The Gypsy Morph

THREE

K IRISIN TIED OFF THE LAST OF THE STITCHES closing Angel’s many wounds, put aside the needle and thread, and rocked back on his heels, looking down at her still form. She was sleeping, the medicine he had given her to take away the pain and render her unconscious working as it should. Numbed to the point of senselessness, she would have felt almost nothing of the work he had done, which was a good thing, given the extent of her injuries. But when she awoke the pain would be back, and he would have to give her another dose.

He was aware suddenly that he was staring at her nearly naked body, the tatters of her clothing removed to give him better access. He hadn’t even thought of it at the time, thinking only about how much blood there was on her body and clothing, how much more she must have lost back on the slopes, and how close to death she probably was.

He pulled the blanket over her and tucked it in carefully. She would forgive him if she lived.

“Finished?” Simralin asked from one side. She was sitting up now, leaning her back against a rock outcropping.

He glanced over and gave a quick nod. “I’ve done what I can, Sim. I just hope it’s enough.”

They were settled well back in the ice caves where the wind and the blowing snow couldn’t penetrate. Only the cold refused to be kept at bay, and there was nothing they could do about that. They were dressed in their all–weather gear, and Simralin and Angel were wrapped in their blankets, as well. A pair of the solar lamps had been placed at the perimeter of their little campsite, lighting the dark interior of the caves. A fire would have been better, but there was nothing to burn except for their gear. Simralin had given Kirisin a sun tab, an artificial heat generator, to place under Angel’s makeshift bedding, but it wouldn’t last for more than three hours and she didn’t have any more.

He smiled at his sister. “You seem better.”

She grimaced and touched her head experimentally. “Don’t be fooled. My head feels like it’s been split open. But the bleeding’s stopped.” She cocked one eyebrow. “Mostly, it’s my ego that’s injured. It never occurred to me to wonder what Culph was doing here, how he had survived his supposed death, or how he had found us. I just accepted it. I thought it was a miracle of some sort, turned my back on him, and gave him a chance to whack me on the head. Stupid.”

“I wasn’t any smarter,” Kirisin admitted. “When I saw you lying there, bleeding all over everything, I thought you were dead. Even after he said you weren’t, I thought you were. I thought he had killed you.”

He was still speaking of Culph as if he really had been an Elf and not a demon, still not quite able to banish the image of the old man who had pretended to be their friend. Culph had fooled them all, manipulating them every step of the way on their journey to these caves. From the moment he had caught out Kirisin and Erisha in the basement archives of the Belloruus family home, he had used them. The memory burned like fire, and Kirisin knew it would be a long time before he could lay it to rest.

“He would have killed us both,” his sister declared, “if he’d gotten his way with the Loden. Me first, you whenever you had finished whatever it was he was trying to get you to do.”

Kirisin shuddered at the memory of how it had felt to be under the demon’s control, hypnotized by the movement of the silver cord and rings the latter had dangled in front of him. He had been deep under the other’s strange spell, unable to help himself, when Simralin, her consciousness regained after the blow to her head, had stabbed the demon through the leg with her long knife, breaking its concentration and allowing her brother to use the Elfstones to destroy it.

To burn it to ash.

Had he known somehow that the Stones could do this? He thought about it for the first time since it had happened. Subconsciously, perhaps. He couldn’t ever be sure, but his instincts had told him that the demon was afraid of the magic, that it had needed him from the beginning in order to control it. Once the boy had broken free of the hypnotic effect of the rings and cord, the magic had been his to summon, and the demon had no defense. That was its undoing.

Old Culph, dead for real this time.

“What was it that it had intended you to do exactly?” his sister pressed.

They had spoken of it only sparingly while he worked to close Angel’s wounds after he had gotten her inside the ice caves. Before that, there had been no time for anything. The demon was dead, his sister was unconscious, and their friend and protector was out there alone in the cold and the night, possibly doing battle with the second demon, the four–legged one that had killed Erisha, possibly injured or dying. He didn’t stop for more than a few seconds once he had regained his senses. He had wrapped himself in his cloak and rushed back through the tunnels, headed for the slopes of Syrring Rise.

It was odd in retrospect that he had known instantly what he needed to do to find Angel. Having discovered the power of the Elfstones to destroy the demon, he had remembered quickly enough that they were seeking-Stones, as well, capable of finding anything hidden from the user. It didn’t have to be a thing; it could be a person. In this case, it could be Angel. He had stood at the mouth of the caves, staring out into the blackness of the mountain’s sweep beneath the star–strewn skies, picturing her face and summoning the magic. It was still hot and alive within him, not yet settled back from his battle with the demon, and it had flared to life instantly. At the crest of its bluish glow, he had seen Angel’s snow–covered form collapsed on the slope not a hundred yards below where he stood and had gone to her instantly.

After that, after finding her and bringing her back inside, he had found Simralin awake, bloody and groggy but alive. Seeing the condition of the Knight of the Word, she had urged him to go to work on Angel at once. While he did so, his sister had cleaned away the blood from her own injury and bound it with a crude bandage, saying little to him while he labored over Angel, not wanting to distract him. Only once had she spoken to him, and that was to ask about the silver cord and rings. Kirisin had explained what they were intended to do, how they were meant to bind him to the demon and would have done so if she hadn’t stabbed it and given Kirisin a chance to use the Elfstones to incinerate it.

“I wish I could have done it myself,” she had muttered before settling back and dozing off.

He had worried about her falling asleep with a head injury, but had been too preoccupied with treating Angel to do anything about it until after he had finished. Now and then he had paused in his healing work to call over to her, waking her from her sleep long enough to force her to grunt angrily and mutter something about leaving her alone. But at least he could be certain each time that she was still alive.

Even so, he had been relieved when she finally woke up for good and began speaking with him again.

“He planned to take me back to the Cintra and use the Loden to imprison Arborlon, the Ellcrys, and the Elves,” he explained. “Once he had all of the Elves in one place, the demons could take them out at their leisure and do what they wanted with them. He would use me as his tool for accomplishing this, and I don’t think anyone would have stopped him. No one would even have known what was happening.”

He glanced down at the bulge in his pocket–the bag that contained the Elfstones. “You know something, Sim. I hadn’t thought about it before, but the Stones are as dangerous to the Elves as to anyone else. The magic doesn’t recognize race or measure intent; it treats everyone the same. All Culph had to figure out was how to find an Elf who could be persuaded to use it.”

Simralin’s smile was tight and bitter. “Don’t be too quick to blame yourself, Little K. None of us understood the rules of the game being played. Not until now. None of us even understood the nature of the magic being put to use. That ghost in the Ashenell, Pancea Rolt Gotrin, she knew. She understood. That was why you were given those warnings. If Angel had died on the slopes and Culph had killed me, you would have been left on your own and not been master of your own behavior. And we almost let this happen. All of us.”

“Well, it won’t happen again,” Kirisin declared softly. “I promise you that.”

“I’ll hold you to your word. We still have a ways to go before this is over. First we’ve got to get back to Arborlon.”

“Wait a minute!” Kirisin exclaimed suddenly, his eyes widening. “I just remembered something. Culph said that he–the demon said that it had summoned an army to Arborlon to make sure no one escaped before it returned with me to imprison the city in the Loden! It bragged about it while it was busy using that cord and those rings to hypnotize me! An army of demons and once–men, Sim! It’s probably already there, waiting!”

Simralin straightened, winced from the resulting pain, and quickly lay back again. “All right. Then we need to warn Arissen Belloruus and the High Council. We need to tell them to get everyone out of there.”

“How are we going to do that?” Kirisin demanded. “The King and probably the entire Council think that we killed Erisha! They think we’re some sort of traitors! They won’t believe us!”

His sister stared at him a moment, then said, “We’ll make them believe us.”

“Oh, that shouldn’t be too difficult.”

“Wait a minute, Little K. Maybe we don’t have to tell anyone. Think about it. An entire army moving on the Cintra? The Elves probably know about it already. Their scouts and sentries will have told them. They’ll have seen something that big coming from miles away.”

Kirisin shook his head. “Maybe, maybe not. I don’t know how they planned to do this. Maybe the army isn’t supposed to get close until the Elves are trapped in the Loden.”

His sister nodded. “Maybe. Maybe nothing is supposed to happen until you get back. The other demons can’t know that Culph is dead. Or his four–legged companion, either. They have to wait to see what happens. That gives us a chance.”

“A chance to get ourselves thrown into the cells by the King,” Kirisin said. “I still don’t know how we’ll ever convince him that we’re speaking the truth. Even if he sees the army coming, he’ll probably think we had something to do with it. I bet he’s already made up his mind about that, too.”

Neither said anything for a moment, looking at each other across the silence of the cavern chamber, the darkness and cold pressing in around them. Kirisin was thinking that they were all alone in this; there was no one they could turn to, no one who would help them. He was thinking that it wasn’t likely anything would change this.

“We’ll be all right,” his sister said softly.

Sure we will, Kirisin thought. Assuming we can learn to fly and disappear into thin air.

“I know,” he said instead. He yawned. “I’m exhausted, Sim. I’m going to get some sleep. Maybe you should, too.”

Simralin didn’t say anything. She just sat there, staring at him. After a moment, she said, “You’ll see, Little K. We’ll be fine.”

She was still sitting there, staring, when he fell asleep.

He AWOKE TO SHARDS of DAYLIGHT spilling down the cavern passageway through ice–frozen cracks in the ceiling. Simralin was moving quietly about the chamber, gathering up their gear and redistributing it into two packs. She looked pale but steady as the light caught the planes and lines of her bruised, ravaged face.

“Sleep well?” she asked without irony. She still had her makeshift bandage wrapped about her forehead and her all–weather cloak wrapped about her shoulders. She looked like a wraith. She caught him staring at her and said, “What’s wrong?”

“Well, you are, for starters. You look like you’ve been blood–drained. Are you all right?”

“Right as can be under the circumstances. Better get yourself up. We leave as soon as I’m finished.”

He pushed himself up on one elbow, and the residual effects of yesterday’s struggle recalled themselves painfully. “Leave for where?”

She nodded toward the passageway. “Back outside and down the mountain. You did the best you could with Angel, but she’s in need of someone better trained in the art of healing.”

Kirisin glanced over to where the Knight of the Word was still sleeping. Except for her face and hands, she was buried in the folds of the coverings in which they had wrapped her the night before, and he couldn’t tell if she was breathing or not. She was wearing fresh clothing; his sister must have dressed her while he slept. He studied her a moment, then said to Simralin, “Is she still alive?”

“She was half an hour ago. Why don’t you have a look?”

Kirisin pulled himself to his feet, fighting off the stiffness and the pain that ratcheted through his muscles and joints and made him feel as if he had been hammered with rocks. Dropping his cloak, he stumbled over to Angel and knelt down. He could just discern the slow rise and fall of her chest. Her face was purpled with bruises, and the knuckles of her hands were scraped raw. That was just the surface damage. The damage beneath the coverings was far worse.

“How do we get her back down the mountain?” he said.

“We make a sling and carry her. We can’t afford to try to slide her down. The terrain is too rough for that. She’s damaged internally–ribs broken, maybe more. We can’t risk knocking her around by dragging her along the ground. We have to keep her elevated and still. We’ll use her staff as a support for the sling. Why don’t you see if you can pry it loose from her fingers so I can get to work?”

Kirisin glanced down. Angel gripped the black staff tightly with both hands and didn’t look ready to let go. Nevertheless, he reached down carefully and tried to slide the staff free.

Instantly the Knight’s eyes snapped open. “Kirisin,” she whispered in a voice dark with warning.

“Don’t.”

He pulled back quickly. “Sorry. But we need your staff to make a sling to carry you back down the mountain so that we can … we can find help for you …”

He trailed off, realizing suddenly that he didn’t know how that was supposed to happen. He looked over at Simralin, who had stopped what she was doing and was watching them. “I guess I don’t know what happens when we get back down the mountain.”

His sister rose and came over to them, kneeling next to her brother. “Once we reach the meadows, we’ll use the hot–air balloon to fly ourselves out of here.” She bent close to Angel. “Here’s the truth of things. Kirisin has done what he can for you, but his training is in healing plants, not people. I don’t know how bad your injuries are, and neither does he. We need someone more skilled than we are to determine that. How bad do they feel to you?”

Angel shook her head. “Broken ribs, maybe my arm. Or maybe they’re only cracked. Hard to tell. Everything hurts, even when I don’t move.” She wet her lips and shifted her gaze to Kirisin. “Did you find the Loden?”

He nodded. “I have it.”

“Tell me what happened.”

He glanced at Simralin, who nodded. Quickly he sketched out the events that had led to the unexpected appearance of the demon Culph and the discovery of its complex deception. He told of entering the ice dragon’s maw and gaining possession of the Loden, then emerging to find the old man waiting. He related how the demon had tried to hypnotize him using the silver cord and rings, intending afterward to transport him back to the Cintra and there use him to summon the Loden’s magic and imprison the Elves and their city. Simralin had saved him by stabbing the demon in the leg with her knife, disrupting his concentration and allowing Kirisin to break free of the spell that bound him and use the magic of the blue Elfstones.

He quite deliberately said nothing of the strange euphoria he had experienced when he summoned and gained command of the Elfstone magic, not yet certain how he felt about it, keeping it a secret even from Simralin. He wasn’t ready to talk about it yet, wasn’t ready to admit what it might mean.

“You were incredibly brave,” she told them. “Both of you. I thought that if I didn’t reach you, the demon would finish you both. But I was the one who needed saving.”

“Tell us what happened after we left you,” Simralin urged her.

So Angel related the details of her battle with Culph’s companion, the four–legged demon that had tracked her all the way from Los Angeles, first as the spiky–haired blond female and later as a wolfish beast. How much farther it might have evolved was a matter of speculation, but it had been dangerous enough at the end to almost finish her. As it was, she had been unable to do more than crawl uphill in the general direction of the entrance to the ice caves before she passed out.

For her part, she said nothing of her dream of Johnny and the sense that he had led her to a waiting death to which she had been willing to give herself over.

She took a deep breath against the inevitable pain and tried to raise herself to a sitting position. She failed and lay back again. “You’ll have to help me up,” she told them.

“We’ll have to carry you, is what we’ll have to do,” Simralin observed. “Don’t try to rush this.”

“I’m trying not to. But I know what’s at stake. Kirisin has to get back to the Cintra. He has to use the Loden to save the Elves. Otherwise, this has all been for nothing.”

Simralin nodded. “Kirisin will get his chance. But first we have to do something about you.”

“You have to take me with you.”

Simralin actually laughed. “Now there’s a good plan. Why didn’t I think of it?”

“I mean it, Simralin. You have to take me with you. It is the mission I was given–to be your protector. I can’t let you go alone.”

“Well, I don’t think this is your decision.” The Tracker bent close again. “I’ve seen dead people in better shape than you are. If you try to go with us, you’ll be more hindrance than help. I can’t protect you and him. And you can’t protect either of us until you’re healed. I’m taking you to someone who can make you well again. Then I’m taking Little K back into the Cintra where he can do what he is supposed to do.”

Angel shook her head stubbornly. “Not without me.”

Simralin sighed. “I thought you promised not to make this so hard on us.”

“I don’t care what I said. I’m going.”

“I’m afraid not, Angel.”

She reached down, pressed her fingers into the other’s exposed neck at the base of her skull, and held them in place. Angel’s eyes fluttered momentarily and closed.

Simralin stood up. “She’s unconscious. I’ll give her something in a little while to keep her that way. Stubborn, isn’t she? Determined. No wonder she’s still alive.” She motioned to Kirisin. “Take the staff from her hands, Little K. Be gentle.”

Together they made up the sling using the staff and one of the cloaks, tying and looping the sleeves and the loose ends of the flaps to form the cradle. Then they fitted Angel inside, shouldered their packs, and picked up the sling. It felt to Kirisin as if Angel weighed three hundred pounds.

“Don’t worry,” Simralin grunted from the other end of the staff. “We’ll stop and rest on the way. Just let me know when it gets to be too much.”

It was already too much, Kirisin thought. But he didn’t say so. He just nodded. He would do what it took to get Angel down the mountain. She would have done the same for them.

She would have given up her life.

Half an hour later, they were back outside the caves and making their way across the ice fields toward the snow line and the meadows that lay below.