Page 139 of Fortune's Blade

How badly do you want to find out?

Badly enough, I guessed. Because the next moment both men were slinging their legs over the staff and pushing off from our icy perch. And plummeting straight for the ground since this was not a broom, much less an enchanted one!

Or perhaps I was wrong. Because the magic caught just as we were scant feet above the ground, which had rushed up to meet us like a swung fist. Then we were curving upward, dragging our boots through the snow and sending it spraying outward on both sides for a moment, before pelting for the skies in a headlong, but very wobbly and uncontrolled way.

Because I did not think that Marlowe knew how to fly this thing!

“Do you even know how to fly?” Mircea yelled.

It was a testament to how grave things were that Marlowe didn’t give one of his usual scathing replies. He was too busy wrestling the staff into line, levelling it out, and scanning the ground. Which even with vampire vision was almost impossible as it was just a churning sea of ice and fur and blood, with even the outcropping that the redhead had been using having been swallowed by the roiling masses.

But Marlowe had good spatial memory and pointed us in the direction of the rocks, nonetheless, and a second later I glimpsed her—that flaming hair was hard to miss. And then we were landing, or rather crashing with style as Marlowe somehow kept to his feet and started running, although the rocky outcropping was nowhere near level. And swept her up and kissed her—

Until she slapped the hell out of us, a bright, stinging pain that Marlowe didn’t seem to mind but that I did, because she was about to spell us for a chaser. But he caught her wrist before she could, and slapped the staff into her open palm, and as soon as he did, she gasped. And looked from it to him, her eyes getting huge for a second before she flung herself back into our arms.

“What are you doing here?” she screamed, when she finally let go of his lips. “How are you here?”

“I could ask you the same! You’re supposed to be dead!”

“I am supposed to be a great many things,” she said cryptically, and then said no more. This was no time nor place for conversation, as we were in danger of being crushed to death by our own forces at any moment. We sought shelter under the rocky overhang, as frost giants spilled by us on both sides.

“What do you need?” Marlowe screamed.

“They’re trying to break through the portal. They’re going to retake Faerie and Earth besides! We have to stop them!”

“Any ideas?”

“Yes! Kill Athena! She’s their leader; they’ll scatter if she falls!”

Yes, very likely, as that was the habit on ancient battlefields, and despite their tendency to shatter like ice, the frost giants and their slings were taking a heavy toll on the yeti creatures. The long, white fur of those still on their feet was dripping red, with much of the earlier waves already having been ground underfoot. Or sent flying through the air courtesy of the giants’ clubs, which many wielded with devastating force.

The giants also regenerated shattered limbs, as if drawing power from their element all around. I saw one reach down to the snow with a splintered arm, and have all the nearby crystals flow into him, rebuilding what he had lost. But there must be a limit to that, as some of them had fallen and were not getting up again.

Yet on the whole, the yetis were starting to look like a group that might break and run, given the excuse. But the gods wouldn’t. They were hanging back, were letting their servants bleed for them, were watching them take as much of a pounding as the enemy wished to deal out.

They were saving their own strength while they tested ours.

And we did not have an army of gods waiting in the wings.

We didn’t have a champion anymore, either, I suddenly realized. Mircea, who had climbed back on top of the outcropping to see into the crowd now that the main rush had ended, made a sound that I had never expected to hear from him. And while the echo of my father’s scream was still ringing in my ears, I saw my mother fall.

Or fly might be more accurate, as she was sent sailing backward by a blow from her opponent, her neck at an unusual angle, and blood blooming on her face and torso. I couldn’t tell the extent of the wounds; didn’t have time before she disappeared amidst the churning sea. But they were bad, and she was trampled as soon as she landed.

Father leapt off of the rocks to go after her, disappearing into the mass of combatants almost immediately, but Marlowe wouldn’t let me follow. “We’ll get killed out there! We can’t help him!” he yelled at me, as I fought and scratched and felt like I was bleeding, too. My mental landscape was nothing but red.

“No, but I can,” the redhead said, knocking us aside. And extending her staff, which for a brief second, I didn’t see as wood. But as a hugely elongated forearm stretching out from her body, with slender fingers longer than a man’s leg that looked more like tree limbs covered in flesh than anything human. Then the glimpse was gone and she was normal again, except in one regard.

Because her hair had started to lift around her head, and her eyes had started to glow, and all the hairs on my borrowed body raised as Marlowe and I stared at her. Then the end of her staff erupted in green fire, carving a path for Mircea through a hundred furry bodies. They went flying, he raced ahead, and the witch, for witch she absolutely was, turned her fire on Athena.

“Burn, bitch,” she whispered, yet somehow, I heard. And Athena must have as well, as she suddenly looked our way, just before the bolt hit her and almost knocked her off her feet. But with that uncanny fluidity, she had already sent one of her own back at us, so fast that it passed the witch’s in mid-air and struck almost simultaneously.

It was powerful enough to have fused stone and bone together, leaving us as nothing more than a fossil record on an alien world. And would have done, but another witch was suddenly there, blonde and panting, with half of her silver gown burnt away. Yet holding some kind of shield spell in front of us thick enough to eat away at the goddess’s bolt until there was nothing left.

“Time spell,” the Pythia panted, seeing our stunned faces. “Ages it . . . out of existence—”

“Where the hell have you been?” Marlowe yelled, as if she hadn’t just saved our lives.

“Dragons—”

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