Firebrand (9 page)

Serina bristled. “There is no place you can go. You can’t tamper with the will of the fates, David,” she warned. “My spies tell me that Gorash and Eric Sinclair may be one and the same. And if that’s true, it’s more dangerous than ever for Amber. He probably sent the trolls for her and when they return empty-handed, he’ll be coming for her himself. We have to get her to safety.”

Amber pulled away. “Stop it!” She pressed her lips together and spoke from between clenched teeth. “I’m not going anywhere with either of you. My father is missing and I intend to find him.” She reached toward the telephone but it disappeared in a ripple like heat rising. She straightened and turned slowly.

The phone perched neatly on the palm of Serina’s outstretched hand. “There’s no one you can call, Amber. No one will believe you,” she said as the phone floated to the table near the sofa.

Amber looked from the phone to Serina’s chestnut brown face. “What are you?”

The phone moved from Serina’s hand to a nearby table. . “Watch and learn, Amber,” she whispered squaring her shoulders.

The room began to glow and a light formed at the center of Serina’s chest and flowed outward. Sparks crackled as the brightness swirled into a thousand colors, each more spectacular than the last, until finally it began to dissolve into itself. When the glow disappeared Amber’s eyes widened.

In front of her now stood a beautiful fairy with a mass of black curling braids highlighted with the blue hue of moonbeams. Her large almond shaped eyes were a deep honey color that glinted with green and purple highlights. Graceful elliptical ears with pointed tips were adorned in gold earrings with burnished chains that cuffed the upper lobe.

Amber’s gaze slid to silvery blue gossamer wings fluttering like those of dragonflies and suspending what was left of the Serina she knew in mid-air.

“I am Teezal Thistlecomb, your protector and your friend.”

Chapter Seven

“I know you,” Amber said in a rush of air laced with recognition.

Teezal nodded her response. “You do.” She moved smoothly to Amber’s side, the pulsating of her wings gently stirring the air. She ran a loving hand down Amber’s cheek, her fingertips caressing. “Close your eyes. Remember.”

Without her permission, Amber’s eyelids trembled shut. She was seven now, no eight and running across the fields behind her father’s house. She had been napping but woke early and wanted to play. Without telling anyone, she left the house. A butterfly caught her attention and she ran after it, giggling as it flew this way and that, stopping only for a moment to pause on a wild daisy or lady slipper, allowing Amber to get close for a moment before taking flight again.

It paused on the trunk of a fallen tree and Amber watched as its white wings moved slowly back and forth. She reached out and almost touched it when a wind came up and blew forest soil into her eyes, momentarily blinding her.

When she brushed the dust from her eyes and looked around, the pathway on which she came had closed, trees and brush replacing the well-worn trail. She ran toward the place she knew should be there but now was not. Soon, each time she moved, more plant life grew, vines that tried to take hold of her arms, moss that tried to clasp her feet fast to the ground and branches that sprouted out of the trees and hit against her back and neck. Tears of fright streamed down her face but she would not cry out.

Suddenly a great rushing, roaring gust sprang up, grasped her then parted the foliage blocking her way. The mighty wind swept her to the base of the great tree near her house and deposited her in the arms of a beautiful dark-haired, honey skinned woman. She smiled at her and dried her tears, wiping the dirt from her face with the hem of her white dress that looked as though it was made of moonlight.

The beautiful lady urged her toward home with a graceful nod of her head. With each step Amber took toward her house, the glow around her began to dissipate. As Amber grabbed the doorknob to the backdoor of her home, she looked over her shoulder. The lady smiled and then vanished altogether.

“It was you.” Amber’s audible gasp made David take a step closer to her but Teezal cautioned him away with a shake of her head. Other visions formed rapid-fire quick of different times in her life, each one ending with the beautiful woman she now knew as Teezal. When she opened her eyes again, she took a faltering step backward into the wall that was David’s body. He put an arm around her shoulders to steady her but she shrugged it off. She turned to him briefly then averted his eyes.

“Don’t shut me out, Amber,” he said softly. “We need each other.”

Amber’s eyes flashed with anger. “That’s one decision I can still make.”

“Destiny has already made that decision,” he said. “I have been sent to keep you safe until the day of the Triad.” He scooped her into his arms. “And I swear I will as best I can,” he promised as she lay her cheek against his.

Closing her eyes, she put everything out of her mind except the sandpaper scrape of his emerging beard on her skin. As he walked with her in his arms, she focused only on the gentle rocking that accompanied his steps. Calmer now, she tightened her arms around his neck and sighed.

“Stop!” Teezal moved at a speed so fast that the air around her hissed as she placed herself between David and the door. “Where are you going?”

David met her gaze head on. “I’ve taken an oath to protect her too and I’m starting by taking her away from here.”

Teezal’s dark braids danced around her face as she shook her head. “It has begun. No matter where you go, nothing can stop the Triad and Amber’s part in it. Her time of learning has begun. You saw for yourself. Even now her powers emerge. She must be taught how to control them.”

For a moment that seemed longer than eternity, David seemed to battle within himself before nodding slowly. He slid Amber down the length of his body until her feet touched the floor and watched almost helplessly as the woman he loved turned her gaze first to him and then to Teezal. He righted a chair and Amber dropped into it.

She turned to Teezal. “Tell me why. Why me. Why David,” she whispered. “You’re a fairy. A mystic. Your world isn’t my world.” She looked at David. “It isn’t our world.”

“But it is,” Teezal corrected. She opened her hand. An arc of light appeared above her palm. “At a time preordained even before her birth, your mother, Alara, came to know a human woodsman named Brian McKenna.”

Inside the orb, images formed allowing Amber to see the events unfold. “Brian could no more escape his fate than could Alara and, against all that is written in the Tenets of the Fae, they fell in love, allowing their auras to first touch and then combine. You were a result of that joining. But the union was doomed from the start. Soon after your birth, he vanished.”

“He didn’t want me?”

“He didn’t know of you.”

“Then what happened to him?”

“The Great Clock began counting down the time to the Triad at the moment of your birth. Immediately, Gorash began to search for you. You are the only living thing that can stop the Triad and thereby hamper with his plan to rule all worlds. It has been written that Gorash took your father, hoping to learn your whereabouts.”

“But if he didn’t know…”

“It was suspected that he was killed. Humans of no use to trolls are quickly discarded.”

Amber covered her face with her hands. “My God. What is happening?”

“Something terrifying but also something wondrous.” Teezal took Amber’s hands and lowered them. “It is up to you to decide which.”

“How?” Amber asked in a voice barely a whisper.

“You hold the hopes and dreams of all the worlds in the amulet that lies around your neck. To free them, you must learn all there is to know before the Triad and then use the powers you were given at your conception to carry out the ritual that will save us all.”

“Because I have a human father and a fairy mother?”

“That and more. You have been chosen.”

Amber closed her eyes and exhaled the breath she had not realized she had been holding. “Father used to tell me bedtime stories of a beautiful fairy princess who sacrificed all for those she loved. But it wasn’t a tale was it? It was all true.”

Teezal nodded.

“What happened to her?”

“She waits for you.”

* * * * *

Carefully hidden from human view under the Whitestone Bridge in Queens, inside a mound of earth in a hastily built shelter, Jolinax paced back and forth on strong but stubby legs. Gorash was a fool, he thought. He allowed time to slip away while he twiddled around with the upworlders.

“Enter.” He growled in response to a knock on the door.

The heavy hewn entrance creaked as a worker troll crossed the threshold. The red cap he wore barely controlled the long gray hair that poured out from underneath it. A runny, crooked nose made his already unpleasant face even more distasteful. A disproportionate hump on his back distorted the dingy blue jacket he wore over black pants and his feet, it seemed, were as large as his head.

Jolinax wrinkled his bibulous nose. “Furnum, You’ve been chasing that human girl again.” He raised his eyes upward. “The smell of them is all over you.”

“She’s feisty that one but I’ll have her soon enough, of that you can be sure.”

“This mixing is unhealthy for us. You’ll taint the strain of your line. Do you want more hybrids among us?”

“No but I want her.” Furnum’s lips wobbled as he made a lewd gesture.

“They, like the fairies, are meant to be our servants. We are almost at the time of the Triad, yet you and our king savor nothing except the pleasures of your carnal appetites.”

“Jolinax, you are a slave to your own ambitions. Do you think there is one among us who does not feel the pull of the Triad? For generations beyond counting the legend has been passed down that we…” he pounded his chest, “the troll-kind shall inherit the two outworlds if the Triad is halted. The fae and the humans will be our slaves.”

Jolinax licked his large lips and leaned in closer to odoriferous troll. “Then if I ask you to join me in an important quest, one that would ensure our dominion over the sky and the ground, you would?”

“If you make it worth my while. I no longer want to be the Watcher. I want to be a Chieftain.” Furnum’s mouth separated into a sly, crooked grin. “Perhaps even Trollmoot.”

“You would pledge your allegiance to me? You would defy Gorash?”

“For that honor and if you give your word, of course I will join you,” Furnum said.

Then it is agreed. You will be the new Trollmoot General over the guards with a
Newot
Servant of your own,” Jolinax promised, rubbing his chin and smiling back at his cohort.

Furnum’s gaze searched the room for a morsel of leftover food. “And how do you propose to keep this endeavor from our majesty?”

“Gorash spends his days among the upworlders, living in their cities, drinking their wine, poking their women even as he keeps the veil over their eyes.” Jolinax spat out. “He has been blinded by the pleasures of his human flesh and spends less and less time here in the realm. The time has come to consider a new ruler.”

“Make no mistake,” Furnum warned, “The seed of rebellion you try to cultivate will not easily take hold with the Triad growing near. The old ones warn of the prophecy as they dance around the bonfire on the nights of the Gathering. They circle twelve times and warn of the Na, the void that will come and make the trolls the servants if the Hybrid is successful.”

“Bah! If I were king,” Jolinax said through gritted teeth, “our grottos would be filled with fairy slaves, our beds with any woman we want and all-worlders would be growing our food and brewing our mash. And you my friend,” he winked, “would be free to enjoy as many human wenches as you wish.”

“Then your wish is my command.” He bowed low, his face a mask of anticipated greed.

“The human, Drake. He is secure?”

“He was taken through the trod to the Glacier. He is locked in Blasalen just below the summit of the mountain in the central part of the hollowed room with the other. The light from the sun does not reach it and they dig by candle, in the snow and ice.”

“Good. The hanging ice spikes look like dragon’s teeth and the foolish worker trolls will not pass out of fear.”

Jolinax walked to a dark corner of the room. The air filled with the sound of shuffling and scrambling, followed by a thud. “We’ll start by assembling as many trolls as we can when Gorash is in human form. Once our numbers grow, we will find the Three Swords and open the monolith to lay wide the Divination Stone. Once I have secured the Triad amulet, I will smash it into a million useless pieces. Then, when all worlds succumb to the Na, the new Shadow World will belong to the trolls with me, Jolinax Redfern, as its king.”

Suddenly bright light from a newly lit candle filled the room. Furnum squinted at the brightness. There in the corner he could make out Jolinax, seated on a large throne gleaming with diamonds, rubies and other precious stones.

“By the beard of Rorn, where came you by this treasure?” The troll’s eyes widened in awe of the spectacle before him.

“That is of no consequence,” Jolinax replied, his eyes glistening with the near-madness of desire, “Your only concern is how you will enjoy the new world when, before all gathering trolls, humans and fae, you proclaim me as the sovereign over the kingdom of three.”

The guttural laughter of the two, began as a low grunting snort before culminating into a howling bellow.

Outside, hidden behind one of the gleaming steel strut bars of the bridge, Plim Nightwing straightened. He’d been listening to the exchange. His face was grim, his heart torn between a loyalty older than himself and a promise he’d made.

He had to get this information to his ally but he could not risk traveling the trod. In this area, the trolls who had taken to issuing travel passes heavily guarded the trodways. Those found without one were taken to Gorash for interrogation. Even traveling a short distance could mean discovery.

He would have to travel above ground, being careful to hide his appearance from the upworlders. The information he’d just learned was too important not to be shared.

* * * * *

Amber sat by the side of the pond near her father’s house, her finger wrapped around the golden chain on her neck, the amulet swinging like pendulum in front of her face. Made up of three distinct segments, it seemed ordinary enough. She let it spin and catch the sunlight and noticed for the first time how each sector caught the light in different ways.

The lightest section was clear a brilliant diamond, allowing the sunlight to pass through it and gather on her skin. The second segment was like an opal, catching the sunlight and enhancing its inner brilliance. The third was dark like the blackest onyx and seemed to absorb the light, capturing it inside its facets forever. It amazed her to think that if what Teezal and David said was true, the pendant she held contained the secret to the continued existence of the planet.

She looked down into the sparkling pool. Everything was becoming more alive to her, colors more vivid and sound more pronounced. She could feel the water rushing across the gills of the fish that made the pond their home and, if she concentrated, could even see the grass stretch up toward the sun as it grew.

She had listened in awestruck silence as Teezal told of her birth, her journey to her new, albeit now temporary life and of the great task which had been handed down to her. She sighed as she tried to assimilate all she had been told and let the amulet drop. It seemed to settle near her heart as though it knew where to rest.

“Hell of a day, isn’t it?”

David’s voice made her lift her head and turn toward him. “Definitely not average.” She arched a brow. “So, can I spin straw into gold too?”

He sat down beside her. “I’m not sure,” he said with a nervous chuckle. He wrapped a free arm around her waist and kept it there. “Maybe.”

She could see the sadness in his eyes but also the warmth around the edges of his smile. She leaned into him and felt the firmness of his body. It felt good. Too good. She eased away from him.