The door has no handle on the inside, either. Lictor opens it with a gesture, leads me back into the corridor, then gestures again to close it. He’s a mage of some kind. I know next to nothing of magic, but I can see how easy he makes it look. A single fluid movement, incorporating minute flicks of his fingers, drawing a complex tangle of symbols into thin air. Each of his fingers draws a separate symbol at the same time. I can’t peel my gaze off from it. It’s too smooth. It feels unnatural.

  Lictor gestures again as we walk, and another door opens much farther down the corridor. He walks in and as I follow him, I realize a group of people are looking at me. The room is similar to the one with the fruits: small and luxurious, with even the same furniture - a table and two couches. The fruit platter is missing, though.

  One man lounges alone on one of the couches. He’s even larger than Bann and more tanned than anyone I’ve seen. The sides of his head are shaved bald, but a thick tail of bright copper hair reaches over his shoulders. His eyes are slightly slanted, and he greets me with a curt grunt when I step in. There’s a preposterously large curved sword leaning on the sofa next to him.

  On another sofa, there’s an actual elf and a girl who looks like she’s been picked off the gutter. She’s about my age, but it’s hard to say under the grime. Her hair is remarkably thick, long and dark. It wouldn’t need to be much less tangled, and it would be glorious. Her feet are on the table and I can see her bare feet through a hole in the sole of her boot. Her gaze smolders as she gives me a look from below her brow.

  The elf rises up and bows low. He’s the first of his kind I have ever met, but he has to be one. His ears are slanted and his hair fine and shiny. There’s not a single wrinkle anywhere, but the look in his eyes reminds me of Gran. His face is relaxed and open. I could tell him anything. ”You must be Folke,” he says.

  I bow back to everyone in general. The tanned man places both fists on his knees and keeps them there as he bows, still sitting down. The girl grunts.

  ”Pleasure to meet you. We’ve heard much about you from Lictor. I believe we’ll make a great team,” the elf says and smiles. ”My name is Mandollel.”

  He sounds so gentle and strong at the same time. Are all elves like this? It feels unfair. ”I’m honored to be here. My name is Folke… as you already knew.”

  The girl chuckles. She flicks her head to throw a tangle of hair from her face. She has high cheekbones and lips that Lian would probably kill someone to have. ”Name’s Finna. And this whole thing’s stupid.”

  The huge man turns from me to her. ”You know how important this is.” There’s an accent to his speech that I can’t place. There’s twice the normal amount of consonants in the words when he says them. Understanding him is going to feel like exercising. ”We are called to act! Our madness will burn the world.”

  He must be from Kerthar! Judging from how alien he looks to me, from further away in the east, where the barbarian tribes live. I haven’t seen anyone sit like he does. He’s practically vibrating with tension, like he’s focusing on the task with all he has.

  Lictor clears his throat. ”Rworg knows something of what is happening in Kerthar.” The name has at least four syllables, as he says it. It rolls off his tongue effortlessly. ”The rest of you will learn soon enough.” He steps into the middle of the room and spreads his arms wide.

  I recognize the gesture and take his hand. The rest seem to recognize it as well. Rworg picks up his sword and grabs Lictor’s opposite arm below the elbow. His fingers wrap around his whole arm. Mandollel lowers a hand on Lictor’s shoulder. Finna bumps me with her shoulder as she grabs hold of Lictor’s cloak.

  Lictor starts wriggling his fingers the moment she does. It’s another perfectly smooth motion, but much more complicated this time. It lasts for a while. The air fills with overlapping symbols. They flash brightly and the world goes dark.

  My vision returns in a forest. I’ve been pushed through a thicket of spider webs and I fight the urge to wipe my face. Finna, on the other hand, paws at her head and whole body with both hands. Mandollel and Rworg look around, composed. It’s late, and the forest is already fading to black, the shapes of trees and the moss on the rocks barely visible. White boulders jut out from the ground, taller than me. The trees themselves are familiar, but compared to the forests that I’m used to, there are more evergreens than deciduous trees. I chuckle when the word pops into my mind. Gran taught us all to read and write and everything about nature that I’ll never need for real. Everyone complained about it so much, but here I am, missing the leafy trees of home and remembering the word she used of them. In this unfamiliar forest, some orange lights flicker through the trees.

  ”We’re near the border. The lights ahead are from a Kertharian camp. They are raiding a small village in two hours,” Lictor says.

  ”How many?” Mandollel asks.

  ”This isn’t what we agreed on,” Finna says.

  ”Three warmages, fourteen soldiers, seven non-combatants, though that doesn’t really apply here.”

  ”We will offer them a chance to surrender,” Rworg says. He swings the curved sword and lifts it before his chest, pointing the blade up.

  Is he insane? Lictor said there’s 14 soldiers in total! I have never fought a single human for real. Much less a warmage. When did I agree to fight at all?

  ”We will not harm the non—” Mandollel says, but stops mid-sentence. His face turns sour for a moment, but he clenches his jaw, grips a handle on his belt and pulls out a sword.

  I didn’t pay attention to the dangling handle before, but now there’s a faint blue glow as he drags the blade into existence. It appears from thin air as he keeps pulling. The sound it makes is like a whistle of some bird. The blade is a needle with a cutting edge. It shines silver in the moonlight.

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  Who are these people? Mandollel and Rworg start walking toward the lights. Finna stands there, but who could blame her?

  I swing my bow from my back into my hand. I nudge the quiver on my hip to make sure the arrows are loose and ready. Just in case. I’ll hang back, like I always do. I guess I’ll have to go and see what happens?

  Lictor waves a hand toward the lights. ”Go.”

  Mandollel drops low and vanishes into the forest. His technique is immaculate, feet landing lightly on the soft forest floor, body weaving between the branches. He doesn’t hesitate or correct his movements even once. I wonder if he can see in the dark.

  Rworg, on the other hand, marches directly into the forest and toward the lights. He’s wearing light leather armor and holding his sword in one hand. He pushes the branches off his face with his other one, making an astounding racket. I grimace with every snap and crack.

  Finna does as well. She keeps turning around. ”Still the same place?” She takes a final look around the area and makes a rude gesture at Lictor. “You changed the deal. I’m out. I’ll take my own chances.”

  Lictor purses his mouth, but doesn’t react otherwise. He presses a finger on a cluster of runes on the shoulder of his cloak and they glow blue. ”Can’t win every time. Sorry, Folke,” he mumbles quietly to himself. I can make it out, even though I’m not sure if I was supposed to. He winks out, disappearing into thin air. At first I think he teleported somewhere again, but I can hear him take in a breath and a quiet thump as he jumps into the air.

  He must have just turned invisible. A ludicrous thought to have, or it would have been a couple of hours ago. I wonder where he jumped and wait for the sound of him landing, but it doesn’t come.

  During my wait, Finna has disappeared. I didn’t even notice her leaving. Can she turn invisible too? It seems unlikely. I shrug and move in the direction where Mandollel went. I’m not going to keep standing in an empty clearing, alone. I try to keep as quiet as the elf, but I can hear how my steps rustle and how loud my breathing sounds in the quiet forest. Somewhere ahead of us, there’s the crash of Rworg moving his way through the forest. He begins shouting something in a language I haven’t heard before.

  I creep closer to the camp and nearly bump into the elf. He’s leaning on a tree, almost hugging it. At the last moment, he lifts a hand to stop me. The lights of the camp reach us, and I peer from behind the branches to catch a glimpse of what’s going on.

  Rworg is standing at the edge of the camp, shouting in what I assume to be Kerthar at the people in the camp. There’s a large bonfire in the middle of maybe eight tents. The Kertharians are silhouetted against the light, and I have to squint. I keep my other eye closed so I’ll be able to see something in the dark even after looking away from the fire and torches. The people in the camp have weapons ready, but so far they are listening to what Rworg is shouting at them.

  Mandollel leans toward me to whisper. ”He’s asking them why they are here. Telling them to go back unless they want to be killed in a foreign land by foreigners.” He cocks his head to the side. “Somehow it’s worse than being killed at home, I think.”

  The people in the camp watch Rworg. Their mouths move, but I can’t hear what they are saying. A man in a robe pushes his way out of a tent. I guess he must be one of the warmages, and if so, I probably should be ready. I hesitate, but slide out an arrow from the quiver and nock it. I hope it’s not just someone coming out of a bath.

  Mandollel has been staying still, listening. ”His accent is atrocious. I wonder if the Kertharians can even understand what he’s saying. Now he’s telling them to—”

  His words are cut short by the screaming. The sound is a high-pitched wail that undulates up and down. The Kertharians nearest to Rworg start it, and everyone in the camp joins in immediately.

  The screaming is wild, voices breaking and cracking and raw. My blood kicks in response to the sound.

  Four men start rushing toward Rworg. Teeth bared and eyes wild, they stumble over each other to get to him.

  The man in the robe raises his hands high above his head and a blue glow starts to form between them. Power drags and sizzles around him. I don’t have time to think. I fire. I can’t hear the arrow connect from all the shouting, but my aim is true. The light winks out and the man drops to the ground.

  ”Beautiful shot,” Mandollel says.

  It was a reflex. I didn’t mean to. I glance to Mandollel, trying to explain, but he’s somehow far ahead of me, already much further than seems possible. His sword whistles and leaves behind a silvery after-image, as he twirls it while running.

  First two men reach Rworg. He cleaves both of them in half with a single swing of his sword. I’m not sure if I saw right what happened. That shouldn’t be possible. I’m happy that I didn’t see it more clearly. Curiously, it doesn’t affect the screaming. The high-pitched war cry continues, the remaining two men still charging at him.

  Two men are running near the warmage that I shot. They don’t stop to check or help him. One of the men jumps over the body and his leg snaps the arrow sticking up into the air. The body jerks but lays otherwise still.

  Something rises up in my throat and leaves an acrid taste in my mouth. I glimpse a blue glow farther back, on the opposite side of the camp. It contrasts against the orange and yellow light of the torches. The robed silhouette of the caster is easy to see, but they are really far. I spit to get the taste out of my mouth and nock the arrow.

  I don’t know how long I have, but I still take a moment to aim. The glow grows brighter and more intense, coloring the camp blue instead of orange.

  I release. The arrow arcs over the camp, but a rustle and a scream wrench my attention away before I can see if the aim was good.

  A woman rushes toward me. She’s maybe ten steps away, raising something over her head. She screams as she runs, the same wail as the others, teeth bared and tongue lolling out. She must have seen where the arrows came from. She stumbles over a root. I nock and shoot an arrow without aiming. It hits her in the stomach. I wince as she goes down.

  I was lucky it was only a single person who stumbled. She wasn’t lucky, at all. The hit wasn’t a clean one. She’s down, but it’ll take her ages to succumb to the wound. A thought flashes through my mind: Lille would scold me for that kind of shot on an animal and make me finish it at once.

  I freeze at the idea. The woman wriggles on the ground. She’s not just wriggling, she’s still crawling toward me. Her war cry hasn’t stopped either. It sounds pained, but still as angry. The arrow sticks out from her back, the wet tip drawing arcs in the air as she crawls, the black stain spreading on her clothes. The weapon she was brandishing is a large wooden ladle.

  ”Mage!” Mandollel shouts from somewhere inside the camp. ”Mage!”

  I wrench my eyes off the woman and sweep my gaze around the area. Rworg is wading in a pile of bodies. He’s been painted with blood, his teeth gleaming white next to the red that looks black in the moonlight. I notice the blue glow to my right from the corner of my eye. The mage must have been at the very end of the camp or visiting a nearby bush or something. As I see the glow, it’s replaced by something huge and orange and terrifying.

  I try to turn and run, but I trip on the ladle the woman stabs at my legs. I’m still falling when a massive force hits me from the side. I have time to register a piercing spike of pain in my right ear. The shock wave hits me and throws me into the air. The ground flies away from me. I spin and hit something back-first. It pierces through my shoulder and the impact would push the air from my lungs if they still had any left. A bloody branch sticks out from my shoulder. The mass of fire rushes toward me too fast to comprehend. It hits me before I have time to scream.

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