Meg’s sides ached as she shifted in Zafidi’s saddle. The big horse nickered irritatedly and tossed his head as she tried to find her balance and a position on his broad back that didn’t make her broken ribs grate together. She pulled his reins tighter and nudged him forward with her heels.
Thunder grumbled overhead, threatening a downpour at any moment. They would need to move faster if they wanted to cover enough ground to make any difference.
Meg cast a glance over her shoulder at the caravan behind her.
Caravan might have been too strong a word. Danny, Mickey, and Jim rode behind her, each on a horse from Prism Castle stables. Tzaitel and Velanna brought up the rear.
Somewhere in the dark, boiling clouds, thunder cracked. Zafidi shied to the left, and Meg reined him back in. Behind her, Jim yelped, and Meg had to smile when she looked back at him. He clung to old Bhuna’s saddle as though he feared he would tumble off.
Knowing Jim, he might. He’d been hesitant to ride horseback when they left the castle earlier that morning, but to his credit he’d done it even when he wasn’t confident. And, fortunately, Mickey was there to help keep him upright.
Danny guided his horse, Roti, to a trot beside her. Danny had named the giant chestnut gelding several years ago because the color of its dappled coat reminded him of his favorite Josharon fried bread.
“You all right?” Meg asked him.
Danny nodded, carrot-colored hair jutting out from beneath his ball cap. “If we get Jim there in one piece, it’ll be a miracle.”
“Be nice to Jim.”
Danny jerked his head toward the sky. “It’s going to rain, Meg. A lot. Can’t you smell it?”
“I can smell it.”
“We need to stop.”
Meg shut her mouth hard enough to make her teeth clack together. Stopping wasn’t on the agenda. If they stopped too early they would waste time they already didn’t have. The more time they took getting to Centaur Mount, the less time Barb and Jenny had.
If they’re even still alive. Meg shook her head and blocked out the morose whisper at the back of her mind. “Danny, we can’t stop. We haven’t gone far enough.”
Danny sighed and gathered Roti’s reins. “Meg, far enough is getting to the mountain now. We can’t do that in a day’s ride, and I don’t know about you, but the last time I tried to set up camp in a downpour, I ended up sick. I’d rather not be sick when we have to fight dragons.”
Meg regarded him quietly.
He looked so much like their father. The same face shape. The same nose. Even some of the freckles were in the same place, although since both Danny and their father had been liberally covered in freckles it wasn’t that great of an achievement.
Keep the family, Maggie. Don’t lose them. Charles Mitchell’s dying gasp rattled in her ears, and Meg shook herself.
Danny offered her a sad smile that didn’t brighten up his eyes. Meg looked to the back of their group where Velanna rode, stiff and pale. Exhausted. Fading.
Whatever she had done to fight off the Centaur’s shadow weapon had left her weak and frail. Weak and frail: two words that should never describe Velanna Ittai. But she’d insisted on coming with them, even as the Josharon High Council doubled down on their decision not to attack Centaur Mount.
Cowards.
But Tzaitel had come too. Velanna barely had enough strength to walk on her own, and Tzaitel might not claim Jenny as family anymore, but she couldn’t get away from the fact that Velanna was her mother. And regardless of her reasons for coming, Tzaitel was a good fighter. They would need her.
A raindrop splashed on Meg’s forehead, and she sagged in Zafidi’s saddle before she met Danny’s eyes. He raised his eyebrows hopefully, and Meg reined Zafidi to a stop.
Quietly she nodded. “Okay.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah. Find us a place to stop.” Meg gave him a genuine smile. “You the best at picking the spots.”
Danny gave her a quick nod and guided Roti around her to scout ahead of them on the path. More raindrops began to fall. Meg held Zafidi still until Jim and Mickey reached her.
“What’s happening?” Mickey asked, adjusting the pack she wore and glancing between Meg and Danny’s back as he rode ahead of them.
“We’re stopping,” Meg said. “Storm’s going to be bad, and it would be better to be settled before it hits.”
“Gotcha.”
A low whistle drew Meg’s attention to where Danny had stopped out front. He stood up in his saddle and pointed to something in the forest, probably a clearing big enough to make camp. Danny and Tolan had done a lot of camping together, especially during hunting season. Sleeping outdoors had been one of Tolan’s favorite pastimes.
Meg ignored the twist in her heart and nudged Zafidi to where Danny and Roti ascended up a small hill to a small clearing in the forest surrounded by a sturdy army of redwoods. The canopy would provide some cover to help them get tents pitched, but there was enough flat surface area that tents didn’t have to be jammed up next to each other.
It was a good spot.
As I expected. Danny has a gift for this.
Danny dismounted and tied Roti to a low-hanging limb. The docile gelding happily munched on the grass growing at their feet, and Danny started unloading supplies from the horse’s saddle.
Meg spotted a limb on the other side of the clearing and pointed Zafidi toward it. The horse was territorial and his foul temper usually didn’t improve around other horses, so giving Zafidi his own grazing area was usually a good idea. Meg got him settled and began unpacking her own supplies from Zafidi’s saddle.
Mickey helped Velanna tie her horse down and slide off her saddle.
That Velanna even needed help was concerning, let alone that she accepted it.
What had she done to herself? What had even happened? The whole thing was still a blur, and Meg didn’t allow herself to dwell on it long. All that mattered was that the Centaurs had attacked them with some kind of living shadow weapon. Velanna made it go away. And the Josharons still wouldn’t help Jenny and Barb.
Those were the facts.
Meg stripped her tack off Zafidi and draped blanks and saddle over the limb before she gathered the camping supplies and carried it to where Danny had already begun setting up.
“I got tents,” Danny said, taking her bags from her. “Can you find dry wood? I think we’re going to need a fire.”
“I can do that.” Meg patted him on the arm. “This is a good place to stop, Danny. Good job.”
He glanced down with a quiet smile.
Meg grabbed the borrowed energy saber out of one of her bags and tucked it into the holster at her lower back. The well-worn hilt felt rough and scarred beneath her fingers, and the weight of it felt foreign. But it was her own fault. She shouldn’t have lost her own saber. Who knew when she’d be able to make a new one?
Out of the corner of her eye, she spotted Jim helping Velanna to a log at the side of the clearing. Endearingly awkward, Jim was more likely to fall over helping Velanna sit down than to get her from point A to point B, so maybe he wasn’t the best one to be helping her. But Tzaitel had grabbed her own energy saber and was walking toward Meg.
Meg tried not to stiffen in dread but met her sister’s eyes as she approached.
“I’m getting firewood,” Meg said as Tzaitel came close enough to hear her.
“I will assist.” Tzaitel brushed past her.
Meg glanced at Jim who had amazingly gotten Velanna settled on the log and was now kneeling in front of her, speaking in a soft tone. Mickey and Danny were assembling the tents.
Good.
Another raindrop struck her, and she scowled. They needed to get a move on before all the dry wood was gone.
She followed Tzaitel into the forest.
They worked in silence, gathering sticks and small branches that would be dry enough to catch and hold a flame. Tzaitel’s coarse trousers and long tunic rustled loudly with every motion, her tightly wrapped headscarf keeping her hair in place. Not for the first time, Meg marveled at how much the younger Celtican resembled her mother.
Tzaitel was a carbon copy of Velanna. The same angular facial features and high cheekbones, the same green eyes, the same gracefully arching eyebrows. But Tzaitel had a better sense of humor.
Or at least, she used to. Before Tolan died.
But then, most everything had changed since Tolan died.
The sharp twisting in her heart returned, and Meg shoved it away. Now wasn’t the time. She could indulge the grief once Jenny was home safe.
Meg set her armload of logs and sticks on a boulder and bent to gather more. Tzaitel did the same, tight-lipped and frowning.
Meg eyed her from where she knelt, gathering kindling. “Tzaitel?”
An eyebrow cocked.
“Do you know—what happened?”
Tzaitel paused, hands pressed against the cool rock skin of the boulder. “At the castle?”
“Yeah.”
Tzaitel shook her head slowly. “No.”
“The shadow?”
“No.” Tzaitel looked down. “I have never seen anything like that before. Nor have I seen—whatever Mother did to make it stop.”
Meg straightened and stood next to her older sister, searching her face. “Did you see it?”
Tzaitel swallowed and turned to face her. “The Shadow was alive,” Tzaitel said. “That is the only explanation I have. It sought out those in its path and consumed them. It consumed all of us.”
Voices echoed in the back of Meg’s mind, memories of the pain the shadow had caused, like being boiled in acid or being skinned alive.
Years of effort wasted on thee. Thee does nothing that I say.
You will never succeed, Margaret. You will always fail.
You killed him. His blood is on your hands. My father would not have died if you had never come here.
Don’t lose them, Maggie. Keep the family. Keep them safe.
Meg shook herself and forced herself not to think about the burning in her eyes. “What did Velanna do?”
Tzaitel bent and started gathering sticks again. “I did not see clearly. But—”
“But what?”
Tzaitel sighed and lifted her gaze to meet Meg’s. “It seemed to me that Mother became light and chased the shadow away.”
Gooseflesh rose on Meg’s forearms. “She became light?”
“That is—what I saw.” Tzaitel looked uncomfortable. “I cannot explain it.”
Meg grabbed a large dirty stick and brushed the mud off it. “Maybe she will.”
“Perhaps.”
Tzaitel lapsed back into silence, the only sound between them the gathering of sticks.
Whenever the family had gone camping, she and Tzaitel had always been on firewood duty together, but in those days they talked constantly. About the latest silly thing the orphan kits had done or the most recent relationships the Josharons had begun or the last ridiculous training exercise T’zuman put them through.
The aching in Meg’s heart surged again. Tzaitel had been treating her differently ever since Tolan died. Tzaitel blamed her and rightly so. None of them would have even been in Terran if Meg hadn’t insisted that they go to find Mickey.
Jenny disagreed. Even now, Meg could hear her sister in her mind berating her for choosing to think something that was so obviously untrue. But Jenny could argue with her until she was blue in the face. Meg would carry Tolan’s death on her shoulders for the rest of her life, and she understood why Tzaitel had changed toward her.
But Tzaitel had no call to blame Mickey or Danny or Jenny. They hadn’t been responsible.
Meg’s duty now was to make the loss as bearable as possible. Once she finished training at the Peregrine Academy, she’d have the means to track Phoenix Munroe down and make her pay for what she’d done. But until then, if everyone needed someone to blame, she was satisfied to bear it.
Tzaitel straightened and gathered her pile of sticks, carrying it out of the forest and back to the clearing without another word. Silently, Meg did the same.
By the time they reached the campsite, Danny and Mickey had both big tents standing and were in the process of setting up the last smaller tent. Jim had even been useful apparently and built a small fire ring inside the big tent with the open flaps. The old Josharon hunting tent had been a good idea. A wide, sturdy base with durable fabric walls and a cap with a smoke hole, it allowed large fires to burn inside without burning the tent itself down.
The other big tent would be for the women to sleep in. The smaller tent was for Danny and Jim to share.
As Danny finished setting the last tent up, Mickey broke away and started tossing skins and rugs and blankets into the big tent. The coming rain would cool the already chilly temperature down significantly, so they would need warmth overnight. Meg and Tzaitel stacked the wood in the open tent just as Jim finished the fire ring.
Meg knelt and carefully stacked the driest of the wood in the ring and cracked the flints together, sparking a flame just as a huge rumble of thunder rattled overhead. Before any of them could react, rain dumped out of the sky as though the Creator Himself had upturned a pitcher of water on the world.
Danny finished the last tent and scrambled inside to where the fire was beginning to burn and shook himself off, flashing a smile at Mickey and Meg.
“You guys make a good team,” Meg glanced between her brother and her cousin. “We should go camping more often.”
Mickey brightened slightly. “I’ve never really camped for fun before.”
“Oh, you haven’t lived.” Danny sat next to her. “There’s a gorgeous spot on the coast where the fishing is great.” He wrapped himself up in a blanket. “We’ll go. When we get back. With Jenny.” He swallowed hard.
Mickey nodded at him. “With Jenny.”
Meg blinked back the tears burning her eyes. “That would be fun,” she said. “Let’s plan on it.”
Jim helped Velanna into the center of the big tent and gave her his arm as she sat down on a log next to the fire. She clutched a blanket around her slender shoulders and shut her eyes, letting the heat from the fire seep into her. As she sat there, Meg noted the medallion around her neck and frowned.
It was the same crystal they had used to reach Terran a month earlier. Velanna hadn’t wanted them to take it, Meg remembered. She hadn’t wanted them to use it at all, but Tolan had insisted. It was the only way to get all of them to Terran so they could find Mickey.
Meg would never forget the burn of the crystal against her skin when she’d opened the interdimensional rip to bring them back to Prism Castle with Tolan’s lifeless body at her feet.
Why had Velanna brought it now?
As Meg watched, Velanna slipped her hand around the crystal medallion and folded it in her long, slender fingers.
“Tzaitel,” Velanna spoke softly. “Margaret.”
Meg blinked and met her mother’s gaze.
“Get out your sabers please.”
Meg and Tzaitel exchanged a glance and obeyed, Meg removing her hilt from the holder on her lower back and Tzaitel producing hers from somewhere inside her layered tunic.
Velanna straightened. “We are going to the Mountain of Fire,” she began, her tone slightly stronger. “Once we arrive, we will be inundated with Centaurs.”
“And dragons,” Mickey muttered as she knelt next to the fire to warm her hands.
“And dragons.” Velanna offered a half smile. “We will need to have all our options at hand. Tzaitel, Margaret, take your stances at the far end of the tent. I will show you something new.”
Next to Velanna, Jim’s eyebrows arched, and he shifted his gaze to Meg. “That sounds cool,” he said. “Slightly ominous. But cool.”
Meg stood, as did Tzaitel, and they stood at the tent floor’s edge.
“Ignite.” Velanna nodded.
Meg switched the training saber on, and the gray sparkle of energy bursting out of the hilt lit up the tent brighter than the campfire did. Tzaitel did the same, her saber shimmering yellow.
“Now,” Velanna continued, “at the base of the hilt, you will find a switch. You’ve often asked about it, and I have always forbidden you to touch it.”
That was true. Meg had lost count of how many times she’d asked about that switch as a child.
“It is a safety switch,” Velanna said. “It allows you to adjust your saber blade’s settings. You must press it to begin the adjustment, and you may press it after the adjustment is complete if you with to keep your new settings. For now, simply press it once.”
Meg did so, but nothing changed. The switch clicked under her thumb, but if something was supposed to happen, she missed it.
“Now, the base of your hilt will turn.”
Meg held her breath as she regarded the saber hilt in her hand. Around eight inches in length, the metal hilt fit snugly in her palm, slender enough that she could wrap her fingers around it and thumb and middle finger could touch. With the gray blade still burning, she grasped the hilt in one hand and palmed the base with the other.
“Turn it counter clockwise,” Velanna said.
Meg did. The bottom half inch of the base turned, each turn clicking.
Would you look at that?
With every click, the gray energy blade grew brighter, whined louder, and then the weight of the blade shifted. Like all the weight of the weapon slid into the top half of the blade itself.
Top heavy, the saber fell forward out of Meg’s hand, and she scrambled to hold it with both hands before it hit something.
With a cry of alarm, Tzaitel did the same thing.
At least it’s not just me this time.
Meg froze, clutching the hilt of her vibrating, shrieking practice saber with both hands as the gray blade trembled in the humid rainy air. The intensity of the energy blades frequency rattled her eardrums.
“Turn them off.” Velanna snapped her fingers.
Meg obeyed, and the blade vanished in a burst of sound. Her eardrums rejoiced at the relief. In her hands, the practice saber’s base clicked back into its previous position.
“Mother.” Tzaitel stared at her hilt. “What is this?”
“Every energy saber has a blade integrity setting,” Velanna said. “I have now taught you how to sharpen the blade. In that setting, it will cut through even cold forged iron.”
Meg arched an eyebrow. “Even dragon skin?”
Velanna nodded.
So that’s what she’d done. At Prism Castle, Velanna had been able to pierce the gaja’s hide with her saber when nothing else would work.
“But the weapon’s balance is incorrect,” Tzaitel said.
“It is not incorrect, Tzaitel.” Velanna smiled. “It is merely different. Now that you know this option is available to you, you must learn how to fight with it. Everything you have learned thus far is compatible. The stances are the same. The balance of your weapon has changed, and you must simply adjust.”
Just like that, huh? Meg stifled the need to make a face.
Tzaitel scowled and glared at the hilt she still held. Meg pressed the switch button again and felt it click, locking the saber’s default settings in place again.
She met Velanna’s eyes. “We’ll figure it out.”
Velanna nodded. “You will indeed.” She pulled the blanket over her shoulders again.
“That’ll be handy,” Mickey said as she stoked the fire.
Meg and Tzaitel returned and sat around the blaze as the orange flames grew, casting light into the darkness around them as the rain hammered against the tent roof.
“Nothing beats a scattergun.” Danny stretched out on his back and patted the long-barreled weapon laying beside him.
Quietly, Mickey broke into the ration packs and started handing them out. The firelight made her frizzy brown hair glow.
“So,” Mickey said.
“So?” Meg looked up at her.
Mickey handed her a tin of dried fruit, biscuits, and jerky. “So you and Tzaitel have your swords. Danny’s got his shotgun, and Jim has a pistol.”
Jim straightened and patted his side where his shoulder holster rested under his jacket. “I’m a crappy shot.”
“Comforting, Jim.” Meg smiled.
“Are you feeling left out?” Danny smirked at Mickey as she handed him a tin of food.
Mickey nudged him with her foot. “I can do more damage with a rock and a tree branch than you can with that scatter gun.”
“Is that a challenge?”
“Maybe we ought to make it one.”
Meg bit into a dried apricot and shook her head. “Mickey, did you have a point?”
Danny stuck his tongue, and Mickey nudged his ankle again.
“Yeah,” Mickey said. She sat down by the fire again. “All these weapons are good and stuff, but will any of them do anything to stop that shadow?”
For a long moment, the only sounds were the crackling of the campfire and the rain against the tarps.
“No,” Velanna said softly. “Sabers and scatterguns will do nothing to stop the shadow that attacked the castle.”
Mickey set her jaw. “But you did.”
In the shifting light of the campfire, Velanna’s gaze zeroed in on Mickey. Meg narrowed her eyes. She knew a challenge when she heard one, and so did Velanna. Of course, Mickey would be the one to issue it. She hadn’t been around long enough to develop a healthy sense of intimidation surrounding the things Velanna didn’t want to discuss.
If Velanna wanted to talk about it, she would talk about it.
If you pushed her? Well. Nobody understood a cold shoulder as well as a Celtican.
Velanna released a heavy sigh. “Yes,” she said. “I did stop it.”
“How?”
Meg watched her cousin’s expression for a moment before she turned back to Velanna. On the other side of the fire, Danny had sat up, face slack in surprise at Mickey’s boldness.
Velanna wrapped her fingers around the medallion hanging from the chain around her neck. “I stopped the shadow attacking Prism Castle the same way I stopped it three hundred years ago in the ruins of Celtica.” Her eyes darkened with grief. “I stopped the Shadow with the Light.”