by Leigh Evans
Her answer was a slow, chilling smile.
I jammed the piece of oak down the back of my pants so that my hands were free. “Well, watch and learn, Mad-one. I’m going knock the Black Mage’s twisted heart straight into the abyss of hell.”
When, out of nowhere, I heard a voice. “This is ill-advised.”
Who was that? I whipped around, searching for a face, a shadow, anything to explain that cool observation that seemed to come from either inside my head or right behind me. Let it be someone behind me. But there was no one. Just the wind, the moss, the myst. An errant breeze goosefleshed my skin as I turned back to Mad-one. Her head was tilted; her eyes narrowed in consideration.
“What did you say?” I asked Mad-one hopefully.
The Mystwalker lifted a single blond brow, very delicately. “I did not speak.”
The wintry voice inside my head spoke again. “I shall not aid your travel to that one’s embrace. The Old Mage calls us, can you not hear his summons? We were born to serve him, not the foul one.”
Oh crap.
Up to now the few times my Fae had opted to comment on Hedi-land, she’d been basically all “Fee-fi-fo-fum. I’m going to fuck with this dumb-dumb.” Sly quips. The Dorothy Parker of ride-alongs. And usually, she strung together two or three words at most.
Six tops.
Never had she spoken using a distinct sentence structure, with verbs and stuff. Never like a fully formed person inside my freaking head. Well, that wasn’t quite true … there was that time the three of us had killed Dawn.
No. Not that again.
Not up here, when I was Were-less. When it was just mortal-me pitted against Fae-me.
“Do not talk to me,” I said. “You’re not becoming top dog in Hedi Incorporated, got it? Just because we’re in Threall where you’re feeling all…”
“Forsooth, she is witless, this one,” the Mystwalker murmured.
My voice trailed away. I stared at Mad-one, wondering, was this how crazy had begun for her? She’d started out reasonably normal and then the voices started? Two or three Threall visits later, and she was the resident whackjob having long heart-to-hearts with herself?
Scary. Get out of Threall before you turn into an inmate.
Without another word, I launched myself out of the foxhole, and sprinted across the field with the speed of an infantryman under sniper fire.
I’m coming for you, you black-hearted bastard.
Puddles sprayed as I dashed toward the dastardly and all was going swimmingly until twelve feet from the walnut when I hit an invisible and viscous pocket of something … terrible.
His ward was thick and oily.
Horrible. It swamped me with a near-overpowering urge to backtrack bowing and whimpering from that wall of the dreadful and the bad. Even breathing became a Herculean task because there was no air in that bubble. Just horrible, stinking pressure. It squeezed down on me … Fae Stars, I was the bruised raspberry suspended in a bowl of setting gelatin.
“Go back,” said my Fae.
I couldn’t do it. Retreat required a one-hundred-eighty-degree turn. Too much effort.
“Fool, push through it,” she cried.
The command congealed before it ever reached my toes. How could I move my foot? It was a cinder block affixed to a concrete pad bolted to a unyielding slab of bedrock.
“We’re going to perish!” She flooded me with bitter frustration.
No we won’t. Not if I lift our foot. It isn’t a cinder block. It’s a foot. Toes and heel. A callus on the back of your heel. Always missing a shoe or two. I can do it. All I have to do is take another step. I don’t need air.
Lungs screaming for air, I took a shambling step.
Followed by another.
“We’re seeing dots,” she hissed.
Stop whining. I’m concentrating.
One last push. Come on. You can do it. Use the momentum of your weight. Stick out your goddess-cursed chin and fall forward.
Sometimes I amaze myself with my brilliance. I thrust out my jaw and willed myself to become the Leaning Tower of Hedi. A sense of reluctant parting—choking hands being forced to open—and then I was out of its sickening grip. Release. Oh, wonderful release. I fell onto my hands and knees, and stayed like that, gratefully sucking in air, the piñata stick digging into the upward swell of my ass.
I’m going to have to go back the same way I came.
My mouth filled with bile as I twisted around. There was nothing to mark the place where the invisible wall began or where it ended beyond a long track of moss pleated up during my zombie walk. Even as I watched, a stream of blue myst slid right through the ward, did a lazy circuit around me—go ahead, rub it in—then merrily flitted away.
“Kill him,” said my Fae. “The ward will die with his soul.”
“Works for me.” It took a brief second to puzzle out the toeholds and stretches required, then I placed a foot neatly on the big bulbous growth sprouting on the trunk and sprang upward. My hand caught the edge of the knothole a foot higher. One big heave, a bit of awkward scrambling, and I was crouched in the fork of the black walnut tree.
Stupidly, I grinned—oh evil murderess me—at how easy it was. Success was just a quick scramble up through the foliage. And then, as I was reaching for my piñata stick …
Oh sweet heavens.
The Black Mage’s dark soul poured into me, as if someone had pulled the stopper on a bottle of something vile. I didn’t see pictures, I didn’t receive thoughts. Just the essence of him, and that was both fascinating and repugnant because his soul was really low on the gray tones—he was hate without heat; ambition without limit; sex without pleasure; night without light.
Dark-hearted. Yes, that fit.
And constantly hungry, too.
My sluggish progress through the ward must have sounded an alarm for him, because I didn’t receive any images that would have given me a clue as to what he was seeing or doing in Merenwyn. Instead, he plunged me into a pitch-black cave that no amount of rapid blinking could bring bright light into.
Swirling head. Dizzy. Disoriented.
Goddess, he’s blinded me.
My sense of direction disappeared. Was the end of the world off to my right elbow or my left? Had I been spun around in my confusion? I can’t see. That abyss. That long, long plunge—to fall and never stop falling.
Don’t move. Not until your head clears. Heart thudding in my chest, I hunched over my heels, trying not to twitch or even breathe, frightened that he’d soon find me, one toe in his thought stream and then … oh what would happen then? My knee began to shake against the trunk of his tree, tap, tap, tap, like a woodpecker on a tall pine.
“I see you now,” he said softly.
Horror spiked through me as a fright-mask of a face suddenly sprang out at me from the gloom. Skin as pale as a ghost’s, mouth set in a pitiless smile. And then … the Black Mage was on me. Around me. In me. A stab of pain, and a long cruel finger poked deep within me, scoring things that had never been touched.
I am dirty. I am bare.
“Close your mind!” my Fae cried. “Steel yourself!”
Too late. He was everywhere. Fondling things he should never touch.
Get him out.
His soiled fingers brushed against the Stronghold box—which I’d so carefully packed when I was standing in Trowbridge’s bathroom, blithely considering murder. Inside it, the knowledge of those people precious to me. My Trowbridge, my Lexi, my Merry, and my Cordelia. Harry and Biggs and Ralph, too.
“And me!” shrieked my Fae.
No. He will not touch that which is mine.
With a banshee scream, I lifted my cudgel high and brought it down hard enough to feel the vibration of the strike all the way up to my shoulder. I sensed a sharp recoil and, with it, the game turned—hello, avenging Valkyrie.
I rained blows upon his trunk.
Chips of bark flew, sap ran.
And you know what? For a bit I almost t
hought I could just chop him down. Strike by strike. But then beneath me, the black walnut began to sway. A whoosh of leaves to the left. A protest of chafing branches to the right.
Trees shouldn’t do that when you’re blindly crouched in them.
That bastard’s going to toss me soon and I’m going to fall and never stop falling.
Screw that.
Dumb luck met desperation—in the frenzy of blows that followed that panic one of my strikes hit a bulbous growth with enough force to crack it.
A loud, reptilian hiss … and the connection was broken.
The tree grew still. But I knew.
Evil was listening.
An elegant dismount was beyond me. I made a quick prayer to the Goddess of GPS—please let the abyss be on my right—and simply leaned far to my left.
I landed less than two seconds later on my tailbone—ow—followed by my head bouncing on the ground—double ow—and then I was lying prone on a crop of rotting stone fruits. They smelled bad. Sweet and acid, a little bit woody, too. I’m lying on the seeds of evil. Move away. My ankle brushed against his trunk, and before the Black Mage could snatch at me again with the hooks of his agile, wicked mind, I painfully rolled past his reach.
Cored out, I lay near the foot of his tree, curled on my side, my billy club clutched in my hand like a warrior’s sword. For a second I studied the scattered dark and wizened fruit, the new deadfall of twigs, leaves, and broken branches that lay near the edge of the world—good, I did some damage to the bastard—then I buried my head in the crook of my arm.
And I tried really hard not to weep for my brother.
* * *
“Seek protection with the Old Mage!” urged my Fae. “Go! Now!”
My eyes shot open.
Crap. The tree’s bark glistened with sweat. Right under my gaze, the shiny stuff sloughed off the trunk to pool on the soil, no longer shimmering, but widening in a dark wet stain. In less than half a second, that blot of ugly had gone from a puddle to a shape rising from the ground.
Something wicked this way comes.
I pushed myself shakily to my feet as the shape shifted into the ghostly outline of someone crouched, fingers spread and braced on the soil. Was it the mage? Could he materialize here? Heart in mouth, I was backtracking toward the ward as the shape changed and details were quickly added. Hair, short and roughly chopped. Clothing, loose and homespun. Not the mage, I realized. His feet would never be so small, so dirty.
The devil’s spawn lifted his head.
This ten-year-old was the assailant who’d slunk along the bushes and lobbed fire at Mad-one? He was the person Lexi had called “the little mystwalking freak”?
Shame on both of them. He wasn’t a spawn; he was a cub with a baby-soft mouth.
I pushed myself shakily to my feet.
The kid gaped at me then fumbled for the rough bark behind him. “It’s not Tyrean,” he babbled. “It is another!”
Who’s planning on doing the slog march through the ward again. I edged close enough to feel the vibration of its doom message, while the Black Mage gave the problem a quick think. High up in the boughs of that wicked tree, a purple light flashed. Blip, blip.
The devil’s spawn listened, mouth pulled down, before flicking me a searing glance. “Yes, her eyes are green.” A pause then the kid’s face twisted in a sly calculation. “But she has a stick, master,” he wheedled.
Don’t call him master.
A red mark bloomed on the boy’s pale cheek. “I will do it,” he said sullenly before he lifted his hand. It was a small little paw, vividly red and swollen, at the end of a malnourished arm.
Puny muscles. I could take him.
The devil’s spawn didn’t use any words to call up his magic. The kid merely blinked, and a ball of fire burst into life above his soot-grimed finger. His personal incendiary device was softball-sized; blue toned versus orange, with the requisite tongues of yellow flame.
Shit.
“Get out!” he said, creeping toward me.
“You better hope you can outrun me,” I said slowly. “I burn, you burn.”
That would have been the moment he should have nailed me with it. When he didn’t, I started speculating as to whether or not he could throw his great ball of fire while we were inside the Black Mage’s ward. Even as I watched, the yellow heat licking the outside of his fireball sank low, almost disappearing into the bluish center.
It’s a breath away from extinguishing on its own.
As he crept toward me, I asked, “You’re responsible for all this destruction?”
He gave me an ugly, preening smile. “I am a mystwalker.”
“Didn’t anyone tell you that we’re supposed to protect this realm, not destroy it?” I asked, gaze fixed on the sputtering sphere of flame. “What you’ve done here … doesn’t it feel wrong?”
He made a dismissive noise that was a combination of a tsk and a huff.
Almost there. Come on, you little brat. Just another foot.
“I will burn you,” he said.
“Uh-huh,” I replied, then I puckered up my lips, leaned over, and blew. And, just as I suspected, his great ball of fire went out, leaving only a little, itty-bitty flame flickering above his ragged fingernail. Kind of like a Bic lighter, low on gas.
“You’re out, buddy,” I said.
What I’d counted on was for him to act like a kid. You know—get rattled, and then go home crying. Instead, he reignited his Bic finger and went for my hair. Swiftly, I intercepted his wrist. “Put it out!” When he didn’t, I grabbed him in a one-armed bear hug then lifted him right off his feet. His feet bicycled as I blew out his flame. “Stop trying to light me on fire, you little guttersnipe—”
Snipes have teeth.
Faster than a pissed-off Pomeranian, he chomped down on my forearm. He must have had lots of practice at biting … he did it so very well.
Pain. Worse than stubbing your toe.
You little devil. I went to cuff him, hesitated—couldn’t help the pause, he was a kid—and was rewarded for my sudden flare of ethics by him gouging my thigh with his sharp ragged nails.
Geeze Louise.
Automatically, I bent over, to move my legs out of the range of his claws, and when he slashed at them again, I feinted backward. And stepped right into the ward.
Sucking pressure. No air. Legs limp as overdone noodles.
Pomeranian hanging off my arm.
And … memories. It was like touching Mad-one all over again. I saw into the kid, and inadvertently discovered pieces of his history that I never wanted to know. And perhaps, in exchange, he discovered little pieces of mine. Oh kid … oh sweet heavens … you poor little … oh kid … I staggered out of that airless vacuum a whole lot faster than I shuffled through it the first time. Feeling sickened to my soul.
And hurting, too—when I emerged, the devil’s spawn was still attached by his incisors.
“Stop biting!” I hissed.
If anything, he just bore down harder, seeming to want to connect with bone.
“I don’t want to hurt you!” I yelled.
Half of a lie. You really do want to hurt someone when they bite you. But this kid, this brat, this little monster dubbed the devil’s spawn—he’d already been hurt so. Sweet and trusting he’d been once …
Blood began leaking from the corner of his mouth.
My blood.
“You little vicious…” In frustration, I pinched his nose hard, sealing his nostrils tight. “One thousand, two thousand…” His eyes widened and I fancied I could see him mentally assessing how long he could last without air.
Not long, apparently.
The devil’s spawn unhinged his jaw. “I’m going to tell him that you’re the Shadow’s sister,” he said, before using his forearm to get rid of that inconvenient dribble of my blood on his chin. Just to make sure I was truly scared, he aimed another kick at my kneecap, then darted for the safety of the ward, and would have slipped into its ve
il had I not lunged, and reeled him back by his shirt collar at the last second.
“You don’t have to go back to him!” I yelled.
It would have been easier to grab a wolverine by its tail. Little-boy ragged toenails jabbed for my shins, sharp feral teeth snapped for my fingers.
“Enough!” I yelled, giving him a shake. “Stop it, or I’ll…” I lifted my cudgel in an empty threat and immediately he stilled, his eyes dead, his face set in a sullen expression, as if I’d just fulfilled every one of his expectations.
If I’d wanted to kill the Black Mage before, now I wanted to feed his entrails to a Cuisinart. Because I’d seen things as I backpedaled out of the ward with the mystwalker apprentice. Stuff I never wanted to know. Like the pants-wetting fear the devil’s spawn felt about the dark, and how that anxiety spiked to bowel-loosening dread when the door to the room of magic was pushed open. The things that kid knew … no child should know that.
And now the sickening memory of it was in my head. Not like I’d read it in the newspaper, or watched it in a gritty documentary. It was as bad as that spring evening in the Trowbridge living room when all I’d smelled was blood, and all I’d known was that I was weaker than those who wished to hurt me. No escape. Just misery and endurance.
My life has been so easy.
Pity swelled. “It’s wrong,” I said shakily. “What’s been done to—”
He actually cocked his head—and to this day, I’m not sure if it was because I’d reached him, or I’d shown a weakness he thought he could exploit. But suddenly, he saw something over my shoulder that made him go stiff as a mouse spotting the resident cat.
And that was about as much warning as I got.
I heard a sizzle, and out of the corner of my eye I saw an incoming flash of yellow and orange. Protective instincts, once prodded to life, are a bitch to ignore. I wrapped my arms around he-who-bites, and lunged for safety an instant before the burning fireball slammed into the ground not four feet from us, spraying moss, earth, and well … fire. Too damn close. Heat on my back, fear in my belly. I hunched protectively over the boy, and the flaming sphere bounced, once, and then began to roll toward the ward, frying moss as it did.