The Smoke-Scented Girl (37 page)

Kerensa let out a strange sound halfway
between a gasp and a squeak. She slipped past Evon and approached
the rider. “I can’t believe this,” she said. Evon reached out to
grab her arm and she shrugged him off. “Evon,
look at his
hand
,” she said in the same breathless tone. The man raised his
hand and pointed at Kerensa again. The middle finger of that hand
was missing and the stump shone golden in the autumn sunlight.

“It’s
Alvor
,” Kerensa said, and turned
her face up to address him.

The man lifted an enormous spiked mace from
his lap and swung it at Kerensa’s head.

Kerensa screamed and flung herself to the
ground. “
Desini cucurri!”
Evon shouted, gesturing sharply.
The man’s arm froze in mid swing, tangled in red cords, and he was
nearly jerked out of his saddle by the motion. He roared something
in that unfamiliar language and sawed at his horse’s reins
one-handed, yanking its head around to face Kerensa in preparation
for trampling her. She scrambled backwards on all fours and Evon
ran forward to pull her up, out of the horse’s reach. His muscles
ached. His reserves were running low.

Two other riders emerged from the woods,
calling out words inflected like questions. The big man ignored
them and urged his horse onward.
“Desini cucurri
!” Evon
shouted again, and the horse froze mid-step and went over hard,
taking its rider with it. The man let out a cry of surprise that
turned into one of pain as he hit the ground. One of the riders, a
woman, raised both hands in such a familiar gesture that Evon
called out, “
Recivia!”
almost before the woman cast her own
desini cucurri
. A flashing mirror spun out of nowhere
between them, turning the spell back on the woman, who only barely
dodged it; Evon saw red cords wrap her right arm tightly. The other
rider spurred his horse forward, drawing a short blade. Evon felt
his breath coming too rapidly. He didn’t have enough in him to
block this man’s attack.

The woman shouted “
Forva!
” and Evon
threw himself to the left just in time to avoid taking a blast of
liquid fire—
liquid?—
to the chest, then rolled again to get
out of the path of the rider with the sword. The rider jigged
around to face him, and Evon backed slowly toward Kerensa, risking
a glance over his shoulder to see if she was unhurt. “Kerensa,
no!”
he shouted, and ran toward where she crouched near the
fallen man, trying to help pull his leg from beneath the horse.
Alvor, if it really was Alvor, grabbed her arm and dragged her off
her feet and into a chokehold.

The man with the sword took another swing,
which Evon barely ducked under. He dove at Kerensa and tried to
pull Alvor’s arm away from her neck. She clawed at Alvor’s hand,
her face red and her eyes bulging. Alvor snarled something at Evon
and kicked at his knee with his one free leg. Evon stumbled, then
cried out as the sword struck him across the back, the blow turned
aside by the folds of Evon’s thick cloak. The man with the sword
spoke to Alvor in the same unintelligible language, and Evon took
advantage of his brief distraction to rise and kick Alvor in the
face as hard as he could. The big man roared and released Kerensa
to cover his nose, which began pouring blood. Evon took Kerensa’s
arm and dragged her into the shelter of several close-growing aspen
trees. She was coughing and gagging and her eyes watered, and Evon
put her behind him and turned to face their attackers. “You
bastards
,” he shouted, not caring that they probably
couldn’t understand him any better than he understood them. “Leave
her alone! What kind of people attack a defenseless woman?”

The man with the sword dismounted; the woman
did as well, one-handed and awkward, then, to Evon’s amazement,
touched her frozen arm and said,
“Sepera
,” and a glittering
fall of crystal nearly obscured his view of her flexing her arm as
if it had never been paralyzed. The two approached Alvor and began
trying to pull him free from the horse. They spoke among themselves
in low voices, occasionally glancing in Evon and Kerensa’s
direction, their eyes flickering over the trees as if scanning for
danger. “Are you all right?” Evon asked.

Kerensa nodded. “Can’t speak,” she
mouthed.

“My reserves are low. I don’t know how many
more spells I can cast. I don’t know how good that woman is—”

Kerensa mouthed something, then made a face
at Evon’s incomprehension and drew the word DANIA in the dirt at
her feet. “You really think so?” Evon asked. Kerensa nodded
vehemently. “I thought Alvor fought in defense of others. That man
tried to kill you. Twice. It’s got to be an illusion or some sort
of trick this place is playing on us.”

The woman said something more loudly. Evon
looked up to see her watching them warily. Her dark hair, cut short
to brush her chin, was mussed on one side as if she’d just risen
from her bed. Slowly, she raised her hand and gestured, then spoke
a single word. Evon’s brow furrowed. “
Cleperi,”
he said,
then repeated the word accompanied by the gesture the woman had
used and did the same thing for Kerensa.

A tone rang in his ear, a low-pitched hum
like the sound of a thousand bees hovering just behind his head,
and the air around them quivered, distorting everything around them
for the space of two breaths. As the tone faded, he heard the woman
begin speaking: “
Ia tromos e tradsem
for
ke sapeke ke
iem.
You
cerrat bel jeset
of the
fathlon
in
you—”

“
Fathlon
,” Kerensa whispered, pounding
Evon on the shoulder in her excitement. He gestured her to silence.
The woman continued to speak, though she occasionally paused to
cast
cleperi
on her companions.

“—and we have
yav letica
it in
beli
forest, which we
ecklat
leave. We cannot
epiros
why you
presadi beli
woman if she has
fathlon
in her.
Aste
she
presados
Alvor—” she
gestured at the man on the ground, who was finally free of the
horse and having his ankle palpated by the other rider. “So she
cannot be
meron
enemy.”

“Why isn’t it translating all of her words?”
Kerensa whispered. She was regaining her voice, though she still
coughed occasionally. Evon was afraid to hand her their canteen,
afraid to take his eyes off this woman who he was increasingly
certain was the real Dania, looking quite lively for a woman a
thousand years dead.

“The translation spell has to have a base to
work from. The more she talks, the more it can translate. That’s
why she’s talking so much.” In a louder voice, Evon said, “I think
what you’re saying is that Kerensa—” he pointed at her—“has the
Enemy inside her. What she’s carrying is a spell with the Enemy’s
name on it that is intended to kill him. It. However you’re
tracking the Enemy, it must have identified Kerensa falsely. Her
spell has the same problem. Do you understand me yet?”

“For the most,” Dania said. “Say again what
it is that the Enemy has done in her?”

Evon explained again. Dania said, “Such a
spell is impossible.”

“You can see it for yourself,” Evon said,
pointing at Kerensa wreathed in blue ribbons and outlined in
fire.

“It resembles the shadow of Murakot,” Dania
said, “but the fire is unfamiliar.”

Evon gave her a summary of what he’d learned.
Dania circled Kerensa and seemed taken aback at how Kerensa beamed
at her. When Evon finished speaking, Dania turned to look at her
companions. “I believe him,” she said.

“It’s an improbable story. He might be lying
to protect the woman,” said the second rider. He was tall and thin
and his skin had a waxy, unhealthy sheen to it. His eyes, when he
looked at Evon, were as empty as Kerensa’s had been the day he met
her. “The Enemy twists minds to believe what it wants.”

“If that were so, he would not have cast
desini cucurri
, he would have attempted to kill me.” Dania
took a few steps toward Alvor, still sitting on the ground next to
the paralyzed horse. “Are you well?”

Alvor’s face and beard were gory with blood,
and he glared at Evon. “As well as could be expected after
receiving a boot in the face,” he growled.

“Then you shouldn’t have tried to kill me,”
Kerensa said. “It was dishonorable.”

Alvor barked a laugh. “No honor to be won in
fighting the Enemy fairly,” he said. “Do you not agree, my
friend?”

Evon thought he was talking to him, but
before he could answer, something detached itself from the trees
next to him and placed the edge of a blade across his jugular.
“Agreed,” someone said in his ear in a rasping voice, the person’s
breath hot and stinking of raw meat. Evon froze. A moment later,
the blade was withdrawn and the person slid past him to crouch next
to Alvor. He, or possibly it, wore a dark green cloak with the hood
pulled well down over his face. He rested his hands on his knees,
and Evon saw, not a blade, but ivory claws just retracting into his
hands. There was something wrong with his legs, as if the knees had
been attached backwards, and the shadow of the face inside the hood
wasn’t entirely human.

Kerensa clutched Evon’s arm. “They came
here,” she whispered. “When they vanished, this is where they came.
Why didn’t they return? Evon, what if this place won’t let us go
either?”

“Let’s make certain they don’t still plan to
kill you before we start worrying about that.” Evon surveyed the
sky for more of the flying cloths. Two flew high above, specks
against the featureless sky. If they were drawn to spellcasting,
they weren’t yet aware of the battle.

Kerensa nodded, then stepped around Evon and
walked over to Alvor before Evon could do more than catch at her
sleeve. “Can we start over?” she said. “My name is Kerensa and this
is Evon.”

Alvor glared at her. “Your man tried to kill
me.”

“You tried to kill me first. Would you not
defend the people you love from death?”

Alvor glanced at Dania, then at the other
rider, who had to be Carall. “Alvor,” he said, saluting her by
inclining his head and pressing three fingers of his left hand to
his forehead. “Carall, Dania, Wystylth. If you seek the destruction
of the Enemy, then we have common cause.”

Evon could tell Kerensa could barely keep
from vibrating with excitement. “How did you find us—I mean, find
what you believed was the Enemy?” he asked, before she could start
asking irrelevant questions about Alvorian myth.

Dania pointed at her horse, which bore a
plate-sized version of Evon’s quizzing glass. “Two hours ago the
Glass became active. It has been dormant for over three years.”

Two hours ago. They hadn’t even entered the
place of power then. Evon’s heart sank. It was increasingly likely
that time here was askew, variable, and that they could very well
come out far too late to have any chance of stopping the
Despot.

“We killed the Enemy,” Alvor said, hitching
himself along until he could use a tree to hoist himself to his
feet. “I am certain of it. And yet it appears again. Perhaps this
spell is merely a remnant of the Enemy’s presence in this world,
that the Enemy itself remains dead?” Alvor sounded as if he were
looking for reassurance, which to Evon’s mind was ludicrous, given
the size and ferocity of the man.

“There is no smell of the Enemy on her,”
Wystylth said in that rasping voice. “Only the smell of smoke.”

“We know where the entity—the Enemy—is, and
we know who its host is,” Evon said. “We were on our way there when
we were attacked and forced into this place of power.” Now that the
confusion of battle was over, questions began arising in his mind.
Did Alvor and the others know what had happened to them? What
had
happened to them, for that matter? If he told them that
a thousand years had passed since they disappeared from the world,
how would they react?

“Lead us there, and we will destroy it
again,” Alvor said. “Dania, if you wouldn’t mind?”

Dania went to the horse’s head and laid her
free hand on it. “
Sepera,”
she said, and the cords shriveled
away and the horse fell into a heap, all flailing limbs and tossing
head, crying out its panic. Alvor stood to one side and waited for
it to sort itself out, then helped it stand. Evon breathed in
sharply. “Teach me that,” he demanded, then realized how abrupt
he’d sounded and his face went red.

“Do you not know? I am surprised.” Dania
examined the horse, apparently to check the efficacy of her spell.
“You seem a most formidable magician despite your age.”

“Probably a lot of knowledge got lost between
your time and ours,” Kerensa said.

Dania stopped halfway to restoring Alvor’s
right arm. “What time is that?” she asked, narrowing her eyes.

Kerensa and Evon exchanged glances. If they
didn’t know how long they’d been wandering.... “It has been almost
a thousand years since the four of you disappeared,” Evon said.

“It has been no more than three weeks that we
have wandered in this place,” Carall said. There was a gap between
his two front teeth and air whistled through it when he spoke.
“This is another trick of the Enemy.”

“No, sir, it is a trick of this place,” Evon
said. “Its natural properties have been overridden by the free
magic. If—when we find the way out, we might emerge an hour, or a
dozen years, or two millennia from the time we entered.” The words
“two millennia” made him feel ill.

“How could such a place draw us so far
forward in time?” Carall asked Dania.

“I do not know why you look to me for the
answer. I am as mystified as you,” she said.

“Some places fold in on each other,” Kerensa
said. “You might have walked the same path a thousand times. A
thousand thousand times, even. And it would have felt like a single
time.”