by Lou Hoffmann
Every day, reports came in about the families who hadn’t been able to come here to the Sinlahekin. Those who’d been unable to shift into a complete form were dying, and those who were stuck in either complete shape had drifted away to embrace fully what they were stuck being. But a few more people had come to the gathering on Bastien territory each day, and now it seemed the entire viable population of Earth’s shifters had gathered in this one place.
With one notable exception. The White.
After days and then weeks of Henry’s efforts to coach the most promising students—the young, the wise, the agile—failed, the elders began to speak of trying to call The White.
“Can you call White Buffalo?” the snowy owl asked Henry.
“Uh… I could try, but no. I have no knowledge of how to do that. I’ve never even heard that it can be done. White Buffalo Calf Woman appears when she chooses, and she’s both prophet and prophecy, but she’s busy with her human kin.”
The owl turned to a tiger elder from Cambodia. “Can you call the White Elephant?”
“I don’t believe such a thing would work. The White Elephant is a messenger of joy, not a magician.”
She turned then to a pair of Irish wolves. “Can you call the White Stag?”
“I’m thinkin’ it might be done,” the oldest of the two, a warrior woman if ever there was one, said, “if we were goin’ into battle. For this… well, perhaps, but….”
Then a bear from Hungary cleared his throat. He had been teaching at a Canadian college for a quarter century, and he spoke with hardly a trace of his original accent. “I can call the White Stag, the one known in my country. My parents and grandparents passed down the ritual, but keep in mind, none of us have used it for centuries. I’m sure it will work, but if I do perform the ceremony, we’d best be prepared to move to a new land, for that’s what the White Stag is known to do for Magyar, be they bears, humans, or shapechangers. I’m only assuming, of course, that he would lead all of you too, if you were with me.”
To Henry’s great relief, the elders and leaders of the conclave agreed this was their best chance at survival, so he was off the hook. The great Magyar bear, whose name was Artko Mack, arranged his solitary ritual and invited all the people gathered at the Bastien aerie to keep vigil outside the ceremonial circle, adding their voices as appropriate to his petition for the White Stag’s assistance. The ritual was unimpressive to look at. Dancing around a fire, the bear kept his movements small and his voice quiet. His talismans consisted of water, sigils crafted from twigs, and a sheaf of fresh, new-green branches with tender leaves—birch, hazelnut, wild plum, and alder, one variety to please each of the stag’s four stomachs. For two hours spanning the dusk from daylight to night, Artko spoke, sang, and danced his bobbing dance around the fire. Then he sent all the watchers away, saying he would sleep by the fire inside his circle and must be undisturbed.
In the morning some of Talon’s eagle clan found Artko’s lifeless body next to still-warm embers. The news spread through the gathering like wildfire, and all the people mourned both the bear and their chances at survival, because they thought his death meant all hope was gone. They cremated Artko, heaping on him as much honor as they could manage in their forlorn state.
“What do we do now?” became the question of the day, and nobody had answers. Many of those who were able to travel decided to make their way back to their homes, thinking a cure was as likely to come there as anywhere, and if it didn’t come at least it would be better to die where they and their ancestors had lived.
But Henry had an uneasy feeling that something about Artko’s ritual remained unfinished—or more accurately, something more needed to be done. Could they expect a supernatural being to just show up in their midst?
That isn’t how it usually happens. Revelations always seem to require some wandering in the wilderness.
Though the others seemed content to bide their time, Henry couldn’t shake the idea that someone had to go looking if they expected to meet up with The White. Early on the morning of the fourth day after Artko’s death, he talked himself into chancing a shift to condor shape, and just hoped he wouldn’t be permanently stuck in bird form, or worse, halfway. He had to work at it, but he made the change, and set out to tour the area and see what he could see.
Some eagles followed him, but he knew it was unlikely they’d attempt to stop him. He was bigger than they were, he could fly faster, and his claws were every bit as dangerous as their talons if it came to a fight in the air.
He circled the hidden valley wider and wider, stopped now and then to rest, and some hours later ducked out of sight when he spotted people pointing at him from a parking lot near at the Sinlahekin reserve office. Condors didn’t generally show up this far north, and he didn’t want to bring undue attention that might lead people to the Bastien Clan aerie and the gathering at the hidden plateau. When he emerged from his temporary hiding place, the eagles tailing him had gone.
He flew generally eastward, doing his best to ignore a mounting hunger, until he saw The White.
A huge animal for a stag, he browsed in a stand of alder saplings, his coat dazzling in the morning sun. As Henry circled high overhead, a group of feral dogs approached, growling and baring teeth. The White merely shook his head to show them the enormous arrangement of antlers on his head, and they cowered and then scampered away. Henry flew down to perch on the short snag remains of a lightning-struck fir, and the White Stag turned toward him.
In a single moment, an old man with a white beard and an old style of clothing—leather pants and a shirt brightly embroidered with floral designs—took the stag’s place. Henry knew that both stag and man were illusions that The White used to reveal his presence, and neither was his true form.
The man held his arm out, and Henry flew down to perch on it. The White had no trouble bearing his weight, and no fear of his beak. He touched his forehead to Henry’s, and then set him on the ground. As soon as his feet touched, Henry found himself standing upright in human form.
Except voiceless, like a condor.
“Don’t worry,” The White said. “Your voice is gone only because I do not want you to waste time on needless fumbling thanks and pleas. As you know, I’ve come to help. Gather the people and tell them to meet me where you grew up, at the eastern end of Black Creek Ravine, the place where the battle was fought with the witch of ice.”
Henry opened his mouth to speak, but nothing came out. He rolled his eyes.
The White laughed, then nodded his head toward Henry. “You may speak,” he said.
Henry cleared his throat as a sort of test, and said, “Thank you. I meant to ask, are you planning to lead the people through that Portal, then? And do you think it will take us to Ethra?”
“If by ‘that Portal’ you mean the road your young friend opened, then no. Not exactly. That way is marred, and I would not chance it. But that is a place where the barriers between planes can be shattered, and I will make another opening—a back door if you will. As for going to Ethra, I do not know the worlds outside this one—my home. But I suppose your destination will be clear when you get to it.”
Henry didn’t know what to say. It wasn’t just what The White said, it was the mischievous grin on his face.
“But,” The White said, “I was once told by a very old man, a wizard by profession, that in order to get where you want to go when you travel the ways between worlds, you must know absolutely where you want to go.” At this he laughed uproariously, and as he did, he began to fade out of his human shape. For a time he seemed an amorphous white image of nothing in particular, and then he began to melt into the shape of the Stag. That creature’s mouth moved as he spoke his final words to Henry. “I’ll wait a week, no more. Bring all who will come, but don’t delay for those who will not, or even those who cannot. My friend, the one you called Artko the Magyar bear, used up the last of his strength to call me. Don’t let that gift be wasted.”
Chapter Thirt
y-Two: Not Even a Remnant of Ash
DESPITE THE fact that the wraiths didn’t bleed, Lucky had been liberally splashed with blood. Some of the blood came from the occasional cuts he inflicted on mercenaries when they happened into his way, but he hadn’t killed any of them, and most of the blood had somehow landed on him from fights happening in his vicinity. Nevertheless, every ounce of it weighed more than it should, and the weight of it created a constant drain on his energy.
Three times, during his fight across the battlefield, Lucky’s arm or leg came in contact with a wraith. Not with their swords, thanks to any god who might have helped, but the touch of their substance stung, and bitter cold instantly paralyzed Lucky’s limb each time it happened until Ciarrah allowed her energy to heal it. Extended as the hand-and-a-half-sized sword, she weighed almost nothing to wield, and her blade sliced through the wraiths as if through air—and maybe that’s all they were—yet every time he downed one and turned to face another, Lucky’s arms grew heavier, his breath came faster, his heartbeat pounded more furiously in his chest.
The battle was grinding him down to pure exhaustion even though Ciarrah bore more and more of the burden of their onslaught. And then, finally, even she began to fail.
Having somehow found a momentarily quiet corner, surrounded by fighting but not in it, Lucky struggled to catch his breath. He looked around the field and saw with surprise that the wraith army had been cut down to maybe a third of its original numbers. He couldn’t quit now, not when it almost looked like they could win.
“Ciarrah,” he begged of her, “just a little more.”
Her light brightened slowly in response, and when she was ready, they entered the fray once more, perhaps not fighting with their earlier vigor, but steadily cutting wraiths to cinder nonetheless.
Then the entire battle seemed to pause, and the mist-shadow snapped, crackling loudly in a wind of its own. In the space of a breath, it burst into a cloud of faintly purple, electrified mist that rose skyward to cover the round valley like a shroud. The Terrathians had gone, apparently having taken their machines away via whatever Portal they’d come by. It should have been a hopeful thing, but a last horde of wraiths surged forth, the largest wave yet. The living soldiers of the Sunlands could not match blades with the wraiths, and Lucky and Ciarrah had exhausted their strength.
Lucky looked back at the hill where Han had made his stand, worried he might see resignation and defeat, hoping he’d see Thurlock—and he did.
The Premier Wizard of the Ethran Sunlands stood, strength in his shoulders and anger on his brow, staff once more lifted to the sky. Again, he shouted out, “Behlishan!”
Golden light sheeted under the darkened sky and gathered itself into clusters that hung like miniature suns against a night blacker than any the world had known.
The Sunlands troops cried out, joyful and refreshed with the triumph of light. They rallied, but the foes they could fight were few, and they wasted their strength and shed their blood needlessly when they tried to combat the mass of mindless wraiths. Han ordered a general retreat to the hilltop. Luccan made no move to obey—he wasn’t in the middle of a fight, but he felt dazed with exhaustion. Han had seen him, though. He called Simarrohn and mounted up, preparing to ride down onto the field.
“I’m coming for you, Luccan. Don’t move.”
But before Sim could put a hoof forward, the ground began to shake, and a rolling thunder sounded from deep in the bowels of the world, flinging dust and pebbles into the air to be caught and carried away on a sudden wind that tore leaves and needles from trees. Lucky, like everyone else, struggled to stay on his feet and covered his face with his hands trying to protect his eyes.
When the quake, along with the roar and the wind of it, died away, he looked up, and then blinked in astonishment. On the field, in the area that had been partitioned by the mist-shadow curtain, a new horde—unlike the others—had come onto the field.
Wolves, eagles, owls, foxes, cougars, bears.
Then some of them shifted….
They flashed in and out of their human and animal forms, and flickered in and out of solidity, wraithlike one minute, flesh the next. Lucky looked back at the hill and saw many of the Sunlands archers nock arrows, and soldiers with swords, pikes, and maces were flooding down the hill. Han sat atop his horse, firing flame arrows into the crowded field. He aimed—and hit—wraiths, as did the few other archers who had flame arrows, but the rest of the Sunlands troops fought the shifter horde with vigor, to fair effect. The shifters were in solid form enough of the time that the soldiers could sometimes catch them corporeal. They were bloodied, but they fought tooth and nail, fist and foot, and their strength was superhuman. Neither arrows nor swords took them down completely.
Thurlock stood on the hill directing his attention to the golden lights he’d created, pointing now at one, now at another, looking for all the world like he was conducting a symphony. At his direction, the lights dripped fiery balls like molten gold, each one falling timed to meet with some creature’s head, be it wraith or shifter, though Thurlock managed to completely miss any of the Sunlands troops. Hit by Thurlock’s magical bombs, wraiths sizzled away—an ugly thing to see, but the wraiths didn’t seem to feel pain. The shifters dodged the burning lights mostly, but when they didn’t get out of the way fast enough, their flesh burned, filling the basin with a sickening smell of cooked meat.
Lucky still stood in his quiet corner and nobody came at him; he soon realized that safe space had been created for him by Ciarrah. He silently thanked her, and was about to tell her to let the shield drop and prepare to reenter the battle when he noticed something that puzzled him. The shifters fought everybody. They fought the wraiths—and in animal form they could cut them down! But they also fought the Sunlands soldiers. And the bewildered expressions they wore, the confused head-shakes, the worried looks they cast toward one another made Lucky stop and take stock.
They weren’t, he decided, part of the enemy brought by his mother, Mahros, and the Terrathians. Or if they were, they didn’t know it.
He lifted a hand to shield his eyes from the glare of Thurlock’s lights, planning to find Han and let him know what he’d seen, but as he lifted his gaze, he caught sight of Liliana. She had appeared at the top of the hill opposite the one where the Sunlands soldiers had dug in for their base of operations. A shield of blue light crackled around her. She saw him and flashed her dead grin, and Lucky heard her words inside his mind.
“You’ve chosen, my son. Them, not me. I shall not try to save you again.” She turned her hellish mount and started to ride away.
The battle—Han, Thurlock, wraiths, shifters, soldiers, swords, horses—all of it fell away from Lucky’s mind. He knew only one thing—he had to find and fight and subdue the monster his mother had become. He scrambled up the hill and ran in the direction she’d gone. He didn’t register how far he’d run, but the battle noises were out of his earshot, and he was winded and sweat-drenched before he saw her again.
She sat on her horse, not twenty yards away, looking at him.
“You’re waiting for me,” he said. “You knew I’d follow.”
“Yes, Luccan. I’ve changed my mind. Because I am your mother, I offer you one last chance to come with me, to fight and grow your power at my side.”
“No, I—”
She drew her sword the instant the negative came out of his mouth, and then she spurred her mount viciously and came at him at a run.
Lucky’s hand had been on Ciarrah’s hilt all along—though he hadn’t been aware. Faced with his mother’s attack, with a Wish in his heart and the twin songs of Blade and Key in his ears, he drew the Black Blade from her sheath. A dazzle of violet light flooded the field, stopping Liliana in her tracks. But then, in less than the time it takes to form thought into words, with her off hand, she drew a blackened spiral wand from her belt. She thrust it out in front of her with a muttered, guttural word, and Ciarrah’s light was driven back into a tight, shie
lding circle around Lucky.
Liliana laughed and charged at Lucky, sword point held like a jousting lance, ready to skewer him.
Even after everything that had happened Lucky couldn’t quite grasp that his own mother was about to murder him at sword point. “Mom,” he said, a strangled cry that sounded to his own ears like the boy he’d been years ago, before Isa’s banishment turned his entire world upside down. But as he spoke, Ciarrah’s power hummed through him, and woven into it, the power of the Key of Behliseth. Lucky felt himself being turned in a circle, the hand holding Ciarrah pulling him as the Blade made a choice he couldn’t make on his own. He spun, and Ciarrah’s blade lengthened to reach a tall, slender pine growing at the top of the hill he stood on. Her violet light sliced through the tree just like it had at practice, but this tree did not wobble. It fell as Liliana and her horse crossed directly in its path.
Horror swept through Lucky on a wave of guilt. Had he just killed his own mother and her horse?
But no. For where she’d been, there was now nothing at all. Not even a remnant of ash.
He heard her laugh again, and it was a wicked sound, and it came from everywhere—from every hilltop and from every fold inside his brain. He shook his head to clear it and turned in a slow circle to search. He glimpsed her riding away between two hills in the direction of the Sisterhold—in the direction of home.
THE BATTLE, the most frustrating Han had ever fought, waged on, boiling and surging in the cirque below where he stood. He’d just thought they might have the beginning of an upper hand—largely thanks to Lucky’s Blade and Thurlock’s magic—when onto the field came a horde of shifters.