Eye of the Tempest (22 page)

Or rough magic
, I thought, peering around the cavern for evidence of anything untoward.

“There,” Blondie hissed, nudging me in the ribs with her elbow and pointing with her chin. Sure enough, embedded in the stone to our very far left, we could see in the wavering light of our mage balls just the outer edge of a mirror thingy similar to the one under Gus’s rock. I gestured, and one of my closer mage lights moved just enough to reveal the mirror’s smooth surface.

Just like the one I’d found before, this mirror held some sort of ancient Alfar sigil. But instead of full glimpses of different sigils popping in and out, this one snaked. A serpentlike dark line traced around sinuously to create new forms, never stopping long enough to identify what—if anything—it read.

Blondie and I approached the mirrored surface slowly, our magics pushed out enough to sense anything lurking but not enough, hopefully, to trip any booby traps. When we were finally standing in front of it, I was confronted with the exact same mystery from the crystal cavern, only this time I knew how dangerous our fiddling could be.

“Well, obviously we shouldn’t blast at it,” I said.

“No. That ended badly,” Blondie replied, wryly.

“To be honest, I don’t even want to touch it with magic,” I said.

My own words made me pause. “Maybe that’s it,” I said, after a few moments. “Maybe it’s not about magic at all. Maybe it’s like in a mystery… There’s always a knothole in the tree, or a special book in the bookcase…”

And with that, I began groping around my side of the mirror. Blondie watched me cup, pull, fondle, and basically harass the rock face it was housed in, before she interrupted me.

“What on earth are you doing? Why would the Alfar use a physical trigger when they had all that magic?”

Because it works in Clue!
I wanted to snap, but I didn’t.

“Think about it,” I said. “It sorta makes sense. If they’re living before the other species evolved, then all their cohorts are really powerful: they’re other ancient Alfar, Originals like you, and first-magic creatures like Brownies. So why would you use magic to defend something when everyone has powerful magic? It’s a good defense now, cuz there’s not as many creatures with that much juice. But back then?”

Blondie frowned, and then pulled up her shirt sleeves to well above her elbows as if getting ready to duke it out. I hope she wasn’t planning on duking it out with me—she’d win.

“It’s good logic, Jane. But it’s wrong. This is a glyph,” she said, as if that should mean something to me.

“I know,” I said, remembering what Nell had told me. “An ancient Alfar hieroglyph.”

“No, it’s a
glyph
,” Blondie said. Obviously dropping the “hiero” meant something to her, but it meant diddly-squat to me.

“Lucy,” I said, wearily. “Please ’splain.”

“Glyphs are interactive locking devices.”

“Wha?”

“They’re interactive, meaning we have to do something to the glyph itself. And they’re locks.”

“Locks are good,” I said, thinking of the nursery rhyme. “We want locks.”

“Yep. Now we just have to figure out how to interact with it.”

“With magic?” I said, looking at it warily. All joking aside, I really did
not
want to end up a seal, or worse.

“Well, you’re actually half-right in this one. These
will
probably work with touch,” Blondie said.

“Like an ancient version of an iPad?” I asked.

“No, not like that at all. Are you ready?”

“Ready for what?”

“We gotta get in there and touch it,” she replied.

I gave her a Look, but moved up to face the glyph with her.

She gave me a look that read, “
You touch it
,” just as I gave her a similar one. We frowned at each other. Then we both reached forward at the same time. Before I could stop my hand from moving forward, my fingertips landed squarely on one of the tats on her forearm, one that appeared to be of a very ancient tribal nature…

Suddenly I was in a different cave, squatting next to a smoking fire. The cave smelled overpoweringly of human sweat and rotten meat, but the smell was familiar rather than off-putting. I was cutting up a kill with my sister—a young buck—and we were carefully hanging the meat to dry. With such successful hunts, our clan’s winter wouldn’t be so hard. She smiled at me, her mouth and chin smeared with blood from the delicate organs we’d snacked on as we worked, and I smiled back, content as I’d ever been
…

“What the hell?” I shouted, as I found myself plummeted back into my body, Blondie looming above me. I’d somehow ended up flat on my back. “I was you!” I accused her. “In a cave! What the fuck just happened?” I demanded, sitting up as she sank down next to me.

“Didn’t I tell you about my tats?” she asked, running a hand up her arm and shivering, her eyes closing to slits for a second.

“Yeah, um, no,” I said, watching her touching her tattoos, feeling my face flush with heat.

“They’re not just ink,” she said. “They’re my memories.”

“What does that mean?”

“I imbued them with my memories. So that I wouldn’t forget things from my past, no matter how long I lived.”

I blinked at her. “Wow… why?”

She snorted a laugh, and then moved so we were sitting side-by-side, her muscular forearm close to mine. I resisted the urge to touch another tattoo.

“You’ve seen what happens to the really ancient. Eventually they stop living and just survive.”

“So, to combat that, you put all your best memories in your tats?”

“Not just my best. Some of my worst, too. And not just anything I enjoyed or hated. I tried to choose memories that made me who I am. The memories that really made me feel.”

I looked up into her clear blue eyes. “That’s amazing. Did it work?”

“You tell me. You’ve seen enough Alfar. Am I like them?”

I couldn’t help but smile, thinking of her energy—her life. “No. You’re not like them.”

“You can touch, if you want,” she said, her voice soft, inviting.

“But they’re your memories. Isn’t that… too much?”

“Not for you. I know you’re coming to our world late. I’ve seen what can happen to people like you who don’t know what they’re in for. I’ve no doubt you’ve noticed things that give you pause, because you’re someone who watches and thinks. But still. Near-immortality isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.”

I thought of the cold Alfar and their preternatural calm; the sadism of creatures like Graeme, bored over the millennia into monsters; hell, even the kindly selfishness of Ryu I saw as an extension of his long life. Although short by Alfar standards, he’d lived long enough to become set in his ways, while being entirely unaware that he’d become so.

So I reached my fingers toward Blondie, not knowing where to start. When I paused, she drew herself up to pull her shirt over her head. Then she guided my fingers to her naked abdomen, laying my hand over her muscular stomach. When my palm came into contact with the small skull and crossbones lurking right beside her navel, I was suddenly standing onboard a ship plunging through rough waters, foam and water all about me as a storm formed overhead.

I was shouting commands, my Spanish perfect, as my crew hustled around me, preparing for the storm… but not just for the storm. For we knew the English merchant ship was only a few miles off our starboard bow, and that she’d be floundering in such seas even worse than we
…

“You were a pirate?” I gasped, coming to myself as Blondie withdrew my hand.

“Among many other trades,” she replied, smirking. I wanted to ask her more, but soon enough she’d moved my hand to where a woman’s head, her hair bobbed like a flapper, stared out from over Blondie’s left hipbone.

Her stomach pressed against mine as we kissed, our tongues entwined. Her breast moved beneath my questing fingers and she moaned sharply when they found her nipple roughly. My own body grew wetter at the sound of her pleasure. I loved her, even knowing she didn’t feel the same for me. I’d learned it didn’t matter. For, love or no love, they all died and left me alone
…

Tears pricked my own eyes as I met Blondie’s blue ones, but she was already moving my hand to her left shoulder. My fingertips grazed over what looked suspiciously like a…

I stood, unable to contain my awe at the marvel before me. Shining wood and gleaming white porcelain combined in such a way that I would have thought it art had I not already had its function explained to me. Unable to believe it really did what my hosts said, I reached out a hand toward the wooden handle hanging from its chain and I pulled… and to my delight the water did, indeed, swirl away
…

“You tattooed the invention of toilets?” I asked, only to see Blondie shrug.

“It changed everything. It really did. I’ve got the invention of toothpaste on my right calf,” she said, but instead she moved my hand to her right shoulder and a large, tattered flag.

Her first real battle; her first real war. No longer mere skirmishes between the upstarts calling themselves Alfar and her people. We weren’t different races, the idiots, and yet they were so intent on subjugating everything different from them to their will that they can’t see what’s obvious
…

“The Alfar,” I said and gasped. “Not a different species?” And this time my hand moved on its own, seeking across Blondie’s flesh for answers.

I saw the end of the battle of the Black Flag. The Alfar had brought with them something old; something foul. They’d raised it from its sleep, and it had laid waste to everything in its path. It went after those Alfar that had awoken it, first, then had moved on to the rest of the Alfar on the field of battle. But we did not rejoice at the fall of our enemies, for we knew the creature wouldn’t stop there. We also knew if we attacked, we would suffer terrible losses
.

And we knew that the Alfar generals—sitting miles away on a distant hilltop—had planned this all along
.

My people charged, and when it was over, nearly everyone who’d fought that day was dead, our side, and their’s. But those who fought on my side didn’t keep ourselves back on mountains and let others do our fighting. Indeed, I was one of the only warriors of my kind to leave that place alive; but the Alfar had
hundreds
held back on that mountain. I knew, then, they would harry us to extinction
…

My hand moved down Blondie’s arm, wanting more.

Images of women, children, things… a sea of emotion flooded over me… fighting, loving, quiet moments with friends, the deaths and births of so many loved ones
…

Blondie moved my hands to her back, all new sensations and images pouring through me as she lifted my shirt, gently, letting my skin press against hers.

An assault of images, sensations, a jumble being processed slowly—too slowly—by this brain… so much experienced, so much learned… so many terrible fashions endured… Weeping, I called out for those who were gone as, laughing, I relived that first time we drank together, or joked together, only to have that person fade in time and space, my only constants were my loneliness, my mission, and my tattoos
…

So hungry for her kisses, the pretty thing, so sad and so alone for so long… but now I’ve got you, don’t I, pretty… hands searching, hers finding, yes, sweet thing, yes, harder, yes, lips so small, yes, her taste, yesyesyesyes
…

Only then did I realize that I had my hand on a tattoo of a splay-legged woman, her thighs spread across Blondie’s pubic bone. My mouth was on the Original’s, and I didn’t know whose pleasure I was experiencing—mine or hers, with the woman who inspired the tat. I’m also pretty sure I wasn’t supposed to be making out with the woman underneath me.

Anyan’s a dog for one night and you’ve already got your hands down someone else’s pants
, my virtue clucked.

My libido took a bow.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN