The Gypsy Morph

Logan felt his throat constrict. Simralin. An image of her face appeared in his mind, blond and smiling that crooked half smile. He shook his head. “I don’t know. She stayed behind with the King and the army that was holding off the demons and once-men. She said she was the only one who could lead them to us once they had done all they could.” He kept his eyes on the road. “We’re still waiting.”

  “Kirisin is very close to her,” Angel said. “He must be wild with worry.”

  Logan didn’t answer. He was thinking about his own feelings, about his own sense of loss. If Simralin didn’t make it, he wasn’t sure what he would do. He’d tried hard not to think of her, but she was always in the forefront of his thoughts. He saw her all the time, watched her smile, heard her voice, smelled her scent when she leaned close . . .

  “Maybe we need to look for her, too,” Angel suggested.

  He shook his head. “One thing at a time. The Loden is more important.”

  “How are we supposed to find it, anyway?”

  He wasn’t sure, of course. He could try using the vehicle’s tracking system, but he knew it was unreliable. No way to differentiate between the things it would pick up on the screen. He had been hoping that he would have help from Trim. Without trying to be apparent about it, he had been searching the skies for the owl, thinking that since Trim had come to him before when he needed to find Kirisin and the Elven talismans, maybe he would come again.

  “We’ll find it,” he insisted without offering any more.

  Eventually, they did. But not until they had driven for several hours and the sun had begun to dip into the western horizon toward the Cascades. Then, all at once, Trim appeared, winging his way out of the skies, swooping down in front of the AV, and soaring away again.

  “Look at that owl!” Angel exclaimed. “It almost hit us!”

  “Not likely,” Logan said, giving her a quick grin. “That’s our guide to the Loden. He’s called Trim. The Lady sent him to me when I came to find Kirisin. We just need to follow him.”

  They did so, working their way down the road as the shadows lengthened and the light faded. Logan began to worry that they might be getting too close to advance elements of the demon-led army. But they weren’t yet back to where the skrails had attacked and seized Kirisin several days earlier, so he could assume that Praxia and the other two Elves had come farther than that, at least. His worst fear was that all three had been captured and taken back to the old man. If that had happened, he might never learn what had become of the Elfstone.

  But within half an hour Trim took them off the road and down a dirt trail into a dry wash studded with scrub and cactus. They followed the wash for maybe five hundred yards, searching through layers of shadows and clumps of rocks and earth.

  “Logan, over there!” Angel exclaimed suddenly.

  He had already seen it. A pair of military jeeps sat abandoned in the center of the wash, a body hanging off the driver’s seat of one, a second body sprawled on the hood of the other, and blood splashed everywhere. More bodies lay scattered on the ground nearby. Logan made a quick count. Four, five, six that he could see. He climbed out of the Ventra, Angel a step behind him. Both held their black staffs ready, eyes searching the wash and the high banks for any sign of life. But there was none, and the runes carved into the wood remained dark. The wash was a killing ground empty of life. Logan looked at the dead, the ground on which they lay, the jeeps and the tracks they had left, taking it all in, assessing it. Then he walked over to have a closer look at the bodies. He found the two male Elves lying together, riddled with bullets from automatic weapons. The men around them were wearing a patchwork collection of army surplus and makeshift insignia. Arrows and javelins had done for them.

  He walked on, down the length of the wash and around a second bend, following a flurry of footprints. Someone running away, someone else chasing. He stopped. Ahead, draped in shadows, lay a second cluster of bodies. More would-be soldiers, their bodies heaped on top of one another. The fourth was Praxia.

  He knew right away what had happened. A unit of rogue militia had found the Elves. Maybe just stumbled on them, maybe saw their tracks. They shot the male Elves in a firefight. Some of them died in the process. The three survivors went after Praxia. Caught up with her here. Big mistake. She killed them all, was killed herself. No one had survived. He knew this because a survivor would have taken one of the two jeeps, and all the tire tracks stopped where the two were parked.

  He moved over to Praxia. She was propped against a large boulder, eyes closed. Patches of dried blood marked half a dozen wounds in her chest and stomach. She had been shot repeatedly. She looked frail and broken, all the toughness drained away. One hand clutched a Sig-Hauser twelve-shot automatic rapid fire, clip ejected on the ground next to her. It was a favorite weapon of militia commanders. How she had gotten hold of it or even known how to use it was a mystery.

  He bent down and touched her cheek, and her eyes opened. He froze, staring at the blood-streaked face. “My hand,” she whispered.

  He looked down. The hand that wasn’t holding the Sig-Hauser slowly opened. In the palm lay the pouch that contained the Loden Elfstone.

  Her lips moved. “Tell Kirisin . . .”

  Then she trailed off, and her eyes fixed. He felt her neck for a pulse, found none. He sat back on his heels, staring at her. What must it have taken for her to stay alive this long? The fight was clearly hours old.

  He took the pouch from her hand, checked to make certain the Elfstone was still inside, and then slipped the pouch into his pocket.

  Tell Kirisin . . .

  He stood up wearily. “I’ll tell him,” he promised her.

  Angel, standing next to him by now, didn’t say anything, keeping her thoughts to herself. Logan searched Praxia’s young face. Just a girl, he thought, but she had fought and died hard. He thought suddenly of Simralin. He tried to imagine how he would feel if something happened to her.

  “We’d better bury them,” Angel said to him.

  He nodded. “And then get back to the camp.”

  Without waiting for her response, he started toward the Ventra to collect the shovels.

  TWENTY-FOUR

  A NOTHER SWELTERING DAY, air thick with heat and steamy dampness, sky brilliant blue beneath a sun that burned white hot and implacable.

  Angel Perez plodded ahead, her boots kicking up puffs of dust as she walked flats that stretched away for miles in all directions. Grasses were few and burned crisp and sapped of color, and what trees survived were withered scarecrows, their leaves in tatters. The Cascades were behind them and fading fast into the distant haze. If there were mountains ahead, they were not yet visible to the naked eye. Bluffs crested the horizon north, long stretches so distant they lacked clear definition.

  No water was visible anywhere, and in the heat of the midday it felt as if there never would be.

  The caravan stretched away for the better part of a mile, a collection of trucks and AVs, wagons and haulers, and people afoot. Supplies and equipment were loaded on the wagons and haulers along with the smaller children and the injured and sick. The AVs carried others, a select few who needed special attention or to whom had been assigned special tasks that required extra mobility: scouts, medics, machinists, and the like. One of the AVs just behind her, Logan Tom’s Lightning S-150, carried Owl, River, Tessa, Candle, and a couple of smaller children from the camps. The older children and most of the caregivers walked, strung out through the line of vehicles in ragged clumps. Ahead, in the vanguard, Hawk led with Cheney, Panther, Bear, Sparrow, and several handfuls of armed men and women. Trailing everyone was a conglomeration of Lizards, Spiders, and other creatures, a couple of which she could not identify, even though she had thought she had seen everything there was to see by now.

  It was the whole of the refugee camp save for those who had been left behind to defend the bridge. The caravan had been on the move since sunrise, traveling north and east away from the Columbia River and up into
country that had once been farmland and was now dried-out hardpan. The caravan had started out as a cohesive whole, but over the course of the morning had begun to drift apart, to break into pieces that sprawled all over the flats and had taken on a segmented look.

  Angel would have liked to keep everyone much closer together. Spread out as they were, they were impossible to protect. But she had realized early on that this was the best she could hope for. Any organization beyond what she was seeing was all but impossible. Too many children, too few adults, too little discipline. They were doing the best they could, and that would have to suffice. By nightfall, they would be back together, and by morning they would regroup to begin the march anew. In the meantime, she would just have to hope that an enemy force didn’t catch them out in the open.

  She glanced over at Kirisin, walking next to her, and felt her throat constrict. His face was so sad it made her heart break. She wished there were something she could do for him, something she could say. But she knew there wasn’t. He would have to get through this on his own.

  He caught her looking at him and gave her a quick smile. “I’m all right,” he assured her. “Really, I am.”

  She nodded, said nothing. She glanced ahead to where Hawk was leading, moving at a steady pace, looking fit and ready. Cheney slouched at his side, shaggy and insolent, big head swaying as he walked, a mass of bristling hair and muscle. She didn’t like the dog. She didn’t trust him. But he seemed to belong with the Ghosts, as independent-minded and cocksure as they were. They seemed of a piece, and she was not the one who could pass judgment on that arrangement.

  Kirisin, who up until now had barely spoken two words, suddenly said, “Do you think she might have gotten away if she hadn’t been protecting the Loden?”

  She shook her head. “No, Kirisin. Even without the Elfstone she wouldn’t have escaped. Responsibility for the Elfstone wouldn’t have slowed her down or changed her approach. Praxia was tough and smart, and she did the best she could. It just wasn’t enough.”

  “But having responsibility for the Loden might have altered the way she was doing things.” He glanced quickly at her. “I’m sorry. I know I shouldn’t think like this.”

  Angel sighed. Then stop doing so. But she didn’t say it, even though a part of her wanted to. She understood why he would be so insecure about Praxia. The boy had seen a lot of people die who had tried to help him, and the accumulation alone would breed substantial guilt. He was still very young, she reminded herself, and he wasn’t all that well equipped to deal with any of this.

  “She told you she envied you for what you were doing, didn’t she?” she asked gently. “She said she wished it could have been her. Well, in a way, she got her wish. She died knowing that she had done something that mattered. You have to let her have that, Kirisin, and not diminish her sacrifice by questioning whether you could have done something to avoid it.”

  She looked off into the distance, measuring the stretch that lay immediately ahead, wondering if they could cross it before sunset. “None of us could have changed what happened without knowing of it ahead of time. And even then . . .”

  She trailed off, glanced over at him, waited. He mulled it over for a minute, then nodded. “I know it’s so. But I can’t help wondering anyway.” He was silent a moment. “I guess I think about Praxia because I’m worried about Simralin.”

  This is what’s really troubling him, she thought. His sister. She imagined that the boy had been thinking of little else ever since they had separated in the Cintra. That was almost a week ago now, and there had been no word of her. No word of any of the Elves who had remained behind with their King to slow the demon advance. It was hard not to think the worst.

  “Simralin is experienced in staying alive,” she said to him. “You said yourself that she is the best at what she does. I think she’ll be all right. Maybe it’s just taken longer to break off the fight than expected. Maybe they’ve just come a different way. A longer way, one that keeps them safer. There could be a lot of reasons why she isn’t here yet, Kirisin.”

  “I just don’t like it that we left her,” he persisted. “I should have stayed with her.”

  “I know that’s how you feel, but that would have been foolish. She stayed behind so that you could escape safely. Besides, you gave her the blue Elfstones. If she was in real danger, she could have used them.”

  “Maybe.” He wasn’t convinced. He scuffed at the dusty earth with the toe of his boot. “If she could figure out how to use them.”

  “She watched you, didn’t she? I did, too. We both saw how it was done, what was required. We talked about it. I think she would find a way if it was needed.”

  She watched him lift a hand to his chest and finger the bulk of the Loden through the fabric of his tunic. “I wish this was over. I wish we were there, wherever there is.” He looked at her. “Does Hawk have any idea how far we are going?”

  She shook her head. “I don’t think so. If he does, he isn’t saying. He just seems to be following his nose. His instincts are telling him where he is supposed to take us. The girl, Tessa, says that’s how it works. She insists that’s enough.” She shook her head. “I don’t know if anyone much believes that, but it’s all we’ve got to work with.”

  They were quiet for a few minutes, concentrating on walking, on the movement of their feet, placing one in front of the other, the repetition providing a strange sort of comfort. Angel glanced at the sky, at the white-hot ball of the sun, at the blue sweep surrounding it. She wished it would rain, but she knew it wouldn’t.

  “I guess we have to have faith in him,” Kirisin said suddenly. “The same way we had faith in what we were doing when we went searching for the Loden and didn’t know where it was or how we would find it. Sometimes faith in something is all you have.”

  “Sometimes,” she agreed, giving him a smile.

  She thought suddenly of Ailie, something she hadn’t done for a while. Losing the tatterdemalion had tested her own faith, but she had gotten past it. In an odd way, it had even acted to focus her on what she must do for those she was trying to help. Ailie had told her she was there to be her conscience, to whisper in her ear when she needed to rethink something. But without Ailie to prod her, she had no one but herself to rely on, and it had made her more careful than ever about thinking things through before she acted. It wasn’t that she was afraid of making a mistake so much as it was not wanting to disappoint Ailie. She owed her that much.

  She glanced ahead again where Hawk walked side by side with Panther. How much pressure must he be feeling, she wondered, after what had happened last night?

  “I’M TELLING YOU, Bird-Man, they’ll be back!”

  Panther was so insistent about it that Hawk almost felt sorry for him. The other was trying hard to make Hawk feel better when doing so was impossible, and it was painful to witness. Say anything, Panther apparently had decided, to make it seem as though somehow it would all work out.

  But Hawk knew better.

  “Look, it’s just like I said,” Panther went on. “Fixit wanders off and Chalk goes looking for his dim-brained friend ’cause Fixit never knows what’s going on anyway. Chalk thinks he’ll find him, like he’s done before back in the city, but he gets himself lost because he isn’t in the city anymore and can’t find his way out of a closet. He wanders around all night, maybe sleeps, too, wakes up or whatever and starts back. He gets back, finds out Fixit didn’t go anywhere and the only one missing is him. But by then, it’s too late to let us know what’s happened. We’ve left, so now the two of them are stuck at the bridge until the rest of the force can join us.”

  He paused, as if considering the reasonableness of his own argument, and then abruptly threw up his hands. “You know, it’s not like there’s any way they can tell us what’s happened! It’s not like there’s cells or radios or anything to call us up on!”

  “I know,” Hawk said quietly. He glanced over at the other. “I hope you’re right.”

&nbs
p; “But you don’t think I am, is that it?”

  Hawk shrugged, shook his head. “I don’t know.”

  “That’s right, you don’t know!” Panther was scowling, his frustration getting the better of him. “You don’t know a lot of stuff. Just because you’re some sort of fairy creature all full up with magic and special powers doesn’t mean you see things the right way all the time!”

  “Okay, Panther.”

  “Doesn’t mean that you got to be responsible for everyone, either. They’re big boys and girls, all but maybe Candle. You can’t be standing around keeping an eye on them every minute. You can’t expect—”

  Sparrow pushed up beside him, her face intense. “Give it a rest, Panther. This isn’t helping.”

  Panther glanced over dismissively. “You got something to say, say it to him. He’s the one needs it.”

  She shifted the weight of the Parkhan Spray from one shoulder to the other, a gesture that caused Hawk to glance over warily. “Just stop talking about it,” she snapped, her eyes dark with anger and frustration. She was on the verge of tears. “We hate what’s happened, and we all wish we’d kept better watch over those two. How many times have we warned them, all of us? But talking about it just makes everyone feel even worse. It doesn’t do any good to shove it in Hawk’s face and say, I told you so. We know all that, so let’s give him a break, okay?”

  “I’m saying he’s not to blame, Sparrow, case you weren’t listening to me.” Panther was unwilling to back down. “I’m saying the same thing you are. But he’s the one won’t let it go, not me. He’s the one thinks everything’s his fault since he’s leader and high mucky-muck and what have you. He’s the one wants to take on everything that happens and make it personal.”

  He went silent, momentarily talked out. They plodded on for a few moments without saying anything more, flushed with the heat of the argument and its genesis. Hawk watched Cheney as he stalked ahead of them, his shaggy presence no longer as comforting as it had once been. In the city, Cheney would have warned them of unseen dangers. He would have guarded and protected them; he would have kept the bad things out. But out here, with no doors or windows or walls, what could he do? There was too much open space, too many ways the bad things could get at you.