The Blood Storm (Unwithering Realm Book 4) Read online

  Ossifrage and Nakasu were gazing at me with surprise or puzzlement. Maybe they came from worlds where child brides were a normal thing, and chattel slavery, and torture and rape and statutory rape, and chaining up children like dogs, after tarting them up like streetwalkers.

  Foster had vanished. I could see his shadow on the floor stones next to me, so he had vanished but not vanished. You know what I mean. The shadow was of an archer with an arrow to his ear, longbow bent in a mighty, tense, yet steady arc. He had faded and readied his shot because he thought my shout was a danger warning.

  Abby was not looking at me. She was staring at the corpses of the guards lying so neatly and nicely in a circle, with no sign of struggle, around the central lily pond.

  I followed her gaze. No, she was not looking at the men. There was something alive under the water.

  4. Emergence Emergency

  The crown of her head, her lovely eyes with eyelashes sparkling with droplets, the perfect tip-tilted nose, the red-lipped and mysterious smile of Penelope Dreadful rose from the waters in the center of expanding concentric rings. Her blonde hair was darkened and pasted close to her skull by the water, and the trickling wetness caressed her soft skin as she rose.

  Then came her ivory neck, beautiful and proud as a swan’s, but circled, as were the other girls here, by a cruel metal collar. There was a ring in the collar’s front that lightly rested against the thumbprint-shaped indent atop her breastbone.

  Her athletic shoulders came next, followed by a pair of clavicles like delicate strokes an artist might use to underline the lovely line of those shoulders.

  And then the water rose slightly as if in joy and was swept aside to allow the magnificent curve of her breasts to surface. I wondered if the water had magnified them somehow; they seemed bigger than before. More likely it was just the small white shift she wore was clinging so tightly and wetly to her upper body.

  Of the slenderness of her waist, the firm swell of her hips, or the taut beauty of her legs, words fail me. Can perfection be described?

  She turned away as she stood, presenting a sight nearly as glorious as before. From her darkened hair hanging down her back lingering streams of water fell, and formed silvery oxbows and digressions along the curve of her backside.

  Facing away from me, Penny cupped her hands before her nose and mouth, bent over, and hawked like a choking bullfrog before vomiting a considerable quantity of water out of her lungs. Also her stomach, her intestines, and quite possibly her spleen, judging by how long it took before she stood up and turned around again, teary-eyed and wiping her mouth with the back of her hand.

  I admit, that sort of spoiled the mood.

  5. Thunder-Thief

  At this point, Foster had dispersed his cloud or ended his spell or fumbled and dropped it because he was clearly visible again. That is, as visible as a man in a mask and goggles and hood can be.

  Foster’s lenses as well as the eyes of Abby and Nakasu were staring at me, and Ossifrage must have had something in both eyes, because he had his thumb and forefinger rubbing their tear-ducts, and crow’s feet had crinkled the corners. Maybe he had a headache.

  Turning and stepping toward Penny, Foster Hidden raised his hand in salute and said, “I am not Luke Skywalker, but I’m here to rescue you!”

  Fortunately for him, I am of the Host that Yearns for Death in Vain, not the Host that Shoots Radioactive Lasers from Eyesockets, because that spared his life just then. He stole my thunder!

  Penelope said briskly, “Nonsense, my dear Knight of the Nocturnal. No one can leave this chamber while wearing a collar like this, whether we are hidden from the Astrologers or not. No art of mine and none the Wisecraft know can undo them. But no matter! I am not your concern.” To Abby she said: “I sent Wild Eyes to summon those of you loyal to the Wise to this chamber, so that I could give you the instructions on how to smuggle the Cloudwalker,” (she nodded toward Ossifrage), “to Cush. Also, I have arranged for an Immortal of Cain’s Curse,” (she nodded at me), “to be rescued, because he otherwise created dangers for us. He will be an asset in our struggles against the Dark Tower …” (She looked sharply at Foster.) “… But praytell why, Sir Knight, are you here? I was not expecting one of your Order. In fact, I am rather surprised.”

  Foster saluted. “Uh, ma’am, I am actually a squire, not a knight. … uh… I am helping out with Ossifrage — that is what Ilya calls him, since his name is unpronounceable — and I am not here representing any ….”

  While he spoke, her eyes narrowed into emerald glittering slits. “I know that voice! Eflast Falinn? Is that you? What are you doing here?You creeping little thief!”

  Some women are beautiful when they are angry: Penny was magnificence incarnate.

  Her blush of anger not only pinked her cheeks, but also her neck and shoulders and almost reached the upper curve of her breasts. Her eyes flashed with vivid green, and her bosom heaved so much that I thought her tunic, which did not look so sturdy to begin with, was about to tear open at the seams. Sort of like a feminine version of when Bill Bixby turns into the Hulk, but if the flesh exposed were pink, buxom and mammalian instead of monstrous, muscular and green.

  The left half of my brain wanted to see that happen more than I wanted life itself, and the right half told me to sober up and act like a man, so it was a tie. And I suppose the one brain cell where I store my microscopic conscience got the tie-breaking vote. The verdict was to grab her and break out of here before she burst out of something.

  And her anger at Foster inspired me. You creeping little… ah, music to mine ears! He stole my thunder, but she flattened him with lightning.

  Foster had lowered his hood and raised his goggles, “Yes, it is me. I am not representing the Knightly Brotherhood of the Dark Mist.”

  “Then who sent you?” she demanded. “I thought the High Council specifically said this mission was to be handled by the sea-maidens, not by the thralls of the dark elves! This is a matter for naval intelligence, not the secret service! Does Riphath want to reignite the strife with Cush?”

  “Who cares who sent me? No matter who sent me, you cannot seriously be expecting us to leave you here …”

  I had heard enough. I did not care about their squabbles, and I sure as heck was not leaving her here, or anywhere on this world.

  I started forward, I made a huge splash when I entered the pool, and my hauberk rang and clattered around me. I had yanked up my sword, scabbard and baldric and all, and clasped it under my armpit, holding it high so it would not be wetted. (My other arm I had shrugged back through the armhole into the sleeve, and the cunning armor once again slackened and then cinched up to accommodate me.)

  When I came with a slosh and wave to Penny in the soft twilight of the falling sawdust clouds, I loomed over her.

  I was kind of surprised yet again at how short she was. I don’t think I ever stood this close to her, so I never really compared heights. She had to tilt her head back to look at me, and I suddenly found myself unsettled by the mad impulse to kiss her.

  But instead, I looked her in the eyes, and I put out both hands and took her by the shoulders. I cupped her wet and warm and naked shoulders beneath my giant, clumsy hands, and felt the nearness of her presence almost as if it were electricity. I was going to drag her from that pool, this place, and this Dark Tower, by brute force if need be. Brute force, after all, was my one true talent.

  Staring into her eyes was like drowning in an ocean. But I focused on my mission and addressed her in a voice firm with determination. “Never fear! I can rescue you! I vow it. Come with me. We are hidden from the …”

  She softly cut in “… Hidden from the eyes and arts of the Astrologers? Yes, I do know, thank you kindly. It was I who sent my hobby, who can escape their gaze partly, to find that young lady there.” (She meant Abby.) “Hope Truly Seen, we call her. She is one, the only one, who escapes their gaze altogether. My familiar led her to you.”

  Penny smiled an impish littl
e smile.

  “Therefore, technically, I rescued you, not the other way around, young Mister Marmoset.”

  Wow. Everyone was stealing my thunder today.

  6. Safe in Chains With Books

  Penny continued, “I am safe, or will be, once you depart. I have made my own arrangements to escape. It will take time, perhaps years, but if I am forced to be the concubine of some high-placed general or Astrologer, I know an art whose virtue will allow me to open the doors and enter their great library, the archive of all archives, which contains all the copies of all the volumes, codices, librums, grimoires, analects and folios of forty worlds…”

  In an act of un-Ilya-like self-control, I took my hands off her naked shoulders and tucked my grandfather’s sword into the crook of one elbow to keep the blade from dipping in the water. With my other hand I took her by the arm just above her elbow to help her up out of the pool. She had the sexiest elbows I had ever seen.

  “I don’t get you,” I said as I lifted her over the lip of the pool. Then we were on the tiles, facing each other, and the water drops made little tapping noises as they struck the marble floor. “You are talking about letting them turn you into a harem slave and broodmare so that you can read some books?”

  “Not just books!” she said with a strange light in her eyes. “Books to end the war! The origin of the deadly Daevastra weapon from Vasumati, or the inextinguishable Agneyastra! The secrets of magnetic vitalism discovered by the Catoudaei from Ashkinaz! The lore of creating earthquakes which is the closely guarded secret of the Eskimo Warlocks of Noj—all this would be mine. And the lost love poems of Anacreon, which vanished from our times and worlds, and the writings of Agatharchides about the Erythraean Sea.”

  “So—hold on,” I interrupted her erudite gushing. “How does the lost love poems of whoevertheheck help with the war effort?”

  “A girl has to have something to read between deployments,” she sniffed. “The enemy are not infallible. One day I will be uncollared, and Wild Eyes, hidden all that time in the clouds of the twilight, will emerge. I need no rescue. You must complete the mission. Unless you actually have a way to get this collar off? Do you know how they work? We don’t have metal in my world.”

  I heard myself blathering, “I know … I know I have not come all this way for nothing! I’ll … I’ll … I’ll think of something…. Just give me a sec …. Hold on …”

  Penny turned her eyes sideways away from me, and made a little delicate gesture with her hand, twining a lock of her wet hair around her finger. “It seems the brave janitor come to rescue me is unprepared. Sad to see such fervor go to waste. But, fear not! For you can indeed help me!” She gazed up at me, and it was like seeing a pair of green spotlights, dazzling. “Take over my work here! See it gets done! I certainly don’t trust a robber to manage things.” She darted a dark glance at Foster, who smiled an engaging smile and raised both eyebrows, in a look of pretend innocence.

  “But—!” I stepped forward another half step, and now I really was looming, like it or not, over her.

  “But me no butting!” she snapped, eyes flashing, “I am ordering you!”

  How quickly her moods changed baffled me. She had turned stern and imperious in an instant. Penny raised her chin, to give me that look older women give foolish young boys, but maybe it did not quite work. She was half-naked, and in her clinging and transparent wet shift, more than half visible, and I was standing too close, so for a moment, for the smallest possible moment, there was something in her expression—maybe it was just a slight parting of the lips—a slight dilation of the pupils—a slight flare of the nostrils—

  Or maybe it was my imagination.

  “Why not just go out with me?” I said.

  “Go out with you?” She blinked, and then her mood changed again, and she arched an eyebrow in mock surprise. “I am flattered, but this is hardly the time…”

  I gritted my teeth. “Can’t you be serious! I mean walk out with me? With us! The way we came in?” I said, hooking my thumb over my shoulder at the broken balcony doors above and behind me.

  “I am quite serious. I have no power over cold iron.” Penelope touched her hand to the collar around her neck. I saw no lock nor seam, so there was no way to undo the hateful thing. I realized it was the living metal, not what she had called it, iron.

  I could not keep my eyes on her slender neck. I had to turn my head aside, because otherwise a magnetic force yanking my gaze to her generous cleavage (a part of her body where the still-trickling waters were gathering together rather than fanning out, as on her hips and thighs). Instead I looked at the dead men in the pool.

  The soldiers were lying there, unwounded, serene, with their shoulders just over the brink of the pool, their heads bent down and faces below the surface, smiling. Their mouths and noses were submerged less than an inch under water, but it only takes an inch to drown.

  “Who killed those guards?” I started to say. But my tongue, perhaps more perceptive, slipped, and I said you rather than who. It did not come out as a question. You killed those guards.

  She smiled a cold little smile then, and she looked so dangerous and so mysterious, I realized that Penny was not really Penny. The real young lady here was Parthenope. She was an agent for some power involved in a war between universes. She was like my sword, steel hidden under a fair sheath.

  How old was she? If she had told the newspaper truly, she was only two years older than me, but now that distance suddenly seemed unbridgeable. And who knows, she might even be older.

  Could her damned talking, rat-eating carrion bird have been right about me? Was she too far above me for me to cherish any hope?

  Penny said, “I’ve had time to think this through. Really, I have. They shan’t kill me. I am the only one of my kind they’ve ever captured. A few months, or a year, I may have to endure, at most.” She smiled sadly. “But now that I have saved you, if you are grateful, as grateful as a gentleman should be, in return I ask that you must promise to carry out the mission. The man you call Ossifrage must be smuggled to safety.”

  “But—”

  “More buts—!” she sighed in exasperation. “You never talked this much back at the Museum!”

  “Then, I was the cleaning man. Now, I am the hero.” I said it without thinking.

  I have no idea how stupid it sounded, but she raised both eyebrows, and little impish dimples appeared at the side of her mouth as she suppressed a laugh she was too well-bred to let loose.

  “I see the prospect frightens you,” she said. “Don’t fret! You and the others can escape easily, you know. Just jump from a window. Ossifrage can bear you aloft.”

  “I won’t leave you!”

  “Boys!” She held up her little soft hand in a stern gesture, cutting me off. “Don’t make me sound harsh, young man, but you are an idiot, were you informed of that fact? Or are you too much of an idiot to know? Without you in their hands, I will not be tortured. This is all your fault.”

  “This is my fault?”

  “Man of you to admit it!” She half-lowered her lids in derision.

  “How? How is any of this my fault?”

  She said coolly, “First, if you had not come to the Museum, the Astrologers would not have foreseen my attempt to open the gate. At that moment, I was hidden in the shadow Wild Eyes cast. You were not. Your fumbling attempt to rescue me and protect me did nothing but summon the invasion fleet. Second, if you had not decided to develop a foolish schoolboy crush on me, the Lord of Magicians would not have thought of breaking you by threatening me. That is the only reason I had to get you out of that cage. The moment you were free, I was safe. Imprisoned, enslaved, but alive and quite safe.”

  “Safe? You killed these guards!” I pointed at the one-legged men, all still armed, all drowned. “You have to flee now.”

  “The Dark Tower foreknew their deaths and let them die. They were also slaves, none of them worth a silver talent. But I am worth many talents of gold to them. D
o you understand how cold these people are, how their knowing the future makes them cold? To them, everything has already happened long ago, and nothing can change, and nothing means anything! As for you, big awkward surface-dweller, you cannot defy them. You cannot fight them.”

  “For you, I will!”

  “You don’t even know me!”

  “I know what my heart tells me!”

  “Lub-a-dub? 120 over 80?”

  “I know you own more shoes than any girl in Oregon. You kept sixty pairs just at the museum. And I know you are a mermaid who works for the Wisecraft.”

  “What planet am I from?”

  “Planet? Um…” Foster had not mentioned a name for her world.

  “What’s my mother’s name?

  “Well, uh.” I stammered, “I mean, uh, ….”

  “That’s her. Willamina from planet Um. So you know everything about me. You want to do something for me? You want to save me? Then go! I cannot leave here, so to save me, you must go!”

  7. A Crack in the Door

  She raised one eyebrow like Spock, and for a moment, she did not look like the unearthly walking mermaid, and she was just Penny again, the girl from the newspapers.

  For a moment, she was once again the young woman I so worried about as her father slowly drifted deeper and deeper each day into mental illness.

  I remembered one evening, after her father had suffered a particularly bad episode, and she had called friends to take him home because he could not be trusted with his car keys. I had been walking with a mop and bucket down the hall and past her office door, silently swabbing. The door was open a crack. She was sitting at her desk, illumed by one lamp in a dark room, facing the dark window, with her head in her hands, her shoulders shaking. I tiptoed away, not wanting to intrude.

  But I wanted to protect her. To save her. There was nothing I could do to save her father from his insanity. I hated the sensation of helplessness.