by Leigh Evans
On contact with the Black Mage’s shield, the incendiary device broke apart. Relatively softly, almost like when a bath bead finally pops in hot water. The oil within spread over the ward’s invisible wall and burst into flames.
I spun around.
Chapter Twenty-four
Mad-one stood outside her foxhole, weaving slightly, her right hand lifted shoulder high. She grimaced, and another fireball burst into life above her sooty finger.
“Don’t fire!” I yelled. “I’ve got it under control!”
As if the Mystwalker gave a damn—she saw her chance to remove two irritants and she planned to take it. With a deadly smile, she flicked her wrist backward. “Don’t!” I screamed as I pushed the devil’s spawn behind me.
The fireball arched through the air, and suddenly the stick in my hand was no longer a cudgel but a bat, and I wasn’t a girl one hiccup away from being crispy-fried, I was Derek Jeter. Her meteor of hurt came in from high, and then curved downward.
Mouth pursed, I kept my eye on it, not on the kid, not on Mad-one.
For once in my life, I kept my eye on the ball.
My life has been easy.
I swung.
The tip of my improvised bat hit the fireball with a shower of sparks. I cringed, protecting my head, expecting to be doused in flaming oil. But instead of breaking apart, Mad-one’s missile flew up in the air in a perfect arc, seemingly destined on a return trip to its origin, except out of nowhere, a strong, whistling gust of air caught it, and changed its trajectory. My mouth dropped open as my foul sailed sideways into the sky, brilliant orange and red, twisting and rotating.
Then it did the unthinkable.
No, no, no.
Spitting sparks, it hit the dry tinder of the Old Mage’s wind-nibbled topmost branches—the ones flayed by wind and left splintered like an open book of matches—and the top right portion of his tree burst into flames. Just like that. As if someone had hit ignite on a gas barbecue.
Horror, gut-deep.
“Our mage!” cried my Fae.
She erupted inside me, and took.
Next thing I knew, I’d dropped my stick, and was streaking toward the disaster of my making, my Fae’s anxiety fuel to my flying feet. Behind me came a shriek, agonized and awful. I flicked a glance over my shoulder.
Mad-one was following in my tracks, her face anguished, her blistered hand lifted skyward. “Storm!” she cried.
And holy cow, Batman. No sooner had she uttered the word, than it began to rain in Threall. Not a heavy downpour, but a barely there soft rainfall.
Let it be enough to put the fire out.
My Goddess must have heard my plea, because even as my Fae and I were reaching for that first handhold—a sturdy bough that led to an even sturdier one—the fire’s horrible, popping, crackling noise died into a resentful hiss. Skirting the section that still smoked, I—no, she—starting moving up that tree faster than a squirrel in a race for the last nut of the season. Reaching for crook and vee and swollen knob, anything that could give me purchase up another foot, another inch, another hand’s reach toward that soul light, high up in the tree.
“Master!” she screamed. “I am coming!”
Higher and higher, we climbed; my Fae keeping our eyes trained upward. Because the old man’s soul—it called to her. She’d felt the tug of his presence since the moment I’d opened my eyes last night in Threall. Hell, she’d been fan-girl over him ever since we’d begun dreaming of Merenwyn.
“Save me,” he pleaded to her.
His soul ball glowed, so fierce, so bright. A distress beacon high in a mostly dead tree. Orange as a setting sun. And yes, even semimortal-me recognized the aching beauty of his dying soul. It was there in the glory of the golden light pouring from it. The summation of all the things thought before death—the loves you remember, the people you’ll miss, all the moments you won’t have in the future, all those sun-dappled days you spent in your past … when you die, that love, that wistful regret … it shines from within.
“I will save you, my liege,” my Fae cried.
The tree’s on fire. Let’s stop and think—
No. There would be no thinking, no hesitating, no mulling of options. My Fae’s reckless will pushed us higher, past fear of falling, past fear of losing. My hand slid off, met air, and then, miraculously, my knee met something immovable—I didn’t even turn to see what it was. Up, up, toward that glowing orb of light. Four more forks, then just a stretch, an impossible stretch. Doable.
“I’m almost there!” I cried.
* * *
But here’s the sad truth: if you’re half dead, you’re only half good.
Mad-one’s well of water was not bottomless. The magic that fed her rain withered, and with that, her gentle rain softened to a light drizzle, which gave way to a damp fog. Which might have been okay; the fire had been doused and we were four fifths of the way toward our rescue victim.
Then Threall’s wind stirred to life.
“Give me a break,” I cursed.
The sweet-scented zephyr of air passed over me like a silk ribbon drawn over my skin then snaked to where tiny pockets of fire drowsed. With sinuous skill the wind breathed air into the mouth of dying embers. A puff here, a blow there, a gentle fan there.
Oh no.
I knew what to expect next; I’d seen what happened to a few dull gray coals after Dad had doused them in lighter fluid and sped things up with the blow dryer. Hurry. Grab the soul ball and flee. Frantically I jammed a foot into a crook, but even as I stretched for the bough above me, I heard the terrifying whump of a fire being reignited.
Crap.
Below me, a river of yellow wicked up the tree’s spine, in search of that sun-bleached, bare-barked, gray dead wood in which I was perched.
“Master!” cried Mad-one.
Screw master, help me.
So high! How had we climbed so high? There was no soft landing, there was no simple way down. The trunk was aflame four feet below me and fire was running along each bough searching for more fuel. There remained one window of escape. We’d have to squirm down, perilously close to the branches that hung over the abyss. Now. We had to leave immediately, otherwise we’d both be Joan of Arc.
Our mage, she hissed.
She forced our gaze upward. Perhaps ten feet above me, the mage’s cyreath swung with each breath of Threall’s wind. Its ties to the realm precarious—the only thing that kept it tethered to the tree was the thin strand of umbilical cord looped through a spar of wood. Not enough time to climb for it. An image flashed. A man, silvered hair, gleaming robes, backlit by brilliant white light that gave him almost a godlike halo.
Our mage, breathed my Fae.
She surged up my arm, tore painfully through the narrow channel of my wrist then—without prodding or permission—streamed out of my fingers in a cable of green magic. A serpent of green. A Fae spirit, too long stifled, now unleashed in the Fae realm for which her nature had been formed. She sparkled. She glittered. She glowed.
“Our mage!”
My magic sped upward—beautiful and bright—and hit the Old Mage’s withered soul light with her soft, openmouthed kiss.
* * *
I’d touched one of Threall’s soul balls before. Hell, I’d even carried it tucked under my arm. And as I’d done so, I’d felt a tenderness for the soul within. But this—oh, this blissful moment of unity when my Fae met mage—was totally different. She arched our back as old, deep-seated power, beyond any measure I ever owned or expected to, filled us.
It was a heroin fix for my Fae’s deepest cravings.
“I am your servant,” moaned my Fae to her mage.
Breathing? That got temporarily suspended. Using my knees to hug the limb? Almost forgot that, too. My Fae was larger than life, potent with promise, shivering with damn near orgasmic pleasure.
“Do you vow to be mine forever?” asked the mage. “My nalera?”
“Yes, forever,” she answered with my voice
.
Wait a minute—
Then, before I could tug the controls back to semimortal-me, he said, “Let it be so!”
“Yes,” she said. Let it be so—joined to a mind far more brilliant than ours. Let it be so—earthly woes soothed, mortal worries vanished. Mmmmh, let it be so—this moment of bright white light, this moment of utter joy, this certainty that here, finally, was the job my Fae had been born to do. No longer the misfit among the animals. No longer hidden. No longer imprisoned.
Freedom.
She belonged here. In Threall.
With him.
My Fae’s magic wound a tight coil over that fragile strand that tethered his soul to the flaming tree, then strained to pull it free. One more rush of wondrous heat, as his ball’s tether stretched reed thin. Then it snapped—
There was the burst of a bright white light; a thousand klieg lights all turned on at once; and then—Goddess, then—he was ours.
Yeah, yeah, I know. Hello. The tree’s on fire.
What was semimortal-me doing? Nothing much. Just experiencing secondhand a joy that transcended anything I’d ever felt before. Me, my Fae, and him might have just stayed there and fried, impervious to pain, in a disquieting mental climax that never ended, body shuddering, senses attuned only to the pleasure of belonging—such a communion, such a marriage of magic and mage—if a section of the burning tree hadn’t suddenly broken with a loud, bliss-breaking crack.
My eyes flew open to hell.
The sizzling firebrand plunged toward the ground, taking with it weaker branches, all in a shower of sticks and branches and splinters of wood. And as it crashed through all that broken tinder, things aflame met things that weren’t.
Tinder, they were.
With a loud whoosh, the entire bottom of the tree went up. Heat and smoke roiled toward us, bringing with it a searing agony, worse than any blistering payback throbbing heat. Goddess, my feet! My hands! Fire below us. Heat blistering the soles of my feet. Smoke everywhere. Stinging the eyes, clogging the throat.
I can’t breathe.
“You must fly, nalera!” said the old man. “Bring us to safety!”
I haven’t got wings!
“Fly! Leap from this tree, and fly!” he screamed.
It was my Fae—not me—who forced our legs from a crouch to a standing position. And it was she who put her faith in the magic of the soul ball we held in our arms.
She leaped but we flew.
Straight out into the sky we shot, out to where bluebirds fly, and dreams presumably come true. Not like a dust mote, but as a sprite with wings as light as a dragonfly’s. So wonderful, so free, until semimortal-me looked down.
There was a whole bunch of blue-gray below me.
A few clouds.
And a lot more twilight blue.
Oh hell no. Me and Mr. Mage shot toward the clearing faster than a spitball blown through a shooter. The instant we passed the crumbling edge of the end of the world, and I saw ground below my trailing feet—mossy, firm, and solid—we lost altitude abruptly. I touched down with a knee-hurting jolt then bounced down the length of the clearing like a poorly piloted Cessna coming in on a wing and a prayer before finally staggering to a stop a scant ten inches from the graveyard of tree stumps.
Safe.
My legs went out, and I fell on my butt, his soul ball clasped in my arms.
* * *
Well, I’d always wanted to fly—why else would I have focused on the concept of flight to help my mind separate my soul from my mortal body—and now … well, I’d flown. Not drifted, flown. I’d had the ability to more or less navigate. Son of a gun, I flew. Part of me said “whoops.” Part of me wanted to grin.
I coughed up some smoke. And then felt a bit sick, as remorse pushed aside “hey, I flew!” and retrospection kicked in. Fae Stars, what had my Fae done?
I stared at the ball clutched close to my heart. It had no heat, for such a powerful light. Its parchment-thin skin covering was sandpaper dry, and crisscrossed with wrinkles.
“Nalera” better not translate to “geriatric’s fuck buddy.”
My neck suddenly felt prickly the way it does when someone’s staring at it and thinking of wringing things. Mad-one?
I twisted around to check behind me.
And there she was. Standing at the edge of the graveyard of tree stumps, staring at me like I was the new cheerleader who’d just hooked up with her old boyfriend. A stream of blue myst investigated a tear in her gown. Eyes still narrowed on moi, she gave her skirt a savage shake.
Okay, then.
Across the way, the devil’s spawn wasn’t looking much happier than me. He leaned against the trunk of the Black Mage’s walnut, his face pressed to its fissured bark. “Yes, master. The Old Mage’s tree is gone,” he shouted over the hungry fire’s pops and crackles. The kid’s gaze flitted to me. “No, master. His soul lives. She holds him in her arms.” His voice broke and the rest became a babble. “I couldn’t help it, master. She used an enchantment! The cyreath floated straight to her!”
The wind had died, leaving the air feeling curiously heavy and expectant. A chill went down my spine as the walnut tree’s leaves rustled.
The boy burst into sudden tears. “Yes, master. His light turned white.”
Your “master” is evil, kid.
Don’t wrap your arms around him and seek help.
“Master, I didn’t know she had magic. I didn’t know that she could be his nalera!” The devil’s spawn began to weep in earnest now, tears and snot streaming, shoulders shaking. “I tried,” he sobbed. “But she’s stronger than me.”
Oh kid.
The red-purple light in the Black Mage’s soul ball flashed—horribly bright, its flare blinding. And the little mystwalker sprang back, horrified. “No,” he wailed. “Please, master, I can learn. Please—”
The Black Mage’s tree seemed to pull itself inward, coiling backward, and I suddenly realized that there was no failing allowed in the dark one’s school. “Come here!” I screamed, surging to my feet. “Kid! Run to me!”
The Old Mage allowed me one step, and no farther.
That’s the moment I discovered the fine print on the “chosen one” contract. Cruelly and firmly, the Old Mage threw a wall between my thoughts and the machine of my body and instantly I became a statue, ball clasped to chest, unable to flex a single large muscle. It was a far worse sensation than being caught in the glue of the ward—at least then I had something to wade through. Oh sweet heaven, I can’t move. Claustrophobic panic squeezed the breath out of me—I was bound and helpless, inside a small tight casket that was being lowered into the ground.
“Please let me help him.” I strained. “He’s just a baby.”
“It is kinder this way,” I heard the mage murmur. “He is soiled.”
“Are you insane?” I screamed. “Kid, come here!”
But the little cub didn’t heed—he was cringing, his hands out as if to ward off a blow. There were other things I wanted to say to that little boy, mostly in the vein of “retreat,” but the Old Mage had grown tired of listening to my pleas.
He sealed my mouth.
It would have been kinder to close my eyes so I didn’t have to witness the rest.
The lowest bough of the black walnut tree became an arm—a heavy, brutish one—that swung back and then out. It swiped the sobbing boy right off his feet, and carried him right past land’s end to an endless sky. Then the tree limb gave a hard downward shake, akin to emptying the contents of a dustpan into the trash.
The kid tried to wind his short legs around the bough.
He truly did.
But he had tiny mitts, and puny muscles. The tree gave a savage lurch to the left and he was thrown. A flash of his small body falling through the air with arms and legs flailing. Then, with a high trailing scream, the devil’s spawn dropped from sight—a fledgling who’d never been granted wings.
* * *
The Old Mage loosened his mental hold
on my legs and I sank to the damp ground. Disgust curled my nails into the sagging sheath of his soul ball. I wanted to rend it, or at least score the surface, but his skin was as difficult to pierce as a month-old helium balloon.
This world is wrong. This mission is over. Put the ball down and go home.
All I needed to do was swivel at the hips, and place the mage’s soul on a bed of moss. Easy peasy. Except I couldn’t do that, any more than I could slap on a pair of ice skates and perform a triple toe loop.
Put it down.
Veins throbbed in my forehead as I strained inwardly, but—oh Goddesss—I was stuck. Yes, I could breathe. I could even pant like a scream queen destined for the blade of the bad guy’s axe. But I couldn’t seem to force my arms to relinquish the burden they carried.
Fine. Forget the ball. Detach from this body.
Think of home.
Trowbridge. The bathroom with its eighties vanity and the lingering scent of Were. You’re standing there. Trowbridge and Harry are talking by the door to the hall. You’re standing there. The remnants of his dreadlocks are soft under your feet. You’re in the bathroom in Creemore.
Imagine yourself there.
Standing.
There.
But no matter how many details I pulled up—the little tiny flowers on the wallpaper, the glob of shaving cream on the tap, the damp air sweetened by the scent of shampoo and Trowbridge—I couldn’t force my body to pull away from the burden it held clawed in my arms.
Tears welled, then spilled in a thin hot rivulet down my cheek. And that’s when I understood—profoundly so—that my choices were gone. The time for clicking my ruby slippers and wishing for home had passed. I wasn’t going to detach from Threall, any more than I was going to place the Old Mage’s soul ball beside me on the moss.
Not unless he let me.
I was going to sit cross-legged, arms quivering, holding a mage’s soul ball for eternity.
I’m sorry, Lexi. A stream of blue myst wandered past us, curious to meet its cousin smoke. It wreathed upward, toward the heated pungent air where flames danced, and for a moment it was hard to tell the two apart as dark energy swallowed blue. A second passed, and then another, before the myst pulled itself free from the poisonous air. It darted for the hawthorns, and sank into them, in a long thin spiral of fright, seeking sanctuary with the green.