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but was now awake and fighting everything he had been to remake him into
something new. Something he feared and did not desire.
Sobbing, Baanraak pulled himself to his feet. He shuddered, and blocked the
magic away from himself as best he could, but it had wormed its way inside him
and had filled empty places with itself. Nature, which abhorred a vacuum, had
never found the vacuum within him. But a few careless moments in the presence
of one human s magic had done something that a millennia with Nature could
not.
He only wished he could tell what that something was.
He turned his back on the little town of Hendricks and headed south on WV 72,
walking on the berm, watching out for cars. There were a few, but not many. He
was heading into the heart of the magic.
He would not taste it again, he promised himself. He did not dare. But this
would be, he thought, his best hope of a good hiding place. Everyone knew live
magic could not feed the dark gods. So this would be the last place anyone
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would look for him.
He needed time to think. To re-figure. His encounter with Molly, which had
ended with him dead but not destroyed, had shaken him badly. He didn t know
how she d beaten him. He d had her. But then she d done something and he d
found himself in the forest, some little time later, rebuilt of humus and moss
and rock, sun and water, and with some of his resurrection rings missing. The
main one, the traitorous one that carried the silver channel in its vile
heart, still animated him. But of the others he had found no sign. They were
lesser rings, made only in supplement to his main one, or stolen from enemies
he d admired and he d added them to his wearable trove of immortality simply
as a form of backup. He would not be lost without them, but he did not like
the fact that he had lost them. And he did not like the fact that he did not
know what had become of them.
He walked for a mile, and then another, and then off to his right he saw a
trail sign. He turned onto the trail, feeling the magic becoming stronger with
every step.
Here, the magic had had plenty of time to start soaking into the ground, the
trees, and the water. Before long, uncanny things would begin happening in the
wilderness near Hendricks. Hikers on the Otter Creek trail would have some
fairy sightings, though they probably would not report them people had gotten
wary of reporting things like fairies. But before long the wee folk would be
all over the area. They were like mosquitoes that way; give them running
water, appropriate terrain, and live magic, and not even DDT would get rid of
them.
He glanced up at the canopy of green over his head summer leaves on their last
legs before autumn came. It was a beautiful place. And it felt alive now. Any
world s natives were by nature almost blind to their own world s magic, but
the stuff Molly s sister had brought in here had an unmistakable flavor.
People would notice, even if they didn t know what they were noticing. This
area would get a reputation with the New Agers, and even though the area had
bears along with its deer and its pheasants and its pretty rhododendrons,
they d start coming in search of the magic. And here they would actually find
it.
Hikers walking along this path would be imbued with that same ferocious love
that Baanraak felt, and they would be moved. They would become& heroic.
Self-sacrificing. Men and women who had never before thought of anyone but
themselves would start taking chances to protect others. This was going to be
a dangerous stretch of woods it was going to change people s lives.
The surviving flora and fauna of Earth s magical ecology would find their way
here, too. Baanraak wondered how many of the wee folk and the weyrd folk had
managed to hang on this long on this planet with things so bad. The pookas,
the black dogs, the werewolves and whisperers in spite of all their strength,
they were delicate creatures. When the magic started going, most of them had
died off. If any survived, this place would be a little bit of heaven to
them if they could just get here. And their being here would add to the magic,
make the place stronger.
Eventually, the trees would wake up, he thought, and start guarding the place
themselves. Wouldn t the tree-huggers be surprised when the trees hugged back.
And wouldn t let go. These were all second-growth trees they d never known
rich magic and wouldn t know how to handle themselves. They d be wild or
stupid unless someone trained them. Still, that would be a long time from now.
And then, hiking deeper into the forest, Baanraak caught one of the trees
watching him. His skin twitched, and inwardly he swore. There was already an
old god here, then, using this magic, accelerating the area s recovery. In no
other way could the trees have woken up so fast. And these were canny they had
given no sign to him of what they were as he d walked forward. So they had
been trained already. If he had not been thinking about trees, he would not
have noticed them watching him. If he had not stopped and stared when he
caught the tree watching, he would have been fine, perhaps. But now his cover
was blown. He would have to leave; trees were not taken in by form. They could
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see him for what he really was, and they would tell the old god. Killing the
old god wouldn t help his situation, either. He wanted to keep a low profile,
not draw attention to his presence. If Molly and her sister had enlisted old
gods in the effort to restore this world, those old gods would be watching out
for each other. If the trees had been quick about it and he could hear their
leaves rustling and their branches rattling even as he stood there the odds
were that the old gods, and perhaps even Molly, already knew he was here.
And the only thing he wanted the only thing was to stay out of sight for a
while in a place where no one would think to look for him.
He turned and started out of the forest, back toward Hendricks. He could find
a mirror there, make a gate. Go someplace else. He d thought Molly would not
look for him on Earth, but now he needed someplace even more unlikely than
Earth.
He was careful not to think until he was well clear of the forest, well free
of the watching trees. He was careful not to think until he d found a public
rest room with a big mirror at a gas station. He would have to make himself
smaller to fit through it. But now he had the means he only needed the
destination.
And he thought of Kerras, upworld, dead and dark and burned and frozen. He
could hide there while he thought. While he reassessed and planned and
figured. He d make a bubble for himself, a bit of air, a bit of warmth. He d [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]