by Hilari Bell
She thought the ice was growing more slowly, but she couldn't be sure. It hadn't stopped. Every time Kelsa looked up the rim of white had crept farther out, closing the river's gap. She heard a crack and a yelp as one biker pushed his luck a little too far, but no splash followed and she didn't look back.
Sweat slid down her back, despite the cold air that made her lungs burn. Her hands were blistering, but that didn't matter. Nothing mattered but the sweat trickling down Raven's taut face and the two edges of ice creeping out to meet across the river's mouth.
Raven swayed, and a shudder shook him. He sat up and ran wet hands over his face. "I can't stop it. Not alone."
Kelsa had known that for the last three minutes. She turned and looked back. The ice covered more than half of the lake's surface, and the bikers were now closer to the canoe than they were to the shore. They'd stopped a dozen yards from the edge of the ice sheet, sensing—being told?—t hat it was still too thin to bear their weight. They waited in silence now, like the predators they were.
Kelsa took a tighter grip on her paddle. She could stab with the edge and split a skull if she was lucky. She could swing it like a baseball bat, breaking arms and ribs. And with Raven fighting too ... They would be overwhelmed in minutes. Nine men were too many, even if none of the bikers was armed. Which didn't seem likely.
"I'm afraid," Raven sighed, "that it's time to call in some help."
"You think?" In the few moments she'd hesitated a thin skin of ice had formed around the canoe's bow. Kelsa leaned forward and cracked it with her paddle, then turned the canoe back toward the unfrozen center of the lake, working by herself. Raven had turned around on the seat, and now he sat perfectly still in the front of the canoe, his hands and face lifted toward the moon.
Perhaps it was her imagination that the light seemed to gather in his hands, intensifying before it poured into the rippling water. Even when she wiped the sweat out of her eyes, Kelsa couldn't be sure.
All she knew was that eventually a really annoying smirk crossed his face, and he opened his eyes and said, "There. That should do it."
"Do what?" Kelsa's voice was ragged with fury and fear. They'd almost reached the center of the lake. She couldn't go much farther.
Raven finally looked at her, taking in her terrified exhaustion and the ice that walled them in.
"Forget the bikers," he said. "Look at the shore."
It was hard to look away from her enemies as they picked their way carefully closer, but Kelsa dragged her gaze away and focused on the nearest shore, just in time to see dozens, hundreds, of small black dots slither onto the ice. They were so tiny, if they hadn't been moving she wouldn't have spotted them.
"What's that?"
"Frogs."
Kelsa had no idea why he sounded so smug about it.
"Frogs can't fight men, no matter how many there are. We need a wolf pack."
"If a wolf pack shows up we're going to be sorry, because Wolf's on the other side. Frogs are exactly what we need."
"How can frogs help us?"
"Watch," Raven said. "What do you see?"
Kelsa looked at the bikers, who were still waiting for the ice to thicken a bit more so they could close in to rape and kill her. No change there. She looked at the frogs and frowned. The dark dots seemed bigger now. She could see them, even though they weren't moving.
"Are they growing?"
"No. What you're seeing is water around them. Or to put it another way, holes in the ice."
Holes in the ice that were expanding even as she watched. "They're melting it? How? Frogs are cold-blooded."
"Well, Frog People is giving them some help. He sees no reason to let the leys get worse if we can make the situation better instead. And he owes me a favor. This pays it back, I'm afraid."
Kelsa cared nothing for his karmic balance sheet. "Frog People? He?"
"Frog People is a many-in-one kind of guy." Raven's voice was absent. "But he's good at balancing."
Kelsa didn't think he was talking about physical balance. There was a ring of water all around the shore now, and the ice had stopped reaching toward them. She leaned down and put a hand in the lake. The water wasn't exactly warm, but it wasn't as cold as it should have been.
A crack rang through the night, like a big branch breaking. Or an ice sheet. The bikers, focused on their prey, paid no attention.
"Who are your other allies?" Kelsa asked. "And what can they do?"
"It's complicated," said Raven. "Are those bikers likely to be good swimmers?"
"Stop trying to distract me!" Kelsa said sharply. "I need to know this stuff. Who are your other allies?"
"Ah ... besides Frog People, well, Goose Woman is leaning my way. Though she's mostly a seductress," Raven added. "Not as useful as Frog People. Unless you want someone seduced."
Kelsa waited.
Raven said nothing.
"That's it? Frog People, who no longer owes you any favors, and maybe Goose Woman? Everyone else is on the other side?"
"There are a lot of neutrals," Raven said. "More neutrals than people who've declared themselves. If I can—"
"This is why you kept putting me off when I asked about your allies, isn't it? Because you don't have any—"
This time the cracking of the ice sheet was too loud to ignore. The bikers looked around, yelped in alarm, and started running toward the shore ... or more accurately, toward the growing rim of dark water that now lay between them and the shore.
Kelsa picked up her paddle and began pushing the canoe slowly back toward the dock. "I'm going to enjoy this."
The melting ice was slippery. The bikers skidded and flailed their arms as they tried to run. One fell, and the ice broke beneath him sending up a great splash. He bobbed up in the hole and threw both arms onto the ice sheet, yelling for help. One of them hesitated but didn't go any closer. The others ran on.
"They'll all be in the water soon." Raven had taken up his paddle too, guiding them through the rapidly dissolving ice. "Pity it's not cold enough to ... There! We can get through there."
Kelsa's hands burned with broken blisters, but she ignored the pain, paddling hard while Raven steered.
They bumped into several chunks of floating ice, but it wasn't enough to impede their progress, and only once did they encounter a piece of the ice sheet large enough that they had to maneuver around it.
No bikers were visible now, but Kelsa knew they were there. When a hand rose out of the water and curled over the side of the canoe she was ready, bringing up her paddle and smashing the blade down on the gripping fingers.
A man's voice screamed and the hand vanished. The swimmer splashed away, swearing and choking.
Kelsa kept watch after that, paddle raised at ready until Raven had pulled them well past the point where a swimmer might overtake them.
Then she returned to paddling. Raven put in a steering stroke occasionally, but he wasn't pulling his weight.
"A little help here?" Kelsa said. He was supposed to be the expert, after all.
"Sorry." But he didn't lift his paddle. "I put too much energy into trying to warm the water, and it's turning into a physical drain. I should have known better. I'm not a balancer, not at all."
"Is that a fancy shapeshifter way of saying you're tired?"
"Yes." He turned to glare at her. "I'm tired."
Kelsa stopped paddling. Raven's face was no longer the one he'd assumed in the diner, but the one she thought of as his real face. The face she'd first seen. The face of the boy in the newscasts, wanted on felony charges.
"Oh, carp."
She brought them in by herself, saying nothing more as he slumped wearily on his seat, though he did put in a stroke now and then to correct their course.
Kelsa kept working till her paddle hit the bottom, then she shoved the canoe forward till she heard mud rasp under its hull. The shallow water was almost warm as it splashed around her ankles. She turned to the leafy brush around the shore and spoke with all her
heart, "Thank you."
Raven, climbing out at the front without his usual grace, snorted. "The magic is gone now. They're only frogs."
"Even so."
If he could make snide comments, he could walk on his own. Kelsa waded past him and went up to the biggest, fastest of the gang's bikes.
"We can't outrun anyone on that wimpy ATV. How much time do I have before the bikers swim ashore?"
Raven looked back at the lake. "Several minutes, at least. And they're headed for the nearest land, which is a ways from here. Why?"
"Because I'd like ten minutes," said Kelsa. "But if I've got less, that'll have to do."
She was already kneeling, reaching up under the compartment cover, groping for the wire that ran from the ignition keypad.
"My dad taught me how to jump-start a bike, and made me practice it at the beginning of every summer before we took our first trip. He said that sometimes keypads fail, and I needed to know what to do. I can charge the bike with solar sheets, change a bad battery, and replace a tire too."
"You're stealing that bike!" Raven's face lit with delight. "Can I help? I don't know these machines, but sometimes a strong will to open something can make other things happen. I don't have much energy left, but opening takes only a wisp of power."
Hand on the wire, Kelsa hesitated. If he could start it without her having to break things, that would be a much better solution.
"Go ahead."
Raven laid his hands on the engine cover and closed his eyes. The hard shell of the rear storage compartment popped open.
"Darn it," he muttered.
"That's OK." Kelsa gripped the wire and yanked it loose. Some of the fine strands broke, remaining on the welded connection points, but there was enough for her to work with. She unstrapped the battery cover. "See if there's anything in there that can puncture a tire. A screwdriver or something. And make sure it doesn't lock again when you close it."
Raven dug into the storage compartment and pulled out a knife with a seven-inch blade. "Will this do? Why do you want to puncture tires? Don't we need them?"
"Not our tires. Theirs!" Kelsa gestured to the other bikes. "Just stab every tire, hard. In the side, not the tread. The side is thinner."
She was afraid the tires might explode when punctured, but only soft pops and the hiss of escaping air followed Raven's progress through the row of parked bikes.
By the time he finished, she had uncovered the battery terminals. Kelsa split the wire far enough to stretch between the poles, and applied one wire to the positive head and one to the negative, as her father had taught her.
The engine hummed to life.
Love and gratitude made her heart ache as Kelsa swiftly re-coiled the wire and covered the battery. Would her father keep on rescuing her, teaching her, for the rest of her life? Probably. She prayed that he knew it.
Raven was already seated on the back of the long saddle when she swung her leg over the bike. Kelsa could feel the extra charge rushing to the wheels as it worked its way around the curves, past the silent cabins. This bike was far more powerful than hers, or even her father's. A gangster's bike. A road hog. And it would probably take the bikers half a day to get new tires.
She and Raven had gained a lead. She had a few minutes to spare.
Before turning onto the empty highway, Kelsa stopped the bike and turned to look at Raven. He still wore his real face, pale and tired in the moonlight, and he'd been leaning against her more heavily than usual.
"You said they were gambling on killing you back there. But you've been alive for centuries. Can you be killed? Really?"
"Yes." For once he spoke without hedging. "I can be killed. If I was, in a few more years, or centuries, there would be another Raven. But it wouldn't be me."
It made no sense, but Kelsa knew truth when she heard it. It was probably the clearest explanation he could give. She turned the bike onto the main road and accelerated into the night.
CHAPTER 14
THE ROAD CURVED THROUGH flat-bottomed glacial valleys, over rivers, and up through the hills, twisting back on itself. The frost heaves became more frequent, the bike rolling over them like a ship in a stormy sea. Even the modern, crack-resistant road surface began to give way, with pothole after pothole flashing up in her headlights.
Sometimes Kelsa could avoid them, but often she was on them too quickly, and the bike slammed over them, rattling her teeth.
She should slow down. Neither she nor Raven had a helmet or any kind of protective gear. If she slid out they could be badly injured or killed. But it wasn't till the fourth spine-jarring jolt that she finally slowed, and she still had to pay close attention to the road. It almost distracted her from the red bar creeping slowly up the gauge in the corner of the bike's display screen—but there was nothing she could do about that except pray.
The adrenaline created by running for her life gave out, leaving her more tired than she'd been when they pulled into Pickhandle Lake. The flat gray twilight of the northern night was giving way to sunrise when the battery died. The engine shut down, and the bike rolled to a stop. Kelsa took it onto the shoulder at the last minute. They'd passed a few all-night truckers, and after they'd slowed several trucks had passed them. In a few hours the RVs would take to the road—not high traffic by city standards, but being stalled on a blind curve was never a good idea.
She'd hoped to make it to a station before this happened, despite the rising red bar on the gauge. What kind of moron set out without enough charge to make it to the next town?
The moron who'd owned this bike, apparently.
Raven lifted his head from her shoulder, where it had settled for the last half-hour.
"What's wrong? Why are we stopping?"
"The battery's empty. We have to recharge it before we can go on."
"But couldn't you tell it was wearing out? Can't you just let it rest for a while?"
Kelsa's eyes were burning. With weariness, she decided firmly. How much sleep had she gotten in the last three days? Four hours? Five?
"Letting it rest won't help. I did know the charge was running out, but sometimes there's more depth in a battery than shows on the gauge. Unfortunately, it looks like this gauge is accurate."
Raven looked around, and Kelsa followed his gaze. They'd been riding around the base of a hill, and a bog dotted with scraggly pines lay on the other side of the road. The trees' silhouettes looked odd, with thin bottom branches and heavy drooping tops, but it was too dark for Kelsa to see them clearly.
"We can't stay here," Raven said. "If my enemies find us, they'll send those bikers after us again."
"How did they find us at the lake?" Kelsa hadn't had time to think about that before. "How could they possibly know we'd pulled off there to spend the night? You said they couldn't use birds and things to spy on us."
"They can't," Raven said. "The thing is..."
Kelsa waited in grim silence. She was too damn tired to put up with his stalling now.
"The thing is, I'm afraid they might be tracking you the same way I have. Following that." He gestured to the bulge the medicine pouch made under her shirt.
Kelsa's heart sank. The medicine pouch was the one thing they couldn't leave behind. "If they can track the pouch, why didn't they find us earlier?"
"Until you started using it, they couldn't know what it ... smelled like, for want of a better term. But that scent, the unique feel of its magic and yours working together, have been dumped into the ley several times now," Raven said. "And Otter Woman spent too much time with you. Thank goodness you were smart enough not to let her touch the pouch. They probably only have a vague sense of its magic. But the song of your human magic mixed with it is very distinctive. From now on, staying in one place for a long time is probably a bad idea."
"Wait. Are you saying that Otter Woman, all your enemies, are going to be able to sense me? Wherever I go?"
"Yes. So how do we charge this battery?"
Kelsa rubbed her eyes. She w
asn't going to cry. She was tired, that was all. It only felt like they were going to be stranded here forever.
"Ordinarily, in a situation like this, I'd pull out my com pod and call for a mobile recharge. We can stop the next vehicle and ask the driver to call it in for us."
Almost any driver, and any professional trucker, would stop for a stalled vehicle.
"We can't," said Raven. "Even the bikers have seen those newscasts. We don't dare let anyone get a good look at us."
"So change your face again. I don't look a lot like the picture they're showing, and if I were traveling with, say, my grandfather, most people wouldn't look at me twice."
Raven's silence lasted too long. Kelsa was turning to face him when he said, "I can't shift. Trying to warm that lake, with half a dozen strong molders working against me ... I won't have enough power to change my shape for days."
He sounded cross, almost arrogant. Kelsa was beginning to suspect that was how he dealt with fear. She was plenty scared herself !
"Couldn't you ... I don't know. Use some power from the ley to do it?"
"I'm not your stupid battery," Raven snapped. "It doesn't work like that."
"Then how does it work? I'm sick to death of your not telling me things!"
Raven sighed. "To use the power of the ley, you have to use your own power to call it forth and control it. Exhausted as I am, I couldn't begin to touch it. And a power drain isn't like physical weariness, either. Mostly, if you retain some part of your magical energy the rest comes back pretty quickly. But when you drain it completely it takes a lot longer to return. Unlike your battery, resting will restore me, but it will be three or four days before I can shift shape."
Kelsa remembered other times he'd become tired, how shifting had taken him longer and longer. And he wasn't the only one who was exhausted. A tear ran down her cheek. She fought to keep her voice steady.
"How come you could do the opening spell on the bike's storage box?"
"That was only a nudge for the compartment to do something it wanted to do anyway. It didn't take more than a wisp of will. Molecular manipulation takes real power."