The time Tracou had thought he had, had vanished. Pendaer had been right to yell at him—he had months to say something and hadn't.
Tracou's legs collapsed under the weight of this revelation.
"Tracou, are you okay!?" Serpouhi called, but Tracou barely heard her.
Without magic, he was nothing. No dezmek in his village could ever hope to stand up to one human without magic, let alone a group of them, let alone a military.
Wait. Tracou peered out the door again. He saw dezmek outside, gawking at the dust everywhere, but no humans. Not yet. Maybe they wanted the dezmek marinate in the powder, let them slowly realize what the powder did and attack once they started to panic.
Shakily, Tracou stood up. The last thing Ergakan needed was a mass panic, but how could they avoid that? Not telling the villagers about the dust had been a mistake, one that rested on his shoulders alone. He was a coward and his villagers would pay for his cowardice with their lives.
Normally, when attacked, dezmek fought back and would send the dezmek with lesser ability far away. But their foes weren't fellow dezmek. The entire village couldn't hide out in the flat countryside, especially when these Winleans might strike multiple villages at once. They didn't know enough to make a plan.
Closing the door, Tracou walked to the other end of the room, away from Garin, and tested his magic. While the entrance had some dust, most of the house did not. A small light sprouted from the tip of his wand, holding steady. Magic hadn't fled him, not completely. Not yet.
Whirling around, Tracou found himself face to face with a worried Serpouhi. She had been trying to get his attention to no avail.
"After I leave, get rid of the door and the windows. This dust makes magic unusable and—and it's something humans use. Winleans. If you stay inside you should be okay. Do you have water? You should use it to rinse Garin off."
He had to get everyone inside their homes, where magic was still usable. Unlike magic from their wands, magic in homes lingered, having been built up over time. They offered shelter from the Winleans.
Before Tracou could leave, though, Serpouhi grabbed his arm.
"Then you need to stay inside, too."
"I have to go and tell everyone to go home."
"You're so stupid. You can do that from in here."
Tracou stared down at Serpouhi as what she said filtered through his panic. Right. He could still use magic in here.
Coughing awkwardly, he pulled away from Serpouhi to place his wand to his throat.
What should he say?
He just had to talk—thinking about it would lead him to saying nothing.
"To anyone who can hear this," he began, voice booming over who knew how many acres of land. The adrenaline made it difficult to refrain from using an absurd amount of magic at one time. "The powder you see absorbs active magic. It doesn't matter how strong you are—it makes your wand useless. Only something that has been permanently changed by magic, like your homes, is safe. Stay inside and get rid of windows and doors. This powder is... a Winlean tool and I don't doubt that they are on their way to slaughter us."
Shakily pulling his wand away from his neck, Tracou made for the door again only to find it missing.
Apparently Serpouhi expected Tracou to stay.
Like someone's familiar, a dezmek's home was tied to the people living in it unless otherwise given authorization by someone connected to the house. It would be easy for Garin or Serpouhi to change the layout or colors of their home, but Tracou couldn't do so without an immense struggle.
"I have to go."
"No," Serpouhi responded, glaring at him.
"Let me out, Serpouhi."
"You said the Winleans want to slaughter us—are you insane!?"
"They aren't here yet!"
"How do you know that?!"
"When I looked outside earlier—"
"They could be here now!"
Tracou grunted. "Make a window and we'll check."
Serpouhi looked to Garin, who had been content to leave the two of them to argue about this all by themselves. But, with attention now on him, he nodded to her. Heaving a high-pitched sigh, Serpouhi made the wall temporarily transparent.
On the other side of the wall, the street lay empty aside from the accumulating gray. Those nearby had heeded his warning, if nothing else.
Whirling around to face Serpouhi again, Tracou gestured to the window behind him.
"Do you see? I have to go while I have the chance! I can't stay here waiting—I've done enough of that already and it's resulted in this!"
But Serpouhi and even Garin stared transfixed on something behind him, mild surprise on their faces. Tracou blinked at them and turned back around.
Two horses skidded to a halt in the road, with Mirthal in one and Pendaer on the other. Mirthal clambered down and hurried over to the window.
"There you are!" Mirthal bellowed, loud enough for the dezmek inside to hear, though only Tracou could understand.
"Mirthal!" Idiot! What was he doing out here? Well, it was obvious what he was doing—he had come looking for him. While that pleased him, Mirthal would have been safer in the manor. Just because Mirthal and Pendaer could fight didn't mean that they could beat back an entire Winlean force.
The wall regained its color. Tracou faced Serpouhi again before it finished changing, ready to yell at her, but the look on her face cut him off. Her nose glowed red.
"I made a door for you." she said with a small hiccup. "Go straight to the manor, okay?"
As she had said, a new door had appeared in the wall.
Tracou let out a short breath, nodded to her, then dashed outside to meet Mirthal.
Mirthal trotted over to him, smiling in relief. He had his sword at his hip as well as a bow and quiver on his back. Pendaer was decked out similarly, though his quiver rested on his other hip rather than his back. Naturally, Pendaer didn't get off of his horse to greet him.
"Never do that thing with your voice again, dezmek. I thought blood was going to start pouring out of my ears," Pendaer sneered, his grip on the reins of both horses a bit too firm.
Not even in the middle of a crisis could Pendaer resist saying something stupid.
Mirthal waved his hand as if batting Pendaer's words away. "We found you because of it, so it was a good idea. How did you do it, anyway? I thought you couldn't use magic with this stuff in the air..." he said as he led Tracou over to the horse.
"As long as there's not a lot of dust, I can still use magic inside."
"Oh! Then we'll be going back to the manor."
Mirthal got onto the horse first, rather slowly, and then helped Tracou onto it. No one had taught him how to ride a horse, but he knew how to get onto one. Pendaer tossed the reins to Mirthal's horse away so Tracou could grab them.
"First," Tracou said, adjusting in his seat. Mirthal sat behind him and already had an arm around him. "I want to go around and make sure everyone is inside. Have you seen any humans out here?"
"No. But the wind's blowing west, so I imagine they're to the east."
To the east lay the ocean. The port. How lucky the Winleans had been to have a wind blowing toward Ergakan.
The three of them made their way through Ergakan, looking over the fields for any stragglers. For the most part, Tracou's warning had been effective. Still, every second they spent searching was a second they weren't using to solve their growing problems.
Time. It always came down to time. One day he had plenty of it and the next he had none.
After helping an elderly man back over to his house, the elves froze. Tracou watched them, uneasy.
"Sounds like horses," Mirthal said, looking to the west.
Pendaer nodded. "A number of them. But... not a large number."
How could they be so calm?
Tracou nearly started to ask what was wrong with them when he saw Elira and Stepan on horseback. Unlike most villagers, who had little use for horses, Elira and her family kept a number of them in case the militia had need of transportation.
Frowning, Tracou moved his horse to meet Elira, whose horse nearly bowled into his.
"Lord Vartanian!" she yelped. "I've been looking for you!"
"Why? Didn't you hear what I said? Magic is useless out here! Stay inside!"
Elira's mouth fell open. Blinking rapidly, she shook her head. "But... If we're being attacked, I—"
"You don't get it!" Tracou snapped. But then, Elira had never seen a human—how could she understand?
Stepan nudged his horse forward. Instead of looking at least worried, like Elira, Stepan grinned. An eager confidence rolled off of him as his familiar circled in the sky overhead.
"We understand perfectly well, Lord Vartanian. Those who want to hide can, but what can you do with just you and two elves? At least this way you'll have five people."
This was what his fighting force amounted to. Despite numbers being useless, it still embarrassed him.
"Tracou, what are you all talking about?" Mirthal asked from behind him.
After a sharp inhale, Tracou translated for Mirthal and Pendaer.
Oddly, Pendaer made a noise of approval. "Yes, that sounds fine. We can always use them as decoys if we need to flee."
"Decoys?!" Tracou repeated. "How dare you!"
Mirthal pulled Tracou closer to him, perhaps in an attempt to be soothing. "Pendaer, please. Anyway, Tracou, I think Stepan is right. If they turn out useless, you can keep them safe inside the manor anyway."
Right. Sure, three magicless dezmek were not much better than one, but three dezmek inside a building meant three less dezmek in danger.
"All right, you can come with us. We're going to the manor," he said in Dezmerian before repeating the information in Aodehsh for the elves.
Four horses traveled up the dusty trail to Tracou's manor. Tracou turned his head, looking over Ergakan.
Snow hadn't fallen. The powder, a poor replacement, foretold death rather than hid it.