by Jo Spurrier
Had it worked? I didn’t know how to tell without calling them all back again. I supposed I’d just have to have faith that I’d done it properly.
I shuffled my feet in the dust, and wondered how long I should give them. We couldn’t afford to wait too long, but I couldn’t call them back too soon, either. With nothing to do but wait, my mind turned to ruminating on what was to come. Another fight. Another battle. Another friend turned against me. I thought of Kara, turning in desperation to the same witch who’d cursed her father, who’d sent him out to attack us just because we took too close an interest in her affairs. I wasn’t sure I’d have the courage to do that. But then, courage was one thing Kara had never lacked.
I glanced across at Toro. ‘Were you ever scared? When there was a big fight coming, I mean, back when you were a bandit?’
He lifted his head, pricking his ears, and then he snorted a yes.
‘What did you do?’ Then, I remembered the conversation we’d had when Aleida loaned him her voice. ‘Oh, right. You used to drink.’
Another yes, and he dropped his head again, pawing at the earth with one hoof.
I sat down, knees bent with an arm hooked around them. ‘I’m not sure I’m cut out for this,’ I said. ‘I don’t want to fight anyone. I don’t know the first thing about it. And I don’t want anyone to get hurt. Least of all me.’ That last part was meant to be a joke, but it didn’t quite come out that way. ‘I mean, just look at Kara. She’s so splendid, with her sword and her braided hair and her red trousers . . . And then there’s Aleida.’ It scared me sometimes, how cold she could be, the choices she was willing to make without hesitation or remorse. That smile she’d worn when she cast her spell over the thugs before they were taken away to be hanged. I didn’t think I could ever do something like that. I didn’t ever want to.
I laid my wand in my lap and traced a finger over the crystal’s glassy faces. Despite everything I’d seen and done, inside I still felt like the pot-girl and nursemaid I’d been back at home, like I was a farm beast that had wandered astray and found itself somewhere it had no business being. I couldn’t help but remember what Aleida had said to me when I protested the path that we were on, and the moves she was proposing to make. Sweet child, what on earth are you doing with me? I honestly wasn’t sure. I did love this life that I’d found myself in — right up until we hit those moments of sheer terror and looming danger, like the one that lay ahead of us tonight, and then I longed for home, for the chipped sink in the kitchen and the laundry copper and the floor that needed endless scrubbing.
A little distance away, Toro lifted his head, ears pricking to alert. I straightened, and found my hand on my wand without any thought of doing so.
He was watching the sky, I realised, and I heaved myself up in time to see Minerva’s eagle flapping overhead, moving with determination but flying quite low over the trees. It held something in its claws, something long and slender with a red blob swinging from one end.
It was the red that gave it away — Kara’s sword, the red tassel still swinging from the hilt. ‘Oh,’ I said in a low voice. ‘Oh, that doesn’t bode well.’
Toro made a low rumble of agreement in his throat, and backed away under the cover of the trees. Then he pointed his long nose at the ritual circle laid out in the dust, and scraped his hoof restlessly against the ground.
‘No, it’s too soon to call the sprites back,’ I said. ‘Last time, Aleida gave them half an hour or so. It’s barely been ten minutes.’
He made a dissatisfied sound, but dropped his head again in submission.
I joined him under the tree, and tried not to think about what Kara must have promised for Minerva to take the time and trouble to fetch her sword.
Shortly after the eagle disappeared from sight, a strange noise began to echo across the forest, a low, distant rumbling. It made Toro startle, and set my heart to beating harder, making me tense. But though I listened with all I had, even holding my breath to hear more clearly, there was nothing else. Just a distant grinding noise, like an enormous millstone.
After five or ten more minutes, growing more and more uneasy, I couldn’t stand it any longer. ‘All right,’ I muttered. ‘I’ll call them back. I hope by all the gods that it’s been long enough.’ Quickly, I laid out the rest of the offering, and started the incantation to call the sprites back.
They were none too swift about it, unfortunately. Facet was the first to arrive, and he brought six of the odd, dark pebbles with him, popping them up out of the ground like sprouting seeds before drifting over to the gold coin to take his reward. The rest returned, one by one and taking their sweet time, and I anxiously counted the pebbles they brought. Each of the little creatures brought at least three, but the undisputed champion was the little quicksilver sprite, who brought nine of the things before muscling his way through the rest of the group to reach the gold coin. The other sprites edged aside to let it through, even though it was smaller than the rest of them. Even Facet gave ground, which struck me as something of interest, though I was rather too preoccupied to dwell on it for long. Somewhere in the distance, that deep rumbling sound was still carrying on.
I gathered up all the stones, piling them into a handkerchief, and the knot of worry in my chest eased a little as the count steadily climbed. Forty, fifty, nearly sixty of the things!
‘All right, we’re done,’ I said to Toro as I scuffed out the circle and the symbols drawn in the dust. ‘Will you let me on your back again? We should get back as fast as we can.’
He tossed his head in something I took for a nod, and with the aid of a rock beside the dry stream I scrambled onto his back again.
Now, looking back, I admit that I wasn’t as watchful as I should have been. I was filled with relief that my first ritual alone had worked, and that I’d collected nearly double the number of stones Aleida had asked for. My mind was also bending to what lay ahead, the fight to stop Minerva’s portal before it opened and brought a hell-beast through to our realm. Whichever way you look at it, I wasn’t doing what I should have been doing, which was to focus on the here and now — though exactly how much good it would have done is anybody’s guess.
We were trotting back towards the wagon, me doing my best to grip Toro’s sleek, slippery sides with legs that were not at all accustomed to the task, when there came a sudden shriek from above us. It was an awful, ear-splitting noise, a sound that pierced right through my thinking mind and spoke directly to the primal part of me, striking it with a wordless, visceral terror.
Toro shied violently and launched into a gallop with a powerful kick of his hind legs, surging forward with breathtaking force. Once again, I felt the cold shadow of enormous wings pass over us and threw myself down against his neck, remembering too clearly the feeling of sickle-like claws slipping between my ribs. By some miracle I kept my seat, gripping his flanks with all my strength and burying my hands in his mane, as he desperately ran for the cover of the trees.
It never occurred to us — and it really should have — that the damn things might hunt in packs.
Toro swerved between the trees, trusting the branches arching overhead to stop the griffin from swooping down upon us. He leapt over a fallen branch, threading and weaving between a couple of trunks, while every twist and turn threatened to send me sliding off over his shoulder — and then there came another screech, dead ahead of us. I caught the briefest glimpse of huge, golden eyes and a gaping beak, and massive white wings spreading wide.
Toro threw himself aside, and this time I had no hope of holding onto my perch. I flew over his shoulder, and tumbled to a landing right at the griffin’s feet. It reared back to swat at me with one of its taloned forefeet, pinning me to the ground, and looked at me quizzically along that bill-hook of a beak. The only reason I wasn’t screaming in fright was because the fall had driven all the breath from my body, and with the weight of it pinning me down I simply couldn’t draw breath.
Somewhere I could hear Toro’s panicked
whinny as he realised he’d lost me. Then came the thundering of hooves, getting closer.
The griffin’s head snapped around, pupils shrinking to pinpricks — and then with a flash of his chestnut hide, Toro slammed into the beast’s shoulder, half a tonne of solid muscle and power and fury. Just as when he’d charged the lion, they both went down, tumbling together in a flurry of legs and feathers and fur.
I scrambled up, snatching for my wand and knife. The heavy satchel was wrapped around me, pulling me off balance, but I couldn’t risk losing it. There came a strange chittering behind me, and I whirled to find the other griffin stalking towards us on foot. A gleam of gold caught my eye — another one of those golden seals, pressed into its neck. I understood what it meant, now. Minerva owned this beast, it was bound to follow her will. The one behind me must have one, too.
I pressed my back to the tree and raised my wand, feeling fire and fury course through me, as hot and bright as molten metal. ‘Fire!’ I snarled, and the stone at the tip of the wand glowed like iron fresh from the forge, red as cherries and blazing with heat, sending a fireball the size of my head roaring towards the griffin. It splattered against the beast’s neck and shoulder, splashing over the white plumage like liquid flame, and with a screech of alarm the creature threw itself to the ground again, rolling to smother the flames.
I kept the fireballs going as I pushed away from the tree. I could only spare the briefest glances for Toro, struggling to stand again. I hoped he hadn’t broken a leg, risking a move like that. And for the second time today, too. ‘Up! Get up!’ I screamed at him. He was bleeding from several cuts along his flank and down his leg, but thankfully those long limbs seemed able to bear his weight.
The air was full of the stench of burning feathers, but the nearer griffin had managed to put out the flames, and the second one hung back, wary. It turned those yellow eyes towards Toro, rearing back on its haunches as though to pounce, but I warned it back with a shout and another fireball. I was so focused on the two griffins that I barely even noticed the golden brown shape weaving and flitting through the branches overhead.
It was a mistake on my part. It was Minerva’s eagle, and though it was enormous by earthly standards, it paled to insignificance next to the massive griffins, each one of them nearly as tall at the shoulder as Toro himself.
With a few flaps of its wings, the eagle launched itself towards Toro, and alighted on his withers, talons sinking in as Toro gave a squeal of pain and bucked to rid himself of the unwelcome passenger. But the eagle was gripping tight, and with wings spread for balance it lowered its head towards Toro’s shoulder.
Too late, I noticed the gleam of gold in its beak. The same gleaming golden seal that the griffins bore, that Brute the bear and Grinner the lion had carried when they attacked us that morning.
‘No! Get off him!’ I threw another bolt of fire, not even thinking of how it would burn Toro as well as the eagle — but the bird was already leaping away with a powerful flap of its wings, and Toro . . .
He fell, legs folding beneath him. He rolled to his side, thrashing and kicking. Convulsing.
I backed away, gripping my wand tight, heart thundering in my throat. ‘Oh gods, no.’ Minerva had him, and only the gods themselves knew what she had in mind for him.
I didn’t want to leave. But I knew I had to. The rocks of the Scar were near, I could feel them. I had no idea if Minerva wanted me dead or her prisoner, but I had no intention of giving her either.
With clenched teeth, I set my wand glowing again, and with a steady stream of fireballs to keep the beasts at bay, I beat my retreat.
I came out of the pathway down where the road cut through the rocky scar, as far as I could get from the beasts under the trees while still being somewhat near the caravan. I only knew how to use pathways through bare, exposed rock — if there was some other way of opening a door, I didn’t know it. Once I was out in the fresh air and dying sunlight again, I set out for the caravan, hiking my skirts so I could run.
Aleida was waiting for me in the clearing beside the wagon, leaning on her staff and looking grim. ‘What happened?’ she said as I came near, breathing hard. ‘I started over, but once you ducked into the pathway I figured you’d be heading back here. You hurt?’
I shook my head, still panting. I’d have liked to know how she knew I’d retreated through the pathways, but that was a question for another time. ‘No, but she’s got Toro. Minerva, I mean.’
She pulled a face. ‘I was afraid she’d come after him, now that we’d flushed him out for her. Is he dead?’
‘No, no . . . They could have killed us, I think, but they didn’t seem to want to. There were two griffins, and the eagle. It had one of those seals in its beak, you remember, the golden ones?’ Quickly, I told her what had happened.
‘Mm,’ Aleida said when I was done. ‘So she’s got control of him now. Interesting the eagle went straight to him and not you. Perhaps the seals don’t work on humans? That would explain why she went to the trouble of transforming them. I’ve been wondering why she’d go to so much effort just to kill them anyway.’
‘I thought they were after me.’
‘I expect they would have taken you to her if they could. Did you get the stones?’
I nodded, and opened my bag to show her the bundle of them, wrapped up in the handkerchief. ‘Nearly sixty.’
‘Sixty? Lord and Lady, Dee. That’s perfect. Okay, let’s go. You can catch your breath while I’m setting everything out.’
‘Can I just get a drink of water first?’
‘There’ll be water where we’re going. Come on.’
The job took longer than I’d expected. Aleida had me open a pathway again, and bring us to a cavern underground, where we laid out an array of leaves and twigs, seeds and stones, anointed with oils and candlelight, all set out in a complex pattern. We built three of them in total, and the work went a little quicker once my hands stopped shaking from the fight and I was able to help.
‘Is that the last of them?’ I spoke quietly, but my voice still echoed over the rocks and the still water. It was lucky that we had the means to lay them all out underground, Aleida had explained. They’d have a little more power this way, and there was no chance of them being disturbed, whether by Minerva’s eagle or wild creatures or even the nether beasties that we knew were scattered through this tinder-dry forest.
‘Yep, that’s the lot. Now there’s just one more thing.’ She pulled a familiar little jar from her belt, along with a tiny brush. ‘Turn around, and drop your dress down from your shoulders a little. I’m going to give you some armour, and that’s the best spot.’
I did as I was told, sweeping my hair away too, and tried to hold still against the tickling touch of the brush and the cool, tingling ointment she painted onto my skin. ‘When you say armour . . .’
‘It’s called Steelskin,’ she said. ‘There, done. Give me your hand, I’ll show you what it does.’
Turning, I offered my hand. She seized it, turning it palm up, and drew her knife across my palm, pressing hard. I pulled away with a yelp of surprise, but she held my wrist tight. It took me a long moment to realise that it didn’t pierce my skin. It didn’t so much as scratch. ‘Oh,’ I said.
‘Be warned, it only keeps you from being cut,’ she said. ‘You’ll still bruise, and a hard enough blow will still break your bones. And sorry in advance, by the way.’
‘For what?’
‘You know how when you get a sunburn, your skin peels? Well, in about three days, you’re going to get that all over. And I mean all over. Now you do me.’ She handed me the brush and ointment, and pulled a slip of paper from her pocket with a sigil drawn upon it. ‘This one.’
I hesitated. ‘What if I get it wrong?’
‘Don’t.’
I swallowed hard and opened the pot. ‘All right. You’re going to have to crouch down, though, or I can’t reach. Is this the same one?’
‘No, different.’ She knelt on th
e ground and tugged her dress down to expose her golden skin. ‘This one’s called Salamander’s Kiss. Stupid name, if you ask me, but I didn’t invent it.’
Real salamanders lived in the water, but someone had decided that a certain type of fire sprite should be called a salamander as well. ‘Defence against fire?’
‘That’s right.’
‘Why don’t we have the same one?’
‘Because I’m going to be in the thick of things, and you’ve got another task to do.’ The sigil drawn, she stood again, pulling her dress up and fastening the buttons. ‘You’re going to keep Kara off my back. Toro, too.’
‘Are you serious? You want me to fight Kara?’
‘Yep. I’m going to have my hands full with Minerva. Kara’s yours.’
‘But I don’t know how to fight! Her da’s been teaching her for years, and she has her sword back! I saw the eagle carrying it.’
‘Dee, if you’re wearing Steelskin, all she’s got is a stick. And you do know how to fight, you did a damn good job against Gyssha’s construct back at the cottage a few months ago. But I’ve got a couple of other things that might help . . .’
‘That’s really not the same thing,’ I protested as she pulled a pair of rings from her pocket. ‘And I don’t want to hurt her.’
‘Dee, that’s good and all, but if she gets past you and gets to me, I will put her down. I know you like her, that’s why I’m leaving her to you. Listen, she’s not going to go too hard on you, did you get a look at her hands? Those pretty little knuckles have never taken much of a pounding. Now, here.’ She grabbed my left hand and pushed a ring onto my finger. ‘This one’s a shield. This one’ — she pushed another onto my right hand, next to the amethyst she’d given me yesterday — ‘will give your fireballs a bit more of a kick. If she does get past you, just start throwing fire at her. They won’t touch me but they’ll force her to back off.’
