by R. A. Rock
“That’s true, we can’t,” Ethan said, determined not to hurry Doyle, seeing as he had probably been the worst friend ever to him throughout their entire history.
“The interesting thing to do with the Holy Grail,” Doyle clarified, “was Fernand Larocque’s extensive notes.”
“Notes?”
“He traveled as far west as what is now Manitoba in Canada. And then traveled north all the way to Hudson Bay, visiting with many communities as he went. During this journey, he documented everything he could about the people he met. The most fascinating of which were the stories. They have been digitized and are, therefore, searchable in the archeological database.”
“What stories?” Ethan prompted, sensing they were finally getting somewhere.
“There are all sorts of legends, myths, and folk tales. Over two hundred that he wrote down as they were told to him.”
Ethan nodded, not wanting to interrupt Doyle when he was almost getting to the point.
“One result caught my attention.” He paused dramatically and Ethan felt a smile appear on his face.
He really didn’t appreciate Doyle, did he?
At that moment, he resolved to be less selfish. To pay attention to other people’s wants and needs as well as his own. To change from being entirely focused on his own desires to actually paying attention to other people and what they wanted, too.
He had a feeling it wouldn’t happen overnight. But he supposed that he had all eternity to work on it.
“What result was that?” Ethan asked when Doyle didn’t go on immediately.
“The story of the Strangers From Afar and the Wee-ah-kun.”
Ethan lifted his eyebrows.
“Wee-ah-kun means vessel in Cree—the indigenous language that the story was translated from. Larocque spoke Ojibway, Cree, and also Huron. The man who told him the story said that it was an old tale from long, long ago.”
“That fits,” Ethan said. “What’s the story?”
“That’s the thing, Ethan,” Doyle said, his eyes enthusiastic though his face remained serious. “It’s exactly the story that Finn told me of how the King came and hid the Chalice on Earth.”
Chapter 26
Jayde jumped out of the vehicle as soon as they arrived at the Omahk. She grabbed her bag from the back and left them to make their way to the Medicine Wheel in their own time. Tess debated whether to leave or bring her backpack full of weapons. She checked out their surroundings. Nothing but prairie. She would be able to see their enemies coming for days. She could leave the bag in the car.
As Tess and Finn got out of Jayde’s Honda Civic, Tess complained to Finn.
“That was highly unpleasant. We were not made to go that fast. What are the Starless ones thinking, creating carriages like this?” She gestured at the car and put her other hand on her stomach.
“Cars,” he corrected her.
Finn put his hands on his hips and surveyed the place, the morning sun making his face look less pale than it actually was. But Tess pushed her worry about his health away. There was nothing she could do to help Finn right now.
They were out on the prairie with a huge blue sky overhead. The morning looked as though it had been washed clean and fresh by the stars the night before.
“I’ll just tell Jayde that we’ll take the Passageways next time. I’m sure she’ll be okay with that.”
“Ha, ha,” Tess said.
“Humans are not what I thought they'd be, Tess. At least Jayde is quite the impressive creature.”
“Uh huh,” Tess said, put out by how much Finn seemed to like Jayde. Tess liked Jayde too. It wasn’t that. She just wished Finn liked her less. She looked at him and decided that he was unfairly cheerful this morning, considering how late he had stayed up watching movies last night. She had only watched two and had to go to sleep.
She followed the little human with her gaze as Jayde set her backpack on the ground and pulled out a little packet of something. She set it on the pile of stones in the middle and closed her eyes for a long moment.
“What’s she doing?” Finn said.
“Looks to me like she’s praying,” Tess said in surprise. “Let’s get closer.”
They moved in quietly. Jayde sat down on the ground and pulled out what looked like some straw braided together. They heard the sound of her lighting a match, which she touched to one end of the braid. Then she shook it so it went out and smoked. She set the stuff that looked like straw on a stone and, using her hands, wafted the smoke over herself.
As the two Fae approached the Medicine Wheel, they shared a glance. The magic in this place was humming.
“You feel that?” Finn whispered.
“Of course. It’s the most magic I’ve sensed since we left the Passageways at Stonehenge.”
“Guess what that means?” Finn said, putting his hand to his side and withdrawing his Unity Blade.
“Awesome,” Tessa said, trying her own Otherworld sheath.
“There’s enough ambient magic here for the sheaths to work,” Finn reminded her. They both returned their blades to their sheaths.
Jayde heard their voices and she began to speak, not opening her eyes.
“We offer tobacco as a thank you,” Jayde said, opening her eyes and patting the ground beside her. “And the sage smoke purifies us.”
Tessa recognized the smell from Jayde’s apartment. That was what the sweet scent had been. They sat down one on either side of her and they each took turns wafting the smoke over themselves. Tess could feel her Starlight being cleaned.
When they got up, she whispered to Finn. “You feel that?”
“Definitely. That stuff affected my Starlight. I feel a tiny bit better.”
They moved away from Jayde as she tidied her things.
“These Starless Ones. They keep surprising me.”
“Me too,” Finn said. “I think I was pretty prejudiced against them.”
“Uh yeah,” Tess said, sarcastic. “Like Ignis.”
“Not that bad,” Finn said.
“Yes, that bad,” Tess countered.
"No. Ignis wasn't prejudiced, I don't think."
"What then?"
"Just wary, I think. Once he realized that we were good people, he was fine."
"That's true," Tess conceded.
“What do you want to know about the Omahk?” Jayde asked, coming over to where they were standing. “Just Grail stuff?”
“You can tell us everything,” Finn said, making a sweeping motion with his hand to the pile of rocks. “Though, we already read a lot about it on the inter—”
Jayde got an amused look on her face.
“The inter—” He glanced at Tess and she only shrugged.
“Net,” Jayde finished for him.
“Yes, the internet, such a random word,” Finn grumbled. “Anyways. So we do know the basics. But tell us everything anyway. Don’t leave anything out. Any bit of information could be important.”
“Okay. So you know then, that this Medicine wheel has been carbon dated at over 5000 years old? And there are definite similarities to Stonehenge that I don’t think are an accident?”
Tessa nodded. “That fits exactly with what we know,” she said, referring to the fact that both places were concentrations of magic and faerie rings, though Jayde wouldn’t realize that was what Tess was thinking of.
“And it is located along 51 degrees latitude, the same as Stonehenge,” Jayde said in what was probably the voice she used to lecture back when she taught at the University of Toronto. “The rings at the center of both circles are 30 meters in diameter. Both can be read as a solar calendar. And we know that some of the lines align with the solstices and equinoxes but we’re not sure why.”
“Magic surges from Esper at those times,” Finn said quietly as they followed Jayde around the circle of stones.
“How do you know that?” Tess asked.
“Izzie,” Finn said, referring to his old friend, who also happened to be a his
torian of all things magical in Esper and other realms.
“Good old Izzie,” Tess said, thinking about the man with both fondness and irritation.
“And then there’s the thrumming sound,” Jayde said. “The acoustic resonance of the place.”
Finn and Tess stared at her blankly.
“You know? Sound that puts people into a trance?”
“Ah,” Finn said, then dropped his voice so only Tess would hear. “I would imagine the magic would do that to a human, too, so it's hard to know exactly what’s putting them in a trance.”
“True,” Tess agreed.
“As I told you before, I had a friend come out and take seismology readings—”
“What was that?” Tess interrupted, all her soldier’s training coming into play in an instant as she honed in on a sound that didn’t fit.
“What was what?” Jayde said, looking around.
Finn’s face got serious. “This kind of terrain looks uniform,” Finn said. “But there’s dips and hollows where even a car could be hidden and we wouldn’t see it. The prairie looks flat but it isn’t.”
“Get down, Jayde,” Tess instructed, crouching herself.
“What, why?” the woman said, still standing up.
Suddenly, there were gunshots and Finn yanked Jayde down. Tess flattened herself beside them.
“Someone’s shooting at us?” Jayde said, covering her head and sounding scared but not terrified. “Who are you people?”
Tess and Finn exchanged a glance.
There came a female voice from a nearby. “Stop shooting, you idiots. You’ll kill her.”
The gunfire stopped and there was a brief silence.
Jayde and Tessa’s eyes met. These people were here for one of them. And Tess was pretty sure it was her. She was the Faerie on the run from both the Dark Queen and the King.
Without warning, men and women jumped up from where they had been hiding in the hollows of the prairie. They were dressed for combat in long dark pants, boots, and jackets. And they all carried guns but were putting them away and pulling out other weapons.
Tess counted three swords, a bow that had somehow appeared from nowhere, a pair of some kind of pointy fork weapon she’d never seen before, and one person that had two sticks made of metal.
The warriors ran toward the Medicine Wheel.
Who were these people? And why would they care about a couple Fae and an archeologist?
She didn’t have time to contemplate because they were almost upon them.
She and Finn got up, pulling their Unity blades.
“What the hell are you doing?” Jayde asked from where she still crouched on the ground.
“Stay here, and stay down,” Tess told her. “We’ve got this.”
She and Finn moved out to engage with the first couple men who had arrived at the Medicine Wheel.
“Be careful of the Omahk,” Jayde called out.
Tess shook her head, lifting her blade to block a downward slash from a man wielding a sword like he knew what to do with it. She hadn’t thought any of the Starless ones even trained with such weapons anymore.
He lifted his weapon and swung again, slashing at her side, but Tessa danced back. While he was still recovering from all the momentum he had thrown into that swing, she slashed at his arms with the blades. He dodged but she caught the edge of his upper arm and scratched him.
He didn’t appear to notice but only came at her with several vicious strikes that she either evaded or caught. Tess had to admit that he was pretty good for a human. But he wasn’t going to beat her.
She stopped holding back then and really went at him. With slash after slash, she drove him back. He seemed to get angry and attacked with a huge overhead strike but Tessa caught it with her blade in the middle of the sword. She quickly let the Unity Blade slide lower and hooked her wrist hard, disarming him and throwing the sword away from them.
With a well-aimed blow from the butt of the blade, she knocked him out and moved on to her next target.
Finn already had four unconscious on the ground.
“Nice,” she said as they fought closer to each other.
“Four to one,” he said. “I’m winning.”
“I just happened to get one who knew how to fight,” Tess said.
“Sure, sure,” Finn said, tripping a woman and punching her neatly in the jaw. She dropped and lay still on the ground. Meanwhile, Tess had dispatched two more.
The last two approached with more caution. And as if on an invisible signal, they both attacked at once. Finn was doing well, as usual, until he inexplicably bent over as if he didn’t have any strength left.
Shit. He must be having one of his weak spells.
The woman Tess was fighting didn’t give her any chance to stop, though. If she did, she’d have one of those pointy fork things through her heart and then she’d be healing for days. Or who knew how long it would take for her to heal on the Earthly Realm?
The woman used a surprise move that Tess hadn’t been expecting as she’d never fought against these fork weapons before. With a hook and a flick, the woman disarmed one of her blades and then stepped in and elbowed her in the face, knocking her to the ground.
Tess slashed wildly with the other blade from where she lay on her back but the woman landed with her knee on her chest, knocking Tessa's breath from her and making her hands go slack for a moment.
In that instant, the woman hooked the second blade with her weapon and tossed it away. While Tess still couldn’t breathe, the warrior sat down on her chest and really began to hit her with the butt end of her own weapons.
Tess was so disoriented and out of breath that she couldn’t think. She couldn’t breathe. And the woman wouldn’t stop hitting her, which seemed to hurt more here on the Earthly Realm. She bucked up, lifting her chest, but she barely moved the muscled fighter.
She struggled to take a breath but the woman’s weight, combined with having the wind knocked out of her, made it hard to fill her lungs. She felt desperate. She needed air. This reminded her of when Perdira had taken her price and she had been trapped underwater and unable to breathe.
She needed the woman off of her. She freaked and panicked, struggling. She couldn’t take it anymore.
The woman had to get off.
Tess bucked up again. Arching her back and pushing with her feet, a blast of magic and white light exploded out from her and the woman went flying across the Medicine Wheel.
Chapter 27
Tess got to her feet, pulling her fists up to protect her face, ready for the next attacker. Her breath was coming in ragged gasps and she felt wild. What had happened? It was definitely a blast of magic. And it had definitely come from her.
She looked around the Medicine Wheel and saw Finn pinned down by the other fighter and she ran toward him. But before she could get there, Jayde arrived. The human smashed the rock she had in her hands into the warrior’s head and he slumped to the ground. She seemed surprised and shocked at what she had done.
He was the last warrior to fall. All ten fighters were lying unconscious on the ground, scattered around the Medicine Wheel. Jayde kept hold of the rock and dropped beside Finn.
“Are you okay?” she said and he nodded.
Jayde gave him a hand and he pulled himself up to sit.
“Did someone have a bomb?” Jayde asked. Tess and Finn knew what that was from a movie they had watched the other night. But they both frowned.
“I don’t think so,” Finn said.
“Why do you ask?” Tess said, nervously picking up her Unity Blades and stowing them in her Otherworld sheath when Jayde was looking at something else. It seemed as though Finn had already put his away.
“Well, there was this blast and one of the women went flying and I felt the shockwave from it.”
“I don’t know,” Tess said, giving Finn a look that said that was so me. Then he gave her a look back that said what the hell did you do?
Tess decided that if
she could do magic on this realm, she needed to learn how to control it. Because otherwise, she was like a bomb of magic when she got upset. And that couldn’t be good.
They both watched as Jayde walked over and put the rock she had hit the warrior with back in a very specific spot. Then she spoke softly to herself.
“Thank goodness nothing was damaged or moved.” She began to walk around, examining every stone. “I have the images. I could replicate it anyway.”
To change the subject away from the supposed bomb, Tess walked over and examined one of the bodies.
“Look at this star on their jackets.”
Finn got to his feet and came over to see what she was looking at.
“I feel like I’ve seen that somewhere before,” Finn said softly to Tess. “But I can’t think where.”
“Who were these guys?” Tess responded just as quietly.
“Not the Shadows. These ones have a totally different style.”
“Wait, what’s that sound?” Tess asked loudly so Jayde would hear her too.
They all listened.
“Just cars on the highway,” Jayde said, not looking up but continuing to inspect the Medicine Wheel. When she was finished, she came back over to stand in front of them.
“So, who were those people and what did they want with you?” Jayde said, standing there with her arms folded. She looked in control but she was a shaking a little bit. “I knew I shouldn’t have let you in. Shouldn’t have brought you out here. What sort of trouble are you two in?”
Finn and Tess looked at each other.
“You know we should really get out of here before they wake up,” Tess said, avoiding the question. They were in a lot of trouble but not the kind a Starless One would understand.
“How about a tiny bit of an explanation?” Jayde said.
“Well…” Finn started.
Then they all looked up as five SUVs appeared over the nearby ridge, driving at breakneck speed across the prairie. They braked hard, sliding to a stop. Another five came along behind, doing the same thing.
“We need to run or hide or something,” Finn said.
“Where?” Jayde asked. “We’re in the middle of the damn prairie. There’s nothing for miles.”