by Steve Vera
“You may breathe,” Dwensolt said with a grin. “Bronwyn approves.”
Amanda smiled back and swallowed, self-conscious in the spotlight but unwilling to step away. He smelled like heaven—sunshine, fresh air and horse-musk—but it was his wings that were the most glorious. Each feather the size of her hand—
“Do not touch his wings,” Dwensolt warned, and she stopped immediately.
“Still think it was a waste of time?” she heard Gavin ask Donovan.
Donovan, who observed with the cold dispassion of a security camera, said nothing. The turquoise Pegasus watched Donovan with black eyes filled with suspicion.
“The only men ever to ride on the backs of steeds such as these were the old kings of the Southern March,” Dwensolt said solemnly. “And it has been half an age since it fell. It is only on the word of the Guardian of the White Forest that they come. They do not trust men with dark hearts.” Dwensolt pointed at Donovan. “And you, stranger, bear the markings of night.”
“He does not understand your words, Dwensolt,” Gavin said.
“Oh, I understand him just fine,” Donovan rasped in English to Gavin. “And you can tell that crazy fuck he won’t have to deal with any darkness as long as he stays out of my way.”
Dwensolt’s eyes flared, but Gavin stopped him with his hand and fixed Donovan with a glare. “We could leave you right here, you know.”
“And abandon your girl?” Donovan asked. “I think not.”
“We could take her from you,” Tarsidion said and rested his hand on his hilt.
“Then you’d better be prepared to die,” Donovan responded, swiveling his head to Tarsidion like a turret.
Bronwyn snorted dangerously and stomped the ground with his massive hoof. Amanda skittered back with a yelp. The other winged horses did the same, stomping and shaking their heads as if there were flies in their ears.
“There will be no violence here,” Dwensolt snapped. “I can speak for you, Shardyn, for your woman and the champion you bring from Earth, but I will not speak for the man with the hidden eyes.”
“Then I will,” Gavin said.
Everybody looked at him, even Donovan.
“Where we go, he goes.”
I love you so much, baby.
Dwensolt stared, Gavin stared, everybody stared, even the Pegasi. A galaxy could have been born and died by the time Dwensolt spoke up.
“So be it, but it is only on the honor of a Knight of the Shard that you are bequeathed such an honor.” He finished his sentence by stabbing his finger at Donovan’s face. When he apparently felt his ire had been satisfactorily conveyed, Dwensolt turned and fixed the rest of them with a wide-eyed gaze, stern warning forgotten. “We begin this most perilous of quests, my new friends,” he said in a hushed whisper, “atop the steeds of the kings of old!” He looked at the mountains looming on the horizon, pointing dramatically. “To the Pass of Almitra!”
* * *
Donovan was a bastard. It only became clear to Gavin that Donovan had never ridden a horse at the end, when everyone was mounted up.
“What’s wrong?” Amanda asked Donovan, arms encircled around Gavin’s armored waist. “Don’t you know how to ride?” There was just enough derision in her question to put Gavin on guard.
“No,” Donovan answered dispassionately. “There was never a need to acquire the skill.”
He had his own Pegasus; Gavin was paired up with Amanda, Tarsy with Cirena and Noah with Skip.
“Why does he linger?” Dwensolt demanded, staff in hand, bushy eyebrows joined over his nose.
Donovan ignored the Druid. “And since you, Amanda my servant, do know how to ride, I will ride with you and learn.”
“I’m riding right here,” she answered from behind Gavin.
Damn right, she is.
“No. You are riding with me. Or not at all.”
Amanda’s arms tightened around Gavin’s waist. Once again, that slight, imperious, infuriatingly condescending smirk pulled at Donovan’s lips. I think we might just have to settle things right now, Donovan, Gavin thought. He could see his own deadpan expression splashing off the red lenses of Donovan’s Aviators. Donovan’s smirk widened. Just try it, it said.
The Pegasus mare beneath him whinnied and Amanda leaned forward, putting her mouth to Gavin’s ear. “Now’s not the time.”
I know that. And still he was contemplating putting a lightning bolt right through Donovan’s face. All right, maybe not his face; death might be a bit heavy-handed, but how about his legs? As quick as a snap of electricity Gavin could have Donovan writhing on the ground—immobilized and in agony.
And then they could just leave. Cause and effect.
Amanda made his decision for him. She slid off the mare with a sigh and stood beside Donovan. “Does being such a jerk come naturally to you, Donovan, or is it something you’ve practiced every day of your life?”
Gavin’s feet were bouncing against the Pegasus’s sides, which she didn’t seem to appreciate.
“Both,” Donovan said. “Now mount. We have a world to save.”
Gavin’s lips were drawn so tightly against his teeth, blood was going to start squirting out. Donovan’s imperious smile remained. We’ll see who’s smirking when we settle up, asshole.
* * *
Amanda was only too conscious of Donovan’s arms around her. Yes, they were hard and leaked a constant current of heat, but every time the Pegasus flapped its wings—which was pretty often, considering they’d been flying for hours—the tops of his hands would brush against the bottom of her breasts.
It was driving her crazy but every time she adjusted herself within a couple of flaps his hands were right back where they’d been. The worst part of it was that some sick part of her took comfort by his presence. The mountains in front of them were like nothing she’d ever seen—a wall of otherworldly giants drawing them in like a mouth to some cosmic monster. Her dread was at least partially dispelled by Donovan’s presence and it really came down to one thing. He always won.
It was a good quality to have when going against the Lord of the Underworld or, as it turned out, the Necromancer.
The Lord of Death.
* * *
Skip had done a lot of crazy shit in his life, but flying across a new world Pegasus-back definitely took the chimichanga. With arms wrapped snugly around Noah’s plate and chain-mailed waist, Skip was lulled into a euphoric daze by the constant rhythm of the pumping wings of their majestic Pegasus and the onrush of pristine air.
He should have been cold this high up, but not only did Shardyn cloaks provide missile-stopping protection, they also—as Noah had put it with that cute little smile of hers—had temperature control. As long as that wonderful piece of fabric was touching Skip’s body he was filled with a never-ending current of warmth. Go Shardyn.
Pegasi, it seemed, were no different from avians when it came to flying. Like a flight of Canadian geese or U.S. F-16s, they flew in V formation with Dwensolt at the point, staff in hand, wild hair streaming behind. Skip imagined Moses might have looked similar standing at the Red Sea with the Egyptians at his back.
Behind Dwensolt on his left was Donovan and Amanda. Just thinking about that little scene had Skip shaking his head; he’d thought for sure Gavin was gonna fry Donnie-boy right there. How he’d refrained was a testament to Gavin’s character, because Skip wasn’t sure he could have done that. He probably would have had to pistol whip the spooky bastard a couple of times with his Python. The nerve.
Behind Donovan and Amanda came Tarsidion and Cirena, both on the massive turquoise stallion—they looked about as close to gods as you could get, both cinematically poised, cloaks flying behind them, blue armor shining in the sun. And right across from them to finish off the left flank of the V were Skip and Noah.
This is the way
we save the world, save the world, save the world, this is the way we save the world, early in the morning...
Noah tapped his face with the back of her knuckles and pointed below. Some things overlapped on Theia and Earth—gravity, trees, the ground, things like that. Others...not so much.
“What are they?” he yelled into the wind. They looked like hawks with long trailing tails, similar to manta rays, but with plumage like parrots—vibrant and colorful. There must have been a hundred of them.
“Swallowtailed Falcons. Beautiful but deadly,” Noah yelled back.
Their mare watched them warily and only relaxed when the flock was little more than a smear in the air. He saw a couple of flying snakes with bat-like wings (don’t see that every day), a thousand-foot waterfall that broke into three streams, which shimmered like rainbows as they crashed into pools, cloud formations that looked like the sketchbook of God and so many other fantastical things that eventually Skip’s head went numb.
A person could only take so much splendor.
The only thing that really perked him up was when she pointed to a swath of forest sculpted into a stretch of open grassland in the unmistakable shape of flames.
“It looks like fire!” They were as precise as crop circles, but more...artistic.
“Elverai, most likely,” she called back.
“What the hell’s an Elverai?” he shouted back. The wind pounded at his ears.
“Elves!”
Of course there were Elves here. That had been his next guess. “We talking Keebler Elves here? Santa’s helpers?”
“One of these days that mouth of yours is going to get you in trouble,” Noah said.
Skip laughed, felt a tear get ripped from his eyes by the wind. “Too late.”
The flame-shaped woodlands went on for a couple of miles but gradually gave way to open grassland splashed with the pastels of blooming wildflowers. There were small lakes as blue as the sky, tree-sprinkled knolls, crescents of meadows threaded with mist—Skip was getting a bird’s eye view of the land of fairytales.
Then came the hills. Broad but not particularly high, they rolled on for as far as the eye could see, foothills in the march to the wall of peaks looming on the horizon. Smaller ridges bulged from between them like ripples within waves, crossed with the occasional cluster of stunted trees.
By the time they landed seven or so hours later, his body was a tangled mess of numbed nerves. Pegasus riding—spectacular as it was—was not butt-friendly. A saddle would have been welcome.
“How much farther, Dwensolt?” Skip asked, rubbing his rump while stretching his calves.
“Can you not see with your own eyes? We are barely halfway there. Mill about, companions, stretch your cramped muscles while our noble steeds forage.” Dwensolt finished his sentence by giving Bronwyn a good clap on his shoulder, which was answered with a whicker.
Gavin went right over to Amanda, who was blue-lipped from the altitude, took off his cloak and wrapped it around her shoulders, all the while smoldering deadfaced at Donovan.
Their surroundings were as plain as he’d seen here on Theia, normal knee-high grass, a small stream from which their mounts eagerly drank, a couple of thin trees that reminded Skip of sycamores growing close to the water and open, rolling hills that seemed to go on forever.
It felt nice not having a thirty-pound rifle on his back. Before they’d left, Dwensolt had laid out a tarp-sized square of brown linen inscribed with some sort of green writing—runes—according to Skip’s ever-expanding arsenal of new concepts and terminologies. Once spread out, Dwensolt had instructed them to put everything they didn’t need to carry into the middle of the tarp. After a little cajoling, they’d put all four camping racks, the olive and green drag-bag that housed his Bronto-Killer, their black duffel bags with gold and seeds and anything else not critical. Once done, humming, Dwensolt had folded each corner of the tarp into the center until all corners met over their gear like a dumpling, pulled out a cord of rope with gold and green ribbons woven into the fibers, poked it through the narrow slits cut into the tarp apparently just for this reason and, once done, he pulled the rope tightly. Each time he pulled, the dumpling got smaller and smaller until it was no bigger than a woman’s purse.
With a wink, Dwensolt had tossed the package to a thoroughly impressed Gavin. “I do not like to be encumbered,” Dwensolt had said. He’d then handed two more empty ones to Cirena and Noah, though these were rolled like scrolls with green and gold tassels. “For treasure,” he’d added with bright eyes.
Skip liked the way the man thought.
Out of habit Skip checked his gear, which consisted of his Python (he gave the cylinder a nice little spin, appreciating the familiar rapid clicking), tapped his watch and tried not to think about what was going on back home. Tried not to think about who he’d left behind. In a lot of ways it was good to have so much impending doom around him; it made it easier for him to justify his decision to have come in the first place.
“Penny for your thoughts?” Noah asked.
He turned. Her face was flushed, cheeks still rosy from the wind of their flight. Of the four, she’d rebounded the quickest.
“Just one penny?” Skip asked. “You’re cheap.”
Noah’s smiles were always great—sunny, genuine but a bit cryptic as well, slightly wry. Skippy likie. “All right then, how about if you share your thoughts I’ll let you ride in the front for the next stretch.”
“Feeling a little generous, Noah?” Skip asked. “Deal.” Skip was a driver, not a passenger. “No disrespect, but why do you care?”
“Why wouldn’t I?” she asked. Her eyes got big with the question, almost indignant.
“I dunno. Just seems as if you’ve got bigger fish to fry than my emotions.”
“And what makes you think I can’t fry big fish and little fish?” she asked, only one of her eyebrows arcing up. “Now tell me what you’re thinking. I’m curious to know if you are as disoriented as I was when I came to Earth.”
“Probably not,” Skip said. “I have the benefit of coming from a world of movies with kick-ass special effects.”
Noah gave a shrug. “Indeed. And yet, seeing them up close, feeling and smelling them is quite different from imagining them. I saw your face when you saw that Sylph.”
Skip thought back to that moment by the river and raised his eyebrows. “It was pretty wild.”
“What else?”
“What else what?”
“What else are you thinking.”
Skip took a seat in the grass. “I guess I was just wondering what was going on back home. Who’s filing the report.”
“About what happened at the Bastion?”
“Among other things. Also, if I’m not mistaken, today would be Monday afternoon and I’d have one—” he inspected a sky that was slowly becoming familiar to him, “—maybe two more hours before I’d head home, stop off at Whitney’s to grab a couple of chops and a six pack of Sammy, and get ready for the game. This week was Philly, Tampa Bay in Philly. Of course, if a hundred and thirty-nine years have passed here when you thought it was only seventeen...” He tried to do the math but failed. “Who knows what day it really is there?” He shook out his head. “That’s like five dollars worth of thoughts, by the way.”
“What else?” she asked.
“That’s it,” Skip answered in a reasonably believable tone. Noah’s placid eyes seemed to say, yeah right.
“Are you sure? Because there’s something you haven’t asked me, Skip. Or any of us for that matter.”
“Like what?”
“Like whether or not you’ll ever be able to go home.”
Skip tried to play it off, but Noah wasn’t just some mindless idiot. She saw. “I figured I’d cross that bridge when I got there.”
Before she
could respond, an explosion of flapping wings detonated from a copse of trees not fifteen feet away and a gaggle of large, vulturish birds cawed at the air. Hands flew to hilts and grips, and Dwensolt’s staff burst into golden light. The Pegasi’s ears were pinned to their head, nostrils flaring as they snorted.
“Perhaps we should not dawdle here,” Dwensolt said, mounting his golden steed with the ease of a twenty year old. “We are well beyond the borders of the White Forest. Who knows what darkness awaits?”
* * *
The mountains were growing larger. Back at Dwensolt’s garden, the concept of traversing the Pass of Almitra had merely been intellectually terrifying to Gavin. Now that the World Ridge dominated all senses and loomed before them like God’s Wall, Gavin was getting a bit of experiential terror to go along with the intellectual.
He could see massive outcroppings of jutting granite, swaths of gaunt pines and gorse-clad slopes below them, haunted with hollows creeping with mist.
And these were just the foothills. No wonder nobody ever passed that thing.
“I don’t think Amanda approves of us riding together,” Cirena purred from behind him.
Gavin glanced at his fiancée. No, Amanda definitely did not. Every couple of minutes she’d turn and give Cirena a little glare through her wind-whipped hair.
Since Tarsidion and Cirena were the largest of their band, they’d decided to give their turquoise stallion a break from double weight. Which of course left Gavin, who’d been riding alone.
“I think you’re right,” he answered back, working a kink out of his shoulder. Under different circumstances perhaps he might have been moderately concerned. However, approaching a haunted pass that had divided the world since the dawn of time had his mind on other matters.
“I know I’m right,” she whispered in his ear, which sent an involuntary tremble right through the backs of his legs. He could feel her smirk.
“You be good, you.”
“What?” she asked innocently.
Gavin glanced over at Amanda. She was watching. “You trying to get me killed?”
“By her? Please.”