“Well, I don’t. What does it mean?” She prodded the bags with a finger. “That you were going to give me jewelry? What is so dangerous about the necklaces?”
“Dreams are rarely straightforward. Most likely the necklaces represent something else.”
“Like what?”
“I do not know, but it might be wise to find out.”
Chapter 3: Nuts And Bolts
Wolf spotted Wraith at the fringe of the Ghostlands when he flew back to Turtle Creek. He’d left his domi in the care of his household at Poppymeadow’s enclave and returned to help deal with the beast that attacked her. He dropped down to land beside his First.
“I don’t know what Storm Horse was thinking.” Wraith growled in greeting. “How did he end up with all the babies?”
Little Horse had chosen the five youngest sekasha to make up the Hand that accompanied Tinker into Turtle Creek; not one of them was over two hundred. True, any death would have been grievous, but to lose the five youngest would have been a blow to the close-knit band of warriors.
“They are the ones my domi is most comfortable with.” Wolf knew that Wraith was truly rattled if he was using the nickname, as some of the “babies” were in truth older than Wolf. His First Hand didn’t like to remind him that he was impossibly young for his level of responsibilities.
“Oni, they could have handled,” Wraith allowed and then handed a sheet of paper to Wolf. “But not an oni dragon. I’m amazed any of them are still alive.”
Wolf recognized Rainlily’s fluid hand in the drawing. The low slung creature looked like a cross between a ferret and a snake. “An oni dragon? Are you sure?”
Wraith clicked his tongue. “It’s much smaller than the one we fought when we closed the gate between Earth and Onihida, and the coloring is different. It might be just a less dangerous cousin, like we have the wyvern cousins to our dragons, or perhaps a hatchling. It would explain how they survived.”
The battle had been shortly before Wolf was born. A Stone Clan trading expedition had discovered the way from Earth to Onihida by accident. When the survivors managed to return to Elfhome with their tale of capture and torture, the clans united to send a force to Earth to stop the oni spreading from Onihida to Earth, and then, possibly to Elfhome. Wraith Arrow and others of Wolf’s First Hand had been part of the oni war.
“Are oni dragons that dangerous?” Wolf folded the paper and tucked it away. He would have to let the Earth Interdimensional Agency know of this new threat if they couldn’t kill the beast quickly. The EIA could best spread warnings through the humans.
“We lost two dozen sekaska in the caves to the beast. We couldn’t hurt it. It could—” Wraith frowned as he searched for a word. “— sidestep through walls as if they didn’t exist, and it called magic like you do.”
“How did you kill it?”
“When the Stone Clan pulled down the gate and the connection between the worlds broke, its attack pattern totally changed. It dropped its shield and became like a mink in a chicken coop, stupid with bloodlust. We boxed it in so it couldn’t turn and we hacked it to pieces.”
“Maybe the oni was controlling it magically. Little Horse said that the tengu used a whistle to call it off them — perhaps the sound only triggered a controlling spell. Earth doesn’t have magic.”
“So their control over it vanished and we were fighting the true beast?”
Wolf nodded. “Perhaps.”
“So the key is to kill the controller first.”
“Perhaps.” Wolf didn’t want to fall into a wrong mindset. He crouched beside the torn earth and spilt blood to find the monster’s tracks. They were as long as his forearm, with five claw marks splayed like a hand. Pressed into the dirt at the center of one track was one of Tinker’s omnipresent bolts, a bright point of polished aluminum glittering in the black earth. It must have fallen from her pocket during the fight. Wolf picked it out of the dirt, realizing for the first time the size of his beloved compared to what attacked her. Gods above, sometimes he wished her sense of self preservation matched her courage; she couldn’t keep leaping into the void and swimming back. One of these times, the void was going to drink her down. He rolled the bolt around his palm to shake off the dirt, thinking he should talk to her about being more careful, only he didn’t want to fall into the trap of becoming her teacher.
Wraith crouched beside Wolf, and stirred his fingers through the dirt. “Domi showed great courage in protecting Little Horse. She needs, though, someone who can steer her away from the dangers. Little Horse is lost at summer court.”
From Wraith’s tone, the sekasha also thought that Windwolf was too deep in the first throes of love to think clearly. Perhaps he was. “Are you volunteering?”
Wraith tilted his head. “Do you want me to?”
Wolf considered, tumbling the bolt through fingers. Wraith was not the first to come forward in the last two days and let him know that they’d be willing to change allegiance to Tinker. He’d given them all permission to advance their case to Tinker since she needed at least four more sekasha to make a Hand. Wraith, though, was his First, and Wolf depended heavily on him. Without Sparrow, losing Wraith would cripple Wolf. “No. I need you. Others plan to offer, she will have plenty to choose from.”
“Yes, but will they guide her?”
Do I want her guided? That was the true question. He’d benefited greatly by choosing sekasha who had served his grandfather, but they had brought subtle pressure to bear on him at all times. This conversation itself was a perfect example of their influence on him. Their persuasion extended out to the rest of the household, reinforcing the caste differences so that Wolf was always correctly above everyone. When the Queen summoned Wolf to Aum Renau, he’d left Little Horse behind to guard over Tinker. The youngest of the sekasha, his blade brother had also been raised in a household where the caste lines had been allowed to blur. Little Horse would be the open minded, affectionate, and least likely to try and change Tinker. Wolf had hated the necessity to make her elf in body — he didn’t want to force her, even by subtle persuasion, to become elf in mind and habit.
No, I do not want her guided in the way that Wraith would.
He would speak with Tinker, but not point her toward the older sekasha. He would allow her and Little Horse to find those they were most comfortable with.
“On this, I will act.” He let Wraith know that the conversation was closed, that he would not discuss it farther. He turned his attention back to the oni dragon.
The main fight area was a chaos of torn earth and blood. The sekasha might be able to read the course of events, but to him it was only churned earth. The bark of surrounding trees was gouged in the dragon’s five clawed pattern.
“It had domi pinned. Little Horse attempted to penetrate its shield.” Wraith pointed at a spot on the ground, and at the nearest scored tree. “It leapt to that tree. Rainlily said that the tengu was on the bridge, so that tree there —” Wraith pointed to a distant tree with claw marks half way up the towering trunk, “is the next set.”
The leap meant the creature was stunningly powerful without magic.
“Let’s see where the trail leads.”
The railing of the bridge was scored deep by the dragon’s claws. After that, however, the track became impossible to follow by the naked eye. The sekasha considered the bridge deck, scuffing it with their boots.