“Of course,” Galen breathed. “Like you did to Dayna’s obstreperous supervisor!”
“I...but…” Destry shied away. “I wasn’t able to control my power. I enchanted your friend, too. How can I risk these chevalier d'armes here?”
“Perhaps you cannot, but I can!” Fitzwilliam put in, as another of his men fell screaming. “And I am losing them with each second you hesitate. I charge you, pooka: save us if you can! I will absolve you of any misstep.”
Destry blinked, and then nodded. “What shall I do, Dayna?”
“You were able to latch onto strong emotions and memories from McClatchy,” I said. “Do the same thing here with this ‘Old Man’. Follow the memories back to the source. And then amplify whatever unpleasantness you find there! Bury him in it!”
“Yes,” Galen said, catching on. “Shock him for but a second. Show me his position and I can cast my stasis spell!”
Destry nodded his agreement. With a tiny whoosh, he vanished. I took a deep breath and stepped out in front of the King’s shield. Every inch of my exposed skin crawled as if it were on fire. Each tiny breeze felt like the tug of a needle-tipped dart.
“Rocky!” I shouted. “This slaughter is senseless! This war of yours is long over! No one today even knows about it! Don’t you see? Everyone you ever fought for, everyone you fought against is dead!”
A moment passed before I got an answer. I couldn’t see the swirl of dust in the fog.
“Not everyone,” Rocky intoned. “Sirrahon is still alive. So are many of the others. Others of my allies who shall also rise to claim their place in the sun!”
“And what of your enemies? Sure, if your friends survived, so have your foes! Think of them, what they have done to your kind.” I shrugged. “It couldn’t have been anything important, though. I mean, none of us have ever heard of what they did to you.”
“Nothing important?” Rocky’s tone took on a fever pitch. “I shall bring flaming wrath down upon all those who stood in the light! For chaining my soul to this terrible place! For thousands of years of confinement, for thousands of years in horrible…”
Destry materialized off to the right. He reared, snorting, and I heard his softly accented voice in my head as he spoke words that sent a chill down my spine.
“So that is what you fear most, mon ami? Then I have you, illusionniste! Taste your fear, multiplied a hundred times!”
The big black horse’s eyes blazed.
An unearthly scream shook the air around us. Rocky flung a torrent of poison darts at Destry with his remaining strength. The points made a sound like hailstones on a tin roof as they passed harmlessly through the pooka and ricocheted off the rock below.
Then Destry’s form winked out.
He reappeared atop one of the rocks just ahead of us. His forehoof tapped the vine-covered granite boulder for a moment before he vanished again.
“Galen!” I cried. “That’s it, that’s the Old Man of the Mountain!”
“Kasta uit illum andal!” the wizard shouted.
He flung his arm up towards the rock Destry had just vacated.
A dark blue shimmer surrounded the stone.
Another unearthly scream rent the air. Part of the shimmer peeled away. As if bent back by a powerful, unseen force. Sweat beaded Galen’s brow, and he redoubled his efforts, shouting his voice raw.
“He is fighting me!” he cried, and then cast his incantation a second time. “Kasta uit illum andal!”
The blue shimmer began to close. The screams turned into roars of raw rage and pain.
“Destry!” I shouted, “If you can hear me, use all of your power!”
The pooka must have been listening, as Rocky’s raging screams and roars began to crack and warp into plaintive cries, whimpers of fright.
Galen’s voice all but gave out as his incantation a final time. “KASTA UIT ILLUM ANDAL!”
The voice of the Old Man of the Mountain finally went silent. As if it had been smothered by a very large, very heavy pillow.
King Fitzwilliam went up to the blue-sheened rock and spat on it.
“And a damned good riddance to you, demon,” he pronounced with finality.
Chapter Thirty-Four
The sun was bright, the sand under my toes was warm, and the surf beat out a gentle throb that sounded heavenly. The sharp salty tang of the sea was a welcome treat to my nose after having been through a forest fire only two days before. I pushed my sunglasses further up my nose and absently wished that I’d brought some sunblock to Andeluvia. I still hadn’t spotted what I was looking for in the sky, but it didn’t bother me. I was having too much fun listening to my friends’ conversation.
Shaw poked at the bandages that wrapped round his torso like a king-sized straitjacket, albeit one that had had its sleeves removed. He swore under his breath and made as if to chew at them until a pair of antlers rapped his beak in warning.
“That’s enough, featherhead,” Liam said. “Otherwise, they’re never going to heal.”
Shaw gave his companion a sour look. Liam, for his part, had gone back to wearing the emerald-encrusted barding across his back and atop his head. He gleamed so brightly in the sunlight that at times he made my eyes water.
“Sixty years,” Shaw grumbled. “Sixty years hath I seen battle, and ’ere my death, I am bossed around by a young buck. ’Tis as the bards say! Truly, there is no justice in this world.”
Liam let out a snort. “When I saw blood spew from your mouth, I thought that your ribs had been jabbed through your lungs. I thought you dead for sure. So, I’m sure that it was grossly unfair that you survived to tell the tale.”
“Alas, t’was not blood. My ribs were cracked, not punched in like barrel staves! What you saw were the remnants of my meal with the Albess, as my stomach was squeezed as much as anything else.” The big griffin looked positively glum as he added, “And aye, unfair it was, at that! I had the chance to die most gloriously at the claws of the greatest dragon yet seen by the world, and lo! That reward was denied me.”
I put my hand on the griffin’s shoulder and stroked it sympathetically.
“Shaw, I’m sorry I ruined your hopes,” I said gently. “But think of this another way. Rocky said that he summoned Sirrahon in hopes of re-kindling his Great War. Though he failed in doing that, he certainly unleashed the dragon and let it loose upon the world.”
“Might we face Sirrahon again?” Shaw’s face looked hopeful.
“It’s certainly possible. And when you do meet him…it will be a grudge match. Whether you win or lose, do you think the bards will be able to resist singing about the re-match between the greatest dragon and griffin warriors to ever live?”
In response, Shaw let out a sound between a sigh and a contented purr. Liam rolled his eyes.
“Truly,” Galen murmured, “you know how to play that griffin like a fine instrument.”
“Hush, now,” I scolded him gently. “Do you think that the griffin elders’ plan is a smart one?”
“I believe so.” The wizard absently scratched one of his own bandages as he spoke. Galen hadn’t suffered any broken bones, but he’d suffered a handful of painful scorches along his arms and equine torso from our fight with Sirrahon. “Rocky’s stone had been enchanted against chipping or breaking, so I doubt that any of Fitzwilliam’s arms or explosives would have had much effect. It really was a perfect prison for more than three thousand years. In all certainty, it is what drove the demon insane.”
The wind shifted, and suddenly the dull thumps of dozens of wings echoed in my ears. Three whole battalions of griffins, many clad in the royal armor of Fitzwilliam’s Air Cavalry, broke out of the clouds by the shoreline and headed out to sea. Heavy lines dangled from their forepaws, ending in a cat’s’ cradle of rope that all but mummified the demon’s prison stone.
“The griffins’ suggestion is borne out by my research,” Galen continued. “Ethereal beings cannot communicate or manifest through water. So this seems like quite a good way to take our Old
Man of the Mountain out of the equation for a long, long time.”
The cloud of griffins flew far enough out to sea so that each of the large creatures was no more than a golden or white splotch against the sky. A single caw rippled through the host.
As one, they released their payload.
The ‘Old Man’ that had assassinated Liam’s predecessor, murdered Captain Vazura, and nearly got me to kill Lady Behnaz plunged into the ocean with an almost comical sploosh. A tight band of emotion inside of me relaxed as the plume of water subsided and even the ropes holding the stone slipped beneath the waves. I let out a breath of relief as the griffins dispersed to all points of the compass.
Liam’s ear flicked back and forth. “I’m sensing something approaching. A lot of somethings, actually.”
A familiar shimmer rippled through the air just down the beach from us. A big shimmer, actually. Shaw let out a squawk of amazement and even Galen took a step back as the shimmer turned into an entire herd of pitch-black horses with wild manes and pupil-free yellow eyes.
It looked like the pouquelaye had decided to finally show up.
The horses stood in place, making a decidedly menacing-looking dark line along the expanse of beach. A couple snorted and pawed the sand, but the others simply looked on with their impassive citrine eyes.
Destry and the herd’s lead mare, Reveé, trotted forward a few steps to stand in front of me.
“I am Reveé, the Dream Speaker,” the mare pronounced, in her lightly accented voice. “It is I who lead the people who bring the terrors of the night!”
“Yes,” I said wryly, “I kind of caught that the first time around.”
“I have spoken with the liaison we provided you for your investigation,” she said, with a toss of her head. “We are only half-pleased with the way that you have kept your side of the bargain.”
I had sort of been expecting this, but it still rankled me. “Why only half-pleased?”
“Because while you have found the source of his fear, you have not dispelled it.”
“That’s because it’s not a fear, or a phobia!” I shot back. “Destry suffers from a birth defect, one that has no known cure! You cannot blame him for that, any more than I could blame a human child for being born without hands!”
“Or a griffin chick for being hatched without wings,” Shaw said sternly.
“Or a centaur foal without hooves,” Galen put in.
“Or a Fayleene fawn without luck,” Liam said, and his face had a sad, strange look.
Reveé looked back at her herd for a moment. She blew a breath out noisily through her nostrils, the way horses did. Finally, she turned to us, and spoke more softly this time.
“We realize the truth of what you say. It greatly saddens us, for we feel that we have been saddled with a turn of chance that may decide all of our fates. But we shall not unmake him.”
I didn’t let it show on my face, but I did feel good about that. One victory, at the very least.
Reveé cast her gaze upon Destry and added, “Destarius de Revasser, it is not your fault that you carry this ‘birth defect’. It is the fault of we who made you, and the will of the Grand Creator who guided our hooves. I shall not banish you. And you may come and go amongst us as you please. But you may not truly join your people so long as it robs your stallionhood of its strength in either light or dark.”
Destry bowed, once. His eyes fixed resolutely upon the ground before him.
And with that, the entire herd shimmered into nothingness like so much smoke on the wind.
None of us trusted ourselves to speak.
It was Destry who pawed at the warm beach sand for a moment before coming over to us.
“I…am not certain of what to say,” he began. “I am an ethereal, yes, but only now do I feel like I am made of nothing. Like I have nothing left.”
“You do have something,” I insisted.
“Quoi?”
“You have us four. And sometimes, you need to find a sense of family with people who are good, rather than to try and find good in one’s own family.”
Shaw purred his agreement. Liam stomped his forehoof, while Galen nodded appreciatively. I reached up and put my arms around Destry’s warm, equine neck and hugged him close.
It was the one drop of pure joy that day.
A single drop, mixed in with a sea of worries.
I thought on what Zenos had told me already about the Codex. Maybe we’d already nipped the return of this old war in the bud. To be on the safe side, I’d be borrowing both of the books that the soothsayer had given me for a while.
Destry hadn’t been re-united with his people. Liam had, but at the cost of one of the other Fayleene princelings. A princeling that was still angry, and on the loose.
And Sirrahon was out there now. I didn’t think for a moment that anything of his size would remain out of sight for long.
So very little had been completely settled. Did anything in life ever resolve itself neatly, like a mathematical formula, and stay that way forever-and-ever, amen? I didn’t think my rotten luck would ever let that happen.
All I knew at least was that I was among my friends. My family, if you will. I never in my wildest dreams thought it would be a family with so many hooves and feathers. But the one thing that shines out from them is that they’re good.
And that’s all that matters, in the end.
Chapter Thirty-Five
Warm mist flowed from between my lips like steam from the spout of a boiling tea kettle. Ice rimed the bare tree trunks around me. I shivered. It was a frigid December in the woods of Pike County, Illinois.
I’d just turned seven.
I took a step, heard a crunch and looked down. As I half-expected, instead of seeing the little pink wigwam boots I’d worn back then, I saw something else. My thick-soled black boots that I wore for my crime-scene investigation work. I’d nicknamed them my ‘stompy gothic boots of doom’, and for good reason.
They kept corpse juice out of my socks. And they kept snow out too, as I plowed my way through the drifts, following the blood trail that stood out against the snow. The line of droplets meandered drunkenly between the trees, tracing the path of the dying Fayleene doe my father had shot all those years ago.
I followed the trail back towards my family’s house. The glow of the Christmas lights from our porch made the icicles that perched along the edge of our frozen gutter sparkle red and green, like iridescent glow-sticks. I’d never noticed that before.
My feet carried me along the side of our driveway, past our beat-up station wagon and up to the garage’s side door. I reached out to grab the knob. Lime-green flecks of paint flaked off on my glove as I turned it.
I pushed the door open.
Smell of paint thinner and gasoline and blood.
The all-weather bulb inside the garage hung from the rafters by a single paint-spattered cord. Daddy’s orange hunting vest was streaked with red. He knelt before the white, coffin-shaped chamber, sobbing as he gazed upon the bony nubs of antler that projected from within.
My insides turned to water as the Fayleene doe sat up in the freezer with a dull thump.
Her eyes were the soft brown of kitten fur, and so full of life that it made me ache inside.
“This wasn’t your fault, you know,” she said.
“It…it wasn’t?” I gasped.
My father stopped crying. His hands dropped to his sides and his face had taken on a look of amazement and disbelief. The Fayleene doe spoke to him as she climbed out of the freezer, hale and whole.
“You’ve been weeping over my death for long enough,” she said gently. “It is time for both of you to forgive yourselves.”
“I didn’t know what you were,” my father said. “Please, you must believe me.”
“I believe you. What happened between us was a horrible quirk of fate, but one we must put aside. For the sake of your daughter. She has no dark secret to hide.”
“Yes,” my father choke
d out, and his tears finally stopped flowing. “Dayna, forgive me…I was out of my mind with grief. What I said…it was out of love, but the way it came out turned it into something bad. Something that kept cropping up here, in your dreams.”
“I forgive you, Daddy,” I said, and somehow, even as an adult, I managed to fold myself in his arms. I felt his strength, his warmth, his fatherly love radiate through his hunting jacket and into my soul. He held me for a moment, and then I stepped back to look at the Fayleene again. I knelt in front of her, the way I’d knelt in front of Liam as he’d finally claimed his place among his people. “Thank you for forgiving me.”
A smile of sorts crossed her deer face. “You knew that you had no guilt for what happened on that day.”
“I knew it there,” I said, pointing at my head. The doe nodded as I went on. “But I had to hear it from you. So that I would know it here.”
And I pointed at my heart.
The doe leaned forward and kissed me on my forehead.
I woke in my old bed. My old house, back in Los Angeles. An unseasonably cold morning sun peeked in through the window. The first thing I did was to feel my forehead. Seeking out the damp spot where the doe had bestowed her kiss upon me.
A Gallic chuckle from beside the bed.
At least this time, I didn’t scream like a little girl as I turned my head to see the big, black pooka standing by my bed. He looked faintly amused.
“Destry!” I said, as I sat up and rubbed my eyes. “I was wondering if you were going to stop by. After our time on the beach…no one’s seen or heard from you over the past few days. Are you all right?”
“Suis bien. I am well enough, Dayna,” he said, with a horsey shrug. “I am wandering the world, thinking things over. Trying to understand my place in it.”
I got up, stretched, and then straightened out my cotton top and capri pajama pants. Somewhat belatedly, I realized that things definitely had changed in my life. I mean, magical nightmare horses showing up in my bedroom hardly fazed me anymore.
“If you need to bend someone’s ear, you know that my door’s always open, right?”
The Deer Prince's Murder: Book Two of 'Fantasy & Forensics' (Fantasy & Forensics 2) Page 23