Elf Saga: Bloodlines (Part 1: Curse of the Jaguar) (14 page)

I scream, “NO!”

And Mother jerks. I see her hand rise at the
last second and she catches Nahina’s wrist, and snaps it.

Nahina shrieks as the axe falls from her
fingers, and now I’m scrambling back up to save the fisher girl
from the jaguar woman. I yank them apart, throwing Nahina down on
her backside with her broken wrist cradled to her belly. I stand
over Lozen, looking down into her gold-flecked eyes and I see her
gaze wandering drunk and lost across me and the sky like we’re one
and the same. I back away from her.

“Are you okay?” I ask Nahina. “Can you
walk?”

But the fisher girl is sobbing and shaking,
babbling to herself, “...selfish bitch, how could you, how could
you do that, who gave you the right…”

I want to help her, but I don’t dare take my
eyes off Lozen. “Nahina? Get up. Go back to the ship. Rajani can
fix your hand. Go.”

And thankfully she staggers up and she goes,
pausing only to scoop up her axe again.

“What the hell is her problem?” Lozen slurs.
She’s lying on her back, eyes mostly closed.

“What’s yours?” I kick her foot.

“Hey, Gen?” Rajani calls out. “I think we’ve
got a little trouble.”

“What now?” I glance at her and see Xiang
helping Nahina back into the ship. I also see Amara standing tall
in the prow with her two guns drawn, and beyond the ship, out at
the jagged rim of the volcano, I see the tiny black figures of
distant elves against the pale morning sky.

“Uhm… pirates, I guess,” Rajani says.

“Pirates indeed,” Amara calls out. The
princess turns and slips down over the railing, falling to the
ash-covered ground. “Mister Dae, I believe I will require your
assistance, if you please.”

With Nahina safely aboard the Valkyrie and in
Rajani’s care, the young treasure hunter jumps down and hurries
after Amara. But they’re not going to confront the pirates. They’re
coming toward me. And Lozen.

“Get back in the ship,” I call out to them.
“We’re leaving.” I look down at Lozen. I don’t want to touch her, I
don’t want to talk to her, but she’s my mother, damn it, and I
still need to know how to get rid of these spots, so… I squat down
and slip my arms under her.

“Leave her there, Miss Marev,” Amara says as
she begins climbing the temple steps. “She’ll be of no use to you
in the coming minutes, not in her current state. You, on the other
hand, will be our only defense against the approaching
corsairs.”

“I’m not going to fight an army of pirates
when we can just fly away.” I glare at her. “I told you to stay in
the ship.”

“And I’m telling you that this may be our
only opportunity to study this device.” Amara nods at the
pillars.

“What device?”

“The Yagari Gate.” The princess limps over to
one of the black pillars and begins inspecting its warped and
cracked features. The pillar curves inward slightly and tapers to a
broken point above us, not unlike the diseased rib of an elder
dragon. “Surely a woman of your intelligence can understand that
this is no mere ruin of stone, left by primitive artisans to revere
some imagined deity? No! This device is precisely what its name
implies. A magic gateway. And with Mister Dae’s assistance, I
intend to open it. However, the corsairs may not—”

“Yeah, I get the picture.” Mostly. I leave
Lozen on the ground. “How long do you need?”

“As long as it takes,” Amara says mildly, her
attention focused on the pillar. “Now, cease your prattling and do
what you do best. I have work of my own to attend to.”

If she wasn’t so frail I’d smack her, but I
suppose there’ll be time to teach the princess a few manners after
I fight off a small brigade of thieves and killers, so I turn and
start running toward the ship.

“Nahina! Are you all fixed up yet?”

“I think so.” She’s standing beside Rajani,
flexing her hand.

“Mind giving me a hand with a few
pirates?”

She squints at the approaching men and women,
dressed in sun-bleached cotton, wearing the colors of a dozen
cultures, carrying the blades and guns of a dozen navies. “I prefer
not to do much fighting before breakfast, or after, or ever.”

“You just attacked my mother,” I reminded her
as I jog past the floating crystal ship.

“That was different. That was personal,” she
says.

“Yeah, right. You’ll have to tell me all
about it sometime.”

“No, I really don’t.”

“Seriously, you’re not going to help me?” I’m
striding away now, all alone, and I can see at least fifteen
pirates trotting toward me, some getting ready to fire their
pistols at me, and I stop. What the hell am I doing?

“I never fight when I can run,” Nahina calls
out, “And right now, I’m in a very strong running mood.”

The first pirate fires, and the bullet
shrieks past my scarred ear. “Yeah, me too.”

I turn and run back to the ship, leaping the
last dozen paces and crashing down on the glassy deck between the
other women. “Let’s go!”

“Go where?” Rajani grabs the levers and we
shoot forward, whisking across the dusty plateau, and leaving
nothing at all between the pirates and the temple.

“Anywhere,” Nahina says, “Just as long as
they can see us.”

“But what about Xiang and Amara?” I ask,
peering back toward the temple. “They’re trying to open some sort
of magic gateway. Seems stupid, but I didn’t argue. They probably
know what they’re doing.”

“Probably,” Nahina agrees. “Turn the ship
around and circle back toward them. Close, but not too close.”

“Toward Amara?” Rajani starts the turn.

“Toward the pirates.” Nahina winks at her.
“We’re playing bait-the-shark, and we’re the bait.”

“Oh, goody,” Rajani says nervously. “Wait.
Isn’t shark bait called chum? I don’t want to be chum!”

As we curve back around toward the pirates,
we sweep over a dusty field strewn with rocks, mangled weapons, and
the cold remains of old campfires, and I wonder what sort of place
this was before Lozen took up residence. A pirate fortress, a
trading post, a destination for scholars and tomb raiders?

A rooster-tail of ash flies up behind us as
we streak toward the pirates to cut across their trail, and sure
enough they all take a knee and fire a volley as we pass. Rajani
and Nahina both duck down, but I don’t. Even with only one eye, I
can tell they’ll miss, and they do. But two of them don’t stop to
shoot, they keep running straight for us and leap as we fly by.

The first elf lands face-down in the
dust.

But the second elf lands on one of our
crystal fins, and the ship jerks to port with the sudden unbalanced
weight. We slide in a snaking trail across the plateau as Rajani
wrestles with the controls, and Nahina and I grab the railing to
keep from being thrown off.

“I’ll get him,” Nahina says, already crawling
back toward our new arrival. But before she can climb over the
rail, the ship slides a bit to starboard and the pirate’s legs
collide with a jagged spear of basalt, and he disappears from the
fin. The Valkyrie wobbles back up on its crystal keel, and I steady
Nahina on the quaking deck.

“Damn,” she says softly, staring back over
the stern.

“What’s wrong?” I ask.

“I just… hope that man’s not dead,” she
mutters, and she paces away to lean against the rail on the
opposite side of the boat.

“Right.” I look back toward the knot of
pirates, expecting to see them running after us, but instead
they’re marching toward the temple, and Lozen is still passed out
on the steps, leaving Amara and Xiang trapped at the edge of the
volcanic cliff with all those twisted black ribs hanging over them.
“Oh crap, Raj! Get us back there!”

“Aye aye, skipper!” she sings out, and we
zoom about in another quick turn and race back toward the
temple.

A handful of gunshots crack and echo off the
pale sky as the pirates’ pistols flash and smoke. I see Amara turn
and fire both of her golden guns, dropping two of the corsairs to
the ground. Xiang doesn’t seem to have a weapon at all, but he’s
not even paying attention to the pirates. He’s focused completely
on his pillar, and Amara turns back to rejoin him.

“Go faster,” Nahina says. “Right across their
backsides, as fast as you can. Give it everything you’ve got!”

“What happened to not killing them?” I ask,
grabbing the railing as the Valkyrie surges forward.

“That’s still the plan.” Nahina rests her
hand on Rajani’s hand, and the ship shimmies slightly to the side,
even closer to the line of pirates approaching the steps of the
shattered temple.

Before I can object to whatever her plan is,
we blast by the temple steps within arm’s reach of the glaring
corsairs, and an instant later, the men and women all fly into the
air, all yanked backward like puppets on unseen strings, and sent
tumbling back across the dusty field.

“What was that?” I stare at the elves
groaning and crawling in the ash.

“A wake.” Nahina flashes a wild grin. “Air,
water, it’s all the same. You go fast enough, you make a big wake,
and no one likes getting hit by someone else’s wake.”

I blink. “Okay.”

The air explodes with something deeper and
closer than any thunderclap I’ve ever heard. The three of us wince
and flinch, ducking down as though to escape a lightning strike.
Rajani lets go of the ship’s controls and the Valkyrie glides to a
halt, drifting sideways in the breeze.

A moment later we all straighten up and look
back at the temple.

“What the hell was that?” I squint at the
hideous black pillars where a strange white light is glaring into
my eyes. “And what the hell is that?”

“He did it,” Nahina whispers, staring at the
temple. “That crazy kid actually did it. Rajani, go, go!”

“Go where?” The healer asks breathlessly.

“Into the light!”

As the ship turns beneath me, I just keep
staring. The two stone pillars that Amara and Xiang have been
playing with all this time are now blazing with white light pouring
out of every tiny crack and crevice in their ancient faces. And in
the airy void between those pillars is a wall of light.

Or a doorway.

Whatever it is, it’s a pane of pure white
light so bright that it hurts to look at, but it’s so strange and
so clearly something-that-was-not-there-a-moment-ago, that I can’t
help but stare as we turn and accelerate toward it.

The pirates all sit up in the dust to gape
and point at the light.

Xiang and Amara are shielding their eyes and
shuffling back from the blazing gateway.

Rajani brings the Valkyrie down on the stone
platform and Xiang clambers aboard, and then turns to help pull
Amara up over the railing. I glance back at the pirates, and see
them standing up and slowly walking toward us again, though this
time they’re less concerned with shooting us and more distracted
with shading their eyes.

Down on the steps, Lozen’s hand moves.

Lozen!

Damn it.

I reach for the rail to leap down and fetch
her, but a hand grips my belt. A long, bony hand. And while Amara
isn’t strong enough to hold me back, I’m not about to rip her arm
off, so I turn to yell at her just as she pats Rajani on the
shoulder and says, “Go now, or we will surely die!”

Rajani throws the lever and the ship plunges
into the light.

For ten long seconds, I don’t move. No one
moves. We stand in the ship, gripping the rails and each other,
staring into the insane walls and threads and panes and swirls of
light screaming past us on every side, in every color, in perfect
silence. Every rainbow, every drop of oil on the surface of the
sea, and every gleam of colored glass I have ever seen are melting
past us on all sides, creating a tunnel of eye-watering
madness.

And then the light vanishes and we’re flying
far below a grim gray sky and well above a dark green sea, and a
wide white land stretches across the horizon not far beyond our
bow.

I blink and look back at the ragged ring of
white light hanging in the sky behind us, just for a moment, and
then it winks out of existence, leaving the sky and clouds
undisturbed as though nothing strange had happened at all.

I look back at Amara and I remember to be
angry at her. “Why did you stop me?” I knock her hand away from my
belt. “What about Lozen? We just left her back there! They could
kill her!”

“Perhaps,” she admits calmly. “Though I think
it unlikely, given the woman’s unique abilities, even in her
inebriated state. In any case, there was no time to retrieve her.
As you just witnessed, we only barely cleared the gateway by a few
seconds. Had we still been inside the gateway when it collapsed, we
would all have been killed.”

I blink. “Seriously?”

Xiang nods apologetically as he leans over
the rail. “Unfortunately, she’s right. Look down there.”

I peer down at the sea below, and I see a
long strip of angular stones just barely breaking through the
waves. There are broken black pillars drowning in the surf, covered
in kelp and starfish. And to one side a mound of grassy earth
sparkles verdantly just below the surface.

“See?” Xiang points. “There used to be
another gate here, too, but it fell into the sea. Without a gate at
both ends, the tunnel could only stay open for a few seconds. The
good news is that it only took us a few seconds to get here, but
the bad news is that it’s going to take hours or days just to get
back to Moa Taka, flying the old fashioned way. Which… I guess this
is. Wow. We’re really just flying, aren’t we? I could get used to
this. And man, talk about lucky! What if I’d opened that portal and
just stepped through? Ha! That would have been… well, bad.”

“You mean, we can’t go back?” I look back up
where the gateway of light had been.

“There would be no point,” Amara says as she
begins to reload her pistols. “Your mother’s interrogation proved
fruitless. She knows nothing of your jaguar curse. However, the
creature called Raven may still be able to save your life, and that
of your unborn niece. So, you are welcome.”