by L. J. Smith
Maiden? Maggie thought. I guess in a place where they have slaves it’s not weird to talk about maidens. But which girl does he mean? Not me; I’m not important.
“We’ll get her back,” Bern was saying.
“We’d better,” Gavin said viciously. “Or I’m going to tell her that it was your fault. We were supposed to make sure this didn’t happen.”
“It hasn’t happened yet,” Bern said. He turned on his heel and walked into the mist. Gavin stared after him for a moment, and then followed.
Maggie let out her breath. She realized that Cady’s lips had stopped moving.
“Let’s go,” she whispered, and took off in the opposite direction to the one the men had gone.
Then there was a time of endless running and pausing and listening and hiding. The forest was a terrible place. Around them was eerie twilight, made even spookier by the mist that lay in hollows and crept over fallen trees. Maggie felt as if she were in some awful fairy tale. The only good thing was that the dampness softened their footsteps, making it hard to track them.
But it was so quiet. No ravens, no gray jays. No deer. Just the mist and the trees, going on forever.
And then it ended.
Maggie and Cady suddenly burst out into another meadow. Maggie gave a frantic glance around, looking for shelter. Nothing. The mist was thinner here, she could see that there were no trees ahead, only an outcrop of rocks.
Maybe we should double back….
But the voices were shouting in the forest behind them.
Above the rocks was a barren ledge. It looked like the end of a path, winding the other way down the mountain.
If we could get there, we’d be safe, Maggie thought. We could be around the corner in a minute, and out of sight.
Dragging Cady, she headed for the rocks. They didn’t belong here; they were huge granite boulders deposited by some ancient glacier. Maggie clambered up the side of one easily, then leaned down.
“Give me your hand,” she said rapidly. “There’s a path up above us, but we’ve got to climb a little.”
Cady looked at her.
Or—not looked, Maggie supposed. But she turned her face toward Maggie, and once again Maggie had the odd feeling that those blind eyes could somehow see better than most people’s.
“You should leave me,” Cady said.
“Don’t be stupid,” Maggie said. “Hurry up, give me your hand.”
Cady shook her head. “You go,” she said quietly. She seemed completely rational—and absolutely exhausted. She hadn’t lost the tranquility that had infused her from the beginning, but now it seemed mixed with a gentle resignation. Her fine-boned face was drawn with weariness. “I’ll just slow you down. And if I stay here, you’ll have more time to get away.”
“I’m not going to leave you!” Maggie snapped. “Come on!”
Arcadia remained for just a second, her face turned up to Maggie’s, then her clear and luminous brown eyes filled. Her expression was one of inexpressible tenderness. Then she shook her head slightly and grabbed Maggie’s hand—very accurately.
Maggie didn’t waste time. She climbed as fast as she could, pulling Cady, rapping out breathless instructions. But the delay had cost them. She could hear the men getting nearer.
And when she reached the far end of the pile of boulders she saw something that sent shock waves through her system.
She was looking up a barren cliff face. There was no connection from the rocks to the ledge above. And below her, the hillside dropped off steeply, a hundred feet down into a gorge.
She’d led Cady right into a trap.
There was nowhere else to go.
CHAPTER 7
Maggie could have made it to the path above—if she’d been by herself. It was an easy climb, third level at most. But she wasn’t alone. And there was no way to guide Arcadia up a cliff like that.
No time to double back to the forest, either.
They’re going to get us, Maggie realized.
“Get down,” she whispered to Cady. There was a hollow at the base of the boulder pile. It would only hold one of them, but at least it was shelter.
Even as she shoved Cady down into it, she heard a shout from the edge of the forest.
Maggie pressed flat against the rock. It was slippery with moss and lichen and she felt as exposed as a lizard on a wall. All she could do was hang on and listen to the sounds of two men getting closer and closer.
And closer, until Maggie could hear harsh breathing on the other side of the boulders.
“It’s a dead end—” Gavin’s young voice began.
“No. They’re here.” And that, of course, was Bern.
And then there was the most horrible sound in the world. The grunts of somebody climbing up rock.
We’re caught.
Maggie looked around desperately for a weapon.
To her own amazement, she found one, lying there as if it had been left especially for her. A dried branch wedged in between the rocks above her. Maggie reached for it, her heart beating fast. It was heavier than it looked—the climate must be too wet here for anything to really dry out.
And the rocks are wet, too. Wet and slippery. And there’s one good thing about this place—they’ll have to come at us one at a time. Maybe I can push them off, one by one.
“Stay put,” she whispered to Cady, trying to make her breath last to the end of that short sentence. “I’ve got an idea.”
Cady looked beyond exhaustion. Her beautiful face was strained, her arms and legs were shaken by a fine trembling, and she was breathing in silent shudders. Her hair had come loose in a dark curtain around her shoulders.
Maggie turned back, her heart beating in her throat and her fingertips, and watched the top of the boulders.
But when what she was watching for actually came, she felt a terrible jolt, as if it were completely unexpected. She couldn’t believe that she was seeing the close-cropped top of a man’s head, then the forehead, then the cruel face. Bern. He was climbing like a spider, pulling himself by his fingertips. His huge shoulders appeared, then his barrel chest.
And he was looking right at Maggie. His eyes met hers, and his lips curved in a smile.
Adrenaline washed over Maggie. She felt almost disengaged from her body, as if she might float away from it. But she didn’t faint. She stayed motionless as the terror buzzed through her like electricity—and she tightened her grip on the stick.
Bern kept smiling, but his eyes were dark and expressionless. As she looked into them, Maggie had no sense of connecting to another mind like hers.
He’s not human. He’s…something else, a distant part of her mind said with absolute conviction.
And then one of his legs came up, bulging with muscle under the jeans, and then he was pulling himself to stand, looming over her, towering like a mountain.
Maggie braced herself, gripping the stick. “Stay away from us.”
“You’ve caused me a lot of trouble already,” Bern said. “Now I’m going to show you something.”
There was a little noise behind her. She glanced back in alarm and saw that it was Cady, trying to get up.
“Don’t,” Maggie said sharply. Cady couldn’t, anyway. After a moment of trying to pull herself out of the hollow, she slumped down again, eyes shut.
Maggie turned back to see Bern lunging at her.
She thrust the stick out. It was completely instinctive. She didn’t go for his head or his midsection; she jabbed at a fist-sized pit near his feet, turning the stick into a barrier to trip him.
It almost worked.
Bern’s foot caught underneath it and his lunge became uncontrolled. Maggie saw him start to unbalance. But he wasn’t the huge muscle-bound ape he looked like. In an instant he was recovering, throwing his weight sideways, jamming a foot to arrest his fall.
Maggie tried to get the stick unwedged, to use it again, but Bern was fast. He wrenched it out of her hand, leaving splinters in her palm. Then he threw
it overhand, like a lance. Maggie heard it hit the ledge behind her with explosive force.
She tried to dodge, but it was already too late. Bern’s big hand flashed forward, and then he had her.
He was holding her by both arms, looming over her.
“You trying to mess with me?” he asked in disbelief. “With me? Take a look at this.”
His eyes weren’t cold and emotionless now. Anger was streaming from him like the strong, hot scent of an animal. And then…
He changed.
It was like nothing Maggie had ever seen. She was staring at his face, trying to look defiant, when the features seemed to ripple. The coarse dark hair on his head moved, waves of it spreading down his face like fungus growing across a log. Maggie’s stomach lurched in horror and she was afraid she was going to be sick, but she couldn’t stop looking.
His eyes got smaller, the brown irises flowing out to cover the white. His nose and mouth thrust forward and his chin collapsed. Two rounded ears uncurled like awful flowers on top of his head. And when Maggie was able to drag her eyes from his face, she saw that his body had re-formed into a shapeless, hulking lump. His broad shoulders were gone, his waist was gone, his long legs bulging with muscle were squat little appendages close to the ground.
He was still holding Maggie tightly, but not with hands. With coarse paws that had claws on the ends and that were unbelievably strong. He wasn’t a person at all anymore, but something huge and vaguely person-shaped. He was a black bear, and his shiny little pig-eyes stared into hers with animal enjoyment. He had a musky feral smell that got into Maggie’s throat and made her gag.
I just saw a shapeshifter shift shape, Maggie thought with an astonishment that seemed dim and faraway. She was sorry she’d doubted Jeanne.
And sorry she’d blown it for Cady—and Miles. Sylvia had been right. She was just an ordinary girl, only maybe extraordinarily stupid.
Down on the lower boulders, Gavin was laughing maliciously, watching as if this were a football game.
The bear opened his mouth, showing ivory-white teeth, darker at the roots, and lots of saliva. Maggie saw a string of it glisten on the hair of his jowl. She felt the paws flex on her arms, scooping her closer, and then—
Lightning hit.
That was what it looked like. A flash that blinded her, as bright as the sun, but blue. It crackled in front of her eyes, seeming to fork again and again, splitting and rejoining the main body of its energy. It seemed alive.
It was electrocuting the bear.
The animal had gone completely rigid, his head thrown back, his mouth open farther than Maggie would have believed possible. The energy had struck him just below what would have been the neck on a man.
Dimly, Maggie was aware of Gavin making a thin sound of terror. His mouth was open as wide as Bern’s, his eyes were fixed on the lightning.
But it wasn’t lightning. It didn’t strike and stop. It kept on crackling into Bern, its form changing every second. Little electrical flickers darted through his bristling fur, crackling down his chest and belly and up around his muzzle. Maggie almost thought she could see blue flames in the cavern of his mouth.
Gavin gave a keening, inhuman scream and scrambled backward off the rocks, running.
Maggie didn’t watch to see where he went. Her mind was suddenly consumed with one thought.
She had to make Bern let go of her.
She had no idea what was happening to him, but she did know that he was being killed. And that when he was dead he was going to topple off the mountain and take her with him.
She could smell burning now, the stink of smoking flesh and fur, and she could actually see white wisps rising from his coat. He was being cooked from the inside out.
I have to do something fast.
She squirmed and kicked, trying to get out of the grip of the paws that seemed to clutch her reflexively. She pushed and shoved at him, trying to get him to loosen his hold just an inch. It didn’t work. She felt as if she were being smothered by a bearskin rug, a horrible-smelling pelt that was catching on fire. Why the lightning wasn’t killing her, too, she didn’t know. All she knew was that she was being crushed by his size and his weight and that she was going to die.
And then she gave a violent heave and kicked as hard as she could at the animal’s lower belly. She felt the shock of solid flesh as her shin connected. And, unbelievably, she felt him recoil, stumbling back, his huge forelegs releasing her.
Maggie fell to the rock, instinctively spread-eagling and grabbing for holds to keep from sliding down the mountain. Above her, the bear stood and quivered for another second, with that impossibly bright blue energy piercing him like a lance. Then, just as quickly as it had come, the lightning was gone. The bear swayed for a moment, then fell like a marionette with cut strings.
He toppled backward off the cliff into thin air. Maggie caught a brief glimpse of him hitting rock and bouncing and falling again, and then she turned her face away.
Her closed lids were imprinted with a blazing confusion of yellow and black afterimages. Her breath was coming so fast that she felt dizzy. Her arms and legs were weak.
What the hell was that?
The lightning had saved her life. But it was still the scariest thing she’d ever seen.
Some kind of magic. Pure magic. If I were doing a movie and I needed a special effect for magic, that’s what I’d use.
She slowly lifted her head.
It had come from the direction of the ledge. When she looked that way, she saw the boy.
He was standing easily, doing something with his left arm—tying a handkerchief around a spot of blood at the wrist, it looked like. His face was turned partially away from her.
He’s not much older than me, Maggie thought, startled. Or—is he? There was something about him, an assurance in the way he stood, a grim competence in his movements. It made him seem like an adult.
And he was dressed like somebody at a Renaissance Faire. Maggie had been to one in Oregon two summers ago, where everyone wore costumes from the Middle Ages and ate whole roast turkey legs and played jousting games. This boy was wearing boots and a plain dark cape and he could have walked right in and started sword fighting.
On the streets of Seattle Maggie would have taken one look at him and grinned herself silly. Here, she didn’t have the slightest urge to smile.
The Dark Kingdom, she thought. Slaves and maidens and shapeshifters—and magic. He’s probably a wizard. What have I gotten myself into?
Her heart was beating hard and her mouth was so dry that her tongue felt like sandpaper. But there was something stronger than fear inside her. Gratitude.
“Thank you,” she said.
He didn’t even look up. “For what?” He had a clipped, brusque voice.
“For saving us. I mean—you did that, didn’t you?”
Now he did look up, to measure her with a cool, unsympathetic expression. “Did what?” he said in those same unfriendly tones.
But Maggie was staring at him, stricken with sudden recognition that danced at the edges of her mind and then moved tantalizingly away.
I had a dream—didn’t I? And there was somebody like you in it. He looked like you, but his expression was different. And he said…he said that something was important….
She couldn’t remember! And the boy was still watching her, waiting impatiently.
“That…thing.” Maggie wiggled her fingers, trying to convey waves of energy. “That thing that knocked him off the cliff. You did that.”
“The blue fire. Of course I did. Who else has the Power? But I didn’t do it for you.” His voice was like a cold wind blowing at her.
Maggie blinked at him.
She had no idea what to say. Part of her wanted to question him, and another part suddenly wanted to slug him. A third part, maybe smarter than both the others, wanted to run the way Gavin had.
Curiosity won out. “Well, why did you do it, then?” she asked.
The
boy glanced down at the ledge he was standing on. “He threw a stick at me. Wood. So I killed him.” He shrugged. “Simple as that.”
He didn’t throw it at you, Maggie thought, but the boy was going on.
“I couldn’t care less what he was doing to you. You’re only a slave. He was only a shapeshifter with the brain of a bear. Neither of you matter.”
“Well—it doesn’t matter why you did it. It still saved both of us—” She glanced at Arcadia for confirmation—and broke off sharply.
“Cady?” Maggie stared, then scrambled over the rocks toward the other girl.
Arcadia was still lying in the hollow, but her body was now limp. Her dark head sagged bonelessly on her slender neck. Her eyes were shut; the skin over her face was drawn tight.
“Cady! Can you hear me?”
For a horrible second she thought the older girl was dead. Then she saw the tiny rise and fall of her chest and heard the faint sound of breathing.
There was a roughness to the breathing that Maggie didn’t like. And at this distance she could feel the heat that rose from Cady’s skin.
She’s got a high fever. All that running and climbing made her sicker. She needs help, fast
Maggie looked back up at the boy.
He had finished with the handkerchief and was now taking the top off some kind of leather bag.
Suddenly Maggie’s eyes focused. Not a leather bag; a canteen. He was tilting it up to drink.
Water.
All at once she was aware of her thirst again. It had been shoved to the back of her mind, a constant pain that could be forgotten while she was trying to escape from the slave traders. But now it was like a raging fire inside her. It was the most important thing in the world.
And Arcadia needed it even more than she did.
“Please,” she said. “Can we have some of that? Could you drop it to me? I can catch it.”
He looked at her quickly, not startled but with cool annoyance. “And how am I supposed to get it back?”
“I’ll bring it to you. I can climb up.”
