The way to Sherinna’s tower lay across the Plain of Thorns, the aptly named expanse of brown bush and sharp briers that stretched from the edge of the forest for miles to the south and east. Albanon led the way through thorny vines that did, he had to admit, seem to yield at his approach. He moderated his pace to make sure Kri could keep up-the thorns started closing in behind Albanon as soon as he passed, forcing Kri to pick his way more carefully through the brambles.
The sun settled on the horizon, bathing the dry plain in blood-red light. Albanon frowned at the sky, looked back to the forest where his father’s palace stood hidden among the trees, and searched the fields ahead for a sign of the tower.
“I don’t relish the thought of having to find the tower in the dark,” he said to Kri.
“It can’t be much farther,” Kri replied. “And the sky is clear-we’ll have moonlight to guide us.”
“Can you see the tower? Am I just blind?”
“If you are, it’s because you rely too much on your eyes instead of letting yourself feel the magic around you.”
Albanon sighed. “It’s overwhelming here. So much magic.”
“That’s what makes it so useful. If you can open yourself to it, it will show you more than your eyes ever could. Imagine you’re a fish that can feel everything the water in the ocean touches.”
“I’d go mad.”
“No!” The vehemence of Kri’s reply surprised Albanon. “If you’re unwilling to use the power given to you, you’ll never learn anything.”
“Moorin always taught me to use my power with caution.”
“Moorin held you back.”
Albanon glanced up to where Splendid circled in the sky, glad the little drake wasn’t present to hear her late master insulted. He knew he should probably take offense as well, but he couldn’t quite manage it. He had loved Moorin-”like a father” didn’t seem to quite cover it, considering his relationship to his own father. But he’d also long felt exactly what Kri had just said, that Moorin was holding him back, unwilling or unable to see his true potential. Moorin had dismissed his grumbling as the discontent common to every young apprentice, but now Kri seemed to be validating it.
Splendid swooped down and landed on his shoulder, making him stumble a few steps forward under the sudden weight. With her return, Albanon felt a blush of shame for the thoughts he’d been harboring, the disrespect he’d allowed himself to feel for his departed master. The shame was followed by a surge of anger, though, at the mentor who was supposed to train him and heighten his skills and instead held back his growing power.
Why should I be ashamed of wanting to claim the power that is mine? he thought, casting a dark glance sidelong at the pseudodragon.
“I found your tower,” Splendid said.
“You did?” Albanon’s face brightened, but then he heard a sound that sent a thrill of fear down his spine. Hounds bayed in the distance behind them.
Kri cocked an eyebrow at him. “A hunt?”
No trace of fear showed on the old priest’s face, and Albanon could understand why. In the world, the sound of a hunt meant a party giving chase to a stag or a boar. It was nothing for the people of the world to be afraid of, and might send a flutter of excitement in a listener who had participated in such a hunt before. But the stag or boar who was the quarry of the hunt would flee in fear, and rightly so.
“The nobles of the Feywild do not hunt beasts for sport,” Albanon said. “If there is a hunt on our heels, it means we are the quarry.”
“But your father granted us passage,” Kri said. “Did he change his mind?”
“Perhaps he decided that the insult you gave him could not be allowed to stand. I’ve rarely seen him that angry.”
Kri drew himself up. “He needed a slap in the face.”
“Not where others could see, not from a stranger in his court, and certainly not from a human. Even if he had been willing to ignore your insult, he might have felt he had to punish you in order to save face with his courtiers.”
“So what now?”
“Now we run. Splendid, lead the way to the tower!”
“If what?” the drake said.
“If what? I don’t think I understand you.”
Splendid’s voice dripped with disdain. “If you please.”
“You must be joking.”
“Am I a pet? A servant? A slave? I think not.”
“Fine, Splendid. Please!”
The drake sniffed. “That will have to do.”
She pushed up from Albanon’s shoulder, sending him off balance again, and flapped into the air. She circled a moment as Albanon watched, then flew away in more or less the direction they’d been heading, but a little more to the south.
“And now we follow, as fast as these damned thorns will allow.”
Albanon hurried after Splendid, the thorns parting in front of him and closing in behind. He searched the rolling plain ahead for a sign of the tower, cursing himself for forgetting to ask Splendid how far away it was. Then he crested a rise and spotted it, nestled in a thicket at the top of another low hill. Too far away-they’d never make it, if the hunt was as close as it sounded.
“Albanon!”
He turned and saw Kri ten yards behind him. Grasping thorns pinned the priest in place, caught in his clothes and piercing his skin. Albanon growled in frustration. They’d never escape the hunt if Kri kept getting snagged in the brambles.
“Use your power, Albanon,” Kri said. “The thorns respond to your mere presence. If you command them, they’ll respond to that as well.”
Albanon’s eyes widened. Why didn’t I think of that? he thought. I am a wizard and the scion of an eladrin prince. Did Moorin utterly crush my sense of my own abilities?
He stretched one hand toward Kri and the other, gripping his staff, in the direction of the tower. Drawing a deep breath, he focused his will and his magic, then with a grunt he extended both out through his hands. Kri staggered free of the thorns, and a path appeared through the brush and vines, a hundred yards long.
“That’s more like it,” Kri said. His broad smile filled Albanon with pride, and together the two men raced for the tower.
When they reached the end of the first path, Albanon thrust both hands in front of him and made a longer one. Over the sounds of the baying hounds in the distance and Kri’s wheezing breath, he heard the high, clear notes of a horn urging the hunt onward. Too close. At least Kri was moving faster, but it still felt too slow.
When they reached the end of the second path, Albanon had an idea. First he summoned his will to clear a new path in front of them, the longest one so far. He could feel each individual thorn and vine when he stretched out his senses, feel the magic in them and shape his own magic to control them. It was so easy, now that he understood it.
Why did I never learn this before? he wondered.
With fierce joy surging in his heart, he turned around and lifted his arms over his head. He watched as the vines surged back over the path he’d left in his wake, then thickened still more, growing taller and tougher. In a moment they were a wall behind him, studded with terrible thorns.
“That should slow our pursuers,” Kri said.
“Yes. Even if they carry my father’s authority, it’ll take them some time to clear a path through that, or to go around it.”
Each time they reached the end of a path, Albanon set up a new barrier behind them. Soon the tower loomed close, and Albanon finally allowed himself to believe they might reach the tower before the hunt caught up to them.
Splendid swooped down and landed on a thick bush, nimbly twisting herself around the large thorns. “I have to admit, apprentice,” she said, “your control of the thorns is admirable. The great wizard Moorin would approve.”
Albanon turned away before Splendid could see him scowl, then found himself blinking back tears. What would Moorin have thought? he wondered. He still missed the old wizard, despite the resentment that seemed to be growing in his heart. And despite the excitement he felt at the thought of learning from Kri.
Splendid jumped onto his shoulder and they hurried along Albanon’s path. The horns blared with a new urgency, as if the hunters had realized that their quarry was escaping them. But the thorny barriers didn’t seem to be slowing them as much as Albanon had hoped, which only confirmed his fear that the huntmaster carried the full authority of the Prince of Thorns, allowing the hunt to clear a path as easily as Albanon did.
Albanon cleared one more path, and the thorns fell away from the base of Sherinna’s tower. It was a slender spire of white marble draped in ivy, five or six stories high. It had weathered the centuries well-but most structures built in the Feywild by eladrin hands did. The tower’s entrance was a door of stout oak reinforced with mithral bands, and Albanon felt a sudden worry that they’d reach the tower only to find themselves unable to open the door to escape their pursuers.
He turned to raise a thorny barrier behind them, and caught his first glimpse of the hunt. The hounds at the lead had glowing green eyes, and with each yowl and bark they belched a puff of emerald fire. Behind them, a half dozen eladrin nobles rode white and gray horses, the pennants of the Prince of Thorns trailing from their upraised lances.
So there was no denying it-the Prince of Thorns had sent them out to kill his own son.
Albanon raised the barrier just in front of the lead hounds and heard them crash into it with yelps of surprise and pain. Smiling with bitter satisfaction, he nodded to Kri. “Almost there,” he said.
Only then did he see the toll their flight had taken on the old priest. Kri was bent over, hands on his knees as he tried desperately to catch his breath. His ashen face was twisted with pain and streaked with sweat.
“Oh, no,” Albanon breathed, stepping to the old priest’s side. “Come on, Kri.” He put an arm around Kri’s shoulder and tried to help the priest walk to the tower. “We’re so close.”
Kri accepted his help and they hobbled together along the path, the yelps and barks behind them growing more intense as the hounds forced their way through Albanon’s thorny barrier. The hunt was so close that Albanon could hear the eladrin spewing colorful curses as their horses balked at the rising brambles. The tower seemed impossibly far away.
Every few paces, as Kri caught his breath, Albanon threw back one hand and summoned another surge of thorns to slow the hunt. Slowly-painfully slowly-they drew nearer and nearer to the tower, and their pursuers remained at bay. Each step stretched to an agonizing eternity.
Somehow that eternity drew to an end, and they stood before the mithral-bound doors to the Whitethorn Spire. Albanon glanced over his shoulder and saw two riders circling around the end of his thorny barrier, spurring their horses for a charge.
“Open the doors!” he urged Kri.
Exhausted as he was, the old priest tugged with all his remaining strength on the mithral ring that hung from one door. The door didn’t budge.
“Is it locked?” Albanon asked. “Do you have a key?”
“No! There’s not even a keyhole.” Kri raised his staff and chanted a few arcane syllables Albanon recognized as a simple charm of opening, but again the doors showed no hint of movement.
“They’re coming!” Splendid chirped in Albanon’s ear.
Albanon put his back to the door and clenched his own staff. The lead rider was about twenty paces away, but riding hard and fast. Albanon called up another surge of thorns to slow them, simultaneously trying to prepare his mind to unleash a spell of fire or lightning on the riders. Panic and his pounding heart shattered his concentration, making both efforts ineffective.
The door suddenly slammed hard into Albanon’s back, knocking him to his knees as Kri yelped and staggered back. Albanon twisted around to see what had opened the doors.
His guts wrenched in fear as he recognized the monster in the doorway-a hulking brute, almost like some kind of beetle, standing upright but hunched forward. Four arms tipped with heavy claws sprouted from its torso. Its red eyes glowed in the shadow inside the tower, set above a mouth full of sharp teeth. A massive carapace of reddish crystal covered its shoulders and back and rose in two sharp spikes above its head. It was one of Vestapalk’s minions, but larger than any he’d seen before. A plague demon, born of the Voidharrow.
Smaller demons swarmed behind the one in the doorway. So Vestapalk’s corruption had already spread as far as the Feywild, to the very tower that Kri believed held the secret to defeating them. Albanon scrambled to his feet, his eyes darting between the demons in the tower and the charging fey hunters.
On one side, the claws of the demons held the promise of torture and death, or worse. On the other, the hounds of the fey charged forward, ready to tear him to shreds, and the spears of his kin were aimed to pierce his heart. But the thought that came to mind was Tempest’s face, smiling in her determination. She would have gone down fighting. He could do no less.