The Agency, Volume IV

by Dianne Sylvan

  "She's alive," she said, barely able to speak. "She's alive."

  Reverently, Rowan laid his palm against her belly, and there was a third flutter, almost like a tiny wave hello. Rowan's eyes went wide.

  They stayed that way for a long time, feeling and listening, the stone forgotten--and when a fourth little movement came, more of a jerk than a flutter but still soft and tentative, they stared at each other, then smiled.

  *****

  The Moon had risen high and full when she and Rowan went into the woods behind the house, the Elf carrying firewood, Sara carrying a flashlight. They'd explored the area before sunset and found a small clearing that would work well--not knowing what the effects of the spell would be, they'd agreed it was better not to do it in the house.

  Ardeth had wanted to come, as had Aven, but Rowan had wanted to do it alone, and it took Sara turning a particularly stern look on him to change his mind. He'd seen that look a number of times since she'd joined the Agency, and any time she used it, he lost an argument.

  "All right," he'd surrendered, "But you stay out of the way, and let me do the actual work. If something goes wrong you go for help--don't try to deal with it yourself."

  She had promised to be careful, noticing that since that moment on the porch he'd been even more solicitous of her welfare than before.

  She didn't really blame him. She was starting to feel that way herself.

  She walked with one hand on her stomach, waiting--hoping?--to feel the tramera move again, but it was still, as if it too understood the gravity of what they were doing. There was no way to know what would happen when the Gate was opened. They might not even come back.

  Was the knowledge they could gain worth it? She had to believe it was.

  "Here," Rowan said. He steered her over to a large chunk of exposed stone and sat her down on it. "Stay put while I get the fire started."

  She was too nervous, now that they'd arrived, to disagree. She gripped the flashlight tightly and kept the beam on Rowan as he deposited the wood in the circle of stones and sand they'd made that afternoon. There was no wind, but they'd built the fire circle carefully, pulling up the grass. The last thing they needed was to set fire to the forest.

  They'd gotten the wood from the rack next to the guest house, so it was dry and well-seasoned; Elves in general didn't like to cut living trees, so they gathered deadfall all year round and stored it carefully. In the summer most of what was used went into the bakers' ovens and community cookfires.

  She wouldn't have figured Rowan for an expert campfire builder, but within minutes the wood was crackling merrily, casting its dancing light all around the clearing.

  He stood in front of the ring for a minute, pondering the stone in his hand, before coming over to where she sat and kissing her on the forehead, then on the lips.

  "Just in case..." he began.

  "None of that," she interrupted. "Everything's going to be fine. We'll be back in our beds asleep in no time, safe and sound."

  He smiled. "Yes, ma'am."

  Rowan returned to the fire, and memory intruded: she thought back to the first time she'd seen him work, back when she was a new recruit and still had only rudimentary control over her powers. She had been awed by his precision, as well as his grace. He could ground in five seconds flat under heavy gunfire, and project across miles. She knew she had only seen a tenth of what he was capable of...still, after knowing him for nearly two years. Watching him prepare himself for the spell left her speechless...and horny, actually, since it was working with his psychic abilities that had brought them together in the first place.

  There would, she hoped, be time for that later.

  His energy shifted, rooting itself in the earth, drawing strength from the embrace of the soil and the trees; he was completely calm, centered, and ready as he lifted the stone to where the firelight could illuminate it, and began to read.

  His voice rang off the night, strong and sure, the cadence of Elvish adding depth and nuance to the words themselves. A single word in their language could mean a dozen things depending on inflection, gender, and other factors; she had no idea how she could have learned it at all without him implanting the entire thing in her head.

  The incantation was four lines long, and she grew more and more tense with each line, her heart nearly stopping as the end of the fourth echoed out around them. Breathing hard, she locked her eyes on Rowan, and waited, heart in her throat as he tossed the stone into the fire pit.

  And waited.

  Five minutes, ten...fifteen...silence. The birds and crickets went right on about their business as if nothing had happened. The fire crackled. The wind picked up just a bit overhead. Clouds drifted like veils over the face of the Moon.

  Nothing happened.

  At first Rowan's attention was locked on the fire, but as the minutes ticked by, he started to look a little confused, then concerned. Finally, after twenty minutes, he looked over at Sara, who shrugged.

  "Did you feel anything?" she asked.

  He made an indefinite gesture. "I think so. I felt something move through me, almost like it was looking me over...but then it was gone. Did we do something wrong?"

  "Look at the stone," she said. "Is it intact?"

  Rowan leaned over the fire pit--just in time for the fire to sputter and go out, all at once.

  He jumped back. "Whoa!"

  Sara stood up and came to his side. "It went out, just like that?"

  Sure enough, the fire was dead, a pile of black and grey, with one thing gleaming pale amid the ash: the stone, pristine, not even dirty. Rowan leaned over to touch it, and she almost warned him not to, but when his fingers struck the surface, it was cool. He picked it up and hung it back around his neck.

  "What did we do wrong?" Sara asked.

  Rowan was completely baffled. "Nothing," he insisted. "I did exactly what the inscription said to do. The Gate should be here, right in front of us."

  Sara cast about with her senses, but no matter how she approached it, there was nothing amiss in the forest. It might have been any other calm, peaceful night in Clan Willow. "There's nothing here, honey," she said. "I would know if it had changed."

  "Something started to happen. Why did it stop? Was it...was it me?"

  "Maybe it was me," Sara mused, retrieving the flashlight and kicking dirt into the fire pit to smother the last few embers that hadn't gone out yet. "Maybe you really do have to be alone when you do it."

  "She said I wouldn't," Rowan muttered. "She said I wouldn't come alone."

  "Well, then we need to take this thing to Deisa tomorrow and see what she knows about it, and talk to some of the other sorcerers in the Clan, the ones that work more in theoretical magic than in craft. They can at least tell us if we're headed in the right direction."

  Rowan was agitated, but he nodded. "You're right. We probably should have talked to the others before we even tried it on our own. We could have gotten hurt, or unleashed...anything. We'll get our bearings tomorrow and try again."

  "Good." She took his arm. "Let's go back and get some sleep."

  "Yes...all right."

  He was obviously distracted on the walk back, and also while she puttered around the kitchen fixing them a hasty dinner before bed. The Bakers had brought them bread, and some of the huge kettle of stew that they kept going almost all year, adding different vegetables as the season's harvest dictated. The last few days it had been full of fresh green herbs, compliments of Aven's work at the house, early summer squash and eggplant, and heaps of green beans. Tonight's had several new potatoes chunked into it, and for afterward, there was the much-promised blackberry pie.

  "We're well cared for here," Sara observed, dishing them up each a bowl of fragrant stew and a slice of bread.

  Rowan seemed a little dazed by their failure, and for a while he said nothing, just picked at his food the way he always did when thinking about something unpleasant. She left him alone, letting him brood, and concentrated on filling her
tummy with the wonderful food, in large amounts, now that eating was no longer a signal to her digestive tract to throw the engines in reverse.

  "I think you should stay here," Rowan said after a while. "I think you and the tramera need to be here where it's safe."

  She looked at him over her stew bowl. "And you?"

  "I need to go through the Gate. After that, if...if I come back...we'll see."

  “Of course you’ll come back,” she said, panicked at the very thought that he might not. “What good would it do for you to just disappear? Aren’t you supposed to help save the Elves from extinction or something?”

  “That’s the myth. What’s the truth? I’m afraid to find out…but I have to.”

  She managed to goad him into eating most of his dinner, then they worked together to clean up, Sara moving a bit slowly—she was as exhausted as she would have been after a full day of training with Carlos back at the base. Apparently it took a lot of energy for a fetus to wiggle its foot.

  Rowan took her hand. “Would you mind company tonight?” he asked.

  Sara smiled. “Absolutely not.”

  They hadn’t slept together much in the weeks they’d been with the Clan, and anything else was even rarer, but bedding down together was as comfortable and warm as always. She had forgotten how good it felt to lie with the Elf, safe in his arms; her relationship with Ardeth was lovely, and extremely satisfying sexually, but there was something about Rowan that was inherently healing, and always had been. They spooned up together amid the cozy blankets of her bed, and she fell asleep to his heartbeat against her back, his arm around her waist, and his fingers laced through hers, thinking that whatever happened, she hoped that this, at least, would not change.

  *****

  When Rowan opened his eyes, for a moment he could make no sense of what he was looking at. Bright sunlight struck his face and nearly blinded him; he rolled onto his back, groaning, and put his hands over his eyes sleepily.

  There was something hard under his back. A rock?

  A rock?

  He opened his eyes again and found himself staring up at leaves.

  “What the…”

  Rowan turned over onto his side again, and drew an astonished breath.

  Sara was gone. The guest house was gone. He was outside.

  It was morning, but there was no birdsong, only the sound of wind rustling through the branches above him. He lay beneath a broad oak, one of many that surrounded the clearing.

  Clearing. What?

  He got to his feet slowly and looked around, senses on high alert. To all outward appearances it was simply a clearing in the woods, much like the one where he and Sara had lit their fire the night before, though larger.

  Something, however, was very, very different about this place.

  He turned in a circle, and reality shifted around him belatedly, stopping around him when he grew still and going blurry when he moved. One minute things were crystal clear, the next they were in watercolor; the trees, too, kept changing, some of them oak and then elm, cedar and then cypress. Disoriented, he rubbed his eyes like a child woken from a nap, and tried again, taking a deep breath to center himself.

  That was better. The scene settled into a single reality, with trees like the ones he was used to around Clan Willow.

  At the far end of the clearing, there was a single enormous oak, standing dark and somewhat ominous as sovereign of the realm. It reminded him strongly of the Blessing Trees, though looking at it made him feel a little uneasy instead of tranquil. There was something odd about the bark, he realized, taking a few steps toward it, out into the sunlight.

  He approached the tree carefully. Around him, the wind stilled, waiting.

  Rowan stared at it, realizing that what he was seeing wasn’t the nearly black pattern of a live oak’s bark—the pattern was too regular, and smoother.

  It was carved. The entire trunk was carved with Elvish Runes like the ones on the back of the stone he wore around his neck…except for a single small circle right in front of him, at about eye level…exactly the size of the stone itself.

  “The Rune Tree,” he whispered, one hand seeking the stone.

  He looked back at the clearing, trying to get his bearings. Where was he? How had he not known this place was near the Clan?

  Or was it?

  There was movement on the edge, back where he’d come from, and the shadow beneath the oak where he’d woken seemed to blur again. He watched, heart pounding, as it solidified into the shape of a person.

  A groan, a yawn, and a gasp.

  Sara struggled to her feet, looking around, her face pale with shock. When she saw him, she sagged back, relieved. “Thank god,” she said. Her voice was almost lost in the silence.

  He crossed the clearing to her, and they hugged. The solidity of her body helped him clamp down on the fear that was crawling up his spine.

  “Where the hell are we?” she asked.

  “I have no idea.”

  “I remember falling asleep, that’s all. I woke up here.”

  “Me too. The spell must have done this—wherever we are, we must have gone through the Gate.”

  “What do we do now?”

  Before he could answer, there was another flurry of movement, and the shadow once again gave birth to form. This time, the person that emerged didn’t wake up gradually—he rolled out from the tree, thrashing, and was on his feet in seconds.

  He ended up out in the sunlight, and made a terrified noise and jumped back beneath the tree, panting.

  “Jason?” Sara asked. “What are you doing here?"

  The vampire pressed himself back into the tree as hard as he could, nails clawing backward into the bark, panic written all over his face.

  Rowan went to him, pulling him around to the side of the tree, farther from the sunlight. “Breathe, love. Just breathe. You’re okay.”

  He’d never seen Jason so afraid of anything, and it was equally frightening to watch, but Jason clenched his arms and did as he said, calming himself by inches. A few feet away, Rowan heard another roll, another thump, and he guessed that meant they had a fourth member in their party.

  “Holy shit!” he heard Sara exclaim. “Who the fuck are you?”

  Rowan poked his head around the tree and saw a familiar wingspan. “Lex?”

  The Seraph wasn’t trying to hide from the sun—Rowan remembered vaguely that it didn’t burn him the way it did normal vampires—but he was clearly thunderstruck, his wings unhooked and unfurled, fists clenched and ready for a fight. It was no wonder Sara looked like she was about to make a run for it.

  Lex looked at him. “Rowan? Where are we?”

  Sara, who had shrunk back into another tree, stared at him hard. “You’re Lex?”

  The Seraph turned to her. “Yes…who are you?”

  “I’m Sara.” She smiled weakly. “You’re even hotter than they said you were.”

  The Seraph, despite the situation, gave her an equally wobbly grin. “Likewise.”

  It wasn’t until she came out into the light again that the Seraph’s eyes went wide as dinner plates, and he put a hand to his mouth, stepping back.

  “What?” she asked.

  Lex gestured helplessly at her but couldn’t speak.

  Rowan brought his attention back to Jason. “Are you okay? Does it hurt?”

  Still breathing hard, the vampire shook his head. “No. It’s…it’s fine.” His eyes narrowed, and he looked around at the woods. “It’s fine. But it shouldn’t be.”

  “I thought you had to be in direct sunlight to catch fire,” Sara said.

  “I do. But this much light should be giving me the mother of all migraines.”

  Still frowning, Jason moved out from behind the tree, out of Rowan’s grasp; the Elf tried to yank him back, but he waved him away and slowly, carefully, stuck a hand out from the shadow into the sunlight.

  Nothing.

  Emboldened, he stepped forward again, and again, until the sun fe
ll across his face.

  Rowan started to yell at him to get back, but there was no need. The sun wasn’t burning him.

  Jason held out his arms, staring at his skin, at the midmorning light falling on him that turned his immortal pallor golden. His mouth worked in silence for a full minute, and his voice was small and tremulous as he said, “It’s so warm.”

  Meanwhile, Lex was still gaping at Sara, who was gaping at Jason, who looked like he was about to faint.

  Clearly someone had to take charge of the situation.

  “All right,” Rowan said. “Is everyone okay? Lex, what’s wrong?”

  The Seraph motioned toward Sara again, and said, “It’s her.”

  “What is?” Sara demanded. “Who am I?”

  A slow shake of the auburn head. “Not you,” he clarified, pointing with an unsteady hand at her middle. “Her.”

  Sara’s hands went protectively to her belly. “You mean the baby?”

  Lex nodded.

  “What about her?”

  He approached Sara, and knelt in front of her, one long-fingered hand coming to rest over hers. Sara cried out, but not in pain—in recognition, the way she had when the baby had kicked.

  Sara swayed backwards, and Lex took her hands, holding her up with a firm but gentle grip. “It’s all right,” he said to her.

  Rowan went to them and drew Sara away from him, putting himself between her and the Seraph. “Like hell it is. What’s going on?”

  Sara’s voice was hushed. “They recognized each other. The baby knows him. I could feel it.”

  Lex’s face bore an expression Rowan couldn’t interpret, a cross between terror and joy. He remained on his knees, looking up at Sara as if she were a queen, or a goddess. “At last,” he said. “At last I know.”

  “Rowan,” Jason said from the clearing, “What is this place? What have you done?”

  Rowan crossed back to his side, out in the sunlight, where it seemed he was rooted to the spot, staring up at the sky—the first blue sky he’d seen in over a century. The Elf watched him for a minute, a smile spreading over his face—he’d never seen Jason look so young, or so vulnerable. The vampire was gazing up at the sun and drinking in its heat, and though his mind was trying to remain on task, Rowan knew the enormity of it was too overwhelming for reason.