Once they arrived at the mine site, the young human showed no signs of fear or apprehension, merely indicating a dark shadow on the rocky hillside. “There it is,” he said. “Gibbings Mine.” In keeping with what the old woman had said, he showed no signs of getting out of the jeep himself.
“Thank you,” Wolf said as he opened his own door. “I don’t know how long I’ll be.”
“No worries,” Ben said. “I’m to take you and bring you back, Becky said.” He lowered the seat back, tipped his wide-brimmed hat over his face, and appeared to go to sleep.
Even if Graycloud at Moonrise had not already told him, Wolf would have known to expect a Goblin just from the caution of the townsfolk, and the fact that this was a mine. The entrance showed signs of recent use, but the scents were mixed, old and new, along with a distorted one that oddly overlaid the others. He could not be sure, but it had that same twisted familiarity he was associating with the Hunt. His hand lifted to touch the scarring around his eye and he frowned. Wolf walked far enough into the mine to leave the sunlight behind and waited, letting his eyes adjust to the darkness, before taking a deep breath.
“Vein of Gold,” he said. “Graycloud at Moonrise told me where to find you.” He opened the collar of his shirt, ready to show the High Prince’s mark.
At first there was no answer, but Wolf had learned his lesson in the fountain of Cibeles in Madrid, and waited, listening to the music made by the far-off dripping of water.
Suddenly the smell changed, a crowded city street overlaying a room of old meat. The temperature dropped, and Wolf took a step back, putting his hand on the hilt of his gra’if blade.
“Wolf.” The voice was low, beyond the hearing of any human. Low and familiar. “Wolf.” The voice was stronger, as if the speaker came nearer.
Wolf felt his blood turn to ice.
“Did you bring me a morsel, my love? A precious lick of dra’aj?”
“Where is Vein of Gold?” he said.
“Ran away. Ran through the gold that names him, Binds him, flows in his veins. Ran where I can’t follow.”
A misshapen griffin stepped out from behind an irregularity in the rock wall. Changed to a horse-faced thing with only forefeet. Flickered and changed again. Became a Rider, thin to the point of starvation.
“Don’t you know me, my love?” and changed again as soon as the words were finished. But her hippocampus was feathered not scaled, with twisted stumpy feet, not a flashing tail. Changed once more. “I knew you’d come back. I told them all so.”
Wolf’s lips trembled on the edge of her name. “Swift River Current,” he said finally.
“That’s right, my dearest, my sunlight.” (flicker) And the hand she reached out was a paw. (flicker) A hand. “That’s mine, isn’t it?” (flicker) She advanced a few inches on tentacles (flicker) on feet. “The bitty bit outside? For me, isn’t it? You’re not in need.” She changed again as soon as she finished speaking and stood, fanged head hanging low, double lidded eyes blinking snik-snik, ribs showing through mottled skin stretched tight, webbed hands, dragging tail.
She could not really want the human, Wolf thought. With his own dra’aj glowing like a sunrise, she must be maneuvering to get closer to him. Even if she had fed on Vein of Gold, it would not have made any real difference. She would want more, and more, all that there was. Without her Five nearer to her to make her wait her turn, she would glut herself, absorbing dra’aj until the sheer weight of it would rob her of consciousness.
Wolf shifted around to his right, to better stand between the Hound and the shaft that led to the outer world. “That human has not enough dra’aj to interest you. Surely you can wait?” Though he knew she could not, would not. Any more than he would have done in her place. “I know where there is dra’aj aplenty for you; let me take you.”
The thing opened its mouth to speak and flickered once more into the shape of the Rider it had once been.
“What are you saying, Wolf? I can tell you know the use of the human dra’aj. How else could you keep your shape so long?”
A cold lump grew in Wolf’s belly. Was this how the Hunt was achieving this stability that both Graycloud and Valory had spoken of? In his time, the Hunt had not known of any special virtue in the dra’aj of humans, who had barely enough to make it worthwhile to feed from them. How and when had it been discovered?
“You don’t need any, I can tell just looking at you. Why would you keep it from me, Pack Leader?” River came closer. “Though now I smell you more closely, there is something different about you.”
She took one more step toward him and Wolf pulled his gra’if blade free, a sudden blaze of light, almost blinding in the confined space. The Hound changed again, coils of a snakelike body, tails flapping as it wriggled away, throwing its paws (flicker) hands (flicker) claws (flicker) hands up before its eyes.
“How,” it croaked.
“I am cured, River. Clean.” Wolf lowered his sword, but did not sheathe it. He knew better than to trust her. “I am no longer part of the Hunt.”
“Not possible! Who could do such a thing?”
“There is a new High Prince, a Dragonborn. She it was who Healed me, saved me.” Wolf swallowed. “She would Heal you also.”
The thing that was Swift River Current returned to its sea horse shape, and considered, head to one side, left eye blinking slowly, right eye gummed shut with yellow ichor.
“She would do this?” (flicker) as she regained her Rider shape long enough to speak. “You are sure?”
Wolf hesitated. Could he speak for the High Prince on this matter? Surely she would help the Hunt? She would have saved even the Basilisk, at the end. “I am sure,” he said finally.
But it was the hesitation River had heard, and not his final certainty.
“Of course, of course, my dearest, my love. But for now, just for now, you’ll let me have that human, won’t you? Just this last time. So I’ll be nice and pretty and look myself when the High Prince sees me.”
Wolf’s heart sank. “What good will the human do you?” Let her answer him clearly. Then he would know.
“But that’s why I thought you were still one of us—still part of the Hunt, I meant. Because you had your Rider shape, and I will have, too, once I’ve fed from the man you have outside. We learned that, after we were abandoned here. If we eat enough human dra’aj, we can control what we look like, we can be ourselves again. That is why Fox—” She lost her shape.
Wolf raised his weapon once more. “What did you say? Speak on. You would say something of my brother?”
River drew herself up, her back arched, her hands, clenched into fists, hanging strangely in front of her. Her face seemed too long, and yet she was able to speak.
“When you didn’t come back, someone had to lead, and who was going to fight him for it? He’s your brother, second only to you. Of course he made himself Pack Leader and thinks himself a better one than ever you were. But I know him, just like I know you. He’s afraid you’re going to come back and take the Pack from him.” She smiled, square teeth in her long face. “I wonder, should I tell him you’ll never come to challenge him now, or would you still? He says we can stay here; we can feed from the humans. We can control our shapes, and we wouldn’t need the People.” She swallowed. “We wouldn’t need them ever again, if we had the humankind as our nourishment.”
Wolf shook his head, unwilling to accept what he was hearing. That she would reject Healing, that she would reject becoming whole again, for this continuation of her perverted existence.
Though a quiet voice inside him said he might have rejected it as well.
“Wolf.” She flickered and changed again.
Wolf Moved.
“What was that, mate?” the boy Ben said. “Sounded like a gunshot.”
“I heard nothing,” Wolf said as he climbed into the jeep. “Let us go. Quickly.”
He would have to find Vein of Gold some other way.
I fell to my hands and knees, and
began swallowing faster and faster, trying not to gag. To my horror, my stomach lurched, and kept right on lurching. Alejandro put his arm around me.
“No. Don’t touch me. Please. Sorry.” Slowly, the world steadied and, still swallowing, I managed to look up. “Sorry,” I repeated. I took a deep breath and gagged again, retching. I tried to breathe shallowly, and in a minute I was able to raise my head again. I’ll hyperventilate at this rate, I thought. I would have been mortified, if I’d had any time to spare.
Alejandro without his human guise was almost enough to get my stomach to settle. I would have known him anywhere, of course, even without the familiar dark blue linen suit, and he did bear a resemblance to his human version, but it was as if everything had been buffed and shined, tweaked into perfection, as if even his bones had been more finely drawn. The immediate difference was how much richer his coloring now was, making his human self seem washed out and bland. But what was most striking—and I use that word with care—was how very beautiful he was. Alejandro Martín was a handsome man, but Graycloud at Moonrise could take the breath from your body.
What does Wolf really look like, I wondered, as I realized that what I saw now was what Alejandro’s wife had seen, when she’d first found him, hiding, as he thought, in a waterfall in Asturias. She had spoken to him, sung to him, and when he had finally understood that moving water was no refuge from humans, he’d answered. Graycloud had been hiding, not from her (what did he need to fear from the humankind?) but from another Rider, one he had offended, one whom he was not powerful enough to kill. Many times after that first day his enemy looked for him, and always Graycloud stepped into the moving water, and was safe. Safe from the one who came to kill him, but not safe from the spell of the black-haired woman, who came every day to sing. Until finally he came out of the waterfall for the last time and stayed by her side until death made her leave him.
Looking at him now, I could see why that long-ago human woman had taken the chance to sing to him.
“Is it unwell?” A long-fingered hand on my arm and I twisted away, retching, before the tide of images could sweep me away with it and drown me. Another beautiful face, though this one was much harder, and colder, and not just because Alejandro was more familiar. Hair a platinum blond, pulled back into a braid and tied off, eyes a very pale green, like a cat’s, skin a sun-darkened ivory. A Starward Rider. Dressed in dark browns and blacks, leather showing wear and tear, and even in one place a patch. He didn’t have to dress like this, his dra’aj was strong enough to have kept his clothes new looking and bright, but apparently his fara’ip had a soul above such things.
He had a collar of some glittery silver around his neck that I realized was gra’if, just like Alejandro’s sword.
“She is unwell, yes. Perhaps it is the passage through the Portal.”
“She is human, then?” He was interested but not in any profound way. He’d never seen a human, but he knew they existed.
“The Songs tell of such passages, of the bringing of humans to the Lands, though they do not tell of this sickness.” He was a Singer. He squatted down next to me, and I shied away, entirely a reflex because whatever it was that was making me feel so bad didn’t affect my talent, and I knew that the Rider had no intention of touching me. “You’d do well to find a Dragonborn.”
“It is the High Prince herself we seek.”
At this point, I had to stop paying attention to what they were saying and concentrate on my breathing. Slow breaths, not too deep, in and out, in and out. Keeping my body as still and level as I could, to prevent the squirmy feeling in my insides from spiking into full-blown nausea.
“My dear one, we must Move.” Alejandro’s voice sounded far away.
“Okay.” That was the best I could manage, and with that I almost lost it. I tried again. “Let me hold you,” I said. I couldn’t bear to be touched, but I knew that I needed his help to stand, and I had to be touching him to Move.
I was barely upright when the SNAP! came and we were standing on a hilltop under a display of stars I would have found amazing if I hadn’t been vomiting. Another CRACK! and we seemed to be standing within a circle of stones that made even my nausea-tossed brain think of Stonehenge. Then I got lucky and fainted again.
Now there was a beautiful, warm voice, like chocolate, and soothing hands touching me, spreading comforting warmth through me, and I relaxed into the soothing heat, feeling all the Lands spread around me, seeing all the pockets of territories like a patchwork quilt version of the world tossed onto a field of darkness, all of them the same, all different, and the movement of the dra’aj, feel it pulling through my psyche like ribbons of color, the ebb, the flow, the shifting, the swell—HOLD STILL…
Scales under my hands, and heat as the ribbons untwisted and became calmer.
And then darkness.
A bitter taste in my mouth. And the darkness again.
“She sleeps.” Cassandra joined the Rider Graycloud at Moonrise in the dining area of her pavilion. “I must be honest and say, however, that her sleeping is thanks in great part to the pills you obtained for her.”
There were platters of fresh fruits, and others of pastries filled with meat or cheese laid out on the table, along with wine and sparkling water. This last was something Cassandra particularly liked, but which hadn’t been available in the Lands until now. It turned out that Water Naturals, giggling, were happy to induce carbonation in their springs for the High Prince. Several were already vying to produce a variety of flavors. Smiling, Cassandra saw that Graycloud had also poured himself a glass, though he seemed uninterested in the food. Outside, the day was a warm one, but here in the pavilion it was as cool and fresh as if the walls had been made of stone.
Cassandra sat down, resisting the urge to rub at her temples. She had found and Healed three more damaged places just this morning, and would have been happy to have left this girl to someone else if that had been possible, and if it had not been Graycloud with her.
“From what Nighthawk had told us, we did not expect to see you here in the Lands, Graycloud, but we welcome you, and your fara’ip. I am only sorry that it was an injury that brought you to us.”
The Sunward Rider inclined his head to her. “I meant no disrespect, my Prince, and I thank you for your Healing. But it has been long since I was accustomed to hearing my Rider name. Will you call me Alejandro?”
Cassandra smiled when she heard the familiar accents of Spain in his voice. “Then I am Cassandra. I’m sorry Nighthawk is no longer here, but both he and the Prince Guardian are attending to some business of mine elsewhere.”
Alejandro inclined his head again. “And Valory? Will she now be well?”
Cassandra leaned forward, resting her elbows on the edge of the darkwood table. “I can make her comfortable,” she said. “But I cannot stop the vertigo.”
“I have never heard of such a thing.” The outer corners of the man’s brows were drawn down. “But then, it is long since I have been through a Portal, and never did I bring a human with me.”
“I admit my own experience is limited,” Cassandra said. “I’ve asked the Singers who are with us at the moment to consult among themselves, to see if they can Tell us anything from their store of knowledge. But you say she’s psychic.” Cassandra was glad no one else was here who needed that word explained. She’d found that Max was better at explaining certain human phenomena than she was. She had lived among humans, and that had given her an insight into the world of the Shadowlands, but Max had lived as a human, and that gave him an advantage, an understanding, she could never have. “Could that have anything to do with her reaction to the Lands?”
“She became much worse when you touched her.” Alejandro’s tone was steely, and it made Cassandra smile and raise her hands in conciliation. Alejandro relaxed again, shrugging one shoulder.
“You’re absolutely right,” she continued. “The girl did become worse when I touched her, skin to skin. Is her ability enhanced with contact?”
“It is.” The older Rider was grudging. “But she has touched me frequently, and without difficulties.”
“Well, now.” Cassandra tilted her head back, unfocused her eyes. “I wonder what would happen if Max touched her.” She sat forward again, her elbows on the table. “I’m not an ordinary Rider, I am the High Prince. If Valory is really psychic—and I believe you, Alejandro, that was just a figure of speech—then what she perceives when she touches me might serve to make her reaction to the Lands worse.”
“I am afraid I do not follow you, High Prince.”
“I’m bound to the Talismans, and through them to the Lands themselves, and the vast network of dra’aj that informs everything within them. If the poor girl perceived even a part of that through me, it’s a wonder her head didn’t explode.”
“I must take her back,” Alejandro said, standing up.
“You shall, when I am satisfied that the journey itself will not kill her.” Cassandra motioned him back to his seat. “In the meantime, we must discuss the impact of the news you bring me. There are two matters of urgency as I see them,” she began. “First, this phenomenon of the ‘stable’ Hounds, as you call them. Second, the existence of the humans who call themselves Outsiders.” She paused, continuing only when it was clear that Alejandro had no comment. “I have lived in the Shadowlands myself, and, like you, I had heard something of these people before, though I do not think I have ever met one, nor did I know what caused their condition.”
“The stories and rumors of something that feeds on humans, taking their life force from them…” Alejandro shrugged. “It is true, we have all heard these stories, and like many of us, I dismissed it as a human phenomenon. It now appears that the Basilisk’s Warriors have been bringing the Hunt to the Shadowlands, though infrequently, since shortly after the Exile began. From time to time, the Hunt fed on humans, and it is this which created the Outsiders. According to the one who spoke with us, their numbers have been steadily increasing, exploding in the last few months.”
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