“Nope,” Aric said as he donned his shirts.
The elf glanced over his shoulder at them. “This forest is well-protected.” Jenni couldn’t see his eyes, but his manner was measuring as he looked at Aric, then his lips curved in a slow smile again, and Jenni was glad it wasn’t aimed at her. “But then, you, Aric Paramon, Treeman, asked for help for the dryads, your mother and this forest, didn’t you?”
“Yes,” Aric said.
“And you got it,” the dwarf said. “Looks like a good job.”
The elf chuckled, patted his companion on the shoulder that didn’t carry the tatt. They were both clothed again and Jenni was trying to forget how well they looked without their armor and shirts. Not as good as Aric, but really good.
“And we aren’t as fussed about the next bubble event ’cause we’ve already participated in one,” the dwarf pointed out. This time he made a full bow. “Thanks to you. And we are grateful for that and won’t forget it.” He touched the line of a broken web and didn’t flinch, Jenni couldn’t tell if he felt pain at it or not. “If our wishes are fulfilled like yours, we will be well pleased.”
The elf cocked a brow at Aric. “Though we made sure to phrase our intentions as generally as possible. It didn’t take very long for the sweep of magic from the Yellowstone bubble to make it here.”
Aric didn’t move beside her, but Jenni sensed his discomfort. His chin jutted. “The dryads need help. Some of the drain in magic and power you Lightfolk have felt over the centuries was because of what was done to the Treefolk and the forests.”
“Can’t argue that,” the dwarf said. He’d found a faint track and started walking.
The elf made a sweeping gesture to them to fall in behind the dwarf. Aric tugged on her hand and she reluctantly went with him. “Where—”
“To the most open area to the outside. Now we wait,” he said.
“We wait,” Jenni repeated as dread curled inside her.
“For the shadleeches.” Aric loosened his long knife in its sheath. Neither the dwarf who’d become a barely visible moving shadow ahead of them, nor the elf behind them, made any noise, so it was as if they were alone again. There was no more smile from Aric. His lips had firmed. “I want to make sure you’re protected. We all do.”
“And there’s only one way to find out,” Jenni said.
“Yes.”
She wanted to cling harder to his hand. Her own palm had gone sweaty, but she kept her fingers loose. “I will point out that you now have two tatts.”
His smile showed briefly. “As I said before—if you want another…”
“No, thanks!”
“All right, then.” He dropped her hand to touch her nape and it tingled. She knew she’d always be extra sensitive there. Not something that had occurred to her earlier. Was the back of her neck an erogenous zone? She thought so. It was now, anyway.
Had Aric wanted her tatt to be on an erogenous zone? She should have thought of that before, too, and figured out somewhere she could have asked him to do the same. But he was soft inside for her, she could tell. Because she didn’t want him to hurt from a big spiderweb. Fierce and protective on the outside. From the little she knew of warriors, that was the best kind.
Soon they reached the edge of the forest and the moonlight illuminated more paths that appeared to be human-made instead of by wildlife or the dryads. Jenni let her lightball fade.
The dwarf settled in the low crook of a tree, leaning rather than standing. The elf chose another tree, half in shadow, half in moonlight, and seemed to disappear. She was the odd one out in this little adventure, with no forest craft or background. City girl.
Aric reached into his coat and pulled out a dark tarp that he spread between the wide roots of a tree, dropped down onto it and drew Jenni after him. She shouldn’t have been surprised at the cover’s softness, but she was. He leaned back against the tree and spread his legs so she could sit and spoon against him. Lovely.
After a minute, the dwarf said, “Shadleeches.” Jenni thought she heard him spit. “It goes against grain for me to stand here and wait for an attack,” the dwarf said through gritted teeth, as if every word were a curse.
The elf sighed. “It’s not going to be one of those waits, is it? The kind where you talk my ear off?”
The dwarf said something in dwarvish that sounded derogatory.
Aric said, “I don’t think the shadleeches will be put off by our talk. Likely, they’d hone in on us as food.”
“My thought, too,” the dwarf said sourly.
“An elf, a dwarf, a Treeman and a half human, half Lightfolk. A banquet of tastes for the discriminating shad leech,” the elf said.
Jenni muffled a snort.
“What?” asked the elf.
“It just sounded like the beginning of a joke—an elf, a dwarf and a Treeman walk into a bar…”
The dwarf groaned. “Please, don’t encourage him. He has thousands of those jokes, and he accuses me of nonstop talking.”
“Jokes, songs…” the elf mused. “Reminds me that I saw your father, Aric, and he sends his greetings.”
Suddenly Aric wasn’t so nice to rest against. Every muscle behind her tensed. “You can give mine back to him.”
The next silence was weighted as if the elf or dwarf intended to say something. Jenni could almost feel the mental communication between them. Finally, the elf said, “You are a man a father should be proud of.”
Aric grunted and no one said anything else.
Soon the animals they’d disrupted with their talking began to move around again and Aric eventually relaxed behind her. Tension crept through Jenni, tightening her nerves. Waiting in the forest for shadleeches to attack was one of the worst things she’d ever done.
She didn’t know what the others were doing, but all of her magical senses were extended to the fullest. She wouldn’t be able to keep that up long, but a twitchy feeling on her neck warned her that the shadleeches were coming. She shifted time and again, and Aric closed his arms around her.
I’ve got you, you’re safe, he sent her mentally.
He wasn’t even on his feet! Though his sword was right beside her.
Are your tatts tingling?
He stiffened a little, then raised his hand with the spider mark on his index finger. The silver tracery had darkened until it was black.
Lean forward, Aric said in her mind.
She complied. Early warning system? Jenni asked.
Looks like, Aric agreed. Your spiderweb is no longer silver and red, but black against your skin. For an instant he brought her close, held her. Then lifted her and set her on her feet, rose himself.
The new mark on my shoulder is itching, the dwarf said matter-of-factly, using whispery mind-speak, too.
Mine feels like a breeze is brushing it, the elf said.
Both Jenni’s and my tatts have turned black, Aric said.
The dwarf and elf released identical grunts. There was a sense of slight movement as if they readied themselves to fight. Jenni drew her coat close, buttoned and belted it, wrapped her arms around herself. She should turn her back to the entrance, prominently display her tatt protection, but she couldn’t stop herself from watching.
Shadleeches zoomed through the trees low and black and nearly unseen.
The first few hit the spiderwebs. Instead of bulleting through, the web blanketed them and they fell to the ground with an awful shrieking that died as they did. Those behind the first wave flew straight for them.
The elf stepped into their path. They dived for him, but couldn’t quite connect. As soon as they were close, they slid away.
With his sword raised, the dwarf joined the elf. The shadleeches swarmed him, too, hit him, then fell to the ground, twitched and died…at least those the dwarf didn’t stab first.
Much as she really, really didn’t want to, she walked into a flurry of shadleeches. They stunk of caves and dead things. They grazed her. One or two tried to bite, then were deflected, whimpered and flapped
away from her unevenly as if hurt…to turn around and try again.
Aric stood stoically as they rushed him, circled, couldn’t even get as close to him as the elf, and they squeaked distress, abandoned him for the others.
“Now!” ordered the dwarf.
Blades gleamed in the moonlight, flashed, struck. One shadleech escaped and shot toward the path to the open, got caught in another spiderweb and died.
“All done,” the elf said cheerfully. His sword was clean and back in its sheath. He rubbed his hands. “And well done. These spiderweb marks do protect.” He rubbed his side. “Though I don’t think they shield the Lightfolk as well as Treefolk.”
“An’ I don’t think any of the Eight will put themselves through the process and be marked and shielded. They’ll rely on their magic,” said the dwarf.
More fools, they, Aric muttered mentally and privately to Jenni.
The guardians looked at them sharply and Jenni deduced they could hear any mental communication.
“But maybe the rest of the major and minor Lightfolk will be smart,” the dwarf said. “The minor Folk, especially—brownies, naiads and naiaders, air sprites—”
“Not air sprites, they aren’t plagued by the shadleeches,” the elf said. “Air sprites can outfly them or just translocate, and fire sprites can burn the shadleeches up.” His teeth gleamed in the moonlight. “Shadleeches don’t like fire sprites.”
Rubbing his short beard, the dwarf said, “Not sure how long the shadleeches will be around.”
“Maybe they won’t last.” The elf touched his side. “But I’ve got a feeling my spiderweb mark is permanent.”
“The shadleeches have done too much damage already,” Aric said. “Any more was unacceptable.”
“So you sent the bubble creative force to change that,” the elf said softly, and nodded. Then he shifted his blue gaze to the forest floor, toed a streak of black that was shadleech remnant. “Appears like it worked.”
“Thank God,” Jenni said. “The forest and dryads needed it.” She looked at the elf, a master of communication. “How widespread are the spiders and webs?”
“Here, mostly, but I’ll wager they will be global soon. Traveling west to east.” His gaze landed on each of them for a considering moment. “Four natures. Four different results. But all protected.”
“I’m gonna have bruises,” the dwarf said.
“I don’t think so,” the elf said. He nodded to Jenni and Aric. “We’ve learned what we came for.”
“Had a little fight,” the dwarf added, putting his weapons back. “Too short, though. Not much challenge, either.”
“Fine by me,” Jenni said. She’d had nothing to defend herself with except her power.
“You need a knife,” the elf and the dwarf said at the same time, and two blades appeared in two hands. Neither of the knives looked like they were the ones the guardians carried, but surely the weapons were from their private arsenals. Jenni was touched.
“Take ’em both,” the dwarf said. He was smiling and it looked odd.
“Thank you.” She did.
The dwarf ducked his head. “’Til later.” He vanished. The elf smiled and disappeared, too.
“Well.” Jenni was left with Aric standing silently beside her and well-balanced knife hilts filling her hands. One was lumpy with what she thought were jewels, but still provided a good grip, the other felt as if it was wire wrapped around leather. “Well,” she said again.
Aric swung her up in his arms, nuzzled her neck. “Yes. Very well. A good night’s work. Now let’s go to bed.”
CHAPTER 24
THEY HAD BREAKFAST WITH LEAFSWIRL, WHO glowed with satisfaction and sported no spiderweb tatt that Jenni could see. She didn’t doubt that the dryad had a beautiful one. After the meal Leafswirl kissed her son and Jenni, sang a little blessing and disappeared.
Aric readied his pack, then they stepped out of the tree to a wet and rainy morning. They walked through the cold and dripping redwood forest. Now and then they’d take a shortcut a few miles by moving through one tree to another farther up the coast. Jenni had a hard time keeping track of their location, but she had complete faith Aric knew where they were going.
Midmorning they came to the end of their journey and exited a pine sitting in a deep crevice between rugged hills on the coastline. There was some scruffy vegetation, and a thin strip of beach.
“Like I said, the lost coast of California, no close roads,” Aric said. “Diamantina’s home is up there.” He gestured to blocks of red-brown stone atop the rock cliff.
It took Jenni a moment of blinking to see the shape of the house, it blended in so well. She frowned. “A merfem living in a stone house?”
“I think her main dwelling is under the sea. There are several passageways from the house to the ocean.”
Jenni’s frown deepened. “She lives under the ocean so close to tectonic plate activity?” She stared up at the house again, shook her head.
“Denver, too, has had earthquakes.”
“Yeah, yeah. But not since I’ve been there.” She flipped a hand. “No accounting for taste. Stone.”
“She is a merfem of the sea, they don’t tend to trust wood,” Aric said drily. “They think of the waterlogged timbers of old wrecks in the oceans.”
“Huh.” Jenni couldn’t help it, she slipped her arm in his. “Brick houses are nice, but wood…” She sighed. “Wood is the best.”
He smiled.
“Diamantina doesn’t sound like a mer name,” Jenni said.
Aric shrugged. “She probably changed it a long time ago, I think she might be distantly related to the King and Queen of Water, the Greendepths.”
“Oh.”
“Diamantina is an oceanic trench off of India.”
Jenni frowned. “I don’t think I knew that.” But Diamantina sounded hard and Jenni pictured a thin and whiplike merfem.
Aric swept his arm toward the ocean. “Etesian, the elf scholar, thinks the bubble will rise from under the sea floor.”
They both looked at the gray waves with white crests. Jenni moved her shoulders. “I want to check for it, but I’m…wary. I did that at Yellowstone and it was rising.”
“If it was already rising from the mantle, then you didn’t speed it up. It would have happened at that time whether we were there or not,” Aric said.
The words sounded as if he’d repeated them often. She leaned a little into him. “Thank you.”
“I wasn’t the only one to point that out.” His hand came up to slip under her hair and trace a pattern on her neck that she didn’t think matched the spiderweb. When he spoke again, his voice was rough. “I wish we could have spent more time at my home, but the Eight are nervous and want us here, though everyone’s sure the last bubble event will be on the spring equinox in three weeks.”
Her own throat was thick. “I don’t blame them for wanting us here.” Echoes of the time when she wasn’t where she should have been flashed through her. That would never happen again. She cleared her throat. “Did they give us any instructions in case the bubble rises before—”
Aric shrugged. “Yes. I have a sheet of a spell they’d like us to memorize, just in case.”
“Oh.”
He turned to face her, pulled her so they were body-to-body. You’d think they would have had enough of each other in the past couple of days, but Jenni could feel her passion rising. He didn’t kiss her. “I had hoped for a few days with you with no distractions.”
“On a mission for the Lightfolk?”
Huffing a breath, he rubbed his face against her hair. “All right, a delusion.” His arms tightened so that she could barely breathe. “But you aren’t anymore, Jenni. A delusion, illusion. What we have isn’t.”
“No.” The nearby surf wasn’t louder than her heartbeat.
“Ahem.”
They both jerked. Jenni looked toward the sound, saw a merfem walking out of thrashing waves. Unlike the Water Queen, she was plump, not voluptuou
s, using fat for extra insulation in the water. She was “dressed” in a few strategically arranged fronds of seaweed. Her face was heart-shaped and pretty rather than stunning, though Jenni was careful not to meet the woman’s beautiful turquoise eyes. Her skin tone was that of an Indian Sea merfem of high status, green-gold.
She beamed and her fluting, musical voice cut through the sound of the crashing ocean. “Welcome! I am Diamantina. You must be those sent by the Eight. I received a message that two would arrive.” Her gaze lingered on Aric, then she winked at Jenni and smiled, gestured to the house on the steep hillside. “We can have coffee and speak of what you need from me. Would you like a pastry or two? I have chocolate croissants.”
Jenni’s mouth watered and she heard Aric gulp. He bowed. Unlike Jenni, he could look the fem in her eyes and did. He showed exactly the amount of appreciation that was proper. Since Jenni was brought up in the Lightfolk world and her mother had been much the same shape, she understood that the woman was very attractive to other mers…and Lightfolk in general. She felt too skinny. “Thank you, that sounds wonderful.”
“I’ll meet you at my house.” The woman ran fluidly to the ocean and dove in, vanished under the waves.
“Do you know Diamantina?”
“I haven’t met every noble in the States.” He began to lope up the trace of a path to the top of the ridge. Jenni drew a little air energy to her to make her weight a little lighter and her mass easier to move.
The house was unexpectedly charming, reminding Jenni of juxtaposed children’s building blocks. It couldn’t have been constructed too long ago, thirty years at the most. The front door had copper panels faded to green. On each side of the door were long rectangles of stained glass of blues and greens showing stylized waves or undersea plant life.
Aric swore as he touched the doorknob and an arc of electricity jumped from the brass to his hand. “Damn mer security.” He scowled, then glanced at Jenni. “That could have hurt you.”
“Electricity, fire? Maybe. Depends on the jolt. Certainly could have hurt a human who tried the door.” She shook her head. “Not wise.”
“Don’t touch…” Diamantina called out, then the door whisked open to show a contrite face. “I am so sorry.” She grimaced. “We are so isolated and more often in the underwater home…” She sniffed, seemed to scent the slight whiff of seared wood that had risen from Aric’s skin. “So sorry,” she repeated. The merfem stepped back and flung the door wide, showing the entryway floored in large, colorful tiles with a definite Indian influence. The walls were sponge painted in shades of turquoise, mimicking water patterns. Skylights over the entryway made the atrium cheerful, though Jenni found the temperature cooler than a human home.
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