Mistweavers 01 - Enchanted No More (30 page)

FIRE WINKED OUT. A HUGE GAPING HOLE
appeared in the balanced elements that had glowed around her. Jenni rocked to her hands and knees. Magic lifted her hair, coating each strand with sweat. The King and Queen of Fire had died! Stabbing pain of loss. She hadn’t thought she’d bonded with them much. She’d been wrong.

How?

No time, no time. Air and water energies were rushing to overcome all. She reached into the Earth’s crust, into the center of herself and
pulled,
grabbing as much fire as she could handle, drawing sheets of the energies to herself, the beach, the area.

Her tears sizzled away as they left her eyes and met the hot skin of her cheeks. Another family lost, ripped away. New mother and father. How? How? How?

Jenni!
Rothly screamed in terror.

Here!
she managed a faint reply. Forcing the air and water energies back, drawing fire to fill the gap. She couldn’t hold it long.

Sister! Hold two minutes.
A male voice, but not Rothly. Strained but calm. Who? She strove to think as she wedged raw elemental fire energy into the gap she’d kept open. Let it run wild a little bit, flame the air hot, steam away the encroaching water. Maybe, maybe she had two minutes before the fire burned her up. She took a breath and it seared and she used the fire itself to protect her lungs.

Who had called her? Blinking, an image formed of a man—a full Lightfolk—whom she’d vaguely noticed on the bluff. The Emberdrakes’ son. Even as she thought of him, the wild fire was drawn to a new source, tamed. Most of it. Not as much as the older royals could control, but enough to keep all steady. Enough that Jenni could let the reins on it slither away. A new Fire King and Queen had stepped into place.

Rothly pressed again…
Jenni?

I…am…okay….
She doubled over, feeling aching emptiness, the hollowness of loss, the stone of tangled emotions lodged again in her belly. She—they’d, Rothly and she—had had ties to the Emberdrakes. Distant relatives and adoption bonds that had lain lightly until cut. She didn’t know how she could bear it, but she would have to. She had no time to let grief roil through her, she
had
to go on, or all was lost.

Who died?
Rothly asked in a small voice and she heard the self-blame in it, the loathing of self that he hadn’t been there to help.

The Emberdrakes,
she moaned.

The King and Queen of Fire? Both!

Both…both…both…all, all, all.

Sister, we need you! Control yourself!
the new King of Fire snapped.

Who the hell are you on our private mental line?
Rothly demanded.

I am your brother, Blackstone Emberdrake. Jindesfarne, straighten up and do your job.
Desperation seeped into his tones, and the fire was wild again, unconstrained. Jenni snatched more.

How?
whispered Rothly.

Betrayal!
A female voice hard with anger shouted it aloud as well as mentally. With the whip of words, more fire was gathered from Jenni, shaped into good use. Blackstone’s wife. A strong djinnfem. Good.

Betrayal. Jenni finally understood the word. It hit with the force of remembered agony that she’d betrayed her family. She reeled, didn’t hold on to the mind-set for the interdimension, fell out, onto the beach where only Aric and the guardians were.

Mistake.

“How dare you say I betrayed!” screamed a familiar voice and Jenni felt a wrenching in the magical fire energies, more immediate here in the real world. A wrenching in her being, too, as her bonds with the other Emberdrakes were skewed, strained. Her gaze went to the top of the bluff where the Eight—the
Six
—had mended the circle and were grimly continuing with the ritual.

Three figures were separate, throwing flames.

“Jenni, get back into your mist!” the new Fire Queen shouted from above. But she wasn’t the queen. Shades of magic bathed her. Synicess had grabbed fire energy, was glorying in it, using it as a weapon on Jenni’s Emberdrake brother and his wife.

Synicess wanted to be Fire Queen.

Royal status was in the balance. Power.

“I
was
the one betrayed! Me! My parents abandoned me to go to another dimension.” Synicess would have frothed at the mouth if her flaming magic hadn’t prevented it. “I was
left behind.
They didn’t take me, though I begged.”

Jenni would have left her, too. Crazy woman.

The crazy-strong-full-Lightfolk-djinnfem turned her copper gaze on Jenni. A shot of flame hit the sand next to her, fusing it into glass.

“Get back into the mist!” her Emberdrake brother roared.

“You betrayed me, too,” Synicess said. “You took my man. And there he is, the fool.
Burn,
Treeman.”

Jenni stepped in front of Aric, braced, figured they would both die.

The new Fire King slipped behind Synicess, wrapped an arm around her neck and snapped it.

Synicess’s body dropped, Emberdrake kicked it from the cliff. It hit a couple of rocks before it burst into flame.

“The bubble!” He met Jenni’s eyes and jerked his head. She wriggled to send her senses downward through the sea, found a huge spherical shape breaking from the Earth’s mantle and into the ocean.

Emberdrake grasped his lady’s hand and they inserted themselves into the circle between the Cloudsylphs and the royal dwarves. The dwarves were moving slowly, too slowly, as if their feet were reluctant to separate from the rock of the bluff. The elves appeared strained, almost transparent.

Energies needed balancing.

Jenni lay encrusted in sand, panting, soaking up sun, scrabbling for her own balance. Everything was too bright, all sensual input from the real world too painful.

The loss of a new mother and father too black.

“And here are the Dark ones,” the dwarf guardian said grimly.

A cloud passed over the sun, casting dark and wavering shadows on the ground. People began to curse and Jenni looked up. Not a cloud, shadleeches! Huge, triple the size of the ones she’d fought. Horror escaped her in a cry. She wanted to clutch Aric, but was caught in her ritual. Keep to herself. Even love—given and taken—distracted from the concentration needed to face the interdimension and do a major working in the mist.

Spitting, the dwarf sliced his sword whistling through the air in a couple of testing swings. “Should’a figured that if Kondrian modified his shadleeches to go into the interdimension, someone else might make ’em grow to be better weapons.” He moved his gaze from the sky to Jenni. “Better slide into your interdimension, girl.”

“They shouldn’t be able to follow you, not these,” the elf said.

“No,” Aric added bleakly. “But those might.” He jutted his chin at a smaller line of grayish dark that flew lower from the north, along with a gray shape that Jenni knew in her bones was Kondrian.

Aric pulled his sword, loosened his shoulders, took his fighting stance.

“Think the great Dark one Demitroland made the large ones?” The dwarf had hunkered down, freed his other weapon, a short axe, from its sheath.

“Probably,” the elf said. He still stood negligently, holding two thin and shining blades. “Demitroland likes big.” Then his blue, blue eyes met hers. “Go, now.”

A few armed Lightfolk showed up. To Jenni’s surprise, all of Diamantina’s staff—ready to defend her land home. Another surprise was the tall, silver-blond and elegant elf, Windstrum, Aric’s father.

Aric sent the elf a brusque nod, turned to stand in front of Jenni.

“Hades, they’re not aiming for us, but attacking the
Eight!
” the dwarf said.

Jenni stood, tried to meet Aric’s eyes, but he was focused on the enemies. Heart thundering in her ears louder than the wings of all the shadleeches, she began to say the meaningless words in any language but Mistweaver. The words weren’t important, the sound of the syllables were. She stamped in place, felt it was better to keep her feet close to the ground. Her eyes sharpened or dimmed or changed…whatever they did for her to see the interdimension. It was here, just a half step away.

The mist formed before her, she hesitated.

The great shadleeches swooped and the Earth King shouted dwarvish words that
pulled
at Jenni, but she knew the command. “To me. To us!”

The dwarf guardian trembled, then shuddered, like a rockface about to be sundered. “He orders
me!
I am older. I am stronger—” he shouted in outrage. “That dwarf can command me if he pulls earth power.” The dwarf guardian was sweating dirt-brown droplets.

“Go.” The elf clapped his hand on his friend’s shoulder.

“I
will
not.”

“Go! Return when you can. Demitroland hopes to divide and conquer. Go!”

With a desperate look at the elf, who grinned wildly, the dwarf vanished.

More screams from the hill, the sound of fighting.

Something brushed Jenni, pulled her attention to her job. One of Kondrian’s shadleeches! She stamped her feet and her words, saw more converge on Aric and the guardian, the slash of shining blades. Then Aric’s face as he mouthed the words,
I love you.

She halted for a moment, suspended in his love, in her need for him. She screamed, “I love you!”

His grim expression broke into wonder. He blew her a kiss and she thought it went straight to her lips, filtered down to settle in her heart. Tears rose to the back of her eyes. “I love you.” She formed the same sentence with her lips.

He nodded, saluted her with his sword. “Go into the mist!” Aric yelled. “Your spiderweb will protect you from the shadleeches. Be safe.”

She lifted her foot, and a bolt of black lightning struck her side, burning! She shrieked, fell.

Aric grabbed her, slapped a hand over her wound that sent pain to every nerve. “Heal, my love!” Her skin twisted, seared more, hardened. She couldn’t think, could only gasp. Treefolk healing couldn’t affect her. Could it?

“Elf-bright lightning!”

They both had elven blood. That blood seemed to boil and blister and burst around her wound.

“Get into the interdimension!”
Aric roared. He shoved and the mist was there and in she went. Again she fell to her hands and knees, moved to her butt, huddled over, focused on what she had to do for them to be together. She’d barely reached her feet before she heard the King of Air, Cloudsylph, order the elf guardian to him.

Leaving Aric alone to guard her. Her heart leapt in fear and her hands went to her mouth to suppress a cry.

She wanted to go help him, but she had her own duties.

Sheets of energies flashed. She cast her senses toward the bubble and felt the roiling of them all inside. If they burst now, mixed with other wild magic, there’d be nothing but chaos.

That the Dark ones could use to their advantage.

She turned her attention to the hill. The Eight, the old Six and the two new Emberdrakes, were continuing with the ritual, others fought. She had to do her part.

So she struggled to her feet.

Two Dark ones attacked the Eight and their people—not the strongest. One held back, seeming to rise on tendrils of smoking evil as if he watched the fight—ready to swoop in if there was an opening for a killing blow, but staying selfishly separate.

Balance the hillside first. She sent great sweeping elemental energies there, all in equal amounts, saw it caught and formed.

They fought around her, she could sense it in the gray mist…so many moving and flashing auras. Deep, dark oily ones of three great Dark ones. The bright pillars of the Eight.
To me!
the Earth King commanded once more. Aric hesitated, glanced her way. He would think she was safe in the mist. Would he go to the Eight?

He stayed.

Not many around her, and Kondrian was committed to fighting her defenders, to wresting the whole of the energies of the bubble from the Lightfolk if possible.

No time to worry about the battle…Aric…anything but the bubble.

Ignoring the tears of grief and pain and fear rolling down her cheeks, she pressed a hand to her side and stretched her magic, herself, toward the bubble…through the thin skin of it, delicately, delicately, to be swept into the swirl of energies.

Fire! More fire to lick at her, her wound, her skin. She pulled it into her, used the energy to heat her, fight her pain.

Water, not much in the bubble, but surrounding it…surrounding her. She filtered some into the bubble. Pulled a matching amount of air from the molecules of the sea. She thought. She hoped.

All even.

Maybe. Best she could do as the bubble floated through the ocean.

She heard a mental cry from Aric, and turned to look at his strong green aura, saw that his father had deserted them to go fight in the mass with the Eight. Relative safety.

Another inner cry from Aric and he swung his sword fiercely at the dark and flitting triangular shapes—shadleeches.

She ached. Emotional pain ripped away reason and rationalizations and mental understanding of why the Eight did as they did, opened old wounds again.

All the bitterness she felt before flooded her again, rising from where she’d quashed it away. Hurting, light-headed, the past and the present merged.

The Eight fought, but they’d abandoned Aric, abandoned her.

Where were her guards? Gone. Needed to protect the circle, the ritual, the Eight. Perhaps they needed the guards, but so did she. She was tiring, would not be able to stay in the gray mist for long, and once she left she’d be killed.

So much for channeling the force of the bubble—a bubble that contained enough power to kill them all.

Six fully powered kings and queens, two new ones, but all older than Jenni. Twenty more full-blooded Lightfolk, and all concentrating on the bluff. None on the beach.