Three days later, Corminar did not appear.

  I waited, Turell and Arzak at my side, to greet him. Well, mostly it was to tell him that the range was ready and that our arrow supply was nearly overflowing, so Archery training could begin. Arzak had a list of trainees ready and waiting, while Turell was there because he had nothing else to do—having been so eager to help that he had already got through all the tasks I’d given him.

  But the portal opened, and through it, we saw only the slightly blurry brick wall of one of Uil’s many buildings. I gave it a minute or two, coughing awkwardly while we waited, before starting to panic.

  It occurred to me that maybe my mother had got him. For all we knew, she’d been in the camp with us, invisible, this whole time. Maybe she’d stepped through the portal with Corminar, and killed him while he was separated from us. But then I caught myself: no, that didn’t make sense, because if my mother knew where our camp was, then the Council’s armies would have already wiped us off the face of Alterra. If Corminar was missing, someone—or something—else was to blame. Whatever it was, we wouldn’t find out from here.

  ‘Arzak,’ I said, without turning away from the portal. ‘Put Zoi in charge. You’re coming with me.’

  My orcish friend disappeared to give Zoi her orders, leaving Turell and I at the portal. I’d have trusted Val or Lore over Zoi, but they were down south, in the Sundorn, doing their best to recruit a part of the world untouched by the Council.

  Turell coughed pointedly, as if to say that after all the work he’d put in, he should be in charge.

  ‘Keep an eye on Zoi,’ I told him, demonstrating that I trusted him too. ‘Keep her on task.’

  The minor lord—not someone used to receiving orders—nodded his agreement, then he, too, disappeared from my side. It took Arzak a few minutes to return, but when she did, her presence was announced by heavy footsteps and minutely squeaking joints on her metal arm support. We’d need to see about greasing that contraption at some point, but right now, there was another priority: making sure that Corminar was still alive.

  ‘Ready?’ I asked Arzak.

  ‘Mm. Ready.’

  I stepped through the portal, Arzak on my heel. We appeared in the centre of the small city of Uil, a key trading post in the Goldmarch empire. It was a bustling city, filled with traders, merchants, and people whose business it was to put others together. The taverns were grand, the main streets cobbled with large, polished stone, and often you would hear a drunkard or two singing as they strolled on home.

  But it was a ghost town.

  Nothing about this made any sense. The southern Goldmarch was quiet because the malae had passed through, and the corruption’s innate power had drawn out monsters. But out here, in the west, there had been no malae to speak of. No monsters. So why was there not another person in sight?

  Arzak furrowed her brow. ‘Hmm. Cos of snow?’ The suggestion was half-hearted.

  I shook my head. ‘Something’s happened here.’

  ‘Think it got Corminar?’

  I didn’t answer; we both knew I did, yet I couldn’t quite bring myself to say it. I crossed the street, snow crunching underfoot, and called out, ‘Hello? Anyone here?’

  The fluttering of a curtain—that I spotted just out the corner of my eye—said that this wasn’t a ghost town at all. People were still here, they were just hiding in their homes. Yet this wasn’t like Tradum, where Arit had been corrupting the locals, because there was no Goldmarch soldier presence in sight. Whatever this was, this was something new. Could there have been some incursion from the tribes of the Badlands, farther to the east? It would be unprecedented; they’d never got this far into Goldmarch territory before, but it was possible with Amira ousted and the Council’s attention focused elsewhere. Still, it didn’t seem quite right.

  To the south was the Bay of Roots, and a day’s sail away from the broken Dawnwood. To the north was the Iron Sea, and then the militarily weak and disorganised Gentle Tundras. There was no force nearby other than in the Badlands that could realistically be here.

  I looked up and down the street, finding the layer of fresh snow untouched except for a few sets of footprints. There was no blood spilled here—at least none that I could see—and no damage to the buildings.

  Arzak strolled north, calling for someone just as I had, but also getting no luck. She was more at home in this bitter weather, and even in few layers of clothes she wasn’t shivering, like I was. At the next junction, between the tall structures built in the wood-and-stone style of the Goldmarch, she crouched, and pulled a single arrow from the snow.

  ‘I don’t like this,’ I said, just loud enough so that she’d be able to hear me. ‘Keep your eye out for trouble. I’ll portal you away if you cry out.’

  ‘Mm.’ Arzak turned on the spot, looking down each of the four streets that met at the junction. When she didn’t wave or call out to anyone, I understood that she’d not seen a single soul.

  I turned my attention to the building where I’d seen the curtain twitching. Snow crunched underfoot as I approached, but halfway to it, Arzak called out.

  ‘No,’ she said.

  I stopped and turned to her, asking her the inevitable question with a furrowed brow.

  ‘Could be ambush.’

  ‘Then let’s spring it,’ I suggested.

  ‘No,’ Arzak said again.

  I considered her, seeing her unconsciously fiddle with her contraption with the other arm. ‘It’ll be OK,’ I said. ‘You’ll see. If it’s an ambush, I’ll portal us away, and they won’t be able to reach us.’

  ‘Portals not always perfect. Sometimes magicks dampened. Sometimes you not quick enough.’

  The touching of the metal contraption made sense now. I understood what Arzak was thinking of; if I’d been quicker to portal us out of the way of the corrupted soldier, she would never have been touched by it. She would never have been hurt in a way that she would carry for the rest of her life.

  The light was fading behind Arzak’s eyes. She’d once carried such an unbridled passion for justice, one that had once upon a time made her the de facto leader of the Slayers. But now, after all she’d seen and after all she’d been to, her heart simply wasn’t in it. I could hardly blame her.

  ‘Alright,’ I said. ‘Stand back. I’ll be careful. I promise.’ As I turned back around to face the building where I knew someone was home, I noticed an odd-looking piece of cloth opposite. It stood out only because there was no good reason for it to be there, and it was held in place by metal rings that didn’t seem part of the original structure. I kept one eye on it as I approached the door.

  The genuine version of this novel can be found on another site. Support the author by reading it there.

  ‘Open up!’ I demanded as I pounded on the wood. I caught sight of the curtain moving once again. ‘I know you’re in there, so you might as well open up. I’m not leaving until you do.’

  There was nothing; whoever was home was pretending that they weren’t.

  ‘Dunno if you heard me and my mate talking about portal magicks? Well, yeah, I can just portal myself inside if you don’t open the door, and that might with some of your furniture being cut in two.’

  I heard a mumbling inside—there were at least two people there. I pounded on the door once more. ‘I’ll give you to the count of five. One…’

  The door flew open, to reveal a man about my mother’s age. Towards the back of the house, I could see the silhouettes of another adult, and two children.

  ‘It’s not an ambush!’ I called over to Arzak. ‘You can come over here.’

  ‘Please, sir, I—’ the man started, voice quite high in pitch and legs trembling in fear.

  ‘Hello,’ I said. ‘Let’s start over, shall we? My name is Styk. My friend, who’s just coming over now, is called Arzak. We’re here in town looking for someone, and you seem to be about the only person about here who might be able to help.’

  The man said nothing, but was still clearly unsure. This didn’t change for the better when Arzak arrived at my side, towering over me.

  ‘That’s fine, I suppose I didn’t ask for your name. Maybe you don’t wanna give it. But can you tell me if you’ve seen another one of our friends? He’s an elf, about this—’

  ‘No!’ the man shouted. ‘No, no, we’re not part of this! We just want to live our lives!’

  I gestured for the man to calm—hands in front of me, pushing them down. ‘We’re not gonna hurt you. We just wanna—’

  The man’s eyes widened, but not with fear—with hope. ‘You’re not one of them? But you came from the portal, the same portal that he came from.’

  I grabbed the man by the shoulders. ‘Corminar? You’ve seen him?’

  The man went deathly still at my touch. ‘I saw someone come out a portal, three days ago, if that’s what you mean. Another one of them.’

  ‘What you mean, “them”?’ Arzak demanded.

  ‘Another elf!’ the local cried.

  ‘You’re saying there are others? Other elves? What do you—’ But then, I understood. I’d been wrong before. There was another nearby force who could cause trouble in this area—one that I had considered, but had immediately discounted. The elves had been scattered by the Niamh-led Goldmarch invasion of the Dawnwood, but they weren’t dead. And if they were going to sail for the Goldmarch, they’d land in this area.

  I released the stranger, eliciting a sigh of relief from him, then turned away. I strided fast across the snowy street, to the piece of cloth hanging from the opposite building. I tore it away, already knowing the essence of what I’d find behind it.

  There was a large symbol, scrawled into the wooden panel behind the cloth. It was unmistakable—it depicted one of the towering trees of the Dawnwood, so unique in its appearance. From the tree fell a seed, one which was depicted as lying upon the dirt. Tendrils had begun to sprout from it.

  Underneath the symbol, a single phrase was carved:

  FROM A SINGLE BIRTH SEED, THE POWER TO TOPPLE TYRANTS.

  The elves hadn’t simply admitted defeat. They hadn’t simply been biding their time. Some of them were out for revenge.

  I turned back to the man in the doorway, and I barked a simple instruction. ‘Tell me where they went.’