The Dark Passenger (Book 1) (27 page)

At this, Edwin shot another bolt towards a gray face. He hit
it directly between its eyes.

The bald head surfaced. “Puh, puh, puh. It tastes sour,” the
creature spat, and the lake laughed with mirth and menace.

With the spirit’s presence calming him, he leaned over the
boat as far as he dared and studied the many strange faces looking up at him. “See
how he look-s down at us,” said the nearest of the faces.

“He won’t wear that ug-ly look for long,” another said.

“Drain aw-way his soul we will. Drain, drain, drain.”

“Drain, drain, drain,” another sang.

The spirit began moving his mouth, or maybe Edwin was doing
it himself—he wasn’t sure. He knew the spell he wanted, and he saw the
incantation as clearly as if Herald were right in front of him. Wisps of smoke
left his fingertips and reached the nearest of the gray-faced creatures. She
dissolved into a murky ash, and a great cry spread across the lake.

“Oh, a mahr-ling,” a voice said from a great distance. “Why
didn’t you say so?”

“We nixies would nev-ver harm a mahr-ling.”

Keeping a close eye on the water, Edwin let a minute pass.
He then grabbed his one oar, turned his back, and rowed the rest of the way to
the island. Though he continued to hear the sound of distant ripples in the
water, it was no longer followed by snickering.

*   *   *

Gretchen began to feel life returning to her limbs after the
nixies retreated from the boat. The last of the song’s effects were finally
leaving her, but even so, a few minutes passed after Edwin reached the island
before she felt strong enough to stand.

The little two-story cottage looked normal in every way. A
stone path led up to the front door, but Edwin walked across the dirt yard to
the large picture window instead. The room he saw was dark, but he could just
make out the outline of a couch and table.

Backing away from the window, he looked at the front door,
but decided he would rather walk around the cottage first. Finding something so
common in a place so strange made him more nervous than he would be if he’d
found something supernatural.

“Walt!” he yelled hopefully, but there was no answer.

As soon as he rounded the cottage’s corner, he found himself
facing a huge statue of a dragon. It was hunched forward, its mouth was open in
the shape of a scream, and its front paw was in the water.

As he got closer he saw that there was a smaller figure next
to it, barely as big as one of the dragon’s claws. It was a hairy little
creature with huge wings for its tiny size, and its foot was outstretched as
though to see if the water was warm. He bent down to pick up the little statue,
but no sooner had he touched it than the rock on its surface began to crack and
the little creature was shaking itself awake. As it shook off the stone, it looked
almost like a tiny, fist-sized woman, only it was covered from head to toe in
chocolate brown hair, save a mane of white hair that ran down its back. But it
was the creature’s hexagonal red-on-gold wings that most caught Edwin’s eye. The
creature stirred as though waking from a dream. Not feeling threatened, Edwin
said, “You’re beautiful.” The little creature hopped into his open hands and
chirped happily.

“I woke you, didn’t I?” Edwin felt disturbed by his
connection to this place. And then, looking back at the dragon, he added, “I’m
sure glad I touched you and not that. What are you?”

As the little winged creature climbed up his shoulder, it
made a noise that sounded like the word
brownie
, and Edwin continued
around the cottage. There were other statues, but he didn’t dare touch any.
Before long he was back at the front door, and he decided he had best go in.

The door opened too easily for Edwin’s tastes, and he
wondered whether it had been made to open for a Host or had never been locked
at all. Inside, he found himself in a dark little hallway, and he lit a small
spark in his hand. Nothing looked out of place; there were three different
rooms downstairs and a stairway placed between them.

Walking upstairs, the wood groaned beneath his weight. There
was a faint outline of light as he got nearer the top, and he extinguished his
own spark with a wave of his hand and cautiously crept forward. Unlike the
ground floor, this level wasn’t broken into rooms; in the middle of the large
room sat a small, delicate platform, above which floated a necklace, the source
of the soft light.

Edwin looked around the room for any traps, but there seemed
to be none. Besides the floating necklace, the room was as normal as the rest
of the cottage.

Reaching the pedestal, he carefully inspected the necklace.
The chain was nothing special, but it supported a marble-sized ball unlike any
he had ever seen. An infinite number of tiny floating lights circled an
invisible well of gravity, and even from a distance Edwin could feel its power.
The ball was soft and warm as he reached out to touch it, inviting even, and he
gently plucked it from the pedestal.

At his touch, the little lights extinguished in his hand and
the necklace went cold. Without the light of the necklace, the outside lamp,
which could be seen through a window, filled the room with long shadows. There
was a sound behind him, and he turned and saw Gretchen removing her mask.

“Welcome, Edwin,” she said, and Edwin jumped as one by one
Mina and the triplets removed their masks, popping into view.

Staggering backwards, Edwin asked, “What are you doing
here?”

“He did it! He really did it!” Mistral cried. She, like her
four sisters, was still holding her mask in her hands. “I always knew he
would.”

“Today is a great day, sisters,” Gretchen said. “Today is
the day we destroy the Hosts’ last hope.”

“I see you found a brownie,” Meryl said. “And you released
it! Joyous, joyous day!”

“What are you doing here?” Edwin repeated.

Smiling, Gretchen said, “Isn’t that obvious? We’re here to
claim our birthright. Now, hand over the necklace.”

Even with her voice dripping with venom, Edwin couldn’t help
but notice she was beautiful, and he took another step back, his head swimming.
He had so many questions—questions about the necklace and whether it was
what they were after, about whether they had used him just like the spirit said
they would, about how they had followed without his knowing—but instead
he asked, “What about Walt?”

The sisters cackled.

 “Oh, silly boy!” Pyre cried. “Walt is right here in
this room. Isn’t that right, Walt?”

Removing his own mask, which was orange like the sun, Walt
popped into view in front of his aunts. So shocked he forgot to breathe,
Edwin’s heart leapt and he jumped forward. The brownie fell from his shoulder,
chirping unhappily.

“Walt, you’re alive!” he cried as he hugged his friend. “I
thought for sure you were dead. But…” He backed away, cradling the necklace to
his chest. Everything was happening so fast. “…the whole time? A trick?”

“I’m glad you came, Edwin,” Walt said. “You’re the only one
who could have gotten us here. Sure, my aunts could have gotten us past the golems
and the creatures that feed on the Gate’s light, but only a
mahr
could
find the incantation to open the Gate itself.”

“And that was only the beginning,” Gretchen said. “There was
also the nixies’ siren song in the tunnel. Only those with Host blood aren’t
lulled to sleep. It’s a useful trick if you want to keep creatures from
escaping. And then there were the nixies themselves. They were common in our
time, and they have always loved turning creatures to stone. Of course a Host can
undo the nixies’ magic, as you’ve already seen.”

The little brownie was crawling up the back of his cloak and
back up onto his shoulder, quietly chirping with indignation.

“Thank goodness you finally figured out how to bond properly
with your
mahr
before the nixies tipped the whole boat over,” Gretchen
said. “We always knew you would be able to do it.”

Next to Gretchen, Walt’s dark, almost cynical expression
sent chills down Edwin’s spine. Blushing stupidly, Edwin said, “I thought you
were my friend… my only friend… I tried coming earlier, but the villagers
almost killed me. Willem Medgard tried to kill me, but I killed him. He was the
only father I’ve ever known.”

There was nothing kind in Walt’s smile. “You came to the Gate
the first time without your
mahr
. That was a foolish thing to do.”

“You saved me from the Umbrage Box and the villagers all so
I would take you here? Why didn’t you just make me come? Or ask me?” Against
the wall now, he could retreat no further, and he threw the necklace on over
his head.

“It had to be your choice,” Walt said. “Only the pure heart
of a Host could open the Host’s Gate and the door to this cottage.”

The witches wore expressions so overcome with joy that they
could barely control themselves. Pyre said, “Enough of this. Let’s just kill
the boy and be done with it.”

“Be careful not to hurt his
mahr
,” Gretchen said, her
satisfied smile sickening.

“Yes, even with the Host’s Tomb there’s no reason to waste a
perfectly good candle,” Pyre said.

Unsure what he could do, Edwin asked the next question that
came to mind: “Why a cottage?” The sisters stood between him and the stairs.

Walt waved away his question. “I’m sure this building has
had many forms over the years. Can’t you feel it? It is in whatever form the
imp desires.”

They were approaching him quickly now, and Edwin cried,
“Stop, don’t come any closer,” but they only laughed.

“I said stop!” Edwin yelled, and he muttered a few words, creating
a blue crackling bolt between his hands. He threw the bolt forward with all his
strength, and it was so strong that thunder echoed throughout the room. But
when the light cleared, he saw that Mina had pulled the energy towards her and
absorbed it effortlessly. “How… Who…
What
are you?”

They were still advancing, but as a group, like they were
toying with him. Following him around in circles, Gretchen said, “Your little
book didn’t tell you?” Gretchen laughed. “No, wait, Herald always has been a
miser of knowledge. Of course it didn’t.”

“Look, sisters, he knows nothing of us, of our reputations, yet
see how he cowers,” Meryl said.

“Perhaps he is smarter than we gave him credit,” said Pyre.

“Savor this moment, sisters, for it is the last day of the Hosts,”
Gretchen said. “Remember this before you die, little one: It was you who
destroyed the Hosts’ last hope.”

“So you’re just like the villagers? You want to destroy this
place?” Edwin asked, trying to keep them talking. He kept trying to get closer
to the staircase, but Walt moved to stop him while Gretchen laughed at his
question.

“No, no, no. We don’t want to destroy this place,” Gretchen
said. “We only want to destroy you.”

Still walking backwards, Edwin asked, “But why?”

“The Hosts tried to kill us,” Gretchen said, and her sisters
nodded.

“Your people were greedy,” Meryl said. “They were greedy,
greedy hoarders of magic. They wanted to keep it all to themselves. We may be
halflings, but we have as much a right to magic as any Host. We could never
have a
mahr
of our own, but we had the gift.”

“Though we mostly had to steal the magic from others, we did
learn that we had some innate abilities of our own,” said Pyre. She threw a
fireball in Edwin’s direction, which he hopped over with a squeal.

They continued walking around the big room in circles, and
it seemed the sisters were all too happy to prolong the moment. But even so,
they were moving in closer, and Edwin knew they would only allow this farce as
long as he kept them entertained.

“First we stole magic from little things,” Gretchen said. “Brownies,
gnomes, and the like. But over generations we learned to take more. With
nothing but stolen power, we were the Hosts’ scourge, much like our father
before us. He was an outcast too, you know.” She pulled a few rocks out of her
pocket, and, like controlling a puppet on a string, she released the rocks and
let them fly in the air and orbit her body.

Water had begun dripping from Meryl’s face and down her
fingers, soaking her body and blue hair. A wind had picked up around Mistral.

Pyre said, “The Hosts believed we upset the natural order,
so we had to protect ourselves, naturally. The humans were easy to persuade. Kill
a child here, a cleric there, and they were aching for a fight.”

“They were stupid,” Gretchen said. “Only our perverted magic
could hurt them as long as they were protected by the Great Tree. It was our
father’s gift to them, but they never understood that the Hosts weren’t the
threat. Men came to us and begged for our help, and our help they received.”

The water around Meryl was dropping into great pools, and
the wind around Mistral was so fierce that her platinum hair stood on end.

“But then the Hosts ruined everything,” said Meryl, her body
soaked.

Her voice echoing between gusts of wind, Mistral said,
“Magical creatures had fled to the Hosts’ fortress, which you know as the Black
Keep. We thought the creatures had been ours for the taking, their magic ours
to do with as we chose, but then they created all this to protect that necklace
around your neck.”

“The Host’s Tomb,” Meryl said, her voice reverent.

Mistral continued: “All their power, all their knowledge, all
magic locked away in a little ball, waiting for what? To be safe? The Hosts
were fools to think such a time would ever come.”

Gretchen nodded. “Magic became all but impossible to find
after the Hosts fell. We have scoured the world to find magic and extend our
lives, but this couldn’t go on forever. Our only hope was that one day a Host
would open the Gate. But a true Host, one who had lived during the time of the
great fall, would never allow our entry. A true Host would rather see the Host’s
Tomb lose power and allow every creature in it to die. But then you appeared,
you with your
mahr
, and I knew what we had to do.”

Mina’s ethereal voice cut in. “Sisters, beware! I sense a
change in tide.”

Alarmed, one triplet locked hands with another, and water
met air. The combination spiraled out from their hands, rushed around their
three sisters, and flew towards Edwin from both sides.

“Edwin, your cloak!” It was Sam’s voice.

A gap appeared between the sisters, and Edwin saw Walt
trying to hold Sam to the ground, a moon-shaped mask between them.

Falling to the ground himself, Edwin covered himself with
his cloak just as the water and wind surged at him from all sides. The force of
the elements dissipated the moment it hit his cloak, and steam rose into the
air.

“Walt, your twin was your responsibility. Take care of it!” Pyre
yelled, and her hands grew bright with fire.

Wind pulled the roof off the cottage, and flying wood was
everywhere. Coils of fire rushed towards them, flowing from beneath the lake in
molten columns that seemed to come from the earth itself. The nixies were
screaming, and the cottage shook. The huge fire cackled menacingly above the
triplet’s fierce red hair and took on the unmistakable shape of Edwin’s mother.
Pyre laughed and the fire screamed. His mother’s mouth unhinged, and the
inferno came crashing down on Edwin as though to devour him. But like the wind
and water before it, the fire couldn’t penetrate his cloak.