Forest Moon Rising, page 1
Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright Page
Dedication
Acknowledgements
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Epilogue
P. R. FROST’S
Tess Noncoiré Novels:
HOUNDING THE MOON
MOON IN THE MIRROR
FAERY MOON
FOREST MOON RISING
Copyright © 2011 by Phyllis Irene Radford.
All Rights Reserved.
DAW Book Collectors No. 1536.
DAW Books are distributed by Penguin Group (USA) Inc.
All characters and events in this book are fictitious. Any resemblance to persons living or dead is strictly coincidental.
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First Printing, February 2011
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eISBN : 978-1-101-47851-6
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This book is dedicated to the armies of volunteers and professional foresters who work very hard at maintaining the treasure of green spaces in urban areas everywhere.
Acknowledgments
A lot of a writer’s time is spent in isolation; our minds engaged in a fictional world, our thoughts shaped by the imaginary characters, and the impossible demands we put upon them. But no book is totally created in solitude. We need to come up for air upon occasion and take inspiration from reality (no matter how you define it), and from the people around us who graciously allow us time alone, the right to be cranky when the plot ties itself in knots, and rejoice with us when all the puzzle pieces fall into place.
So I must give hearty thanks to Tim Karr, my beloved husband of forty years. Without you I couldn’t do any of this or be a complete person. My brainstorm crew of Deborah Dixon, Lea Day, Sara Mueller, Jessica Groeller, Lizzy Shannon, Maggie Bonham, Bob Brown, and Big Brother Ed deserve more thanks than just a mention here. These are also my first readers. They help lever my wandering prose into a story that is actually readable.
The lovely filk song “Heart’s Path” by Chris Dickenson is printed here with her kind permission. A recording is available on the “Harmony Heifers” CD produced by Mystic Fig Studios, available at www.mysticfig.com or CD Baby.
Many years ago, ElizaBeth Gilligan and I sat in a filk circle at Orycon and crooned “Where Are All The Aliens.” I thank her for the loan of the lyrics we compiled together.
And I can’t forget Sheila Gilbert, editor extraordinaire, the best in the business.
Prologue
In the Chinook Jargon, Devil’s Lake was called me-sah-chie-chuck which means evil water. There are many stories about malign spirits and creatures inhabiting the lake’s clear turquoise waters.
“TESS NONCOIRÉ, Warrior of the Celestial Blade, you really don’t want to do this,” Scrap whispered.
In the chat room—that big, white, blank space between the dimensions with portals to all of them—my interdimensional imp had substance and size. He no longer fit on my shoulder or on top of my head. So he stood beside me. His potbelly looked thinner than usual and his bandy legs stronger—we’d been working too hard. A lovely scattering of warts decorated his chest and his bum. His tattered wings stretched from above his head to his heels. They fluttered in agitation.
His normally gray-green skin flashed between yellow and pink. He was scared and we were in danger.
I knew that. I was as scared as he. Maybe more so.
My scar, which ran from right temple to jaw, pulsed and burned, a clear warning that I needed to either fight my way clear or flee. Rapidly.
I couldn’t accept either option.
“If this is such a bad idea, why’d you bring me this far?” I asked, trying to keep my teeth from chattering.
“I brought you here to scare you into going home.” Scrap’s actual voice came through deeper than his normal telepathic communications.
I caught sight of the demons on guard duty in the distance. Their bright blue, stacked-tire bodies with pink feather ruffs at neck, wrists, and ankles loomed larger with each giant stride toward us. Think the Michelin man decked out for an Easter parade.
“B’Cartlins,” Scrap whispered. “Their stupidity makes them more dangerous than their size. They need everything repeated six times before they understand.”
“I think I want to hide.” No shadows presented themselves in the limitless white. The B’Cartlins grew by the heartbeat as they approached. Without a thought, either of them could squash us to unidentified road pizza.
“No trespassing in the chat room,” one of them boomed. Demons took seriously their duty to keep everyone in their home dimension.
I covered my ears against the cannon roar of sound.
“Imps go anywhere, anywhen,” Scrap announced to them with authority and dignity.
“No imps outside Imp Haven. Those are the rules,” they both repeated by rote.
Full blood, or Midori, demons aren’t terribly bright.
“If we stay very quiet, maybe they’ll forget we’re here,” I said quietly.
If we needed to remain quiet, why were we talking? It was either that or run away and leave this essential errand unfinished.
“I have to do this, Scrap.”
“I know. This is going to cost me some warts. I worked hard to earn these!” He heaved a sigh that might provoke a hurricane. “You couldn’t wait for backup?” He produced a black cherry cheroot out of nowhere and lit it from a flamelet atop his thumb.
“I don’t have backup anymore.”
“What about more information?”
“I dismissed my archivist.” I would not think about Guilford Van der Hoyden-Smythe, PhD. I would not. I had to cut Gollum out of my life and my heart.
I did not like where this conversation was leading. So I took a couple of steps toward where I thought the proper portal should be.
Scrap grabbed my arm and steered me in the opposite direction. My frail human flesh began bruising beneath his solid, unrelenting grip.
“Are you sure this is the right way?” I asked, trying to peel his talons off my forearm.
“Unfortunately, I am.” He led me at a ninety-degree angle to the guardian demons.
The burning along my scar flared higher. The B’Cartlins were the least of my problems.
In the blink of an eye, an elegant brass door with stained glass panels to either side loomed before us. It just showed up to block our way. No dark spot in the distance that grew larger as we approached. One minute nothing but white stretching on forever, misting to more white to hide corners and angles where floor or ceiling met wall. The next heartbeat the door became a solid barrier.
Or a chance at salvation.
A blob of mottled bile green and sulfurous yellow flesh pooled across the entrance, sort of growing out of the white on white.
“You know there’s a reason Donovan told you that few beings who faced the Powers That Be have survived the encounter, and never a human,” Scrap grumbled, eyeing the blob between the door and us.
“I can’t trust anything the former gargoyle says. He betrayed his calling and his creation. For that he doesn’t deserve to raise his daughter Lilly. He lies as easily as he breathes.”
“He didn’t lie about this.”
“Then we’ll just have to make sure we get what we want before they execute us.”
“Today is a good day to die.”
“As good as any,” I replied, not sure I believed my own lies.
The blob stirred, raised a bulbous head with two intelligent eyes and a parrot beak. At least eight legs stretched outward
I recoiled before it could strangle me. Another eight or more legs kept it anchored to the suddenly shifting ground.
Or were those my knees shaking hard enough to upset my balance?
“Mind if we pay a visit?” I asked.
The beak snapped once, hard enough to break my body in two if it chose.
I accepted that as a yes, and stepped around the beast—I didn’t want to chance it changing its mind and grabbing me with one or more of those tentacles. With one deep breath for false courage I grabbed the lion’s head door knocker and let it drop. I wished I had some scotch to help with the courage thing. It didn’t have to be single malt. A cheap blend would do better; I could drink more of it faster.
A loud bong resounded around the chat room, bouncing off walls that shouldn’t exist, compounding with each repeat of sound. Tsunamis of noise built and echoed. The bong grew louder yet, more insistent.
I had to grab my ears. Then I collapsed to my knees and shrank within myself.
Still, the knocker flapped and boomed and let the entire Universe know that someone had the audacity to approach the Powers That Be without an invitation.
That’s me, Tess Noncoiré, Warrior of the Celestial Blade, who bounds in where no one else dares, and bullys my way through.
Chapter 1
Forest Park in Portland, Oregon, was established in 1898, has 5156 acres, a hundred types of birds, sixty (known) species of animals, seventy miles of trails, and is the largest naturally forested area within the city limits of any municipality in the US. It is the third largest city park in the country.
STINKY, STINKY. I smell demon-inky.
Demon and baby poop.
If demons are breeding I need to follow my cute little nose and find them so my dahling Tess can wipe them out. After I find some bleach to clean up after them.
Screaming draws my attention along my line of smell. This is sounding ominous. My spine shivers and stretches. I need to transform into the Celestial Blade. Where is Tess when I need her?
Off to a fencing tournament so she can avoid work.
I’ll gather information before I summon her to my side. Then the two of us can lash and lunge, slice and stab. Such a wonderful way to end the domination of a demon.
My nose leads me to a strange room within a hospital. Locked doors that need codes to get in or out. Triple locks on the drug stashes that are carefully disguised behind normal cupboard doors. Casually clad nurses dash about, converging on a gurney where a hysterical woman thrashes about, trying to push away the newborn baby on her tummy. But her hands are lashed to the sides of the portable bed with thick layers of bandage so she can’t reject her child.
The child looks human. But it stinks of demon, demon laced with astringent pinesap.
A bit of scaly bark clings to the baby’s feet. His (oh, yes, he is male) fingers look a bit like twigs, too long and skinny for such a tiny morsel of life.
Even as I watch the abnormalities fade along with the demon stink. Just an afterthought of pine cleaner, that might be part and parcel of a hospital, clings to him.
The woman still screams. A doctor in blue surgical scrubs approaches with a big syringe hidden behind his back. “Hold her arm, Nurse,” he commands in that all too calm and soothing voice of one who has dealt with this before.
“Third case this year,” the squarely built nurse with disastrous blunt cut hair mutters. She too wears blue scrubs. “This is looking like a new postpartum syndrome.”
“Strange one. I wonder what triggers it,” the doctor says as he stabs the patient with the syringe and depresses the plunger. “I think I need to research a new paper.”
I’ve found our next mission. Tess isn’t gonna like this. She has a thing about babies. She’ll want to give the infant a chance to grow up normal and human, not letting me take it down until after its demon half inflicts unnamable horrors on humanity.
Portland, Oregon’s Forest Park is a wonderful natural treasure. Most of the time.
Five thousand plus acres and over seventy miles of hiking and biking trails. One nasty little dark elf had lots of places to hide. Lots of places to ambush weary hikers, joggers, and mountain bikers. Too many victims had fallen into his traps lately. He probably ate the homeless pets that got dumped here too.
So why had he avoided me for over a year?
“Where are you little Nörglein?” I asked sweetly as I jogged slowly along the well-beaten path. “Tonight the moon will show a waxing quarter. That’s the time of a demon’s greatest power. You should be out trolling for victims.”
Tonight was the time a goddess showed her face in the skies, the sickle moon defining her cheek like the scar on mine. The starscape behind the moon revealed her face and the Milky Way became her hair blowing in a celestial wind.
I’d seen the goddess a couple of times and felt her power infuse me with the strength to fight demon hordes.
Not tonight. Even a goddess can’t break through the thick clouds and rain the weather service predicted.
“Scrap, do you smell anything that doesn’t belong here?” I called to my otherworldly imp companion.
It’s a forest, he shot back at me. I smell green—trees, shrubs, and moss. That’s what forest denizens smell like.
“How do you know that?”
I’m an imp. I know these things.
“If you say so.”
I do say so! Scrap landed on my shoulder with more clumsiness than usual. I barely felt his weight, just a bit of dandelion fluff. That’s because he lives only partway in this dimension and is invisible to everyone but me, or another Warrior of the Celestial Blade.
“He won’t come near me if you are this close,” I complained. Only another mile to the trailhead. Another day wasted searching for our quarry.
This trail is too popular. A blind rat could find his way home.
I passed a couple hiking uphill with daypacks and water bottles slung on their belts. They wore sensible low cut boots, matching black shorts, and bright red Tees that complemented their chocolate and café au lait skin nicely. They also had black sweatshirts slung over their shoulders. The sunny Saturday morning in mid-September had warmed up, but this late in the year, the weather could turn wet and/or chilly with only a moment’s notice. The equinox didn’t have a lot to do with determining the actual season change in Portland. Next week could be bright and beautiful and ninety degrees.
Don’t like the weather here? Wait a minute.
Don’t like the forecast? Change the channel.
This is the Pacific North Wet, after all. Great coffee, wonderful microbrews, and frequent rains sweeping in from the Pacific Ocean.
The couple hurried a little faster than normal hikers out for a Saturday morning walk.
I sweated heavily from my five mile run—mostly uphill—in my loose shorts and tank. My sweatshirt was tied around my waist and my light running shoes felt every imperfection in the dirt trail.
I felt naked without my mother’s pearls around my neck. The strand was too short to hide beneath the tank top. Pearls while jogging? Even I knew that was a fashion disaster.
The hikers and I nodded in mute acknowledgment of fellow travelers in the wilderness. Never know when you might need help. Or if one of us turned up missing, we’d remember seeing each other and the basic location when searches began.
Too often in the last year solitary hikers got “lost,” then walked out the next morning, dazed and mumbling about the ugly little guy who sheltered them overnight.
That shelter and directions came with a price.
The Nörglein had a bad reputation in the Italian and Swiss Alps. His reputation in the western hemisphere was nastier.
I looked to either side of the trail into the thick ferns, underbrush, and moss-covered fallen tree trunks crowding around tall Douglas Firs. A million shades of green melded into each other, shifting with each breeze whispering through. Ripples and mounds showed just how uneven and precarious I’d find the footing off the beaten path.
I saw faces in the whorls of bark and moss. Images of the Green Man so popular in forest lore popped into my head. I shook myself to get rid of a fear that every plant and tree embodied a malicious creature peering out at me.
