“WHAT ARE YOU talking about?” Patricia said. “Stephanie and I Shaped this world together. No one else.” I thought her choosing to participate in the conversation was pretty impressive, considering one werewolf had her pinned and four others were staring down at her, growling.
“She’s right,” Stephanie said.
“You’re both wrong,” I said. “I can feel her—or him—and so can Karl.” I glanced at the wolves surrounding Patricia. “Let her up.”
I didn’t put any Shaping power into it, so as one (except for Eric) they glanced at Stephanie for confirmation. She nodded. “Let her up,” she repeated.
They stepped back. Eric looked at me over his furry shoulder. I nodded, too. He backed away.
Patricia got to her feet. Her face smoothed into her normal human appearance. She eyed Stephanie warily. Just as warily, Stephanie eyed her back.
Karl continued to gaze off into the southwest corner. “It is very odd,” he said, his voice troubled. “I cannot explain it. But I can feel the place where a Portal can be opened. And without question, close to it, there is another Shaper.”
“First things first,” I said. I looked up at the open window behind the throne. “Since Patricia called for reinforcements, I would expect, any minute now . . .”
Right on cue, a dozen winged vampires poured in. They swooped down . . .
. . . and I shouted, “Hold!”, with Shaping power poured into the word.
The vampires landed. They shifted into naked-human shape.
I sighed. I’d seen more naked people in this world than I’d seen in ten years of watching that Home Theater Ticket series Contest of Castles—and that was saying something. And now, I suddenly realized, I’ll never see the final season. Bummer. It seemed unlikely, with the dour and authoritarian Adversary now running my world, it had even aired. Probably sucked anyway.
The pack shifted into human form, too. A whole room full of naked people eyed each other suspiciously.
The immediate threat taken care of, I closed my eyes and concentrated. Peace, I thought, and Shaped. Without the hokhmah of that mysterious third Shaper, I could tell I couldn’t make the kind of Shapings I had managed in my own world, creating quarries out of nothing, resetting time by three hours, conjuring fog, accidentally stirring up hurricanes—that kind of thing. But I could influence the Shaped vampires and werewolves within this hall . . . no, within the entire valley. I had the power.
I used it. The Pact is restored, I thought, and I felt that truth take hold.
I opened my eyes again, looked around the room of naked people, closed them for a moment, Shaped, and opened them again to see robes lying at everyone’s feet. (And that, I could tell from how it had made me feel, was about the greatest act of physical shaping I could hope to manage with the hokhmah I currently possessed.) “Get dressed,” I said, and put a little Shaping into that command, too.
As the werewolves and vampires covered up, Stephanie turned to stare at me. “You really are a Shaper,” she said.
“Duh,” I said.
Patricia’s eyes were also wide. “I don’t know what to say.”
A new vampire flew into the room. He carried a struggling Father Thomas.
“Leave him alone!” Eric shouted.
The vampire landed and shifted into human form without releasing Thomas. It was Dracula. The Pact might have been restored, but that did nothing to influence individuals who felt their loved ones were threatened. “Harm the queen and this one dies,” he said. Eric dropped his robe he had barely donned and turned back into a wolf.
“Eric! No!” I shouted.
Fur bristling, he held where he was, crouching.
“Vlad,” Patricia said. “It’s all right. Let him go.”
Dracula hesitated. He stared around the room, clearly trying to make sense of what he saw.
“Vlad,” Patricia said. “Please.”
With a kind of hissing grunt, Dracula shoved Thomas to the ground. He fell to his hands and knees and stayed there, taking deep, shuddering breaths. In Dracula’s grasp, the aura of terror must have been utterly paralyzing. But at least the priest hadn’t been harmed.
Eric turned back into a boy and ran to Thomas’ side. Dracula’s clad-in-shadows routine didn’t really work in a bright room, I realized with a sigh. Keeping people clothed around here is like playing whack-a-mole. I Shaped him a robe, as I had the others. “Get dressed,” I ordered, and he obeyed.
Patricia’s eyes shifted from him to me to him again, and I realized what she had just seen: I’d Shaped her consort, just a little, but still.
Piotr, meanwhile, scooped up Eric’s robe and took it to him. Eric dressed, then they both knelt beside Father Thomas. All three spoke in low voices.
Dracula hurried to the queen. “Are you all right, blood of my heart?” he said.
“I’m fine,” Patricia said. She took his hand in both of hers and held it to her breast. “I’m fine.” She kissed him, then turned to face me, keeping his right hand clasped in her left. Her eyes shifted to Karl, still at my side. “Karl Yatsar,” she said. “I must apologize for my doubts. You were telling the truth.”
“I was,” Karl said. “Were you?”
Her eyes narrowed. “I don’t understand.”
“There is a third Shaper. You said you Shaped this world with Stephanie, alone.”
“And so I did,” Patricia said.
“As I Shaped it with her, alone,” Stephanie said. “With my best friend . . .”
She walked toward Patricia then, her eyes locked on the vampire queen’s. “Tell me the truth,” she said. “Did you kill Geoffrey?”
Patricia let go of Dracula’s hand and reached out to Stephanie. “How could you ever have thought it? I knew . . . know . . . how much you loved him.”
“I saw you do it,” Stephanie said. “Or I thought I did. And the ones who attacked were recognized by those who survived on my side . . .”
“As you were seen,” Patricia said, “by Dracula.” She nodded to her consort. “And those of mine who survived the attack recognized other of the werewolves, as well.”
Both queens looked at me. “You started to say you could explain this,” Stephanie said.
“I think you’d better,” Patricia added.
I nodded and told them about the rogue who had so convincingly altered his appearance.
“That sounds like a form of glamor,” Patricia said, frowning. “Glamor is a vampire trait . . . but none of my vampires have that particular ability.”
“Because I did not Shape it into any of them,” Stephanie said. She frowned in her turn. “Yet you say he looked like a werewolf?”
“Yes,” I said. “Whatever he was, it seems clear his kind are behind the breaking of the Pact. And he told us he followed someone he called the ‘Protector.’ Whoever that is, he—or she—must be behind everything that’s gone wrong.”
Stephanie turned to Patricia, then, and pulled the vampire queen toward her. They embraced. I saw tears on Patricia’s face. I felt a slight burning in my own eyes, but I put it down to the lingering smoke from the candles, more of which had sputtered out in the blast of Dracula’s whirlwind entrance.
I looked at Karl. “So, are you thinking what I’m thinking?”
“I imagine I am. Obviously, this third Shaper must be the called the Protector.”
“But why would he or she . . .”
Karl shook his head. “I do not know.”
Oh, great, that phrase again, I thought.
“What I do know is, we must find him . . .”
“ . . . or her,” I put in.
“Or her,” he agreed, “and take this Shaper’s hokhmah as well. Only then will this world be protected from the Adversary, and only then will we have the full knowledge of it, which Ygrair must have.”
I remembered thinking, back in Zarozje, that the Protector wasn’t my problem. Clearly, I’d been wrong. “Great,” I muttered. “Here I thought I’d just beat the final boss, and it turns out there’s a whole ’nother level to go.”
“Your words,” Karl said, “make no sense to me. As usual.”
I laughed. I still felt a little woozy from the blood Patricia had drained, and maybe from the Shaping of the cloaks. “Keep hold of me,” I told Karl, and he gripped my arm, steadying me, as I walked down from the dais to where the two Shapers had just separated. They turned to look at me, like everyone else in the room, as I approached them.
“We’re going to have to seek out this previously unsuspected Shaper,” I said. “We’re going to need an escort. And supplies.”
“Where do you believe this . . . impossible person is?” Stephanie said. She and Patricia had stopped hugging, but they were still holding hands. I thought Dracula looked a little jealous.
I remembered something from the Jules Verne world. “Do you have a map of the valley?”
“Of course.” Patricia glanced at Seraphina.
“Yes, Your Majesty,” she said. She hurried off to a side door.
I looked around at the silent, almost frozen vampires and werewolves all around us, and raised my voice. “Talk amongst yourselves! Get to know one another! Does anybody know any good team-building exercises?”
Stephanie and Patricia laughed. No one else did. At last! I thought. Someone who gets my jokes! Karl, of course, just shook his head.
“Seriously, though,” I said to the queens. “Maybe take charge here a bit? Yes, I can Shape things a little, but it’s your world, and you rule.”
They exchanged glances, then broke apart. Stephanie went immediately to her small pack. “Embry,” she said to one of her men, “unbar the door, hurry out to our forces, and tell them that what they feel is true: the Pact is restored. Tell them to stand down. There will be no attack.”
“Yes, Your Majesty.” Embry hurried to the door, unbarred it, opened it, disrobed, changed into a white wolf, and dashed out past a large group of rather confused-looking vampires in human form, these clothed and armed in conventional fashion. Clearly, my restoration of the Pact had taken hold, however; they made no move to stop the werewolf.
“Vampires, gather before the throne!” Patricia cried. As the vampires in the hall and those Jakob had just revealed outside the door began to move, she took Dracula’s hand and returned to her accustomed place of honor.
Dracula looked relieved. Well, I thought, if your consort is also kind of a goddess, and she suddenly starts making eyes at another goddess, I suppose that could be threatening to a male ego.
I rubbed the wound on my neck. The punctures seemed to have closed with alacrity, part of the original Shaping, no doubt. Karl was still supporting my other arm, but I felt stronger, so I smiled and told him to let go. Somewhat doubtfully, he did so.
With him close beside me, clearly afraid I might still keel over, I went to join my own little group, Piotr and Eric and Father Thomas, who now sat on the edge of the dais. The priest’s breathing had returned to normal, but he still looked pale. “He came out of the sky,” he said. “I barely knew he was there until . . . the terror . . . it drove me to the ground . . . I thought my heart would burst. Then he picked me up, flew me . . .”
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I really thought you’d be safe in the cottage.”
“I did not stay in the cottage,” he admitted. “I was worried. I saw Eric and Piotr snatched away. I went down into the valley, looking for a way into the castle.”
“Oh.” I felt a surge of annoyance at his disobedience, then slapped it away. Father Thomas was his own man. He had accompanied us here for his own reasons, not because I had any right to command him. Although he would have been better off if he’d obeyed me . . .
I slapped that thought down, too. I’m hanging out with too many princes, tyrants, and queens. It’s starting to rub off.
Power corrupts, as they say. And absolute power . . . like the power of a Shaper . . .
No. That isn’t happening to me.
Not yet.
Shut up.
“The Pact is restored,” I said out loud to Father Thomas.
His head jerked up, eyes wide. “The story of the rogue who could make himself look like one of the queens . . . it convinced them?”
“It helped,” I said. “But no, I had to use that power of mine we told you about. I touched each of the queens, and took their hokhmah, their wisdom. And with it, I was able to influence them. I convinced them to restore the Pact.”
“God be praised!” Father Thomas cried.
“God?” I said. “Not that long ago, you were worried my ability sounded like witchcraft.”
“Witchcraft isn’t used for good,” he replied. “Therefore, this isn’t witchcraft. And as to whether or not God was involved . . . I don’t believe that’s for you to say.”
I smiled. “Touché.”
Seraphina reentered the hall, carrying a map. She went first to Patricia, who said something to the vampires gathered around her, then rose from her throne and approached me with Seraphina and Dracula in tow. I caught Stephanie’s eye across the room, and she disengaged herself from her cadre of werewolves and joined the rest of us off to one side of the dais, Piotr with her.
The remaining vampires suspiciously eyed the remaining werewolves, whom they now greatly outnumbered. The werewolves attempted to make up for their small numbers by eying the vampires even more suspiciously in return. The Pact might be restored, but trust apparently remained in short supply.
Seraphina spread her map on the floor. For the first time I saw a complete representation of the valley. I was surprised how many villages were marked north of the castle and south of Stephanie’s lair. There, presumably, something like more ordinary life continued. In the rogue-plagued Lands Between, however, there were far more villages marked. I wondered how many had been destroyed or emptied, and which remained intact, but heavily fortified.
“What are you looking for?” Thomas said.
“It’s hard to explain,” I said. Of those around us, Piotr, Stephanie, Dracula, and Patricia—well, and Karl, of course—knew the truth of the Shaping of this world. Eric, Seraphina, and Father Thomas did not. “Please. I have to concentrate.”
I closed my eyes to better get in touch with my inner alien technology, which was less fun than getting in touch with my inner child but more fun than getting in touch with my inner demons. I could sense the mysterious third Shaper, and the potential Portal, practically in the same place, and that place was . . .
I opened my eyes and pointed at the map. “There. That’s where we have to go.”
Everyone leaned forward to see where I was pointing.
Father Thomas spoke first. “Mother Church,” he said reverentially. “You’re going to Mother Church, at the end of the Sacred Vale!” He looked at me. His face was alight with joy. “And if the Pact is restored then I can come with you!”