by Wendy Palmer
'Little human,’ said the Goblin closest to Mizzle, voice rasping out between sharp teeth. ‘We leave you be. Run.’ He had half-turned to look at Trick, but kept turning his head back to Mizzle.
By Fortune, he wanted to. Bet had her ears laid back and it was exactly how he felt. But he did not move.
Jeers and laughter rose up among the Goblins while Mizzle stayed still and quiet and the Goblins watched her with more attention than they showed him.
'She has ensnared you,’ said the Goblin who had already spoken. Trick felt his face flush. ‘You can't leave her.'
It was true and it was galling and it banished his fear as if it had never been. He lowered his blade at the Goblin spokesman, a silent challenge.
The Goblin raised his own spiked sword with catcalls from the others, turning his back to the DarkElf. It was a fatal misjudgement.
Mizzle stepped neatly forward and beheaded him, with a clever flick that landed the head at the others’ feet. She stared at them, long silent look from cold silver eyes, and they stepped away, back into the snow or back into their other world, he could not tell.
Trick sat still on Bet until she finally turned, and held out Skye's reins mutely. He wanted no gloating.
'I will not thank you.’ Mizzle sheathed her swords and mounted Skye, starting her walking even before she had settled in the saddle. ‘Your help was not voluntary.'
It was a moment before he understood the sly nudge and then he couldn't help but grin. He felt obscurely better that she thought his help had been of his own will, and was sure enough of it to tease him about it.
His shoulders and chest unknotted, tension flowing away. ‘Will that happen often?'
She shook her head, her braid swinging between her shoulder blades. ‘These hills are a—’ She showed him her hands, fingers intertwined. ‘An unstable point between the worlds. We cross easily here, into the In-Between and then into the There, and can return to the Here when normally we could not. I do not know why—but I guess.'
She did not go on to tell him what her guess was. Trick said what he was thinking. ‘You're not popular.'
'The Ancient races are not xenophiles and the Telamon incident did not improve matters.'
Trick kept to himself that it was fortunate for humans that the Ancients were more interested in fighting among themselves than uniting against mortals.
Mizzle shifted her weight, catching his eye with that small gesture. When he looked at her, she said, ‘I can do nothing about the allure. But the glamour is a DarkElf talent and I try not to use it.'
This was her thanks, a backhand promise to not use glamour on him. He strove for good humour. ‘Though you've been sorely tempted?'
'Yes,’ she said, soberly.
It wasn't a joke to her, he saw, and he shut his mouth.
They were well into the hills now. Trick, keeping a wary watch for more Goblins, as if he could sense them before Mizzle did, saw the first flickering of orange light and a gust of heat washed over him. As they rode closer, the snow turned all to rain and steam in the heat and he had to stop. He only saw the fire because Mizzle was with him but it still had its effect here.
Mizzle dismounted and walked through the snowy mud and out into the snow away from the fire while Trick watched her, wrapped in his cloak on patient Bet. He noticed her touch her shoulder once or twice and suspected the stone that had struck her had left it tender.
Finally, she came back, holding a few brown withered leaves. ‘The herb is here but I would need more than I can find.'
He had known it would be so.
'We must free the boy,’ she continued.
He nodded. Mizzle held her hand out to him. He sat a long moment before he could bring himself to get off Bet and take it.
Her hand was cool and warm all at once but he had no time to notice the jolt that went through him. She had pulled him over the threshold the moment he had touched her.
She let go off his hand. The world was drowned, grey and wavering as if they stood underwater. Trick felt as if he had lost possession of all of his senses. This blankness was dead in a way the whiteout of the flurrying snow had never been.
'We are between worlds,’ said Mizzle. ‘We cannot cross completely while you carry iron and complete passage is unnecessary besides. Perhaps dangerous.'
Goblins waited on the other side and he was glad of her reluctance.
She led him towards the fire. It still towered above their heads, but no heat touched them, no roar of flames threatened.
There beside the pale orange flames in this muted In-Between sat a young man.
Trick stopped. ‘He's the wrong age,’ he whispered to Mizzle, half-expecting his voice to die before the words came out.
'Time does not pass here as in the world,’ she said. ‘That is how the fire burns and does not consume itself.'
The man looked up and Trick recoiled. The greyness of the In-Between had infected him, sinking into his skin and eyes. He was not, after all, a young man, and never could be again. A chain snaked out from his ankle and disappeared into the base of the fire.
Trick repressed a shudder. ‘We're here to free you.'
The man just stared at him. Trick looked at Mizzle.
'His mind is gone,’ she said, without a flicker of sympathy or horror. ‘I cannot break Giant-forged chains without the stone. I will call the Giant. Give me your flask.'
He gave it to her, unable to take his eyes from the grey man sitting hunched before the fire. ‘Why does the Giant even need him?'
Mizzle said, still wrapped in that bloodless impassivity, ‘His presence anchors the fire across the worlds. It makes a gate where once was a wall.'
His questions went right out of his head when she tossed the rest of his brandy into the fire. Instead of burning higher, it was abruptly only as big as a bonfire. He was too appalled to register that properly.
'That's Livanian brandy,’ he said, with a decided wail to his voice that he couldn't care about. He had had two mouthfuls left and no prospect of more.
Mizzle ignored him. ‘Normally the Giant himself tends his own fire in the There. He will certainly come should something threaten it. It is his strength and lifeblood.'
Trick tried to stop thinking about the brandy and was open-mouthed with shock when she tossed even more, impossibly, into the fire. The flames sank lower.
A vibration caused shivers in the In-Between.
'He comes.’ She nodded to Trick almost companionably. ‘This is why these hills have become an unstable point, a bridge. The Giant keeps the way open.'
'But why?’ he asked. He held his hand out for his flask, not holding out hope, and she obliged his expectation by keeping hold of it.
'I shall be sure to ask him.'
She had that glint of humour in her voice again, and that was Trick's only clue that this would be a rough encounter. Then the vibrations became world-shaking and the Giant burst upon them.
Trick had not understood the concept of Giant until it stood over them and he looked up and up and up.
'Another and again,’ said the Giant, and his voice rumbled out like thunder and made the flames of his fire shiver. ‘You seek revenge?'
Of course the Giant could not know that she was the one who had alerted him previously to DarkElves in his hills, threatening his fire to call him down on her pursuers.
'I seek your attention,’ Mizzle said.
The Giant reached down a hand. Trick crouched as if a mountain threatened to fall on them, but Mizzle drew one sword with her free hand, and tossed more brandy on the fire with the other. Trick drew his own sword, following her lead because he knew not what else to do.
The fire was almost out. The Giant howled and Trick dropped the sword and clapped his hands over his ears.
Mizzle never flinched, despite her sensitive DarkElf hearing. ‘I will take this man,’ she said. His hand came down at her again and she stung it with her blade.
The Giant screamed again. ‘He is mine,’ h
e roared from above. ‘He must tend my fire while I seek the human Wizard who killed my mate.'
Trick sensed a coincidence too great to ignore. ‘Avenir Serin.'
He spoke quietly but the Giant had large ears. ‘You know him? He eludes me constantly with his petty spells.'
'We will kill him,’ said Mizzle.
But the Giant howled again. ‘He is mine to destroy.'
'Release this man,’ said Mizzle. ‘Or I will douse your fire.'
This time when the hand came down, it dived not for Mizzle waiting with her sword but for Trick. He was snatched up into the air so fast his ears popped, and his breath was rammed out of him.
'I will crush your little human.'
The hand enveloped him, pressure tight around his ribs and squeezing his arms into his body. He could not move. He could barely breathe.
And Mizzle said nothing.
Looking down, he could see the top of her head, and he realised she was thinking about it, whether he was fair exchange for the man who would get them Mouse, who would get her the DarkStone.
'Mizzle, make a decision,’ Trick cried with the last of his air.
Mizzle shrugged, quintessential human mannerism, the only one she affected. ‘Kill him then.'
He tried to swear as the fist went tighter about him and Mizzle threw more liquid onto the fire. It died to nothing more than embers.
Trick hit the ground hard as the Giant dropped him and snatched up one of the embers just as Mizzle doused the rest.
He sat up, pain spiking through wrist and knee where he had tried to catch himself. ‘Wrong decision, Mizzle.'
She ignored him, tiny beside the crouching Giant, cradling his last ember. ‘We will take this man.'
The Giant reached down one-handed and snapped the chain. Trick forced himself to his feet, limped over to the grey man and got him up too.
Mizzle still looked up at the Giant. ‘Re-build your fire,’ she said. ‘In the evening of tomorrow, you will see a signal to the north. If you dare leave the fire untended for a short time, the Wizard is yours.'
Trick followed her away from the remains of the fire and the Giant huddling over the ember in his hand. He had to take the arm of the grey man with his unharmed hand to make him walk, and the touch made his skin crawl.
They came back into his own world with a howl of wind and skirl of snow that seemed loud and cold after the deadness of the In-Between. The man moaned and sank into the snow and ice, shuddering.
Trick was at the edge of his endurance. His wrist and knee throbbed and he could not bring himself to drag the man out of the snow and make him stand again. He did not know how he would get up on Bet himself, let alone get the man up. But they could not camp in this desolate place for he had not thought to bring wood from the forest for a fire.
Behind them, orange light bloomed. The Giant had rekindled his fire in the In-Between. For a moment he thought they might shelter there but it faded out.
Mizzle turned from it. ‘He no longer has a human point to bridge it across from the There.'
'Can he still come here?’ he asked. He didn't want to talk to her but his curiosity was stronger than his indignation.
'Not easily. Elves who cross completely do not return without a gateway.’ He understood her reluctance to go further than the In-Between now. Not fear of Goblins, after all, but of the loss of the bridge that had already allowed her to come back once. She went to Skye. ‘But Giants are the oldest of us all and the architects of those gateways that do exist. He will force his way through for the Wizard.'
With the loss of the gateway, Goblins were no longer free to cross and rampage in this world, he understood that much. He limped over to Bet, steeling himself to get up on his sore knee, but Mizzle waved him off.
She pressed her hands together for a moment, then spread her palms over the snowy ground. Snow went away, not melting, and the ground was clear and dry. She touched the centre of her circle and a fire sprang to life.
'We cannot stay long,’ she told him. She held out his flask and he took it. It was heavy in his hand and he realised it was still full.
He said nothing. The camp and the flask both were unexpected magic and unlooked-for kindnesses. But the Goblin had made the mistake of turning his back to Mizzle. Trick would never do so no matter what gentleness she showed him now. She had shown him her real self in abandoning him to the Giant. The allure had broken once and for all.
He got the grey man a few feet closer to the fire, and went round the other side of it. Mizzle dropped her bag and unsaddled and fed the horse. He was mostly asleep by the time she was done. She sat down, closer to him than to the man lying as dead on the far side.
She took her shirt off. It woke him up again, staring at her half-naked in the fire-bathed darkness. He had known DarkElves had no modesty in the human sense and he was embarrassed at himself for watching her.
She took a jar from her bag and rubbed a dark green, sweet smelling salve into her shoulder. Even from where he lay, he could see the mottling of a huge bruise. That was not all he saw. He forced himself to roll over and away from her and stretched out to the edge of the ground she had cleared. He grabbed up a handful of snow, packing it under his glove around his swelling wrist. He couldn't ice his knee but he thought it would heal by itself whereas the wrist was certainly sprained.
When he turned back again Mizzle had her shirt back on and she held the jar out to him. He took it, used the salve on wrist and knee, and, pointedly, on his face where she had hit him in the cottage, before giving the jar back. The pain subsided and he fell straight asleep.
Mizzle woke him when it was still dark. He resented her but she had let the fire die down and it was cold so he got up without complaint. His knee was much better and his wrist hardly twinged at all.
He would not thank her for it.
Mizzle had already saddled the horses. Trick woke the grey man up and got him onto Bet. He swung up in front of him and they rode back towards the cottage.
He didn't want to think about Mizzle and he didn't want to think about Linnet and he didn't want to think about this dead-eyed grey-tinged man leaning against his back and making his skin crawl.
Instead, he thought about the pirate ship and Fingers who had gone off the side and been re-born again as Jarrett. As a child he had found Fingers attractive and wicked and interested in him as no one else on the ship was, with his mother sick and Ben Matray too wrapped up in her.
He had thought, as a child, that his mother was sick as some people were sick at sea. But they had left the ship and she had still been sick, and then his father had been killed because of it.
Trick shook his head. A child's blame attached to a child's target. They had left the ship and been set upon by bandits and Ben had died to let his wife and child get away. Would Trick have blamed Linnet, if he had died for her and their child, rather than the way the dice had fallen, with Fortune ever on his side?
And he had not wanted to think of her. His thoughts turned back and back on themselves until the sword became the only answer. He almost wished for the distraction of the allure and was appalled at himself.
He would rather stay angry at Mizzle and free in himself.
But his memories of the ship reminded him of something. Fingers had said to him once that he had been opened to a different way of life. Losing himself in the network of caves when he was perhaps thirty years old, a babe in Ancient terms, he had come out among a remote band of shepherds, far further west than DarkElves usually roamed. He had lived among them for a time, and was young enough to be influenced by them. When he finally made his way back to the DarkElves he had seen horror in their cruel and martial way of life. For this he had been exiled with less fingers than he had been born with, the first DarkElf to be sent out from the clan for the offence of urging restraint and peace.
No other DarkElf had ever sought a different way of life, and none had done it spontaneously, for even Fingers had had the influence of the human sheph
erds and their simple peaceful ways.
So what made Mizzle's life with the DarkElves as intolerable as she claimed? He had suspected a human father for her but could not see that driving her to leave and take the DarkStone with her. Human blood had not given her human tendencies and the DarkElvish way of life would be all she knew. She could not know what was intolerable unless she knew what was not.
Could she have had a human mother who had sought revenge on the DarkElf father by giving the child over instead of smothering it at birth? But that could not be right, for the DarkElves would have killed such a child themselves.
So why? It was a new mystery to surround her and he thought on it even though he had promised himself he would not think on her again.
Chapter Five
'You are well?’ Kintore asks.
The two Elves have met in the hallway near dawn. Jacoby is returning from her night prowling, Kintore on his way out.
Jacoby turns, her hand on the doorknob to her room. ‘Yes,’ she says. ‘Your salve is just short of miraculous.'
Kintore, having begun the conversation, seems reluctant to continue it. He takes a few steps towards the stairs, easing his way past her. ‘Yes.'
'We have lost such herb lore since our people separated.'
The LightElf nods.
'Teach me to make it,’ says Jacoby, putting a hand to his arm.
Kintore flinches back from her. ‘If you need more—'
'I wish to know how to make it.'
She is insistent and tries to catch his eye but he seems to know that threat for he will not look at her. Perhaps she asks for a LightElf secret, or perhaps Kintore guesses she wants more than one secret.
'Very well.’ Kintore looks amazed at his own agreement. ‘Did you—'
'Will you now?’ she asks, edging him back towards his room.
'What game are you playing?'
She slips through the door and sits on his bed, one of her swords across her lap, come from nowhere.
Kintore looks askance from the doorway. ‘Put the sword somewhere.'
'It is somewhere,’ says Jacoby.
'Elsewhere.'
Jacoby lets the sword slip to the floor, and then, when Kintore still does not move, she kicks it away. ‘Come sit by me, ‘Tore,’ she murmurs with a cat's smile.