Page 138 of Fortune's Blade

I wasn’t sure if that last thought was mine or Marlowe’s, or if it mattered anymore. For once, the chief spy and I were in perfect agreement. Which was why our fingers were digging into the loose, rocky soil so fast, trying to get away, that we didn’t see Mircea being blasted out of the portal’s mouth until he crashed into us.

We went rolling back downhill, and farther this time as he was almost immediately beating on us and yelling, and smacking our face into the dirt whenever we rolled that way again, which was constantly as we were picking up speed. And only caught ourselves on the very edge of the precipice, near enough to one of the frost giants that I might have almost reached out and touched it. But I didn’t, because something was happening.

“Athena!” a voice rang out over the battlefield, and it must have been magically enhanced, because it was as clear as a bell in the cold air. “Great warrior of the gods, why do you cower behind your men? You let these paltry creatures do your fighting for you, these days? I had thought you better.”

The words were not English, but I understood them perfectly, and not because the spell that Marlowe wore had translated them for me. It had, but I didn’t need the tinny overlay in our ear. I knew this language; it was the same one that Fortuna had spoken.

My link with the troll was long gone, yet it sang in my veins nonetheless. But the goddess seemed to be having a different reaction. The terrible face jerked up, and the strange, colorless eyes searched the field.

“And who do you cower behind, reject?” The voice was low and hissing, but cut through the air like a knife. “Fortune’s Folly, traitorous girl who always runs?”

“Nothing. I’m through running.”

And true to her word, a woman walked out onto a jutting finger of the cliff, perhaps half a mile away, her long dark hair flowing on the breeze.

The sight of her rang through me like a struck tuning fork, many times harder than the oddly familiar language had done. She was the one I’d seen on the old recording from the cave with the eggs, but I didn’t need that. I knew her instinctively, as did Mircea, who went completely still at our side, while the goddess’s searching eyes finally locked onto her.

And she smiled.

“Come then, and meet your destiny, as your maker did before you.”

My mother didn’t hesitate, pelting headlong down the spear of land while a scream built in my throat, then jumping straight into the abyss with nothing below her but air—

And a wild looking redhead on a swift flying broomstick, who came out of nowhere before I’d even had time to utter a sound. Instead, Marlowe yelled something unintelligible as they whooshed by overhead, before swinging outward in a wide arc and tearing straight for the goddess. And straight for death.

Because she might be strangely emaciated and tattered, and barely recognizable save for her shield. But she was fast—unbelievable so. The broomstick was clipped by the edge of her sword, swung so swiftly that I hadn’t seen it move until the duo tumbled out of the sky, flipping end over end before disappearing into the ranks of the yeti creatures below.

I felt my breath catch in fear as Marlowe jumped to his feet, looking for a way down the cliffside when there wasn’t one. Wasn’t a normal one, that is, but he jumped onto one of the frost giants, who barely seemed to notice our presence. Perhaps because we were the size of a bug to them, or because the abbreviated fight . . . wasn’t so abbreviated.

For my mother was rising again from the valley floor, although not on a broomstick this time.

She was growing to many times the size of a human, although not even coming up to the goddess’s waist. I did not know what this was, whether one of her skills or some kind of spell, but suspected the latter as the redhead was helping her. She had landed on a rocky outcropping in the center of the field, wand out and pointing at the battle, something I could see clearly as Marlowe never took his eyes off her.

And that was despite the fact that we needed to pay attention to make it down to the ground in one piece! I found myself having to do most of the navigating, finding rougher patches of cold “skin” to help us keep a grip while he was distracted, and thus missed much of the action. But what I did see was not encouraging.

My mother had a liquid speed worthy of a master vampire and what appeared to be matching strength, as she parried the blows of the goddess several times. She also had considerable skill with her weapons of choice, a set of short swords that were the only thing allowing my eyes to track her as they flashed under the sun. Yet it was not going to be enough.

Not even with the goddess fighting fairly, albeit with a slightly contemptuous lift to her lips, and allowing no others into the duel. She clearly did not think she needed them and I tended to agree. My mother’s skill would have overcome most foes in our world or in Faerie, but she looked like a rank amateur in comparison to Athena.

I had never seen anyone fight like she did, to the point that, despite everything, I paused for an instant in wonder. It was as easy for her as breathing, as natural as the sun or wind or tides. She wasn’t performing war, she was war, the personification of it, and when she moved, she was still beautiful.

This would not take long.

Or it would not have, but one of the yeti creatures either did not see the goddess’s “hold” gesture or did not care. He let an arrow fly that missed my mother but hit a frost giant on the other side of the field and exploded, as if he’d sent a bomb. Followed by a crack that echoed off the surrounding cliffs as the massive creature’s chest splintered and cleaved.

Half of his body fell away like a calving glacier while the field paused in shocked silence for one heartbeat, two, three . . .

Then the roar of two oceans slamming together rent the skies, and almost split my head, as both sides charged simultaneously. The ranged fight was suddenly over and the hand to hand commenced, flooding the battlefield with combatants and causing me to lose sight of my mother. The only way I could still track her were the bloody swathes the goddess’s weapon were carving through her own people as she hunted for her.

We have to get to them! Mircea yelled in my head, shaking Marlowe one handed while clinging to an icy shin with the other. A shin that was not moving toward the battle like the rest, for a line of the largest giants had stayed in place, to guard the portal presumably. Although how they thought they could possibly hope to succeed I did not know.

The gods might be starving, but they were numerous, and their followers even more so. I saw strange things in the crowd, things I did not understand. Perhaps the successes from that chamber of horrors behind us, or the denizens of other worlds.

I did not know which and, right then, did not care. Like father, I cared about only one thing, and I could not see her anymore through the running, fighting, screaming throng. Even great Athena had had to break off the attack, in order to parry the flurry of huge stones being slung across the field, all of which seemed to be targeting her.

But that meant that I had no idea where my mother was or even if she was still alive.

Where is she? Mircea screamed, echoing my thoughts, and Marlowe cursed in several languages and held out the staff he had picked up back in the caves.

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