stopping only when he levelled his spear and held it inches from her face.
‘Where are my Gods?’ she repeated softly, peering out through fronds of matted grey hair. ‘I am more interested in your Gods now.’
He took a step back; she had replied in perfect Elvish, something he had never heard from a human before. The Elf glanced back at his commanders, the warleader and his sister, the mage. Sensing danger the mage wasted no time in summoning the spirits bound to her; three wispy forms like puffs of smoke, one black, two white, appeared in the air near her.
‘And there they are,’ the old woman announced with a smile. She offered the spirits a bent-backed bow.
‘Kill her,’ ordered the mage.
The soldier turned and lunged, but the old woman dodged his spear somehow. As the shaft slipped past she caught it and tugged it, jerking the soldier off-balance and within reach of a backhand slap that sent him crashing to the ground.
‘We are not so different,’ the crone mused as she turned to the others.
The two archers drew back their strings as she edged forward, grinning toothily. One bow shattered in the hands of its owner. The other managed to fire before his did likewise, but he snatched at the shot, and it skewed a yard wide. A spear was thrown, but she twitched it aside with a flick of her long fingers and it buried itself deep into the soft earth. When no more were thrown she took a step forward and grinned down at the dazed Elf at her feet.
‘Not so different indeed,’ she continued. ‘Both once tied to the Gods, both now free to learn a new way.’
She hesitated, her tongue flicking out like a snake catching a scent on the breeze. The fallen Elf touched a grimy hand to his face then held it up for inspection. His eyes widened as a discoloration on the skin deepened before his eyes and swelled in an instant to become a bleeding sore.
‘And how well have you learned!’ she cackled, gesturing towards the spirits circling the mage. ‘You have found new Gods, ones weak enough to be controlled and enslaved - and so you become the thing you hate most.’
The Elf at her feet began to keen in fear, pawing at his face as the disease spread, ravaging the skin faster than the eye could follow. He tried to howl, but his throat was already ruined and in moments he was unable to even whimper like a dying puppy.
None of the rest noticed; they were transfixed by the sight of the old woman shaking out her ragged clothes and straightening. Her appearance changed in seconds as she grew taller before their eyes. A thick stink of putrefaction filled the air and her skin paled to the chalk-white colouring of a corpse as her body juddered like a plague victim. Then the transformation was over and she looked up, her blue lips twisted into an uneven smile. A tarnished crown appeared in the tangled thicket of her hair.
‘So I shall learn from you all,’ the Wither Queen announced to the terrified Elves. The quickest-witted of them wrenched his horse around to flee, but the Wither Queen was faster. She raked her nails through the air in his direction and was rewarded with a scream from his horse. She followed it with a flurry of slashes directed at the remaining soldiers and in a heartbeat they were all lying on the ground, some crushed, others merely dazed. The Wither Queen spat on her palms and flung the spit out with an incantation and riders and horses alike coughed bloody foam. The horses reeled, sinking jerkily to their knees.
Only the mage was left, almost paralysed with terror as she cringed in her saddle. She was oblivious to the bound spirits darting frantically around her head. The Wither Queen stepped forward, a terrible hunger in her face. The mage’s horse collapsed and she was tipped forward to sprawl flat in the dark forest mud, senseless for a moment. When she came to, she tried to scrabble away from the advancing Goddess, knowing it was far too late. Convulsions began to wrack her body.
Above her the spirits raced around in frenzied fear until the Wither Queen reached out a hand, fingers splayed as though to pluck them like fruit. The spirits stopped and hung in the air above the mage’s corpse, their shapeless forms coalescing into vague shapes of smoke. They sank to the