Page 81 of Time's Fool

It was a whisper on the air, a cool stream cutting through all the heat and biting energy like a river across a parched land. Unthinkingly, I reached out to touch it, it was that tangible, and to draw it closer. And when I did, she turned around and looked at me, as if sensing my admiration.

Which quickly turned into something else entirely.

The skin of her face and body was mostly transparent, but not like mine or the ghost’s. We looked like a tapestry bleached by the sun, with our forms unchanged, merely faded. Whereas I could see every bone in her lifted arm, and beneath the pale blush on her cheeks, a skull grinned at me slyly.

As if to say, ‘you’ll be next.’

I reared back, causing the ghost to curse and tighten her grip on my arm, but I did not apologize. I didn’t know which of the fell creatures she had described to me this was, and didn’t care to know. I just wanted out of here!

But she wasn’t having it. “It’s alright,” the librarian said breathlessly.

“Alright?” I asked, my voice high. “I do not know what that word means in your time, mistress, but here—”

I broke off, but not because the skull creature had moved.

But because something strange was happening on the street in between us.

A war mage came into view, seemingly out of nowhere thanks to the surrounding darkness, although that wasn’t the strange thing. No, that would be the fact that he was being blown backwards, facing one way but being pushed in the other. I felt nothing, not even a mild breeze, with no cross streets here to carry it through the closely packed buildings.

Yet he appeared to be battling a tempest.

His arms were working uselessly, with the few spells he managed to throw being blown right back at him; his cape was barely clinging to his shoulders and then was ripped away entirely; and when he finally stumbled, he was tossed down the street after it, like a stray leaf caught in a gale.

And he wasn’t the only one.

Further down the road, I dimly spotted another mage being lifted off his feet by swirling winds and carried away. A second was struck by lightning, a terrific bolt that lit him up even through the gloom and shattered his shields, leaving his coat—their last line of defense—smoking. And a third was finding that the rain particularly loved him, following him as he staggered into view, with what amounted to a gushing waterfall directly on top of his head.

He was in no danger of drowning; he had a shield, too. But once he went down, he stayed that way, the pressure being too much to bear. And every time he tried to get up, the torrent increased, leaving him unable to do anything except to peer desperately out of his watery cage, much as the local residents had done from theirs.

And I began to realize that the weather . . . had a sense of humor.

It also appeared to be on our side, like the skull creature. Instead of attacking, she had merely gone back to her work, using magic to quieten the flames and save the house. When I turned to look at my ghostly companion, I found her watching her, too, with a relieved grin on her face.

“Fey,” she told me happily.

“Fey?”

She nodded. “Ancient ones, who slipped into this world long ago, and refused to go home when commanded.”

“Why do they look . . . like that?” I asked, because that was neither a ghost nor a body; I didn’t know what it was.

“A terrible punishment,” she said, lowering her voice. “Fey souls are supposed to be fused to their bodies, and cannot part from them. But their defiance so angered the gods that they stripped them of their corporeal forms, leaving them greatly diminished, for losing half of their beings denied them much of their power. They were afterward banished from Faerie, doomed forever to wander a world not their own.”

“That’s . . . horrible.”

She nodded. “It is said that the ancient covens discovered them and took pity. They found animal bodies in need of healing for them to share. Merging with the creatures gave the lost fey a home again, and cured the animals of their afflictions. Afterwards, the witches kept them as companions and friends.”

“Familiars,” I said, as the woman finished her work and the flames went out.

And she shrank into a cat, as black as the night, and ran away.

“Yes, as some call them,” the librarian said, smiling after her. “Although they are not nearly what they were, they still have power. Enough to cause the mages trouble—and to protect us.”

“Protect us?” I echoed, because I didn’t see how they could do much for a couple of wandering spirits not that much different from themselves.

But it seemed I was wrong.

“They don’t like demons,” the ghost told me. “Or the mages who consort with them. And they are fiercely loyal to their people. No hunters will dare to stalk us this night.”

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