Page 121 of The Shadow Path
“All right,” the Scotsman grumbled. “Let’s paint a target on my back.” He sighed and swung his leg over his horse as he got to the ground. “Carys, is the dragon near?”
Carys mentally reached for Cadell, who was flying in broad circles around woods that bordered the green. “He’s nearby.”
Duncan glanced at Harold’s soldiers, then back at Godrik. “You’re not seeing anything you’re about to see, understand?”
Godrik looked confused, but he nodded anyway and looked at Carys. “Is this about the magic you used for the dragon children?”
“Again, that wasnotme,” she said. “Does everyone here think I have some kind of fae magic?”
“You’re a Brightlander who can talk to dragons,” Godrik said. “Yes.”
Carys walked next to Duncan as he crossed the line of red-coated troops and strode across the green. Then—like a highlander in a movie—he pulled the steel sword from its scabbard, the silver glinting in the sun, and drove the blade into the earth just at the base of the newly risen ground.
The soldiers around them muttered in low voices, and the wolves barked and yipped as the earth around the mound rolled like there was an earthquake. The sheep bleated and the donkeys brayed, scattering from the green as the soldiers moved closer.
Godrik’s shoulders went back and his eyes went wide. “I don’t know what that was, but I heard something.”
A wolf sat back on its haunches and threw its head up, howling into the air; then another joined it and another.
“They can hear the children!” Godrik shouted. “There are children under the ground.”
Half a dozen of the wolves ran to the side of the mound and began to dig, furiously churning the earth and tearing at it with their claws as others in the pack continued to howl.
But no matter how much they dug and how much the earth climbed in piles behind the digging animals, the holes they dug seemed to fill as quickly as they created them.
The wards are still intact,Cadell said into her mind.I can feel them. There is a crack, but nothing that will let them break through.
Can you break them?
Not without bleeding myself, and you know how dangerous that is.
Carys knew that if she asked it, Cadell would offer his own blood to free whatever children were trapped under the earth, but it would be a massive risk. There would be no way to hide what had broken the fae wards, and if the whole of Briton discovered what dragon blood could do, Cadell’s kind could be hunted.
“Duncan, can you drive your sword deeper?”
“I can try, but I don’t know if it will help.” He pushed the blade farther into the ground, but Godrik shook his head.
“I can hear them now. I can feel them, but it’s like they’re behind a wall. And now they can hear us and they’re panicking.” The burly man’s chest was heaving in anger and frustration. He threw his head back and shouted, “Damn you to hell, Cian Elathason!”
Carys heard the soldiers begin to yell, and the villagers were running toward the mound, drawn to the howling wolves and the rumble of the earth as it began to shake and roll.
But no matter the rocking and churning, the smooth surface of the green mound did not break open to reveal any way inside.
Carys was starting to feel desperate when she heard a low, droning hum from the forest south of the village.
She turned and saw a dark figure coming through the trees, singing a song in a low, familiar voice.
The wolves grew quiet. The soldiers froze.
The humans in the village turned toward the voice; then one by one, they fell silent, sat down wherever they were, and listened with rapt attention and adoring faces.
Carys saw Duncan staring at the figure as if he was caught in a trance. “Duncan?”
The big man gripped his sword and shook his head. “Damn fae.”
Dru walked from between the trees, a green cloak thrown over his shoulders and twigs and feathers trailing from his hair.
Despite his wild appearance, the dark fae’s face was regal, and the dancing lights of sprites and pixies followed behind him like a luminous cloud.
