Black dawn (9 page)

The animal had gone completely rigid, his head
thrown back, his mouth open farther than Maggie
would have believed possible. The energy had
struck him just below what would have been the
neck on a man.

Dimly, Maggie was aware of Gavin making a thin
sound of terror. His mouth was open as wide as
Bern
's,
his eyes were fixed on the lightning.

But it
wasn't
lightning. It didn't strike and stop. It kept on crackling into
Bern
, its form changing
every second. Little electrical flickers darted
through his bristling fur, crackling down his chest
and belly and up around his muzzle. Maggie almost
thought she could see blue flames in the cavern of
his mouth.

Gavin gave a keening, inhuman scream and scrambled backward off the rocks, running.

Maggie didn't watch to see where he went. Her
mind was suddenly consumed with one thought.

She had to make
Bern
let go of her.

She had no idea what was happening to him, but
she did know that he was being killed. And that
when he was dead he was going to topple off the
mountain and take her with him.

She could
smell
burning now, the stink of smok
ing flesh and fur, and she could actually see white
wisps rising from his coat. He was being cooked from the inside out.

I have to do something
fast.

She squirmed and kicked, trying to get out of the
grip of the paws that seemed to clutch her reflexively. She pushed and shoved at him, trying to get him to loosen his hold just an inch. It didn't work.

She felt as if she were being smothered by a bear
skin rug, a horrible-smelling pelt that was catching
on fire. Why the lightning wasn't killing her, too,
she didn't know. All she knew was that she was
being crushed by his size and his weight and that
she was going to die.

And then she gave a violent heave and kicked as
hard as she could at the animal's lower belly. She
felt the shock of solid flesh as her shin connected.
And, unbelievably, she felt him recoil, stumbling
back, his huge forelegs releasing her.

Maggie fell to the rock, instinctively
spread
eagling
and grabbing for holds to keep from sliding
down the mountain. Above her, the bear stood and
quivered for another second, with that impossibly bright blue energy piercing him like a lance. Then,
just as quickly as it had come, the lightning was
gone. The bear swayed for a moment, then fell like
a marionette with cut strings.

He toppled backwards off the cliff into thin air.
Maggie caught a brief glimpse of him hitting rock
and bouncing and falling again, and then she
turned her face away.

Her closed lids were imprinted with a blazing
confusion of yellow and black afterimages. Her
breath was coming so fast that she felt dizzy. Her
arms and legs were weak.

What the
hell
was that?

The lightning had saved her life. But it was still
the scariest thing she'd ever seen.

Some kind of magic.
Pure magic.
If I were doing
a movie and I needed a special effect for magic,
that's what I'd use.

She slowly lifted her head.

It had come from the direction of the ledge.
When she looked that way, she saw the boy.

He was standing easily, doing something with his
left arm-tying a handkerchief around
a
spot of
blood at the wrist, it looked like. His face was
turned partially away from her.

He's not much older than me, Maggie thought,
startled. Or-is he? There was something about
him, an assurance in the way he
stood,
a grim com
petence in his movements. It made him seem like
an adult.

And he was dressed like somebody at a Renais
sance Faire. Maggie had been to one in
Oregon
two
summers ago, where everyone wore costumes from
the
Middle
Ages and ate whole roast turkey legs
and played jousting games. This boy was wearing
boots and a plain dark cape and he could have
walked right in and started sword fighting.

On the streets of Seattle Maggie would have
taken one look at him and grinned herself silly.
Here, she didn't have the slightest urge to smile.

The
Dark
Kingdom
, she thought.
Slaves and
maidens and
shapeshifters
-and magic.
He's prob
ably a wizard. What have I gotten myself into?

Her heart was beating hard and her mouth was
so dry that her tongue felt like sandpaper. But there
was something stronger than fear inside her.
Gratitude.

"Thank you,"
she said.

He didn't even look up.
"For what?"
He had a
clipped, brusque voice.

"For saving us.
I mean
you did that, didn't
you?"

Now he did look up, to measure her with a cool,
unsympathetic expression. "Did what?" he said in those same unfriendly tones.

But Maggie was staring at him, stricken with
sudden recognition that danced at the edges of her
mind and then moved tantalizingly away.

I had a dream--didn't I? And there was some
body like you in it. He looked like you, but his
expression was different. And he said
...
he said
that something was important....

She couldn't remember! And the boy was still
watching her, waiting impatiently.

"That ...
thing."
Maggie wiggled her fingers, try
ing to convey waves of energy.
"That thing that
knocked him off the cliff.
You did that."

"The blue fire.
Of course I did. Who else has the
Power? But I didn't do it for you." His voice was
like a cold wind blowing at her.

Maggie blinked at him.

She had no idea what to say. Part of her wanted
to question him, and another part suddenly wanted
to slug him. A third part, maybe smarter than both
the others, wanted to run the way Gavin had.

Curiosity won out. "Well, why did you do it,
then?" she asked.

The boy glanced down at the ledge he was stand
ing on. "He threw a stick at me.
Wood.
So I killed
him." He shrugged.
"Simple as
that."

He didn't throw it at you, Maggie thought, but
the boy was going on.

`Z couldn't care less what he was doing to you.
You're only a slave. He was only
a
shapeshifter
with the brain of a bear. Neither of you matter."

"Well-it doesn't matter why you did it. It still
saved both of us-" She glanced at
Arcadia
for con
firmation-and broke off sharply.

"Cady?" Maggie stared,
then
scrambled over the
rocks toward the other girl.

Arcadia
was still lying in the hollow, but her body was now limp. Her dark head sagged tone
lessly on her slender neck. Her eyes were shut; the
skin over her face was drawn tight.

"Cady! Can you hear me?"

For a horrible second she thought the older girl
was dead. Then she saw the tiny rise and fall of
her chest and heard the faint sound of breathing.

There was a roughness to the breathing that
Maggie didn't like. And at this distance she could
feel the heat that rose from Cady's skin.

She's got a high fever.
All that running and
climbing made her sicker.
She needs help, fast.