Marsh rolled her eyes and glared at Tamlin. “Tams, why don’t you take your sister over there and get her to practice making buzz bunnies?”
“Buzz bunnies?” the boy asked, a mystified look on his face.
“Rabbits made out of lightning,” Marsh told him. She didn’t bother telling him that she didn’t even know if lightning could be used that way.
Tamlin cast her a dubious look but he went, taking Aisha with him.
“Aysh, you know how you can make all sorts of shapes with stone…” Marsh heard him say as he led her away.
Brigitte gave Marsh a tired look. “Thank you,” she said. “I didn’t realize what I’d done until you shouted, and then I panicked and didn’t know how to undo it.”
She sighed. “I guess I’m just not cut out to control it.”
“It’s not as easy for some people as it is for others. You just need more time.”
Brigitte’s blue eyes filled with worry. “What if there is no more time?”
Marsh made a show of looking around the rooftop. “I don’t see any Ookens here, do you?”
Before she could answer, Etk’k gave a whistle of alarm, its shrill tones cutting through her head like a knife.
“What is it?” she asked, and then didn’t need to know.
Marsh! was all she heard from Roeglin amidst the impression of a flood of orange fur and pain.
“Roeglin!”
Aisha’s shriek of dismay and outrage came as a surprise. “You give him back!”
The little girl whirled and raced for the rubble leading up to the open second floor they’d been standing on. “Give him back! Give him back! Give them all back!”
“Aisha!” Marsh ran after the child. “Wait!”
While she agreed wholeheartedly with the girl, she also knew they couldn’t go rushing headlong into what could very well be a trap.
Aisha ducked under her hand. “Marsh! We have to go. We can’t let them take them!”
As Marsh lunged for her again, she caught sight of movement rippling the bushes nearby. Now, she ran to catch up to the child, instead of just catching her.
“Aisha! We have incoming!”
She trusted the little girl would understand what that meant. Aisha had spent a lot of time with the soldiers, after all.
Stone floated up from the ground and began orbiting the child.
“Where?” Aisha demanded. “Show me!”
“Wait!” Tamlin’s cry came just in time. “They’re friends! The wolves are our friends!”
“Friends!” Aisha cried, and the rocks hit the ground around her in a patter of falling stone.
Bristlebear broke cover and raced toward her, his nose alternating between sniffing the ground and sniffing the air. The wolf’s eyes flared green as he passed.
This way. The words were a blur in Marsh’s mind, but their intent was clear.
He didn’t stop but raced past, leading them down the remains of an ancient road and veering into the rubble of a ruin a block from where she and the others had been practicing calling the lightning. At first, Marsh wondered what he meant, but the sudden familiar screeching identified his prey soon enough.
He and the wolves bounded up the remnants of stairs to the second floor. They were soon overtaken by Mordan and her kits, who raced into the fray with semi-identical roars.
“Hey!” Aisha yelled in frustration. “Those are mine!”
She sprinted after the wolves and then surprised Marsh by leaping into the air even as she pulled a pillar of stone from the ground, then drew the flowing stone into a bridge for her flying feet.
“Aysh!”
“Sorry!” As if her apology was ever going to be enough.
The child must have been paying more attention to her thoughts than she’d realized because the stone suddenly extended behind her to form a path. Marsh didn’t question the hows or the whys, even if she was suddenly worried by the extent of the child’s rapidly developing ability.
It’s not nice to be afraid of me, Marsh, Aisha told her, reminding her that the girl could do more than manipulate stone.
I’m not afraid of you, you little shit. I’m afraid for you. There’s a difference.
Aisha’s delighted giggle was a relief to hear. The crunch of rock being ripped from the walls was not.
Her “Bristlebear! Get! Back! I’ve got this!” was even more worrying, and Marsh made herself run faster.
It reminded her of her dream, but this time, the nightmare was in front of her and not behind her.
Not funny, Marsh, Aisha told her, punctuating her sentence with the sound of rock being driven into rock with something meaty and metallic in between.
Marsh winced. She might have felt sorry for the Ookens, but she caught sight of three of them leaping over the side of the building, with Bristlebear and the pack in full pursuit.
One of the orange-furred monsters didn’t make it. Mordan slashed upward and took it out of the air mid-leap. Her blow brought it down to the rooftop, and Perdemor pounced and ripped off its head.
Marsh felt her stomach roll as blood and other materials sprayed the rubble around him.
“They’re getting away!” Aisha’s shrill call brought Marsh abruptly back to the present and she stepped into the nearest patch of shadow, preparing to close the distance between them. As she did, she watched a large, multi-legged form race out from the base of the building, its forelimbs a blur of metal in the afternoon light.
The blades gave the Ookens pause, but it wasn’t until Brigitte sent a large shard of stone through its skull that it fell, leaving the mantid free to find its next target. In the meantime, a large gray blur had brought down the leading creature.
The monster screamed and thrashed, but Bristlebear wasn’t alone. Silvermoth and Mousekiller were with him, and more of the pack arrived soon after, but even with Etk’k’s help, they were struggling.
“Help me,” Tamlin murmured, and the air came alive. “Only the Ookens,” he added, directing the lightning into the roiling mass of tentacles, fur, and fang.
Wolves yelped and Etk’k stumbled back, but the lightning did as Tamlin asked, receding at the boy’s request. For a few long moments, silence reigned as humans, wolves, and mantid scanned their surroundings for more.
“Was that all of them?” Marsh asked, searching the shadows and crevices for more.
Yes. We have taken down the enemies of the pride, Mordan confirmed. She sniffed the air, sending a querulous growl through the ruins.
To Marsh’s surprise, the kat was answered by several light yips and a soft, crooning howl, and Bristlebear and Silvermoth trotted over to nose around at her feet.
Their trail leads that way, but it will be gone by dawn. There is rain coming.
It leads to the portal, Etk’k’s voice interrupted after the wolves had moved a few steps, their direction clear. I can show you the way.
“Brigitte, Aisha, Tamlin, are you ready?” Marsh asked, noting that the wolf was right. The clouds had slowed, and the wind felt damp against her skin. She wondered how long they had.
“I don’t have my armor,” Brigitte replied to her question, then added, “but we really don’t have time to go back.”
“Marsh can show you how to make shadow armor,” Tamlin told her before Marsh had a chance to respond, “and Aisha can show you how to use a shield of rock.”
“And we always have weapons,” Brigitte agreed, pulling a spear of stone from the rock making up the nearest wall and hanging a shield of shadow from her forearm. She glanced at Marsh. “How do you do armor?”
“It’s like the shield, only you pull it around your body and ask it to protect you,” Marsh explained.
Brigitte’s brow furrowed, then darkness shrouded her form. There was a moment where her face completely vanished, then the shadow cleared from there.
“Got it!” she exclaimed triumphantly. “Now, what happened to Roeglin?”
He was taken, Etk’k informed them. A lump blocked Marsh’s throat
and stole her voice. As were my people. We must get them back.
It was the first time Marsh had seen him afraid.
“Show me the way,” she ordered, glad to see Aisha scrambling onto Mordan’s back and two kits and a pup closing around them.
The child wouldn’t stay behind, but she was well-protected. Tamlin ran beside them, as close as he could get with the kit and Scruffknuckle in the way. The boy didn’t seem to mind, though. Despite the occasional glance to make sure his sister was okay, he kept his eye on the mantid as it led the way over the half-buried street and into the semi-collapsed structure of another building.
Normally, Marsh would try to work out what a ruin had been. Today, she didn’t bother. The clouds gathering above seemed only fitting. Roeglin had been taken, and she had to get him back. It made her wonder what had happened.
They were waiting, Etk’k told her. Tok thought they knew we would come, they struck so fast, and with electro-nets.
“What nets?”
Nets that hold lightning inside their strands and release it when they strike their target.
“Oh.” It made a horrible kind of sense. Lightning paralyzed. Even if a net didn’t trap its target, the lightning inside its strands would prevent the person it hit from controlling their limbs.
When they arrived at the portal, the shattered chunks of stone told their own story. The Ookens had blown the barrier from the inside, sending the stone flying almost to the junction.
Pulse gun, Etk’k murmured, and Marsh wished the mantid would make sense. Not even the image the mantid sent by way of apology explained how such a weapon had destroyed the stone.
The stone…
“We need the mages,” she gasped, remembering Brin and Sylvie. “Without them, we won’t be able to calculate where to direct the lightning.”
She gulped, pushing back the sense of despair that threatened to overwhelm her. “I don’t even know if there’s anyone else who can do what they do if we lose them. We need them to help us close the portal.”
Agreed, Etk’k responded, and we must retrieve my leader. Without him, there is no future for my people. We must get him back.
Ahead of her, the portal still shone, sending a dull red glow down the tunnel. Mordan, the wolves, and the children didn’t hesitate. They ran into it without stopping, making Marsh’s heart leap to her throat.
Etk’k outdistanced her, racing through the portal in a blur of limbs and shadow.
Without him, there is no future, echoed through Marsh’s head as she followed. It didn’t matter what lay on the other side. She had to get her people back.
Roeglin not least among them.
23
Infiltration
I have them, Etk’k announced.
Have who? Marsh used a short staff to block and trap another tentacle, wrapping it around the short bar before asking the shadow to transform into a two-edged blade.
The Ooken shrieked as the tentacle was slashed apart, but it didn’t seem to matter. The orange-furred monster had more.
Their minds, Etk’k replied. Now they cannot tell the others we have arrived.
How… Marsh began but decided it didn’t matter. She disentangled her blade and thrust it into the Ooken’s chest. We need to warn the Four Caverns about these.
Agreed.
Ruins rose around them, the Devastation of another world. Summer’s heat hung thickly in the air, but the difference didn’t end there. Instead of the stone being brown or gray or white, everything here was touched by a dull red veneer, and the plants were dead, what few there were.
“What is this place?” Brigitte murmured.
The shadow mistress was briefly wrapped in a tentacle, but her armor shifted, growing sharp-edged spikes that severed the limb even as she drove a dart into her attacker’s chest. Marsh killed a second one, then a third.
She searched for Aisha along their link and found the child coated in stone and impervious to attack as she caused spikes of stone to erupt from the closest wall. The kats and Scruffknuckle worked to keep the area behind her clear while she dealt with the Ookens up front.
“Those things don’t fight fair!” Tamlin observed from inside a maelstrom of shadow.
He’d adapted his sister’s tactic to create a whirling storm of dark fragments.
“Just count yourself lucky that our magic works over here,” Marsh snapped back. “We’d be shagged and shroomed without it.”
Roeglin? she called, trying to contact him along their link.
I am sorry. The block is non-specific, Etk’k apologized. The only reason we can speak is that you are linked through me, and we are close.
So, we need to kill these guys before I can try to talk to Roeglin?
That is correct.
Well, why didn’t you say so?
Etk’k had no answer for that, but Marsh didn’t need one.
Around her, the wolves fought, her children fought, everyone fought because Tamlin was right. The Ookens didn’t fight fair, and they weren’t stupid. They’d attacked as soon as the children and kats had come through.
Only Tamlin’s quick thinking had saved them. The boy had thrown a shadow shield over them as the attack came and kept it moving with them as they ran. Etk’k had arrived in time to throw a different kind of shield; she’d have to ask the mantid what he’d done later.
For now, she was grateful he had. She focused her energy on taking down the next tentacled monster, glancing around the battlefield as she did so. There weren’t as many of them now.
The kats were working with Tamlin and Aisha, and they’d reduced the initial mass of orange and blue to a scant half-dozen. It was still a lot, but at least the kids and kats outnumbered their foes now.
On the other side of her, Etk’k was using both hands and his feet to take his foes out, sometimes singly and sometimes in pairs. The wolves had divided into two groups, with Bristlebear and a half-dozen packmates protecting the mantid, while Silvermoth worked with the rest to keep Brigitte free and clear.
There was a yelp and Tamlin snarled, “I’ve had enough of this!”
Merde! Marsh felt her skin tingle with accumulated power.
“Keep it small!” she snapped, smashing her buckler into the Ooken face coming at her.
“Small?”
“I want you to have enough energy to call something bigger when we get to wherever they took Roeglin.”
“Bien.”
Marsh slashed another tentacle at the same time as she reached into the shadows to touch the energy the boy was gathering.
“That should be enough, boy,” she murmured quietly, so as not to distract him and through gritted teeth as she blocked another attack with her shield and ended the Ooken with a savage cut into its chest.
Jerking the blade free, she lost contact with the energy, surprised as tiny shards of power rained down around her, striking her opponents with deadly accuracy and stopping once the last one had fallen.
In the silence of the aftermath, she stared at Tamlin in open-mouthed surprise. “Where did you…”
She closed her mouth and gathered her thoughts. “You’ve gotten better,” she finished.
He grinned at her, moving to tap carefully on the carapace of stone surrounding his sister. “Aysh? You can come out. It’s safe.”
I have dropped the shield, Etk’k told her. You should be able to speak to them now.
He paused. Tok says to hurry. The facility is remote but has sent for transports.
As he spoke, the stone armor melted away from Aisha, returning to the ground beneath her feet. She pointed at a worn trail through the rubble. “They’re that way. Master Ennermet says to hurry.”
Marsh frowned at the child. “And does he say how many Ookens there are, or where they’ve been taken?”
As if she’d summoned him, Master Envermet was in her head. He says to picture this location in your head and portal your asses here before any more of them arrive.
His acerbic tone was accompanied
by the image of an open pit in the center of a walled-in courtyard.
He also says to save some energy so you can open a portal for our new friends and us back to the gate, he added. You remember what the area around that looks like, can’t you?
Marsh had started to run after Aisha, but she jolted to an abrupt halt. “Tamlin! Brigitte! Aisha! We’re going to open a portal to them.”
“Bear! Dan!” Aisha’s childish treble summoned the animals back, and Mordan and the pack leaders relayed the order to return.
Marsh turned to Etk’k and the two shadow mages. “We need to remember this space well enough to open a gate to it. Master Envermet says there are people we have to bring back.”
Speaking of Master Envermet reminded her she hadn’t heard from Roeglin.
I’m here, he said as if thinking of him had called him to her mind.
Are you okay?
I’ll be fine. That was Roeglin at his most evasive.
His words sent a jolt of panic through her. Ro?
Just get here.
The connection closed, but before she could react, a gentle touch brought her back to the present.
“We’re ready when you are,” Brigitte told her. “Etk’k has shared the destination, and we’ve all tried to remember exactly what the gate looks like from here.”
The shadow mistress’ words reminded her that she needed to do the same, no matter how much of a hurry she was in to get to Roeglin. Brigitte and Tamlin came to stand beside her as she studied the gate, trying to commit it to memory.
She was guessing there wouldn’t be a lot of time to create the portal, and she didn’t know what state the mages with Roeglin were going to be in. Deeps! She didn’t even know how many of them were injured or dying or…
A small hand patted her side, and she looked down to see Aish reaching past Brigitte to give her comfort. The little girl was sitting astride Mordan’s blood-spattered back, her other hand wound firmly in the kat’s fur.
“I can fix,” the little girl assured her, catching her worry about the injured, “but we must go now.”
Marsh gave the child a shaky smile. “Okay, then.”
She looked at Tamlin and Brigitte. “Are you ready?”
Magic Below Paris Complete Series Boxed Set (Books 1 - 8): Trading Into Shadow, Trading Into Darkness, Trading Close to Light, Trading By Firelight, Trading by Shroomlight, plus 3 more Page 184