With a picture-perfect swing David stepped up and took the monster’s arm clean off. At the sight of their comrade’s vibrant red blood pouring from its shoulder, the others seemed to catch a kind of frenzy, sending the fight into a deadly fast-forward. David, his arms clearly growing weary of Excalibur’s weight, could barely swing his sword fast enough to repel their attacks. Tamani did what he could, stabbing out at every weapon and limb that approached him, mostly just trying to stay alive until David whittled their number down to a reasonable ratio.
How about three to one? Tamani thought ruefully.
When he felt something grab at his ankle, pulling his legs out from under him, Tamani was afraid his luck had run out. He managed to regain his footing, but not in time to completely dodge the blow of a wicked iron mace. He yelled through clenched teeth as the iron spikes tore into his right shoulder and he felt his grip slacken on his spear. The troll behind him gave a kick to the back of his knees and though he tried to catch himself, his injured arm collapsed beneath him, unable to bear his weight. He rolled in time to see the first troll lift his mace again, aiming for his head this time. Tamani was powerless to stop him.
And then the troll’s knees buckled and it lurched forward, collapsing onto Tamani, filling his mouth with troll flesh and burning his nostrils with its sickly scent. Tamani heaved against the crushing weight with his good arm, but it was only when he felt David’s strength join his that the huge troll rolled away.
Tamani climbed back to his feet and David reclaimed the sword from where he’d plunged it into the cobblestones. He had a strange look on his face.
“I owe you my life,” Tamani said, sweeping up his spear. “Again,” he added.
“I didn’t do it. I mean, that one I did,” David said, pointing to the two halves of the troll that had kicked Tamani’s legs out from beneath him. “But I turned to get this one and as I raised the sword he just . . . collapsed.”
“Must have taken a poison dart,” Tamani said, scanning the troll’s body, then looking around the street for their concealed benefactor. Not finding one, he just waved his thanks to the empty streets.
He adjusted his arm, trying to find the position that was least painful on his shoulder, giving up after a moment and just dealing with it. “We’d better get to the house before any more trolls see us.”
When they burst back in through the front door, Laurel was there to greet them, brandishing the same knife Tamani’s mother had nearly killed him with earlier. Something in Tamani’s core sank low to see Laurel holding a knife. She must have been terrified to be wielding a weapon, even if she didn’t know how to do much damage with it.
“It’s you!” she said, her voice heavy with relief as she tossed the knife from her the way Tamani might discard rotten fruit. “They’ve been outside for a few minutes, and all we could do was stay as quiet as possible.” She threw her arms round them both and Tamani couldn’t help but wish the embrace was for him alone.
“How is Jamison?” Tamani asked, but Laurel was shaking her head.
“How are you guys? Hurt?”
“It doesn’t matter,” Tamani said. He pushed past her and down the hall. He couldn’t focus on himself for even a moment or he wouldn’t be able to keep the pain at bay.
“He’s stirring,” Laurel said, following him. “But that’s all we’ve managed.”
“I was afraid of that,” Tamani said softly, standing in the bedroom doorway and looking at his mother, who was sitting by Jamison’s side. The room was heavy with so many scents that Tamani could scarcely breathe without coughing.
“Sorry,” his mother said. “Laurel said humans have an elixir called smelling salts, and we thought we’d try something similar. It seems to be working, but slowly.”
Tamani nodded. “Keep going, then. We held the road. Some trolls made it through, but it looks like everything will be under control soon.” He looked forlornly at Jamison, wishing he were more awake. But there wasn’t time for regrets. “I guess we need to go to the Academy after all,” he said, pushing his emotions aside. “I’ll take David. I just hope—”
No. Voicing hope that the Academy was still standing was not going to help Laurel, especially since he had sent Chelsea there. Had he made the wrong decision? Should they have tried to make it to the Academy in spite of the danger? Shar had warned him often against self-doubt, especially in the middle of a battle, but he had to wonder if his fears for the safety of Spring had influenced his feeling that Jamison was safest here.
“I hope we make it,” he finished at last.
Then he turned and ran straight into Laurel.
“I’m coming with you.”
“Not a chance.”
“You can’t stop me.”
A surge of helplessness washed through him. He could stop her, but she knew he wouldn’t. “You’re safer here. And you can explain the situation if Jamison wakes up.”
“I already told your mom everything. It’s more important that I come with you and tell the other Mixers what’s going on in his system. It’s his best shot,” Laurel said, her gaze steady.
Tamani hated that she was right.
At first, they kept to the trees. The foliage shielded them from view and almost made Laurel feel safe, even if it was just an illusion. Tamani waved Laurel and David forwards pointing through the lacy gaps in the leaves. “We can dash straight up the hill and probably get there faster – though the climb will be hard,” he said. “Or we can take the road through Summer, where the trolls are almost certainly attacking in force.” His brow furrowed like he wanted to say something else, but he was silent.
“We should go through Summer,” David said, his voice firm. “We can help. Clean out some trolls as we pass.”
Tamani nodded and his entire face relaxed. “Thank you,” he said, and Laurel realised he had forced himself not to make the request, putting it in David’s hands instead. “The Sparklers, they aren’t warriors and they don’t even have the strength of the Academy walls to help; their houses are mostly made out of glass.”
“What about weapons?” Laurel asked. “They’ve got to have some, right?”
“Stage weapons,” Tamani said dryly. “The kind specifically made not to hurt you.”
“Is . . . is Rowen there?” Laurel asked.
Tamani nodded, looking at the ground. “And Dahlia, and Jade,” he added. Laurel vaguely remembered the names of Tamani’s sister and her companion, though she’d never met them.
It didn’t take them long to reach the outskirts of Summer, but they heard noise before they saw anything. There were explosions, the ring of glass breaking, and a lot of screaming. Laurel braced herself for the gruesome sight as they approached the top of the rise.
They crested the hill and Laurel slowed in shock; Tamani paused as well. They were standing in front of an enormous stone castle with a moat full of fiery lava. By the time David realised they weren’t with him, he was six metres ahead.
“You guys coming?” he asked warily.
“This isn’t what Summer is supposed to look like,” Laurel said.
“Not even remotely,” Tamani said in awe.
“It’s an illusion!” Laurel realised. “To intimidate the trolls.”
As they looked at the huge structure one of the walls flickered and faded. For a moment, she could see a bright red silk covering, the kind used to cover the glass houses at night. Then the wall flickered back into existence, though it didn’t look quite the same.
Had someone just lost their concentration . . . or died?
“OK,” Tamani said. “Illusions are completely substanceless, so we have to walk through anything that we know isn’t actually Summer.”
“That’s helpful,” David muttered.
“How about this,” Tamani said. “If it’s made of stone, it’s probably not real. Almost everything in Summer is made out of sugar glass.”
“We’re still going to run into things,” Laurel said, “because there are real structures in
there. So be careful.”
They walked up to the moat and David hesitated. “Is there actually a dip here of any kind?”
Tamani shook his head.
“Looks real to me,” David said, edging closer and looking over the edge.
Steeling herself, Laurel stepped forward and reached a toe into what appeared to be thin air, but her feet felt the soft earth of the main path, right where she remembered it being. She took a few more steps until it looked like she was walking on nothing over the steaming molten rock below. “It’s OK,” she said, beckoning to David. “You can just walk—” her voice cut off as something slammed into her, knocking the wind out of her and throwing her through the illusionary castle wall. She couldn’t breathe enough to scream and when she connected with a cool, smooth surface, it shattered beneath her weight.
“Laurel!” She wasn’t sure who yelled it, but as soon as she could move she scrambled to her feet, feeling sugar glass sharp against her palms as she pushed herself upright – only to trip on something she guessed was a low stool, rendered invisible by the illusory cobblestone floor.
“I’m OK!” she yelled blindly to Tamani and David, hoping they could hear her over the roar of battle. She was suddenly painfully aware of just how vulnerable she was – she had no weapons, and even if she’d had her kit, her potions would be useless against these trolls. Gingerly she made her way to a crumbling bit of wall she could see but couldn’t touch, then crouched behind it.
Peering over the faux wall, Laurel realised that the inside of the Summer “castle” was even scarier than the outside. Creatures straight out of legend were running all over the place, but Laurel knew most of them couldn’t be real – or, at the very least, not the creatures they appeared to be. There were fire-breathing dragons, armour-clad unicorns, even an enormous cyclops. There were also trolls and faeries, some of them exact copies of others Laurel could see, and a rather large number of boulders Laurel knew hadn’t been there before. It was impossible to tell which were bespelled fae and which were illusions made from nothing.
They’re trying to get the trolls to kill one another, Laurel realised.
And for the most part, it seemed to be working. Laurel winced in horror as a black-clad troll gunned down an orange-haired faerie – only to breathe a sigh of relief as the “faerie” shimmered and shifted, taking the form of a tusk-mouthed lower troll. Across the imaginary courtyard, trolls were tripping over hidden fences and running into invisible houses and fae, all the while being blinded by sudden flashes of light. It was chaos, but Laurel had to admit, it was effective.
Still, it couldn’t last forever. Some of the faeries that dropped didn’t turn into trolls, and illusions were winking out where the trolls swung blindly and got lucky. And as each faerie fell, whatever the unfortunate Summer had been hiding was suddenly exposed and vulnerable for as long as it took for someone else to take up the illusion.
When Tamani and David failed to appear, Laurel tried to make her way back to where she thought she’d come in, her sense of direction skewed by the chaos around her. Taking care to avoid being seen, she carefully felt her way from faux boulder to faux boulder.
She realised she must be going the wrong way when she touched the curve of another bubble house, disguised as a half-destroyed stable. Swallowing her fear and wondering if she could risk calling out for David and Tamani again, Laurel tried to turn back, but the landscape had changed – the shifting illusion made navigation by sight impossible.
Suddenly the bubble house at her fingertips flickered and became visible, its translucent shell draped three-quarters with brilliant purple silk, a conspicuous target in a sea of artificial grey stone. A troll Laurel hadn’t seen lurking behind the mirage turned and swung his axe at the glass, smashing through it – then went after the faeries huddled within.
Helpless to stop the troll, Laurel could only duck behind a fake wall and curl up on the ground, her hands clapped over her ears as the screams – so close – filled her head. Where was Tamani? Where was David? Tears streamed down her face and her chest convulsed in sobs as the screams were silenced one by one.
It was a long time before Laurel stopped shaking enough to move. Forcing herself to find some semblance of control, she peeked around the corner. The troll had collapsed inside, its mismatched eyes glazed, its lips curled in a final sneer – but whoever had killed it was nowhere to be seen. The house remained visible. There was no one left to hide it.
“Help me!”
It was a small cry, the voice of a child – a child who would soon attract more trolls, yelling like that. No longer hindered by invisible obstacles, Laurel looked around for trolls, then approached the half-destroyed bubble of sugar glass, steeling herself against what she knew she would find there.
“Hello?” she called as quietly as she could. The crunch of sugar glass beneath her feet was her only answer.
Did I imagine it? She didn’t think the Summer faeries could make sounds with their illusions, but she had to admit she didn’t know for sure.
“Help!” came the voice again.
Laurel flew to the source of the sound, a hand waving from beneath a limp, headless body oozing thick, translucent sap. Laurel shuddered and tried not to think about it too hard as she braced her feet and rolled the woman’s corpse over to reveal a tiny girl, clutched protectively in the dead faerie’s lifeless arms.
She knew the child in an instant.
“Rowen!” Laurel pulled Tamani’s niece to her chest, carefully tucking the girl’s head behind her arm to protect her from the gruesome sight surrounding them.
“Laurel?” Rowen whispered. Laurel couldn’t imagine the confusion she must be feeling.
“It’s me,” she said, holding back a sob of relief. “I’m here. Tamani’s here too, somewhere.”
“Where?” Rowen asked as Laurel continued to hide the girl’s face while picking her way through the broken glass and ducking low to hide behind a small rock that was actually real, but too small to provide cover for long.
“I’ll bring him soon,” Laurel said, forcing her face to relax, her mouth to smile. “Was – was your mom with you?” she – asked softly. Rowen nodded and stuck two fingers in her mouth. The darkening around her eyes told Laurel that she knew something had happened, even if she didn’t comprehend quite what that was.
“How about your dad?”
She shook her head. “He said he was going to go fight bad guys.”
“And that’s exactly what he’s doing,” Laurel said, scanning the chaos around them, searching for some place to hide. The castle was becoming a flickering patchwork, with wrecked Summer houses interspersed among the false walls and half-timbered illusions, but there were still a few places to hide.
“Laurel!”
Laurel had never been more relieved to hear Tamani’s voice. She peered over the wall to see Tamani using his spear like a blind man’s cane, scouting out the terrain by feel while guiding David along. Relieved of the chore of figuring out where to walk, David was swinging his sword freely since it wouldn’t be able to harm any faeries.
“Tamani! I have Rowen.”
Instantly, Tamani was running toward them. His feet found something he couldn’t see and he tripped, sprawling to the ground on his stomach, David close behind.
“Watch that . . . thing . . .” Tamani said ruefully, scrambling to his feet.
He covered the remaining distance quickly and threw his arms around Rowen and Laurel together, burying his face in Rowen’s soft brown curls. “Thank the Goddess,” he whispered.
David was glancing about warily. “What do we do now?”
Tamani surveyed the confusion and destruction surrounding them and shook his head. “We’re not even halfway through yet,” he said. “I underestimated the Sparklers. Vastly. If we try to keep going we’re never going to make it to the Academy in time, and I’m not convinced we’ll actually do much good here.” He hesitated. “I say we go back the way we came. To the woods. Follow the
m up as close to the Academy as we can.”
“But everything keeps changing,” Laurel said. “How do you know which way is out?”
“That way,” Rowen piped, pointing one tiny finger.
Tamani smiled. “I was just going by the sun, but now we have a Sparkler. Perfect visual memory is good for more than illusions, you know.”
Laurel and David nodded, and Tamani took up his spear, holding it in front of him like a cane again, just in case. “Are you OK with Rowen?”
Laurel nodded. The little girl hardly weighed more than an infant, which made it all the more awe inspiring that she appeared to have memorised the settlement’s layout. Laurel wondered whether it was part of Summer faerie training, or if it just came naturally to them. With Rowen’s help, it took them only a few minutes to retrace the short distance they’d travelled into Summer, but Laurel was more relieved to see the lava-filled moat than she would have thought possible. Without hesitation she ran right over the top of it and, clinging to Rowen, sprinted for the trees. She’d never imagined the beautiful illusions she’d seen at the Samhain festival or the cute familiars Rowen had made last summer could transform her favourite settlement into this nightmare-inducing terror.
As they all panted for breath Tamani gathered the little faerie into his arms, holding her as though she were his lifeline.
“Now listen to me, Rowen,” Tamani said, pulling back and holding her face firmly in his hands. “I know you’ve been working on changing your appearance.”
Rowen nodded soberly.
“Did you get a good look at any of the bad guys who came in here today?”
She nodded again.
“Can you show me?”
Rowen’s tiny chin quivered for a moment. The she bowed her head and seemed to expand before them, becoming twenty times the tiny girl she had been, morphing into a misshapen man in black jeans and a tattered white shirt. A man with a huge axe.
“Holy crap,” David said, jumping backward and nearly knocking Laurel over.