Authors: Edward Lazellari
“No,” Lelani said. “This woman is the image of Chryslantha.”
“She looks like Charlize Theron?!”
“Yes, although, Lord Godwynn’s daughter is seventeen,” Lelani said, as though this detail was somehow important.
Cat stopped walking and sank down onto a large rock beside the path. She muttered to no one in particular, “My husband’s childhood sweetheart-slash-fiancée is a filthy rich debutante who looks like a seventeen-year-old Charlize Theron.”
Lelani, who had gone on a bit before realizing Catherine had stopped, walked back to her friend and confirmed her statement with a soft, “Yes.”
Cat arched back facing the sky, shook her fists to the heavens and screamed, “ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME?”
Park dwellers stopped and glared at them. Bree tugged on Cat’s coat to get her attention and with her finger in the shush position against her lips, she told her mother, “Bad word.”
Lelani helped Cat off the rock. Her arm was strong, solid. The centaur could probably make a Pilates instructor weep with her workout regimen.
They were silent until they reached the castle wall. Cat grumbled, “You could have lied a little.”
Lelani rolled her eyes while pulling out four white polished stone tablets from her satchel. Catherine sat by the bank breaking reeds. The wizard placed the tablets against the castle’s stone wall to let them soak magical energy. They were about the size of an iPad, with runes etched across them. Lelani said they could power wards, a type of magical shield, around the Waldorf, just in case Dorn discovered their location.
Cat looked at the edge of the park, studying the few buildings that cleared the tree line, and wondered where her husband’s enemy resided. Lelani said Dorn’s aristocratic tastes probably led him to take up residence in Manhattan, in a townhouse near the park, or possibly in a luxury hotel suite of his own. If this sociopathic sorcerer from a feudal world could just blend in with the Upper East Side crowd, what did this say about Manhattan’s residents?
Their previous conversation did not help her mood. Cal’s fiancée was young, rich, smart, and beautiful. They were Aandor’s Brad and Angelina. They were “Callantha.” His childhood sweetheart was waiting for him in Aandor, still looking forward to her wedding day because the time differential between their two universes meant that only a few hours had gone by, while thirteen years had passed here. Lelani had the truth of it—there could be no winning solution for Cal. If he stayed with her, the thought of how it would destroy that poor innocent girl made Cat sick to her stomach. She tried to see Chryslantha as the competition, but all she could think of was a young girl, still a teen, dreaming of the life she would have with the man she loved. Dreaming of their children together. The thought churned Catherine’s stomach; Chryslantha had done nothing to deserve having her dreams shattered. She was guilty only of loving an incredibly good man. Cat was pinned by forces beyond her scope.
She watched Bree chase ducks along the bank and realized the reason she could empathize with Chryslantha’s plight was because she already knew Cal’s decision in this matter. The higher commitment was to his daughter. Brianna had been his lifeline in a world where he had no blood relatives. He loved her more than he loved himself. He would never abandon her or the child that grew within Cat. Cat suddenly had a selfish thought. Staying because of the kids wasn’t enough. She needed to know how he felt about her. Was Chryslantha still first and foremost in his mind? Was Cat only the runner-up by default?
But what if that wasn’t all? In feudal times, marriage contracts were business arrangements. They had more to do with the parents’ machinations than the bride and groom’s. Cal’s sense of honor would also not allow him to skirt the issue by staying behind when the prince returned to Aandor. If there were consequences to his broken oath, he would meet them head-on and honestly. He would be truthful regardless of who it hurt.
“Lelani, Cal broke his oath to Chryslantha. Are there consequences?” asked Cat.
“It would go better for the MacDonnells if Lord Godwynn or his daughter were killed during the invasion,” Lelani answered.
What a gruesome wish—can it get any worse?
Cat thought.
Cat had not seen Collins for a while. Perhaps he needed to relieve himself. His absence emphasized how grateful Cat was to have someone watching her back. She looked around for him. It would be dark soon—Cat wanted to get out of the park as soon as possible. She regretted not taking the car, as Collins suggested. “Are you almost done?” she asked Lelani.
Lelani didn’t respond. Her hands hung in the air before her as though she were about to conduct an orchestra—she stood perfectly still.
“What are you doing?” said Cat. The centaur did not move.
Cat tensed. Something was wrong. She approached the centaur slowly. Lelani was still as a statue. Something hit the tree behind her with a loud thud. Collins’s bloody body lay in a heap at the base of the trunk. Cat heard crunching in the woods. Three men stepped onto the path—she recognized the swarthy one with a sword right away from the attack in her apartment—Kraten! With him was a slight, gray man with yellowish eyes wearing a hoodie, and a third man as large and blond as Cal was behind them.
Cat’s hands began to shake. Her voice was trapped in her throat. As Kraten crossed the path toward her, she found its release.
“Bree! RUUUUNNN!”
CHAPTER 22
A LEAGUE OF HER OWN
1
Lelani realized a second too late that someone had targeted her with a spell. She stood frozen in place, unable to help herself or her friends. Catherine continued to speak, unaware that anything had occurred; her voice came through muffled, as though her head were within a tin pot covered by a blanket. This stasis spell was a very costly lesson; Lelani failed to implement Proust’s third rule of engagement: Act first.
Three men approached them from the woods: Symian and Kraten from the tenement fight in the Bronx and a third conspicuous man as big and pink as Captain MacDonnell. At the tenement, Lelani had implemented the third rule and took out the enemy sorcerer with the first blow. Now the roles were reversed. This spell was a little more advanced than she thought Symian capable of. She was embarrassed to have let a first-year washout get the drop on her.
Cat had realized something was wrong and slowly approached Lelani. Collins’s body flew through the air and hit a tree just at the edge of the centaur’s field of vision. Cat screamed; Lelani saw it more in her friend’s strained, reddened face than heard it because of the muffled nature of sound in stasis. Bree ran crying up the path toward the castle. She fell and skinned her knee, but picked herself up and ran out of Lelani’s view. None of the men went after her.
Cat pulled a pistol from her coat pocket just as Kraten came upon her. He swung his sword at Cat’s hand, and Lelani’s heart jumped, expecting to see her friend’s hand lying on the ground severed. But Kraten tilted the blade and struck her with the flat of the sword, knocking the gun from Cat’s still intact appendage. Cat lunged at him like her namesake, claws ready to tear. The swordsman grabbed her wrist with his free hand and punched Cat in the face with the sword still in his grip. She dropped like a brick.
Symian approached, sporting a big troll grin bookended by his canine incisors. He gloated before Lelani, waxing poetic on a multitude of points she could not distinguish through the muffled hum of the stasis spell. As he spoke, he relieved her of her satchel and the mana tablets. Lelani was fairly certain he called her a witch several times, or at least something similar sounding. She was certain about the “itch” part. Symian had not cast a perfect spell; Lelani should not still be able to think in real time. She was grateful that the second of Lord Dorn’s sorcerers set against her was no better than the polyester leisuresuit–wearing fool upstate had been.
K’ttan Dhourobi of Aht Humaydah had been a sloppy, lazy wizard. In fact most wizards were flawed wizards, and were really only skilled sorcerers undeserving of the title
wizard
. Proficient wizards have described wielding magic as the art of herding cats. It was far different than science, more chaotic because it included qualitative elements in addition to quantitative ones. The mood of a wizard could affect a spell beyond the components used to cast it. So could the position of the moon, the distance from a lay line, and many other archaic factors. Perfect magic did not exist. How could it? Magic wielders did not create the energy they employed in their art. It came to them from a far-off place. No one knew if it was a byproduct of some pan-dimensional equivalent of a star, or was in fact the blood of the gods as many clerics proselytized.
Lelani began to construct the counter spell in her mind, shutting out Symian’s raging soliloquy at having been nearly burned to death at her hands a few days earlier. He launched into hyperbolic detail about his painful recovery. If he ever finished his rant, she was to “experience pain beyond her imagining,” et cetera, and so on.
Symian pulled a silver knife from his coat and began to wave it in front of her face. The knife had strange writings on the blade and a pearl handle that was luminescent against the gray of Symian’s skin. Lelani needed another minute to call up the final components of the counter spell from her memory. Every component had to be placed in order just as if she were laying them out on a table, but all in her mind’s eye. The last swish of Symian’s knife nearly scratched her nose; Lelani was acutely aware that his boasting was coming to an end and her time grew short. But the counter spell was extremely difficult, and she didn’t dare rush it. It is normally accompanied by certain phrases and hand gestures with fingers in specific positions for focus. She would need to run through those gestures and say those words in her mind as she released the components of the spell organized in her thoughts. She had to coordinate three independent actions simultaneously, all in her head. She’d only succeeded at this once in Aandor out of five attempts. This was advanced spell casting, the type that made experts appear omnipotent because they could cause actions to occur with but a thought. It’s what separated those with sensitivity to magical energy from those with the capacity to become great wizards.
Kraten approached Symian from behind with Cat trussed up over his left shoulder. He wore that oily smile he always had, the kind that only those born into entitlement are issued at birth. They were discussing the most horrible ways to demean and kill her. Centaur parts were in high demand to some conjurers: centaur tail, a hundred Krakens; centaur nipples, five hundred Gryphons … Kraten waved the point of his sword at her—beside Symian’s knife, it looked like a contest of manhood, with Kraten the clear winner.
The henchman behind Kraten was less enthused by the murder game.
He is not going to go far under Dorn,
Lelani thought. She needed several more seconds, but when Symian raised his arm for the killing blow, she knew it was time she would never have. Lelani couldn’t even close her eyes.
The left side of the big pink henchman’s head exploded.
Whatever did that was outside Lelani’s field of view. Symian put up a shield. Bullets ricocheted off, lodging into the ground and chipping pieces of tree about them. The hail of bullets grew intense, Symian and Kraten backed away until they were into the brush. Lelani cast the counter spell. Normal sounds returned. She dropped her arms as the stasis spell peeled away.
Malcolm approached with his team. Tom Dunning checked the brush where the attackers fled. Kara, the redheaded security woman from the hotel suite, leaned over Collins checking for a pulse.
“Are you okay?” Malcolm asked.
“Yes, thanks to you.”
“Collins alerted us just before they got him.”
“Is he…?”
“We’ll get him to a hospital. Where’s Cat and the girl?”
“Bree fled up the path toward the castle entrance. Cat is a prisoner. I must reach them before they leave this park. I can track well through woods. You find Brianna!” she entreated, pointing at the castle and bolting into the brush after Catherine.
“Wait!” she heard Malcolm yell behind her—but Lelani was already through. She had, at best, ten minutes before they hit the streets of this city and disappeared without a trace.
The area just south of Belvedere Castle is known as the Ramble—a lush forest in the middle of a sprawling metropolis. When Lelani first arrived to this world, she lived in the Ramble until she could get her bearings, procure money, and confidently mingle with the inhabitants of this reality. When she was anxious, at her lowest energy, she would always think of this woodland as her oasis on this strange and alien world … she praised the people who preserved such beauty against the encroaching city in her daily prayers.
Kraten and Symian were in a mad dash to get away with their prize, and as such left a stumbling, bumbling mess of a trail that even a child centaur could follow. It was a desperate move for them, but a strategically sound one—with Cat as their prisoner, Captain MacDonnell was effectively neutralized. If Cal found the prince first, they would offer an exchange. There was no doubt Dorn would kill her without a moment’s hesitation. The problem was … would Cal trade the prince for his wife? Was his fealty to his prince, his family back home, greater than the one to Catherine? Lelani realized the irony of her doubts … they were the very same ones Catherine had been feeling since she’d entered their lives—doubts made even more uncertain since learning of Chryslantha.
It was near dusk; soon it would be hard to differentiate people as they turned to silhouettes. Lelani had crested the summit of the Ramble and now headed downhill through brush and trees toward the lake. She spotted them at a steady trot ahead of her on a path that would take them to that old bowed bridge that reminded her of Valentino’s Crossing in Aandor. Lelani hit the lakeside path and ran toward the bridge at a centaur’s speed, preparing the same stasis spell that had been used on her. The bridge was a popular spot for people to take wedding photos, and it was crowded with Asian people in tuxedos and gowns this evening. One of the bridesmaids, alarmed at Lelani’s inhumanly swift approach, cried out, alerting Symian to the centaur’s charge. She cast the spell at him, but Symian deflected it with a show of colorful sparks that ruffled the lake’s surface. The wedding parties panicked and scattered off the bridge.