dead and alive. “Father…Mother…gods…” He felt no shame in the sobs that tore from his throat, jumbling his words with terrible, awful guilt. “I shouldn’t have lost my temper, shouldn’t have ridden out. If I had been there—”
Cease! Aelfric snapped, much as he did to his men in battle.
Dayn came to attention, but his voice shook when he said, “I await your orders.” He had said the words many times before, though most often lately with resentment. Now it took on a new, sharper meaning, because he didn’t know what to do next. Find Nicolai? Muster an army? A magical attack? A retreat? Never in his wildest dreams had he imagined the castle taken, his parents gone. But he couldn’t waste whatever time his father had left in the in-between, so he whispered, “Speak, Father. I will do whatever you tell me.”
Good, then listen well. Because of our wounds and the sorcerer’s power, the spell turned warped as your mother and I cast it. The magic has sent you and your brothers and sister far away, as we intended, but it has also tied the four of you to the castle and begun a countdown. When this count enters its final four nights—and not before then—you must all return to the island, retake the castle and kill the Blood Sorcerer. If you do not, you will die and Elden will be lost. But you must wait until the time is right.
Dayn’s breath rasped in his lungs; his mind spun. “How will I know?” Gods, was this really happening?
A woman will come to guide you home. The countdown begins when she arrives and ends on the fourth night. You must let her guide you, but remember: stay true to yourself and know your priorities. Promise me that.
A sob backed up in his throat. “I promise. Gods, Father—” He was cut off as the tornado suddenly accelerated with a roar. Seconds later, he was flying away from the calm center and back out toward the whipping wall of air. “No!” he howled as the wind grabbed him, latched on and flung him forward into the spin. In an instant he was moving, tumbling over and over, leaving him to shout into the roaring wind, “I’m sorry I wasn’t there to help fight!”
Thunder cracked and energy detonated inside him, searing his flesh and driving the breath from his lungs. Pain consumed him, convulsed him, as his body suddenly sought to tear itself apart from the inside out. Flesh and muscle ripped; sinews snapped from one place to another and his bones bent. There was a sharp jolt, and agony javelined through him, so terrible that he screamed and his senses went dim for a few seconds.
Then, between one second and the next, the howling stopped and the tornado disappeared, blinking out of existence as if it had never been. He hung for a second facedown in midair, eight or ten feet above a grassy clearing surrounded by strange stone pillars. Then his weight returned and he fell.
“Son of a—” He hit hard, with a rushing boom of impact that made his eyes blur, his ears ring and his brain spin. Surely that explained why, as he struggled to his hands and knees, the world around him seemed too bright, the sky too pale, the trees too tall. But no head injury could explain the cold that cut through his tunic or the way he could see his breath on the air. Or why the sky was a strange color and the ringed stones and tall, thin trees didn’t look like anything he’d ever seen before.
Where was he? Had the spell sent him to the High Reaches? Even farther? Gods, what if he was all the way out by the Barrens? It would take him months to get home. His father had said he needed to wait for a woman guide and a four-night countdown that started when she arrived, but impatience stirred at the thought. What if he didn’t wait? What if he returned on his own? He was a hunter, a Forestal. If anyone could make it safely through the kingdoms alone, it was him. What if—
He jolted when movement blurred in his peripheral vision, and his pulse thudded thickly in his ears as he turned, hoping to see his guide.
Instead, men emerged from the trees. One was a gangly youth in his late teens, while the other appeared to be in his third or fourth decade. They shared long-nosed, forbidding features