Lord of the Abyss - By Nalini Singh Page 0,83

into the rise behind them. "I know my father's strength - and we'll need everything we have if we aren't to use the death spell."

"We'll talk about this later." Ripping off a strip of her tunic, he tied it around her arm.

More arrows thudded home.

"Do you know who's shooting at us?" she asked.

"A pod of gremlins."

Liliana winced. The small, thin creatures with their pointed brown teeth, corpse-gray skin, and thirst for blood were natural allies of her father, feeding as they did on carrion. But it appeared they had turned from scavengers to hunters after years of unparalleled freedom. "They won't give up now."

"Then we'll have to get rid of them." Going to his saddlebags, he returned with both the arrow that had hit her and a number of small, sleek knives.

He touched the arrow to a blade, murmured low deep words under his breath. "A small magic, Lily. Child's play." Rising, he threw the blade in the general direction of the gremlins. A scream of pain sounded, followed by a hail of arrows landing around them.

Smiling, Micah began to pick them up.

The gremlins ran off screaming after their arrows kept returning - to unerringly find living targets. "That was very clever," she said as he helped her back onto her horse. Her arm hurt, but she could still use it and that was what mattered.

"It's from a game my father taught me." Micah pulled himself up onto his own horse, looking no more drained than he had after dealing with the snakes. "To find things."

And what Micah had found, they saw when they looked into the bushes where the gremlins had been hiding, were the hearts of the shriveled and hairless creatures who had the two legs and arms of man, but the intelligence of a rat. The only things they wore were their weapons. Before running away, their "friends" had hacked off an arm and a leg each - to snack on, most likely. Gremlins didn't care what they ate as long as it was dead.

"Nothing here, Lily. Let's go."

It seemed like forever before they reached the border to Elden, the sky turning from blue to orange to dark red as the hours passed. There were other obstacles in their path, including a hungry ensorcelled bear and a fleet of crows with venomous beaks. The bear they'd been able to simply fool, but Micah had had to use his magic the other times...and he was getting weaker with each incident.

It was on the edge of sunset that they finally crossed an invisible line that had him saying, "Elden." The wonder in his voice quickly turned into rage and sorrow as he saw the state of the land around them, unmistakable even under the shadow of oncoming night - the trees stunted and browned, the ground cracked, no birdsong in the air, though it was early yet.

Jumping to the earth, Micah touched his hands to it. "We have come," he whispered. "We have come."

The ground rumbled, but it was broken, almost dead.

No, no. A tear fell in her heart. Without the earth's strength, Micah was now too weak to battle the Blood Sorcerer and live.

He lifted his head at that instant, his eyes incandescent with a chaos of emotions. "Give me a knife, Lily."

"No, Micah." Jumping down herself, she blocked him from going to his saddlebags. "If you bleed yourself here, my father will win and the land would die, anyway."

His body vibrated against her palms and she knew that should he decide to shove her out of the way, she'd be unable to stop him. "Please listen to me. You are here now - the earth will heal. It will heal."

The eyes that looked down at her were of the deadly Guardian...and also of a prince of Elden, blazing with strength and incredible raw power.

"How?" she whispered, for around them the land lay dying.

"The power is ancient," he said, his voice resonating with the force of it. "It lay hidden, slumbering until it sensed my presence. The price was this sickness - the land sacrificed itself to protect that power."

She staggered under the weight of the magic in the winter-green, but didn't back down. "My father tried to end your lineage two decades ago," she said, forcing herself to hold that terrible, beautiful gaze. "You do this and he succeeds. Your parents' sacrifice, that of the land, will have been for nothing."

His fingers gripped her jaw. "You know nothing of my parents."

"No," she said, taking the emotional blow