‘Fine.’ I waved a hand magnanimously. ‘Go see for yourself.’ I stalked over to the chair in the corner and sat down, slinging one leg over the arm as I examined my nails.
‘You,’ Bladimir pointed a finger at Turos, ‘watch her.’ He pointed at me, sniffed, and then swept out of the room.
I maintained my relaxed position until he was gone, then I leapt up and started pacing the room. ‘What are we going to do?’ I ran my hands through my hair and turned to face Turos. He had taken up residence in the chair I had just vacated and was mimicking my formerly relaxed position.
‘The real question is,’ he said, ‘what are you going to do?’
I put my hands on my hips as irrational rage coursed through me. ‘Me? Why does it have to be me that does something?’
He shrugged. ‘Well, there’s nothing at all that we can do about it except fight to the death. And that doesn’t seem like a palatable option.’
I struggled to control my breathing. There had been so many of them. And all of those ships had had the weapons that had caused so much destruction the last time they had gone up against them. I couldn’t destroy all of them. Not by myself. Not without using black magic.
I paced to the window and sucked in a deep breath. We were surrounded. Totally surrounded. ‘You need to open a way again.’ I turned back to look at him.
‘How am I going to do that?’
‘The same way you did when you came and got Emerald and me. Just…’ I flourished a hand in the air.
He had been sitting forwards on the chair. Now he slumped back into it and ran his hands through his hair. ‘I didn’t do that.’
‘Well, get whoever did and do it again.’
‘Impossible.’ He closed his eyes and leant his head back.
‘Why are you being so stubborn about this?’ I strode over to him and leant down. ‘Is it a pride thing? You caught us, and now you can’t let us go?’
His eyes opened and I found myself caught like a moth in the glory of a sea of ice blue. ‘Do you think,’ he enunciated the words carefully, ‘that I would let the pettiness of my own pride condemn my friends, my family, my dragon, to death?’
I stared into his soul for a moment longer before standing again. ‘No. Of course not.’
He nodded once. ‘The man who crafted the way for me to find you died a long time ago. When we fled through the way, one of the magic makers gave us a single glass globe. It held a spell that would allow us to re-open a passage to wherever we wanted to go.’
I stared at him as my mind tried to process what he was saying. They had lied when they had said we could go home after the egg was laid. They’d never had any intention of sending us back. But that wasn’t the important thing. That wasn’t what had me totally confounded.
‘Why,’ my words came out in a whisper, ‘would you have wasted it to find me.’
‘Well technically,’ there was a wry smile on his face, ‘we weren’t trying to find you. We were trying to find Emerald.’
There was a possibility I was doing a damned fine impression of a goldfish.
He shook his head and stood, brushing past me on his way to the window. I swallowed and tried to ignore the tingles that swept down my arm where he had touched me. That really wasn’t helping the situation.
‘We have a seer.’
‘Pardon?’
‘A seer. You know, a fortune teller. Clairvoyant. A prophet.’ He rubbed the palms of his hands over the smooth stone of the window sill. ‘Most of the time she is totally crazy. But when she speaks coherently, we listen.’ Something flickered over his face, too fast for me to identify it. ‘She said if we didn’t do it, we would be lost.’
‘But,’ I opened and closed my mouth a few more times as I worked my way through that, ‘but because of it, we are lost.’ They wouldn’t have found the Millenium if not for that spell. And if they had found them, the Millenium would have had a chance to escape.
‘She is never wrong.’ He held himself stiff for a few moments more and then it seemed that he curled in on himself. His shoulders sagged and his face crumpled. ‘Well, she has never been wrong before.’ His feet dragged as he walked back to the chair. ‘If she said a storm was coming, it always came. If she said we should plant more crops that year, there was always a drought the year after.’
‘Izzy.’ Isla’s face appeared at the window for a second before disappearing again. A few seconds later it was back, and then gone again. It took me three goes to realise she was moving up-and-down in time with Arthur’s wing beats.
‘Are you crazy?’ I hissed at her. ‘If they see you we’re in so much trouble.’
‘Really?’ Her voice carried up through the window. ‘That’s what you’re worried about? I don’t think they’ll have time to deal with us before those pirates do.’
She had a valid point.
‘What do you want?’
I heard her huff. ‘The guards wouldn’t let me up and you ran off before telling me what the plan was.’
‘I don’t have a plan.’
Her head appeared for a second and then was gone again. ‘So, you’re going to let us all die?’
I could feel pressure building in the back of my head. ‘Why is this my responsibility?’
‘Can you do anything other than shoot lightning?’ Turos stood and crossed to stand beside me at the window.
‘Oh, so now my lightning isn’t good enough for you?’
‘Of course it is. But can you do anything else?’
A small pain started up at the base of my neck. ‘I can make shields. And blow things up.’ And rip out people’s hearts.
‘You’re a War Faery. Surely there are other things you can do.’
It was my turn to walk defeated to the chair. I sat and leant forward, putting my head between my legs as I fought the building pressure.
It was all up to me. It was always up to me. But this time, I didn’t know if I was up to it. War was brimming at home, and if I didn’t get back for it, all was lost. And I was trapped here, in a land where death seemed imminent.
‘She can do anything.’ Isla’s head appeared for another second. ‘Anything she needs to. She just has to believe in herself.’
‘Can she open a way back home?’
I thought about letting them know I could hear them, but I was struggling to breathe let alone speak.
‘Santanas did it. When he took Emerald.’
I put a hand in the air in an attempt to stop them. The pressure had moved from the back of my head to the front. It was throbbing and pulsing and threatening to tear me apart.
‘The problem is,’ Isla’s voice was fainter, ‘she has blocked herself.’
Turos looked over at me. ‘Why would she do that?’
‘To stop herself from using black magic.’ Her voice was just a whisper on a breeze.
Turos leant out the window and peered down. ‘Land now,’ he barked.
I tried to be worried for my friend, but my head was about to burst into a million tiny pieces. One hundred goblins creeping through the forest. Coming to find us. Coming to kill us.
‘Pull me up. She needs me.’
I leapt into the air and landed on the back of a goblin fighting Isla. Grasping his head, I ripped it to the side. There was a crack, and his arms fell limply. I jumped clear as he collapsed.
‘Izzy?’ I could feel Turos’s hand on my arm, but even though I had my eyes open I could no longer see him. I was no longer in that room.
‘Thanks,’ Isla panted. She picked up her bow and loosed a couple of arrows at a goblin attacking Wilfred.
Whoa – Wilfred? Wilfred had gone with the Ubanty Goddess, Ulandes.
‘How many more do you think there are?’
I looked around the clearing. Tiny was in the process of picking up some goblins that had popped out of the trees at his feet. One-by-one he threw them as far as he could over the top of the woods.
Wolfgang was shooting fireballs into the tree line where dark shapes dod
ged and weaved trying to escape a fiery death. Aethan, Brent, Luke and Wilfred were fighting two goblins each, their blades flicking through a complex pattern.
‘Cover me.’ I closed my eyes and reached out with my mind, pushing out through the woods. Darkness and evil swarmed around us, black hearts beating in anticipation of our death. Like homing pigeons they came.
It was too many. Too many by far.
I opened my eyes and stared at Isla, the horror must have shown on my face.
She stared back at me, her beautiful, blue eyes calm. ‘You don’t have to do this,’ she said.
I blinked. ‘That’s not what you said.’
‘It’s what I should have said.’
I could feel her hands on my arms.
I shook my head. ‘I have to. Or we’ll all die.’
‘There has to be another way. Think.’
The thousand hammers pounding on the inside of my skull changed to one single baseball bat bashing away at my head. ‘How?’
‘Oh Izzy.’ I could feel her cool hands on the side of my face. ‘There is always a way.’
All my friends stood frozen, swords and bows aimed at statue goblins. Easily a hundred goblins surrounded us. I couldn’t kill them the way I had done. That way lead to madness. So if I couldn’t kill them what could I do?
‘What would Grams do?’
It was the question I least expected, but as soon as the words left her lips a picture of my scatty, brilliant, mischievous grandmother leapt to mind. ‘She would make them all dance.’
The pressure moved out of my head and down my hands flowing out over the goblins. They woke a second before my spell got to them. One minute they wore snarls and grimaces, and the next they were turning to each other, taking each other in their arms, and beginning to waltz.
‘Oh,’ Isla clapped her hands together. ‘That is perfect.’
Another goblin skipped from the trees, a small bunch of flowers in his hand. The picture it presented was ludicrous.
‘I can’t do this to all of them.’ I could feel the smile on my face.
‘You don’t need to,’ Isla said. ‘You just need to do it to all of those blocking our exit.’
The rest of my friends fell in behind me as we moved in the direction of the waltzing goblins. I looked back over my shoulders and, at a thought, visions of each of us flickered into view right where we all had been a minute ago.
‘Nice touch.’ Isla’s hand was on my arm. ‘How long can you hold them for?’
‘Long enough for us to make our escape. Is this what I should have done?’
Isla stopped walking and turned to face me. As she shrugged her shoulders, it all disappeared from view. Suddenly we were back in the King’s study. ‘There was no one right.’
‘Only one wrong.’
She nodded.
‘For too long now you have doubted yourself.’
It took me a second to realise that the voice did not belong to Isla. We all turned toward the door at the top of the staircase where a woman garbed in a tattered, black robe stood. She lifted a hand and pointed a finger. A manacle hung from her wrist, a broken chain dangling from it.
‘The shadows of the worlds await you.’ Her hair hung in matted clumps down her back to her knees. Even through the dirt smudged on her cheeks I could see a luminous beauty. ‘You must tread warily least you welcome it once more.’ She swayed on her feet as she took a step towards me. ‘Wary, wary. The betrayer is already amongst you.’ Her pitch-black eyes seemed to swirl with an alien light. ‘What has been done, can not be undone.’
She turned her gaze to Turos and her face broke out into a broad smile. ‘Hello son,’ she said. And then she collapsed in a pile of torn fabric and dirt.
***
We were still staring at Turos’s mother, when King Bladimir returned. His eyes were wild, and his face pale and blotchy.
‘Gladaline.’ He stood over the prone woman. ‘Gladaline.’ He bent and scooped her up in his arms, cradling her to his body as he walked to the thick rug in front of the fireplace. ‘What is she doing here?’ He looked up at Turos as he lay Gladaline down on the rug.
‘She just appeared.’ Turos moved to his mother’s side.
‘Now, of all times.’ Bladimir rocked back onto his heels and let out a hard, rueful laugh. ‘Well it is the end of the world.’
Bells started ringing, their metallic cries echoing out across the valley.
‘We are all doomed.’ Bladimir’s face was blotchy as he looked over at us. ‘I have failed us.’
Gladaline stirred, her eyes opening as she reached out a hand towards Bladimir. ‘You are still as handsome as the day I first saw you,’ she said staring up at him.
‘I was only five. I’m not sure how handsome I was at five.’ His face softened as her hand brushed his cheek.
‘You were the most handsome, stubborn and rebellious five year old there was, and I knew as soon as I saw you we would be wed.’
I could hear men crying out from the dragon stables.
Gladaline pushed herself up until she was sitting. She raised a hand to her head and felt her matted locks. She pulled a face and dropped her hands as she said, ‘How long?’
‘You’ve been gone for twenty years.’ Bladimir’s hands trembled as he reached out and cupped her face. ‘Are you back now?’
Her eyes glazed for a minute, as if she were performing an internal examination. Then she blinked and met his eyes. ‘For now.’
Tears rolled down onto his cheeks as he pulled her to him and pressed a kiss to her lips. ‘At least we will be together when we die.’
‘Wait a minute,’ I said. As touching as the lovers’ reunion was, I wasn’t ready just to sit there and get killed by those pirates.
‘Why are you still here?’ His eyes were hard, cold stones.
‘So that’s it. You’ve just given up.’ I threw my hands in the air. ‘We need to get everyone moving now.’
‘You’ve seen what they can do,’ he said.
‘Yes.’ I nodded my head. ‘But you haven’t seen what I can do.’
I turned and raised a hand toward the external wall of the room. At a thought, it exploded outwards. The noise was deafening as chunks of stone arced far out into the valley.
‘My room. My wall,’ Bladimir stuttered.
‘No lightning?’ Turos asked.
‘That probably wouldn’t have worked out so well for us.’ I tried to control my pleased smile. Maybe Isla was right. Maybe I could do more than what I thought.
‘My study.’ Bladimir stood as he stared at where the wall had been.
‘One second ago you were ready to die, now you’re worried about your study?’
Gladaline let out a gentle laugh. ‘She is right love.’ She pushed herself up to stand beside him.
‘So,’ Bladimir shifted his gaze from the destruction to me. ‘You think you can blow up all those ships. There must be thousands.’
I shook my head. I’d been in this situation before but now I knew what to do. ‘I don’t need to blow them all up. I just need to create a safe path out.’
‘But there is nowhere else to go,’ he said. The desperate edge was gone from his voice, quiet resignation replaced it. ‘We’ve spent many years searching for other lands.’
‘We’ve always had to return with enough strength in our mounts to make it home. We don’t know for sure we won’t reach land before we fail.’ Turos walked over to his mother and took her hand. He raised it to his mouth and I thought I heard him whisper, ‘I’ve missed you,’ as he laid a gentle kiss on it.
‘That won’t be necessary,’ Isla said, ‘we won’t be looking for new land. We’ll be returning to old ones.’
Bladimir looked toward her for the first time since he had returned from his flight. ‘What do you mean old lands, Princess.’
‘You can’t run,’ she said, ‘they will find you again eventually. It is time you returned home. You are needed there.’
‘You want us to swap our
problems for yours?’
‘There is one big difference between our problem and yours.’ She smiled broadly. ‘Ours still has the chance of a happy ending.’
He let out a huff of air.
‘Listen to her love.’ Gladaline patted his arm. ‘She speaks sense.’
‘We have no way of returning.’
‘I’m not so sure about that.’ She turned her gaze onto me, and for a second I saw the same alien glow burn bright in the depths of her eyes.
‘I can take us home.’ My voice sounded strong even though my internal voice was babbling in fear.
‘It will take us a while to gather everyone. And we need to bring in the animals and…’
I stopped him with a chop of my hand. ‘You are the king. Start thinking like one. We need to go.’
His spine stiffened and his mouth worked soundlessly a few times, but then his face hardened and, for the first time since he had seen the opposing force, his demeanour returned to the strong, if not totally-rational leader I had known since I arrived. He turned to Turos and barked. ‘Put as many people on each dragon as they can carry.’ He turned to me. ‘Where will you open the gateway?’
‘Out at sea,’ I said. ‘I need space.’ Well, I wasn’t sure if that was true, but I knew I needed time. I had no idea how I was going to do it and I didn’t need the pressure of being attacked while I worked it out. We would have to fight our way clear of the horde first, and then I could do what needed to be done.
Isla reached out a hand and squeezed mine. I was pleased that neither she nor Turos let on that I had no freaking idea how to do what was needed.
Bladimir nodded. ‘Get each dragon airborne as soon as it is loaded. They can wait on the other side of the valley until we are all ready.’
Turos nodded his head and raced from the room. Isla and I followed right behind him.
‘Scruffy,’ I said. I was happy that Turos didn’t point out that I had said we didn’t have time to get animals. I would have had to knock him senseless and that would have stalled our departure.
‘Meet you down at the stables.’ He and Isla turned left as I turned right and started running down the corridors towards our rooms.
The bells continued to ring out and people bustled past me, hastily-packed bags of possessions clutched to their chest. Mothers held onto small children with one hand, while cloth carriers on their backs held their babies. Men belted swords to their waists or clutched axes in their hands. They weren’t going to help them today, but they would be needed where we were going.
Faery Revenge Page 17
