"'No promises,'" Belegir echoed, as if the words puzzled him. "Come, then." He held out his hand.
Glory got to her feet, clutching Gordon reflexively. By now the temperature of the room had dropped to that of a crisp fall day, and she grabbed a sweatshirt—grey with a picture of Vixen on the back and the show's logo embroidered on the right front—and knotted it around her shoulders. After a panicked moment—knowing she ought to pack for this adventure but without the faintest idea of what to bring—she grabbed a large logo tote-bag and stuffed her street clothes, her makeup, her purse, and her script into it. She tucked Gordon carefully into the top. He was her mascot, and she wasn't leaving him behind.
"Okay," she said breathlessly. "Let's go."
The Allimir turned and filed through the doorway. Glory hesitated, then hitched her bag over her shoulder and followed them.
* * *
Her feet scuffed through a thick fall of yellow birch leaves, and the bite of the air made her glad she'd brought the sweatshirt. She would have liked to change back to her baggy T-shirt and jeans before going off with these guys, but she'd felt an odd reluctance to suggest it. While she wore the costume, she was Vixen the Slayer, and groundless though the conviction was, wearing the costume made her feel protected.
Protected or not, her arms and the tops of her thighs tingled with the cold while the rest of her sweltered under several layers of squeaking, creaking, and jingling leather, buckram, and steel, and after a minute she knew she was going to get the usual raw place under her right arm where the shoulder-piece always rubbed. At least her feet didn't hurt. Her armor was a pain in the ass to march in, but the boots were comfortable.
"Hey guys, you know what? I reckon I'd better go back and change clothes after a—"
She turned back. She'd been expecting to see the dressing room, or at least the doorway and a chunk of wall. But there was nothing there. Only a square raw spot on the forest floor where something had been.
Glory felt her stomach clench with panicky nausea. Suddenly she felt trapped, though she was in precisely the same situation that she'd been in the moment before. But now even the illusion she could leave was gone. Nothing was left but the forest, her strange companions, and her idiotic bravura.
They were staring at her again.
"Oh, well. Never mind. Look. Why don't you . . . um, tell me about yourselves, hey?" She still didn't know what Belegir and company thought she could do for them, but whatever it was, it had to be easier than being a Media Personality. And if somehow this still turned out to be a joke, at least it was one of the elaborate interdimensional kind.
"We are the disciples of the great mage Cinnas the Warkiller," Englor began proudly. "In every generation . . ."
" . . . there can be only one," Glory finished automatically.
"No. Three," Englor corrected her kindly.
She'd caught up to the others, and they'd started walking again. Helevrin kept glancing at her suspiciously, but Englor was frankly worshipful.
"Um. Sorry. Go on."
She'd have to remember that these people didn't watch a lot of television, though apparently they'd seen enough to have gotten her into real trouble.
"For a hundred generations the legend of Cinnas the Warkiller has been a beacon to his people. Though he died in the moment of his greatest triumph, his works live on!"
"That's reassuring," Glory muttered. Dead, then, is he? Precious little use to you now.
"Only now—"
"If she isn't going to help us, she doesn't need to know," Helevrin interrupted brusquely. It didn't look like she was going to forgive Glory for making Belegir and Englor cry any time soon.
"I— But— Well— Oh, yes, of course. You're right," Englor faltered, glancing from Glory to Helevrin.
The journey continued in silence.
* * *
Two hours later they were still walking through the same forest, and if not for the consistent presence of the sun on her left hand, Glory would have been willing to swear they'd been walking in circles the entire time. She could feel the tendons in her legs thrumming like a plucked guitar string, and her back ached, but despite her physical discomfort, Glory actually felt better than she could remember feeling in months. All the grinding weight of the show and the media spotlight had been lifted from her shoulders, and she was no longer surrounded by people wanting her to be perky and photogenic when she felt grumpy and dull. And if these people had her confused with Vixen, at least they were innocent and up-front about it—not a bunch of supposed media-savvy grown-ups who ought to know better.
Helevrin hadn't thawed, but Glory had stopped worrying about it, because it was taking all she had to keep up with her. The three mages might be short, but they scuttled through the forest at an amazing rate.
The sun had been high overhead when they'd first started out of Duirondel. Now the shadows were long and the light had a twilight ruddiness, but at last Glory began to see signs of change in her surroundings—the trees began to thin, and grass began to poke up through the drifts of leaves, the stalks growing longer and the clumps thicker until Glory realized she wasn't walking through a forest with occasional grass, but a grassland with occasional trees.
"Are we there yet?" she muttered under her breath. She'd thought she was in good physical shape from the show, but cross-country hiking used unfamiliar muscles.
She looked up, watching something besides her own feet for the first time in hours, and the vista had the impact of a blow.
There was nothing before her but kilometers of flat open plain covered with golden autumnal grasses. It stretched on in an unbroken sweep until it passed over the shoulder of the earth. She could see the wind as it gusted across the prairie, making dips and shadows in its grassy surface. If a wheat field could be a thousand miles wide it would look like this: so vast and featureless that for a moment the placid blue sky seemed close enough to crush her like an open hand. She staggered back, throwing up an arm to shield her eyes from the glare of the westering sun. A grass ocean, with no place to run to, nowhere to hide . . .
She spun around, looking back wildly the way she'd come.
Behind her was the forest through which she and her companions had walked. The birches were bright autumn gold against the midnight green of a dense pine forest that seemed to stretch for miles, climbing the lower slopes of mountains that thrust blue and jagged into the evening sky. The setting sun turned the patches of snow on their higher slopes a pale shell-pink. It was a scene as beautiful as a painting, reminding her of nothing so much as pictures she'd seen of the Canadian Rockies.
The other three had stopped.
"Behold, Vixen—Serenthodial the Golden!" Englor said, gesturing toward the plains ahead.
This is really real. This is really happening. You're not in Kansas anymore, Glor, let alone Oz. Christ—what were you THINKING? You should have stayed on that couch and screamed until somebody showed up with a rubber tuxedo!
"There is the camp of the Allimir," Belegir said, pointing off into the distance. Glory squinted in the direction he was pointing. Halfway to the horizon she could see the smudges and dots of what might be . . . something. A thin spiral of white smoke rose into the sky, the only vertical in a horizontal landscape. Something with a cook fire, then, but whatever it was, it was miles away, and she'd already walked miles today.
"Since the destruction of Great Drathil, we have become refugees, outlaws in our own land, hunted for the sport of Cinnas' once-prisoned foe," Belegir added, as if that were some sort of an explanation.
She wished she'd paid better attention when they'd been talking back in her dressing room. She knew they'd been looking for someone like Vixen the Slayer, but she was hazy about the reason why. The trouble with Belegir was that he talked like a script before rewrite, and she was afraid that asking a bunch of questions now would only give him the idea she wanted to help.
But you do, don't you? And crikey, look at these guys—a housecat would give them trouble,
wouldn't it? All you'll have to do is show up and fetch what ails them a good kick in the goolies, do a backflip or two, and everybody's happy.
"Outlaws?" she said cautiously.
"Oh, he doesn't mean real outlaws," Englor assured her hastily. "Nothing involving, you know, peacebreaking." His voice dropped on the last word, as though he were saying something indecent.
"Driven from our homes. Hunted like mice in a granary—with the Warmother the cat!" Helevrin said harshly.
"Do not speak of Her here," Belegir said, glancing up apprehensively toward the sky. Glory followed the direction of his gaze, but she saw nothing but sky and a collection of very large mountains. Nevertheless, the expression on his face sent a chill up her spine.
"Send for Ivradan," Belegir said. "Best we be within bounds by the time night falls."
Not unless this Ivradan has a lorry, Glory thought.
Her feelings must have shown in her face, because Belegir smiled. "Fear not. Ivradan will bring horses, and we may ride back to our people in state—bringing a hero."
Helevrin reached into her sleeve and withdrew a little red bird. At least, it looked like a bird to Glory—she caught only a glimpse of it before Helevrin flung it into the sky. Whatever it was, it flew like a bird as well, cutting through the sky in darting swoops, its body a scarlet spark against the vast blue and gold emptiness. Glory lost sight of it almost at once, but the three Allimir stared after it as if they could still track its flight.
When nothing happened immediately, Glory dropped her tote-bag to the ground and sat down beside it with a sigh. She didn't care if she never got up. She was tired of standing. At once the world retreated behind a veil of grass that crackled as she shifted her weight. The sword on her back poked her in the ribs as it always did, while the leather corset held her in an implacable embrace. But those discomforts were homely and familiar, and her current circumstances were not.
It just didn't seem likely that she was here. Even if somehow, somewhere, there was such a thing as magic, how had the Allimir found her? How could they have confused her with Vixen? What if there were a real Vixen the Slayer somewhere and Glory was impersonating her? What if the real Vixen found out?
If there is and she does, I'm dead meat.
It was almost more comforting to worry about that than about what she was going to do when Belegir and company found out she didn't measure up to their hopes. Vixen won her battles each week because the scriptwriters were on her side. There weren't any scriptwriters around here—just a bunch of mini-mages making cryptic pronouncements.
And looking up at the sky as if they expected something to come diving out of it.
Something nasty.
"Ah," Belegir said suddenly.
Glory twitched, startled.
"They have seen us. We should reach the camp before dark—and tomorrow we can go to the Oracle, who will tell us what we must do to return you to your home," he added, turning to Glory.
"Yeah. Right." Reluctantly Glory floundered to her feet again. Her eyes were beginning to adjust both to the light and the enormous scale of this place, and now, when she looked in the direction of the smoke plume, she could see a disturbance in the grass arrowing toward them. It didn't take a rocket scientist to figure out that what was making it was Ivradan and the horses.
A few moments later she could even make out figures—five dun-colored critters that looked like brumbies, one with a rider, nearly invisible against the tall grass—and then she could hear the pounding of their cantering hooves. But her eyes had played tricks on her again, between the vastness of the plain and the lack of local referents. From a distance they'd looked like full-sized horses, but when they got closer, she realized they were more like ponies. All five beasts were virtually identical: black mane and tail and muzzle, long black socks, and faint grey bars along shoulders and rump, as though there were some tabby cat in their backgrounds. From a dozen yards away, you would not be able to see them in the tall grass.
As Ivradan rode closer he slowed down, and Glory could feel him staring at her. His skin was the dark tan of a man who lived his life outdoors—next to him, the three mages looked as pink and white as a bunch of roses. His eyes were black, and his hair was brown, bleached to chestnut by the same harsh sun. He looked as if he might be about Englor's age, perhaps a few years older, but she wasn't sure.
He tapped his pony's shoulder, bringing the entire string of animals to a halt before Glory and the three mages. Ivradan glanced from Glory to Belegir, his expression wary.
"Behold!" Belegir boomed in theatrical tones, gesturing toward Glory. "For it is written in the Prophecies of Cinnas, that there shall come . . . a hero!"
Even the sound of the word made her stomach flinch. With each passing moment she was getting in further over her head, she knew that much. Oracle or no Oracle, sooner or later Belegir was going to tell her his problem, and what was she going to say then?
Ivradan touched his forehead, bowing deeply from the back of his mount. He must be an ordinary Allimir instead of a mage, because he wasn't dressed anything like the other three. Instead of being bareheaded in long robes, he wore a soft cap—a Phrygian cap, Tricia, the wardrobe mistress on TITAoVtS had called it—tunic and leggings, and high soft boots that looked as if they were made of heavy felt. The garments were violently colorful, and Ivradan looked like a jockey who'd been dressed by a color-blind bag lady. If he and the three wizards were any indication of the general run of Allimir, she must be the tallest person he'd ever seen (not to mention the best dressed): Ivradan couldn't be more than five feet four on a tall day. The expression on his face was a mixture of joy and wariness.
Englor began to sing in a clear pure tenor. " 'In days of old was darkness bold and Evil stalked the hearthside/A hero came with hair of flame to guard the light within us/Sing hey! for our lady/Her sword and her stake/Who saves us from trouble and strife/Sing Hey for our Vixen who's Evil's affliction and will be the rest of her life!' "
It was the TITAoVtS theme song, in all its creaking mis-rhymed glory.
"It is she!" Ivradan said in awed understanding. "You have brought us Vixen the Slayer!"
Well, sort of.
Now was the time when Belegir or at least Helevrin should have piped up to say: Nope. This is just her inept twin. This is just a peculiar accident. She isn't the hero we're looking for, and besides, she hasn't agreed to help. But oddly, neither of them did.
"Welcome, Vixen the Slayer," Ivradan said, bowing from horseback. He looked from Glory to the ponies, his face plainly indicated that he'd never expected to have to arrange transport for such an enormous creature. The only tack Ivradan rode with was a braided leather loop hooked over his mount's lower jaw, and Glory saw no sign of a saddle. None of the other ponies were saddled either. Oh, this just gets better. Horseback I can manage, but bareback? Wearing THIS?
"Um . . . hiya," Glory said inadequately. She didn't know what Vixen would say in a situation like this. Usually Vixen just growled and let Sister Bernadette handle the talking.
"Well, come on," Helevrin said brusquely. The other two mages had already moved toward the beasts, unknotting the leading-rein around their necks and using it to bridle their diminutive mounts.
"There is bad news," Ivradan said. "She came again last night."
All at once Belegir seemed to shrink, as if someone had stuck a pin into him. Though he had never looked like a young man to Glory, in that moment he looked terribly old.
"How many are left?" Belegir said.
It was only a long time later that Glory would realize what had struck her as so odd about the question. Belegir didn't ask about dead or wounded or whether their side had won the fight. He only asked how many were left.
"Yesterday runners came from the other camps, bringing the New Moon tally. We are four great-hands now, and that is all. Of all the Allimir nation!" Abruptly Ivradan buried his face in his pony's mane.
"Four hundred," Helevrin whispered. She stared, shocked, at her
companions, and even forgot to scowl at Glory.
Four hundred people? Out of how many?
"I reckon—" Glory's voice squeaked, and she took a deep breath and tried again. "I reckon you better tell me what you brought me here to do."
It was as if the other four had forgotten her presence until she spoke. Englor emitted a faint distressed peep.
"We did not bring you here," Helevrin said harshly.
"Someone did," Glory pointed out. "And you're not going to deny you came looking for me, right?" Or at least for Vixen the Slayer?
"But you said . . . she isn't here to help us?" Ivradan asked in disbelief.
"She . . . we must consult with the Oracle before we proceed," Belegir said hastily.
Glory saw Helevrin and Englor exchange glances, and knew that Belegir's little white misdirection wouldn't hold up for long. But the pink mage obviously didn't want to talk about it out here, and as the shadows had grown longer, all three of the mages had become twitchier and twitchier, to the point where Glory, too, would be just as happy to get out of here rather than press the point. She unknotted the sweatshirt tied around her shoulders and walked toward the pony whose rein Ivradan was holding.
But there's going to be a reckoning real soon now. You can take that to the bank.
"Well, Slayer?" Helevrin said brusquely. She and Englor were already mounted, and now even Belegir was climbing aboard his mount. The mages' robes were gored in back to permit this, and now Glory could see that they wore high felt boots dyed the same bright colors as their robes.
Glory sighed, squaring her shoulders. Feigning an assurance she did not feel, Glory settled the sweatshirt on the pony's back, shrugged her tote-bag firmly onto her shoulder, and took a tight grasp on the animal's mane. Then she bounced up and swung her leg over.
The pony sidestepped. But Glory had not spent an entire shooting season being bumped, jostled, and otherwise upstaged by Adrian the Wonder Horse to no purpose. She went with it, gained the animal's back, and gripped its ribs tightly with her thighs. Her feet hung inches from the ground.
The Warslayer Page 3
