand years of treaty meant nothing if they had decided to attack.
But wait! There, in the failing midday light near the edge of the clearing—faces. Dozens of them, barely reaching the height of Amalynde’s willowy thigh—an entire battalion of dwarves, frozen in place. Trapped by their own magnetic bond with the soil, unable to move, all the energy forces of this native land turned against them.
Only one power capable of doing this. Only one evil in command of billions—the Unseen.
Amalynde nearly tripped in her haste to back away. She regained her footing and ducked, hiding deep in the lengthening shadows of the forest. Her animals—her friends and helpmates—now just dust in the wake of a force they’d never seen coming. She bowed her head, heart aching. Pray to the Mother of Stars they had not suffered.
The dwarf nearest her exploded into a confetti shower of smoke with hard edges, moving parts that bumped against each other with the whisk of fine steel. Just as quickly, they melded as one and rained toward Amalynde, almost upon her before she could take her next breath.
No! She would not die this way. She would not be reduced to the elements that comprised her, would not give up without taking as many of the Unseen with her as she could. Stumbling, falling, clambering to her feet, long frame more suited for endurance than sprint—no matter. Sprint she would. Down the path, back the way she’d come, deeper and deeper into the Red Forest with the swarm buzzing close behind.
Leap! Now! Over the fallen tree. Bend forward and scoot beneath the marisvyne draped across the path. Don’t stop running. Never stop running—into the wood, where coarse filaments of tarachnomite webbing hung between trees. Lead them this way, and they will follow, the Unseen, those evil, killing marauders of peace and all things good. Lead them this way, and let their own fitting death take them where it would.
She heard the forerunners of the swarm hit the webbing first—pap! Pap! Pap! The grinding sound of Unseen particles colliding against each other, against the fabric of a natural barrier they could not overcome. Then came the clacks and the crunches, those powerful tarachnomite jaws closing on wads of entangled things that to a dozen unblinking eyes would be far more Seen than not. The glorious music of destruction, the rendering useless of an entire invisible army.
Amalynde watched as more tarachnomites descended from their trees for the feast. Would this meal turn on them? She couldn’t begin to guess. But one thing she knew beyond all doubt—not far behind the Unseen would come their master. The destroyer of her home and the murderer of innocents. The beast, whom she would hate until the day her own death came calling.
Amalynde drew herself up to full height and screamed his name into the wind.
“Nanomancer!”
