The Gypsy Morph

  “Some of us might see it differently. Humans are not perfect; I wouldn’t argue otherwise. But their faith is what sets them apart from creatures like you. They believe in the impossible, in what they cannot see and touch. They think that if you don’t seek to be better than what you are, you live to no purpose. What is the point of life if not to improve it for yourself and others?”

  He laughed anew. “Life’s sole purpose is in staying alive for as long as you can. Power facilitates that end. I saw that centuries ago when I shed my human skin to become my demon self. I gained control over magic that you can only dream about. I gained power over my life and the lives of others. Faith in anything other than that is a waste. What can you hope for but disappointment?”

  “You can hope for a world in which living things flourish, not one in which they are systematically destroyed. You can hope for a world where power for its own sake is disdained. You can hope for a common ground that fosters compassion and understanding provides space for all living things.”

  “A very pretty image.”

  “You wouldn’t understand.”

  “What I understand is that a world of living things is overrated.”

  She sensed a change in his stance, in the expression on his face. She held herself steady, using her magic to buttress her failing strength, a little here, a little there.

  “You struggle so hard in the service of the Word,” the old man said quietly. “But in the end, you die anyway.”

  She had summoned what magic she could to defend herself, but it wasn’t enough. The old man’s bright fire exploded into her with pile-driver force, knocking her off her feet and sending her sprawling. She felt all the strength leave her, felt pain rip through her body. Smoke rose from her clothing in wispy trailers. She lay helpless on the ground, the black staff clutched against her body.

  Help me, Johnny, she prayed.

  “Such a waste,” the old man said, shaking his head as he approached across the flats.

  Sudden movement caught her eye. Feeders, thousands of them, were oozing from the ground like the ghosts of the dead come back to life. They emerged like strange, twisted trees, their black shapes liquid and sinuous, their eyes bright with hunger. They were there to feed on her.

  The old man saw them, too, and he smiled approvingly, until a sudden explosion of fire generated by a magic that was not hers caught him squarely in the back and threw him to the ground.

  SIMRALIN AND LOGAN TOM watched in disbelief as the boy Hawk used his gypsy morph powers to open the earth and swallow the demon army whole. They stood atop the embankment until the shaking of the ground forced them to their knees, and then they remained kneeling as the shock of what they had witnessed left them momentarily frozen. How could any creature possess power enough to do what they had seen this boy do?

  But then the skrails flew the old man over the empty flats to con-front Angel Perez, and Logan Tom was back on his feet instantly. He could hardly believe what he was seeing. It was the enemy he had searched for all these years. He knew him instantly, as if he were eight years old once more and standing amid the bodies of his family and the destruction of his home, as if seeing that sly smile and those cold, hard eyes, as if feeling anew the other’s tacit approval of his killing of the once-men with the Tyson Flechette.

  He turned at once to Simralin, and she saw everything he had told her about the old man reflected on his face. “Is that him?” she asked.

  “It’s him. I have to go down and face him. I want you to wait until he is engaged with me, and then I want you to slip around behind us and get Angel and Hawk on their feet and across the bridge. Can you do that?”

  She nodded. “But I want to go with you.”

  He shook his head, backing away. “I can’t be worried for you when I do this. I can’t bear thinking of him hurting you, too. Don’t ask it of me.”

  She let him go then, not because she had no other choice, but because she understood the kind of determination that ruled him in this matter and knew there was no point in questioning it. They were close enough by now that he didn’t need her to tell him so to know that it was true. There was something in her eyes at the last, just before he turned away, but there was no time left to consider what it meant. He did not look back, hurrying down the embankment and onto the flats, intent on reaching the old man, who had already been set down by the skrails and was walking toward Angel. He felt the adrenaline pump through him; he was almost light-headed with expectation. This was the reward the Lady had promised him all those weeks ago. By finding and protecting the gypsy morph, he would have his chance at avenging his family. He had wondered all along if the promise had meaning, if it would be kept. Now he found himself wondering if he could make it count.

  He was a long way out yet when the demon set fire to the dam to stop the futile rescue attempt from the eastern bank of the gorge. He was still too far away to be effective when the demon tried to go around Angel, and even though she was clearly wounded and sapped of her strength, she blocked his way. He wasn’t much closer when the two began talk to each other, and the feeders began to appear. He saw all this in glimpses as he passed through curtains of residual smoke and floating ash. The tableau played itself out in small snapshots, as if an album of pictures taken of a single event. He kept thinking that he was going to be too late to save either Angel or the boy, that the old man would kill them both before he could get close enough to prevent it.

  But suddenly he was through the last of the haze, and the confrontation between the old man and Angel Perez was taking place right in front of him. Neither saw him, and he did not wait for them to do so. Levering the black staff, he summoned the magic of his order, letting it build until it was so thickly gathered within him that he could no longer contain it. Then he released it in a blinding explosion that ripped through the still afternoon air with a sound like metal tearing.

  The demon was unprepared for the attack, its attention focused on Angel. It had no defenses in place, save the ones that its preternatural instincts allowed it to summon at the last minute. The Word’s fire slammed into it, lifted it off its feet, and threw it to the ground, singed and smoking. Logan did not slow. He came on, walking toward the slumped form, catching a quick glimpse of the hard old face as it turned to him, feeling the sting of those terrible eyes.

  He sent the Word’s cleansing fire burning into it a second time, a long, sustained stream that engulfed the gray-cloaked demon and set it aflame. Logan watched it burn as he closed on it, fighting his way through fresh waves of smoke and ash. He was filled with a fierce, terrible joy. For my mother and father, he thought. For Tyler and Megan. He kept the magic of his staff burning into the demon until he felt his strength begin to sap. Then, and only then, did he pause his attack to measure the results.

  He was very close by then, but flames and smoke hid much of what he needed to see. He moved closer still, wary now, his instincts warning him that this might not be over, that he might not be seeing things as clearly as he should.

  His instincts were correct. Just as he realized that the smoking, flaming lump in front of him was only empty robes, he was struck a terrific blow from behind and sent sprawling. He managed to hang on to his staff, but only barely. As he tumbled to the ground, he caught a quick glimpse of the skeletal form that had been standing at his back, stick-thin and hunched over, the demon in its old man form.

  Then its killing fire was burning into him, and all of his concentration was on mustering sufficient magic to ward it off. He did so at terrible cost to his own reserves and only barely managed to keep the flames at bay. The demon had tricked him, giving the impression that it lay helpless on the ground when in fact it had slipped away after that first strike. He had been too ready to accept what his eyes told him. His eagerness had blinded him to the truth.

  The demon fire ceased, and Logan rolled away from a scorched patch of earth so hot that it made him cry out. He tried to rise and couldn’t. Feeders hovered at the periphery of his
vision, crouched and waiting. With his black staff shielding him, he faced the demon from a prone position, looking for a way to fend it off. Again, he had misjudged. This demon was so much stronger than any other, and he had not been sufficiently prepared to defend against it.

  The demon was approaching him now, a strange look on its face. It moved a step closer to Logan, as if needing to see him more clearly.

  “I know you,” it hissed, its voice a whisper that spoke from the depths of a bottomless well. Surprise reflected in its wicked green eyes. “You’re the boy from the compound, all those years ago . . .”

  Logan screamed in fury and counterattacked. Only his rage at the knowledge that the other recognized him gave him the strength to do so. It felt as if the demon had claimed a kind of ownership over him, and he could not bear that. But the effort was futile; the other’s power responded instantly, eroding his own, beating back his defenses, collapsing his shield. Even when he was close to being consumed by demon flames, his skin beginning to sear, he fought to regain his feet, lurching to his knees, struggling to rise.

  It was not enough. He could not save himself. The feeders were all around him now and closing. He felt his magic giving way. Despite everything, he was going to die.

  Then a wave of blue fire struck the demon from behind, a fire so bright and pure that Logan was almost blinded by its intense glow. He watched it envelop his attacker and saw the look of shocked surprise that crossed the hateful face. His first thought was that Angel had regained her feet and was trying to help him. But this was not Word fire, and Angel still lay where she had fallen, barely risen on one elbow.

  He shifted his gaze, and through billowing clouds of dust and smoke he found Simralin.

  She was standing not a dozen feet away, the Elfstones gripped in both hands, her face a mask of concentration. Blue fire erupted from between her fingers, burning into the old man. Logan was stunned. She must have disobeyed him and followed him down. She must have decided she would help. And against all odds, she had found a way to master the power of the Stones.

  Fighting through pain and rage, the demon began to turn toward her, shifting his own magic to defend himself. The Elven fire illuminated his bones as if he were transparent, and his head was thrown back in concentration. The moment he began to turn, Logan lurched to his feet. He threw off his weariness and his fear of failure, recovered his shattered determination, and walked toward the demon. When he was right on top of him, he jammed one end of his black staff into the other’s back, penetrating skin and muscle and bone, and summoned the magic.

  Instantly the Word’s fire responded, ripping into the demon, an explosion of power released from a place inside himself that he did not know existed.

  In a flood of dark shapes, the feeders were all over Findo Gask.

  The demon half turned, pinned between the killing fires, eyes bright with madness and hatred. Lips skinned back from pointed teeth, and its gaze conveyed to Logan Tom its terrible loathing. But Logan did not relent; he pressed his attack even harder. He pressed it until it was all there was left of him, until the entire world disappeared beneath the weight of his resolve to see the demon destroyed.

  There was a moment in which Logan could feel a shift in the tides that marked the battle’s momentum. The demon twisted and thrashed, changing as it did so into something unspeakable, a creature from an older time come at last to the end of its life. The feeders clung to it, ripping and tearing, driven into a frenzy.

  Then it exploded into flames and smoke and ash, and Findo Gask was gone forever.

  THIRTY-THREE

  I N THE AFTERMATH OF THE STRUGGLE, the skrails lifted off and flew south, and the remnants of the once-men drifted away. Even the lesser demons, perhaps not appreciating that had they chosen to do so, they might have combined forces and overwhelmed the pair that had destroyed their leader—perhaps too stunned even to think such thoughts—turned away. Atop the wall of the dam, the demon fires died out, leaving blackened stone and scorched air. East, the members of the caravan stood grouped along the banks of the gorge, and in the sweep of the land west, the plains lay abandoned and empty.

  Logan Tom lowered his black staff and looked down at the remains of the old man, the enemy he had hunted for so long, and realized that he didn’t feel any of the things he should have been feeling. He should have felt elation or relief or satisfaction, shouldn’t he? Something? But all he felt was emptiness, as if the fulfillment of the Lady’s promise had done nothing more than hollow him out. All those years, he kept repeating in his mind, over and over. All those years.

  Then Simralin’s arms were about him, and she was holding him, and he could feel something breaking inside, and the emotions flooded through him with such intensity that he began to shake. Forgotten memories surfaced like the ghosts of the dead, memories of his parents and his siblings, of his life after they were gone, of his loneliness and resolve, of so much he hadn’t allowed himself to think about for twenty years.

  Her arms tightened, and he said softly, “I’m all right.”

  But she held on to him anyway, and it was not until the shaking finally stopped that she whispered, “Now you are.”

  She released him then, and they hurried over to Angel Perez. When they knelt next to her and tried to help her to her feet, she shook her head quickly and said, “No puedo. Me duele todo el cuerpo. I can’t. I hurt everywhere. Leave me, and see about the boy.” She looked at them each in turn. “Son muy valientes, mis amigos. Very brave.”

  They moved to Hawk and found him awake, breathing regularly and unharmed. Simralin knelt and lifted the boy’s head into her lap, and when he opened his eyes and tried to speak, she put a finger to his lips and said, “Shhh, just rest. Everyone is safe.”

  A stream of adults and children came charging back across the bridge to help them, ignoring the fresh network of cracks and fissures that had developed in the concrete. Soon the Ghosts were clustered around Hawk, hugging him and telling him they believed in him and would never leave him, and Tessa was kissing him and telling him she loved him more than ever.

  Kirisin appeared suddenly from the throng, came running up to Simralin, and threw his arms around her. He was crying, even though he kept trying to hide it, and he couldn’t speak at first. She hugged him back, and simply said, “I missed you, too, Little K.”

  With Helen Rice directing traffic, they carried Angel across the dam to the far side of the gorge, and a woman with medical skills set about removing the darts, cleaning out the wounds, and binding her up. No bones had been broken, and these injuries, like those she had received before, would heal with time. All that was needed was rest, and the woman gave Angel a medication that put her to sleep in moments. Helen had a makeshift stretcher built using a pair of slender trees and an old canvas greatcoat, placed the sleeping Knight of the Word atop it, and assigned two strong men the task of attending to her.

  When the caravan set out again, its members were filled with a fresh sense of hope and confidence. From the youngest to the oldest, everyone’s spirits had been lifted. People talked and joked and related memories of the battle they had witnessed and the near disaster they had escaped. In softer tones they spoke of Hawk, of a boy who could open the earth and make it swallow their enemies, and they told themselves that as long as he led them they would come to no harm.

  Hawk walked apart with Tessa and the Ghosts, choosing their path and not saying much to anyone. If he heard what people were saying about him, he didn’t let on. When Sparrow tried to speak of what he had done, daring, as usual, what no other would in the absence of Panther, he only shook his head and said he didn’t want to talk about it.

  They walked through the remainder of the day, the sun drifting slowly west behind them, the light dimming, and finally, after far too long, Logan Tom found himself alone with Simralin.

  “Your little brother doesn’t want to let you out of his sight,” he said, having just sent the boy to the rear of the caravan, ostensibly to make certain t
hat everyone was keeping up.

  “Little brothers are like that,” she replied, moving close to him and linking her arm in his.

  They walked on for a time without speaking further, content just to be close, their eyes shifting from the ground to the land ahead, where night was creeping into view.

  “What you did back there . . .,” he said finally.

  “Was necessary.”

  “Was incredibly brave. You couldn’t have known you could make the Elfstones work. You took a terrible risk.”

  “Some risks you have to take. I had to take this one. I had to try to help you.”

  He shook his head. “You didn’t listen to anything I said about waiting, did you? You were right behind me the whole time.”

  She was silent a moment. “I kept thinking of all those I left behind in the Cintra, all those who died and I will never see again. Friends and family, people I cared about.” She shrugged without looking at him. “You know how important you are to me, Logan. I wasn’t going to lose you, too. I am bound to you in so many ways. Not by words or writing, but by how I feel. If I lose you, I lose myself.”

  “You won’t lose me,” he said.

  “At the time, I wasn’t so sure.”

  He gave her a small, weary smile. “I told you that you might be able to use the Elfstones, even if it didn’t seem so when you tried before. Didn’t I? Didn’t I say you just had to give yourself a chance?”

  “You did. It seemed so easy this time. Perhaps it was because I was so determined that it would work; because I wanted it so badly. I just called the magic up the way I’d seen Kirisin do it, and there it was. You were right.”

  “But I could have been wrong. You could have been killed.”

  “You could have been killed, too.”

  “I love you,” he said impulsively.

  She squeezed his arm. “I love you, too.”