Stonewing Guardian

by Zoe Chant

  Except it had carvings on it.

  Hrungnir's Heart, she thought in wonder.

  There was no doubt that this was the object which was pictured in the drawings Mace had shown her. Even if seeing it in person was a whole different experience than a faded drawing from several hundred years ago. The carvings were exactly the same.

  It was bigger than she had expected. When she spread out her fingers, it was a little larger than her fully spread hand.

  Is it safe to pick up ...?

  Every archaeologist instinct cried out to leave it in place until she could fully document its location and surroundings, but Mace's deteriorating condition couldn't wait. She shone the flashlight all around the disc and the plinth, and crouched down to look from other angles. As far as she could tell, there were no trip wires and nothing holding it in place. There weren't even any carvings that might be magical in nature.

  Thea tucked the flashlight up her sleeve to free her hands, grasped the object in both hands, and carefully lifted it.

  Although the carvings made it look somewhat fragile, it was reassuringly solid and heavy. It weighed about what she would expect from a stone disc that size; she definitely needed both hands to hold it.

  She turned it over and found that it was carved on both sides. The carvings on the back were a perfect reverse of the front, and additionally, there were runes around the outside edge. The light was too poor for her to be able to read them without a closer examination.

  I can't believe it exists, she thought. I can't believe we found it.

  Gradually she became aware of a slight tingling in her fingertips. Her first, startled instinct was to drop it back onto its plinth, but the feeling didn't hurt. It seemed to be something akin to the way she had been able to sense the spells back at Mace's house.

  But at Mace's place, the feeling had been much more faint and hard to identify. She'd had to concentrate deeply to feel it at all. This had happened without even trying. The disc was just that magical.

  What kind of thing was she messing with?

  Something bumped her hip.

  She yelped and almost dropped the medallion on the floor. Gasping, while her heart rate dropped slowly out of the stratosphere back to normal, she looked at Gio, who was standing beside her, having apparently come out of nowhere. He regarded her with a blank stone-lion stare.

  "How can you be that quiet?"

  Gio flicked his ears. He sniffed at the medallion, then looked back at the doorway they'd come in through. From here, it looked very ominous, a black opening like a hollow void. Mace was slumped beside it, head dropped down to his chest, not moving.

  "Is that magician coming?" Thea asked quietly.

  Gio flattened his ears, and bounded over to the doorway. He bumped Mace with his nose, and then took up a position in the doorway, his mane bristling, looking down the tunnel.

  Thea swallowed a fresh sense of urgency. She didn't dare run with the medallion, but she hurried, crossing the floor at a hustling trot while trying not to stumble on the edge of a paving stone.

  There was also a part of her that couldn't help bracing for the room to erupt in flying arrows, the floor to fall out from under her, or some other Indiana Jones trap to close its jaws as soon as the medallion was removed from its resting place. But apparently its makers either weren't into that kind of thing, or had never expected that an unauthorized person would find its hiding place. No paving blocks shifted under her; no giant rocks came rolling down from above. She reached Mace without incident and dropped to her knees beside him.

  "Mace?"

  He was breathing so shallowly she could barely identify it as such, but his chest was still rising and falling in tiny, trace amounts. When she took his hand, his fingers were ice cold. She moved his hand to the stone, which was lying cradled in her lap.

  Nothing happened.

  "Come on," she said, desperate. She put her hand over Mace's, curling his limp fingers over the top of the medallion. "This thing isn't just a big round rock. Even I can tell it's not. It must do something—it must!"

  Mace stirred a little. His fingers twitched on the medallion—and then, to her wondering gaze, his fingertips sank visibly into the rock, as if it was made of soft putty. But she knew it wasn't; she had just been holding it.

  "Mace?" she said hopefully.

  There was a sudden, deep, ground-shaking roar from Gio. It reverberated around the chamber. The lion launched himself down the tunnel, but there was a tremendous flash of light and the stone lion tumbled end over end into the chamber, smoking and shedding small trails of flame.

  Javic stumbled into the room, breathing hard. His hoodie was torn in deep slashes—such as might have been made by a stone lion’s claws—and in the dim light, a bright firelight glow shone through the rips from inside.

  "Come on, people!" he panted, running a hand through his hair. "It doesn't have to be this hard."

  His gaze fell on the medallion. He went very still.

  So did Thea.

  Then she snatched it out of Mace's grasp—the fingerprints remained, deep indentations in solid stone—and backed away.

  "Give that to me," Javic said quietly.

  "No!" Thea snapped. "It's not yours."

  "You don't need it. I do."

  "We do need it!" she shot back. She looked around for Gio, but he was lying where he had been thrown by Javic's fireball, apparently knocked unconscious.

  "Not as much as I do."

  The flashlight had fallen to the floor, rolled and come to rest pointing at the wall, casting the room in dim backwash light. Without any light other than that, the glow on Javic's skin was very obvious. Or, no—it was coming from inside him, like firelight bleeding through cracks in a wall. Even his eyes had a little of that dim glow. It was as if he was on fire from the inside.

  "What are you?" she asked.

  Javic swallowed. He was good-looking, she thought distractedly, with a kind of masculine good looks that were just a little too rugged to be pretty. But she'd take Mace's craggy features any day.

  "I am a vessel for a phoenix," he said at last. "It's consuming me. I think that artifact you hold in your hand—and gargoyle magic, generally—might be able to stabilize it for me."

  So phoenixes were real too; why not? "Then you do need our help." She tightened her grip on the medallion. "We need it to help our friend. You need it to save yourself. So let's work together."

  Javic shook his head slowly. "I can't trust you."

  "I'm not giving it to you," Thea said.

  "Then I'll take it."

  He moved with astonishing speed. Fire crackled around his hand. Thea had to jerk away to avoid being burned, but instead of burning her, the fire lashed around her and held her in place, like thin ropes made of flame. It was hot enough to approach pain, but not enough to burn her skin, though she could tell it was leaving reddened marks.

  She twisted against the bonds, but there was nothing she could do. Javic approached and took the stone out of her hands. She could feel the fever-hot brush of his skin. Desperately she tried to hang on, but Javic grimaced and twisted until it felt like her wrist was going to break. Her fingers opened, and he wrenched the medallion out of her hands, then staggered a little as he realized how heavy it was.

  "Mace!" she screamed. "Gio! He's got Hrungnir's Heart! Mace!"

  Mace

  Thea.

  Her scream penetrated Mace's drugged, poisoned daze, cutting to his core like a blade made of ice.

  I am a gargoyle, he thought sluggishly. I protect. I defend.

  My mate is in danger.

  He opened his eyes. The world swam and stabilized. His night vision was less acute than usual, with the poison running through his system, and his vision was blurred. But he could see the glow of Javic's fire powers somewhere nearby, and he heard Thea scream his name again.

  Mace's body wouldn't obey him. This was not to be borne. His mate was in danger. He would not stand idly by and allow it.


  He curled his lip. A growl vibrated through his chest as, through sheer force of will, he pushed himself into a shift.

  It was one of the hardest things he'd ever done. The poison fought him every step of the way. But as he forced his body to stone, one inch at a time, the shuddering weakness began to recede, and strength slowly came up behind it. His fangs lengthened, shoulders broadened, claws curled from his fingertips. His body began to respond to him again.

  He was nowhere near full strength, not even close to it. But when he climbed to his feet, his legs held.

  It had felt as if it had taken an eternity, but in truth he realized that his stretched-out internal battle had taken only seconds, about as long as a normal shift. Thea was held in place with some of the fire-cables that Javic had once used against Jess and Reive. And Javic was turning away with Hrungnir's Heart held in both hands.

  Mace launched himself at him.

  Javic didn't see him coming until the last minute. He twisted his body to keep the medallion away from Mace, murmuring under his breath a fast chant that was probably some kind of spell.

  Mace slammed into him before he could finish chanting. Fire flared around Javic to protect him, but he was still an ordinary human in the claws of a shifted gargoyle. It must have been like being smacked into a brick wall. Javic grunted, all the breath knocked out of him, and they went tumbling together. Javic lost his grip on the medallion. Somehow it didn't shatter; it went skidding toward the wall.

  Right now Mace hardly even cared about that. What he cared about was getting Javic away from Thea.

  Behind him, he heard a sharp gasp and a few quick footsteps as Thea's magic bonds dissolved and she stumbled to keep her feet.

  "Thea!" he called over his shoulder. "Check on Gio!" What he really wanted her to do was get out of there, but she'd already made it clear how she felt about that. He would settle for keeping her as far away from the fighting as possible.

  "Are you okay?" she called back.

  "Fine!" Mace grunted. Javic was trying to crawl out from under him and get to the medallion. In his normal state, he would have easily been able to pin the human mage in place. As it was, he had to rely mostly on his superior size and weight to keep Javic down. Still, given their difference in size, there was very little chance of Javic being able to throw him off through sheer strength alone.

  Then Javic rolled over and it all went to hell.

  Fire flashed in the mage's eyes, and his face went completely blank. That was all the warning Mace got before a sheet of fire erupted from the mage's body.

  Fire couldn't burn stone—at least, normal fire couldn't. This was something else. It was more than just fire; it had force and weight to it. No wonder Gio had been flattened.

  Mace was flung off and went rolling, while Javic struggled to his feet. Fire blazed around him, a white-gold sheet of flame that cast light but somehow little heat. It rose up behind him into something like wings.

  Javic moved like a puppet controlled by strings, head lolling to the side. His eyes were open, but blank, filled with fire.

  Uh, wow, Mace thought. This doesn't seem good.

  Mace moved to get between Javic—or whatever Javic was now—and Thea, who was crouched beside a slowly recovering Gio. The medallion was lying on the floor behind the plinth, and right now it seemed like the least important thing in the room.

  Javic moved his head slowly and looked down at his hands. They were in front of him, palms open. He curled them very slowly into fists, and a shudder ran through him; emotion flooded back into his face, features twisting, and he closed his eyes for a moment. When he opened them again, they were normal human eyes, with just a trace of fire flickering in the depths.

  "I really hate doing that," Javic muttered. He swayed. His clothes had been half burned off him; bits of his robe dangled in charred pieces.

  Then he looked over at the medallion, lying on the floor behind the plinth.

  There was a brief pause, and then Thea, who was closest, lunged for it.

  Javic shot out a fiery cord from his fingertips. It lashed around the medallion and yanked it out of the way right before Thea's fingers closed over it.

  The medallion skittered along the floor, towed by the cord. Mace grabbed for it and missed. Being a gargoyle was working against him here, since he was big and bulky and made of stone; he might be faster and more graceful in his human form. He shifted back, and staggered, falling to his knees. Okay, perhaps not. The poison had been partly cleared out of his system by the shift, but he could barely move his poisoned arm.

  The medallion skittered across the floor toward Javic.

  Then Gio came bounding out of nowhere, lunged at the medallion, snapped it between his jaws—and swallowed it.

  Everyone stared.

  Gio stumbled to a stop, as if he himself wasn't quite sure what had happened. He shook his head, then shook it again, harder, like a dog with an itch in his ear. He sat down hard on his haunches, as if his back legs had suddenly stopped working.

  "Gio?" Thea asked hesitantly.

  Javic finally got himself together. He raised a hand. Light began to spark around his fingertips.

  Gio raised his head, and his blank stare sharpened abruptly. He was still a lion, but the look in his eyes, for a moment, was very clear and human.

  Then he sank out of sight into the stone.

  The fireball spent itself on the stone a second later.

  Javic snarled a curse and turned on Mace and Thea. "You two—" he began, and then stopped, staring not at them, but past them.

  At the same time Mace felt something, a strange tingle flickering through his body. His stone sense was still half dead from the poison, but he could tell that something was happening around them, some sort of gargoyle magic.

  Thea cried out.

  The walls were beginning to bulge inward.

  "What's happening?" Javic demanded. He backed up. Sparks danced from his fingertips, and firelight glimmered in his eyes.

  "I think some kind of failsafe got triggered," Mace guessed. He got to his feet, struggling to hide his lingering weakness, and moved toward Thea. "The medallion is supposed to stay here. When it left ..."

  Thea muttered something that sounded like, "Indiana Jones was better as a movie!" and backed up until she bumped into Mace.

  The stone was bubbling up and bowing inward on the walls as if it was about to erupt into stoneskins. When the first one dropped onto the floor on all fours, Mace realized that was exactly what they were—but like no stoneskins he had ever seen before.

  The ones he had created, and the ones he'd fought, were roughly gargoyle-shaped, mindless automata of stone in a vague humanlike shape.

  These looked more like big dogs or bears, four-legged and heavy-bodied with flattish heads, canine ears, and mouths full of razor-sharp obsidian teeth.

  And rather than the dull behavior of stoneskins, which just stood there until they received orders, these were as alert as the big predators they resembled. Their heads swiveled, stone ears flickering. They were a lot like Gio as a stone lion, and it occurred to Mace that it was possible some kind of animal had been bound to them, in the same way he had accidentally done with Gio.

  It was very clear that they were guardians.

  They were coming out of the walls all around the room. Without really meaning to, Mace and Thea backed up until they nearly bumped into Javic. The three of them stood facing outward, an awkward little alliance surrounded by stalking razor-toothed stone murder. There were at least a dozen of the creatures already, and more emerging all the time.

  "If you know a back way out of here, gargoyle," Javic said out of the corner of his mouth, "now's a good time to reveal it."

  "I didn't even know this place was here until tonight; how could I?" Mace retorted. He kept his eyes on the guardians, what he could see of them. Behind him, he heard more of them stalking forward, their stone claws ticking on the floor. Every once in a while there was a rocky clatter as a new one droppe
d out of the wall.

  "Can you control them?" Thea asked quietly.

  Could he? Mace reached out with his stone sense. It was still muffled and dull, like trying to hear through foam earplugs. Every time he tried to get hold of them with his mind, it simply slipped off.

  "Maybe I could if someone hadn't drugged me," Mace growled. "Is there an antidote for this?"

  "Not that I know of," Javic said over his shoulder. "It's supposed to render gargoyles compliant and unable to slip away into the stone. Er ... can you slip away into the stone right now?"

  "If I could, don't you think I would have? What about you?" Mace demanded. "Can't you teleport?"

  "It's called portaling," Javic retorted huffily, "and no, I can't here; do you think I would have gone through that entire labyrinth trying to get here if it was possible to take a shortcut? This entire island is warded with spells the likes of which I've never seen before." He snorted. "I can't believe I needed you two to show me the way; it's so obviously magical here that it should have been clear—"

  One of the stoneskin guardians growled. The sound was like two large rocks grinding together.

  "Monologue later!" Mace said sharply. "Fight now!"

  He put Thea behind him, interposing himself between her and the advancing stoneskins. Unfortunately this put her in worrying proximity to Javic; she was sandwiched between them. Right now, however, Javic seemed like the lesser of two evils.

  "Guys, maybe we should think about getting out of here?" Thea suggested, peering around Mace's arm at the advancing stoneskins.

  "I welcome suggestions for how to do that," Javic said between his teeth.

  "Leave her alone," Mace snapped. "We're only in this situation because of you."

  "Could we run?" Thea asked.

  Mace didn't like it. He was still shaky; he wished it was possible to just get Thea to safety some other way. Then again, standing and fighting didn't seem like the best solution either. And they had to clear a path in order to have an opportunity to run.

  He briefly thought about throwing Javic at them and running like hell. It was entertaining to contemplate, at least.