Free The Paladin Caper by Patrick Weekes Page A

did have the fog, because he’d never felt like that about hitting someone.
    And then the wrench passed out the other side of the ogre, and Herlit was stumbling through her, and it was like walking through a gust of rain during a storm, and then he was behind her, and the whole world was a little too sharp and bright and hurt his eyes.
    Two of his men were on the ground, coughing and clutching at their faces, and there was mustard-yellow mist swirling around them and trailing out from the dwarf’s hood. Another stumbled and twitched, something wrapped around him, and Herlit saw that it was the bony woman, only she wasn’t bony anymore. She was coiled like a rope, and the man tangled up in her was glowing and shrinking somehow, bits of him going away.
    Herlit took all this in as the ogre turned to him. Her hand reached into his chest, and, again, it felt like walking into a heavy rain.
    “Do we need him?” the ogre asked, and Herlit looked down at the hand embedded to the wrist in his chest, and he held very still, even though some part of him thought that he should leap away, because it wasn’t a very large part, and it wasn’t sure , and all he could think was that yes, yes, they needed him, please, they needed him, the fog was lifting and everything was sharp, and the ogre’s hand was this strange cold softness all through him.
    “No,” said the bony woman.
    And then, with an impossible crushing pain, it wasn’t.

    Sunrise Canyon was a great crimson ribbon that cut through the rolling hills of the countryside around it. The grass, a pale green that faded to gold in autumn, gave way sharply to the vivid red of stone walls, slick and shining as though carved by a master and not worn away over countless generations by the river that ran along the canyon floor. During the day, the canyon got enough direct sunlight for light foliage to grow near the river, and the bright canyon walls were like buildings that blocked the sun. At night, the trace crystals that gave the walls their color lit the entire canyon in red, giving more glow than starlight and less than the moon, casting strange shadows on either side.
    It was well after sunset as Desidora descended into the canyon, carried in the talons of a great snowy-white eagle whose wings were vast and silent and pink in the light of the walls.
    Desidora looked over and saw the mining facility as they passed by it, a great wooden dock attached to a well-braced archway in the wall. The dock and archway were the only black parts of the glowing wall, save for a narrow trail that led down the wall itself, switching back and forth several times before it finally reached the dock. It looked to Desidora like a giant mouth with its tongue sticking out.
    The mining facility was not their destination this night, however.
    “Can you sense the fairy creature?” she asked, looking down at the sparkling river that snaked through the bushes and low trees below and gripping Ululenia’s talons a bit more tightly. She did not hate heights, but a few months ago, she had fallen to her death (priestesshood), and it had left her a little nervous.
    Not yet, Ululenia said, and to Desidora, her friend’s mental voice sounded strained. The crystals in the canyon walls are the rushing waters that hide the wolf’s quiet steps.
    “And it is the wolf, in this metaphor?” Desidora asked, looking up to the underside of Ululenia’s wings. Near the leg on one wing was a patch of black, in a shape that looked almost like antlers.
    Ululenia had been pure white once, but while Desidora had been falling to her death those few months ago, Ululenia had been helping Loch win a gambling tournament. In the process, she’d fought another fairy creature, an experience that had marked her. Literally, in this case.
    It is. Ululenia sighed in Desidora’s mind. I hear your words, spoken and unspoken, and you need not fear. I am no danger to you or the others.
    “Shall I just nod uncomfortably and let it be