Alosha (37 page)

He was handsome, seemingly youthful, his face much more human than she would have imagined, his long blond hair curled like an actor on TV. His blue eyes, especially, reminded her of her father's eyes. The elven king had ruled many, though, through hard times, and in his expression there was little joy, and no humor. He came straight to the point.

“You arrived here in time to stop my army from coming through,” Lord Vak said. “Why didn't you, Geea?”

She tried to speak with authority, but it was not like when she had faced down Karl. Lord Vak was every bit as powerful as she, if not more so.

“I wanted to talk to you,” she said. “This war is madness, you have to stop it.”

Lord Vak sighed as if it were an old argument. “Thirteen years ago you threatened to take birth as a human to stop the war. I see you have carried out your threat. But tell me frankly, Geea, what have you accomplished with all your sacrifice?”

Ali hesitated. “I have learned what it means to be human.”

“And?” he asked.

“Hey, I'm human and proud of it,” Cindy interrupted.

Lord Vak glanced at her. He didn't say anything.

Cindy gamely offered her hand. “I'm Cindy Franken. You're Lord Wak?”

“Vak,” Ali whispered. . . .

“That's what I said. How are things going, Vak?”

Lord Vak ignored Cindy's outstretched hand. “Who's this?” he asked Ali.

“A friend,” she muttered. She added in a stronger voice, “She's a good friend, and that's one of the great things about being human. There's always plenty of love to share with your friends.”

Lord Vak frowned. “Humans and love? Humans are the only species in the universe that kill each other. Even trolls do not do that. Do not lecture me on the heart of humanity.”

Ali searched for an angle, knowing it was probably hopeless. He was not going to be persuaded by a speech, yet she felt she had to try. “I know they're not perfect. I know they can be stupid and mean. I've seen the way they treat each other, and the damage they've done to their world. But they learn quickly, and they try so hard. I've only got a chance to watch them for a few years, and all over the world things have changed for the better.”

Lord Vak spoke seriously. “You see them through the eyes of your love for them. I see them as they are. Humanity is cruel and vicious. The more years they are given, the more pain they cause. No golden future awaits them, and there will be no future at all for us if we do not destroy them. I told you that the last time we spoke, and I tell you again tonight because I wish you would join us. Your powers are great. If you wanted, you could help us end this war in half the time.” He paused. “Will you not join us, Geea?”

She paused. “No.”

Lord Vak raised his spear. Ali immediately created a shield between them, made of earth, water, fire, air, and space. She simply had to will it into existence, without effort. It glittered between them like an energy field built of a million pulsating stars. The elf saw it and lowered his weapon.

“I do not want to harm you,” he said.

“Could have fooled me,” Cindy muttered.

“All I am asking is that you give humanity more time,” Ali said.

“You know as well as I do that there is no more time,” Lord Vak said gravely.

That was a huge remark. What did it mean? She desperately wanted to ask
but she could not appear to be an ignorant thirteen-year-old girl. Then he would never talk to her.

“Can't we just talk about this?” she asked, feeling pain over the communication gap between them. But Lord Vak shook his head.

“There is nothing left to say,” he said. “If you won't join us then you are against us. There can be no in-between in such matters. You must know it will only make the final battle that much bloodier.”

Ali saw that pleading with him was useless. Sharpening her tone, she held up the gold medallion around her neck. “You forget I have the Yanti,” she said.

He didn't look impressed, which did nothing for her confidence. “So? You did not use it in time. You cannot send us back, Geea.”

Was that true, she wondered? He did not sound like he was lying but that did not mean what he said was true. According to Radrine, she had possessed the Yanti longer than Lord Vak, and she knew more about it than any elemental. Ali tried to remember her exact words.

“Lord Vak is ready to use the Yanti to bring his army into this world. No doubt he will succeed. But he cannot tap its full power. A code was placed upon it, I suspect, a mystical formula. The Yanti does not always obey his will, nor, I think, would it obey mine if I had it with me now. . . . What did you do to it, Geea?”

A code? What code?

That was the key, it had to be.

But what was the code?

Since she had met Nemi, there had been one thing she had hesitated to discuss with the others. That had been the name Nemi had called her by. He had never told her to keep it secret, and yet she had automatically known it was important. Many of the books on magic and fantasy she had read had spoken of the power of knowing a person's secret name. She remembered back to the instant when she had first heard the word
Alosha
, how it had sent shivers through her body. For that matter, she had never told anyone Nemi's name.

There had to be a reason. She did not consciously know what it was, but she was sure it existed. Radrine had spoken of a mystical formula. Was it possible
she had tied the power of the Yanti to herself with her name? She did not remember doing it, but it
felt
like something she might have done.

There was only one way to find out.

Lord Vak looked at her strangely.

“Don't try to stop me, Geea,” he warned. “It is too late for that. You would only anger me, and all the other elementals.”

Ali backed up a step, taking a firm hold on the Yanti.

“What about angering me?” she asked. “Do you worry about that? You seem to forget that I am human now. I feel as they do, talk as they do, think as they do. Most of all I love like them, and I do love them. That's one thing I could never explain to you, or to any elemental.”

He raised his spear again, stepped forward, bumped into the barrier. His face darkened; he saw she had something up her sleeve. “I know that tone of yours,” he said. “There is to be no fairy magic used here tonight.”

“Says who?” Cindy asked, glancing back and forth between them.

Ali smiled, suddenly feeling confident that her guess was right, that the Yanti would respond to her secret name. “But tonight is my night,” she said. “And I am after all a queen.”

Lord Vak raised the hand that had brought the magical steps to life, no doubt reaching for a spell that would counteract her barrier. But before he could succeed she held the Yanti close to her lips and whispered three times, “Alosha . . . Alosha . . . Alosha.”

In an instant the mysterious power returned: the sky spiraled; the wind howled; the green sphere swelled; the red column that connected the moon and the Yanti burned, as flames leaped off the edges of the moon. Only now she stood in the center of the red beam and once more her hair was lifted from her head as a power unlike any she had ever imagined filled her body.

In that moment Ali felt deeply connected to all that surrounded her: the forest, the mountain, the elemental army, Cindy and Lord Vak, and even the stars in the sky. She felt they lived inside her and that she breathed through them, and because of that connection, she sensed that they were now under her command, at least for the moment.

Holding high the Yanti, that now shone with many colors, Ali spoke in a voice much greater than her own. “I command the elemental army and all their soldiers and leaders to depart from the human dimension!” she cried. “With the exception of Farble and Paddy, I want the elementals everywhere on this mountain to leave this world! Except for a single canoe, I ask that all their weapons be gone, and for their magic to return to their own world where it belongs!”

Lord Vak started to speak but froze, as if turned to stone.

His spear fell from his hand onto the ground.

All around the mountain top the elemental army went still.

The huge spiral in the sky halted. The light of the Yanti began to fade and the wind died down. Then slowly, as if evaporating in a sun that had yet to rise, the elementals started to disappear. One by one across the peak the army faded, dwarves and elves alike, like imaginary figures from the pages of fantasy books returning to places humans would call merely dreams. Last to fade was Lord Vak, and Ali caught his expression as he went to disappear.

He looked very angry.

“Goodbye,” she said.

He suddenly pressed his palms together, in a prayerful gesture directed toward the moon, and he stopped fading. He chanted a word softly—Ali could not quite hear it. But she suspected it was his own secret name, for he said it three times, like an invocation of power.

When he was done he was as solid as before. The fact caught Ali off guard; she momentarily lost control of the magic shield that separated them. For an instant she even forgot about the Yanti, until Lord Vak took a bold step forward and grabbed the medallion with one hand, and put a knife to her neck with the other.

“You want to say goodbye? Forever?” he asked quietly.

Cindy jumped forward but Lord Vak kicked her in the chest—without losing an inch of balance—and sent her falling onto the ground, stunned. Ali did not move, merely stared into the deep blue eyes of the king of the elves. Finally, she realized, she was out of her depth. Her full powers had only begun to
return, and this being that stood before her was centuries old, and no doubt knew every trick in the fairy book of magic. Her warm blood pounded beneath the knife, and the blade felt like ice against her skin.

Yet she knew she could not surrender.

“I cannot give you the Yanti,” she said.

He pressed the blade deeper into her neck. “You will die, Geea.”

“We all die,” she whispered, and as the words came out of her mouth, she remembered that she had said them to him before. When his son Jira had died. Only then she had been trying to console him. Jira had been one of her best friends, and Ali recalled staying with Lord Vak through a long dark night as the elven king wept in agony over the loss of his only child. That is why Paddy had given her a strange look when she had asked about Jira. Even then, the leprechaun must have suspected who she really was.

She had worked no fairy magic that night, but Lord Vak had felt her love, for himself and Jira, and that had been magic enough. He had been grateful.

Perhaps he remembered that night now. His knife hand trembled.

“You have turned your back on all the elementals,” he said, as if trying to convince himself. “It would be right to kill you.”

“Humans and elementals are both dear to me. I turn my back on no one.” Calling his bluff, she added, “If you're going to kill me, kill me now.”

Angry, he let go of the Yanti and withdrew the knife.

“It is either us or them!” he shouted.

“Why?” she demanded. Yes, why, the one question that had never been answered, by Nemi, Paddy, or Radrine. Lord Vak was bitter.

“You know why! Because of the Shaktra! It drives us here!”

So the elementals had problems of their own, she thought.

“Then let us unite together, humans and elementals, and fight it!” she said, not even knowing what
it
was.

He looked at her like she was mad. “Geea, what is wrong with you? The Shaktra came from the human kingdom!”

Oh no, she thought.

“It did?” she gasped.

He shook his head and stepped away and picked up the spear he had dropped. With his back to her, he seemed to stare out at the mountain, the trees, and the town many miles below. Perhaps his gaze even reached as far as the sea, where the moon shone on the water as if it were a vast field of ice. For a long time he stood there, silent.

“You have taken my army from me,” he said finally, his back still to her. “And I can take the Yanti from you and get it back. But I will not do that, not tonight. I will not kill you.” Slowly he turned, looked at her, and sighed, as if saddened by the rift that had come between them. “I owe you, Geea, I have not forgotten the many kindnesses you did for my family over the long years. Nor have I forgotten the love you and Jira shared. But next time we meet there will be no debt between us—tonight settles all. I warn you, the next time the needs of the elementals will take precedence over the hopes of humanity. And if on that day you choose to stand against us, you will die.”

“I understand,” she said, and nodded.

Lord Vak also nodded, out of respect, and then turned and walked toward the center of the mound. Even before he reached the hole that led down into the cave, and the bamboo structure that had held the Yanti, he vanished. She could only assume he had his own secret way of traveling between dimensions.

For a long time Ali stood silent with the now still Yanti around her neck. She did not know what to say, how to feel. Cindy had recovered enough to stand, but she was not talking either. All around them the air was so calm the only thing left for them to hear was the beating of their hearts.

Her mother was alive. The thought was an echo inside her.

Her mother was not dead.

Cindy finally came over and gave her a hug and the tears Ali was close to crying turned to laughter and they giggled in each other's arms like thirteen-year-old girls, which was, after all, what they were.

Karl had left the rope for them to climb down—bless his hairy heart, Ali
thought—and soon they were beside their friends, with Paddy and Farble all excited about what they had seen, and Steve just itching to yell at her. The first thing Ali did was take the tape off his mouth.

“How dare you accuse me of being . . .” he began.