"I'd like to get back to the barn," Chinthliss said, scanning the house and the road quickly. "The shields on it are good ones, and I don't want to leave a live Gate open behind us without shields. The only way we're going to get them out will be if we leave the Gate open at our backs."
"A good point," Ako murmured. "This is your place of expertise, Chinthliss, and I will follow your instructions. I have only visited here on this side of the Hill, and none of those visits was very recent."
"Which way is the barn from here?" Chinthliss asked Joe in an undertone. "I don't remember."
"Not a problem." Joe took the lead with confidence, even in the thick darkness of the last hour before dawn. The others followed, accepting him as the temporary leader.
The Junior Guard had followed him and his orders once—but it had been out of habit to obedience, and not because they were particularly confident in his ability.
But this was different. At this moment, despite anxiety for Tannim and worry about what lay ahead, he was as content as he had ever been. He was trusted for himself, now, and not because he was Brother Joseph's son, or the duly authorized leader of the Junior Guard, or even an officer in the ranks of the Chosen Ones.
It felt good.
He owed this, all of it, to Bob, Al, Tannim, and the other Fairgrove people he hadn't even met yet—a family of his own choosing, if it came right down to it. They'd given him a place where he belonged, where he could find out what he was all about. He owed them for something beyond price, something not too many people ever got, really.
Well, he thought, lengthening his strides when he sensed that the others would be able to keep up with him, in that case, it's time for some payback.
* * *
"I'm sorry," Shar said, wiping her nose on the tissue Tannim offered. Her eyes were sore; her throat and lungs ached. She felt vaguely as if she should have been embarrassed; she'd never broken down like that before in front of anybody, not even her mother. Charcoal, Lady Ako, some of the Unseleighe had seen her anger, her rage, but never her tears. Grief until now had been a private thing.
But she wasn't embarrassed. It had felt so good to lean on someone else, even for just a little—so good to let loose all that grief, all the frustration. So good to be held by someone who wasn't going to expect the very next moment to be a passionless roll in the sack.
"Hey," Tannim said, patting her hand awkwardly, "you were just tired, that's all. You still are. Just wait until we're somewhere safer, and you get a chance to rest; you'll be all right then."
She sniffed and blew her nose, then looked up at him to meet his peculiar, weary, lopsided smile.
He handed her another tissue. "I wish all I did was cry when I get tired. When I'm beat, you can't trust my aim with anything. That's one reason why I don't carry a gun around."
"Really?" she said, seizing the chance to change the subject gratefully. "I can't imagine you being unskilled at anything."
He nodded solemnly. "Honest truth. Scorched one of my own friends with a mage-bolt once during a firefight with the Unseleighe; gave him a reverse Mohawk."
"No!" She giggled as he nodded with a touch of chagrin as well as amusement.
" 'Fraid so." He sighed and looked around at the eddying mist outside of the Mustang. "Look, I hate to try and push you, but we really need to make some decisions here. What are you going to set the Gate for? The frozen plain first? Or do we jump right into the fire and try Charcoal—"
Without warning, the Gate flared into life.
Tannim's reactions were faster than she would have believed possible for a mere human. He had the Mustang in reverse and skidding away from the Gate in a flash.
It just was not quite soon enough.
The sand came to life with a roar and rose up in a barrier behind them. It acted as if it was alive, or something was alive and burrowing beneath it, heaving upward in a towering mound with sides too steep for the Mustang to climb. He slammed on the brakes, and spun the wheel to the side, throwing the Mach I into first and accelerating into the mist at right angles away from the brand-new mound, only to find the way barred by something entirely unexpected.
A wall of shadow and dulled silver. A living wall.
A wall with ten talons, each as long as an arm.
He slammed on the brakes, just short of it. Shar stared through the windshield at the two enormous foreclaws, each half as large as the Mustang.
A dragon. . . .
There was only one dragon in all of Underhill that peculiar metallic gray, like polished ash, or matte-finished hematite.
Charcoal.
Father.
She bit back a gasp of fear, and felt a wave of chill wash over her.
Her hands were on the door handle. She tried to take them off and couldn't. They would not obey her.
She found herself opening the door of the passenger's side, entirely against her will; found herself getting out, standing beside the Mustang, mist eddying around her ankles. Her hands shut the passenger's door as she strove to regain control of them, to no avail. She should have been angry, but all she could feel was rising panic.
Charcoal shares my blood; he must have—the ability to control my body—
More shapes moved in on them, out of the mist: bipedal shapes in black armor, with surcoats and cloaks of midnight black, a dozen or more altogether. They paused in a group for a moment, in complete silence. One of them strode out of the midst of them with his sword drawn and his faceplate up.
Madoc Skean. He looked rather pleased with himself. Bastard. He got Father to track us down!
"Ah, Charcoal," Madoc said with false good humor. "I see you've found them. Now, just hand them over to me, and—"
The dragon coughed, and warm air laden with the scent of aged stone washed over her. He bent his neck down to stare at Madoc, his sulfur-colored eyes wide with amusement. "Hand them over to you? Aren't you getting above yourself, Madoc Skean? It was you who came to me for help, as I recall, and not the opposite." Charcoal's voice boomed overhead, kettledrums and distant thunder, a vibration in the breastbone. "If it had not been for me, you would never have found them, would you? If it had not been for me, you would not have known the Gate into this domain, nor would you have been able to hold it."
Shar found herself free to move again, as Charcoal's attention was momentarily on Madoc, and she backed up, one slow step at a time. So he doesn't control me unless he's concentrating on it! Maybe if she could get a little out of reach, where the mist was thicker, she could make a run for it. And if she broke and ran, that would give Tannim an opening to try something. Her magic was exhausted, but there was still his, and he was no amateur. Tension corded every muscle in her body as she edged past the rear of the Mustang. A little more. A little more. . . .
Madoc's expression changed from genial and self-satisfied to petulant and angry. "I thought we had a bargain, Charcoal," Madoc replied harshly. "You would find them, I would—"
"You would what?" Charcoal laughed so loudly that Shar winced involuntarily. She knew that laugh. Charcoal was sure he held the situation completely under his own control. "Dispose of the human? Punish my daughter? You would presume? I claimed this human as my prey a long time ago, elven fool—and such as you are not fit to polish the talons of one of my kind! However she has offended you, she has previously offended me, and she is mine to deal with, not yours!"
Charcoal's tail lashed, scattering Madoc and his followers, and the barrier of sand collapsed as Madoc took his attention from it. But the overall effect, when Madoc's Faceless Ones gathered around him again, was to put Shar and the Mustang directly between Madoc and Charcoal, with the Faceless Ones between her and freedom. This was not an improvement.
"I will challenge you for them if I must, impertinent lizard!" Madoc shouted, gesturing with his sword. "The human has slain my kin, wrought havoc among my kind! She broke faith with me! She violated the terms of our agreement! I have first claim on her and on him as well!"
"My
claim takes precedence over yours, oh cream-faced loon," the dragon retorted, raising his head again. "She broke faith with me long before she broke it with you. In fact, I would say that you owe me for making a separate peace and an alliance with her when you knew that she and I were at odds."
The Faceless Ones were creeping up on Charcoal from behind, working their way across the sand silently, using the mist as cover. Shar wondered if he noticed—
Then his tail lashed again with sudden, deadly purpose. Most of them evaded it, but one did not; the creature was caught across the midsection by twenty feet of scale-covered muscle as big around as the trunk of a tree and sent hurtling, broken-bodied, out into the mist. It did not return. Not surprising; most created creatures disintegrated when damaged beyond repair.
And what will happen to me when I am damaged beyond repair?
"And as for the other, the human, my prey," Charcoal continued, as if nothing had happened, "I will deal with him as I see fit. His very existence is offensive to me, and has been since my rival chose to make a protégé of him."
Tannim opened the driver's-side door and slowly emerged from the Mustang to stand beside it. But Shar got the distinct impression that he had not been forced, as she had been, that he was getting out under his own control.
Tannim, no—don't do anything, don't say anything—
The young mage ran a hand through his tangled mop of hair and looked up at Charcoal with no sign of fear. "Don't you think it's a little early to start calling me `prey'? I mean, we just met," Tannim said mildly.
Shar stiffened at his casual tone, now more afraid for him than she was for herself. Oh no—no, Tannim, don't provoke him!
Charcoal bent his gaze on the human below him, his eyes glowing with pent-up hatred. "Oh really? Perhaps you need to be reminded of how tiny you are."
Tannim folded his arms across his chest, and casually leaned against the car. "If you're trying to intimidate me, it's not working. I know all the tricks. And size doesn't impress me in the least."
What was he trying to do? Did he have some clever plan to get them both out of this? Shar clenched her fists until her nails cut into the palms of her hands, desperately trying to muster up even the tiniest amount of energy. The sparks of her magic sputtered and died as she tried to fan them into life. Surely he couldn't be counting on her to back him up—he knew she was exhausted!
This was a hazardous gambit Tannim was playing, if what he was doing was trying for time by bluffing—and she didn't think it had a snowball's chance of working.
Charcoal's eyes narrowed. "You are an arrogant fool," he rumbled, his talons flexing in the soft sand as if he longed to sink them into Tannim's body. "As big a fool as that Unseleighe idiot who was hunting you."
But Tannim simply shrugged and leaned a little more against the car, dropping his left hand down behind the open door, paying no attention whatsoever to Shar. "Really? You think so? Then you haven't been paying attention."
His left hand flickered once, quickly, out of Charcoal's line of sight; the keys to the Mustang fell at Shar's feet, the sound of their impact muffled in the soft sand. Charcoal was so busy concentrating on Tannim that he didn't notice.
The dragon's eyes narrowed to mere slits. "You tire me," he hissed. "I believe it is time to squash you, and—"
A whiplash of mage-energy crackled across the distance between Madoc and Charcoal. Shar ducked involuntarily as it arced over her head, and Charcoal's head snapped back from the impact on his muzzle, precisely as if Madoc had slapped him.
"First there are my claims, worm!" Madoc cried, his voice high and tight with anger, his hands glowing with the residual energy of the mage-bolt. "This mortal is mine!"
"Don't you think both your claims are a little premature?"
Shar turned, for the voice had clearly come from behind her. Another figure loomed out of the mist.
Tannim oohed. "The gang's all here."
Loomed was precisely the word; the shape moving through the mist towards them was just a little shorter than Charcoal—although in this mist it was difficult to judge. In the next moment, a blast of wind from a pair of huge, fanning wings blew all the mist away from the immediate area.
It all began to drift back immediately, of course, but not before Chinthliss made an impressive entrance in the wake of the wind.
Shar had never seen Chinthliss in his full draconic splendor before, and she felt her eyes widening with surprise. He stalked onto the sand, bronze scales shimmering subtly as the muscles beneath them moved, head held high on his long, flexible neck, wings half-spread behind him like a golden-bronze cloak. Beside him, the rest of his party looked like dolls—
Dolls? Perhaps that was not the best comparison. Perhaps they were no match for him in size, but that did not mean they were not formidable in their own right.
On Chinthliss' left, and nearest Shar, was the young blond human Tannim had been partnering before Shar kidnapped the Mustang; he had a drawn weapon in his hands, and Shar might have been the only creature present other than Tannim who knew just how deadly that tiny piece of metal really was. Beside him, in full battle arousal, was a three-tailed kitsune, his fox-mask convulsed in a snarl of rage, every hair on end, his paws crackling with mage-energy.
And on Chinthliss' right—
Mother!
Lady Ako was as serene and outwardly unmoved as a statue of a Buddhist nun; only someone who really knew her well would see the anger in her eyes and sense how close she was to the boiling point. And Shar knew that scarlet outfit she wore so regally, that belt with all of its many surprises. Lady Ako had come prepared in her own way for battle.
Tannim hadn't moved a muscle, although both Charcoal and Madoc Skean had backed up and shifted a few involuntary feet. Shar allowed herself to hope, just a little. Charcoal stared at the newcomers with the first signs of surprise Shar had ever seen him display. Shar took advantage of the distractions to bend down and snatch up the keys to the Mustang, knowing what that had cost Tannim—and what it meant to her.
He had sent her a message, as clearly as if he had spoken it to her. If I buy it—it's yours, the car and all the power in it. Everything.
Her heart ached. It wasn't the Mustang that she wanted. . . .
Shar, Tannim, and the Mustang were now the exact middle of a triangle, the points of which were Madoc and his Faceless Ones, Chinthliss and his allies, and Charcoal. Shar was already several feet behind the tail of the Mustang. With the change of position, Madoc was nearest Tannim, Shar nearest Chinthliss, the Mustang between Tannim and Charcoal.
"Chinthlissssss." Charcoal's hiss of recognition was so full of hatred that Shar could taste it. "I might have known you would show up."
The bronze dragon shrugged; an oddly human gesture. "I am not as careless of my protégés as you, it seems. Nor am I inclined to abandon my allies as my whim suits me."
Charcoal ignored the sally and dropped his gaze to Chinthliss' feet. "Ako," he said in a tone that Shar could have sworn was one of reproach—if she hadn't already known that Charcoal was a master of manipulation. He assumed an expression of noble hurt. "Ako, I am surprised to find you with—this brat. I thought you had more dignity and pride than to be taken in by a manipulating charlatan."
Lady Ako looked Charcoal up and down, her face so full of open scorn that even Tom Cadge must sense it. "I do," she replied shortly. "That is why I left you."
Charcoal reared up as if he had been struck. The three-tailed kitsune openly snickered. Chinthliss' mouth widened slightly in a draconic smile.
"I believe," he said genially, "that we have a stalemate, Chinthliss."
"Foolish worms!" Madoc Skean shouted furiously, startling them all. "You are forgetting me!"
He rushed Tannim, sword held high over his head, the blue-black blade alive with crawling actinic-white tendrils of mage-power. But Tannim was not as unready as he had looked—nor as relaxed.
Tannim reached down into the Mustang's front window, and turned with
one smooth motion to face Madoc's charge. As Madoc's blade slashed downward toward his head, Tannim brought up both hands with something between them. Madoc's sword met Tannim's red crowbar instead of Tannim's head.
However tempered the elven blade was, it was no match for a solid bar of Cold Iron, doubly-tempered with spells. With a scream that sounded almost human, the blade snapped in half, leaving a charred stump in the hilt in Madoc Skean's hands.
The Unseleighe lord stared at the remains of his weapon for a single stunned second. That was long enough for Tannim to make his countermove.
Showing all the expertise of any battle-honed elven warrior Shar had ever seen, Tannim swung the crowbar in a two-handed slash toward Madoc's head. The elven lord ducked aside at the last moment, and the crowbar only caught his upraised arm.
Sparks flew from Madoc's spell-strengthened armor, and Madoc staggered back a few steps.
But now the fight was no longer one-on-one. The Faceless Ones closed in to come to the aid of their master. Tannim whirled to parry their blades, but there were many of them and only one of him.
Tannim! He could never fend them all off—not without help!
Shar managed to summon up the power for a mage-bolt. Her hands blazed with magical energy; she screamed at the top of her lungs with the pain it cost her, but she blasted the nearest of the Faceless Ones full in the unprotected back, just as Tannim connected with a second, a raking blow straight across the chest with the pointed end of the crowbar.
Both disintegrated in a shower of sparks, empty armor dropping to the sand with a clatter.
Tannim dove through the opening presented by the loss of a faceless warrior, turning the dive into a somersault that brought him up onto his feet much nearer Shar, and outside the circle of Faceless Ones. Out of the corner of her eye, Shar saw that the young human with Chinthliss was trying desperately to find a target, but was clearly afraid of hitting Tannim. Tannim swung on another Faceless One, catching it in the back. Another shower of sparks and tumble of empty armor marked the loss of another of Madoc's creations.
Now it was Madoc's turn again; he charged Tannim with a wild war cry, his hands full of a much cruder weapon than his prized mage-sword. This was an ancient Celtic war-club, a massive piece of lead-weighted wood, previously strapped across his back. Tannim's crowbar was no match for it—and Madoc was a warrior trained since his birth hundreds of years ago in the art of wielding such weapons.
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