“You may tell your niece,” Trevarr said, a matter-of-fact voice with hard, cold metal behind it, “that I will always defend myself — and those who are mine — against personal invasion.” He didn’t add that on Kehar, the niece’s intrusion would have been meted a punishment more severe than the Feather person was likely to imagine.
Kehar was not something to talk about here, where people were so secure in their existence.
Trevarr shifted a hip onto the rock, pulling the Garrie to him as she stirred. Sklayne felt the return of her, the awareness sifting in — a befuddled confusion, rising embarrassment and even shame. ::All safe,:: he said to her. ::Listen first.:: And then, to Trevarr, ::She comes back.::
Not that the Feather person knew any of it, mulling the niece’s actions as she was. “Maybe I’ve indulged her a little, but—” She stopped herself, straightening slightly. “I’m still not about to leave a guest passed out in the cleansing circle!” The little dog yapped a fervent agreement.
::One swallow,:: Sklayne told it, and sent a hint of threat its way.
“I’m not passed out,” the Garrie said, although her voice was far from steady and her energies flashed a confusion of conflict and yearning.
::Trevarr has said you did not travel well,:: Sklayne told her, hasty at that.
The Garrie immediately took up his words. “I didn’t travel well today. Maybe... the altitude...” She sat, leaning into Trevarr. Surely the Feather person could not possibly fail to see her message.
The Garrie counted on Sklayne’s own Trevarr. The Garrie trusted.
And unless the Feather person was blind even with her flashlight, she saw, too, when Trevarr turned to the Garrie, running a thumb along her cheek... assessing.
“The altitude does strike some people that way,” the Feather person finally allowed. “Even here at five thousand feet. You’d best give yourself a couple of days before you head up to Flagstaff, if you’d planned to.”
“We have to find Robin,” the Garrie said, still sounding confused.
“That’s right,” the Feather person said, fresh realization in her voice. “That’s what Caryn was coming out to tell us when... well, when—”
She shook her head and gestured at the rock, a loopy flash of light that made the Garrie close her eyes. “You warned us about the rock before anyone could have possibly known. And you —” The flashlight beam pinned Trevarr again.
“That,” Trevarr said, ever so gently, “is enough of the light.”
The little dog made a surprised sound as the Feather person clutched it suddenly tighter. Not at Trevarr’s tone, oh-so-careful. Not at his calmness beside the Garrie.
But at that thing Trevarr couldn’t hide. The taste of who he was, coming through.
The flashlight drooped in response, gleaming off Trevarr’s wide leather belt and satin sheen of worn metal buckle, a sharp, fierce design of much meaning. Not blending in, not any bit of him. The Feather person blurted, “Who are you?”
Sklayne purred into the darkness. Loudly.
The Garrie didn’t answer that question. She sat straighter, even with the strain still in her voice. “Who died here?” She looked up the steep bluff, into the entrenched scowling energy soaked into rock. “A woman. Before you bought this place... before you turned it into an inn. Maybe before anything was built here at all. Do you know? A flower child...”
“That girl!” the Feather person blurted. “Yes! I mean... no. I don’t recall her name. My, it’s been years since I thought of her, but when we first got here, of course it was all anyone could talk about. Oh, you’ve bought the place where that poor girl died. In fact, I started this garden with her in mind, although over time it’s grown to be so much more.” She looked at the rock with sadness. “I don’t know what we’ll do with it now.”
“Leave it this way,” the Garrie said. “She didn’t much like the way it was.” Her voice had taken on a remote nature. Sklayne well knew why, feeling the faint riffle of a breeze she’d sent pinging up the hillside to make sure the ghost hadn’t returned. So careful, was she, to send that ping away from Trevarr — but Trevarr knew of it anyway, bracing himself for the traces that slipped past — his eyes flashing, for an instant, like a cat’s pinned by light in the darkness.
Quickly enough, the Garrie gave herself a little shake, bringing all of herself back to this spot. “Give me a chance to deal with her.”
“Who are you?” the Feather person repeated... baffled. Wary. Facing the reality of all the things she’d ever thought might be unseen but true.
As well she might be wary, faced with the small person who had just channeled all the power of a plasmic portal, burning herself from the inside out... branding herself with Trevarr.
Still learning the price, she was. Right this moment, learning the price.
Not that Sklayne allowed any responsibility for such things. He had done the necessary. He had paid his own price. This world was saved; so was his own. Now there were new things for Trevarr to face.
Trevarr, he thought, was going to need his counsel.
As for the Garrie, she said simply, “We’re guests who’ll be gone after we help Quinn’s friend. It’s just that sometimes I talk to ghosts, and sometimes Lucia feels them — and then Quinn digs up what we don’t already know. And seriously, I wouldn’t mess with this spot until Bobbie’s been sorted out.”
“Bobbie?” the Feather person said, oh-so-faintly.
The Garrie made an impatient gesture. “The woman. Ghost, I mean. It’s better than Jane Doe, right?”
“I...” The Feather person’s voice faded, and when she spoke up again, Sklayne found her thin bravado less than convincing. “I don’t know what to make of any of this. I think... you should take it easy tomorrow and drink plenty of fluids. I’ll just—” and she bent as if to put the dog down, completing her sentence with action rather than words.
::Yes!::
“Oh,” the Garrie said dryly, “I wouldn’t.”
The Feather person hesitated while Sklayne hissed in silent annoyance at opportunity lost.
The Garrie told her, “I heard something out there. Don’t you have coyotes in this area?”
“Maybe we’ll use the courtyard,” the Feather person muttered, holding the little dog in close.
::Yes, tiny dog. Tremble you should.:: Sklayne lashed his tail in annoyance.
The Feather person turned to go, the doglet tucked safely in her arms. But she hesitated, looking back at them. Looking at Trevarr. “You, and the other girl, and your blond young man. You talk, she feels, he finds out. What about him?”
“Oh.” The Garrie didn’t need to give that much thought at all. “Him.” A shrug, a glance at understanding and protectiveness and awareness, there under the gaze of those faintly gleaming eyes. “He... is.”
Oh, yes. Trevarr was going to need Sklayne’s counsel.
Chapter 6
Kehar: Shattered Glyphs
Ghehera waited... waited...
And then came on with a vengeance.
Nevahn’s boundary glyphs shattered during the daily village gather, whiplashing straight back into his soul. They howled through his inner senses, wrenching out a silent scream as he fell to his knees on the dusty ground. Elderly Miskha-shei crumpled limply against him, as broken as the wards.
Ardac somehow broke his fall — still responding to Nevahn’s needs so many years after failing as Nevahn’s apprentice. Perhaps because there had been no apprentices since. By then Nevahn had seen this day coming, and could not bear to inflict it on a vulnerable young person. “Ghehera!” Ardac cried. “Ghehera comes!”
Ghehera comes. Nevahn watched his people scatter in a daze, barely hearing and barely seeing, but inwardly aware.
Ardac grabbed the back of Nevahn’s tunic. “Get up, Nevahn-hei. Get up on your stupid feet! We must prepare!”
Selikha stumbled up beside them, her braids swinging, one hand bracing on Nevahn’s shoulder. “I’ll help him — you’re needed at th
e wagons. They must be very close.”
Close indeed. The wards crushed. All at once. So completely.
Nevahn would have said it couldn’t be done at all. He would have said that Ghehera wouldn’t bother. The village had no means of escape. No means of resistance.
“Ardac, go,” he said, barely managing it. “I’ve served my purpose. But you—”
Ardac had grown into Solchran’s provisions master, their master of recipes and portions and clandestine flight preparation. But his temper was no better than it had ever been. “If our crews can’t manage without me, we’re already lost!”
Still, he rose, glancing to the hostler’s yard where the oxen and mulebeasts already stood in pairs, rigged and backing to the wagons that had been stashed throughout the village. Teams already swept the village homes for stragglers, gathered livestock, and waited to perform one final grim task — to light their homes afire, leaving nothing for Gheheran interlopers.
Trevarr had given them this: the time to develop such plans and implement them. The chance to be ready.
Nevahn waved off Selikha’s attention as the glyph reverberations eased, heaving himself to his feet. She was needed elsewhere, and Nevahn’s little cart of personals and glyphcraft tools waited for him, already packed, at the upper edges of the village. Nevahn moved through the chaos in a daze — outraged chickens, offended goats, crying children, the crack of a crop against an oxen rump... the sounds and movement came to him as though through a veil.
But then his gaze lifted as though drawn, his attention falling upon the looming granite promontory to the east of the village — pale grey against dark forest green, glittering with flecks of gem and metal. It was unreachable, that place.
Unless one had an oskhila minor. Unless one came from Ghehera.
He recognized the figure standing upon it even at this distance. The lithe form and posture of the one called Anjhela.
Watching.
Not helping, as she’d intimated she would. Not caring, as she’d said she did.
Don’t trust her, Trevarr had said.
Be ready.
Nevahn had been ready. The village had been ready. Now they would go to wherever Ghehera intended to exile them.
But not as terrified, unprepared individuals. As a cohesive and organized village, with or without this patch of ground. They would survive. Nevahn would survive.
But they would never be the same. Not the village, not Nevahn Glyphmaster.
He could only hope better for Trevarr.
Chapter 7
Turquoise Arches
“Discretion is paramount.”
— Rhonda Rose
“Nothing to see here. Move along.”
— Lisa McGarrity
::Me. Sklayne.::
— Sklayne
Garrie refused to acknowledge embarrassment as she exited into the bright morning sunshine from the disconcerting turquoise arches of the Sedona McDonald’s. Impatience rolled off her team, and she glared at them.
“I can’t help it,” she said, crossing her arms in defiance. “Drink fluids for the climate, she said!”
“Maybe we should split up.” Quinn glanced at his phone, as if there might be a message from Robin waiting since the last time he checked. “We’ll cover more ground. This town has over fifty galleries, eateries, New Age shops, specialty stores, antique shops — you get the picture. And we’re running slow.”
Lucia clutched her coffee as if it was a precious thing. Caramel-scented steam rose from the sippie lid, so maybe it was. “As if it’s our fault that we missed this place the first time we passed it.”
“I was looking for golden arches,” Garrie said, casting the building a baleful glance as she stepped into the parking lot. “I mean... turquoise on adobe. Who even knew?”
“Chamber of Commerce,” Lucia said wisely.
“Are you taking this one bit seriously?” Quinn snapped. “You do realize we have no idea what’s happened with Robin?”
“Quinn,” Garrie said, sharply — and just in time, for Trevarr had looked over from the shade at Quinn’s tone, his morning quiet falling away to make way for warning, there behind his sunglass-hidden eyes.
Lucia fussed with the coffee lid as they approached the rental car. “Robin’s store doesn’t open until nine. Nothing here opens until nine. So surely we can offer Garrie a pit stop, after all that energy tea this morning — because we all know that’s what our Garrie needs, is more energy—”
“I didn’t sleep well,” Garrie muttered.
“Mm-hmm.” Lucia took a delicate sip of the coffee. She gave Trevarr and his Dr. Pepper-in-the-morning a glance she probably thought discreet.
Quinn and Trevarr had been quiet neighbors, but Garrie had no illusions about the cool hostility pervading their room. And she well imagined that Trevarr ignored the bed, draping himself over the short couch for its vantage point, and still counted it plenty comfortable relative to the usual.
She knew damned well what had kept her awake — and it all led back to that rock. That cleansing circle. That previous night.
That previous night still stuck in her thoughts and playing round and round the moments after Feather had finally and truly left them alone.
When Garrie had said, “Oh. My. Gawd. I fainted. I farking fainted.”
There’d been far too much understanding in his silence. He’d held up his hand, palm facing out. A tentative hesitation later, Garrie held hers up to mirror it — not quite touching.
Leaving that choice up to him.
Not touching it was. Just close enough to feel the cold burning tingle crackling between them, tracing up and down her fingers... raising sensation along each dip and whorl of each individual fingerprint. Sitting on a rock in the Sedona night, touching...
Without touching at all.
She forgot to breathe.
Trevarr only smiled — the faintest hint of a shadow at the corner of his mouth in darkness. “Come,” he said, and when he touched her, suddenly his hands were nothing but hands. Strong, long fingers, nicked with scars and rough with callouses. He turned her around and tucked her up close — burning warm in the cooling desert night, the duster falling around her shoulders and the belt buckle up against her spine.
Her bones soaked up his strength and presence. She absorbed the faint movement of his breath as the natural scent of him closed in around her, a smoky tang now faint enough to tell her he was under no particular stress, free of any inner battle between dual natures.
“Do your aerial sweep,” he told her. “I will see to your safety. Sklayne will do the same.”
::Me. Sklayne.::
As if Garrie could have forgotten him, hiding in the bushes in his favorite guise of cat, amusing himself with gustatory threats against Feather’s poor little Yorkie.
::Still hungry!:: Sklayne protested. But his mental voice held far too much satisfaction.
Garrie made an unconvinced sound at him and settled back against Trevarr, putting herself into an aerial frame of mind, completely and entirely grounded by his strength and —
Right. Hardness.
“I feel that,” she told Trevarr.
“Atreya,” he said, patience in his voice — and even a hint of humor. “So it is, when you are near. But I will not faint of it.”
“Oh.” She would have elbowed him, had she not been so bemused to find he could even be mischievous. “Oh!” But there was no way to stomp her foot, so she gave it up and enjoyed the rare lick of his humor as she took her awareness high above Sedona for an expert survey of energies — colors, sounds, feelings, and ever-present breezes. Vortexes, viewed from on high.
Except that she saw nothing.
Nothing.
Oh, yes — a faint wash of cheerful color here; a bubble of activity there. A few dark blobs with watercolor edges bleeding into the pale foundation energy state of the area — darkside entities, but not strong ones. Here, where the Journey sat, she found a mild roil of clashing colors, a taste o
f sorrow mixed with short, strong gusts of anger. She found the white-heat of brightness of her own form and the more subtle layering beside her — smoldering warmth, scintillations rising to the surface... glimmers of an inner being, emerging and submerging in buried depths. And not far, a Fourth of July sparkler that could only be Sklayne.
But in an area that should have had four major vortexes and three more nearly as significant, not to mention oh-so many unmapped smaller sites in an area brimming with energies and activity...
Nothing.
And that mystery had kept her awake. As a result she’d beaten the dawn, all full of rise if not shine, to grab an hour’s hard run, heading along a nearby dirt and into the small canyon beside the inn. She thought she’d pulled her thoughts together, too.
At least, until she’d headed back to their cabin and discovered Trevarr in what was left of the cleansing circle, working forms.
Sword forms.
Of course.
Sword forms with Lukkas, the blade he stashed away in an impossible coat of many pockets. And while the patterns didn’t look particularly strenuous, Trevarr — he who eschewed air conditioning, wore the duster without regard to the high summer Arizona heat, and made his home on a world Garrie had found oppressively steamy — had not only stripped off his shirt, but worked up a gleam of sweat.
Not that she stared or anything. Not at the feathered scales patterning his torso, not at recent scars still wicked red — a puckered bullet hole, the slash across his biceps, the deep stab angling in under his ribs.
None of which should have been nearly so healed at all.
The cut across his back looked older, ragged... not part of their San Jose adventure. His hair fell over it, braided back from the sides and loose at his neck — a quick, sloppy braid tied off with leather, revealing the glimmer of silvering in the myriad thin braids normally hidden within the mass of it all. His belt sat low, following the contours of sleek muscle — and if his pants gave him plenty of room to move in the leg, they also hugged his ass on the way past.
Okay, yeah. Now, she was staring.
And she’d been caught at it, too. Not that there was any hesitation in his movement, so practiced and smooth and flowing, the sword an extension of his arm — now in one hand, now in two; now extended, now dropping point in an extreme guard position, now cocked over an outstretched arm with the hand reaching, just so. Ritual.
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