The Colors of Magic Anthology

A Song Out of Darkness

Already muted by cloud cover, little direct light penetrated the bayou's thick canopy. It fell in thin, lackluster beams that threw shadows and gleamed dully off black and brackish waters. Tendrils of land reached into the darkness, thin bridges that connected small hillocks and some larger spans of wet ground. The mournful cry of a marsh ibis caught in a caster's web rolled through the bayou.

Temken paused, feeling eyes upon him, and rested his leather satchel on the marshy ground next to his feet. His sharp eyes penetrated the bayou's gloom, nostrils tested the cool, dank air, searching. No movement, but for a chill draft stirring among the tall grasses and the gray moss that cascaded from overhead limbs into stagnant pools of water. No tree shapings or signs of organized care for the land. No scent of cookfires or the flower-scented paths commonly marked out by warriors and scouts.

No sign of other elves.

Still, the land called to him. Beneath its own pain and suffering it whispered a promise that he walked the right path. Here, close by, he would find others-Survivors- those he had come to gather. The corrupt pallor draping this land cloaked them from view. Temken reached out as the dreams had instructed, feeling for the power inherent in the lands, and seized that which nurtured life, drawing it, channeling it, to reveal what the darkness hid from his normal senses. Though not the uplifting experience of nature's pure strength, the bayou provided enough mana for his purposes.

Temken was surprised by how close she sat, resting against the wide bole of the very cypress that stretched its limbs over him. The shadows retreated, leeched away by his summoning of the bayou's limited life-force, just enough to reveal her outline. For a brief moment he imagined a darker shadow hovering behind her, the sinister essence of darkness itself trying to summon the strength to oppose him. Then it too was lost, fled back into the bayou. The other elf shifted only slightly in the realization that her cover had been stripped. She moved, not to flee or to embrace her clanfolk, but with the simple resignation of a minor concern.

"Yes, I am here," she said, voice weary, slurring the usual melodic speech of the elves. "What words do you have for me?"

A touch of despair over the cold greeting trailed through Temken's heart, but he quickly banished it because of the importance of his quest. He stepped forward, deeper into the tree's embrace, and knelt into the marshy soil in front of her, ignoring the clammy wetness that soaked at his knee. Shocked by what he saw, he fought to keep concern from ruling his face or voice. He knew her vaguely. That was to say that he remembered her from Before-he a juvenile, scout apprentice, and she barely an adult but already a sentry. A century had brought them both into the long twilight of middle age enjoyed by most elven races, but while Temken had finally found a purpose in the After, bringing together the Survivors, it was clear that she had allowed a sense of despair to invade even her personal life. No need for magic; it was written in her appearance. Fatigue etched hollows beneath her opaline eyes and the sunken cheeks of malnourishment left her with a haunted expression. Her dark hair was wild and tangled with bits of moss and mud-the detritus of bayou living. The ceremonious words with which he had opened scores of previous reunions fled him. She obviously saw no cause for celebration in his arrival, and so Temken opted for a simple offering of warmth and hope until his mission could be explained better.

"I've come to bring you home, Gwenna."

Her gaze burned into Temken, eyes reflecting the pain still wrapped up in her memories.

"Argoth is destroyed," she said, immediately putting into so few words what most Survivors could not stand to even think. "We have no home."

Skirting the edge of the wetter portion of the bayou, Gwenna led Temken from the sentry post where she had awaited his coming to the village she and the others had settled. The shadow flitted at the edges of her vision and consciousness, always a presence lurking in the darker recesses of her mind. Gwenna chose paths most times at random, rarely by memory. Trails could change with the latest rainfall, wiped away or made treacherous to the point of mortal danger, and the ever-changing territories of the local predators always made it prudent to vary one's attendance to the trails. At one point the pair found their way blocked by a large web, easily twice the height of the elves. The remains of a few unfortunate creatures were spun into preserving wraps for later feeding. A spicy scent, lure for the less intelligent creatures, rose in the air about them.

"We've lost two young ones to the webs over the years, " she said in a monotone as they backed away from the site. "Be careful. Those strands are hard to cut, even with the sharpest blade. "

Temken was visibly startled. "That's the circle of life, " he said. "Still, I grieve for our loss. "

Our loss. Gwenna did not miss the way Temken automatically included himself. She remembered the courtesies and social law of Argoth-what affects one affects all. But instead of feeling appreciative for his consideration, she knew pain for the memory.

"We are no longer protected, " she said quietly. Stronger, she added, "We never really were. "

Certainly they had thought so. That was the lie to it all-the great lie that Gwenna had seen exposed in so short a span of years that she still reeled from the shock of its memory. Argoth, island paradise tended by the elves and ruled by Titania, avatar of Gaea. The law governed them, and Titania protected them. So thoroughly had Gwenna believed in that protection that she helped a human, cast down with his flying machine onto Argoth's beach, certain that even if he could escape the storms, Argoth would remain secure.

Her mercy cost the Argothians everything.

The human returned, bringing others with their saws and picks and shovels, their smelters and forges. Their war. Their incredibly vicious war, as two powerful brothers fought for dominance, in the process ruining that which the victor would have taken possession of anyhow. The island's precious resources were ripped from Gaea's womb as the air turned foul with smoke. The inhabitants of Argoth were caught between two mighty armies, one of which they might have held back, but not both. Gwenna remembered Titania herself weakening, dying. Then the flame-haired woman offered them the chance to strike back where the army of Urza was vulnerable. The target was the virtually unprotected mainland.

Gwenna still wasn't sure how many warrior enclaves finally accepted the offer-dozens, certainly. Her own band had been in the process of attacking an inland city when the southeast horizon suddenly glowed with an unnatural sunset. The Argothian elves heard Titania's final scream, Gaea's own cry, as their homeland was shattered by whatever final cataclysm the Brothers' War had released. The earthquakes and tidal waves, and the dark years which followed, were pitiful epilogues to that one terrible moment.

Guessing her thoughts, Temken placed a hand upon her arm and gently squeezed.

"We can never have what was Before," he offered, "but we can build again. The Survivors are building again."

The warmth of his hand, even through her damp tunic, allowed Gwenna to feel Temken's belief, if but for a second. In that moment she wanted to believe him, to believe in him. Then the shadow loomed at the side of the path, chilling her. What could Temken offer that Titania had been unable to give? Nothing. More false promises, that was all he brought.

"Titania is dead," she said, feeling the void inside and wanting to-needing to-share it. She swallowed against a coppery taste, her throat raw and constricted. "Gaea has abandoned us."

"But she hasn't," Temken insisted. Taking Gwenna by the elbow, he pulled her to a halt there on the path. "Wounded these many decades, she has still found a way to speak to us. She brought us the gift of knowledge by which we have found ways to find each other and to protect ourselves in the After."

He stepped off the trail into a patch of sparse, wet grass that bordered a small puddle of muddy, insect-choked water. Laying a hand on the ground, right where a beam of gray light had worked its way past the dense growth above, he half closed his eyes in concentration.

A sense of foreboding washed over Gwenna, warning her. The bayou dimmed, drawing out the darker shadows and teasing them into a shroud that discolored the land. Her head swam, and something deep within her mind spoke of danger.

"Don't," she said, reaching out to shake Temken by the shoulder.

Gwenna's warning went no further. Beyond her fingers, she suddenly saw a green glow radiating from within Temken, bleeding down his arm into the ruined land. In the recesses of her mind-which usually held the sin of her mercy on Argoth and the consequences it reaped- she instead saw visions of dense forests and snowy taiga. Temken raised his hand, and beneath it a new shoot of vibrant green had broken earth. It grew, blossomed, and flowered in mere seconds; an orchid with petals of jade and lavender pistils.

Already, though, the dark force that had been stalking them since Temken entered the shadows rallied to the challenge. The darkness danced at the edge of Gwenna's vision, and she saw the flower begin to whither and die, as Titania had done. Gwenna felt the elven mage tense beneath her touch, bending in closer to the stricken flower. He now appeared to share some kind of special relationship with his creation, drawing from it to strengthen his own aura, which flowed back into the jade orchid and resurrected it.

Gwenna's mind clouded. She felt the need to destroy this thing of beauty-this threat to the shadow-that marred the bayou's perfection. She caught herself in mid-reach. Only her physical contact with Temken, and therefore an association with the magic he commanded, intervened and left her hanging in the balance. She knew that to resist was futile and would mean punishment. One did not defy the shadow, especially her. But Gwenna was also a child of Gaea, and to intentionally mar such beauty as the orchid was not easily accomplished. She pulled back, daring to believe Temken for even the briefest moment.

The punishment came swiftly.

Darkness broke over and around them both in a wash of despair. Gwenna fell away to the muddy trail, physically sick. She watched as Temken glanced up in confusion, his concentration obviously broken, tears rolling down his cheeks as the orchid first lost its coloring then rotted on its stem. He tried to speak, but no words issued from his mouth. Gwenna shook her head.

"No building again," she said, voice laden with the tears her eyes no longer cried. "We can none of us leave. It will never let us." Then the shadow passed again.

Temken's eyes rolled back, and he pitched forward, collapsing into the muck.

Calling the collection of ramshackle huts and utility buildings a village was optimistic to Temken's way of thinking. The clearing looked up to a gray, moisture-laden sky, but the poorly thatched roofs could not possibly keep out anything stronger than a morning dew. Walls were full of holes. No one thought of or bothered to make a mud and straw mortar to fill the irregularities between branches. Certainly mud would not be hard to come by here. Doors were commonly a piece of hide stretched over a light frame and leaned into place over one of the larger openings. The huts sketched out a crude circle, which might have been considered a rough tribute to nature's cycle except for the large opening that framed a path leading deeper into the bayou. At least the ground here appeared drier, though Temken wondered if that might simply be relative to his own muddied and sodden state.

It was not quite the way he had intended to make his entrance, he and Gwenna leaning against each other for mutual support as they hobbled into the encampment. His head throbbed, and he could only imagine his appearance-disheveled and feeling the worse for whatever had come over him. Even so, he had expected something more than the indifferent looks the other elves gave him.

Nothing.

No words of welcome, no questions after kinfolk who might have been part of Temken's enclave. He read their harsh lifestyle in the gaunt and drawn faces as much as in the poverty of their living. Resignation and defeat shadowed their features, even the young ones who were obviously born in the After. Not for the first time since entering this forsaken land, he wondered why they remained here. The plains to the north were dying as the climate turned worse every year, but certainly there were more hospitable stretches of forestland nearby or the coastal regions to the nearby south. If the ocean reminded them too much of what they had lost, at least it would provide nourishment until a suitable refuge could be located. Why did they stay here? Another question answered him, swimming up from the depths of his mind, teased up by the shadow dancing at the edge of his consciousness. Why not? That was not an answer, though. He refused to accept it, and the shadow retreated.

What had happened to him back along the trail?

Gwenna slowed to a halt, tested her own balance, and then stepped away from Temken to let him stand on his own.

"This is Temken," Gwenna introduced him for the benefit of those who did not remember him as a youth. "He will be staying."

There were nods all around.

"Only as long as necessary," he amended Gwenna's remark.

More nods, though to Temken they still seemed to be agreeing with Gwenna. A day, maybe two. Just to rest, he told himself, though earlier he had not planned on remaining one night in the bayou.

"There are other Survivors. They are heading west- to warmer forests, we hope. But we'll be together," he finished weakly.

"We're already together," Gwenna said, though she did not sound certain of herself. Quick nods bolstered her confidence.

She stepped over to a large pot simmering over an open fire, a community cooking area, the charred ground showing the remnants of other fires. Someone handed her an implement, and she dipped out a ladle of broth, shocking Temken by not offering it to him first as a guest. Instead she drank deeply. He covered his surprise by wiping mud from the long braids hanging before his left ear, then tucked them back over his shoulder. Gwenna drank again, then handed Temken the ladle. As their hands touched she blinked in sudden confusion, as if suddenly at odds with her own violation of custom, but she shrugged it off.

Temken reminded himself of how long these Survivors had been cut off from others, of the conditions under which they currently lived. He nodded thanks to Gwenna, to the person tending the fire, and then pulled a deep ladle from the pot. He noticed the grisly meat swimming in the brown broth and decided that if he questioned its source he might not get a comforting answer. He slopped a bit over the ladle's rim, splashing it to the ground in an offering to Gaea, and sipped the rest cautiously. Over the ladle's rim he saw reactions to his libation-the briefest touch of surprise and even anger for his waste of good broth. To a forest people, he thought his ritual offering to the nature goddess should still be known if not commonplace.

"He'll need a home," the fire tender said, glancing about the village. "There might be room to squeeze him in over there." He nodded toward two huts with just enough spacing, away from the opening toward the bayou's heart.

Temken lowered the ladle from his lips. "I won't need a home," he said, confused.

He sipped again at the weak, fatty broth. Darkness wrapped about the area, but Gaea's song, dim but recognizable, pierced the gloom and brought back to mind memories of cleaner lands: the whisper of a breeze among willows, the creak of tree limbs rubbing over a clear, gurgling brook. Handing back the ladle to the tender, Temken glanced at Gwenna and drew in a steadying breath of the dank air.

"I'll be looking for more Survivors soon, on my way westward. I hope you'll come with me."

They met his invitation with frightened looks of concern and sidelong glances.

What had happened to him, back along the trail? It seemed an important question. Unfortunately, Temken had no good answer. Marsh gas, or simple fatigue? He remembered feeling ill. He remembered the shadow collapsing after the failure of his spell. He'd lain in the foul-smelling muck, looking to Gwenna. Her words, soft and despairing… We can none of us leave. Hadn't there been something more? He couldn't recall.

Gwenna remained rooted to her spot near the fire, watching Temken with a mixture of sorrow and despondency. She nodded to him as he looked her way, as if confirming his thoughts. Gaea's calls had led Temken to her specifically, not the village. She was the key, but how to turn it? The two stared at one another, the first searching, and the other becoming more pale and insipid. Rather than infect her with a yearning to quit the bayou, to return with him and bring her enclave, even now Temken could feel the pull to remain. They had no home, not really. Gwenna was correct about that. But did it have to be that way? Everything had its place in nature, hadn't it? He remembered the death of his spell, the orchid, and the sorrow it brought him.

We can none of us leave.

Why not? What was he missing?

Gwenna felt Temken press up to her, standing behind and reaching around to grasp her wrists in order to better control their movement. Eyes closed, she tried to follow his whispered directions, forgetting or placing aside all sensations but her reach for the land's mana. Forgoing sensation was not the difficulty, not for her- bayou living had made such a task easy. Only the warmth of his touch against her bare wrists offered any amount of distraction. But she couldn't visualize the bayou's life-giving side when her memories of the dank and dismal place fought against it. Even now its rotten scent clung to them, reminding Gwenna of the cold place of shadow where they had-chosen? — to live after Argoth's destruction.

Temken stretched her right hand forward. "There, " he said, voice soft but intense, "the living force of the bayou. Growing trees, plants, animals; the never-ending cycle of life. It's Gaea's song, as you heard it, before. "

She didn't hear it. And, if she understood his explanation, she couldn't remember ever hearing it, which could be a problem. Also she did not favor keeping her eyes closed, shutting off her best warning of the danger that the bayou could visit on them at any time. In her mind's eye, the darkness encroached upon them, drawing tighter every time they tried to call upon the magic of the land.

"I can't touch it, " she said, resigned. Deeper within her mind, she also knew that she didn't want to touch it and shouldn't be trying. She wouldn't have been, except for the reserve of energy that Temken seemed able to tap into for them both. "It's not there. "

"It is, " he insisted. "You've seen it once already. "

"It's not there for me, " she said, squirming within his embrace. Still, the memory of the orchid almost made her believe until the shadow's touch fell over her and dimmed the memory again.

Temken's grip tightened on her wrists. "It has to be, " he said. Then quieter, he observed to himself, "There must be a reason I was led to you first. "

From Gwenna's point of view, it was she who had come to meet Temken.

"I was sent, " she began slowly, then grew confused as if a dark shroud had suddenly been pulled across her mind. She saw no use in arguing the point. Frustrated and tired, she saw little use in continuing the exercise. "Let it go, Temken. Magic is just one more false promise. "

"Have you forgotten Titania? The Citanul druids?" He spun her around. "Magic is a part of our lives, just as it was then. "

Opening her eyes, Gwenna caught the expression of concern that had taken control of Temken's face. His eyes pleaded with her to believe-to try. Her gaze twitched away involuntarily, searching the darkness beyond the isolated clearing and finding the bayou's shadow looming over all the elves had built, dampening their lives.

"It didn't help any of us, " she said listlessly.

Eyes narrowing, the elf mage glanced back over his shoulder, following Gwenna's own gaze into the darkness.

"Let it go," she whispered again, tired and imploring.

"No." He didn't sound as certain of himself as before. His hazel eyes blinked their doubts. Then his voice grew stronger. "The potential exists within you and has to be the seed of your release. Try again." He guided her back around, keeping hold of her right hand, and moved up beside her, stretching his own right hand out ahead of them both. He glanced to her face and frowned. "You have to trust me, Gwenna."

Trust did not come easily in the bayou, but Temken's touch wore away at the despondency that blanketed their lives. The darkness rallied, forcing itself in on her, but a temporary breeze through the overhead canopy rustled leaves and branches and brought to her the faint touch of nature's song. Gwenna seized upon it and nodded to Temken, uncertain and apprehensive, then closed her eyes again, reaching out. This time she felt a familiar pull, as before when Temken reached into the bayou to bring forth the orchid. He was channeling the land's mana and allowing her to feel it course through him.

"Accept it," he whispered. "Allow Gaea's power to work through you toward the beauty of life's never ending cycle. Find in your memories the strength you remember from other lands you've passed through- other lands that touched you and you touched in return. This place has similarities to those if you look."

Gwenna tried, and as the darkness began to glow a subtle green she fought for any memories that might banish the pervasiveness of the decaying bayou-that might banish the shadow.

But it was not so easily dismissed.

Despair roiled up under the surface of Temken's promise, challenging the place he had won inside Gwenna's mind. Dark energy touched her, washed over her in a stronger wave than Temken's meager offering. The shadow moved through her, never long enough to make itself completely known, but a presence nonetheless filled with raw power. Gwenna felt the clammy touch of death against her left hand, in her heart and mind, coursing through her veins, threatening to burst if she did not find some way to release it. She struggled against it, despising its basic nature but unable to throw it off. She did not want it. She had never truly wanted it, and she would do anything now to be rid of it.

The power surged against the life-force running through Temken, overwhelming and consuming them both. It bound the two of them together, draining away strength. Gwenna opened her eyes and stared into the face of Temken as he paled and gasped for a sudden lack of breath. The elven mage jerked away, breaking his bond to Gwenna in an effort to stave off the pain invading his own body. The dark rush of power faded. The two staggered to their knees.

"It hates," she said weakly, the vestigial memories of this attack and others remaining with her. "It needs. It will never let us go."

Then the veil fell back into place, churning her thoughts to mask its own intrusion and leaving in place the well of sorrow and loss that Gwenna had carried with her since Argoth's ruin. Suddenly at a loss for words for what had just happened, she watched as Temken struggled to his feet. He looked at her strangely, a mixture of pity and dawning horror.

"I know it now," he said, voice cracked and weak. Without further word or expression, he turned and walked from her, into the dark embrace of the bayou.

Clinging muck squelched with Temken's every step in protest of his passage until the peninsula of marshy ground ended abruptly, plunging into the black and fetid waters of the bayou. A light, patchy mist roiled the surface, chill and clammy as ghostly tendrils worked their way through the seams in his trousers. Lonely cries sounded to his right, then left as a pair of mist lynxes challenged each other. A black-feathered marsh ibis glided by, then soared upward in an attempt to penetrate the thick canopy.

Temken settled back on his haunches, shaking off the draining effect that had channeled through Gwenna. He still felt its dark touch trailing icy claws along the base of his spine, clutching at his heart, clouding his mind. It hates, she had said. It needs. A malevolent intelligence was working through her. It was keeping her-keeping them all, he was sure-imprisoned within the bayou. Something slithered up from the waters, crossing the muddy ground behind him, and paused with its sense of his body heat. Temken whispered to it a piece of Gaea's song, urging the viper along its way. Never once did he need to turn and look at it, so attuned to nature's forces around him. In this same manner the elf mage knew his adversary was not of nature and so was not truly alive. A blind spot in the preternatural sight gifted him with the wielding of the land's magic. As a worker of the forest's mana, Temken had recognized in the bayou its sources of nature's magic. He had ignored its darker aspects, a mistake that had proven near fatal today.

No longer.

He glanced over his shoulder and found the lights of the village cookfires, a distant and dim glow between trees and brush. Far enough, he decided, wanting no distractions. Temken swallowed against the taste of mildewed plantlife, now acutely aware of the aura of death that held the bayou in its grip, and prepared his casting. A cascade of stringy, bilious green moss blocked most of his view to the right. The living waterfall turned black and was decaying where it met the water's scummed surface. He focused on it, drawing mana from first the bayou's living side and then from his memory of Kroog's struggling young forests and the frozen taiga north of Argive. He took it into him, feeling the suffusing glow of life and turned his focus on the hanging moss.

It responded immediately. New color brightened central fronds and then spread outward and down. Rotted stringers reformed, growing thicker with new life until the entire cascade of vegetation was once more vibrant with Gaea's energy. Against that backdrop of nature, within the twisting strings of moss, Temken looked for Gaea to tell him the name of his adversary. The first stage to understanding a battle, was to name your opponent.

Shadow. Simply shadow.

Temken frowned, having expected more. Nothing could pass through the world without Gaea's knowledge, without leaving behind some kind of imprint-even a noncorporeal force. Unless Gaea, too, suffered a blinding to things not of nature. The thought unsettled Temken who believed Gaea's power absolute. Magic was derived from the living lands of the world. What was Gaea if not the essence of all things living? Bleak despair swam in his thoughts, and Gwenna's words whispered up from the depths of his mind. False promises. Lies.

But not Gaea's lies, the shadow's!

Its intrusive presence could be felt, almost measured in the amount of misery welling within him. Shifting his focus, Temken drew upon the mana already at his disposal to enshroud and protect him. A sublime warmth flooded his veins, giving strength and clarity of thought, driving out the despair and sorrow that for a moment had intruded. Temken cast nature's energy outward, scattering it over the landscape. In his preternatural vision, he saw pieces of the magic attach themselves to that which was living-nurturing and strengthening. The magic also attacked that which opposed it: the disease and decay inherent in the dark side of the bayou, in the plague-ridden insects and swamp rats, and in the life-draining miasma. The shadow.

It hovered there, not ten arms' lengths off his left shoulder. The frosty mist curled up to cloak what would have been the feet and legs on a normal creature. Upward from there ran the blackness. It was not a true shadow, not the absence of direct light. Instead it was evil-foulness and corruption somehow made incarnate here in the bayou. It turned and twisted, as if swatting out the magic attacking it like an insect. It folded in upon itself, at times almost corporeal, at other moments merely an indiscernible piece of night broken off from the rest.

Then it was gone.

His senses charged, Temken caught the wave of surprise and loathing that rolled off the shadow before it flitted away faster than his mortal eyes-elven or not- could follow. But there was more: alarm, the hint of fear at being discovered. How many years had it been since anyone had looked upon it? How many lives had been consumed by this thing of evil? Now it stood exposed, and if it was afraid, then it could be defeated. Temken took heart from its panicked flight.

His courage was ripped from him by the soul-rending scream that shook the bayou.

This time it did not take the shadow's influence to cast a pallor over the elven mage. He had acted too soon, he realized. Weak from the last attack, his defenses only half-ready, he had challenged the shadow and set it loose upon the village of Survivors. It hated, and it was afraid. In nature, no beast was so terrible as when it was cornered.

Another scream came, a solitary call of pain and anguish. Temken heard no answering challenge from the elves, no wails of sorrow or anger. There was merely a despondent silence, interrupted only by the cries of the victims. The elf rose, his jaw clenched and muscles tight. He spat against the foulness of the bayou's corruption.

This was no way to live, domesticated prey to some unnatural force. One way or another, he would find a way to set these Survivors free to rejoin the cycle of life.

Gwenna stood between huts in the open space that fronted the bayou's heart, rooted to the spot in a mixture of fear and black desolation. Sweat beaded on her forehead, and a caustic taste of bile burned at the back of her throat. The muted gray light filtering down through breaks in the overhead canopy dimmed as if from an early sunset. Cook fires burned low and went out, as if doused, when the shadow swept nearer. People, her people, lay in the muck or sprawled, their breath shallow and eyes vacant, as if staring into a void. They screamed only as the chill finally took them. Otherwise they bore their suffering in silence, trying not to draw attention to themselves. The elves retreated deeper within themselves in an effort to escape.

Except for Gwenna. Untouched, she tried to make sense of the situation, but the confusion within her mind argued against any fair effort to understand.

The sickness, the madness, the chill, the shadow; how many times had it swept their small, dying community? It came whenever someone brought forth the idea of moving on, of leaving. It brought madness among them, infecting others, until the bayou claimed its terrible price in a night of terror. Her stomach churned. So many lives, so many of Gaea's children, wasted away to nothing over the decades. How many times? Dozens, certainly, but Gwenna could only remember the first night when she had decided that the bayou's embrace must be endured. Hadn't they learned already? The law was set, and to challenge it brought only misfortune. One did not question the law or take action against it. What was the point? Better to succumb, better that you lived in ignorance. So she had led her enclave.

Another scream tore through her mind, the shriek tapering off to a whimper. No, there was no magic. No song or savior. There was only a hand on her arm.

Temken.

"Where is it?" he asked, voice frantic and insistent.

The shadow's shroud blanketed her mind, distorting the words to barely recognizable sounds. Gwenna felt silent tears slide down her cheeks. "Gone," she answered. "All gone. Destroyed."

His bright, hazel eyes searched the gloom. "I know it's here." His grip on her arm grew tighter and more painful. "I can't hold it in place, can't beat it, without you. Gwenna, where's the Shadow?"

It was there at the edge of her vision, teasing her with a shape she could never quite define. It reeked of the bayou, its stagnant waters and diseased animals, and decay. She shook her head and swallowed. Her throat was raw and tasted of blood. To name it invited punishment. Better to stay quiet and hope the chill would pass her by.

"Well, I know one way of getting its attention." Temken bent forward, splaying his hands out and driving fingers down into the moist earth. Immediately an aura of deep green wrapped itself about his body.

Gwenna remembered he had done this before, when he raised the orchid of jade and lavender from the cursed land. Now he seemed stronger, steeped in the power. This time the aura flared at once and dove down into the earth to raise the orchid instantly. In a blink it grew and flowered. Its petals swayed softly in tune to Gaea's song.

Savior, song… and magic.

Gwenna felt the hold over her slip a fraction as the darkness drew back to build strength and rally. The sweet perfume of the orchid drowned out the bayou's corrupt stench. Its color tinted the land around her-the wonderful green of a bright sun diffused by heavy forest leaves. She tried to flinch away. Better to live in ignorance…

No, the song whispered; better to live.

She turned, reaching out to Temken in support. She froze as the shadow once again revealed to her the darkest of her memories: the loss of Argoth-trees burned, the land razed, her people dying. But she did not see it with the detachment that time offers against all wounds. She remembered it as if it were happening now. She saw it, feeling the guilt of her decisions, her actions, which had cost the Argothians everything they held dear. The guilt locked up every joint in her body. Anguish froze her muscles, and despair blanketed her thoughts. The orchid began to wilt, its beauty fading once again. She didn't want this. She would do anything to be rid of it.

This time, Temken stood ready. He reached out, slowly, the tip of his finger touching hers in the simplest of gestures. Warmth flooded her, the magic coursing through her with energy. It was enough to break the hold once again, to give her the choice of action or withdrawal, courage or despair. She looked to the wilting orchid. Its fading sight reminded her too much of the broken promises of before and almost pulled her down with it as the darkness swept in closer to claim her. She fought against it. She did not want this.

She would do anything she could to kill the shadow.

In the snatch of song that haunted her, echoing within her mind from long ago, Gwenna responded to the reminder that a wilting flower was as much a cause for joy as for sadness. The cycle of life controlled everything in nature's world. Everything born of the earth returned to the earth eventually, and from death always came new life. Gwenna reached out, as Temken had tried to teach her, accepting the orchid's death as the turn of nature's wheel. From it something else could grow, and she drew upon it for herself, soaking it in as the ground drinks fresh rainwater. She allowed it to strengthen her, to give her the resolve to meet the shadow's corrupt embrace as it moved through her and was caught.

Whispering Gaea's song, Gwenna drew the shadow into her snare. It struggled, railing at her with the cold touch of death. Gwenna felt its pains and fears. Just as despair had so many times worked to sap her will and her strength, so now the fear of the shadow worked against it, making it vulnerable. The song in her mind and in her heart grew stronger until it wrapped about them both. It lured the shadow deeper into Gaea's embrace, where it screamed inside Gwenna's mind.

Temken brought his fingers from the earth. The heavy residue had stained them black. Not the foul black of the bayou, this time it was the rich, loamy color of fertile farmland. That, too, would fade as his magic lost its hold and the orchid died, but it was enough for now to remind him of the cycle and the cost that life sometimes demanded. He stared at his hands, at the slowly fading orchid, at anything but the figure standing just over his shoulder.

He rose and turned in one fluid motion, meeting Gwenna's tortured gaze. Her eyes stared ahead, unblinking. A single tear of bright red blood welled at the corner of her eye and then trailed down her cheek. The gaunt-ness of her face had faded, drawn inward with the shadow's poison, leaving her with a touch of her youth in these final hours-perhaps her final moments.

"You should hurry," she said, the words softly slipping between lips that barely moved. "I can hold it only so long."

The mage frowned, biting his lower lip as he considered. "We could try to kill it," he offered, sensing even as he put the idea into words that it would not work.

Gwenna blinked away a ripple of pain, her opaline eyes falling on Temken. "It is already dead," she said.

The magic still wrapped about him, Temken felt Gwenna's life-force draining away as she used it to hold the Shadow imprisoned. Piece by piece she sold herself to counter its attempts to escape. Temken felt the struggle raging, just as he had originally sensed her final decision to lure the shadow to her and hold it fast. He had thought to try such a tactic himself, binding both his own life-force and the primal essence of the shadow to the orchid's power, but now he doubted that he would have been able to succeed. Temken had not lived for decades here in the bayou, adapting to the darker side. He had never come to terms with the shadow, the way he somehow knew that Gwenna had. To hold it within himself would almost certainly have killed him.

He still wondered at the shadow's origins and what exactly governed its existence now, but those were questions to which he doubted he would ever have answers. Whatever the shadow had been or was, Gwenna had known it long enough to identify its basic nature. It hated, yes. But it also needed. It needed the elves in the bayou to feed off of, to survive. But even if it existed outside Gaea's embrace, the shadow could still be made to obey her laws when it intruded upon nature's world. But the price… Temken bowed to Gwenna's resolve and silently thanked her for the sacrifice she made.

As if awakening from a long nightmare, elves stumbled from their huts or rose from their lethargic positions. Some did not rise and never would again. They were part of Gaea's price, exacted so that others might live and bring life into the world again. Most were crying, the pain on their faces was the first real sign of animation Temken had seen.

"Assemble quickly," he said, voice thick with emotion. "We must leave the bayou."

A few thought to move toward Gwenna, hands reaching out in sympathy, but Temken stepped in front of them.

"Go," he commanded. "Gaea will watch over her." They grabbed what few traveling articles they could find in moments.

Temken turned back and saw that Gwenna was nearly lost to him. Her green eyes dimmed, as she turned her energies to the inward battle.

"This day," he said softly, willing her to hear, "you have absolved yourself of any blame an elf might still have held for you, Gwenna. There is no greater gift than life."

He gently took her by the shoulders and eased her to the ground near his orchid. Her face and the flower both recovered a spot of color before they began to fade again, this time more slowly.

"Let the orchid sustain you for as long as possible, and Gaea will bring you to her before it can hurt you again," Temken said. Before he could think the better of it, he spoke the name he had denied his lips for too long. "Argoth will rise again," he promised Gwenna. "We will rebuild."

In a gray-lit clearing, completing a rough circle of dark and abandoned huts, Gwenna sat upon water-laden ground with her back to the heart of the bayou. An icy rain began to sprinkle down, spattering against pools of water and slowly churning the ground. The orchid's lavender pistils dripped water into the flower's cup, and petals sagged with the extra weight. The irregular rhythm of its wash played accompaniment to the gusting wind that rubbed branches together and sawed at the long grasses. The rain carried with it the hint of brine, borne in from the not-too-distant ocean. It was a clean scent.

Gwenna continued to hum Gaea's song. In her mind, the shadow grew stronger as it warred with nature's memory-her memory of Argoth. The elves had left. Animals died. Forests were stripped away, the land itself sunk from sight, rolled over by oil-slicked water. The air grew cold and tasted stale. But even as the shadow finally slipped away, exuding rage in its newfound strength and ready to feed upon her remaining life, the land rose once more within her mind. Plant and animal and elf returned as the memory flourished. Argoth rose. With the last of her strength Gwenna allowed herself to slip away into the memory, carried on Gaea's song and her promise- that life would always follow.