by Jean Johnson
By the third lap, Éfan himself glowed, turning his golden mage robes into a thing Ban had seen on other worlds, a cloth-covered lamp shade. Instead of a body-shaped shadow silhouetted on the fabric, the edges away from his body held the shadows. By the fifth circle, the anima he absorbed flowed in, but small spheres beaded out of his body like sweat-bubbles. They grew and grew until they detached.
Seeing this, the chief mage of the pantean nodded solemnly, and turned to Ban. He closed the distance between them with that same graceful, measured pace all the Fae mastered by their fiftieth year, more of a glide than a stride. Stopping in front of the tattoo-covered Shae, he nodded. “I can hold no more. I am ready.”
Ban nodded. Faeshiin steel slashed through the space between them, gleaming golden-white under the power of all that leaking anima. For a moment, Éfan continued to stand there, almost uninjured. Ban reached out with his left hand, planted it gently on the Fae’s chest, and pushed.
Body and head separated, toppling backward. Crimson gushed from the wound. An instant later, it exploded in blinding golden-white sparks that swirled out and around . . . and then arrowed in again. Coalesced awkwardly in a sphere . . . and hummed. With effort, a shimmering, spark-riddled version of Éfan unfurled in its place. Translucent, almost transparent, he lifted a hand, examined it, and tried to say something. It took three tries before it turned into intelligible words in the local human tongue.
“Very different . . . but manageable. I learn with each effort, and learn quickly. Zedren, may I borrow you for an experiment?”
The younger Fae nodded, and braced himself. Éfan’s image dissolved. Wind swirled around the artificer. A moment later, his right arm jerked upward, his hand waved awkwardly, and the Fae grimaced. “I’m not doing this! I . . . I can feel you in me!” His arm dropped, and he hissed a little, flexing it. “Thank you for releasing me.”
Éfan’s voice came from the air around the younger male. “I apologize for the discomfort. I can feel your anima-energies . . . it is far more intimate than any sensing of energies I have known . . . and I can sense that I am feeding on them. Rearranging them, just by my presence. I can create order in them, refining the process . . . or I can sow chaos.
“. . . I will rearrange your matrices, all of your matrices, to a better alignment, but then I must leave quickly so that I do not interfere in Zedren’s ascension. I can feel the barriers you erected with your creations, Zedren; they are blocking me in, hampering my senses. I think I will need to be let out of the stronghold.”
Nodding, Zedren reached out with his hand, his eyes closed . . . and relaxed. “There. An aperture due south. It leads into the solid stone of the theater complex, basement-level storage . . . third storage room on the far right. It can only be used by your kind—our kind, soon. The anti-anima radiation does not block physical bodies, so the others will be able to leave. I . . . ohhh . . . that feels . . . odd,” Zedren breathed. He shivered. “Odd . . . but . . . good.”
“You’re welcome.”
“It almost felt better than sex,” the younger Fae warned.
His sister shuddered and swayed on her chair, then Rua, who shivered and bit her lip, grinning. “Oh, that does feel good . . . I think when we stir up sex with the humans, this is why they’re so attractive. They sing with the anima, and . . .” She stopped purring, cleared her throat, and adopted a sober expression. “Yes, I know I need to focus.”
“Yes, you do—ooh,” Jintaya crooned, blinking in startlement. She frowned thoughtfully in the next moment, analyzing what Éfan did to her. “. . . Yes. Yes, I understand. I will help you get the others.”
Rising, she moved around the circle opposite to Éfan’s invisible but tangible effect on the others. Beyond the circle of Fae, Ban saw all three Efrijt arching one brow. Anzak and Chadesh even folded their arms across their stout chests, skeptical. When Éfan met Jintaya at the far side of the circle, he spoke again.
“I am . . . weakened. This is all new, and requires strengthening my mental muscles in new ways. But as soon as I thread my way out through the hole Zedren made, I will gather strength as I fly northwest across the desert.”
“Wait. Don’t go just yet,” Jinji countered. “Linger outside the stronghold’s defenses. Fly with Zedren when he comes out. That way, you can learn how to sense each other’s presence in the aether. Hopefully you can, and if so . . .”
“Then we can track Udrin. Yes, that is a good idea,” Zedren agreed. “Everyone, concentrate. It is my turn, now. I will miss having a body, but I look forward to the adventure.”
“It gets a bit boring around the second millennium,” Ban muttered. Zedren chuckled when he added, “Then it just becomes mostly tedious.”
“Concentrate,” Éfan directed. “I will go now. If you do not have enough energy to transform Zedren, send word to me through the opening. We must not delay any longer.”
A whirl of energy breezed through the garden-shaped cavern and darted away. Copying his forerunner, Zedren started walking around the circle while Jintaya returned to her seat. He, too, absorbed energy from the others. Within just three passes, anima beaded back out of his glowing form. Unlike their chief mage, the artificer for the pantean had not depleted himself through battle with their teenaged menace. He did not require much to reach his peak.
“. . . I am ready. You may behead me, my friend,” Zedren stated, moving to face Ban.
“See you on the other side,” Ban murmured, and slashed. Again, the Fae stood there for a moment, the cut clean. He dropped just as the outworlder human lifted his hand to give him a push. This time, the body hit the floor, gushing . . . an explosion of light and a wind that whipped around and around, before . . . not coalescing into a visible representation of Zedren.
It did form a vaguely Fae-shaped shimmer of sparks, however. A couple test noises, like rustling leaves and humming bees, filled the cavern four, five times, before turning into audible words. “. . . Yes, there is a learning curve to this . . . but it is easily overcome with logical thought. I will not attempt to alter anyone. It is imperative to find Udrin and chase him into the portal—I wish you could come with us, Ban. But we must go.”
For a moment, he swerved toward his sister, ruffling Muan’s pale gold locks with an impression of a hand touching her cheek, and then he soared away, dissipating visibly, but still a palpable gust that left the grotto. Once he left, the crystals lighting the cavern seemed inadequate, the illumination dim. Ban blinked a few times, gathered his wits, and resheathed the curved Fae-metal blade in his hands.
“All of you need to go. Now,” he added firmly when they just blinked at him. He pointed at the table. “Get some food in your hands, eat it, and go. We don’t know how fast Udrin can get back here, but if he comes this way, he will see how drained and vulnerable you are. So go. Find untouched anima, and absorb it. Arm yourselves with more energy than he can handle, and come back into the stronghold’s protections for your armor.”
“A wise order. I will obey,” Krue said. “Shava will come with me. Adan and Fali, you pair up, and Kaife and Parren. Jintaya and Jinji, Rua and Kefer. Muan . . .”
“Muan and Jintaya will go together,” Jinji countered. “I will take a skydart straight up, and siphon the anima from the highest winds directly over Ijesh. It’s the safest position for a single Fae, and I am used to looking for signs of trouble from above, of late.”
Krue nodded and looked to Jintaya for approval. At her nod, he rose and left, his mate striding at his side. The leader of the pantean rose more slowly, crossed to stand in front of Ban, and said very softly, “Thank you for being willing to do that, Ban. I am grateful the transformation succeeded.”
“So am I. But it is not the first time I have killed a friend, and it will not be the last. You were right to point out I can handle it.” He started to say more, to point out the other reason he was sure Éfan had asked them all to top up their reserves .
. . but merely embraced her when she leaned into him, wrapping her arms around his chest. So he hugged her for a while, until she finally dragged in a deep breath and moved to join Muan by the passage out of the grotto.
The three Efrijt eyed one another, then Ban. Kuro Chadesh glanced behind him at the disappearing women, and cleared his throat. “They give us great trust, leaving us in the depths of their stronghold—this is not a threat,” he quickly added, for the Efrijt healer was well aware of Ban’s reputation. “Just an observation.”
“I am here to guard the pantean, so they do not worry about it,” he replied calmly.
“Still, it is time for us to leave,” Dakin stated. “Even if we cannot get to the portal in . . . a quarter hour or less? . . . In whatever time is left, we should still head that way. If Éfan-taje can get there in the span of a mere thought, the portal might still be open and available by the time we do arrive.
“If not . . . the Red Rocks Tribe are our responsibility, as per contract.” He pushed to his feet, wrinkled his burnt sienna nose, exposing the creamy white of his tusks, and admitted, “I do not look forward to heading back to a place where a child can throw a tantrum that can literally throw and possibly kill my sejo.”
“Are the lives of your triumvirate necessary to keep that portal open?” Ban asked. Curious to know the answer, he kept his tone mild and light, inviting them to ignore it if they liked.
“Whether or not they are, it will keep the boy from destroying the heart of the medjant,” Taro Anzak told him. “I may be lowest-ranked . . . but I do not wish the House of the Spotted Seashell to fail. Particularly because of a petulant, spoiled, overpowered brat.”
“You’re lucky he is not around to hear you, cousin,” Dakin murmured, rising to join the other two in exiting the grotto ahead of Ban. “Even if it is the truth.”
“Finally free to admit it? Or just now realizing it?” Ban asked, curious. He touched a knot of stone on the archway to the grotto; activated, the magics shielding the innermost room rippled and shifted the mass of rock into place like clay being sculpted by unseen hands. The granite that had long ago replaced the original sandstone moved with only a faint, low rumble.
“Both,” Dakin replied. “I did not agree with our triumvirate offering him concessions right and left whenever they were in private. Efrijt children are not spoiled. If they are, they think contracts can be ignored, bent, or even deliberately broken. This leads them to being punished harshly and perhaps even killed if their arrogance becomes disruptive.”
“The Supreme Being is ruthless when it comes to those who break our laws,” Chadesh agreed, “and our contracts are our laws. Bringing Udrin across uninvited will have dire consequences for all involved.”
“I doubt the Saitan of Kasir is going to bother with punishing everyone on a tiny world that has only one medjant occupying its tradepoint,” Anzak pointed out. “At most, the Saitan and the Adjuti Council would dissolve the House, block the portal, and scatter the employees across the empire. But I doubt they would go that far.”
“You doubt it?” Ban asked.
Anzak glanced over his shoulder at Ban. “I am normally a daro-rank on worlds with thriving, finance-based economies. This world has several cinnabar deposits within reach of the portal-point we managed to pry open. Even if they shut the portal, they will eventually reopen it to see if my nephew has been dealt with. It may take a few hundred years, but mercury does not exist everywhere. Not in easily mined quantities.”
“They’re processing feces on Kasir to recoup lost mercury,” Chadesh admitted dryly. The other two Efrijt jerked and stared at the healer, affronted by that. The older male shrugged, hands clasped behind his flame-brocaded tunic. “It is the truth. They are processing our sanitation facilities to recoup mercuride compounds from our biological wastes. The value of mercury is that steep on the homeworld, and has been for the last thirteen hundred years . . . but they wisely do not advertise it as such.”
Dakin blanched—as much as a rust-skinned Efrijt could—and bared his tusks. “I am never buying ‘locally sourced’ capsules on Kasir ever again.”
“If we’re stuck here with a closed portal that will not reopen for centuries, you may not have to, cousin,” Anzak said, comforting his kinsman. “And not necessarily because your offspring has claimed he will kill us.”
“True, cousin,” Dakin said, raising his brows. “He is a little scatterbrained, and may forget that he has sworn to kill us.”
“That presumes we can stay out of his awareness long enough to be forgotten,” Chadesh pointed out. “The contract of Medjant Kumon states all of its members must work to protect its assets. Including the human workers. Unless and until we are disbanded or discharged from employment, we must go serve in the spot where that brat will remember and come looking for us.”
Ban chuckled at that. All three Efrijt peered over their shoulders at him. He found himself smiling, inexplicably amused. “Normally, I am the one predicting doom and gloom. All of it based on personal experience, of course. Turn left, two junctions ahead,” he said. “There should be one skydart left when we reach the hangar. I can pilot it back to the Red Rocks Tribe.”
“I know those things are fast,” Dakin said. “How fast can we arrive?”
Ban, opening his mouth to answer, found himself interrupted by a voice in his ear. He quickly held up a hand for patience and stopped, listening. Thankfully, they stopped as well..
“Nobody leave the pantean defenses. There’s an anima-storm fighting out there. And . . . it’s gone,” Jintaya stated, her tone turning puzzled. “I think it was . . . no, it’s back. It’s tearing through the wadijt around us. I can feel the lead edge of it ruffling the aether and sickening the life-energies all around, via the healing network connecting me to all the humans in the region, and to all their livestock. I think both of them are chasing him, but he . . .
“They’re gone again, as fast as a thought. I . . . I do not think they will be able to pin him down, though they are herding him away from here, time and again, and quickly. I think that’s what I’m sensing in their movement patterns.”
“Ban-taje, what is happening?” Dakin asked him.
“They are chasing Udrin. They come and go in a blink of thought,” Ban relayed. “Éfan and Zedren are trying to keep him away from Ijesh, but he comes and goes, and steals the lifeforce of those around us.”
“How can you tell?” Anzak asked.
“I’m wearing a communicator,” Ban explained briefly. “Jintaya has a spell that ties her awareness to every human who lives in the region. Even to some of their livestock, so she can sense an injury or an illness and thus tend to it swiftly. She is sensing Udrin disturbing the aether, making everyone he rips past feel ill. Éfan and Zedren are in pursuit. They come and go swiftly, as if they are teleporting great distances. She recommends we stay inside the protections.”
All three Efrijt exchanged troubled, worried looks. Finally, the healer asked carefully, “Can Sejo Jintaya draw upon the humans she is connected to, to access their anima? Not to drain them dead, but . . . to build up her anima reserves?”
Thinking about it, Ban nodded slowly. Warily, since he did not know where the Efrijt’s thoughts had gone. “Yes. She has used it to combat occasional waves of sickness and mass injuries from landslides and wildfires.”
Chadesh nodded, satisfied by his answer. “Then it is like the few animadjet among the Red Rocks. They can shift the good health energies of one human to another who is ailing.” He hesitated, then said, “If you wish for the Fae to replenish themselves, they can ask the humans of this place to lend them some of their strength.”
“The idea has merit,” Dakin murmured, nodding slowly. “But I do not think it will be necessary. They are able to chase him, after all.”
“That is an encouraging sign,” his cousin agreed.
“We will go to the hangar and wait for w
ord of when it is safe to leave,” Ban decided, and gestured. “Take the next left turn.”
Nodding, the trio moved. Occasionally, Ban touched another outcrop, triggering another sealing of stone over the passages in their wake. Just as they reached the hangar, where the remaining Fae had gathered, a heavy breeze whipped into the cavernous chamber. It buzzed for a moment, then resolved into an echoing version of Zedren’s voice.
“This isn’t working. We can each only cover an arc with enough strength to block him,” the transformed Fae told them. “From what I estimate—and Éfan agrees—we need to cage him on six sides, like a box, and the two of us can only cover two of those sides with sufficient strength.”
“Wait, how did you get in here?” Krue demanded.
“Uh . . . the . . . uh. Yes. Right. The anti-anima devices aren’t going to hold against a powered-up . . . anima-being. Thing. Udrin has been taking energy from every living thing he passes. There are streaks of dead grass in the meadows northwest of here.”
Chadesh gestured with both hands at Ban. He did not look all that smug about being right, but he did silently point it out with the movement. Ban sighed and touched his earring. “Jintaya, we have a problem. The humans of the Flame Sea might be able to help you fix it, if you hurry.”
“Where are you? I’m in one of the skydarts.”
“The hangar, by the entrance.”
“Everyone gather by Ban. Start talking, my love,” she added, her tone borderline grim. “I will listen to any idea at this point, good or bad.”
Thinking quickly, Ban pulled together the different troubles they faced, organizing them in a highlighted list, and started discussing them and the possible solutions with the Efrijt.
