"Oh, will you?" Onyx lashed out with her nails and raked his face, drawing three thin lines of bright red blood on his left cheek.
Scowling, the knight lunged toward Onyx with the knife. The cold blade bit into her shoulder, bringing an involuntary yelp of pain to her lips. She looked up at his young face in angry disbelief.
The knight shook his head almost sadly. "You can't act like a ruffian and expect to be treated like a lady. Stick to your spells, witch. You aren't very good at hand-to-hand fight shy;ing."
Humiliation made Onyx's blood boil like molten metal in her veins. Her fingers came upon a fist-sized stone. Scarcely moving a muscle, like a cat creeping up on a field mouse, she closed her hand around the cool rock. Onyx swallowed an evil smile, smelling revenge.
Suddenly, the young knight raised his forearm and his fist shot forward in a quick, effortless, bone-snapping punch to the bridge of Onyx's nose. The rock dropped from Onyx's fingers.
"Not much good at all," she heard the knight say distantly. As daylight spun into darkness, her last vision was of the young man's face. She would never forget, nor forgive, the pity in his brown eyes.
Chapter 9
The cold air brought Onyx back to consciousness. There was no sound around her but the wind whispering through trees. Her arm and face throbbed. Even her eyes ached. She lifted her cheek off the wet leaves and wrenched her swollen lids open. What was she doing in the woods? Where was every shy;one? And what was the matter with her face?
Onyx touched a finger to her nose, then winced from her own touch. Her entire face was swollen and tender and caked with blood. The knight's final blow came to mind all too vividly. There was no sign of him now. She had no idea how long she'd been out cold. The light filtering through the trees was dimmer than she remembered. Led would be look shy;ing for her.
Dragging herself up, Onyx painfully followed the knight's bloody trail back to the pass. Earlier, she had sprinted through
these woods like a deer; now it hurt just to walk slowly. Cresting the hill where the ambush occurred, she blinked in disbelief.
The bodies of the dead knights and their horses lay in the pass, plucked clean of their gear, some half-eaten by ogres. The smashed wagon remained in its place. The area where Onyx's magical hailstorm had pounded down was still cov shy;ered in shards of ice. But Led, the ogres, and their two horses were gone.
Only a blind man could have missed the bloody trail left by the knight and Onyx's charge. Led could easily have fol shy;lowed it to her, if only he had looked.
Which could only mean that he hadn't bothered.
The human had abandoned her with less thought than he had his lieutenant, though Toba's mysterious disappearance coupled with her own might have spooked the man. Perhaps he thought there was something sinister prowling the woods, stalking his little group. That wasn't beyond the realm of possibility, especially since he was, or had been, transporting a kidnapped faerie creature.
Still, the thought that he had abandoned her so easily angered and humiliated Onyx at the same time. Her hands curled into fists. Before she could decide what to do about either emotion, she sensed more than saw a presence nearby and whirled about
"Who's-Kadagan!" Like a feather, the nyphid drifted down from the cliff face. His brown hair had lost some of its glow; his eyes, too, were dull. New lines had formed around his mouth and eyes, turning his normally thoughtful features sour and sad. His two-foot frame was now so emaciated that beneath the furry vest, his green tunic hung like a dirty sack from his shoulders.
"Kadagan!" she cried, rushing up to him. She had never been so happy to see anyone. "I'd hoped you'd followed us." Onyx's smile fell. "You already know what happened … to Dela."
"Yes."
Onyx peered around him. "Where's Joad? I could use some of his herbs right now. I ran into some trouble, as you can see. Is he nearby?"
"He is dead."
Onyx's heart jumped. "How?" she finally gulped. "Did some other humans catch him alone? Not Led!"
"No, it was nothing like that," Kadagan replied flatly. "Seeing Dela's death was simply too much for him."
Onyx put her swollen face in her hands and sighed. "I'm sorry, Kadagan. I did what I could to save her."
"Didst thou? It seems thou hast found thy human form less disagreeable than anticipated."
Both the question and the statement startled her, and instantly put her on the defensive. "I've learned to tolerate it, if that's what you mean. What's that got to do with any shy;thing?"
"Only thou knows the answer to that."
Onyx's eyes narrowed angrily at the nyphid's typically cryptic response. "How was I to know a stupid ogre would break open the wagon before I had a chance to rescue Dela? I commanded the maynus to give her energy, but it was already too late. If the maynus couldn't save her, what else could I do? What did you expect me to do?"
"I expected thee to rescue Dela." Kadagan closed his blue eyes wearily. "None of that matters anymore. The time of nyphids on Krynn is over. I came to say good-bye."
"What will you do now?" she asked softly.
"I will give back the energy I have gathered throughout my life, to enlighten others."
"Are you going to seek out more qhen students? Are you-hey, what are you doing?"
The nyphid stood with his eyes closed, swaying softly like a seedling in the breeze. His face grew even more gray. Onyx shook his shoulders and called his name, but he didn't answer.
Suddenly the corners of the nyphid's mouth pulled up in a mysterious smile. His paper-thin eyelids fluttered open and took on that same faraway look Dela's had before she died.
"Stop this, Kadagan!" Onyx snapped. "You can't leave-"
His birdlike shoulders withered like a leaf between Onyx's hands. "No!" she cried heavenward. Kadagan couldn't be gone! There was so much she wanted to learn, things that only he could teach.
Something landed on Onyx's upper lip. She brushed it away angrily. It was a firefly-the third one she'd seen on this cold winter day. Then Onyx remembered her trip with Joad to the beautiful, mossy grotto. It was the first time the elder nyphid had spoken to her. With a voice husky from silence, he'd told her that the grotto remained green and cov shy;ered with fireflies the year round.
"Each spends its lifetime gathering energy. They give it back to us by illuminating the night. That is a life well spent."
Khisanth finally understood why Joad had broken his silence and taken her to the grotto. She understood, too, why a pair of fireflies had appeared above the wagon when Dela died. And she wondered whether Joad and Dela had known to wait for Kadagan, if they expected him to follow them so soon.
Khisanth slowly lowered herself onto a boulder. She felt light-headed from all that had happened, and she could barely breathe through her swollen, broken nose.
As she sat there, Onyx glimpsed something shiny and black, lying in the dirt. Slipping from the boulder, she stooped and retrieved the object. An angry knot formed in her stomach as her fingers closed around a large, egg-shaped onyx stone. The young woman clenched it tightly, as if she could still feel the warmth of Led's hand on it. In her dragon form, she would have crushed it to black dust.
Crouching on the cold ground of the pass, Onyx's mind ran through all that had happened on this very bad day. The more she thought about it, the madder she got. Everything had gone sour: she'd failed to rescue Dela; all the nyphids were dead; the knight had broken her nose and gotten away; Led had left her to die.
The more she brooded, the more her anger focused on Led. He'd abducted Dela, incited the fight with the knights. He had fanned her fascination with her human form and then seduced her.