The Adels - Part 13

The Adels part 13 has been posted.Tales of the TawsheThe Adels-Part 13At first Wolf couldn’t understand what he was seeing. He saw gold, then it was something else, then it was gold again, then it settled as something else, but that something didn’t make sense to him right away either. Like a mist clearing from his eyes, he started to recognise features of what was inside the chest. He had seen them before, but never like this. His mind struggled to comprehend, and then suddenly he recognized a nose, a cheek, an eye. Now he knew what he was seeing — the severed heads of the four men he had left at last night’s campsite. Kent’s dead eyes were staring up at him. With a curse he stepped away, turning back to his men, ready to scream at them to fight; only he found all of them already fighting each other. He saw Far Darrigs dodging around as his men struck wildly around themselves, but they weren’t trying to kill the little people. It seemed as if they didn’t even see them. Instead they were killing each other. One man broke from the fight and ran towards the edge of the circle. His sword was raised. He meant to fight his way through the Far Darrig, but when his foot touched the ring of mushrooms he suddenly stopped moving and turned to ash. Soon the rest of his men were sprawled dead on the ground, blood seeping from their wounds. With a cry of anger, Wolf turned back to the chest.The red bitch was no longer standing there. She might have been one of the many that stood in a silent circle around the campsite, but he couldn’t identify her. Wolf retreated towards the centre of the circle. He was cursing himself for a fool, as he went. He had realized his mistake too late. He was protected from the Far Darrig magic because he held the old woman, but his men hadn’t been. They had killed each other thinking they were fighting an enemy, and the same thing would happen to him if anything happened to the old woman. His threat to kill her was useless. The little people stood silently watching and waiting.***“It looks like you have a standoff,” Bray observed as Amadella walked up to him. “How will you proceed?”“We cannot kill a human directly, only through misdirection, and while he holds to Grandmother Adel he is immune to our manipulations, so you are correct, it is a standoff for now. Eventually, the lack of food and water will weaken her. She will die. He will lose his protection, and he will kill himself – slowly and with great pain.”Beside him Adel gasped. “You can’t just wait for Grandmother to die. That is horrible. How can you even think that? Who will negotiate for the village if Grandmother is gone?”“You will of course,” Amadella answered.Adel looked stunned. She looked around desperately. “Bray, we have to do something. We can’t let —”
“I know, Adel. The question is what.”