Rise of the Magi

by Jocelyn Adams

I grasped his proffered fingers and held his gaze, finding unwavering resolve there.

  “It’s been an honor working with you. I’ll need a bit of time to scramble a jet or two since we only have a few left, but you give the word, and I’ll bring enough firepower that there’ll be nothing but a crater for twenty miles around your location.”

  Although James still wouldn’t meet my gaze, he rested his hand on my shoulder and squeezed before dropping it to his side. “You are one crazy broad, Lila Gray. If I don’t see you again, you can be damn sure nobody will forget what you do today.”

  “Don’t get all sappy on me.” My smile was half-hearted. “And if you make a statue of me or something silly and sentimental, I’m going to come back and haunt it.”

  He cracked a laugh and straightened, nodding. “No statues. Got it. Maybe a school or a street named after you, then.”

  Shaking my head, I backed away and waved one of the guards at Brígh’s door forward. “You should know by now, I’m not the glitz and glamor type. Wait a bit before going out the portal—Rita will show you the way. I’ll have a team there for you.”

  Their stares itched my nape as I walked away from my last line of defence. I hoped I wouldn’t need them.

  Garret stirred, probably sensing my distress. I rubbed my hands over him. “Sleep, baby.”

  25

  After a quick stop-off to arrange another contingent of witches and a Sluagh for the Fed and the Mountie—telling the witches, under no uncertain terms, not to ask questions about what the humans would be using them for—I went to get Nix.

  One of the guards, a plump brunette, opened the door and motioned him out. Nix had tied his hair back with an elastic band and had donned a pair of black jeans and a red T-shirt that clung to his ripped frame.

  “Did they have you doing hard labor?” I asked him as he descended the steps with the two guards flanking him. “What’s with the bulging muscles?”

  He shrugged and frowned. “Like I said, I don’t really remember what they had me doing. The side effects could be worse, though, I suppose.” Glancing behind him, he stopped, a momentary glint of something shadowing his eyes. “Is it just the four of us going?”

  I studied him, wondering what was on his mind. Had it been fear I’d seen in him? Blood lust? “We’re meeting our team just inside the portal door, and the guards will be staying here.”

  Head bobbing, he started forward again. “Where did you get those pastries you sent me? They were crazy good. And was that elfish wine in the glass?”

  “Yeah. Laerni created a self-refilling buffet at the Court.” I explained what had happened to Freymoor wood. “Laerni’s the only one who survived, and she’s here helping us. She’s one of our team, and Parthalan’s our last sucker.”

  “Shit. That’s just wrong. How they died, I mean.” After a few moments, he smiled, evoking memories of happier times with him. “Is it really self-refilling?”

  “She used some of her elf mojo and cast some sort of spell on a bunch of empty platters. Seriously delicious, and none of it looked like spiders this time, so I ate my fill. I’d love to know what that blue liquid, wine whatever, is in the cups. Tastes like … I don’t know … liquid orgasm.”

  Nix laughed, a deep, hearty sound that induced my own. A stab of guilt hit me in the gut before I remember what Liam had told me, that we needed to hold onto moments of laughter no matter what was going on. Did I dare hope that someday I might convert Nix back to team fae, or at least team acceptance-of-fae unity? I wouldn’t hold my breath for that, but a tiny hope still crawled into my heart and stuck down a root there. Maybe, in time, they’d all forgive me for who I used to be and for violating them like I had.

  Our duo waited for us at the Portal. “Everyone ready for this?” I asked, hoping Meline and the others were all in place out in Talawen’s wood.

  “Ready and willing.” Laerni stood tall and grinned, eager, holding out the same black stone she’d lent us to get to Freymoor. She probably used it to transport the other groups to their locations.

  I smiled back at her. “If I haven’t said it before, I am so glad you’re here.”

  “What do you intend to do about Alseides, Mistress?” As we emerged into the early evening, Parthalan stared skyward where his brethren circled, the sight no longer filling me with an urge to flee.

  A long sigh hissed from my lips. “Still don’t know.”

  “What if there is no answer. What if her power, and that of her people, proves too great for all of us?” With his glowing eyes focused on me, he studied me from too close, as if trying to see clear through to my brain, searching for the tidbit I’d arranged with James and Richard.

  I shoved my palm out to move Parthalan back enough that I wouldn’t go cross-eyed looking at him. “Then we die. What do you want me to say?” Certainly not that I’d arranged to have myself and my child blown up in that outcome. My stomach lurched painfully, and the tear in my heart ripped a little more. I tried to tell myself that at least Garret and I would go together, that he wouldn’t be alone in the end, but it didn’t take the glass out of my soul. I’m so sorry, baby. My only solace was that he wouldn’t be aware of anything until our Light went out, if it came to that.

  Laerni faced the three of us in turn, lingering on me as she said, “Now is not the time for doubt, Lila Gray. I feel your conflict between hope and despair. It saps the energy which you will need to overcome.” Her frown suggested she’d picked my plans out of my head.

  “Hope for the best and plan for the worst. Isn’t that what they always say?” I couldn’t hold her gaze, seeking out the grass instead. “Are we going or what?”

  “No. Wait.” Nix put his hand on my arm. “What is she talking about? Tell me you’re not planning something crazy.”

  I stared at him until he removed his fingers. “I almost believe you care, but I’m not.” I lied, well enough I almost convinced myself. “You do your job, and let me do mine.” Nobody else would know; I refused to leave anything to chance. If I couldn’t win, then I’d at least save all those possible before I went down, and nobody would stop me. For any reason.

  Laerni held her hand out to us, and Parthalan and I reached in unison, touching her fingers. Nix eyed me for a moment before placing his palm farther up Laerni’s wrist.

  The sensation of being squeezed through a thick layer of warm honey spread over me as it did the last time I’d used the stone. Laerni, Parthalan, Nix and I rematerialized in the field outside Talawen’s forest.

  “Why so far out?” I asked.

  Parthalan’s covert glance said it all. By extending our journey, it would add to the distraction so that everyone’s attention would be on us instead of the extraction teams hiding under a cloak of magic around the perimeter. Good thing someone thought ahead.

  Laerni patted Parthalan’s cheek as if pleased with whatever she found in that head of his, and the birdman grinned. Not a romantic expression, more fascination. That was just too weird.

  “I do not wish you to come to harm.” That glowing ice gaze swung back to me, shadowed with sorrow. He turned, slid his cool hand over the back of my neck and pressed our foreheads together.

  “I know.” I hugged him, holding tight as he wrapped himself around me. I’m hugging the Glass Man. The universe had most definitely slipped off its axis. “Thank you. Now, let’s go before I lose my nerve.”

  Lips curved in a shy smile, Parthalan stepped away, touching his forehead where mine had pressed against it, and gestured for me to go ahead of him as he fell into step beside me. “We will not fail you.”

  I heard the words he didn’t say, that the moment I said the word, he’d relay the message to the other groups and send them in after our lost ones. “I believe you. No matter what happens here today, you’ve come a long way toward redeeming yourself.” Despite everything he’d done t
o me and mine in the past, I had to admit, I was damn glad he stood beside me in that moment. Nix, too.

  We trudged into the first stand of trees. The shade of the canopy appeared much darker because of the crimson sunset in the west. Silence, save for the crunching of twigs beneath our feet, descended around us like an unseen enemy lying in wait to ambush our jumpy asses,.

  Forced into single file, me stuck between Nix’s back and Parthalan’s front, conversation ceased altogether. Tension thick enough to make soup out of coated the air. Too much quiet made for too much thinking and the sound of our footsteps rattled inside my ears—like brittle bones breaking to mark our passage into hell.

  I pictured Liam appearing from the brush, swinging me up into his embrace, wearing his usual heart-stopping smile. Nobody had ever looked at me like that before, could make me shiver just with a glance. I never imagined I’d have been so lucky as to find someone who could love me after seeing all of my darkness. Shaking that off, along with the sting of tears, my mind conjured dreams of holding little Garret for the first time, his little cloth-wrapped bum propped on my arm, soft cheek against my shoulder, coos brushing my ear. Stop it! Fantasies. Stupid dreams that will probably never happen. Why are you doing this to yourself?

  “It’s the mind’s way of reminding you what you’re fighting for, Lila Gray.”

  Before I could chew Laerni’s head off like I wanted to, an eerie melody spilled out of her. Deep and resonant, her voice came in stereo, laying against me like a second skin, holding me together when I thought I might fly apart. It energized me, filling me with something akin to adrenaline and made me think I could run a hundred miles and not get tired. A glance over my shoulder revealed Parthalan’s sad smile. Something more, too. His eyes glittered with readiness, bold defiance. Was Laerni pumping us up with some sort of elf battle march? Ahead, Nix hung his head forward, walking as if his feet were made of lead. What was going through his mind? Did he really regret all he’d done and said? Had I really broken his heart and not just shattered his illusions?

  We passed through Talawen’s glen where we’d found Nix, moving around carcasses of fallen trees and boulders jutting high above the grass. I wondered where the pond that haunted Andrew was and if we would end up there. I hoped he remained blissfully unaware of what had happened. If he was so pissed he’d almost been taken at Freymoor, being successfully taken would push him over the edge. He’d be okay once I got him home. All of them. I would send them all home, even if I couldn’t join them as anything more than a ribbon of golden mist above their lives.

  Twilight had given way to an inky night, and beyond the glen, our path brought us into dense forest overgrown with thorny bushes and snarled with vines. Dew dampened the air along with my skin. I shivered, ducking beneath a branch to catch up with Nix, but I wasn’t sure it was entirely from the cool night. “I’m starting to feel it, I think,” I said, “their freaky hocus pocus clogging up the air. Are we almost there?” Laerni must have been right when she said I needed to feel before I’d know what to do.

  “I … I think so,” Nix said. “I was half out of it when they brought me here, so I’m kind of leaning on instinct.”

  Maybe Laerni had been right about the portal, too, if Nix couldn’t remember going through it. Alseides must have convinced him, and our men, they’d find all their dreams on the other side. Would I really be immune from the outside? Was that why Alseides hadn’t sent one of her lackeys to claim me because I wouldn’t have gone through of my own free will? “Too bad you didn’t have Cas’ cumhacht,” I said to Nix. That earned me a death glare over his shoulder, but one only brief enough for me to wonder if I’d really seen it. I shrugged. “What? He can find any place he’s been before even with his eyes closed. I was just saying that particular skill would be handy right about now.”

  “I’ll get us there just fine.”

  His clipped tone made me feel the need to apologize, but I didn’t. Instead, I satisfied a greater need to protect my captain. “Cas never hurt your father, nor would he ever so much as twist the ear of a piece of corn. He was probably way too young to have even been to Court at that point, anyway.”

  Nix’s silence suggested I’d have more luck shoving two opposite ends of a magnet together and getting them to stick than I would trying to convince him that not all Unseelie were evil.

  Laerni’s song ceased. “He will understand in time, Lila Gray.”

  I turned to her, confused and leaned around Parthalan to say, “How do you know that?”

  Her smile told me nothing, only that it was another of those tidbits I either had to figure out for myself or wait until it happened.

  “I hate your cryptic shit.”

  She rounded the Host Lord, patted my face and began singing again, her eyes closed as she passed me and kept going, maneuvering with ease as if she, like Gallagher, didn’t need her eyes to see. If I had a millennium to spend with that woman, I didn’t think I’d ever completely understand what made her tick.

  “It’s just beyond that ridge, I think.” Nix thumbed toward the top of the hill we’d been climbing. “At least, that’s what my gut’s telling me.”

  “Considering we have nothing else to go on, your gut’s going to have to do.” Winded from a spurt of nervous excitement and desperation to find Liam, I propped my hands on my thighs to help my climb. The sight from the top took the bottom out of my stomach as well as if I’d stumbled upon a salivating demon. “The pond.” Twenty feet across and lined with cattails, it wasn’t large. “But there’s no portal here. In Dun Bray, there was a suspended door and into the Overseers, there was a painting. This is just … a regular old pond.” Andrew’s story niggled at me. What did the water have to do with the Magi? Was there some ritual I had to perform with the water to open the doorway?

  “Stop looking with your eyes and use something deeper, Lila Gray. We’re seeking the entrance to their prison, so your wishing for a flashing arrow over the correct spot is futile.”

  I gave Laerni a squinty-eyed glower before accepting that she was probably right, as usual. Use something deeper, she’d said. My mind flew in such a tizzy, and my heart ached with the broken expectation that somehow Liam would have been there waiting for me, that I wasn’t thinking clearly.

  Eyes closed, I summoned my Light. It didn’t burn as hot on my skin as normal due to the heavy blanket of magic trying to smother me. I listened, probing outward for minds beyond my company. Mental whispers returned to me, curious and without fear. “There’s something here. Or someone.” After lifting my lids, I swept the oasis below, finding nothing but lush green and a pristine pond. “There’s no scum on that pond, no frogs that I can hear. Something’s weird about this place.” I couldn’t quite put my finger on it. The water didn’t look right. No breeze danced through the trees to disturb the surface, but it was too still. “I’m going down.”

  Parthalan thrust his hand out and caught my arm. “I do not like this, Mistress. Like a thousand eyes watching us from somewhere close. My skin grows cold and tingly beneath it.”

  I stared at his hand, at his tight expression, his gaze darting around the moonlit valley. Moonlight! I held my hands up and turned them over, noting the ethereal kiss of the moon. It was full, shining down like a silver sun. Arms swinging to quicken my steps, I descended the hill through the tall grass. “There’s no reflection in the water. That’s what’s weird about it. With the moon directly overhead, we should see a reflection, shouldn’t we?” Maybe the water didn’t open the portal. Maybe the water was the portal.

  “What does this tell us, Lila Gray?” Laerni joined me.

  “Geez, I don’t know. I’m making this up as I go, remember?” I turned to look at Nix who trotted down beside Parthalan. “Andrew said something about the vines taking his father into water to drown him. What if they didn’t drown him, but held him so Alseides could take his mind and make him jump in of
his own volition?” I turned to Nix. “Did they take you through the pond? Is that how we get to their reality?”

  He stopped at the edge of the reeds and peered into the murk of the water. “I told you I was out of it when they brought me, but … something is ringing my bell right now. You sure that’s even water?” Crouching at the side, he circled his finger in the substance.

  Knowing so many waited for my signal to start busting our people out, my anxiety cranked up a notch, making it even harder to think. Parthalan picked up a stone and tossed it. When it hit the water, the noise it made sounded nothing like liquid. More like … silence, as if it had disappeared on contact. Bingo.

  I wanted to discuss the options, but couldn’t in case the Magi were listening, which they most certainly were if the heebie-jeebies having a dance on my nape were any indication. If they had people acting as conduits on the outside, I couldn’t detect their minds. Something else was off, too.

  “I will go.” Parthalan squatted and dipped his own finger into the substance, grimacing. “It feels like nothing. No warmth. No cool. Just … nothing.”

  Nix shot up, his eyes wild with fury. “Tell me you don’t trust him that much. Who’s to say he hasn’t been working for them all along?”

  I bristled and worked my fists open and shut. “He’s not who he once was. Believe me, I’ve been in his head. In fact, he was willing to give his life, and did for a bit, to help me with Alastair. So, yeah, I trust him.” More than I trust you, hung out there unsaid.

  “Although I do not agree with your former captain’s reasoning, Lila Gray, I do agree that Parthalan is not the wisest choice to send, as he is male and many of his brethren were also taken. If the males are more susceptible to Alseides’ charms, he may be taken sooner than you will, giving the Magi yet another weapon to use against you.”

  “Right. Good point.” Not that they didn’t have enough weapons already. Liam alone would have been enough to get me there, raising the question again of why did the dryads need the others? Forcing my shoulders back and head high, I joined Parthalan by the pond-that-wasn’t-a-pond. We needed him for the rest to work. “I’ll go, and Laerni, too, so she can signal you if it’s safe for you and Nix to come through.”