“I’m good at my job.”
“What was in the theriaca?”
“A soup of minerals and algae. It’s very nutritious for the dryads as well as mentally clarifying.”
“Have you met Potentate Heartwood before?”
“Yes.”
I resisted the urge to drum my fingers on his stomach in frustration. I’d interviewed the captain before, and I knew he took a not-so-secret delight in being taciturn with journalists. Or maybe just with me.
Mindful of the cramp forming in my neck, I discarded a dozen questions about the dryads. I could follow up with Grant later, perhaps to write a second, smaller exposé on the dryad community. He wouldn’t be able to dodge my questions forever, and however today’s events panned out, Dahlia would likely be pleased with a follow-up article.
But first I had to write this story.
“What is this mysterious weapon that enables you to stop a spriggan single-handedly?”
“Landewednack dragon’s breath.”
“I’ve never heard of it.”
Grant grunted.
“Is a Landewednack a type of dragon?” I tried to picture a dragon tolerating being shackled in a harpy’s nest, but my imagination failed me.
“Landewednack is a place,” Grant said.
He swerved to avoid a majestic oak, and I tightened my arms around him when my balance tipped. I decided to wait to pester for ancillary details until we were on more stable ground and stuck to the most important questions.
“Are you sure Beldame Zipporah will have the dragon’s breath?”
“Positive.”
“Why?”
“You don’t live as long as she has without planning for every eventuality.”
“So you don’t actually know if she has it? You only think she does?”
“I’m not going to talk in circles with you. I know I make this look easy, Kylie, but it takes a certain amount of concentration to hold all these weaves together and keep us moving.”
I closed my mouth and considered our predicament. When I tilted my head up to shout my next question, Grant’s ribs expanded in another sigh that I pretended not to notice.
“When the spriggan demolishes its way through the forest, Zipporah will be in as much danger as everyone else. Shouldn’t she give us the dragon’s breath?”
Grant shook his head. “Zipporah gives away nothing for free.”
“But we’ll be protecting her nest, too.”
“The spriggan isn’t threatening her nest.”
“Not yet, but it will.”
“It only might. If the spriggan does, she would have no problem killing it, but until she’s directly threatened, she won’t act. Zipporah doesn’t care about anything else the spriggan destroys or whether it wipes out the entire population of dryads and their trees. We care, and she will use that to exact the highest price she can.”
I wanted to protest, but arguing with Grant wouldn’t change Zipporah’s reputation.
The trees zipped by at a dizzying rate, and I closed my eyes. I tried to enjoy the feel of Grant’s strong body pressed against mine, but trepidation nipped at me, making it impossible to relax. After far too long alone with my own thoughts, Grant brought the platform to a halt. I peered around him. We had arrived.
The harpy’s nest roosted atop a mammoth spire of boulders far above the loamy soil of the forest. An unnatural break in the trees created a clearing extending fifty feet around the base, and Grant stopped us within the shade of the trees. I squinted against the sun to study the nest at the top. From here, it resembled an overturned beaver’s dam, twisted trunks used the way normal birds would use twigs to build a colossal bowl. An even taller, jagged rock bleached completely white by the sun jutted from the back of the nest.
The breeze shifted, carrying a foul odor. I amended my assessment: That wasn’t sun damage on the rock. It was feces.
Ew.
Grant had signaled Quinn to drop down along our trail under the tree canopy several minutes earlier, and the gargoyle coasted to a sliding stop next to us. I stepped off the platform, and Grant dissolved it and the link between us at the same time. My vision tunneled dark around the edges, and I bent forward to brace my hands on my knees. My back popped and I flexed cramped fingers. When Quinn withdrew his enhancement, leaving me alone inside my magic, I forced myself straight. After having insisted on accompanying Grant, I refused to let him blame me for slowing him down. Fortunately, he wasn’t paying attention to me.
“This is as far as you go, Quinn,” he said.
“But I can help.”
“Zipporah would love to get her hands on a gargoyle, and she wouldn’t be inclined to let go. I can’t protect you from her, not alone, and the last thing we need to contend with is a gargoyle-enhanced harpy.”
“I wouldn’t amplify her magic,” Quinn protested.
“Zipporah is a master at coercion. And unfortunately, we both know there are ways to force you. It’s best if we avoid tempting her at all.”
Quinn’s wings slumped. I could tell he wanted to put on a brave face and insist on going with us, but he’d been used and abused for his magic-enhancing abilities before, and those emotional scars ran deep.
“You were an enormous help in getting us here quickly,” I said, drawing the gargoyle’s attention. If I felt this tired after having Quinn’s boost, I could only imagine how much more fatigued I would be if he hadn’t accompanied us. “We’ll need your help getting to the spriggan, too. But right now, Grant and I have got this. Stay here, and stay hidden, and we’ll be back for you.”
“Better yet, Kylie, you’re staying here with Quinn.”
“No, I’m not.”
“Yes, you are.”
I planted my hands on my hips. “Why did you bring me this far if you planned to ditch me at the foot of Beldame Zipporah’s nest?”
“Because I couldn’t trust you to stay put back at the meadow. You’d have either followed me here or trailed the dryads to the spriggan. This was the safest option for all of us.”
He thought of himself as my babysitter. How flattering.
“I guess I should stay here, then,” I said, choosing my words carefully.
I surveyed the unnatural pile of massive rocks. The harpy must have carried each gigantic boulder to this location to assemble her aberrant stone perch. It stretched high into the sky, well above the canopy. Somewhere up there, Zipporah lurked out of sight. Heights didn’t scare me, but the harpy did.
“What are you waiting for?” I asked Grant.
He squinted at me, as if he could read my thoughts if he stared hard enough. Finally, he said, “Stay in the shadows of these trees. The harpy has keen vision, and I won’t be here to protect you if she spots you.”
With one last dubious glance over his shoulder at me, Grant jogged across the barren ground between the tree line and the rock spire, and out of sight behind the boulders.
“Are you really going to stay with me?” Quinn asked.
I shook my head. Missing my chance to meet Beldame Zipporah wasn’t an option. Besides, Grant would never tell me about his meeting in enough detail to satisfy me, and a good reporter got firsthand accounts.
“Promise me you’ll stay hidden,” I said.
Quinn nodded, his wide mouth curled in a deep frown.
I waited another forty-five seconds, then tiptoed after Grant.
6
I climbed the jumbled boulders cautiously, concerned as much with my footing as with attracting Grant’s attention. Ideally, I’d catch up with him near the top. We both knew Grant didn’t have the authority to curtail my movements in Emerald Crown Grove, and he had even less legal right to dictate my actions atop Beldame Zipporah’s mountain, but that wouldn’t stop him from trying to order me around. If I timed it right, he’d have no choice but to allow me to accompany him to the harpy’s nest, and I wouldn’t even have to argue with him.
I scrambled my way around the mountain, angling upward in a long, spiral
pattern, following Grant’s footsteps in the dust. Zipporah had assembled the hunks of granite and feldspar with a focus on stability, not ease of foot traffic. If anything, she’d probably designed it to be more difficult to scale.
The sun baked my body and the mountain with equal ambivalence, and the dark rocks singed my fingertips when precarious sections of the trail forced me to cling to stone handholds for balance. Sweat trickled down my spine and plastered my shirt to my body beneath the strap of my bag. After the first turn around the mountain without spotting Grant, I paused in the shade of an overhanging boulder and surveyed my progress. I hadn’t climbed even halfway up the mountain, but one slip from this height and I’d take a bone-breaking plummet to the ragged rocks below—or the fall would kill me. I pushed the thought from my mind and resumed my climb.
My foot hit a patch of scree, and I slipped. Flinging out a hand to grab the rock next to me for balance, I regained my footing, but I couldn’t stop the mini-landslide cascading down the mountain, or the racket it created. I froze, listening for Grant. I hadn’t heard him once, and when he didn’t appear now, I couldn’t decide whether to be relieved or alarmed. He must have been farther ahead of me than I’d anticipated. I needed to pick up my pace.
I scrambled up two smaller stones, straightening to trot along a path no wider than my foot, clinging to the grainy surface of a tall rock for balance. When I looked up, Grant loomed in front of me.
I yelped and lost my grip. Teetering, I windmilled my arms. Grant’s hand shot out and grabbed the strap of my bag, hauling me to safety on the flat rock next to him. I started to thank him but thought better of it when I took in his thunderous expression.
“I told you not to follow me.”
I twisted my arm from his grasp. “You keep forgetting that I have a job to do, just like you.”
“Our jobs are nothing alike. Mine is to defend the citizens of Terra Haven from all manner of deadly threats. Your job is to fill column space. If you don’t do your job, the paper fluffs a title’s font size to take up the empty space. If I don’t do my job, people die.”
“So you’ve got strong magic and were born with a body that could build big muscles. Good for you. That doesn’t make what you do any more important than what I do.”
“You can’t be serious.” Grant crossed his arms, chest inflated, doing a great impersonation of a puffed-up wall.
My spine snapped straight and I pushed into his personal space. If he thought he could use his larger stature to intimidate me, he didn’t know me that well. “There’s more than one way to protect and defend people,” I snarled. “You can spend your time scurrying around saving individuals; I prefer to disseminate information, raise awareness of problems, and save thousands of lives by arming the citizens of Terra Haven with the knowledge to save themselves.”
“How noble of you. But explain to me how serving yourself up to Zipporah like a clumsy, brain-dead goat is going to ‘save’ the readers of the Chronicle.”
“You act like there’s a chance the harpy will notice me. All I’ll have to do is stand behind your colossal ego, and she’ll never even know I’m there.”
Grant growled my name, and a shiver slid down my abdomen. I disguised my reaction behind a scowl. Stepping back, I crossed my arms, mirroring his posture. He blocked the path to higher ground, so I was forced to crane my head back to glare at him.
“Obtaining the Landewednack dragon’s breath is a part of the story,” I said.
“At best, it’s a footnote.”
“It could be the most important part.”
“It’s not, and I won’t let you add to Zipporah’s notoriety. The last thing we need are more idiots scaling this mountain, feeding themselves to the harpy.”
“Too bad it’s not up to you.”
His fists bunched against his folded biceps in an impressive display of strength that strained the sleeves of his shirt. “So help me, I’ll tie you to this rock and leave you until I’m done with the spriggan unless you—”
“I need this story,” I blurted out. “If I bring my editor the headline story today, she’ll send me to the everlasting tree. This is the only way I can attend the blooming. Plus, the seed drop will be the biggest story the paper has covered in decades.”
Grant relaxed fractionally. “So it’s not a rumor? The tree is blooming?”
“Our gryphon scout confirmed it this morning, and that’s when my editor issued the challenge for a top-notch story.”
His dark eyes scanned my features. “What would you have done if the spriggan hadn’t shown up today?”
“There have been thefts at the docks. I would have done some investigating.” I shifted, unsure if I could trust this quieter, inquisitive Grant.
“And Nathan?”
“He wants to win, and he’s not above stealing my story to do it. He wouldn’t have known anything was happening in the grove if he hadn’t been there when my rum— when Quinn broke the news.” I hoped I’d caught my flub quick enough to fool Grant. He didn’t know about my rumor scouts, and I preferred to keep it that way. “I’ve been monitoring the dryads for a few weeks, and now Nathan’s trying to take point on this story simply because he’s a senior writer. I’m not letting him have it.”
“Okay.” Grant glanced up the mountain, then back at me. “But you still haven’t given me a reason you can’t wait with Quinn. If you come with me, you’ll only make things worse.”
“I’m not completely useless or the imbecile you make me out to be.”
“Prove it. Go back down before—”
I sensed the magic swell behind him before I saw it. A cyclone of air and metallic blades rounded the craggy incline, barreling straight for us. Sparks flew when the blades nicked the rocks, and I flinched away from the ricochet of granite shrapnel. Grant cursed and grabbed my arm, positioning me between the rock wall and him.
“Link. Now!”
I fumbled to collect equal levels of magic, eyes fixated on the vicious storm. If the serrated cyclone reached us, it’d slice through bone as easily as flesh. The link I passed Grant trembled but stabilized when he snatched hold of it. He folded it into his magic and seized the elements without waiting for me to adjust. My internal compass tilted, and I braced a hand against the rock to stay upright. By the time I regained my bearings, a ward of earth and fire encapsulated us. The cyclone shredded the outer edges of the ward, and Grant drew heavily on my magic to strengthen it. The sharp blades within the cyclone continued to whittle away at his protective barrier, but at a slower rate.
“What is that?”
“A deterrent.”
Thank you, Mr. Obvious. “I meant, what are those sharp objects?” Grant’s ward should have been enough to deflect and dull normal blades, but these continued to eat away at our combined magic.
“Feathers. Let’s go.”
He dragged me two steps down the mountain before I realized he intended to take me back to the forest. I dug in my heels—not that Grant noticed or slowed. The deadly cyclone accelerated around us, reversing course to throw its full force in the path of our retreat, dicing into the ward. When we backpedaled up the mountain, the assault slackened, though it didn’t fully let up.
“The only way to go is up,” I said, trying not to sound pleased.
Grant’s scowl should have bored straight through the mountain. His jaw locked as he shoved back down the mountain, his hand a bruising vise on my wrist. Again, the cyclone’s attack escalated, diminishing when we reversed course.
“She’s herding us,” I said.
“And whittling away our strength. I bet this is designed to pressure us. Zipporah wants us worn out by the time we reach her nest. It’s smart.” He released my arm and gave me a flat stare. “Keep up.”
We climbed, our steps nearly on top of each other, the ward forcing us to stay close enough that our shoulders and thighs bumped each other. More than once, Grant hoisted me across terrain too narrow for us to travel side by side, and he carried me with all
the effort and reverence he would a sack of dirty laundry. The cyclone never relented, rotating to attack from different directions, the ferocity of the blades waxing and waning with no rhythm, making it impossible to relax our guards for even a few seconds. Grant was right: Beldame Zipporah was softening our defenses to make us more vulnerable, and our only recourse was to keep moving.
My thighs burned from the perpetual climb, my footsteps turning clumsy from the exertion and Grant’s heavy reliance on my magic to strengthen the ward. He may have resented my presence, but he did actually need me.
The lethal whirlwind chased us to the base of the nest and then dissipated. Freed, metallic-edged feathers whistled through the air, embedding in the wooden limbs of the nest in staccato thumps and sparking off the granite boulders before clattering down the mountain. Those that struck our ward bounced harmlessly to our feet, slid down the uneven surface of the rock, and disappeared. I shuddered. Without the ward, we both would have been decapitated.
Grant dropped the link between us without warning, and I sagged against the nest, pretending to be engrossed in studying one of the feathers while I collected myself. My magic flexed with the lassitude of an overworked muscle when I tested it. I sucked in a deep breath, instantly regretting it. The stench that had wafted down to the forest floor hung in a thick, cloying reek here.
When my legs could hold me without shaking, I stepped back from the nest to examine it. This close, I couldn’t take in its entirety. Easily larger than my studio apartment in both depth and width, the nest protruded from the harpy-made mountain in a network of rotting oaks and pines, all the gaps between tree trunks stuffed with detritus. If a bird and a rat had come together to make a nest, this would have been it, except this nest could fit a gryphon and have room left over. Just how big was Beldame Zipporah?
Grant surveyed the forest below us, a hand held to his brow to shield the sunlight from his eyes. Somewhere out there a spriggan ravaged the landscape, but we couldn’t see it from here.
I should have let it go, but I couldn’t stop myself from saying, “Good thing I came along. You wouldn’t have made it without me.”
Deadlines & Dryads Page 5