Page 47 of Homeward for a Spell

Araphi stretches, popping her back, then shakes snow off her boots. Best to stay in the here and now, and shove all thoughts of hypothetical fires, beds, and further encounters with Sage in said beds far from her mind.

“How are you doing, Bard?” Sage asks, striding over to her. There’s a softness to her voice. A note of care that is new.

Ask for what you want.

Araphi manages a smile as heat flares low in her belly at the memory of Sage’s words in Briarwall and for the very skilled way in which she delivered exactly what Araphi asked for.

“Oh, I’ve never been better,” Araphi says blithely. “Truly, I don’t even know why we needed to stop. Did you get tired, Ranger?”

Sage frowns. “I needed a moment to check our maps, rough as they are. We’re close, I suspect. I just have this feeling.”

“Will we be there by nightfall?”

The thought of spending another night among these pines and still not being anywhere near their destination makes Araphi want to weep.

Before Sage can reply, a gust of wind howls through the trees, cold and demanding. Powdery snow tumbles from the pine boughs. A lump of ice slithers down the gap between Araphi’s jacket and her neck to melt slowly against her skin, and she swears. Meanwhile, snow has settled in Sage’s hair and eyelashes. She looks sugared. Delectable. Delicious. The ranger is breathtaking as she brushes snow off her shoulders with a grin and glances up at the sky. Araphi follows her gaze. Above them, between the crowns of the pines, dense bulwarks of cloud pile up. Sage inhales, letting out another happy laugh on the exhale.

“You really love being out here, don’t you?”

It’s so apparent the ranger is in her element in the wilds. How did Araphi ever dream that Sage might be happy in a tavern, or at a fashion show at a manor house in a small village, or in the capital among Araphi’s friends? The thought now seems so ridiculous as to hurt.

Still, Araphi wants this—whatever it is—to work out. Whatever that means.

Sage’s breath puffs out in a cloud. “I do love it out here. Something in me lights up with the prospect of an unexplored country and miles ahead of us. Though I would like to find the Swallow before nightfall. There’s no—”

A high-pitched screech rends the air, at once the sound of a knife’s blade on a whetstone and the scream of a dying creature; pain and the promise of violence all combined in an otherworldly cacophony.

Araphi has never heard anything like it, and her blood runs colder than the plummeting temperature. How is it so much chillier under the trees, and so sudden? The mist at their feet roils, bubbling upward, growing denser as the horses begin to snort and whinny in distress.

“Sage, what…”

The ranger already has her bow in hand, string drawn back and searching for a target. But her hands shake noticeably as she glances frantically about, and her skin has gone ice white.

That’s almost more terrifying than the shriek that rings throughout the clearing, closer this time, before a maelstrom of fog, snow, sticks, ice, and pine needles begins to spin upward from the forest floor. Wind and debris spiral through the frozen air, gaining speed and force around them, like a hearth fire encouraged by strong hands on the bellows.

“What the devils is this?” Araphi yells to be heard above the howling. Her borrowed dagger is in her hand, her eyes flying around the grove, but she can’t find a target either, can hardly see through the churning fog…

Until the gleam of pale and glittering eyes cuts through the maelstrom just in front of her.

“Down now!” Sage commands, shooting above Araphi’s head as she drops to one knee obediently. Whatever it was vanishes in a blink, but unaccompanied by the sound of impact or pain. Could Sage have missed at such close range, even in this confusion?

“Are there more?” Araphi cries, standing again. “Can you see them?”

“I can’t even see our party. Where are you all?” Sage calls into the whirling ice fog.

“Here!” Remy calls back, his voice thinner than usual. It comes from the left of the grove…or is it straight ahead? Sound is almost impossible to track, echoing about the grove as it’s whipped by the wind.

Then the mist parts briefly, Nura’s staff slicing through the maelstrom with precisely zero effect. Beside her, Remy stands frozen, his eyes wide in horror. Then the fog closes in and they’re gone again.

Another unearthly cry, this time a low and rattling croak—the sound of bone on bone—reverberates in Araphi’s ears as two ghastly ravens the size of jackals pierce through the wind wall to dive at her and Sage. They appear to be dead, yellowed bones showing through blood-matted clumps of ragged black feathers, the dark scales rotting off their claws. But their talons—each a handbreadth long at least—remain very much intact.

“Gods, what are those?” Sage cries, panic in her voice.

It’s a sentiment mirrored in Araphi. “I don’t know, just shoot them!” she shouts back.

One of the horrifying birds swoops down, either driven by a surge of ice and snow, or trailing one after it. Araphi braces the dagger in front of her, blade steady as she can hold it…but the raven somehow slips through, slicing at Araphi with its talons before wheeling off, just missing her skin. Before it can disappear into the fog, Sage’s arrow finds it, only to slip through with as little impact as if it were piercing water. Then it’s gone again.

“Stop shooting at us!” Nura bellows from somewhere across the grove. “You almost nicked Bramble with that one.”