“Stop,” I commanded over the deafening wind and singing, feeling half drunk.
The air around me shimmered, but the singing only got louder and the bear-thing kept coming and that frigid wind blew and blew. Two hundred yards and closing. One-fifty. One hundred. My fingers burned in the cold as I gripped my sword tighter and tighter.
“Fine, if that’s how it is.” My eyes were open now. Fatigue left me in a rush as my heart slammed and jammed. I hoisted my sword and readied it in baseball stance. Its light made an umbrella, silvering Acaw, the crow-brother, and me.
The bear-thing seemed to try to slow up a little, but too late. As it slammed toward me, I swung hard. My blade connected with a wet thump just before impact ripped the weapon out of my hands.
Tons of bear-monster plowed me into the ground. Pain blazed in my chest, my gut, and my back. My arms went numb as I fell hard, face-first into frozen pine needles. Dirt. Rocks. It felt like the whole forest got stuffed in my mouth. I sat up fast, spitting out grit. My lips chapped and cracked in the cold. When I tried to yell, I couldn’t. Something was yelling, though. Really loud. And the singers were shrieking, like it was from the center of my brain.
Crawling, pulling myself and pushing with my knees, I scrabbled through the night toward the distant light of my blade. Had I hurt the bear-thing? How could I damage something that big? Were my arms still on my body? I didn’t dare turn around. I didn’t want to see what the thing had done to Acaw or the crow-brother. I didn’t want to see it head back to finish me off. The sword—I just needed to get to it.
My frozen, aching fingers found the hilt and I jerked it out of the soft ground. The metal was so cold my hand actually stuck to it. Whatever. At least I’d die swinging.
When I wheeled around, I saw Acaw still standing with daggers drawn, but his ice-coated crow-brother had settled back on his shoulder. In front of him were six women, all of them nearly identical to the redhead from town, the one with the curves and the gauze gown, except some were blonde and some had dark hair. They were all on their knees, cradling and petting a hairy dude even shorter than Acaw. The cold didn’t seem to bother any of them at all.
As I watched, white sparks trickled out of their fingers, disappearing into the little dude’s hair. In the odd light, I could tell his hair—fur?—was matted with blood. Probably from the blow I struck. I didn’t know whether to be elated or humiliated. This was no giant bear. It was a scruffy man no bigger than a five year old. Maybe I’d been asleep again.
I’d fallen asleep and nearly cut some hairy forest kid in half, and now these enchantress babes would probably try to eat me. Great. My ribs grated like they were all broken, but I lifted my sword, letting the silver light cut the darkness.
“Lower your blade,” Acaw instructed as the women covered their eyes and started to shriek.
Without questioning, I did what he said. My teeth chattered so loudly I thought they might break against each other as the sword’s glow eased back to just me. I could still see the gauze babes and the hairy kid because they—well, they glowed. Just a little. Still red. It was enough for me to see the shadows of the huge forest trees all around us. I wondered if I was dreaming again.
“Wer reitet so spat durch Nacht und Wind?” Acaw asked calmly, keeping his own blades up. He was speaking German, I was sure of it. I remembered that line from a poem in school, by Goethe or somebody like that. I had heard it in German and the teacher translated it.
Who rides so late through the night and the wind?
From the ground, the hairy kid said, “Erlkonig!”
“Erlkonig!” the enchantress babes echoed.
I didn’t need any translation for that word. I’d definitely heard it before.
Erlking.
From nowhere and everywhere, Jazz’s memory whispered, Not everything is as it seems, Bren.
The hairy kid wasn’t dead, and he wasn’t a kid. In fact, he was standing up now, growing taller and larger. The pelt became wild red curls and a beard. The dude’s eyebrows were long enough to comb and braid. When he finished his shifting, he was wearing hammered, dented armor crusted with black stuff I didn’t want to identify, and he had a helmet that looked like a skull with horns. Only his mouth and beard that reached his chest showed out from under the edges. In his hands was a double-bladed axe easily as long as my body.
He stared at me, or I think he did, for a few long seconds as I stood there shaking, teeth chattering, and hurting like hell—probably bleeding in lots of places. Instinctively, I lifted my sword an inch or two, letting the light creep back toward the Erlking and his…minions, or whatever they were.
Daughters, my mind told me, remembering bits and pieces of that Goethe poem again, as if the teacher were right there in my head.
Meine Tiichter sollen dich warten schon; My daughters shall attend to you so nicely.
Meine Tochter fuhren den nachtlichen Reihn; My daughters do their nightly dance.
Und wiegen und tan zen und singen dich ein; And they’ll rock you and dance you and sing you to sleep.
No, thank you very much.
More like they’ll baste you and cook you and eat you for supper. They might look like one-eyed rotted squids under that gauze. They probably did. The cold stabbed at me harder and harder, and the light from my sword grew. I was getting desperate. The sword could tell and it responded with increased power.
As silver beams spilled over the Erlking’s toes, he growled and turned on Acaw. “What did you shepherd to my forest, you treacherous, lying elf?”
I flinched because the man—the thing—the Erlking’s voice was so loud.
Acaw didn’t flinch. Neither did his crow-brother. “The halfblood,” he said in that calm, quiet way that usually made me want to dropkick him. “My ruler who commanded me. I had no choice. You may not touch me.”
“A halfblood.” The Erlking snorted. “You would have me believe a halfblood wields power enough to turn my charge? What madness possessed me, to question a bloody elf?” To his daughters, he said, “Kill him.”
“No!” I raised my sword above my head and light flashed from everywhere. I felt the magic drawing on energy I didn’t have, but no way was I letting those squids at Acaw.
Once more, the women cried out when the light washed over them. The Erlking grunted and stepped into the shadows.
“He cannot touch me, Your Majesty, and he well knows it.” Acaw’s voice was so unbelievably calm. “I am here at the command of my ruler, and so violate no oaths or bonds to the secrets my people cherish and protect.” To the Erlking, he pointed out, “I did not say a halfblood. I said the halfblood. And while we speak of blood, the boy drew yours first. By all the old rites, Guardian, you must let him pass.”
Sensing the danger had lessened, I lowered my sword enough for the women-things to quit moaning and fussing. The Erlking came closer to me, studying me through that eyeless horned helmet. I couldn’t see his blazing red gaze, and yet I could. This child-killer. This shape-shifting baby-eater. I had half a mind to skewer him just on principle.
Easy. Easy. I blew out a breath and wondered if the mist from my mouth would freeze solid. Not everything is as it seems. In this freaky world, boogeymen can be heroes and moms can be boogeymen. Don’t forget that.
“Aaaaaahhhh,” the Erlking murmured. “You are the whelp of the Shadowmaster. The boy who slew his own kin.”
“I didn’t—” I started to say, but Acaw cut me off.
“He is the King of the Witches.” The elfling lifted his blades. They glinted in the reflection of my sword, causing the Erlking’s daughters to hide their eyes. “He defeated the Shadowmaster. He is well possessed of the old blood and he rules in all of our lands, even this place where you have been consigned. Would you challenge him again, dwarf lord?”
The Erlking turned his weird horn-head back to Acaw. “That was hardly a challenge.”
“Yet the king drew first blood.” Acaw’s tone took on a relentless quality, colder than the cold that
was killing me where I stood. “Give him his due. The old rules, the old rites. If you dishonor them, you will face more than entrapment in these vast lands.”
“Be silent,” the Erlking roared.
Acaw’s crow-brother flapped, but not in fear. The bird’s eyes blazed so brightly I could see them in the dark. Black, glinting rage. The dwarf, or whatever it was, better be glad it had on a helmet, or his—its—eyes might have been clawed out.
For a while, we all stood in silence, except for the clattering of my teeth. I was turning into a carved ice statue of myself, I was sure of it.
When the Erlking finally turned back toward me, I was ready to start yelling and charging just to get my blood flowing again. He didn’t attack me, though. Instead, he waved one metal-gloved hand and barked a word I didn’t understand.
“Be still,” Acaw ordered as the Erlking’s daughters rose and began to swirl around me.
I didn’t want to be still. I wanted to put some distance between me and the red-bearded dwarf freak and his nutty offspring, but I did what Acaw told me to do.
A pressure formed in my head, like somebody poking at my thoughts. Similar to what I had felt so long ago, when Jazz had to break into my brain to find out about the golem that had stolen my will.
“Stop it,” I ordered. They were hammering against my defenses, looking too far inside my essence. I hated it. So cold. So sharp.
The pressure doubled. The women got even closer.
Are you worthy? they seemed to ask, over and over as I got dizzier and dizzier.
White sparks dripped from sixty fingertips, whirling in a circle with the daughters. Around and around they went, and the sparks, the sparks bouncing and spinning, making a wind-devil, a tornado swallowing me, covering me, falling in on me—man, it was getting warm. Hot. I was sweating. My sword hilt burned into my palm and I wanted to drop it so bad.
No. No. No! Clamping my teeth together, I held on tight. All my aches and pains faded to the back of my mind as the daughters charged into the front of my thoughts. I had to keep my sword raised. No way was I putting it down with all of this crap going on.
My consciousness started slipping and dancing with all the sparks. I was pouring sweat.
Images flooded me. Nire-Mom, and Jazz, and Dad, and Todd, and Sherise, and L.O.S.T., back to Todd, and everything I ever knew, everyone I ever knew, every place I had been. The Erlking was soiling everything, scratching claws across my little brother’s face, thumbing through my memories like book pages, laughing, blood dripping from his fingertips…
Did you think it would be so easy, boy? His voice felt like a mallet, beating me into nothing. What fools, to bring me a halfblood. Even one like you!
That’s when the singing started again. The singing. That beautiful singing…
***
Chapter Five
Egidus ran so fast his blue head moved like a piston in a modern engine. My legs pumped just as hard. Onrushing harpies blocked out the sun, turning the meadow a dangerous gray. How did so many harpies get to the land of the dead? This was insane. But it was happening.
“We must make the barrier!” the peacock cried. He took off and flapped for a distance, then touched down, running even harder. I wished for a live oak branch.
I wished for any sort of magic beyond the simple spells even the unconverted could perform. An invocation might help with one harpy, but a sky full of the creatures? For certain, not. I could almost feel the claws tearing into my hair, my head, my skin.
Like the Shadows. Those cold, evil, foul Shadows. My heart squeezed like it might explode just from the thought of them. Pain stabbed my side. I couldn’t breathe. How could I battle Shadows again? They would kill me. I would die all over again, and go back to the dark place with the hag-tree. I would lose my sanity.
“Jasmina!” Wings beat at my head, and not harpy wings by the feel of them. Bird feet drummed against my skull. Egidus was flogging me!
“Stop it!” I swept my arms upward to push him away and he dropped down to run beside me. When I glanced at him, his beak was open and I could actually see his tongue as he panted. Still, the look he managed to give me said one thing clearly.
Concentrate.
Concentrate. Yes. “These are harpies, not Shadows.”
My wits came back to me. I did my best to double my pace. We were approaching the edge of the meadow. Trees loomed beautiful and tall before us. If we could just make it beneath their canopy, we might be saved.
At least the leaves and branches would slow down our onrushing attackers. Overhead, the harpies bawled. They sounded like panicked sheep mixed with terrified hags.
Had I ever seen a terrified hag? Did hags actually feel terror?
Witches did.
The trees were close. I lunged forward.
Claws raked my back, my neck. Fire. Goddess, did the beast tear me open? For a second, then two, I was off the ground, legs running in air as the harpy grasped me. My arms felt like they were tearing out of their sockets.
A call like the furious screech of a woman echoed against the bleating of the harpies. I saw a flash of blue, then feathers raining, both black and brilliant indigo.
The pressure on my arms turned loose.
I dropped, hitting the ground with a tumbling roll. My skin sizzled where the harpy’s claws had sliced me. Grabbing at grass, at sticks, at earth, I blundered forward until I slammed into the rough base of a giant pine.
All my wind left me, and I could do nothing but sit and gasp. I felt like my body had broken into three pieces. I had no feeling in my arms, my legs half-dead and tingling, and was something standing on my chest?
No, no.
Clenching my jaw, I rolled onto my hands and knees and forced myself to crawl forward, farther into the trees. I had to take cover.
Where was the peacock? Did he—no! No. I had to move. Just keep moving. If I could die again, I was about to do so, but I couldn’t. I had to get to Bren, warn him about what I’d seen. I couldn’t let him, let all the people I loved, fall to Alderon’s new treachery.
“Goddess, help me,” I pleaded as I crawled. Sharp pains, dull pains, I couldn’t count them. My head would barely lift from the ground, but I thought I was making progress. A little, then a little more.
Something landed beside me, breathing hard. Wings. Feathers. Egidus was limping badly. One of his wings dragged the ground between us. “Go,” he was saying. “Go, go, go.”
And I crawled and crawled and crawled. Rocks, stones, grass, moss, sticks—it didn’t matter. I crawled. A harpy’s gurgling scream blocked out all sound, all hope. Light faded, and then there was nothing.
Bren. He was with me! Right beside me. Close enough to reach for his muscled sword arm. I couldn’t wait to touch him, to know he was real. He grinned at me, his bright eyes taking me in as if I were the only girl in the world.
I touched his shoulder, his soft brown hair swept behind his ear. My heart swelled with warmth, brimmed with joy—but I found his hair coarse. Too long.
And red?
Where was I?
I stepped away from Bren.
Only, it wasn’t Bren at all. It was a horrible little man with mounds of red hair and beard. Gore-coated armor formed over his huge, heavy muscles, topped finally by a horned helm that masked his cold black eyes.
“I wondered, I did.” His voice was rougher than slither hide and meaner than a hag-spirit in full viper form. “Now I understand. And we will meet again, pretty. Take that for a vow.”
I shivered from the sound of him, wanted to retch. Goddess, he—it—was reaching for me. As I fell on my backside, trying to get away from him, he laughed, and that was the worst sound of all.
“Jasmina.” My father’s voice dispersed the horrid man like he was nothing more than dust. He chanted quiet spells, and the music of his words covered me like a soft blanket, soothing my wounds. His hands hovered above my broken body.
I wanted to sit up, to hug him and feel him hug me, but I couldn�
�t move. “Father. Help me.”
“Be still.”
His hands hovered above my shoulders, then my chest, then my belly, hips, and knees. White-golden light blazed between his palms and my torn clothing. Deep inside my body, bone moved. Blood flow stopped and started. I felt like I could hear my heart being coaxed back to normal rhythm.
Above us, a golden light shimmered. A shield. It covered us, protected us from the dark shapes outside.
Shadows!
I opened my mouth and screamed, but no sound issued forth.
“Father!” I was finally able to get out. “The Shadows are coming!”
But he was gone as quickly as he came, fading to nothing along with the beauty of that sparkling light.
I woke, lying on my belly, covered in blood and mud and pine needles. I raised my head. There was no golden light above me, only a cold, gray slab of rock. An icy splatter of water landed on my hair. I was in a cave, the faintest of misty light coming from the entrance.
Every inch of me throbbed or burned, but I found I could move enough to turn over. A fire crackled beside me, and on the other side of the fire, Egidus lay preening his feathers.
“Birds can light fires?”
The peacock paused in his grooming long enough to offer me a haughty glance. “I have many talents beyond style and grace, Jasmina.”
“And humility,” I muttered. As I sat up, I realized the skin on my back and neck felt better. It moved as if it were whole, as if harpy claws hadn’t flayed it open on the edge of the meadow.
“How did we get to this place?”
“It’s a cave,” Egidus supplied. “We are at the foot of the Wal Mountains, and as soon as you can walk, we must risk the harpies again. The boy will die if we delay.”
“How did we get here?” I repeated. His words had started me to massaging my arms and legs to see how quickly I could be on the move. “I doubt you carried me.”
If peacocks could smile, Egidus offered something like a mysterious grin. “As I said, I have many talents. Though this world is connected to the physical plane, we are not truly a part of it yet. Some hard, fast laws of physics can be…modified. Less and less so as we proceed.”
L.O.S.T. Trilogy Box Set Page 31