The Gypsy Morph

TWELVE

IT WAS THREE HOURS AFTER SUNRISE, the sky a brilliant blue sweep through the tangle of the forest branches, the sun a bright orb hanging low on the eastern horizon, the day smelling of new life and fresh possibilities. Kirisin Belloruus stood on a rise east of the city, just at its edge and deep within the concealment of the forest. He carried the three blue Elfstones and the Loden, all tucked within his pockets, and he was dressed in the clothing he would wear when they made their escape into the mountains. A handful of Elven Hunters stood nearby, armed and ready to leave with him. Another handful of Elven Hunters, all Trackers, had spread out in a screening movement that would detect any enemy approach.

The King and more than a thousand of his Hunters were gathered at the west end of the city, forming a screen between the demon–led army and Arborlon. When the city and its people were encapsulated within the Loden, the Hunters and their King would shift their defenses to protect Kirisin. Retaliation would be quick once the demon leaders got over their initial shock. They might not realize right away that Culph and Tragen were dead and that Kirisin was acting not at their behest but on his own … though it wouldn’t take long for them to figure it out. No word had been received of his return, of his capture and subjugation, or of a time or place that the Loden would be used. When the Elves and their city disappeared, there would be an immediate response.

Kirisin knew that he’d better not be anywhere close when that happened. The plan was to make sure he wasn’t.

The boy looked up at the sky and then off into the distance. It was all so surreal that he was having trouble believing it. He still didn’t know for certain that he could use the Loden. He certainly didn’t know how. The Ellcrys had told him nothing, only left him with the impression that when the time came, he would know instinctively. He supposed this was possible. After all, hadn’t he known instinctively how to use the blue Elfstones? Well, after the first time, anyway. Would he need a first time with the Loden? How much time would he need? How much would he get?

He squeezed his eyes shut and gritted his teeth in response to his uncertainty. Trust in yourself! He mouthed the words silently, took a deep, steadying breath, and opened his eyes again. He wished this waiting were over. He wished he were doing something. But he had been told to wait for the King to signal that all was in readiness, that the army was in place and able to protect him.

As if anyone could really protect him. Even Sim.

He peered downward through the trees to the city. Arborlon’s people were awake, but almost none of them understood the enormity of what lay ahead. They had heard about the attack on the High Council and the resulting deaths. They had been told that a meeting of the new members of the High Council had been set for midday today. They knew that no one was to leave the city for any reason until permission had been given. Home Guards were blocking all routes, a protective measure to assure that no one would be caught outside the city and left behind. Almost no one understood what that meant. Aside from new First Minister Ordanna Frae and two other ministers who had survived Tragen’s attack, no one understood much.

They would know soon enough, of course. An announcement of what had been done would be made at a general gathering of the populace, once they were encapsulated inside the Loden. Home Guards would be everywhere when that happened. There would be hysteria. There would be anger and disbelief. There might even be insurrection. No one knew. No one had lived through this. Only a handful had ever even heard of the Loden Elfstone before today, and no one at all knew what life inside the city would be like after it was put to use.

It was new country for all of them.

He thought momentarily of his parents, who would be among those discovering the truth for the first time tonight. They had returned to the city in his absence, unaware of what had happened. Upon their return, Arissen Belloruus immediately placed them under house arrest. It was only last night that Simralin had gone to them, had told them they were free again, that the arrest had been a mistake, that she and Kirisin were well and would see them soon. A small lie? He shook his head. No, a rather large lie. He might never see them again.

But Simralin could not tell their parents the truth any more than he could tell the other Chosen. Secrecy must be maintained. Caution dictated what was permitted and what was forbidden. Mistakes could not be afforded.

Even so, he wished he could have seen his parents one more time before the closing away. He wished he could have explained things for himself instead of relying on Simralin. But he guessed it wasn’t the first or last wish he wouldn’t be granted in this business.

Simralin walked over from where she had been talking with the Knight of the Word and put a strong arm around his shoulder. “Are you all right, Little K?”

He nodded and gave her a smile. She hugged him and stood next to him for a moment, leaving her arm draped over his shoulders possessively. She was trying to reassure him, he knew. He was grateful to her for that, but reassurance came hard just now. There were so many uncertainties, so many doubts that beset him. She would do her best for him; she always did. But in the end, he suspected, it would come down to what he could do for himself.

His eyes shifted to where Logan Tom stood by himself off to one side, leaning on his black staff. There was something about him that bothered Kirisin. He was a lot scarier than Angel, who had always seemed a friend despite her service as a Knight of the Word. Logan Tom didn’t seem like a friend to anyone. Although he didn’t seem like an enemy, either. He just seemed … apart. As if he might disappear in a heartbeat, gone back to wherever he had come from.

But the boy knew that this impression was faulty, that Logan Tom would stand and fight. You could see it in his eyes. You could tell from the way he moved and talked–steady, confident, determined. Driven. Simralin had told him a few things about the Knight, things she had somehow discovered while bringing him back to Arborlon after he had come upon her at the site of the hot–air balloon. It was a great deal more than what he suspected Logan Tom would normally have given up to someone little more than a stranger. Stories of how he had gotten to them, of how he had found and rescued the boy who was actually a Faerie creature, a gypsy morph who would save them all from the demons. It was scary stuff, but kind of reassuring, too. Because buried in the details was the unmistakable promise that safety for all of them was not just a dream.

“He’s awfully dark, isn’t he?” he said softly to his sister.

She followed his gaze over to Logan Tom. “He’s a lot of things,” she murmured.

“You think we can trust him?”

“I think maybe we can.” She smiled ruefully. “But I thought that about Tragen, too.”

“That was different.”

“This might be different, too.”

“He looks dangerous.”

“No more so than Angel.”

“Much more so, I think. The kind of dangerous that means he won’t let anything get in his way. I wouldn’t want to get on his bad side. But maybe he can do what he says he’s come to do.”

She nodded. “Maybe.”

She left him a few moments later and walked back over to Logan Tom. The Knight of the Word straightened and turned immediately, his entire demeanor changing. Something about his reaction to his sister reminded Kirisin of Tragen. But that was ridiculous. The two had just met, and besides, Tragen had been pretending. It was just the way men responded to Simralin.

Even so, he watched them for a moment, pondering the idea that men found his sister irresistible. He didn’t. Mostly, he found her smarter than he was. But she was his sister, after all. She was just Sim.

He jammed his hands into the pockets of his pants and grasped the Elfstones between his fingers, impatient with the wait, looking for something to do. He was still looking when an Elven Hunter burst into the clearing and hurried over to Simralin. She listened for a moment, and then turned to look at her brother. Kirisin felt his breath catch in his throat. He knew at once what she’d been told. He didn’t wait for her to approach. He simply nodded.

It was time.

He took a deep breath and exhaled, trying to relax himself. Then he brought out the Loden Elfstone and stood looking at it as it rested in the palm of his hand. Would it do what he wanted? What would using it feel like? Was he up to this?

He brushed the questions and doubts aside, knowing they did him no good, that they only served to distract him. What he needed was to concentrate. What he needed was to believe. He could do this, he told himself. He could do whatever it took. The Ellcrys had confidence in him, and he must have confidence in himself. He had gone through a trial by fire to get to this moment. Two precious lives had been lost in the process, one belonging to a Faerie creature and one to his cousin. They must not have been lost in vain.

He was aware that everyone was looking at him. No one was saying anything. No one was moving. They were simply watching and waiting. A silence had settled over the surrounding forest, a deep hush that refused to be broken. He could hear himself breathe in that hush, could hear the beating of his heart in his ears.

Do it now.

He closed his fingers over the Loden, feeling his skin mold itself against the Elfstone’s faceted shape. He could feel every knife–edge ridge, every smooth surface, the details forming a picture in his mind. He closed his eyes. He knew what was needed–to imagine what he wanted to see happen, to visualize it as clearly as he could and by doing so bring it to life. That was how the seeking-Elfstones worked. That was how the Loden would work, as well.

He pictured the forest, the city, its people and animals, the Ellcrys and her gardens, everything that stretched around them in a sylvan cradle of life save for the defenders, who were crouched well back in the trees, away from where he would attempt to direct the magic. He envisioned it all, took hold of it, and drew it in. By doing so, he drew himself in, as well. He went down inside, carrying everything he had pictured with him, taking it deeper than he had thought it possible to go. He felt himself sinking, but even though it frightened him at first, his fear quickly gave way to recognition.

He no longer needed to worry if he could find a way to summon the power of the Loden.

Its magic was coming awake.

He could feel it unfold like a flower and then work its way through him, an entwining of heat and light, a twisting of something alive. It was magic born of the Loden, but of himself, too. He could not explain how he knew this or why it should be so, but he could sense it as surely as he could sense the change happening. He opened his eyes, a quick peek. In the palm of his hand, the Loden was a glowing orb. Heat was rising and light spreading, the former filling him up, the latter encapsulating him. He experienced a moment of panic, but fought back against it and locked it away.

He closed his eyes once more. There was no point in watching. Watching only frightened him, a window on possibilities he would rather not consider. Whatever was going to happen, it was too late to stop it. The heat flooded through him, its temperature steady now. The light was all around him and still spreading. He could feel it, even without looking. It was stretching and reaching and gathering in the city, the Elves, the Ellcrys, everything that was fitted around and under and above them. He could see it happening in his mind, the whole of it, a miracle.

He was taking in deep gulps of air, panting hard with the effort. He couldn’t seem to stop. He tried to steady himself and failed. His body was responding to the magic’s invasion, adjusting perhaps. Or fighting back. He let it happen, but kept himself still. Until the wind started, howling around him like a winter storm, harsh and raw, blowing with a ferocity that backed him up a step, unprepared. He squinted, but there was nothing to see. The light had closed him away, and everything beyond was gone. He hunched his shoulders and gritted his teeth against the force of the wind, wondering what would happen if it picked him up and blew him away. He shifted into a half crouch, again wishing he knew more, knew what else to expect. But his ignorance was complete, and he thought in a moment of lucidity that perhaps it was better so.

The wind rose to a shriek, mind–numbing and bitter. Then its fury spiked, diminished, and was gone. All that remained was the deep silence of before, when he had first called up magic. He waited, uncertain.

He could no longer sense the presence of the Elfstone’s light or feel its warmth. It sat within the palm of his hand, cool and still.

In the ensuing silence, he heard a series of gasps and sharp intakes of breath. He could feel the tension and shock radiating from all quarters. He opened his eyes in response.

He stood at the edge of a massive crater, shallow but so broad it stretched away down the slope of the mountain farther than his eyes could see. Everything that had occupied that space had vanished–the whole of the Elven community. Gone, every last vestige. As if a giant’s hand had reached down into the earth beneath it and scooped it away. He stared in disbelief at the scar that remained. At the emptiness.

Even knowing what had happened, he could not bring himself to believe what he was looking at.

Nothing remained. His friends, his family, his home–virtually everything he knew from the whole of his life had vanished.

In the palm of his hand, the Loden Elfstone glimmered faintly. He could see traces of movement in its depths. Life.

His sense of loss collided with his sense of responsibility, and for a moment he was so overwhelmed he could not move.

Then Simralin was next to him, the Elven Hunters had closed about, and the Knight of the Word, Logan Tom, was saying, “We have to go. Quickly!”

Even so, even though they started away almost as soon as Logan Tom urged them to, they lingered long enough to look back on the beginnings of the battle between the Elves and the demons. The enemy hordes appeared almost instantly, flooding out of the woods below the crater, thousands strong, a river no dam could hold back. Once–men, Logan Tom had called them. They were wild, unkempt things, humans turned into dark imitations of themselves, more animal than man or woman. Ragged, dirty, brandishing everything from lengths of pipe and jagged sticks to automatic weapons, they shouted and screamed their incoherent words of rage and frustration. They never slowed as they reached the crater’s rim, but simply kept coming, sometimes stumbling over its edge. Those that fell either rose quickly or were trampled by those that followed. A surging mass, they spilled into the bowl of the crater in a flood.

When they were halfway across, the Elves, concealed in the trees on one side, counterattacked. Hundreds of arrows tore through the demon ranks, a deadly rain out of the sky. They died by the scores, screaming as they fell, slowing those that followed and making them better targets for the hidden archers. At first the enemy could not understand what was happening. Even when they did, they could not determine the source of the attack. Hundreds more died as they slowed within the killing bowl of the crater, turning first this way and then that, easy targets for the Elven archers. Some fired their automatic weapons blindly into the trees. Some fired them into their fellows. The chaos and slaughter were indescribable.

But they kept coming anyway, and because there were so many the living finally surmounted the mounds of dead and reached the far side of the crater. There, within the shelter of the trees, they posed a flanking danger for the lines of Elven Hunters positioned farther down the slope, and so Arissen Belloruus was forced to pull back.

By now Kirisin and his companions were rushing up the slope toward the hot–air balloon, intent on getting away before the enemy got any closer. But even as they did so, they heard fresh shouts and cries from the trees to their right. The once–men had gone not just into the crater but around it, as well. In doing so, they had encountered the Trackers set to screen against any enemy approach, and the two forces were engaged in battle. Logan Tom, in the lead, called back to Kirisin and the others, urging them to hurry, to shift left, away from the fighting. Even as he did so, the boy saw movement in the trees ahead, shadowy forms scrambling to cut them off.

Simralin, trailing him by several steps, saw them, too. “Logan!” she called ahead, and at the sound of her voice the Knight of the Word immediately wheeled back.

In the next instant a small owl swooped down out of the trees, nearly colliding with Logan Tom, who flinched and then turned to watch the owl wheel away. Again, he started forward, and again the owl intercepted him, cutting him off.

He turned back this time and waited for the others to catch up before saying, “We have to change direction. The once–men are ahead of us. They must have begun encircling the city during the night. We can’t go forward. Take everyone left, Simralin, through those trees.”

He pointed to a towering stand of old growth that layered the earth beneath in shadows and climbed through an outcropping of rocks to the wall of the mountains.

“But the balloon is the other way!” Simralin insisted.

Logan shook his head, eyes shifting quickly, scanning the trees behind them. “We’ll have to leave it. They’ve probably found it. In any case, we can’t fill the air bag in time to make an escape. Do what I say.”

For just a second, Kirisin thought his sister was going to argue. She didn’t take orders easily. But Logan Tom was a Knight of the Word, and perhaps that proved the difference.

“Let’s go, little K,” she called to him.

They charged ahead once more. Behind them, Logan Tom was hanging back, protecting their rear. A scattering of figures burst from the trees. Elves. Trackers. Kirisin recognized Praxia and Ruslan. Then Que’rue and several more he knew appeared, as well.

Seconds later a wave of once–men charged into view, brandishing their weapons. One dropped to his knee and leveled a gun. Kirisin gave a short cry of warning, but Logan Tom was already bringing up the black staff. A blue bolt exploded from one end and sent the once–men flying backward. They landed in crumpled heaps and did not rise.

“Run!” he called up to the Elves, seeing them hesitate.

They did so, gaining the forest of old growth and rushing into its shadowy maze. They were not more than twenty strong, a small force against what appeared to be hundreds. Kirisin could see the movement of their shadows and hear the sounds of their approach. Farther down the slope, the battle between the Elven Hunters and the larger portion of the demon army had shifted from the crater into the trees and was moving their way, as well. The Elven lines were clearly broken, the weight of enemy numbers forcing the defenders to give way. How much longer they could stand against such a huge force was anybody’s guess, but Kirisin did not think there was much hope.

“Faster, Little K!” Simralin shouted in his ear, coming up on him all at once and giving him a hard shove.

He thought he was moving fast enough, but when Sim told him to go faster, he knew enough to do so. He redoubled his efforts, flying through the last of the trees. Behind him, he could hear the sounds of battle drawing nearer. When he risked a quick look over his shoulder, he caught a glimpse of combatants flooding the forest, fighting on the run, the Elves falling back as quickly as they could, the once–men trying to bring them down. The gap between them was narrowing, and the Elves’ forward progress had slowed as they struggled through the forest debris. The way ahead, beyond the tangle, seemed open, but it was impossible to be certain. Dozens of hiding places lined their passage–fallen logs, clusters of boulders and heavy scrub. The Elven Trackers saw the danger. They closed about Kirisin protectively, carefully warding him on all sides as they tried to look everywhere at once.

An explosion from behind caused all of them to slow and turn. Blue fire flooded through gaps in the huge trees, a wall of flames that momentarily blocked the enemy pursuit. Logan Tom was creating a protective screen for the fleeing Elven Hunters, providing them a measure of relief from the enemy pursuit. He stood against the rush as long as he could, then turned and ran toward them, his black staff dotted with brightly glowing runes that pulsed like white–hot coals. The Knight’s face was dark with purpose, and his eyes were dangerous. Kirisin looked away as he swept by and took back the lead from the Elves.

“Just ahead!” he called out to them.

Moments later they reached a clearing in which an armored vehicle sat waiting. Logan Tom released the locks and opened the doors, beckoning for Kirisin to climb inside. “Belt yourself in tightly, Kirisin,” he told the boy. “This won’t be easy.”

Then he was holding Simralin by the shoulders, a gesture so familiar and protective that Kirisin gasped. “Remember the plan, Simralin. Bring the King and rest of the Elves to Redonnelin Deep, down by the bridge. Everyone who’s left, bring them there. We’ll be waiting.”

Simralin reached up suddenly and touched his cheek. Then she was calling to Praxia, Ruslan, and Que’rue to climb into the vehicle with Kirisin. A pair of Elven Hunters joined them. Kirisin sat frozen in place a moment longer, and then he was out of the AV and running to his sister.

“What are you doing?” he demanded, seizing her arm. “You have to come with us!”

“I can’t do that, Little K.”

“What are you talking about? We have to stay together!”

“Not this time. Arissen Belloruus is risking a great deal for you. I have to stay to help him.” She reached down and removed his hand from her arm. Then she embraced him. “I love you, Kirisin. Now go!”

She shoved him away. “Keep my little brother safe!” she shouted over to Praxia and the others.

“But, Sim—”

“Go, I said!” she snapped, turning away.

“Wait!” he cried. Impulsively, he reached into his pocket and pulled out the blue Elfstones. “Take these.” He thrust them into her hand. “That way you’ll be sure to find me.”

“I can’t do that!” She tried to give them back. “They belong to you! They were given to you!”

“Well, now I’m giving them to you!” His hand closed over hers. “You can give them back when you find me again.”

“Kirisin, no!”

He was already moving away. “That’s how it is, Sim. You stay, the Elfstones stay with you.”

She started to say something more, then decided against it. She gave him a final look, a quick wave of her hand, and turned away, moving off into the trees where the bulk of the Elven Hunters were just appearing. She didn’t look back.

Kirisin rushed to the AV and climbed inside, still not quite believing he was going without Sim. Logan Tom scrambled in after him, closed his door, threw the locks, and started the engine. Kirisin shivered, not quite certain why. The Knight of the Word looked over at him, dark face set, unreadable. His gaze shifted almost immediately to the Elves in the back and then ahead to the road leading out.

“Hold on,” he said softly, and threw the levers on the dash all the way forward.