Mistweavers 01 - Enchanted No More (11 page)

The Water King rose and the unheard pressure of a thundering tsunami rolled through the room. “You
will—
”

“No!” Jenni shouted. “The bargain with your rep—” she glanced at Aric “—was Rothly’s rescue first. Do you hold to your honor this time?”

THE EARTH KING’S WHISPER WAS THE ROUGH
slide of gravel at the start of an avalanche. “Despite what you might think took place fifteen years ago, we held to our honor then. Your family agreed to move the portal opening up due to the sighting of Darkfolk. We compressed our dancing ritual. All was as agreed.”

Earth and water thunder filled the room. Jenni’s body trembled. Her mind and emotions held firm.

The Earth Queen rose and angled her body to face Jenni. She was the shortest person there, more squat than her mate—the oldest royal, if not the most powerful. “The original estimate for the rising of the second bubble was next week. Thus the reason we sent Aric to you this week. We all agreed on that.” She spoke to Jenni, didn’t look at anyone else. “My draft of our dancing ritual is not complete. I will finish it by sunset and give it to the rest of you for input.
We
will be prepared tomorrow morning with a complete dancing ritual for the bubble event.” She paused, tilted her head as if listening, then continued, eyes as piercing as a diamond drill. “We have been informed mentally that Rothly Mistweaver Emberdrake has been located. You, Jindesfarne Mistweaver and Aric Paramon, have two hours to rescue the new Fire Prince. Do so.” She walked to the door and it split into halves and opened before her.

Aric’s fingers clasped Jenni’s and he dragged her along, slipping through the doors before they closed. “Change into something for a Yellowstone winter, fast.”

Jenni ran to the dorm, heart pounding in her ears. Had she mastered enough technique to pull Rothly from the interdimension? Maybe, maybe, maybe. The well of her magic had filled in the presence of the royals. She’d followed the rituals twice in the last twenty-four hours, had more tea. She didn’t think she could use Aric as an anchor, though, didn’t know him well enough.

Could she rescue Rothly? Ready or not, she had to try.

The only women in the dormitory were sleeping. In five minutes she’d flung off her clothes and gulped down another vial of the family brew. She could squeeze out one more little session. Three times would be good—three times a charm.

She took a small step into the interdimension to check on Rothly, cast all her senses toward her brother. When her mind formed an image of him, she gasped. He didn’t look human.

Instead he appeared like a gray lump with bulges of fluttering leeches coating him. Dire straits.

Rothly!
she called.

She thought the lump twitched.

Rothly, I’m coming! Hold on. I’ll be there!

She heard the faintest mind whisper.
Late as ever.

His sneer arrowed through her and she flinched, but she wouldn’t be pleasant if she were being drained of magic and life.

Better late than never,
she returned.
And I’ll save your ornery hide this time!

She thought she heard the tiniest mental snort, saw a brightening of his aura, and was encouraged. Maybe sheer bloody-minded stubbornness would keep him going. He’d sparked with fire and the shadleeches reeled away. Jenni tried to pull more fire to him, send him some love and energy, but didn’t know if that worked. She’d be there soon.

She stepped from the mist and shook herself, glanced around. If any of the women had awakened, they didn’t show it.

She hesitated, then drank another potion vial, worrying about the last thing she’d seen in the interdimension—a strange pulsating of the mist. She didn’t think that they had two days to the next bubble event. And Rothly seemed to be right on top of it.

Then she gathered as much magic as she could to seep into her pores, top her energies off after that quick session. She drew from the amount the Eight had generated, from the palace itself, even stray bits floating around the dorm.

A faint knock came and she hurried, moving quickly in jeans and boots, and opened the door to see Aric and a dwarfem.

“I am here to lead you to where we believe Rothly Mistweaver to be,” the dwarfem said. She wore a shearling coat and hat.

“Trackers followed the shadleeches and found traces of where he might have entered the interdimension,” Aric said.

“Shadleeches!” The dwarfem hissed nearly as well as a djinn or merfolk. A shudder rippled through her like an earthquake.

Jenni went light-headed with relief, clutched Aric’s solid arm. “Then I should be able to go directly to him and get him out.” She wouldn’t have to attempt to travel in the gray mist and get lost forever. “I’d hate to step from the interdimension into a geyser.”

Aric set the arm she was clutching around her waist, surprising Jenni. She looked at him with wide eyes, decided to speak to him mentally.
Your lady will not be pleased if she sees us like this.

He hesitated, then replied to her telepathically and with finality.
I will not speak of Synicess to you. Just as I did not speak of you to her.

Jenni caught the undertone, the wisp of information that the full-blooded djinn princess had pressed him, and not only about his previous relationship with Jenni, but also about Jenni’s abilities. The hair rose on the back of her neck.
Fine,
she said, trying to make the word casual. Since he relaxed a little, she thought he’d succeeded.

As they walked, the tunnel dimmed and the ground smelled of sulphur strongly enough for her to set what fire magic she could into her lungs to protect them. She was sure the heat and acid air would get worse. The magic was nearly half earth and half fire with only a trace of air and water—and more fire lay ahead.

Aric slogged on, face grim. Treemen didn’t like fire. Jenni wondered that he was courting a djinn princess. Jenni’d thought she’d fascinated Aric with her own fiery nature, but that would be nothing compared to a full-blooded royal djinnfem. Weren’t any elffems or merfems available for him? Or was his ambition such that he wanted the highest ranked woman?

Shaking her head, Jenni slipped her arm in his, found that he was using much of his elven air nature to purify his breath. She added a slight atmosphere around them, like a filter, burning some of the bad gasses before they reached them. He nodded thanks.

They walked through heated rock, and the cashmere Jenni was wearing was soaked with sweat as the temperature became hotter than her own magic could disperse. She withdrew her arm from Aric’s and panted with each step, let him keep to the middle of the wide tunnel alone. Though she could only see the back of the dwarfem, something in the set of the earth-being’s shoulders made Jenni think she was snidely amused with her charges.

Soon the tunnel angled up and away from the fire, light coming from ahead. The path cooled rapidly and a whistling wind sent gusts of icy air toward them. Jenni’s skin dried quickly and she condensed the moisture in her clothes into a small patch of water energy and sent it away. As the light became stronger, Jenni was aware that the tunnel was actually open to the outside.

The dwarfem stopped at the bottom of a vertical shaft. Jenni looked up and saw some brush covering the opening. When she squinted she thought she saw a magical barrier that would act as an alarm for the dwarves. There was no way up.

“Elf!” the dwarfem shouted in common Lightfolk speak, though Jenni couldn’t hear all of the layered tones—dwarf tended to be below her hearing range, elf above.

There was a cascade of chiming metal, a streak of blue, and an elf stood before them, dressed in leather the blue-gray of snow shadows. His hair was a mature silver and his face unlined, but his blue eyes had darkened over the millennia until they were indigo. This was an old elf, maybe even one who had been old enough to pass through the first portal when most magic Folk left Earth.

He wore wrist bracers of the silvery metal elven warriors preferred—osmium. The sheaths on each of his hips were of gray suede and platinum. Jenni was sure the hilts of his swords were osmium, too, since the metal gave off a faint odor. The elf himself smelled of the most delicate of tundra blooms and the rich air magic surrounding him had Jenni leaning forward before she understood what she was doing and yanked herself back.

“Mistweaver, Paramon.” The elf actually inclined his head a quarter inch, a sign of respect that had Jenni’s mouth falling open until Aric nudged her.

He was at the portal opening, saw us fight,
Aric explained.

Jenni didn’t remember the elf, but she didn’t remember many of those that day. Her family, Aric, the Eight.

The elf stepped forward, curved his long-fingered hands around one of Aric’s biceps and one of hers. His potent magic made her sway. Before the gasp escaped her lips they were swirled up and away and shot through the air, then they drifted down to shadows between tall pines.

“There,” said a dwarf, pointing a gnarly finger. He was half the height of the elf, but fully as broad and wore dark gray leather and two swords with dull black hilts. His salt-and-pepper hair and beard were neatly trimmed.

Aric muttered a tree-groan swear word.

“Ah, you see them, Paramon. Lady? Gotta look sharp.”

Jenni squinted, following the line of the dwarf’s brown finger, Aric’s green gaze. Across the wide and rolling drifts of unblemished snow there was the faintest of movements against the bright blue sky. A flutter, another. Gray shadows flapping like strange, airborne manta rays. Shadleeches. She sucked in a breath.

An electric-blue lightning-shock speared the sky from the elf’s finger, killing several of the evil creatures. He made a disgusted noise, loosened his sword in his hilt. “Like most magical beings, they are better off killed with metal.”

“Guns?” Jenni murmured faintly.

Aric cast her a look. “Times haven’t changed that much. Tech doesn’t work well.”

The dwarf snorted. “Explosive powder don’t transport well.”

Not by magical travel. Nevertheless, Jenni would have liked a flamethrower. Not that she could use one, but…

The earth trembled beneath her.

Aric set a hand against a tree, swore longer. “What is going on?”

Loosening her knees to sink into her balance, Jenni probed the energies. Rich air and earth—the elf and dwarf, spots from their waiting going down into the earth and spreading a couple of yards, but below that…

A roiling, surging wave of elemental energies…and in the midst of them an oddness. A spherical oddness.

Blood drained from her. “The bubble is coming.”

“Now?” The dwarf goggled.

“Now!” She lurched forward.

Aric’s fingers closed around her wrist. She glanced up at him, saw the forest-green depths in his eyes that he got when upset. “Wait one instant.”

A Treeman’s instant wasn’t the same as a human’s, so she pulled at her hand. “Let me go!”

“Jenni…you’re special—”

The dwarf snorted. “Not now, lad.”

A tremor passed through Aric’s large frame. “We’ll talk later. The Fire Princess and I—”

With a bump of his body against Aric, the dwarf sent Aric stumbling and he let go of her. She shook her head for focus, the odor of sulphur rolled through her, the elemental energies flared around her. She bolted toward the shadleeches. There was a stream, a mudpot pond. Snow was up to her waist, she sizzled it away with fire and fear.

Then she was scooped up by the elf and deposited on a small patch of ocher land that trembled and cracked. The dwarf was there, sunk into the land up to the tops of his ankles, holding her. She tried vainly to wrench away. “I have to go to the interdimension.”

Without a word, the elf sang his blade from his sheath, hacked at shadleeches, which turned and attacked. Aric pulled his own sword, stood his ground and fought.

The dwarf’s fierce gaze speared Jenni. “On three I let go.”

She nodded.

“One.”

Jenni began chanting fast, weaving powerful words with unvoiced prayers.

“Two.”

Rothly, I am HERE.

“Three.”

She bit off the last spell rhyme and stepped into the gray mist.

Rothly was there, covered in shadleeches. Gray streaks of goo dripped down his face, hands, clothes. Gray goo that would be bright red blood in the real world. No time.
No time.
NO TIME!

With a whisk of her arms, Jenni called all the elements to her—steam fire water mudpot minerals wind. Sheets wrapped around them and the shadleeches cried with glee, flung themselves into the elemental energies to feast, abandoned Rothly.

Jenni reached out, grabbed him, pulled him to her.

So light! He had little weight, emaciated.

She pulled his arms around her, the thin, sound one, the bent, crippled one, and held him tight and listened to his fast heartbeat and he was hers, her brother, her Rothly, her
family,
and she stepped with him out of the mist.

Just in time to see the top of a bubble a yard wide rise above the mudpots. “Quick!” she said, grabbing the hand of the dwarf, one of Aric’s hands. “Link!” she ordered.

Rothly still leaned against her, his arms around her waist. The elf lifted his brows, set his hand in Aric’s and the dwarf’s. Power snapped through her and she arched. Such power. Too much. Her mind whirled as she tried to balance it. Rich, ancient air and earth, her and Rothly’s small fire, an additional bit of air and
greenness
from Aric.

Sucking in a breath, she
pulled
fire and water from the mudpots, watched with horrified amazement as the pool dried before her eyes.

The bubble still rose, now halfway out of the former pool, floating from cracked dirt. Inside was a shimmer of colors: a great deal of blue-green water, some gold earth energy, some silvery-blue air, streamers of red fire. She thought her eyes wheeled in her head as she tried to
see
the amounts.

She stretched her senses, felt the ground beneath her all balanced, began to let water energy trickle away. The bubble encased mostly water.

Dwarven words rumbled from her left in some ritual pattern. The elf sang, luscious notes fell around her, bringing tears to her eyes.