Keeping It Real Read online

  A flicker of something hot ran across her hands, a tiny flame, but she was already letting him go. He nodded. Lila saw his andalune body clearly then. The dust glittered inside it and was spun around as though in the glare of a private sun. It drew suddenly very close to him and then vanished. He pulled part of his shirt over his face to take a breath with his eyes screwed shut, everything about him turning the soft beige shade of the earth. Then Zal sang the circle, just one breath, a few elvish words, a few clear notes that made Lila aware of the junction between her flesh and metal body as cleanly as if they were being cut in two.

  She felt a change in the air, in the temperature, and the quality of the ground but she had no time to put these things together before they were surrounded in a boiling yellow gale of fire. Lila flinched automatically from what she thought would be blistering heat, but the air against her skin was cool. Through a gap of a few inches she stared into a roiling heart of flame and felt nothing of it.

  Zal coughed and spat. “This won’t hold for long against that. And whoever is its master.”

  “Why not?” Lila asked, looking down at her feet and seeing they were standing on lilac-coloured sand, looking up at the sky and seeing the most delicate of rose clouds against a turquoise blue. She and Zal, alone inside a column of fire, standing in another world.

  “I can feel how strong that thing is,” he said and to her questioning gaze gave an awkward shrug. “Who were you expecting? Mithrandir?”

  “How long?” The fire curled and licked at the invisible barrier greedily. Lila would not step away.

  “Minutes,” he said, closing his eyes. Suddenly he yawned.

  “What are you doing?” Lila was alarmed. She couldn’t believe he was relaxed enough to feel like yawning.

  “I’m tired,” he said. “And holding this is very tiring. You wouldn’t understand. I’m sure you’ll have another plan by then. That jousting thing was very cool.”

  “Can you take us to where this circle is for real?”

  “No,” he said. “Not nearly.”

  “Can we walk and take it with us?” she asked, starting to feel desperate.

  “No. I didn’t think about that. It’s fixed on the earth. Part of earth elemental magic. I could have done it in air but I wasn’t… it wasn’t what I did.” He shrugged and peered more closely at the fire. “I think we’re inside a phoenix. That’s interesting. I didn’t know they were fire all the way through. I thought they were hollow, like those disappointing chocolate Easter rabbits.”

  Lila pushed thoughts of impending death and strangling him to one side, “Zal, do you know why these people are out to get you?”

  “Don’t like me.”

  “The Great Spell,” she prompted.

  Zal was very serious now. “Yeah, that. I do somewhat fit the recipe for global disaster there. But they don’t really want that. Might think they do. Who knows?”

  “Someone clearly thinks so.”

  “Yeah, no prizes for guessing who they are.”

  “Enlighten me.”

  “Nobody wants to cut off their kingdom from the pollution of other races and their ideas more than those bastards in Sathanor.”

  “The High Elves?”

  “The High Elves,” he said, his ears flattening to his head completely. Lila saw that he was starting to struggle to stay upright. He folded his arms across his chest in determination. “Not all of them. Some. All it takes. And by the feel of this they’ve been building their strength a long time. We’ve got another two minutes, maybe one and a half.”

  Lila bit her lip and thought. If this was down to who he said it was, no way would they want Zal dead. She decided to take the gamble and quickly stripped off her bike jacket.

  “Is this my two-minute charity window?” Zal asked, frowning.

  “Put it on,” Lila ordered, pushing the jacket into his arms. She stripped off the trousers too, leaving herself in her military issue shorts and vest, all metal exposed. “And these. Move!” Her boots would have to lie wherever they were for ever, lost in time and space when the circle expired.

  “Why?” He obeyed her. He was more dextrous than a human man, and more graceful, even when stuffing his Elf sleeves into her clothes.

  “We’re getting out of here,” she said. “And it’s going to be very hot, and then very, very cold.”

  “And how does your not wearing anything of note…”

  “Nuclear reactor core,” she said absently, peering at their surroundings. She could feel heat on her arms and shoulders, face and chest now, slowly increasing. “How you doing?” Zips and poppers sounded like flame crackling.

  “Thank god neither of us likes cakes,” he said, but without any zeal.

  Lila turned and saw him swaying on his feet. She caught him before he fell and braced him against her. At the last minute she grabbed hold of all his long blond hair and twisted it rapidly together, jamming it down the neck of the jacket. “Stand on my feet. Go on. Do it. Okay, let the circle go.”

  “Hmm?”

  She glanced at him, mistakenly, and made eye contact. As the ports on the soles of her feet were opening onto the lilac ground she lost herself in a deep and puzzling warmth and darkness. The jet systems in her ankles came online and she felt the fire’s heat wash away in a sudden cool, like mountain water, as Zal’s aethereal body flooded out of him and leapt free of the tight control he had kept it under during the casting of the Zoomenon circle. It gushed over her like a tide, before falling back to its normal place a half an inch beyond his own skin.

  It didn’t mean anything, she told herself, though she inwardly registered it as a definite embrace.

  She shut her eyes and allowed herself only the smallest of interior smiles at the vision of all-leather-clad Zal in her arms. Timing was everything. She had to get it right. She felt the subtle vibrations coming up through her skeleton as the intake vents behind her calves opened up and she felt the ground move away, heard the sheet and scatter of sand being blasted, being made into glass under her toes. “Now!”

  The cool air of their envelope met the inrushing hot ionised gas of the phoenix and its oxygen gave the fire a sudden white brightness. It licked around Lila’s legs and singed the leather of her trousers and the soles of Zal’s boots, but it was confounded by the huge wash-out of her jets as she and Zal rose straight up on their own blazing trail. The phoenix recoiled from them as she had hoped; happy to imprison them, but afraid to damage what it was guarding.

  The spell creature turned its massive head to watch them, beak opening as it spread its wings again and took to the air. But Lila was very high, too high and too fast. She navigated the bitter cold Jetstream above the cloudline and felt Zal’s physical shock at the sudden change, the loosening of his hold on her as his hands lost their strength. Condensation was rapidly turning to frost in the tendrils of hair around his face. And still the firebird climbed after them.

  She saw an eagle, as large as the phoenix, coming out of the west. She glanced at Zal’s face—his lips were pale with cold, almost white, but he was grinning at her.

  “Did you notice how we’re always together like this?” he said. “And there’s an eagle behind you.”

  Lila cut the jets. They fell like stone. The eagle swooped after them, folding its wings into an arrow shape, but it was too big and the air resistance would not let it pass quickly enough. The phoenix, a conjuration that was seriously challenged for sustenance in unmagical Otopian space, was diminishing, its power fading as it literally burned away the magic that kept it alive. Such a thing could only be temporary here. Lila looked down at the fast-approaching earth and saw two dark figures on a single bike riding to the spot where her lovely red machine had died and become a blackened, deformed wreck. Finally her call out was answered.

  “We can’t get to you in time,” Malachi said. He sounded awkward, but Lila didn’t have time to think about that.

  “Fuck,” she said under her breath, and then to Zal. “Can you swim?”
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br />   But her final, desperate sea-ditch plan flew out of her head as they were suddenly hit by a terrific side impact. Another eagle, the size of a roc, had swept in lower and it struck them at an angle, seizing them in its huge claws. If she and Zal had been close before they were crushed together now in the force of its grip. The sharp claw tips barely scratched Lila’s metal skin but they cut into Zal and he gasped in pain. His breath didn’t come back easily either.

  Lila employed power hydraulics and levered the claws apart around them, but she didn’t have the span to create a gap big enough to free them, only enough to create breathing space. The eagle righted itself into a smooth gliding arc and bent its head down, looking at them with one, great golden eye and then, in a move of great deftness, used its other foot and pressed two sharp claws around Lila, pulling her away from Zal. She clung on in resistance, the yellow scales of the foot that held Zal easy to grip, only to see one huge sickle of horn curve in easily towards Zal’s stomach.

  “Let go, if you want him to live,” the beast said clearly. The claw punctured Lila’s leathers effortlessly. Zal had frozen with the absolute stillness of mortal fear. She trusted his assessment of the magical creature’s intentions, although it made little sense to her.

  “You need him alive,” she retorted, neither letting go nor struggling back.

  “There are others who will do,” the eagle said. “Shall you see me prove it, little toy?”

  Lila looked once into Zal’s face. “I’ll come for you,” she promised.

  He gave her the slightest of smiles, “I should think so. It’s your job.”

  Lila let go of the eagle’s foot and without a second’s hesitation the eagle let go of her. They were out over the ocean. She radioed her position in as she fell, watching the bird soar high and beat its way steadily north, towards the nearest Alfheim gateway. The pale effluvia of the firebird’s remains had scattered over the desert like marshfires. She saw the two elf agents watching her fall. She saw the tankers that had blocked their way start up and drive away, faeries at the wheel.

  Faeries? She glanced again at the elves and saw them signalling to her. The eagle was a dot in the sky. Lila realised that she could not simply go barrelling into Alfheim after it. They would shoot her easily. Instead, she took a deep breath and descended, coming to land a safe distance from her old bike. Her jets blew up more dust into the gleaming morning air and she had to walk through it alone this time, furious and ready to fight.

  Dar was sitting on the ground next to her bike when she approached the two of them. One of the dirt bikes lay close by. He was clearly in considerable pain and his breathing was so shallow it was nothing more than rapid gasping. A pale red foam had gathered at the corner of his mouth and he was too hurt to brush it away. Both his arms were strapped across his chest. He glared at Lila, but without the fire of anger she expected. His blue eyes were the same colour as the clear sky. His partner stood at his side, her face taut and grim.

  “Agent Black,” she said stiffly. “The time has come for a moment of honesty between us.”

  “I’m all ears,” Lila said.

  “We do not seek to murder Zal, nor to harm him. We are trying to protect him.”

  “You’ve got a funny way of showing it,” Lila retorted.

  The female elf’s face was impassive, but her fingers strayed to Dar’s hair, touched it briefly, and Lila realised they were in aethereal contact, talking to one another secretly. The agent mastered whatever she felt about Lila and said, “Zal would have been taken to a safe place, beyond the reach of those who have captured him now. Your efforts have had the opposite effect to the one you desired. You have made it quite impossible for us to do what we must. Such strength and cunning are to be congratulated, and your feelings are clearly—involved.”

  Lila opened her mouth but the elf cut her off smoothly.

  “Curb your anger, I mean no slight by it. We are all prisoners of the heart. Still, this has become a very difficult matter in the last few minutes. Dar would ask me to ask you if you would ride with him now, back into Alfheim, to pursue your mission. He will soon heal, once you reach Lyrien and then he and those loyal to the true Jayon Daga will help you.”

  “Forgive my scepticism, but in that case how come you were sending all those poison pen letters and messages by arrowshot?” Lila demanded.

  “We did not send the letters,” the agent replied icily. “The Daga has enemies within. We have compromised them in Otopia, though we could not stop the Lady’s eagles. Unlike her party we wish to keep the Severed Realms attached to one another, for the interests of Alfheim will not be served by separation. Time runs short. You must decide. Go with Dar and take a chance at saving Zal, or go on your own and be lost in Sathanor, hunted by the Daga, consumed by the dangers of the land, or vanquished by our common enemy, for the Lady is mighty and in H Alfheim none of your strength can match her power. You did not K match it here.”

  Lila glanced again at Dar and he met her eyes. It took all her resolve not to break first. He took a desperate, difficult breath and his voice was full of whistles and bubbles,

  “I apologise to you, Lila Black, for causing your present incarceration in metal. Be assured it was no choice of mine.”

  “I remember who chose what,” Lila hissed. “I was there, and there was nothing wrong with my mind.”

  “No. You are far too clever for your own good,” he whispered and closed his eyes, unable to speak any more.

  Abruptly his partner sank to her knees and supported him before he fell. Her eyes were narrow and dark with anger as she stared at Lila, “He will soon die here. Go now. This bike will take two, but not three.”

  “We’re not going to make the Alfheim gate on a dirt bike,” Lila said. “It’s two counties away, back in Bayside.”

  “There are other ratholes to fit through,” the elf said. “He will tell you where to go. You can make it easily. Once you are there, other means will come to you.”

  “I can get my own means here,” Lila insisted. “My field team is on its way as we speak.” She hated the idea of saving Dar, in any way. She couldn’t stand the idea of having him so close to her, even as vulnerable as he was.

  “Do not waste more time!” the elf pleaded with her, and Lila saw tears form in her long eyes. “Dar cannot wait.” She took a breath as if she would beg more but then held herself back. Pride and anger fought to take control of her features. She was fierce, Lila thought, and she was desperate. It was not good to be the object of that gaze and it made her feel like a total jerk.

  Lila went forward, sun shining off her metal armour into her eyes, and knelt on one knee beside Dar. She moved slowly and gently in spite of her reservations, and made herself touch his shoulder. The andalune body she had been dreading had either subsided or was contained. She felt nothing but the cloth of his jacket. She glanced up at the female elf, “What’s your name?”

  “Gwil,” the elf said, almost spitting in her haste and frustration.

  “Okay, Gwil. I’ll lift him on the bike in front of me. You have to tie him to me so that I don’t lose him on the way, yeah?” Unwittingly, Lila found herself gazing longingly at the lump of tarry machinery that had been her bike. The rockracer that Gwil gave her instead was pitiful by comparison. Still, even though they taxed its suspension and power to the limits, it would do.

  Lila turned her attention back to Dar and crouched down with his back to her chest. She took hold of him under his strapped arms, bracing against the lower part of his ribcage, but getting his elbows involved anyway. She felt the faint judder of broken bones shifting as she lifted and he made a pitiful sound, a soft shriek, that would have been a scream to anybody who could breathe. He made no resistance or effort to support his own weight, because he couldn’t. As she released his weight onto the bike, things must have got worse for him because his contained andalune released. Its unique touch was exactly the same flavour as it had been in the moment he had maimed her years ago, but now she could sense
only weakness and suffering where it seeped against her human body. It was fragile and evaporating rapidly. To her surprise and chagrin Lila felt sick at the thought of the pain she was causing him and in that instant her hate for him left her. He became simply a casualty, and she his ambulance driver.

  “A moment.” Gwill put her hand on Lila’s as Lila kicked the engine into life. She spoke over the sputter and fizz. “If he is not conscious when the Daga find you they will not believe your story, given who and what you are. Tell them that Gwilaren Amanita of Lyrien has sent you.”

  “Amanita?” Lila said, surprised by the name’s connection to deadly poison.

  The elf grinned mirthlessly, “Not all elves are lovely in name and aspect,” she said, stepping back. Dar slumped against Lila’s chest, his head on her shoulder.

  Lila glanced back once, “Gwilaren Amanita, I will get him to Alfheim.”

  “Do more, Lila Black. Your ambition insults us.” Gwil shouted after her, with uncanny acuity. “Finish your Game with Zal, and discover the truth of your own making.”

  Lila’s ears burned at the elf’s words. How could she know about the Game? Or did she mean something else altogether? Her embarrassment shamed her, and her responsibility for Dar’s state did also, in spite of all the rational rules of combat that she tried to deploy against the feeling. But she soon forgot it as she felt the touch of his andalune focus where it touched the exposed skin of her shoulders. Through its agency she found herself able to hear Dar’s voice in her mind, soft but clear, as he directed her into the wilderness beyond any roads, deeper and deeper, until they were quite alone among the rocks and the brush and the strange, small plants that lived in the desert.

  There, where a wind-scoured archway of old tufa framed the blazing midday sky, Lila rode up confidently across a plain of ascending rock towards thin air which looked to be nothing more than a leap to certain death.

  They passed through a strange and silent sheet, a moment of liquid potential, and emerged instead into a thick, rich, dripping green forest. The bike snarled to a halt in a narrow glade, spraying mud and water up over Lila’s legs and splattering her arms and face.