by Martha Carr
“Cheyenne, it won’t do anything.”
“No, you won’t do anything.”
“I can explain.”
Shouting in rage, Cheyenne whirled on her father and sent a ball of black flames hurtling into his chest. It threw him toward the cave wall, and he pulled the same trick he’d used before. The black fire consumed his body and he spread his arms, slowing himself before hitting the wall and hovering over the cave floor before lowering himself to the ground. The flames curled inward and almost sank into his skin, then they were gone.
Cheyenne summoned a churning sphere of black energy and stormed after him. “Don’t tell me you can explain.”
“I can.”
“You sacrificed me! Just like that.” She launched the energy sphere at him, and he batted it aside with a flash of white light. “You didn’t even try to find a better way. All you did was tell me I’d be fine!”
A chuckle escaped him and he shrugged. “And so you are.”
“Stop laughing!” Cheyenne hurled two more attacks at him. L’zar deflected the first, but the second caught him in the shoulder and spun him off-balance.
Finally, she reached her father and took a black-flaming swing at his face. He ducked and tried to grab her wrist. Cheyenne brought her other elbow up toward his throat, but L’zar blocked it with a quickly raised forearm and stepped aside. “I’m serious, Cheyenne.”
“You’re never serious. That’s the problem!”
“Stop.” He parried another punch and tried to pull her against him. “Stop trying to fight me and listen.”
“Stop pretending you give a shit about me!” Cheyenne snarled as she kept up the attack, launching punches that would send most magicals crashing through the walls. L’zar was too quick.
The Sorren Gán watched the squabbling drow for a moment before its fascination dwindled. It snorted another cloud of thick black smoke and flicked two of its hands toward the mouth of the cave.
Cheyenne and L’zar were ripped apart by the Sorren Gán’s magic and went sailing through the wall of fire blocking the cave entrance and out into the stone courtyard beyond.
The halfling braced herself for the fall and tumbled across the stone, rolling as much as she could.
Lumil leaped up from where she’d been sitting in the clearing, eyes wide. The other magicals in their party got to their feet to watch L’zar sliding on his back into the center of the bowl-shaped clearing too. Both drow trailed thin wisps of smoke behind them. Cheyenne’s black flames had been snuffed by the Sorren Gán’s disposal of her and her father.
“Shit.” Cheyenne slapped the real fire igniting the hem of her trenchcoat and two spots on her sleeves. Dammit, I just bought this thing.
L’zar scrambled to his feet and slapped at the fire singeing his pants and the front of his shirt. When he finally got it all out, he straightened his shirt and smoothed his long white hair away from his face with both hands.
“So.” Maleshi folded her arms and blinked at the drow. “How did it go?”
L’zar lifted a hand and opened his mouth to answer. Words escaped him, so he gestured at Cheyenne.
The flames blocking the cave entrance flared brighter, and the Sorren Gán’s voice boomed across the clearing again. “You have amused me, at the very least. This I will accept as payment. For now.”
“Endaru’s balls.” Byrd smiled in relief. “I didn’t think that would happen.”
“In three days’ time,” the beast roared, hidden behind the flames guarding its cave, “I will make the journey to Hangivol, and I will feast on the product of Ba’rael Verdys’ stupidity. Do not wait another thousand years to visit me, L’zar. I did miss you.”
L’zar spun and shot the cave the middle finger as the Sorren Gán’s terrifying laughter faded.
“Three days?” Corian rubbed his mouth. “I guess it’s better than never.”
Cheyenne whipped the back of her trenchcoat around, looking for any errant fire she might have missed. L’zar approached her and reached out toward her face. “Are you all right?”
She slapped his hand away. “Don’t touch me.”
“I want to make sure you’re all right.”
Another churning sphere of crackling black energy flew from her hand. He stepped quickly away to dodge the attack, and her magic cracked into the stone behind him, sending black and purple sparks everywhere.
“Whoa, whoa.” Corian rushed toward them. “What happened?”
“Ask him.” Cheyenne launched another energy sphere, but Corian threw off her aim when he pushed her arm down.
Then he grabbed her shoulders and turned her around to look at him. She tried to struggle out of his grasp, but he gave her a quick shake. “Cheyenne!”
“What?” she snarled.
“Cut it out.”
Breathing heavily, she tried to look over her shoulder at L’zar, who merely straightened his shirtsleeves before clasping his hands behind his back and turning away from them.
“Don’t look at him, kid. Look at me.”
“You’re not the one I want to kill, Corian, but if you don’t let go of me, I’ll fight you too. I already punched you once. Imagine what I can do now.” Cheyenne jerked his hands off her shoulders and spun toward L’zar.
“What happened in there?” Maleshi asked, stopping hesitantly beside Corian.
Cheyenne jabbed a finger at L’zar. “That asshole sacrificed me to the Sorren Gán.”
Maleshi unfolded her arms. “What?”
Corian bared his teeth in a snarl. “L’zar.”
The drow thief slowly turned around and spread his arms. “I wouldn’t say that’s an accurate recounting.”
“Bullshit! That’s exactly what happened. You didn’t even try to fight for me. You’re a fucking coward, and I think ripping your head off your shoulders would do more good for all of us than any of your shitty plans.”
“Cheyenne, I understand you’re upset.”
She roared and lunged at him. Corian and Maleshi went after her in twin flashes of silver light, and Cheyenne found herself struggling against both nightstalkers holding her back. She tried to slip past them, snarling, but they held her shoulders and yanked her back.
“You need to stop, kid,” Maleshi growled. “This isn’t the right way to handle it.”
“Sure feels right.” The halfling jerked against their hold, and they pulled her back even farther.
“We’ll figure it out,” Corian muttered, “but you have to let this go. Right now.”
Cheyenne sneered and shoved her face up to his. “You weren’t there. You have no idea what I saw!”
“Hey.”
Cheyenne turned at the sound of Ember’s voice and shot a quick glance at her friend before the fae’s hand smacked the halfling’s cheek. Cheyenne’s head barely moved, but the shock of it took the fight out of her for two seconds.
“Oh, shit.” Byrd sucked in a breath and pressed his knuckles against his teeth. Beside him, Lumil ran a hand through her mop of yellow hair and watched silently.
“Ember.”
“Get it the fuck together already. What’s wrong with you?”
“Hey, I’m not the one who tried to feed my daughter to a—”
“Shut up.” Ember pointed at Corian and Maleshi. “Let go of her. She’s not one of your prisoners.”
Corian cleared his throat and slowly slid his hands off Cheyenne. Maleshi released the halfling’s other shoulder and raised her hands, backing away.
The halfling rolled her shoulders and lifted her chin. “What happened back there was—”
“Inexcusable. Horrifying. A massive betrayal. Yeah, I get it.” Ember grabbed her friend’s shoulders and squeezed. “We can talk about it later. Right now, you’re starting to sound a lot like the drow you’re so set on blowing to pieces. Got it?”
Cheyenne blinked. Jesus, I probably do look like a raving lunatic. She glanced at L’zar, who had his hands in his pockets and was staring at the ground.
Ember sh
ook her gently. “Got it?”
“Yeah. Yeah, Em. I get it.”
“Okay.” Ember released her and asked, “So what now?”
“If it’s all right with Cheyenne,” L’zar muttered, slowly looking up at his daughter with a small frown, “I would very much like the chance to explain what happened.”
“You can’t leave it alone for five minutes, can you?”
“It’s important.”
Cheyenne spun and stormed past the nightstalkers. “Give me five minutes.”
L’zar looked at Corian and gestured toward his daughter. The nightstalker pointed at him in warning. “Don’t push it.”
“Okay.” The drow raised his hands in submission. “I’ll wait.”
Cheyenne walked across the bowl and slumped against the slope, her back curving with the shape of the smooth stone. Light tapping sounded on her right, and she snorted when she saw Foltr sitting on the lip of the stone bowl, swinging his staff over the edge and hitting the rock.
“Time heals many things, Aranél.”
“Yeah, well, I don’t think five minutes is enough to patch up this mess.” Not even five lifetimes. I should never have trusted him.
The old raug nodded slowly. “We shall see.”
Chapter Twenty-One
“Can I sit?”
Cheyenne glanced at L’zar’s shoes beside her. “You were timing me, weren’t you?”
“Only with an internal clock. It’s pretty accurate after the first thousand years.”
She snorted and didn’t protest when he lowered himself to the stone beside her. The rest of their party had gathered on the other side of the clearing to give the drow space for a much-needed chat.
L’zar kicked out his legs in front of him and said, “I’m sure you’ve picked up on the fact that I was here once before.”
“Yeah, two thousand years ago. And you found yourself a master. Sounds like some kind of messed-up drow BDSM without any of the benefits.”
He slowly looked at her with a growing smile. “And those would be?”
“I don’t know, it just came out. Say what you need to say.”
“Ba’rael wasn’t the only one looking for more power, Cheyenne.” L’zar wrapped his arms around his bent knees and hooked his fingers together. “We shared the same brand of youthful stupidity back then. Honestly, I wonder sometimes if it’s changed much.”
She scoffed. “How observant of you.”
“Most days, I like to think my stupidity is slightly less prevalent these days.” L’zar shot her a sidelong glance and smiled. “My sister was too much of a coward to leave the safety of her precious city and risk everything she had to get what she wanted. I was too much of an idiot not to consider that coming here the first time would give me everything I wanted in all the worst ways. But I came. The Nimlothar forest was still thriving then. The rest of this place is unchanged.”
“What’s your point?”
“My point.” The drow chuckled. “I came here wanting power from the Sorren Gán, and it showed me how to get what I wanted. I know exactly what it’s like in that fell-damn lake, Cheyenne. I spent more time down there than I care to remember all at once, without coming up for air.”
“You know you can breathe in there, right?”
“No. You could. I could not.” L’zar turned his head toward her, then looked away. “I died in those flames. The part of me that makes me myself died, and when I did, I saw the threads right there in front of me, laid out in perfect order and with such clarity.”
Cheyenne shifted her position and frowned across the clearing. “I have no idea what you’re talking about when you bring up threads and weaving and whatever.”
“Hmm. What you see with that activator, lines of code and data and the various outcomes of a single command, I see with magic. Those are the threads. The bonds tying us to every living thing in this world and Earth. To ourselves.” He shrugged. “As I died, I found the threads to pull myself out of the flames. Maybe it was only a return from the brink of death and not real death. Who knows? L’zar Verdys, the O’gúl Cu’ón, fell into the fire, and L’zar Verdys the Smiling Weaver walked out of it, the same and not the same. Sometimes, I wonder how far from myself I’ve gotten since that day.”
“Everyone says you were an annoying little shit from the beginning, so it can’t be that far.”
They both laughed, and L’zar nodded. “There is that. But we’re talking about you.”
“Right.”
“When I walked out of that lake, Cheyenne, the Sorren Gán told me something I never expected to fully understand. I had the power I wanted, sure. I’d survived. I rewrote what would have been the end of my story and transformed it into something like the middle, or at least the end of the beginning. I had the Sorren Gán’s full approval and what it called ‘my power,’ but it told me I would not be the last one to use it.”
“Meaning me.” Cheyenne nodded. “I get it. I’m your kid, I got your drow powers. Sure.”
“No. I’m sure you’ve noticed our abilities are not the same.” L’zar chuckled. “And you can’t read the Weave like I do.”
“Well, you can’t handle computers.”
“That’s a fair assessment. The day you told me you’d unlocked your final ability and used the black fire, though?” L’zar said, running a hand through his hair, “That was the moment I understood what the Sorren Gán meant.”
Cheyenne waited for him to continue, but the pause felt far too long. He’s still stalling. “I have a feeling there’s something more to this. Otherwise, you lost me.”
“You get your drow fire from me, Cheyenne. And from the Sorren Gán.”
“Wait, what?”
“In plainer words, drow fire was not one of my abilities when I passed my trials. I’m fairly certain that came from my time spent in the lake, under the Sorren Gán’s control in its domain. To save myself, I took a piece of that beast’s magic as my own and came out with a new fierce power I couldn’t explain. No one would have listened anyway, except for you. You were born with it.”
Cheyenne leaned away from him and frowned. “That’s crazy. You’re telling me I’m part-Sorren Gán?”
“Hardly. You just have its magic in your blood.”
“Magically speaking, L’zar, I’m pretty sure that’s the same thing.”
He looked her in the eyes, a small frown flickering across his eyebrows. “It most certainly is not.” With a grunt, he pushed to his feet and walked across the clearing toward the others. “And now I need a drink.”
Cheyenne stared after him, trying to make all the pieces fit. It sounds like total crap, but it makes sense. I could breathe in the lake, didn’t lose my mind, and couldn’t hurt the damn thing with my most powerful ability.
She shook her head. “Later. I can think about that later.”
She stood and headed after her father. Corian gave her a wary smile. “Everybody good?”
“‘Good’ is probably a little strong, but I don’t want to kill him anymore.”
L’zar smirked but didn’t look at her.
“That’s acceptable.” Corian rubbed his hands together and gazed around the gathered circle. “Time to figure out what happens next.”
“Don’t we go back to the capital and wait for that thing to come and suck out all the extra magic?” Ember asked.
“We could.”
L’zar lifted his chin. “I can’t think about what happens next until we get out of here. And I’d prefer not to waste another day at the very least traveling the way we came so I can find a quiet place to put my head together.”
“Right.” Corian glanced at the cave entrance and cocked his head. “We have plenty of that to do still.”
“And if possible, I would prefer to return to Hangivol with much more of a plan than we have now when it comes to the terms of Ba’rael’s secession and Cheyenne taking the O’gúl Crown. If she wants it.”
Maleshi shrugged. “The plan we have now is nonexistent.”<
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“What exactly do we have to sit down and think so hard about?” Cheyenne asked.
L’zar’s smile widened. “Where my sister’s weakest point is and how to exploit it.”
She gestured toward the burning cave. “After everything that happened in there, you want to talk about exploiting weaknesses?”
The other magicals glanced around in confusion, but L’zar and his daughter stared only at each other.
“You make an excellent point.” The drow nodded, and his smile bloomed into his trickster grin. “You can’t tell me it’s not extraordinarily effective.”
She laughed. “No, I guess not.”
“We can go to Hirúl Breach.” Foltr lifted his staff and gestured farther into the mountains. “Another few hours through the next pass.”
Lumil snorted. “Hirúl Breach? You know, I heard they call that place the Crown’s Bastion.”
The old raug grunted and stuck his stick into the ground. “The last Crown, yes. K’laht traveled there often, and Hirúl Breach welcomed him with open arms and everything they had to give. There is no love lost between them and Ba’rael.”
L’zar narrowed his eyes. “No love lost, or they hate her?”
“They despise the Crown of this Cycle, L’zar. As they should.”
The drow clapped his hands together and pointed in the direction Foltr had indicated. “Then by all means, that needs to be our next stop. A few hours is much better than an entire day. Lead on.”
“I’m not leading us anywhere,” Foltr blustered. “But I can get us inside.”
L’zar leaned toward him and shook his head. “I don’t know where it is.”
“Of course you don’t.” The old raug thumped his staff against the drow’s calf. “You never went farther into these mountains than this cursed stinkhole.”
“We should go somewhere else.” Maleshi folded her arms and squinted into the woods.
L’zar cocked his head. “Come again?”
She rolled her eyes and glared at him. “Do I have to spell it out for you, L’zar? Hirúl Breach is the closest hub to the den at Felagtrok.”
“Ah, yes. And this is apparently an issue for you.” L’zar tapped a long, slender finger on his lips. “Care to elaborate?”