by Lou Hoffmann
As if the dimension Henry lived in had been blocked out by chunks of other-where.
It did remind him of Naught, that something he’d traveled through when using the Portals. But unlike that emptiness, this seemed somehow purposeful. He turned forward again and looked deeper into the cave where mists curled and twisted and lights sparked and sizzled. The nothing was there too, but somehow Henry was sure there was something in it, something more than he could see. Something exceedingly foul and unspeakably scary.
Thurlock’s staff had begun to glow again as the wizard chanted in a low, steady voice, and now it gave off a faint, troubled golden light. Weak and sputtering, it hardly seemed like an anchor against the dreadful miasma of the place, and without thinking, Henry let his hand fall away from it. Within seconds, dizziness overtook him on a wave of nausea. He wasn’t sure if he was falling, but he felt like it—until he heard Thurlock call out. Thurlock’s normally powerful voice quavered like sound borne on radio waves from distant galaxies. Henry barely made out the words.
“Hold on to the staff!”
Henry shouted back, “Where are you?”
“Right next to you” came Thurlock’s answer, and indeed when Henry reached out, his hand made contact with the wizard’s staff, and he grabbed hold. Once he had a grip on it, he could see it, and the solid wood comforted him. His dizziness and nausea calmed, but when he got a good look at Thurlock, he had to bite back a new wave of fright.
“You’re flickering,” he shouted after he’d found his voice.
“So are you,” Thurlock said.
Even in its current nebulous form, the wizard’s expression shouted to Henry that the old man was thoroughly annoyed, which added another layer of danger, but also seemed to suggest their problems weren’t insurmountable. Henry drew in courage on a sharp breath of chilled air, determined despite being scared in a way he’d never been before, and asked another question.
“What’s happening, Thurlock?”
“I don’t know, Henry, and I’ll never know if I can’t think it through. Just hold on to the staff and be quiet!” Perhaps Thurlock regretted his angry tone, because after a moment, he added, “Please, quiet now, Henry. As you can see, this magic is almost too much for me. I need all my strength, all my mind on the problem.”
Henry clamped his lips shut and stashed his questions away to ask at a safer time, should he survive until then.
The cold that had passed by with a single touch out in the glade seemed to have sunk roots and flourished here inside the cave. Somehow, a wind blew through the closed space, doing nothing to clear up the darkness or the smelly air, but sending its chill straight into Henry’s bones. He hunched his shoulders against it.
Something warm and solid leaned up against his calf, and when Henry dropped his gaze he saw Maizie. He saw her, fully solid, her golden-furred body as unwavering and easy to see as if they still stood in the clearing outside. It was a comforting sight, like a touchstone, and for a moment Henry simply gazed at her, but just as he was starting to wonder where Lemon Martinez might be, a glimpse of motion between Thurlock’s feet caught his eye. The cat was there, and he too stood solid and in full living color, snarling and hissing at the swirling mists and lights. Henry looked again at Thurlock and then down at his own body—yes, they still flickered and wavered as if trying to decide whether or not to exist.
A mystery woke up Henry’s brain: why did this stuff—which must be some sort of magic, he supposed, or at least a phenomenon of a science he didn’t understand, which amounted to the same thing—why did it affect him and Thurlock, change them somehow, but leave the animals untouched? For a moment he watched Thurlock struggle, wondering if he dared disturb the wizard’s efforts to ask his new questions. But then, in a sudden flash of insight, he understood.
In the same instant, he realized that he—lowly shifter from another world—might be, at least on one level, far better equipped to fight this… stuff… than the legendary wizard Thurlock. This evil (yes, he decided, evil) seemed to have been deliberately crafted and transmitted on a frequency that would target humans, just like a dog whistle was pitched to the canine ear. Whatever it was supposed to do—change them, kill them, transport them?—at the moment he felt weak, like he’d been diluted down and washed out. He could do nothing about it, and he couldn’t even see the enemy, but Maizie and Lemon, standing solid, at least saw something in the mists. Henry had a way to make it so he could do that too.
He shifted.
Henry’s Condor was real—solid flesh and blood—but he transformed instantly and painlessly. Unlike the classic werewolf, he had no need to wait for bones and flesh to bend and stretch and shape themselves. He had learned to shift as a shaman shifts, and there was magic in it too. So now, he was human, and then with a thought he was the Condor, fully formed and feathered. And even better, Thurlock’s magical stone amulet stayed potent despite the evil magic in the cave.
As soon as he took his nonhuman form, Henry could see into the dark flashing mists. The horrid sights made him sick, literally, yet knowing what they faced seemed to him a vast improvement over being terrified to move in a sea of misty emptiness.
Inside the nothing, a power surged and crackled, brilliant lightning, flashes of electric-blue flame, sparks and swirls the color of black light. The atmosphere held, or perhaps it animated, death. Three soldiers stood there in the cave, wearing mail and holding swords—not zombies, and not ghosts, but something shadowy in-between. Their eyes, clouded with death, glowed in dark skulls wearing rictus grins—all made of rotting flesh that wasn’t quite there. They didn’t wield their weapons but held them aloft, catching on the points the fabric of the awful power that had possessed this place. It hung from their weapons like a cloud in a net. Presently, that cloud blossomed a new shape from its depths, an ice-blue blade in liquid motion as if an invisible hand wielded it in slicing arcs, moving slowly but inexorably toward Thurlock.
Henry let the Condor’s magic rise and, his powerful wings sweeping evil aside to clear the way, flew up and alighted atop Thurlock’s glowing staff. With his wings spread to their full twelve-foot span, he tried to block the ethereal sword from getting to Thurlock. He was strong, his shield could hold back the dark, cold magic, but he wasn’t sure how long. In bird form, he was immune to the trickery of the magic, but maybe not all its power. It could hurt him, he thought, maybe even kill him. It didn’t have total power over Henry, but he didn’t have total power over it either—he could not destroy it, quell it, or transform it into something harmless.
But he could shield Thurlock, and that’s what he would do for as long as he could.
Thurlock’s staff had been shaking when Henry perched on it, as if the wizard didn’t have the strength to hold it steady against the onslaught of the dark mists. But while Henry blocked that magic, he felt the staff grow steadier. He wrapped his claws around the orb atop the wizard’s staff, clutching tightly, and the light—formerly only a faint glow—grew strong, bright, and constant. Henry turned his head to look at Thurlock. The wizard, too, grew strong, stopped flickering, his magic flowing again.
Soon, Thurlock and his magic dominated—dwarfed—every power in the cave. Henry marveled as he watched him, seeing him tall as a giant, broad-shouldered, and impossibly strong.
“This misty darkness,” the wizard said, his voice booming in the emptiness but sounding for all the world as though he was giving a lecture, “is like the powers of the god Mahl. It partakes, as does he, from the stuff of Naught. Naught is always hungry. Whatever is behind these mists, it is hungry for souls, and most particularly my soul.” He laughed, but not as though he thought it was funny. “But the Sunlands of Ethra are the home territory of Behlishan, the god of light whom I serve and who is my friend. While I stand, the hunger cannot truly claim this place. Maintain your shield, Henry. Empower it stronger if you can. I’ll see to undoing the spells working here.”
In his entire life Henry had touched his true power only twice: once
when his uncle had trained him to shift, and once as a firefighter when he was trapped in a building with a young child to save. Now he called it up for the third time, let it bubble up from his spirit’s core and out to infuse his wings until they glowed with bloodred light. Years ago in that fire, his magic hadn’t killed the flames, only shielded him and the child he carried, allowing them to escape. Likewise now, his power couldn’t quench the evil inhabiting this cave, but when he unleashed it, it rendered the shield he’d created many times stronger. Behind it, the wizard could work.
Thurlock chanted words unintelligible to Henry, and as the chant flowed forth, Thurlock’s voice strengthened and deepened even more. Soon Henry could feel power thrumming and pulsing through the glowing globe atop the staff. A wind filled with banshee screeches and howls rose up out of the darkness, filling the cave with awful sounds. The dread, lifeless soldiers Henry had seen opened their mouths wide as if to scream, but instead of sound, snakes of black smoke slithered out from the orifices in long twisted cords that writhed and then coiled, ready to strike at Henry, Maizie, and Lemon Martinez.
But they failed to make contact with living flesh, and suddenly, all the sound in the cave fell in on itself, leaving them standing in silence so unnaturally complete it felt to Henry as if he’d gone utterly deaf. The dead soldiers collapsed to the ground, their flesh whisked away in clouds of dust. The black mists sparked and writhed still, but they began to wither, shrinking into crevices and corners, and finally disappearing altogether.
The sense of evil presence, the dread that had cloaked Henry’s mind from the moment he’d stepped into the cave left him. He breathed back to human form and turned to Thurlock, only to find him bent over, leaning heavily on his staff, looking this time impossibly old.
“Thurlock,” Henry said, aware of alarm in his own voice. “Can I help?”
“Sun,” Thurlock answered. “Behl’s light. Out by the pool.”
Though the way out of the cave remained obscured by smoke, light poured in through the triangular opening. A breeze blew in, smelling of sehldar, myrtle, and the dark but fresh tang of some herb, which reminded Henry tantalizingly of coffee. “What I wouldn’t give for a cup of coffee,” he said, as he all but carried the wizard out into the clearing and across to the freshet and pool.
Thurlock eased himself from Henry’s hold and went down to his knees at the edge of the water. After he bathed his face and hands in the pool, he already looked much stronger, younger even. He planted his staff in the sandy mud as if he planned to use it to rise, but Henry once again reached out helping hands.
Allowing Henry to help, Thurlock said, “Thank you, young man. For the hand up, but also for everything you did”—he waved his fingers toward the cave—“in there. I’d sensed a different sort of magic at the core of your shapeshifting ability, but I had no idea it would prove so formidable. I fear we may have been lost in that loathsomeness had you not helped.”
Thurlock paused, his eyebrows scrunched together, and his gaze seemed suddenly to focus intently on something distant. The ridiculous notion crossed Henry’s mind that Thurlock was flipping pages in some huge tome a hundred miles from where they stood. Standing in the pool and letting the water wash over his feet, clearing away the remembrance of things too putrid for even a condor, he suddenly had to fight an urge to laugh. He squelched the humor and was about to give an appropriately serious “You’re welcome,” but Thurlock turned and spoke again, curiosity burning in his eyes.
“Tell, me,” he began. “Did you know? Have you had occasion to use that magic before? While you were in Earth? Was it equally strong before, or stronger?”
“Um….” Henry stalled, surprised at the question, which had never occurred to him. He repeated the syllable a couple more times while splashing his face and combing wet fingers through his hair—finding, as always after a shift—a few of the small, lanceolate feathers from his neck ruff. Feathers always fell after a shift, maybe because he was never in bird form long enough to molt like his condor brethren. This time he found the sight of them reassuring; at least this one thing hadn’t changed. With a calmer mind, Thurlock’s question wasn’t hard to answer.
“Yes,” he finally said. “Not counting when I was learning, I’ve used it once before, to protect myself and a child in a fire. It had the same strength.”
“Ah,” Thurlock said. “That’s interesting. It probably means your magic isn’t rooted in Earth the way much of my magic—like most magic in this world—is rooted in Ethra, and thus is somewhat weakened, or at least harder to access, when I’m away.”
“Right,” Henry said, nodding.
“What do you mean, right?” Thurlock sounded a little annoyed.
I guess he’s not used to people knowing more about some kind of magic than he does. “It’s part of me, not the world. It’s all there, all the time. Born this way.” Henry smiled, thinking of a sign he’d once carried at a marriage equality rally in San Francisco.
“I see.” Thurlock pursed his lips in contemplation. “I suppose that’s why you shift instantaneously as well, then.”
“I don’t think so.”
Ire up again, Thurlock said, “You don’t think so. Okay.” He clapped his hands above the water and it formed a mug, filled itself, boiled the contents and turned them black. Holding the aromatic brew out to Henry, he said, “Explain, then.”
Henry’s eyes grew wide with pleasure, and his taste buds got excited, anticipating that magical brew, coffee. “Thank you!” He took a careful sip, and then, finding the temperature perfect, a deep draught. His eyes closed in caffeinated bliss, and he left them closed while he answered Thurlock’s question. “The ability for my shift, and its nature and strength and magical potential, is inborn. But the manner in which I shift is the same as any shaman. That’s the part I had to learn. I can shift the other way, mind you, but who would want to?”
“Ah,” Thurlock said again—it seemed to be one of his favorite words. “Well, that’s not only interesting, but possibly useful. I’m thinking of Tiro and L’Aria. Remember her? Her father is an otter…. Not a shaman, though. We don’t have shamans here… well, except for you, now.” He paused infinitesimally. “Listen to me. I’m rambling. Han would scold me. Enough of that, we’ve business to deal with. If you’ve finished your coffee, let’s clean up that mess in the cave and take a look at the Portal.”
The next fifteen minutes rushed by for Henry as he tried to keep up with Thurlock’s magical cleaning. A thick oozy residue had coated the walls and pooled in places on the cave floor, the smelly and thoroughly disgusting remains of the horrid magic that had taken up residence there. The wizard spoke strange words and pointed his staff about and ooze flashed with gold light and sizzled to dry, crumbly charcoal bits. Henry’s job was to move the garbage out into the sun, where it became dust and lifted away on a breeze apparently ordered by the wizard for that purpose. Maizie helped, digging out the piles of cinders where the ooze had pooled. Lemon ignored the mess, sat outside the cave entrance, and licked his paws clean.
The cleanup complete, the four travelers shared a moment of satisfaction, then Thurlock tested the Portal. He stepped in and stepped back out a moment later.
“Clean and, I believe, in good working order. Lemon, it might be best if you were to ride with me.”
Lemon looked aggrieved at the idea, but Henry had noticed he tended to look aggrieved an awful lot, and a second later the cat jumped to Thurlock’s shoulder without so much as a meow.
“Claws!” Thurlock said, adding a moment later, “Thank you. Now, for Maizie—”
He stopped speaking because Henry had already crouched down, gave Maizie a good scratch, and then picked her up. She didn’t look comfortable, but she didn’t squirm.
“Remember,” Thurlock instructed, “think Sisterhold. Let’s go.”
Chapter Eight: It’s About Luccan
HAN WOKE very early in the morning, stiff and sore from troubled dreams filled with misty shadows. He thoug
ht of a time in Earth soon after he and Thurlock had located Luccan and brought him to Thurlock’s house in the foothills around Valley City. Isa, servant of the always-hungry god Mahl, had magicked up a great storm of dark power and brought it right to the wizard’s threshold. The darkness in his dreams felt like that, and Han feared it, though not for himself. Like that storm in Earth, it wasn’t about him.
It’s about Luccan.
A knock on his already-open door interrupted his worry.
Tahlina came in, the sour face she always wore when she saw him tempered only slightly by her concern for him as her patient. “Morning,” she growled.
“And a fine one it is,” he said, though he had no window to see the weather, and truly didn’t feel all that fine. He’d said it with an extra-cheerful tone just to goad her.
Childish, Han. His mind spoke those two words so clearly in Thurlock’s voice, for a moment he thought he’d at last made mental contact with the old man.
He shook his head to clear it of confusion, and at the same time adjusted his expression, if not his attitude. Thurlock was right, even though his scolding came from Han’s imagination. There was never any profit in driving up tensions between people or making the wedge between them wider. When Tahlina, with pointedly contained inflection, asked him how he was feeling, he tempered the tone of his response.
“I’m better, I think, Tahlina. I feel stronger.”
“Pain?”
He didn’t think she’d buy it if he said he had none at all, so he went halfway. “Less,” he said. “Duller, I guess.” It was true, but only a little bit. He wanted to avoid being made to sleep again when he knew he was needed.
