Читать книгу Enchanted No More - Robin D. Owens - Страница 11

ARIC STEPPED NEXT TO HER, GRASPED HER hand. Bonds she’d thought were ruptured between them—mental, emotional, magical—snapped back into full being.

Do not anger the king! he warned her telepathically.

Sensations flamed through her with his touch. She couldn’t grasp Aric’s emotions, didn’t dare stop to consider them. He was right, she’d said something stupid, but she couldn’t take it back.

Aric continued his mental scolding. It was the King of Water, the merman, who sent the dwarf to you and Rothly. The and Queen of Earth, the dwarves, approved. The older couples. They did not tell the Cloudsylphs or Emberdrakes.

Great, now she knew more about the Eight’s internal politics than she’d ever wanted, and was tangled in them like in seaweed.

“I will accept an apology for that,” the king said, each word a bullet of ice.

Jenni risked a fleeting glance in his eyes. They remained light, and she thought she’d seen a flash of pain. “Then what I said was not the truth. I apologize.”

“Questioning the actions of the Eight is not wise,” Cloudsylph said with absolutely no emotion in his voice.

Jenni felt all too human, all too vulnerable. A lifting of his finger could remove all the air from the room and she would die…except that Aric’s warm hand was wrapped around hers and he could live without air for a time, and could keep her alive.

She looked out the window at the city, gray-block buildings diminishing in size to the brown-yellow plains. “Yet you seem to think that the Eight need me.”

He tapped his fingertips together. Once. Jenni thought it was a mortal gesture he was trying to mimic. “As you need us to save your brother.”

Again her chest constricted, this time from emotion. She dragged in a breath, wet her lips. “Do I?”

The elf’s brows lifted in the faintest arch. “You may be able to find your brother, but will you be in time to save him? Your father told me once that staying in the interdimension decays the life force. Can you travel through the interdimension to him?”

Jenni figured the king knew the answer was no. Her lips were now cold and she didn’t want to use energy to raise her body temperature.

After a minute-long silence, the king continued. “I didn’t think so. And you can’t tell where he is, geographically?”

“I can’t pinpoint his location.” All she knew was that Rothly was to the northwest.

“We know he is in your ‘gray mist,’ but not where in the real world he stepped into it—geographically. It is my understanding that the closer you are to where he might be in this world, the easier it will be for you to bring him from the interdimension into reality. We sense he is not alone in the interdimension, but shadleeches feast on him, draining his magic.” The king’s fingers curled in a tiny flex. “Can you separate him from his pursuers and pull him out without bringing them, too?”

A shivery breath sifted through her. The elf’s phrasing sounded as if it had come directly from one of the Mistweaver family journals, one she’d thought had been personal. How many journals did they have transcriptions of? How many of the Mistweaver secrets did the Eight know? And how many of the Eight had read them?

“Your father was my friend,” Cloudsylph said.

Jenni didn’t remember that. Didn’t recall Cloudsylph being in their lives. He was of a royal line and the Mistweavers were “mongrels.”

“I can send warriors to protect you and him,” the king said.

“A little late for that.”

For the first time he showed anger. “I was not responsible for the deaths of your family. I fought and suffered. We all suffered.”

“But you survived, became a new royal and part of the Eight. All of the Eight survived and four of the old Eight got to transfer to another, richer dimension. My family paid for your survival and that portal with their lives. You did not save them.”

“You do not know all that occurred. You were not with your family when the Darkfolk attacked. Nor did you save them.”

Jenni went up in flames. Literally.

She let the heat of her fury burn her clothes away, flash her being into fire, then smoke. She shot through the air vent, melting the grate, hurtled out of the building. There was a snow-fat dark cloud in the sky and she grabbed energy from it, drew electricity around her and became a lightning bolt. She concentrated and snapped onto the ground—

—into an icy stairwell. A rectangular concrete hole in the alley six blocks from her home, a basement access to a business.

She collapsed into a heap, so completely drained she wouldn’t be able to move for hours.

She hadn’t been smart.

And she was naked.

And a shadleech separated itself from a brick building and fluttered close.

The gray magical being-scrap bent itself. Jenni’s human sight saw a large crow tilting its head and hopping toward her. Its claws scritched on the stairwell’s concrete. The thing came close enough that she smelled old bubblegum. She shuddered. It would take only a wisp of thought for that dark thing to call others…and the great Dark one, who would feast on her.

If she got a second chance, she would work on anger management. Work on growing beyond grief and guilt.

Another hop and the shadleech’s sharp beak pierced her wrist. Hurt! Like a nail had been driven into her, pinning her. Then she felt an awful tug, as if it drew magic from the very threads of her muscles, the marrow of her bones. She thrashed in pain, but still heard the thing’s clicking noise as if disappointed in the thin trickle of her magic.

She was cold, colder than she’d been in Cloudsylph’s office. Snow and ice coated her back and butt and legs…. Focus! Use the fear, the short adrenaline rush. She reached to the earth below the concrete, to the air, for any magic. Earth energy, air, water from the ice. It began to snow.

Slowly magic coalesced inside her. The shadleech gurgled in pleasure. A race now. Could she use the magic before the shadleech drained it? She sent heat sizzling down her nerves, zapping the thing off, flung herself up to sit, stand, zombie-lurch to the stairs.

There was a door close, but no one in the basement. Another back business door was at the top of the stairs. People behind it.

“You filthy thing!” Hartha’s voice, thick with fury and loathing.

Jenni pitched forward, noodlelike arms barely breaking her fall. She cranked her head sideways, saw the brownie whipping the shadleech with her apron. It cringed, wisped to nothingness under the onslaught of earth magic, died.

“Humph.” Hartha dropped the apron, stamped on the very end of the string and the shadleech disintegrated. Snow fell faster. The browniefem flicked her fingers and glitter imbued the flakes falling on the apron with cleansing magic. Nothing would take harm from the once-cloth or the vanished shadleech.

Hartha turned and Jenni saw the survey of herself—her state of nakedness, skinned hands and knees, more-than-pale magically drained skin.

The brownie tsked, shook her head. “Translocated, did you? Those royal Lightfolk can rile a body fast.” The small woman hopped forward and grabbed Jenni’s thumbs. Then her head tilted back and her nostrils flared as she sniffed the air. Her eyes widened to huge orbs and her ears rolled against her head. “Must go. Something big and bad and Dark coming. We be safe in Mystic Circle.”

The great Dark one. Jenni hunched.

There was a brief moment of gritty blackness, then Jenni was falling down onto her very own bed in her pretty and warm coral-colored room. She flailed and flopped over onto her back. An instant later Hartha had pulled a gold silk comforter over her…covering even her head. Chinook hopped on the bed, found Jenni’s stomach and curled her substantial self on her. The blessing of the cat’s heat and energy made Jenni moan.

She’d nearly died—mostly due to her own temper, but a Dark one was on her already and the mission hadn’t even begun.

“I will bring a strengthening tonic,” Hartha said in a no-nonsense tone.

Jenni huddled, fatalistically knowing that in this moment the power in the household had shifted to Hartha. Jenni was now a person on a deadly quest and Hartha was the stable person.

A busy-mind thought to keep Jenni from actually thinking hard about what she’d done—her out-of-control temper—and the consequences of her actions, both to herself and to Rothly. No one could save him from the interdimension but her. There could even be consequences to Aric.

No, Cloudsylph wouldn’t blame Aric for Jenni’s reaction. But that elven lord would know he’d won the skirmish with Jenni. He’d kept his control and she’d lost hers. He knew her weakness. Her guilt was one hell of a hot button.

Guilt was just one of her weaknesses. Right now she felt like she was a messy heap of nothing but weaknesses. Far too emotional. She grieved for her family and was eaten by guilt. She was angry at the Lightfolk for not protecting her family and for manipulating them in the first place. She was angry at Aric for choosing to save the Eight instead of rushing to her family and saving her brothers…his friends.

Then there was the Dark one. He—it—had killed her family. It had posted a shadleech in her neighborhood to watch for her. Another reason she would need the Lightfolk, and that was as bitter as the rest.

She’d suppressed so much anger and grief and guilt. Now the emotions burst through her as if her skin crackled then iced and split and all she was left with was emotion. Thought fled.

Jenni wept, then she slept.

She awoke in dim light, with the scent of a potion that still steamed, though Hartha must have left it hours ago. A sensing of the neighborhood atmosphere told her the sun had set and it was past rush hour. People were home from their jobs.

Testing her power and energy, she knew even with Hartha’s tea she didn’t have the strength to do anything more than small magics. Not tonight, not until tomorrow. And she’d need to be more skillful—go into the mist several more times—before she could save Rothly. Her stupidity had cost her time.

Curling into a ball, she thought of the shadleech attacks and whispered a prayer that Rothly stayed unconscious until she retrieved him.

She had the night to rest, to prepare for the missions, and couldn’t afford to lie about doing nothing. Struggling to an elbow, she realized Chinook snored gently beside her. Her old cat, a cat she’d gotten as a kitten a year after she’d moved into the house, was now her only family. A cat who was in indifferent health that Jenni would be leaving to brownies who didn’t particularly like cats.

All the gloppy sentimentality in her nature swamped her as she cuddled Chinook. “I love you. I’ll miss you.”

The cat spared a lick on Jenni’s hand then grunted and slipped from Jenni’s loose grasp to walk over to the table and investigate the drink. She made a disgusted noise then thunked to the floor and waddled from the room.

Chinook would be fine when Jenni left. The brownies would take care of her.

Jenni rubbed her face. She needed another shower, this time to rehydrate herself.

Stretching aching kinks from her body, she found a tiny amount of elemental energies had dribbled into her while she had slept. Too many earth particles—the brownies must have been concerned. After she drank Hartha’s potion, she was able to equalize her own small store of energy and discovered she was ravenous. Too much magic spent wastefully.

With a deep breath, she set down the mug, shifted her shoulders. Her house felt odd, the balance off—more air and tree…Aric was here.

She’d have to tell Aric about the Dark one.

As she stood under the shower, she let the atmosphere of her home envelop her. It was odd to feel Aric in this place that she’d made her own. Obviously the brownies had let him in, and since he was her contact with the Eight—and between the choice of the Eight and Aric, she’d choose her ex-lover—it was efficient that he was there.

She dressed. Much as she’d like to avoid the home she’d grown up in, she would have to go to Northumberland to get more tea. She was hoping that Rothly had left notes about the mission. She cringed to think of him trying to practice his craft as a cripple.

Her childhood home would haunt her, she knew that. It would hurt.

Being with Aric there would hurt her more. They’d become lovers there. Every second would remind her of her guilt.

She took a big breath, and checked the tapestry bag with wooden handles. It was full of clothing from natural fibers—hemp, wool, cotton, even silk shirts and her two cashmere sweaters. For an instant she mourned her long red trench. Her own damn fault it was gone.

From her closet shelf, she pulled down a padded cloth backpack.

Nothing that was synthetic could pass through the trees on her journey with Aric. Odd and strange and sad all the little habits that came back from when they were a couple. It would only get worse.

So she just walked down the stairs and didn’t look back.

Aric was seated on the couch in the living room. Chinook was on his lap, purring. “Beautiful cat,” he said, stroking her.

“Yes, she is,” Jenni said. “And very loving.” Her mouth pruned. “Not very discriminating, though.”

Aric’s jaw flexed. He inhaled deeply, blinked. “This place is wonderful, Jenni, very powerful.”

Jenni swallowed as the compliment touched her, narrowed her eyes. “Don’t think of doing any great casting here.”

Aric gave Chinook a last stroke, then carefully placed her on the sofa beside him. “I wouldn’t, and you should know that. Are you going to snipe at me all the time we’re together on this mission?”

Jenni’s nostrils flared as she inhaled. “I don’t know you. You’ve changed. I have changed. And I don’t think that my anger is unreasonable. The Lightfolk sent my crippled brother on a mission he couldn’t hope to fulfill, just to manipulate me to save him, to be in their debt and do the mission myself.” Her voice still had the roughness of fear and sleep and tears.

Aric stared at her. The light was dim, the brownies only had a couple of glow globes going, so Jenni couldn’t make out the expression in his eyes.

Finally, he inclined his head. “It’s the truth that I have changed. As we all have, since that day of the opening of the portal and the Darkfolk attack. Your anger may not be unreasonable, but it is uncontrolled.”

Well, she deserved that. “Yes. Obviously I have issues—psychological problems to work on.”

“I know the word issue, and I’m not the only one. We are trying to integrate back into the mortal world.” He gestured in the direction of downtown. “When magic and technology fuse, humans may be ready to accept us.”

“Much as that appeals, that’s not the point. The point is saving Rothly, then doing this mysterious mission for the Lightfolk,” Jenni said. She squared off against him and silence pulsed.

Hartha walked in with a tray holding two large pottery bowls of steaming stew. She put down a bowl at Jenni’s place at the dining room table. A table now clean of books, papers and laptop, and set with another mat, bread plate and silverware. She put down the second bowl there.

Frowning, Jenni said to Hartha, “You invited Aric into my home when you knew I didn’t want him here.”

“A great Dark one is after you,” Hartha said. “Safety is more important than tender feelings.”

Jenni flinched.

“You knew?” Aric asked.

Jenni didn’t look at him and said, “A recent development.”

He stood tall, his stance set but balanced, and Jenni knew that he now had more than the minimal fighter training for a Lightfolk male. Jenni’s middle brother had surprised them all in apprenticing himself to a great Lightfolk as a soldier. Her throat tightened. Stewart’s body had been covering her mother’s. He’d been the first to defend and the second to die. She’d never had the chance to say goodbye. Like all the others.

She rubbed her eyes.

Aric said, “I won’t eat the offered food and I will leave if you do not wish to discuss this now.” His soft tones backed with steel slid through her. She’d never heard such from him before that morning. She was too right, he’d changed.

She hadn’t changed enough. Today’s events had made that painfully clear in so many ways. “You’re going with me.”

He nodded, no muscle of his face soft. “I remain your liaison.”

She shook her head, gestured to the place setting Hartha had made for him. “Then we should speak of saving Rothly.” Before she sat, Jenni extended her senses for any negative energy in her home or Mystic Circle—and discovered the area was better shielded than ever. The brownies and Aric had helped…and her neighbors were reinforcing it a bit. There also seemed to be some dryad Treefolk magic from the parklike center of the cul-de-sac. “We must go to Northumberland first.”

Aric flinched.

So he didn’t want to relive memories there, either? Too bad for both of them. After a deep breath that brought no relief, Jenni said, “I must see if Rothly left any notes about where he was going, and discover if he made any of the special tea that helps me enter the interdimension.” She let stew broth dribble from her spoon.

Frowning, Aric dipped his bread in the stew and ate, then said, “You didn’t need the tea often…before.”

He meant all of them, the Mistweavers, and when she lived with her family.

“The tea can be helpful even when one steps into the interdimension daily.” She scowled. She was talking as if there was more than one whole elemental balancer in the world. There wasn’t. There was only her. Hunching a shoulder, she shrugged the reality of the thought away, met Aric’s eyes. “I haven’t been traveling to the interdimension much.”

“Then it is all the more impressive that Mystic Circle and Denver are so well balanced with the four elemental magics,” Aric said softly.

A compliment. It made her throat tighten with longing for the past. Which she had to put behind her or doom them all with her uncontrolled emotions.

“Northumberland, eh?” Aric asked.

“Yes.”

He spooned up more stew, ate. When he met her eyes, his own were resigned. A corner of his mouth twisted. “A journey to Northumberland before a quest to save Rothly before a mission to help the whole magical community—”

“The Lightfolk,” Jenni corrected.

Aric’s gaze was stern. “The whole magical community, and benefiting humans, too. A mission you don’t want to know about.”

“After we save Rothly.” She managed a bite or two. Her mouth savored rich beef, but her stomach remained tense.

“About this Dark one—”

Hartha appeared, shook her finger at Aric’s nose, rumbled something in her own language, gestured to Jenni.

Aric nodded. “The browniefem’s right, such talk will definitely upset your digestion.”

Another bite before Jenni replied, “Her name is Hartha.”

“That I know, but she hasn’t given me leave to use it.”

Quiet sifted through the room, and the quality of it—gold from the brownies’ homey glow globes and the soft shades of summer green that Aric brought with him—soothed Jenni. As if this was a standard meal among family instead of two people ready to embark on a dangerous adventure. In that quiet lilted by Chinook’s purr, Jenni ate her entire meal. As soon as she put her spoon down, Hartha whisked the remains away with invisible speed.

Aric stood, turned slowly in the room as if testing the elemental energies, shields and threat. He nodded. “The Dark one can’t come nearer than that business district in the south.”

Jenni shivered at the recollection of what had happened there, expected Hartha to show up and reveal all the circumstances of her save. Leaving Jenni as emotionally naked as she had been physically and energy-wise when Hartha had found her earlier. But Hartha remained in the kitchen, actually making a little noise to show she wouldn’t be interfering. Jenni had to tighten a slack jaw at that. The brownies were loyal.

She stood and angled her body toward Aric’s again, but this time not in a face-off, this time her legs moved her almost in reflex to how she’d stood near him…before…but she didn’t step back.

He did.

That hurt but she mixed the pain of it with the renewed fear of the Dark one when she met Aric’s eyes, and got out the most important aspect of the attack first. “I believe he was the one who killed my family.”