Clayton Emery: Jedit

"Adira!" Johan's trapped voice rang tinny inside the amber shell. "Free me! I can fight Shauku! Match her spell for spell!"

With a dry chuckle, Shauku reeled in Adira as a python might constrict a mouse in its coils. The vampire's free hand touched Adira's wrist with black claws, then slowly pressed. Adira watched her blood ooze from twin punctures that burned and itched. To her everlasting horror, she watched the vampire bring lips to wrist and begin to suck her blood.

Drained, thought the paralyzed pirate. I'll be sucked dry and left a husk, or else rendered a night fiend myself. And I can't move a muscle. Hazezon, where are you?

"Release her!" hissed a tiny voice.

Barely able to avert her eyes, Adira saw Whistledove Kithkin draw her borrowed dagger. Somehow, perhaps because of her small size, or her mystic heritage, the brownie had escaped the petrifying spell. Fast and feisty as a rat-killing terrier, Whistledove's rapier sang, slashing Shauku from neck to elbow, white steel furrowing sallow skin.

The attack netted nothing. Though slit to bone, the undead fiend couldn't bleed. From lips dripping ruby droplets, Shauku commanded, "Die!"

Without a word, Whistledove rolled up brown eyes and pitched face-first on the stone floor with a sickening clonk.

We're finished, thought Adira. All my fault.

Yet they were not, entirely.

Frozen and forgotten was Jasmine Boreal, a witch of nature, who plied not a sword or bow but the essences of the earth, so held a knife not of steel but of bronze, an alloy of brass and tin. The druid in sky-blue knew she was lost, out of her element, not in a cozy forest rich with magically charged greenery, but rather in a dingy cave where even the air was eye-smarting and foul. Still, many forces of nature awaited her beck and call, and a vast friendly forest lay almost overhead. Improvising as best she could while paralyzed, Jasmine Boreal pictured soaring timber, lush pine-scented foliage, and the unending carpet of intertwined roots. Wishing she might sprinkle iron filings and pine shavings, the druid pried open her hand to let fall the bronze knife.

Druidical magic usually brought small results, but with earth elements a little charming went a long way. Swollen by magic, the knife's ping on the cavern floor was amplified a hundred times, then a thousand. In an eye blink, the floor of the chamber jumped less than an inch. Yet that minor groundquake bucked the earth as if snatching a rug from under everyone's feet.

Adira, straining backward from Shauku, was flipped head over heels to whang her skull so hard she saw fiery spots. Shauku shivered into misty droplets, temporarily ethereal. Jedit Ojanen was jolted and dumped to all fours, where he clutched stone with battle-blunted claws. Murdoch was pitched forward onto his stolen shield. Heath, Sister Wilemina, and Magfire's foresters spilled like nine pins. Even Jasmine Boreal jiggled like a jelly, amazed at the ruckus she'd caused. The groundquake flung dust and ashes in the air that set many sneezing and weeping.

Adira Strongheart had crashed alongside Johan's crystal cage. Temporarily stunned, or still partly paralyzed by the vampire's curse, Adira fumbled to roll over and gain her feet. All the time Johan shouted from two feet away, though his voice was as muffled as if buried alive.

"Loose me, Adira! I can fight Shauku! I have the magical prowess! Get me free, and I swear on my sacred honor I'll combat her! Adira! Can you hear? Let me loose!"

Groggy, the pirate queen gazed at Johan, Tyrant of Tirras, not seeming to recognize the red-black face framed by horns. Of more concern was the vampire Shauku reforming from fog. Close by lay Whistledove Kithkin, like a child overcome by sleep, except her eyes bore the thousand-league stare only the dead achieve.

"Dead." Adira struggled to think. "We'll all be dead. Unless… What?"

"Let me out!" bellowed Johan through a glass wall.

"Never!" Groggy as a hammered ox, Adira levered against Johan's crystalline prison to rise. Her left hand dripped blood from the vampire's punctures. "Nay tyrant! You're bad as-"

Blood, of course, is made of water.

Adira lurched as, in a wink, the seams of Johan's prison opened. Amber plates like glass clattered on stone. Free, Johan surged to his feet. For a second or two, again dumped on her rump, Adira goggled at the looming monarch. With his purple robes and red-black tattoos and double devils' horns, he looked like a master of men. Yet the illusion shattered as Johan lifted his skirts and scampered away on bare feet.

"Like a rat." The pirate queen didn't even rage, only lay in dust and blood, infinitely tired. She'd made so many mistakes, caused so many deaths. Virgil. Peregrine. Whistledove, valiant as a wildcat. Simone, her boon companion and faithful lieutenant, always jolly and never complaining. Adira missed her friends as if her heart had been cut out. All gone for nothing.

No. Dimly Adira corrected herself. Her comrades gave their lives to stop the depredations of Johan and Shauku. To give up the fight was to sully their sacrifices. Shaking her aching head, the woman called Strongheart groped for her fallen sword.

"Very well. I'll not die. I'll kill this bloodsucker myself, if only to get Johan's throat between my fingers to strangle him slowly."

The Circle of Seven and the woodsfolk likewise struggled to their feet. Bruised and shaken, some watched the misty form of Shauku regain shape. Others staggered to aid their leader, who crawled aimless as a baby. The unkillable Jedit Ojanen reached her side first, as always.

"Dira," rumbled the tiger. "Let me help."

"Don't call me Dira, damn you," gasped the pirate chief. Awkwardly she rose. "Only Simone could call me that! And Hazezon, damn his white whiskers. And most especially I damn Johan."

Even addled, Adira blinked. Johan had never run away before. Always he stole opportunities from the crisis at hand. What secret knowledge sent him pelting helter-skelter for the upper air?

"Haahhh!" A cobras hiss startled everyone. Like a ghost from the mist, or smoke issuing from a fissure in the ground, Shauku rematerialized. The vampire grinned with needle teeth and peered with black eyes like burn holes in her yellow parchment skull. Withered hands crooked in the air. "Stand fast, ye humans!"

Indeed, pirates and pinefolk again felt their limbs stiffen, and this time Adira knew they wouldn't escape. Nothing could save them.

In one long stride, Jedit Ojanen slung a balled paw far behind his shoulder, wound up with all his massive weight, and punched the vampire square in the brisket. Shauku was plucked off her feet as if hurled from a catapult. She struck a stone wall thirty feet away with a bone-breaking crunch, then flopped on her shriveled face out of sight amid boulders.

Adira grunted. "How did you do that? That curse petrifies people in their tracks!"

"This time she commanded humans, not mortals." Jedit grinned so long white fangs winked below his muzzle. "Nor tigers."

"The legionnaires?" Magfire peered through a haze of smoke and dust. The tattered soldiers fell into a ragged encircling rank as an officer rapped orders in a foreign tongue. "They ring us still."

With the vampire temporarily out of the way, Adira had bigger worries. Not far off, the green-flushed cosmic horror peered upward with bulging eyes. Even the hideous tongues and tentacles were turned upward as if awaiting deliverance from the sky. And Johan, Adira recalled dimly, had quit this chamber running.

"Never mind the legionnaires! They're not the threat! Grab Whistledove." Adira squatted where the brownie lay as if asleep, hoping against sense for a breath of life. But one clasp of a cold hand made Adira let go. "Oh, for pity and cruelty! Leave her! Make ready to run!"

"Run how?" asked someone. "Adira, wait!"