Perry paused at the top of the hill, closed his eyes to the beauty of the moonlit forest and listened to what the silence could tell him. The night spoke of many things. Mice hunted for insects under the alder saplings and sedges. An owl winged silently somewhere over his head, the ultimate stealth hunter, invisible until it chose to show its talons to the unwary. A rat snake hunted the heat contrails of cottontails in the tunnels under the blackberry thicket. Somewhere, far down the hill, a fox had already found its dinner, carrying it to the pups in its den.
When he was absolutely sure no mind of the higher order had its awareness tuned to this hillside, he parted the brush and jumped down the hole hidden there. He slid down the ancient lava tube, slowing his fall by pressing the soles of his tennis shoes and the palms of his hands into the weather-smoothed walls. His toes lost their purchase at the bottom and he had just enough time to reorient his body and relax before he impacted with the cave floor. He landed with his usual grace and looked around in the flickering light. The other kids were already there, having converged on this spot using the labyrinth of tunnels that honeycombed this hill. Henry and Jackson were feeding small branches into a little flame that had the promise of great bonfire. Perry shrugged out of his backpack and tossed it down next to Wanda. She paused, her pocketknife frozen over the green stick she was sharpening into a and looked up, an expectant look on her perfect brow.
“Well, what did you find out?” she asked. The other kids stopped talking, to hear his answer.
“I was right. They have found him,” Perry announced, as he pulled open his pack and pulled out a small loaf of black bread, a stone jar of soft cheese, a jug of mead and a paper full of sausages. He said nothing more for a moment. Instead, he placed his booty next to the already large pile of groceries they had collected for tonight’s clandestine meeting.
“What? No way!” exclaimed Henry. There was a note of disappointment in his voice. Henry had made a bet that the Elders, being notoriously impotent of late, would never be able to untangle the web of illusions and obfuscations surrounding the Singularity they had been tracking. Perry had taken part of that bet just to irritate Henry. He had as little faith in the Elders as the rest of them. The Singularity, as everyone called it, was an energetic anomaly buried deep within the Middle Reaches. Discovered a decade ago, it was the source of much conjecture and frustration and had defied all attempts at magical observation, which could have been ignore if not for the fact that any magic of the extra sensory kind went horribly askew in its vicinity. It was only in the last few years that the Elders decided that the nexus of the anomaly centered upon a being and not a point of earth power or a magical object.
“So, they are on their way to get him, right?” Wanda asked, relieved..
“I can’t wait to meet him,” Sherry breathed, hugging herself as she shivered dramatically. Sherry’s adolescent appetite for male company was only just emerging but it promised to be a raging hunger by the time she reached adulthood. Henry scowled at her, his jealousy apparent.
“Keep it real, girl. They are not going to let any of us near him,” Jackson snorted, a cynical sneer on his face. Jackson refused to buy into the rising excitement in his packmates. Perry could understand that. They all had been disappointed more times than they could count. It was hard to keep hope alive in the face of such insurmountable odds. Weren’t they all refugees from the war the Shadow Lord waged upon the nascent population of demigods currently emerging within the Middle Reaches? The Elders saved who they could, plucking children from the arms of their parents the moment they exhibited the first sign of power, hiding them all behind the walls of magic and illusion that surrounded this land they called the Enclave. All very noble, but for the kids ripped from loving parents. Being powerless and afraid turned the innocence of childhood into paranoia and hyper-vigilance. You learned to trust no one but the members of your own pack.
Perry hated to be the one to add to their pessimistic view of the world.
“They aren’t going to do anything,” Perry said, shaking his head.
Jackson pressed his lips together and looked away, silent.
“No,” wailed Henry softly, “they have to go get him. He is all alone, like we were. Why would they leave him out in the cold like that?”
“You can’t know the intentions of the Elders for sure,” Wanda stated firmly, ever the little mother, trying to control the group’s rising anxiety.
Perry reached up and pulled something small and metallic out from under his collar. He held out his palm and set what looked like a toy beetle there.
“I had a bug in the situation room. It was passive so their sweeps didn’t catch it. I’ve been on the cleaning crew all week. It was dead easy planting them and then retrieving them after the meetings. That’s why I was so late. I had to download the audio. Replay.”
The beetle responded to the voice command. It shivered and extended legs and antennae. The antennae vibrated, the hum turning into sound. It sounded like the shuffling of feet and a distant mumble of conversation.
“Filter all but human voice and amplify,” Perry ordered it.
The beetle spread its wings, which seemed to amplify the sound.
“Chief,” said a voice.
“Minister. I take it this is not a social call?” said another.
“Skip to the words: What can we do,” Perry ordered it.
“What can we do? Any move we make will compromise our own safety,” said a woman’s voice.
“We do nothing. The safest course is to wait and see what happens,” said the first voice.
“End playback,” Perry ordered it. The bug shivered and sank back into its inanimate form. Perry looked up at the members of his pack.
“To sum up hours of arguing, Manny is suspicious of the way they found him. Too easy, he said. Like we were being hunted and not the other way around.”
“What? Surely the Singularity must have know he was being hunted all this time. Why else would he have tried so hard to hide? If we found him, its because we have worked so hard to track him down,” Henry said. “What is suspicious about that?”
“The other side has been looking, too,” Sherry said, frowning. They all paused at that. Sherry had an uncanny ability of cutting to the heart of a thing by simply stating the obvious. “I’d still be hiding, living a lie in the outside world, if the Elders hadn’t found me.”
“That’s the freaky part,” Perry said, frowning. “Benny thinks the other side already found him. Long time ago. He figures the minute the Singularity started exhibiting power, the other side found him. They think that is why the wards and illusions are so thick around him. It’s a defense mechanism to cope with a constant threat.”
“That was over ten years ago. Nobody can hold off the Shadows for that long,” Wanda whispered, shuddering in horror.
Jackson looked up, a look of sick despair on his face.
“So,” he said softly, “we are too late. We all found our powers at the age of seven. That means he is older than seventeen. Too old for the this school. He has lived too long under the influence of the Shadow Realm. The Elders must know he has been subverted and consumed. Now, the most powerful demigod on the planet is working against us.”
“No!” Wanda hissed angrily “I refuse to believe it. We would not still be here if that were true.”
“That’s why Manny is being cautious. He is suspicious that the failure of the cloaking illusions was intentional. It might be a trap set by the other side,” Perry said, throwing a stick into the fire.
Jackson picked up a large branch and violently snapped it in two, a silent snarl on his face.
“It’s OK, Jackson,” Henry said, reaching out a hand to touch his shoulder. Jackson shrugged it off angrily and leap to his feet.
“It is not OK! Nothing is OK,” he shouted. “What if it’s not a trap? What if the wards are coming down because he is in trouble and needs our help? Did anyone bother to think of that? No. They are busy hiding and covering their tracks while the one thing we need is out there dying. Things are going to hell out there beyond the walls of this school and he is stuck in it, trying to survive and all we can do is talk about it. Talk, talk, talk. I am sick of talking! We need to do something.”
The light of the fire betrayed him. Everyone saw the tears glittering in Jackson’s eyes.
“He’s right,” Wanda said softly.
Perry looked at her, surprised. Wanda was the last person he would have expected to second any vote for foolhardy action.
“We can’t leave the school grounds let alone cross the veil into the Middle Reaches. How are we going to help him? We don’t know who he is or where he lives,” Perry stated, trying to insert reason into the rising passion around the fire.
“We don’t need to leave,” Sherry said brightly.
“Huh?” grunted Henry.
“We can use my seeing stones and conjure his image. If he is looking for us, truly looking, then the stones will cut through the illusions and show him too us. Maybe we can get clues to his location that way.”
“The Elders must have already done this. Why would it work for us?” Henry said doubtfully.
“The Elders are afraid of him. I don’t think they even tried,” Jackson said impatiently. “If we have to become psychic voyeurs to find him, then lets get it over with.”
“Uh, I am not a voy…” Sherry looked hurt.
“Fine. I agree. We need information,” Perry said, breaking into the impending argument. “The more we know, the more we know what to do. Did you bring your stones, Sherry?”
“I always have them,” she stated simply.
“Let’s do this, then!” Henry yelled excitedly, jumping to his feet. He pulled a long thin branch from the wood pile and began scrapping an arc in the dust. The other children stared at him, momentarily nonplussed by his odd action. It was Wendy who first realized what he was doing and pulled her athame from her belt. She went to the opposite side of the cave and bent to inscribe the rest of the circle.
“Henry, you and Perry do the star, just make sure the fire pit is inside the heart of it and the lines are not broken,” Wanda ordered over her shoulder.
Henry and Perry took out their belt knives and began sketching in the dirt. By the time the circle had been drawn and the lines of the star were precisely delineated to create the eight points, Sherry had her stones out and had them placed at eight evenly spaced points around the edge of the fire pit. She sat on her heels and rested her palms on her knees, her eyes closed.
“Where do you want us, Sherry?” Perry asked.
“Evenly around the star, inside the circle, but not touching any lines. I need to think. Be quiet.”
Perry squatted in what he figured was the southernmost void of the octagram. Wanda took the space opposite him. Jackson stood to his left and Henry took the right. Sherry began to hum. The fire flared blue and green as pitch boiled from a pine log. Sherry lifted her hands, her fingers sketching a bubble of light that rose and settled in the heart of the flames.
Perry watched, hypnotized by the flickering light and the sound of Sherry’s humming. The fire seemed to grow solid, there, in the heart of the fire, just above the logs. A snake of light coiled sinuously for a moment before it grew legs and a head and lifted itself into the air, trying to escape the limits of its fiery cage. The salamander could only go so far, being tied to the logs that birthed it.
A log broke and fell, sending up a shower of sparks. The salamander split in half as something fierce roared softly and threw itself against the night of the cave. Sherry squeaked in surprise but did not drop her hands nor lose her resolve. A thing with massive jaws and eyes full of light rose out of the fire, shook itself and looked about, snarling, the light of it turning the dark of the cave into daylight.
“Dare you disturb my rest?” it hissed at them.
“Nice illusion, Sherry,” Henry said dryly, “You’ve conjured a phantasm.”
The head spun around and eyes of light impaled the spot above Henry’s head.
“Who are you? Are you Shadow?”
“Shhh!” Wanda hissed softly. “It is not a construct.”
The great head swung about and looked in vain for the body that went with the voice. Wanda ducked her head and covered her mouth with her hands.
“Begone, Shadow!” it hissed. “Did you not learn your lesson long ago?”
“Don’t shush me,” Henry glared at Wanda. “It is a one way viewing. It cannot possibly hear us.”
The head turned towards Henry again.
“I hear you. Do you think my magic so puny, that you can spy on me with impunity?” it hissed. “I feel the touch of your eyes. The weight of your thoughts tear at my flesh. Your need is an illness that I cannot cure.”
“We are not from the Shadow Realms. We are the Children of the Light, demigods in training,” Perry called loudly. The head swung about, staring off into the distance darkness over Perry’s head. It seemed to be blind.
“There are no gods left,” it said, its voice haunted. “They have all turned to stone.”
The apparition condensed and swirled, its light dimming. The jaws receded, the teeth becoming not quite so intimidating.
“Some of us remember the time of the gods. Some of us are trying to bring back those times,” Perry said. He stared at the thing writhing in their fire and a thought bubbled out of his subconscious. “We awoke as if from a long dream and we remembered who we once were. Is it you we have to thank for that?
The fire demon hissed in rage and reformed. Its demon face snarled at the spot above Perry’s head.
“What I did I did for myself. Do not think me so kind as to care that you survived.” it hissed in rage.
“We are grateful, none the less,” Perry said humbly.
The demon laughed a cruel laugh.
“You should not be. If I were truly compassionate, I would have put you all out of your misery. Now you lay beached upon the sand far above the water line with no one to teach you how to breathe.”
The demon’s fire cooled as its shape shifted in the heart of the fire. A stone face glared at them, white heat seeping out of the cracks in its facade.
“You could teach us,” Perry said softly, hopefully.
“Why should I?” it said coolly.
“Because….” Perry faltered.
“Because you know how hard it was for you,” Jackson said firmly. “and you would keep the rest of us from suffering what you have suffered.”
The stone idol shuddered, its surface shattering. Pieces of it fell away until a young girl stood within the fire, a dragonish headdress upon her head. Her eyes were full of light and she was blind to them because of it. Henry hissed in surprise. Perry caught his eye and shook his head fiercely, wishing him quiet. But Perry could not fault him his surprise. They had all been expecting the holder of such ancient power to be adult and male.
“I am only one being and the world hurts me so. How can I help you when I can barely help myself?” the girl said shaking her head so that the whiskers on the dragon mask beat against each other and rang hollowly, the sound somehow comforting.
“We can help you. Let us help you.” Wanda pleaded.
“I am tired,” the girl said, sinking down to hug her knees.”I cannot think. What is the point if you will fail as I have failed?” She pulled the dragon mask down over her face. Perry could not tell which was more disconcerting, the blind eyes made of light or the painted paper eyes that were equally blind.
“You have not failed,” yelled Jackson, his passion making his voice ragged. “We are here. We live. That is your victory.”
“Let us in,” Perry insisted. “Let us help you.”
“In exchange, you can help us…” Wanda faltered.
“Help us understand what it is we are becoming,” Jackson finished.
“You already know,” she said sleepily, as the weight of the dragon headdress seemed to pull her head down. “You will step out into the world and remake it, to please yourself, to please the OneMother. You do not need me to tell you this.”
“Wake, Little Mother,” Perry pleaded. “We are few and the Shadow assails us on every side. We do not have the luxury of learning by mistake when every misstep spells our doom.”
The child lifted her chin and shook her head hard, as if to clear it of cobwebs. The dragon mask caught fire and was consumed, spewing sparks into the darkness. Only the child remained. She could not have been a day older than eight. She stared at them, seeing them for the first time with eyes as ancient as the stone under their feet.
“You are children,” she said in wonder. Then she laughed a bitter laugh that was frightening coming from a child as young as she. “I am doomed.”
The child image flickered and began to fade.
“No!” Jackson yelled. “Do not say that. We can help you fight whatever it is that hurts you.”
“We know how to fight!” Henry added. “We just need someone to …”
“To give us hope,” Wanda said softly. “We need someone who can help us believe in a happy ending.”
“Our magic is strong,” Perry insisted. “We just need a…. place to put it.”
“Are you heroes, then,” mocked the child, “All you need is a cause that is just, a purpose that inspires the heart and fires the mind?”
“Yes, please,” whispered Sherry. Perry looked down at his packmate. Her eyes were full of light and her arms shook with the effort of holding this portal open. Their time was rapidly running out. Even now, the edges of the bubble in the fire wavered as if assailed by a strong wind.
“Tell us how to find you,” Perry begged, his desperate haste adding an edge to his plea.
“Go to the Middle Reaches. I hide in plain sight in a city on the edge of the sea. Westmark, it is called. But be warned. The dragons of the Darkness eat at the edge of my world and my life will be forfeit when they find me.”
“We will come!” Henry shouted at the fading image.
“I dare not hope,” the girl said tragically, gazing out at them, “It is a luxury I cannot afford.”
Something dark coiled up out of the heart of the fire as the image of the child began to grow ragged in its dark wind. The shadow ate the light filled image of the child and turned a serpentine eye towards the children in the cave. Sherry cried out in pain. Wanda screamed and stepped backwards out of the circle, scuffing the lines as she went. Jackson froze as the dark stare of the Shadowlord fell upon him, his belt knife dropping from senseless hands. Henry, head down, crawled to Sherry and, grabbing a handful of her shirt, jerked her away from the shadows that ran from the fire like dark blood, seeking anything living. Perry bared his teeth, snarling in fury at the cold amusement of the thing that dared to smirk in satisfaction in his direction. Shadow seeped into the corners of Perry’s mind.
Perry refused it entrance, forcing himself to think. Something was wrong. The circle was broken. Sherry was no longer acting as conduit. The image should have disappeared. Perry scrambled forward on hands and knees and reached out to knock the seeing stones out of alignment. Wanda screamed a warning as the shadow struck at him, phantom jaws closing around his hand. Perry screamed as pain seared across his mind. He did not stop. He dare not stop. This was all his fault. The Shadowlord could not be allowed to remain here, in the Highreaches. If it were to get loose, none of them had the power to contain it.
Perry swept his arm through the pattern of stones and fire, knocking everything askew. Stones rolled away, in a shower of embers and burning wood. The serpent vanished. Perry had the presence of mind to roll away from the fire and the flare the disturbed embers scattered around him before he curled around the all consuming pain in his hand.
It was the shouting that made him look up.
Jackson had grabbed a pack and was throwing supplies into it, careless of order.
“Where do you think you are going?” Henry yelled, cradling a barely conscious Sherry.
“Were you not paying attention? The Shadow is near to having her. We need to move.”
“Nobody is going anywhere,” Perry growled hoarsely.
“You cannot keep me here!” Jackson screamed.
Perry’s mind flashed red with rage. He was furious about so much, mostly at himself and Jackson was making himself a target. Perry launched himself at Jackson, grabbing at his jacket. The pain in his left hand made it almost useless. He shook a fist under Jackson’s nose.
“See this. This says you stay until I say go. Don’t forget that,” Perry was shouting now.
Henry got to Jackson’s side just in time to grab Jackson’s fist before it connected with the side of Perry’s head.
“Whoa! Calm down, J-dog,” Henry yelled, “We’re going. We just need to do a little more planning. Going off half cocked is only going to get us killed.”
“I didn’t say we were going,” Perry growled.
“What?” said Henry and Wanda as one.
“See!” shouted Jackson, taking another swing at Perry. Henry, distracted, put him in a head lock and turned back to confront Perry.
“Of course we are going,” said Wanda.
“That was the Shadowlord! None of us has the power to take him on,” Perry shouted. He took a breath and tried to calm down. “ Look. I am alpha. I am not risking my entire pack on a suicide mission. You guys are staying here.”
“She’s a little kid. She has figured out how to take them all on and hold them off for this long. We need her. Somebody needs to go get her.”
“Yeah, that’s why I am going. By myself.”
“Sorry, bro,” Henry said, shaking his head. “We’re a pack. We go together or not at all.”
“You need us, Perry,” Wanda added. “Going alone will accomplish nothing but getting you killed.”
“We could all die. Better if just one takes the risk instead of all of us. If I fail, you guys will know why and take a different tack.”
“We don’t have time for more than one try, Perry,” Sherry said softly, looking up at him, her face pale with exhaustion.
“You guys are crazy!” shouted Perry. “Were you listening? Do we know any more than we knew before? No. Now, instead of trying to find a needle in a thousand haystacks, we’ve narrowed it down to one.”
“I know where she lives,” Sherry said. “I saw her house.”
They all stared at her.
“I didn’t see that. Are you sure of what you saw?” Perry asked.
“You weren’t holding a door open and having her walk through your head. She left me an image. And a number. 1633.
“We still don’t know how to get around the Elders and cross the veil,” Perry argued, grasping at reason.
“I’ve been working on that, actually,” Wanda said. “I think I have it solved. Give me a day to gather the spell materials.”
Perry looked at her, loving her for being so brilliant and hating her for dooming them all.
“So,” he whispered, “fate, it seems, has set us upon this path. Let us know where. We will meet you at the edge of the veil in one day.”
“Mmphfff,” said Jackson.
Henry looked down and remembered he still had Jackson in a head lock. He let him go and helped him straighten his hair as an apology.
“Get off, you Neanderthal,” Jackson snapped.
“Love ya, too, J-dog,” Henry said, grinning.
They all laughed as they moved to set the cave to rights and prepare their meal. They would need most of the night to lay their plans and the calories would fuel that task.
Perry let the smile slide off his mouth, a smile that had never reached his eyes. He rubbed the dull ache in his hand, the parting words of the Shadowlord clinging to his mind like the miasma of a putrid swamp.
“Ah, you have found her, at long last,” it had whispered. “How do you like my pet? It is a wonder that you have taken so long to come hunting such a choice morsel. Or perhaps you have grown to love her agony as I have. There is no wine finer.”
Perry shivered and watched his packmates, trying desperately hard not to cry. He had been a fool to think the Elders had not already tried using their seeing stones or been wise enough to know the consequences of the folly of using them.
He stared at the faces of his packmates, faces full of hope, hearts filled with the fire of their quest. They were all going to die. And there was nothing he could do to stop it.
