Elf Saga: Bloodlines (Part 1: Curse of the Jaguar)

by Joseph Robert Lewis

  With Nahina safely aboard the Valkyrie and in Rajani’s care, the young treasure hunter jumps down and hurries after Amara. But they’re not going to confront the pirates. They’re coming toward me. And Lozen.

  “Get back in the ship,” I call out to them. “We’re leaving.” I look down at Lozen. I don’t want to touch her, I don’t want to talk to her, but she’s my mother, damn it, and I still need to know how to get rid of these spots, so… I squat down and slip my arms under her.

  “Leave her there, Miss Marev,” Amara says as she begins climbing the temple steps. “She’ll be of no use to you in the coming minutes, not in her current state. You, on the other hand, will be our only defense against the approaching corsairs.”

  “I’m not going to fight an army of pirates when we can just fly away.” I glare at her. “I told you to stay in the ship.”

  “And I’m telling you that this may be our only opportunity to study this device.” Amara nods at the pillars.

  “What device?”

  “The Yagari Gate.” The princess limps over to one of the black pillars and begins inspecting its warped and cracked features. The pillar curves inward slightly and tapers to a broken point above us, not unlike the diseased rib of an elder dragon. “Surely a woman of your intelligence can understand that this is no mere ruin of stone, left by primitive artisans to revere some imagined deity? No! This device is precisely what its name implies. A magic gateway. And with Mister Dae’s assistance, I intend to open it. However, the corsairs may not—”

  “Yeah, I get the picture.” Mostly. I leave Lozen on the ground. “How long do you need?”

  “As long as it takes,” Amara says mildly, her attention focused on the pillar. “Now, cease your prattling and do what you do best. I have work of my own to attend to.”

  If she wasn’t so frail I’d smack her, but I suppose there’ll be time to teach the princess a few manners after I fight off a small brigade of thieves and killers, so I turn and start running toward the ship.

  “Nahina! Are you all fixed up yet?”

  “I think so.” She’s standing beside Rajani, flexing her hand.

  “Mind giving me a hand with a few pirates?”

  She squints at the approaching men and women, dressed in sun-bleached cotton, wearing the colors of a dozen cultures, carrying the blades and guns of a dozen navies. “I prefer not to do much fighting before breakfast, or after, or ever.”

  “You just attacked my mother,” I reminded her as I jog past the floating crystal ship.

  “That was different. That was personal,” she says.

  “Yeah, right. You’ll have to tell me all about it sometime.”

  “No, I really don’t.”

  “Seriously, you’re not going to help me?” I’m striding away now, all alone, and I can see at least fifteen pirates trotting toward me, some getting ready to fire their pistols at me, and I stop. What the hell am I doing?

  “I never fight when I can run,” Nahina calls out, “And right now, I’m in a very strong running mood.”

  The first pirate fires, and the bullet shrieks past my scarred ear. “Yeah, me too.”

  I turn and run back to the ship, leaping the last dozen paces and crashing down on the glassy deck between the other women. “Let’s go!”

  “Go where?” Rajani grabs the levers and we shoot forward, whisking across the dusty plateau, and leaving nothing at all between the pirates and the temple.

  “Anywhere,” Nahina says, “Just as long as they can see us.”

  “But what about Xiang and Amara?” I ask, peering back toward the temple. “They’re trying to open some sort of magic gateway. Seems stupid, but I didn’t argue. They probably know what they’re doing.”

  “Probably,” Nahina agrees. “Turn the ship around and circle back toward them. Close, but not too close.”

  “Toward Amara?” Rajani starts the turn.

  “Toward the pirates.” Nahina winks at her. “We’re playing bait-the-shark, and we’re the bait.”

  “Oh, goody,” Rajani says nervously. “Wait. Isn’t shark bait called chum? I don’t want to be chum!”

  As we curve back around toward the pirates, we sweep over a dusty field strewn with rocks, mangled weapons, and the cold remains of old campfires, and I wonder what sort of place this was before Lozen took up residence. A pirate fortress, a trading post, a destination for scholars and tomb raiders?

  A rooster-tail of ash flies up behind us as we streak toward the pirates to cut across their trail, and sure enough they all take a knee and fire a volley as we pass. Rajani and Nahina both duck down, but I don’t. Even with only one eye, I can tell they’ll miss, and they do. But two of them don’t stop to shoot, they keep running straight for us and leap as we fly by.

  The first elf lands face-down in the dust.

  But the second elf lands on one of our crystal fins, and the ship jerks to port with the sudden unbalanced weight. We slide in a snaking trail across the plateau as Rajani wrestles with the controls, and Nahina and I grab the railing to keep from being thrown off.

  “I’ll get him,” Nahina says, already crawling back toward our new arrival. But before she can climb over the rail, the ship slides a bit to starboard and the pirate’s legs collide with a jagged spear of basalt, and he disappears from the fin. The Valkyrie wobbles back up on its crystal keel, and I steady Nahina on the quaking deck.

  “Damn,” she says softly, staring back over the stern.

  “What’s wrong?” I ask.

  “I just… hope that man’s not dead,” she mutters, and she paces away to lean against the rail on the opposite side of the boat.

  “Right.” I look back toward the knot of pirates, expecting to see them running after us, but instead they’re marching toward the temple, and Lozen is still passed out on the steps, leaving Amara and Xiang trapped at the edge of the volcanic cliff with all those twisted black ribs hanging over them. “Oh crap, Raj! Get us back there!”

  “Aye aye, skipper!” she sings out, and we zoom about in another quick turn and race back toward the temple.

  A handful of gunshots crack and echo off the pale sky as the pirates’ pistols flash and smoke. I see Amara turn and fire both of her golden guns, dropping two of the corsairs to the ground. Xiang doesn’t seem to have a weapon at all, but he’s not even paying attention to the pirates. He’s focused completely on his pillar, and Amara turns back to rejoin him.

  “Go faster,” Nahina says. “Right across their backsides, as fast as you can. Give it everything you’ve got!”

  “What happened to not killing them?” I ask, grabbing the railing as the Valkyrie surges forward.

  “That’s still the plan.” Nahina rests her hand on Rajani’s hand, and the ship shimmies slightly to the side, even closer to the line of pirates approaching the steps of the shattered temple.

  Before I can object to whatever her plan is, we blast by the temple steps within arm’s reach of the glaring corsairs, and an instant later, the men and women all fly into the air, all yanked backward like puppets on unseen strings, and sent tumbling back across the dusty field.

  “What was that?” I stare at the elves groaning and crawling in the ash.

  “A wake.” Nahina flashes a wild grin. “Air, water, it’s all the same. You go fast enough, you make a big wake, and no one likes getting hit by someone else’s wake.”

  I blink. “Okay.”

  The air explodes with something deeper and closer than any thunderclap I’ve ever heard. The three of us wince and flinch, ducking down as though to escape a lightning strike. Rajani lets go of the ship’s controls and the Valkyrie glides to a halt, drifting sideways in the breeze.

  A moment later we all straighten up and look back at the temple.

  “What the hell was that?” I squint at the hideous black pillars where a strange white light is glaring into my eyes. “And what the hell is that?”

  “He did it,” Nahina whispers, staring at the temple. “That crazy kid actually di
d it. Rajani, go, go!”

  “Go where?” The healer asks breathlessly.

  “Into the light!”

  As the ship turns beneath me, I just keep staring. The two stone pillars that Amara and Xiang have been playing with all this time are now blazing with white light pouring out of every tiny crack and crevice in their ancient faces. And in the airy void between those pillars is a wall of light.

  Or a doorway.

  Whatever it is, it’s a pane of pure white light so bright that it hurts to look at, but it’s so strange and so clearly something-that-was-not-there-a-moment-ago, that I can’t help but stare as we turn and accelerate toward it.

  The pirates all sit up in the dust to gape and point at the light.

  Xiang and Amara are shielding their eyes and shuffling back from the blazing gateway.

  Rajani brings the Valkyrie down on the stone platform and Xiang clambers aboard, and then turns to help pull Amara up over the railing. I glance back at the pirates, and see them standing up and slowly walking toward us again, though this time they’re less concerned with shooting us and more distracted with shading their eyes.

  Down on the steps, Lozen’s hand moves.

  Lozen!

  Damn it.

  I reach for the rail to leap down and fetch her, but a hand grips my belt. A long, bony hand. And while Amara isn’t strong enough to hold me back, I’m not about to rip her arm off, so I turn to yell at her just as she pats Rajani on the shoulder and says, “Go now, or we will surely die!”

  Rajani throws the lever and the ship plunges into the light.

  For ten long seconds, I don’t move. No one moves. We stand in the ship, gripping the rails and each other, staring into the insane walls and threads and panes and swirls of light screaming past us on every side, in every color, in perfect silence. Every rainbow, every drop of oil on the surface of the sea, and every gleam of colored glass I have ever seen are melting past us on all sides, creating a tunnel of eye-watering madness.

  And then the light vanishes and we’re flying far below a grim gray sky and well above a dark green sea, and a wide white land stretches across the horizon not far beyond our bow.

  I blink and look back at the ragged ring of white light hanging in the sky behind us, just for a moment, and then it winks out of existence, leaving the sky and clouds undisturbed as though nothing strange had happened at all.

  I look back at Amara and I remember to be angry at her. “Why did you stop me?” I knock her hand away from my belt. “What about Lozen? We just left her back there! They could kill her!”

  “Perhaps,” she admits calmly. “Though I think it unlikely, given the woman’s unique abilities, even in her inebriated state. In any case, there was no time to retrieve her. As you just witnessed, we only barely cleared the gateway by a few seconds. Had we still been inside the gateway when it collapsed, we would all have been killed.”

  I blink. “Seriously?”

  Xiang nods apologetically as he leans over the rail. “Unfortunately, she’s right. Look down there.”

  I peer down at the sea below, and I see a long strip of angular stones just barely breaking through the waves. There are broken black pillars drowning in the surf, covered in kelp and starfish. And to one side a mound of grassy earth sparkles verdantly just below the surface.

  “See?” Xiang points. “There used to be another gate here, too, but it fell into the sea. Without a gate at both ends, the tunnel could only stay open for a few seconds. The good news is that it only took us a few seconds to get here, but the bad news is that it’s going to take hours or days just to get back to Moa Taka, flying the old fashioned way. Which… I guess this is. Wow. We’re really just flying, aren’t we? I could get used to this. And man, talk about lucky! What if I’d opened that portal and just stepped through? Ha! That would have been… well, bad.”

  “You mean, we can’t go back?” I look back up where the gateway of light had been.

  “There would be no point,” Amara says as she begins to reload her pistols. “Your mother’s interrogation proved fruitless. She knows nothing of your jaguar curse. However, the creature called Raven may still be able to save your life, and that of your unborn niece. So, you are welcome.”

  “Welcome? For what? Where the hell are we?”

  She gestures to the white land that we are rapidly approaching. “Unless I am very much mistaken, these are shores of Yas Yagaroth.”

  I stare at the huge island covered in ice and snow. “Yaga…? But you said it sank.”

  “Indeed I did,” Amara agrees. “But it would appear the ancient scholars played a bit of a trick on us. Look again. Evidently, Yas Yagaroth did not sink to the bottom of the sea. It sank to the bottom of the world. Welcome, my dear, to the South Pole.”

  A frigid wind blasts through my hair as the Valkyrie coasts lower and closer to the churning sea and the foam-tipped waves.

  “I told you, I don’t care about your lost city.” I lean down over the princess.

  “Perhaps you should,” she says. “You and I have much in common. We’re both dying of rare ailments that even the Feyeri cannot cure. But the Yagari healing device that I seek may save your life just as it saves mine.”

  “And what if it can’t?” I sit back. “I’m not sick. I’m cursed. Slight difference.”

  “Then that’s all the more reason to continue your search for Raven here,” Amara says as she holsters one gun and begins loading the other. “Rajani, be a lamb and take a look at your crystal ball. Do you see anything of interest?”

  Rajani peers down at her navigation globe and says, “Hey, wait. There’s a new dot. I swear it wasn’t there before. But I can see another crystal ship on the map now, and it’s dead ahead.”

  Amara smiles, utterly too pleased with herself. “You see? We have found the missing Coyote’s crystal ship, and I suspect that Raven will not be far from his kinsman. My mother told me the stories of the animal spirits too, you know. I’d be just as interested to meet them as you.”

  “Wait, go back.” Nahina slides across the seats to lean closer to the princess. “What did you just say about Coyote? Did you say he’s here too?”

  “Indeed.” Amara raises an eyebrow. “I believe you screamed something about him earlier?”

  “And why the hell did you go after my mother like that?” I ask.

  Nahina frowns at me, her eyes swimming with doubt and pain as she slowly sits back and looks away. “Because they did something terrible, a long time ago, the two of them.”

  I blink. There’s only one thing they ever did together. “Resurrection?”

  She nods. “Resurrection.”

  “Uhm.” Xiang raises his hand. “What now?”

  I sigh and close my eyes. It’s strange, I can still feel my left eye rolling around behind my lids, but when I open it… nothing. “Thirty years ago, Lozen asked Coyote to help her save the world. Coyote agreed, but at a price. He wanted Lozen to help him seal up the entrance to the afterlife so no one could ever be resurrected again. And she did it.”

  “Okay.” Xiang pouts and nods. “Sure, sure. I just have one little question. Since when was resurrection actually a thing?”

  “For centuries,” Nahina says. “The Feyeri have been bringing back the dead for centuries. And they were doing it right up until Lozen slammed the door. Did you know there’s a town in Shihoku where almost half the people were resurrected, or saw it, or were the children of people who were resurrected? I’ve been there, I’ve spoken to them. They’re real.” Her voice is shaking and her hands are shaking as she wraps her fists up in her skirt.

  “Yeah, that was Big Mom,” Rajani says with a sad smile. “I’ve been there too. Good sushi.”

  I stare at Nahina, at her black lips and tattooed chin, her shaved head and patterned dress, and beneath all these foreign things I see something so very familiar. And I ask her, softly, “Who did you lose?”

  She looks at me sharply, her eyes wide and rimmed in red, her mouth gaping just
a bit as she tries to say it. “Everyone.”

  I wait, and after a moment she continues, “There was a storm. A terrible storm. The sort of storm that makes you hide in the corner and wonder if maybe this really might be the end of the world, because it’s so dark and so bright, so cold, and so loud. The wind, the thunder, the lightning, the waves. Hour after hour.” She swallows. “My whole family died. Parents, grandparents, uncles, aunts, brothers…”

  We sit in silence, with only the shushing of the waves below to remind us that the world still exists and time still crashes forward.

  “How old were you?” Rajani asks so softly that I barely hear her.

  “Eight,” Nahina says.

  Another painful silence.

  “Years later I heard the stories about a town where everyone had come back from the dead, and I sailed to Shihoku, and I learned about the Feyeri,” Nahina says quickly. “I was so happy. I could bring them back. The Feyeri could bring them all back. Except they can’t now. Not anymore. The Feyeri can’t raise the dead anymore because of someone called Lozen, and some creature called Coyote. They put an end to it.”

  Xiang grips her shoulder. She ignores him.

  “But then I heard another kind of story,” Nahina says. “A story about the lost city of Yas Yagaroth, where the ancient witches created a machine that can open a doorway into the past and bring people from one time to another. I know it sounds insane, but I have nothing left, no other way to save my family. It’s been seventeen years, but maybe if I can go back to that night, and find them, and bring them here, then…”

  “A portal in time? Fascinating.” Amara slips away her second pistol. “I too have read of this device, although I must admit I doubt that such a thing can really exist. But if it does, it would be enormously valuable. Therefore, I propose a partnership, Miss Nakaroa. Help me to find the Yagari healing device, and I will help you find your time portal.”

  She gives the princess a critical look. “I don’t know you. I don’t trust you.”

  “I’m not asking you to trust me,” Amara purrs. “I’m asking you to work with me. After all, I’ve already brought you this far, to the shores of Yas Yagaroth itself. And as my companions can attest, I am a woman of my word.”