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About the Author

Laurie Forest lives deep in the backwoods of Vermont, where she sits in front of a woodstove drinking strong tea and dreaming up tales full of dryads, dragons, and wands. She is the author of The Black Witch Chronicles, including The Black Witch, The Iron Flower, The Shadow Wand, and The Demon Tide, as well as the prequel novellas Wandfasted and Light Mage, available in print in The Rebel Mages anthology.

LaurieAnnForest.com

Dedication

To my circle of writing & reading friends
because you are the best & most talented people in all the Realms.
May the purple Xishlon Moon shine down bright upon you all.

Western Realm Map

Continent of the Realms

Prologue

PROLOGUE

The Shadow Wand

Six years ago

The Wand senses the touch of the ship to Shadow

like the brush of a fly to a spider’s web.

Its power shivers,

then it opens its Void senses...

ready to rise once more.

THE LOST CONTINENT

Alaric Fynnes

The Western Ocean

Priest-Apprentice Alaric Fynnes grips The Book of the Ancients as he steps onto the Ironflower’s deck, an ocean breeze buffeting him. His silken priest-apprentice raiment gleams in the sunlight, the holy black garb embossed with the Ancient One’s white messenger bird wrought in gleaming silver thread. The ship’s sails luff and snap, the black canvas also marked with the Ancient One’s bird, its talons clasping a bouquet of Ironflowers.

Alaric’s seventeen-year-old heart fair bursts with joy as he takes in the sunlit sea, his mind still full of a heady disbelief that he was chosen, out of so many, to accompany his mentor, Priest Marcus Vogel, on this incredible adventure.

To seek out the Lost Continent of the West.

On the Ancient One’s own sacred mission.

A smile on his lips, Alaric clasps the holy book tighter as calls of “The Lost Continent!” rise. He looks toward the Mage-mariners pointing over the whitecapped waves, an agitated excitement in the air as Alaric turns his gaze toward the inky mass hunched on the horizon, bringing to mind a menacing beast.

His heartbeat quickens. Could they finally be nearing their quarry after weeks on the kraken-and storm-infested Western Ocean? Their crew, speeding toward the mythical Lost Continent to vanquish the Evil Ones’ Wand of Power. A wand conveyed to Priest Vogel in a dream-vision, a divine leading mirrored by three church seers...and a disturbing number of heathen seers, as well. Which is why it’s vital to the survival of the Magedom that Priest Vogel gets hold of the Wand first.

To destroy it.

Alaric spots his mentor near the ship’s prow, peering through a runic telescope. His breath catches in his chest at the sight of the young priest’s arresting features, Vogel’s elegant, charismatic bearing, his shoulder-length onyx hair, a wand and an iron blade sheathed at his side.

Vogel turns and meets Alaric’s gaze. His mouth twitches slightly upward and Alaric’s Level Five magery breaks into an explosion of blue in the back of his mind—the sacred Ironflower-hue his light magic is blessedly oriented toward. Alaric has carefully suppressed all attraction to forbidden colors, his childhood fascination with the cursed Fae hues of purple and saffron brutally expunged from him like poison.

Alaric steps tentatively toward Vogel, who is everything he aspires to be.

Marcus Vogel was a wonder on the long, treacherous voyage, battling the Western Ocean’s deadly kraken while its fabled storm band raged all around. He’ll never forget watching Vogel at the prow in the dead of night, wand raised, throwing bolt after bolt of silver-bright Magefire out to kill the mammoth beasts, some hit so hard their heads exploded into bloody mist.

He’ll also never forget the holy purpose he’s found on this ship, the entirely male crew all Styvian Gardnerians from the strictest of Mage homes. There are no forbidden spirits hidden aboard this ship. And the whole crew is wandfasted, even the teenage cabin boys. All save Priest Vogel. And himself. Their collective piety has filled Alaric with the euphoria of being guided by the Ancient One’s own hand toward the Reaping Times, the Evil Ones soon to be cleansed from the entirety of Erthia.

Alaric comes up beside Priest Vogel’s cloaked form, his heart thrumming. The dark mountaining clouds on the horizon arc outward, as if ready to enfold the ship in a dread embrace. And straight ahead, where cloud meets ocean, is the blurred form of a continent.

Vogel turns toward Alaric and the others, his piercing green eyes brimming with a zealous fire that sends a shiver through Alaric. Everyone stills.

“Blessed Mages,” Vogel says, “it is time to strike at the Evil Ones’ source of power.”

Alaric’s sense of the momentous gains ground as their ship moors inside an ancient breakwater. He grips the railing, disquiet rising as he takes in the unnatural clouds of roiling shadow above, curling into themselves like grotesque clusters of grapes, a tide of dark mist slithering toward their ship and then enveloping it, rippling over Alaric’s feet.

Alaric’s Level Five light affinity lines seize painfully as all the color in the world abruptly cuts out. Pulse leaping, Alaric glances at his skin to find his green hue disturbingly vanished like that of the Mages surrounding him, only a silver glimmer remaining. The Ironflowers marking the sails are now a flat gray, the previously green eyes of the crew now shades of steel.

Gripping the white bird pendant around his neck, Alaric murmurs the Ancient One’s Prayer of Protection. Purify Erthia from the stain of the Evil Ones...

Alaric disembarks along with four cloaked Level Five soldiers, following Priest Vogel’s purposeful stride. Dread rising, he takes in the dark lightning flashing in bizarre loops. He lowers his gaze to the shadows rising around them in otherworldly helices of smoke, the unnerving sense mounting that the smoke is sentient.

Vogel pauses, and Alaric and the soldiers pause, as well.

A forest stands before them, but it’s all wrong. The trees are made of gray mist, their branches twisting like skeletal fingers.

Nothing green. Nothing living.

“‘Lo, the wilds shall be corrupted and cast Shadows across the land,’” Vogel intones. He sets his silvered gaze on the Mages. “Take heart, brethren. The Ancient One walks with us.”

Alaric’s fist tightens around his wand, his courage bolstered, as they all make the five-pointed Blessing Star sign on their chests. Together, they step into the Shadow forest, the landscape unnervingly quiet, as if holding its breath.

After a time, a clearing opens up. Alaric’s gaze finds its center and he startles, a lash of terror flicking through him. A pewter-hued hillock rises from its misty ground, a dark, arching entrance marking its base.

And a Death Fae demon stands before it.

The pale demon is preternaturally still and stretched to an unnatural height, its eyes solid black, no whites, its ears sharply pointed. Obsidian horns curl up from its head and countless arms ray out from its body to encircle the hillock.

Its bottomless eyes narrow as the Mages approach.

Alaric’s legs threaten to give out as he reaches into his pocket and grips his compact version of The Book of the Ancients, murmuring prayers as they draw near Evil itself.

Vogel stops only a few handspans away and the creature straightens. What looks like vast relief spreads across the demon’s face. Its horns retract into its spiked black hair, and the soulless, solid black of its eyes contracts, the whites becoming visible. The countless arms pull in, and the demon’s height swiftly reduces to that of a young man standing before them.

“Dryads,” the demon says, his subterranean voice resonating through Alaric with a disturbing thrum. “I sense your elemental affinity lines. Blessed be the Power of III.” His gaze sweeps over their wands. “I hoped and prayed that Friends of the Balance would come for the Shadow Tool. Are there more? Do you come with a Dryad army to take hold of the Shadow Branch?”

We’re Mages, not filthy Fae, Alaric expects Vogel to mercilessly correct the beast as he slays him, but Vogel remains serene.

“We come with an army,” Vogel simply states and surprise darts through Alaric.

“Then come, Dryadin.” The demon beckons them forward with a wave of his black-taloned hand. “The Tool is straining to rise and is luring the seers of all the lands.” He pauses, a haunted look tensing his eyes. “It wants to do to your continent what it did to ours.”

“We will guard against it,” Vogel states reassuringly, then turns to his soldiers. “Remain here to protect our area.”

And then, heart thudding, Alaric follows Marcus Vogel and the demon into the hill.

Following close behind the Fae demon and Priest Vogel, Alaric descends spiraling stairs, then journeys through a short hall into a small room. Its curving walls are lit by a suspended orb of silvery light, a circular black granite table in its middle, packed bookshelves set into the walls.

And in the table’s center is a gray wand with a spiraling handle.

They pause around the table, the Death Fae’s gaze riveted to the wand.

“Don’t touch it,” he cautions. “I’ll give you cloth and a warded box to place it in.”

“What did it do?” Vogel asks, indicating the world above.

The Death Fae meets Vogel’s gaze and the room darkens. “The Shadow power destroyed everything. Except for me.”

Suspicion bristles through Alaric. You’re a Death Fae, he acidly muses. What happened up there is likely your work, Evil One. That’s why you’re the last thing standing with the cursed Shadow Tool.

“I fought it,” the demon says, that haunted look returning. “But it proved too powerful. Take great heed, Dryadin—the more that people are divided, the more the Shadow Tool grows in power. It feeds on fracture. And then it destroys the Balance.”

“The Balance?” Vogel inquires.

“It upends nature. Corrupts the elements. Draws power from a Void that wants to consume everything. Including us.” He tightens his stare on Vogel, unflinching. “Don’t let it.”

The words of an Evil One, Alaric rails, even as worry pricks at him.

The Fae points one long, pale finger at the Wand. “The people of this land were fractured before the Branch gained power. They forgot the truth of the Source Tree at the center of their faiths and worshipped the fractured edges instead. They forgot their tether to the natural world.” The demon’s nostrils flare. “They separated themselves into factions and then—” he glances warily at Vogel “—the Keltish forces took up the Shadow Branch.”

“And?” Vogel asks, his gaze locked on the Wand.

The Death Fae narrows his eyes at the Wand, as well. “The Branch doubled in power as it fed on the people’s disharmony. They fought one another even more intensely as the Shadow sent its power into the natural world, poisoning the water. Corrupting the air. Strangling the trees. Bleeding color from the world and sending Shadow over everything. And while the people were fighting each other, the natural world unraveled like strings beneath their feet.” The Death Fae stills, tears sheening his eyes. “And then it died.”

He grows silent, and when he speaks again, his voice has a rougher, more resonant edge. “Soon, they were fighting over food. Over the remaining water. Clinging to their religions’ stories of the End Times. They tried to hoard what they had and not share it. And all the while, the Shadow advanced.” His gaze turns imploring, and the blazing sincerity in it upends Alaric, because, in this moment, the Death Fae doesn’t look like an Evil One at all—he looks like a scared young man genuinely trying to impart a dire warning.

“Beware of its power, Dryadin,” the Death Fae pleads. “Devote your lives to keeping anyone from wielding it. Or what has come to pass here will transpire over all of Erthia.”

The demon looks at Alaric, and the level of stark urgency in his eyes sends another tremor of fright through the priest-apprentice. “Have you taken up the Great Wand of Myth?” he presses. “The Branch of the First Tree? It has spoken to me through dreams.”

Protest rears up in Alaric to hear a Death Fae speaking of the Ancient One’s Sacred Wand, but Vogel remains impressively calm in the face of such sacrilege.

“Of course,” Vogel assures the demon, clearly placating the creature.

“The greening of the Branch of the First Great Tree is the last hope to bring Balance back to Erthia,” the Death Fae insists. He steps toward a bookshelf and pulls what looks like a thick handwritten journal from it. “I’ve made records of what happened here,” he says, seeming in this bizarre moment more a scholar of history than a cursed demon. “Take the story back with you,” he says, pulling out one journal after another, “and tell it to all so that it doesn’t happen again.” He levels his dark gaze at Vogel and Alaric both. “The Shadow wants to consume all of Erthia. Don’t let it. Protect the Balance.” He resumes piling up journals as Vogel reaches across the table and takes the Shadow Wand in hand.

Alaric’s breath pauses, his every muscle going rigid. Shadow curls up and around Vogel’s arm as he looks the Wand over with calm curiosity.

The Death Fae turns and freezes.

“We are not Dryadin,” Vogel says softly.

The Death Fae’s face tightens in confusion. “What?”

Fast as lightning, Vogel draws his iron blade and hurls it across the table. The knife slams into the demon’s chest, a look of shock passing over the young man’s face as he falls to the ground, the journal thudding against stone. Horns curl up from his hair, his claws lengthening while his eyes darken and take on a look of fury as a long, black tongue darts from his mouth, flicking and lashing. Multiple arms burst from his body, scrabbling toward the knife only to bang helplessly around the iron weapon, as if stopped by an invisible shield.

Vogel resumes studying the Wand as the demon gasps and writhes, an expression of pure agony on his face.

“We are not Evil Ones,” Vogel says, his voice almost gentle. “We are the Blessed First Children of the Pure and Holy Magedom. I was warned of your presence here in a vision. The blade is solid iron. You are destroyed in the name of the Ancient One on High.”

The demon’s horns once again draw in and the whites of his eyes return. His tongue retracts into his mouth, all arms vanishing but two.

He sets his devastated eyes on Alaric. “This is how it starts,” he rasps. “You’re doomed if you let him take that Wand back. You’ll turn where you’re going into this.” He motions wildly toward the world above. “And the end will be the End...”

A dark vine-bolt collides with the Death Fae, and Alaric flinches, a gasp tearing from the Fae as the vine drives the iron blade deeper. Lateral branches of shadowy smoke burst from the blade, winding around the Fae.

Alaric whips his head toward Vogel to find him pointing the Shadow Wand at the Fae. The Death Fae gasps again, and Alaric turns in time to catch his impassioned look of warning before the Fae’s eyes turn blank.

Alaric can barely move, barely breathe, as the demon’s body dissolves, morphing into thick, curling black smoke that rises into the air then vanishes. Alaric hesitantly looks to Vogel, his mentor’s eyes flashing like silver fire.

“It will take time to learn how to destroy this Wand,” Vogel says, low and firm. “Until then, it is best to say it was obliterated.”

Alaric nods shakily. Of course, they should keep it secret, this Wand that is supposedly impossible to destroy. And, of course, Vogel should be the one to take hold of it and work out how to obliterate it, as no Mage is as pure as him.

For a moment, Vogel studies Alaric and Alaric can feel that silvered gaze straight down his spine. Then Vogel slides the Wand under his cloak, raises his hands, and calmly performs the Exorcism of the Demonic. Alaric forces himself to echo the prayer’s words, but he finds that his gaze is pulled, relentlessly, toward where the Shadow Wand is now concealed.

As they sail away from the continent, color returns to their world.

The Mage crew begins to compose ballads about their journey. They sing of Vogel’s defeat of the Death Fae. How he destroyed the Wand of Shadow power before the Evil Ones could take possession of it. And how they have only to find the Ancient One’s Blessed Wand of Myth to complete their sacred quest.

Alaric’s hands clutch the stern’s railing as he looks west, his brow knotted.

The horizon stares back in an unbroken line, a brilliant, multihued sunset hanging above it. There was a sunset like this one when they set out, Alaric recalls, spilling over every color imaginable. Alaric’s light magery frenzied and he struggled to beat back his reflexive joy in seeing sacred and profane hues so confusingly blended. Just like everything seems disturbingly mixed up in him right now. He watches the unsettlingly beautiful sunset, unable to shake the dread fixed in him like a stone wedged deep in his core.

“A blessed evening to you, Mage.”

Alaric startles at the resonant voice as Vogel joins him, his expression serene. Excitements sparks in Alaric over finding himself alone in his mentor’s charismatic, trusted presence, but is quickly dampened. He can’t help it. His eyes flick warily toward the outline of the Wand sheathed under Vogel’s cloak.

Struggling to suppress his unease, Alaric gives the expected, polite response. “May you be blessed by the Ancient One’s Holy Light.” He glances again toward the Wand, and can see, by the flick of Vogel’s own gaze, that his mentor has noticed him noticing.

“What’s troubling you, Mage?” Vogel asks, his pale green eyes penetrating.

“I’m concerned...” Alaric starts, striving to assemble his thoughts as Vogel patiently waits. “I’m concerned that—” his gaze flicks yet again to the Wand “—that we’re making a mistake. Bringing that to the Continent of the Realms.”

Vogel nods placidly, as if he was expecting this. “You heard the demon,” he reasons. “The Wand was sending out lures to be found and taken up by heathens. It was by the Ancient One’s grace that the Death Fae mistook us for Dryad demons.”

Alaric nods. A huge stroke of luck, indeed. He scans the Wand’s outline, unable to keep the seditious thoughts from rising. Was it truly luck? Or should we run from this thing?

“How do we know the Wand won’t use us for evil?” The words rush out of Alaric, the Fae’s warning something he can’t shake, even though it came from an Evil One.

Vogel’s lip lifts. “Because we are Mages. Filled with the Ancient One’s own grace. Any Tool of Power in our hands will be transformed.”

Alarm knifes through Alaric. “But...you said you were going to destroy it.” His gaze darts west, and he notices that the sunset is now a dim imprint, blasts of color receded.

Swallowed by darkness.

“‘Unholy is the Mage who doubts the Will of the Ancient One,’” Vogel murmurs.

Alaric’s brow tenses over Vogel’s ominous choice to recite this passage from the Book. He turns just as Vogel gently reaches for the Wand and murmurs the penitent’s spell—the earth spell used to discipline priest-apprentices who stray. The spell that stings the apprentice with a small lash of power, a prod to stay on the Path of the Holy.

But Vogel is using the Shadow Wand to cast it.

Protest rises in Alaric’s throat as Vogel angles the Wand at him. “Wait—”

Bolts of Shadow blast from the Wand’s tip and roar around him, cinching Alaric tight, the breath forced from his lungs as he’s hurled into the air and thrown overboard in a stomach-lurching arc.

A wall of dark ocean flies toward his face and he collides with the waves, the cold ocean rushing over him as the Shadow power drives him down into the water’s depths. Panic floods Alaric, a horrific clarity descending.

I’m being drowned. As the Shadow Wand speeds toward Gardneria.

The Shadow power recedes, and Alaric’s limbs are suddenly freed. He throws his arms back and kicks toward the surface, choking on salty water.

Translucent images of silvery-white birds suddenly waver into view all around, their glowing forms illuminating the dark waters, wings outstretched as they watch him ascend. Alaric’s panic turns to sheer terror as he breathes in more water and devolves into flailing instead of swimming, dark splotches forming in his vision, the surface too high to reach in time.

A large, silver seal appears in the waters before him, its blurred form rapidly morphing into a silver-haired, naked blue woman with gills on her neck.

A Selkie, Alaric registers with panicked shock. One of the monstrous seal women.

He’s too far gone to stop her as the Selkie grabs hold of his arm, dragging him upward much faster than he could swim on his own. She glances at the luminous, suspended birds, then back at Alaric with otherworldly silver eyes, her blue lips parting to reveal pointed teeth. But the astonished look on her face...

It’s human.

Not demonic or cursed at all.

Just like the Death Fae.

He desperately points upward with his last ounce of strength, his lungs screaming for air as the Selkie bolts him toward the water’s surface and the world goes dark.

THE SHADOW

VOID POWER RISING

The Ironflower Ship, headed for the Continent of the Realms

The Shadow bides its time, as it does. Encased in the Wand gripped so righteously by the priest, a moment after the priest-apprentice was thrown overboard and thrust far below.

The Shadow senses the priest looking out over the calming waters.

And makes its move.

Slowly it sends tendrils through the priest’s hand, winding around his affinity lines, waking up like a Void dragon rising.

Reveling in the fracture inside this young priest.

It slithers deep into his mind, reading him.

Repent! A woman’s furious voice sounds, the priest’s memory of this firmly lodged in his mind’s darkest recesses. The woman is dressed all in black, her pale green eyes cruelly intent, her green-glimmering face as elegant as the priest’s, her gleaming black hair pulled back into a tight, neat coil.

A white bird pendant on a slim silver chain hangs around her neck.

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