The Smoke-Scented Girl

by Melissa McShane

  The man lifted an enormous spiked mace from his lap and swung it at Kerensa’s head.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Kerensa screamed and flung herself to the ground. “Desini cucurri!” Evon shouted, gesturing sharply. The man’s arm froze in mid swing, tangled in red cords, and he was nearly jerked out of his saddle by the motion. He roared something in that unfamiliar language and sawed at his horse’s reins one-handed, yanking its head around to face Kerensa in preparation for trampling her. She scrambled backwards on all fours and Evon ran forward to pull her up, out of the horse’s reach. His muscles ached. His reserves were running low.

  Two other riders emerged from the woods, calling out words inflected like questions. The big man ignored them and urged his horse onward. “Desini cucurri!” Evon shouted again, and the horse froze mid-step and went over hard, taking its rider with it. The man let out a cry of surprise that turned into one of pain as he hit the ground. One of the riders, a woman, raised both hands in such a familiar gesture that Evon called out, “Recivia!” almost before the woman cast her own desini cucurri. A flashing mirror spun out of nowhere between them, turning the spell back on the woman, who only barely dodged it; Evon saw red cords wrap her right arm tightly. The other rider spurred his horse forward, drawing a short blade. Evon felt his breath coming too rapidly. He didn’t have enough in him to block this man’s attack.

  The woman shouted “Forva!” and Evon threw himself to the left just in time to avoid taking a blast of liquid fire—liquid?—to the chest, then rolled again to get out of the path of the rider with the sword. The rider jigged around to face him, and Evon backed slowly toward Kerensa, risking a glance over his shoulder to see if she was unhurt. “Kerensa, no!” he shouted, and ran toward where she crouched near the fallen man, trying to help pull his leg from beneath the horse. Alvor, if it really was Alvor, grabbed her arm and dragged her off her feet and into a chokehold.

  The man with the sword took another swing, which Evon barely ducked under. He dove at Kerensa and tried to pull Alvor’s arm away from her neck. She clawed at Alvor’s hand, her face red and her eyes bulging. Alvor snarled something at Evon and kicked at his knee with his one free leg. Evon stumbled, then cried out as the sword struck him across the back, the blow turned aside by the folds of Evon’s thick cloak. The man with the sword spoke to Alvor in the same unintelligible language, and Evon took advantage of his brief distraction to rise and kick Alvor in the face as hard as he could. The big man roared and released Kerensa to cover his nose, which began pouring blood. Evon took Kerensa’s arm and dragged her into the shelter of several close-growing aspen trees. She was coughing and gagging and her eyes watered, and Evon put her behind him and turned to face their attackers. “You bastards,” he shouted, not caring that they probably couldn’t understand him any better than he understood them. “Leave her alone! What kind of people attack a defenseless woman?”

  The man with the sword dismounted; the woman did as well, one-handed and awkward, then, to Evon’s amazement, touched her frozen arm and said, “Sepera,” and a glittering fall of crystal nearly obscured his view of her flexing her arm as if it had never been paralyzed. The two approached Alvor and began trying to pull him free from the horse. They spoke among themselves in low voices, occasionally glancing in Evon and Kerensa’s direction, their eyes flickering over the trees as if scanning for danger. “Are you all right?” Evon asked.

  Kerensa nodded. “Can’t speak,” she mouthed.

  “My reserves are low. I don’t know how many more spells I can cast. I don’t know how good that woman is—”

  Kerensa mouthed something, then made a face at Evon’s incomprehension and drew the word DANIA in the dirt at her feet. “You really think so?” Evon asked. Kerensa nodded vehemently. “I thought Alvor fought in defense of others. That man tried to kill you. Twice. It’s got to be an illusion or some sort of trick this place is playing on us.”

  The woman said something more loudly. Evon looked up to see her watching them warily. Her dark hair, cut short to brush her chin, was mussed on one side as if she’d just risen from her bed. Slowly, she raised her hand and gestured, then spoke a single word. Evon’s brow furrowed. “Cleperi,” he said, then repeated the word accompanied by the gesture the woman had used and did the same thing for Kerensa.

  A tone rang in his ear, a low-pitched hum like the sound of a thousand bees hovering just behind his head, and the air around them quivered, distorting everything around them for the space of two breaths. As the tone faded, he heard the woman begin speaking: “Ia tromos e tradsem for ke sapeke ke iem. You cerrat bel jeset of the fathlon in you—”

  “Fathlon,” Kerensa whispered, pounding Evon on the shoulder in her excitement. He gestured her to silence. The woman continued to speak, though she occasionally paused to cast cleperi on her companions.

  “—and we have yav letica it in beli forest, which we ecklat leave. We cannot epiros why you presadi beli woman if she has fathlon in her. Aste she presados Alvor—” she gestured at the man on the ground, who was finally free of the horse and having his ankle palpated by the other rider. “So she cannot be meron enemy.”

  “Why isn’t it translating all of her words?” Kerensa whispered. She was regaining her voice, though she still coughed occasionally. Evon was afraid to hand her their canteen, afraid to take his eyes off this woman who he was increasingly certain was the real Dania, looking quite lively for a woman a thousand years dead.

  “The translation spell has to have a base to work from. The more she talks, the more it can translate. That’s why she’s talking so much.” In a louder voice, Evon said, “I think what you’re saying is that Kerensa—” he pointed at her—“has the Enemy inside her. What she’s carrying is a spell with the Enemy’s name on it that is intended to kill him. It. However you’re tracking the Enemy, it must have identified Kerensa falsely. Her spell has the same problem. Do you understand me yet?”

  “For the most,” Dania said. “Say again what it is that the Enemy has done in her?”

  Evon explained again. Dania said, “Such a spell is impossible.”

  “You can see it for yourself,” Evon said, pointing at Kerensa wreathed in blue ribbons and outlined in fire.

  “It resembles the shadow of Murakot,” Dania said, “but the fire is unfamiliar.”

  Evon gave her a summary of what he’d learned. Dania circled Kerensa and seemed taken aback at how Kerensa beamed at her. When Evon finished speaking, Dania turned to look at her companions. “I believe him,” she said.

  “It’s an improbable story. He might be lying to protect the woman,” said the second rider. He was tall and thin and his skin had a waxy, unhealthy sheen to it. His eyes, when he looked at Evon, were as empty as Kerensa’s had been the day he met her. “The Enemy twists minds to believe what it wants.”

  “If that were so, he would not have cast desini cucurri, he would have attempted to kill me.” Dania took a few steps toward Alvor, still sitting on the ground next to the paralyzed horse. “Are you well?”

  Alvor’s face and beard were gory with blood, and he glared at Evon. “As well as could be expected after receiving a boot in the face,” he growled.

  “Then you shouldn’t have tried to kill me,” Kerensa said. “It was dishonorable.”

  Alvor barked a laugh. “No honor to be won in fighting the Enemy fairly,” he said. “Do you not agree, my friend?”

  Evon thought he was talking to him, but before he could answer, something detached itself from the trees next to him and placed the edge of a blade across his jugular. “Agreed,” someone said in his ear in a rasping voice, the person’s breath hot and stinking of raw meat. Evon froze. A moment later, the blade was withdrawn and the person slid past him to crouch next to Alvor. He, or possibly it, wore a dark green cloak with the hood pulled well down over his face. He rested his hands on his knees, and Evon saw, not a blade, but ivory claws just retracting into his hands. There was something wrong with his legs, as if the knee
s had been attached backwards, and the shadow of the face inside the hood wasn’t entirely human.

  Kerensa clutched Evon’s arm. “They came here,” she whispered. “When they vanished, this is where they came. Why didn’t they return? Evon, what if this place won’t let us go either?”

  “Let’s make certain they don’t still plan to kill you before we start worrying about that.” Evon surveyed the sky for more of the flying cloths. Two flew high above, specks against the featureless sky. If they were drawn to spellcasting, they weren’t yet aware of the battle.

  Kerensa nodded, then stepped around Evon and walked over to Alvor before Evon could do more than catch at her sleeve. “Can we start over?” she said. “My name is Kerensa and this is Evon.”

  Alvor glared at her. “Your man tried to kill me.”

  “You tried to kill me first. Would you not defend the people you love from death?”

  Alvor glanced at Dania, then at the other rider, who had to be Carall. “Alvor,” he said, saluting her by inclining his head and pressing three fingers of his left hand to his forehead. “Carall, Dania, Wystylth. If you seek the destruction of the Enemy, then we have common cause.”

  Evon could tell Kerensa could barely keep from vibrating with excitement. “How did you find us—I mean, find what you believed was the Enemy?” he asked, before she could start asking irrelevant questions about Alvorian myth.

  Dania pointed at her horse, which bore a plate-sized version of Evon’s quizzing glass. “Two hours ago the Glass became active. It has been dormant for over three years.”

  Two hours ago. They hadn’t even entered the place of power then. Evon’s heart sank. It was increasingly likely that time here was askew, variable, and that they could very well come out far too late to have any chance of stopping the Despot.

  “We killed the Enemy,” Alvor said, hitching himself along until he could use a tree to hoist himself to his feet. “I am certain of it. And yet it appears again. Perhaps this spell is merely a remnant of the Enemy’s presence in this world, that the Enemy itself remains dead?” Alvor sounded as if he were looking for reassurance, which to Evon’s mind was ludicrous, given the size and ferocity of the man.

  “There is no smell of the Enemy on her,” Wystylth said in that rasping voice. “Only the smell of smoke.”

  “We know where the entity—the Enemy—is, and we know who its host is,” Evon said. “We were on our way there when we were attacked and forced into this place of power.” Now that the confusion of battle was over, questions began arising in his mind. Did Alvor and the others know what had happened to them? What had happened to them, for that matter? If he told them that a thousand years had passed since they disappeared from the world, how would they react?

  “Lead us there, and we will destroy it again,” Alvor said. “Dania, if you wouldn’t mind?”

  Dania went to the horse’s head and laid her free hand on it. “Sepera,” she said, and the cords shriveled away and the horse fell into a heap, all flailing limbs and tossing head, crying out its panic. Alvor stood to one side and waited for it to sort itself out, then helped it stand. Evon breathed in sharply. “Teach me that,” he demanded, then realized how abrupt he’d sounded and his face went red.

  “Do you not know? I am surprised.” Dania examined the horse, apparently to check the efficacy of her spell. “You seem a most formidable magician despite your age.”

  “Probably a lot of knowledge got lost between your time and ours,” Kerensa said.

  Dania stopped halfway to restoring Alvor’s right arm. “What time is that?” she asked, narrowing her eyes.

  Kerensa and Evon exchanged glances. If they didn’t know how long they’d been wandering.... “It has been almost a thousand years since the four of you disappeared,” Evon said.

  “It has been no more than three weeks that we have wandered in this place,” Carall said. There was a gap between his two front teeth and air whistled through it when he spoke. “This is another trick of the Enemy.”

  “No, sir, it is a trick of this place,” Evon said. “Its natural properties have been overridden by the free magic. If—when we find the way out, we might emerge an hour, or a dozen years, or two millennia from the time we entered.” The words “two millennia” made him feel ill.

  “How could such a place draw us so far forward in time?” Carall asked Dania.

  “I do not know why you look to me for the answer. I am as mystified as you,” she said.

  “Some places fold in on each other,” Kerensa said. “You might have walked the same path a thousand times. A thousand thousand times, even. And it would have felt like a single time.”

  “Then prove this to us,” Carall said, approaching Evon, his bony head thrust forward, menacing. “Prove that we have traveled outside our time. Prove that you are not liars sent by the Enemy.”

  “Carall—” Dania began.

  “There’s no sky here,” Kerensa began, “no sun I mean, and probably no stars, but when we step outside this place, Wystylth will recognize that the stars aren’t in the right places—they’ve moved in the last thousand years. And Dania, you likely realized that we speak your language, only a much altered version of it. I’d ask Evon to dismiss the translation spell and prove it,” she added with a grin, “but I don’t want any confusion that might end up with people being dead.”

  Carall looked at Alvor, who said, “We have tried to find a way out of this forest without success. How do you propose otherwise, Kerensa who is strangely well informed about our abilities?”

  Kerensa glanced at Evon. “To be honest, I’m not sure we’ll be able to leave, either,” she said. “But we have a spell to find the Despot—that’s the Enemy’s host in our time—and I hope it will lead us to somewhere we can exit this place. And if it’s capable of tracking the Despot from in here, that might mean we’ll come out close to our own time. So if you want to throw in your lot with ours....”

  “Then let us be going,” Alvor said. He mounted his horse in a swift, fluid gesture completely at odds with his bulky appearance. “I look forward to doing battle with our Enemy again.”

  “You can’t,” Evon said without thinking.

  Alvor looked down on him. He’d washed most of the blood off his face, but enough clung to his beard and the creases of his skin that he looked savage. “You do not tell me what I cannot do,” he said.

  “The spell Kerensa is carrying will destroy the Enemy forever, not just for a thousand years,” Evon said. “You must allow us to complete our task.”

  “We saved this country—no, belike we saved the world,” Alvor said, raising his voice. “Dare you tell me that our work was in vain?”

  “Alvor, your work gave the world a thousand years of peace,” Kerensa said, laying her hand on Alvor’s calf and making Evon want to grab her and drag her out of his reach. “But this spell was made by magicians in your time who were willing to sacrifice anything to see the Enemy destroyed forever. Don’t let their work be wasted. Help us use it against the Enemy.”

  Alvor sat back in his saddle. His eyes looked out over the clearing, rapt in memory. “Free us from this place,” he said finally, “and we will speak more of this.”

  Kerensa nodded and took a step back. Carall and Dania mounted, and the three of them looked at Kerensa for directions. Wystylth, on the other hand, kept his eye on Evon, and Evon thought he saw the shadowy face smile. He looked away, trying to seem unconcerned, but wondering what interest the man, or whatever he was, might have in him.

  Kerensa took out the coin and closed her fingers over it, then turned in a slow circle until she was facing the direction Alvor had arrived from. “This way,” she said, and shouldered her bag and began walking. Evon quickly picked up the other bags and followed her, trailed by four people out of history and myth. He walked close beside her and said, in a low voice, “This is not good.”

  “What are you talking about? This is amazing. I just spoke to Alvor! You traded spells with Dania and Wystylt
h nearly cut your throat! I have so many things I want to ask them all. Some of the myth has to be wrong, you know. Passing down stories from generation to generation, they must have gotten some of it wrong.”

  “Kerensa, this is not the time for planning an attack on the Alvorian canon. If they decide to head off after the entity, I can’t stop them.”

  “Maybe we should let them do it.”

  “What?”

  Kerensa wouldn’t meet his eyes. “We still don’t know how to remove the fire and keep it a weapon. Wouldn’t it be easier to just let the heroes take care of the entity?”

  “Kerensa, if they kill the Despot, you’re doomed to carry that fire for the rest of your life. You’ll go on burning to death and being resurrected and that cycle will never be broken.”

  “If you figure out how to take this fire out of me—”

  “When I figure it out.”

  “All right, when you figure out how to take this fire out of me, couldn’t you transfer it to someone else? Someone evil?”

  “I’m not comfortable judging the comparative evilness of other people. And you ought to know better than anyone that good people die because of this weapon too.”

  Kerensa ducked her head lower. “I don’t need a reminder.”

  “I’m sorry. But you know it’s true. Besides, even if we let Alvor kill the Despot, we’ve already seen that his solution isn’t permanent. In a thousand years the entity will return and someone else will have to endure what you have. It might even be your descendant. Can you really condemn someone else to that fate?”

  Kerensa sighed. “You’re right. But it was nice, for a few minutes, to pretend it was all over.” She stopped and turned around. “We should probably join hands, or something,” she said. “I’ve heard that sometimes people cross the borders of these places and end up separated. Sometimes separated in time as well as location. So we shouldn’t take any chances.”

  Alvor nodded. Kerensa stood between Alvor and Dania and hooked her elbows around their ankles so she could hold the coin as she walked between their horses. Evon wrapped his fingers around Carall’s ankle and then, hesitantly, held out his hand to take Wystylth’s. This close, he could see that Wystylth was definitely smiling. His mouth was slung forward a little, like the muzzle of a cat, though he didn’t have the fangs Evon half expected to see. Wystylth’s palm was rough like sandpaper, but the back of his hand was smooth, almost silky. The ivory claws were fully retracted, giving his fingertips a bare, unsettling look. “I don’t bite,” Wystylth said in a low voice, and bared his teeth. They were perfectly normal human teeth.