A wind suddenly blasted through the trees, and Tinker felt magic surge up as Jin suddenly froze and the music instantly stopped.
The dragon head had been turned away from her.
The hairs on the back of her neck rose as it slowly turned to look at her with gleaming eyes. The mane that had laid down Jin’s back rose, crackling with power.
“Tinker haenanan.” The voice was too deep, too gravelly, too loud to be Jin’s. “Manamana daaaaa sobadadada.”
“Princess Tinker,” Riki murmured in Elvish from his bowed position. “Our great guardian Providence greets you.”
This was entirely too creepy.
“You never told me that he was dead,” Tinker whispered in English.
Riki winced and gave a slight warning shake of his head. Providence, apparently, could understand English fine; the dragon laughed. Its breath blasted warm over her, smelling like wind after a rainstorm. His words rolled over her, seemingly unending. Jin had told her once that dragons were long-winded and indirect and trying to hurry them was considered impolite.
“It is the folly of youth,” Riki translated even as Providence spoke. “Ignorant of great pain and death, the young believe that they are above harm. We moved through the worlds, following our whims, believing nothing could hurt us. But we were wrong. Like all things, it was only a matter of time.
“I was not the first to fall. The earliest ones were caught fast by their bodies, their minds free to seek out help. They bore stories of a growing evil, covetous of our powers, which sought to take them for themselves. This evil rendered down our helpless brothers, tearing them asunder and gifting their slaves with tattered pieces of our souls.
“Still, we did not understand our danger. We simply put this world under edict and left it to its own fate. We felt it was not our place to act, as it was not the world we were born to. But then the evil branched out to Earth, like a growing cancer, and this time we attempted to check its spread. We searched out bridges to Onihida, the next world in harmony with this one, and eliminated them. To our horror, we soon realized that we were too late. All we had done was seal the evil on Onihida.”
It sounded like her theory was right. “So the greater bloods are elves?”
“This evil has had many names across many worlds. We did not witness the start of their rise. We do not know from whence they came nor what they were at the birth. They still seek what they have always sought—to become gods. They want what we have by natural right. They grow more and more powerful, piece by stolen piece.”
Sparrow had claimed that the Skin Clan had been one step below gods. She had claimed that the elves were stagnating. She had wanted to go back to the old ways, so the elves could once again “advance.”
“Long I have watched over my tengu,” Riki/Providence said. “It is my shame that I am the cause of their misery—for the evil came searching for me and caught my body and laid siege to my mind. I asked of the tengu to commit the ultimate of blasphemy, to slay their own god to free me from my captors. As punishment for that deed, they were merged with crows and yet left bound to earth.”
“But the greater bloods were here first, on Elfhome, as elves?”
Providence nodded his great head. “They gave your father’s people our intelligence. They gave your mother’s people our sight. They gave the warriors at your back our morality.”
“Eons have come to a balance point on this moment, like great rocks pressing on fractures of the Earth. The time is at hand for pressure to cause a shift and all the worlds to be rewritten—not only this world, but all the worlds in harmony with it.”
That didn’t sound good. “What’s going to happen?”
Providence gazed down at her with gleaming eyes. “All is at hand for the evil to achieve their goal.”
27: ON TRACK
Tommy was starting to think he was wrong. With Spot tucked behind him on his hoverbike, he’d followed the railroad tracks out for mind-numbing hours. Beyond the Rim, the tracks were the only sign of civilization. They cut through a virgin forest of towering ironwood trees. On either side of the iron rails were spell lights to keep down the ambient level of magic that would otherwise snare and tangle on the metal. Beyond the graveled embankments, he could pick out wards on stone posts, to keep everything from black willows to rabbits from wandering onto the tracks. Still, every few miles there was a massive skeleton of a saurus that had managed to blunder into the path of the train anyhow. For the first time, the massive axe-like nose on the Elfhome engines made sense to Tommy.
There wasn’t, however, a single sign of the oni.
Hoverbikes had amazing gas mileage since half their power came from magic. He’d filled his tank and strapped on a extra can behind Spot, but he was nearing the point where he would have to turn around or not be able to get his hoverbike all the way back to Pittsburgh.
Spot beat on his shoulder and pointed behind them.
Tommy skidded to a stop and looked back, the hoverbike rumbling loudly in the forest silence. They were running alongside a shallow river, the train tracks cut into the shoulder of a hill above the flood plain.
“Here?”
Spot didn’t answer, but his nose was working, trying to catch whatever elusive scent had made him stop Tommy.
Tommy turned the hoverbike around and slowly made his way back toward Pittsburgh, eyeing the landscape closely. The oni had been careful, but years of use had left small, indelible marks on the landscape. He hadn’t noticed them at fifty miles per hour, but at a crawl he could pick them out. The rocky embankment was bare of vegetation all the way down to the river’s edge. On the far side of the shallow water, there was a break in the brush, too wide to be a deer trail.
Tommy pulled up against the cliff, just in case a train came through, and shut down his hoverbike to conserve gas. The forest quiet pressed in on them.
Spot swung down off the hoverbike and pressed nose to soil.
“Is it the same group?” Tommy checked his pistol to make sure it was loaded, not that a dozen shots would help much if they were jumped by an entire platoon.
On hands and knees, Spot crisscrossed the embankment sniffing and then nodded.
“Do they still have the elf female?”
Spot nodded again.
“Is the kitsune with them?”
Spot shook his head, making his long ears flap.
Good. Tommy wasn’t immune to her powers. “How recent?”
Spot held up both hands to measure out a long time. The oni must have driven straight to the station and boarded a train just as it left. The oni were hours in front of them.
Tommy didn’t bother to ask how many oni—Spot was still having trouble counting past five.
So he was right that the oni were using the train to travel far out of Pittsburgh in large numbers. Yay, him; out in the frigging nowhere with a pistol and an eight-year-old. Somehow this didn’t seem like a smart plan.
Tommy considered the river and the far bank. The brush screened the area beyond now, but the leaves were already turning color with the approaching autumn. It was only a matter of time before all the leaves came down, leaving the far bank exposed. The oni camp was probably miles south from the track so there was no chance of it being discovered by train work crews. Hopefully it was far enough out that no one had heard his engine. This was as far as he could go on his hoverbike, though, without bringing the oni down on his head.
He turned in a full circle, looking for a place to hide the big bike. Someplace where the oni wouldn’t see it or stumble over it or even find it easily if they were looking. There were niches in the cliff running alongside the tracks. He could pop up and land on one of the larger ledges.
Spot tried to scramble back up onto the hoverbike when Tommy restarted the bike.
“No, stay here. I’ll be back.”
Spot gave him big hurt puppy-dog eyes but backed off. Tommy took the bike around the bend of the hill until he found a likely ledge. He raced the engine and then, drop
ping all power to the lift chain, popped up onto the wide shelf. Shutting down the motor, he unflattened the brush that he crashed through until the bike was screened from a casual glance.
Spot wriggled with joy when he saw Tommy trotting back down the track toward him. His cheeks were wet with silent tears.
“I told you I’d be back.” Tommy patted the boy on the head as Spot hugged him tight. “I need you to be a big boy. No crying.”
Spot nodded, rubbing his face dry against Tommy’s shirt.
* * *
They had to go quietly and carefully. The band of oni had fanned out, taking various trails so that none would be too heavily traveled. After the second ridge, two miles south from the river, they rejoined on one well-worn path. Five miles farther south, another wide trail crossed it.
Half-oni or not, Spot was still just eight. He couldn’t hike all day. Tommy detoured to the nearest hilltop where he could keep an eye on the path. Spot curled up beside Tommy and tossed and turned exactly enough to get his head into Tommy’s lap before falling asleep.
Tommy sighed, shaking his head, but didn’t bother to push Spot off. The only affection that the boy was ever going to get was from his own family. As he got older, even that would be less and less often.
While Spot slept, Tommy considered the crossroads. Where did the east-west path lead? It seemed to be running parallel to the distant train track. Was it simply that the oni had multiple stops where they could get on and off the train? It would be comforting to think so, because it meant he wouldn’t be caught between two oni forces if they continued south. There was only one train in and one train out every day, and both had passed through this area hours ago. If the east-west path led to other camps, though, there could be oni coming and going all day and even into the night. He considered heading back to Pittsburgh, but what would he say? He’d found a path?
After twenty minutes of resting, he shook Spot awake and they continued south. Another ten miles and two longer breaks, and they came to a second crossroad. Dusk was falling and Spot was starting to stagger. He lifted his head, nose working.
Tommy crouched down beside Spot and sniffed. Wood smoke lightly scented the air. They were getting close. “Follow me.”
Spot nodded, eyes wide. He might not be able to count, but he understood the danger of tracking the oni.
Tommy veered off the well-beaten path on the valley floor to push through the thick laurel that covered the steep hillside. At points they had to scramble up rock walls. When they reached the hilltop, he motioned to Spot to keep belly down on the ground. Tommy moved forward in a crouch along the ridgeline until he came to a drop-off.
In the valley below was a massive ironwood fort and beyond it hundreds of tents. Thousands of oni moved through the dusk. He could make out hundreds of cages holding muzzled wargs. In the far south of the camp, there was a huge pen. Whatever was caged there roared, the noise echoing up the valley like distant thunder.
“Shit,” Tommy whispered.
Spot tapped his shoulder and pointed off to the west. There was a faint smoke haze between them and the setting sun. Another camp lay beyond the hill. The path heading west from the crossroad seemed to lead toward it. Judging by the smoke, the western camp was probably as big as the camp just to the south. Tommy turned and studied the eastern horizon. Darkness was already spreading over the land, and light from campfires in a third site gleamed off a haze of smoke.
There weren’t thousands of oni hidden in the forest—there were tens of thousands. And somewhere, down in the spreading darkness, was one female elf.
28: TEA AND CRUMPETS
How do you fight your shadow?
Tinker sat in the courtyard, staring down at her shadow. Around her, the sekasha prowled, restless but silent as caged tigers. The wind moved through the peach trees, stirring the branches. She watched the play of light move over her shadow, thinking of Providence.
The dragons had somehow evolved two different levels of existence. There was the body that lived and breathed. Their minds—no, not mind—awareness? Soul? Whatever made up moral conscious thought—that existed beyond their bodies. Jin had warned her that dragon bodies could operate on autopilot without their minds guiding their actions. “Lights are on, but no one’s home.” It was disturbing to know that their minds could continue too, without the body still alive. And yet wasn’t that the whole thing with the elf cremation? To free the spirit of the dead body so it could move on to heaven?
She had tried to get details from Providence about what the Skin Clan planned, but he merely told her that she’d be fighting her shadow.
She held out her hand and studied the dark fingers on the ground. What did the dragon mean by that?
Shadow knows what you’re doing because you block the light, telegraphing intention. Actions cause reaction.
Tinker squinted up at the morning sun. Light created the shadow. The absence of light meant there was no shadow. Could that actually be counted as fighting it? Considering the dragon’s dual existence, what if the shadow continued to exist in total darkness? What if you could only see it because of the light? Without light, you would no longer be aware of the shadow’s reaction. But then again, the shadow wouldn’t be connected to you anymore, and it wouldn’t be aware of your actions. In darkness, a fight would become a two-way blindman’s bluff.
Tinker sighed. She was wasting time with the metaphysical. She would be better off dealing with science. Good hard numbers. So far, Oilcan’s kids were the only clue to what the Skin Clan planned. By now Lain should have the preliminary findings on the children’s DNA.
Of course, there was the small problem of how to get the information. Her cell phone had been toasted in the Rolls-Royce explosion.
Fate was determined to reduce her down to the Stone Age.
Tinker stood up. “I want to go see Lain.”
“Are you sure?” Pony continued to pace restlessly. “Prince True Flame has taken many of the Wyverns with him, and all the other Hands have gone with Wolf.”
And you are hurt, he did not say.
“Since there is no phone here, the only way I’ll be able to talk to her—”
“Was if she came and saw you,” Lain said from behind Lemonseed.
* * *
Under the guise of having innocent conversation with her estranged (and strange) mother and aunt, a picnic tea was set up in the courtyard under the peach trees. Lemonseed apparently sensed the real importance of the occasion—she only provided teacups and assorted finger sandwiches for three.
Pony and Stormsong stood guard as Shields at the edge of the picnic blanket. Cloudwalker, Rainlily, and Little Egret roamed the courtyard as Blades, keeping the rest of the elves at bay.
“I focused on the children first,” Lain whispered as she spread out the DNA scans on the picnic blanket. “All the children—the living and the dead—were related. They’re all distant cousins.”
“Are you sure?” Tinker frowned at the smudges. That was all they had to work with? “The Skin Clan spell-worked everyone. Could this just be DNA they bred into the Stone Clan? Look at Oilcan and me. We both look like Stone Clan even though we’re only like one-sixteenth or less elf.”
Lain sighed. “You have the intelligence to know all this, if you just applied yourself.”
“I don’t like biology,” Tinker said. “Blood and guts and all that. Bleah.”
Esme snickered, earning a hard look from both Tinker and Lain. “That’s what I said when I was eighteen and Lain tried to talk me into a biology major. Almost those exact words.”
Lain decided to ignore both of them. “Yes, I’m sure. All the children share the same great-great-grandmother.” Lain pulled out sets of the computer-printed spell papers paper-clipped together. “To verify that the scans you found in the chest were those of the children, I used the spell on the DNA swipes.” She divided the paper-clipped papers into two stacks. “These three are the dead children. These are Barley, Cattail, Rustle, and Baby Duck.??
? She laid a lone sheet between the two stacks. “And this is the control, Merry. Notice these markers at the top. This spell is testing for a certain set of DNA markers and showing positive and negative. The three children that were killed tested negative. The four that survived tested positive. Merry also tested positive.”
Pony growled out an impressive string of foul words. “We thought ourselves free of the Skin Clan and yet they’re still breeding us.”
The Skin Clan was working within the Stone Clan, carrying on their breeding programs? It boggled Tinker’s mind, but she supposed in the confusion of war, a member of the Skin Clan could disappear in one corner of the world and surface in another, claiming to be part of a different caste and clan. In the time she had lived with Windwolf, she hadn’t seen any drawings or paintings of individual elves. Without DNA testing, there was no way to be sure if someone was who they really claimed to be.
“But why bring the kids all the way over here?” Tinker said. “No one has even suspected there’s anything wrong in Easternlands.”
Pony started to pace. “If Skin Clan is working from within the Stone Clan, they could influence mating: encourage a marriage, introduce partners, discourage couplings that they didn’t want. The Skin Clan couldn’t do any spell-working. Every domana within a mei would feel any massive spell use. Even if they had brought one or two domana into their fold, there would be others in range.”
“But if we felt something here, we’d assume it was the oni doing stuff,” Tinker said. “Did they spell-work the kids?”
Lain sighed. “I only have you as a basis of comparison, and what Windwolf did to you was massive. There’s no way to miss it. Merry’s sample seems to indicate that nothing has been done to the other children—their abnormality was there when they were born.”
“They seem so normal,” Tinker complained, thinking of Providence’s warning. The Skin Clan tipped their hand in luring the kids to Pittsburgh. What had been worth that risk?
Tinker glanced to Esme, who was plundering the sandwiches that Lemonseed had left behind with the tea. “What about your dreams? Did you see anything—useful?”