Daughter of Danger

by John C. Wright

  “How did I come to have it?”

  “Well, I am not sure. Brunello the Dwarf stole it from Angelica, Bradamant the Martial Maiden took it from him, and she gave the ring to Melissa the Sorceress. Melissa used the power of the ring to overcome a wicked enchantress, and was supreme among sorceresses until her grandfather, Merlin, told her to put it back in the Glass Tower. Glinda is supreme now, but she will never be tithed. Such is the will of Heaven!”

  Ami said, “So you recognize this ring?”

  “Who wouldn’t? It’s famous. It is one of the Thirteen Treasures that were torn from the hands of the Old Gods by Arawn of Annuvin, and after he was driven forth by Constantine, the treasures were scattered abroad, doing much mischief among men. Merlin gathered and stored them in Elfland after Arthur conquered the elfs and became the first High King. The treasures are held in a tower of glass, against the day and hour when Arthur returns, and England is burned red with the blood of saints and the fires of Hell. The children of men must grow in power and wisdom ere such treasures can be entrusted to them, lest they be tempted beyond their strength.”

  Ami said, “Each time I turn this ring, I feel horrid and hostile eyes on me, like the eyes of hungry ghosts. I would rather wait until sunset.”

  4. The Ring of Mists

  Elfine sat down happily on a folding metal chair, leaned back, and crossed her slippered feet at the ankles atop a throbbing boxlike arm of the air conditioning machinery. She folded her arms behind her head, looking pleased.

  “This is exciting, isn’t it! When a fox is hunted, he never goes into a den that does not have at least two exits. So don’t let them corner you! And when someone comes to beat you senseless and tells you to stay off the case, that is when you should get stubborn! Never get off a case someone tells you to get off! Now, when we leave the building, should we go east or go west and double back to throw off pursuit?”

  Ami brushed a spot of concrete clean, drew her short sword, snapped it to its full length with a flick of her wrist, and knelt in a corner, where she could see the windows and door and hatch leading into this small room without turning her head. The sword was made of a white substance that looked more like ceramic than metal. It was a two-foot-long short sword of a type called a kodachi.

  “Why are we going east?” Ami asked.

  “We want to go to the headquarters of the Nineteenth Precinct building.”

  Ami said patiently, “And why are we going there?”

  “Humans write everything down! I told you that. We want to see what they said about you.”

  Ami remembered the Elfine had been playing with the computer console in the security room. Perhaps it had been more than mere play. “What did you find out? Did you see my records?”

  Elfine looked surprised. “Well, you told me to do more detective work! When you were picking the lock. Remember?” Then, she looked worried. “You are not starting to forget other things, are you? This was like, ten minutes ago. Tie a red string around your finger! That stops elfs from stealing memories!”

  Ami said, “I remember! You didn’t tell me what you found out. Detectives are supposed to report their results, aren’t they?” Ami found herself blushing with shame. She had simply assumed Elfine to be incompetent and scatterbrained, despite a number of clever and capable things she had done. “How did you get the computer record open? Don’t you need a password?”

  “Tom Knock Niss did that for me. The gremlin who lives in the air conditioner. I bribed him with a kiss. He thinks I am sexy!” She giggled. “Gremlins are nightfolk who meddle with machines. They built a monster computer called the Intertube to put dirty pictures of naked women in everyone’s desks and cellphones. The elfs want men to be weak and stupid and told the gremlins to do it. Filthy creatures, gremlins!”

  “But you saw my records?”

  “I sure did!” She nodded eagerly.

  “And?”

  “You were brought into the emergency room by an officer named Dom Damiano of the Nineteenth Precinct. You were covered in blood but showed no sign of wounds. Samples of your blood and the blood on your clothing were taken and packaged to be mailed to a lab in Berkeley, California. Because you are a crime suspect, you were placed in the forensic patient wing under Doctor Sinters Pillory. There was no brainwave pattern, so you should have been dead, but you were breathing shallowly, with a slow heartbeat. That was marked as an ‘anomalous result.’ Then, at midnight, your brainwave activity started again. You opened your eyes and were unresponsive to stimuli. Then, at one in the morning, your vital signs returned to normal, you spoke several sentences in an unknown language, and you fell asleep. They put you in a room to wait for you to wake up. During the shift change, you vanished and smashed out the windows. That was at four in the morning.”

  “Wait. I am a crime suspect? For what crime?”

  “It did not say. But you do have a habit of killing people. So far, you have averaged about one per day: the goat-man and the redcap mugging me.”

  Ami opened her mouth to protest and then closed it again, frowning.

  “Why do they wear red caps?”

  “Those are Carabas caps, but dyed in human blood. It lets them touch iron and cross thresholds. The feather is a Strega feather, from an owl-hag. It overcomes the confusion of tongues and allows the monsters to speak human speech. The real ones come from the Elfking, Erlkoenig, the Prince of Winter.”

  “These were not real?”

  “Of course not! The real redcaps are servants of Erlkoenig. The goat man said he was from the Supreme Anarchists’ Council. Sons of Night don’t have free will like Sons of Adam: we cannot just swear fealty to a sovereign and later denounce or deny that oath, not even in jest. Elfs are very careful about the wording of their oaths. We cannot break our word. Our lawyers always have lots of work!”

  Ami said, “Have you? Sworn any unbreakable oaths, I mean.”

  Elfine said, “When any of us turn twenty-one, it is expected of all twilight creatures to swear fealty and obedience to the Elfin King. I have not turned twenty-one. I heard rumors that some of my cousins escaped this oath somehow and also escaped punishment. That is the reason why I smuggled myself here. I am detectiving them. Is that a word? They are in this city.”

  “But the goat did not swear. Why not?”

  “I don’t know. But the fact that your goat-man said he was an anarchist, by itself, and is walking the earth in the Daylit World is very bad news. We should tell the King!”

  “The Elfking?”

  “Not him!” Elfine scowled. “His is a bad soul, twisted and malign, and he is not to be trusted! His knights are cruel, lustful, grasping, and wicked! I mean the true King!”

  “Who is that? Where is he?”

  “He sleeps with all his knights and snow-white steeds beneath the mound at Alderley Edge. Mother said his kitchen page is at large in the world, with a magical black pot. He uses it to brew the truth, a stew that base and wicked knights, cowardly and false, must spew from their mouths, for while it is savory in their nostrils, it turns bitter as wormwood in their stomachs!”

  A strange sensation tickled Ami’s spine. She came softly to her feet. Her eyes were at the yellow windows. It was dark out. The sun had set. Ami tossed her head, and this snapped her mask down over her face. In the light amplification lenses in the mask, she could see a trio of police officers in riot gear, with black and faceless helmets and bulky bulletproof armor on chest and back, shotguns at the ready. They were emerging from a stairwell and onto the roof.

  5. Night Flight

  The roof was cluttered with antennae, vents, other machines, and fixtures, including more than one utility room with a roof entrance like this one. A man in brown overalls was trailing the officers, and he came forward and unlocked any trap doors or roof doors they directed.

  Ami turned and opened the hatch leading down into the elevator machinery. The engine was grinding and complaining, and she saw the elevator car rising. In a moment, it would be at the to
p of the shaft. The elevator car filled the shaft. There was no escape that way.

  Ami turned and beckoned Elfine to go out at the small door which led onto the roof. Fortunately, this door was on the opposite side of the utility room from the police. Emerging from that door would keep the structure between the girls and the eyes of the men.

  Ami said quietly and quickly, “Head for the side of the roof and go straight down. Fly near the stone between the windows. If we get separated, meet me, um… in front of the club where I met you!”

  Elfine said, “Not there! The redcaps might come back!”

  “In the cathedral we passed on the way here. Saint Jean Baptiste.”

  “He doesn’t like fairies! The high school next door to it! In the courtyard!”

  There was no time to argue. “The courtyard! Fine! Now go!”

  Elfine said, “Try turning invisible!”

  Ami shook her head.

  Elfine said, “But the police will surely see you!”

  Ami wondered which course was riskier. What if the unseen eyes seeking her were not looking this way? She decided to try it.

  Ami twisted the ring on her finger from white to pewter to a dark gray the hue of cast iron, almost black. The dark face closed its eyes. A dark mist spread out from the ring and swirled with sinister movements around her body. When the dark mist passed before her eyes, the shadows in the small utility room suddenly seemed darker, and the angles and spaces in the room were subtly wrong.

  Standing in the corner of the room was a pale man garbed in black. His boots did not touch the ground, nor cast he any shadow. On his black surcoat was the image of a leafless white tree. On his head was a black crown from which a fierce and airless heat radiated, like the heat from a dark furnace. His eyes were empty sockets. His mouth was a lipless slash.

  With dreamlike slowness the apparition turned his empty sockets toward her, and smiled, and raised a curved horn to his ghastly lips.

  He winded the horn. A shattering noise rang out and echoed strangely. It did not echo from the walls in the room in which he stood but from larger unseen walls standing farther off. Howls of wolves answered the horn call. The baying was distant, but it came from more than one point of the compass.

  Ami gritted her teeth to bite back a scream and twisted the ring back to pewter. The man vanished. Elfine was also not in sight. Perhaps she had fled, for the door to the roof was now hanging open. Ami did a midair summersault and kicked off the wall behind her with both feet.

  She passed with the speed of a striking shark out into the darkness and across the gravel roof. Her arms were at her sides, hands at her thighs, minimizing her air resistance. The rough surface of the roof sped by, inches from the nose of her mask.

  A loud voice from behind her called, “Halt! In the name of the law!”

  But there was no stopping her forward momentum. She sailed across the roof. She shrugged her shoulders, and the cape unfolded into glider wings. The scoop of the air carried her upward a foot or two, just enough to clear the railing of the short wall circling the roof. She twitched her wrist, and the wirepoon gun slapped into her palm. The tines snapped open like the ribs of a naked parasol. She snagged the hook of the grapnel on the iron rail as she slid over it with an inch to spare. Then there was nothing below but a dizzying abyss of air and the lights of shorter buildings.

  More shouts came from behind her, and the baying of wolves was nearer. The wire spool played out as she receded several yards from the side of the building. She then engaged the brake of the wire spool. The wire jerked taut and flung her in a semicircle sharply downward. It was as if the brink of the roof jerked itself upward to block the view of the policemen above and behind her.

  She pushed the thumbswitch to release the grapnel from the wall. Like a stone from a sling, she sped now in a straight line tangential to the semicircle.

  The side of the building was now rushing toward her like a giant granite flyswatter. She did a half-roll, one wingtip pointed at the ground and one at the zenith. She caught the wind in her wings, and she peeled off toward the left, neatly avoiding the corner of the building. She saw her own reflection in the windows she sped past. The alternation of glass and stone caused by her rapid passage made the reflection flicker like a strobe light. The sleek and shapely black fox-faced figure swan diving in the depth of the reflections turned her gold eyes toward her as if in surprise, and the little triangular ears were standing up like parallel exclamation marks.

  The air slowed her. She twisted the ring to give herself partial weight so that gravity bent her flightpath toward the distant ground. Reaching up with either hand, she yanked on the wing joints to collapse them into a silk cape. The cape fluttered and clung to her form as she fell head foremost down the side of the building, arms at her sides, sleek as a torpedo.

  Would the police think to run to the brink, look over, see her, and open fire? She dismissed the idea as absurd. In the normal course of events, girls who threw themselves off skyscrapers died. Besides, the streets below and buildings beyond were inhabited, and she had seen shotguns, not rifles with scopes, in the policemen’s hands.

  In order to avoid the normal course of events, when she fell below twenty stories, Ami twisted her weight to zero and snapped her wings open. The sudden jerk on her shoulders was unexpected, and she was yanked upward, or so her inner ear told her. She tumbled like an autumn leaf in a gale for a moment, dazed. The squares of light from building windows slid dizzily past.

  She spread her arms and legs like a parachutist to steady her tumble. Now she was face downward and slowing. She came to a standstill about seventy or eighty yards above the street. She could see the glint of streetlamps and the glare of headlights, the flicker of neon signs. No lights were bright enough or high enough to shine on her. She shrugged and twisted the ring to give herself partial weight, and as soon as downward motion started, she angled the wings to carry her into the dark alley between the hospital and the lower red brick building next door, a condominium. Beyond the brick building she saw the high school below her to the left and the cathedral below her to the right. She lowered her weight to zero and let the wings slow her. She shot the wirepoon pistol into a tree in the courtyard she found, drew herself to the ground, spread the wings once more to arrest her speed, folded the wings, twisted the ring, and dropped neatly to the grass.

  She turned the ring to white. A sensation of relief, like a warmth, ran up her spine. The eyes were no longer seeking her. She felt as calm as the metallic expression in the face of the ring. She looked down at her empty hands. In the excitement, she had left the expensive stolen clothing and the folded flag sitting in the elevator.

  The calm did not last. Ami pushed the fox mask back up to the crown of her head and looked left and right. Where was Elfine?

  Chapter Six: In the Narrow Pass

  1. Rendezvous

  Ami looked over the square of greenery. Surely this was the place Elfine meant: there was no other patch of green between the school and the cathedral other than this walled park. Here were grass, a walkway between the school and the church, some trees, and a few trestle tables. Where was Elfine? Even a firefly should have been visible.

  Above the wall to the left, Ami could see the tall red brick condominium peering and, taller still and further away, the hospital. She eyed the height of the wall. Ami toyed with the ring, but the calm sensation radiating from the white band was one she was reluctant to undo. She was not sure what the forces seeking her were using to track her, but using the ring certainly seemed to draw them.

  She left the ring as it was and vaulted the wall, kicking from one rough brick to the next and flipping herself acrobatically to the narrow top, hands out to either side to steady herself.

  She could see a line of dumpsters, an abandoned car, and then a larger space, a small empty lot. The dumpsters were parked beneath a scaffolding of metal bars and wooden slats that blocked her view.

  Ami leaped onto the scaffolding, surprised at
how heavily she landed. She swarmed up the bars and crouched at the top. The noise she made and the heaviness of her own body seemed excessive. It was alarming how quickly she had adjusted to the weightless and half-weightless ghostly motions that the Ring of Mists enabled her to enjoy.

  She heard the pitter pat of slippered feet echoing from the wall of the alley nearby. It sounded like Elfine’s gait, coming from just around the corner.

  The need for speed outweighed caution. She spun the ring to quarter-weight and leaped down. She landed at the corner, rolled, came to her feet, and headed down the second alley, a small and unsanitary space between a ballroom dance hall and the hospital.

  The upper floor of the dance studio was lit, but everything below was dark. The building walls at ground level were dark to left and right, but the reflected lights from the main street formed a bright rectangle between them.

  Ami tossed her head, which slipped her mask into place. The night vision showed it was Elfine, standing still, looking wretched and confused. She had her hands up as if she were a mime pretending to be trapped in an invisible box. Ami raced forward on long, silent steps.

  Elfine turned and saw a dark, slender silhouette against a darker background with pointed fox ears and silent, flowing cape.

  2. Charmed Circle

  Elfine screamed something, hands raised as if to push Ami back out of danger.

  Seeing this, before the words even left Elfine’s mouth, Ami ducked and raised the cape on her elbow just as a wolf-headed man-thing launched itself out of a hidden doorway toward her neck.

  The cape stiffened to metal hardness, and his teeth and forepaws landed on the surface without finding purchase. He was much bigger and stronger. In one motion, she drew her kodachi and thrust beneath the cape to let him run onto the point with his unprotected belly, unfolding the white blade into his intestines as she did so. His momentum bowled her over; she rolled, bringing up her feet, and kicking his body neatly all the way over and behind her. Upside down, bleeding copiously from a gut wound, the wolf-man fell straight into the surprised arms of another attacker coming from the other side, a tall man with a knife in either hand.