by Lila Dubois
He was able to circle so he was at the Huntsman’s back and got within ten feet of him, before something gave him away. The Huntsman whirled, that horrible manic expression still deforming Harris’s face. “Where is she? I will have her.”
Trajan wasn’t about to waste time with witty banter. He rushed the Huntsman.
Rather than take a defensive position, the Huntsman laughed and rushed at Trajan in turn. Trajan could use that.
The Huntsman went for a straight tackle, and just as his hands closed around Trajan’s shoulders, Trajan turned into him, shoving him hard with a shoulder. The Huntsman stumbled to the side and Trajan dropped down, sweeping a leg at the Huntsman’s ankles. He must have seen it coming, because he hauled back one leg and kicked Trajan hard in the hip before Trajan swiped his feet out from under him. The Huntsman fell onto his back and cackled madly.
“You think you can save them, but they are mine. You are mine. This is my forest and you will serve as my slaves for a thousand years.”
Trajan had the last gold dampening dart tucked in his sleeve. He yanked it free and stabbed it into the Huntsman’s calf. “I don’t think so, fucker.”
The Huntsman roared in pain, Harris’s body arching up. His silvery non-corporal form seemed to rise out of Harris’s body before slamming back into the other man. In that brief moment of separation Harris’s mouth opened and he gasped out a single word: “Run.”
Harris was alive. Alive.
Trajan grabbed the needle, jerked it out, and stabbed it into Harris’s other leg. The Huntsman roared in rage and again flickered, nearly coming out of Harris’s body.
That one needle wasn’t going to be enough, but he didn’t have any more. He didn’t have his hat. How the hell was he going to get this thing out of Harris?
Trajan made the near-fatal mistake of stopping to think in the middle of an action. The Huntsman sat up and launched at Trajan, wrapping Harris’s hands around Trajan’s neck. His air cut off, and for a horrible moment he couldn’t access his magic. He didn’t necessarily need to breathe in order to do magic, but that was how he’d trained, how he had the best control.
That was it. He had to make it so Harris couldn’t access his magic, but he had to do that without using dampeners. For Trajan, cutting off his breathing worked, plus strangling him was also a good way to kill him. Harris’s powers were rooted in growing things.
Trajan jammed his arms up, between Harris’s, forcing them apart. Trajan inhaled as he fell back a step, then on the exhale moved forward once more. He landed an uppercut to the Huntsman’s solar plexus, and then a hard right to his jaw. The Huntsman’s head snapped back, the maniacal grin not leaving his face. He needed to get Harris somewhere with no access to growing things. If only they weren’t in a fucking forest.
Trajan scrambled to his feet, and as he did he caught sight of the river far down the slope. He was only able to glimpse it, the trees perfectly aligning to allow him to see what he needed to see. Water.
When the Huntsman jumped to his feet and drew two knives, the large one from his belt and the smaller one that he’d been holding when he first appeared and which had apparently been tucked into his boot. Trajan didn’t wait—he huffed out a breath, and a gust of wind punched the Huntsman, who laughed and thrust his knives into the air. Trajan’s lungs and chest stabbed with pain, but he didn’t stop; instead he formed his hands into cups and lifted. The Huntsman rose on a spout of air, shooting to the top of the trees. Once he was up there, Trajan released the spout of air, and gravity came into play. The Huntsman started to fall, twisting wildly as he did so, knives slashing through the air. Trajan’s whole chest ached with pain, but he wasn’t going to give up now.
He called a fresh gust of wind that caught the Huntsman as he started to fall. The wind carried him like a leaf—admittedly a leaf that occasionally smacked into the top of a tree.
Trajan started to race down the slope. He didn’t have the power to use wind to transport himself, so he had to settle for doing it the old-fashioned way. He could sense where the Huntsman was as he flew/fell toward the water. When Harris’s body was over the water, Trajan stopped the wind. He couldn’t hear the splash, but the stabs of pain stopped. The Huntsman was in the river. The only problem was that meant Harris was too.
“Don’t die, Harris. Don’t die.”
Trajan was hoping that water, particularly running water, would ground out Harris’s power and make him a bad host for the Huntsman. The problem was that Harris needed to breathe, and there was the very real possibility that either the fall or the Huntsman leaving his body would have knocked Harris unconscious.
“Stay alive.”
*
Harris came awake with a gasp as cold shocked him. He realized a minute too late that the cold was from cold water. Liquid filled his mouth, and he sucked some down into his lungs. Instinct had his arms and legs moving, a mad scramble toward the surface. There was a strange silvery light illuminating the water around him. The silvery light faded, and he realized it wasn’t ambient light, but a form that was floating through the water.
Harris broke the surface of the water and coughed, his lungs filling with delicious air. He coughed again, too focused on that to do more than notice the icy river’s current was carrying him away, boulders rushing past. He took a third breath when something grabbed his leg. Cold that had nothing to do with the water and everything to do with dread gripped him, but this time he was able to suck in air before he was pulled under.
That same silver light he’d seen before was still there under the water, but this time he was able to make out the outline of the Huntsman. Harris kicked at the silvery apparition with his left leg, but his foot went through the ghostly form, which was extremely unfair since the Huntsman’s grip on Harris’s right ankle was all too real.
Harris’s lungs were starting to burn, so he scrambled his arms through the water, pumping toward the surface. His head emerged and he sucked in a single breath, but was immediately dragged back down. In the split second his head was above the water, he caught sight of Nim standing in the shallow water at the river’s edge—her long dark hair and pale, naked skin. A moment later he was pulled under again. The Huntsman’s grip moved up to his calf.
In the water he was nearly powerless. In still water—a pond or a lake—he might have been able to access aquatic plants, but there wasn’t enough, if any, plant life growing in this river.
He looked around desperately, able to see due to the glow coming off the Huntsman.
A missile of light streaked through the rushing water, a pure, blue-tinted white light. Nim?
The missile of light struck the Huntsman. He must have seen it coming, because he tightened his hold on Harris’s leg. When Nim hit the Huntsman, Harris was dragged deeper. His lungs burned. He wasn’t going to be able to hold his breath much longer. Harris bent at the waist, trying to pry the Huntsman’s fingers free of his leg. Once again his fingers passed through, and he ended up grabbing his own leg.
A slim, pale hand streaked through the water, wrapping around his wrist. As soon as Nim touched him, the Huntsman’s fingers and hand became solid, and Harris was able to yank the fingers back, so hard he thought he felt one of them snap. As soon as the Huntsman released his grip, Harris swam for the surface, his vision dancing with dark spots and his lungs burning with the need to inhale.
*
Trajan heard splashing as he leapt over the disturbed ground near the stream where they’d first transformed the forest. He avoided the giant diamond Nim had created and the little circle of saplings. He ran up onto the pink quartz that extended out over the river. He looked upstream then down, and caught sight of Harris dragging himself onto the bank twenty yards downstream. Trajan raced off the rock and started scrambling along the bank. In places it was a smooth pebbled bank, in others a four-foot drop into the rapidly rushing water. He went as fast as he dared, every sense alert for whatever weird or dangerous thing the forest might throw at him. He was only two
yards from Harris when his feet hit a patch of riverbank that was carpeted by soft, springy green plants that formed a lush carpet. Even as he watched, the carpet spread, more plants bursting out of the soil, all of them emanating from Harris.
The other man lay face-down on the bank, his hair plastered to his head, his bare back prickled with goose bumps. His back rose and fell. He was breathing. Thank the Goddess. His head was turned away, so Trajan wasn’t sure if he was awake. He also wasn’t sure if he’d see the Huntsman’s maniacal grin or Harris’s own expression on that face. Trajan paused, just out of reach of Harris.
Harris rose up on his elbows, head hanging down, and coughed, a wet sound that probably meant he’d nearly drowned. Trajan was about to say something when Harris took a deep breath and turned, prepared to slide back into the water. As he moved, Trajan caught sight of his face—no insane grin or too-wide eyes.
“Harris, wait!” Trajan rushed forward and fell to his knees, wrapping his arms around Harris.
“Trajan?” Harris tried to look over his shoulder and instead managed to bang his head into Trajan’s chin.
“I’ve got you. We should get away from the water.”
“No, I have to go back.”
“I don’t know what’s wrong with you now, but I’m certain you should not get back in that water. Come on.”
“I have to go back. Nim’s in there. She’s fighting the Huntsman.”
Trajan’s blood ran cold. “What?”
“The Huntsman was pulling me down, trying to drown me, and she dove in to stop him.”
“No, Nim is safe. She’s hiding.”
“It was her. I saw her.”
“Damn it, Nim. Fuck. Okay, you stay here, I’ll go in after her.”
“No, I will.”
“You just got un-possessed. Let me.” Trajan released Harris, who continued to shiver, his lower legs and bare feet in the water. “Get out of the cold,” Trajan told him.
Harris didn’t move—just shivered. Trajan hauled him back until he was totally out of the water, then stripped off his own jacket and forced Harris to put it on. “Don’t worry about me, save Nim.”
“She’s not a water witch, but there’s plenty of rocks along the edges of the river—out of any of us, she’s the safest.” Water would affect Trajan’s magic the same way it had affected Harris’s and he was not looking forward to diving in, but if Nim was in there, he was going after her.
Trajan searched the bank for a large enough rock.
“What are you doing?” Harris demanded. “She’s going to drown.”
“I can’t help if I can’t see. She showed me how to light up a rock.”
“What? When?”
“When I stashed her someplace while I went to fight the Huntsman.”
“I…I don’t really remember. I was going to hold him off, and then everything got kind of fuzzy and the sound was weird, like I was trying to look through dirty glass and listen through a wall.”
While Harris babbled, Trajan found a head-sized chunk of clear white stone, which was definitely not something that should just be sitting on the bank of a river amid the other more normal gray rocks. When he picked up the stone, the moonlight filled it, filtering down through the trees to light it from within. Trajan concentrated, and the white mark on his left hand tingled. Slowly the stone started to glow even brighter, until it looked like he held a large light bulb.
Squinting against the brightness, he tossed the stone into the water. The glossy blue-black surface of the water was suddenly transparent, and as the rock sank, it lit the depths of the river. The light from the stone stretched far more than he would have guessed it would until a twenty-foot section of the water was illuminated from bank to bank.
The stone hit the bottom of the riverbed, right beside the very solid-looking body of the Huntsman, who was once more dressed in quasi-medieval garb. He was not a silvery outline, and his features were not Harris’s—though that didn’t stop Trajan from sneaking a glance at Harris to make sure that the other man really was there.
Harris climbed to his feet and came to stand beside Trajan. “Uh, was he solid before?”
“Nope,” Trajan said.
“Then where did that body come from? That looks like a body.”
“Don’t know, don’t want to find out. Do you see Nim?”
Harris took a few steps to the side, his feet splashing in the water as he walked in up to his ankles, craning to see. Trajan went a few feet the other way, climbing onto the highest point on the bank to give himself a better vantage.
“I need you to teach me that rock trick,” Harris said. “This is amazing.”
“Nim will have to teach you. Do you see her?”
“No.”
“And you’re sure it was her?’
“Yes. I mean, I was drowning at the time, but how many other women with long black hair and pale white skin are running around this place?”
Trajan stiffened. “White skin?”
“Yep.”
“Harris…half of Nim’s skin is black from those vine things.”
“It looked just like her,” he insisted.
Trajan looked back at the water, an uneasy feeling washing over him. “It can’t have been her.”
Harris was frowning at the river, but then shook his head. “Maybe not. I was sort of drowning at the time. Maybe I was seeing things.”
“Sorry about that, man.”
“No need to apologize, I was possessed. Gotta do what you gotta do.”
Trajan glanced up the hill, into the dark forbidding forest. “We need to get back to her.”
Harris reached out and touched the closest tree. The forest came alive with light as all the vegetation started to grow. What had been dark and forbidden was now fairy-tale magical.
“I’m starting to get really annoyed that I can’t make stuff glow,” Trajan said.
“Well, you made that rock glow. I’ll teach you how to make the plants bioluminescent.”
“First we help Nim.” Trajan looked at Harris. “I’m warning you, she wasn’t in great shape when I left her.”
Harris’s lips pressed into a thin line. “Let’s go.”
Chapter 16
She was getting a cold. That’s what it felt like. Her head was pounding and her body was flushing hot then cold. Wait, did that mean she had a fever? Maybe she was getting the flu, not a cold.
Maybe she was dying.
Nim lay on the cool, sand-covered stone inside the cave. The light Trajan had pumped into the stones had faded. Despite the dampener, the floor under her body was glowing softly, like a crime-scene chalk outline made of light. The sand obscured some of the already-dim illumination. Maybe the spell on the gold needle was failing, or her fever was amping up her ambient magic enough that it overrode the dampening.
She twisted her neck, looking at the smooth stone at the back of the cave.
It wasn’t right.
It couldn’t be.
It didn’t make sense.
If she took out the pin, she’d be able to touch the rock and know what was under it. She’d have her magic. She wouldn’t feel so cold and isolated.
If she took out the pin, she might spark another burst of dangerous magic.
She relaxed her neck and closed her eyes. She floated, her head heavy and swollen-feeling, her neck and shoulders starting to ache. Almost every inch of her skin hurt—her arms and legs burned. Her chest and back were marked by the small punctures of Harris’s various well-deserved attacks. Her lower abdomen throbbed where she’d jabbed herself with the pin the second time, and in her haste actually stabbed herself rather than simply breaking the skin.
She wasn’t sure how long she floated, but as she lay there, the mystery of the stone at the back of the cave was bothering her. It was like an itch she couldn’t scratch.
A shiver wracked her body, hard enough that her anklebone cracked against the stone. The pain brought her back to herself, sharpening her thoughts. Rolling to her
knees, she put a hand on the wall and slowly climbed to her feet. The light outline of her body faded, but the wall near her hand gave off a pale glow.
Using the wall to support herself, Nim walked toward the back of the cave. Standing upright was hard—her head spun and the floor seemed to rock under her feet, as if she were standing on a giant swing. For each step she took she placed her hand on the wall, causing another faint glow of illumination, the fading circles of light like breadcrumbs marking the path she’d taken.
When she reached the large boulder, so different from the water-carved granite of the cave walls, she ran her hands over it, and there was no answering glow.
As the last of her handprints faded, she was left alone in the dark.
* * * *
Harris was hurting by the time they’d reached the car-sized boulders Trajan said hid the entrance to the cave. Every part of him either throbbed, ached, burned, or stung, and he could no longer remember the exact root issue for each individual pain point.
“Let me go first.” Trajan looked appraisingly at him. “Or maybe you should go first and I’ll protect the rear.”
“I’ll be fine.”
Trajan looked wry. “Last time I let you stay back, you got possessed by an evil ghost thing.”
“And you would have been able to, what, not end up possessed?” Harris was too tired to be really upset.
Trajan sighed. “Just stay with me.” He took Harris’s hand, lacing their fingers together. The faint irritation Harris had felt toward the other man disappeared, to be replaced by a tingling warmth.
Harris followed Trajan into a narrow space between the boulders. He felt rather than saw it when they passed through into a more open area. Trajan moved a bit and then the walls of the cave started to glow, brightening bit by bit rather than flicking on to full brightness immediately.
He looked around, mildly curious. When he caught sight of Nim, he stopped. “Nim?”
“Fuck.” Trajan released Harris’s hand and approached Nimue. He walked with his knees bent, his hands slightly out from his sides. It was the posture you used when you were approaching something, or someone, dangerous.
