When Catriona brought Justaria back to their camp by the ancient temple ruins, she first introduced her to her best friend. Of course, she already knew Dreya the Dark from Council sessions.
“The White Assassin,” she greeted Mandalee, shaking her hand. “I’ve heard of you.”
“You have?” she replied, astonished that one of the Triumvirate would think her worthy of notice.
Justaria nodded. “In fact, I was planning to hire you for some Council-sanctioned demon hunting jobs a couple of years back, but you disappeared.”
“A bad thing happened, but it’s all fine now,” she replied simply, giving an embarrassed Catriona a reassuring smile.
Dreya knew the ‘bad thing’ in question, of course, and decided to move the conversation along.
“It is good to see you alive and well, Mistress Justaria,” she offered formally, inclining her head in respect for one of the Triumvirate. Naturally, Justaria’s disappearance had led to a replacement being appointed, but after the formality of a Conclave, Justaria would doubtless be exonerated of any wrongdoing and be free to reclaim her seat, should she wish it. Besides, Dreya liked Justaria. Despite their different alignments, she had often been an ally on the Council.
“Dreya,” Justaria returned the greeting. “I trust you kept the Council from breaking apart in my absence?”
“More than that, I used the distractions of your disappearance and this business with Kullos to push through reforms almost without them noticing. Changed the name, gave druids equal status and opened our doors to clerics.”
“Still the same Dreya the Dark,” Justaria remarked, trying to hide an amused smile. “For years, I beg, plead and reason with the Black robes to stop fighting among themselves, without success. You put a knife to Laethyn’s throat, tell him to pack it in and bar the odd incident, it stops. I don’t even want to know who you manipulated to get the Council dancing to your tune this time, Dreya. Officially, I can’t condone your methods. Unofficially, I can’t help but admire how you get results. So, have you got around to conquering the world yet?”
Her question was a joke. She was not prepared for an entirely serious, “Yes, I did. I had a spare afternoon.” Then after a pause to let that sink in, Dreya qualified her statement. “Not this world – another one. At least, I intended to conquer it. Some people seem to think I may have accidentally saved it at the same time.”
Justaria laughed. “Like I said, still the same Dreya the Dark: still making excuses for doing good things.”
Doing her best to look offended, Dreya objected, “I’m sure I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“Of course you don’t,” Justaria replied, putting on her serious face. “Blame my weeks in captivity.”
Moving on, Cat introduced Daelen and Michael, equally casually, momentarily forgetting that to Justaria, these friends of hers were mysterious, legendary beings of awesome power.
Justaria shook her head in disbelief. “When I predicted an exciting future for you, Catriona, all those years ago, even I never imagined all this. For all Dreya’s machinations, I suspect you are the glue holding all this together, and if it’s not too presumptuous of me, I am unbelievably proud of you.”
Blushing, Cat wondered if she would still say the same if she knew what she’d done to the prisoner. Not that she regretted it.
*****
Without further ado, Justaria handed over the marigold flowers and while she told the others everything she had learned, Cat drew Mandalee to one side.
“So, are we going to talk about what you did to that prisoner?” Mandalee asked her friend.
“No, we’re going to talk about these.” She grabbed a bowl from the food tent and poured the flowers into it. Elaborating on her plan, she explained she knew they were poisonous to sheep and cattle. That made her wonder if, with a little bit of Cleric of Nature magic, they might be toxic to humans and Faery, too. “Not fatal,” she assured her. “Just enough to give people a bad bout of stomach cramps for a while, if they happened to ingest some in their water supply.”
“Cat, you know I don’t like using poisons,” Mandalee complained.
“Yes, I know you don’t like it, Mandalee, but can you do it?” Catriona snapped, irritably. “Think of it this way: we don’t know how many of the people in that camp truly are our enemies, and how many are like Justaria. With these flowers, a bit of magic and a pinch of luck, we can take most of them out of the fighting altogether. If you were sitting in that camp, having been abducted, which would you prefer: a bit of sickness, or death in a battle you want no part of?”
Of course, even if her idea worked, they couldn’t guarantee it would work on aliens, but they were relatively few compared to the amassed horde. Cat would do her best to look out for them and restrain any who were not sick but seemed to be reluctant to fight. No war could guarantee zero loss of innocent life, but this plan was the best way she could think of to minimise such casualties.
Mandalee pointed out that Kullos had abducted clerics, as well as wizards, so they would have access to healing. But Cat had thought of that.
“Yes, but the healers will get sick themselves, which should delay their response. Even after they heal themselves, the illness will leave them weak for a while. Then every time they heal someone, they expend energy. If we time this right, they won’t have much left by the time we attack. That all helps to take more people out of the fighting, which saves their lives. Anyone who doesn’t fight doesn’t die.”
Mandalee had to concede she made a persuasive argument. It was just the kind of ridiculous radical plan her friend would come up with. Deliberately making people sick to save their lives. Despite her initial reluctance, then, Mandalee agreed to do it. Grinding down the flowers, she added water and applied heat to brew a kind of tea. Thanks to her understanding of nature, she knew how the poison affected sheep and cattle. Factoring in how humans differed, she could visualise how the plants would have to evolve to have that same effect on people. She also had to consider how Faery physiology worked a little bit differently to that of humans because it needed to attack both equally. Then, for good measure, she thought about the standard clerical healing spells that she would start with when trying to cure this herself and made the poison resistant to them. Hopefully, that would delay response time even further and help her save more innocent lives.
It was delicate, inventive work – Mandalee wasn’t used to using her clerical powers in this way – but after a good hour’s work, the poison was ready. She carefully poured it into a drinking flask, which they gave to Justaria, warning her to be careful not to get it mixed up with the safe drinking water they had given her. That water needed to last her only a matter of hours because tomorrow they would attack.
*****
Walking over to the command tent Michael had set up with Daelen, they rejoined the others and shared their strategy. Michael built on the idea, saying he could send a swarm of biting insects into the camp, which would carry an infection with much the same symptoms as Marigold poisoning.
“Since the flies are the more obvious source,” he pointed out, “it should take them even longer to realise the water’s contaminated, too.”
Unfortunately, without his presence to control the flies, he wouldn’t be able to protect Justaria from them, but with his help, Mandalee was able to give Justaria the best defence she could: insect repellent.
Cat escorted Justaria back to Kullos’ camp and bade her wait while she burrowed under the barrier in mole form to check the way was clear. Once she was satisfied no-one had stumbled across the tunnel, she sent a sympathic message to Justaria. ‘Clear’.
Wishing each other luck, Cat returned the way she came, while Justaria set about the perilous mission of tainting the camp’s water supply.
*****
When she returned to the temple ruins, Catriona found herself growing restless. She didn’t know what to do with herself. Her research was at a dead end, and the young woman couldn’t think of any more druid magic tricks to use in tomorrow’s battle that would make any difference. She was avoiding Mandalee because she knew her friend was desperate to understand what she had done to that prisoner. But the druidess couldn’t talk about that – it was too soon. Daelen wasn’t happy about her actions, either, and she was worried that if she let him look into her eyes, he might see the eyes of a stranger. She didn’t think she could bear that. Worse still, while she had no regrets about choosing Dreya, she also loved Daelen, just in a different way, and maybe it was selfish of her, but she’d grown used to seeing his love for her in his eyes. That’s why she was avoiding looking at them now – just in case that love wasn’t there anymore. Nevertheless, she couldn’t explain it to him. She knew people often talked about waiting for the ‘right time’ to tell somebody something when generally speaking, there was no such thing. Even so, right now, on the eve of war – very possibly a fight to determine whether her world would still exist in a couple of days – this was definitely not the right time.
As much as it pained her that those two wanted an explanation, she was irrationally annoyed that Dreya didn’t. To her, it was simple: if Cat had decided that level of response was warranted, that was good enough for her. Cat knew she was trying to be supportive, but she was finding it hard not to snap at her, “You watched me tell a man to go away and kill himself! How can you be OK with that and not demand to know why?” Although, of course, she wouldn’t tell Dreya even if she did ask, and Dreya knew that, so what was the point of her asking?
Add to that the fact that she’d come within a hairsbreadth of dying at his hands when her magic deserted her, plus her failure with the Chronicles that still made no sense, and Catriona’s emotions simply couldn’t handle it. So, she made it clear she wanted to be alone for a while. If they needed her, they’d find her sitting under her own personal black cloud, which, for a druid, could be entirely literal.
In the end, she decided an actual raincloud was not necessary…her own tears were quite sufficient.
*****
She sat there alone for over an hour, unable to get a handle on either her mind or her heart until she heard the now-familiar leopard language in her head.
‘I am sorry things did not work out for you, Cat,’ Shyleen offered, kindly. Catriona hadn’t heard her stealthy approach. ‘Life is a great puzzle, especially for you, and sometimes you just don’t have all the pieces.’
Cat thanked the philosophical leopard but otherwise said nothing, so Shyleen slinked away.
*****
Dusk fell, and people began to think about getting some rest, ready for the big day tomorrow. Most headed for tents, but Cat wasn’t at all surprised to see Mandalee settling down with Shyleen to sleep under the stars. The Cleric of Nature and her leopard, inseparable as always.
Cat got up – she could at least wish her friends a good night – and froze as realisation struck.
She shouted to the heavens, scaring the entire camp half to death, “I am so thick!”
She ran over to her friends, laughing, “Get up, you two! You can sleep later. I’ve just figured it out!”
In leopard, she declared, ‘Shyleen, you are the smartest person I know!’
“Seriously, you two, get up!” she insisted, hauling Mandalee to her feet. “We need to get Daelen and Dreya, too!” Cat could barely contain her excitement. It was infectious.
“What’s this about, Cat?” Mandalee asked. She had no idea why her friend was acting like this.
“It’s about the Chronicles! I know what I was missing! Come on!” Refusing to let go of Mandalee’s arm, she impatiently pulled her along as she ran through the camp. Shyleen at their heels. She found Daelen first, just stepping out of the command tent and called out to him, “Have you seen Dreya?”
Without him having to answer, her girlfriend popped her head out of the same tent. Letting go of Mandalee’s arm, at last, she put her hands on her hips and tried to look annoyed.
“And what have you two been doing together? Should I be getting jealous?”
Daelen looked flustered, but Cat reassured him, “I’m kidding, you fool!”
Turning to her girlfriend, she told her, “You’d better still have the Chronicles!”
“Of course,” she replied, fishing the book out of her pocket and handing it to her.
“Perfect. Right, you lot come with me. Same as last night, but this time, we’re doing it with all the pieces.”
*****
They left the camp and returned to the same clearing they had used the night before. This time ensuring there were no pesky spies around before they started.
“I know why it didn't work – it's so obvious!” the druid exclaimed. “But it took a cleverer cat than me to make me see it. It's not that I didn't have all the pieces, I just left one out. Maybe Magias didn’t anticipate such a unique variation, or maybe I’m just thick!”
Her friends looked at her like she was losing it, so she forced herself to calm down and explain, “It didn't work because the Three were only Two-and-a-Half. Mandalee, don't you see? Shyleen has half your soul!”
Mandalee gasped, “So the magic saw me as only ‘half there’, sort of!”
In leopard, she said, ‘Shyleen, how about it? Just think, for as long as we want to do this job, I’ll age only intermittently, when we enter the time stream to fix things. We can be together for longer than we ever dreamed possible!’
Cat added, ‘I’m so sorry I missed you out last night. I didn’t mean to try and separate you; I just didn’t think.’
“Will you join us?” Mandalee asked aloud.
Shyleen considered carefully and answered in her own good time, ‘Of course I will join you, Mandalee. It is better this way; you would obviously get it all wrong without me!’
Catriona laughed, ‘You’re right, of course!’
It was Dreya who asked Daelen, “One more try?”
The shadow warrior nodded his assent.
This time, four hands and one paw held the staff. This time, upon Catriona's command – and a good hard push from Daelen's power – the ancient astral doors swung open. This time, the symbols in the sky were clear. She still had no idea what they meant, but that didn’t matter. What mattered was that this time, the essence of Time Magic flowed out into the three mortal mages and one leopard, through their bodies and out into the world. Moreover, when the blue crystal sent its lightshow high into the night sky, it was perfectly apparent to everyone that the stars shifted in response.
Even though the magic did not touch Daelen, he could taste the difference in the magic surrounding him.
“It's like I've been stuck inside for centuries, and now I've stepped outside and tasted fresh air for the first time.”
Dreya acknowledged his analogy with a deferential bow of the head, appreciating his long experience.
“Now, I suggest a good night’s sleep, and then tomorrow, it's time to hit Kullos with some of this fresh magic.”
The others agreed – Shyleen growled, too.
“Why wait?” Cat was feeling inspired. In the interests of causing more havoc and disruption, she volunteered to send a thunderstorm over the enemy camp. “Even demons need sleep,” she pointed out, “most of them, anyway. I say we make sure they don’t get any tonight.”
“Won’t work,” Daelen told her, shaking his head. “Kullos can dispel a storm just like I can.”
With a twinkle in her eye, Cat asked, “How many?”
“How many what?”
“How many times is he going to do that in one night?”
Cat explained that if she could add a temporal element to her usual storm magic, she could make it so that every time Kullos got rid of a storm, another would start up, or rather the same storm over and over again all night.
Reusing an idea from when she and Mandalee saved Michael and his group, she thought the army might believe it was Daelen StormTiger, at first. They would quickly realise it wasn’t, but then another storm would hit. They would either spend all night jumping at every flash of lightning or become so dulled to it that by the time Daelen did announce his presence, it would take them a while to grasp that it was for real, this time.
Even Dreya looked impressed. “You can do that?”
Cat grinned, feeling invigorated. “A few hours ago, I thought I’d failed in everything I’d ever worked for. Now, after what we just did, I think I can do just about anything I set my mind to!”
Dreya kissed her and insisted, “You always could. You just needed to see it. Go get them!”
With a seductive look into her girlfriend’s eyes, the druid purred, “Just for that, you get to sleep in my tent, tonight. If you want.”
“Sounds like a magical night to me,” the sorceress smiled.
“Hey, Dreya,” Mandalee offered, tongue-in-cheek, deliberately interrupting the two lovebirds. “As part of your drive for reforms, will you sponsor Shyleen as a full member of the Council of Mages?”
The sorceress considered that. “I will have to raise the issue of leopard mages at the next general meeting.”
“I'll be sure not to miss that one,” Cat remarked. “It could get interesting. By the way, Mandalee, when I said I can do anything I like, that includes you.”
“What about me?”
“What I promised you the day we met,” she replied. “To fix, shall we say, certain biological errors. At last, I can do it.”
Mandalee gasped, “Really? I’d given up on that ever happening!”
“Yeah, sorry it’s taken so long,” Cat grinned. “More complicated than I thought and it’ll probably violate half a dozen rules of Time Magic that haven’t been written yet, but who cares?”
Laughing in joy, Mandalee swept her friend up in a huge embrace. “You are the best! Thank you!”
“Just one thing,” Cat added, breaking the hug, “we’ll need to get back to Elvaria to do it, which is a pretty long way, so do you mind if we save the world first?”
Wearing a look of intense concentration, Mandalee considered that for a moment, then agreed, “Oh, go on, then. Might as well. While we’re here.”