by Natalie Grey
“He’s wrong.” Daiman took my face in both hands. I could see tears in his eyes. “Philip. He was wrong. I didn’t leave you.”
“You….” I flinched from the memory of him walking away, as much as from the memory of Philip’s words.
“You were afraid, you wanted me to go. You didn’t want … to drag me down.” Daiman shook his head. “You weren’t, and I didn’t know how to make you see that—but I was never going to leave you and not come back. He was wrong.”
I leaned my head against his chest, fighting tears. “Where did you go?” I whispered helplessly.
His arms tightened around me. “I found Terric,” he said quietly. “And then I came back to you, Nicky. I’ve been here the whole time—well, minus a day.”
I slammed my fists against his chest.
“Why didn’t you say something?”
His eyes searched mine.
“Because I’m human,” he said, after a moment. “You were going to keep trying to get me to leave, and I couldn’t … I couldn’t bear that.”
“So what was your plan?” I could feel anger blossoming inside me, a slow creep. “I had to learn some lesson? I had to be taught—”
“There was no plan.” He began to laugh, but he was crying as well. “There was no plan,” he repeated. “I left because I couldn’t bear what we were becoming. I stayed because … because I couldn’t leave you. Not really. I didn’t know what else to do.”
I stared at him, trying to make sense of it.
And then: “You were the wolf,” I said quietly. “In the domhan fior. And the hawk. And the mouse in Fordwin’s cave.”
“And?” Daiman asked. His eyes were sparkling suddenly.
“And….” I shook my head, not understanding.
Until I did.
“You were the leopard! You were the leopard!” I pounded on his chest again as he clutched me to him, laughing. “You could have said something, you know!”
He was laughing, the bastard, as I fake-punched his shoulders and he held me tight so I didn’t have any leverage. He laughed and he kissed me, and it was too sweet for me to do anything but melt.
“I’ll get you for that,” I warned him.
“Uh-huh.”
“I will!”
“I believe you. Let’s just say….” His voice dropped several notches. “I’ve become accustomed to your particular brand of revenge, and I don’t think I’m going to mind very much.”
My knees went weak, and I pulled myself together with an effort.
“Uh-huh.” I needed to think about something else, or I was going to be tempted to do things I really shouldn’t do in a public place. “So, uh … Terric. Wait. You didn’t think it might be important to tell me where he was?”
“You remember what Fordwin said?” He took a seat in the leaves, leaning up against a tree. “That without knowing what he was doing or where he was, there was no way to know who his allies were? Well … I didn’t have all of the answers yet, and you were finding the ones I didn’t have.”
“So where is he?” I sat as well. I was bone tired, I realized. I had used more magic than I’d used in a long time when I tried to take that barrier down.
“Fordwin was right,” Daiman said carefully. He gestured with his head to indicate the Monarchists. They might still be listening.
I nodded.
“But I didn’t know why,” Daiman said. “Fordwin’s question was good—if Terric was doing what they had always talked about, why not go to Fordwin? And it was very clear, when I followed his path, that the Monarchists could have interfered. He may be a lot for a one on one match, but one on twenty? No one’s that good.”
I chewed my lip. “Harry said—well, I guess you know what Harry said.”
He smiled slightly. “Yes. And I wondered if that might be it, if Philip was involved. But I don’t know why he would be—and I still don’t. He’s not guarding the place. He hasn’t been in contact with Terric, that I can see. And he’s hardly going to support what Terric’s up to. So what the hell is he playing at?”
I leaned back against the tree and let my eyes drift closed.
Philip wanted … what did he want?
He wanted the old Nicola back, he wanted to restart the plague, he wanted to hurt everyone who had ever hurt him.
So how did this relate to Terric?
The answer was there. I knew it was, and I just couldn’t see it.
And Terric. What did Terric want?
To cut anything out of the world that could bring harm to it. To purge the sorcerers of anything dangerous.
The answer was so close. It was niggling at my mind.
But it didn’t matter. That fact came to me with blazing clarity, and I sat up.
“What is it?” Daiman asked. “Do you know what he’s planning?”
“It doesn’t matter what he’s planning.” I shook my head. “Well, it matters not to let him do it, but it doesn’t matter what it is. What matters is that he’s starting acting like me. That’s what I did to him.”
“Now, wait just a second—” Daiman started.
I cut him off with a shake of my head. “Terric was warped by the time he tried to kill me. He still did it, because he didn’t agree with the plague—but he’d begun to see the world the way I did. That’s why he’s doing this. It’s why he didn’t go to Fordwin. He knows he’s become something….” I searched for the word. “Twisted,” I finished. “He just can’t see any way out of it.”
“So….” Daiman sounded cautious.
“So I need to do to him what Philip wants to do to me,” I said simply. I looked at Daiman’s wide-eyed face. “Not—not that I want things to end up that way, but I need to turn him back into what he was. I’m the only one who can do it. I’m the one who made him go wrong in the first place.”
“Nicky.” He stood, and pulled me up. I could see his beautiful face full of anxiety. “It isn’t that easy. Terric made choice after choice after choice to become what he is. You can’t go in there and say some words and undo all of that.”
“We have to hope I can,” I told him simply. “Because if I can’t … what is he going to do, Daiman? We can’t let him kill people, and if I can’t talk him out of it, that means we have to kill him. I have to try to undo what I did.”
He looked away, and I saw the conflict in his fact. But he let his breath out slowly, and nodded, and took my hands in his.
“You’ll be turning him back into your enemy,” he warned.
“Fordwin is my enemy, too,” I told him. “And he told me truly where Terric was. He was more trustworthy than the ones who were supposedly my allies. Maybe it’s time to stop thinking of it as allies and enemies—and start thinking of it as people who will or won’t try to kill a ton of people, instead.”
Daiman managed a laugh at that. He leaned his forehead against mine.
“I missed you,” he said honestly. “Being close enough to touch you, and feeling miles away. I never want to do that again.”
My fingers clenched into fists where they lay around his neck. “But aren’t you scared? About Philip … turning me back?”
Daiman smiled. “No.”
Clearly, the man was insane.
“Why not?” I looked up at him. “Why the hell not?”
His smile twisted slightly, as if he were secretly amused by something. “I’ll tell you later.”
“I thought your big line was ‘I don’t want to wait for later,’” I grumbled.
Daiman laughed. “For some things. Not for this.” He shook his head when I opened my mouth. “Nope. I’m not budging on this one. Though you are welcome to try to persuade me….”
I thumped him on the shoulder with grin. “Not when you have that attitude, mister.” I headed off into the trees.
“Where are you going?” he called after me.
“To go make a plan,” I called back. “Remember? World ending? Targeted mass murder? All that jazz? Come on. The sooner we stop Terric, the sooner I ca
n make you tell me what’s going on in that head of yours.”
Chapter 21
“All right. So.” Daiman spread out a map on the ground and gave a cautious look around himself. As far as we knew, none of the Monarchists were around, but it was worth checking.
They hadn’t exactly proved themselves to be trustworthy.
Daiman weighted the edges of the map with bits of wood and rock, and pointed.
“This is about where we are.”
I squinted. “Ukraine…?”
“Close. Just into Belarus, I think. Is Belarus still a thing?” Daiman shook his head. “Not important right now. Here is where Terric is. Latvia.”
“Huh.” I wrapped my arms around my knees and stared at it. “So … all right. So we just go.”
“Pretty much.” Daiman looked up from his crouch. His elbows were braced on his knees and his shirt hung open at the neck. At rest, he seemed even more dangerous than normal—it was clear just how easily he could spring into motion. His lips curved in a bemused smile when he saw me looking. “What?”
I took a moment to try to articulate the question. “Does changing into other animals … change you?”
“What do you mean? Like, how do I think when I’m a mouse, or whatever?”
“No, I mean in general. Once you’ve been a bear or a … well, a leopard.” I smiled, remembering the feel of his fur under my hand, and the touch of his wet nose against mine. “Once you’ve been a part of that body, with those instincts, are you different?”
“Yes.” He answered firmly, and then considered. “It’s hard to describe how. But yes. I think a lot of the change happens before you can make the shift. You remember the way we showed each other our lives when I was the leopard? You have to do that with an animal in order to learn how to wear its skin. You have to do it … a lot. It’s not a simple process.” He gave me a grin. “And unlike sensing life, I don’t think you’ll be able to find a shortcut for this one.”
I laughed, but there was so much relief that I was almost giddy. “You’ll keep training me, then?”
“Of course.” Daiman nodded. “I … shouldn’t have started. Maybe. I don’t think the Chief Druid would approve. Then again, our directive is to use our magic and our knowledge to make the earth … whole. I believe that training you does that.”
“What does that mean, ‘make the earth whole’?” I frowned.
“Come on.” He rolled up the map and tucked it into his pack, then helped me up. “We can talk more while we walk.”
“Shouldn’t we say goodbye to them?” I looked over my shoulder.
“I’d rather have a head start,” Daiman said grimly.
I tilted my head, watching him, and he sighed.
“I’m worried about them,” he said, with a helpless lift of his shoulders. “What you said to them, about how they had picked the person who could hurt them most, and then bowed the knee to them … you were right. I’m worried that information about you and Terric is going to be too good a bargaining chip to pass up.”
I nodded and slung my pack over one shoulder. “Right.”
“You’re not really surprised to hear me say that, though,” Daiman observed.
“No?”
“If you were … you wouldn’t have brought your pack, would you?”
I blinked. I hadn’t considered that.
He laughed. “Now, let’s see you take us into the domhan fior.”
“I’m doing it?” My voice squeaked slightly.
“Of course.” He was laughing at me. “I’m training you, aren’t I? That means I have to test your knowledge. Come on.”
“Because I … oh, fine,” I grumbled.
It had been fairly easy to take Lawrence into the druids’ paths, but Lawrence hadn’t known what I was trying to do, after all. He wouldn’t know if I screwed up. Daiman, meanwhile, would know.
And since I had wound up in some weird, tree-less version of it, there was clearly something wrong with the way I did it.
But I knew Daiman well enough to know that we weren’t going anywhere until I finished this test. I started walking north, closed my eyes briefly, and, after a brief struggle, felt the real world fall away.
“You have to stop thinking of the other world as the real one,” Daiman murmured as we made our way across the strange, rocky world.
“Did I … say that out loud?” I gave him a worried look. “Oh God, can you hear my thoughts all the time?”
“No!” He looked offended. “I would never! No, it’s just the way you do the spell. You fight it before you give in, and I remembered how you always used to call the other world the real one.”
“Oh.” I stepped carefully over a bush.
“You have one thought pattern that seems to work better than that one, though,” he continued. “I saw it on the way back from Fordwin’s cave. What do you think to yourself when it goes easily?”
I tried to remember. “Oh. I had been thinking that there were so many worlds that it shouldn’t be hard for me to find one—that I should just be able to trip over my own feet and stumble into one.”
Daiman chuckled. “I had never thought of it that way.”
I tried to laugh with him, but my lips only twitched. “But I found the wrong one, didn’t I?”
“Why would you say that?”
Was the man blind? “This isn’t the forest.”
“Oh.” Daiman looked around himself, and then back to me, and he shook his head. “I’m a fool. I should have told you—each person finds a different place within the domhan fior where they are most comfortable.”
“But this?” I looked around myself. “What is it?”
Daiman gave a delighted laugh. “It’s in Ireland. It’s called the Burren.”
“Wait … this place actually exists?”
“Yes.” Daiman’s smile was easy. “Boireann, if you want to be correct about it.” The word rolled easily across his tongue. “It means ‘Great Rock.’ It’s one of the most beautiful places in the world, I think. When I saw where you’d come … it was hard not to transform back and say something to you.”
I looked over at him. “So, you really like this place?”
“I love it.” He reached out to take my hand. “I’ll take you there someday.”
I bit my lip. “Would I be … welcome … on druid territory?”
Daiman didn’t insult the question by answering it too easily. He chose his words carefully. “We’ll want to give them time to come to terms with … everything. It’s me they’d be mad at, in any case. But someday.”
“Why would they be mad at you?” I was alarmed now.
“For training you without seeking permission. For leaving the Hunters.” He looked strangely untroubled. “But life is full of choices that pit one vow against another. Like I said, this is part of a greater vow.”
“To make the earth whole,” I quoted back at him. “What does that mean, Daiman?”
“First, tell me which way you’re going in what you would consider ‘the real world.’” He flashed me a smile as he emphasized the last few words.
“How?”
“See if you can figure it out,” he suggested.
I stopped and gave him a look.
“I’m not being obtuse,” he explained patiently. “You remember why sorcerers do spells, right?”
At first, I didn’t know what he meant, and then the thoughts snapped into place. “Oh. As a ritual to focus their mind. They don’t need them.”
“Exactly.” Daiman swept an arm out to encompass the windswept spit of rock we stood on. “It’s the same with the druidic spells. How you think of it isn’t strictly important, it’s what thoughts help you work with the forces of the earth. So, try to find your way. Let your mind come up with a way to think about it that makes sense to you.”
It took, in the end, quite a lot of trial and error to find any sort of correlation between the direction we were facing in the domhan fior and the direction we faced in the day-to-day
world we usually inhabited.
Daiman perched on the rock, offering the cardinal directions of my usual world, while I tried to figure out how they related to the way the sun swept overhead.
I swore. A lot.
By the time I figured it out, I had almost forgotten my question.
But not quite.
“So,” I said.
We were close to Terric’s hideout, and I had worked out what I was fairly sure was the distance we needed to travel to pop out of the domhan fior in exactly the right place.
I was going to feel really stupid if it turned out we’d wound up in entirely the wrong country—Daiman refused to confirm or deny my calculations—but I’d worked it out three times, and as my teacher pointed out, there was no way to get better without solving the problem on my own.
“So,” Daiman said. He seemed ready enough to pick up where we head left off. “Are you familiar with the story of Kwan-Yin?”
“Korean goddess?”
“That’s the one.”
“Only vaguely.” I wasn’t quite sure where he was going with this. After all, I expected the druids to be steeped in Irish mythology.
Apparently not.
“There’s more to the story at the start, but in short … when Kwan-Yin first ascended to Heaven, she was just about to pass away from the Earth entirely when she heard a cry of pain.” Daiman looked serious, lost in the story. “She decided not to ascend. She went back, with the mission that she would not return to Heaven until there was no more pain in the world.”
“That’s—” I bit my tongue on the word stupid. I chose my next words carefully, conscious of the look on Daiman’s face. “There will always be pain.”
“It’s just a story,” Daiman said peaceably. “And stories inspire us. Much like Kwan-Yin, the druids view the Earth as a place of brokenness. It is more than that, of course, but one always has the choice to move toward wholeness, or toward brokenness.”
He considered his next words, and I guided him carefully around a bush so he wouldn’t trip over his own feet while he was lost in thought.