But the fire healer got the last word just before the door closed. “Pray you brought back all of him.”
Jenni had never considered that. Usually it would be impossible to leave any part of Rothly in the interdimension, but if the shadleeches had torn his spirit… She stiffened in Aric’s arms, but forced her lips to curve and felt the wetness of blood as they cracked from the dryness of being too much in earth. “Until later, ladies.”
Before she’d finished, Aric was out the door and striding down to the dormitory.
“Don’t mind the fire healer, she’s a friend of Synicess.” He hesitated, his arms around Jenni tightened. “Synicess and I are no longer…together. She is angry.”
Another shock to leave Jenni’s head reeling. The Eight were after her hide, she suffered a gnawing ember of doubt that she might have left some of Rothly in the interdimension and Aric was now…free? Not free, he was the Eight’s man, but…unattached. She found herself gasping for air as her mind sparked with competing thoughts and fears.
One pressed against her lips and shot in words from her mouth. “We’re in trouble with the Eight.”
“Perhaps,” Aric said, but she still felt his optimism. Frowning, she thought back over the last couple of days. He seemed more lighthearted now than any time since they’d met. Why are you so cheerful? she asked mentally. Had it just been his relationship with Synicess depressing him? He was a guy, Jenni didn’t think so.
His green gaze focused on her face and tiny jolts breezed through her like a swirl of leaves. He replied, Because I’ve had to rely on the Eight’s goodwill and my services to help the Treefolk, protect the dryads from the shadleeches. Now the bubble energy will bring something positive for them…all of them across the world.
You really believe that?
I felt the power of the magic—the elemental energies you balanced. It will make a difference to me and mine.
Jenni just shook her head.
A few minutes later he set her on her feet in front of the dormitory door. I will see you in a half hour. We’ll eat. He bowed and hurried away. Probably to check on the bubble magic somehow, talk with Etesian. She missed the solid comfort of his strong body. Bracing herself, she opened the door.
Twenty chattering voices stilled.
Jenni walked slowly through the room, but all was quiet except for her odd mud-encrusted footsteps and the small phtts as caked dirt and grime crumbled from her to hit the floor. Everyone watched her, but she was too physically tired and mentally upset to care. She stopped by her bed, stripped and went into the common shower in silence.
As the hot water pounded over her, she let the steam of the shower help her transition into the gray mist. She’d balanced this cavern earlier, there was plenty of ambient magic, all of the Eight remained on-site, and she’d been stepping into the interdimension often over the last day. Enough to give her a bit of energy to do what must be done.
She sent her senses in the direction where she’d rescued Rothly. Brightly colored energies hung in the mist in the distance, some were even spherical. The signature smears of cast-off energy from the old elf and dwarf showed.
Tentatively she quested for shadleeches, felt nothing. Not one was anywhere in the place between worlds. Could they only enter if there was something to eat? Some other physical presence? Or were they not interested in the place unless there was something to drain of magic?
No smidgen of Rothly remained in the mist, not even a bit of his blood. The fire healer had induced false fears. But how could Jenni have known—any of them have known—what might happen with the new shadleeches on the scene? Had Rothly studied anything about them before their attack on him? Had he known they could follow him into the other dimension?
Too much thinking. She stepped from the mist and flailed, not coming out at the same spot as she went in.
Screams erupted and she lit hard on her rear on the damn tiled floor. Other women were in the shower.
“You weren’t here!” one said.
“How did you do that?” said a second.
“She has a fricking invisibility spell!” one with the pointed ears of an elf said.
The women’s shrill voices bounced off the rock walls. Jenni struggled up, slipping and sliding and bracing an arm against a smooth wall until she stood. She shook her hair back and wiped her face so water didn’t drip into her eyes.
Standing tall and refraining from rubbing her aching butt, she said, “I am an elemental balancer and do much of my work in a different dimension.”
“Like the dryads’ greenhome?” asked a woman with a greenish tinge to her skin.
“Not that dimension, but something like. I’m sorry I chose a common area to do this, and I’m sorry I scared you.”
The wary expressions were fading. Jenni eyed them. The Eight had shown her what they considered her, a servant like these women. Rothly’s room was one for a Prince of the Lightfolk.
She raised her palms, gathering gazes, as others had come to stand in the wide doorway. “Since I work with elemental energies, I can tell you that you are all strong in magic.”
“We are halflings,” said a woman.
“You’re strong enough to make a good living with magic outside of this cavern.”
“Like you do?” someone sneered.
“I came here to save my brother, Rothly,” Jenni said flatly.
“Rothly,” more than one woman said, and some glanced at each other. Obviously Rothly had made an impression, but Jenni couldn’t tell what kind.
She went on. “And I do use magic in my own work with computers. I don’t know how long you have been here, but human technology and magic are merging enough that they can be used as one energy source.”
There were frowns and confused faces. Jenni gestured at the lights in the ceiling. “These lights are powered by magic spells that drain a little power from all in the cavern and from the cavern’s energies themselves. In the human world lights are powered mostly by electricity. The Lightfolk are beginning to integrate magic and electricity.”
“Eight Corp has its own generator in the bottom of that building in Denver,” a woman said. “I helped build it.”
There was a lopsided smile and a gleam in another’s eyes. “I wonder when the humans will deduce that places are going off the electrical grid.”
Another frowned. “And what they will do about it. Assassins—”
Jenni thought she had too vivid an imagination. “The Lightfolk are stronger than humans.”
“But we are fewer. The transition to meld—magic and technology—will have to be handled carefully or there could be a great economic crisis,” said another woman. She stepped to the threshold and reached for a towel from the stack there. “I’m good at financial management, I bet I could…” She hurried into the dorm.
Once again, Jenni glanced at each of those around her, meeting their eyes. “You are very strong. Think about your strengths, what you really want to do.”
The woman who’d spoken of assassins, short and squat with evident dwarven blood, said, “I like being here.”
“Then that’s your choice,” Jenni said. “And your vocation. Good.”
“Yah, and the Eight are looking for you.”
Jenni walked to the towels, dried herself vigorously. The steamy shower had helped her regain her energy. Still, all in all, she was more human than djinn—just like everyone else here. She entered the room to find women had congregated around two beds at the far end of the room. Ah, that was the status area.
Smiling, she went to her bed, suppressing a hitch in her stride from her sore backside. She wasn’t too surprised to see that her clothes and the mud drippings had vanished. Brownies.
Nor was the smear of her passage across the room evident, though she thought the women had taken care of that themselves. “Thank you for cleaning up after me.”
She got a few passing glances and nods but the dorm was noisy with brainstorming and career planning and Jenni liked that. Life o
ptions should be considered every now and then…not that she’d done so lately. She hadn’t even known that magic was infusing downtown Denver.
More halflings should be claiming their place in the world, proud of being Lightfolk and human. Again, as she had not been, but she was learning.
Her feeling of satisfaction had faded by the time she’d donned a formal gown and left the dorm. She opened the door to see Aric, also dressed formally in a silk tunic embroidered in gleaming green thread and black raw silk trousers, leaning against the wall.
Though she sensed his body still hummed with energy and his underlying optimism remained, his face was impassive.
She adjusted her shawl over her shoulders. “We’re in trouble, huh?”
Aric stepped close, fiddled with her shawl himself. “Probably. The Eight don’t care to be thwarted and they wanted to experiment with that bubble. Time to pay for our actions.”
Jenni blew out a breath. “I didn’t call the bubble.”
Framing her face in his big hands, Aric stared into her eyes and she felt as if she were stepping into a deep and ancient forest…with pockets of secrets she’d never been aware of before.
He spoke to her, mind-to-mind, his words all the clearer because of their connection skin-to-skin. But I think the magical elements, the bubble, came to you anyway. For once, you sped things up. I FELT your desperation to help Rothly, and the bubble did that. Somehow. I had my own desperation. To make things better for the dryads and greenhome.
His fingers stroked her face and the remembered touch, echoing all the tender loving in the past, whispered through her, bringing tiny yearnings for the future.
Jenni, I have been so lost without you, without your family. Praised by the Eight, all I knew was to strive to please them. I had no balance. Everyone else around me was also determined to serve the Eight—advance their careers, forward their own goals.
Then, the shadleeches began to hurt greenhome and the dryads and I thought I was in a position to help with the Eight. I DID help…but not enough. Until today. Today I was desperate for the greenhome and I know the bubble will help. Because of you. In just a day, you have realigned my thinking.
He was moving closer and closer until his mouth was touching hers. He kissed her. The press of his lips, inhaling the scent of him—his breath, his body—whirled her mind away.
Only the feel of him existed, the solidity of him, the shape of his aura as it blocked everything else, seeped into her. Magic. Acceptance of her uniqueness, of her as a woman, individual from all else. His woman.
His hand slid from her face to her hip, squeezed, and she leaned into him as his arm came around her back, pulled her into him.
A harsh, rocky cough hit her ears…with the punch of magic behind it. Jenni shuddered.
“The Eight are waiting for you,” a dwarfem said. She wore the colors of the Earth Palace and a golden chain around her waist with three dangling keys, but Jenni didn’t know her status.
“We’re on our way,” he said to the dwarfem. We’ll face them together. He tugged on her hand and Jenni knew he spoke the truth. The bubble magic had worked on him, too. She wondered how it might be affecting her, but couldn’t separate it from all the other events of the past few days.
Several minutes later they were standing before the thrones of the Eight again. Etesian, her father’s friend, was there, but he wasn’t talking much and didn’t seem to be in trouble. But then he’d only given his best estimate as to when the bubble would arrive and burst. And he was a full elf.
The Water King made a disgusted noise that Jenni thought was aimed at her, so she stiffened her spine. This had not been the right moment to be distracted.
The merman leaned forward, smiling enough that Jenni could see his sharp green-yellow teeth. “Perhaps it was the arrival of the halfling and the Treeman that accelerated the rise of the bubble.”
With glinting eyes, the Earth Queen said, “Maybe so.”
No one else spoke. They all frowned. Jenni went very still. This was not going well.
The door swung open and there was an outcry from some of the Eight that abruptly stopped. The elf Jenni had met in Yellowstone glided in. He walked to her, inclined his head at her and Aric a quarter-inch, then faced the eight thrones. “The Mistweaverfem and the Paramon comported themselves in an excellent fashion.” He turned on his heel and left.
Jenni heard the veriest whisper in her mind from her father’s friend, Etesian. A guardian who watches the royals…
“I think he said enough,” the Water Queen said.
Jenni stood in silence, slid her eyes to Aric, who had relaxed into his balance. So the old elf was one who watched the kings and queens? How much power did he really have? Enough to shut them down in mid-rant.
“Welcome to our family, Princess Jindesfarne Mistweaver Emberdrake.” The Fire Queen swept to Jenni, took her hands, even as Jenni was instinctively and blank-mindedly sinking into a deep curtsy. Warm lips brushed one of her cheeks, then the other. “Welcome.” The Fire Queen cast a glance over her shoulder to her mate. He glanced at the rest of the Eight and stalked to her. To Jenni’s surprise he hugged her, smelling a little like lava. “Welcome.”
When he stepped back, he took his lady’s hand.
The Water Queen was there, too. “I think you would like to see your brother again?”
“Yes.” Jenni’s voice was strangled from too much fluctuating emotion. “I’d like to sit with him.”
“It will be interesting to see how the creative elemental energies that were released from the bubble affected him. You may go.” The Water Queen gestured to the door.
“Yes.” That was a safe enough word.
Aric opened the door and held it for Jenni, then followed her out.
Princess Jenni.
Just what she always wanted? So very much no.
But now she needed to concentrate on Rothly. He’d probably wake soon, and what would he say? What would she?
CHAPTER 13
AFTER SHE AND ARIC WERE OUT OF THE door guards’ view, Aric let out a long sigh that would have fluttered leaves throughout a grove. He kept her hand in his, steady and solid, all the way to Rothly’s door.
“Do you want me to come in, or do you want privacy with Rothly?”
Jenni winced, shrugged. “Seeing us together…”
“Are we together, Jenni?”
She swallowed. “I don’t know.”
A corner of his mouth kicked up, his eyes lightened from deep to misty green. He shook his head, bent down and brushed his mouth against hers. “We have come a long way already…in a few short hours. I can wait.” Squeezing her hand, he straightened.
“Aric, the Eight want to ‘debrief’ you.” The same dwarfem with the keys was there again. Her mouth went sour at the “new” word, and Jenni felt a density from her that told her the woman was old…older than the combined ages of Aric and Jenni.
Aric’s eyes flashed green with irritation; he inhaled deeply. “I am the Eight’s man.” He kissed Jenni on the forehead. For now. We shall see how much they support the Treefolk.
He turned and strode back down the corridor and Jenni watched him. That was his priority now, the Treefolk. She couldn’t fault him for it, but how far would he go to save them?
She glanced at the door to her brother’s room. She’d gone far, far to save her brother. Left her home and job. Accepted the pain of her childhood home and being with Aric again. Begun to put aside the bitter grief and guilt at herself and Aric. Far.
But as she put her hand on the door latch, she was pretty sure that even with the trauma he’d suffered, and her rescue, Rothly hadn’t forgiven her. She opened the door and went in.
The room was warm, and a small browniefem sat unhappily in the corner. Probably ordered to watch Rothly. Jenni crossed to his bed and her breath stopped and throat closed and eyes stung. He was so thin! She stroked his hair, then his face. He had no beard, a lucky chance from his djinn-elf Lightfolk heritage.
> “He stinks,” the brownie woman said, scowling with disapproval at Rothly’s tattered dress shirt and cords.
Jenni sent her a cool glance. “You wouldn’t smell so good, either, if a shadleech had feasted on you for two weeks.”
The brownie’s ears rolled down tight against her head, her hands came to her mouth. “Is that what happened to him?” Her eyes were so scared that black leaked into the usually brown pupils.
That’s right.”
“I didn’t know.” The browniefem’s mouth flattened and she twisted her hands in her apron. “We had heard that the crippled Mistweaver had returned, but not what had happened to him.” She ducked her head, but studied Jenni from a sideways glance. “You brought him back here?”
“Yes, I’m his sister.”
“Jindesfarne Mistweaver.”
“Yes.”
“The halfling who gave houseroom to Hartha and Pred.”
“Yes.”
The browniefem sniffed. “They have boasted of your house, of how it is a magically balanced place. Like this place is now. You did that this morning?”
“I did.”
“Pred says he’s made a beautiful gathering hall under a cul-de-sac for all the inhabitants of the wheel of houses.”
Jenni winced.
“Ah!” The little woman pounced. “I knew he was wrong to do so. Humans don’t like Folk messing with their cities without a lot of rules.”
Feeling like she should defend Pred, Jenni shrugged. “Most people in the cul-de-sac have magical blood, and even the humans are open-minded.” She considered the browniefem’s words. “I never thought of the cul-de-sac as a sacred wheel…a wheel of houses.”
The brownie nodded. “You thought of it as a sphere.”
Jenni wasn’t sure of that, either, but it seemed to resonate.
Rothly shuddered and moaned. Jenni touched her lips to his forehead and he subsided. Studying the small woman, she said casually, “Hartha and Pred are honored by me. I am fond of them. But my brother is all alone and I visited his home and he needs—”
“No.” Shaking her head, the browniefem continued. “He is a very sour man. No brownie would like to live with him. He has a bad reputation.” Once again she sniffed, then whisked to the door. “I will let the browniemen know that he needs bathing.”
Enchanted No More Page 13
