Magic Rises (32 page)

The serpent let go, turned, and swept at me. I swam up like I’d never swum before in my life. My muscles threatened to tear off my bones.

I broke the water. I needed a power word. I could command it to die, but
Ud
, the killing word, usually failed, and when it didn’t work, the backlash crippled me with pain. The stronger the magic, the less pain, but this magic wave was weaker than most. The killing word would hurt like a sonovabitch.

I couldn’t afford to be crippled right this second or I’d end the day as fish food. The only other attack word I had was
kneel
. The serpent had no legs.

The serpent reared, rising from the sea, its mouth gaping. A moment and it would slam into me, like a battering ram.

The small man spat a single harsh word.
“Aarh!”

A torrent of magic smashed into the serpent. It froze, completely still.

I lunged at it and thrust the knife into its spine. The serpent shuddered. I sawed through its flesh, nearly cutting it in two.

The serpent jerked and crashed backward. I kicked free.

The creature convulsed, whipping the sea into froth. I swam away from it, to the ledge, gasping for breath. The small man slumped against the stone. A small dribble of bloody spit slid from his mouth.

He’d used a power word and it worked.
Thank you. Thank you, whoever you are upstairs.

I held on to the ledge. The small man leaned over and held my hand, helping me hold on.

The serpent flailed and thrashed, until finally a full minute later, it hung motionless in the water.

The man petted my hand, wiped the blood from his lips, and pointed up. Above us, about seven feet above the stone shelf, a narrow hole split the wall, a little less than a foot across. Not nearly wide enough for both of us.

The man held his hands together, as if praying, and looked at me.

“Okay,” I told him. No reason for both of us to be trapped.

I moved along the ledge to its widest point. A whole six inches of space to work with. Oh boy. It took me four tries to crawl up onto it—my feet kept slipping—but I finally managed and hugged the wall.

The man grabbed my shirt and pulled himself up. Feet stomped on my shoulders. Forget thirty pounds, he was more like fifty. He should’ve weighed one third of that at his size. Maybe he was made of rocks.

The man stood on my shoulders. I locked my hands and raised my arms flat against the wall. He stepped on my palms and kicked off.

I slipped and fell backward into the water. I broke the surface just in time to see him scramble into the hole and vanish.

I was all alone. Just me and fourteen feet of fresh sushi bopping on the waves. I was so tired. My arms felt like wet cotton.

Maybe I’d hallucinated the whole hobbit episode. I’d hit the water hard, ended up with a concussion, and started seeing small magic men in riding boots.

I forced myself to swim. Hanging in the water didn’t accomplish anything, and I was too exhausted to keep it up for long. Another trip around the cavern confirmed what I already knew—no escape. Sitting here waiting to be rescued was a losing proposition. Even if Aunt B and Keira did somehow manage to find me, I’d spend hours waiting for them to get a rope long enough get me out. The chances of the small man returning with a detachment of Pomeranian cavalry to liberate me were even slimmer.

The serpent had to have come from somewhere. There simply weren’t enough fish in this small cavern to keep it alive, and unless they fed it a steady diet of Abkhazian hobbits, it had to move freely between the cavern and the sea.

I swam to the wall where I’d first seen it and dove deep down through the crystal-clear water. Fifteen feet down, the mountain ended and a ten-foot-wide tunnel stretched before me, leading out. I had no idea how long it was.

To dive into an underwater tunnel of unknown length, possibly drowning, or to stay in the cavern until I wore myself out, possibly drowning? Sometimes life just didn’t offer good choices.

I breathed deep, trying to saturate my lungs with oxygen, and dove under. The tunnel rolled out in front of me, narrowing until it was barely four feet wide. I kept going, kicking off the walls. I once heard it was a good idea to not think about holding my breath while holding it. Yeah. That’s like not looking down while crossing over a cliff. Once someone says, “Don’t look down,” you’re going to look.

The walls were closing in on me.

What if I swam out into the nest of sea serpents?

My heart hammered in my chest. I’d run out of air. I swam, frantic, desperate, fighting the water for my life.

The ocean was turning dark. I was drowning.

The tunnel’s walls opened abruptly, and above me translucent blue spread. I flailed, heading straight up.

My face broke the surface. A bright beautiful sky stretched overhead. I gulped in the air. Oh wow. I lay on my back for a long second, breathing. I wasn’t ready to kick the bucket. Not just yet.

Hanging in the water was lovely and all, but if more sea serpents were floating about, I had to get the hell out of the water. I straightened up. I was in the open sea. The shore—a solid vertical cliff—towered before me. The mountain was nearly sheer. Climbing it right now was beyond me.

I turned in the water. A vast indigo sea stretched around me, a constant field of blue except for a tiny island about twenty-five yards away. Only twenty feet across, it was more like a rock than an island, but right now even the runt of the island litter would do.

I swam to it. The warm water, crystal clear, slid against my skin, caressing me gently. I was so happy to be alive.

I reached the rock, climbed up its mussel-studded side, and landed on my ass. Solid ground.
Beautiful, wonderful, immobile solid ground. I love you.

I lay on my back. I could probably find my way to the city once I’d rested. I’d just have to move along the shore until I reached civilization, but right now moving wasn’t an option. Hanging out on this rock sounded like a really good idea. I could sit right here on this little island and think about the choices that resulted in my ending up in this place, half-drowned, exhausted, with my ankle bleeding, and a possible concussion causing hobbit hallucinations.

The warm sun heated my skin. I flipped over on my stomach, rested my forehead on my arm to keep my face from being cooked, and closed my eyes. My imagination painted a scaled monster crawling out of the sea to chew on me. I shoved the thought aside. I was safe enough here, and I was too tired to move.

* * *

“
Aaaay!”

I sat straight up. In the west, the sun was rolling toward the sea, the sky gaining a pale orange tint. I’d slept until evening. All my fingers and toes seemed to be still there. No monsters had come out of the sea and nibbled away any digits. My face didn’t hurt either. My skin looked tan even in winter and didn’t burn easily, but I had managed it a couple of times in my life and I didn’t care for the experience.

“Aaay!” a man called.

I turned. A boat drifted toward me. The hunter I’d met earlier sat at the oars, his shaggy dog waiting next to him. At the nose of the boat, the small man waved his arms at me.

“We have come to save you,” the hunter called out in accented Russian.

“Thank you!”

“It looks like you have saved yourself.” The hunter slowed the boat and it bumped gently against the rock. I climbed aboard.

The small man smiled at me.

“Hello,” the hunter said.

“Hello.”

“We have an important decision to make,” the hunter said. “The city is that way.” He pointed north. “Two and a half hours. My house and dinner, that way.” He pointed northeast. “One hour. I will take you either way, but I’ll be honest: night is coming. Not good to travel in the dark while magic is in charge. Mountains are not safe.”

Two and a half hours to the castle meant he would have to make a return trip in the dark by himself or stay somewhere in the city. His tone of voice told me he didn’t care much for cities. If some strange mountain beast ate him on the way back, I wouldn’t be able to live with myself. The castle and everyone inside would just have to survive without me for another twelve hours.

“Your house and dinner, please.”

“Good choice.”

* * *

The hunter’s name was Astamur. His dog, which turned out to be a Caucasian shepherd, was named Gunda, after a mythical princess with many magical hero brothers. According to Astamur, the small man wouldn’t give us his name because he was afraid it would grant us power over him, but his kind was called atsany, and he didn’t mind being called that.

“They live in the mountains,” Astamur explained, as the boat glided along the shore. “They don’t like to be seen, but I rescued one of their young once. They don’t mind me as much. They are very old people. Been here thousands of years. Left their houses all over the place. Now they are coming back.”

“How did they survive?” I offered my hand to Gunda. She sniffed my fingers, regarded me with a very serious expression, and nudged my hand with her nose for a stroke. I obliged. I really missed my attack poodle.

Astamur shrugged. “The atsany slept. Some say they turned into rocks and came back to life when magic returned. They won’t say.”

“How did he end up in the sack?”

Astamur asked Atsany in his language. The small man crossed his arms on his chest and mumbled something.

“He says gyzmals caught him.”

“Gyzmals?”

Astamur bared his teeth at me. “Men-jackals. It’s bad luck to kill an atsany, so they put him in a bag and threw him into the water.”

Volodja and his fellow shapeshifters. “Not the brightest lot. They tried to rob us.”

“When magic first came, some people turned into gyzmals. Stories said they were evil. People were scared. When people get scared, bad things happen. Many gyzmals were killed. Then Megobari came. Now the gyzmals run the town, do whatever they want. Nobody can say anything. But robbing people, that’s going too far. The boy that led you into the cave has a mother in town. I’ll tell her about it. She’ll take care of him.” Astamur shook his head at me. “I tried to tell you: bad place. That’s where Agulshap lives. The water dragon.”

A lot of their words started with
A
. “Not anymore.”

Astamur’s eyebrows crept together. He said something to Atsany. The small man nodded.

Astamur laughed, his deep chuckle carrying above the water. “I thought I was saving a pretty girl. I was saving a warrior! We should have a feast. We’ll celebrate.”

He landed the boat and I helped him drag it ashore. We climbed up the mountain for about an hour, until the trail brought us to a valley. Mountains rolled into the distance and between them lay an emerald-green pasture. A small sturdy stone house crouched on the grass, and a few yards away, a flock of sheep with gray curly wool baaed in the wide enclosure.

“I thought you were a hunter.”

“Me? No. I’m just a shepherd. There is a bathroom inside. You are welcome to it. My house is your house.”

I stepped through the door. Inside the cottage was open and neat, with beautiful stone walls and a wood floor. Colorful Turkish rugs hung on the walls. A small kitchen sat to the right with an old electric range. There must be a generator somewhere. I walked through the living room, past a comfortable sofa covered by a soft white blanket, to the back, where I found a small bathroom with a toilet, shower, and sink. I tried the faucet. Water splashed into the metal basin. Running water all the way out here. Astamur was doing well for himself.

I used the bathroom inside and washed my face and my hands. When I came out, Astamur built a fire in a big stone pit behind the house.

“We’re going to cook over fire,” Astamur announced. “Traditional mountain dinner.”

Atsany ducked into the house and returned with a stack of blankets. I helped spread them on the ground.

Astamur brought out a large pan filled with chunks of onion, meat, and pomegranate seeds in some sauce and started threading them onto big skewers.

I caught the aroma of the sauce, a touch of vinegar and heat. My mouth watered. Suddenly I realized I was starving.

Astamur set the skewers above the fire and went to wash up. The aroma of smoking wood mixed with the smell of meat sizzling over the fire. The sky slowly turned orange and deeper red in the west, while in the east, above the mountains, it was almost crystalline purple, the color of an amethyst.

Astamur offered me a skewer. I bit into the meat. The tender meat practically melted in my mouth. This was heaven.

“Good?” Astamur asked with concern.

“Mm-hm,” I told him, trying to chew and talk at the same time. “Delicioush. Besht shting I ever ate.”

Atsany leaned back and laughed.

The shepherd smiled into his mustache and handed me a bottle of wine. “Homemade.”

I took a swallow. The wine was sweet, refreshing, and surprisingly delicate.

“So you live here all alone?” I asked.

Astamur nodded. “I like it here. I have my flock. I have my dog. I have a fire pit, a clear mountain stream, and the mountains. I live like a king.”

Atsany said something. Astamur shrugged. “Castles are for rulers. Kings come and go. Someone has to be the shepherd.”

“Do you miss being with other people down in town? Must get lonely up here.” I wouldn’t miss them. I would totally hitch up a house in the mountain and live all by myself. No shapeshifters. No brokenhearted mothers. No, “Yes, Consort,” “Please, Consort,” “Help us, Consort.” Right now that sounded like pure happiness.

Astamur smiled. “Down in the cities people fight. I fought too for a while until I got tired of it.” Astamur pulled up his pant leg. An ugly scar punctured his calf. Looked like a knife or a sword thrust. “Russians.”

He wagged his eyebrows at me and pulled his shirt off his shoulder, exposing an old bullet wound in his chest. “Georgians.” He laughed.

Atsany rolled his eyes.

“Does he understand what you say?” I asked.

“He does. It’s his own kind of magic,” Astamur answered. “If it weren’t for supplies, I’d never go back down to town. But a man has to do what a man has to do. Hard to live like a king without toilet paper.”