To my amazement,
Pelig
lowered the crossbow. "It doesn't matter," he muttered. "She knew you were coming, and that they would follow. But no matter how good your mages are, they can't stop what's coming," the dwarf said. He stared out the window, his gaze fixed on the flat blue sky, dreaming of a nation that would never be.
I didn't bother trying to correct his misconception. It's impossible to argue with a fanatic. And besides, I've never understood the human and meta obsession with ownership of land. Political boundaries, legal title to properties, resource rights—all of it was too abstract for me. I suppose it was kind of like marking your territory. But humans and metas tended to do their marking with land mines, chemical defoliants, and bombs—and what frigging good was the land after that?
I tried asking Pelig about Jane, but he refused to answer any of my questions. I guess I'd pissed him off with my comments about the radicals. He was obviously heavily involved in the plot to "liberate" P.E.I. I took a good whiff of his scent, memorizing it; maybe the local DPI detachment would hire me to track him down, after I'd found Jane. I finally switched on the radio, just to break the monotony of the drive.
We continued for a couple of hundred klicks, taking gravel roads that zigzagged across the center of the island, avoiding the main highway. We headed west for more than three hours and didn't see much traffic—and for good reason. According to the radio, things were getting tense. Tourists were being evacuated from the island and local residents had been asked to remain in their homes and avoid traveling unless absolutely necessary. Native rebels in Charlottetown had occupied Province House, the centuries-old building where the confederation of Canada was hammered out, and were using satellite uplinks to broadcast the Abegweit manifesto. The UCAS military had been ordered to hold back, out of respect for the historic building, while the MTF went in astrally.
But the combat mages had run into some powerful wards. For the moment, things were at a standoff.
Far though we were from the action, I could somehow sense the tension that was building. The air had a still, hot quality to it. I couldn't put my paw on it, exactly. All I could say for certain was that the dust that was swirling in through the open windows of the truck didn't smell right.
As we rounded a bend I saw what looked like a traffic jam up ahead, at a place where the secondary road we'd been following met up again with the main island highway. A huge black shape was straddling the highway at the intersection, and cars had come to a halt in both directions on the paved road. I recognized the vehicle blocking the highway as a Lone Star hovertruck, a larger version of the hovercraft that Hunt and I had taken to Georges Island. I didn't see any police outside the hover—that meant the officers were doing a spot check and were searching the stopped cars astrally.
Pelig's vicelike fingers clamped around my wrist.
"Pull over," he said. "Now!"
I took my foot off the gas, letting the truck slow down. But I didn't stop. It was my sworn duty to turn criminals over to the police ...
"If you want to see Jane, do as you're told."
I braked—carefully, so as not to disturb the owl in the back—then glared at the dwarf. Except that suddenly, he wasn't there. Realizing that he must have used magic to make himself invisible, I switched to astral vision. Pelig had climbed out the open window of the truck and was standing on the pavement. Raising himself on his tiptoes, he peered back through the window, the crossbow bolt pointed at me.
"Keep going," he said tersely. "You'll make it through the roadblock; you're a police officer."
"Only an irregular asset," I protested. "I'm SINless. They won't—"
"Drive to the estate," he hissed, ignoring me. "Find Muirico. I'll meet you there. And I'll make sure Jane gets there."
"Who?" I sputtered. "Meet me where?"
The eyes disappeared. I leaned over to look out the passenger window and saw Pelig hunkered down, keeping the truck between himself and the police as he ran off through the tall grass. I opened my mouth to shout after him, then saw a movement on the highway, behind one of the cars that had stopped at the roadblock. I was still using astral vision, and so I could see the shimmering body of the police officer who walked right through one of the stopped vehicles as if it wasn't there, heading straight for the truck. Magical energy glowed in a ball around her hand as she readied some sort of detection spell.
I knew I was hooped; in another second the officer would spot my true form and know I was a shifter.
I wasn't sure what to do. My instincts told me to trust Lone Star. An officer in uniform was one of the good guys, a member of my pack. I started to open the driver's door, intending to get out and speak to the officer. But then I realized I had no way of explaining my presence here during a national crisis, or the fact that I was driving a truck that belonged to one of the rebels—a truck with a potentially dangerous paranimal in a cage in the back. There would be questions, delays ...
I hunkered down below the level of the dash and frantically began stripping off my clothes. Buttons popped as I wrenched off my shirt. I stuffed my clothes under the seat of the truck, kicked off my shoes, and shifted into wolf form. Then I shoved the cushion the dwarf had been using over to the driver's side of the seat.
The astral form of the cop appeared next to the truck. I leaped up onto the passenger side of the seat and whined loudly—some animals are sensitive to an astral presence, even if they can't actually see it. My movement rocked the truck slightly. The driver's door swung open, passing through the ghostly form of the cop. I continued whining and flattened my ears, all the while looking around as if I were puzzled.
The cop stared at me for a second. She could probably tell by my aura that I wasn't a normal "dog." She'd be able to tell I was a para of some sort. But I was hoping that, if I continued to play submissive and dumb, she'd focus her attentions on the mystery of where the truck's driver had gone.
The cop directed the magical energy that had been building around her hand at the place where the driver would sit. The glow circled briefly over the steering wheel, then settled on the seat cushion. I panted anxiously for a moment, but the cop made the assumption I'd hoped she would. Seeing the open door and nothing more than a large, wolfish "dog" inside the cab of the truck, she looked over her shoulder at the field behind her.
Of course she was looking in the wrong direction— the dwarf had gone out the passenger window and was long gone. While her back was turned, I pawed at the emergency brake, releasing it. With a loud creak, the truck began to roll forward, down the slight incline in the road ahead. Right toward a very large pothole.
Startled by the sudden movement of the truck, the cop took a step back. At that same moment, one wheel hit the pothole. I heard a flutter of wings in the back—and then fear washed over me.
I didn't try to fight it, this time. Yipping loudly, I leaped out the door of the truck. I hit the grass running, whining loudly as I bolted away from the pickup.
I ran until I was well beyond the magical circle of fear that the gloaming owl was projecting. I only looked back when I heard the crash of the truck hitting one of the stopped cars. In an instant, people began leaping from their vehicles and scrambling away, screaming in fear.
The crash must have knocked the cage over on its side, springing the latch. The owl burst out of the cage, blinking and blinded by daylight, and flapped up onto the roof of the pickup. At the same instant everything went quiet. The screams, the low rumble of the hovertruck's idling engines, the shouts of the police who had leaped out of the hovertruck to capture the owl—all stopped.
Panting with the aftereffects of the owl's magical fear, I loped away from the roadblock. In all of the confusion, nobody thought to stop what appeared to be just a frightened dog, bereft of its master. As I ran, I struggled with guilt over the incident I'd just caused. Even though I was only an irregular asset, I considered myself to be an officer of the law. I wasn't sure exactly what the charges would be in this case, but I was certain I'd just committed an illegal act. For the first time in my life, I understood what it felt like to be a criminal.
I shook it off. No time for remorse. Jane was somewhere on this island, and I had to find her. I thought about circling back and trying to pick up the dwarf's scent, but the police were all over the area around the roadblock. So far they'd tagged me as just an animal, but I didn't want to push my luck.
When I was a kilometer or two away from the roadblock I sat down by the side of the road, scratched at an itch on my side, and thought. The dwarf had ordered me to drive to the "estate." There was only one place he could have been referring to: the sprawling mansion and landscaped grounds that the dragon Dunkelzahn had created on Prince Edward Island's northernmost tip.
That was where the dwarf would be headed. And he'd promised to take Jane there, as well. Did I dare take the risk that he would live up to his promise? He may have just been toying with my emotions, using them to force me to do what he wanted me to.
But then I thought over what the old woman had said, back at the cottage. The Mi'kmaqs wanted me to help Jane "find her power"—her magic, I assumed— so that she could use it to cure their children. I wasn't clear on how they expected me to restore Jane's magic to her, but it was a pretty safe bet that the process involved the two of us being brought together. Which meant that the dwarf would bring her to Dunkelzahn's estate, after all.
Assuming he wasn't picked up by the police on the way.
I decided to risk it. The estate was only about forty klicks up the road. I was tired—I hadn't slept all day— but that was an easy run in wolf form. I found the road again, and began loping toward Dragon Park.
By the time I reached the estate, I was panting heavily. A wind was blowing off the ocean, but the air still had a hot, heavy quality to it. Despite the humid sea breeze, my fur felt alive with static electricity. Off in the distance, a strange sound rose and fell, rose and fell, like a soft howl.
I sniffed the air, trying to figure out what was wrong. I smelled dry grass, the sweet aroma of wild-flowers, the sharp salt tang of the ocean. I also smelled the hot stink of exhaust. A car had come this way recently.
The entrance to the estate was a long, paved drive, ochre red in color and made from sand taken from the bluffs of the north cape. At the entrance to the park, a yellow metal bar had been lowered across the road. A sign hung on it, announcing that the park was closed, despite the holiday. It assured visitors that the closure was temporary.
The estate took up the entire north cape of the island, and even though it had been a private enclave, there were no fences. The dragon had relied exclusively upon magical security when he lived here, and now that his mansion was vacant and this was a public park, there was no need to keep anyone out, anymore. The bar across the road was only a token effort, a tool for ushering tourists out of the park at night.
I could see several tire tracks in the grass where vehicles had pulled off the road to circle around the closed gate. I sniffed at the crushed stalks of grass, and at the drops of oil that had brushed onto them as cars passed. The grass still had a sharp smell, and the oil was fresh. Whoever had driven around that barrier had done so today. I walked up to the gate, left my mark on it, then walked back to ponder the marks in the grass from a distance, trying to get an idea of how many vehicles had passed this way. At least three—possibly as many as six.
As I sat on my haunches, wondering if one of those vehicles had been driven by Muirico—whoever he or she was—the hair on the back of my neck rose. I had the distinct feeling I was being watched. But when I whipped around, expecting to see someone, there was nobody there. Just a stunted evergreen whose moving branches had looked like waving arms in my peripheral vision.
I switched to astral perception just to make sure, but didn't see anything unusual. The tree and the grasses below it glowed with normal, healthy auras. There was no one watching me from astral space.
I turned around and looked in the direction of the gate. The sign that hung from it was blank, its printed words without meaning on the astral plane. All I could "read" was its emotional content: a faint sense of regret that glowed a soft violet.
Then I sensed something right beside me—a presence. This time, it wasn't just my imagination. Someone ran past me, moving fast. It was a young elf girl, maybe six years old, with wide cheekbones and dark hair. She wore a long burgundy dress with a ruffled white collar and clunky, square-toed boots with large gold buckles. A close-fitting white cap that hugged the back of her head was slipping free as she ran, revealing her pointed ears.
The girl's face looked strangely familiar to me, but I couldn't place her. Nor did I recognize the style of clothing she was wearing—I guess because I don't watch much trid and don't keep up with the ever-changing kaleidoscope of fashion.
And then it hit me. The girl looked like
Jane
. I could see in those childlike features the beautiful woman she would become.
The elf girl ran up to the gate, stopped, and then reached out to touch it. Her hand passed through the yellow metal bar as if it wasn't there. Laughing, she skipped forward so that the bar passed through her body at chest height. Then she spun around, throwing her arms out in a childlike, carefree gesture.