Elfhome

21: SHADOW BOXING

Oni moved through Tinker’s nightmares. They were all through the enclave, slipping unseen into position for attack. No one seemed to notice them, even when the oni were standing right in front of the elves. She whimpered as the oni crept into the room where Pony slept. Her First lay sprawled facedown in his bed, confident in the safety of the enclave, his naked back to the invaders. An oni warrior eased a long dagger from his belt and moved silently toward Pony’s bed.

She tried to call out, tried to shout, but the words caught in her throat.

The oni struck downwards and Pony jerked once and then went still. Blood sprayed from the wound, a fountain pulsing to Pony’s still beating heart.

There was a noise behind her and Tinker turned, caught sight of an oni appearing out of nowhere as if suddenly teleported there, reaching for her. She started to run, bringing up her left hand, fingers crooked in position to summon her shields. The oni caught her by her long braid and jerked her back, slamming her onto the ground.

Stormsong burst into the room, her shields wrapped around her like black mist.

A third oni warrior with a machine gun opened fire on Stormsong as the female sekasha charged toward where Tinker was still pinned on the ground. Stormsong’s shields flared at the striking bullets, again and again, and then vanished. A bullet caught her in the face, dropping her instantly.

“No!” Tinker sat up with a scream.

“Domi, hush, it’s all right, I’m here.” Pony crooned into her ear, his arms around her. The nightmare vanished and she was in her own bed, warm sheets cocooning her and Pony. There was no wound on his bare back — no blood pouring from his neck — yet.

“Oh God! Oh God! There’s oni in the enclave!” She tried to bring up her right hand and cried out as she realized that her arm was bound tight and useless. “No! I need my shields. They’ll kill everyone!”

“Arm yourself!” Pony shouted and activated his shields without taking his arms from around her.

Stormsong burst into the room, shields up brilliant blue and ejae out. “What is it?”

Tinker cried out in relief and held out her left hand to Stormsong, desperate to feel the life in her. Stormsong crossed the room to Tinker’s bed, but her eyes flicked about the room, looking for something to kill.

“Domi dreamed that oni attacked,” Pony said.

Stormsong’s shield blocked Tinker’s hand from reaching her. Tinker pressed her hand flat against the solid air, frustrated even as she was reassured by its presence. “We couldn’t see them. It was like Lord Tomtom — they were there, but we couldn’t see them.”

Pony swept Tinker up off her bed. “We’ll move to the practice hall. It’s more secure.”

Stormsong nodded and took the lead out of the bedroom. They collected the rest of her Hand as they moved through the enclave. Except for Pony, they were all fully dressed, apparently on alert as long as Windwolf was out of the enclave and Tinker was in a drugged sleep.

“Put me down,” Tinker said. “Let me call my shields. They have machine guns. It just eats right through your shield. They’ll kill you.”

“Your arm is broken,” Pony said in a tone he rarely used with her. He’d shifted into the one in charge. There would be no arguing with him. “You’ll cripple yourself for life if you unbind it while the healing spell is active.”

“So I’ll cancel the damn spell.” She slapped uselessly at his bare shoulder.

He wouldn’t put her down. “The pain will keep you from maintaining a shield for any useful length of time.”

The laedin-caste guards of the enclave were added to the sekasha, herding Poppymeadow’s staff and members of Wolf’s personal household out of the way for Tinker’s Hand to move through first, and then swept into their wake.

She had never noticed that the practice hall had reinforced doors and narrow arrow slits for windows. The laedin slammed the doors shut, threw heavy bars into place, and activated defense shields built into the framework.

The elves relaxed slightly.

If the dream hadn’t been so vivid and horrific, if her dreams didn’t have a habit of coming true, then Tinker would be embarrassed at disrupting the entire enclave based on a nightmare. She couldn’t get the images out of her mind. Pony’s blood pumping out. Stormsong’s face shattering under the force of the bullet.

She gasped slightly as she realized something odd had been playing through her dream.

“What is it, domi?”

“Stormsong’s shields! Your spell tattoos!” Tinker pressed her hand to Pony’s blue-inked tattoos that ran down his arms. “In my dream — they were black.”

“Black?” Stormsong murmured and looked to the right intently as if she had suddenly developed X-ray vision and was scanning beyond the wall.

“Yes. And the oni — they caught me by my hair.” Tinker caught a fistful of her short, scruffy hair. “I had a long braid.”

“Jewel Tear,” Stormsong said. “The oni aren’t in this enclave. They’re at Ginger Wine’s. They’re going to attack the Stone Clan. We’ll have to warn them.”

The sekasha glanced at each other and came to a silent agreement. They nodded.

Tinker guessed that they had decided to go together. “I’m coming with you.”

“Domi—” Pony started.

She cut him short by cocking the undamaged fingers of her left hand and activating a protection shield. She wasn’t sure it would work; she’d never tried it before and was relieved when the shields wrapped solidly around her. Even better, there was no pain. She should have tried this for the fight in the whelping pens.

“What the hell?” Stormsong cried in English.

“Domi?” Pony frowned at the black misting shield she’d summoned. “How — how are you doing that?”

“I can tap the Stone Clan Spell Stones,” she admitted.

“How — how?” Pony sputtered.

“And how did you learn their esva?” Stormsong asked.

She canceled the spell and answered the simpler question. “Blue Sky recorded Jewel Tear activating her shields. I ran it through a video editor to analyze the spell she used.”

They looked so scandalized that she didn’t add in that she had done the same with True Flame calling a flame strike. Nor that she’d practiced the parts of the flame strike, keeping the activation command and hand gestures separate so there was no chance she might actually cast it.

“It’s a domana shield. It’s a thousand times stronger than your personal shields. That’s what I’m here for: to protect you as you protect me. I am not letting you go over to that enclave alone.”

“Stone Clan defense spells are actually stronger than Wind Clan,” Stormsong pointed out, always the realist.

“She’s wounded,” Pony said.

“It feels — best — to take her.” Stormsong meant that her own precog ability suggested that disaster lay in leaving Tinker behind.

“I am going,” Tinker growled.

Pony didn’t look happy, but he nodded compliance.

They were too late.

They came through the front gate, let in by Ginger Wine’s door guard, just as the first round of machine-gun fire announced the death of Jewel Tear’s Second.

“Get everyone out,” Tinker ordered and cast the Stone esva shield. The rest of Jewel Tear’s Hand would die as surely as her Second trying to rescue Jewel Tear. The shield encompassed an annoyingly small area, enveloping half of what she would cover with her Wind esva shield. “Stay close.”

They went through the sprawling compound, pushing through Ginger Wine’s staff as they fled away from the gunfire. They got as far as the inner courtyard when Pony paused her.

“Domi, they’ve barricaded themselves into the training hall.” He pointed to the low building across the yard full of apple trees. The doors were closed, and rifle barrels bristled from the arrow slits.

“Watch out!” Tinker cried as one of the rifles jerked back and made room for a rocket launcher. A missile blasted toward them and slammed into the domana shield. The force of the explosion plowed back through the trees, snapping off limbs and making it rain down half-ripe fruit.

“That missile launcher is really starting to piss me off,” Tinker growled.

“We need to cover Ginger Wine’s people.” Pony studied the building with narrowed eyes. “It would be unwise to force our way into the training hall — even if we could breach the doors. There are at least a dozen warriors inside; we would be overwhelmed if there’s more than three for each of us to fight.”

“Do you think they have Jewel Tear in there?” Tinker winced as a second missile slammed into her domana shield.

Stormsong shook her head. “No, this force is just to slow us down as they take Jewel out another way.”

“We’ll need Wolf to get them out of the training hall,” Pony said.

“Fuck that.” Tinker glanced around. There was a stone wall beside them. “Take cover.”

She dropped the shield and aimed a flame strike at the training hall.

It had a lot more power behind it than she expected. The night erupted into brilliance as flame blasted up through the roof of the training hall. Burning timbers and ceramic roofing tiles came raining back down.

Tinker ducked back beside her Hand. They were staring at her in stunned shock. “Shit! I thought the training hall was shielded!”

“The oni wouldn’t know the activation command.” Pony broke the silence. “Only Ginger Wine and a handful of her people would know.”

Stormsong found her voice. “Are you nuts? Do you have any idea how dangerous that spell is?”

“It’s a calculated risk.” Tinker recast the shield. “We need to find Jewel and what’s left of her Hand.”