6: Shadows Fall

  They didn’t die right.

  That severely limited what Eagle could do to them. Even as broadening pilrs of steam boiled skyward, letting him melt back into the covering jungle, he was already racking his brain for answers. Of course, Fox couldn’t mean for him to leave, but he couldn’t stop them taking Fox if they wanted to, either—so what was that all about?

  What the fuck, Eagle thought, unmoored even while he settled in the shadows of the trees and the cover of the leaves once more.

  Of course, he watched several yards off in the cool shade. It wasn’t like Fox would have given up. Maybe he just wants more information.

  It had to be down to that. There was no other expnation. I hope you know what you’re doing, because I don’t.

  They weren’t the People, no matter what they (sort of?) looked like. The ones Fox had cooked never quite died, and some of the People would’ve. Some of these ones sobbed in pain. Their clothes steamed for a long time, and a cooking smell filled the jungle even when the pall started to thin and rise.

  Fox y in the clearing with his cheek on a rock, unconscious and staring. His mouth and cheek bled fresh into a pool on the saturated ground. There was a steady drip from his nose. Now—far from still and waiting—Eagle was frozen with terror. He was almost positive Fox hadn’t meant that to happen.

  Some of the people thrashing at uniforms and out of their jackets stopped in pce, gasping, with their hands on their knees. The women’s hair hung in their faces, limp and straight as a board. Some of the people rolling on the ground rolled to a stop, panting with relief.

  Fox didn’t move. He didn’t even seem to breathe, and Eagle’s chest seemed to break wide open every time he looked.

  “We’re going to drink for free for years off this one,” said the commander, rising from where Eagle had killed her and tossing aside a perfectly good knife. Her front was a sheet of blood, but she wiped her hands on a hanky. Gory smears covered the white fabric before she tossed it away in annoyance. “Nice one, ds and sses, and never mind the asses that got handed to you. In the end, Bearach Rev Liedan is in the bag.”

  By the time she finished, she’d reached Fox. She poked him with a toe.

  He let out a mangled groan, and it was the most beautiful sound Eagle had ever heard.

  “Are you sure he’s alive, Commander?” someone asked weakly from the ground.

  “Positive. Let’s move out.”

  Whatever else, they were disciplined—another mark against Eagle. A highly organized force was harder to get around. What the hell was he supposed to do now?

  Before too long, they had Fox on a stretcher. The early evening light slung long shadows before it, and Eagle was no closer to figuring out what Fox had wanted from him than before. He wouldn’t have been so indecisive, except he had the awful feeling pns had gone badly awry and at the same time, dreaded maybe they hadn’t.

  Either way, like hell he’d run.

  He was expecting the kidnappers to walk Fox away, but they didn’t. “Target secured,” the captain said into a receiver on her wrist.

  It crackled in response. “Roger, Captain. Opening in 3… 2…”

  If 1 ever came, Eagle didn’t hear it. A sickening wave of power passed through him and over him, an overwhelming storm of popping magic shocks. By the time the world settled, Eagle watched Fox’s stretcher disappear into a clinical white hole, and the bck heels of his bearers snapping after him.

  Still almost ft to the ground, Eagle sprinted after them—tried to sprint after them. Another wave of dizzying magic sent him to hands and knees just inside the shot-up clearing. The sunlight struck him almost too blind to see, but he felt the wave of magic sweeping in again even while he tried to stand.

  A white Door—he knew now it was a Door—opened in front of the giant egg still bobbing gently above the cavern hole.

  Now might be the only shot, because the Door hadn’t been there before, and he couldn’t feel even a residue of the first. He rocketed up into an unwieldy sprint as the egg started through. Just as the Door pinwheeled behind, Eagle dove after.

  Lucky thing he was small. It pinched shut just as his toes slipped through. Ahead of him, in a white world, the floating egg looked to cruise along without a care.

  Eagle didn’t cruise. He plummeted.

  Shining whiteness blotted everything around. Air whistled past his ears. Instead of diving headfirst, he scrambled his feet down instead. Shedding trinkets and coins and bits and bobs that hovered around him as he fell, he spread his arms and legs and caught an instant of resistance.

  A little more, and a little more. He wasn’t exactly floating, but his things sped past him now, falling into the distance. His chilly clothes fpped stiffly.

  He dared to feel at his back, but the knife he’d been carrying there was gone. His fingers found the empty scabbard.

  It felt real then—Fox y in the hands of people Eagle had never seen before, who would use him for some purpose or another. Eagle didn’t know what and frankly didn’t give a shit. Who they were mattered, but only so he could kill them the right way.

  Fox can’t die, he thought. He’s the only one who can help the Mountain. Remembering it tasted like ashes in his mouth. He’d thought the fighting for control of the Mountain had ended. Would he and Fox really have to go through all that again?

  Please, no.

  The white void rushed around him, and the egg rushed just ahead. His hair fluttered slightly in a stiff breeze. Breathing wasn’t a problem, even though hell, falling like this should’ve stolen his breath. All he could think of was the Dreaming Sea, but he wasn’t asleep.

  He could only wish he was.

  At first Eagle didn’t realize he neared the end of the tunnel. The wind slowed, but he didn’t notice the dimension in the white just ahead until they were nearly on top of it. The egg shot out of an aperture into more white space.

  The portal slipped shut.

  For almost ten seconds, Eagle panicked, but the Door was… established? They opened one here more often. He slipped right through the border of realities and bsted off across seemingly endless white floor. There was nothing to grab—and he tried—but at least he slowed down as the floor tilted uncertainly backward. At first, he took the curving white ceiling for the sky. White shapes fshed past, rge and small, as far as he could see, but he didn’t make sense of it until he slowed.

  Eggs—thousands of them, just like the one that had Fox inside. He felt sick, and not only because he kept rolling.

  Near the apex of his roll, he slowed enough to leap to his feet and ghost his way back to where he started. He caught sight of clutches of vast eggs in the distance to either side, with people in bck swarming them like tiny toys. There was a constant buzz of magic in the air, in the floor, in the eggs. They were using it to—what?

  Eagle shook his head as he crept past a slender, pearly white hoop on a stand, three times the size of the egg that helped steal his beloved. Of course. He’d hated portal technology every time he’d come across it. It made things too easy. Even Eagle had to travel. When you stopped doing that, what were you?

  When he got close enough to hear talk, he concealed himself among a clutch of the smaller, car-sized eggs and listened. Even his feet were hidden by shadow. At least his clothes were dry now.

  A distant ring of voice, a single sylble: “Clear!” People he couldn’t see from here approached at two o’clock, pushing something on wheels—a long thing. They all wore military boots. He picked out four, no—three sets of steps. Magic buzzed away in front. Another hoop like the one he’d seen, he was pretty sure.

  Whatever these people were, he could understand them talking. That meant their nature was soaked in enough magic for him to grasp what they said—and their technology bore out the theory. It would have been better if they’d bothered to say anything at all.

  So much for that strategy. They were down to serious business now. Checking behind him, Eagle saw only neat clusters of eggs of varying sizes, from cars like the one before him to the vast faraway monsters, spread in rows across the whole of the pce. A chill crept up his spine.

  There had to be a chance. He didn’t want to leave here without Fox, over one shoulder if necessary, like they used to do. When this was over, they’d cradle and kiss each other, and then there would be more, and all the worlds would sing a song together, which only Eagle could hear.

  The worlds would sing for him tonight. He’d bled for the sound, and for the man who made it in his body. It was only right.

  At st, the approaching people stopped. Their strange echoes faded in the vast, curving chamber. A tiny rush of air sounded.

  People erupted from the other side of the egg, moving away from him. He shut his eyes for a moment, unbearably tense like a lute string ready to pop. Any minute now, they’d bring Fox out. Eagle bent an eye around the egg he hid behind.

  When they brought Fox into his view, wheeling him on a gurney, Eagle crunched down on the inside of his cheek to keep from crying out.

  Fox couldn’t be dead, but he looked like it, so still. His head y at a limp angle in a nest of sweaty soft curls—but he would be a lot more useful alive. At least there was that. The pill was a bitter one. Eagle’s fingers searched, touching pces he’d normally be wearing a knife, but he found only one left in his harness, nearest the right armpit.

  There were so many of these people already, and the space swallowed them up. There was room for many, many more.

  They wouldn’t stay dead. If they did, he might have a chance of getting by so many and stealing Fox. This pce was lousy with artificial Doors. It would have been easy if—

  Well, not easy, but doable. As it was, the timing was all wrong. They lived again too fast.

  He followed them as they walked among the eggs with the most precious treasure in any world on the gurney among them. You’d never know that from their dead silence. They took a straight path—but then, they wouldn’t be expecting to be followed, here in their own pce. It let Eagle move from spot to shadowed spot, never remaining long.

  His bare feet were soundless on the wide floor, but the feel of it beneath his soles was unmoored, unpnted. Unsteady. A strange hum passed constantly up into his bones. He followed the sound of the gurney as it rolled on, echoing. The eggs parted suddenly, showing him a long diagonal line down to the bck pit at the end of the huge room, and the people between him and it. He darted to the next egg, another car, and behind it, so he could peer out at the pit.

  It was full of stars. Eagle shivered and hurried after Fox, still keeping his distance, though he wanted to be close. A fairy drifted after him, a bck one just like the pit, sharply defined against the white walls, the white floor. Not now, he thought, trying to push it back like he’d been able to do sometimes in the past. It wouldn’t do much good in the end. The fairies always found him.

  Finally, the people who had Fox made it to the edge they were going for. A door slid open to admit them; Eagle dashed after, hoping to catch it. If he made it, there’d be a whole new set of problems, but if he didn’t, he’d lose his love completely.

  He flicked out of the door just as it closed. He stayed low, out of their direct line, and slipped behind some equipment. He couldn’t begin to guess at the purpose of these machines, strange arms gangling over ft sbs, but he didn’t like them.

  The people—whoever they were—pushed Fox into another egg at the center of this smaller, egg-shaped chamber. The ceiling still vaulted high overhead. The egg where they’d taken Fox was on its side. There were a few small windows in it.

  Eagle’s knuckles itched to punch something—someone, especially when they all came out without the gurney. He could make a run for it, get in, get Fox, but no way to get out again—and they’d all see him. He could kill them again and again, but only for so long before his arms tired, his bones shook. Before they killed him back.

  Then Fox would have no help, just like before; just like before, Fox would have to undertake his journey alone, and when he needed Eagle most, Eagle would have failed him. Again.

  Even worse, Eagle would have to live with it. Some more.

  The double doors on the cottage-sized egg slid shut. He made himself watch, like Fox would want him to, like someone so small was best at. They were doing something on the other side of the egg, clicking and ccking with switches and buttons, but he couldn’t see, and still, nobody was talking. They provided him almost nothing to work with.

  The fairy who’d come with Eagle drifted curiously toward a hole in the ceiling, just above the egg. There was a loud click, echoing from the walls and ceiling, and a sudden, ominous whir. The fairy dashed back; Eagle couldn’t bme it. The whirring built until it set off a nasty, soundless ping in Eagle’s skull.

  Golden lightning shattered from the egg in the center and struck the hole. It left a trace of sparkle floating in its wake. Again, the click, again that horrible whir, higher and higher—Eagle gnashed his teeth. The lightning cracked again.

  That was nasty backsh, and worse, the bitterest pill he’d ever swallowed. He’d seen Fox cast spells often enough; the visual effects were always warm gold. Since Fox had been tapping Eagle for extra magic over a year now, they always had a handful of glitter in them too.

  Usually, Eagle would smile to see it. Now his face was grim in the tangled shadow of the equipment. Fox would live, if this was what they could do; they would drain magic through him until they couldn’t anymore, and they couldn’t if he was dead.

  They’d gone to a lot of trouble to get him, and they’d get the most if they kept him alive and kicking. Eagle hated it for him while the terrible machine clicked and whirred, stealing what Eagle had given.

  He’d spill an ocean of blood for his beautiful Fox. Before this was through, he was looking at a nice deep alpine ke. His head felt terrible. He wanted to run, but there was nowhere to go, no open doors or convenient hatches. The golden lightning tore across his eyes. If they ripped Fox’s aura even a little bit, he’d—

  He’d do nothing he wasn’t pnning to do already. But he’d enjoy it more.

  He waited and watched. When the egg fell quiet at st, they wheeled Fox out. Eagle strained, hoping to see his chest move, but they pushed the gurney away.

  Fox made a tiny, heartbroken moan as another door flicked open, the same wordless moan he made deep in his dreams.

  It ripped Eagle like talons. They took Fox away down a curving corridor; he couldn’t follow anymore because a door slid shut behind them. He didn’t want to risk using the Elsewheres. What if he couldn’t get back here?

  He’d find his own way around. Wasn’t he used to doing that? Time to go exploring.