FIERCE: Sixteen Authors of Fantasy

by Mercedes Lackey

  I rubbed my hands over my face then wrapped the blanket around my waist. As I lifted her, her head rolled back, leaving her throat exposed as the collar of her shirt pulled open where she’d neglected to close the top few buttons. Such vulnerability should have seemed pathetic to me, but I found myself instead pulling her close to my chest and wanting to protect her.

  It’s her magic, I realized, and released the breath I’d been holding. Of course. It was still affecting me. Completely natural. Regrettable, but natural. It will pass, and no one ever has to know.

  My left arm screamed with pain, and I hoisted the girl over my shoulder to carry her to her bed one-handed.

  I gave into my weakness for another moment and made her as comfortable as I could, removing her boots, loosening the ties at the waist of her trousers, and pulling a blanket up to her shoulders. I reached out for her mind, but found that I couldn’t see her thoughts. She was there, but blocked—another indication that her hidden magic was strong.

  “Goodbye, Rowan,” I whispered. “Best of luck to you with your magic hunter.”

  As I stepped out of the sitting room and onto the top stair, a certainty that she wasn’t safe stopped me. She had used magic to help me. Would that change anything for her? Would her betrothed see what she was?

  “Not my problem,” I muttered, and forced my feet forward. Still, my mind wouldn’t let go of her. And how could she not know what she is? That was powerful magic that she used, that my body is still using.

  A memory from history lessons tickled the back of my thoughts, but wouldn’t come forward. Something about a punishment that kings once used against rival sorcerers.

  This could be significant.

  Pain twisted through the new scar on my arm. Perhaps it would be better to stay for just a few days, until my strength returned. I’d need it if I was going to risk returning to Luid empty-handed. Perhaps I would learn something useful.

  Perhaps I’d change my mind about taking her when her magic was no longer influencing me.

  I returned to the sitting room and folded the quilt on the seat of the chair, then let magic flow through me and transform my body again. I found my eagle brain able to see the situation more objectively. Only logical, I thought as I settled in for the night. Survival first. In a few days, she’ll just be an unfortunate part of my past.

  Chapter VII

  Rowan

  I’VE BEEN HAVING THE SAME nightmare for as long as I can remember. In the dream I can’t see or hear anything. All I’m aware of is something being wrapped tight around my body, squeezing. I try to inhale, but there’s no room to breathe. That’s where the dream ends, in suffocating darkness.

  When I woke, it looked like I’d been having that dream again. The blankets were twisted around my legs, and at some point during the night I’d shoved my pillows onto the floor. I closed my eyes and tried to remember, but everything seemed jumbled in my mind, as though whatever happened the evening before had been mixed with surreal dreams. I remembered unbearable pain. I remembered trying to fix the eagle, and I remembered fainting. Nothing more.

  I kicked the blankets away and rolled gingerly onto my side, careful to not waken the pain that had faded to a bearable ache as I slept. I was still dressed, but my boots stood neatly paired beside the bed, and the laces on my pants were undone. I didn’t remember going to bed. Had Della come up and found me on the floor? If so, had she seen the eagle?

  The eagle. I closed my eyes again and sighed. The poor thing probably died while you were passed out on the floor, you silly thing. So much for your life-saving skills.

  I changed into fresh clothes and hurried through the sitting area to the washroom, not daring to look around yet, and took my time getting ready for the day. Only when I couldn’t stand it any longer did I go back to the sitting room.

  Nothing. No body on the table, no bloodstained jacket in the corner, not even the strange, green piece of wood I vaguely remembered pulling from the bird’s wing.

  “Skraaw?”

  I spun around to look for the source of the soft croaking noise. A brown and gold eagle perched with its talons sunk deep into the upholstery of my armchair, but it couldn’t have been the same one. Far from looking like the bedraggled, nearly dead thing I remembered, this bird was alert and healthy, though one wing drooped slightly. I took a step forward, then hesitated. That beak looked even more intimidating than it had the evening before. The eagle didn’t move, but watched calmly as I edged closer, as though he was accustomed to human company. A hunting bird, maybe.

  As if to demonstrate his good health the eagle stretched, wingtips reaching out as wide as I was tall. He pulled them back in, right wing still held slightly askew, and began preening his glossy feathers.

  I’m losing my mind, I thought, and looked again. The wound, while still visible, had done an impossible amount of healing for one night. This was a strange animal, or I’d been asleep for a lot longer than I thought.

  I backed slowly toward the bookshelf and grabbed “The Illustrated Field Guide to Birds Vol. II.” I’d borrowed it from my uncle’s library thinking I could use it to practice drawing, but had never found time.

  I had no idea what might have become of volumes I or III, but this book had exactly what I was looking for. On page twenty-six, perched between the White-Headed Eagle and the Fish Hawk, was my house-guest, the Golden Eagle. There was no other useful information, but it was good to have a name to put to the bird.

  A name… When I glanced up the eagle was still watching me with his head cocked to one side. The feathers over his eyes gave him a stern and serious look.

  “I don’t know how long you’re going to be staying, but I can’t be calling you ‘hey you’ or ‘fella’ while you’re here,” I told him. “We even name the chickens, and we eat them.” I tapped a fingernail against my teeth as I considered the problem. “I once read an old story with an eagle called Aquila in it. Suits you well enough. What do you think?”

  I didn’t expect a reaction, and I didn’t get one. The eagle just stared at me, somehow appearing relaxed and vigilant at the same time.

  He stretched again, hopped down to the floor and flapped up to the table, scattering my drawings and a few books. The window was open, and he shuffled over to the sill and onto a cherry tree branch that grazed the side of the house. He seemed perfectly content to sit there, ignoring me. I stooped to pick the books up. One was the old fairy tale book from the library, though I didn’t remember taking it out of my bag.

  “It’s magic, isn’t it?” I asked as I leaned out the window. “That’s how you healed so quickly. Did you come from over the mountains?”

  The eagle didn’t respond, but a thrill rushed through me. There was simply no other explanation. Then, just as quickly as it had come, the excitement dulled. I remembered what Ashe had said about magic, and everything we’d been taught about the need to protect ourselves from it. This was real life now, not a fairy tale.

  But still, he was just an animal. There couldn’t be any harm in helping him, could there? He seemed normal, aside from the overnight healing.

  “You’re not dangerous, are you?” I asked. Aquila stared at me for a moment, then slowly clacked his beak. Not threatening me, but I didn’t know what it meant. Maybe nothing.

  “So what am I supposed to do with you now?” I paced between the chair and the bookcase, and Aquila watched from the window. “If I tell someone, I don’t know what they’ll do to you. I doubt it’ll be pleasant, if Dorset Langley was after you. But if I take you back to the forest before you’re ready, you won’t survive.” I tugged at my hair as I thought. “Tell you what. You can stay just a little longer, but I’m watching you.” I hardly wanted to admit to myself that I was feeling the excitement again. “You hurry up and finish healing, and then you’d better get out of here if you know what’s good for you.”

  Aquila fluffed his feathers and settled his head on his breast. At least someone was comfortable with the arrangement.

>   “That’s settled, then. You do what you want, just stay out of trouble. If you fall out of the tree I can’t risk smuggling you in again, and if Matthew sees you, I have no idea how you got here. I’ll try to bring you something to eat later.”

  I spun around and raced downstairs, excited about something for the first time in as long as I could remember.

  I fell easily back into the routines of life at Stone Ridge, helping Matthew prepare the gardens for winter, putting up storm windows, feeding the animals and cleaning the barn. Aquila watched us from the tree, huddled close to the trunk where he was nearly indistinguishable from the bark.

  I tried to visit Aunt Victoria that afternoon, but her bedroom door was locked, and she refused to answer when I knocked. She rarely left that room anymore, but I’d hoped she would at least let me in.

  After Della and Matthew went to bed that evening I sneaked some raw meat from the cold storage to my room, and Aquila ate while I went to the bedroom and changed into my sleep clothes. When I returned, he seemed to be waiting for me. I took out my charcoals and sketched him for a while, but it didn’t relax me the way it usually did.

  After a few hours of lying in bed with thoughts churning through my mind, I got up to find a book to read. Aquila was dozing on a chair, and woke when I passed. He hadn’t done anything unusual all day. Maybe I’d been wrong about the magic.

  He stretched his neck out toward me, and I reached out tentatively to stroke the feathers on his head. He squorked softly as he side-stepped his way toward the table and the window. I decided to leave the books alone for a while and followed him instead.

  The moon shone full and hazy behind the thin clouds that stretched across the sky, bathing the flower garden beneath my window in cool light. Most of the flowers had died off or gone to sleep for the winter, but the cherry tree still held its strange mix of flowers and fruits, and the rose and lilac bushes were covered in blooms. I opened the window, and Aquila stepped out.

  “It’s funny, isn’t it?” I asked, and he glanced back from his perch in the tree. “I was six years old when my parents sent me to live here. I hated it here at first, but I remember how pleased I was when I learned that the flowers didn’t wilt or fade until well into the winter. Everything in the garden bloomed longer back then, the flowers and the trees. When I was little, I used to think it was because the garden was in love with my aunt. She cared so much for it, like it was a child or a friend, and I thought that the flowers were the garden’s way of loving her back. Now that she doesn’t go out there anymore, the flowers only bloom when they’re supposed to. The trees have longer memories, though.”

  Aquila fluffed his feathers.

  “I know, it’s stupid.” I leaned farther out the window. “Matthew told me it’s just because the trees were cultivated over generations to bloom long and bear extra fruit. He doesn’t have as much time to tend the flowers as Victoria did, so they die off more quickly. I still sometimes like to think it was magic, though. It was the only bit of it I ever really had, until you came along.”

  I was about to duck back into the warm room when a frail shadow passed through a patch of moonlight below us. Aunt Victoria’s thinning blond hair was twisted into a bun that left strands floating loose around her face. She wore only her nightgown, but carried a winter scarf in each hand, trailing on the ground. She paused for a moment, then hurried down a side path before I could call out to her. I ran to the bedroom, pulled on a sweater and grabbed a second one for her, and raced down the stairs and out the kitchen door.

  There was no sign of her when I reached the garden. I searched down the path, circled around past the peonies and looked in the dark stone garden shed, then took my time searching the area again. She was gone.

  I turned back to the house, where a thin silhouette paced by the windows in my aunt’s room. At least she’s warm now, I thought, but it didn’t ease my nerves. She never went near the gardens anymore. I pulled my sweater tighter to my body and walked back to the corner where the old well lay buried in rocks. The breeze shifted the branches above me, and a patch of moonlight revealed the dull nighttime colors of the hand-knitted, wool scarves she’d left on the ground.

  Something crashed into the bushes. An airy shriek escaped me before Aquila climbed out of the tangled mess of ivy vines that covered the ground beneath the rose bush. He managed to flap onto the bench behind me, and I laughed a little at the sight of him standing there with his long toes splayed out on the cold stone, acting like nothing unusual had just happened. He glared at me, and it was hard not to laugh harder at how insulted he looked.

  I sat beside him, pulling my feet close under my body to warm them. “It feels strange to be laughing out here again.” Aquila wouldn’t understand, but I wanted to talk and he seemed like a good listener. A tolerant one, anyway.

  “They died right over there. The twins.” My voice caught in my throat, all traces of laughter gone. “I didn’t know them well. My mother had me move back to town when Aunt Victoria was pregnant. I wanted to stay and help, but Mother said that finding a husband had to be my priority. Aunt Vic and Uncle Ches were so excited to have a baby. They’d given up hope.” I smiled a little at the memory, bittersweet as it was. “When we found out it was twins, my mother practically had to chain me to the floor to keep me from coming back. I met them a few times. They were sweet little boys. Uncle Ches always said they’d be a boatload of trouble later, but he laughed whenever he said it.

  “I wasn’t here when they disappeared, a while after they started walking. They were gone for three days and every person in the area was looking for them when—” I had to take a few deep breaths before I could finish. “When Uncle Ches found them in that old, dried-up well. I don’t think anyone even remembered it was there. We don’t know what happened, how they got out of the house, whether one followed the other or they went in together, whether they died right away or…” I couldn’t finish that thought. “Anyway, Ches and Victoria have gone through hell this past year. He’s tried to move on, but she can’t. She spends most of her time in her rooms thinking the boys are playing somewhere else in the house. When she remembers that they’re not, she won’t get out of bed. Won’t see anyone.

  “This garden was one of the best parts of my childhood, and it should have been for Jacob and Leram, too. None of it makes any sense.”

  I squeezed my eyes shut, and tears started rolling out. By the time most of them had soaked into the sleeves of my sweater, the cold had caught up with me and I was shivering hard.

  “I guess me freezing to death out here’s not going to change the past.” I wiped a sleeve across my face and stood. “Thanks for listening.” Aquila looked up at me, then out over the garden. I went to the pile of stones that covered the well and placed a rock on top of the scarves to hold them in place. “I’m going in,” I told him. “You’d better decide whether you’re in or out tonight, because I’m shutting the window.”

  He chose in. I collapsed into bed and felt the approach of the deep sleep that had eluded me earlier. The last thing I heard was the rustle of feathers in the next room.

  Chapter VIII

  Rowan

  THREE DAYS PASSED IN RELATIVE peace. My aunt didn’t return to the garden, but she did allow me to have tea with her one afternoon. Aquila showed no further signs of being unusual, except that he was the quietest and cleanest animal I’d ever met and managed to stay hidden from everyone else in the house. When the rain forced me indoors, I kept myself busy organizing my uncle’s library.

  It was a fine respite from my regular life, but I knew it couldn’t last.

  On the morning of my fifth full day at Stone Ridge the door to my room slammed open, jolting me awake. Footsteps thundered across the wood floor of the sitting area and into my bedroom. Someone landed on top of me with a loud cry of, “Get up, get up, get up!”

  I grabbed the heavy feather pillow from under my head and used it to whack the intruder, who shrieked and bounced back onto the floor. I groa
ned as my cousin ripped the blankets off of the bed and flopped down beside me, out of breath and laughing. “Come on, sleepyface,” she said, grinning. “Aren’t you glad to see me?”

  I squinted at her and tried to look angry. “Felicia, I wouldn’t be happy to see Prince Charming himself if he woke me up by jumping on me.”

  She giggled and brushed her golden curls back from her face. “That might not be so bad, you know.”

  “Filth,” I muttered, and grinned back at her. That was the problem with Felicia. She was always so damned happy that I couldn’t stay mad at her, even when I wanted to. When I was a child at Stone Ridge, I looked forward to visits from Felicia more than I did trips to see my parents.

  She rolled over and stared at me with a mock-serious expression. “We have much to discuss. But first, get thine self to a washing chamber and clean thy teeth. Thou art offending my delicate sensibilities.”

  “Says the girl who smells like the horse that brought her here.” I rolled out of bed and raced through the doorway before she could smack me. Felicia always got me into trouble when we were kids, getting me to join in on whatever trouble she was causing. Now that we were grown, she still brought out the wildest and most childish part of me. I’d missed that.

  There was no sign of Aquila in the sitting room. I couldn’t blame him for disappearing when that strange, noisy person burst in. I leaned out the window and came face-to-beak with him sitting in the cherry tree. “Sorry,” I whispered. He didn’t look impressed.

  When I returned, Felicia was looking at the books on my shelf. She took a seat in an armchair with her legs crossed under her, and I sat in front of her on the floor. She pulled a brush out of her bag and went to work on my hair. She’d treated me like a doll since the first time she came to visit me at Stone Ridge. I never complained. It was relaxing.