AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Iris had changed clothes, too—she was in her priestess robes, and her hair was done up in a wrap of braids around her head. She carried her wand of Aqualine crystal with her, and as I sat playing with my food, she slipped over to my side.
“Don’t fret. We’ll take care of him.” She lightly touched the collar around my neck. “Something feels different about this.”
I nodded. “I can’t lose it just yet, but the Moon Mother came to me last night, and some of its power has been stripped away. I can’t tell you quite why, but I feel stronger. Ready to face him.” Inside, I was a quivering ball of fear-jelly, but I tried to own the fear and let it go.
Iris smoothed my hair back and braided it. “No sense giving him any advantage,” she said. “I think you’re learning a hard lesson, one that you’ve never been able to accept. You’re learning that you can’t always be the rock, you can’t always be the one who makes things better.”
“I’m not in control of this situation. Only of my reaction to it?” I smiled at her, drinking in her winning smile and brilliant blue gaze. Iris had far more common sense than most people I knew, but she wasn’t soft. She was the epitome of tough love—and she had that rare gift of making you love her for scolding you.
“Ah yes . . . then you are learning.” She stood back, eyeing my hair. “There, done for now. Finish your sandwich and we’ll go.”
“Thank you,” I mumbled, taking another bite. I shoved the last bit of sandwich into my mouth and drank down a huge glass of milk.
Delilah dusted her hands on her jeans. “I can’t believe we’re going to fight a dragon. Smoky, Shade, I just hope that you guys can take care of him, because I’m damned if I know what to do.”
Shade jerked his chin at her, smiling. “You and your sisters need to have higher opinions of yourselves. Come now. Let’s be off and get this done so we can attend to other business.”
His almost laissez-faire attitude went a long way into helping me calm down. Smoky said little, merely pulled me onto his lap and wrapped a gentle arm around my waist. I leaned into him, forehead against forehead, and kissed him lightly.
“We can do this, my husband.”
“We can, my wife.” His voice was calm, but his eyes were flashing with lightning and I knew he would not rest until Hyto was lying in a million little pieces strung out over the forest. Sometimes he loved me so much—they all did—that it scared me. I never wanted to endanger that love, but I was so far from perfect that I wondered if I was worthy of their devotion. Just then Trillian leaned in over my other shoulder and kissed me. I walked over to Morio for another kiss. Finally we were ready, and—with one last glance at the barrow—we headed out to meet Hyto.
The path leading to our designated meeting place was winding and steep. Smoky insisted on lifting me over every tree and boulder—to save my strength, he said—and Shade helped Iris. Delilah was able to clamber over the trees without a problem; she was tall enough and strong enough.
“You made Trillian and Roz stay home because they are more vulnerable to Hyto, didn’t you? Vanzir, too?” Delilah caught up to me, blowing on her hands. The early-morning air was damp and moist, filled with the taste of snow.
I nodded. “Yes, but that’s not the only reason. We really do need someone to watch over Maggie and the others. What if Hyto breaks through us? Smoky’s got it set up that if he falls, a warning will go off in the barrow. That will give them enough time to run.”
“I didn’t know that,” Delilah said, suddenly grim. “This is really it, isn’t it? We’re fighting a dragon?”
None of us had ever been on the receiving end of a dragon’s fury except Roz—once when he pinched my butt in front of Smoky—and me, at the mercy of Hyto. I hated to think about what waited in store for us when the battle was to the death.
“I didn’t know it, either, but he told me shortly before we left the barrow. He also told Trillian, so they know what’s going down. Menolly—she’s safe enough, we figure, tucked away in the lower levels. I doubt Hyto would go to much bother trying to find her. But the others . . .”
As we crossed a clearing, a deer came out of the undergrowth, standing near entwined buses of huckleberry and bracken. She stared at us, not moving but poised to run, and I gazed into her eyes as we passed by. She couldn’t control what we were doing, but her reaction was one of caution, wariness. I raised a hand, slowly, greeting her as we passed by.
The snow grew thicker, heavy and wet, as the grade of the path increased. I tried to tune in to the land here—if I was going to use the Earth Elemental to counter Hyto, it might help if I could make a connection with the land. I’d have to start paying more attention to my surroundings once I was part of Aeval’s Court, so I might as well do it now.
Suddenly, I realized I was thinking of the future as if there really was one. The thought We might actually have a chance . . . ran through my head, and I wondered where it had come from.
As we continued, I began to have an odd feeling we were being followed. I glanced behind us but could see nothing. When I mentioned it to Smoky, he listened, then shook his head. The hush of snow falling on snow muted sounds, and the world took on the same surreal white glow that the Northlands had held.
“I can hardly wait for spring,” I muttered under my breath. “I’ve had enough snow to last me a lifetime.”
“You and me both,” Iris said, now riding along on Smoky’s shoulders. “I am dreaming of planting flowers and vegetables. Last night, a pansy chased me down the path in my dreams, threatening me if I didn’t make it stop snowing.”
The sudden break in mood made me laugh. Even though I was trying to keep quiet, my voice rang out down the slope behind us, and I bent over, stifling myself. I managed to quickly sober up, but it took everything I had not to giggle.
Smoky and Shade said nothing, but Delilah gave me a sideways look that told me she was either very annoyed or very much in agreement with me.
We came to a level area on the slope, before the grade of the hill started up in earnest. Another half-hour’s hike, it looked like, before we reached the rendezvous point. The treeline was still dense. We weren’t even into the real foothills of the Cascades yet, though it wasn’t that hard to get an up-close-and-personal view of Mount Rainier from the road. But here the vegetation was thick, the snow deep, and the going problematic.
“At least he doesn’t want to meet us up on the top of the glaciers. I don’t fancy a climb up Mount Rainier to fight a dragon.” Even as the words left my lips, there was a noise to the right and a bolt of lightning came shooting out at us. It missed Delilah and me but caught Shade on the arm. He shouted and dodged to the right as the glaring fork disappeared.
“Crap! Is that Hyto?” I turned, quickly seeking out any form that might tell us he was in the area. But the area from where the attack had come was thick with fern and bracken, covered in large drifts of snow. A hole had melted through it—the spell had to have come from there, but it was low to the ground and somehow I didn’t think that Hyto could keep himself hidden that well. He was too arrogant; he’d want us to know it was him.
Shade motioned for us to stay on the path and hurried over to the area, kicking the plants askew. “Nobody here. But there was, and they wore . . . some form of sandal, would be my guess.”
