.
Vodyanoys and rusalki are nocturnal beings, rising at dusk and generally spending the early daylight hours the way humans pass their evenings, so I did not need to rush back. I left Lisrau as during twilight, to take advantage of the strong flow of incoming Darkness mana for my cloak. Being the New Greater Moon in the Month of Gentle Rains, the night was dark and moonless as I arrived.
Fortunately, my eyesight is optimized for the night, and my mana perception is top notch. I was able to detect the change to the Greenwater’s defenses in time to pull up and not splat like a bug on the newly revised barrier.
Having flared and stuck out my feet, I skated along the surface, sliding to a halt about twenty paces from where I had intended to pass through.
I folded my arms, quirked my lips sideways, and contemplated the possibility that Lord Moram had called me here not to deliver the promised information but to test the patch he had made to his barrier’s vulnerability.
Even a powerful ancient monster doesn’t tempt fate lightly though. Or perhaps, more accurately, a powerful monster becomes an ancient one by being in the habit of not tempting fate. It was more likely that, since I was coming anyway, he had hurried to install his fix in time to get this field trial for free.
I carefully extended my sense across the barrier, looking for an explanation, and identified the nature of the subtle change my sight had noticed.
Almost no barrier of this size can afford to project an always-active full force screen. The sheer amount of mana would be impossible to draw. But even the always-active protection of legendary-class screens like Tëan Tír’s valley barrier deal with the stronger strikes by reinforcing in response to the impending failure of the normal protection level.
Lord Moram had borrowed this strategy in a clever way. Beneath his original barrier, he had added an always-active shield that literally couldn’t stop a mosquito, so that he could afford the mana cost, and a powerful reinforcement stage that reacted not to the presence of an intrusion, because such a reaction would be blocked by my cloak, but to the failure of the the always-active stage.
My cloak prevents detection of my presence, and extends itself to things I’m wearing or carrying. It doesn’t extend to effects caused by my presence.
Well-played, sir.
I sighed, took off once more and gently glided down to the riverside path leading to the north portal. It looked like, unless I could figure out a countermeasure, my free pass through the barrier had expired.
Keeping my wings, I uncloaked and walked the fifty paces of safety buffer I had left so as not to alarm the sentries by suddenly appearing in front of them. It did take me some time to secure permission to enter, but their superiors were the same people I had been dealing with for the last several days. The order to let me through came from Sidis’s uncle, and I arrived at Center Isle to find her waiting for me outside the headquarters tent.
She had a bright smile for me, but didn’t instantly come to my side this time, which was a good sign.
“How have you been, today?” I asked her immediately.
The smile turned a little complicated and she shrugged, not quite meeting my eyes. Finally, she admitted, “I don’t think I’m done with it, My Lady, but I took your advice and went to see my boyfriend. He’s happy to be done with militia doing and couldn’t stop hugging me, and…”
She shrugged again, “… and I was enjoying having him back and I’m happy he’s safe. That’s better than yesterday, when I was barely even thinking about him.”
I heard the pang of guilt in that last sentence loud and clear, so I flicked her forehead. As her eyes snapped back to me, in shock, I firmly told her, “That was my fault, not yours. Got it?”
She gave a small nod. “Yeah. But what am I supposed to do, if I’m still thinking about you?”
A hint of desire in her eyes communicated what way she was thinking about me.
According to Grandmother, contact with fairies can bend mortal sexual preferences. They don’t remove preferences; a homosexual man charmed by a fairy would become bisexual, not straight. The same goes for a lesbian that a male fairy puts his eyes on. And the effect is a permanent change to the mortal.
Having regained the concept of spiritual strength during my latest session as Senhion, I understood it to be a side effect of their overwhelming spiritual strength in comparison to mortals. A mortal who has cultivated similar strength, as I suspect Miröen and possibly his disciples had, would probably be immune to the effect. It wasn’t something fairies did on purpose, but simply the result of that strength focused by lust on the mortal victim. Maybe Sidis was bisexual already, but it was very possible I had done this to her.
Thanks to that same knowledge from Senhion, I suspected the other Elder-descended species might have similar powers. I do know I’ve never had a donor repelled by the erotic nature of my feeding upon them.
I only had Sidis’s story about her kissing practice with her friend to fall back on, for the hope that maybe, just maybe, I hadn’t twisted her as much as I feared. I hoped so. I didn’t want to be screwing with people’s minds like that.
Having considered her question carefully, I told Sidis, “You should learn to think of me as a memory. If you want a female lover, turn your eyes to that friend that taught you how to kiss. The safest encounter with a fairy is a brief one.”
I didn’t expect that to be a satisfactory answer, but it was the answer I wanted her to accept. She frowned unhappily, then changed the subject as she started walking down the path away from the tent, waving for me to follow.
“Grandfather was pretty worried when he found out you had gone to see Lord Greenwater.”
“Worried?” I echoed as I followed her.
“We are all told, constantly, ‘Don’t bother Lord Greenwater’. Part of the secret to getting along with him is not being an annoyance. We do everything we can to stay out of his sight.”
“Is the chieftain angry with me?”
She shook her head and waved negation with her hands. “No, it’s not like that. He’s just worried about messing up our treaty with the water folk. He wants you to keep in mind, it’s our valley but it’s not our water. We’re guests here in Greenwater.”
I nodded. then wondered, “Should I go apologize to him?”
“You would have to do it later. He’s out with Dad, touring the valley defenses. I don’t think he’s looking for an apology, anyway.”
We continued down the path, past the old buildings that I had been told were ‘under renovation’. Even here at night, I couldn’t feel presences inside, and no light emitted from cracks or windows, so I guess they were indeed not occupied yet. In this world of monsters and spirits, unoccupied structures are hazards, so I wondered why they hadn’t already done something about these. But I wasn’t planning on staying around, so it wasn’t my business.
As we reached the lagoon’s edge, a wake disturbed the still surface, followed by a nude woman rising with water pouring from her body, to stand knee-deep facing us from a pace away.
“Hello, sister,” she greeted Sidis, then told me, “My cousin Piri told the truth; you’re a delight for the eyes. I wouldn’t object to a visit to my nest from such a pretty maiden. I have some lovely fish to share tonight.”
“Ner, she needs to see the lord…” Sidis chided the woman, then told me. “I apologize for my sister, My Lady. She doesn’t have a good grasp of normal behavior.”
I cleared my throat and turned it into a light laugh. “I shall decline this time, Miss Ner. Thanks for asking.”
“Grandfather says to come straight to his pool, ” Ner stated, her smile unchanged, then dove into the water and disappeared.
I turned to Sidis. “Are you coming along?”
Sidis waved her hands. “No, it’s too dark to fly. I’m on duty in the headquarters tent in an hour.”
I nodded and promised, “I’ll drop by to say goodbye before I leave.”
Lord Moram’s pool was as I remembered it, but he was not on his rock when I touched down there. Instead, Ner slipped out of the water and sat on one of the stone seats, gesturing for me to sit in another.
“Grandfather has prepared a gift for you,” she told me after I sat, while leaning into a slightly provocative pose. She raised her hand and snapped her fingers, and an adolescent rusalka covered in water weeds emerged from the pool cradling a small stone in both hands. She looked as shy as a rabbit as she approached and held it out to me.
I took it, sensing that it was a magic tool of some sort. A slightly closer investigation with fairy sight, while the child fled back into the water, told me that the ‘gift’ was a spirit stone. A real one, not one of the one-off stones Sidis had described to us.
“He invited me here. Is he not going to speak to me himself?” I wondered. Ner let out a very courtesan-like pleasant laugh and then held her hand before her mouth, concealing a merry smile.
“He’s been here the entire time,” she told me and pointed to the rock.
I looked, and a cloak dissolved to reveal the vodyanoy lord puffing his pipe, a slightly crooked smile on his frog-walrus face.
“Does the spell I employed resemble your stealth?” he asked.
I stood and pinched my skirt to give him a curtsey, then told him, “It seems to be a very similar spell indeed, My Lord.”
“I searched my tomes and found an elven spell created in imitation of the vampire’s cloak. How did you like the improvements to my barrier?”
I couldn’t help myself; behind the gruff attitude and grumpy voice I could hear a hint of mischievous humor. I had to laugh in appreciation. “I was very impressed that you could improve a defense of such size so quickly, My Lord. You are a most impressive mage.”
He gave a curt nod, accepting the praise, then puffed his pipe a few times before stating, “My spirits have seen the women you seek. They remember two beauties of sea-green eyes, one a blond maiden with the fragrance of fairy blood and the other a sky-haired maiden born from the sea.”
I wasn’t sure how Amelia had ‘the fragrance of fairy blood’, but I suspected Chiara of having a merrow parent, so the rest of the description gibed. With my excitement rising, I asked, “My Lord, do they know where they are now?”
“Not clearly, no,” he stated bluntly, killing that excitement. So much for going straight there and grabbing Amelia. “However, they remain within the range of my spirit servants. I have taught the inhabitant of that rock to communicate with my spirits, and they will assist it in your search.”
“So… they don’t know where they are, but they know they’re nearby?”
“They still sense their auras,” he stated. “But they have been frustrated in the attempt to find their exact locations.”
“This is still extremely valuable aid you have given us, My Lord. How may I repay it?”
“Listen to the end,” he groused. “I am not finished.”
I gave a second curtsey with a bow of my head. “Forgive me, My Lord.”
“Be cautious in your pursuit. Where my spirits find traces of their auras, they also find traces of demons.”
