by Helen Adams
I don’t mean figuratively. I wasn’t waxing lyrical, no poetic licence. We were standing… on a fucking… cloud. A cloud.
Lukas’s arm was still around my waist. I tried not to grab him for support, but it was a close-run thing; Raz and Lee dropped to their knees, trying to make their heads believe that their footing was firm when it looked like cotton wool.
I was pretty sure I was about to puke.
“Take a deep breath!” Lukas shouted over the ripping wind. “You’ll get used to it!”
I inhaled, exhaled. Another. After a few more I stopped feeling as if I was going to hurl, and instead started feeling cold, hard terror.
Lorl wasn’t bothered. She wasn’t even fazed. She just sat on my shoulder, the wind ruffling her fur, and chittered with delight. She blazed yellow, tail feathers dropped into an open fan position, blue eyespots burning. Her hind paws gripped my shoulder in a tight grip to keep from being blown away.
“How high?” I tried. Was every conversation going to be shouted?
“High enough! Look over the edge!” His smile was full of capricious humour. It was freezing even with the heat Lukas was kicking out. “I won’t let you drop!”
Not reassured. But I let him steer me toward the edge. I peeked, tense and sweating despite the temperature.
The world below stretched out in a massive rolling patchwork. It was beautiful. Tiny fields were green and brown squares, while housing estates – villages, towns, even cities – formed irregularly shaped patterns in the landscape. Everything was connected by an intricate spider’s web of roadways.
The day was sinking around us. The sun was fading; as it disappeared through creamy grey clouds it turned them orange, yellow and pink. And at the horizon night hovered, a thin line of royal blue waiting to envelop the sky.
I took another peek. Lights began to speckle the picture, a million tiny pinpricks of illumination from cars, lamps and houses. It was fascinating and frightening at the same time.
“This is…” I struggled to find the right words. I couldn’t manage more than a whisper. Lorl stuck her warm nose in my ear.
“If you were mine you could see this whenever you wanted!” Was he lip-reading?
“All I want is to find Alice!”
I pulled away. For a second I thought he wouldn’t let me go. Then his arm opened and I put a respectable distance between us, turning to watch him.
He moved the forefinger of his left hand in a figure-of-eight pattern. The wind dropped. No, wait, it hadn’t dropped, it was still there; I felt its force against my skin, still pulling my hair out behind me. And Lorl hadn’t released her strong grip. But the noise was gone. I gulped at his casual display of power.
Lukas’s eyes had gone all sparkly again. Twinkle, twinkle, bright green eyes, how I wonder what you spy. He blinked and the glitter was gone.
“Oh, dear. Your minions appear to be ill.”
I stumbled over to them. If I didn’t look down, my brain had no problem walking on cloud. The footing was solid… it was just my mind that was wobbly.
“OK, guys?” I slung an arm around Raz, who was dry retching. Lee was vomiting and being damned noisy.
“I hope you fall off a cloud,” Raz gasped as he tried to get himself under control.
“Aww.” I grinned. “You say the sweetest things. Come on, it’s not like we’re thousands of feet up in the air or something… oh wait.”
Raz glared, his pupils wide with fear. “Ha. Ha. My sides are splitting.”
It was Lee who recovered first. That surprised me. He wiped his mouth with a hand – yuck – and straightened, shuffling closer.
“This is amazing. We’re standing on the clouds.” His brown eyes were hot with excitement.
“Yeah, yeah. Get over it.”
“Daphne? Are you ready?” Lukas called.
He was holding my duffel. I could have smacked myself for leaving it behind, but there had been extenuating circumstances – like being swept up by a devious shapeshifter and whisked off who knew where. He handed it over and I slung it across my free shoulder.
I wanted more time to prepare (like maybe another ten years) but time was a premium I couldn’t afford.
“Let’s do this.”
My men-folk were still looking pasty, but at least they’d stopped trying to pass their stomachs out through their mouths. What happened to vomit left on a cloud? Had Lee puked over the edge? Would it land on anyone? Or would it freeze on the way down, shattering on impact?
You’re disgusting.
Lukas led the way. I walked beside him, eyes everywhere, while Raz followed close behind. Lee trailed at the rear, looking around every bit as much as me. At least I wasn’t mentally writing a report for my Army overlords.
The clouds seemed to stretch on forever as the last of the daylight melted away. Thick dusk gave way to darkness and Lorl plastered herself to my neck, sharing her warmth… or, more likely, stealing mine. The temperature dropped even lower. I was now shivering so hard that I could barely put one foot in front of the other. If we didn’t get to the Shake pretty damned quick, I wouldn’t have to worry about Mina or golems or even falling off a fucking cloud – I was going to freeze to death.
Lights appeared in the gloom. Big, round balls of illumination, soft white globes that floated in a definite path-shape on either side of us. A sudden roar made me twitch: - the combined noise from thousands of throats. My pulse heard it and sped up in response. It was the voice of a crowd and it was hungry.
And just as I heard it, the Shake reared out of the darkness ahead. Sculpted from clouds, the structure was vast; I looked up, neck bent back as I followed it higher and higher. I couldn’t see the top.
Lukas ran the fingertips of his left hand across the cloudy wall over and over again. What was he looking for? Suddenly smiling, he pressed the palm of his right hand to the wall. A door-shape appeared in front of him, shining like gold. There must be a significant light source on the other side.
Lukas pressed both thumbs to the door and pushed. It disintegrated. Light spilled out, so bright that I had to shield my eyes.
The combined voice of the crowd was massive and intoxicating. I realised that however much the idea of fighting Lukas scared me, I wanted to fight him. I wanted that roar. I wanted it to be for me.
The temperature rocketed as soon I stepped over the threshold. I didn’t care where it came from or how it was generated. All I cared about was the way it sank into my bones. My skin tingled.
I tried not to gawp as Lukas led us through a long, arched tunnel. The wind vanished, my hair dropping back into something like its usual tousled mess. Lorl relaxed her grip on my shoulder.
The walls were the same weird cloud-material. I touched a hand to the nearest – it was just as solid as the ‘ground’, and expelled a rich ivory light that gave me the creeps. I’d never wanted a glaring florescent light so much in my life.
How did they hide this place from aircraft?
“Magic,” Raz said, sidling up next to me.
“Get out of my head,” I murmured.
“Like I’d want to get lost in there,” he laughed.
But the answer to my unasked question made sense. Vaengrjarl used magic to cloak the Shake. Would it show up on the radar as an area of bad weather? Or did pilots just have the sudden urge to avoid this patch of airspace?
“The power used to maintain the Shake is vast and ancient,” Lukas announced, waving his arms in a grand arc. Glitter, glitter. He should have a licence for those sparklers. “It’s primal magic. Should you come to your senses and agree to bear my offspring, you’ll have access to this kind of power.”
If it was primal magic, why couldn’t I smell burned chicken? Then I decided that I didn’t want to know. The very idea of what Mr Twinkle was offering was revolting; berserkers already used primal magic in the aura-ritual I’d worked on Lee, and that was more than enough for me. I never wanted to touch it again. It was for vaengrjarl and other ancient, powerful species
, not humans, even if being a berserker or a witch or a warlock lifted us above dewdrops on the food chain.
It certainly wasn’t for ex-cons.
The tunnel went on for miles. Well, alright, it just seemed like miles. I had absolutely no sense of distance up here, and even directions were getting a bit shaky. As for time…
I had the strong feeling that it was running out. I tried not to think of Alice at the mercy of a psychotic ex-berserker. I tried not to think that she might already be dead, that everything I was doing could be in vain.
She could be hurt. Injured. Suffering. The urge to make Lukas hurry the hell up was strong and growing stronger.
The tunnel branched out into several others. We followed like lambs to the slaughter, eventually emerging into a small office. All perfectly normal… I just had to pretend that the furniture hadn’t been crafted from clouds.
Sat at the desk, a small, elderly man looked up as we entered. With his waistcoat, shirt and trousers he could have been a clichéd bookkeeper, a look reinforced by tiny specs and a receding hairline. The fine, wispy grey strands were thinning at the sides and almost gone on top.
“Sir.” He pushed his chair back and stood.
“Relax, Aki.” Lukas’s smile seemed warm and genuine. “I must ask a favour.”
Who was this guy? Vaengrjarl demanded. They didn’t ask.
Green flashed across Aki’s eyes, the little twinkles I’d come to associate with happiness. Holy shit. He was a vaengrjarl, not a vampire or any of the other races that had a human skin. And he liked his boss?
“Anything you need, sir.”
“This is Daphne McArthur.” He laid a possessive hand on my arm. I almost shrugged him off. “We’ll be fighting shortly, first blood only. I want you to extend our hospitality to her minions.”
The glitter died in Aki’s eyes, returning to a more natural brown. His gaze lingered on the other berserkers, weighing them up. Lee seemed uncomfortable under the scrutiny; Raz bore it with studied indifference.
Those spectacles bothered me. Did vaengrjarl need glasses? They had magic in spades, so it had to be an affectation. But why?
“They answer to her?” Aki’s tone had cooled.
“‘Her’ has a name,” I said. “And they don’t answer to me, they’re my friends.” Though I pointedly didn’t look at Lee when I said that. I put up with this crap from Lukas because I needed his help, but I wouldn’t tolerate it from anyone else, vaengrjarl or not. Aki was a subordinate – favoured, by the sound of it – but still a subordinate.
Those brown eyes fixed on me. Now I was the one being weighed up.
“I meant no disrespect, Miss McArthur. Your friends will come to no harm under my care.”
I had my doubts about that. But if Lukas trusted him, then so would I.
“Thank you. May I have a word with them? In private?”
Aki looked at Lukas. The vaengrjarl prince nodded. The two stepped out into the corridor, leaving us alone.
“Minions?” was the first thing Raz said.
“Kinda like it,” I grinned. “Never had minions before.”
He pinched the bridge of his nose and closed his eyes. When he opened them he put a hand on my shoulder.
“For once in your life, please be serious,” he implored. “This is no time for jokes.”
I covered his hand with mine, squeezed – gently – and lifted it away.
“I have to joke. It’s that or scream. Which would you prefer?”
“I can’t help you. If something goes wrong out there –”
“Nothing’s going to go wrong.”
I had the sudden urge to touch wood. But I’d be OK. For Alice, I’d be OK.
I turned to Lee. “Here are the rules – most of the people here either eat humans or play with them,” I warned. “Always keep that in mind.”
Lee nodded, absorbing the information. When I looked at Raz, arched eyebrow demanding that he acknowledge the reminder, he threw his hands up.
“I know how these things work!”
“Right.” I gave him a hard look, unmoved. “So you know all about not pissing off a vaengrjarl.”
“He was trying to get you in the Shake!”
I ignored him. There was no reasoning with him when he was having a hissy fit.
“Lee, if you love life, don’t antagonise anyone. Better just to keep your mouth shut. Be led by what Raz does… actually, just don’t ask questions and don’t wander off.”
“If you talk to all new berserkers like this, your training sucks,” he said.
Raz should be training Lee, not me. I had the knowledge – but he had the experience.
“Oh, no. It’s just you.”
“I can still put you back in prison.”
“You could. But you need me now. You need a guide.”
He muttered something resentful under his breath. I realised then that the balance of power had shifted between us; while it was true that he still held my freedom to ransom, I held something more important to him – his life. Just as Raz had kept me alive in those early days after my aura matured, so I had to keep Lee alive. Did that make our bargaining chips equal?
“If I’m lucky, someone will eat you,” I grumbled as I turned away.
What was I talking about? I was never going to be that lucky.
I called the others back.
“Gentlemen, if you would like to follow me,” Aki said, leading Raz and Lee out through another exit. “I’ll show you to your seats. You’ll have a fine view of proceedings.”
“This will be so much fun,” Lukas said. His eyes had gone all twinkly again. “The vaengrjarl prince and his berserker consort.”
Yeah, when Hell froze over. “I’m not your consort, sunshine.”
He said nothing, merely turned and walked away. Sighing, I followed him through more tunnels until we came to a fork.
“Go that way,” he said, pointing to the right. “You’ll come out on one side of the arena. I’ll come out on the other. First blood.”
I gave him a suspicious look. “By ‘first blood’, you do mean the first sword cut, don’t you?”
His expression was far too innocent. “Of course.”
“Because I’d hate for you to misinterpret the traditional meaning. It would be an awful shame if you thought you’d won just because you’d managed to break my nose.”
“I’m shocked you’d think that.”
The innocence was still there. I knew it was a show. Especially when I saw, just underneath, something crafty and very, very old.
The tunnel emerged into a gladiatorial staging room. There were weapons everywhere: - stacks of spears and javelins, piles of shields, racks of small blades. A row of tables held nets, whips and chains. A cloud-hewn portcullis, presumably leading to the arena floor, blocked the only other exit from the room.
Lorl chirped and perched on a shield rim. Her insubstantial weight barely rocked the edge. I nudged the duffel and grabbed Baby’s hilt, the blade almost whispering as I let her out. I grinned and propped the duffel against a table leg. When had I started thinking of her as a living thing?
“Right about the time you gave her a name, doofus.”
Right. Both of us had come a long way in a couple of days. Lee’s betrayal hurt like nothing I’d ever felt before, and it was still hurting, deep down where I’d pushed all the things that I couldn’t deal with.
I stripped off my sweater – the Anthrax T-shirt underneath wouldn’t restrict my movement – and spent the next few minutes going through warm-up exercises, trying (and failing) not to think about Lee.
He was scum. He was worse than scum. I wanted to rip his innards apart, crack his ribcage with a mallet so that I could reach inside and yank out his still-beating heart. So why did I still want him to turn around and tell me that it was all a big joke? And this whole thing with Alice…
She was the reason I was here, in some magical arena thousands of feet in the air. She was my best friend and I’d go to the ends o
f the earth for her. Just a few days ago I’d hoped that Lee would go the extra mile for me. We’d never said the ‘l’ word, but we’d been more than casual lovers.
We’d had trust. And now that trust was gone.
Lorl watched as I stretched my limbs and rotated my wrists and ankles. I felt each muscle respond, warming as I flexed. I jogged on the spot and jumped a few times. Finally I swung Baby in a simple arc, the first warm-up drill I’d ever learned.
A flash of white grabbed my attention. Baby’s arc ended with her pointed at…
“Oh, come on! You’re shitting me, right?”
It was a fox. A white fox. In a vaengrjarl fight club.
I put Baby over my shoulder and relaxed my stance, but didn’t take my eyes off the probably-not-a-real fox. If it was an ordinary animal I’d eat my trainers; there was more intelligence in those bright black eyes than I saw in most people.
Besides, Lorl was blowing raspberries. She knew that it wasn’t what it seemed. The fox sat on its haunches, bushy tails curled around its legs. Just watching me –
Tails. Tails. Not one tail but two, fat and fluffy. Bingo!
Harpy’s Bestiary described creatures called kitsune, Japanese shapeshifters who changed into foxes. The older they became the more tails they grew; they measured growth spurts in centuries rather than months. Some had as many as nine tails.
I particularly remembered the passage, because I thought it extraordinary that a woman could have travelled across the world to Japan in mediaeval times. Ingrith Harpy, the author of the Bestiary, must have been an incredible berserker.
“OK,” I said, giving Lorl a stern look to make her hush. “Give it up. I know what you are.”
The air around the fox shimmered, the distortion impenetrable. When it cleared the fox had turned into a woman.
We spent a moment sizing each other up. She was an inch or so shorter than me, with enough lean, slender muscle to prove that she was a fighter. Bone-white hair was bound into intricate braids around her head, stray tendrils artfully framing a narrow face. Her skin was a light shade of brown that made the white hair shocking. She regarded me with large, placid eyes the colour of mud.
