Elfhome

“Arm yourself!” Pony shouted and activated his shields without taking his arms from around her.

Stormsong burst into the room, shields up brilliant blue and ejae out. “What is it?”

Tinker cried out in relief and held out her left hand to Stormsong, desperate to feel the life in her. Stormsong crossed the room to Tinker’s bed but her eyes flicked about the room, looking for something to kill.

“Domi dreamed that oni attacked,” Pony said.

Stormsong’s shield blocked Tinker’s hand from reaching her. Tinker pressed her hand flat against the solid air, frustrated even as she was reassured by its presence. “We couldn’t see them. It was like Lord Tomtom; they were there but we couldn’t see them.”

Pony swept Tinker up off her bed. “We’ll move to the practice hall, it’s more secure.”

Stormsong nodded and took lead out of the bedroom. They collected the rest of her Hand as they moved through the enclave. Except for Pony, they were all fully dressed, apparently on alert as long as Windwolf was out of the enclave and Tinker was in a drugged sleep.

“Put me down.” Tinker said. “Let me call my shields. They have machines guns. It just eats right through your shield. They’ll kill you.”

“Your arm is broken.” Pony said in a tone he rarely used with her. He’d shifted into the one in charge. There would be no arguing with him. “You’ll cripple yourself for life if you unbind it while the healing spell is active.”

“So I’ll cancel the damn spell.” She slapped uselessly at his bare shoulder.

He wouldn’t put her down. “The pain will keep you from maintaining a shield for any useful length of time.”

The laedin caste guards of the enclave were added to the sekasha, herding Poppymeadow’s staff and members of Wolf’s personal household out of the way for Tinker’s Hard to move through first, and then swept into their wake.

She had never noticed that the practice hall had reinforced doors and narrow arrow slits for windows. The laedin slammed the doors shut, threw heavy bars into place, and activated defense shields built into the framework.

The elves relaxed slightly.

If the dream hadn’t been so vivid and horrific, if her dreams didn’t have a habit of coming true, then Tinker would be embarrassed at disrupting the entire enclave based on a nightmare. She couldn’t get the images out of her mind. Pony’s blood pumping out. Stormsong’s face shattering under the force of the bullet.

She gasped slightly as she realized something odd that been playing through her dream.

“What is it domi?”

“Stormsong’s shields! Your spell tattoos!” Tinker pressed her hand to Pony’s blue inked tattoos that ran down his arms. “In my dream — they were black.”

“Black?” Stormsong murmured and looked to the right intently as if she suddenly developed x-ray vision and was scanning beyond the wall.

“Yes. And the oni — they caught me by my hair.” Tinker caught a fistful of her short scruffy hair. “I had a long braid.”

“Jewel Tear.” Stormsong said. “The oni aren’t in this enclave, they’re at Ginger Wine’s. They’re going to attack the Stone Clan. We’ll have to warn them.”

The sekasha glanced at each other and came to a silent agreement. They nodded to each other.

Tinker guessed that they had decided that they would go together. “I’m coming with you.”

“Domi…” Pony started.

She cut him short by cocking the undamaged fingers of her left hand and activating a protection shield. She wasn’t sure it would work, she’d never tried it before, and was relieved when the shields wrapped solidly around her. Even better, there was no pain. She should have tried this for the fight in the whelping pens.

“What the hell?” Stormsong cried in English.

“Domi?” Pony frowned at the black misting shield she’d summoned. “How — how are you doing that?”

“I can tap the Stone Clan spell stones,” she admitted.

“How — how?” Pony sputtered.

“And how did you learn their esva?” Stormsong asked.

She canceled the spell and answered the simpler question. “Blue Sky recorded Jewel Tear activating her shields. I ran it through a video editor to analyze the spell she used.”

They looked so scandalized that she didn’t add in that she had done the same with True Flame calling a flame strike. Nor that she’d practice the parts of the flame strike; keeping the activation command and hand gestures separate so there was no chance she actually cast it.

“It’s a domana shield. It’s a thousand times stronger than your personal shields. That’s what I’m here for: to protect you as you protect me. I am not letting you go over to that enclave alone.”

“Stone Clan defense spells are actually stronger than Wind Clan.” Stormsong pointed out, always the realist.

“She’s wounded.” Pony said.

“It feels — best — to take her.” Stormsong meant that her own pre-cog ability suggested that disaster lay in leaving Tinker behind.

“I am going.” Tinker growled.

Pony didn’t look happy but he nodded compliance.

#

They were too late.