Wards of Faerie

  “Mother won’t let us go,” Redden said, grabbing his brother and pulling him back down. “Not in a million years.”

  Mirai gave him a look of incredulity. “Since when do you tell your mother everything you plan to do?”

  Redden stared at her. “What does that mean? Are we supposed to lie to her?”

  She made a rude noise. “Of course not. I wouldn’t expect you to know how to do it properly. So I took care of it for you. I told her we were going to make a delivery on behalf of my father to people he trades with regularly in Bakrabru. You could tell her the same thing. Say you’re taking some of those skill masts you spend so much time fashioning.” She shrugged. “Don’t mention Farshaun.”

  “But she must have already guessed just from what you told her,” Redden pressed. “Even she isn’t that gullible.”

  Mirai shrugged. “Well, I might have mentioned that Farshaun was away for several weeks in the Sarandanon so she wouldn’t have to worry about us seeing him.”

  “And she agreed to let us go?”

  Mirai winked. “What do you think?”

  When Sarys returned a moment later, Mirai was finishing clearing away the dishes and her sons were grinning at each other like mad fools. She shook her head in despair. Love was a terrible thing.

  A little more than two hours later, Redden and Railing were flying west over the Duln, the last glimpse of Patch Run behind them. Working the radian draws and light sheaths, they bounded here and there across the deck of the big airship while Mirai stood at the helm. Quickening was the Highland girl’s ship, given to her two years earlier when she entered into the family transport business, a measure of her parents’ confidence in her abilities. Quickening was named for a fairy creature said to have been the child of the King of the Silver River, a young woman who possessed great magic. If the legends could be believed, she was created to aid one of the Ohmsfords in becoming successor to the Druid Allanon and in recovering a talisman called the Black Elfstone. A member of Mirai’s own family, Morgan Leah, had gone with them on their quest and fallen in love with Quickening. He had lost her in the end, but their love story had been passed down from generation to generation and Mirai liked it enough to name her transport for the girl.

  Quickening was a fine ship. Big and sturdy, she could be nimble and dexterous, as well. She was armor-clad from bow to stern and equipped with rail slings and winch-fired crossbows. The empty cradles positioned at all four corners had been built to hold and utilize fire launchers. Illegal everywhere in the Four Lands by Druid Edict since Federation Prime Minister Sen Dunsidan had built one secretly and then tried to use it against the Elves, fire launchers were nevertheless available if you knew the right people. Thus, every transport making a regular run from one quarter of the Four Lands to another tried to have at least one hidden on board.

  Quickening was blessed with a full complement thanks to the efforts of Redden and Railing, who had secured them through their contacts on the black market and delivered them unbidden in an effort to win Mirai’s admiration and favor. She had bestowed both on each twin, although neither was fully aware of just how much she had lavished on the other.

  This was because they didn’t talk about their feelings for Mirai—at least not in the way they might have if they weren’t in competition for her. It was the only matter on which they did not share opinions and feelings. Each of them was fiercely protective of his relationship with her, even without entirely understanding its nature.

  Certainly, Mirai never gave them much to work with. She treated them both the same and never gave one the benefit over the other. She acted as if all three were close friends and nothing more. Except that now and then she did things that suggested maybe there was something more with one or the other. A moonlight walk with Redden. A swim down by the lake with Railing. A special word here, a meaningful look there, a private smile, a sexy laugh, all of it suggesting she felt something more than what they believed or understood.

  Redden was thinking about the unfairness of all this when Mirai called down to him from the pilot box and asked him to come up and take over the controls.

  “I want to speak with Railing a moment,” she announced casually, as if to confirm his worst fears.

  She went down the deck to where Railing was tightening the draws on the forward light sheath and spoke to him for a very long time. Redden watched with a mix of suspicion and envy, and when she returned and took back the controls it was all he could do to keep from rushing down to ask his brother what was so important.

  Instead he said to her, “Why did you ask us to come? Didn’t your father offer to send some of the sailors who work for him?”

  She glanced over and held his gaze. The wind was whipping her blond hair all about her face, forming a kind of shifting veil. She looked so ravishing it was all he could do to keep his thoughts together.

  “Maybe I didn’t want my father’s sailors with me as much as I wanted you. Maybe I don’t want him to know everything I do on this trip.” Her laugh was slow and rolling. “Or maybe it was a whim and nothing more. What do you think?”

  He grimaced. “I think maybe I shouldn’t have asked.”

  “No, no, you can always ask, Redden. But you can’t always expect to get the answer you’d like.” She was working hard to make herself heard over gusts of wind that nearly knocked him backward from his perch. Only his handhold on the cockpit railing prevented him from being toppled. Mirai, on the other hand, barely moved. “Windy, isn’t it? Don’t you love days like this?”

  In truth, he did. Wild and windy, no clouds, all sunshine and blue skies—perfect flying weather. He loved them as much as he loved cold ale in summer and his mother’s warm bread in winter. He grinned in spite of himself.

  “There, you see?” She laughed and gave him a playful shove. “I like it so much better when you smile!”

  He felt himself blushing and turned away, pretending to study something down by the ship’s railing. “I smile enough.”

  She shoved him again. “Get out of my cockpit, Troll boy! Go talk to your brother. Ask him to tell you what I told him. That should give you something to think about.”

  He hesitated a moment to see if she was serious, but when she pushed him again he did as she said and headed downship toward Railing, who was still at the bow. Before him and to either side, the vast green canopy of the Duln spread away in a rippling blanket of leaves and tiny branches, giving the landscape the look of a vast emerald ocean. To the north, Rainbow Lake shimmered in clips of silvery light, and beyond its bright reflective surface you could just see the dark smudge of the Dragon’s Teeth through a haze of mountain brume.

  “Mirai told me to ask you what she said when she spoke to you,” he said grudgingly, positioning himself next to his brother, both of them leaning on the worn surface of the ship’s railing.

  “Did she?” Railing gave him a surprised look.

  “Yes, actually, she did. But you keep it to yourself if you want. It doesn’t matter to me.”

  “Glad to hear it. I’d tell you if it was important to you that I did, but not otherwise. It isn’t important, is it?”

  Redden clenched his teeth. “Not in the least.”

  “Good. Because it was kind of private. Personal, really.”

  Redden’s fingers tightened their grip. “You are pressing your luck. You know that, don’t you?”

  Railing grinned. “She told me she wanted us to come with her to Bakrabru because she’s expecting trouble along the way. Raiders. Gnome pirates using flits. Apparently they’ve drifted down out of the Northland, tracking vessels in our shipping lanes. There have been reports of them along the eastern shores of the Myrian. Her father hasn’t heard the reports yet or he wouldn’t have agreed to let her go. Obviously, Mother hasn’t heard or she wouldn’t have agreed, either. Mirai has been busy covering up some stuff, it seems.”

  “Nothing new there. She’s always covering up something.” Redden relaxed his grip on the railing. “But tha
t’s okay. I’m glad she decided to take us with her. I think we need to get away for a few days. See something new. Have an adventure.”

  “Maybe get in a fight?” Railing glanced over.

  “Maybe.”

  “Almost as much fun as crashing a Sprint.”

  “Almost.”

  “So Mirai thinks we might get attacked?”

  “She thinks it’s certain.”

  Railing gave him a solemn nod. “I hope she’s right.”

  They left it there, staring out at the world below, lost in their separate thoughts. A few minutes later, Redden moved away.

  They spent the night anchored just east of the Duln Forests, not quite into the Tirfing, but safely onto a stretch of flats where they could keep watch. The night was clear and bright with moonlight, so it was easy to see anything approaching from some distance away. They took turns at the watch post, much of the time all three of them awake and talking about everything from airships to Federation politics.

  By dawn they had eaten and raised anchor and were flying west again toward their destination.

  Three hours later they were under attack.

  It happened all at once, just as they were entering the airspace over a rugged clutch of lowlands dotted with heavy woods and riven with deep ravines and twisting rock formations. The lowlands stretched far enough north and south that trying to fly around would have taken them well out of their way, so Mirai simply pointed Quickening’s bow toward what she believed to be the narrowest part of the unfriendly lowlands and increased speed, intending to be over and past before they could be challenged.

  But the Gnome raiders were waiting, hidden in the ravines under cover of trees and scrub, and their flits were airborne and winging toward the transport in minutes. Redden, standing forward on the port bow, spotted them first. Yelling a warning to his brother and Mirai, he leapt to man the forward port rail sling. Railing, standing on the starboard side, was quick to seize control of the rail sling opposite his brother, and Mirai accelerated the Quickening further.

  But outrunning the lighter, faster flits was virtually impossible, so the raiders were on them almost immediately. Zipping about like angry hornets, the flits swarmed over them, the raiders wielding poles with blades attached to rip at the light sheaths and cut at the ship’s rigging. Enough damage and the ship would go down or the crew would surrender. Because the flits were one-man airboats, they were quick and maneuverable, and even the wide scattershot of metal pieces fired by the rail slings seldom found their targets.

  But the Ohmsfords had practiced extensively with rail slings and fought off Gnome raiders before, and they took down three of the flits in minutes. Even so, there were dozens to replace them. The Gnomes relied on superior numbers to overcome defenders, and frequently that was enough. Railing took a dart in his shoulder early on, the bolt fired with such force that it penetrated the heavy padding he wore for protection. Redden heard his brother grunt, yet when he turned to help found him still at his post.

  But the light sheaths were being shredded, causing the flow of power from the radian draws to diminish and the airship to slow. The Gnomes, sensing victory, shifted their efforts from disabling the ship to disabling her pilot, launching an attack on Mirai in the cockpit.

  During all of this, the Ohmsfords had failed to make use of the fire launchers. They had carried two of the weapons topside from their hiding places early that morning and placed them in the forward cradles before setting out. But the brothers were not extensively practiced with fire launchers, and on talking over how they would function in the event of an attack they realized for the first time a number of problems with trying to use them to fight off flits. First off, the launchers were not easily maneuvered and would have trouble tracking the tiny craft. Second, if they swung them even a little too far one way or the other, they would set fire to their own vessel. Third, it took time for diapson crystals to charge sufficiently to maintain the intensity of the fire stream necessary to burn attackers out of the sky, and once their power charge was exhausted the launchers were useless.

  So the brothers had turned at once, on sighting the flits, to the more reliable rail slings for defense.

  But seeing the raider attack shift toward Mirai, Redden had a flash of inspiration. He abandoned his rail sling and rushed to the port fire launcher, swinging the big weapon’s barrel about so that it was facing toward the speedy attackers just off the port side of Quickening.

  This better work, he thought, because otherwise we are in serious trouble. And he cursed Railing for his impetuous wish of the night before.

  Railing was screaming at him from the other side of the bow, presumably because he had abandoned his station, but Redden ignored his brother. He opened the barrel cap, released the trigger safety, and with the launcher ready for use summoned the wishsong’s magic.

  Worked for Railing with the Sprint. Should work for me here.

  He channeled the magic out of his body and down through his hands into the fire launcher. The weapon bucked in response, a lurching that very nearly unseated it from its cradle.

  Redden hauled back on the trigger.

  The magic-enhanced fire exploded from the barrel in a sharp burst of light and heat, the backwash of which very nearly flattened Redden. But he held on to the weapon’s handles, maintaining control of the wishsong through his grip, directing its path. Normally, the launcher’s fire would have assumed a tight, narrow beam with sufficient intensity to burn right through iron. But Redden used his magic instead to create a swath wide enough to impact a whole raft of Gnome raiders, mustering less force than a more concentrated beam would have, but enough to knock dozens of them all over the sky. Caught by surprise, the flits spun this way and that and toppled out of sight.

  As quick as that, the attack was broken up. With half their force either downed or disabled, the rest of the raiders broke off and flew back the way they had come.

  Redden glanced toward the stern and the pilot box. Dozens of darts and javelins sprouted from the wooden cockpit walls like quills from a porcupine; dozens more littered the decking. Mirai was still at the controls, disheveled and streaked with sweat and dirt but miraculously unharmed. She gave him a reassuring wave and began brushing splinters from her clothing.

  He released his grip on the fire launcher and stepped back—right into Railing, who had appeared at his elbow.

  “Good to see I can still teach you something,” his brother quipped. He had pulled the dart from his shoulder and was holding a makeshift compress to the wound. “That was pretty impressive, using the wishsong like that. I should have thought of it.”

  Redden gave him a weak grin. Maybe so. But he hadn’t, and so he didn’t know that invoking the wishsong to control the power of diapson crystals in a fire launcher was debilitating and scary. Even now, Redden was shaking. The power of the wishsong had been drained by that single use, that momentary effort. He was left light-headed and dizzy, and there was something happening inside of him that he couldn’t quite define.

  Whatever it was, he didn’t much like how it made him feel.

  11

  KHYBER ELESSEDIL STOOD AT THE BOW OF HER PERSONAL vessel, the Ard Rhys, and watched as the docks of the Ohmsford home at Patch Run came into view. She had traveled down from Paranor with the new day, wending her way over the peaks of the Dragon’s Teeth until she reached the Mermidon, then traveling down the length of the Runne Mountains to Rainbow Lake and from there across to her destination. She was making the journey with Garroneck and a crew of four, but only out of deference to the wishes of her Captain of the Druid Guard who believed that an Ard Rhys should always travel with an escort.

  Otherwise, she would have come alone.

  She glanced around momentarily to watch as the Trolls prepared the airship for landing. Garroneck stood at the helm, and while she was certain he was watching her, he showed no signs of doing so.

  Vigilance without interference.

  She turned back to watch the sho
reline. She could see the walls and roof of the Ohmsford house emerge from between the trees of the surrounding forest. The docks were mostly empty of craft; only a couple of skiffs and a barge were in moorage. A large boathouse was situated off to one side, the kind that could be used for dry-docking and repairs. Seabirds circled the shoreline, hundreds strong. Stacks of materials and assorted equipment sat in neatly stacked piles at the ends of the docks and in scattered clumps throughout the grassy rise leading up to the house. A typical workingman’s home if you ignored the absence of any men or work.

  Nor was there any sign of the home’s inhabitants.

  She thought about Sarys Ohmsford, with whom she would have to deal, and was immediately sad. Sarys Starleigh of the Elves—a woman of strong will and stronger emotions, a mother who loved her sons more than anything and would fight to the death to protect them. Born of a people who had embraced magic for centuries, she had been less entranced than most right from the first. Shy and skittish, she had avoided things that frightened her. Magic was one of them. But when she fell in love with Kierst Ohmsford and discovered the Ohmsford legacy, she was forced to reassess her thinking. Unable to give him up, she had persuaded herself that her children would be among the generations skipped by the magic of the wishsong. The odds were excellent, after all. Her future husband’s father, Penderrin Ohmsford, and his father and his father’s sister, Bek and Grianne Ohmsford, had all possessed it. It was time for the legacy to skip her children as it had their father. If it did not, that would mean three out of four consecutive generations would inherit the magic. That had never happened dating all the way back to the siblings Brin and Jair Ohmsford, who had been the first to have use of it.

  Her terror and dismay when she discovered her twin boys had been born with the wishsong had driven a schism between herself and the rest of those in the Ohmsford family who were magic wielders—a schism that even Kierst’s efforts had failed to bridge. Once it was determined that the magic was there, Sarys had undertaken a campaign to make certain that it was never employed. From the time they were small, Redden and Railing Ohmsford had been forbidden to use it or even to acknowledge publicly that the potential for doing so existed.