Chapter Thirty-Eight
W hat felt like a year later, we were all sitting around the floor watching Pritkin work on the black slab that formed the back of the mountainous chair. He was trying to summon his mother’s tunnel, which apparently hadn’t been just a one-off thing. And which might get us to the portal room without risking whatever the Margygr had put in that water.
I say might, as it wasn’t going well.
“So she made a tunnel that just . . . moves around?” Alphonse said, his forehead wrinkling.
He was sitting on the rocky edge of the chasm while Enid paced nearby. She’d handled the trip into a troll’s brain better than I’d have expected, maybe because she was part fey and the Common wasn’t completely unknown to her. But sitting around while her fate lay in someone else’s hands seemed to bother her a lot more.
I could sympathize.
It wasn’t exactly doing me a lot of good, either.
Pritkin nodded. “On call might be a better word for it, as she had no way of knowing when or where she might need it.”
“But how ? And that’s the back of a chair you’re working on. There’s nothing on the other side to make a tunnel through .”
Pritkin shot him a mildly amused glance. “The same way that the Svarestri, whose element is earth, use it to create almost anything they choose, from cities where none should be possible to great stone defenders of their realm.”
Alphonse did not seem satisfied with that answer, and I couldn’t blame him. Human logic and magical logic were often not compatible. “Okay, but that explains the what, not the how.”
“You want me to explain elemental magic while you wait?” Pritkin asked dryly, glancing over his shoulder at the big vamp.
“Well, you know. The crib note version?” Alphonse had never cared much about magic, but now that it was his only way home, it had gotten his full attention.
“The elements stand in for the building blocks of our reality,” Pritkin said, returning to his work. “Ability with one allows you to manipulate reality where that particular element is concerned.”
“Like to create a tunnel on demand.”
“Yes. My mother was weak in earth magic but used it here as the Green Fey do not know it. They have fought the Svarestri for so long that there has been little intermarriage between them. Most do not carry even a shred of it as a result and, therefore, would not recognize what she was doing.”
“But you said this thing needed all four elements?”
“She used the others, with which she was more comfortable, to boost the power of her earth magic. And to ensure that no one could interfere with her escape route. Only someone with all four elements can cast or delete the spell.”
“And you can cast it ‘cause you inherited all four elements from her.”
“I’m not trying to cast it,” Pritkin said, pausing as some blue sparks appeared against the black rock for a second and then vanished, as ephemeral as fireflies. “I am trying to summon the one already here.”
“Your mom’s old spell?” Alphonse asked, frowning. “But why not just recast? You don’t have the power?”
“Not at present. But it isn’t simply a matter of power. My earth magic is weaker even than Mother’s was. I do not think it is sufficient to cast that spell.”
“But it is sufficient to summon it?”
“Let us hope so.” It was grim. “The spell has been sleeping for many years. I have to get its attention, and for that, I need all four elements shouting at once. But my earth magic is more like a whisper. So far, the spell is ignoring it.”
“Or maybe it’s not there anymore,” Alphonse said skeptically. “Ain’t your mom dead? I thought spells died with the caster.”
“Typically. But she fueled hers by linking it to the defensive network around the capitol, using the city’s own wards to power her passage through them.”
He sounded impressed as if even he might not have thought of that.
The fey sure hadn’t.
“But that defensive network is down now, right? So how’s that work?”
“It doesn’t,” Bodil said, looking like she thought this was a colossal waste of time.
Pritkin glanced at her. “You know as well as anyone that this place is built on a ley line sink—”
“Ah, so that’s why they chose to build in a swamp,” Alphonse said.
“—and it’s energy therefore doesn’t run out. The wards are nonfunctioning, possibly damaged in the attack. But the reservoir of power they draw from, the same one that Mother tapped into, is still here. And therefore, her spell is, too.”
Bodil didn’t say anything more, but her expression was eloquent. She didn’t think this would work, but she wasn’t arguing because she had no better idea. And because she was sitting beside a still-unconscious ?subrand.
She’d probably be more vocal once her backup was awake.
She also kept glaring at me like I had somehow turned her fair-haired boy feral. As if he’d ever been anything else. So, I figured if I was to get the blame, I should at least get some answers to go with it.
“Aeslinn might have found the power to collapse my mother’s spell from the god-blood he was harvesting,” I said to Pritkin, taking up my previous point. “I’ve been thinking about it—”
“A dangerous occupation,” Bodil murmured.
“—and he might not need as much as we think. Athena had an army already waiting on the other side of the barrier when Mircea and I went through. So, Zeus must have been able to communicate with her—”
“How?” Bodil demanded.
“He uses these supersized crows as his eyes and ears, sending them all over Faerie. I saw some at the dark fey capitol. Big as humans or maybe bigger, they had nests all over the place. Anyway, he can see what they see, and the ones on this side also report back to him.”
“On this side?”
I nodded. “When Mircea and I went through the portal to Jontunheim, we saw the crows everywhere—”
“They originate from there,” Faerie said. “Zeus brought them with him when he came, and some were left behind when the gods were banished.”
“Well, they must have been reproducing because there’s a lot of them. And the fact that they’re on both sides of the barrier gives him a conduit to the other gods. He must use them to communicate.”
“How?” Bodil demanded again. And damn, she was getting on my last nerve.
“I don’t know, but he must have a way. How else would Athena know to go for that particular portal just when it was about to be opened from our side?”
“So, you think he’s getting help,” Alphonse said. “Somebody pushing on that side while he pulls from here?”
“That’s what it looked like. And while Athena is now dead, there are plenty of other gods to take her place.”
But Pritkin wasn’t buying it. “Plenty of half-starved gods who can’t give him power they don’t have. And those poor bastards he and Zeus have been rounding up, like Rask and his group, are getting thin on the ground. And most didn’t have much god-blood to begin with.”
We paused while he tried another spell. It flared vivid blue against the rock’s black surface for a second before petering out once more. But he stayed with it because if anyone could jury rig a solution, it was Pritkin.
And what other choice was there?
“Zeus might have found enough power to heal after his battle with you,” he added. “But to overcome your mother’s spell? And not just hers. She cast it, but the Circle maintains it. He would have to defeat all of us.”
“Maybe he did.” I didn’t like to think about it, but our forces were damned vulnerable to someone who could feed like I had in the race. That was how Mother had ravaged the hells, only on a whole other level. She’d drained entire armies and turned their power against them; why would Zeus be any different?
But Pritkin was shaking his head. “He doesn’t want to risk himself in a straight-up contest. He isn’t Zeus the Mighty or Jupiter Best and Greatest anymore. He’s a fraction of his old self—”
“And still packs a punch.”
“Yes, but he’s vulnerable in a way he doesn’t like and isn’t familiar with. That’s why he went back in time, courtesy of his pet dark mage, to weaken our alliance in the past when he couldn’t manage it otherwise. Yet he somehow did so shortly after our departure?”
I frowned. “He could have used the Ancient Horrors. They don’t have god blood, but they’re powerful. If he drained them—”
“It would give him a meal, not a feast. Your mother drained whole worlds and, afterward, multiplied the energy she gained with my grandfather’s power a hundred times over, a thousand. The Ancient Horrors couldn’t give Zeus anything like that.
“I don’t know what could.”
“ You could,” Alphonse said. “Like you could give it to Cassie. Then we go back, find Tony, and make his fat ass sing about whatever he did. Ten to one, that little bastard knows Zeus’s plans. He always knew everything—”
“But you have to catch him first,” Faerie pointed out. “And if he can time shift, that may be difficult. Whereas we already know where Rhea is, and she’s a seer—”
“ Cassie is a seer!” Alphonse yelled, his voice echoing around the great space. The Ancient Horrors seemed to have made an impression.
I wondered what he’d think of Zeus.
“But Cassie cannot force a vision,” Faerie said patiently. “And did not live through what happened. Rhea did. She can give you facts—dates, events, methods—”
“Which won’t do us any good dead!”
“What is it?” I asked because Alphonse suddenly looked close to panicking, and the big man didn’t panic. “What do you hear?”
“What do you think? They’ve started calling to each other; I can hear them through that,” he gestured up at the missing river. “And they’re all around us, digging. They’re coming, which means we need to get going. And you,” he turned on Pritkin, “need to get busy charging her up before they get here!”
But Pritkin had a weird expression, one I couldn’t interpret. He didn’t look enthusiastic about Alphonse’s plan, which was starting to sound better all the time. Because yes, using his gift was dangerous, but not doing so might be worse.
“I don’t need enough power to take us all at once,” I told him. “This reality tried to reject me when I first arrived, but I tore through—”
“So that is what released us,” Enid said, looking at me with far too much admiration. It made me uncomfortable.
“—so, now that I’ve been here, I should be able to return after meeting up with the Pythian power again—”
“Hell, you don’t even need to,” Alphonse said. “Go back and help old me kill Tony before he can do whatever he did. Then this future,” he looked around malevolently. “Never happens, right?”
I stared at him. “You’d make a good Pythia.”
“Don’t have the assets,” he said, grabbing his chest. “But I pick up on stuff fast when it’s my ass.”
He looked at Pritkin and scowled. Because the mulish look was back, and there was no spell to account for it this time. “What is it?” I asked.
“I can’t,” Pritkin said.
“What do you mean you can’t?” Alphonse asked, getting in his face faster than I could blink.
I could have told him that was a waste of time. If anything, it was likely to have the opposite effect . . . and it did. “You want to take a step back,” Pritkin said.
“What I want to do right now, I can’t say ‘cause there’s ladies present. So start talking or—”
“Or what? You’ll feed me to those things?”
“I won’t have to! They’re coming for all of us!”
“Yes, they are,” Faerie said, tilting her head. “You are running out of time.”
“So do your thing!” Alphonse said and grabbed Pritkin’s shoulder.
Only to find himself on the floor—for a second, until he jumped back up. And was met by a hand on his arm, but it wasn’t Pritkin’s. “Stand down,” Bodil said.
“Lady, I don’t like hitting women, but you’re about to—”
Bodil knocked him out with a word, and Alphonse fell over.
“Stop doing that!” I told her angrily. We had enough problems without lugging two unconscious people around!
But she wasn’t listening. “Explain,” she said to Pritkin.
“My ability takes before it gives,” he told her tightly. “When Cassie has the Pythian power, it takes from that. But currently, she doesn’t.”
“You do not believe she would withstand the process alone?” Bodil raised an elegant eyebrow. And even though she hadn’t washed off and should have looked like a bedraggled mud monster, it was elegant. I would never understand the fey.
“No.”
“She is half goddess, and her mother was one of the strongest of them all,” she said dryly. “I think we can risk it.”
“I don’t.”
And unlike Alphonse, who had been snorting like a bull but with wide, panicked eyes, there was no fear there. Pritkin’s gaze was level and cold, as much as I’d ever seen it. Giving Bodil nothing.
She could knock him out—she probably already had back in the stables—but she couldn’t force him to do a damned thing. Which she seemed to realize because she looked at me. Batter up, I thought.
“Can we talk for a second?” I asked him.
Pritkin glanced at me, and then a silence spell clicked shut over our heads and he turned us away from the rest. He even led me off a few yards, I guessed so they couldn’t read lips. Not that most around here could understand English anyway, but he wasn’t taking chances.
“I’m willing to take the risk,” I said before he could start.
“I’m not.”
“Pritkin—”
“And even if I were, it wouldn’t help us.”
I had been formulating a thought, which that comment erased. “What?”
“I can’t ,” he repeated.
“But your other half can. And he will; you know he will—”
“Yes, I’m sure he would jump at the chance.” It was grim.
“—and yes, it’ll reenergize him, but not for long. I’ll be using most of the power we generate for the shift. And even if I don’t need it all—”
“Cassie—”
“—and he starts to become a problem, well, I tricked him once—”
“And won’t again. He’s not a fool. He simply made the mistake of underestimating you.”
“—and we’ll have the time to worry about it later,” I pointed out. “If we die here—”
“You won’t. I promise you—”
“You can’t promise me.” I stared at him in confusion. “You know what those things can do! And if you don’t, I can tell you stories—”
“I’ve heard the stories.”
“Then what—”
“You don’t understand,” he said, looking almost. . .
“What did you do?” I asked, feeling my stomach drop. Because shame wasn’t in his usual repertoire.
“What I had to. I needed to cross that finish line, but you were in danger. You’d just jerked ?subrand back to you, and he—the fey aren’t like us, Cassie, or even like Alphonse. They don’t have chivalry, or if they do, it’s of a different kind. He wouldn’t see you as anything but an opponent, and one whose magic he had cause to fear—”
“Pritkin.” It was flat because this was bad. This was very bad. Pritkin didn’t do long, involved explanations. Pritkin explained things in terse, basic terms when he could be bothered to explain himself at all.
Except for now because this was bad .
“I had to be in two places at once,” he said and waited for me to get it.
Which took a second because—
No.
No!
“Cassie—”
“You—” I grabbed him by those massive biceps. “You left him there? You went and left Zeus the one guy he needs to kill us all?”
“What are you talking about?” Bodil asked because the bitch had done to us what I once had to Rhosier and pulled off our silence spell without us even noticing. “What did he do?”
“Chimera!” I all but yelled it. And Pritkin met my eyes with no defiance in them but no apologies, either.
“If I hadn’t, you’d be dead,” he said simply.
“You don’t know that!”
“And I don’t know otherwise. Neither do you. I couldn’t take that chance.”
“So you used freaking Chimera ?”
“You used it—”
“I’m Pythia! I’m allowed!”
“What does this mean?” Bodil demanded, getting between us. “What is Chimera?”
“A human spell for duplicating yourself,” I told her while still staring at Pritkin. It had taken me ages to get that spell right, and he’d never even been trained for this! But when it came to magic, the guy was freaking Einstein. “Or, in this case, separating,” I added because Bodil didn’t look like she understood.
I guessed that didn’t help because she looked at Pritkin.
“I split my soul into two pieces to make two separate bodies,” he said hoarsely. “Chimera allows the use of magic as our illusion spells do not. They make it look like my duplicates are casting spells; Chimera allows me actually to do it, which I would need against ?subrand. And it was on the spur of the moment, with no time to consider the implications—”
“What implications?”
“That my soul was already split, had been so from birth, into my incubus nature and my human one. And thus, when the spell activated—”
“You left him behind,” she whispered.
“Yes. I dove for Cassie, which is why I was taken by whatever spell Tony used, but my . . . other half . . . was across the way, having just crossed the finish line, putting him outside the spell’s reach. It, therefore, took me and left him.”
“Then . . . you literally cannot do what we ask.”
He shook his head. “Not even if I was willing to take the risk. My demon half isn’t here.”
“Then that’s how he did it,” Alphonse said groggily from the floor. “You handed Zeus the key to our world. You let the bastards in!”