Tempest Reborn (32 page)

All we needed to do was let the buzz grow to a roar, then have a final meeting, one in which Luke’s advisors – including Morrigan’s top Alfar spy – were included.

We’d been masterful that day, Ryu and me. Anyan had let us handle it, since Ryu was the showman. The baobhan sith had brought in a huge pile of scrolls, books, and other old-looking sources. He’d shown us all the ‘evidence’ – most of it cobbled together from existing legends with added embellishment. Then he’d let us know the crucial info: that the legend about ruling the Island wasn’t a legend. It was fact. For Arthur’s Seat wasn’t called that by accident – it was an ancient seat of power, containing a hidden force so raw and untamed, anyone who wielded it would be like a god.

We’d made the whole thing up, of course. Arthur’s Seat was just a dramatic-looking plateau. But it was the perfect dramatic-looking plateau for our operation.

All I had to do then was pull the labrys and make some crazed declarations of my intentions to find this source and take it for myself, so that I could defeat the Red and all she represented and rule all the supernaturals under my benevolent grace.

Cut to startled looks from all involved, then a combination of cheers from the halflings, startled shouts from the humans, and anger from the Alfar, then everyone hustling to start the preparations we needed to make. The only one who’d left looking calm was Morrigan’s spy, but that’s because he thought he was the cat who got the cream.

And that had brought us here, dressed in sexytimes costumes. It was growing dark finally, and that’s when we’d start. Already some of our folks had lit torches or poi, both of which they swung around in elaborate fire dances. Confused humans gathered, thinking they were off to the wrong place, so we prodded them along to their real destination with gentle magical nudges.

Slowly, Ryu, Caleb, and Iris made their way around the crowd, getting everyone into formation. Across the other side of the city, Beltane rites were beginning that would see the crowning of the May Queen and the sacrifice of her consort, the Green Man.

Meanwhile, we started our own procession, going in the other direction. Anyan and I led the way, our joined hands held up high so that all could follow as we marched toward our destinies.

The climb up Arthur’s Seat was bracing. Despite the chill air, sweat ran down my back, soaking the hair at the nape of my neck. My calves sang with tension, but nothing could top the anxiety whisking around my stomach.

When we got to the top, we moved forward, our troops amassing behind us. We formed a circle, Anyan and I at the center. Our fire dancers moved around the edges, front and back, whirling their poi or their torches, while others with flaming banners waved them around. We were being as noisome and frolicsome as we could, as if in the beginning stages of some massive ritual.

Anyan and I watched the proceedings, my hand clutching his. I knew mine was slick with sweat, my heart pounding in my throat as he surveyed the scene with sad eyes.

I raised my free hand to finger the stone, strung in a mesh net that dangled from my neck like a heavy necklace. It bumped against my own belly, as if to remind me of what I must do.

‘They’re coming,’ said a voice next to me from out of nothing. Hiral popped into view a second later, the gwyllion having served as one of our scouts.

‘When?’ was all Anyan asked.

‘They’re coming from the Dalkeith side. They’ll be here in minutes. She’s brought more troops than we have.’

Anyan and I exchanged looks.

‘We have to get her down immediately,’ I said. ‘Put an end to this as quickly as possible.’

Hiral nodded. ‘Leave it to me.’

Suddenly, the dancing around our circle ceased and our numbers fanned out, as ordered. That left Anyan and me facing our enemy.

Morrigan came first, in her half-dragon, half-human form. Her long limbs rippled with muscle, covered in scales that caught our fire and reflected it in a blood-red glow. When her troops appeared, they revealed that she, too, had done some costuming. They were wearing red tabards with a white embroidered dragon. She wanted everyone to know for whom she fought; for whom she sought revenge.

We eyed each other over the expanse of the grassy top of Arthur’s Seat. Then she raised her hands, creating a mage ball that glowed as red as her scales. Her troops created their own missiles, and we raised powerful shields. To combat the glow her side was creating, I pulled the labrys, which lit up like a strobe, knowing its enemy was near.

I don’t know who launched the first mage ball, but it wasn’t Morrigan. She stood the whole time, staring at me with hate etched on her features as her troops attacked. Our own forces surged past us, in front of us, guarding us as they met the brunt of her forces. Our goblins and goblin halflings, armed with enormous broadswords and axes, charged first, their long legs carrying them out of the crowd. Harpies swooped overhead, as did ravens and nahuals who’d grown wings, clashing in the night sky, armed with mage balls, talons, bows, and swords.

Ryu and Nyx fought together. They were a formidable team, both in tight leather armor and armed with swords lit up with power. They fought as one being, smoothly defending the other’s back as one of them went on the offensive, fluidly switching roles as the battle demanded.

Caleb, and other healers like him, roved about alternately fighting and doctoring our troops. I’d feel a surge of earth magic from the satyr as he exploded an enemy’s upraised arm, only to feel a similar surge as he healed the fallen dryad at his feet.

Our fighters were outnumbered, but they were also skilled. And Morrigan’s prejudices meant her troops had trained only with others of their own factions – something that was eminently stupid on a number of levels. In the melee of battle, those groups were quickly broken up, and fighters who had no idea what the other’s skills were had to suddenly defend each other’s backs. Our people were used to capitalizing on each faction’s strengths and weaknesses, so we had defensively powerful creatures, like dryads, paired up with offensively powerful ones, like ifrits. The one shielded them both, the other attacked with no mercy. Morrigan’s scattered troops quickly tried to emulate our strategies, but they didn’t know how. A few who had obviously fought before signing up with Morrigan barked orders trying to help, but their voices were swallowed up by the din of the fight.

Eventually, a knot of hard-fighting Alfar came at Anyan and me. We met them with a wall of power so fierce we pushed two backward all the way off the cliff. The others stood their ground, braced behind their own shields.

When we realized we could do this all day, we stopped, and let them come. I took a defensive stance with the labrys; I would try to carve through their shields, allowing Anyan to attack.

It was Griffin and Luke who stepped in then. Surprisingly, Luke had insisted on fighting. Griffin hadn’t been able to stop his leader, although it was obvious he wanted to. But I was glad he hadn’t. I knew we’d have been able to take Morrigan’s Alfar eventually, but it would have taken a lot of time and energy better spent combating the Red.

And Luke proved why, despite his being completely unaware of reality, he was the Great Island’s leader. I felt a huge swell of power from behind me as the first two Alfar charging us were literally obliterated by a mage ball winging over our heads. Griffin and Luke stepped around Anyan and me, Griffin throwing his own mage ball a second after Luke’s. It wasn’t as strong, but Luke’s had decimated the Alfar’s shields, along with their first two soldiers, so Griffin’s missile took out the next in line, a fierce-looking Alfar female.

The pair closed in on the remaining Alfar, and were sucked into the melee. I knew they’d won when what looked like a bomb exploded from behind a wall of fighters. Bodies flew everywhere – living and dead – until finally Luke and Griffin emerged, looking grim but triumphant.

Caleb and his team rushed about healing the flying bodies from our side, while Anyan and I braced ourselves for Morrigan’s next trick. That’s when Hiral popped back up. He’d somehow managed to acquire a red tabard that fit him, and I threw up a hasty shield around the gwyllion as a mage ball from one of our fighters nearly caught him as soon as he appeared.

‘Ready?’ he asked.

I looked at Anyan, who nodded. ‘Yes.’

The gwyllion popped away without comment. The creature, a silent presence in my mind the whole time, let me see Hiral’s progress through his own eyes. The gwyllion was way behind Morrigan’s lines, where her advisors milled around her, protecting the queen as well as keeping an eye on the battle.

The gwyllion approached a nahual sitting shyly by the sidelines, clutching a briefcase. ‘Gofer’ was written all over the girl.

Dispersing his powerful shield and glamour, Hiral burst into motion, coming up on the girl and grabbing at her hands.

‘They’ve started! They’ve started the ritual! Only I could see what they were doing. The Alfar she sent are dead and they’ve started!’

The girl stared at the gwyllion, comprehension dawning in her eyes. Then her face took on a crafty, greedy look. She obviously saw a promotion coming her way.

The gofer girl approached one of the less senior Alfar on the sidelines, and I watched as the process repeated itself a number of times, the rumor running up the chain of command. One or two Alfar in, the gwyllion disappeared as his lies became fact. He stayed on, though, to see the fruition of his actions.

Morrigan threw back her head and roared. Her body shimmered with magic as her skin stretched and pulsated. The Red obviously wanted out, and the Alfar queen who hosted her was obviously doing everything she could to keep the dragon from taking charge. Morrigan knew they were smarter and tougher in this hybrid skin, even if the Red didn’t accept that.

When the fit of magic ended, and Morrigan had regained control, the eyes she raised to the melee were filled with fire. That fire spread over her body till she’d lit up like an ifrit. I couldn’t help shuddering. Reminders of Con would always have that effect on me.

‘She’s coming,’ I said to Anyan, and seconds later we saw her flaming presence making itself felt across the field. Combatants parted like the Red Sea, and those who weren’t fast enough were blasted out of her way regardless of whether they were our soldiers or hers.

Ryu, Nyx, and Caleb hastily cleared our soldiers out of the way, pushing everyone back into a semicircle behind us.

When Morrigan appeared, she was obviously irate.

‘What is this ritual, you stupid bitch!’ she roared. The long muzzle distorting her face was full of sharp teeth and a snake’s tongue, all of which contributed to a definite lisp. What came out was more like, ‘Whas iss diss widual, you dupis biss!’

Any humor created by her speech impediment, however, was mitigated by her throwing the head of one of our goblin fighters at us. I felt bad batting it out of the air but I also didn’t want to get dinged by it.

Morrigan followed up the head with herself, lunging her own neck forward using her Go-Go-Gadget-neck trick that never ceased to horrify me. The Red blazed in her eyes as she again fought for control over her own body. I followed after her retreating jaws, the labrys blazing before me like a comet.

Slashing, I could feel myself melding with the creature as we fought Morrigan together. Preternaturally swift and sure on my feet, my arms moved through the air like a ballerina’s, if ballerinas were armed with flaming axes of death.

Her neck still extended unnaturally, Morrigan pranced in front of me, slashing with wicked teeth and claws. I kept my shields beefed up as much as they could, because any wounds made by the Red were immune to magical intervention. But the same kind of primordial power that animated my labrys animated the Red, and my shields were not immune to her slashing attacks.

So it was up to me to be quicker than she, and the creature helped with that. But I felt the first burning score across my hip like a tracing of fire, and bright blood swelled to the surface when I looked down.

‘Son of a bitch,’ I growled, slashing forward. My labrys found Morrigan’s shoulder as if in punishment for the hip slash, and she growled back at me with equal ferocity. Dancing around each other, we fought with wicked ferocity until we finally fell apart, panting.

Only then did Anyan nod at me quietly from the sidelines.

Launching myself forward, I again attacked Morrigan. She snarled her rage, coming to meet me after the briefest pause. But this time, I didn’t close with her. Instead, I began a weird slashing dance that sent me prancing around her like a deranged dervish. All of my power went into the labrys, leaving me vulnerable. So despite the speed lent to me by the creature, I felt a fiery slash across my left arm, then my right, and another dug deep across my calf. That one made me stumble, but buoyed by adrenaline and egged on by the labrys, I erupted back onto my feet, only to continue my weird twirling circuit around Morrigan.

Obviously confused, she didn’t realize what I’d done till her shields crumbled around her, slashed in a thousand different places. Before she could erect new ones, I shouted for my backup even as I struck.

The ax wasn’t meant to be thrown, but Anyan and I had practiced all day. Good aim and a nudge from the creature’s power meant the strike was perfect, the labrys burying itself in Morrigan’s chest. From inside her, the double-headed ax struck again – a pulse of power that actually knocked me back on my ass and tore through Morrigan like a grenade.

Without losing a beat, Iris ran forward from where she’d been hiding, waiting for her moment. She carried a single, precious bucket of water that she threw with perfect aim over Morrigan.

As the water arced over her, I raised my hand and commanded it to slow and spread till it resembled a net of water that fell over her, pinning her to the ground for the next, awful stage of this ritual.

Anyan came racing up from behind me, grabbing my hand and hauling me to my feet and to Morrigan. Writhing in agony, the labrys pumping a series of tiny explosions of power through her mutilated chest, Morrigan still looked at me with hate in her eyes as we stood above her prone figure.