The Paladin Caper (9 page)

It couldn’t have messed up his head. He’d been smarter than that, always smarter. He’d been careful, had to be, given the crappy ships he worked on most days with tools the folks in the port cities would have thrown out as no longer useful. This had to be something else, something special.

It could be his big chance, the voice whispered. Take down Loch, and the whole Republic would know Herlit was serious business. He’d get real clients, not smugglers with scrapyard parts and scrapyard money.

“Sir,” one of the men said, “we were worried.”

“Still are,” said another one.

But how to get Loch? How to do it, how to find her and kill her for what she did?

“It’s fine,” Herlit said.

“S’not fine,” a third man said. “You’ve got the fog, Herlit. You need to see a healer.”

The reaction was like a kick in the gut. “It’s
fine
,” Herlit repeated. “Not the damn fog.”

If he dropped the wards on one of the airships, a wind-daemon would escape. No, no, that was a terrible idea, damn, maybe he did have the fog . . . unless the wind-daemon would definitely go after Loch, and it would, it would, it absolutely would, all Herlit had to do was drop the wards and rip open the canvas, that was all. The freight hauler, the daemon was still summoned from when they’d flown it earlier today, it was perfect, that was the one to use!

“Need to clear my head,” Herlit said. “You go over the old ferry again, see if there’s anything to strip. Going to tune that freight hauler. Something off on the morning run.”

The salvagers looked at him in silence. They’d never questioned him before. He’d taught them everything they knew.

He opened his mouth to speak again, and that was when three strange people came out of the nearby woods and headed toward Herlit and his men.

One of them was tall, too tall to be human, and when she pushed the hood of her fur-lined cloak back, the tusks gave her away as an ogre. The other woman was bony and barefoot and wore a peasant dress, but her smile was twitchy, and the grass behind her looked muddy, like she was trailing dirt.

The third was a dwarf in a cloak, and he or she or it was the least strange of them.

“We seek a woman,” said the bony woman, her voice flat. “Tall, Urujar. Her name is Loch. We want her.”

They would take her, hurt her, kill her, and that was good, but bad, because it would be them doing it, and it needed to be a daemon, needed to be her.

Herlit looked at the ogre. She had a staff, but a staff wasn’t a sword. She was the one to worry about, still, big as she was.

“Haven’t seen her,” Herlit said.

“Her aura was here,” said the bony woman.

“Lies,” said the dwarf. His voice was hollow, like it was being piped through a tube.

“Take them!” Herlit snarled, and swung at the ogre with his wrench.

His wrench sank into the ogre’s chest, and for a moment Herlit felt the fierce joy of striking her down, and in the back of his mind he wondered if maybe he
did
have the fog, because he’d never felt like that about hitting someone.

And then the wrench passed out the other side of the ogre, and Herlit was stumbling
through
her, and it was like walking through a gust of rain during a storm, and then he was behind her, and the whole world was a little too sharp and bright and hurt his eyes.

Two of his men were on the ground, coughing and clutching at their faces, and there was mustard-yellow mist swirling around them and trailing out from the dwarf’s hood. Another stumbled and twitched, something wrapped around him, and Herlit saw that it was the bony woman, only she wasn’t bony anymore. She was coiled like a rope, and the man tangled up in her was glowing and
shrinking
somehow, bits of him going away.

Herlit took all this in as the ogre turned to him. Her hand reached into his chest, and, again, it felt like walking into a heavy rain.

“Do we need him?” the ogre asked, and Herlit looked down at the hand embedded to the wrist in his chest, and he held very still, even though some part of him thought that he should leap away, because it wasn’t a very large part, and it wasn’t
sure
, and all he could think was that yes, yes, they needed him, please, they needed him, the fog was lifting and everything was sharp, and the ogre’s hand was this strange cold softness all through him.

“No,” said the bony woman.

And then, with an impossible crushing pain, it wasn’t.

Sunrise Canyon was a great crimson ribbon that cut through the rolling hills of the countryside around it. The grass, a pale green that faded to gold in autumn, gave way sharply to the vivid red of stone walls, slick and shining as though carved by a master and not worn away over countless generations by the river that ran along the canyon floor. During the day, the canyon got enough direct sunlight for light foliage to grow near the river, and the bright canyon walls were like buildings that blocked the sun. At night, the trace crystals that gave the walls their color lit the entire canyon in red, giving more glow than starlight and less than the moon, casting strange shadows on either side.

It was well after sunset as Desidora descended into the canyon, carried in the talons of a great snowy-white eagle whose wings were vast and silent and pink in the light of the walls.

Desidora looked over and saw the mining facility as they passed by it, a great wooden dock attached to a well-braced archway in the wall. The dock and archway were the only black parts of the glowing wall, save for a narrow trail that led down the wall itself, switching back and forth several times before it finally reached the dock. It looked to Desidora like a giant mouth with its tongue sticking out.

The mining facility was not their destination this night, however.

“Can you sense the fairy creature?” she asked, looking down at the sparkling river that snaked through the bushes and low trees below and gripping Ululenia’s talons a bit more tightly. She did not
hate
heights, but a few months ago, she had fallen to her death (priestesshood), and it had left her a little nervous.

Not yet,
Ululenia said, and to Desidora, her friend’s mental voice sounded strained.
The crystals in the canyon walls are the rushing waters that hide the wolf’s quiet steps.

“And
it
is the wolf, in this metaphor?” Desidora asked, looking up to the underside of Ululenia’s wings. Near the leg on one wing was a patch of black, in a shape that looked almost like antlers.

Ululenia had been pure white once, but while Desidora had been falling to her death those few months ago, Ululenia had been helping Loch win a gambling tournament. In the process, she’d fought another fairy creature, an experience that had marked her. Literally, in this case.

It is.
Ululenia sighed in Desidora’s mind.
I hear your words, spoken and unspoken, and you need not fear. I am no danger to you or the others.

“Shall I just nod uncomfortably and let it be until something absolutely terrible happens and
then
get the full story,” Desidora asked, “or could you save time and fill me in right now?”

Ululenia’s wings flapped once, tightly, as they slid between the branches of the tallest trees in the canyon. A moment later, they were coming up on the ground. Ululenia flapped again, slowing their descent, and Desidora let go as Ululenia’s talons loosened, landing in a crouch with no more impact than if she’d jumped from a table. Ululenia herself landed in her natural form, a snowy-white unicorn whose horn shone in all the colors of the rainbow. The black mark still rode her flank, a black mask from which rose a pair of antlers.

My people are the leftover energy of the ancients’ magic,
she said to Desidora as she looked around the little clearing where they had landed.
We are alive. We eat and we sleep, as other living creatures do.

The clearing was near the river, and Desidora could hear the gentle rush of the water not far away. The ground was bare, and the trees overhead stretched and spread in their fight for what little natural light the canyon offered. “Yes,” said Desidora, when it became clear that Ululenia needed prodding. “I remember the first time we met. We ate in that restaurant owned by Loch’s old friend. You had catfish. I had expected a unicorn to avoid eating meat.”

The wolf and the jaguar are creatures of this world, as are men,
Ululenia said,
and most eat meat, as is their nature. There is nothing strange in me doing the same.
She paused, then started forward, horn shining gently on a trail leading away from the river.
There is but one thing our kind cannot consume without changing who and what we are.

“Each other,” Desidora guessed, following behind Ululenia.

We can grow stronger by taking in the power of another, as the creature I fought did, and as I did when I killed him. They
. . . we . . .
are known as the dark fey.
Ululenia paused, and then added,
We do not mean it as a racial judgment.

Desidora laughed, and Ululenia looked back over her shoulder. “I’m sorry,” Desidora said, “but you’re telling me that you’ve consumed the essence of another fairy creature and that doing so has changed you, and your major concern is that I might think the name has troubling racial implications?”

Ululenia’s ears flicked back in annoyance.
I am not judging you being a death priestess again.

“I will try to avoid judging you as well,” Desidora said with a smile, and in a softer voice, added, “and I am sorry. That must be very difficult.”

Ululenia shook her mane.
It is not what I would have chosen.

“I felt much the same when I was chosen as a death priestess,” Desidora said, and remembered the tears, the prayers. “However it came to pass, you cannot be something you hate.”

You have learned to stop hating your power?

Desidora smiled at the unicorn before her. “It is a tool. I don’t love it, but I can use it when I need it, then put it away when I don’t.” She let it slide away from her completely, and for a moment, in her thoughts, she was a love priestess again, feeling the countless auras of people and things everywhere searching for companionship and acceptance. “I know who I am.”

As do I. I will survive.
Ululenia looked ahead again, then whickered. Light played around her, and when it cleared, she was a woman in a pale-white gown, horn sparkling on her forehead. “We will need to move quietly.”

Desidora followed behind her. They kept to the trail for a few minutes—and
trail
was a generous term for what was more likely just an animal track leading to the river, a patch of lighter pink in the faint red light of the walls—and then came out of the trees into a more open area.

“I can feel it more clearly,” Ululenia whispered, frowning. “Oh dear.”

“Share.” Desidora stretched out her own senses. The air went chilly around her, and the scrubby little bushes by her feet curled into twisted hedges bristling with thorns. As a love priestess, she had been able to sense the auras of those around her to guide lovers into happier relationships, and when she had become a death priestess, that power had shifted to the more powerful, if less romantic, ability to sense and alter the auras of living creatures and most types of magic. Fairy creatures were immune to her powers, but she could still feel them if she concentrated, or at least the effects of their presence.

What she felt now was
muddled
. There was death not far away, a great deal of old death. “Hunting ground?” she asked, and then corrected herself. “No, a lair. Is this one of your . . . what are they? Dark fey?”

“It sounds bad when you say it,” Ululenia murmured, shaking her head. “And yes, after a fashion. What lies ahead is the result of the death of many fairy creatures.”

“What is it?”

“It is not an
it
.”

Desidora rolled her eyes. “I apologize. He or she?”

“You do not understand.” Ululenia looked over. Her horn had gone dark, and her face, pink in the red light of the walls, looked worried. “When fairy creatures fight, and both are too badly injured, instead of one absorbing the essence of another, they merge. The result is called the chimera. And rather than
it
, you should think of them as
they
.”

She reached out and took Desidora’s hand, and then led her into the trees ahead. Both of them walked soundlessly, Ululenia from her perfect magical grace and tie to nature, and Desidora from years as a love priestess helping people sneak into each other’s rooms.

The trees ahead seemed to be bleeding in the red light, and as they got closer, Desidora saw that it was sap. Bark had been slashed with great jagged claws. She could sense the death around her now without trying. Plants had been torn from the ground, shredded in fury. Wild game had been taken down, ripped apart while still alive. Men and women too, miners and crystal technicians and hunters who traveled into the canyon for adventure.