I didn’t hesitate. I didn’t hold up even though I knew the shock of his magical shield would probably kill me. This was right. This had to be. If I died, so be it.
The top of the Tor rang with the joyous screeches of hags. Hundreds. Thousands. At the same time, I felt the slithering glee of hag-spirits as they poured their ancient energy into me. Silver light filled my eyes, with hag-black bolts firing out in every direction.
The power of my swing carried through.
And severed the Erlking’s head from his body.
***
Chapter Fourteen
Sherise finished off the last Enchantress with a shout of fury.
I whirled toward Bren just as wild silver magic exploded and blasted toward the stars.
Did I hear hags shrieking? Hag-spirits hissing?
I blinked against the glare and the image of Bren lopping off the Erlking’s head seared into my mind.
As if in half-speed, the head flew through the air and landed at Todd’s feet.
He stared down at the grisly offering as Bren’s crow-brother gave a disgusted caw and took off. Todd’s own silvery magic flared. “Filthy freak!” he shouted, and he kicked the head with all of his strength. It burst against the wall, raining to the stone floor as so much dull red dust. Bren muttered as the body at his feet reverted to bone, then dust.
“Faule,” Helden commanded in German, holding her stone with one hand and extending her other. The glow of her magic traveled the open-roofed chamber, touching the dead priests and Enchantresses. In seconds, each corpse went the way of the Erlking, sinking inward to bone, and from bone to piles of dust.
Quinn was the last to go. I shuddered, but I made myself watch until he, too, became nothing but litter on the floor. A burst of fury at his betrayal made my teeth slam together, and with a blast from my own hands, I sent what was left of him and all the rest swirling from the top of the tower and into the dark night of King Arthur’s world. Let them fertilize the grass of the Tor and the maze-gardens leading to it. At least then they would be of some worth to the world.
Sherise got busy with healing spells, helping first Rol, then the smaller children. Helden and I tended each other, then I turned once more to Bren. He had clasped Todd in an awkward embrace, and they sagged against each other, obviously relieved and grieved all at once.
Nire was back.
Their mother had been released, and she was loose in L.O.S.T.
Aaron stood with his head down, hugging two of the small boys I didn’t recognize. In that instant, I saw Aaron’s resemblance to Bren and Todd—and all of the other little boys, too.
By the Goddess.
“Those boys are all Nire’s sons, aren’t they?” Sherise muttered from beside me. “Todd and Bren told me how she seeded kids all over the place, trying to breed the Shadowalker.”
“Indeed,” Rol answered from my other side. “There can be no mistaking it.”
Helden approached with Kella. She whispered a quick prayer to all that was good and right in the universe, then asked, “How, then, will we kill their mother?”
As if in response, the floor shook beneath us, spilling me into the circle of zodiac stones. I caught myself, tried to stand, but the tremor came again, stronger this time.
Stones cracked. Dust rained from the walls, and the battlements around the open top.
“What is it?” Bren shouted, almost in unison with Todd.
Rol snatched up Aaron and managed to snag a smaller boy as well. He looked half-crazed as he started out of the room.
The world shook again.
Children screamed, and from somewhere in the distance, Bren’s crow-brother shrieked.
Huge stones dislodged from the walls, slamming into the floor and falling across the doorway, blocking Rol’s exit.
This was no earthquake. There was nothing natural in the harsh waves of energy assaulting the Tor.
A strange ache blossomed in my belly, strong and bittersweet, as I realized what must be happening.
“Ward this place against damage,” I shouted to Bren over the rumble of the next tremor. “This is magic, not an earthquake.”
More rocks and dust tumbled down.
“Jazz—” Bren started, but I shut him out of my mind. Rol stepped away from me with his charges, as did Todd and the little boys, and Sherise, Kella, and Helden.
“Soar the spirit. Soar the spirit. Soar the spirit…”
My senses opened, and I raised my arms. In my hawk form, my essence burst from the tower on the Tor, seeking the source of the unnatural shaking.
In seconds, I found it.
The Path.
Instead of the magical silver ribbon, the Sanctuary’s merciless moonlight showed me a dead, cracking tube of darkness. Living strands of rot slithered and rattled like snakes, trying to free themselves before the Path’s collapse crushed them.
It was too late.
As I watched, sobbing even in spirit form, the Path that had saved so many witches, the work of my father, of Bren and Todd, the work of my own hands, shattered.
Like the dust of so many bones, it blew away, leaving a few fading sparkles to drift slowly, slowly to the dark ground. As it struck, flames kindled.
At first I thought the dust of the Path was catching the world on fire, but then I realized what I was seeing.
Bonfires.
The blaze of Beltane, as it was so fervently observed in this ancient Sanctuary.
Light the fires. Nire Comes!
Oh, Goddess. What would happen to L.O.S.T now?
I fell down from the sky, gripped with despair. The air seemed to suck me backward, and I dropped into my body, then dropped to the chamber floor.
The shaking had stopped, of course, and everyone could stand without being tossed around. Pieces of stone lay everywhere, but I could tell Bren had warded the space, and the debris had fallen harmlessly to the ground outside, or to the sides of the room. No one seemed injured.
As I rose to my feet, I couldn’t stop trembling.
Everyone gazed at me.
I didn’t know how to say it gently, so I just said it outright. “The Path is gone. We’re trapped in this time and place forever.”
“We can rebuild it,” Todd said immediately. “Bren and I did that once before.”
“From our time and our place,” I told him as kindly as I could. “I doubt we could accomplish such a feat here, from the past.”
Sherise hugged herself. “But we can try, right? We can try to get back home one day, at least?”
I was about to tell her of course, of course we would try, but the thought of Nire overwhelmed me.
L.O.S.T., burning …
Witches, running, screaming, fighting …
Sparks flying from Nire’s fingertips, making Shadows, raining death on all who oppose her…
“There will be no home when we arrive,” Rol said solemnly. “The Shadowmaster has returned.”
I ached for Bren to hold me, to turn loose my sorrows and let him comfort me, but when I looked up, he wasn’t standing with Todd anymore. At some point, he must have walked away from all of us, because he was on his knees inside the stones marked with zodiac glyphs.
He had the two books he had saved from the library, and he had them open on the floor. It looked as though he was reading them both at the same time. His crow-brother had landed on his left shoulder, and the bird clucked softly as Bren’s fingers moved over each line.
As if drawn by a silent command, we all moved toward him.
Bren didn’t stop reading.
I knelt beside him and placed my hand on his forearm. “Bren?”
He cut his gaze to me, and his eyes blazed with determination. “I think I can do it.”
The intensity of his expressions made my stomach tense. “Do what?”
“I think I can get us home.” He pointed to the Wytches Book of Tyme. “Not in five or ten years. Right now.”
I glanced down at the passage he indicated.
&n
bsp; So the lyte brings darkness,
Ande the Cyrcle borne of stone,
Turn ye tyme ande earth ande water,
Turn ye wynd ande fyre ande moon,
Joyn eye ancyent patterns neverendyng
Or know thy fynal doom.
-Passage MCLXXX
After I read it aloud, Helden whispered, “I know those words.”
“Yeah. From the library, before the Erlking blew it apart.” Bren tapped the other book, a thin green leather-bound volume. It was open to a zodiac circle, also with passages.
Bren studied me as I read the passages in the green volume aloud, starting from “Wytch Cyrcle, power flowing,” all the way to, “Joyn ancyent patterns neverendyng/And free wytches from theyr doom.”
Bren gently extracted his arm from my fingers and brushed the shoulder his crow-brother usually occupied. “The bird translated this next part to me back in the library, and just now again. The book talks about using the Witch Circle to open twelve gateways through time and space. In the old days, witches used zodiac circles to move anywhere they wanted, any time they wanted to do it. And the zodiac circle in this room definitely has to be one of the big twelve, right?”
“It is.” Todd looked pale and exhausted as he spoke, yet renewed, too. “That little red freakazoid talked about it all the time, and he said the priests were making another one in L.O.S.T. The thirteenth circle.”
Nire.
My teeth clenched.
The whole time the priests had been “gardening,” they had been etching zodiac symbols somewhere in that temple, or maybe even into the earth, hidden beneath their plants. When Nire disappeared from the tower on the Tor, no doubt she traveled directly to the Dana’Kell stronghold.
The stronghold I let them build in L.O.S.T.
I wanted to scream.
“Jazz, I think we can fire this baby up again.” He gestured to the symbols in the stone. “I’m not sure how, but I think it has to do with the oldeMagic your mother was trying to teach me. Moving and vanishing things.”
Everyone looked at everyone else.
We then spent the next fifteen minutes arguing about how to do it, and whether or not we should even try.
Despite our exhaustion and fear and the uncertainty multiplied between us, we ultimately decided that we should make the attempt. We also decided that Bren should lead us, since he was the only one who had any experience in working that kind of magic.
To send me into a heap of slither dung, I thought, but I kept that little jewel to myself.
The rest of us would focus our magic on joining his energy and following his formidable will, hopefully through the circle and back to our rightful time and place.
Rol planned to hold my hand and hope for the best. At first he had declared that he would stay behind rather than risk disrupting the magic, but I wouldn’t hear of it. I wasn’t about to surrender another piece of my heart.
Once that issue was dispatched, we all fell silent. I knew Helden’s troublesome question had come back to disturb us all, though none of us would speak it. I studied Bren, then Todd and Aaron, and the younger boys.
How, then, will we kill their mother?
Once we reached L.O.S.T., if indeed there was a L.O.S.T. to reach, what would we do with Nire?
Bren stood and gripped the hilt of his sword. “I know what you’re thinking,” he said to me in low tones. “But we beat her before. We can do it again.”
I got to my feet and watched as the brothers locked eyes.
Aaron’s bottom lip trembled even as Rol pulled the boy close. The smaller boys whose names I didn’t know started to cry.
“It has to be,” Bren said softly, looking at the younger ones. “We can’t let her go on another killing spree. She’s a mass murderer, and she’s crazy.”
Then, as if dreading what he might find, Bren turned to Todd.
Sherise took Todd’s hand. He was staring at the floor and he wouldn’t look up, not even when she urged him to say what he was feeling. Finally, in a voice barely louder than a whisper, Todd said, “I’ll do what I have to do.”
Bren nodded. Aaron bit his lip, and under his pleading gaze, his younger brothers brought their crying down to sniffs and shudders.
When the sons of Nire squared their shoulders, the rest of us found our courage, too. If they could face this nightmare, what right did any of us have to whine or cower?
Wordless, we each moved to our places in the carved circle of stone. This time, we knelt of our own free will, and I felt my opal begin to burn against my chest. The power felt different this time. It was more steady, more focused.
Helden went first, pressing her hands into the sign before her. It flared with golden light. Aaron followed her lead, adding his silver magic. One by one, we all placed our palms against our zodiac glyphs. At my turn, Rol covered my hands with his own and started praying in the most ancient tongue of the hags—clicks, hisses, snarls, and grunts.
Despite the distraction, my Libra sign began to glow.
On we went, until Bren’s turn came at last.
He hesitated and looked at me. His eyes held the doubt of all his failures, and the pain of a son about to face his mother in deadly battle for a second time. My heart ached for him, for all of Nire’s sons, but my soul ached for the people of L.O.S.T. and the witches scattered across time who had no Path to take them to safety.
“I’m sorry,” I whispered. I let my love show on my face, and my hope, and my belief in him. For one moment at least, we could be king and queen, and still be Bren and Jazz, too. The lines of his face tightened. His expression turned grim.
Bren let out a long breath as his crow-brother shifted on his shoulder. The bird actually seemed to be holding on tighter as Bren leaned forward and placed his hands on the curved line of Leo.
As it had before, brilliant silver light blazed under his hands, only much stronger and brighter. Fires leapt from the stones in front of us, silver and gold, and gold and silver.
Bren closed his eyes, and I knew he was concentrating on where we needed to go.
I only hoped we didn’t end up vanished to nothing, or dead in some other realm, or all upended into piles of slither droppings and harpy manure.
Think positive. Think positive. Think home.
I willed my magic to join with his as Rol’s prayers clicked and clacked in my ears.
“Home,” I murmured. “L.O.S.T.”
“L.O.S.T.,” whispered Sherise, then Helden, and Kella, and Aaron, until the sound pealed around the Witch Circle like a steady, hammering bell.
“L.O.S.T. L.O.S.T. L.O.S.T.!”
Where my voice ended and others began, I couldn’t tell. The sounds blended. The magic blended. The fires rushed to the center of the Circle and joined with a mighty hiss and flare.
This time, I felt no drain of energy at my center as the fiery ball of energy gained size and strength. I felt a blaze of power and connection, like the universe had opened a crack in the sky and let stars fall into my hands and heart.
My breath came short. My thoughts flowed like the fires, racing from witch to witch, from symbol to symbol. In my mind’s eye, the heavens smiled on us and swirled, faster, faster, faster, opening, welcoming us, pulling us into that blazing, glorious center. Twelve points of light, with a thirteenth hanging on like a stubborn crab.
As one, the Witch Circle and the crab whirled with the stars and moons and planets. We spun with the suns and comets and halos of cool, sparkling dust. I heard nothing, smelled nothing, then felt nothing and saw nothing until I started falling—falling—plummeting down, faster. Faster. Too fast!
I screamed a soundless scream.
Yellow light flared below us.
We were falling into the sun!
I sensed panic and desperation multiplied by twelve. The crab attached to my hand bit into my flesh. Twelve thrashing blobs of light and the flailing crab struck the sun’s fires—and bounced off.
All at once, my senses crashed back into my bod
y as I hit the ground. Rol dropped on top of me, squeezing all the air from my lungs and almost cracking every bone in my back.
Then he was up, spelling away my pain, pulling me up, apologizing, and falling silent.
I heard Bren shout my name, then he went quiet, too. Sherise, Helden, Aaron—all of them called out, then said nothing else.
Trying to shake off my disorientation and breathe, I turned slowly around. The green grass, live oaks, and freakish plants of the Dana’Kell temple grounds stretched out around me.
We fell into the sun, but came through to L.O.S.T.
And no battle was raging.
No dead witches littered the landscape.
I did see a few mangled bodies, though. They all had on red robes, but they seemed to be missing their heads. And some arms and legs.
The klatchKeepers finally got to do their duty.
I hoped those foul traitors died screaming, too.
The surge of feral glee at the Dana’Kells’ demise cleared my mind, and I took in the rest of my surroundings with a soul-deep gasp.
Rol and the rest of the Witch Circle had gathered in an uneven clump nearby, gazing up at a bright light that seemed to stretch over the entire temple grounds. And outside those grounds, modern witches, Shadow witches, oldeFolke, and magical creatures stood in a huge, silent ring, arms or paws or claws raised, eyes closed.
I looked up.
Above my head hung the largest ball of magical energy I had ever seen, knit together by different threads of power. Thousands of different threads.
Beltane bonfires burning on nearby hilltops flickered and danced on the outside of the ball. But on the inside…
Oh… On the inside, in the center of that ball, a figure clad all in purple drifted to and fro, suspended and helpless, bound by the joined wills of every sentient being in the Sanctuary of L.O.S.T.
“Nire,” I whispered. “By the Goddess. They’ve trapped the Shadowmaster!”
“It is Nire,” Bren confirmed as his crow-brother took off to circle above us. His voice shook when he added, “But I’m not sure they can hold her long. She’s…changing.”
***
Chapter Fifteen
L.O.S.T. Trilogy Box Set Page 64