A strange feeling pressed against her chest and made her eyes prickle. She whispered, “You figured it out, didn’t you? What I am.”
“I think so,” Eva murmured in reply. “But in the end, that stuff don’t matter. It’s who you are, not what you are. That’s what matters.”
She nodded, thinking. “We could give it a trial basis,” she said. “We should find out if you even like the change. If I talk to Dragos about it, I think he’d see to it that your old job was kept open until you were sure.”
“If you asked him, I’m sure he would,” Eva said, smiling. “Okay, that’d work. But I can tell you right now, I’ll like the change. If you don’t mind, I’d like to start talking to my crew about it. Some of them might be interested in making the switch with me, but most of them won’t. I’ll let you know what they have to say.”
“Sounds good.” She smiled. “Thank you, Eva.”
“My pleasure. I’m glad you listened.” Eva tugged at one of the side straps between the breast and the back plates, rather unnecessarily, she thought. “How’s that feel? Think you could run in it?”
She looked down sourly at the thirty extra pounds tied onto her body. “I wouldn’t want to,” she said.
“But you could if you had to, right?” Eva stressed.
“I suppose,” she grumbled.
“Now, here’s the real question,” Eva said. “Do you think you could run in it without dropping your crossbow?”
She rolled her eyes and threatened, “I’m not going to hire you if you keep bringing that up.”
“Are you kidding?” Eva said. “That’s totally why you’re gonna hire me. I’m never gonna let you forget it, and someday that may just save your life.”
A horn blew, the sharp blast of sound soaring over the snatches of conversation in the clearing, and Pia shivered. She turned, looking for Dragos, and found him watching her with a frown. She pointed to the chest plate and gave him a thumbs-up. He just shook his head, his face grim.
Then he turned to look around the fighters in the clearing, who had all quieted. “Calondir and I have agreed to lead together,” he said, his deep, powerful voice pitched to carry. “We will share command decisions and bring down Amras Gaeleval in partnership with each other. The heavier Wyr and all the avians will come after us. Then Wyr and Elves will follow together.” As he looked at Pia, he added telepathically, That’s where you and your guards will be, in the middle. Do you understand?
Of course, she said. Don’t waste your time worrying about me. Do what you have to do.
He said to those nearby, “Stand back.”
When everyone had retreated to give him sufficient room, he shimmered into a change, and expanded, until the massive bronze-and-black dragon appeared once again and dominated the clearing. The dragon arched his long, serpentine neck and looked down at Calondir, who stood in front of him.
“Now,” Dragos told him.
The plate armor that Calondir wore didn’t hamper him in the slightest as he leaped onto Dragos’s back and settled into place at the base of his neck. The tall stern figure of the High Lord shone like bright silver against the dragon’s duskier colors.
Pia stared, unable to look away or blink. Even considering how long she might live, she knew she was looking at a unique sight. A great roar welled up around her from the throats of Wyr and Elves alike. Dragos mantled, bared his teeth and roared back, the deep-chested, Powerful sound ripping the air, until every hair on her body raised and gooseflesh rippled along her skin.
Hell’s bells, it almost made her want to bash somebody in the head.
She looked around. Many of the Wyr had changed into their animal forms too, including the harpy, the pegasus and all the gryphons. This time, like Dragos, the pegasus and gryphons each carried one rider. As she had expected, Quentin rode the pegasus, and Carling was astride Rune. She wasn’t familiar with the fighters that Bayne, Constantine and Graydon had chosen to carry, although Bayne’s rider was a tall male with weather-beaten features and military-short white blond hair. He looked familiar enough that she thought she had seen him around the Tower once or twice.
As Pia glanced at her own psychos to see how they reacted to it all, she discovered half of them had shifted too. Eva, Miguel and Hugh remained in their human form, while Andrea, Johnny and James circled them. Johnny was a lean wolf with a shaggy pelt, while James looked more like a German shepherd mix, heavier in the chest and haunches. The biggest surprise, to Pia, was that Andrea in her Wyr form looked like an Irish wolfhound and stood taller than the other two. They all held their heads low to the ground, showing sharp, white fangs as their alert gazes roamed restlessly over the area.
Pia asked Eva, “Just out of curiosity, what do the rest of you look like?”
“I’m kinda like a Rottweiler,” Eva said. “Miguel’s another wolf. He’s darker than Johnny.”
“I look like a gargoyle,” Hugh offered in a helpful tone.
Pia laughed.
“Since the Elves and the Wyr are supposed to fall in together, do you mind if I stick with you guys?” a light, feminine voice asked. “Thought you might find it useful to have someone with you who knows what to expect on the other side.”
Pia, Eva and the others turned to face Linwe. The Elf wore leather armor much like Pia’s, only hers bore scrapes from obvious use. Like many of the other Elven warriors, she had a sword strapped to her back, along with a full quiver of arrows, and she carried a longbow that was as tall as she was.
Pia opened her mouth, but Eva spoke first. “I don’t mind if you hang with us, as long as you know, we’ve got just one agenda.” The captain jerked her thumb at Pia. “And she’s it. Don’t get in our way, and we won’t have any problems.”
“I understand,” Linwe said. Like so many other Elves, she still looked hollow-eyed from grief but otherwise was calm and alert.
“I’m glad you asked,” Pia said to her, just as, out of the corner of her eye, the gigantic wall of bronze-and-black flesh that filled the clearing suddenly moved.
Pia’s heart jerked as she looked up. Dragos strode out of the clearing, and all the larger Wyr followed.
Time was a funny thing, she thought. Instead of marching on in a measured pace, it seemed to flow like a river. Quiet days pooled together, languid with a sense of sameness, and events swirled and eddied, and time seemed to pick up its pace. Then there was the tumbling, dangerous rush of white water over rocks, and the heart-stopping terror of relentless inevitability as the water fell over the edge, and you knew that no matter what you might do or wish, you could not stop that flow from falling.
All you could do was surrender to the experience and flow with it.
When it came their turn to move, Pia and others fell into place and followed all the others to the crossover passageway that led to the Elven Other land.
• • •
When Dragos came to the Elven crossover passageway, he noticed for the first time how every inch of the floor and sides were carved, and he curled a lip in disgust. The passage was a symbol of everything he hated about the Elves, their arrogance and their Power to change the landscape around them. How like them to take something that already had so much natural Power and beauty and warp it into a vision of their own making.
He snapped his wings closed against his back, uncaring if he jostled the imperious gnat that he allowed to temporarily perch on his back, and he stalked through the passage. Frigid wind howled around his head and shoulders, as the surrounding scene flickered and changed. The burned husk of night lightened into indeterminate day, and in another first experience, he came into the Elven Other land.
Metal scraped as Calondir drew his sword, and Dragos had to control his impulse to snatch the Elf off his back and fling him away. Tensed for battle he looked around, taking in details quickly.
Like the other e
nd, the passageway on this side was surrounded by a cluster of trees, but these were snow laden. Evergreens sprinkled a white landscape that was broken with scattered rock. The temperature was well below freezing. The cold didn’t bother Dragos in the slightest, and Wyr were, as a general rule, a hardy race with many natural defenses, but his thoughts winged to Pia and the baby anyway. Would they be warm enough? He should have made sure she had a lined cloak to go with the armor.
No one was in sight, and the acrid taint of smoke swirled on the biting wind, along with the scent of Elves. Had the smell blown over the passageway from Lirithriel Wood, or had something else burned here too? His gaze ran along the visible tree line, which was intact. The snow was trampled at the passageway entrance, which was no surprise, and footprints led away on a path that wound through a break in the trees.
Mindful of those behind him, Dragos kept moving. He nodded in the direction of the path. “Where does that go?”
“To my home here, just on the other side of the tree line. It overlooks a valley.” Calondir shifted and said, his voice edged, “Can you tell if that smell is from Lirithriel or if something else has burned here?”
“Not yet,” said Dragos. “We’re too close to the passageway.”
“I don’t like this. It’s too quiet.”
“They’re here,” he told the High Lord. “And they’ve only had a few hours’ start. We’ll take to the air and find them.”
“For now, we should make for the house and see if it is still intact,” Calondir said. “Winter nights get bitter here, and we should make use of all the shelter we can get.”
As Dragos strode down the path, he remembered his questions. “Where are the others that traveled with Gaeleval? What happened to the one who was wounded?”
“They’re dead,” Calondir said shortly. “Their bodies were found in the apartment where they and Gaeleval stayed.”
That didn’t surprise Dragos. They had fulfilled their function by leveraging a way into Calondir’s home. Once Gaeleval had taken their will, he wouldn’t have needed to actively wield the Machine, which was why none of Calondir’s seers had sensed any issue. The seers would have had no cause to probe too deeply into anyone’s mind.
“How did they travel to Lirithriel Wood?” he asked.
“What do you mean?”
He controlled his impatience. “I mean just what I said. Did they travel across this Other land, or did they travel on the other side, on Earth? Why did you host them in the Wood and not here?”
“They traveled here,” Calondir said briefly. “And I had them brought over the crossover passageway to Lirithriel Wood. With your mate’s impending visit, I didn’t want to step out of sync with the time on Earth.”
Just then a fresh gust of wind from the other side of the trees gusted in Dragos’ face. It brought with it the smell of more wood smoke, and Elves.
A lot of Elves.
He sped up until he loped, sensing the gryphons pick up their pace behind them. “What is it?” Calondir demanded.
“Trouble.”
He broke through the other side of the tree line and skidded to a halt at the edge of land. To his left, the path took an abrupt turn to follow the edge of a bluff up to the smoking ruins of what must have once been a long, gracious building at the top of a cliff.
The path along the bluff and the ruined building looked over a wide, snowy valley that would probably be beautiful in the springtime.
At the moment the valley was filled with an army.
Calondir whispered a shaken curse.
Dragos walked to the edge of the bluff and crouched like an enormous cat, gripping the rocks tight with his talons as he stared down at the thousands of Elves. Warriors and non-warriors. Men, women. Children. Some were better dressed than others. Some were barefoot in the snow. All of them looked ill fed. His snout wrinkled as he smelled the rarest of oddities for Elves—disease.
As he had reached the edge, all the Elves in the valley turned to look up at him.
All of them, all at the same time. Every single one of them cocked his or her head at exactly the same angle, in exactly the same way. His sharp raptor’s gaze moved from blank face to blank face.
Wyr came up on either side of him, gryphons and the pegasus and the harpy, then other Wyr along with Elves. They stared down in silence.
The dragon chuckled. The low, bitter sound reverberated in the rock of the bluff on which he stood, and several Elves drew away from him in dismay.
“I think we just found the answer to one of my other questions,” Dragos said. “What happened to all the Elves in Numenlaur?”
FIFTEEN
Every Elf in the valley smiled.
Dragos felt the Power of the God Machine pulse to life.
Shouts and screams came from behind him. Fuck. He whirled and lunged back through the trees, knocking people and horses aside in his rush to find Pia. Both Elves and Wyr dodged to get out of his way, horses plunging headlong off the path, while even more ran toward him from the direction of the passageway. He ignored all of them, looking for Pia and her bodyguards.
He saw a tower of flames through the trees.
Where was she?
In the next moment he saw her running toward him, surrounded by her guards, as she looked back over her shoulder at the blazing fire. He slowed to a stop, breathing hard, and waited for her to notice him.
She was the last of her group to do, looking away finally to discover him blocking the path. She skidded to a halt a few yards away.
Somehow Calondir had managed to avoid being dislodged from his back. Now the Elf Lord leaped to the ground and raced back toward the passageway, along with several others. Dragos twitched his shoulders, glad to have Calondir’s insignificant yet extremely annoying weight off of him.
“You,” he said to Pia. “Forget everything I said about hanging back.” She squeaked with surprise as he plucked her unceremoniously off the ground. He raised her up and held her to his shoulder until he felt her scramble onto him and perch at the base of his neck.
“All right,” she muttered. “But I’m not riding like this if you’re going to fly.”
“Just stay put for now,” he snapped. He looked down at her unit, three in canine form and three in human form, plus apparently Pia had managed to add the Elf girl with the blue hair to her collection. All seven stared up at him. “I don’t know,” he told them, answering their unspoken questions. “Figure out something to do with yourselves for now and get the hell out of my way.”
They scrambled to either side of him, and he strode after Calondir and the others.
This time the trees weren’t burning. The stone itself in the passageway was on fire, fueled by the Power in the God Machine. The flames roared thirty feet tall, and they threw off a ferocious heat. Of course the heat didn’t bother him any more than the cold did, but mindful of Pia riding on his back, he took care to get no closer than Calondir and the others had.
Pia and her group had done just what he had told them to do. They had crossed over in the middle of the warriors.
It was a good thing they had. Those Wyr and the Elves who had been the last to cross over had been carried off to one side and were being triaged. Several suffered from burns. A few of them were severely injured and still screaming.
He sensed Pia’s intention to go help those who were injured as she lifted one leg to sit sideways on him, preparatory to sliding down the outside of his front leg.
“No,” he said to her.
But I can help them, she said. She didn’t try to jump to the ground, although her telepathic voice throbbed with unhappiness.
You said you were prepared for how ugly this could get, he said ruthlessly. Well, the ugliness has started. There will be too many people for you to help. There already are. Not only would you expose yourself but
you would spread yourself too thin.
Her breathing hitched, but after a moment she shifted back in place astride him.
Calondir approached. The Elf Lord looked incandescent with fury. He asked, “Can you put this fire out too?”
Dragos lowered his eyelids as he probed the magical blaze curiously. It was more resistant to him than the forest fire had been. “Probably,” he said at last. “But I’m not going to waste time and energy doing it. Gaeleval wants to trap us on this side. Well, so be it. We don’t want to leave. In the meantime, he has an entire army he has to control, and this fire is taking up more of his Power and concentration. There is a limit to what he can do. I say we help him reach it.”
Calondir’s chest moved as he sucked in a deep breath. The Elf glanced at the wounded, his face tight. He said between teeth, “Very well. Just see what you can do to keep something like this from happening again.”
“You are mistaken about the purpose of my presence,” said Dragos. “I am not here to do what you tell me to do, nor am I here to defend you. I’m here to attack him.”
“Dragos,” murmured Pia.
He twisted his head around so that he could scowl at her. She said nothing, just gave him a steady look.
He bared his teeth and growled at the High Lord, “But I’ll see what I can do.”
He had his sufferance rewarded, as she patted and stroked his neck. Calming down, he supposed it hadn’t cost him all that much to promise to do what he could.
• • •
The temperature plummeted as the day began to fade.
Pia’s armor had kept her comfortable earlier. After the sun set, she was constantly on the tense side of a shiver, and as a result, her muscles were tired and achy.
Dragos had relaxed enough to let her get down off his back. He set the Wyr to setting up camp around the magical blaze, which continued to burn steadily, the stone of the passageway glowing bright red.
“It’s going to get cold tonight,” he told them. “And Calondir’s home on this side of the passage has been destroyed as well. We should take advantage of the warmth Gaeleval is giving us. Besides, if we’re not going to engage him right away, I’d better stay close so I can keep an eye on this and make sure it doesn’t spread.”