Gatewright (10 page)

The
next morning Hazel informed us of a slight change of plans, “based on the
weather forecast and the royal family’s preferences”.  Since we’d turned
in early, she said, it only made sense that we take the opportunity to travel
to the Citadel of Fountains now.  Could Riven’s cousin be a member of the
royal family?
 I wasn’t sure how the word “cousin”
translated.  It could have been his 3
^rd
cousin 2 times removed,
for all I knew.  In either case, it explained why Riven was the decision
maker of the group.  Fey loved to emphasize bloodlines.

We
packed up all of our luggage and hauled our belongings back through the
beautiful halls of the Citadel.  Kim was animated, and I noticed his
growing familiarity with Neville… perhaps becoming more than just friends. I
grinned.  Meanwhile, Peter’s attempt to power through nicotine withdrawal
with his positive personality had failed.  He sullenly followed us, shoulders
slumped.

Riven
impatiently waited for us in the courtyard with our transportation.  Two
teams of four solidly-built horses with thick coats stood ready and hitched to
the carriages.  Neville, Kim, Isabel, and Hazel chose the first carriage
while the rest of us shuffled around indecisively.  An
elohi
fey
with almost human features checked over the horses, conferring with Riven, then
introduced himself as Meadow, omitting any clan name.  He kindly helped us
secure our belongings on top of our respective carriages with thick hemp
ropes.  His green eyes lingered on Isabel, and but Hazel made a slight
noise at him and shook her head.

I
hoped I wouldn’t need anything from my bags as we got everything set.  I’d
stuffed my pockets full of trail mix, and filled my water bottle. 
Portions were smaller here than in America, and I could see why so many fey
lost their minds when they were introduced to fast food. We hadn’t had enough
time to make coffee, hustled along as we’d been this morning.  A headache
already haunted my temples.

Meadow
drove the first carriage, and Riven took the reins of the second.  As the
horses took off at an easy trot, Peter stretched out across his seat, muttering
about naps and being carsick.  Erikah and I watched Emor roll by in a
comfortable silence, absorbing the sights and sounds of the city.  The
stone mansions of Emor’s rich denizens slowly transitioned to the brick, wood,
and adobe homes of the common folk.  Few fey were up and about at this
hour, most likely still sleeping off the festivities.  That was something
fey and humans certainly shared in common.  Did the fey have any handy
hangover cures?  I think it would be a fair trade if we offered them
Advil.

The
shops and homes became increasingly scattered, until the forest swallowed the road
whole.  I continued to watch out the window, while Erikah dug out a book
written in Anowir she must have purchased yesterday.  I didn’t ask what it
was… I couldn’t actually read any Anowir, and I wasn’t ready to let that become
public knowledge.  Reading and writing in Anowir was still a very uncommon
skill, and one that hadn’t been taught at any of the universities I’d
attended.  The complexity of their characters generally meant that even
the Exiles were rusty, at best.  I felt slightly vindicated when it took
Erikah a full ten minutes to turn the page.

Eventually,
I grew bored of the trees, and buried my nose in
American Gods. 
I
would probably finish it by the time we arrived, at this rate.  After
about an hour and a half since we left Emor, by my watch, I stuck my head out
of the carriage window and shouted up to Riven.  “How long is this trip,
anyways?”

“Seven
hours, if the weather does not turn foul.”

Damn.
American Gods
would definitely not last.

We
stopped a little while later to give the horses some rest, but from what I
could tell, they were barely winded from hours of trotting.  While humans
had been busy with the combustion engine and five-star safety ratings, the fey
had been figuring out how to magically enhance equine bloodlines.  It
helped that the road was straight, with a slight incline at most. 
Elohi
had simply carved out a flat path for miles on end.  I wonder if that took
more effort than the human approach.

The
beauty of the forest was shifting from fall’s brilliant colors of orange and
red to the austere peace of winter.   I felt I was going back in
time, when a squirrel could have gone from the Atlantic to the Mississippi
simply by jumping from tree to tree.  I mused about getting a hang-glider
into the fey world.  What did the land look like from above?  And the
animals… we’d need to get a proper DNA analysis on shared species to determine
the differences, and see what effect magic had on their evolution.  Could
we implant mastodon embryos in elephants and bring them back to life on Earth?

Another
two hours passed before we stopped again at a small, one-room wooden cabin on
the side of the road to give us all an opportunity to relieve ourselves, eat,
and refill our water bottles.  The horses, let loose from their harnesses,
drank greedily from a small stream that ran alongside the road.

Hazel
produced a small buffet of bread, cheese, and fruit, as seemed to be the norm
for most informal meals with the fey.  I bet the “Fey 15” would be one of
my souvenirs.  Their cheese was
delicious.

As
I munched on a piece that reminded me vaguely of gouda, I closed my eyes and
listened.  My ears almost rang with the silence.  No cars, no
industry, nothing that clouded the music of the forest.  I recognized bird
calls: sparrows, juncos, mourning doves, and crows. Isabel’s laughter pealed
through the quiet, and I smiled. 
What an incredible experience
.

I
caught a hint of distant clattering.  Horses?  My heart skipped a
beat, and I looked for the nearest fey.   Riven was patiently
listening to Neville chatter amiably, but I rudely interrupted by grabbing his
arm.  “Listen!”  I commanded.

He
stiffened at my touch, but he cocked his head and closed his eyes.  Then
he was in motion, rising from the earthenwork bench to command the
others.  “Hazel, Meadow, hitch the horses, now.  Everyone else, we
need to leave.  Gather your things and remain in the carriages.”

Kim
and Erikah protested, demanding to know what was going on, but Riven ignored
them, striding off down the road toward the noise.  Hazel half-pushed,
half-coerced them to the carriages.  Our horses threw their heads in
agitation and refused to settle into their harnesses.  I stayed back, not
intending to get into the second carriage until they’d finished hitching the
horses.  The hoofbeats continued to grow louder.  My amulet had
warmed; I could feel it through my shirt.  The hair on my arms rose.

Five
riders came into view.  They wore the standard tunic and baggy breeches of
most fey
, and I didn’t see any weapons. 
Bizarrely, their hair was cut short, from shoulder-length to almost a pixie
cut.  I’d
never
seen that before on a fey.

“Everyone
stay calm,” Hazel instructed as Meadow finished getting one carriage ready to
go.

At
about 200 feet, the riders pulled up, horses wheezing.  Riven stood between
us and the newcomers, while Hazel helped Meadow with the second carriage.

“What’s
your business?”  Riven bellowed down the road.  His hands glowed
faintly as he held them at his sides.

A
woman dismounted, expressionless, and began walking casually toward Riven. Her
hair was glossy black, and reminded me vaguely of Jack’s. 
Nagali?

“I
warn you, if you mean these humans harm, I am of Clan Kusay and will not take
mercy on you.  I have sworn an oath to protect them.”  I was suddenly
glad I’d made him swear.  I don’t know what he would have done otherwise.

She
cocked her head, as if listening for something.  For a tense moment, all
was still.  Out of the corner of my eye, I saw the other fey working
furiously to hitch the last, rebellious horse.

Riven’s
chuckles broke the silence.  “You’re not going to master me,
nagali.
 
I will not hesitate to shed your blood.” 

Then,
as one, the strange fey struck in uncanny coordination.  The earth heaved,
and Riven’s tunic flapped madly in a powerful gust.  Two mages,
atsili,
launched fireballs in unison.  Riven threw his hands in front of him, and
one fireball sizzling out halfway to the carriages, the other diverted,
exploding into the brush on the other side of the road.  “Hazel, GO!” he
bellowed.

I
should be getting into the carriage
.  The amulet flared
hot before I could move, a wave of fear paralyzing me.  I watched in awe
as Riven carefully danced around quicksand and hurricane-force winds, while
still managing to keep the
atsili
’s fire
at bay.  The horse
screamed at the flames, and Hazel and Meadow desperately tried to finish
hitching it.

The
calm of the storm allowed Riven to ground himself, and then the earth
roared.  A fountain of dirt and rock violently erupted from the road,
spraying all of us with flying debris and blasting us with sand.  Riven
ducked, but it gave the
atsili
the chance they needed. Riven’s desperate
gesture eliminated one of the fireballs, but the other bypassed his invisible
defenses, flying another twenty feet in a flaming arc.  The flames impacted
on the side of a carriage with a ground-shaking roar. Within the bright flash,
I saw the startled expressions of Peter and Erikah still clawing for the door.
 Confusion and desperation twisted their faces before the flames took
them, and they disappeared within the inferno. The force of the explosion
rocked me on my feet and made my ears ring.  It wasn’t supposed to be like
this; we were protected. We were supposed to be safe. I fumbled desperately for
my knife, snapped it open and gripped it in my right hand.  I couldn’t
take my eyes off the burning remains of the carriage.  They were
dead.  My friends were dead.  I could make out their unmoving corpses
burning through the smoke.

Hazel
froze in fear and indecision, then furiously bellowed a war cry I would never
had thought her capable of. Her normally cheerful demeanor disappeared in an
instant to become an avatar of focused violence, using all the force of her
will to launch a tornado the size of a building towards our attackers. Rocks,
tree limbs, and the flaming debris of the carriage were pulled into the vortex,
engulfing the attackers in a chaotic maelstrom.  Their formation broke, as
each became overwhelmed with simply protecting themselves. A branch smacked one
of our foes right between the eyes and he went down like a sack of potatoes.

Riven
took advantage of the chaos and launched his own flaming offensive as the
tornado dissipated, sending an inferno into the middle of their group.  A
moment of panicked shrieks, and then the flames went out with a puff of
smoke.  Riven, forced to defend again, rolled easily when an
elohi
jerked the ground from under him.  I heard the crack of reins as Meadow
managed to get the other carriage moving. He urged the horses into a full
gallop, straining the harness in his absolute need for speed. As the carriage
took off, one of the assassins yelled something incomprehensible, and another
with brown hair dashed towards me.  I clutched my knife in panic,
unprepared for a direct fight. What would I do against someone who could use
the earth against me? He stopped suddenly and planted his feet, straining
against unseen forces as he made a lifting motion with his hands, and the
escaping carriage with the rest of my companions crashed into a sudden wall,
wood splintering.  It grew, rising like a wave, then violently smashed
down on the remains of the carriage.  The fey wasn’t focused on me at all;
it was as if he didn’t consider me even worth noticing. 

Hell,
I wasn’t going down.  Not like this, not when I’d been the one giving
Riven shit that they couldn’t fight.  Wind buffeting me, I ran directly at
the
elohi
who had murdered my friends, ignoring the chaos.   A
few strides covered the five feet between us, and his eyes widened in
surprise.  He obviously hadn’t expected me to attack.  I ploughed
into him, knife first, knocking him over onto his back.  I was only
vaguely aware of screaming. Rage and fear poured out of me in a high pitched
cry that tore at my throat. Terrified he was still alive, I stabbed him again,
then again, as the roar of the flaming carriage burned all other thoughts from
my mind.  His eyes were still wide with fear and surprise when the life
escaped them.  My hands dripped with his blue blood, splotches and streaks
all over my clothes.

Riven
and Hazel squared off evenly with the two remaining fey.
Atsili
fought
atsili
as each tried to overcome the mastery of the other. Riven matched each attack
with a counter, driving forward with each step. His breathing matched with his
footfalls, each movement deliberate and flowing. The remaining atsili began to
panic, his clothes singeing in multiple places as he began to lose his focus.

The
nagali
stepped back and low, taking advantage of the protection of the
fire mage. Her eyes lost focus once more, and Hazel ceased her movement. Riven
was ripped from his meditative focus by the small smirk of the
nagali
,
whipping his head around to see Hazel go blank a moment too late. Glassy eyes
turned toward Riven without recognition, and a sudden gust of wind knocked
Riven flat on his back.  The enemy
atsili
hastily spread flames
from both hands, a clumsy attack.  I heard Hazel scream as the flames hit
her, smashing her into the remains of the second carriage.  Riven, already
back on his feet, and two other mages were left, the rest bleeding or burning
on the earthen road. One surviving mage was
atsili
, while the other, the
nagali,
stayed back.