“I am here to lead you to where we believe Rothly Mistweaver to be,” the dwarfem said. She wore a shearling coat and hat.
“Trackers followed the shadleeches and found traces of where he might have entered the interdimension,” Aric said.
“Shadleeches!” The dwarfem hissed nearly as well as a djinn or merfolk. A shudder rippled through her like an earthquake.
Jenni went light-headed with relief, clutched Aric’s solid arm. “Then I should be able to go directly to him and get him out.” She wouldn’t have to attempt to travel in the gray mist and get lost forever. “I’d hate to step from the interdimension into a geyser.”
Aric set the arm she was clutching around her waist, surprising Jenni. She looked at him with wide eyes, decided to speak to him mentally. Your lady will not be pleased if she sees us like this.
He hesitated, then replied to her telepathically and with finality. I will not speak of Synicess to you. Just as I did not speak of you to her.
Jenni caught the undertone, the wisp of information that the full-blooded djinn princess had pressed him, and not only about his previous relationship with Jenni, but also about Jenni’s abilities. The hair rose on the back of her neck. Fine, she said, trying to make the word casual. Since he relaxed a little, she thought he’d succeeded.
As they walked, the tunnel dimmed and the ground smelled of sulphur strongly enough for her to set what fire magic she could into her lungs to protect them. She was sure the heat and acid air would get worse. The magic was nearly half earth and half fire with only a trace of air and water—and more fire lay ahead.
Aric slogged on, face grim. Treemen didn’t like fire. Jenni wondered that he was courting a djinn princess. Jenni’d thought she’d fascinated Aric with her own fiery nature, but that would be nothing compared to a full-blooded royal djinnfem. Weren’t any elffems or merfems available for him? Or was his ambition such that he wanted the highest ranked woman?
Shaking her head, Jenni slipped her arm in his, found that he was using much of his elven air nature to purify his breath. She added a slight atmosphere around them, like a filter, burning some of the bad gasses before they reached them. He nodded thanks.
They walked through heated rock, and the cashmere Jenni was wearing was soaked with sweat as the temperature became hotter than her own magic could disperse. She withdrew her arm from Aric’s and panted with each step, let him keep to the middle of the wide tunnel alone. Though she could only see the back of the dwarfem, something in the set of the earth-being’s shoulders made Jenni think she was snidely amused with her charges.
Soon the tunnel angled up and away from the fire, light coming from ahead. The path cooled rapidly and a whistling wind sent gusts of icy air toward them. Jenni’s skin dried quickly and she condensed the moisture in her clothes into a small patch of water energy and sent it away. As the light became stronger, Jenni was aware that the tunnel was actually open to the outside.
The dwarfem stopped at the bottom of a vertical shaft. Jenni looked up and saw some brush covering the opening. When she squinted she thought she saw a magical barrier that would act as an alarm for the dwarves. There was no way up.
“Elf!” the dwarfem shouted in common Lightfolk speak, though Jenni couldn’t hear all of the layered tones—dwarf tended to be below her hearing range, elf above.
There was a cascade of chiming metal, a streak of blue, and an elf stood before them, dressed in leather the blue-gray of snow shadows. His hair was a mature silver and his face unlined, but his blue eyes had darkened over the millennia until they were indigo. This was an old elf, maybe even one who had been old enough to pass through the first portal when most magic Folk left Earth.
He wore wrist bracers of the silvery metal elven warriors preferred—osmium. The sheaths on each of his hips were of gray suede and platinum. Jenni was sure the hilts of his swords were osmium, too, since the metal gave off a faint odor. The elf himself smelled of the most delicate of tundra blooms and the rich air magic surrounding him had Jenni leaning forward before she understood what she was doing and yanked herself back.
“Mistweaver, Paramon.” The elf actually inclined his head a quarter inch, a sign of respect that had Jenni’s mouth falling open until Aric nudged her.
He was at the portal opening, saw us fight, Aric explained.
Jenni didn’t remember the elf, but she didn’t remember many of those that day. Her family, Aric, the Eight.
The elf stepped forward, curved his long-fingered hands around one of Aric’s biceps and one of hers. His potent magic made her sway. Before the gasp escaped her lips they were swirled up and away and shot through the air, then they drifted down to shadows between tall pines.
“There,” said a dwarf, pointing a gnarly finger. He was half the height of the elf, but fully as broad and wore dark gray leather and two swords with dull black hilts. His salt-and-pepper hair and beard were neatly trimmed.
Aric muttered a tree-groan swear word.
“Ah, you see them, Paramon. Lady? Gotta look sharp.”
Jenni squinted, following the line of the dwarf’s brown finger, Aric’s green gaze. Across the wide and rolling drifts of unblemished snow there was the faintest of movements against the bright blue sky. A flutter, another. Gray shadows flapping like strange, airborne manta rays. Shadleeches. She sucked in a breath.
An electric-blue lightning-shock speared the sky from the elf’s finger, killing several of the evil creatures. He made a disgusted noise, loosened his sword in his hilt. “Like most magical beings, they are better off killed with metal.”
“Guns?” Jenni murmured faintly.
Aric cast her a look. “Times haven’t changed that much. Tech doesn’t work well.”
The dwarf snorted. “Explosive powder don’t transport well.”
Not by magical travel. Nevertheless, Jenni would have liked a flamethrower. Not that she could use one, but…
The earth trembled beneath her.
Aric set a hand against a tree, swore longer. “What is going on?”
Loosening her knees to sink into her balance, Jenni probed the energies. Rich air and earth—the elf and dwarf, spots from their waiting going down into the earth and spreading a couple of yards, but below that…
A roiling, surging wave of elemental energies…and in the midst of them an oddness. A spherical oddness.
Blood drained from her. “The bubble is coming.”
“Now?” The dwarf goggled.
“Now!” She lurched forward.
Aric’s fingers closed around her wrist. She glanced up at him, saw the forest-green depths in his eyes that he got when upset. “Wait one instant.”
A Treeman’s instant wasn’t the same as a human’s, so she pulled at her hand. “Let me go!”
“Jenni…you’re special—”
The dwarf snorted. “Not now, lad.”
A tremor passed through Aric’s large frame. “We’ll talk later. The Fire Princess and I—”
With a bump of his body against Aric, the dwarf sent Aric stumbling and he let go of her. She shook her head for focus, the odor of sulphur rolled through her, the elemental energies flared around her. She bolted toward the shadleeches. There was a stream, a mudpot pond. Snow was up to her waist, she sizzled it away with fire and fear.
Then she was scooped up by the elf and deposited on a small patch of ocher land that trembled and cracked. The dwarf was there, sunk into the land up to the tops of his ankles, holding her. She tried vainly to wrench away. “I have to go to the interdimension.”
Without a word, the elf sang his blade from his sheath, hacked at shadleeches, which turned and attacked. Aric pulled his own sword, stood his ground and fought.
The dwarf’s fierce gaze speared Jenni. “On three I let go.”
She nodded.
“One.”
Jenni began chanting fast, weaving powerful words with unvoiced prayers.
“Two.”
Rothly, I am HERE.
“Three.
”
She bit off the last spell rhyme and stepped into the gray mist.
Rothly was there, covered in shadleeches. Gray streaks of goo dripped down his face, hands, clothes. Gray goo that would be bright red blood in the real world. No time. No time. NO TIME!
With a whisk of her arms, Jenni called all the elements to her—steam fire water mudpot minerals wind. Sheets wrapped around them and the shadleeches cried with glee, flung themselves into the elemental energies to feast, abandoned Rothly.
Jenni reached out, grabbed him, pulled him to her.
So light! He had little weight, emaciated.
She pulled his arms around her, the thin, sound one, the bent, crippled one, and held him tight and listened to his fast heartbeat and he was hers, her brother, her Rothly, her family, and she stepped with him out of the mist.
Just in time to see the top of a bubble a yard wide rise above the mudpots. “Quick!” she said, grabbing the hand of the dwarf, one of Aric’s hands. “Link!” she ordered.
Rothly still leaned against her, his arms around her waist. The elf lifted his brows, set his hand in Aric’s and the dwarf’s. Power snapped through her and she arched. Such power. Too much. Her mind whirled as she tried to balance it. Rich, ancient air and earth, her and Rothly’s small fire, an additional bit of air and greenness from Aric.
Sucking in a breath, she pulled fire and water from the mudpots, watched with horrified amazement as the pool dried before her eyes.
The bubble still rose, now halfway out of the former pool, floating from cracked dirt. Inside was a shimmer of colors: a great deal of blue-green water, some gold earth energy, some silvery-blue air, streamers of red fire. She thought her eyes wheeled in her head as she tried to see the amounts.
She stretched her senses, felt the ground beneath her all balanced, began to let water energy trickle away. The bubble encased mostly water.
Dwarven words rumbled from her left in some ritual pattern. The elf sang, luscious notes fell around her, bringing tears to her eyes.
But as the bubble rose farther and farther from the earth, large enough to encompass a compact car, her breath came shorter. Only the simplest prayer broke through her fearful anticipation. “Water, air, earth, fire, bring to me my heart’s desire.” A child’s charm, but she focused all her will, all her talent, on the bubble, minutely adjusting particles of magic to cling to it, to match all the energies within.
“Water, air, earth, fire, bring to me—”
Pop!
Energies poured out, balanced with others, spread.
“For GOOD!” The elf’s voice was a smack of lightning.
“For the Lightfolk!” The dwarf’s was a rock avalanche.
“For the dryads!” Aric boomed like a redwood falling.
“My heart’s…” Jenni whispered, awestruck at the colors, textures.
“PLEASE HELP ME!” cried Rothly, flinging his crippled arm to the sky.
Energies fell upon them and all Jenni’s senses were swamped in a psychedelic cloud. The only thing she was aware of was Aric’s sustaining hand and the dwarf’s twisted one. The strange atmosphere engulfed her for an eternity, sinking into her skin…cold, hot, purple, pink, salty, peach blossoms. Clogging her lungs.
Vision returned first. Blue, blue sky, white vapor, geysers and clouds.
“What is that?” screamed a woman—a human.
Jenni’s gaze seemed fixed so she turned her head, saw a tour group staring openmouthed at them. Her own jaw slackened.
Then the atmosphere wavered as if heat waves encased them, and the dwarf pulled on their circle and they sank into the dry mudpot spring, then down and sideways and back into a large cave.
Their physical link broke and Jenni gasped, crumpling to the cavern floor. The damp rock smell filled her nostrils. Her cheek was squashed against the ground, she became aware of moaning…little sharp ones from herself, a mumbled groan from Aric and harsh sobbing breaths from Rothly.
Rothly!
CHAPTER 12
HER BROTHER WAS ALIVE AND HERE IN THE real world. Jenni craned to see him and her limbs flopped around. Feeling revived as they struck the floor, she yowled, thrashed again and crawled over to an unconscious Rothly. He was very thin, his skin pale with red marks. She put her hand on his forehead and it was damp with sweat under his lank, dark hair. Lines grooved his face.
Closing her eyes she felt him. Still half human, half Lightfolk, but there was a swirling mixture of energies inside him that weren’t just quarter-elf, quarter-djinn.
The bubble magic continued to work on him.
She shuddered and fell back, looked at his arm. It didn’t seem as crippled, but she couldn’t really tell.
“He needs to go to the Earth Palace,” the elf said.
Jenni glanced up at the elf and stilled. His eyes were no longer indigo. They were the blue of Yellowstone sky, a blue he would have lost centuries ago. What did it mean? Hesitantly she stretched out her senses…and they zinged to him, scanned him in an instant and informed her that his magic was as strong as ever.
“What’s wrong?” the elf said.
The dwarf stumped over, set his hands on his hips and looked up. “Your eyes are lighter.”
The elf became a perfect statue. He scrutinized the dwarf. “And your fingers are straight.”
After a hard swallow, as he stared at his hands, the dwarf said, “Huh.” He shrugged, walked over to Rothly, picked him up and handed him to the elf. “Let’s go.”
Aric crossed to her and lifted her to her feet. She tried to dust off the grime of the cavern but ended up smearing it on her clothes.
A thunderous sound echoed and Jenni looked around, then realized many, rapid, angry footsteps headed straight toward them.
“The Eight and their horde,” the dwarf grunted again. “Let’s get out of here before they find us.”
Lips curving in an elusive smile, the elf nodded. The dwarf grabbed Jenni’s elbow and Aric’s hand and once more there was darkness and humidity and dust and the feeling of rock closing around her lungs.
Then they were in a richly appointed room.
“This is Rothly’s,” Aric said.
By the time Jenni felt able to breathe again, the elf and dwarf were gone. She wobbled and Aric put his arm around her, steadied her as she walked to the door, pulled the heavy thing open and stuck her head out into the corridor. “I need a healer here!”
One of the women from the dorm squeaked and bumped against the wall, her tray of fine china rattling. “What are you doing here? How did you get here?”
Jenni just smiled. “Magic.”
The other scowled. “Plenty of that going around but elemental balancer or not, you’re still a halfling who can’t move through the earth like Lightfolk.” She went on with her task.
Rushed steps announced four healers, one from each element.
“Thank you for coming so quickly,” Aric said from behind Jenni, opening the door wide. “Jindesfarne, these are the healers assigned by the Eight. They are the very best.”
They’d already passed her and gone to a grubby Rothly, murmuring among themselves. Jenni slumped in exhaustion against the door. The bubble event had been wondrous, but draining—all that cycling of great and ancient dwarf-and-elf energy. She slid her gaze to Aric. He looked revved, healthily flushed.
His eyes sparkled as he caught her gaze. He pried her fingers from the door, sent her enough fizzing energy to have her tiptoed with tingles, then kissed the hollow of each palm.
A bubble just for five of us! A blessing. I prayed for help for the dryads against the shadleeches. I know it worked!
Jenni blinked heavy, gritty lids and couldn’t figure why he thought that. Didn’t have the optimism that infused him.
“Excuse us, Aric, Jindesfarne, but it is best if we tend to Rothly without any distraction,” the dwarfem earth healer said.
“The poor thing has been through a great ordeal,” the merfem said, stroking Rothly’s pale forehead, which
was beaded with sweat, while the elffem air healer held his hand and whistled a low spell.
“Of course,” Aric replied. Picking Jenni up, he inclined his head to the healers.
The djinnfem fire healer rose from the large orange-yellow chair. Her skirts swished like hissing flames as she crossed to them and opened the door for them. With brows lowered, she scanned Jenni in Aric’s arms, pushing her lips in and out.
“Thank you,” Jenni said, trying to pretend Aric was a prop instead of a live, virile man. “I’ll be back to sit with my brother after I’ve cleaned up.”
“And eaten,” Aric said.
“Rothly needs to be clean—” Jenni began.
“He needs healing first,” the dwarfem said. “And I’m sure the Eight wish to speak to you.”
The humming, nearly threatening buzzing of magical atmosphere outside the room enveloped Jenni. Consequences of her actions zipped through her mind. The Eight had anticipated using that bubble magic, bending the creativity to their will.
Instead the wishes of five directed it: for good, for the Lightfolk, for the dryads, for Rothly. For Jenni’s heart’s desire? She didn’t even know what that was. But she’d taken something the Eight had figured would be theirs.
Big trouble.
The djinnfem said, “You brought him out of that strange place they said you can go to?”
Sounded as if the woman meant hell, but Jenni kept her voice even. “Yes.”
The fire woman’s sniff was more like a hiss. She cast a glance at Rothly, her full lower lip curling. “He’s in terrible shape. Especially for a quarter-fire being.”
“His elven air nature was always foremost,” Jenni said.
“Maybe once,” the djinnfem said with scouring scorn.
Had Jenni seen Rothly twitch? He didn’t need any more negativity. “Humans have determined that unconscious people are aware of their surroundings and conversations. Please be more upbeat.”
A gurgling, steaming sound came from the djinnfem.
The earth and air and water healers had stood and were pattering their feet in place, ready to dance a spell.
Aric said, “We’re going now. We’ll return.”
Enchanted No More Page 12
