The Gypsy Morph (8 page)

Kirisin felt a chill run down the back of his neck all the way to his heels, the sort you have when you’ve encountered the freakishly impossible. He stiffened momentarily, then shook his head.

“They’ll wait a long time for that to happen,” he muttered. “I can promise you that!”

Simralin gave him a doubtful glance, but didn’t say anything more.

D
EEP IN THE FORESTS OF THE CINTRA
, in the midst of his army, the demon that called itself Findo Gask blinked twice as he caught the first whiff of the magic’s use. At first he thought he had been mistaken, that his senses were deceiving him, but as the magic steadied and sharpened, he could feel its proximity and recognize it for what it was. The sharp old eyes fixed on a point in space, and his senses drank in the full extent of what they were experiencing. He shut out everything happening around him—the noise, smell, and movement, and the creatures that generated them—and he began to search.

Quickly, quickly . . .

But he wasn’t quick enough. There wasn’t enough time. The magic was there for a few seconds, tight and strong and recognizable, and then it was gone. He was unable to determine its source.

Still, a smile crossed his lips, deepening the lines of his face.

Someone was being very careful.

He rose and stood looking off into the darkness of the trees. It didn’t matter, really. He knew what was happening. He knew why and he knew how. In the end, it would all turn out the way he had planned. The boy was back, and he had found the Elfstones. The nature of the magic he had sensed was unmistakable. Elfstone magic was distinct from any other kind of magic, different from that of the gypsy morph or the Knights of the Word. Magic was not of a single kind; if you knew it was there, you could teach yourself to identify its nature.

And this was unquestionably Elven.

So the demon that called itself Culph had succeeded in tracking the boy to the Elfstones, gaining control over the magic, and bringing both back to serve the demon cause. He wondered briefly if Delloreen had played any part in this, if she had somehow tracked the young female Knight of the Word to the Elves and dispatched her. That would have made her very happy, and he would never begrudge her happiness of that sort. On the other hand, it would be convenient for him if she had failed and was dead. Increasingly dangerous, she needed to be eliminated in any case. If the Knight hadn’t done so, he would have to.

He banished Delloreen to the back corners of his mind and pondered momentarily what the use of the Elfstones meant beyond the obvious. Why had the magic been summoned now? There didn’t appear to be any point in it.

But then it occurred to him that perhaps it was a way of letting him know how matters stood—that the boy was back and the Elfstones recovered. The message might be that it was time to prepare for the jaws of his trap to close. Once the Loden was employed and the city and the bulk of its population imprisoned, it would be time for his army to complete the eradication process.

Still, it seemed an unnecessary use of the magic. He would know that it was time to act, after all, when the city and its population disappeared. And there were other ways for his ally to inform him of his return.

Why allow the boy to invoke the magic and risk its detection?

Vaguely dissatisfied, he stood alone without moving for a long time, carefully avoided by his followers as he pondered the matter, his ancient visage dark and troubled.

SIX

“W
ELL, DON’T JUST SIT THERE!
Tell us what happened!”

Panther was agitated, impatient. His hands gestured to emphasize the urgency of his request; his dark face was flushed. “Why aren’t you dead, Bird-Man? We thought you went over the wall and into the light and you was dead! Now you just walk out of nowhere and look like nothing ever happened! Talk to us, damn it!”

Owl, seated in her wheelchair with Candle in her lap, smiled despite herself. It took something to get Panther this worked up and then to let it show. But the others were anxious, too. It reflected on their faces, bright and eager in anticipation of hearing a new story, this time one that Hawk was going to tell.

They were gathered in a circle in a field not far from the side of the freeway, the AV and the wagon drawn up next to them. Twilight had departed and night had settled in, a dark blanket of still air and quiet expectation. They had not started a fire or eaten a meal. There was no time for that when there was so much catching up to do. Moonlight brightened the faces of those gathered—the Ghosts and Cat on the one hand and Hawk and Tessa on the other. Cheney lay off to one side, his shaggy bulk just visible in the pale light. He had greeted them all in his typically aloof way, sniffing momentarily at Cat to make sure of her, glancing at Rabbit—which was more than enough to send the terrified feline scrambling for safety—and then slouching over to where he was settled now. As far as the big wolf dog was concerned, nothing much had changed.

But everything had changed for the rest of them, she thought. Hawk was back. The boy with the vision was back to lead his children to the Promised Land.

“Tell us, Hawk,” she urged gently.

He looked at her, a flicker of uncertainty in his green eyes, an unmistakable hesitation in his effort to respond. “I’m not sure where to start,” he said. “I’m not even sure
how
to start.”

“Start with what happened at the compound,” Sparrow suggested. “I saw that strange light flash from where I was standing on the rooftop just before I went down the ladder and found Panther and we had to run from the Croaks to . . .”

She stopped, smiling sheepishly. “Start there,” she finished.

“Where did you go?” asked River, dark eyes already wide with wonder.

“I went into these gardens,” Hawk said. “Tessa and I were thrown from the wall and everything was suddenly blinding and I must have lost consciousness. Then I woke up in these gardens and there was this old man. Real old. He said he was a Faerie creature.” He caught a glimpse of Panther’s smirk. “I know, Panther. It sounds crazy. I thought so, too. But that’s what he said, that he was a Faerie creature. He called himself the King of the Silver River. He said the gardens were his and that he had brought me there to learn about myself. He saved me because he said I had something I needed to do.”

“You went into the light, is where you went,” Panther insisted. “I heard about people doing that. You died and came back, is what you did.”

“Yeah, maybe,” Hawk replied, shaking his head. “I don’t know for sure where I was. But the old man didn’t seem to think it was anything big. He told me the same thing Logan Tom told me in the compound cells—that I was a gypsy morph, that I was made out of a kind of magic. But I was a boy, too. Just like everyone else,” he added hastily. “Except that I had to do this thing. I had to come back and find you and all these other kids, and then I had to take you to this place where you would be safe.”

“Safe from what?” Panther wanted to know at once.

Hawk hesitated. “From the end of the world.”

“The end of the world,” Fixit repeated.

“Oh, man,” whispered Chalk.

The others muttered similar pronouncements, glancing uneasily at one another and then back at Hawk. This caught even Owl off guard. “Are you sure about what he told you?” she asked him.

Hawk nodded. “It gets stranger. He told me that others would be coming with us. I mean, besides the children. He said there would be Elves.”

For a moment, no one spoke.

“Sure there will,” Panther declared, nodding soberly. “Probably trolls and pixies, too. Maybe some dragons. Just like in that book Owl read once, the one with all those magic things.”

“He knows what he was told,” Tessa insisted, coming to Hawk’s defense. “This isn’t what you think. He’s serious about this.”

“You saw all this?” Panther pressed.

She shook her head. “No, I was asleep. When I woke up, we weren’t in the gardens anymore. We were on the banks of the river south of here—Hawk and Cheney and me. But if Hawk isn’t telling the truth, how did we get there? How did Cheney end up with us, for that matter?”

“How did you get
here
?” Owl asked, steering the conversation in a different direction while everyone was still calm enough to listen.

“We just started walking,” Tessa answered. Her dusky face lifted into the moonlight and her eyes shone. “Then we found this camp with all these children and their protectors. Hundreds of them, come up from somewhere south, fleeing an army that had killed everyone else. Hawk took them across the river, over a bridge.” She hesitated, as if she might say something more about this, but then decided against it. “After we were across, he told the others to wait for him there until he returned with his own family. Then we came looking for you.”

“You knew where we would be?” Owl said.

Tessa nodded. “Hawk knew.”

Owl and the others looked at the boy. Hawk shrugged. “I just did. I can’t explain it. It has something to do with the magic.”

Panther looked off into the night. “I’m not calling you Bird-Man anymore. I’m calling you Magic Man. Or maybe Crazy Man.”

“Panther.” Tessa spoke his name firmly and waited until he looked at her. “Don’t call him names. You haven’t seen what I’ve seen. He isn’t the same as you remember. He’s something else now, something special.”

“Tessa, don’t,” Hawk said. “I’d say the same thing as Panther if he were telling me all this.”

“So tell us more about the world ending,” Chalk urged, brushing past the rest of it. “Is this for real?”

“The old man said so. He said it was all ending, and we had to get to someplace safe until everything got better and we could go out into it again.” Hawk shook his head. “I asked him if he was serious, if he was sure about this, and he said he was. He said it’s all gone too far and everything’s ending. I guess I believe him.”

“Look around you,” Cat said suddenly from one side, the scaly patches of her mottled face reflecting the moonlight. They all turned to look at her. “I don’t know about this old man, but I know enough to believe what he says about the world. It’s already ruined. Anyone with half a brain can tell that. Why should it be so hard to think it’s going to end?”

“She’s right,” agreed Sparrow. “Giant centipedes and armies killing off the compound people. Croaks and Lizards and all the rest. I think it’s ending. What do we do, Hawk?”

“We go back and join the children I left behind, and then we head east to wherever it is we have to go to be safe.”

“But you’ll know where that is?” Sparrow asked.

“The old man said I would.” He paused. “I’ve been thinking about what that means. I think it has something to do with the gardens. He said that was where I was conceived. It was where he kept me until it was time for me to come out into the world and become who I am. Maybe there is a connection. Maybe I am supposed to find my way back again.”

“How you gonna do that? You couldn’t do it before! Didn’t even know they existed!” Panther threw up his hands. “You better be Magic Man or we’re gonna be lost out here forever!”

“I think it makes a difference that I didn’t know about the gardens. I don’t think I was meant to find them before this. I think that’s what the old man intended all along.”

“Oh, sure. Now you know, so nothing to worry about.” Panther shook his head. “Listen to yourself. Then look at who we are. Kids! A bunch of kids! With more kids waiting to join us? Hundreds of them? So this bunch of kids and some Elves and some other people are supposed to hike off into the wilderness to somewhere that no one but you know, and even
you
don’t know it yet! We’re gonna hike to someplace we’ll be safe, even though the rest of the world is gonna buy the farm? Does anyone but me find this a little weird?”

“How many times have you listened to the story of the boy and his children, Panther?” Owl gave him a warm, reassuring smile. “Didn’t you believe in that story? Isn’t that why you stayed with us? You knew about Hawk’s dream. His vision. That was his story, the same as now. We all understood that. We were all waiting for it to happen, ever since we were together. We all believed in it then and I think we all have to believe in it now.”

“Yeah, Panther,” Sparrow agreed. “Where’s your faith?”

“Where’s your brain?” Panther snapped back. “A story’s a story. It ain’t necessarily the truth. What’s real is what counts. What’s real is what’s out there waiting to chew us all to bits!”

“You think we might be better off if we didn’t believe Hawk?” River asked quietly. Her dark eyes fixed on him. “Are you saying we should turn around and go back? That we should find some other city where we could make a home? What are you saying? If you tell us that Hawk’s vision isn’t true, what’s left for us?”

Panther stared at her. “I don’t know. I’m just saying we have to be careful of things. We have to watch out.”

“How is that different now than it was yesterday?” River pressed. She pointed at him. “You do what you want. But what matters to me is that Hawk is back, and I’m going wherever he takes me.”

Owl was surprised and pleased. River hadn’t said more than two words since her grandfather’s death and her recovery from her bout with the plague. To hear her speak like this, sounding strong and self-assured again, was a small miracle.