Soul of Fire

by Laura Anne Gilman

  * * *

  The attack that threw him against the wall was not entirely unexpected, but the quarter it came from was. Tyler blinked at Martin, acutely aware of the muscled forearm against his throat, too close to cutting off his oxygen, if not crushing his windpipe entirely.

  The person Tyler had been would have struggled, fought, asked what the hell was going on. But the preters had done their work well, and when confronted with an angry non-human, its eyes wide and the pupils carrying more yellow than brown, Tyler’s new instincts took over and dropped him into as submissive a pose as possible, his muscles slack and his own gaze cast downward, presenting no challenge at all.

  “Whatever you’re thinking, whatever you think you’re thinking, don’t.” The supernatural’s breath, this close, smelled stale and musty, with flickers of sulfur. Even if he had wanted to respond, he couldn’t; the grip on his throat prevented speech. “You’re angry and you’re scared, I get that. You tried to face the bitch down, face them all down, get back some of your manhood, and you couldn’t, and now you want to blast them all out of existence, don’t you? Starting with this one, oh, so close to hand?”

  The words were hard and cold, enunciated with a cold precision, and Tyler managed to swallow, despite the pressure against his throat. The wall at his back somehow seemed softer than those words or the creature in front of him.

  “I don’t know what you have in mind or how you think you’re going to manage that. Knife in the back, send nukes through a portal, whatever. But it’s not going to do the job. It’s not going to suddenly make you all better. In fact, it’ll make it a whole lot worse.”

  The arm eased, and Tyler slid down the wall until his feet touched the ground again. He didn’t move, uncertain if he could stay upright without the wall behind him.

  “You don’t understand.” His voice was raw, as if he’d been screaming for hours. He shuddered, the memory of doing just that coming back to him, less a flashback than an undertow of emotion dragging him under.

  “You’re right,” Martin agreed. “I don’t. I don’t understand the pain, the fear you went through. I don’t understand the hold that elf-bitch had on you. I don’t understand what brought you back. I want to, I envy you it, but I don’t understand it.”

  The super made a visible effort to rein in his anger and—Tyler thought, suddenly—his jealousy. “I do know this—you can’t destroy them. Neither of us can destroy the other. There’s a balance. We can’t unbalance it without consequences any more than they can.”

  Tyler frowned at him, momentarily distracted from his own trauma. “What consequences are they facing?”

  “I don’t know. But I think, the way their world is, so empty? That’s part of it. I think they had a Center, too, but it’s gone askew. Probably a long time ago.”

  Martin wasn’t making any sense, but at least his eyes were all brown again.

  Tyler stared up at the ceiling, suddenly feeling the urge to explain himself. Jan couldn’t understand, but maybe the supernatural would. “Jan thinks I miss it, that I crave her—Stjerne. I don’t. Not like that. Not even like I crave shit that’s bad for me, like cigarettes.” And, god, he missed cigarettes, would always miss them to his dying day, even though he hadn’t thought of them once when he was There. “It’s not like that. But it still has its claws in me, thorns digging into my skin, and I need to get them out.”

  “Yeah. I get it. But you can’t go off crazy, and you can’t do whatever it was you were thinking.”

  “Yeah, well, maybe I’m tired of your rules,” Tyler said, finally finding the ability to push away from the wall. He wobbled a little but didn’t crash over, and the kelpie didn’t insult him by offering help. He’d tried to explain, and all he got in return was a lecture. Screw that. “Your rules also make humans into tools, pawns, like we’re not able to decide our own fate.” He thought about saying more, but no words fell out. With a curt nod, he ordered his body to move and walked away.

  “You’re the only ones who can,” Martin said behind him, just loud enough to be heard.

  He kept walking.

  * * *

  “Idiot humans,” Martin muttered, and a passing kobold shot him a surprised but appreciative look. If there was one thing in this house the non-humans could agree on, it seemed, it was that humans were more trouble than they were worth.

  But without them...would any of this work? Supernaturals, preternaturals...all predicated on the base existence of naturals. Theory and philosophy made Martin’s head hurt, but since he had answered AJ’s call, since he had become Jan’s guardian, those thoughts came up occasionally and wouldn’t go away.

  Super. Preter. Natural. They were less powerful, on the obvious scale, but they were also the most numerous, the most adaptable.

  Martin flexed his fingers, not wanting to think and unable to prevent it. A kelpie existed. Occasionally, it killed, not out of malice but because that was what it did. Lupin hunted. Dryads were timid. Bansidhe warned of impending death. Jötunndotter... He wasn’t sure what the jötunndotter did, actually. Moved slowly, he supposed.

  But what they were was not what they did. Not always. Not forever. He had, twice now, not killed Jan when she entered the water on his back. AJ had turned away from hunting when he did not kill the Huntsman, had turned instead into a protector. Gnomes had gotten aggressive. The bansidhe had warned of death—but also acted to prevent it. Preters...preters did not change their ways, did not come into this world out of season, except now they did.

  They had all changed. Of their own will or something else influencing them. So what else wasn’t true?

  No. He couldn’t risk it, couldn’t think about maybes. The realms existed and needed to remain so. The queen needed to return to her court, the controlled portals needed to be closed, the means of control shut down. Tyler could not get in the way of that, either by killing the queen or whatever else he had in mind.

  The kelpie wondered briefly if he should have killed Tyler now, to keep him from doing anything foolish or causing problems later.

  No, he decided. It was unlikely the human had the ability to influence anything, and his death would distress Jan. But it might become a thing later.

  “Come on, AJ. You’re the one with all the plans. I’m just the swishtail, remember? Give us a sign. Tell us what the hell to do.”

  * * *

  The oddly mannered chaos of battle ended with a sudden howl that echoed over the entire property. As though it were a signal, those still fighting waded in with increased fervor, berserkers with wings and claws and hooves. Nothing was held back; none of them expected to leave the field of battle save as carrion.

  “Come on, you bastards,” Elsa growled, her voice deep enough to push through the sounds of fighting, loud enough to carry across fields without any other amplification but her lungs. The jötunndotter could not move quickly, but she moved steadily, and gnomes learned to avoid her if they could. To either side, behind and in front of her, the Farm’s defenders lashed out, but they were bruised and bloody, tired from too long without a break. They would fall soon.

  Elsa turned her head stiffly and looked at the slender, beak-faced being beside her. Splyushka and jötunndotter, air and rock, side by side. There was something funny, and fitting, and utterly improbably perfect about it. “Where are the preters? Why aren’t they showing themselves?”

  “They will,” Andy said. “But we need to be done by then.”

  She nodded. “We will be. Just hold them back a little longer.”

  * * *

  The sun dropped below the tree line behind the Farm, the sky bloodier than the now-muddy, trampled ground. The last glitterings of light caught the corner of the wooden bridge on the far side of the property, playing along the creek that flowed below it. The water was oddly still, even the current subdued, as though the life had gone from it.
In the fields behind it, the grass moved only under wind, and even the birds and squirrels had abandoned the trees. In the ponds, fish stayed deep, avoiding the surface.

  Gnomes moved through the main building, their forms compact again, checking every room intently. Their fingers touched everything, restlessly sorting through the piles of paper, ghosting over the whiteboards without smudging the dry-erase markers. Their eyes caught everything, sorting and filing. Occasionally one of them would catch up a sheet of paper or an object and tuck it away, carrying it to the preter lord waiting in the main room.

  The preter was looking into the air somewhere over their heads, his eyes bright and focused. “Yes,” he said to no one they could see. “We have secured the location. It was not as clean as we might have preferred, but they resisted so strongly, we had no other option. So far, there has been nothing that would indicate they had any knowledge of where she hides, nor any ability to stop us.”

  The air seemed to tell him something, and his mouth pursed up in disapproval, but he did not argue. “Yes. Agreed.”

  The preters plotted and schemed and gave orders. The gnomes took those orders and carried them out, but they were not the tools these elf-folk thought. They looked and thought and plotted on their own behalf, as well. Other races scrambled and sparred; they worked together, one goal in mind, one purpose.

  Gnomes took orders from many but served none but themselves. Soon, soon, all the other races would learn that. And then the destruction would begin.

  They thought that, holding it close to themselves, and waited for the preter to finish his conversation and notice them again.

  Done with his conversation, the preter stalked out to the back porch, looking out into the darkness. Under the glow of kerosene lamps and lights strung from the main house on extension cords, a ditch had been dug past the barn, and bodies were being tossed into it unceremoniously, attackers and defenders alike.

  The gnomes muttered to themselves as they worked, discontent boiling under their skin; whatever they had fought for, the results had not pleased them.

  Every now and again, one of them would look over their shoulder, but never up into the moonlit sky, where the last remaining defender floated on outstretched wings, silently watching the mass burials. When the last spade of dirt landed, filling in the ditch, the watcher wrapped its pale blue arms around itself and keened into the darkness, a lament and warning that raised the hackles of humans for miles, without their understanding why.

  The preter lord smiled finally, a cold, bloodless smirk. “You thought cracking your machines and burning your papers, secreting your humans away would be enough. But none of it matters now. We can do it on our own.”

  The new moon slid into the sky, a rising arc, and the preter inhaled as though he had caught scent of home.

  * * *

  And from West Virginia to New Hampshire, power lines crackled and the air swirled and filled with mist as portals opened...

  ...and overnight, one by one, a handful more humans disappeared.

  Chapter 14

  Voices were raised in argument, escaping the building and spilling out into the night. A preternatural might choose to disguise itself, to drape a glamour around its form to appear human, harmless, to moderate its voice into something flat and dull. When it did not choose to do so, there was no mistaking it.

  “Sheer dumb luck.” The voice rang out into the room, silencing the other voices—but only for a breath of time.

  “Luck that is recognized and acted on cannot, by definition, be dumb. Unless you mean to say that it is mute.”

  “I mean to say that we stumbled into this world at exactly the right time, not because we planned it but because of sheer dumb luck.”

  “Enough, the two of you!” Another voice, fierce and hot, dominating even them. “The consort bound us to the terms of the truce. Those terms, bound by magic, brought us here at the moment the dark moon would rise and our own strength would be at its greatest. Is that luck or destiny?”

  It would have been unwise to doubt the consort’s wisdom or destiny, even here, far from his reach. Particularly since they were about to extend his reach so significantly.

  There were eleven preters gathered, of the seventeen currently in this realm. Nine had come over in the original batch, the nine remaining of the ten who had been first set to this task, plus two more, of the five sent once the first had succeeded. Once the consort determined where Nalith had gone, and how, it had been a simple enough matter to do the same. But simply following would not have been enough: the court’s pride had been pricked, and they must do more to regain what had been lost.

  Thus, this gathering. It was not enough to simply reclaim their errant queen, no. They needed to make this world their own, use it to punish both her and this realm, to ensure that none ever challenged them again.

  The preter court was wise and dangerous, and if they gave mercy it was of their own whim. They did not feel inclined, this night, to mercy.

  They were gathered in a hall, in the darkened basement of a building filled with relics of the human religions, gilded and pretty but otherwise meaningless to them. They had chosen this place not for its decor but its space and its location: the magic, what their pets called “signal,” flared most brightly here.

  Brightly, but not so brightly as Under the Hill, where it had sparked like lightning, filling the sky with the crackle of power. Too many drew upon it here, interfered with it. That was not acceptable and would, like so much, be changed.

  Behind them, their pets waited. Blank eyed and obedient, they were weighted with silver chains around their necks, draping down over to rest against their hearts. Twenty-two humans, cross-legged on the carpet. It had been attempted to hold three at once, but the results had been unpleasant: one human longed and needed reassurance, two were content, but three seemed to tip them into rebellion.

  Rebellion was not permitted.

  “Enough.” A new voice spoke. The original nine had been courtiers, set to their task by command. Those who had come later were lords, higher in the consort’s regard, and expected obedience in return. If the original nine resented that, resented this latecomer giving orders, they gave no sign. “Luck and destiny are mortal conceits, designed to ease the sting of their failures. I will have no more such spoken in my hearing.”

  They fell silent, but the undercurrent of nerves remained. For all their arrogance and pride, they knew themselves to be creatures of tradition, not comfortable with the new, the untried. And this, all of this, was new, uncertain, a thing that had once been considered impossible. Only the change in their world, the shift in the alignment of things, allowed them to even dare it, moving on some strange, strong instinct that swirled the magic and re-formed it, court guiding and humans carrying the weight.

  A Great Portal. More, a Great Portal that was stable, that did not move and fade with the seasons or disappear if something harmed the human who carried it.

  A Great Portal they would control entirely.

  The old ways, dependent on tide and turn, would not have been enough to hold it steady. The new ways, the binding of human souls to hold the portal, was limited in scope. But eleven here, in the dark of the moon, a high magic time, with twice eleven soul-spaces for them to use...

  Change came slowly to them, but they were not fools to refuse it.

  The consort had commanded them, challenged them to come here, and their pride demanded that they answer. And then—then they would take their queen home and leave only devastation behind.

  * * *

  Seduction, Jan was discovering, was all in the mind.

  “Where we were, before, there is a bridge.” Jan had been juggling how to start in her head, and every idea seemed worse than the other, either lame or too obvious or nothing she could actually do or say without falling into hysterical giggle
s, which wouldn’t help at all. Sitting on a pile of cushions in the path of the late-afternoon sunlight while Nalith sketched her, a brownie sitting stiffly at her knee unhappy to be there but unable to refuse the queen’s command, Jan found the words had risen without thought or plan.

  “Hhhmmm?” So long as Jan did not move, Nalith allowed her to speak, but that did not mean she was listening. Yet.

  “It arches over a creek, and if you were to see it, in the course of the day, it would be only a wooden bridge, small and meaningless. But in the afternoon, when the sun hits it just so, the light catches red and gold in the grain of the planks, and it is almost as though it is made of flame, caught in form, arcing over running water.”

  Jan had actually only seen the light do that once, walking the borders of the Farm with Martin. But she had stopped and watched, as the light had flickered and then moved on, and thought it was one of the most beautiful things she had ever seen.

  Martin, of course, hadn’t noticed a thing. But she thought Nalith, with her small obsession with light, might have.

  “Not that the light here isn’t nice—” and she put all the doubtfulness she had into the word nice “—but there, it seems as though there’s a special quality, a life to it, somehow. I think that’s why so many artists live there.”

  There were, as far as she knew, no artists anywhere near the Farm, although it wouldn’t have surprised her to find a high-priced gallery down the road, catering to the CEOs and retired sports stars who had second homes up there. But her words seemed to set a hook, because Nalith paused in her sketching, her hand hesitating just a bit before making the next stroke.

  Jan tried not to look toward the other side of the room, where Tyler was sitting, talking with Kerry. She hadn’t spoken to him since that morning, when he’d disappeared from their room. He wasn’t cold, just distant, deep inside his own thoughts, and she had decided it was better to leave him there.