The Faerie King

by Ash Fitzsimmons

  “Ass,” Aiden whispered behind me, and I nodded as I steered him into position to my right. “Compass?”

  “Check,” said Helen, falling in line beside our brother. “You drive, I’ll navigate. Aid?”

  He squeezed her hand and took a deep breath.

  “First priority,” I said, giving my team one last inspection, “is to make it back alive. Everything else is secondary. Is that understood?” My eyes passed over their faces, then lingered on Meggy, who had reverted to her earlier stubborn silence. “I’m sorry, Meg,” I mumbled, but her expression remained fixed, and I turned away.

  Closing my eyes, I imagined the skin of the world around me stretched taut like cellophane—and then, with a bolt of focused will, I ripped it open.

  CHAPTER 22

  * * *

  Picture the confluence of two powerful rivers, one fresh, the other brackish. If the conditions are right, the two streams will barely mix, and for a time, they’ll continue their journey downstream flowing one beside or beneath the other, separated by a barrier of their own creation. Such is the example generally used to approximate the conditions if a gate were opened from Faerie directly into the Gray Lands—theoretical conditions, certainly, as no one would be so stupid as to make the attempt.

  I can state now that this is utter bunk. The theoretical streams run along peacefully together, but the real streams—magic and dark magic, each trying to flow through the hole—run straight into each other at the confluence point. For anyone sensitive to magic and foolish enough to stand in front of such a gate, it’s rather like being blasted before and behind with fire hoses.

  Etheric Theory 101: magic and dark magic do not play nicely together. The one place they naturally mix is the mortal realm, whose border is pocked with gates of varying degrees of permanence. If the power balance in that realm favors magic, it’s only because we’ve punched more holes through and maintained them better than our Gray Lands counterparts, who tend to create gates only when needed and let them close of their own accord. The Arcanum, which knows damn well what comes out of the Gray Lands, has also done its part over the years to seal off most of the breaches. As a result, while there is a low level of dark magic in the mortal realm, it’s overcome by the background magic flowing out of Faerie. This imbalance lets us maintain the status quo—apply sufficiently concentrated magic to a Gray Lands gate and hold it in place, and eventually, the border will scab over. After all, although the barriers between the realms can be penetrated, their default state is to be…well, barriers. The force that seals the mortal realm off is tough and resilient, and given enough time, it can be healed.

  When a gate appears between the mortal realm and one of the others, the etheric flow only goes in one direction. But double that flow, force magic and dark magic to interact at high pressure along the skin of the realms, and even the toughest border can tear.

  The hole I’d created was rapidly widening of its own accord, and I struggled to tame the gate before it irreparably destroyed the border. “Aiden,” I yelled, aching with the strain, “any time now!”

  A heartbeat later, the fire hose behind me intensified, and the surge of magic flowed around me and against its counterforce, driving the incoming dark magic a precious few inches back from the gate. Pinned no longer, I stabilized the gate and shrank it to a circle a few feet across, then looked out onto the formless plain on the other side.

  Faerie’s not exactly a riot of color—think of what would result if the English countryside had a child with San Diego that had a fetish for architectural novelty—but what I’ve seen of the Gray Lands makes it look like a kaleidoscopic acid trip by comparison. The other realm can charitably be described as having a neutral palate, one dominated by shadow and mist in fact and in coloration. My gate revealed little of the landing site, largely because I’d opened it into a thick fog, but I saw below us more of the brown grass I’d seen through the last gate, so at least we were over land. “Got a heading?” I asked Helen.

  “Just a minute,” she muttered, and I glanced over to find her standing behind Aiden with her eyes scrunched closed and her palms held out toward the hole. Her lips moved silently, and I could feel something subtly modulating in the enchantment I’d created to hold the gate open. Before I could make enquiries, Toula gripped my shoulder to get my attention and shook her head.

  “She’s shoring it up,” she whispered. “Putting supports in place.”

  “It’s stable—”

  “For you, for now. Helen can’t hold it on her own.” She double-tapped my temple and arched her brow. “Think about it. You’ve got enough trouble feeding a spell—imagine the reverse. She’s crafting around the gate so that once you’re distracted, the whole thing won’t come crashing down around her. See?”

  “Wizards,” I sighed.

  “That particular wizard is our ticket home, so watch it, bub.” Toula stepped back, surveyed the spell I couldn’t see, then joined Helen and extended two fingers. “Looks solid, but I can move some of the stress around,” she murmured as her hand twitched from side to side. Helen nodded, too focused on her work to do more, and Aiden sweat as he continued to push magic against the tide.

  With progress momentarily stymied, I watched the fog roil and listened for wildlife. Nothing the size of the giant mantis creatures could have squeezed through the gate, but I knew there were other nasty surprises on the other side—smaller, but no more pleasant—and kept vigil. So hard was I straining to hear footsteps that I jumped a few minutes later when Toula grabbed my arm to let me know the spell was complete. “Easy,” she soothed, then beckoned Helen up to the hole with a low, “Okay, Carver, you know what to do.”

  Apparently satisfied that she wasn’t about to lose a limb due to gate collapse, Helen stuck her hand holding the ensorcelled compass through the rift, being careful to keep it within the pool of magic Aiden had pushed through. I saw the needle slow in its continual revolution, then turn about in the other direction and point to the northeast. “We’ve got a heading,” she said. “Shoot for two o’clock and go straight until I tell you otherwise.”

  I did a quick calculation based on our proximity to the ground and the height of the Gray Lands natives I’d seen, then raised the gate about twenty feet into the air. The fog remained solid at that height, but without the ground against which to orient ourselves, I was flying blind. “Does that thing give any indication as to distance?” I asked Helen.

  “I’m working with a compass, not a GPS system,” she replied, her eyes flicking impatiently to mine. “How long can you hold this open?”

  “As long as it takes.”

  She glanced over her shoulder at pale-faced Aiden, and her mouth tightened. “Just hit the gas, all right?”

  I spun the little gate until the needle lined up with north, then began to push it through the mist. When we didn’t immediately run into anything solid, I picked up speed and kept an eye on the shaking needle in Helen’s outstretched hand. I didn’t know where we were going, but if the compass had a target, then Moyna was still alive.

  If the girl lived, then I could send her off with Meggy, bound and none the wiser.

  And if Meggy were happy again, then maybe she would come back to me.

  It took nearly two grueling hours to break through the fog. My waiting team was tense, Helen’s arm ached, my head wanted to split with the strain of guiding an open gate, and poor Aiden stood behind us in silent concentration, not even opening his eyes when Joey stepped forward every so often to wipe off the boy’s dripping face and maneuver a straw between his lips. Oberon made a point of loudly yawning every quarter-hour or so and taking occasional walks around the sheep pen, but I had nothing to spare for him. The needle was the only indication that our course was true, and by then, I’d begun to question its conclusions…

  …and then, without warning, the fog broke.

  I stopped the gate to survey the world on the other side, a black-sand desert studded with the trunks of twisted, blasted trees,
and turned my eyes to the domed stone fortress rising from the horizon ahead. “Helen?”

  She glanced down at the compass and nodded. “We may have a winner. See what I see?”

  Her hand dipped slightly, and I noticed the dark dots moving around the fortress’s base. “Guards.”

  “Uh-huh. Going to have to fight our way through?”

  “Maybe,” I muttered, but pushed the gate forward again at a crawl. “Let me circle and see if that’s really the target. Keep the compass steady.”

  I can only imagine what Geheret’s troops thought when they spotted us looping the gate around his stronghold. Given the angle—I kept us high for a reason—I doubt they could see me, which means all they probably saw was a circle of light and a disembodied arm flying above their heads.

  This may explain much of the preliminary shrieking. Magic allows us to perform wonders and miracles, but still, there are moments that make even the acclimated step back and do a double-take.

  From what I could see of them, the creatures below us weren’t the kind to scare easily. There were humanoid in the sense that they had a pair each of arms and legs and a single head—never something to be taken for granted—but their arms were long, almost simian, and thick with muscle. The rest of their physique was buff but proportional, giving them the general appearance of television wrestlers…well, if said wrestlers were part orangutan, dark green, and sported leather armor. A few looked skyward as they ran for shelter, giving us a decent view of their faces.

  “Cyclopean,” said Helen. “And the needle isn’t budging—she’s in there.”

  “You sound disappointed,” I replied as she retracted her arm for landing.

  Helen began massaging feeling back into her wrist. “Cyclops are easy. One shot to blind them, and the rest is a matter of cleanup.”

  “Oh, really? And how many cyclops have you killed in your extensive career?”

  “Well, none yet,” she admitted, “but in theory—”

  “Forget theory. In fact, this is the damn Gray Lands, and you’re to take nothing for granted, understood? For all you know, those things are magical. Dark magical. Darkly magical. Whatever,” I muttered, too preoccupied with maneuvering the gate to worry about semantics.

  “Not running away like that, they’re not,” she replied with a smirk in her voice.

  By then, I’d descended to perhaps ten feet off the ground, and so I was at the perfect height to see a pair of massive doors open in the side of the fortress and another pack of guards run out to greet us, hauling with them what appeared to be a sharpened battering ram. “The hell is that thing?” I asked, briefly wondering if most of the guards’ brain function was dedicated to their large eyes, but just then, the tip of the log began to glow bright blue.

  “Down!” Toula shouted, shoving Helen and me away from the gate as she threw up a shield like a bubble being blown through the opening. The battering ram sparked and flared, and her shield glowed with zigzagging cracks as it absorbed the monstrous blast of dark magic that had been shot our way.

  “That’s a wand,” Helen whispered as she stared out through the clearing shield. “Holy—”

  “That’s not a wand, that’s a bazooka,” I replied, peering over Toula’s taut shoulders as the guards recharged.

  Toula didn’t take her eyes off the shield. “The word you’re both looking for is rod. A wand can’t store pre-cast spells. My guess is that they can’t actually use dark magic, so the boss gave them a glorified Dud Defender. Shit, incoming…”

  She grunted with the strain of holding the shield against the next hit, and Aiden yelped behind us. I turned to find him on his knees, squeezing his eyes closed and rocking back and forth. “Aiden? How’re you holding up?” I asked, hoping his sister was too distracted to see him in that state.

  He pressed his palms to his temples and winced as Toula tightened her shield, but managed to mumble, “Hurry.”

  Locked in a standoff with our power source fading, I decided to try a new tactic. “Change of plans,” I said, shooing Helen away from the gate, then beckoned Joey and his mount to the front line. “Toula, how much time do we have before the next blast?”

  “Maybe ten seconds, why?”

  “Once you block, get out of the way. Joey, you’re up.”

  He was already climbing onto Georgie’s shoulders. “Going to have to widen the gate, boss.”

  “Understood. Take out what you can…”

  The blast came, and Toula and Aiden cried out in synchronization as her shield flashed. The instant the last of the shot was deflected, she darted out of the way, taking her shield with her as I tore the rip open. “Now!” I yelled, throwing myself to the side just before Georgie galloped through and spread her wings.

  For the second time that morning, the cyclopean guards began to shriek, but they never had a chance to summon backup. Georgie had taken them by surprise, and rather than wait for the rod to finish recharging, they dropped it and dashed for cover. I heard Joey shout, his commands made incomprehensible by distance and the chaos on the other side, and then I saw Georgie dive for the back of the running pack. An instant later, she snapped the nearest guard up, tossed him into the air, and swallowed him headfirst. Joey patted her neck and squeezed his knees, urging her on, but she paused in midair, hovering with an odd expression on her face.

  “What’s wrong?” I called through the gate. “Stuck going down?”

  “She needs to burp,” he yelled back over the rush of her beating wings. “It’s all right, this happens, it’s only a little gas—”

  The dragon opened her mouth and belched forth a fat jet of flame, charring three of the guards in their tracks. She snapped her mouth closed and looked back at Joey, visibly perplexed.

  “Do it again!” Toula screamed through the gate, cupping her hands around her mouth to be heard. “Do that again, Georgie! Good girl!”

  Georgie turned to us at the sound of Toula’s voice, then dipped her head and wheeled on the retreating guards. With a screech, she dropped toward the pack, took a deep breath, and incinerated the lot before they reached the open doors. As her last casualties screamed and flailed, she executed a neat two-point landing, daintily folded her wings, and went in for a snack.

  With the guards dispatched, I lowered the gate to ground level and nodded to Helen. “Ready?”

  “Ready,” she confirmed, then closed her eyes. Aiden hissed behind her as she powered her magical scaffolding, but he made no complaint.

  “How do you feel?” I asked, slowly withdrawing myself from the gate.

  “Like Atlas,” she said through gritted teeth. “Do me a favor and hurry it up, okay?”

  “You’ve got it.”

  Helen grabbed my arm before I could move out of range. “I’m trusting you,” she said, tightening her vise grip. “Aid is trusting you. He can’t do this forever.”

  “Understood.” She released me, and I beckoned to the others. With a last worried glance at my brother, who still rocked and held his head, I stepped through into the Gray Lands and immediately began to shiver.

  The black-sand desert in which we’d landed was nearly freezing and, at least to me, reeked of floral formaldehyde. I coughed, gagging with the stench, then jogged across the waste to rendezvous with Joey and Georgie. “Cold enough for you?” I called up to him—his windbreaker seemed insufficient for the climate—but he shook his head.

  “Flak jacket helps,” he replied, punching his chest to demonstrate. “It’s not great insulation, but I’m okay.”

  “Where the hell did you get a flak jacket?”

  He unzipped his windbreaker, revealing both the black vest beneath it and the strap of a gun holster—his backup weapon, I assumed. “Helen’s pretty handy. And Georgie’s heating up like an electric blanket right now,” he added, patting the dragon’s flank, “so huddle up if you can’t hack it.”

  For some reason, the idea of standing beside a dragon who was busy swallowing charred corpses didn’t strike me as wise, and
the rest of our party seemed to share the sentiment. We stood close to each other, listening for an approaching army, while Helen worked out the steering controls on the gate and slid in behind us. As the outflow of magic began to reach us, I produced a leather jacket and gloves, while Toula opted for a puffy black coat. “What?” she said, catching Val’s look of incredulity. “It’s warm! There’s no rule against being warm!”

  “You look like a burned marshmallow,” said Meggy, now sporting a thick sweater and boots.

  “Oh, so now you’re talking to me?” she retorted.

  Meggy shrugged and lifted her chin toward the open doors. “Were you planning to wait for an escort, or can we storm the damn castle now?”

  A hissing rush of flame interrupted her, and we turned to find Georgie looking around at the glass-studded sand in consternation. All gone?

  “There’s probably more inside,” said Joey. “You, uh…you don’t have to eat them all, hon. We only need to get past them.”

  But I’m hungry, she pointed out, and if they’re dead anyway, why can’t I?

  “How are you hungry? You had, like, ten sheep for breakfast.”

  She lifted her front leg and touched her belly with her foot. Everything’s hot inside. Makes me hungry.

  “Dual metabolism,” said Toula. “Has to be…dark magic triggers fire production, fire speeds up the metabolic processes…”

  But Val, who had kept one eye on the doors, interrupted Toula’s hypothesizing. “Next wave,” he said, pushing up his tunic’s thin sleeves as a horde of sword-wielding cyclops rushed out of the citadel. “Georgie, whenever you’re ready…”