Shatter the Earth (Cassandra Palmer 10)

Well sort of. The one currently passing closest to the portal must have been twenty stories tall, with a spring bubbling out of its rocky head and cascading down its mossy beard, because it had just been called forth from the mountainside. Another, standing a little way off, had a vein of ruby slashed across its face like war paint and a mohawk of fir trees growing out of its stony skull. And a third was pockmarked by crystals, its broad face glittering, but its eyes dark caverns that nothing looked out of.

But then, it didn’t need eyes. The tiny figure of a man that stood on its shoulder served that function for it. Or should I say, the tiny fey, who was probably seven feet tall like the rest of them, but looked small in comparison to his ride. Because each of the living mountains had a rider who directed its mass in the deadliest way possible.

That would have been bad enough if there was only a handful of them. But there were walking mountains as far as the eye could see. And many of them didn’t have riders, although they seemed to be navigating around perfectly well without them, something which shouldn’t have been possible.

It felt like ice had started to collect in my gut.

“You see,” Jonathan said, watching me. “The problem with a surprise ley-line attack is that you can’t send in scouts. You have to do it all at once, and hope your intelligence was correct. If it was, you surprise your enemy, if not . . .”

He smiled at me.

> “They surprise you,” I whispered.

Chapter Forty-One

I stared at the trap being laid for our troops, while Jonathan drank beer and pawed through his cooler, with the air of a tailgater waiting for the main event to start. For my part, I watched one of the mountainous sort of manlikans dueling with another. They were both the size of 747s stood on end, which made them among the smaller of the type, yet they were lighting fast—too fast.

The mountains with riders lumbered about, with the slow, heavy gait that you’d expect of something that large. Not these. And not plenty more, I thought, seeing another dueling pair nearby, where one had just somersaulted over the other’s head.

And then took it clean off with a sword the size of a freight car, because yeah.

Metal comes from the earth, too, doesn’t it?

“If it makes you feel any better,” Jonathan said, while the vanquished mountain searched around for its head, “your little plan worked a treat the first time. Caught us right off guard, it did.”

I turned my head to look at him. “The first time?”

He nodded and ate eggs. “Your people surprised the shit out of us. We had the majority of our forces on the borders—as I’m sure you know—thinking that there was no way round them. Planned to have your army slog through all the passes, getting massacred right and left, only to curb stomp whatever remained of you with our fey forces should any actually win through to the city.”

He waved his sandwich around.

“It seemed perfect. There were bets going on as to whether you’d even attempt it. Three rings of mountains, three sets of passes, absurd! Then, out of the blue one day, there you were. Well, not you personally, of course, but your people. Your army. We didn’t even get all the shields up before you were breaking through, leaping over our walls, and scaling us like a swarm of—” he broke off. “What’s fanged?”

“What?”

He snapped his fingers. “Insect. Not ants, not bees.” He put his sandwich down so that he could put a couple of fingers up by his mouth and make little proboscis-like movements at me.

I just stared.

“Oh, well, I can’t think of it, either,” he said. “But fanged tiny things, anyway. Overran us in no time. Killed the king, killed most of the army, almost killed me. I managed to escape through a tunnel dressed as an old woman. Then, of course, I hopped back in time and warned Aeslinn. He was . . . displeased . . . that you lot made allies of the Old Ones, and talked them into manipulating the ley lines for you. They’ll pay a price for that, I imagine. Should have stayed in hiding.”

I struggled to take all this in. “You—you mean that—”

“Take your time,” he encouraged. “Work it out.”

“—you mean that you’re from the future—”

“See, and they told me you were stupid.”

“—a future where we won—”

“Slaughtered us.” He agreed. “Wasn’t even close.”

“—but you went back in time with Jo’s power and warned Aeslinn—”

“I’m his fair-haired boy.”

“—so he could prepare and have a different outcome?”