The Tide of Unmaking Page 3

  Just envisioning his face changed something in her. Suddenly the crying came from her heart, rather than her head. And that’s when she knew…not what she wanted to do, but what she had to do. She had handled a lot of things in her life on her own.

  “But, God,” she whispered between sobs. “I just can’t handle this. This is too much. I need—I need Your help.”

  3: Uninvited

  “SHHHH!” KAT WARNED. THROUGH A curtain of dark purple hair, her eyes flashed with urgency. “I hear his thoughts. I think he’s coming.”

  “Aye,” Jimmy said. “It’s him.” His confirmation came from the momentary glimpses of the future that were his gift. “Hurry! We dun’na have much time.”

  Using preternatural speed, her own gift, Autumn dashed around the chamber and gathered up all the planning scrolls.

  Kiri Lee leaped up from her seat at the table and started climbing, walking up invisible steps of air like anyone else would a stairway made of stone. “Here!” she called, gesturing with her hands.

  Autumn encircled all three tables, and then tossed the scrolls up above her head—

  —Where Kiri Lee caught them and climbed higher in the air, up over the doorway’s arch just as Tommy walked in.

  “Crud, Autumn!” Johnny muttered, frowning at the plate in front of him. “You knocked my lunch onto the floor.”

  Jimmy elbowed Johnny and whispered, “Shoot oop, will ya.”

  “Ow,” Johnny muttered, his brows beetling. He flexed his thick forearms and cracked his knuckles ominously toward Jimmy.

  “Oh, joost stop. I already know yu are’na gonna hit me.”

  Tommy halted at the doorway. He scratched the back of his head, whirled a lock of his curly hair around a finger for a moment, and looked suspiciously at his friends.

  The room was utterly silent. Even the fire, burning merrily in the room’s vast fireplace, ceased to crackle for a moment.

  Kat looked at Tommy, then up to Kiri Lee, just a few feet above his head. She was slowly sinking…losing altitude. Even with her gift, Kiri Lee couldn’t defy gravity forever.

  “Climb!” Kat thought urgently to her airborne friend, sending her message telepathically.

  I can’t, Kiri Lee thought back. Tommy will see the movement.

  “But you’re sinking!” Kat thought urgently.

  Nothing I can do. Kiri Lee clutched the scrolls to her chest. She squinted and tried to think light thoughts. As if that might hold me up a little longer.

  “Uh, what’s going on?” Tommy asked.

  “What do you mean?” Kat said, her smile luminous due to her blue skin tone.

  “Noothin’s goin’ on,” Jimmy added, reddish brushy eyebrows raised innocently. “We’re actually a wee bit bored. What are yu doin’?”

  Tommy’s eyes narrowed. “I have forest-shooting with Goldarrow in a couple of hours. I was hoping to practice a little beforehand.” He paused and scanned slowly around the room. “I was looking for Kiri Lee to help me train. Have you seen her?”

  Kat glanced up. In that quick blink, she saw that Kiri Lee was now only a foot above Tommy’s head and still slowly falling.

  “You know Kiri Lee,” Johnny said, bouncing a small fireball between his palms. “She’s uh, probably just hangin’ around somewhere.”

  “I’ll go train with you,” Autumn said, zooming right to Tommy’s side. She took his arm and nonchalantly led him a step out of the chamber. “I can’t get airborne like Kiri Lee, but no one shoots faster than I do.”

  “We’ll see about that.” Tommy turned to walk with her. He gave her the hundred-watt grin of self assurance, complete with dimples and said, “But it’s a little harder when you’re balanced in the crook of a tree.”

  “At least I’m not afraid of heights,” Autumn replied.

  Tommy’s grin vanished. “I’m not either anymore…well, not much.”

  “Hey, be careful out there, Autumn!” yelled Johnny.

  “Really?” Autumn called back. Johnny was protective of her to a fault, something she’d been trying—and failing—to cure him of for years. It was hard to blame him. They had lived as brother and sister on Earth for thirteen years, and Johnny had always taken the big brother role seriously. But returning to Allyra, they had discovered, among other things, that they weren’t related. Even so, Johnny couldn’t or wouldn’t stop overprotecting her. She rolled her blue eyes at him but smiled. And then, she and Tommy were gone.

  “Whew!” Kiri Lee said, floating to the ground. She landed on the left side of the door. “I thought he’d never—”

  “Oh, one more thing!” Tommy said, bounding back into the chamber.

  Kiri Lee slammed herself against the wall beside the doorjamb, then froze.

  Tommy said, “Goldarrow was telling me there’s a mandatory Lords meeting next week. You guys know anything about that?”

  Kat stepped forward and to Tommy’s right. “You know how tense things have been with the Conclave of Nations lately. Meetings always pop up. It might even have something to do the rumors about Grimwarden. I heard he might even show up.”

  “Really?” Tommy exhaled loudly. “Mannn, have I missed him. Well, cool, okay. I’ll see you guys around.”

  Tommy turned and sprinted back down the hall.

  “That was close,” Kat said. “Nice reflexes, Kiri.”

  “I thought for sure he’d seen me,” Kiri Lee said, exhaling a sigh of relief. She shook her head to get her lustrous dark locks out of her face.

  Kat shut the chamber door. “Okay, now back to business,” she said. “Kiri Lee, you’ve got the music covered. Jimmy, you good handling the games?”

  “Aren’t I always?” he asked with a wink.

  Kat laughed. “Go light on the pranks, Jimmy,” she warned. “I want this to be special for Tommy. He’s been feeling down lately.”

  “Have’na we all,” Jimmy muttered. “Seven years, it is. Still hurts.”

  Kat blinked rapidly and swallowed. “We still need to wrap up food,” she said, glad to change the subject.

  “I think I’ve got the menu figured out,” Johnny said. “I’ve got a killer new recipe for pandaran wings.”

  “No’ yur talkin’,” Jimmy said. He and Johnny smacked hard high fives.

  “Not just junk food,” Kiri Lee said. “I want my veggies.”

  Jimmy laughed. “I’ll bring ya some celery, then.”

  “No problem,” Johnny said. “I’ve got it covered. Besides, Mumthers is going to do most of the cooking. I, still, uh…tend to burn things.”

  “Mumthers,” Kiri Lee said. “Oh. Oh…wow. Now, I really can’t wait for this party.”

  “Is he really comin’?” Jimmy asked. “Grimwarden? Do yu think he’ll come?”

  “I don’t think he’d miss Tommy’s birthday,” Kat said. “There really is a lot of pressure on with the Conclave. They’re getting curious about Grimwarden’s doings. Some say he’s rebuilding Whitehall, but I guess Goldarrow would have told us something.”

  “I think he’ll come,” Kiri Lee said. “Goldarrow would kill him if he didn’t.”

  Later that evening Kiri Lee was alone in her chamber. She stood in front of a full length mirror and combed her long, silken hair. Dozens of strokes, mostly unnecessary. With very little effort, she had perfect black waves.

  Still she combed on. Stroke after stroke, she’d lost track somewhere in the hundreds. It helped her think and comforted her when her thoughts turned dark.

  What gives me the right to be here? she thought, meeting the convicting stare of her own eyes in the glass.

  It had been seven years now in Allyra. In mind and body, she was very much a woman. Elf maiden, she reminded herself as one pointed ear peeked out from her hair. Wounds inflicted so long ago by the Drefid assassins upon the infant Lords were healing. Other wounds were not.

  Kiri Lee wandered away from the accusing eyes in her mirror. But she kept stroking her hair. Three bluish-white dremask-braziers burned silently on her chamber walls, and she passed like a shadow in their midst. She stopped in front of one of the grand chamber windows, her reflection in the decorative glass gratefully distorted.

  Deepening night lurked outside. The storm had passed, and the moon wandered the skies well east of Berinfell. Kiri Lee thought of the land that lay a great many leagues east. Vesper Crag. It’s where I died. Or should have.

  She remembered the wracking coughs, the muscle spasms, the seizing up while her heart hammered. The Wisp’s poisoned blade had plunged deep. She’d lain in a pool of her own blood and felt her life draining away…

  Until Jett came to her.

  Jett Green, one of the Elven Lords who had lived the first thirteen years of his life on Earth in a human family, had been gifted with incredible strength. And healing.

  He’d been virtually mangled in a motorcross accident, but healed completely in days. And, by the laying on of hands, he could heal others—taking on their wounds as his own until his body could beat it away altogether.

  Jett had come to Kiri Lee just as her heartbeat had began its final cadence, the untimely end to a beautiful symphony cut short by a lethal poison.

  Kiri Lee faded in and out of the memory, standing before the window and stroking her hair. Always stroking her long, dark hair. Strange, she thought, staring into the distorted glass. She could almost imagine Jett standing there, on the other side.

  He should never have saved me, she thought. He was the strong one, the brave one, the most gifted of the Seven Elven Lords.

  But the past stood like an immovable stone monument to the futility of her thoughts. Jett had come. He’d knelt beside her and found the seeping dagger wound with his hand.

  The cold that had been enveloping her seemed to weaken then. Jett took her into his arms. Warm
th spread from the site of the wound and radiated through her body. Jett groaned, and they both fell to the side.

  “Wait, what are you doing?” she’d cried. Jett didn’t answer but his rich, dark skin had gone dreadfully pale.

  He’d used his full strength, every ounce of restorative power, and spent it. On her.

  Kiri Lee grimaced into the glass. Jett died in my place, she thought. In the seven years since, she’d tried…she’d tried so hard to redeem his choice. But weighing the sum total of her efforts, she still couldn’t reconcile his sacrifice. And she knew she never would.

  “Huh?” she gasped sharply.

  The chill that raced up the middle of her back and tingled like a frosty breath was unlike anything Kiri Lee had felt before. Her pulse quickened. She could move, but inexplicable fear kept her still. She was alone in her chamber, but convinced beyond reason and doubt of another presence.

  There in the vast window stood a silhouette that was not her own. It was a dark, distorted image…a figure tall and broad and menacingly strong. And it stood behind her.

  What do I do? Her thoughts crackled with terror. I have no weapon. There is no room to climb the air. The window is far too thick.

  There was really only one choice…one chance.

  Mandiera.

  It was Old Elven for Nightform, the ancient martial art the Lords had been practicing for the past two years. It was considered more lethal even than Vexbane, and to Kiri Lee it was like a native language. She advanced in Mandiera as if it was a symphony, quickly surpassing her peers.

  Still, with the intruder so close behind her, there was no guarantee.

  She moved like thought itself. One moment, she was as still as the most breathless night. The next, she slid sideways like a shadow glimpsed in the corner of the eye. She began a turn, rotating at the hips even as she dropped into a half-split. Once her feet were anchored, she used the coiling torque to generate extra force. Her sharp elbow came round like a pickaxe and would have driven into the intruder’s lower back, compressing vertebrae at the junction of the spine and hips.

  The move would have felled a Gwar, but Kiri Lee’s flowing strike slid through nothing but air. She couldn’t have missed. No one except for maybe Autumn moved that fast.

  Kiri Lee’s momentum thew her into a spin and she almost fell. Instead, she leaped and launched a snap kick. But there was no one there.

  She dropped into a crouch. Her heart pounded. She willed her breathing to calm and listened. There was no sound. But there was still the presence she had felt before.

  How can this be? she wondered. The hulking figure had stood almost directly behind her. He could not have moved away so quickly without so much as making a sound.

  Kiri Lee moved slowly, gliding like mist toward the window. She gazed once more into the dappled glass. She caught her breath. The figure was still there. Only, he wasn’t behind her. Now she understood. He was outside, standing on the other side of the glass.

  Knowing it was foolish, Kiri Lee moved closer to the window. She swallowed. Unless the glass magnified the figure, he was beyond huge.

  His movement startled Kiri Lee. He lifted a vast hand and pressed it against the glass. Kiri Lee took an involuntary step backward, but then she returned.

  Somehow, this shadowy being didn’t feel like a threat anymore. In fact, there was something vaguely familiar about the shape and stature of this being. If only she could see his eyes, she thought, then maybe she might know.

  She came closer still to the glass, and before she could think clearly and restrain herself, she put her own hand up to the glass, matching the dark figure’s hand. Just inches separated them now.

  She gasped. The window began to vibrate. It felt like the glass was bulging toward her. She jerked back her hand and started to step backward.

  An earsplitting crack. Huge shards of thick glass crashed to the floor. A powerful hand came through and caught Kiri Lee’s forearm in a vice grip.

  She screamed. The mighty hand released. Kiri Lee saw just a glint of eyes through the broken glass as the figure retreated into the night.

  Confusion. Terror. Shock. They struck Kiri Lee like hammer blows. She fell to the ground, an akimbo heap among the broken glass.

  The world was swallowed in sudden darkness.

  The darkness at last abated. Kiri Lee became aware that she was no longer lying on the floor of her chamber. She lay on something soft. There were five strange globes hovering over her.

  The globes had eyes.

  She caught her breath. A soft hand found her shoulder.

  “Kiri Lee,” said a voice. “It’s me, Kat. Can you see me?”

  Kiri Lee’s vision cleared and she realized that the globes were her friends’ faces. She blinked, and there they were: Kat, Tommy, Jimmy, Johnny, and Autumn—their expressions hovering between relief and deep concern.

  “The flet soldiers heard you scream,” Tommy said. “They found you on the floor. The window was shattered all around you. What happened, Kiri Lee?”

  She blinked and shook her head. Tears blurred her vision. “It was Jett,” she said. “He was here.”

  4: Grave Questions

  JETT GREEN.

  HIS NAME HUNG in the air like an uninvited specter. Each of the Elven Lords had carried differing measures of guilt for Jett’s death. They hadn’t been smart enough, fast enough, or powerful enough to prevent it. And whatever the years had done to dull the pain of guilt and clot the wound, Kiri Lee’s claim had torn loose the scab.

  When Guardmaster Goldarrow entered Kiri Lee’s chamber, she found the Lords utterly still and silent. The grim mood was such a wall of gloom that she practically skidded on her booted heels.

  She saw the broken glass, saw Kiri Lee sprawled on the cushions, and her heart skipped a beat. For a moment, she feared the worst.

  “Lords…” Goldarrow whispered. “Kiri Lee, what…what happened here? Is she…?”

  Kiri Lee leaped up from the couch and threw her arms around Goldarrow. “I saw him…he was here,” she cried. “He touched my arm.”

  Goldarrow exhaled relief. She held Kiri Lee close and said, “Who did you see, dear? Who was here?”

  Kiri Lee pulled away to arm’s length. “It was Jett,” she said. Her dark eyes were huge and pleading.

  Goldarrow looked to the other Lords. They offered no explanation.

  Goldarrow gently brushed the hair from Kiri Lee’s forehead, caressed a few locks back over her delicate pointed ears. “Kiri Lee,” she whispered, “while we all wish it were not so, Lord Hamandar, Jett, is dead. He was slain seven years ago.”

  Kiri Lee pulled away, strode on the air a few inches above the broken glass and stood in front of the shattered window. “He was here,” she said. “He stood on the other side of this window. Jett broke the glass.”

  Tommy went to her side. “Someone broke the glass,” he said gently. “But, it couldn’t have been Jett.”

  “The glass is so thick,” Autumn suggested. “And it’s dark out still. You couldn’t have seen too clearly. It would have been too hard—”

  Kiri Lee spun and faced her. “Didn’t you listen?” she demanded. “He was here. He touched my arm. Don’t you think I know his touch? Don’t you trust me?”

  “Of course we trust you,” Kat said, joining Kiri Lee and Tommy.

  “We trust yu, Kiri,” Jimmy said, “but we don’na understand. We saw him die. We put him in the ground. He can’na come back.”

  Kiri Lee wept, but shrugged off any attempts at comfort. “I know all that!” she cried. “I’m not a child. I…I don’t know how he could be here, but…he was.”

  The room fell uncomfortably silent once more.

  Autumn sat on the edge of the couch. Her foot tapped nervously, making a rapid staccato pattering sound.

  Johnny bounced a chunk of broken glass in his palm. A ring of smoldering white appeared around it. The glass melted swiftly and bubbled in his hand.

  Jimmy rocked on his heels and stared at the floor.