The flight wore on, and they passed over people looking up from down below. The people craned their necks and pointed. Some called out to her and beckoned. They were people she had known in another life, in another form, and had left behind. They might have loved and cared for her once; they might even have helped nurture her when she was a fledgling. Now they were trying to lure her back to them, to draw her down so that they could cage her. They begrudged her the freedom she had found. They resented the fact that they no longer controlled her destiny. There was anger and disappointment and envy in their voices as they called out, and she found herself eager to get far away from them. She flew on without slowing, without looking back. She flew on toward her future.
Beside her the bird with black feathers turned to look at her, and she could see its red eyes glimmer with approval.
Having come completely clear of her shadowy concealment within the trees, Nightshade turned her attention first to the two sentries who kept watch at either end of the little clearing. She let them see her, all cloaked and hooded, a tall black shape as menacing as death. When they turned their weapons toward her, knowing instinctively that she was trouble, she brought up her hands and sent her magic lancing into them in twin flashes of wicked green fire. The sentries were engulfed before they could cry out, and when the fire died, they had been transformed into rocks the size of bread loaves, rocks that steamed and spit like live coals.
The Witch of the Deep Fell came forward another few steps. She pointed at the line that tethered the caravan’s animals, and it flared and turned to ash. The horses, Lightfoot and Owl among them, bolted away. Nightshade gestured almost casually at the camp’s cook fire, now no more than a clump of dying embers, and it flared alive, rising upward toward the heavens as if it had become some fiery phantasm risen from the earth. A moment later Mistaya’s carriage burst into flames as well.
Now the remaining members of the King’s Guards woke, blinking against the sudden light, scrambling clear of their blankets, and reaching instinctively for their weapons. They were pitifully slow. Nightshade transformed five of them before they even knew what was happening, catching them up in her magic, turning them to stones. The others were quicker, a few even swift enough to leap up and start toward her. But she pointed at them one after the other, a dark angel of destruction, and they were struck down. In seconds the last of them were gone.
Now the clearing was empty of everyone but Nightshade, the sleeping girl, and the astonished and confused Questor Thews and Abernathy. The latter two stood in front of Mistaya to protect her from harm. Everything had happened so quickly, they had barely had time to wake and come to her side. Questor Thews was weaving some sort of protective spell, his hands, as old and dry as twigs, making shadow pictures in the glare of the revived fire. Nightshade collapsed the spell before it could form and came forward to stand within the light. She swept back her hood and revealed herself.
“Don’t bother, Questor Thews,” she advised as he prepared to try again. “No magic will save you this time.”
The old man stared at her, trembling with rage and indignation. “Nightshade, what have you done?” he exclaimed in a hoarse whisper.
“Done?” she repeated, indignant. “Nothing that I did not intend, wizard. Nothing that I have not planned for two long years. Do you begin to see now how hopeless things are for you?”
Abernathy was edging away, searching for a weapon to use against her. She made a sharp gesture, and he froze in his tracks.
“Better, scribe, if you stay where you are.” She smiled at him, contented by the feeling of power that washed through her.
Questor Thews straightened himself, attempting as he did so to regain his dignity. “You overreach yourself, Nightshade,” he declared bravely. “The High Lord will not tolerate this.”