The Immortals Part One: Shadows & Starstone Page 5

  “Stop!” Jadeth hissed as she slid into a crouch behind a pillar of rock.

  The rest slipped behind her and ducked into the shadows. She squinted and focused on a distant movement far down the winding trail, beyond several towering red rock formations. Lightning forked the sky and shadows jerked and danced.

  “What do you see?” Ivo asked. He shifted positions until his back was to the stone beside her. His gaze never left the trail behind them.

  “Hmm. Movement. It’s in the shadows of a cliff and blends in too well. I can’t see what it is from here,” Jadeth frowned back at Emaranthe, catching and holding her gaze. “I’m moving closer, stay here.”

  Fiery eyes blinked in consent, then vanished as Emaranthe tugged the worn hood back over her hair. Both men made to protest, but a vivid sapphire glare sharper than a dagger stopped them cold.

  Hissing and muttering beneath his breath, Jaeger jammed his axe back into its holster. Ivo’s glare remained on the lithe Elf as she slipped from the shadows and darted into the open, scarlet braids flapping behind her long, narrow, ears.

  “She’s being foolish.” Jaeger grumbled. He grimaced.

  “She’s doing what she feels she needs to,” Emaranthe hissed. “She hates not being able to contribute more.”

  “What?” Jaeger frowned down at Emaranthe, but couldn’t catch her gaze beneath the hood. “She keeps us alive. Well, more or less. If you can call us alive.”

  “She wishes she could fight,” Ivo said. He sighed, still keeping keen watch over her rapidly vanishing form.

  “She never told me that,” Jaeger glanced at his older brother, then back down to Emaranthe. “Why? She was immortalized as a Healer, a keeper of the earth magic.”

  “I was immortalized to burn with fire, to own it and make it mine; it lives in me,” Emaranthe whispered as a cold wind snagged the hood and whipped it from her head. Emptiness burned in her gaze. “But it was fire that killed me, made me this, in the end.”

  Haunted eyes flicked up and locked on Jaeger’s and then Ivo’s and held their gazes without blinking.

  “So I must love what killed me, you see.”

  Both men flinched as dark thoughts stirred. Thoughts they never wanted to remember.

  “So Jadeth both loves and hates her calling. She told me her story once. Long ago.” Emaranthe whispered. A peal of thunder shook the stones around them. Lightning, white-hot and very close, cracked. Shadows jerked and danced.

  The gloomy sky settled again and Jadeth reappeared beside the two men just as the last leaping shadows vanished.

  “Gah! Will you stop that?” Jaeger snapped, startled, as he looked to his left. Stifling a grin, Jadeth threw Emaranthe a sly wink before dropping into a crouch. The others followed suit and the companions traded worried looks.

  “What did you find?” Ivo asked. He struggled to keep his voice down. The wind was picking up again, making whispering difficult.

  “It was a villager,” Jadeth caught three pairs of startled eyes, two of which narrowed suspiciously. “I’d not seen him before, but he was…” she swallowed and her long ears folded against her red braids in grief. “…too wounded for me to save.”

  The suspicion fled and turned to sorrow.

  “Ah. I’m sorry Jadeth.” Jaeger sighed and shot the purple sky a reproachful look.

  “You did your best. Don’t let the sorrow get to you,” Emaranthe said. She braced herself as another gust of wind whipped her cloak about her shoulders.

  “We need to move. It is getting worse out here.” Ivo said. He shifted to his feet effortlessly for someone wearing several layers of heavy armor.

  “The way is clear until…the body,” Jadeth added. “I saw nothing else.”

  Lightning forked the sky and thunder rumbled. Above them, purple clouds shrouded the plateau in a gloomy haze. Unnatural things like magic could stir nature into a frenzy and it appeared the eerie gloom had melded with a summer thunderstorm. Deadly alone in the narrow desert gorges and atop the plateaus, the storm could be enhanced by the enemy.

  “Hurry,” Emaranthe said as she jerked her hood up against the screaming wind. “We must hurry.”

  As one, they darted from the shelter of the outcropping and moved at a smooth, ground-eating trot up the narrow path, all eyes wide and wary. The couple of miles to the body of the unfortunate villager were a blur of thunder, lightning, and howling wind.

  They slowed to a wary halt at the edge of the shadows and paused to bow respectfully to the dead, their right hands over their hearts.

  “Be at peace, friend, may The Four bless you and keep you at their side,” Ivo sighed and turned, jamming his helm back on his head with a gauntleted hand. “I wish I was.”