The King of the Skies

by Robert J. Crane

  A click of a button on the contraption’s side, and the rope was sucked back through from both directions, spinning back into a perfect coil, wound impossibly tight and compressed to the size of a tennis ball.

  “Ta-da!” I said, extending my arms.

  Heidi and Burbondrer looked at me from the other platform, maybe twenty feet between us. Neither looked very impressed.

  “I said, ta-da! Where’s my cheering section?”

  “You literally did nothing there,” Heidi called across to me. “Your little toy did all the work.”

  “Oh, would you just clap?”

  Silence, but for the verse immediately following the first chorus of Queen’s greatest, most-fitting-to-my-life song.

  “Clap,” I said, tone flattening, “or I will not proceed.”

  “You are unreal,” said Heidi.

  I waited, arms folded …

  “Carson feels ill,” Heidi called to me.

  “So clap!”

  “Please clap,” Carson said weakly.

  “There we go; he’s got it.”

  Heidi shook her head. “You’ve got your head stuffed very far up someplace the sun has never shone,” she declared, “and it is finding itself deeper and deeper day by day.” But when I continued not to move, and Carson loosed a queasy moan, she shouted, “Argh!” and placed her palms together, claps separated by very long pauses. Looking uneasily from Heidi to me and back, Burbondrer joined in a moment later.

  “All right,” I said, turning back and taking aim again, at another platform maybe twenty feet off again, but toward my right and some ten feet higher in elevation than this one. “Off I go. Keep it up back there.”

  And I fired and was momentarily zooming through the skies again, the queen of this forest and everything that lay in it, seeker extraordinaire, no challenge too great for me in my quest for treasure.

  One question you might wonder is why exactly we were still hunting for treasure. After all, our share of Ostiagard’s hidden cache was enough to set us up for probably hundreds of lifetimes (can’t say I was totally sure on that; I wasn’t an accountant, and I hoped never, ever to be one).

  But there is more to life than being a rich.

  … and also we were spending like drunken sailors. And by “we,” I meant more specifically me. So, if there actually were funds enough to keep us going until even necromancy failed us and our thousand-year-old bodies crumbled into dust … well, the rate I was going, it probably wouldn’t actually see us through the end of the year.

  Wall calendars do not match the décor of my hideout. But also I do not need a wall calendar, because I have recently acquired a million-world-clock: an enormous, definitely-not-gaudy mechanism that now hangs from the ceiling, and which can rearrange its crystal components at the click of the finger to tell me not just the time of any location in any world I so choose, but also the temperature, weather, humidity, atmospheric makeup, planet density—yeah, I had been using that one a whole lot, comparing on Wikipedia to our solar system, which is most definitely lacking, I can tell you—plus about a hundred other things that you’d never care to know unless you had a million-world-clock, in which case it was the most interesting thing ever.

  “Who even needs one of these?” Heidi had asked dubiously when she returned from a late-night jaunt to whatever curry house she claimed she was haunting and saw the faceted crystalline structure overhead, moving ceaselessly of its own accord.

  Mira Brand, that’s who needed one.

  I sailed between platforms over and over, wind whipping my hair back behind me, calling out into the forest whoops of joy. This was fun, way more than traversing this course the traditional way, which was a terrific change of pace. Heidi and Burbondrer clapped me, and cheered when I asked for them too. Carson gave it his all too, though it wasn’t a stellar effort, bless him.

  Finally, I landed on the highest platform of all, a dainty little thing with barely enough room for me to edge around the tree trunk it surrounded. Only it did have some additional space, because the moment my feet touched stone, the trunk faded to reveal an arched cavity hidden within.

  “Aha.”

  I pressed the button on the line launcher to suck up the elvish rope, then turned to take a bow.

  “Thank you, thank you,” I said to some fairly weak applause. (I was going to have to have words with this crew of mine when we were back on solid ground.)

  “Just get on with it,” Heidi called from thirty feet under me, maybe thirty feet back too. “This music is doing my head in. I don’t even like Queen.”

  “So why is it on your playlist then?”

  “Because you made me put it on there last time we did one of these.”

  Oh yeah.

  I waved her off and pivoted, stepping into the little cavity within the tree’s expansive trunk. I had to duck, but not much.

  Atop a plinth of white polished stone lay a glittering silver necklace. Pink gemstones were inlaid, and the fattest one of all, three quarters of the size of my clenched fist, hung from it.

  “The Necklace of the Regent Adjunct,” I mused, reaching for it. “Welcome home.”

  “Mira,” called a voice—

  Carson.

  I paused, looking back. “Huh? What?”

  “Don’t forget about the—”

  I dismissed him with a hand the way I’d done to Heidi a moment ago. “I’ve got this,” I said, and turned, reaching out again.

  My fingers found its cool surface, wrapping about it, probably the first hands to have touched this thing in a millennium or more. Well, it was about to pass through lots of hands, as me and my team admired it, and it was then sold, or at least handed off to whatever museum it would undoubtedly feel greatly at home in.

  I lifted it, feeling its heft—it was a weighty thing, to be sure—

  And then the trouble started.

  2

  Even as I spun around, I already knew what was causing the relentless buzzing; Carson had insisted on the research, so I could hardly be surprised that this had happened—

  And there they were. Fae spilled from the knotholes these tree trunks were riddled with. Miniature things, maybe eight inches from toe to head, they were nothing like the creatures from the storybooks I’d been read as a (very young) child. These were gnarly little naked things, skin dark and tough, their faces twisted and lips pulled wide to flash jaws lined with needly little teeth.

  They rushed me, coming from a dozen directions at once.

  “Oh, damn—”

  Then they flowed into the cavity in the trunk where I ducked, assailing me with spiky limbs and spikier teeth. Jeans protected my lower half, but I’d put away my heavy shirts in deference to the summer heat, and the barbs went right through my t-shirt. And my bare arms, neck, face—

  “Oww!”

  They squealed at me, like an army of tiny pigs.

  I batted at them, shouting in pain as they latched hold, biting, driving their claws into me—

  This wasn’t a fight I’d win. The fae outnumbered me, and for every one I slapped aside, three more surged in to replace them. So I barreled out onto the tiny platform, stuffing the necklace into a pocket—

  Fae were grabbing for it.

  “This is mine now!” I slapped them in the heads, knocking them into a cartwheel earthward.

  I slid it home, and for good measure zipped the pocket up. Probably not enough to stop the fae; their grabby little hands would be on the zipper in seconds, trying to draw it open and retrieve the necklace. But there was no time to worry about that just yet. I wanted out of here before they accumulated enough numbers to overpower me.

  I lifted the line launcher, swiping biting fae from it, and took aim—

  But the platform where Heidi, Carson and Burbondrer waited was blocked. A wall of fae, wings flapping in a blur like a great charm of hummingbirds (learned that one from Carson, just FYI—not part of my usual lexicon), filled the air between us.

  No clear shot.


  Which shouldn’t matter, because the line launcher could find its target …

  But as I fired, the elvish rope whipped out, then snapped back into the gun again. Too many moving targets for it to safely find a way around.

  “Damn it!” I turned and fired in the direction of another platform back the way I’d come.

  “See you later, you nippy little—”

  My last word was lost as I was whisked off and the fae I’d sworn at surged after me.

  I landed hard and fired again before the elvish rope had come halfway back to the line launcher. It snaked awkwardly in the air, not expecting to be turned around mid-flight, then sailed into a knothole with a thunk that I barely heard over the buzz of angry wings.

  I followed it a moment later, carried by the line launcher—

  “WHERE ARE YOU GOING?” Heidi belted from somewhere out of sight. “HELP US DEAL WITH THESE THINGS, MIRA!”

  “I’m working on it!” I yelled back, landing with a crash. I slammed sidelong into the tree trunk, air forced out of me. My ribs rattled.

  The elvish rope snapped back into place.

  Fae launched at me just behind it, narrowly in second place.

  “Oh, for crying out loud—” I began and then a flock set upon me, biting and clawing all over again.

  “Oww!” I roared.

  I batted one away, then another. A third caught my hand, and its spiny fingers sunk into the webbed flesh between my thumb and forefinger. I howled again—and then that howled turned into a high-pitched shriek as stabby teeth sank into my middle finger. I shook my hand, trying to flick it off, but it held on tight—

  I punched out blindly with the line launcher, because it had suddenly grown heavier as fae grabbed for it—then I snapped into it position at my belt, just for a moment. Swinging my free hand around, I wrapped it about the neck of the fae presently going vampiric on my finger, and pulled—

  “ARGH!” I screamed as its teeth gouged into my skin. Why did that hurt so much?

  Paper cuts, I thought, but not remembering just why those ridiculously thin cuts burned like a thousand suns—and then I was groping for the line launcher again with one hand, punching out with the other, taking aim in whatever direction was clearest.

  I fired—

  The rope shot out, and then snapped back into place again as fae flew on an intersecting course.

  Damned thing! Why hadn’t Benson explained it was easily confused by flappy, growly little gnome freaks?

  “Get out of my way!” I shouted, swinging an arm ahead, hoping it would disperse the cloud of them, the way a good swipe made gnats or whatever those stupid summer flies were skedaddle, at least for a moment. No such luck here though: the front of the cloud just flitted forward, latching onto that arm too, the full length of it, stabbing and biting—

  “Would you just get—”

  I thrust out with my left hand, where I held the line launcher, figuring I’d smash them in their stupid, twisted faces with it, knock some sense into them or at the very least knock the fight out of them—but another cloud had come at me from behind. They slapped into my back, half of them grabbing hold, sinking teeth and claws into my clothes, the other half just driving against me, pushing—

  I teetered—

  And suddenly, before I knew what was happening, I was falling.

  I shrieked, but the wind stole my cry—

  But before I had time to even flail around, my fall terminated as I bellyflopped into an extended bough. Not quite centered, I rebounded, and whatever breath I had left in my lungs was expelled in a spittle-filled burst.

  I clutched madly before the slightly sideways momentum could send me sprawling over the edge. One arm around the bough, I tugged myself over so I was right in the middle of it, legs hanging to either side like a particularly lazy cat.

  Tilting my head sideways, I got a dizzying view of the forest floor, all dirt and those tangled networks of external root systems driving into the earth. Still a very, very long way down …

  Fortunately, the fae had given me a moment’s respite. Every one of them clutching me had flown off as I fell, leaving me totally free of the blighters, though not without plenty of tiny wounds to remind me. My arms were beaded with spots of blood leaking from the dozens, maybe hundreds, of pinprick holes they’d carved in me. And my fingers … well, I didn’t dare lift my hand enough to see them, but I could feel the hot wetness seeping around them, making my hold on this resting place slick.

  Safe, for now.

  But my friends … they were not doing so hot.

  I looked up to see them across the way. The fae that had been assaulting me had diverted, joining the others that had surrounded the opposite platform. They flew at them in dense, dark clouds. Heidi and Carson were both swatting madly, her with hands, him with his manbag, and at least finally with a touch of color to his face again. Burbondrer swung too, his sword loosed. For all the wondrous cleaving it had done to the entrance of the temple, it did absolutely nothing to the fae, which parted as it sailed through the air, coming together again behind it.

  My crew wasn’t doing very well, being pushed into a tighter and tighter formation.

  Worse: Queen’s Don’t Stop Me Now had started playing. And I hated, hated that song with a fiery passion.

  Well, time to bust them out of this.

  Unsteadily, I reached behind me for the line launcher. It had snapped back to my belt in the fall, attaching itself there with the elvish rope lest it shatter into pieces two hundred feet below.

  I took careful aim for the platform where my friends were, waiting for a gap in the ceaseless back and forth volley of fae …

  One opened, and I squeezed.

  The elvish rope flew in both directions—

  Thunk! sounded to my rear, followed a fraction of a second later by another thunk! ahead of me—barely two inches above Heidi’s head. She turned, eyes wide in shock, distracted from the fae battering her—

  “Geronimo!” I shouted, and I flew through the air on the elvish rope line toward them, clutching it desperately, desperately tight in a hand swiped as dry of blood as I could manage at short notice.

  I landed with none of Heidi’s grace, right in front of her.

  And the fae were on me too before the line launcher coiled the elvish rope back into place.

  “Damn these things,” I grumbled, joining my friends in their swatting.

  “I did warn you!” Carson’s voice was high. He swung the manbag like it was an Olympic hammer, sailing around and around. Heidi had one eye on him, as did Burbondrer, by the looks, which was good, because the second he stopped and all that fluid in his ear got to slosh around by itself instead of following his turn, a date with the forest floor loomed.

  “You want to get us out of here?” Heidi asked.

  “Sure,” I said, elbowing a gnawing fae in the face. It opened its tiny jaws and hissed as it spun away through the air. “Mind turning that music off first though? Not one of my favorites.”

  “Unreal.” Heidi landed a punch, Bluetooth speaker clasped in hand—then she shook it out to full length, black plastic transitioning to the onyx steel of Feruiduin’s Cutlass, an impossibly sharp blade with a diamond-thin tip capable of cutting through bone like it was butter. She spun it around and joined Burbondrer in swinging.

  The fae dodged—but not quite fast enough. Burbondrer’s swings were slow and lumbering, but Heidi was all lithe finesse, and she sliced through the air before the fae could fully react. No heads went rolling—but a couple landed hard on the platform, screeching, their wings lopped off or half missing.

  “How do we get off of this thing?” Carson asked.

  “Line launcher?” I suggested.

  “Ohh, no way,” he said, turning wild eyes onto me as he slammed another surging wave of fae clear with his manbag. Totally ineffective as a long-term solution, but it sent the things spinning off in all directions. “I am not riding that thing.”

  “Fairly certain you don�
��t have a choice.”

  “But—”

  “Just suck it up and let her get us out of here!” Heidi roared.

  A fresh wave of fae flew at me, having backed off to regroup. I had a couple of hangers-on, teeth buried into my flesh, and I thrust them loose, ducking as best I could—

  The fae slammed into my chest, shunting me backward a step—toward the platform’s edge. Too close; in my batting, I’d stepped away from the center, giving Heidi and Carson and Burbondrer clear space to swing their weapons, makeshift or otherwise, lest I get sliced in two (or just walloped in the head). Now I was dangerously close to the side—and I turned to see it swim up at me, temple below, rear tucked into the trees—

  I needed a weapon of my own to clear some space to get to the line launcher.

  I swiveled—and two fae crashed into my face, grabbing.

  I roared as their spiny fingers dug for my eyes—

  “GET OFF, YOU PESKY LITTLE—”

  I yanked one free, then the other. Another whine of pain escaped me; it felt like the thing had damn near taken my eyelid off.

  Enough of this.

  I snapped the umbrella from my belt—but not to spear the things.

  “Come for me!” I shouted at the fae.

  Pretty sure they didn’t understand. But the battle cry drew their attention to me, and they regrouped into a dense cloud of biting and clawing and piggy, angry faces—and then flew at me.

  I swung the umbrella in front of me—

  And unleashed it.

  It sprang open, red and yellow stripes radiating in the pink-hued forest.

  Fae slammed into it, a wall of them—and rebounded fantastically, spewing off of it like an ocean wave breaking around a rock. They scattered into the air, cartwheeling and spinning, world turning—

  I’d have watched it in slow-motion over and over, if I could, that’s how beautiful it was.

  But I couldn’t, because no one had had the good sense to train a camera on me as I did my thang, and also because, though it looked pretty sweet, the fae bouncing away en masse, they also were not out of commission for very long—and we needed a way out of here.