by Karen Chance
We didn’t move. And a moment later I realized why, as several more Svarestri passed us, silent as ghosts in the night. And then several more. And then what looked like a whole damned battalion.
There hadn’t been this many before, had there? I wondered, but not for long. Because the last group had barely passed when we were stumbling out of the tree as well. I turned to Pritkin to ask what the plan was, and then stopped. And suddenly understood why the fey hadn’t seen us.
Because, for a second there, neither did I.
I was holding his hand; I could feel it, hard and strong and clenching around my palm. He was there—he was right there—but he wasn’t. And then he moved, and I saw a faint shimmer against the night, one that ran with reflected flame around the edges, like a man wearing some kind of mirror suit.
Damn, those fey had taught him well, I thought, right before he collapsed.
I grabbed him, but he only went to one knee, and stayed there gasping against my shoulder. A shoulder that I could suddenly see as well as I could see the rest of him, because the reflective camouflage coating was draining away like water. Until it reached our feet and vanished entirely, leaving me looking at a corpse-pale man who was shaking from effort.
And was all too visible even to human eyes.
I glanced around, my heart thudding, but the fey weren’t there. They weren’t there. But they’d be back and we needed to be gone when they did, but gone where?
We couldn’t go back to the village. It looked like we’d managed to draw them away from the trolls, and we couldn’t lead them back. Even if the guards could help us, there were children, old people . . . and the Svarestri hadn’t seemed to care who they hurt. Their entrance alone might have killed dozens, if these people didn’t have reflexes like cats and the paranoia to create a system for flying through the trees.
No, we couldn’t go back there. We couldn’t go anywhere and be safe, not in faerie. And anyway, I didn’t want us in faerie, I wanted us—
I grabbed Pritkin’s shoulder. “You said we could go home.”
He nodded, looking a bit dazed still, but less like he was about to fall over.
“Then there’s a portal near here. There must be!”
He nodded again. “There’s—” He stopped and licked his lips. “There’s one just over the border.”
“How far?”
“A few minutes, but that—” He broke off. And looked around as if he was trying to see a solution in the trees, one that didn’t appear, because when he looked back at me, his eyes were as dark as I’d ever seen them. “That won’t help us.”
“Why not?” I asked, right before we froze in place, undergrowth covering us more than the night, as several more Svarestri picked their way through the brush, going the other way. They were already starting to circle back around, to establish a perimeter, to begin closing in.
Whatever we were going to do, it had to be now.
“That’s where the Svarestri are,” he whispered as the fey moved in the opposite direction. “It’s one of their portals. And they’ll expect us to try for it; there’s no alternative at this point—”
“We could hide. What you did before—”
He shook his head, still breathing hard. “I can’t keep it up long enough, not this far from water. And there will be guards on the portal who’ll sense us if we try to slip past. Even with the spell, we’re visible when we move. And we can’t fight them using the staff. A hurricane in the midst of a wood would kill us as surely as it would them.” He looked around again, but it didn’t seem to help any more than it had last time. And then he grabbed me by the upper arms.
“Don’t even,” I told him, because I knew him, too.
“I can distract them, not for long, but for long enough—”
“Long enough for nothing!”
“You can go back to the village. You’re Fey Friend. They’ll hide you—”
“I’m not running off and leaving you here!”
“This is my fault! I got you into this—”
“We’ve had this discussion—”
“Then we’ll have it again!”
“You can have it whenever the hell you want,” I snapped. “But you’ll be talking to hear yourself, because I won’t—damn it!”
That last was because he’d just gone invisible again, or as close to it as the spell allowed. But I’d halfway expected that, because I knew him, too, and a lot better than the fey. I grabbed him as he rose, sending us both toppling back to the ground. And then latched on as he tried to get away, wrapping myself around something I couldn’t see but that couldn’t budge me, because he was already close to exhausted and I was hanging on like someone’s life depended on it, because it did.
And then he stopped. “Wait! What was that?”
“What was what?” I jerked my head up.
And then had it snapped backward by a certain someone’s fist or elbow or possibly heel. How could I tell? I just knew it broke my hold for a second, and a second was all he needed. He scrambled off, invisible in the night except for a few twitching tree limbs, and then not even that, and there was no way, no way in hell I was going to be able to find him, probably not at all and certainly not before he freaking martyred himself.
I sat there for a split second, debating options.
And then I started screaming.
A couple of seconds later I was tackled by a suddenly visible mage who grabbed me and shook me and, okay, this part was like old times. “Are you insane?”
“I thought . . . we’d already . . . established that,” I said breathlessly as several other cries echoed through the forest.
Pritkin heard them, too, and shook me again. “Don’t you understand? If we stay, they’ll find us; if we run, they’ll find us! And I won’t be able to protect you when they do, not in faerie, not from this many—”
“I told you, I don’t need protection.”
“Well, then I hope you can protect me!” he said wildly as footsteps nobody was bothering to conceal thundered our way.
I hope I can, too, I thought.
“Just hide us for as long as you can,” I told him. “And get us as close as you can to that portal. I’ll do the rest.”
And then we were running, full out, my heart pounding a little fast—okay, a lot fast—because this really might be the craziest damned thing I’d ever done. But it’s not a gamble when it’s the only chance you have, and we did have a chance. Not a great one, but right now, I’d take it.
And then we were slamming back against a tree again, as half a dozen Svarestri burst into the open, right in front of us.
And there was no hope they didn’t see us this time, no hope at all, because three of them were holding torches. One of which was thrust into our faces a second later. I held my breath, sure I’d just killed us both—
And then I knew I had, because the fey surrounded us. One of them said something, but not to me. And not to Pritkin, either. Or if he was, it was a little weird, because he was looking about six inches above his head.
I’d have thought he was looking at me, because I’d ended up standing on some tree roots when I backed up, trying to merge with the trunk. But no, he was definitely staring at the wood above Pritkin’s head. For a second there, I actually thought he was talking to the tree, which would have been nuts except faerie, but then Pritkin answered him back. And then another fey shoved something in my face.
I shrank back, but he wasn’t hitting me with it. Maybe because it wasn’t a weapon, I realized. It was . . . a torch.
I stared at it, but that’s unquestionably what it was. The blunt end of an unlit torch. Which he seemed to expect me to take.
So I did. And then he lit it from his. It flared to life, and must have illuminated my face, but he still didn’t react. And finally, I noticed my reflection in his armor and understood why.
The hand I had wrapped around the torch was mine—small, stubby-fingered, with the chipped remains of the last manicure I’d given myself glittering under the torchlight. But in the armor . . . in the armor, the hand gripping the wooden torch was slim and long-fingered, and as pale as the hair falling over my shoulder. My suddenly very masculine shoulder, which was encased in shiny black armor that ran with the flames I was now holding.
The fey was still looking at me. I nodded, and the masculine face in his armor looked grave and cold, instead of girly and freaked out. He stepped back.
I glanced to my left, where Pritkin still looked like a soot-covered woodland sprite to me, or Tarzan after a really bad day. But he was listening and nodding and then saying something to the leader of the fey cohort, who said something in reply as another dozen ghostly figures joined us. The translation spell was having real trouble with the language, but I guess Pritkin wasn’t, because the leader started snapping orders, and small groups started breaking off, heading in all directions. And then we were, too, taking our torch and moving off to search for ourselves.
“This way,” Pritkin hissed, still furious, like the fingers biting into my arm hadn’t already told me that.
I didn’t care. I so very much didn’t care that it was all I could do to stop an extremely stupid grin from taking over my face, which probably looked really creepy on a fey and also didn’t make sense because we weren’t out of it yet. But I was biting my lip anyway, and shaking from relief, and ducking my head because inappropriate, Cassie, seriously inappropriate. But some part of me had finally had enough and wasn’t listening.
Fortunately, no one was near enough to us to notice, and I managed to have today’s nervous breakdown quietly.
It didn’t last long anyway, not after I looked up and saw what was ahead.
Pritkin jerked me into the shadow of a stone gateway, which was pretty much all that remained of whatever wall it had been part of. It was dark red and gleamed in the light the torch was shedding, before I half buried the thing in the dirt. And then stayed down on my haunches, burning pitch in my nostrils and the gate of hell staring me in the face.
And that’s exactly what it looked like: a big, red, swirly portal framed by the arch, and maybe half a football field away. And Pritkin had been right—it was guarded by a dozen Svarestri. Or maybe more for all I knew, since I couldn’t see all of it, could only see about a third of it, since there were half walls and tumbled columns and decorative pieces of stone in the way. But no greenery. It was like the forest didn’t like this place, either, because no vines were eating into the stones, and no undergrowth disturbed the flat red clay under our feet.
I glanced behind me, and the soil of the forest was dark, either rich brown or black—I couldn’t tell in the light. But not rusty, not red. This stuff looked like somebody had lifted it straight out of Red Rock Canyon in Vegas.
But I didn’t get an explanation. I didn’t get anything at all, maybe because we were too close to risk talking. Or maybe because of Pritkin’s state of mind, which clearly wasn’t good. He was gripping the staff in one hand, tight enough to turn his hand white, which matched his pale, strained face.
The Pritkin of my day might enjoy this sort of thing, but I didn’t think this one did.
And that was before the damn portal activated, with a sound like nails on a chalkboard, and a line of black-clad warriors started spilling out. And, okay, wherever that portal went, I didn’t want to go. “I thought you said there was a portal to earth,” I whispered.
Pritkin still didn’t say anything, but he nodded. At something I couldn’t see because the side of the arch was in the way. I went to my hands and knees and crawled forward, and sure enough, there was another portal, in a clear, light blue color that would have been soothing.
Except that that was where all those new soldiers were going.
“That goes to earth?” I twisted my head around to ask.
Pritkin nodded grimly and pulled me back.
“But what are the Svarestri doing on—”
“I don’t know. This isn’t supposed to be here.”
“What isn’t?’
“Any of it. Other than the portal—the one to earth. It’s always been here, as far as I know. But the other, this whole thing”—he gestured around at the patch of livid red ruins—“this wasn’t here a few months ago.”
“Then why is it here now?”
I didn’t get a reply. Because the fey soldier Pritkin had been talking to earlier took that moment to burst out of the trees, moving almost too fast to see. But not fast enough to outrun the spear that took him full in the back.
His armor exploded along with it, shattering and all but leaping off his body but leaving him relatively unscathed. Unlike the whirlwind that caught him a second later. He started yelling something, and then screaming it, something I couldn’t understand but didn’t really need to. Because a moment after it picked him up, the wind twisted him in ways a body wasn’t supposed to bend, and then ripped him apart, sending pieces flying in all directions, including ours.
One landed in the dust outside the archway, but I didn’t look at it. I was looking at Pritkin, who was staring at the remains with the shell-shocked look of a guy who hasn’t seen that sort of thing before and would be okay with not seeing it again. And then he was grabbing me and I was tackling him back, because no, no, no, the forest was not where we needed to go.
“The portal,” I gasped, because he wasn’t underestimating me this time, and tired or not, he was stronger.
“We’re never going to get to the portal!” he yelled, not bothering to lower his voice this time, because the wind was already so wild, it didn’t matter anymore.
And then neither did Pritkin’s escape attempt, which was suddenly moot in a major way. The whirlwind that had destroyed the fey had spread out, ripping through the forest as it began circling the old stones like a cyclone and moving inward. It was like being at the eye of a hurricane, or more likely, the center of a noose that was quickly tightening.
Somebody else didn’t like the Svarestri going to earth, and they weren’t playing.
I tightened my grip on Pritkin, who had jerked us back inside the arch, the only cover available. But it wouldn’t make a difference in a minute, and his expression said he knew that. He was staring in disbelief at the wind, which was already uprooting huge trees and turning them into flying shrapnel, which was sending the outlying boulders bouncing around like pebbles, which was turning the whole perimeter of the ruins into a whirl of black and green and, increasingly, red.
“Hold on!” I said as dust rose up like clouds to choke us.
Pritkin didn’t reply. I doubted he heard. I couldn’t even hear myself. But I could feel my power reaching for me, as desperate to touch me as I was to go to it, but not quite able to make it. But that didn’t matter as much anymore, because I knew the score now. I knew that, in faerie, I couldn’t touch it, but I could ride the ripples caused by trying.
I just didn’t know if I could do it fast enough and take someone else along for the ride.
But it was the only shot we had, and the one I’d been playing for ever since I made that scream, because I wasn’t leaving him behind. I wasn’t, even though my new trick didn’t seem to be working this time, the waves it generated not strong enough to lift two. But it was going to lift two; it was going to if it ripped me apart in the process, and it kind of felt like it might. The strain had me gasping and panting and then screaming in pain, to the point that I barely understood that we were moving again, that Pritkin was dragging me even as I did my best to drag him. Only he was taking me somewhere physically and I was trying to access the metaphysical tide that wouldn’t . . . freaking . . . come—
And there were Svarestri now, running all around us. I noticed them the way you’d notice a nurse entering a room where you’re being operated on without
anesthetic. They didn’t matter . . . didn’t matter. And I guess they felt the same way about us, maybe because the storm was hard on our heels.
But it didn’t matter, either. Nothing did except for that portal, but if it was where Pritkin was trying to take us, it wasn’t going to work. Because the Svarestri had the same idea and were crowding against it, a mass of formerly rigidly controlled creatures who had suddenly become a thrashing, tearing, yelling mob. And we weren’t getting past that; we just weren’t.
And we didn’t.
We went through it.
A second before the storm ripped us to pieces, another sort of storm grabbed us. And I wasn’t sure it was much of an improvement, because my power had ceased to be ripples in a swimming pool and was now lashing at the barrier between worlds like twenty-foot seas in a typhoon in response to my increasingly frantic calls. I didn’t know if I could control it anymore, was pretty sure I couldn’t, in fact, but it was too late because it had us—
And then I lost it.
I lost it, and we fell to the ground.
Or maybe into the ground would be more like it, as a tsunami of dirt was suddenly thrown up like a wall, all on one side. I looked around desperately for the portal but didn’t see it. I suddenly couldn’t see anything except another wall of dirt erupting from the ground, like a mountain being created out of nothing.
Only it wasn’t nothing. It was the debris from a crack in the earth big enough to drive a car through. It was trying to swallow us while another mountain was trying to bury us and we were sliding and climbing and running and falling and getting back up, because the crack was gaining.
Someone screamed as he was swallowed, just behind us. Someone else went flying through the air as a cyclone grabbed him. And the wind was roaring and dust was flying and I couldn’t see anything, not anything—until another dirt wall shot up, blocking our path. Or it would have, except we were already on top of the ground it seemed to want, and we shot up along with it.