by A. J. Aalto
“It’s false light, dearest one,” Harry murmured. “Step lively to the River Warden, you two, and keep your teeth together. You are in weird and wonderful lands now. There will be no humans in your world, not a single one, until the end of the night.” He looked at Batten with genuine sympathy. “Our Mark will need a few minutes to adjust, perhaps. Are you quite well, my carrion hunter?”
Batten was staring up at the sun, and I saw what was bothering him; the moon was out, the stars glittering like splinters of broken glass on flat black marble, but a false golden sun hovered beneath it. It was warm. I heard birds in the trees around us but didn’t see them. I heard insects that didn’t pester me, didn’t flit about our heads. I felt watched, and the eyes were not welcoming; there was no doubt that I did not belong here. My hackles rose. I tried to hide that I felt so out of place; I wouldn’t fool Harry, but maybe Batten wouldn’t know that I was seconds from fleeing back to the guard hut. I’d rather spend this strange night-day drinking coffee with the two grumpy soldiers than go any further into this weirdness.
If I squinted at the guard hut, I could still see the snow falling lightly on Norway. I wondered if I was standing on Russian soil at all. I glanced at the cement step at the back of the hut. There was a symbol there that I recognized as the Russian Imperial two-headed eagle in bold gold paint, but on the horizontal bit of the cement step was a different symbol entirely, something that looked a bit like an Assyrian winged bull or lion, but without the beard and with the addition of a giant, barbed scorpion’s tail. Riding the bull creature was a wee man wielding a bow and arrow; the little guy also had wings. We’ve crossed six inches of Russia and landed straight in the Bitter Pass, I thought, and Harry’s words wafted through my head. There will be no humans in your world, not a single one, until the end of the night.
As we approached the brook, a woman appeared where she hadn't been a moment ago, as though she was a feature of the river itself, revealed by its proximity. Curious, I stepped backwards until she disappeared completely. Four steps. I took two steps forward, and I could barely discern her filmy outline. On the third step, she flickered in and out like an old TV, or a radio station at the edge of its broadcast range. I stepped back again, but Harry grabbed my elbow and hauled me into a forward march.
“There may be time for your shenanigans on our return trip,” Harry said, releasing me once I was in motion. “The River Warden is expecting us.”
In a long white gown, the River Warden crouched on the opposite side of the brook. She certainly looked human to me, but Harry sent a trickle of cool warning through the Bond, and in turn, I touched Batten’s bicep to offer him a nudge of that same warning. I needn’t have bothered; his muscles twitched under my touch, tense with anticipation.
The woman held a carved staff of rowan wood upright on the ground, capped by ball of light, sporting a knot of glowing mushrooms with bright red caps, spotted with white, and their feathery gills spread out beneath. On the far side of the river, ghostly white birch trees were thick and close around a thrice-forked road at the foot of steep, jagged cliffs. Atop the cliffs, evenly spaced towers looked like abandoned churches, their pointed Gothic windows filled with silhouetted figures.
My feeling of being watched by hostile eyes intensified. I glanced at Batten. He’d seen the appearing-disappearing woman; he didn’t seem perturbed on the outside, but I had no doubt that he was making copious mental notes. I tried to match his expression, faking that been-here-done-this look on his face, propping my gloved hands on my hips and then switching to crossing my arms over my chest, not able to find comfort in either brave stance. I finally stuffed my hands in my pockets and went to stand behind Harry as he sorted through his papers.
I looked past the unspeaking River Warden at the swiftly trickling creek, its bed full of round rocks worn down by the incessant, lapidary passage of clear, purling water. If not for Waify McGandalfpants on the other side, with her bouquet of deadly mushrooms, I could have easily waded across to the other bank without help, or hopped it with one exaggerated step, but I had the feeling that, much like the stamps of the military men, her welcome was imperative. Harry had said that we wouldn’t run into any humans, so perhaps she had magic skills I couldn’t fathom, other than the ability to wield a stick that glowed at her command. The Blue Sense, upon consultation, reported: wisdom, confidence, compassion. These were not bad things on their own, but she didn’t fear two fully armed humans and a four hundred-year-old undead fang-beast who could snap a Jeep in half. She didn’t fear us at all. Furthermore, she felt concern for us. Interesting. Maybe she smelled my fear. I should have switched to a stronger antiperspirant.
She drew herself more upright, her posture moving from relaxed observation to something more official, though far from martial, spreading her arms toward Harry in welcome. “Who would cross my waters?”
Harry bowed low, and answered, “Lord Guy Harrick of House Dreppenstedt at Svikheimslending, and two human companions.”
Something oily slid behind the pupils of her eyes, filling them with a silver-green sheen as she turned her gaze down at me. “I would see your path.”
Harry nodded to the scribbled map in my hand and I thrust it at her; I had to lean across the narrow waters to do so, and in doing so, something else became clear: there were shadows standing to either side of her in the water, sentinels in the shape of large wolves, their bulk unmistakable. They never became clear, and when I looked directly at them, they faded out, and others, further off, appeared like dark smoke. The River Warden was not alone, and this border was not simply guarded by a solitary woman with a mushroom-encrusted stick. I could definitely go in for some sentinel spookwolves around the cabin at Shaw's Fist, as long as they wouldn't snack on Bob the Cat.
She tilted her staff toward my paper to examine the Russian guard’s handwriting, and when she did, a lock of her fair hair fell away from her ear and across her cheek. The upper ridge of the exposed ear had a subtle but unmistakable point. Elf? Faerie? To the best of my knowledge, there were few elves left, and they tended to congregate in Scottish lands. European fae, on the other hand, were everywhere, they just chose to be invisible to the human eye, more often than not.
I squelched the temptation to pull off a glove and reach for her like a clod; regardless of my curiosity, it was none of my business who or what she was. This was her backyard, not mine. I glanced at Batten, who was politely averting his gaze from the ear he’d no doubt noticed, following Harry’s lead. If this was no big deal to the revenant, Kill-Notch certainly wasn’t going to show any excitement.
The River Warden nodded at the scribbles.
“You’ll be going north this evening, Lord Guy,” she told Harry. “Stay on the path to your left, please.”
She lowered her lighted staff closer to the river. Now I could see that only a few of the rocks under the water were actually stone. The others had mouths and limbs and were snapping, biting, squirming, and tumbling over one another like lobsters in a tank. Black eels flashed between them. Okay, so shadow wolves, attack rocks, and eels. Gotcha. I made a mental note, in case I ever had to venture back here without Harry, not to fall in the damn water.
Harry went first, choosing his step carefully, and this time, Batten and I were happy to let him. As far as I was concerned, Harry had become our Sherpa in the wild, weird wilderness of the Bitter Pass.
I copied his careful steps under the guiding light of the River Warden’s staff. As I tiptoed over each slick stone, hoping my Keds would grip, the eels shied away from the light.
“Any idea what the fuck just happened?” Batten asked, stepping behind me.
“I don’t think we’re in Kansas anymore.”
“Call me Toto,” Batten warned, “and I’m gonna slap that ass.”
“Mind your tongues, children,” Harry advised. “We are not alone, nor will we be alone for much of the journey through the Pass.”
I pulled up behind him at the fork that entered the forest. “So, we w
alk from here?”
“Is it so much of a chore?” Harry asked, lifting his face to the warmth of the false sun above. “It’s a marvelous day for a stroll.”
“Funny for her to say north since all three forks go north,” Batten pointed out.
Harry said, “’T'would seem to be the case, my carrion hunter, but if you look carefully, only one path is true north. The other two shy away.”
“Who are these indigenous people, Harry? Fae?”
“You’ll see.”
“We get to meet more of them?”
“We must.” His face betrayed some regret, though I couldn’t have guessed why at the time; there was no fear coming through the Bond. I thought, despite all this “marvelous day for a stroll” talk, Harry wanted to be done with this part of the trip as soon as possible.
“And that shadow watching us from the cliff top?” Batten asked. “Must we meet him, too?”
I knew it. I tried to peer up into the towers, but all I could see was the bright bronze glint of several long pipes. Telescopes?
“You should only hope to meet him if you were to rush past all the formalities and worry the guardians of the Pass,” Harry explained. “And then, you should only hope to survive such a meeting. That, my dear lad, is a manticore.”
I squinted until I picked out the same shape as I’d seen on the step outside the guard hut: the bulky lion body, the barbed scorpion tail, the tattered, leathery bat wings, the fluffy lion mane. Somehow, I knew he’d have a face like a bulldog with a mouth full of wasps. Martyaxwar quinquestriatus. My heart skipped a beat and my breath caught. I was watching a real, live manticore? And it’s watching us.
“The First Turned named him Mithridates,” Harry said. “He is the last manticore sire, named for a Persian soldier killed by a petulant King Artaxerxes. There are seven females left, but they are kept apart from Mithridates; the last thing mankind needs is a pride of their whelps roaming the hot, sandy wastes, gobbling up both man and beast. Now, he serves as one of the many safeguards we employ to keep the debt vultures and vampire hunters away.”
I frowned. “Whose decision was it to put a stop to manticore breeding?”
“It was a request by the town of Dausdava, made to House Vulvolak by the Dacian people living in his territory. Suspecting Prince Vulvolak would have a care for their well-being and could manage the task, the townspeople petitioned him to lead the male manticore away in exchange for bending the neck. He brought it here, to rule over the Bitter Pass under the care of the fae.”
Batten did a relatively good job of attempting to cover his distaste. “An entire town agreed to feed this Vulvolak thing?”
It had been a while since Batten had referred to the undead as “things.” Hearing about a feeding trade-off had stirred old prejudices.
“To be fair, at that point in history they probably already were,” I guessed. “Unofficially or unwillingly.”
Harry did not confirm or deny, though he seemed mildly perturbed that I should feel the need to point it out. “They repaid Prince Vulvolak’s removal of the manticore with generations of grateful service, right up until the day the prince retired north to his stronghold on Svikheimslending. To this day, there is a place in modern day Bulgaria that honors the name Vulvolak, and families that will still bend the neck for those visiting Bulgaria from his bloodline.”
Batten nodded at this. “I noticed that his DaySitter shares his last name?”
“Didn’t realize you paid that much attention,” I said, mildly impressed and at the same time slightly worried. It wasn’t unlike Batten to notice things, but to mull them over and bring them up for discussion? He wasn’t the most talkative sort, and chose his words carefully. Why bring this particular tidbit up? “They’re just names.”
“You don’t share Harry’s surname,” Batten pointed out.
“Alastor Vulvolak took Elana as his wife,” I explained quickly, growing more uncomfortable with the topic by the second. “That’s unusual. As far as I know, only House Vulvolak does that. Say, Harry, does the banner of House Vulvolak have a manticore on it?”
“No, my pet, it has falling wolves, and currently includes the colors of the Bulgarian flag.”
“No interest in becoming Mrs. Dreppenstedt?” Batten asked me.
Harry’s face did not change, but I felt his rise in distress and embarrassment.
“It’s not our way,” I said smoothly, not letting it bother me in the least. I felt Harry relax through our Bond. “The Vulvolaks always marry their DaySitters, just as the Duchoslavs almost always choose a male member of the Rys family as their DaySitter.” One of the Duchoslavs, Krystof, had been healing from a rather nasty truck-drag incident in our cellar under the watchful eye of my brother until they’d parted ways.
Harry made a noise of agreement. “I think you will find, Mr. Batten, that the eldest of our kind take their houses’ customs and traditions very seriously.”
“And the king?” Batten asked lightly, though Harry wasn’t fooled any more than I was. These secrets were not being imparted to a friend of the court; the vampire hunter was soaking up information, and neither Harry nor I doubted he would use it if the opportunity was there. “Is he very traditional? Does he have a wife as well?”
Harry’s answer was a mysterious grumble. “At present? I really couldn’t say.”
***
We passed through a wide swath of forest where the trees were so tightly knit that the loops of their exposed roots seemed to pile atop one another in a writhing, woody mass, the canopy above us nearly as tightly overlaid. Their wide, ancient trunks were covered in soft robes of verdant moss. Harry moved ahead of us with a light, quick step, his heavy black coat swaying behind him. Batten and I had shed ours. Where the dirt path became damp or was cut with trickling creeks, someone had laid planks of wood which were slick with dew and didn’t look nailed together. Where the water was deeper, stones had been piled to offer a bridge, but at least these all looked and acted like boring, regular rocks. I was still very aware of the cliffs above the woods and the high, dark towers spaced evenly along the ridge. We were absolutely being watched, but Harry didn’t seem worried by that, and through the Bond I only picked up his concern about my future behavior.
A flicker in the dark underbrush to our right drew my gaze. There was a thick growth of short, stumpy white mushrooms beneath a fallen log and a long whip of bluebells woven into the greenery. Where the shadows became heavy, the mushrooms seemed to glow. Through the trees I could see one of the other paths that had been offered after crossing the river. A path not taken. Sun shone through the canopy there, and I had an urge to go there that I quickly recognized as unwise.
Harry murmured, “Do reign in your temptation to stray, ducky,” and cast a long glance over his shoulder at me, eyes flashing chrome. “I really do not have the time to rescue you from your own missteps at present.”
“No,” said a high male voice from the trees. “Nor do I. Nor do we. Nor do we or I or me or us. Hullo, Guy.”
Harry paused in his step and then turned with a great smile that I sensed was an act of theatre and not in the least bit sincere. “Lord High Treasurer. You will be expecting your toll.”
I tried to spot the being with whom Harry was speaking, but he was very small; when I found him, I saw a whip-thin little fellow perched in the upward curve of a branch. He had a high collar of what looked like tiny green leaves, and his shoulders were covered in a mantle of brown lichen and ebony-stained branches crooked up like claws. He was no bigger than my hand, but he stood very straight and proud, and managed to look noble in his tiny felt boots.
“Who would cross the jiekngasaldi?” The wee man cast an unhappy eye at Kill Notch. “A brawny lad, made for murder, made for murder. Yes, I see. Slashes and ashes. Many lives has he taken. Many lives will he destroy. All is dust, all is dust.” His expression grew darker. “Unless I have something to say about it.”
I suspected this was a bluff, and though his assessment o
f Batten wasn’t far off, and that there was indeed a killing machine in the Bitter Pass, I didn’t think there was too much the fairy could do about it.
Batten squared his shoulders with the small creature and lifted his chin. He kept his face blank and matched Harry’s casually friendly tone. “And what will you say about it?”
The Treasurer’s eyes darted at Harry, as if checking to see if Harry would rein Batten in. When Harry took a casual step back and pretended to admire the blooming vine swaying overhead, the fairy got a bit more agitated.
“Don't make any sudden movements, sudden movements, oh no, don’t do that,” the little man warned. “Mighty Mithridates hasn't tasted human flesh in three centuries. He will obey me. One nod from me, one, and I make his dreams come true, come true.”
Harry said, “One wonders how such a contest would end, my dreadnaught against your lovely pet. Certainly, one of them would die. What a shame it would be if the only living manticore sire were to meet with a sad fate… and at the hands of a mere human, well, I ask you.”
The Treasurer looked disgusted at the thought, but he also looked like he suspected a particularly dangerous human could manage the task. “He couldn’t—“
I cleared my throat. “He wouldn’t be alone.”
The Treasurer noticed me standing there, slightly behind Batten, literally if not figuratively having his back. I braced for an insult, or a taunt, but instead, the small man looked excited. He disappeared into a tangle of vines and reappeared at the base of the tree to scramble closer, wiggling his fingers at me enthusiastically in a come-down-here signal. I crouched as Batten stepped aside and out of his way.
The fairy pointed up at me with one eye shut. “You,” he said, wagging that finger. “You, I like.”
“I—huh?” Well, there was a first. I squinted at him. “Like, for real, or is this a trick?”
He grinned up at me. “You’re unpredictable. All things are possible, all things are possible, anything can happen. Not slashes and ashes, no. Not with you.”