The Paladin Caper (36 page)

“Go in peace,
Yeshki
,” Kail murmured. “Where to now?”

“Either the treeship or inside to search for Loch,”

“Treeship, then. You don’t send more people after a scout unless you’re sure she needs help.” Kail nodded and, holding Bertram gently, led the way out of the garden. “Right now I feel bad for anybody in Loch’s way.”

Everything seemed to be happening too quickly for Tern.

She was fumbling for her crossbow while the puppeteer raised his arm toward Icy. She didn’t get it out in time. The puppeteer fired a blast of crimson energy, and Icy, barely a few feet away, did one of those crazy things he did with his body, twisting to the side and sliding onto his back at the same time so that the blast ruffled his golden robes but hit nothing else.

“Icy! Fight him!” Tern flipped the safety off the crossbow.

“I cannot.” Icy sprang back to his feet as a crimson blast cracked the stage where he had lain.

“If you’re that Unstoppable guy, you
can
. Fight him!” Tern raised the crossbow, aimed carefully, and fired a perfect shot at the puppeteer’s heart.

The puppeteer leaned back in an elegant move almost identical to Icy’s, and the bolt whisked past him.

“I cannot!” Icy shouted, and then the puppeteer’s next blast clipped his shoulder, and he spun in the air and landed on the stones past the stage, rolling to a stop and shaking his head a moment later.

“Tern!” Hessler shouted, and Tern looked over to see the trackers running into the market square, the scorpion in his cloaked-dwarf disguise and the ogre and the bony troll lady. The crowd was screaming as the ogre swatted people aside.

Too much, too fast. Icy was a killer and Hessler was behind her, and she had no idea which bolt to use.

She went with silver, in case the trackers were vulnerable to it like fairy creatures were, but she was still looking at the puppeteer.

“Acquisition parameters have changed,” the puppeteer called out. “We have Loch. These are expendable.” He looked at Icy and raised his arm.

Tern fired, and again the puppeteer dodged it, and he shot Tern a look and called, “You’re next,” as he fired. The blast of crimson energy lashed out.

It hit Dairy instead as he stepped out in front of Icy, and he stumbled, then stood back up, shaking off the blast. “I won’t let you hurt my friends!”

Hessler was flinging illusions at their assailants, and Tern remembered that he’d said they affected the creatures as though they were solid. Shackles formed around the troll, and a great blade slashed at the scorpion. “Watch for the feedback,” he was muttering, and as the scorpion lashed its stinger at the blade, Hessler flicked the illusion away.

The crowd was screaming and running now. Someone slammed into Tern, and she fell to the stones, dizzy and shaken, then pushed herself back to her feet, fumbling with her crossbow and bolt. Dairy was trading blows with the puppeteer, and Hessler was juggling illusions as the bony troll slid out of the shackles.

And then the crowd parted, and something hit her, and it felt like cool water splashed across her chest, and she looked up to see the ogre standing over her, with its fist, magically incorporeal, inside her chest.

“If you are expendable,” the ogre said, her tusks muffling the words, “then this is not murder.”

Tern had no time to react.

But as the cold feeling started to change, a giant fist of solid stone slammed into the ogre, and she crashed to the ground yards away. Tern fell to the ground as well and looked down at her chest, seeing five little finger holes in her dress right around the heart.

“You want her,” Hessler said coldly, standing over Tern with hands raised, “you go through me,” and Tern looked up at him, breathing hard, to tell him she was all right.

She saw the troll behind him, but by the time she screamed a warning, it was too late.

The bony lady was suddenly a creature of rope and sinew, twining herself around Hessler in coils of flesh, and he flinched and tried to fight it, but she was like a snake, wrapping tighter and tighter.

“Icy!” Tern raised her crossbow. “Dairy! Help!” Hessler was glowing with little sparkles everywhere, and he seemed smaller or thinner or . . .

Gone.

“Mister Hessler!” came a cry, followed by a cracking impact, and the puppeteer sailed across the market square, hit a wall hard enough to leave a mark, and did not move.

In front of Tern, the troll coiled herself back into a woman’s shape.

“Bring him back,” Tern said.

“There is no back,” the troll said with a sneer. “He is scattered to the—”

A crossbow bolt thunked into her chest.

“Bring him
back
,” Tern said.

“He is dead,” the troll said, “and my cursed flesh cares little for bolts or blades.”

“Does it burn?” the alchemist asked, and the troll looked down at the stain spreading across her dress from the bolt. Tern tossed a flask that shattered as it hit the troll, and as the two liquids mixed and clinging flames wreathed the screaming creature, she shouted, “Bring him back, you bitch! Bring him back!”

“Her curse cannot be reversed,” the ogre said, and Tern looked over to see Dairy on the ground, groaning, as the ogre came toward her. “He is dead, transformed into the very shadows he used in his figments, and soon, you will
arching ardor
.”

Shadow-touched Besnisti,
Ululenia said, her hooves clopping on the stone of the market square as she put herself between Tern and the ogre.
Caught between here and there, never real, a cursed reminder to your people that you came from the Glimmering Folk. That you are monsters.

“Dark fey,” the ogre growled, shaking her head and coming forward again. “Stolen magic of the ancients, and turned to consuming your own. We are not so different, you and I.”

There is one difference,
Ululenia said, and something in her voice was different, and when Tern looked at her, her shape was different as well. She was still a unicorn, but her shining horn curved and bristled with spines. Her hooves were clawed, and fangs gleamed in her long mouth.
I am not bleeding from the throat.

She lunged, and the ogre roared, and then fell back, and sank to her knees, one hand trying vainly to cover the dark blood that poured from her wound.

The same blood stained Ululenia’s fanged muzzle as she turned to Tern.
We must flee. There will be more.

Tern looked back. The scorpion had pulled the still-burning creature away, and they were across the market square now. Dairy was still on the ground, Icy on his knees beside him.

Hessler was gone.

“I want him back,” Tern said, and let Ululenia pull her away.

Loch found Tahla’s body at the foot of the stairs leading back to the water garden.

It seemed Naria had been right about Loch’s presence here endangering people.

Loch closed Tahla’s eyes, said a quick prayer, and stepped onto the path of wooden bridges leading between the platforms. One of the columns rising up from the platforms had been destroyed, and the water was full of dead fish.

She crossed a bridge, stopped at a platform, and inhaled. It didn’t smell like flowers anymore.

“Isafesira!”

Loch opened her eyes. Irrethelathlialann was at the far end of the water garden, making his way across the paths toward her.

“Ethel.” She started walking again. “What are you doing here?”

“Thelenea told me where you were. I discovered that the ancients were waiting here, and I came as quickly as I could.”

Loch nodded, still walking. “You weren’t wrong.” She crossed another bridge, turned at a platform, and headed for the one where Kail and Desidora had been waiting. “I’m glad you’re here.”

“I need you if I am to survive the coming of the ancients,” Irrethelathlialann said, coming to meet her. “With the Dragon gone, whatever mad scheme you have in mind is the only hope of the Elflands.”

She nodded again and turned to reclaim her walking stick where she’d left it.

And spun to parry the blow that would have caught her in the back.

“I think you have your own plan to save the Elflands,” Loch said as her blow knocked his aside.

Irrethelathlialann brought his rapier up in a salute. The red wood of the blade gleamed. “How did you know?”

“I’ve faced you across the card table,” Loch said, and drew her blade from the walking stick’s hidden sheath. “You think humanity is a waste of time.”

The elf’s blade flashed, and Loch parried, then countered, driving him back. “Tell me I’m wrong, Isafesira.”

“You only helped us because it was what the Dragon wanted,” Loch said, pressing her attack. She drove him back across the bridge, then danced back as his retreat turned into a roll that swept his blade at her ankles. “As soon as he was gone, you should have cut us loose. Instead you offered information and loaned us a treeship.” She slashed, and he sidestepped to the edge of the platform, leaning farther than any human except maybe Icy would be able to without falling, and countered with a slash at her head that she caught, locking their blades.

“I never dreamed that my manners would give me away,” he said as he moved in, pushing on the locked blades, and Loch saw the angle of his body change with the twist he tried to hide, and caught the stab from the dagger he’d slipped into his other hand on the stick-sheath. “Impressive. You’ve gotten better.”

“Last time we fought, I bled deep.” She shoved hard, and he went with it, pivoted around her, and spun into a slash that she blocked with her blade. She got a shot into his ribs with the stick-sheath and took a shallow cut across the forearm from his off-hand dagger. “I try not to make the same mistake twice.”

His kick caught her at the ankle, and rather than fall while vulnerable to his blade, she turned it into a tumble into the pool, slashing out even as she fell with a low sweep that the elf leaped over.

Loch hit the water, surfaced with her blade and stick moving, and got lucky, catching his stab with blind luck and sweeping it aside as he lunged into the pool after her. “I’m still faster,” Irrethelathlialann murmured, sliding into the water with barely a splash.

“Faster than the Dragon.” Loch came in low, caught his block, and aimed a blow at his head with the stick-sheath. He caught it with the dagger, hooked the blade behind the sheath, and tore it from her grasp, and she came up with a high little cut as she fell back, her blade catching his upper arm and leaving a thin line of blood across his cheek. “Though you didn’t kill him with the silver dagger we found in the study.”

He touched fingers to the cut on his face and smiled grimly. “I weakened him enough to capture, as the ancients requested. They wanted him, for some reason.” Now with two weapons to her one, he came in hard, forcing her to retreat as quickly as she could in the waist-deep water. “You seem to have thought of everything.”

“Almost everything.” Loch swept her blade back and forth in an uneven rhythm, hiding the timing of her moves, and Irrethelathlialann ducked down so that only his head showed above the water and lunged forward like a leaping dolphin. Loch guessed at where his blade was, missed, and felt pain bite into her lower leg. “Still not sure why you sold me and the Dragon out for the ancients.”

He lunged in again. This time she came down hard and sidestepped as best she could in the water. She caught the block, but it left her open, and his dagger flashed up out of the water, nicking her side. “Our people for them, Isafesira. They get the Dragon and you as good faith, and they agree to leave the Elflands alone.”

“You know they won’t leave you alone forever.” Loch saw him coming in again and chopped at his head. She took another cut on the leg, but her blade bit into his shoulder, and he grimaced as the blood spilled from the deep gash.

“I don’t need forever,” he said. “I have people making rings based on the same design as the paladin bands. Cheaper, easier to manufacture. If I get a year, I’ll have them ready, and the ancients can have all you humans. They won’t
need
us.” He tucked his dagger into his belt, then switched his rapier to his left hand.

“It’s not about need, Ethel!” Loch parried his next thrust, then gave ground as he slashed forward, as adept with his left hand as his right. “They’ll still turn on you!” Her back bumped into a platform, and she tried to slide to the side, but Irrethelathlialann moved to keep her pinned to the wall.