Hartha choked. Pred and Tiro had tears in their eyes, too. He touched Hartha on her head. “Don’t worry. I’ve got the shield and the dagger.” He smiled again. “And magic.” His gaze swung to Amber again, “And everything to live for.” He waved, then, whistling, he went out the door, letting it slam behind him.
Amber and all the brownies watched. When he was gone, all of them turned to look at her, eyes huge and wet, ears trembling.
“Do any of you think he can beat Bilachoe in a duel, even with the Cosmos Dagger and Shield?” she asked.
All of them shook their heads. Spark made a little sputtering noise that sounded negative.
“You think he’ll die?” Hard, hard to say those words.
They nodded. Spark spit.
Amber peeled the seaweed from her, met the brownie’s stares.
“I love Rafe.” Her lips turned down. “I still feel the need to help other cursed ones, but…”
“You learned the lesson that Cumulustre bound on your line,” Tiro whispered.
Amber sighed and sank into the chair again. Her knees felt wobbly. “Don’t drain yourself totally for others. To do so leaves you without resources for yourself, your family or to help anyone else.” She jutted her chin. “But for Rafe, I’ll do it. He isn’t asking it of me.” Her fingers had clenched into fists and she relaxed them. “It’s mutual. Last night he wanted Sizzitt to protect me, not him. He’d lay down his life to defend me.”
The brownies nodded.
She licked her lips. “So I’m going to break his curse.”
Hartha was there, patting her leg. “Not before the duel. Only when he falls.”
“Rafe has teeny chance of beating evil Darkfolk,” Pred said doubtfully.
“Listen to Hartha,” Tiro urged. He wasn’t looking at Amber directly.
“All right. I should live through it,” she said with more hope than belief, her smile a rictus on her face.
The brownies said nothing to that.
Amber’s eyes stung so she scrubbed them. More kelp flaked. “I’d better prepare for the worst.”
Once more the brownies nodded. She almost hated them.
That evening Rafe jogged with the pups around the cul-de-sac and thought of Amber. She wasn’t what he was used to. He was accustomed to hard-bodied competitive women who lived and breathed sports like he did. Or groupies. Or party girls and models who might be in the same location to see and be seen.
Amber lived in Colorado and didn’t own a pair of skis. He’d been through her basement and garage and storage rooms. Not one ski or snowshoe. There were hiking boots, packs and some gear so that was a relief. But she wasn’t hard-bodied. Her muscles were toned, but not cut. He’d actually seen aerobics programs in her video library. She played with the dogs during breaks in her work and walked them a couple of times a day since he’d been with her, but he wouldn’t say she was in top shape.
Her body was soft and she didn’t seem competitive at all. Though she’d done damn well in that stupid game. She’d fought with her squishy character, and a couple of times when she was in her office, he’d loaded Fairies and Dragons on her laptop and seen that she played tough women—and men of a more hulking build than Rafe—who used their fists to fight monsters. But he didn’t think she had the suppressed violence that would make her a success in the lyceum.
He was used to short affairs that burned hot and fast. That wasn’t what he was getting with Amber. It was a short affair and damn hot. But Amber was a forever woman. He’d actually think about forever if he had it to give. As it was, he was holding back. He didn’t want to be squishy emotionally or physically going into a fight to the death with evil. The thought made him snort and the dogs looked at him. He glanced around the circle. No one was out, as usual, so he let them off their leashes and shouted, “Run!”
So they all did.
Everyone was quiet during dinner and they didn’t speak of the duel until Rafe brought it up.
Amber had spent the day getting ready for a change in her life.
Her will was made and filed with an attorney.
She’d found and rented and moved some stuff into a small bungalow a few blocks from Mystic Circle. Alternative living space for herself was a must. She couldn’t bear to have Rafe return triumphant and realize that their time and chance for love had passed.
She might age even faster outside the cul-de-sac, be more prone to household accidents, but she didn’t care.
She had her genealogy and her journals, even took a couple of jobs to keep her busy. She’d finished Conrad’s family tree and shot it to him by email, as well as putting it up on the database that he’d used.
Of the new two journals, one was ruined beyond reading. The other gave a longer and more complete explanation on how to sever emotional bonds. Unfortunately, she’d need that.
This was the end of the line for the Cumulustre women. Finally. If it had been anyone else, even Conrad, she could have refused to break the curse. Soon Tiro would be free.
She was ready.
“I don’t want you coming with me. You have to stay,” Rafe said in the meanest, most demanding tone she’d heard from him. It might have worked if she hadn’t known him so well. He wouldn’t be a reluctant warrior, but he wouldn’t be a harsh commander, either. More like a determined swashbuckler.
“I understand that,” she said.
He stood and his chair fell and he caught it. Then he drew her up and held her close. His breath was warm against her ear, and he rubbed his cheek against her. “That’s not a promise.”
“I won’t go with you,” she said. “I have no intention of distracting you.” She smiled and it was almost easy. She had a great tenderness for him, her lover. “You need all the focus you can get.”
He swayed with her a little. “Thank you.”
She didn’t tell him that she’d follow him. Find a place to watch the duel. Be ready to break his curse if he needed her help. “I’ll be praying.” Also true.
“Okay.” He sighed. “Okay.” He drew back a little and met her gaze. Yes, the reckless pirate was in his eyes. Ready to do or die. She was so afraid it was the latter, she couldn’t breathe.
Curving his hand around her cheek, he said, “There’ll be no reason for Bilachoe to go after you…if I don’t make it.”
No reason except the thing might like to eat her at the least, have fun torturing her. Make sure she wasn’t around to break any more curses that might threaten him.
She’d told the brownies to stay in Mystic Circle and had gotten stares from their huge eyes as if she was crazy to think they’d leave when danger threatened.
“Okay.” Rafe glanced at the brownies. “You’re all staying here?”
“We must. Jenni and Aric are coming home soon,” Hartha said.
“Soon?” Amber asked, hope swinging wildly high.
“A few days,” Pred said.
“Oh.”
Rafe waved that away. “Tiro?”
“I will stay with the dogs.”
“Good.”
Rafe ran through his plans and Amber watched his mobile face, his expansive gestures and ached.
She studied him.
She’d researched and worked and learned a lot in the past few weeks and now she shifted her vision to see the curse that enveloped her lover. She concentrated on the pattern, plucking a strand or two of the black and sticky webbing, looking for a good thread to pull that would unravel the whole thing with one good yank.
It took more than an hour, but finally she found one, marked it and readied it for use.
Chapter 28
THAT NIGHT AMBER dozed on and off. Rafe would wake and want to love tenderly and then they’d sleep. She’d fear for him and need him and rouse him for fierce sex, then they’d tumble into sweet rapture and dark forgetfulness.
After they woke, she followed his lead and acted as if it were a normal morning. Then he went off for some last-minute training and Amber went upstairs.
Wit
h more despair than hope, she once again searched online for “Bilachoe.” And she found a new, brief paragraph saying that he’d cursed a man and a fiery thought leaped from his forehead to the cursed one. Ever after, the demon had had a weakness in the forehead.
She didn’t know who might have added such information—Pavan? But she was glad for it. She copied the item for Rafe.
Time to cut her emotional ties. On a curse this large, it might affect everyone she had more than a nodding acquaintance with. She couldn’t risk harming them. She felt better about the method now that she’d read Tshilaba’s journal.
Sinking into a meditative state, she let the faces of those she’d loved and helped, and who had loved and helped her, pass before her mind’s eye. For the first time in years true images of her mother and aunt came to her and tears trickled down her face. The bonds to them had been cut cleanly by them, but the ends still throbbed with pain. Who or what was so important to them that they’d left her? She didn’t know, and she’d never looked because she couldn’t bear the revelation.
At least, if worse came to worst, she would leave no children. Friends to grieve, and Rafe—who would be free for the first time in his life and pursuing his dream—but no children. The dogs would transfer their love to Tiro or Rafe.
Rafe would be free of his curse. She could only imagine how a man like him, who treasured every moment of life, would revel in the delight of living. That thought had her mouth curving underneath the prickle of dried tears.
So she studied the bonds emanating from her, glowing with energy and power that flowed back and forth. First she looked at the pale ones, ranging from yellow to white human links. The tiniest were casual acquaintances—faces of people she knew to say “hi” to at the Sensitive New Age Bean. More surprising and stronger were her clients. She “touched” a pulsing one and “heard” a mother telling a story to her child—a story that Amber had provided with a family tree. She swallowed.
She visualized the bonds. Imagining cutting with a pair of scissors was too harsh. Instead she looked at the end of each bond, “magnified” them in her sight. Gently, gently, she frayed the end, making sure there wouldn’t be a snap or a rebound.
Just before the last filament gave way, she said a blessing and sent a tiny surge of affection down the thread.
It took a while, but she felt peaceful as the smallest connections fell away.
Maybe she would live to make more.
Stronger still were the cords linking her and those whose curses she had broken.
Once again, she shredded and let the cords unravel with a blessing. This time she felt an emptiness and loneliness she didn’t like.
She switched her “sight” from all the lovely human bonds, so many more than she’d expected, to the brightly colored threads to the Lightfolk.
The largest and strongest was to Jenni Weavers and it did look like woven embroidery floss of four merging colors of light: red-orange and gold and green-blue and blue-white, all equal. Wonderful. Amber gasped. Jenni had finished her own quest. Was happy and triumphant and celebrating…and in love.
If only the same could happen to Amber. Instead she sawed at the floss until it was down to two threads, then one, then Amber sent Jenni affection as it disintegrated. Jenni didn’t seem to notice and Amber sniffed back incipient tears.
Amber’s link to Tamara was smaller than Amber had imagined, which hurt a little before Amber realized that they hadn’t had any in-depth conversations. Maybe in the future…
With a deep breath, she studied the other Lightfolk connections. Three large brownie bonds, she smiled as she saw they were chocolate-brown.
They knew she would be cutting the strands of friendship between them. This time Tiro would be free.
Hartha and Pred. She loved them. Hartha so calm and practical, Pred a jokester, not as strong.
Three fire bonds. She blinked. Three? More blinking as she studied the thickest. It was to Spark. Ah! Spark had been born in Amber’s home, no wonder. The next was to the firesprite who tended Spark and the third small one was to the djinn who’d teleported Rafe and her from Eight Corp to the street.
A blue-violet-white thread ran to Pavan, the elf, who had shared in hospitality in her home, a thicker golden link to Vikos.
Everyone was right—Tiro and Cumulustre and Pavan. She’d brought whatever doom she had on herself.
But she also had the satisfaction of knowing that she’d saved lives. That was a real and untarnished legacy.
Slowly she unraveled the threads, let the magic linking them filter away in tiny bits of lavender glitter.
Now she hurt. But she wasn’t done.
Her strongest bonds were to Rafe and the pups.
Oddly enough, the bond with Rafe was a deep and throbbing pink that didn’t seem sexual. Love? She loved him, but didn’t quite know how he felt about her. Caring, yes, but anything more?
And how many bonds would Rafe himself have? She sensed he’d have strong connections to his brother and uncle and Conrad. Maybe a myriad of thin, easily broken threads to acquaintances.
She shrugged and ceased studying that cable. Rafe, as the man whose curse she was breaking, would take no harm from her.
So she switched her inner sight to see the strong and unconditional love—pure silver—between Baxt and Zor and her. She loved them, no reason to deny it, and they loved her. Even as she contemplated the bonds, they were there, knocking her over as she sat, licking her face, and she held them and rubbed them.
Then Tiro stood at the threshold of the room with wrinkled face and sad eyes and called them to play outside.
She dreaded what came next. Her heart ached and her fingers clenched that she must cut her bond to the dogs. They certainly wouldn’t survive what she was about to do. But they loved Hartha and Pred and Tiro…and Rafe. Rafe would care for them.
Is this how her mother and aunt felt? For an instant a flash of memory rose, of them both looking back at her from the taxi, tears running down their faces. No! She didn’t want to recall that. She had to be strong.
This time she went to her bed and closed her eyes, and took a long time to pick apart the threads, sending love down each portion.
When it was finally done, when she rose, she went out to the backyard and looked at the spears of tulips and grape hyacinths and daffodils poking through the earth. She wondered if she’d be here to see them bloom.
The dogs raced up to her and sniffed her, acting as if she were a stranger. Then they caught sight of Tiro gardening and ran away to play. She rubbed wetness from her face and turned away from them, cherishing the sound of their happy barks. She’d remember that forever.
With a sense of doom hanging over her, Amber finished her work on Rafe’s family tree and uploaded it to the professional site as well as the one that most amateurs used, including his brother. She wasn’t sure what Rafe had told his brother, but at least she’d explored and documented the Davail collateral line so someone else knew that the curse might pass to the distant cousin, the last of that line, before returning to Gabe again.
Not if she had anything to say about it. She loved Rafe and might be breaking his curse tonight.
If worse came to worst she had no idea how much she would age or how weak she would be.
She tried not to think about that.
Rafe rented a dual sport motorcycle—cycle and dirt bike—and rode to Red Rocks late in the afternoon. He knew it was smart to check out the place before Bilachoe came, but he had to admit he didn’t have the patience of some of the ex-military warriors he’d met. He’d walk around the park and keep his senses open, maybe even use his small stick to feel the different types of magic, but he didn’t think Bilachoe would lay a trap. Still, it was a pretty spring day, no snow even at the higher elevation. There were a lot worse ways to spend an afternoon and evening than hiking in a great park. He found a good fold of rock to hide the cycle in, then went on foot.
Of course there were better places to spend what might b
e his last hours alive, too, like in Amber’s bed. But he’d made do with a long and sexy kiss that had left him hard and Amber quivering. She’d clung for a moment, then, tears on her lashes, had given him a quick kiss and gone back inside her home. She had a superstition about watching someone drive out of sight, so she didn’t. And he didn’t look back, either.
The brownies had informed him and Amber that most Lightfolk couldn’t transport to somewhere they’d never been, but they didn’t know whether that applied to evil Dark ones.
They were under the impression that Bilachoe could. Rafe didn’t know if brownie bladders were weak enough to let go in fear, but he had an idea that if they were, there would have been piss during the conversation.
Tiro told him that if a Lightfolk had a strong bond with someone—human or Lightfolk or other—that Lightfolk could transport to the person. Tiro had also pointed out that Bilachoe and the Davails had been linked by a death curse for centuries.
So the brownies were of the opinion that Bilachoe would focus on Rafe like a missile and transport, probably trying to take him out with the first blow. And that would be at Bilachoe’s timing. Maybe before 1:00 a.m. Mountain Time, maybe after, maybe in the middle of the night.
For himself, Rafe had gotten a few bits of info from the face-to-illusion meeting in the book. He was pretty sure that the evil being wasn’t at home in the States and probably hadn’t been west of Manhattan.
Scanning the dry, rough and totally magnificent scenery around him, he felt down to his bones that it would be an alien landscape for Bilachoe. Plains plants were still dormant in their winter yellow and brown. The huge and eerie shapes of red sandstone rock thrust from the ground. Mysterious land and cultures unknown to the evil. One advantage to Rafe.
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