by Eric Asher
“You are a fool.”
I rounded on the line of trees behind me. High in the branches of one of the evergreens was a face I hadn’t expected to see here. The face of the fairy called Drake.
I wrapped my fingers around the focus on my belt and freed it. “You come to kill me?”
“What kind of idiot question is that?” Drake said. “My place has been in the shadows for far too long. I tire of my king’s games. But you intrigue me.”
I frowned at the fairy. Something didn’t look right. The branch he was on bobbed up and down, not moving with the wind and the other limbs around him.
“Did you bring a Green Man?” I asked. “That your play? Have me get close enough to get impaled?”
Drake blew a laugh out through his nose. “You are a paranoid one.” He slapped his perch, and I froze. It unwound from the tree, lowering itself into the field not thirty feet away. I’d only seen one before, one that had lived under my bed, a flash of silver teeth in the skull of a great beast.
“Shit.”
“That was a good fight,” Drake said. “You took down the Green Men far more efficiently than I’ve seen anyone do it before. I’d like to spar one day.”
“Like today? While you’re on your dragon? And I’m … screwed?”
Drake shook his head slowly, his eyes never leaving me, as if every moment he was anticipating an attack. For all his bluster, he was cautious. And he knew I posed a threat. That made me feel marginally better, considering the dragon seemed to be ignoring me completely. It nosed the earth beneath its front claws before releasing a mighty sigh and flopping to the field. Drake wobbled on the dragon’s shoulder, but his gaze didn’t waver.
“I guess one of us is bored,” I said.
“As I said,” Drake said. “Had I wished you dead, you would be so. I’ve come to give you a warning.”
“From Nudd?” I asked.
“No,” Drake said. “From me. I have no loyalty to either side of this conflict.”
“Okay? And what does that have to do with me?”
“You’ve stepped into a trap. The battle over the hill is between the same factions. When you enter the fray, they will turn on you. Both sides.”
I blinked at Drake.
“Nudd was right about you,” he said. “You didn’t receive a message from your mistress. That was masked by the Fae.”
“But if my message wasn’t real? Then anyone who uses those discs …”
Drake nodded. “Those communiques are far less secure than you imagine.”
I was about to charge over that hill, smashing into whatever conflict awaited me. But was Drake being honest? Was it just an ambush playing out? Now that I thought about it, Nixie hadn’t shown her face. She almost always showed herself, even if it was just in the ripples of the water. I had no doubt the Fae could imitate her voice, but I didn’t know the limitations of those actual projections. I cursed.
“Travel away from the battle,” Drake said. “Your friends are less than a mile away. Do not use the hand of Gaia. The king will know, and a trap of a different sort will be sprung.”
“That’s how I came here,” I said.
Drake gave a quick shake of his head. “The trap will only activate if you attempt to warp away. Your arrival was planned.”
“Are you the same Drake that the fairies talk about? You served the Mad King?”
Drake placed a hand on his chest, covering the engraved symbols on his armor. “I still do.”
I muttered to myself under my breath and pulled at a side pouch on my backpack. I slid out a bag of Frank’s beef jerky and tore it open.
“What are you doing?” Drake asked.
“Making friends.” I pulled out the largest piece of jerky I could find and tossed it underhand toward the dragon. The dragon’s head snapped up so fast that he threw Drake off his shoulder, and the fairy yelped as he tumbled down the scaly back. The dragon, on the other hand, snapped the beef jerky out of the air with one quick strike. It made two exaggerated chews and then swallowed. Then it trundled forward, sniffing the air, until it was only about six inches away from me.
“Are you mad?” Drake shouted. “That is a dragon.”
I held a handful of jerky out and let the dragon lick it away. It held its head upside down, and I poured the rest of the bag in. It chewed slowly, before finally returning to Drake, who wore an expression of absolute disbelief.
“If I don’t find my friends,” I said. “I’m going to train your dragon to chew your face off.”
Drake climbed back up on his dragon’s back and patted the beast’s neck. “Interesting.” The fairy gave me one nod, and then the dragon launched into the air.
I waited until they were out of sight before I blew out a shaky breath. To say the beef jerky had been a gamble would probably be the understatement of the year. That dragon could just as easily have bitten my head off, and if he was anywhere near as powerful as Jasper, I wouldn’t have had very long to worry about it.
I couldn’t be sure what Drake’s intentions were, but the fact he didn’t attack helped me entertain the idea that all was not as it seemed. The silhouette of the dragon vanished fully behind the tree line before I turned my back on the fairy and his mount.
I pulled the cold gray flesh of Gaia’s hand out of my pocket and studied it. If Drake was right, I wouldn’t be able to use the hand to escape the field. But did I truly believe that? Did I trust the word of a Fae who had so recently killed some of my allies? Killed Casper’s men?
I took a deep breath and tucked Gaia’s hand into my backpack. Running headlong into Nudd’s trap might give me all the evidence I needed, but it also might get me killed a lot faster. The question was, did Drake set his own trap? I glanced behind me one more time before striking out through the long grass and heading into the trees.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
The deeper into the woods I traveled, the louder the whispers grew. The shadows of the canopy wrapped around me while the voices rose ever higher. It was disorienting, and I froze in place more than once to evaluate their source. With enough effort, and help from Zola’s mantra, I could quiet all of them.
It didn’t take long to realize those voices were all in my head. As soon as I stopped trying to tamp them down inside my mind, they rose to the surface over and over, and in more numbers than I could comprehend. If this was Drake’s plan, to lure me closer into an ocean of lost souls, I might be in deep shit.
I didn’t have a chance of traversing the forest floor quietly. Old groundcover, and newly fallen limbs, caused branches to snap under every footfall. Leaves crunched, and animals scurried away.
The forest grew more dense, and the vines of invasive plant species hung down around me like the willow whips of the Green Men.
I clenched my teeth and forged ahead. Ten minutes, twenty more. It was slow going in the denser woods, but I found it less and less likely that I would be seeing my friends on the other side of the shadows. When the forest grew dim enough, and my anxiety grew high enough, I contemplated summoning a ball of light. But if my clumsy path through the woods hadn’t given me away, a floating ball of light sure as hell would.
The voices rose again. This time they shouted warnings, urging me to turn back, to run from that place as fast as I dared.
And as that became overwhelming, the forest finally gave way. I ducked beneath a log that had fallen at a forty-five-degree angle and lay propped on the bough of an ancient oak. When I stepped from the shadows and entered the field that waited beyond the woods, the darkness around me fractured. The voices gave way to silence, and I began to understand what was happening.
The flickers of power, and the sudden rise of the voices, hadn’t been a natural occurrence. I’d crossed a line somewhere. A line of wards meant to misdirect or cause such a horrible sense of unease, they would send almost anyone fleeing from this place.
A hill rose in front of me, and I started up it. It wasn’t steep, but it was enough that the trees beyond the
hill were nothing but the peaks of evergreens on the distant slope of an old mountain. I turned away from that blue haze, and glanced back at the forest I’d come through. It looked normal, as welcoming as any I’d ever set foot in. But I shivered at the memory of those voices, and the dread that rose in my bones.
I drew the focus from my belt and held it at the ready. A dozen more steps took me to the crest of the hill, and I had my answer. I looked down into the valley of a river, at an encampment of chaos. But it was not the chaos of a pitched battle, this was an active camp. They were preparing, they were making ready for war. Something clanged in the distance, and it grew until it sounded as though a church bell had been rung inside my head. And by the time it quieted, it sounded again.
“Mike,” I whispered. I’d only heard that sound coming from the Smith’s Hammer. I’d never heard its equal. If this camp was a façade, someone had gone to insane lengths to create it.
I hadn’t made it a quarter of the way down the steep slope before the soldiers below noticed me. Owl knights sounded the alarm. Two massive barn owls hooted at an unnatural volume, until it could have substituted for a tornado siren.
One of the owl knights shouted. “Take aim!”
A man grabbed the fairy’s shoulder, spinning him around so the owl knight was face-to-face with the grizzled flesh and pale white beard of Leviticus Aureus.
“You try to cut that man down,” the Old Man said, “and you’ll be in a world of pain. And not for me, but for Nixie.”
He looked up at me as the wide-eyed owl knight backed away from him. “What the hell are you doing here? You’re supposed to be defending Saint Charles.”
“Saint Charles was already attacked,” I said. “If Graybeard hadn’t been there, we would’ve been in trouble.”
The Old Man cursed and spat. “Come on. You don’t need to tell the story twice, I’ll gather the others.”
He led me through the camp of Fae. Towering Green Men wove their way between beautiful silken tents, while the knights marched and drilled, and voices shouted from inside those gilded tents. The Smith’s Hammer rang out again, louder, and more deafening than ever.
Mike stood silhouetted by the forge as a burst of sparks jumped off his anvil. The Old Man ducked inside one of the larger tents and said, “We have a visitor.”
“Damian?” Nixie asked, surprise plain on her face. “What are you doing here?”
“I thought I was coming to your rescue.”
Nixie stood up, revealing the gilded chair that should have been sitting in the corner. It was golden and studded with aquamarines, and I wondered why in the hell the Fae would’ve brought such a thing into the field.
“So you didn’t get my message?”
“Message?” she asked, pulling a blue obsidian disc from a leather pouch at her waist. “No.”
“Gaia brought me here. But not before I was intercepted by Drake.”
Nixie lowered herself slowly back onto the throne. She was silent for a moment, and she looked to someone in the corner.
It was only then that I took stock of who was in the tent with us. Hess and Utukku stood close to Morrigan. A golden werewolf crouched beside them, a friendly smile on his face, but I knew what a deadly fighter Wahya was. He’d stood with us at Gettysburg, and mourned the loss of the Ghost Pack. More undines filled the tent, and in the far corner sat Euphemia. She nodded to me when I met her gaze, and I returned the gesture.
I told them the story of my encounter with Drake, and what he had said about still serving the Mad King. They seemed to take it all in stride, something which I hadn’t been very good at doing. I told them about the false battle supposedly raging, staged by Nudd.
This drew expressions of surprise and shock from everyone but Morrigan.
“It’s a tactic he has used before,” she said.
“That’s what Drake said.”
I told them of the woods, and the dread.
“That was Ward,” the Old Man said. “Nixie had him lay down a barrier. The fact that Nudd knew we were here is disturbing.”
“Why?” I asked.
Nixie drummed her fingers on the chair’s armrest. “Because this is our forward operating base for the Obsidian Inn.” She sagged back into the chair, propping her chin up on the edge of her hand. “We need to get eyes on that battle. I don’t trust anything Drake says, but I don’t trust Nudd, either.”
“You can trust in who they are,” Morrigan said. “Drake is loyal to the throne. Nudd will always move to return the Fae to power. I will go.”
Morrigan said no more. She strode out of the tent with a purpose. One moment she was an old crone, and the next an enormous raven that launched into the skies.
“What about Rivercene?” I asked. “Are they okay?”
Nixie slid the obsidian disc into a bubbling pool of water beside the throne. “I’ve had no word.” She closed her eyes and the disc pulsed. No one answered.
“It is not beyond Nudd’s power to block those old discs,” Wahya said. “That was established long ago.”
“I know,” Nixie said. “It’s why the discs were abandoned to begin with.”
The crashing of the bells stopped, and the silence was almost deafening as whatever work Mike had been doing in the forge faded. A moment later, the Smith entered our tent, glancing between me and Nixie.
“What are you doing here?” Mike asked.
“Long story.”
He nodded to me before turning back to Nixie. “It is done. It will not kill, but any water witch it falls upon will be imprisoned.”
A cloaked man slid through the entrance to the tent behind Mike. The sleeve of his cloak raised slightly, revealing the intricate tattoos of the man called Ward. He pulled back his hood, and his eyebrows flashed up when he saw me. “What—”
“Long story,” Mike said.
Ward looked up at the demon and then turned to Nixie. “Mike’s right.” He held up a small gray disc. It could have been mistaken for a muddy disc. But it was etched with a hundred different wards. Two rings skirted the edge of the gray disc, encasing a series of runes not unlike those on the Key of the Dead.
“Have you tested it?” Nixie asked.
Ward shook his head. “I wouldn’t do that to your people.”
“Then do it to me,” Nixie said, stepping forward.
“I don’t think that’s a good idea,” Ward said. “This has the power to inflict intense pain.”
“That’s what you designed it for,” Nixie said. “We need to be sure it works. Try it on me, and remove it quickly.”
I stepped forward to protest, but Nixie stopped me with a glance. I didn’t miss the tiny shake of her head, and I realized that there must be more here than I understood.
Ward held out the disc. Nixie turned her back and pulled her hair to the side.
“You sure about this?” Ward asked.
“Do it,” Nixie said.
Ward touched the symbol etched in the center of the disc and then slapped it onto Nixie’s armored back. An explosion of electric blue power shot out and wrapped around her in eight different angles, forming a sphere of power before the beam-like energy snapped closed around her. She stiffened, tried to take a step forward, and fell to the ground. The energy shifted to yellow and red and back to blue. She tried to stand, but all she could do was grunt, until a moment later she shouted against gritted teeth.
“Take it off,” I hissed. “Now.”
Ward reached down and lifted the disc away from Nixie as if it weighed nothing, as if those terrible beams of energy didn’t affect him in the slightest. Nixie’s body sagged with relief as the energy snapped back into the disc.
She took deep gasping breaths as she sat up. “I have not felt the power of a fire demon in a very long time. Well done. It is quite effective. It was a struggle to move at all, and any movement came with a heavy price.”
“I’m glad to hear it,” Ward said. “But I wish you wouldn’t have tested it on yourself.”
N
ixie brushed a small tangle of grass off the vambrace on her left arm. “To not know what would happen until we were in the midst of the battle would seem unwise.”
Ward nodded. “As you say.”
Mike harrumphed. “I would still think there is a more subtle way to prove you trust your subjects.” Mike’s words put the entire exchange between Ward and Nixie in another light. She’d allowed herself to be incapacitated around armed Fae. Had she truly done it just to show her trust in them? Or had she done it to draw them out, and expose themselves while so many of our other allies stood beside her? Either way, I sided with Mike. It seemed like there were far less dangerous ways to accomplish that task.
“You planning on running me through with that?” Ward asked. He glanced down at my hand and then back up to my eyes.
I looked down and found a soulsword lit in my right hand. I frowned, and let my death grip on the hilt relax until the blade eventually receded and I could safely stash the focus in my belt once more. “Sorry. Habit.”
Nixie frowned at me. “We generally don’t encourage the killing of our allies.” She turned to Ward before I could respond. “How many have you made?”
Ward handed it to her, careful not to activate the symbol at its center. “A dozen so far. I could likely have a dozen more by morning if I work through the night.”
“If you can manage,” Nixie said.
Ward waited, as if he would not move until she gave the word.
“You may return to the forge. Thank you both.”
Mike gave her a nod before clapping me on the back and exiting the tent.
“Nice chair,” I said.
Nixie glanced back at the ostentatious seat. “It’s an old throne. And it has a great deal of meaning.”
I bit my tongue, remembering where we were and who we were surrounded by. I wanted to ask her, and I hoped she’d say more.
“It’s killing you, isn’t it?” she asked. “Not opening your mouth?”
“Maybe?” I said. “Maybe just a tiny bit.”
