“We can’t let you in now!” called down Aron. He had picked up his crossbow. “Enemies in sight!”

“But they’re after me!”

“We don’t know that,” shouted Haral. “This could be a trick to get us to open the gate. You said you were a messenger; they’ll leave you alone.”

“No, they won’t!” cried Ferin. She took her own bow from the case on her back, and drew a strange arrow from the case at her waist. The arrow’s point was hooded with leather, tied fast. Holding bow and arrow with her left hand, she undid the cords of the hood and pulled it free, revealing an arrowhead of dark glass that sparkled with hidden fire, a faint tendril of white smoke rising from the point.

With it came an unpleasant, acrid taint, so strong it came almost instantly to the noses of the guards atop the wall.

“Free Magic!” shouted Aron. Raising his crossbow in one swift motion, he fired it straight down. Only Haral’s sudden downward slap on the crossbow made the quarrel miss the nomad woman’s gut, but even so it went clear through her leg just above the ankle, and there was suddenly blood spattered on the snow.

Ferin looked over her shoulder quickly, saw Haral restraining Aron so he couldn’t ready another quarrel. Setting her teeth hard together against the pain in her leg, she turned back to face the wood-weird. It had risen up on its rough-hewn legs and was bounding forward, a good hundred paces ahead of the shaman, and it was still accelerating. Its eyes were bright as pitch-soaked torches newly lit, and great long flames roared from the widening gash in its head that served as a mouth.

Ferin drew her bow and released in one fluid motion. The shining glass arrow flew like a spark from a summer bonfire, striking the wood-weird square in the trunk. At first it seemed it had done no scathe, but then the creature faltered, took three staggering steps, and froze in place, suddenly more a strangely carved tree and less a terrifying creature. The flames in its eyes ebbed back, there was a flash of white inside the red, then its entire body burst into flame. A vast roil of dark smoke rose from the fire, gobbling up the falling snow.

In the distance the shaman screamed, a scream filled with equal parts anger and fear.

“Free Magic!” gasped Aron. He struggled with Haral. She had difficulty in restraining him, before she got him in an armlock and wrestled him down behind the battlements. “She’s a sorcerer!”

“No, no, lad,” said Haral easily. “That was a spirit-glass arrow. It’s Free Magic, sure enough, but contained, and can be used only once. They’re very rare, and the nomads treasure them, because they are the only weapons they have which can kill a shaman or one of their creatures.”

“But she could still be—”

“I don’t think so,” said Haral. The full watch was pounding up the stairs now; in a minute there would be two dozen guards spread out on the wall. “But one of the Bridgemaster’s Seconds can test her with Charter Magic. If she really is from the mountains, and has a message for the Clayr, we need to know.”