Elfhome

43: LOST

The elves eyed the casting room with confusion and suspicion. With all her outer-perimeter defenses activated, Tinker had her Hand, Thorne Scratch, Blue Sky, Oilcan’s kids, and all the laedin warriors gathered in the big room with her. At one time it had been an outdoor pool, but her grandfather had enclosed it with ironwood and glass. The morning sun dawned through the windowed ceiling, starting the cycle of turning the chilly room into a stifling oven. The unused buckets of chlorine already scented the air with ghosts of summers past.

“Quiee.” Baby Duck broke the silence.

“And you and sama lived here alone with your grandfather?” Cattail asked for the zillionth time.

“What a waste of a wonderful bathing room,” Barley said.

“It is. . it was a—” What was the Elvish word for swimming? She settled for the English. “Swimming pool, not a bathing tub.”

Everyone but Blue Sky gazed at her blankly. Maybe elves didn’t swim. Considering what lived in most large bodies of water on Elfhome, she didn’t blame them.

The casting room had been one of the epic wars between Lain and her grandfather. Lain maintained that if her grandfather was going to raise Tinker in the middle of a river that routinely flooded, Tinker should know how to swim. Her grandfather believed that if Tinker could swim, she would be more likely to play in the river. (Ironically, they were both right on the subject.) They both ordered supplies, and the race was on. Her grandfather’s cement truck beat Lain’s water truck by a few hours, sealing the swimming pool’s fate. The pool-maintenance supplies — from algaecide to winter pills — shipped from Earth and nonreturnable — were still piled in one corner of the room, unused.

As a measure of her childhood, her greatest despair had been watching the gray cement slosh across the pool’s pale blue floor. She had been planning on building an entire fleet of toy submarines. She could only wish that her problems had stayed that trivial. It had been over a day since Iron Mace and Forge disappeared with Oilcan. So far, the tengu hadn’t found where they’d gone.

Tinker tried to stay focused on the spell she was transcribing on the white marble slab that been laid on the cement insulating layer. It was the same spell she had tried on Merry earlier, only slightly modified. She needed to know what the oni wanted from the kids if she was going to protect them. She was afraid that the condition she found them in reflected how little the oni needed the children alive. Was it mere chance that the three that died lacked whatever the other five had? Statistically, it was unlikely, but she didn’t want to stake their lives on what could have been random luck. Perhaps in time, the oni would have killed all the children.

Tinker finished the spell and stepped back. “Merry, could you come down here?”

Merry meeped quietly and backed up slightly, wide-eyed.

“No,” Rustle said. “Not Merry. Let me do this. I’ve felt so useless.”

“Your arm will be better soon,” Merry cried. “You shouldn’t feel useless.”

“You should have gone down the chute before me. You’re younger than me. You’re smaller. I should have been the one holding back to protect you.”

Merry rested her head against Rustle’s chest. Unfortunately, it only made it more obvious that she was so much smaller than him. “You’re hurt now, so I’m the one that should be brave.”

“I’ll hate myself if I let you take all the risks for all of us.” Rustle wrapped his one good arm about her shoulders. “We should share the risk of being hurt.”

“It’s just a spell.” Blue Sky didn’t have an ounce of romance in him yet. He was giving the two an impatient scowl. “It won’t hurt.” He turned to Tinker, full of blind trust. “Right?”

This was where Oilcan normally smacked her until she admitted that she only vaguely knew what she was doing. She ached deep inside. It felt so wrong not to be charging around, looking for him. She hated this feeling that she was doing the wrong thing. Especially since it made her aware of how much of her life she sailed through, assuming she was doing the right thing, just because she had thought it up. It was thinking like that which had gotten Nathan killed.

Blue Sky’s trusting look started to fade as he saw the doubt on her face. “It isn’t going to hurt him?”

“The spell I did earlier on Merry indicated that she was connected to an infinite number of points — evenly.” It was simpler to ramble, trying to be reassuring while not lying. The kids were scared enough without telling them that she really wasn’t sure what she was doing. “Normally magic is affected by a number of things: gravity being one of them. Springs and ley lines are side effects of gravity’s influence on magic. That the points were evenly distributed indicates that the connections weren’t affected by gravity.”

Blue Sky knew her too well. He knew that she was overwhelming them with technobabble until they were too numb to form an intelligent resistance. “Is this going to hurt him?”

“If it hurts him, I can cancel the spell.” She didn’t want to say more, not with her shadow possibly hearing every word, seeing every move.

There was a group hug, as if Rustle were going in front of a firing squad, and then the male came down the wide swimming pool’s steps to stand beside her. She tried not to notice that he was only a head taller than her and slender as a reed.

She canceled the healing spell that was inked onto his arm. “Go stand in the middle. Be careful not to step on any of the glyphs.”

She paced around the outside of the spell, checking her work. Her insides churned with the fear that she might really mess things up. She’d run simulations, but she couldn’t account for all the variables because she didn’t really know which of the draconic powers the Skin Clan might have bred into the children. Nor, to be truthful, did she understand most of their powers.

Science was about discovering the unknown through experimentation and careful observation.

The dragons owed most of their powers to their dual nature, which seemed dependent on the presence of magic. Jin had asked that the enclaves’ defenses be lowered not to allow the tengu to enter but so there would be the abundance of magic necessary for Providence to manifest. When she first encountered Impatience, he’d been entirely animal, but after tapping the Spell Stones’ power through her, he gained “consciousness” enough to realize that he was hurting her and stopped.

It stood to reason, if the kids had powers, much like her and Oilcan, they needed some type of trigger to be able to access them. If you analyzed the initialization spell, it became obvious that it used the least common phoneme in the Elvish language and one of the more difficult hand positions. Considering how much time one spent talking and waving hands around, it was good that it was nearly impossible to accidently tap the Spell Stones.

On the other hand, it was possible that the kids — like the dragons — simply needed a vast amount of magic focused on them before their abilities became apparent. There was the fact that while she and Rustle both had a broken arm, hers was nearly healed while Rustle’s was still barely healed. The spell used on both of them simply funneled magic into their natural regenerative powers. On her, the spell was doing what was expected, but not on Rustle.

She made another lap around the completed spell, making sure Rustle hadn’t smudged anything by walking through it and that everything was correct. It shouldn’t hurt Rustle, she told herself. All it would do was focus magic on him.

She bent low and activated the spell with the command word. The first ring shimmered to life as the resonance of the phonemes triggered the spell. She stood and stepped back as the second ring flared to power.

The detection ring rose, instantly gleaming with the countless connections. So Rustle was just like Merry in that regard. The innermost ring kicked in — like the healing spell — its function was to focus latent magic to Rustle.

The entire spell flared to unbearable brilliance.

Oh, that did not seem good.

“Is it supposed to do that?” Blue Sky asked. “Is he all right?”

Good question.

Tinker shielded her eyes with her hand as she tried to make Rustle out inside the spell. There seemed to be things raining down inside, like exploding corn kernels in a popcorn maker. Oh gods, she hoped it wasn’t pieces of Rustle. She edged as close as she dared and squinted at the odd-shaped pieces on the edges of the glare. It was popcorn.

Somehow she doubted that Rustle had his pockets stuffed with popcorn. Where was it coming from? An iPod landed next to the fluffy kernels, trailing earbuds that floated down and settled up against the brilliant shell. The color of the spell changed infinitesimally, as pinpoints of blues and greens flared beside the earbuds.

Oilcan had said that Rustle had been losing things right and left, including the expensive MP3 player. The male had been inconsolable over the loss and had torn the enclave apart looking for it. What if things had been shifting out of phase all this time — little things — like popcorn?

And with more magic, did Rustle just shift out of phase?

“Tink!” Blue Sky cried. “Is he all right? What’s happening to him?”

“I’m canceling the spell.” She could recast it once she was sure he was fine.

“Inner breach,” Pixel announced. “South corridor, lone armed intruder.”

How did anyone get into the hotel without being detected? Oh gods, she should have known her shadow would be able to walk through all her defenses.

Tinker backpedaled from the active spell, waving a hand toward the main doors into the casting room. “We’ve got incoming! Pixel, system status?”

“Twenty-five percent monitor failure detected.”

Her shadow had blasted a hole in her defenses. Was there a wave of oni following close behind?

Tinker tapped the Spell Stones and cast a quick scry.

Oni were pouring down Grand Avenue toward the hotel.

Part One of her plan was working. She just really expected more of a warning.

“Pixel, sticks and stones, words will always hurt.”

“Broadcasting.”

Tinker shouted the command word for the spells scattered across the island. Her voice, amplified by dozens of hidden speakers, echoed up the river valley. There was a deep cough as the blast spell fired, and then a deep roar as flame engulfed everything.

“Incoming: rocket,” Pixel announced. “Impact in ten seconds. Nine. Eight. .”

She snapped up a shield wall between her people and the hallway just as a rocket blasted away the door. Flames blossomed in a deafening roar. The kids all shrieked counterpoint.

The children were not part of the battle plan — beyond a vague idea that they would serve as bait. She needed to get them out of the war zone somehow — all of them — and that included Rustle.

Tinker shouted out the cancelation command of the spell on Rustle. Her voice echoed up all around, still broadcasted over the hidden speakers. The spell continued to blaze with impossible brightness. “Oh fuck!”

“What’s wrong, little princess?” An electronically scrambled voice mocked her from down the now-darkened hallway. “Bite off a little more than you can chew?”

So they both needed time. Her shadow hadn’t expected her to be able to block that attack — and she wouldn’t have if she hadn’t realized her old numbering system allowed her to shortcut to spells she had memorized as a child.

It was a race now, but a race to what? What did her shadow need time for?

“Not as much as you have, Chloe!” Tinker shouted back, thinking frantically. She needed to get Rustle out of the spell and block whatever Chloe was about to throw at her. “I know it’s you. A pigtailed little girl, wearing pretty dresses, pretending not to be the monster that you really are! Nice cover, while it lasted. Too bad it’s over.”

“You were born on this island, and you’re going to die on it.” Chloe used her own voice this time.

“Actually, I was born at Mercy Hospital!” Tinker shouted back. “And if you were sure I was going to die here, we wouldn’t be having this conversation! You only talk when things don’t go as planned, when I’ve done something just so off-the-wall that even you couldn’t see it coming. I’ve figured something out about you: if you don’t understand what I’m doing, you can’t stop me.”

“What’s so hard to figure out? You just lost the child, and you have no idea how to get him back.”

Tinker hated it when the bad guy was right.

“No, I haven’t lost him.” Just temporarily misplaced him. Hopefully. The spell was out of phase but was reacting to music from the iPod. The dragons cast their spells via their mane. It was possible that the vibrating filaments set up harmonics that controlled their ability to phase in and out. Change the frequency and you could key into another universe.

When she applied magic to Rustle, she triggered his ability to step into another world. Oilcan was just going to kill Tinker. All she’d had to do was keep the kids safe. .

And with that, Tinker realized why Chloe was here. What the whole mess was about. The Skin Clan had bred the kids, but they didn’t know how to “use” the kids. It was nearly as complicated as Oilcan and her trying to figure out the Spell Stones without knowing of their existence. The Skin Clan might have several hundred children tucked in the wings back in Easternlands, but no way to experiment on them safely.

But Tinker was a clever, clever little tool. You just had to be careful when applying her to any puzzle that she didn’t figure out what you were doing. .

Close by, a Stone Clan shield flared across Tinker’s senses. One of the domana was about to join the battle. Since Tinker hadn’t passed out invitations, they were here on Chloe’s invite list, most likely under “secondary distraction.” If Tinker had to guess, it was Iron Mace closing fast.

“Get her!” Tinker dropped her shield and cast a force strike at the hallway to nuke it closed behind Chloe. “She’s going to try and run! Stop her!”

The collection of warriors let loose a thunderous volley of rifles down the darkened hallway. Note for future reference: elves will translate “stop her” to “try and kill the bitch.”

Try was the key word as Chloe came bounding down the hallway, twin daggers in hand and dodging like a hyperactive ninja. All pretense of being human was gone; she snaked past Cloudwalker and Rainlily like they were standing still and mowed her way into the laedin.

Tinker backpedaled. This was going to be one of those times where it was a pain to be only five feet tall. She couldn’t unleash her attack spells without hitting her own people, which was probably why Chloe had closed on the warriors. If she tried to protect her people, they couldn’t attack Chloe. Iron Mace was incoming at a fast walk, destruction flaring on her magic sense, followed by the rumble of nearing explosions. Chloe only had to survive until Iron Mace smashed his way into the casting room, and then she could flee in the chaos.

“Get the children out!” Tinker yelled at the still-standing laedin to get them out of the way.

She snapped up her shield and shifted to protect the laedin’s retreat with the children. Pony nodded to her as she stopped in the doorway, blocking the only way out of the casting room. He and Stormsong closed on Chloe, ejae drawn, their sekasha shields glimmering Wind Clan blue.

It was like they had spent weeks choreographing the fight. Her Hand attacked, swinging furiously, only avoiding each other because of their years of practice together. Chloe ducked and whirled and spun, dodging every blow.

Think, Tinker, think. All you have to do is outsmart this bitch, and you know you can.

There was a closer roar of destruction that boomed through the timbers of the old building.

“Lobby door, breached,” Pixel reported.

She was running out of time to be brilliant. She’d have to settle for just devious.

“Blue!” she called.

“Tink?” The brave little idiot was right behind her.

“Get this thing off me.” She tugged at the bandage that strapped her arm.

There was a lifesaving ring on the wall beside her. Tinker shifted forward slightly and jerked it off the wall. Kneeling in place, she sketched a spell quickly on stiff foam. She dropped her shield and flung the ring. Pain flared up her arm as the motion tortured the fragile knits in her bones.

Chloe laughed as she ducked. “Wake up, princess. Even your half-breed can’t hit me!”

The life preserver skidded across the room and careened into the pool supplies.

Tinker snapped up her shield around her Hand and shouted the command word.

The life preserver exploded right on top of the algaecide. A moment later the chemical exploded with a massive fireball.

Thank God, Chloe had apparently failed chemistry.