by Bill Hiatt
“Non-Celtic weapons work better against them!” yelled Alexandros as he took a wide swing that wounded two more.
“That doesn’t help if I don’t have one,” grumbled Gordy, hard pressed to even keep the pixies back, let alone wound them.
Joan kept the gap in the shield from closing, and pixies flowed through it like a flooding river that would wash us all away. I had no choice but to hit them with as much wind as I could. It slowed their advance, but at the cost of leaving us vulnerable to faerie arrows from above. The shield, already compromised, might collapse altogether if it had to take too many hits.
The knockers were easy to quell with sunlight—a good thing, since there might be far more of them below ground, ready to burst forth at any moment.
A battle cry echoed more loudly than the incessant clang of weapons. I turned enough to see Chango charging the pixies. His steps burned beneath him, and his lightning sliced into their ranks. The tattoos must not have been designed to resist such an attack. They seemed to melt into the pixie’s wounded flesh.
Jack-o’-the-Lantern laughed maniacally and ran at Chango with fury in his eyes. Chango lashed at him with lightning, but he dodged the blast. His movements were clumsy compared to Chango’s—but no less fast.
Chango struck again. His lightning charred the ground but missed his oddly nimble target. Jack was getting dangerously close, but if he was carrying a weapon, I couldn’t see it.
A moon-silver arrow shot past me and struck one of the pixies who had struggled past my wind. I looked over at Eva, already poised to strike again. By her side stood Khalid, readying an arrow as he scanned the battlefield for the best target.
Jack was almost upon Chango. The lightning in his eyes flickered, and they began to reflect Jack’s own maniacal eyes. Could someone enchant Chango that way, or was the spell directed at Lucas, who might have been more vulnerable to it?
I flew in Chango’s direction. He was too valuable an ally to lose. Before I could get close enough to act, though, Jack was struck in the left shoulder by one of Khalid’s arrows, which shot four bursts of power through him. Jack screamed and fell backward, clutching at the arrow. The smell of burnt pumpkin filled the air.
Joan wailed to see her consort falling and turned her wrath on the young half djinn, who dodged her ball lightning with skill far greater than his years. Chango shot a blinding burst of lightning at her. She dodged, but her distraction gave Khalid time to fire another arrow. It missed Joan but tore through one of the pixies charging from her left.
Another battle cry shook the pixies as Gwynn ap Nudd himself charged to our defense. His sword strokes bounced off the pixies the same way Gordy’s had, but he put so much force behind them that he knocked the pixies off their feet, stunning them.
Despite the new arrivals, we were outnumbered, and more pixies charged in by the second. My distraction over Chango’s plight had allowed more knockers to dig their way up as well.
A thudding pounded in my head. I did not have to look up to know that the faerie archers, unencumbered by my wind, were pounding away at the shield. Magnus no longer had the considerable energy Chango could contribute, nor the support the others who had rushed to our rescue might have sent.
I had to try a different approach. I let Amun’s wind die down and let rays of sun pour out of me, blinding and burning as many pixies as I could.
A flash of lightning from above struck the shield, shaking it and making it flicker dangerously. Oberon was talking advantage of Chango’s distraction.
“I can’t sustain the shield much longer,” said Magnus. “The lightning, hellfire, and arrows are more than I can manage, even with the lyre. I need you guys to wind up what you’re doing and help me.”
“Spell.” It took me a second to realize that whisper of thought came from Tal. “Lure…lure Oberon down and use it. It’s the only…hope.”
Another flash of lightning shook the shield immediately over us. Hellfire flashed in the distance. Always arrows thudded against it.
Exhaustion gnawed at me. The God’s Wife of Amun was never intended to go into combat against a large army. My sun bolts flickered and paled as my energy faded. I was proud of how many enemies I had felled—but it was not enough.
Tal raised a hand as Gwynn passed by him, and the faerie king bent to listen to the burned bard’s whisper.
“That’s a terrible risk,” I heard the monarch say. His face was grim, but I would have expected no less. We had mighty spell casters and warriors, but the other side had them as well—more of them.
The shield shuddered, then stabilized again, but at a lower power level. I doubted we had more than minutes before the unrestrained wrath of the faerie armies struck us.
The hounds of Gwynn bounded to the aid of their master. Their teeth failed to grip hold of the pixies and their throbbing tattoos, but the hounds could knock them over. They had more than enough weight to hold down a pixie, but other pixies swarmed over them and pulled them back.
I could see Taliesin’s other men running as fast as they could toward us. Had they abandoned Magnus? Was that why the shield was weaker? If so, it was a poor strategic choice.
Though they had been fighting on the ground, pixies could fly just as well as faeries. I found this out in the worst way imaginable. As soon as my sun attack failed completely, a dozen of them flew right at me. I tried to summon a wind strong enough to knock them back from me, but what I got was more like a breeze, and they grabbed me from the air. Their faces were twisted with hatred. They did not have the look of warriors who were merely taking prisoners.
Most of them held me while their leader raised his blade to strike. Shahriyar knocked it from his hand. One touch of his emerald blade was enough to make the tattoos flash green and vanish.
My other captors screamed and turned their attention toward Shahriyar. He struck another aside with the flat of his blade, and the fallen one’s tattoos likewise flashed away. The others fled when they saw that. Shahriyar helped me off the ground.
“Thank you,” I said, not knowing what else to say. I couldn’t understand his strategy, wounding or stunning when he could have killed. The others were doing it, too. Such foolishness just left more enemies for another day—but now didn’t seem the time to chide him for such a lapse in strategy.
An explosion drew my attention. Magnus, shrouded in a small shield of his own, flew up into the air as noisily as possible. He sped toward the cloud from which the lightning had come, strumming the lyre as he flew, building as much power as he could.
“Apparently, stealth is overrated,” though Tal.
“I hope Magnus knows what he’s doing,” mumbled Shahriyar. He had no more time to spare for Magnus, though. The pixies had found their courage and assailed me again. This time knocking one down was not enough. They just kept coming.
“Oberon!” Magnus’s yell was so loud that he had to have been magically amplifying it. “Coward! Come out from behind your rows of warriors and fight me man-to-man—or in your case, man-to-half-man!”
Lightning exploded across the sky, but Magnus had the momentum to dodge it. The rain of arrows paused as the faerie archers targeted him.
“I knew it,” yelled Magnus. “I knew you were not man enough to face me. It’s easy to fling lightning from a safe distance. Real men fight hand-to-hand.”
Three lightning bolts in rapid succession sizzled toward Magnus, but he evaded them all. The air smelled like ozone again.
“Come on—shorty! Your men will wonder why they follow you. Will you accept my challenge?”
The shield flickered again as hellfire twisted through it. It held, but its weakness weighed on my mind. This Oberon had no reason to accept a challenge. When our defenses collapsed, he and his allies still had more than enough troops to overcome us all in minutes.
“I wonder what your alleged father, Julius Caesar, would have had to say about this?” asked Magnus. “I’ll bet he never had reason to hide. Now your mother, an earlier incarnation of
Morgan le Fay—that’s a different matter. I’m sure she did a lot of hiding if she’s like the current Morgan—backstabbing bitch that she is!”
The sky turned bluish white as if the heavens had become one continuous lightning bolt. Magnus should have been burned to ashes, but he had prepared himself for fast flight and got beyond the edge of the sheet lightning, which struck the earth with a mighty roar. The soil melted before its fury. Had Oberon kept his wits about him and aimed that much power at the shield, the battle would be as good as over.
A figure streaked as fast as lightning from the cloud of faeries and headed for Magnus. Had Oberon accepted the challenge? Magnus laughed contemptuously and shot downward like a falling star with the faerie king plummeting after him like the living embodiment of vengeance.
Magnus landed right next to us. Oberon, wild-eyed though he was, avoiding crashing into what was left of the shield. Instead, he flew around to the gaping hole in it and shot right through. Behind him came at least twenty faerie archers.
Magnus had led them to the weakest point in our defenses. What was he thinking?
Oberon wasn’t like the other faeries. His face was just as handsome, but he was far shorter, about halfway between knocker height and pixie height. I sensed he might have been touched by a curse. However, his diminutive stature did not keep him from looking menacing. The moment he saw Magnus, lightning flashed from his hand and crashed against Magnus’s shield, showering everyone nearby with sparks.
“Is this you agreeing to my challenge, or are you going to let your faerie warriors do most of the fighting for you?”
“Hold!” yelled Oberon. The faerie archers already had arrows nocked and aimed at Magnus, but they froze.
“Hold, all of you!” This time the faerie king was glaring at the pixies.
“It is not your place to order my troops,” said Joan. She held her torch in a way that stopped just short of being a threat, but her tone was unfriendly, and her mouth was set in a thin, tight line.
“This is a matter of honor,” began Oberon.
“We pixies are more practical,” replied Joan. “This is a matter of victory. The enemy’s defenses are all but gone, and we outnumber them. What do you hope to gain by duel that we cannot gain by combat?”
“An apt question.” The new arrival was a faerie woman who towered over the surrounding pixies. Her skin was pale, her hair black as raven wings, and her eyes deep and dark as chasms to the very center of the earth. They hinted at secrets that would never be revealed. Like Jack-o’-the Lantern’s, they were too disturbing to look at for very long.
Her gray robe was simple, but the silver crown set with diamonds that caught the light like snowflakes revealed her to be Nicneven, queen of the Scottish faeries.
“Well, Oberon, how will you answer Joan and me?”
There was something odd about her tone. I had spent enough time in Pharoah’s court to know the subtle nuances by which rank was expressed. She and Oberon should have been on an equal level, but she addressed him in a way an Egyptian would have addressed a subordinate.
“As always, your wisdom is matchless,” said Oberon. The words came slowly, reluctantly—but they came. He would bow to her wishes.
“I should have guessed.” Magnus’s voice still boomed with magical amplification. “Not even man enough to stand your ground—or else you are Nicneven’s bitch.”
Oberon looked away from Nicneven, and his face twisted with rage. Before she could speak again, two bursts of lightning flared from his hands.
His shot was the signal for havoc. The faerie archers fired, though most of their hasty arrows missed, and the few that didn’t struck armor. Joan flung her ball lightning. The pixies hacked away like things possessed. Nicneven alone did not attack but eyed the field as if contemplating where to strike.
I flashed sunlight at her. Feeble as my effort was, it caught her by surprise and blinded her momentarily. I did what I could to raise a wind that would make the archers useless. It blew hard enough to reduce the accuracy of their aims.
Oberon focused on Magnus as if no one else were around, pummeling him with lightning until his shield snapped and crackled. The sorcerer played furiously on the lyre, reinforcing his defenses with golden light.
Khalid started shooting as fast as he could at Oberon, but the faerie king was shielded, too. Each arrow explosion made it ripple. The faerie king was putting too much energy into offense, not enough into defense.
Chango could probably have struck him down but didn’t. Instead, he shot flames and lightning at Nicneven, buckling her shield and sending her sprawling to the ground. Joan, less surprised, withstood Chango’s next attack better, but her electrical counterattack never even reached him. His bolts shattered her balls, and he laughed.
The pixies dreaded the emerald touch of Shar’s sword, and their ranks broke as he advanced. The others followed in his wake, cutting down the stragglers and getting closer and closer to the spot where Joan made her desperate defense and Nicneven struggled to rise.
Could we actually win? I allowed myself to hope for a moment. Then I looked up. The clouds of faeries in the sky were dropping much closer. They could easily sweep through the gap in the shield or pound some other part of it with arrows until it collapsed. Gwynn’s sorcerers, now unaided by Magnus, couldn’t sustain it for a minute if the enemies above launch a concerted attack against it.
I prayed to Amun for guidance, but it was as futile in this world as it would have been in mine. There would be no answer from my god until I freed him from his restraint—which I would never live to do.
The renewed arrow strikes against the main shield were like the pounding in my head. I lacked the strength now to turn them away.
I didn’t understand the strategy my supposed allies were following. Except for Magnus and Khalid, they all ignored Oberon. Even Gwynn, from whom I might have expected better sense, was hacking away at pixies instead of taking out the biggest immediate threat, who was now practically within arm’s reach.
None of them paid any attention to the large mass of archers about to crash through the shield. None of them tried to power share with Magnus—or me, for that matter. They focused on the troops right in front of them—and that was all.
I did the only thing I could—continue to deflect arrows as well as I was able until my ebbing strength ran out.
Shahriyar fought his way to Joan and struck her torch with his blade. Its blue magic fought the emerald glow of the sword for only a second before dying. Her shields tore apart like ancient papyrus in a high wind, and he struck her down with a punch to the jaw. He should have killed her, but I was too tired and ached too much to worry about things I couldn’t control.
I felt the last remnants of the main shield crumble. A thousand or so archers would be on us any time. I did what I could to concentrate Amun’s wind in the area where Gwynn, Arianrhod, and Taliesin’s warriors were clustered, but it was too wide for me to handle effectively. The archers would quickly rip through such a feeble defense.
A shudder passed through Oberon. Had he exhausted himself blasting Magnus with lightning? No, it was more than that. His shield crumbled. His whole body flickered and melted away. In its place was a much taller faerie—taller and less powerful. Khalid shot him in the leg before he had a chance to mount a proper defense, and he fell to the ground like a sack of stones.
“English faeries, behold!” shouted Magnus, his amplified words echoing all the way across the battlefield. “You have been deceived. You were led into this war, not by Oberon, but by this impostor.
“This is a trick!” yelled a faerie freshly arrived on the scene.
“No, it is not,” said another who had come with the false Oberon. “I saw him change with my own eyes.”
“And that isn’t all!” Shar had to yell to be heard even by those close to him. “Nicneven was an imposter as well.” He dragged to her feet a semiconscious faerie wearing Nicneven’s crown and robe, but even from a distance, I could se
e it was not the same person who had challenged Oberon’s judgment.
Magnus’s eyes widened, but he relayed the message through his amplified voice.
By now the bulk of both the English and Scottish faeries had assembled all around us. Of the hellfire witches, there was no sign. Perhaps they had been responsible for the substitution.
“How can this be?” asked one of the Scottish faeries. “No illusion or shapeshift would be that good. Too many of us would have seen through it.”
“There is a spell that could accomplish that deception,” said Magnus. “It allows for impersonation in a way that is almost undetectable. English faeries, someone has captured your king and substituted this imposter. Whoever did that is your enemy, not Gwynn ap Nudd.
“Scottish faeries, the same appears to be true of Nicneven. You too have been led to war by an imposter.”
The English sorcerers asked to inspect the imposter. They poked and prodded, but I could tell even from a distance they could not detect the magic Magnus was talking about.
“This man is clearly not Oberon, but we see no evidence that your story about the spell is true,” said one of them.
“How about a demonstration? Khalid, will you assist me?”
The half djinn allowed Magnus to take a drop of blood. The sorcerer levitated it into the air and chanted over it for a short time. I felt a surge of mystic power. The blood became a cloud around Magnus, then a film over him. He became younger looking, his skin and eye colors darkened to match Khalid’s, his features shifted. Once the process was complete, I couldn’t tell the shifted form was not the real one. I didn’t matter how hard I strained—if it weren’t for the clothing, the two Khalids would have been indistinguishable.
The transformed Magnus, whose voice now sounded like Khalid’s, invited the English and Scottish sorcerers and the seconds-in-command for each army to compare him to the real Khalid. The Scottish sorcerers kept their distance, and their faces remained eerily expressionless, as if they didn’t care one way or the other. Both seconds and all the English sorcerers studied every inch of Magnus and Khalid, oohing and aahing as they checked each aspect and could find no difference. One of the sorcerers stood back and squinted at Magnus for fifteen minutes without being able to see through the deception.