by Karen Chance
And then I passed out.
Chapter Forty-five
Two hours later, I was sitting on top of a platform perched high in a tree, while a tiny Wookie barred the only exit. The platform was connected to a lot of other platforms on a lot of other trees by rope bridges, swinging vines, and weighted boards that went up and down and sometimes around via a complicated system I was too tired to figure out.
Especially since I wasn’t likely to be using it.
The tiny Wookie regarded me steadily out of a wildly bearded face. Ewoks, I thought. The little ones had been called Ewoks. Only this version wasn’t quite that hairy, and there was human intelligence in those dark eyes. And human-ish features under all that hair.
Well, except for the nose, which managed to make even Pritkin’s look petite. And the large, gnarled hands. And the beard, which was black and bushy and big enough to have hidden anything, including more of the weapons he had draped around everywhere. And the teeth, which were more canine pointed than human blunt . . .
On second thought, I didn’t think Lucas would have cast these guys, after all.
I told myself to get a grip already. Only it didn’t work so well since I didn’t know where Pritkin was, and that went double for his father. And I didn’t know where to find another, preferably nonflooded, portal to take us back to earth. And I couldn’t have reached it even if I had known because there was an Ewok in front of the only bridge out of here.
Who was starting to look a little worried, maybe because I was now glaring at him.
I turned around and glared at the scene beneath me, instead.
It was pretty. The sun had set about an hour ago and the stars were out. But they were hard to see because of the thickness of the leafy canopy overhead, and because of all the light scattered around below. There were fires burning among the trees, cheery campfires and twinkling torches and a big bonfire-type thing just below us, where a bunch of tiny, hairy men were trying to wrestle something onto a huge spit.
They hadn’t managed it yet, but other scents were starting to drift through the air, making my stomach growl and my mouth water. But there was nothing to do but sit and salivate. And scratch. Because what had once looked like an unfortunate Muppet had degenerated into a large, hairy wart after being soaked and dried.
But nobody else was wearing shorts, so I’d thought it best to keep it on.
“You know, they gave Leia a new dress,” I told the guard, over my shoulder.
He didn’t feel it necessary to reply, maybe because I didn’t have any PowerBars to share.
God, I thought fervently, PowerBars. Or jerky. Or really anything, anything at all. They never showed this part in the movies, how adventures mean you’re constantly filthy and beat-up and exhausted and starving. No, Leia had been pristine with perfect hair, and her dress—her nice, soft, flattering dress—had been well pressed and she hadn’t looked like she was getting ready to start gnawing the boards off the damn platform!
Of course, Han and Luke had almost been roasted alive in that same scene, so I supposed it could be worse. And they were treating me pretty well if they planned an execution. I’d woken up to see some guy with a bone through his nose and feathers in his hair who looked like he should be shaking a chicken at me, but who instead had been dressing my shoulder with a pot of salve. It smelled like a bear had made love to a skunk, but it had numbed the pain nicely. And now I had a jug of water and a pile of furs on the boards behind me, in case I wanted to sleep, I supposed.
But I didn’t.
I wanted to go. I wanted to find Pritkin. I wanted to get him to Rosier. I wanted to get that damned curse off him and get us back where we belonged and end this. . . .
Only that wasn’t happening, was it? Not with Chewbacca over there, watching my every move. I sat and chewed on my lip.
If I couldn’t get to Rosier, then I had to bring him to me. Somehow. And I had to do it soon, in case the crazy fey time stream sped things up, and the cursed soul showed up, thanks to my colossal screw-up, and—
And get a grip, Cassie!
I could do this. It was just another shift. And, yes, I was in faerie and Rosier was on earth, and my power didn’t work well here, if at all, but we were right by a portal. Before it got dark, I’d been able to see the river glistening through the trees. And the portal was in the river. And Rosier was just on the other side of the portal—at least he’d better be, because if he’d run off somewhere, I’d wring his demonic neck.
Right. So. A shift. Rosier from the other side of the portal to me, and then us to wherever Pritkin was. I didn’t see him, but he couldn’t have gone too far, and they weren’t spitting him down below, so I assumed he was okay. They’d probably separated us so we couldn’t collude or something, and shut up, shut up, shut up, just get his bastard of a father here.
I closed my eyes and reached for my power.
Not surprisingly, it didn’t come. But it wasn’t gone. The power went where I did now; whether I shifted in body or not, whether I shifted in time or not, it was like a great golden shadow, following, shimmering, beckoning . . . just . . . out of . . . reach—
Concentrate!
I took a deep breath, because I was short of it for some reason, and tried again. It felt almost exactly like trying to reach for something high on a shelf, when you’re not quite tall enough. Reaching hard, like I was straining and stretching and my fingertips could touch it but not grab it, like it was right there, right there, right there, but I couldn’t . . . quite . . . Damn it!
I stopped, panting and sweating and swearing under my breath, because I’d almost had it that time. Only for a second, and only like a fleeting touch, but I’d felt it, pure and beautiful and powerful. All the power I could ever need or hope to use like a shimmering sea spreading out all around me . . .
I paused for a minute, because that was exactly what it was. Spread out, like a vast ocean on all sides, crashing and beating and battering at the barrier that separated us. Like it didn’t like this arrangement any more than I did. But I still couldn’t touch it, not directly, not here, any more than I could reach the bottom of the river when on top of Pritkin’s elastic water trick.
In fact, that was really a better analogy, because a shelf doesn’t move. But my power did, ebbing and flowing like water, sometimes closer, sometimes farther away, but always coming back. It was like I was on some kind of metaphysical pool float that I couldn’t get off of, and wanted something over by the deck that I couldn’t reach.
But the water could, if I displaced enough of it. So I started mentally wiggling and squirming and jumping, trying to figure out this new way of controlling power that I couldn’t actually touch. And it worked—sort of.
I was doing something, anyway, something that made the float I wasn’t on rise and fall more and more, until it felt like I was sitting on a boat in the high seas instead of on a platform waiting for the fey to decide to come and cook me.
And, okay, maybe this hadn’t been such a good idea, I thought, playing with that much power, as the waves started striking harder, and things started getting a little out of control, and then more than a little. But I didn’t stop; I wasn’t sure I could stop. I just concentrated on Rosier, got an image in my head of that annoying, smug pain in the ass, and—
And—
And pulled.
I fell backward, although not from the snap of the power. That hit and absorbed, radiating shock waves through me, feeling weird and exhilarating and sort of good and bad all at the same time. Like when the little car rolls to a stop after a roller coaster and you’re left wondering if you really had a good time or not and clutching your chest.
And something else.
I sat up, realizing that I’d fallen backward because something had hit me. Something that I didn’t understand at first, because it wasn’t a pissed-off demon lord. Well, not entirely, I thought, as
I examined a piece of homespun-looking cloth, mud-splattered in places and rumpled, like someone had slept in it.
Because someone had.
It was a cloak, the kind that probably half the people in Britain were wearing right now. But it didn’t belong to any of them. That was Rosier’s little circular pin holding it at the throat, the one concession to vanity he hadn’t been able to deny himself, despite the fact that the pretty pewter item didn’t go with the rough material.
It was Rosier’s cloak. I sat there, clutching it for a moment in slight disbelief, feeling dirty wool under my fingers and a huge grin breaking out over my face because I’d done it! I’d shifted a cloak!
I decided to try for the owner next.
Or I would have, if someone hadn’t gotten nosy.
Literally. I felt a touch on my shoulder, and looked around to find myself nostril to nostril with something the size of an eight-year-old’s foot. And a pair of beady black eyes on the long stretch behind it, regarding me narrowly. “What you do?”
“Nothing.”
The eyes dropped to my prize. “What that?”
“A cloak—what does it look like?”
“Where from? You no have before—”
“I did.”
“Did not.”
“Did, too.”
The eyes dropped from squinting at me to squint at the cloak instead. They didn’t seem to see very well, which wasn’t surprising with all that hair in the way. But then the inhaling started. And I should have known: a nose like that had to be good for something.
A gnarled hand grabbed a fold of wool. “It no smell like you.”
“I—I borrowed it from a friend.”
“Not smell like him, either.”
“Not that friend! Another friend. Well, sort of, and give it back!”
“What you do?” he demanded again. And then said some other stuff that sounded like chicken-tex-dump-stick but probably wasn’t.
Trust me to get the spell version of Babelfish, I thought, and snatched my cloak back.
“I’m not doing anything with it,” I told him, trying for indignation. “What does somebody usually do with a cloak?”
The suspicion did not subside. “Why you need?”
“It’s getting cold! See?” I rubbed my arms.
He didn’t look like he bought that, maybe because it was a balmy evening without even a touch of the chilly nighttime temperatures of Wales. But I guess he decided that maybe humans were strange, cold-blooded creatures and needed more warmth, because he finally let go. I promptly threw on the cloak, which seemed to satisfy him, and he ambled back to his post.
I waited awhile, my back to him, sweating under two layers of wool. And trying to be as boring as possible while doing it. And I guess I hit the mark, because the next time I risked a glance over my shoulder, he was watching something off the other side of the platform, and sniffing the air like he liked the scents that were wafting everywhere, too.
I closed my eyes, drew my cloak around me, and tried again.
It was harder this time, a lot harder, and for a moment I didn’t think it was going to work at all. But then I got something. Something that didn’t want to come through, like it was stuck somehow, or like someone was playing tug-of-war on the other side. But I tugged harder, pulling and heaving and yanking—
And getting slapped in the face with something nasty for my trouble.
It was sweat-smeared and weed-stained, with holes in what I finally identified as the knees, and dirt splattered halfway up the calves. Trousers, I realized, with a sinking feeling. I looked around quickly, and then shoved them underneath my cloak.
Rosier probably hadn’t been anywhere he needed them.
Or the lone surviving shoe, which landed in my lap next. Or the belt that showed up after that. And then something I didn’t immediately recognize, something small and white and limp, and frankly a little bit funky, that—
Ewww! I dropped the pair of tighty-whities I’d just pulled out of the ether and sat there, panting and exhausted, and glaring at a heap of Rosier’s nasty clothes, but no Rosier. And with no strength to try again when I could barely sit up.
I put a hand down to support myself and just breathed for a while.
Wonderful.
Now what?
That had been my one big idea, all alone and stuck up in a tree in faerie, and now I was fresh out. And shifting was my best thing; it was what I’d always been good at—even Agnes had said so. So if I couldn’t do that, what was left?
Except to bundle the nasty stuff up and weight it with the shoe. And drop it off the side of the platform. And try not to hit anybody in the head with it on the way down, although another little guard far below grabbed his spear and leapt around wildly when it landed in a patch of weeds behind him.
But he didn’t find it, and I breathed a sigh of relief, peering into the darkness and wondering what Salvatore would think if he knew where one of his loafers had ended up.
And then the Ewok started making some sort of noise behind me.
I turned to look at him again, but he hadn’t come back over. He also hadn’t moved, like, even to blink. I’d have thought him a hairy statue except for the firelight glinting in those black, black eyes. Or the way the chest under the layers of rags rose and fell, a little more quickly now. Or the way his hand clenched on his spear.
Looked like he wasn’t a fan of human magic.
Like, really not. He didn’t move, but the whites of his eyes were showing. And flickering around as he looked from me to the side of the platform to me again, and yeah. He had no way of knowing what I’d just conjured up, did he? Or what I’d thrown down into the middle of his buddies, and on reflection, maybe I should have just lived with the litter because there was such a thing as being too tidy, and now he was making those sounds again.
And taking a step toward me.
And no, they really weren’t cute enough for Lucas, I thought, scrambling back. They weren’t cute at all, and while I’d assumed there were humanlike features under there, I didn’t really know that, did I? I didn’t really know anything and I wasn’t anywhere even close to home and I was out of juice and, for all I knew, maybe Pritkin and I were on the menu, because it wasn’t like the dark fey at Dante’s had been particularly picky, and—
And then what I could see of the guard’s face changed, and crumpled, like maybe I’d done something to piss him off. Only how could you tell when all you could see was a couple inches of skin? But said skin was looking a little flushed suddenly, like I’d been staring too long, and maybe that was an insult in their culture, because what I could see of the face wasn’t looking happy.
And that was doubly true when I jumped to my feet and took a step backward, hands raised, trying to look as nonthreatening as possible.
Only maybe that didn’t mean the same thing in their culture, either, because he was looking seriously flushed now, something that didn’t change even when I took another step back. Like maybe I was showing weakness and that was pissing him off, only what were my options here? And he was making those sounds again, more like screeches, and they didn’t make sense, maybe because the translation spell was wearing off or maybe because he was cursing at me—who the hell knew?
I stumbled back and he started waving his arms, including the one with the spear in it, and then rushing at me, and I gave a cry and tried to retreat again, only this time, there was nothing under my foot but air.
I screamed and the guard screeched and he lunged and I started to fall and the canopy of trees swirled sickeningly above me—
And then stopped just as abruptly.
But not because he had caught me.
But because someone else had.
“Do you always get in this much trouble?” Pritkin asked from behind me.
I craned my neck around to see
him standing on one of the little swinging platforms, holding a basket in one hand and me in the other.
“Mostly,” I breathed.
“You know, I’ve noticed that about you,” he told me.
And then he kissed me.
Chapter Forty-six
“Guard,” I gasped, jerking back.
“What?”
“There’s a guard!”
Pritkin looked confused. “Yes?”
He glanced over his shoulder, and then so did I. And the guard who had been about to kill me was suddenly looking like the third wheel at a junior high school dance: awkward and uncomfortable and slightly embarrassed. He had been examining the toe of his boot, but he glanced up when Pritkin said something in a language the spell didn’t know. But the guard must have, because he abruptly turned and booked it down the rope bridge at a sprint.
I looked at Pritkin in shock. “What did you say?”
“I relieved him. And I think he was relieved. Poor man; he was afraid you were about to put a hex on him!”
“I don’t do hexes.”
“Well, you did something,” Pritkin said. “That Svarestri warrior didn’t collapse from a heart attack.”
“Which one?” I asked miserably, and sat back down. And put my head in my hands, because I couldn’t avoid the elephant in the room forever, could I?
Not when I’d just trashed the hell out of the time line.
I sat there for a moment, listening to him spread out a picnic I no longer wanted, the sinking feeling in my stomach filling it instead of food. I’d been mad at Rosier just for bringing a gun along he knew we couldn’t use, and what had I done? I knew better. I knew that anything I did this far back might have disastrous consequences, that it could mess up time in a way I couldn’t fix, that I was supposed to be guarding the time line, not trashing it myself!
If I had trashed it.
But it sure as hell seemed like I had. We’d killed another fey—that much I was certain about. And maybe more than one, because despite their scary resiliency, that had been a damned long drop onto damned hard rocks, and sure, maybe I’d gotten lucky and maybe some of them had made it, but I couldn’t believe that all of them had.
