Stormfront

by John Goode

  “Then it’s my turn,” Olim declared solemnly. “I don’t know how much help I will be against Jack, but I can handle a few Tveirs.”

  “I saw at least a dozen,” the opal clarified.

  Olim paused but only for a half second. In that half second I could see the person under all that immortal bluster. A dozen giants would be a fight for anyone, but to her credit she didn’t say anything about it. She just glared at the gem and said, “I said I can handle them.”

  No one argued with her. Quietly and cautiously, we made our way ever nearer the farm, the gems fanning out in a defensive half circle around us. Once they were far enough away, I leaned over to her. “You’re of no use to me if you die.”

  She glanced at me, and the whisper of a smile moved across her lips. “Well, you do know I judge my entire existence based on my usefulness to you.”

  I nodded and gave her a grin. “Most people do.”

  She let out a laugh that sounded like the genuine product, not the sarcastic construct she had been using since we had shown up.

  “You are a mystery to me, Ice Queen,” I said as we continued walking. “At first you seemed to be on our side with the replanting of the World Tree, but every time your sister shows up—”

  “I become a raging bitch?” she finished for me. I nodded and she smiled. “What you and Kane don’t understand is how long this plan has been in motion. Kane’s mother gave up her divinity thousands of years ago and traveled the planes trying to find a way to save the realm, all the while being hounded by Elders who wanted her to come back and tell them the future again. My sisters and I were born centuries after that, and the legend of her escape still survived. That legend gave us all hope that we could escape our fate. The difference is that both of my sisters are so greedy for power, they ignore Destiny’s prediction that the Nine Realms will crumble in on themselves if The Tree is not put back. All they took away from Destiny’s story was that The Tree can be used to give power and that a World Seed can be planted in any realm and not just on Earth as previously thought.”

  “Which is what Glinda told my mother?” I asked Olim, broaching the subject for the first time.

  “My sister told your mother many things: how to remove the tree that was on Earth, how to sever Earth from the rest of the realms, and how to use her newfound power to alter the passage of time. I wasn’t joking when I said your mother was simply a puppet in the vast conspiracy web my sisters had woven. The worst part is Titania never even suspected. Her lust for power was so great she simply took the bait and never looked back.”

  “So what does that have to do with your change of behavior?” I asked, trying not to veer the conversation away from my point and toward my mother.

  “Demain is no less greedy than Inmediares, and she assumes I am the same. If she knew I had no desire for The Tree myself and am actively working to stop her, she would have no choice but to join Inmediares’s side. That would make the two of them unstoppable. Trust me when I say Demain cannot know I am not on her side or we are lost.”

  “So you pretend to be a bitch?”

  She glanced over and gave me an evil grin. “No, Hawk, I am a bitch and proud of it. There are simply times I decide to be… cordial. To tell the truth, most women are like that. It is only manners that prevent most of us from expressing our frustration with the world in general.”

  “Most women. What of the others?”

  “They are complete shrews, and give the rest of us bitches a bad name.”

  Her candor made me laugh, something I needed more than I knew.

  “This is taking far too long,” Olim said in a louder voice. “Try and keep up, gems. The prince and I are taking the express route.”

  “What are you…?” I began to ask as a layer of ice formed around my feet and hers.

  Without warning, the ice shot forward, taking Olim and me with it. I looked behind and saw the trail of ice melting quickly as we sped off. This was faster than most horses I had been on, and, I had to admit, a little exhilarating. The gems caught up with us easily; it was obvious from the way the opal had moved they were capable of much greater speeds and had been holding back because of us.

  In all, we needed another twenty minutes to reach the border of the farm.

  Tveirs are hideous. I am sure that when you imagine a two-headed giant, you see a body with two heads, complete with separate necks; but Tveirs looked nothing like that. Instead they had one gigantic skull with two misshapen faces. Their skin looked like melted wax the way it just seemed to hang off their head, and the faces were turned away from each other, giving them a wide field of vision. Their long, unkempt hair was adorned with bones and pieces of creatures they had eaten: I knew more of their diet than I had ever wanted to know.

  The opal was not wrong; there were easily a dozen Tveirs walking around the fields. I could see a small house far in the distance and a larger stone keep, which must have been the giants’ barracks. These could house another six or seven giants, bringing the total up to nearly twenty.

  “Can you do this?” I asked Olim, concerned.

  “It’s not like we have a lot of choices,” she answered solemnly.

  “I thought there was a beanstalk,” I said, looking around the fields.

  “It’s hidden,” Caerus explained. “There is a spell of unobservance around it. Once we get closer it will appear.”

  “You mean it is invisible?” I asked.

  “No, I mean it is right there. You just can’t see it. Your brain won’t let your eyes transmit the information it’s seeing, so it comes out as nothing, but I assure you, there is a huge beanstalk rising up to the sky in front of us.”

  “What kind of magic is that?”

  Adamas answered, “The permanent kind. Invisibility takes too much power to be a permanent effect. Sooner or later the enchantment will fray at the edges and people will start to see things out of the corner of their eyes. This has your brain doing all the work. It could stay in place for centuries and the effect would never fade. Someone doesn’t want anyone to find this beanstalk.”

  “So then why did Charmant give it up so quickly?” Olim asked.

  “So Jack could kill us, of course,” I said, trying to see the beanstalk again. “He is hoping we take care of him or he takes care of us. Either way, we aren’t his problem anymore.”

  Adamas came to an abrupt stop when he reached a point six inches in front of Olim’s nose. “You’re up, Ice Queen.”

  “So I am,” she agreed, pulling her cloak around her. “You might want to find cover. It’s about to get cold.”

  Before she finished her sentence, the temperature dropped so much that my teeth started chattering. Caerus moved closer to me and said, “Chaud,” and the chill faded some. “Close your eyes. The spell won’t protect you from going blind.”

  I looked at the sapphire in panic. “What is Olim doing?”

  “Close your eyes,” Caerus repeated and then said softly, “Winter is coming.”

  I closed my eyes and waited.

  I didn’t have to wait long.

  Faint at first, the sound of cracking everywhere. At first I thought it might be newly forming ice, but when I heard the aborted screams from the Tveirs, I realized it was their flesh being frozen and cracking as they jerked back in pain. The cold stung my face, and I turned away as it intensified. Every breath I took felt like I was inhaling needles, and I felt myself shaking uncontrollably.

  More screams were followed by calls of surprise, and then a vast thump that shook the ground, followed by an even more enormous whump that made me think the land itself had broken open. All I could imagine was that she had collapsed the barracks. Several quieter thumps followed and then silence.

  I had severely underestimated Olim. If she was capable of bringing to bear elemental power of this magnitude, me thinking I’d be able to defeat her if she betrayed us was lunacy. The cold intensified sharply again and then—nothing.

  The chill was gone. And stillness f
roze things in an entirely different way.

  When I opened my eyes, I needed all my control not to gasp out loud. The entire field was covered in ice; not an inch of any surface was untouched. Each giant was broken into dozens of pieces, blood freezing in place, making each chunk look as if they were simply pieces of a larger puzzle. The keep had collapsed, and judging from the few arms poking out of the rubble, it had fallen on top of the giants inside. No one save Olim was left alive and she was sitting in the middle of the field, gathering her breath.

  “This is—” I fumbled, not sure of my wording “—phenomenal. Why didn’t you do this against Oberon?”

  “It only works off-world,” she explained, taking a small flask from an inner pocket in her cloak and downing its contents. “The cold in Niflgard is tempered by its source. When you are there, the temperature doesn’t seem that extreme, but when brought to another plane, you see how it actually feels.”

  I looked around. “This feels pretty cold.”

  She shrugged. “Cold never bothered me.”

  “Now can you see it?” Caerus asked. I looked at her blankly. “The beanstalk,” she added.

  I was about to tell her no when I looked around and saw a beanstalk the size of a massive rougewood standing in front of me. “That was there the whole time?” I asked incredulously.

  “It’s a powerful spell,” she explained.

  “Start the ascent without me,” Olim said to the gems. “I need to gather my strength, and I can ensure that no one is following us.”

  Adamas bobbed. “Sounds good. Prepare to assault the beanstalk. I want teams of three on either side, and we move as one.” The ambers encircled the giant green plant and hovered in place. He turned to me and asked, “You’re coming?”

  “You’ll be all right by yourself?” I asked her.

  She nodded and smiled, but I could see the exhaustion on her face. “I’ll be right behind you.”

  I didn’t believe her, and I don’t think she did either.

  “Go,” she said when I hesitated. “Go find your mother, get back to Kane. We’re running out of time.”

  She was right and I hated that.

  “I’m ready,” I lied to the gems. All I wanted to do was lie down and stop moving, but since that wasn’t an option, I grabbed a vine and began to climb.

  The only conversation I heard as we made our way higher and higher up the stalk was confirmation from each group of gemlings that their climb was proceeding unobstructed and there were no signs of followers. I didn’t look down, but I knew we were making good time. About an hour into the climb, the opal returned from its scouting.

  “We’re clear. There are no sentries on the vine.”

  “Then there’s no need to take it carefully,” Adamas stated. To the nearest group of soldiers, he ordered, “Grab the boy and let’s move.”

  Caerus zipped over to me and warned, “This is going to be disorientating.”

  “What is?”

  My legs began to float up away from the beanstalk. I grabbed hold of the vines and held on for dear life, but Caerus burned them out of my hands. “Try to keep your hands and legs still,” she said calmly. I floated away from the beanstalk and hovered thousands of feet over the ground.

  “I have him,” she reported.

  Adamas made sure the rest of his gems were ready. Then, “Now!”

  As one we took off skyward, hurtling far too fast for my taste. But I wasn’t in control of the trip. The details of the beanstalk blurred as we barreled up and up and up. I wondered how Olim was ever going to catch up with us. Then I wondered why I wondered. Despite my terror of being dropped, the wind and the consistent color of the blurred beanstalk got to me and I found myself dozing off again.

  “MY OWN future? Of course I have. It doesn’t work,” the former goddess explained.

  “I believe it does work,” the detective said, pacing around the small apartment. “The problem does not lie in your power but in your lack of direction.” She looked at him, confused. “Your future is not as clear as it might be because you do not have a direction or a goal, so your power can only read the vaguest of possibilities. You, my dear, need to make a decision and then try again.”

  She had never thought of that before. The future was malleable by those caught in the eternal dance of life, which she was now. The realization she had become too dependent on her powers was as humbling as it was annoying. She was used to knowing everything there was, and now she had missed the most obvious of clues.

  “An event is nearing,” she said more to herself than to the detective. “An event that threatens to tear apart the Nine Realms, and that I cannot allow to happen. So whatever starts that, I will do anything to stop.”

  After closing her eyes, she gazed out into the future and was startled to discover the source of the event.

  “Me. I start it,” the goddess said, her face ashen with shock.

  The detective nodded. “I concluded as such. Now we can begin.”

  “WE’RE GETTING close.”

  Caerus’s voice woke me, and for a moment all I knew was panic as I realized I was still suspended in midair.

  “Calm yourself,” she admonished me. “You fell asleep. We’re nearing the cloud top now; be ready.”

  Once I was aware of where I was, the terror passed, and I was able to calm my mind. The ache in my chest burned again, and I realized I may grow accustomed to the pain while asleep, but once awake the pain would return tenfold. Deep breathing and meditation made the agony dial down to a truly noticeable, but not debilitating ache.

  The cloud cover faded as we broke through.

  Jack’s realm was a sight to see.

  From my vantage point, the clouds looked solid, like the ground was simply covered in a firm, never-melting layer of snow. There were no visible plants or roads. In fact the only thing that was obviously not cloud was the massive castle visible in the distance. Caerus set me down, and the cloud gave slightly under my boots.

  “That is an impressive castle,” Adamas announced.

  Coming from him, that was high praise.

  “Do we have a plan of attack?” I asked, my hand and what was left of my soul automatically reaching for a sword that was never going to be there again. I breathed around the pain as well as I could, but I lost track of time and regained my focus slowly.

  “I plan on attacking,” Adamas announced rather flippantly. No one said a word; obviously, I had missed something.

  “Cute,” I answered, breaking the silence. “But we need some kind of strategy.”

  “No,” he responded seriously. “We need power.”

  Before I could even comprehend what he had just said, he began to shout out orders to secure the castle.

  “Adamas, you can’t do this!” I called out. When he ignored me, I stepped directly in front of him. “You can’t just go charging in.”

  His reaction was as sudden as it was violent. He drew back as if attacked and exclaimed, “Who is this? How did you get into my kingdom?” His words were accented with a blast of force that took me off my feet….

  And right off the cloud.

  An all-too-familiar sense of panic bludgeoned me as I plummeted toward the surface of the world far below. Then the panic faded. I couldn’t fly. I was going to die after falling off a cloud held aloft by a magic beanstalk, after being attacked by a senile diamond that had forgotten who I was.

  Somehow I had always known my life would end up being a monstrous joke.

  I chuckled at my own wit, then stopped abruptly when I understood something in my mind had just snapped. Perhaps it was the loss of Truheart, maybe it was being removed from Kane, or maybe it was just that I was too damned tired to care anymore. I wasn’t surprised to see Caerus come zooming down after me.

  What did surprise me was the impulse to wave her off and let myself fall.

  Did I want the endless fighting and chasing and running to end? Of course. Did I want to rest? Gods, yes! Was I willing to let everyone d
own by giving up? Was I willing to let Kane down by giving up? Kane… my heart reached out to his: I could feel it. Let Kane down?

  Not likely.

  Forcing my arms away from my sides, I tried to slow my descent to give Caerus a better chance of catching up. I don’t know what was more impressive, the height of this beanstalk or the speed at which the ground was coming up to meet me. I lowered my mass, but I couldn’t keep the spell up indefinitely. Sooner or later I was going to make a very big impression below.

  “This is going to be tricky,” she called out to me once she matched my velocity.

  “I defer to your better judgment,” I panted back.

  She flew past me and began to form a mass of light beneath me. When I impacted it, I expected the barrier to hurt, but it was as soft as a pile of feathers. We were still falling, but I could sense the light beginning to solidify around me.

  “Take a deep breath!” she yelled. “And hold it!”

  Closing my eyes, I drew as much air as I could into my lungs and waited.

  I did not have to wait long.

  I felt myself encased in the light, so much so it was now impossible to move. My chest was locked in place, and I panicked for a moment when I realized I couldn’t breathe. Then common sense took hold. I exhaled and found there was room inside her spell for me to draw air. There was no sensation of moving, though I could see we were flying back up toward the cloud, the beanstalk falling away from us.

  The spell vanished, and I was dumped out onto the cloud surface in the middle of a full-on battle.

  Adamas and his troops had attacked the castle, seemingly ignorant of the fact it was guarded by a score of armed giants. The giants had a blue hue about them that reminded me of Ferra and her people, but where the Friguses looked like they were frozen to a gray-blue hue, these were the color of a perfect summer sky.

  Their color was the only positive thing I could see about them.

  The shortest stood well over ten feet tall; they all wielded weapons that appeared to be formed of the cloud itself. But from the way the ground shook when one of their razor-bladed clubs or sharply nailed maces hit after missing a dodging gem, they were obviously far sturdier than any cloud.