The Elves of Cintra

by Terry Brooks

  Fixit glanced down at the array of weapons buttons on the dash, just below the loran’s bright lock-on screen, sorted through his memories of what they did, and chose two of four with red arrow symbols. He punched them in as he swung out and away from his friends to get clear of them, and a pair of dart missiles launched from the vehicle and into one of the machines, exploding with a blinding light and sending out a shock wave that rocked the AV and knocked Panther and Sparrow sprawling. Two of the machines disappeared. It caused the others to turn toward him, and he punched the second set of buttons. But this time nothing happened. Two were all that were loaded, he guessed, wishing he had asked a few more questions when he’d had the chance.

  His grin tightened as the AV rocked and lurched through laser fire. Oh, well. Too late now.

  He roared toward the machines, their lasers stabbing the concrete all around him and then the Lightning itself. He held the machine steady, his arms aching with the effort, and increased speed. He was on top of them in seconds, sideswiping the closest, crumpling several of its metal legs and crippling it. Then he was past them and tearing toward the hangars from which they had emerged. Not where he wanted to go. Were there more? He wheeled back, the AV skidding, tires shrieking. For just an instant, he thought he was going to lose control completely. Logan Tom was on his feet again, sprinting for his staff. He snatched it up and wheeled back in a single fluid motion. Blue fire exploded from the tip and rocked another of the machines. He was yelling at Panther and Sparrow.

  Fixit charged the one that remained, throwing the levers to what he believed to be the heavy BRom charges, shells that could punch through concrete. But torch wire uncoiled instead, ripping free from the containing spools and wrapping the last attacker in yards of corrosive thread that burned the metal skin with white-hot intensity. In seconds the wire had eaten through, and the machine was lurching like a drunken animal.

  Fixit reached Logan Tom and skidded to a halt. The Knight of the Word leapt for the passenger’s door and threw himself into the machine. “Go!” he snapped, hands flying over the weapons panel. Fixit did as he was told, and the AV screeched toward the fence. Panther and Sparrow had already reached the barrier and were charging through, the other Ghosts crowding around in celebration. Fixit took the Lightning through right after them and jammed on the brakes at the highway’s edge. He was breathing so hard that for a moment he just sat there, his hands on the wheel, his body shaking, his eyes staring straight ahead.

  “You can let go now,” Logan Tom told him, and reached over to help pry his fingers loose. The dark eyes met his own. “That was good work, Fixit.”

  Fixit nodded, and then grinned. “Thanks.”

  Logan nodded. “You might want to look in the backseat now.”

  When he did so, he found himself staring at the prone figure of the Weatherman, still strapped to his stretcher. Fixit took a deep breath. He hadn’t even noticed that the old man was there.

  The Weatherman’s eyes were wide and staring. It didn’t look as if he was breathing.

  “Get out of the vehicle and join the others,” Logan ordered, his voice strangely calm. “Go on, before they come over here. Hurry!”

  Fixit did as he was told, his heart in his throat, his mouth dry as he opened the door and staggered away on legs that were unexpectedly weak. He got only a dozen yards before he was surrounded by the other Ghosts, who cheered and clapped and pounded him on the back, celebrating his daring rescue.

  “That was so wonderful!” Sparrow declared, her grin huge.

  “You got some iron in you, little man,” said Panther. “Takes some hard edges to do what you did. Some tough stuff.”

  Only Owl seemed to realize what was wrong. Logan Tom caught her eye as she lagged behind the others, and she wheeled herself over to join him. Out of the corner of his eye, Fixit could see her peering inside the Lightning. He tried not to look, but he couldn’t help himself. Logan Tom was bending over the old man, putting his ear on his chest, then close to his mouth. Please, Fixit prayed. Don’t let him die.

  “Hey, man, I’m talkin’ to you!” Panther snapped, giving him a playful shove. “Least you can do is pay attention when someone’s tellin’ you how great you are. You saved us, you know? Frickin’ Creepers! That’s what they are, Creepers! Would have had us, if not for you.”

  Fixit gave him an awkward grin, and he shouted to demonstrate his euphoria. But when he looked again at the Lightning, Logan Tom was climbing out to stand beside Owl, and Owl was crying, and Fixit felt the last vestiges of his joy turn to ashes.

  SEVENTEEN

  F IXIT WAS DEVASTATED. He was in despair. Owl could see it in his face as she wheeled herself over to where he was still being congratulated for his daring rescue. He might want to believe that it wasn’t his fault that River’s grandfather was dead, but she could tell that he couldn’t quite convince himself. She knew what he was thinking. If he hadn’t been so quick. If he had just taken a moment to check. If he hadn’t driven so wildly. If he had not become distracted.

  If.

  She wanted to talk to him, to reassure him that it wasn’t his fault. But before she could reach him, Logan called out sharply. “All of you! Get away from the fence! Get back over here by the Lightning! Now!”

  Everyone looked at him in surprise, and then to where he was pointing. Dozens of tiny machines had emerged from out of the complex, machines of all shapes and looks. Like ants, they swarmed over the corpses of their fallen brethren, extruding tiny welders and tools. Without pausing, they went to work on the larger machines, repairing or replacing the broken parts, slowly but surely putting them back together. Another dozen had come straight for the fence and were reattaching the damaged links. The entire concrete surface surrounding the haulers was alive with activity.

  Panther snatched up his Parkhan Spray and swung the barrel toward the enclosure, but Logan shouted at him. “Leave it, Panther! We don’t want to give them a reason to come out here. Let them do what they were programmed to do. Pack it up, and let’s go.”

  Reluctantly, Panther turned away, muttering something about “Creepers.” The Ghosts trotted back over to the AV and the shopping cart, where Logan assigned them their places. He put Candle in the front passenger’s seat of the Lightning and River in back with her grandfather. He was heading for Owl when she waved him off. Instead she wheeled herself up to Fixit. “Would you push me for a while?” she asked him. “I need to be out in the open air.”

  Logan chained the boy with the ruined face to the shopping cart, told him he could walk for a while, put Bear next to him as guard, and ordered Panther to stay away. They set out within minutes, once more heading south, leaving Oronyx Experimental and its machines behind. They did not yet have the hauler they needed, but Logan told them not to worry. They would find something on the way, something not so heavily guarded.

  The afternoon was waning, the sky losing its light and the shadows beginning to lengthen. There was an unusual chill to the normally sultry, stagnant air, but Owl didn’t want to ask Fixit to bring her a sweater or blanket because she was afraid of losing him. She wanted to keep him close until she had said to him what she thought needed saying. She didn’t speak to him right away, however. She let him push her in silence, let the tension drain away. It was late in the day. They would travel just far enough to make camp, and then they would stop for the night.

  “Did you read about machines like those in any of your magazines, Fixit?” she said finally. “I didn’t know such things existed.”

  He didn’t reply. He just kept pushing her along at a steady, even pace. Perhaps he hadn’t even heard her. She glanced ahead to where Bear and Chalk walked next to the shopping cart and the chained boy. Ahead of them, the Lightning crawled down the highway like a big beetle. Panther was farther out, walking alone.

  She glanced to either side without turning her head. Sparrow was walking behind her and to her left, staying just far enough back so as to not intrude, but close enough to come if called
. That was Sparrow, she thought.

  “I read something about it,” Fixit said suddenly. “They were building computers that could think like humans and were programmed to perform one or two specific functions. But I never actually saw one before today.”

  “I wonder what else was in those buildings,” she mused.

  There was silence between them again for a time, only the crunch of the wheelchair running over gravel and debris intruding. Owl watched a hawk fly overhead and was reminded of why they were traveling south. She thought back for a moment to how things had been in Pioneer Square for all those years, when they had a home and the outside world hadn’t yet intruded. She thought about how much she missed it.

  “I wish it hadn’t happened,” Fixit said suddenly, the words so soft she almost missed hearing them.

  “I know.” She kept her eyes directed forward. “I wish we could change all the bad things that happen to us.”

  “I didn’t mean for it to happen.”

  “I know.”

  “I didn’t even think about him being back there.” She could hear his voice break. “Why didn’t I look? All I had to do was turn around. I would have seen him.”

  “You were trying to do something brave and dangerous,” she said. “You were trying to save your friends. There wasn’t time to stop and think about anything else.” She looked at him now. “If you hadn’t acted so quickly, they would be dead. All of them. The rest of us didn’t know what to do. You did. You were the only one.”

  He glanced down at her, then up again quickly. “I should have looked.”

  “It is easy to second-guess yourself now,” she said. “Now, when everything is quiet and peaceful and safe. But you did the best you could in the heat of the moment. I don’t think anyone blames you for what happened to River’s grandfather. Not even River.”

  “You don’t know that. She won’t even talk to me.”

  Owl took a deep breath. “Let me tell you something, Fixit. Something true. The Weatherman was very sick. He had the plague. He had a strain I couldn’t treat, something I didn’t have medicines for. It was a sickness he had suffered from before. River told us. This was just the latest incident. But this is what I haven’t told anyone until now. He was going to die. He was getting weaker, and I couldn’t do anything about it. He was already almost gone.”

  There was a long silence from behind her. She waited patiently. “You’re just saying that to make me feel better,” the boy said.

  “Yes, I am saying it to make you feel better,” she admitted. “But it’s also the truth.”

  It wasn’t the truth, of course. It was a white lie. River’s grandfather might have gotten better, might have recovered. No one could be sure. But she didn’t think so. She hadn’t seen anything to indicate he would. And no one could know for sure whether anything that Fixit had done while driving the AV had contributed to the old man’s death. For all they knew, he might have already been dead and no one had noticed. Death in their world was like that: it claimed those around you like a wind gathering fallen leaves, and you didn’t even notice right away that they were gone.

  “Did he make any sounds while you were driving?” she asked.

  “I don’t know.”

  “Did you hear anything?”

  Silence. “I guess not.”

  She let him think about it for a moment, then said, “You saved three lives. Three very important lives. If we had lost those lives, we might ourselves be lost. We probably couldn’t complete this journey, our search for Hawk and Tessa, without those three to help us.”

  She didn’t say anything more, nor did he, and they passed down the highway behind the AV and the shopping cart like sheep to a pasture as the sun faded into the west. By twilight, they had reached a wayside park where they could pull off and take cover in the trees, back where there was a shelter and fireplace and a few weathered old benches. As soon as they were stopped, Logan set about digging a grave farther back in the small stretch of forest. Bear and Panther were lending a hand when Fixit walked over to ask if he could help, too. Panther looked at him, and then gave up his shovel wordlessly and walked over to where Owl was unpacking the supplies that would provide them their dinner.

  “That old man would have died anyway,” he said without preamble.

  “You and I know that, but Fixit isn’t sure,” she replied, looking up from her work. Sparrow, who was helping her unpack, didn’t look up at all.

  “Don’t make sense, him blaming himself for this. He did what needed doing or we’d be dead, right, Sparrow?”

  “You tell him that, Panther Puss,” she said.

  “Fixit ain’t got nothin’ to be sorry for.”

  “Tell him that, too.”

  Owl smiled at the boy. “He needs to hear it from all of us. He needs to hear it enough times that he’ll start to believe it.”

  Half an hour later, they buried the Weatherman, the darkness nearly complete, the soft glow of a cloud-shrouded moon providing their only light. They gathered about his grave in a tight knot, and one by one they spoke about him.

  “He was a strange old guy,” Bear declared in his slow, meticulous way. He shifted his big frame from foot to foot, uneasy at having to speak. But Owl had asked them all to say something, and Owl was their mother. Bear cleared his throat. “He wasn’t always easy to understand. But he was kind and never did anything to us. He was always looking out for us, even when we didn’t know it. Hawk said so. We’ll miss him.”

  “The Weatherman always told us when to watch out for things,” Sparrow added. “He was good about that, even if we didn’t always understand him. If he was a kid, we would have made him a Ghost.”

  “Say what you want about that old man,” Panther declared, after thinking about it a moment. “Say what you want, but then remember that he gave us River, and she’s special.”

  It was so unexpected that for a moment no one else said anything. They just stood there in the shadows, looking at Panther.

  “What?” Panther said finally, his face turning darker than usual. “I’m just sayin’ what’s so!”

  “The Weatherman was our friend,” said Chalk, and after pausing for a moment couldn’t seem to think of anything else. He cleared his throat, glanced around at the others, and shrugged. “He was our friend,” he repeated. “Always.”

  Then it was Fixit’s turn. The boy stood there, looking at the ground, his body stiff and tight with emotion. He shook his head. “I don’t know what to say,” he whispered.

  “I do.”

  River walked over to him and put her arm around him. “My grandfather was a good man, and he lived a good life. It wasn’t always easy, but mostly. He liked all of you; he told me so. He got to come with you when you left, even though he didn’t think he would be allowed to. That made him happy, even when he was sick. I know it did.”

  She paused, her arm still around Fixit. “If he was here, Fixit, he would tell you that what happened to him wasn’t your fault. You are not to blame yourself for his dying. You were a good friend to him and you are a good friend to all of us, and we don’t any of us want to think about it anymore. It’s over.”

  She leaned in and kissed him on the cheek, then put her arms around him and hugged him. Fixit was crying, but Owl, sitting in her wheelchair and watching his face, knew it was going to be all right.

  LOGAN TOM wasn’t so sure.

  He was unsure not only about Fixit, whom he was already viewing as damaged goods, but also about the way all of this was going to turn out. The expectation was that they would travel south toward the Columbia River, finding Hawk and Tessa on the way, and everything would work out. But this assumed a few things. It assumed that they would get there in one piece. It assumed that Hawk would be easily found once they arrived. And it assumed that the journey itself would not do such emotional and psychological damage that they would not be able, over the course of time, to heal themselves.

  The first two added up to enough wishful thinking to sink a b
arge, but the last was the one that bothered him the most. He knew something of the sort of damage that journeys undertaken in this world could inflict on you. He had made more than a few over the past twenty years, and he still carried the scars deep inside. The Ghosts had overcome a lot to get to where they were, and their bonding as a family had helped to shield them. But they were still just children, with only Owl, Panther, and Bear old enough to be viewed as grown-up, and for all their bravado and determination they were likely so much cannon fodder for what lay between them and their destination. For half a dozen years, they had not left their sanctuary in the city of Seattle. They had not traveled more than a few miles from their home. Everything they knew was behind them. They were starting life over, a little family setting out on a strange road for a strange land.

  Could they finish such a journey when things like the insect machines and the Freaks waited for them around every twisty bend and in every dark corner?

  What were the chances they could survive?

  Could they manage without him?

  These weren’t idle questions. They were considerations he had been worrying over ever since they had set out from the city. He needed to know if they could make their way alone. Because he was thinking that at some point they might have to.

  Because, in truth, he was thinking it might be best if he left them behind.

  It sounded harsh, but it was the pragmatic choice. His charge from the Lady by way of Two Bears wasn’t to save the Ghosts. It was to find and protect the gypsy morph, who just happened to be one of the Ghosts in its current transformation. He was to give the morph a chance to save humanity from the coming conflagration, to give it a chance, he assumed, to repopulate and rebuild the world. That charge did not involve the other Ghosts in any way, shape, or form.

  It wasn’t that he didn’t want to help these kids. He did. But they were slowing him down. He could get to where he needed to go much faster on his own. He could travel more quickly and in greater safety. Every decision he made was affected by their presence. He wasn’t used to this kind of responsibility. He had lived alone since Michael’s death, and he had developed habits and patterns of behavior that improved his chances of surviving. Of necessity, much of what he had come to rely upon had gone by the wayside since he had taken on the burden of responsibility for the Ghosts.