Nobody with any sense would fling themselves into such a non-space. Fortunately, good sense wasn’t high on the list of gríobhth virtues, so that made the decision even easier. With a deft maneuver of folded wings, she turned sideways and dove into the nothing.
For the space of three heartbeats, she seemed to hang there, formless and senseless.
Then the world burst into full scent, sound, and color. A warm and humid wind buoyed her wings, feeling far thicker than any wind she’d known. Below, a forest stretched, dense, unbroken, and primeval, with no evidence of human settlements. The cries and roars of strange creatures echoed up, her gríobhth instincts wary of them, though her human mind couldn’t assign them to any animal she knew.
In the distance, a shape ascended into the sky—which had a greenish tint, all wrong for the world Zeph knew—and spread its enormous wings. A dragon. And a massive one, far larger than Zynda’s shapeshifter version. Larger still than Kiraka or the other n’Andanan dragons. But then, those dragons had all once been shapeshifters, even if they’d settled into Final Form.
With every cell in her gríobhth body, Zeph knew this was a real dragon.
Though no one really understood the magic behind shapeshifting—and many superstitiously refused to think about it, lest Moranu become offended and withdraw Her gift—most thought of shapeshifting as a kind of swapping of one body for another. It wasn’t as if her human body distorted to become the gríobhth, or vice versa, which was why size became irrelevant. Some irreverent types joked that shapeshifters must deposit their human forms in some other place while they used an alternate form.
Few cared to contemplate the implications of that for very long. Was the true owner of the gríobhth body forced to wear her human form at Zeph’s whim? Or did her human body wait asleep for her to take it back again? What about those variations in dress and hairstyle she carefully cached? Perhaps each iteration of herself stood like a row of dolls on a shelf, glassy-eyed and deathly still, waiting to be donned again.
She shuddered internally. This was why she wasn’t a philosopher.
Still, most Tala agreed that they couldn’t simply make up a form. No becoming a horse with six legs, for example. The form had to have existed somewhere or somewhen for a shapeshifter to acquire it for their cache. With an uneasy turn of her stomach, Zeph contemplated that this place might be that where.
Keeping an eye on the dragon—which could and likely would eat her in a single gulp—Zeph listened for Lena. If she was somewhere below that dense canopy, Lena wouldn’t be visible. Nor could Zeph smell or hear Lena, but the sense of her tickled at her mind, her friend’s distress nearly painful. Following that tug, she decreased altitude, forcing herself to keep the glide slow and easy. No sudden movements or wing-flapping to attract the dragon’s attention.
When Zeph ducked below the upper canopy and into the thick shadows, she released a bit of tension. Hopefully she and Lena could find a fold on the ground and go home that way, without risking the dragon’s attention again. After all, flightless Lena had found the fold from the ground in their own world.
Unless the fold disappeared again, leaving her and Lena trapped in this place forever. Well, they would deal with that if they had to.
Her relief at being out of sight didn’t last long. She might’ve avoided the dragon—for now—but this forest was no more familiar than anything else in this world. The broad, waxy leaves big as the shields of the guards at Ordnung slapped at her with surprising rigidity, and they sprouted from gnarled limbs that grew together to make a nearly impassable barrier. Small creatures that looked part monkey, part reptile leapt about in droves, chattering through pointed teeth and hanging from prehensile tails. At least the monkey-lizards fled from the gríobhth—though not as far as Zeph would like, given their painfully high-pitched screeching.
She’d do better to switch to a smaller bird form to get through the tight network of branches. The peregrine would work, small, agile, but still possessing a sharp beak and talons, should she need to defend herself.
Except she couldn’t shift.
The shock nearly had her crashing into a trunk, and she had to seize control of herself with a brisk mental shake. Pay attention to the here and now. The admonition came in her father’s voice, and imagining his disappointment in her produced the cool state of alertness she needed.
Her wide wingspan would never make it through the resistant—and, it turned out, spiny—canopy. So she landed on a wide branch and clung with all four sets of claws, the hard wood equally as difficult to penetrate. Keeping her balance as she leapt ever downward from branch to branch forced her to concentrate on that, and not on the icy terror that she might never shift again. They’d all grown up on stories of Aunt Zynda’s painful trial of being unable to shift for so long. Possibly the second-worst nightmare for a shapeshifter, next to botching a shift. But at least Aunt Zynda had been stuck in human form, with speech and thumbs.
Spending the rest of her life as the gríobhth, never able to kiss Astar again, or lay against him, skin to skin… the prospect turned her heart inside out.
Well, she wouldn’t let it happen, no more than she’d give him up to another woman. In gríobhth form, there wasn’t even a question. Astar was her mate, and only that mattered. Thrones and crowns and silly human ideas about honor and duty were like clothing to be donned and discarded. If she had to wear the costume of a queen so the rest of the world would acknowledge their mating, then so be it. She had no idea why that had ever seemed like an obstacle to her human mind. If Astar needed her to be a queen, then she would. Done.
With that epiphany, she finally burst through the dense canopy layer to the murky shadows beneath. The smooth trunks stood in straight and silent columns, the lowest branches easily ten times a human’s height above the forest floor. But at least the space gave her room to spread her wings and glide to the forest floor, deeply layered with the dead leaves. She sank into them to nearly her belly, not unpleasant, except who knew what creatures might live beneath.
Given the apparent lack of life on the forest floor, she’d bet her beak that predators of some sort lay in wait below the thick detritus. No plant life seemed to live in the deep gloom. If the sense of Lena’s increasing panic wasn’t tugging so strongly at her, Zeph would’ve flown up and out. Better to take her chances with a dragon than an unknown and stealthy attacker that could come at her vulnerable belly from below.
Too bad her gríobhth couldn’t hover, but she was way too heavy for that. A hummingbird would be ideal, though she’d never tried for that form, not wanting to encroach on Gen’s First Form when Zeph had one Gen could never attain. Theoretically, anyway. Only she and Zyr could take gríobhth form, and they’d been more or less born to it, whatever that implied. Not that she could shift in this awful world anyway.
Wishing she could call Lena’s name—she felt like she was nearby, but Zeph couldn’t tell precisely where—she opened her beak and called softly, a gentle trill for a frightened chick. The sound drifted like fog in the crushing silence of the forest floor, eddying briefly, and then gone.
Something rustled under the leaf litter. Several of her lengths away, the still, musty surface moved.
Keeping one eye on the leaf movement, Zeph called again, more loudly. She’d already alerted one thing, so what was the worst that could happen?
Turned out the worst was awakening a dozen more of the things. In every direction, the creatures stirred under the deep detritus—and began arrowing toward her. The nearest, her first thing, moved stealthily enough that it was still a couple of lengths away. Legs tensed to leap away—she really needed to practice taking off from the ground in gríobhth form, though running through this leaf layer wouldn’t happen—she called one last time, a roar of urgent summoning that ricocheted through the sentinel forest trunks and sent ripples of reaction through the canopy, the monkey-lizards screeching in an agonizing chorus.
The things under the leaf litter stilled, then moved towar
d her faster. Claws extended, tail at the ready, and wings unfurled, she prepared to escape—and to fight off what she couldn’t elude.
“Zephyr!” Lena’s scream, full of terrible hope, echoed through the forest. The first thing, still a length away, snaked slimy tentacles around Zeph’s front paws. She didn’t have to plan the leap—her feline instincts did that for her. With a yowl of horror, she did a snake jump that carried her well into the air, simultaneously slicing with her beak at one tentacle and using her tail like a whip to sever the other. Free for the moment, she pumped her wings furiously as more tentacles shot up to pursue her. The forest floor looked suddenly like a seabed full of tubificid worms, waving themselves in search of food.
She didn’t like being food.
Twisting her body in midair, she changed her trajectory to land in a clear—and hopefully not easily predictable—spot. As soon as she hit ground, the things zoomed toward her, and she leapt again.
“Zephyr, if that’s you, please help!”
I’m coming! Zeph thought at Lena, wishing she could actually send the thought. She roared, but was too busy leaping and avoiding tentacles to manage much more. Fuck her, she wished she could get a good glide going. Her wings throbbed with the strain, working to lift her heavy lion’s body, which dragged her again and again to the deadly ground, the slippery leaves giving her next to no purchase to spring up again.
How had Lena evaded these tentacled things?
Gradually, she targeted Lena’s voice, zigzagging her way there—and at last spotted her, crouched on an outcropping of black rock. How she’d found it in the otherwise featureless forest floor was nothing short of a miracle. Tentacles snaked up the rock around her on all sides, slapping at the stone wetly, flailing to reach her. Lena perched at the very top, bleeding from multiple lacerations, a dagger in each hand, mouth contorted in a soundless snarl as she stabbed the blades at any tentacle that came too near.
There wasn’t really room for both of them on the rock, but Zeph didn’t dare risk getting tentacled and dragged under by the things. With a roar of warning, she lunged for the top of the rock—an extra-long leap—and gave everything to her wings. She didn’t quite reach the summit, but she landed with all claws extended, gouging the tentacles with big swipes of her hind paws as she clung to the rock with the front. It wasn’t much different than trying to dig her claws into that iron-hard wood of the trees.
Lena seized her with a sob, wrapping her arms around Zeph’s neck and burying her face in her feathers. Trying to be gentle with the frailer human, Zeph nudged Lena with the curve of her beak, then clacked urgently as a tentacle wrapped around a hind paw. She whipped it with her tail, severing the thing, but she couldn’t fight all of them.
Fortunately, Lena was no shrinking violet—just imagine how Henk and Dina would fare in this situation!—and she quickly climbed onto Zeph’s back. Good thing they’d at least practiced this much. “Go,” Lena urged.
Zeph eyed the drop to the forest floor. Not nearly enough air for her wings to grab, even if she’d been fresh. Whipping two more tentacles away, she judged the height to the lowest and nearest branch. About three human heights.
Normally she’d say she couldn’t do it, especially with a person on her back.
This wasn’t normal, and she had no choice. Probably, too, this would be a good time to ask for help—she actually knew she needed it—but there was no help to be had. Except maybe Moranu.
Coiling down, winding herself into a spring, she prayed to Moranu for that help. If the goddess could even reach into this cursed world. Lena was chanting a prayer on her back, clinging hard. Maybe that would help too.
Zeph leapt into the air. Pumping her wings like never before in her life, she strained for the limb. Stretching to grab with at least her beak. She reached, reached… and felt herself begin to sink. It wouldn’t be enough. If a gríobhth could cry, she’d be weeping in despair.
Then a gust of cold, wet wind buoyed her, giving her a lift. Turbulent and too gusty, the wind challenged her wings—but also gave her a boost and density to push against. With beak and then forepaws, she grabbed the limb, cursing the vile, stony stuff for being too hard to really dig into. Lena crawled up her neck, grabbing the limb and hauling herself onto it. “To the trunk!” she screamed at Zeph. “Kick up with back paws!”
Good idea. With nearly the last of her strength, Zeph lunged for the wide smooth trunk, splintering claws as she did her best to dig in, wings working to give her lift. With powerful back legs, she kicked herself up and landed on the limb belly down, aching wings furled, and all four paws dangling.
I eat you, she thought viciously at the futilely waving tentacles below. Gríobhth wins.
Lena seized her head on either side of the lethal beak and lifted Zeph’s head. “You are the most incredible woman in the entire world,” she vowed. “I don’t know how you found me, but thank the Three that you did. I owe you for the rest of my life.”
Zeph trilled a comforting sound, missing words more than ever. Lena frowned. “Can you shift—heal yourself and talk to me?”
Slowly shaking her head, Zeph realized her legs stung where the tentacles had grabbed her. Lifting one paw, she noted bleeding lacerations much like Lena’s. Wonderful.
“You can’t shift,” Lena repeated. “But my weather magic works, much good that is.”
Ah—that explained the fortuitous wind that saved their lives. She clacked her beak chidingly at Lena. “Well, yes. I did do that,” Lena replied, “but you did all the real work. If only I could do something useful like call lightning. Or a flood! Then I’d drown those fucking things.” She glared at the tentacles below, slowly slipping back into hiding, deprived of their prey. “All right,” Lena continued, “I guess I do all the talking, and you can give me nods for yes, and so forth.”
Zeph nodded encouragingly.
“I don’t know how you got here, but I was walking along the cliff’s edge because I felt an odd juxtaposition in the atmosphere. Like it was one thing on this side and then—with a bit of overlap—something else on the other. In between the two sides was something like a pocket. I stepped closer and fell into nothingness.” She wrapped her arms around herself, smearing the still freely flowing blood. “Horrible nothingness.”
Zeph crooned comfortingly, adding a nod.
“Same for you? Sorry. I won’t waste a lot of breath apologizing, but I’m so sorry. That’s what I get for being curious. Anyway, then I burst through the nothing and was in this forest. I started wading through that shit and, well, you can guess the rest.”
Zeph cocked her head in question, turning her head backward, hoping that got the message across.
“What do you see—oh! Did I try to go back through the gateway? Yes, I spent way too long circling trying to find it again. I’m afraid that… what if the portal doesn’t open from this side? We’ll be trapped here.”
Zeph bobbed her head, trying to look like a sea monster.
“I have no idea what… Wait, the lake creature? I see! If it comes from here, then there must be a two-way doorway. Good thinking. But how to find it?”
Zeph pointed her beak at the sky, somewhere far above the solid-looking canopy.
“Fly?” Lena asked. “That’s how you crossed over, I bet. Hmm. So, if you can fly us around, then I can feel for a change in atmosphere like I felt at Lake Sullivan. It could work.”
Zeph nodded vigorously. It was their best chance—especially as she had zero intention of returning to tentacleland.
“I’m game,” Lena agreed. “I sure don’t have a better plan. But you need to rest.”
Clacking her beak in disagreement, Zeph shook her head, then pointed her beak at one of Lena’s bleeding wounds, holding up one of her own bleeding paws. Lena stared blankly, then blanched. “The blood isn’t clotting. There must be some venin in there preventing it. You’re right, if we stay here, we’ll bleed to death.”
Zeph rather thought they had a good chance of bleeding to death
anyway, even if they made it back to their own world. Maybe Stella could heal alien venin. Maybe not. But it was worth a try.
Wearily, she climbed to all four feet, then leapt to the next branch up, then glanced back inquiringly at Lena.
“Climbing it is,” Lena agreed, sounding as exhausted as Zeph felt. “No, I can do it. I learned how to climb trees in Aerron—a critical skill for escaping the desert lions—and you’ll be carrying me soon enough. When we get to the top, I’ll help you get aloft, and then I can rest like the dead weight I am!”
Trust Lena to be optimistic in the face of terrible odds. Still, Zeph would rather be on the wing and dodging dragons than being slowly reduced to strips in gloomy tentacleland.
~ 29 ~
The guys reached the lakeside villa just inside of three hours. Gen and Stella, having been checking in with them regularly—and seeing no sign of Lena or Zephyr—had arrived ahead of them and had mobilized the resident staff into readiness.
The hot bath had been most welcome, as was the copious food and drink, though Astar had refused all liquor. He wanted to be alert and ready to help Zephyr. If he could do anything.
Rhy had eaten, then removed himself and his foul mood from their presence. He was probably out prowling the silent lakeshore. If not for the gleam of moonlight on the endless stretch of water, you’d hardly know the lake was there at all. No wind blew, no waves lapped the shore. It was uncanny, but the staff had assured them this was usual for the place.
The Golden Gryphon and the Bear Prince: An Epic Fantasy Romance (Heirs of Magic Book 1) Page 28