Alaskan Fury (6 page)

Kaashifah found the Sleeping Lady
Lodge deserted, the lights still on, the generator still running.  With every
shield she could muster solidly in place around her body, Kaashifah went into
the shop and, with a gloved hand so as not to disrupt her magics, put the iron
beast back to sleep with the press of a button.  Immediately, the battery
system picked up where the generator had left off, a brief flicker in the
overhead lights.  Kaashifah went to the shop doorway and looked up at the
Sleeping Lady, which loomed dark and dormant over the lawn.  She bit her lip,
wondering what kind of tricks her enemies had waiting for her inside.

Still standing in the entry of
the shop, Kaashifah concentrated her magic and sent it outward in an
inquisitory blast, like a bat bouncing its shriek against its environment. 
What came back worried her.  The Inquisitors had left no spies behind, not a
single soul to break the wave of her magic. 

Everything within range was
either dead or taken.  Silence reigned absolute.

Kaashifah glanced down at the
concrete floor.  Various bits and pieces of the wereverine’s iron monsters lay
strewn around, their incomprehensible components bared for all to see.  While
Kaashifah owed the wereverine no protection by oath, she had come to respect
the ill-tempered Northlander for never pushing her boundaries, once she had
made them known.  Unlike the djinni, who touched her at every opportunity, the
wereverine had only done so once.  Somewhere in the hours of tears and ritual
ablutions that had followed, he had gruffly apologized.  Kaashifah suspected
that Blaze had had something to do with that.

Yet the phoenix, the first person
that had even come close to being a friend on this wretched continent, was
probably even then being drained of her magics by Inquisitors’ apparatuses.

I gave her my word,
Kaashifah thought, fighting another wave of anguish.  She stepped from the shop
and looked up at the phoenix’s dream.  The Sleeping Lady Lodge sat in the
center of a lush wash of crops, surrounded by greenhouses filled to the brim
with every fruit tree imaginable, ringed with verdant pastures filled with
flourishing animals of all forms.  All of which would, within weeks, begin to
wilt and starve as the last of the phoenix’s magics slipped from the land, and
the realities of the harsh Alaskan fall returned to steal the life from the
grounds.

All of it was dying before her
eyes, an abundance of plant and animal wealth, abandoned by those who would
take the phoenix’s magic for themselves.

Kaashifah had to help.  Not only
had she given her word, but she
owed
the phoenix.  For no gain of her
own, the phoenix had not only tolerated her, but given her a home. Being a
Maiden of the Sword, Kaashifah was cold and aloof by nature.  She had to be. 
She and her sisters were the Justices of the battlefields.  She was a mediator
of the Realms.  She was one of Ares’ hounds.  It was her job to kill
oathbreakers—those fools who did not obey the Pact of the Realms.  Her very
existence
depended on her lack of passion, her purity of mind and body.

Yet, even with all of that, the
phoenix had treated her as an equal, and, while Kaashifah had never quite
allowed the woman to grow close enough to call a friend, Blaze had easily been
the closest thing to a friend that Kaashifah had ever had.  The phoenix had
been
kind
to her, where all others had either cast her out or simply
tried to kill her, once they’d realized Kaashifah could no longer feel her
wings.

And Kaashifah had given her oath
to protect the woman.  The oath of a Fury had no equal.

…except, twice cursed as she was,
she wasn’t a Fury.  She had lost her sword.  She had no wings with which to
fly.  Even the mere thought of permanently harming someone left her nauseous. 
Hells, she couldn’t even behead the criminal that had been taunting her for
three thousand years.

Still, she had to find a way to help. 
She had given her word.  Closing her eyes, Kaashifah stretched her mind,
reaching outward to feel the winds in a desperate attempt to determine which
direction the Inquisitors had taken her friends.

You can’t take her as you are,
something whispered, like a breath against her mind. 
Find the dragons.

Frowning, Kaashifah wondered
where the words had come from.  It had almost sounded like…
wind
. 
Glancing at the iron monsters scattered around the shop, she considered that.  The
dragons owed her an ancient blood-debt, but the dragon republic held council in
the Brooks Range.  That was over four hundred miles out of her way, over mountains,
through heavy forest, across rivers and swampland.  She didn’t have
time
to trounce through the woods looking for serpents.  She needed to find the
Inquisition.  Desperate now, she pushed her mind out further.  She couldn’t
kill, but if she could figure out
where
the Inquisition had taken the
phoenix, then perhaps she could concoct a spell to walk the Void and free Blaze,
who could then take matters into her own hands.

But where had they taken her? 
Kaashifah prodded outward with her awareness, seeking, stretching.  She found
the blissfully human neighbors of Ebony Creek Lodge still safe within their
home.  When she moved further, however, she found more homes empty, more people
missing.  All the moon-kissed.  Gone.

Kaashifah frowned.  Gone?  The
further she looked, the more missing souls she found.  Third Landers, fey,
naga, elementals…

Where?
Kaashifah pressed,
pushing further, straining to feel the Inquisitors’ trail.

Go to the dragons,
the
whisper came again, insistent. 
The War has started.  The dragons are key to
the—

Always loping at the edges of Kaashifah’s
mind, the Third Lander wolf that infected her blood suddenly found her outstretched
mental tendrils and viciously ripped them to pieces.  Slammed back into her
body, Kaashifah reeled into the shelves of tools and fell to her knees on the
grease-stained concrete, momentarily disoriented as her awareness tried to
regain its bearings.  For two thousand years, it had been thus.  The Third
Lander, bitter that his attempted possession from the frostrealm had failed,
now took every opportunity to thwart her out of spite.

Much like a certain djinni.

Well, their best efforts be
damned.  She may be cursed, but she was not helpless.  She
would
fulfill
this oath.  Pushing herself back to her feet, she strode from the shop and into
the small cabin that the wereverine had built for her.  The inside had been
ransacked, with her meager belongings tossed around and shredded like
confetti.  Doubtless to implicate the famed ‘mutant’ wolves of the area.  Kaashifah
found a clean set of clothes amidst the rubble and tugged it over her body.

Then, without another second’s
delay, she tugged on the djinni’s cord and snapped, “Yad al-‘Aqrab, Djinni of
Ji’fah, I summon you.”

The mountain of ebony flesh
appeared against the curtained wall a few feet away, giving her a wary look. 
“Then you will make your final wish, mon Dhi’b?”

“I offer no wish,” Kaashifah
growled.  “I offer a bargain.  Free me of my curses and we renew our duel.  If
I win, I will kill you quickly, and without pain, and upon killing you, I will
immediately release your soul back to the weave, for the gods to do with as
they choose.”

The djinni stared at her so long
that she wondered if he had not heard her.  Finally, his violet eyes quizzical,
‘Aqrab said, “I am a
poet
, mon Dhi’b.  I tell
stories
.”

Kaashifah felt herself frown.  “So?”

He blinked at her.  “So you offer
me…death…little wolf?  That is your bargain?”

“A painless death,” Kaashifah
snapped.  “Our time of games has ended.  There are other lives at stake, now. 
I would have my true nature back, and I would wreak vengeance upon those who
have broken the Pact of the Realms, as is my duty as my Lord’s Justicar.”

“So you offer me…death.”  He was
still staring at her as if she had grown a scarab’s mandibles.

“An honorable death,” Kaashifah
reasoned.

The djinni glanced at the cabin around
him, then crossed his arms over his broad chest and leaned back against the
wall, looking amused.  “So let me see if I heard this correctly.  As my
incentive to free you and give you your powers back, you offer me death.”

“I gave my Lord my
oath
to
kill you,” Kaashifah growled.  “I have no choice.  We’ve discussed this.”

The djinni rumbled his amusement,
though his eyes were sharp with calculation.  “You want my help, little wolf,
you will have to do better than that.”  And there it was.  The djinni wanted a
bargain.

“My friends are in danger,”
Kaashifah snapped.  “I don’t have time to twist words with a djinni.”

‘Aqrab snorted.  “Don’t delude
yourself, mon Dhi’b.  The only friend you’ve ever had was your sword, and you
left that in an oasis back in the homeland, three thousand years ago.”

The djinni’s words hit her like a
blow.  As painful as it was, it hurt most because it was true.  Kaashifah had
to look away to keep him from seeing her shame.  Her voice cracking, she
managed, “I have oaths to keep, djinni.”

The beast scoffed.  “As if I give
a damn about your oaths, little wolf.  They happen to involve my head rolling
by my feet.”

Kaashifah narrowed her eyes. 
“You will help me, now, or I will get someone
else
to undo your magics
and I will fulfill my master’s command
slowly
.  You understand me,
‘Aqrab?”

The djinni snorted.  “There is no
Fourth Lander stupid enough to unravel a djinni’s weave.”

Kaashifah allowed a vicious smile
to play upon her lips.  “I didn’t specify which Realm I would seek help from,
djinni.”

He laughed.  “There are no First-Landers
capable
of unraveling—”  Then he caught himself and frowned, his eyes
settling on her uneasily.  In the silence that followed, he fiddled with a
curtain-chain hanging from the wall by his elbow as if he found it suddenly
fascinating.  He did not, however, finish his sentence.

So he wasn’t a complete fool.  He
knew that she could use her last wish to exchange his servitude to her for that
of a dragon, and a djinni had as much of a chance of twisting a dragon’s wish
back on it as he did twisting off his own head.  The serpents, unlike most
First-Landers, were very adept at the weaving of words.

“So you see,” Kaashifah said,
“you will cooperate, and earn yourself an honorable death by my blade, or you
will force me to seek aid from the dragons, at which point, you will spend the
rest of your miserable life passed around as chattel.”

The djinni dropped the chain back
to the wall and glared at her.  “I have committed no crime, mon Dhi’b.”

“That is not what my Lord told
me,” Kaashifah snapped.

The djinni narrowed his eyes at
her.  “Then your Lord lied to you.  I never broke the Pact.”

The mere
suggestion
that
her Lord could be lying left Kaashifah clenching her fists in rage.  “Unlike a
djinni, my Lord does not lie.”

“A djinni does not lie,” the
djinni growled, uncoiling his massive arms.  And, for the first time, there was
anger in his words.  “We
can’t
, you fool.  We’re bound by the
Fourthlander Law.”

“Yet you tell me you never broke
the Pact,” Kaashifah growled.  “My Lord only sends me after those who break the
Pact.  He does not waste his time with anything less.”

The djinni’s eyes were like fiery
amethyst when he leaned down toward her, until their faces were inches apart,
and bit out, “Then you misunderstood his command.”

Once again, the magus was trying
to assert that she had some divine right to kill him.  Except this time, she
seemed desperate enough to seek out the serpents in her quest to fulfill that
ridiculous claim.  That, ‘Aqrab knew, would not end well for him.  The serpents
owed his mistress a blood-debt, for saving several clutches of eggs from being
ravaged by the same wolf that ultimately bit her.  And, while the serpents had
already stated they would not interfere in the dealings between a djinni and
his mistress until their bargain had completed—likely because the cowards did
not want to become the brunt of a Fourth-Lander wish—they also had no qualms
with acquiring his servitude for themselves in exchange for doing her the favor
of returning her wings.

And, if he was reading her face
right, that was exactly what the little magus had in mind.

“Then you misunderstood his
command,” he bit out, irritated to the point of anger.  “I am Yad al-‘Aqrab. 
Sand-singer of the Scorpion clan, firstborn son of a djinni sheik, rightful
heir of a miles-wide gannah of dates, figs, and pomegranates around my clan’s
oasis.  I am no more a criminal than you are a whore.”

She narrowed her eyes at him,
then.  “My Lord told me to kill you, specifically.  He only gives specific
orders like that on very important occasions.  Most of the time, my sisters and
I were left to our own discretion.”  She cocked her delicate head.  “So tell
me, Yad al-‘Aqrab.  Why would the Lord of War tell me to kill you, if it were
not for your crimes at Ji’fah?”

‘Aqrab felt a miserable sound
roll from his chest.  “Little wolf,” he said, “as I’ve told you repeatedly over
these last three millennia, I have no idea.”  She was going to give him to the
dragons.  He could see it in her eyes.

“He told me to kill you,” she
said stubbornly, as if that ended the conversation.  …Just as it had ended the
conversation so many times before.

Yet this time, ‘Aqrab found
himself on different ground.  Fighting a building sensation of despair—because
he was looking at a lifetime of servitude to creatures as adept at word-weave
as himself, and because not even a
djinni
wanted to be hunted by the
Lord of War—‘Aqrab said, “Is there any way you could have misunderstood his
command?”

She snorted, as if his words were
completely beyond consideration.  “His orders were for
me
to kill
you
,”
his magus insisted.  “You.  Yad al-‘Aqrab.  The Hand of the Scorpion.  The
djinni of Ji’fah.  And not any of my sisters, but for
me
.  I was
considered one of the greatest of us, back before your curse.  Perhaps he knew
it was going to be a difficult kill.”

“A difficult
kill
?” ‘Aqrab
cried.  “I am a
bard
.  I’ve never killed a sentient being in my
life
.”

“And yet you’re not dead,” she
said flatly.  “Are you, djinni?”

‘Aqrab looked away, frustrated.  It
just didn’t make sense.  He’d never broken the Pact.  Only a fool did that, and
djinni were not fools.  They were bound by Law and had the winds of the
half-realm to guide them.  They did not make foolish mistakes of that
magnitude.

Hell, one of the only times the
winds had
ever
spoken to him, ‘Aqrab had been on his knees, a winged
angel of death raising her sword beside him. 
Touch her,
they had
whispered. 
Claim your wish.
 

And, with those words, they had
saved his life.  He had taken ‘wish,’ in that instance, to mean a deadman’s
curse, the final wish of a dying man, and had uttered the four words that had
saved his life. 
May you never kill. 
He still marveled at that, so
stunned had he been when her sword had slipped from her fingers to bury itself
in the sands, instead of his neck.  The winds had saved him.  After many years
of silence, after centuries of allowing him to be passed between masters like a
favored stallion, the winds had deigned to save his life.  They had told him to
claim his wish.

…Only to begin a worse torment. 
Three thousand years tied to a perfect pillar of ice.  It stank of the gods,
and indeed, he suspected he had somehow invoked divine wrath sometime in his
past.  Yet how?  He’d always obeyed the Law.  He’d never twisted a reasonable
wish.  He’d never grasped for power.  He’d never broken his pact to his
masters, even when their devious use of their last wishes kept him perpetually
bound to the First Lands.  As much as he’d been tempted to simply kill his
tormentors and be done with it, he had always completed his favors owed.  He’d
never stepped on any divine toes, and if Ji’fah was the best reason the magus
could come up with for her master wanting him dead, then it had to be something
else.  Every djinni that had ever had the misfortune to be trapped in the First
Land had been forced to twist a wish for the good of all.

As far as he knew, his slate was
clean.  He
had
no enemies.  So why would the winds save him from certain
death, only to enslave him again? 
Touch her,
they had whispered. 
Claim
your wish.
  Until hearing those words, he hadn’t even considered touching
the Fury, for he knew men lost hands for doing so.  But, as an act of
desperation, trembling under the shadow of her sword, it had seemed like a
reasonable enough thing to do at the time.  Now, looking back, he wondered if
it had meant something more.  There had been that odd pang upon first meeting
her eyes, as she rounded the fig palm.  That strange sense of connectedness
that had quickly been forgotten the moment she began taunting him into a duel. 
Touch her.  Claim your wish.

Suddenly, every muscle in ‘Aqrab’s
body went stiff as iron.

Many years ago, he had made a
wish. 

“If you are going to continue to
stare at me like a fool,” the magus growled, “I will take your silence as a
rejection of my offer and begin my journey to the serpents’ mountains without
you.”

A self-wish, ‘Aqrab had thought,
that had never been fulfilled.  Many years ago, he’d been wandering the
night-darkened desert of the First Lands, after yet another broken heart with
yet another all-too-passionate djinni woman, one who had grown tired of the
fire they had kindled together and went looking for flames of a different
color.  He’d been alone amongst the dunes, in agony, wracked to the core.  It
had been the first time he’d twisted to the First Realm, spurred by his broken
heart, fleeing the hopelessness of that lonely little tent he had once shared.

He had thought she was the one. 
His soulkin.  His lifemate.  That one perfect bond that the gods gave every
living creature.  The other half of his soul.  And yet she had simply abandoned
him one night, leaving him nothing but a note on a pillow to remember her by. 
A note, and the scent of another man in their bedding.

“Very well,” his magus snapped,
“I’ll see you again once I’ve conferred with the dragons, djinni.”  She turned
and strode out of the cabin.

That night, after twisting into
the First Lands out of sheer agony, ‘Aqrab had fallen to his knees and made a
wish. 
May I never bed another woman who is not the mirror to my soul, and,
once I find her, may she be a slave to my heart, may she seek nothing of me I
cannot give, and may she revile the touch of other men.
  Soulkin.  Twin
flames upon the desert of time.  That is what he had wished for.  A stupid
wish, a wish made in the furnace of passion, and quickly forgotten, for most
self-wishes dissolved like licks of flame across the sands of time, never to
take hold, never to be bound by Law.  He’d simply…forgotten.

After all, only a week later, he
had found himself imprisoned by a First Lander magus who had received word of a
djinni wandering the desert, cursing the stars.  He’d spent the next few
centuries being passed around like a favorite piece of furniture before he’d
managed to free himself and return to the firelands, and by then, his wish had
been completely forgotten in his relief to be home, sleeping in his own bed,
sharing kisses with pretty djinni women that caught his eye at his father’s
table.

But he hadn’t
bedded
them,
‘Aqrab realized.  He had flirted, he had bantered, he had diced, he had danced,
but he had never
bedded
them.  He’d never been
able
to.  He had
always considered this to be his own scarred heart, protecting itself, keeping
him at a distance, but what if it was
more
?  What if
that
was why
his icy mistress was the only one who seemed to be able to rouse his passion of
late?

“Sweet Goddess,” ‘Aqrab
whispered, sliding to his knees staring at the open doorway where the magus had
disappeared.  He put his palms to the wool rug beneath him and bent his head,
praying to his deity, the mistress of creation and light.  “This cannot be.” 
He had meant a
djinni
woman.  Someone he could have a
home
with.

And yet, he had the
soul-hammering knowledge that it could.  In a rash, stupid blaze of passion, he
had wished for loyalty, for the lack of passion that drove women to seek other
men.  He had wished for a perfect complement to himself.  Someone who would
never betray his heart, someone who reviled the touch of men, and someone who
wanted nothing of him aside from his simple death.  A Fury. 

Never had he been so horrified,
so utterly dismayed by the results of a wish.

The tether binding him to his
magus strained as he reached the edge of his five hundred cubits and, in his shock,
‘Aqrab let it drag him out the door on his knees.

A cold, distant ice-queen. 
Trained from birth to despise the touch of a man.  She came from destruction
and war, he from life and creation.  He was passionate and vibrant, she stiff
and cold.  He was rowdy and lewd, she prudish and quiet.  He took pleasure in
creation, she in the kill.  She was exactly what he’d asked for.  The opposite
side of the coin.  The weave on the other side of the rug. 

The gods, merciless dick-farmers
that they were, had given him a Fury to ice his bed, from now to eternity.

“I wanted a djinni,” he whispered
to the sky.  “Sweet Mistress, please.  Not a Fury.  A
djinni
.”

Yet he had never, he realized
with growing dread, specified a djinni woman in his wish.  Like a fool, he had
asked for coldness, a lack of needs, and a disgust of men.

But a
Fury
?  Surely the
gods were joking.  His words had been said in passion, but his
meaning
had been there.  His perfect mate was just as passionate, as life-loving, and
as sexual as he was.  Not…that.

Then teach her,
a whisper
came, flitting upon the grasses by his forehead, caressing his back. 
Give
her the passion of a djinni.

“Mistress, please,” ‘Aqrab said,
trembling, now, as the magus pulled him blithely toward the dragons’ domain by
his Law-made tether.  “There are some things that can’t be done.  Not with a
thousand lifetimes.”  Not even a
wish
could accomplish such a task.  He
had planned on tricking her into spreading her legs for him, a
game
to
see if she would let him plant his seed so he could in turn show her how it
felt to be enslaved to a creature of another realm.  The idea of being forced
to settle with her, forever, due to a brash wish he made millennia ago in the
throes of passion was…intolerable. 

And now she was intent on trading
him to the serpents…

“Please,” he whispered.  “This
was not my wish.”

The warm winds disappeared,
leaving him alone as the magus dragged him through the woods behind her. 

With the heart-searing knowledge
that his casual game of chance was suddenly no longer a game, ‘Aqrab twisted to
the Fourth Realm in despair.