Elf Saga: Bloodlines (Part 1: Curse of the Jaguar) (13 page)

“Wow. That is one bad wreck,” Rajani says
softly.

I follow her gaze and see, with some small
shock, that the jagged shape on the east side of the ruins is not a
ruin at all but the shattered hull and sails of a crystal ship
lying in an unsalvageable heap of broken jeweled spears.

“The crystal shards… It doesn’t look like
enough pieces to make a boat, even a small one,” Rajani says.

“There were more,” Nahina says. “But the
pirates grabbed all that they could before the woman fought them
off. Are the shards worth much?”

Rajani raises an eyebrow. “Well, each shard
can grow a whole new flying ship, so… yeah. Gosh. If those thieves
ever figure out what they’ve got their hands on, I’d say we’re less
than five years away from a world run amok with sky pirates. Can
you imagine? Dashing men in black masks swinging down from the
clouds to steal your jewels, and a kiss?”

Nahina glances at me. “Quite the starry-eyed
romantic, isn’t she?”

I snort. “You have no idea.”

As the sun continues to rise on our right,
the pale light illuminates a bit more of the strange battlefield
below. There are burned out torches, barrels, crates, and what
looks like discarded clothing, all signs of people who once lived
here but left in a hurry.

“And there she is,” Amara says quietly,
pointing to the far side of the temple steps.

Lozen is sprawled across the bottom of the
ancient stone stairs, sleeping, I suppose. Two open barrels reveal
some of the stolen rum that Xiang mentioned, and a dozen broken
tankards dot the steps around her.

“There she is.” I nod and sigh. “Hooray.”

“Be careful,” Nahina says. “I’ve never seen
anyone as strong as her before.”

“Yeah, I know.” I keep my eyes on the
sleeping woman as the Valkyrie glides down to the dusty ground, and
I grab the railing, about to jump down. “Wish me luck.”

But before I can jump, Nahina grabs my arm
and holds up my spots to the first pale rays of the dawn. She peers
at them closely, like a prospector inspecting some strange ore.
“These marks… what kind of pattern is this?”

“Jaguar.” I try to take my arm back, but she
tightens her grip.

“Jaguar? Who are you?” There’s something dark
and dangerous in her voice. “Who is your mother? Names!” Her free
hand is drifting down toward her belt where she has a funny sort of
axe. It looks like bone, but the edge is studded with serrated
teeth, and I’m betting I don’t want to get hit with it.

I yank my arm free and step back. “Genesee
Marev. Thanks for asking so nicely.”

She grips her saw-tooth axe and points to my
mother. “And her? Who is she?”

I know I could lie and save myself some
trouble, but for some perverse reason I say, “That would be Lozen
Xocolatl Marev.”

Nahina’s eyes widen and her hand shakes.
“Lozen? The jaguar knight?”

“Yeah.” Crap, she hates Mother too. That’ll
make this fun. “But like I said, she and I aren’t exactly best buds
right now, so if we’re taking sides at this particular moment, I’m
with you. Okay?”

But Nahina isn’t glaring at me anymore. She’s
staring at Lozen. Staring, and gripping that axe of hers.

“Look, just… just wait here while I deal with
her,” I say.

Nahina jumps to the ground and starts
marching toward my mother.

“What part of ‘wait here’ sounded like ‘go
get her’ to you?” I leap over the railing and run after her,
catching up easily and shoving her back. “I’ll deal with her. If
you go anywhere near her, you’ll end up in small dead pieces, or
worse. Just back off.”

Nahina stops. The axe hangs by her side and I
see the tears shining in her eyes. She wipes her cheek with the
heel of her hand and nods, her eyes never leaving Lozen. “Just make
it quick.”

I pause to make sure she’s really going to
stay there, and then I jog across the volcanic plateau toward my
drunken, sleeping, bloody-handed Mother sprawled across the steps
of some ancient temple. It’s not exactly the scene I thought I’d
find her in, but it doesn’t look like I get a say in the matter. I
stand over her, glance back to make sure the others are staying
back, and look down at her again. “Mother?”

“Nnn,” she grunts.

“Mother, wake up.” I squat down. “We need to
talk.”

“Nnn.” She waves me away.

“Yeah, we don’t have time for this.” I pick
up one of the half-empty barrels of rum and dump it out all over
her. The dark liquor pours and pours, and she jerks upright,
wincing and glaring as I mutter, “Rise and shine.”

She coughs and spits.

“Well, you look like drowned garbage, and you
smell worse.” I toss the barrel aside. “How’s your head?”

She lunges up at me, spraying rum everywhere,
and I feel her bury a furry fist in my gut right before I go flying
back across the ashen plain. I’m flying long enough to feel the
wind in my hair and shirt, but not long enough to appreciate my
view of the sky, and then I hit the ground, but some whisper of
instinct has me rolling over my shoulder and pushing back up to my
feet all in one smooth motion. Nothing broken, apparently. My belly
hurts, but it’s nothing I can’t walk off.

“And you wonder why people don’t like you,” I
mutter as I wave my friends to stay back by the ship and I limp
back toward the steps. Then I call out, “Mother, it’s time for an
uncomfortable talk, so get the crap out of your ears and start
listening. It’s been about two months since our last chat. I’ve
traveled a bit. Made some friends that I’m not very fond of. Met a
certain queen, sorry, empress that you might know. And oh yeah, I
got my face melted off by a dragon.”

Lozen rises on her unsteady legs and squints
at me with bleary eyes through a curtain of rum-soaked hair.

“Don’t worry, I got better. Sort of.” I
stride toward her. “So, we need to talk. Now. Can you talk? Do you
remember how to talk?”

“You spilled my rum.” Her voice is like a
stone being dragged across the bottom of a drowned quarry. She
wipes her hair out of her face and tries to wring some of the rum
out of her clothes. “If you weren’t my daughter, I’d kill you for
that.”

“If I weren’t your daughter, I wouldn’t be
here, genius.” I stand in front of her, wondering abstractly how
quickly she could kill me if she really wanted to. Yeah, I’m
scared. But look at her. She’s a mess, and I’m starting to remember
how truly and viciously angry I was at her, all those nights, lying
in bed as I listened to Necalli coughing and Dad crying. “I’ll keep
this simple, Mother. I don’t care about the ship you stole and
wrecked. I don’t care about the pirates, or Yagaroth, or whatever
else you’ve been up to. I just want to know one thing. How do I get
rid of the jaguar curse?”

She stumbles back up the steps and falls on
her butt. She sniffles and hunches down with her arms on her knees,
glaring at the ground. “I don’t know.”

“Not good enough.”

“I know it’s not good enough!” she snaps.

“You know?” I frown at her. “What do you
know? You left. You don’t know shit. You don’t know that Andrei
died clutching his chest because his heart was pounding so hard it
burst. You don’t know that Necalli was coughing up blood when he
sailed east, and that he couldn’t take ten steps without gasping
for air. As for me, I get these headaches, dizzy spells, blackouts.
Who knows how long I have left?”

“I KNOW!”

Five obsidian claws dig into my chest so hard
and so fast that not even my keen eyes see it coming, and then she
yanks me forward into the air. I go flying across the ancient
temple steps and slam headfirst into a cracked stone pillar, which
cracks and crumbles a bit more as I fall to the ground, struggling
to breathe, one arm dangling over the edge of the cliff so I can
stare down half a league of sheer volcano at the sea surging
against the rocks far below.

I shiver.

It takes me a moment to stagger to my feet,
and wave to the others at the ship that I’m okay. They don’t look
convinced, but they stay where they are.

I limp back over and sit down hard on the
steps beside Lozen, this time well out of arm’s reach, and massage
my chest. “I think you scratched my boob.”

She turns her head slightly to look at me,
and then she turns all the way and for a moment her eyes seem to
clear and focus. “Gen, what the hell happened to your face? Your
eye?” Her voice is strangely tender as she reaches out one of her
deadly hands toward my scarred cheek.

“Nothing.” I look away so she can’t see it.
“I’m fine.”

“You’re not fine. Who did this?” She grabs my
shoulder.

I shove her back and she slides away a
little. Her hand falls to her side, and she looks down at her feet.
“Sorry.”

I shake my head and spit out a bit of
blood.

She glances up, says nothing, and looks away.
Her eyes are red, their sockets shadowed and wrinkled. Tangled mats
of her hair drip, drip, drip around her feet. Her lips are thin and
pale. She looks like hell.

“So… you said you know. You mean, you already
know about Andrei and Necalli?” I ask, not sure that I believe her.
“And about me?”

“Of course I know. I always knew. You think I
couldn’t hear my own babies, their hearts, their lungs?” Lozen
pushes her dripping hair back again, and I see her claws shaking.
“When you were all still small, I had a Feyeri come and try to fix
you, but it didn’t take. Three Feyeri, actually. And two Drogori
witches. And an alchemist. But there was nothing they could do.
Nothing I could do.”

“So you left us to die?” I lunge and backhand
her across the arm as hard as I can. She shudders with the impact,
but she doesn’t move. Damn. I lean back again, and then slide my
butt a bit farther away.

“The first time Andrei fell down…” She
swallows, still staring at the ash at her feet. “And I thought he
was going to die, my baby boy was going to die, in my arms… I lost
it. I smashed up the house, tore up whole trees, hurled canoes
across the lake… People got hurt.” She gives me a guilty look, like
a wounded dog, ashamed and pathetic. “And that’s why I left.
Because you were all going to die, and there wasn’t a damn thing I
could do about it except hurt people, so I went back south to the
border, where I could hurt all the people I wanted.”

Her face is all dark and lined, eyes
squinting, lips small and curled. She looks strange, old and broken
and… wrong. I look away. It’s hard to hate her looking like
this.

“And then you said that thing in the woods,”
she goes on. “About it having some meaning, and getting rid of it.
I wondered if you were right, so I went to see Raven.” She shivers
and whispers, “I went to kill Raven.”

I nod. I can believe that.

“I had a friend once, who died,” she says. “A
long time ago. And we tried to find a way to bring her back. Your
father and I did.”

I know this story. Dad told me all about
Jenavelle Rolantir, the knight who died saving the world. They
wanted to bring her back. Short version? They didn’t.

“And he found this shaman from… from Udan
Mung, of all places.” Lozen leans forward, her words slurring just
a bit. “And she told us… she said the dead, they… the ghosts…”

“Yeah, I know.” I don’t want to hear it. I
don’t want to think about Andrei’s and Necalli’s ghosts, because I
know that not all ghosts sleep. Some wander, forever restless,
filled with rage and sorrow.

“Raven never told me... he never said what
would happen if I had a baby.” She covers her eyes.

“And you didn’t ask.” Not a question.

She shakes her head.

“So maybe there is no big meaning,” I say
softly. “No answers. Maybe it’s just a disease, and they died for
no reason, and I’m going to die for no reason, and Andrei’s
baby...” My voice dies in my throat.

“His baby?” Her eyes widen.

“A girl, we think.” I nod. “Pretty soon,
now.”

She shivers.

I look away.

“If there’s an answer, only that crazy
sonofabitch Raven knows it.” Lozen sits up a little straighter and
pushes her hair back behind her long spotted ears a bit more
emphatically, and this time it stays back. But she’s swaying like a
dazed boxer about to fall. “I followed him here, but…” she
shrugs.

“Yeah.” I look around at the ruins. No sign
of Raven, or Coyote, or another crystal ship. “The trail ran cold.
They do that.”

“If I ever find him, I’ll try to get your
answers,” she says. “Right before I kill him. For your brothers.
For you. I swear it.” She stands up and takes a step, and her
wobbly foot slips on the puddle of rum, sending her crashing to the
ground again, face-first onto the edge of a stone stair. The fall
looks painful, but she just rolls over onto her back and sighs. Her
eyes flutter and then close, and a moment later she’s snoring
again.

I rub my eyes and work my hands back into my
hair, massaging the tops of my ears all the way out to the tips as
I try to figure out what to do now.

Unfortunately, Nahina figures out what to do
first.

“Lozen!” she calls out. “Lozen!”

Lozen murmurs and cracks open her eyes.
“What?”

“Is it true?” Nahina starts toward her. “Is
it true what you did in the desert?”

“What desert?” Lozen mumbles.

“Nahina, just stay back, please!” I yell at
her.

“Is it true?” Nahina lifts the toothed axe
from her belt. “Is it true what you did for Coyote?”

I stare at her. Coyote?

“What I did?” Lozen rubs her eye. “Coyote?
Huh. That bastard. That was a hell of a day. I told you about him,
Gen, didn’t I?”

“YOU!” Nahina comes charging forward, axe in
hand, an angry sneer on her tattooed lips. I run down the steps,
yelling at her to stop, not thinking for a second that she might
actually listen, and then I leap straight at her waist to tackle
her… but I miss.

I land face-down in the dust, empty-handed
and thoroughly baffled, half-twisted onto my side so I catch a
glimpse of Nahina somersaulting through the air, and bringing her
axe down on Mother’s head like a meteor.