Forged

by Benedict Jacka

  Alex! Luna called.

  I tried to dodge past a jann towards where I’d last seen Luna; two more blocked my way and forced me back. I can’t get through—

  I sensed something over the miasma of background magic: a gate flicker. Hope leapt within me. Cancel that. Just hold on.

  There was panic in Luna’s thoughts. Help!

  Hold on!

  Three jann attacked me from all directions. I managed to dodge two, contorting; the third hit me, its claws scraping my back. My armour became rigid, deflecting the blow. I spun into the jann, twisted to trip it, but already another was reaching for me.

  Alex! There was pain in Luna’s thoughts now, the sense of flowing blood. Too many!

  I didn’t have time to answer. Everything was a rush of violence and flashing claws. The light seemed to be fading. I wove through the melee, losing all sense of direction, focused on the future coming closer. Come on, come on . . . The whirl of claws drove me to a halt, and it was all I could do to dodge them, counting down in my head. Four, three, two, one . . .

  The sky lit up with fire.

  Looking up, I saw a figure descending on wings of flame. Variam. His spell was slowing his fall, and as he sank he raised a hand, fingers extended.

  Bursts of heat scorched the clearing, tearing holes in the crowd. Jann screamed, their bodies flaring like paper in a bonfire. All of a sudden I could see again, and I could make out Luna just a little distance away.

  Darkness seemed to bloom, and Anne stepped out of the crowd. Her eyes flashed with anger, and behind her I could half see, half feel the jinn, unfolding like a shadow. A green-black wave of death flashed upwards at Variam: he threw up a shield of fire and the spells met with a clap of thunder.

  I was already running, aiming for Luna. A jann tried to get in my way and I slashed it and kept going. Luna had two jann trying to pull her to the ground; she’d lost her wand and was struggling to stay on her feet. Hermes blinked into existence behind one jann, sank his teeth into the back of its ankle, blinked away again as it lashed out. The distraction let Luna pull an arm free, stab the second jann, then break away.

  I heard a shout from Anne, and turned to see her point at us. “Stop them!” She took a step towards us, but a wall of fire from Variam cut her off and she jumped back with a curse.

  Variam had burnt at least ten jann to ash. There were still dozens more. Every one of them charged us.

  Luna and I turned and ran. The jann were converging on us, and we sprinted into the trees, running side by side. I couldn’t see Variam or Karyos or Hermes, and I couldn’t spare the time to check; that many jann hitting us at a full charge would bring us down in seconds. We wove through the trees, hearing the crash and snap of foliage behind us as the jann tried to force their way through.

  Vari— Luna said.

  He’s doing his job; we need to do ours. Get to my cottage—weapons.

  We broke out of the woods twenty yards from my little house. The sky was still lighting up from the battle behind, but we’d gained a few seconds on our pursuers. I ran to my front door and yanked it open with Luna right behind.

  I took two steps inside and paused. In one corner was my black weapons bag. My MP7 was still lying on top: I hadn’t touched it since last night. It would be better than my handgun, but not by much. The shortsword in the bag underneath might be better still.

  But propped in the corner where I’d left it was the spear I’d taken from Levistus’s shadow realm. The long, slightly curved blade glinted in the light from outside, and I could sense something from the weapon, something awake and hungry.

  Sometimes you have the time to divine the future and figure out a plan. Sometimes you have to trust your instincts. I tossed my empty gun onto the desk, grabbed the spear, and walked back out of the cottage just as the first jann burst from the tree line.

  Time seemed to slow as I strode across the clearing. Three, seven, a dozen jann streamed from the trees, converging on me. Behind them, the sky flashed dark green and fire red in the light of Variam and Anne’s battle. The first jann was a couple of steps ahead of the others, and it charged, claws extended. I brought the spear across—

  The spear cut the jann in half. The blade lit up with red light as it carved through the centre of the jann’s body, leaving a dull red glow on the top and bottom halves of the jann’s torso. There was so little resistance that I nearly fell.

  I managed to recover my balance just in time to catch the second jann with a backswing, then set the spear against the charge of the third. The second one was cut in half just like the first; the third impaled itself in its rush. It flung back its head, and a high, whining scream filled the air, then red light flared from within its chest and it burned from the inside out. The spear seemed alive in my hands, radiating a fierce joy. It wanted more.

  More were coming. Jann were pouring from the tree line and they threw themselves at me, ignoring the threat of the spear. I struck and dodged, using every bit of my skill and magic. No human would have fought so suicidally, but the jann seemed to care about nothing except Anne’s command, and their total lack of self-preservation pushed me to my limits. Claws scraped at my armour. I’d never used a spear in combat, but I’m good with a staff, and the weapons aren’t so different. The spear itself seemed to help, twisting in my hands to slash and impale, revelling in the slaughter. Dimly I was aware of Luna guarding my back, but I had no attention to spare. Strike with the haft, reverse and thrust, tear the blade out with the next slash. A blow caught my head; another jann grappled my leg, and I brought the spear around high to low, cutting through its arms. Parry and dodge, find the thread through the futures, kill, kill, kill—

  Panting, I rammed the spear through the chest of a jann, watching it jerk and spasm as red energy burnt through it, and realised that it was the last one. All around me, black bodies littered the clearing, the first of them already starting to dissolve into smoke. My breath was ragged and the blood was pounding in my head. I had no idea how long the fight had lasted; it could have been ten minutes or ten seconds.

  “Come on.” Luna was panting as well; she looked exhausted, and now that I had the chance to notice, I could see that there was blood down her right arm. Still, her eyes were fixed on the lights in the sky. “Help Vari.”

  My muscles felt like water and all I wanted to do was rest. I managed to nod, and broke into a jog, back towards Karyos’s clearing.

  We came out of the trees to see Anne and Variam facing off against one another, fifty feet apart. A shield of flame surrounded Variam, making him hard to look at; only his eyes and his dark face showed above the flickering fire. Karyos stood a little way behind. The hamadryad looked hurt, but she was staying near her tree. And opposite them both was Anne, green-black light wreathing her. The shadow of the jinn extended behind and above her, a looming presence, but Anne still looked very human, and very pissed off.

  “What is your problem!” Anne shouted at Variam. “Can’t you take a hint?”

  “I saw this coming a long time ago.” Variam watched Anne, his dark eyes unreadable. “Alex is dumb enough to trust you. I’m not.”

  “I wouldn’t have to do this if you’d all stop fighting!” Anne turned to glare at me and Luna. “Oh, and you’re here as well. Did those jann round you up? No, of course they didn’t, there’s no way they could possibly do anything useful.”

  Fires were burning in half a dozen places around the clearing. Karyos’s tree seemed intact, but others had been charred, and more had been knocked over, branches and tree trunks snapped off as if by some invisible force. The spear seemed to quiver in my hands, pulling towards Anne. It wanted her . . . or the thing inside.

  “How the hell are you still up?” Anne demanded of Variam. “Did you take up Harvesting in your spare time or what?”

  “Like I said,” Variam said. “I saw this coming. You, though—I bet you didn’t mak
e any plans at all. Just figured you could win without even trying.”

  Anne narrowed her eyes at Variam. “It’s that cloak. Isn’t it?”

  I couldn’t see through Variam’s flame shield, but now that I looked, I could sense another magical aura wrapped around him. Maybe it was the item he’d taken from Jagadev . . .

  “Anne!” Luna said. “Stop! You have to see this isn’t working.”

  “Oh, for God’s sake, shut up,” Anne said. “Maybe you haven’t noticed, but there is a really good reason I’m doing this. As soon as the Council are done with their war with Richard, they’re going to be after us again, and who’s going to stop them? You’ve just been hiding in your shop hoping they’ll take someone else first. Vari’s working for them. The only one of you who’s done anything useful is Alex, and he still needed me to do the heavy lifting. If you don’t have a jinn of your own, then it’s just a matter of time before you end up the same way I did!”

  “The Council aren’t going after her,” I told Anne.

  Anne snorted. “Seen that in the future too?”

  “Did you really think you were the only one who’d noticed we had a problem?” I said. “While you’ve been running around settling old scores, I’ve been calling in favours and putting together a plan. A plan which just came off. As of an hour ago, the Council have agreed to a truce. They won’t come after me or my associates. I even got them to specifically include you.”

  Anne paused. “Well, they’re lying.”

  “No, they’re not. Because this time I made sure I had enough leverage to back it up. Our war with the Council’s over.”

  “Bullshit.”

  “You did all this for nothing, Anne,” I said calmly. “You’ve been telling yourself that there’s no other way, right? Attacking me and Luna, having to fight Vari, all the compromises you made and whatever you’ve had to promise that jinn . . . in your head, it was all okay because you were the hero. But you haven’t saved anyone. Right now, you’re the one that Luna and Vari are trying to save each other from.”

  Anne opened her mouth for a retort and nothing came out. She stared between me and Luna and Vari and for once had nothing to say. Emotions battled in her face, shame against anger.

  “It’s not too late,” Luna said quickly. “You’ve hurt me, you’ve hurt Karyos, but it’s nothing you can’t fix. Nobody’s dead, not yet.”

  “And if someone is ending up dead,” Variam cut in, “you should think about whether it might be you.”

  Anne hesitated, and in one of those strange moments of insight I was suddenly sure that what Luna and Variam had done was enough. Dark Anne was ruthless and she was violent and she was terrible at thinking long-term, but she wasn’t a total psychopath. She did care about some people, the three of us most of all. We’d shown her that, to beat us, she’d have to risk killing us, and that wasn’t a price she was willing to pay.

  Unfortunately, that was only a price that Anne wasn’t willing to pay. And though Anne didn’t know it, she wasn’t calling the shots anymore.

  “Okay,” Anne said. Her face hardened. “Okay.”

  “You started this fight with one of you and fifty jann,” Variam told her. “Now there’s one of you and zero jann. Let me break down the maths on that for you. You’re losing.”

  “One of me?” Anne said softly. “Is that what you think?”

  The green light around Anne seemed to die, but the darkness grew. The presence behind her loomed larger, shadows spreading across the clearing like giant, batlike wings, a sense of something watching, cold and hungry. Anne spoke again and there was an echo to her voice, dissonant and frightening. “I’ve been holding back from the moment I stepped in here. I think it’s time I showed you what you’re really dealing with.”

  Vari, Luna! I snapped out through the dreamstone. Shield!

  A sphere of green-black light flared outwards from Anne. It was a basic attack spell, one I’d seen before from death mages, but never on this scale. Normally my best defence against battle-magic is evasion, but evasion only works if there’s somewhere to evade to. This was a full sphere, hitting everything around her. The amount of power it must have taken was enormous. No battle-mage I’d ever met could cover half that volume.

  I forced the best future I could with the fateweaver, and twisted to let my back armour take the blast, trying to lessen the impact. It did a little, but not enough. Pain and nausea swept over me, draining my energy. I stumbled and fell, black spots swimming in my vision.

  Through blurry eyes I could see that Luna was on her knees. Anne was already casting another spell, this one something I’d never seen. It looked like the teleportation spells space mages used, but its weave was alien, utterly different from human magic. In one hand she was holding the gate focus that she’d used to enter our shadow realm; the other was extended towards Luna, and a net of black lines wove outward, growing through the air towards Luna like shoots of a plant.

  But she’d forgotten Variam. Alone out of the four of us, Variam had a real shield, and with the instant’s warning he’d managed to weather Anne’s spell. Flame darted from his hand, blocking off the black tendrils from reaching Luna.

  The grey mist of Luna’s curse darted out.

  It all happened too fast to see. Luna’s curse intersected Anne and Variam’s spells, and as the three magics met, energy burst outward in a clap of thunder. Every hair in my body stood on end and the world went white.

  Somehow I made it to my feet. I couldn’t see or hear, but I still had my divination and I looked ahead, searching for danger to me or to anyone else. But there was nothing. The futures were clear. Gradually my vision returned, revealing an empty clearing, the grass pressed flat and leaves blown from the trees. Fires were still burning, but the sense of menace was gone.

  I looked around as the spots receded and the ringing faded from my ears. Karyos was still there, rising a little shakily from beside the tree. Luna was struggling to her feet. The silver mist of her curse was barely visible; it was returning, seeping back along her limbs, but it seemed to be recovering, as if it had been depleted.

  There was no sign of Anne. And there was no sign of Variam.

  “Vari,” Luna called, looking around. “Vari!” She turned to me. “Where is he?”

  I closed my eyes, reaching out through the dreamstone. Vari.

  A moment, then I made contact. Variam’s thoughts were frantic, intense; he was fighting. I’m here! Anne gated us out and she’s pissed.

  Where are you?

  No time. Get Landis. Tell him—

  Shock and pain flared in Variam’s mind, making me stagger. An instant later the link snapped.

  Vari! I cast about for Variam’s mind, trying to establish the connection. Vari!

  Nothing.

  I opened my eyes and looked at Luna, troubled. “What’s happening?” Luna demanded. “Where is he?”

  “I don’t know,” I said quietly.

  Karyos crossed the open grass to join us. The three of us stood alone.

  chapter 14

  You have to find him,” Luna told me for the third or fourth time.

  “I’m trying.”

  I was sitting with my back against a tree. Karyos was kneeling next to Luna, frowning slightly as she bound herbs to the wound in Luna’s arm. It seemed to hurt, judging by the way Luna was flinching, but her attention was on me. “Can you figure out where he is?”

  Across the clearing, animals were working to clean up the damage from the battle. Birds plucked up burned leaves; squirrels and mice nibbled off splintered twigs and carried them away. Not all were working; some were searching. A squirrel came bounding out of the woods to hop up to Karyos. Karyos met its eyes for a second, then the squirrel bounded away. Karyos glanced at me and shook her head.

  “Alex,” Luna pressed.

  I sighed and broke off the path-walk.
What I was trying to do wasn’t easy, and Luna was making it harder. “I can’t reach Vari through the dreamstone in the present or in any future I can see.”

  “Then what about—” Karyos pulled the bandage tight and Luna winced. “Elsewhere,” she said once she’d recovered.

  “If I enter Elsewhere,” I said, “I’ll be able to touch Variam’s dreams.”

  Luna brightened. “Then he’s—”

  “I’m also going to be intercepted,” I said. “A jinn, or more than one. They’re powerful in that realm. Much more than me.”

  “But he’s alive?”

  “He’s alive. But adding that up, he’s either Anne’s prisoner or under her control.”

  “There,” Karyos said, rising to her feet and taking a few steps back from Luna. “Your wounds are not severe.”

  “Thanks,” Luna said. As she relaxed, the silver mist of her curse spread down over her arm; she’d been holding it under tight control. A faint tinge had still reached Karyos, but at Luna’s gesture, it flowed from the hamadryad down into the ground.

  “Nothing?” I asked Karyos.

  Karyos shook her head again. “I do not believe it is here.”

  “What isn’t?” Luna asked, flexing her arm.

  “When we were facing the jann in this clearing, one of them was holding the monkey’s paw,” I said. “When we fought them outside my cottage, I didn’t see it. Karyos’s animals have been searching the Hollow.”

  “And finding nothing,” Karyos said. “I believe she took it away.”

  Hermes came trotting out of the trees. He sniffed the air, then walked a few steps towards me before stopping, his eyes narrowed.

  “Hermes?” Luna asked. “What’s wrong?” She followed Hermes’s eyes.

  “I think I can guess,” I said, getting to my feet. The spear was lying on the grass by my side. I reached down and picked it up.

  Immediately I felt the spear’s presence in my mind, alive and hungry. Killing all those jann hadn’t sated it at all. It wanted to drink Hermes’s blood, but nowhere near as much as it wanted to kill Karyos. I could see her flesh opening up beneath the blade, red blood bright on the—