Elf Saga: Bloodlines (Part 1: Curse of the Jaguar) (6 page)

Deep breath.

“Rajani?” I look around and discover her
lying on the ground a short distance away from the dried blood,
curled up in a ball, watching me. “Rajani?”

She nods. She looks like shit, like she’s
been crying for three days straight. “Gen? Are you okay?”

“Yeah, I think so.” I sit up all the way,
letting her shirt fall off me completely and running my hands over
the burn scars. “You did good. Really good. Thank you. I guess I
owe you one, huh?”

She smiles an awkward, sickly smile.
“Barely.”

“Nothing barely about it. I should be dead.
Thanks to you, I’m not.” I hold up her flowery shirt and then pull
it on. The cool silk feels like water on my aching back. Looking
up, I see that the jagged shape of the sky above the ravine is now
a dark purplish color. “Come on. Let’s get out of here.”

We hike back up to the crystal ship and I get
my first practice walking with one eye, which isn’t too hard,
except the ravine walls seem to move strangely as I turn my head.
And after a brief argument, I carry Rajani on my back as I climb
the rock wall to get us on board. There’s just no other way to get
us both up there, and I’m strong enough to do it, end of
discussion. But then she makes me lie down on a glassy crystal
bench while she messes around with the ship’s controls, and I’m
happy to let her.

“Can I ask you something?” she asks as she
slides the crystal levers up and down the center console, making
the ship hum beneath my back.

“What?”

“What’s so important about finding your mom
that you would do all this? Go through all this?”

“I… I need to find her, to find a way to get
rid of this jaguar curse.” I exhale slowly. “It killed my brother
Andrei. And my brother Necalli is probably dead now too.”

“Oh no. I’m so sorry,” she whispers. “How?
Why?”

“We all inherited this jaguar thing from
Mother.” I hold up my hand to look at my spots. “And it made us
stronger and faster, but it made us sicker too. Andrei had a bad
heart, and he died right after he got married. His wife is
pregnant. We think it’s going to be a girl.”

“Oh, I love babies. That poor little
thing.”

“Necalli had trouble breathing. Coughing and
wheezing, all day, all night.” I stare up at the darkening sky,
which looks exactly the same through one eye as it did through two.
“After Andrei got married, Necalli sailed away to join the Alcani,
and I haven’t heard from him since. I hope he’s still alive, but I
don’t have much hope anymore.”

“What about you, Gen? Are you sick?”

“Yeah. I get these headaches. Blackouts. Bad
ones.”

She nods.

“So I need to find Mother, or Raven. Raven
did the cursing. Either way, I need to know what’s happening to me,
and what’s going to happen to Andrei’s little girl.” I swallow
hard. “I don’t want to die like he did, eaten away from the inside
for no good reason. Never even getting to see his baby girl. So if
I can help her, if I can save her...”

The tears are coming, so I stop. I look at
her, and she’s crying like a river.

Rajani nods. “Then we’ll find your mom. You
and me. Together. I promise.”

I close my eyes as the crystal ship begins to
hum and shiver slightly beneath me. A moment later I feel the ship
scrape free of the ravine walls and we begin to rise slowly into
the air. “Thank you, Raj. Now, if you don’t mind, I’m going to
sleep for a week.”

“Sure, honey.” A pause. “Gen? I think I
remember where I’ve heard the name Yas Yagaroth before.”

“Oh?”

“Yeah. From a book Big Mom used to read to me
when I was little,” she says. “Old stories. Scary stories. Ghosts
and monsters. Yas Yagaroth… it’s a dark and dangerous place. A city
all alone in the middle of the sea. A city of the dead.”

I exhale, too exhausted to process this
anymore. “Of course it is.”

I’m sitting in a flying crystal ship, staring at the
backdoor of a windmill, waiting. I’ve been waiting for half an
hour. I hate waiting. “Raj, let’s go already! My ass is falling
asleep. Seriously, these seats are incredibly uncomfortable. Don’t
you people believe in cushions?”

“Ready!” Rajani twirls out of the door and
curtsies, displaying a long skirt covered in dye-prints of faeries
and flowers. She’s wearing a loose cotton blouse, but over it is a
snug leather bolero with a frilly collar. “How do I look?”

“Are you kidding me? I thought you were
packing another bag.” There are already four big bags crammed under
the boat’s seats, and I know for a fact that only one of them has
any food or tools in it.

“No, just getting my traveling clothes on.”
She shuts and locks the door behind her, and then slowly crosses
the lawn toward the ship as she arranges a dark golden scarf over
her hair, tying her green locks down securely.

“You look fabulous,” I grumble. “Can we go
now please?”

“Absolutely.” She climbs up into the boat and
takes her place at the controls.

“Nice knife.” I point at the strange blade
tucked into the leather sheath at her side.

“Oh, yeah.” She lifts it up to show me. It’s
a narrow, triangular blade carved out of pale gray dragon bone,
with a narrow gap dividing the weapon into two half-blades, each
wrapped in thin copper wires. A small amber rod sits in the grip.
“Little Mom made it for me. For emergencies.”

“Looks fancy.”

“She wanted me to be safe, you know, without
having to kill people.”

I frown. “Last I checked, knives can kill
people.”

“This one is different.” She grips the handle
and I hear the soft click of a switch. The amber rod glows and the
wire-wrapped blades spark and crackle with tiny electric arcs.

I nod approvingly. “Nice.”

She puts it away and wipes her hands on her
skirt as she turns back to the console.

“So you’re sure you can fly this thing?” I
ask. “No more crashes?”

“Please!” Rajani smiles and shakes her head.
“That was years ago. I’m much better at this now.”

“Okay. Good.”

The boat lurches up into the air, and all of
her bags shift and thump under the seats.

“Oops. Sorry!” she sings out. And before I
can suggest that she take it slow, she shoves one of the little
crystal levers and we rocket away from the windmill, zooming over
the gentle green hills of Aram and sending hundreds of terrified
goats fleeing from their minders below us.

“There we go.” Rajani flashes a bright smile
back at me. “See? No worries!”

“Oh, I have worries,” I mutter, gripping my
seat as the wind lashes my hair in my eyes and mouth.

“So, where are we going?” she asks as we
curve back around toward the windmill.

“Well, a talking fox told me that one crystal
ship can find another,” I say loudly over the wind. “Do you know
how to do that?”

“No idea, honey, but I’m sure we can figure
it out.” She fiddles with the levers and knobs for a moment, and
then smacks the little crystal globe beside her. “There we go.
See?”

“See what?” I peer at the globe and see the
thin outlines of continents and islands, and a handful of bright
glowing dots. Most of the dots seem to be very close to where we
are.

“These lights.” She taps the globe.
“Navigation points. Places that I marked back when I first started
flying. Mostly just the villages near here, and a waterfall I
liked, and a meadow where I saw some unicorns once. I didn’t get to
record many places before the whole crashing business. But these
dots out here?” She points to the ones on the far side of the
world. “Those must be the other crystal ships. One of them must be
your mom.”

“But which one?” I frown at the map.

“No way to tell.” She shrugs and points to
the closest of the distant dots. “Maybe this one? This is in Oyera
where Queen Amina lives. She was friends with our moms, back in
their wilder days. Maybe your mom is there visiting her. Oh oh!
Maybe your mom is asking Queen Amina to help her! She’s getting the
old band back together!”

“I don’t know, maybe.” It doesn’t sound like
her, but what do I know? I blow out a long sigh. “Sure. Let’s start
there. It’s the closest one, at any rate.”

“Excellent.” Rajani swings her little levers.
“And away we go!”

Oh, we go all right.

We go very, very fast. The world turns into a
horrible blur of green and gray, which just turns to blue and white
when we reach the ocean. And the ship shivers and shudders, just a
little bit, from time to time. I think it’s making me sick. I close
my eyes. She talks. I nod. I have no idea what she’s talking about.
I just want this shuddering to stop. My head is swimming.

It takes most of the day to cross the Valmora
Sea and reach the coast of Oyera, hour after hour of sitting in the
buffeting wind with the sun blazing down and a cold spray of sea
water just barely landing on my skin, just enough to make me wish I
had a winter coat on. So between that and the shuddering, I decide
it’s time to take a long nap.

When I wake up, the sea has been replaced by
sand and I barely have time to decide that I don’t like this desert
any more than the one in the Union when the sand ends and the
grassy plains begin, and then, just as we approach the dense
greenery of some sort of forest that actually looks quite beautiful
and strange, I see the white walls of a city. It’s a wide,
sprawling city punctuated by narrow obelisks and enormous statues
of men and women that seem to stride between the vast tiled domes
of the larger buildings.

“Welcome to Kanero,” Rajani says. “The food
here is delicious. And so are the men!” She bites her lip. “You
know, if you’re... into that sort of thing?”

I sigh. “Yes, I like men too.”

“Oh cool! I mean, it’s cool either way, I was
just curious, because, you know, I’m curious, but not in that way,
at least not anymore, and…” she keeps talking.

We slow down as we get closer, and then we
gently coast over the wall and float down toward a flat green lawn
at the eastern end of the city.

“Is it okay to leave the ship here?” I
ask.

“You’re supposed to.” She points to the flag
poles and tents at the edge of the lawn. “This is the landing field
for flying ships. See?” She points behind me and I turn to see
another, larger crystal ship hovering beside us. It has an enclosed
deck and enormous sails that seem to fold up against the ship’s
hull, ready to be deployed when it takes flight.

It’s stunning. Long sweeping arcs, tiny
etched details that look like dragons and flames, and through the
cloudy crystalline walls of the cabin, there are large shadows,
making me wonder what’s in there. Part of my mind instantly begins
cataloging the tiny swirls and arcs, imagining how I might create
similar shapes in the wooden hull of a canoe. But the rest of my
mind can only see evidence of Mother.

“She’s here!” I stand up and reach for my
hatchet as I look around for signs of chaos, brutality, and
generally pointless violence.

“Well, no, sorry,” Rajani says as she pulls
the crystal levers out of the console and tucks them into her
shoulder bag. “That’s my moms’ ship, the new one. That’s the
Virago.”

“Virago.” I nod. So Mother isn’t here.

“Yeah. Oh hey, I forgot to tell you, my baby
here is the Valkyrie.” She pats the console proudly.

“Huh. Funny name for a ship.”

“Why?”

“Well, don’t valkyries carry the dead to the
afterlife?” I ask.

Her smile fades. “Really? I just thought it
sounded cool and sexy.”

“Oh, it does.” I shake my head and look back
over at the beautiful Virago. Damn it. Lozen isn’t here. That whole
flight was for nothing. “So I suppose we’ll have to head for the
next light on the map and try again. More flying. Yay.”

“Oh stop, it wasn’t that bad. At least we
know that this is where my moms are taking their honeymoon. Or part
of it, anyway,” Rajani says. “I bet they’re having a great
time.”

“I bet.” I massage my eyes. They’re both
throbbing, even the blind one. And as I look out across the city, I
realize that everything looks strangely flat. Nearby flags, distant
towers… oh right. No more depth perception. Great. Because that
won’t cause me any problems.

“Hey, hey, it’s okay!” She rubs my arm.
“Listen, I know you’re bummed that your mom isn’t here, but we can
go talk to my moms, and maybe go see the queen. They know your mom
too, right? Maybe they can help.”

I doubt it, but at least there won’t be any
flying for a little while. “Sure. It can’t hurt to ask.”

Ten minutes later, I’m lying on a hard stone
courtyard with six armed men pinning me to the ground, and I can
barely grunt out the words, “Maybe it actually can hurt to
ask.”

“Please, stop! Don’t hurt her!” Rajani is
shouting.

The soldiers aren’t listening. They’re all,
“Tie her hands! Watch out for her claws! Not the rope, get the
chain! Call the captain, hurry!”

It takes me a moment to recover from the
initial tackle. I may be strong, but I’m no warrior goddess, and
when I walked up the steps toward the palace gates, I was more
interested in admiring the statues and listening to the music in
the square behind me than worrying about the very tall men with the
very long spears. And the fact that I now have a literal blind side
didn’t help much either.

Two more men dive on top of me. There are
hands all over my arms and legs, whole bodies trying to hold me
down, hold me still. But as soon as I blink the stars out of my
eyes and take a deep breath, I’m ready to deal with these jokers. I
yank my arms down under me and shove myself up to all fours, which
knocks about half of the men off my back. They’re all yelling, and
Rajani’s yelling, and I think her faeries are flipping out,
whirring through the air and making a half-assed attempt at growing
vines on the soldiers.