by Steve Vera
“Once again, the burden falls on us,” Gavin said, drawing strength from the people he loved more than any other. “We did it once. Looks like we’re going to have to do it again. We’re going to warn the world—if not Valis, then Nu’rome. The Northern March. The Elverai and D’worves. Everyone.” He squeezed both hands. “And when it’s over, we’ll rebuild our homeland, make it stronger and better than it was, in honor of our people—” His voice got thick but it didn’t break. “As long as there is life, there will be a need of a place where the hunted and the weak can go to become strong...” Gavin closed his eyes but this time failed to stop the tears that squeezed through his closed lids and rolled down his cheeks. He could feel their trails, warm at first, and then cool as the air hit them.
“And what of the Empire of Vambrace?” Tarsidion asked, teeth scraping as he pronounced the word.
Vambrace, the backstabbers. The treacherous. The evil empire. The images of the Druid’s pool blasted through Gavin’s mind like a shockwave and when he opened his eyes they were dry. Hard.
“When this is over,” he said, letting his next words sit unformed on his tongue, taking comfort from their power. “There will be a reckoning.”
Chapter 18
Amanda’s eyes sprang open. For a moment there was panic, like oversleeping on the first day of class. She sniffed and registered the unfamiliar scents of the room—old wood, dirt and something like wet mushrooms—and focused on the dim golden flames burning from three torches mounted on the brown stone wall above her.
She glanced to her left and saw an empty but recently laid-in bedroll made of bird feathers not two feet beside her. Skip. Foggy but distinct memories returned, not gracefully but violently.
Gavin. Where was he?
She gave the room another look. Behind her was a rack lined with hand-blown wine bottles, an old chest stuffed with old rolled-up papers tied with tassels, a faded coil of rope, a dusty helmet with a dent in the middle and other miscellaneous mementos.
“Gavin?” she called out. No answer. And yet, she felt as if she weren’t alone. “Donovan?” she asked in a smaller voice. “Skip?”
Amanda scrubbed at her eyes and looked harder into the dimness of the room. She couldn’t quite see the other side, just the suggestion of a wall there, though if she hadn’t known better she’d swear she could hear the muffled whir of buzzing wings—what kind of bugs did Theia have, anyway? Her skin immediately crawled at the thought of some giant, hairy spider stalking her, spitting magical websilk at her before sinking giant fangs into her.
A shadow whipped across the room and splashed movement off the walls. Amanda was upright so quickly, hands pinned to her sides, eyes wide and darting, that even Donovan would have been impressed. Her breaths came quick and hard. Please don’t be a flying, giant, hairy spider.
There it was again, only this time, it buzzed right passed her ear. She flinched violently and batted at the air by her face, banging her head against the wine rack behind her, terminating her brief, pain-free run, which was then followed by a clattering of the bottles within.
I’m so out of here. She locked onto the large, metal-banded, crooked door separating her from freedom and prepared to launch.
“Gode ivae.”
She froze. The voice had come from behind her, high and fluty and seemed rather...small. Surreal enough to kick the fan of her brain’s CPU into overdrive. Very slowly, she turned.
And then jumped back three feet.
“Bala senudash?” he asked. It asked.
Hovering not six inches from her face was a tiny...man with dragonfly wings pulsing rhythmically behind him. He was as pretty as a doll, intricate little muscles and comely features revealed by an tiny short-sleeved doublet and sash. There was even a sword no larger than a safety pin strapped to his hip.
“Oh my God, you scared the crap out of me,” she said, snapping her hand to her chest. Her heart pounded so hard that her teeth shook. She willed herself to stabilize her breathing and tried to come to terms, yet again, to an ever-broadening sense of reality. There’s monstrous Lords of the Underworld on this world, so why not a guy fairy? He was hardly the size of a bookmark and yet he made her nervous. It was his eyes. They weren’t quite human, too much dark and not enough white; it was like staring into two holes.
“Um, what can I do for you?”
His head cocked slightly like an inquisitive dog listening to the approach of voices. “I like you,” he said pumping his wings in a steady whir. His tiny body floated closer.
“You don’t even know me,” she said putting up her hand, which was as big as he was. “And how is it that you are speaking English?”
She looked around hopefully at the doorway behind him, willing Gavin or Skip to come through but it was just her and this...guy? Creature? Dude? Fairy?
“Because I am a Sprite,” he said after a musical laugh. “My magic allows me to understand your tongue and for you to understand mine. What are you called?”
“Amanda,” she said. “And would you mind not flying so close to my face?”
There was something both mischievous and unsettling about the smile that followed. “What a strange name you possess, Amanda.” Every time he tried to fly around her hand she moved it to block him.
“Uh, do you live here? Is there something I can do for you?”
“I come and go,” he said and cocked his head the other way. “And there is something you can do for me. You have a strange manner of speech, Amanda, even more bizarre than your attire.”
“Yeah, well, that wouldn’t be the first time I’ve been told I dress weird—Gavin?” she called out. “I could use you.”
“Who is this Gavin?”
“What did I just say about flying so close? Back up.”
He hovered just beyond her upheld hand, his doublet-clad chest and head visible above her fingers. “Never have I seen such girth of beauty—”
“You did not just use the words ‘girth’ and ‘beauty’ in the same sentence—” She bumped into the wine rack behind her.
“What sort of rascality are you up to this time, Sprite?” Dwensolt asked from the doorway. In his hands was a tray holding two silver bowls overflowing with large purple grapes big enough to be plums, bright cherries and a crystal decanter of a liquid that looked like wine. Even from here Amanda could see the fuzzy caterpillar that served as Dwensolt’s unibrow crinkle in disapproval.
The Sprite rotated midair to face his admonishment. “I meant no harm, Dwensolt,” he said, showing empty hands. “I wished only to frolic—”
“Depart her presence at once, miscreant, before I feed you to the snapdragons! Do you forget so easily what nearly befell you the last time you wished to frolic?”
“Ah, Druid, you are too eager to spout your pious—veenash dome pur...”
They exchanged a couple more sentences before the Sprite turned to face her one last time, smiled coyly and then winked out of existence with a whir.
Dwensolt shook his head as if dealing with a willful child and studied her with surprisingly lucid eyes.
How crazy are you? she asked him silently.
Since his hands were full, he beckoned her with his head. “Stoom-ka,” he said and walked out the door he’d come in with a rustle of his faded green robes. Amanda raised her eyebrows and shrugged. Any way she looked at it, this beat waking up next to dead rabbits anytime.
Speaking of which...where was her emperor, anyway?
Chapter 19
Like a fighter pilot’s heads-up display, Donovan assessed, memorized and catalogued everything his eyes descended on. The different types of grasses, their hues and texture, soil density and structure, the local biology contained within the sprawling estate of the hermit—which was rather extensive behind the hill—the assault of unfamiliar scents of budding flow
ers and the crisp tang of the petroleum free air here. Donovan took in everything.
To the casual observer, the grounds beyond the center gardens might seem wild and unmanicured, but Donovan was anything but casual. Nothing larger than a squirrel prowled, though a couple of times he saw massive lupine shadows watching from beyond.
After a meticulous exploration of the grounds, Donovan measured the property lines at precisely two point three-nine-seven miles long by four point one-seven miles wide. The borders were marked by a wooden palisade fifteen point zero six feet high so cleverly camouflaged by trees, shrubs and swaths of climbing vines as to render it invisible. He’d of course climbed it and looked beyond and saw the true wild of the land—large, brooding trees that waited like Venus Flytraps, creature tracks, the bones of the wall’s failed assailants and the sense that the land beyond was waiting.
Hungrily.
Donovan stayed within the walls.
As for the many dangers lurking within the hermit’s domain, his Othersight came in useful. With it he could discern between ordinary flora from those that were sentient. The auras of the sentient plants were more expansive, more vivid and were cracked with threads of emerald that writhed like electricity from the core colors to the outer bands. Those he steered clear of.
When he was done exploring, Donovan returned. The others were exactly where he’d left them two hours before, under the cover of a trio of trees, a silent loose circle of emotional trauma and spiritual fatigue. Although he didn’t particularly care for the Shardyn, they were a necessary evil that must be endured. They were stepping stones to his destiny.
Donovan studied the Shardyn. He didn’t need his Othersight to see that they were traumatized. Everything they’d ever known and fought for had been extinct for more than a century. Even now, hours later, their was a slump in their shoulders, a distinct lack of energy and the occasional murmur.
They were still reeling. When there were things to be done.
What he did use his Othersight for, however, was to see the extent of the damage.
Usually Donovan could discern emotional pain from physical pain by the simple hue of red in the outer bands of their souls. Bright scarlet represented physical pain, where crimson represented emotional. A storm of the latter whirled angrily around the each of them, especially around Gavin.
He was by far the most fucked up of the four of them. Curious the others followed him. Tarsidion was the first to notice that they were being observed. He tapped the others and together the four of them stared back, warding off his analysis with sullen, angry gazes eager to have something to lash against. Donovan didn’t remove his stare but instead continued to evaluate the thirty-three-year-old leader of the Shardyn Knights, gauging whether or not the bronze-skinned, spiritually scarred man would be strong enough to continue. Whether or not he would crumble.
Gavin met Donovan’s stare and his crimson trauma dimmed, joined by threads of steel gray.
They liked him even less than he liked them. How ironic. Donovan allowed the right side of his face to curl up and smile. He’d use their disdain of him to his advantage, give them a reason to puff out their chests, to forget about the pain. Yes, even as he stared their spines got straighter, their eyes losing their glaze of shock.
United against a common enemy. Donovan’s smile widened.
* * *
Old Crazy eyes might be down a couple of sandwiches in the picnic department but the man sure knew how to decorate. Skip dug this place.
Unlike his lopsided, Dr. Seuss-ian abode, Dwensolt’s backyard was downright Eden-esque. Leading away from the back door into the heart of the gardens behind the hill was a walkway made of colored stones fit together so seamlessly that Skip couldn’t find a single blade of grass squeezing through. In essence, he was walking on a mosaic, though the image within the pieces seemed to change with each of his steps, depending on the angle of the light. Lush, verdant grass surrounded them, complemented by the occasional ornamental shrub, lamp post or circular grove of what looked like oak, ash and shelmut. There was a beauty in here that not only was mystical, but was also geometrically precise. Unlike his house.
Skip found himself wandering between a six-foot-high sundial encased in a pyramid of handblown green-tinted glass and some kind of funky stone disc sitting at a forty-five degree angle impaled by a silver spear. He was sure the angle of the sun and the shadow cast by the spear were related somehow but he lost interest when he got a good look at Amanda.
Even in paradise she seemed alone, knees up by her chest, eyes far away. And sad. Gavin and the other Shardyn were still reeling, talking in a hushed circle under the shade of a grove a hundred feet away. At least Amanda had chosen a good place to be sad. Beside her was a picturesque white marble woman pouring a neverending stream of water from a vessel into a pale alabaster basin. The water splashed comfortingly by the statue’s feet, which were clad in exquisitely chiseled sandals; the statue even had an anklet—a groovy-looking leaf-spritzed cord of vine decorated with cranberries that looked like jewels.
Their eyes met. Amanda lifted her chin off her knees, held his stare before closing her eyes with a slight yet noticeable shake of her head. All right, I won’t bother you, Skip thought and walked the other way. He knew that look, gave it often himself. So instead, he followed the mosaic path to the other side of the gardens, yielding a smidge of his apprehension to the soothing tinkle of wind chimes and bells—no wonder this guy never left. Just the perfume of blossoms that were tumbling out of their branches like cotton candy seemed comforting somehow.
“Skrip,” Dwensolt snapped from behind him. Skip jumped. As was intended. When he landed, Dwensolt was chuckling, his foreign tongue that much more unintelligible by his laughing.
“Ha-ha, you’re a riot. It’s all fun and games until somebody loses a kidney.”
Just how the he’d snuck up on him made Skip suspicious of both the Druid and his own normally stupendous modes of sensory. It was never a good thing for a forward operator to be ambushed by a crazy-haired old-timer. And still Dwensolt was trying to speak.
“I got an idea,” Skip said. “Why don’t you stop laughing first and then try talking to me in your foreign language that I can’t possibly understand, you crazy bastard. What do you think?”
Dwensolt finally quit chortling and furrowed the fuzzy caterpillar that served as a unibrow over his eyes in incomprehension before a light went off in the back of his different-direction-looking eyes. He slipped his hand into one of the many leather pouches adorning his belt and when he pulled it out, he was holding a gold ring.
“Solo-day,” it sounded like he said and then he leaned over it, whispered something. And dammit if Skip didn’t see the ring jump in his hand like popcorn. When it landed there was a muted flash of emerald. Dwensolt bared his impressively healthy-looking teeth in a smile and held the ring out in his palm to Skip.
“Lemme guess, you want me to put that on?” Skip asked.
“Pu-dah nah tee-ohve,” he said.
Skip stared down at the ring, up into Dwensolt’s face and then back down. This better not give me another headache. Skip reached down and picked it up.
The moment his skin brushed its surface, a hum went through his fingertips, up his hand, followed by a slowly opening blossom of heat radiating from the ring.
“Now, enforcer of Earth laws,” Dwensolt said in English. “What does ‘crazy bastard’ mean?”
“Whoa, whoa, now you speak English?”
“Is that the name of your foul-sounding language? It sounds like the farting of bullfrogs.”
Skip laughed and it felt good. “Magic ring?”
“Are all law keepers from your realm as sharp as you?” Dwensolt asked. He leaned in and both of his roving eyes zeroed in on Skip’s. His mirth evaporated and suddenly the old man’s gaze was utterly lucid. Penetrating. “Before
this day, Earth was the name of the god who shattered the moon.”
Skip held Dwensolt’s gaze and pushed against the sides of his fingers with his thumb, cracking them sequentially. “Yeah, well, if it’s any consolation, I’d never even heard of Theia until I met them,” Skip said and then pointed at the Shardyn meditating in the grove. Their conversation had garnered interest.
“I find that preposterously difficult to believe,” Dwensolt said in a voice that rolled in his throat like a sailboat on waves. And then his focus diverged, and Skip was forced to choose which eye to follow. He went with the left.
“Well, it’s the truth.”
“I do not doubt your word, Master Skrip, but a realm where magic does not exist is unfathomable to me—how do people stay fastened to the ground? By what power does the world spin or the stars stay in the sky? There is much I would like to discuss with you, lawman of Earth, but first there are other matters to attend to.” He froze and his eyes went still, like he was listening to something only he could hear. He smacked his lips.
“What is it?” Skip asked, hand reflexively going to the handle of his revolver under his armpit.
Without another word Dwensolt turned and dashed off toward the cellar of his crooked house. Skip looked around to see if anybody else had just seen that and caught Amanda’s eye. She stood, smacked grass off her butt and headed over to him.
“What was that all about?” she asked when she reached him. Even from out here they could hear him rummaging inside, the clatter of junk being moved, followed by the occasional muttered curse.
“I don’t know but I think Crazy-eyes might have a couple of spark plugs out in his noggin.”
“You’re just figuring that out?”
Dwensolt kicked open the back door of his cellar and bounded up the stairs with a decanter and a handful of crystal goblets trimmed in gold and encrusted with chips of jade. He then looked around for a place to set them, saw there was none, pointed at two shrubs—which immediately came to life, twisting and contorting until they were flat surfaces of woven branches, bark and grass—and set down the goblets. “Drink!” he said and dashed back into the house.