The Danger of Destiny

by Leigh Evans

  Fully anticipating a blast of wizard nastiness, I reached for the old man’s cyreath. But instead of hearing the old man nattering in my head, demanding what the hell did I think I was doing, I heard the low hum of distant two male voices. A mental shield had been placed around me.

  Thank you, Mad-one.

  I scooped up the old man’s sagging soul-ball—grimacing at its faint dampness—and raised it carefully. It stretched as I pulled upward, elongating into a teardrop shape. I increased the pressure by increments, hoping for the sweet spot, where his soul-ball would slough off Lexi’s easily. And it was working, or I felt it was, until I encountered resistance.

  Crap.

  “Mystwalker,” groaned Mad-one. “Make. Haste.”

  I shoved the limp mass of the old man’s cyreath to one side and bent to look at the place where the two souls touched. What I saw at first glance was a lot of mushed-up goo. Don’t be joined. I ran a finger through the wet stuff and found a faint seam. I followed it, heart dropping. Goddess, the skin on Lexi’s cyreath was so thin. If I tore it wrong, the essence of him would come spilling out of his soul-ball.

  Suddenly the Mystwalker cried out.

  * * *

  The old man’s thoughts had been focused firmly on my twin’s sudden inflexibility, but now he turned to inspect me, caught with fingers where they shouldn’t be.

  He sent a hot poker through my temple. It didn’t matter if he didn’t actually have a hot poker—that’s what it felt like. I couldn’t see through the pain, but my hands kept moving. Pleating up the fabric of his soul-ball, following the seam line.

  I can endure this. I will endure this.

  He switched weapons. “Wolf-loving whore.”

  His tone was low, pitched for a dark mutter and at odds with his usual patronizing patter.

  So he’d dropped the pretense. He was as he truly was.

  “Half-born, half-baked, half nothing,” he continued. “Not worth taking to Merenwyn with your twin.”

  My fingers stilled for a second, and the wrinkled weight of his soul rested on them.

  “The value of your existence was weighed the night Helzekiel executed your mother. You know that, even though you’ve told yourself repeatedly that he did not know that you were there, hiding in the cupboard like a little mouse.”

  I returned to work, but this time I did it humming “Silent Night.”

  “But you knew. He heard you,” the old man continued in that horrible whisper. “Gasping in fright. A little mouse, cowering behind your mother’s protection ward. He knew you were there, but he left you to burn. Because you were not worth his trouble. Another half-bred wolf to feed? One with such weak talent? You were not worth his effort. Let her burn.”

  That’s bullshit. I don’t believe any of that.

  “You lie to yourself, nalera. I can see into you. Part of you is convinced of our low worth, though you have struggled much to push the thought aside.” He fell silent, then said, “Now you focus on—”

  He broke off to laugh. “Your One True Thing?”

  “Shut up.”

  “The wolf does not love you. Why would he? You trapped him into bonding with you—and you know much a wolf hates a trap.” His tone turned guttural. “But perhaps you really don’t, for you’re not a full-blooded creature. You are neither this nor that. An embarrassment to the man you call mate. An anchor of Fae iron strapped to his back. He wishes to run, but cannot run. He will never run free again.”

  This was how the old man had broken Lexi down. He found the fears, and the little voices a person can’t quite smother, and he used them.

  Goddess. Lexi.

  “No, your brother’s will was surprisingly difficult to conquer. Half-truths would not have worked. Only the bare truth would break it.”

  I’d found the end of the seam. I needed to concentrate. To pull the old man’s stinking carcass off Lexi’s gently, taking great care so as to not tear my brother’s soul.

  Focus on that. Not these lies.

  But the voice went on. “When your twin woke in the passage, he demanded answers. He could not understand why he was with a mage—he fears mages—or what was being asked of him. His confusion was not surprising—he was sent into the portal drug raddled and insensible. I informed him that his sister had betrayed him, and had used his affection for her to trick him into a life of sacrifice. I told him how quickly she’d leaped at my offer once she’d realized the scope of her loss of independence.”

  Lexi, if you can hear me, it’s not the full truth.

  “Half-truths, full truths. You are ever adept at rationalization.”

  “Go on, talk it up, asshole.” I started peeling him away. “Because I’ve almost reached the point of separation.”

  I shouldn’t have gone for the cheap shot.

  “Hedi!” cried Mad-one.

  I looked down just as the old man materialized at the bottom of the tree. He made a sharp gesture, and Mad-one fell over with a cry of pain.

  Instinct bowed my body over my brother’s vulnerable cyreath. Freakin’ instinct. If I’d only had time to think about it, I would have realized the safest thing to do would have been to put those cyreaths in the line of fire.

  But my instinct to protect is impossible to deflect.

  This time, when the old man’s hands curled to shape the ball of his curse I could actually see it form into a sphere of purple light, the interior of which was filled with red-tailed comets.

  He uses his soul, I thought. And then this—oh, shit.

  Unlike a ball of fire, there was no whizzing trail of fire, providing me opportunity to calculate trajectories and likely impact zones. The wizard simply jerked his hands again, and that quick movement released his dark conjure, and suddenly I knew real pain.

  “Oh!” I cried.

  Then, all was in motion. I was a ball, spewed from the mouth of a cannon, flying fast over the wedge of tall grass that bordered the forest. Unable to stop, I tore into woods, hitting trees, breaking branches, and cracking twigs. And with each shiver of leaves, and snaps of green wood, I tore through the mindscape of slumbering Fae.

  My run ended abruptly, eight trees in, when I finally came to rest hanging over the limb of a linden tree. It belonged to a Fae of middling importance to his local village’s prosperity. I could taste, as if it were mine, his terror at my sudden intrusion into his sweet dreams.

  I was his nightmare.

  I pushed myself off the linden branch and fell a foot or more before I remembered how to fly. I heard branches crack to my left. I looked up and saw a torpedo of wizard robes and white hair streaking toward me.

  Oh Goddess, he can fly too—

  * * *

  The Old Mage flew as fast as a bird of prey, his talons outstretched.

  Indifferent to the soul-balls he left swinging in his wake, he tore a straight path through the tree canopy. He didn’t apply his air brake as he came in; he hit me at full force. An eagle’s dive-bomb on the field mouse.

  It was the type of strike that rattles you right out of your body. Grappling for my face, he grabbed me while I was still spinning. Two surprisingly strong hands pinioned the top of my head, thumbs tight on my temples.

  I flailed, striking at him.

  His grip was worse than a pit bull’s locked jaws.

  I couldn’t shake him. And I started to hear his mutters again. Louder this time. The long, pitiless stream of them, all strung together without rises or falls.

  Fear slashed through me. If he got inside me this time, I’d lose it. I’d lose my mind here, in this forest of strangers. I’d never find my way home. I’d stay here, madder than Mad-one and twice as lost.

  No.

  I won’t let it happen. I want to go home.

  I hooked both of my legs around his waist and wrapped my arms around his body. And then, I made us fly. We zoomed through the torn canopies, following the same trail we’d broken not moments before, heading to the light—there must be light—to the place where no tre
es grew except a walnut with a split trunk.

  We came out of the woods in a burst of leaves.

  I looked down and saw the patch of waist-high grass, where not one single sapling grew. With a smile as wide as an avenging Valkyrie’s, I dropped us like a bomb.

  * * *

  On impact, we bounced apart.

  Those terrible thoughts stopped, chopped off in mid-stream. I knew I should hurt, but I didn’t even feel my aches anymore. I was beyond that. I lay in a crop circle of flattened grass, breathing through my mouth as if I’d run a very long race.

  Out of the corner of my eye, I could see the wizard’s form. He lay in deeper grass. His illusion had remained intact; he appeared as corporeal as me. He was immobile. Flat out. Not moving, not talking, not shaping curses with his gnarled hands.

  But his eyes were slit open, and as I watched his lashes fluttered.

  I crawled over. Pushed aside the long grass, then rose on both knees over him. I clasped my hands together and raised them in a knot high over my head. His eyes widened. I saw the color of them and awareness too. Good. He’ll feel pain.

  And then, without much thought, I brought my clenched fists down.

  Two. Three.

  Four times should do it.

  Any job worth doing at all is worth doing well. I added two more blows. Then I pushed myself to my feet—strangely clumsy—and walked away from that thing I’d battered. My brain slowly worked to reason it out. Why wasn’t he dead? Why hadn’t hitting him like that completed the job? Because it stood to reason, if he still had a form in Threall—albeit broken, bloodied, damaged—he still had life.

  Or at least, access to a soul.

  I concentrated on pushing the tall grass apart so I wouldn’t crush its stalks under my feet, and on walking slowly and deliberately so I wouldn’t tumble ass over kettle, and finally on moving purposefully and forward in the direction I needed to go.

  To the light.

  I knew how to finish it.

  Mad-one lay curled like an infant not far from the base of our tree. Her palms were pressed hard over her ears, and tears ran unchecked down her cheeks. “He won’t hurt you anymore,” I told her as I passed. “He’s not going to hurt anyone anymore.”

  I tipped back my head and searched for Lexi’s cryeath. I could see my twin’s soul, a jeweled source of illumination peeping from under a burden of ugliness.

  Up, I thought.

  It’s easy to hover, but it was easier to sit astride a thick branch as I set about finishing what I’d started. I took a handful of his damp vellum and began once again the careful process of pleat and pull.

  I could sense the old wizard’s presence.

  He’d only just realized that he’d attacked a fellow eagle, not a mouse.

  I spoke to him as I worked. “Every record of your explorations into magic has been destroyed. No one will ever read it; no one will ever know how far you went. Your apprentice is dead, and with him, the recollection of your best spells. Your name—if it is ever spoken again—will be forever linked to a terrible moment in the Royal Court’s history.”

  I bent my head sideways to consider the seam between my brother’s soul and his. I could see the difference between them now. I don’t know how I didn’t before.

  Their souls had not fully joined.

  “You fear that you will be forgotten.” I pulled the vellum of his soul-ball taut. “But you were already forgotten, long before you ever attempted to steal our souls. Your importance was dismissed the moment you were sentenced to the Sleep of Forever. Life went on without you.” I chose a spot above the seam. “As my life shall. I will forbid your name from ever being spoken in my presence. I will enjoy whatever fate brings me, living among my wolves with my brother, and the only memory I’ll allow myself to dwell on concerning you will be this one.”

  Holding the fabric of his soul tight as a canvas, I stabbed it with my nail.

  I tore a hole right through it.

  Chapter Twenty-nine

  I watched, for once well satisfied to be a witness, as a thin lance of purple ugliness poured from the tear of his cyreath. Then, the skin split and the rest of his foul soul escaped—in a rush—like a two-buck bottle-rocket.

  I waited until his soul had spiraled into nothingness before I dispatched what was left of his soul-ball’s sheath. Then I bent over my brother’s cyreath, focused on the more important task of cleaning all traces of the foulness from it. When I was finished, I ran a gentle palm over it. Patches of his outer shell were thinner than others, where the old man’s cyreath had rested hardest, but overall his soul-ball was intact.

  “I think you’re good, twin,” I whispered. “A little dented, but good.”

  CROSSING FINAL ITEMS OFF THE LIST

  Side by side, Mad-one and I slowly flew back to the place where the mage’s trees once hulked on the edge of oblivion, the clearing rutted with stumps and bordered by a straggling hawthorn hedge. As we glided over the latter, soul-balls glowered from within its thorny branches.

  As I kept Mad-one company, I felt the tickle of Trowbridge’s call.

  Soon, my mate.

  The Mystwalker of Threall’s speed slowed as she drifted toward the fence made from branches that had been cut or broken and long stripped of their leaves. They’d been pile-driven into the mossy soil at a forty-five-degree angle, then layered, stick upon stick, until they formed a high, circular wooden fence around an ancient beech.

  Mad-one waved her arm, and the branches pulled back, chittering like tiny teeth. She didn’t immediately welcome me into her private space, instead hovering by the doorway with an indecision that didn’t sit well on her. “None will ever know what wars were fought in this realm,” she whispered. “The names of those chosen to defend the Royal Court have already been forgotten.” She stole a strangely timid glance at me. “We are the last of our kind. There are no wizards to train those born with the ability to dream-walk.”

  “Given what I know, I’d say that was a bonus.”

  “Who will protect these souls?”

  “Souls are better left alone to make their own errors and to learn from them.”

  She crossed her arms, staring at the old tree. “I’m not sure I will return to Merenwyn.”

  “I’m not coming back, Mad-one. If I leave without you, you’ll stay here forever. Alone.”

  A tendril of blue myst wreathed through a crevasse in the wall of branches. As sinuous as smoke, it undulated past me. My eyes followed its progress as it slipped into the heavy foliage of the tree inside her fence.

  It was ancient. Gnarled limbs. Twisted roots.

  Was she old? Was that her deal? Was everyone she loved gone?

  “Is that your citadel?” I probed.

  For a moment I thought she wasn’t going to answer. Then, I saw her throat move and she surprised me by shaking her head. “Not mine. But one who is infinitely precious to me.”

  Confused, I studied the tree and then the silk damask divan that was placed close to its trunk. I thought of her lying on it, touching the bark of that old elm.

  “That’s the citadel of your One True Thing.”

  Her nod was slow and solemn. “Five hundred and more winters have passed since I have stood beside Simeon. And during all those days, he has guarded my body. Fed it nourishment. Bathed it. Protected it as I have protected his citadel from harm.” She fingered the belt around her waist. “This body is how I remember being, but I do not know if it is what I still am. My true shape may be as withered as his citadel has become gnarled. I may be—”

  “Beautiful. Or ugly. Does it matter?”

  “It may.”

  “If you have aged, then so has your lover. Does the thought of seeing Simeon with thin hair and a stoop disgust you? Would you turn from him?”

  “Never.”

  “Then it’s time to go home.”

  She wet her lip. “I don’t remember how.”

  It was really tempting to tell her to click her heels three times to
gether, but I refrained. She’d become a friend, this woman of the haughty expression, the girl of the tragic past. She was what I could have become. I chose my words carefully. “For me, my mate is my anchor. He’s my piece of reality that kept me connected to my real life. So when I need to go home—and Tyrean, we need to go home—I think of him; I listen for his voice. He’s been calling me for a few minutes. His voice is faint, but I can hear him. And if I block out all the noise around, and all the fears, and the what-ifs—if I search for it and cling to it, I can follow it all the way back home.”

  She shook her head. “A thousand times I have spoken to Simeon. When he wakes at dawn in Merenwyn, I bid him good morning. And when he tells me that the light has fallen and the stars shine, I wish him sweet dreams and tell him that I will protect him. But none of those conversations has ever brought me home. Thoughts do not take you home.”

  “Have you tried to follow his voice home?”

  “No. I could not. If the mages followed me, they would—”

  “The days they could hurt you or those you love are over. Touch his soul, Mad-one. Tell him it’s time to bring you home.”

  She stared at me, chewing her lip.

  “Don’t trade one master for another. Don’t let fear rule you. Let’s be brave for the rest of our lives, okay? All the way to the end.”

  She laid her hand on the rough bark. She closed her eyes. Her communion with her love was silent, but the light in the cyreath that hung from a crooked limb near the top of the tree suddenly brightened.

  The Mystwalker of Threall’s face softened. She opened her eyes and looked at me, and then her mouth broke into a tremulous smile. She was Tyrean, young and hopeful. “Good-bye,” she whispered as her body began to shimmer.

  “Safe travels,” I replied.

  Chapter Thirty

  Trowbridge’s breath was warm on my mouth. I could taste the essence of him. Courage. Honor. Wolf. Inside my mouth, on my lips. Am I dreaming? No. Because his scent surrounded me, cocooning me in its possessive embrace.

  Woods and the wild.

  And something else.

  “Wake up, Hedi!” My One True Thing shouted hoarsely in my ear. And then the ungrateful sod slammed his fist in the center of my chest. Hard. Really hard. “Breathe on your own!”