Remnants: Season of Fire (37 page)
The Maker has forgotten us.
Hell is here.
Forgive us. We knew not what we did.
There were curse words, names and dates, many depicting births and even more deaths, one messenger listing perhaps a hundred or more. Had there been a Community down here? Survivors? Or rebels to the Pacificans, for a time?
“Why’d you help us escape?” I asked Cyrus. “I mean, specifically. Why throw all you had away in favor of us?”
“I am indebted to the Remnants. Tressa healed someone I love very much. Someone who brought me back to the Way.” He sipped from his canteen and leaned his head back against the cement wall. “I spent much time with Kapriel as a boy. His trainer had told him about this tunnel, where to find it, where it opened and ended, shortly before he died. The man knew that Sethos’s power over Keallach was growing and their time was short. He feared for Kapriel’s life. And then the worst happened, and I . . .”
“You agreed to follow Keallach.”
“I did,” he said, giving me a long, sorrowful look. “I was afraid. It was the worst decision of my life. Every day has been a sort of sick torture since then. Pretending to be one with them, wishing I could be away, and yet fearing for my own life.” He shook his head and pushed his hair back from his face. “I was a coward for far too long.”
“But at critical moments you were brave. And wise,” Ronan said, moving to stand before him. “I, for one, will be forever grateful,” he said, reaching down a hand to shake Cyrus’s.
“As will I,” I said.
“And I,” echoed the others.
“Never too late in the Maker’s time,” Vidar added.
His phrase reminded me of Keallach. “Despite what happened back there,” I dared, “I sensed good in Keallach. Hope. He’s not all bad. Is he, Cyrus?”
Cyrus paused and sighed. “I don’t know, Andriana. Truly. Some days I see glimpses of the boy he used to be. But more and more I see Sethos’s tentacles penetrating every part of his life, every choice. Don’t you?”
I remained silent as we rose, preparing to move out again.
“You think Keallach didn’t know exactly what the Six were planning to do in his absence?” Ronan asked me with a scoff, suspicion and anger radiating from him. “To you? Your parents?”
It was as if Ronan suspected me of caring for Keallach as more than a brother, even now. But he couldn’t know all that happened.
Surely not
. . . “I don’t know,” I said, throwing out my hands. “Did he, Cyrus?”
Cyrus shifted, looking from me to Ronan and back again. “I don’t know either. I was only a part of one conversation about what was about to happen to you and yours, and that was this morning, with Lord Jala.”
“Don’t you think it’s convenient that he and Sethos disappeared, right before something horrific was about to happen to you?” Ronan said with a jeering tone, crossing his arms. “It was an easy way to keep his hands clean, right? Make him look innocent. He knew you wouldn’t consider a
union
if you associated it with the murder of your parents.”
I frowned, trying to ignore the hurt within Ronan, and turned to follow him down the wide mouth of the cement tunnel. “I believe Sethos knew what they planned. But not Keallach. I mean, yes, he . . . I just don’t . . . I can’t believe that he . . .” I let out a sound of exasperation. “Cyrus, I just can’t see that it was Keallach’s plan to torture me into submission. He was willing to use his gift to try and sway me, yes. But would he really have been willing to see me go through such pain? That doesn’t square with what I know of him.”
Ronan’s shoulders stiffened before me.
“Never mind,” I muttered. I dropped it. There’d be time enough to talk through what I thought about Keallach. Right now I had to focus on getting out of Pacifica with the rest of
them, or we’d be killed before I ever had the chance to consider it again.
Not that I sensed any of them would give Keallach a real chance. To them, he was the one who had captured me and imprisoned my folks, as well as Kapriel, and harmed us all in one way or another. They held him responsible, even if he wasn’t the one who was at the root of it all. And I supposed that was right, given that Keallach ruled. But in some ways, he was just as new to all this as we were. New to the power, experimenting, curious, trying and failing and succeeding. And if I had been with Sethos day in and day out, would I not be influenced by him?
Once Cyrus got his bearings, we moved into a jog down the dry edge of the sewer tunnel, careful to avoid the fetid stream at the center, and turned left and then right and then left again. I saw that Cyrus was following a series of casually marked lines that might have been missed by anyone coming after us, but clearly were marked by the Ailith as they passed.
“Where does it lead?” I called up to Cyrus. “Where do we come out?”
Cyrus came to a sudden stop and motioned frantically for me to be quiet. I turned to look at Vidar, and felt his rising fear before I saw it on his sweating face. A moment later the sting of my armband told me what we already knew. Someone was coming. Someone almost as powerful as Sethos. A tracker. It had to be. I hadn’t felt Vidar’s panic like this since that day outside the Hoodites, or in Wadi Qelt.
“Run,” Cyrus growled, pushing Mom and Dad past him. “Follow the white lines until you see white stars, then follow those. Once outside, go to the white house at the top of the hill and take shelter beneath the deck.” Bellona edged her bow off
her shoulder, even as Vidar pulled out his revolvers and Ronan his sword. Cyrus held out his hand to me. “Come with me,” he said. “I’ll show you the way.”
“But we can’t leave them,” I protested.
“Yes,” Ronan said, “you can.” He nodded backward, to where my folks waited at the next corner. “Keep them safe. We’ll join you as soon as we can.”
I heard the unearthly screech of a tracker — just like when Sethos caught up to us in Zanzibar — and chills ran down my neck and shoulders.
“Go, Dri,” Ronan demanded. “You may be weaker after your time in the palace.”
So that was it. They didn’t trust me. They doubted me. But I couldn’t help them if they were right. I could actually harm their cause if I faltered again. And the last time we’d battled trackers, in hand-to-hand combat, it hadn’t gone so well.
I turned and ran with Cyrus. When we reached my parents, I took my dad’s hand and Cyrus took my mom’s. And as the roar of an attack echoed down the walls of the tunnel, sounding a hundred times worse than anything I’d heard before, we ran faster still.
RONAN
T
here was no way I was going to lose Andriana now. Not when I’d just found her again. We threw the flare down to the right and propped the torch against the left wall, then took up our weapons and waited for our adversaries to turn the corner. With each breath, I was thankful — it meant Cyrus, Dri, and her parents could get farther away — and yet I felt I would crack open with the anticipation. Every inch of my skin was alive as my arm cuff grew colder and my muscles tensed.
“Let the Maker flow through you,” Vidar said. “Force yourself to ease up, wait for him to lead,
then follow,
” he said. “We do not fight alone. Remember that.”
I felt a tinge of warmth on the other side of my cuff, which moved to overtake the cold. Round and round the two sensations went: frigid, then hot. I thought of the battle in the Hoodite field, when Vidar saw angels and demons
and Andriana sensed the same. The hairs on my arms stood up with the sensation of others joining us unseen, and Vidar’s words ran through my head, over and over.
We do not fight alone.
Which was good. Because what rounded the corner — with even some of them splashing through the sewer muck at the center — was the most fearsome group of adversaries I’d faced yet. We were but three. They were five across and at least three lines deep.
“Not alone,” I muttered to myself, as Bellona let her first arrows fly. Two Sheolite scouts went down, one male, the other female. Before the group reached us, two more were hit, one somersaulting in the stream and causing another to trip. Bellona drew her sword and took on a tracker with Vidar, as I ducked the angry strike of a scout’s sword and thrust my dagger into his belly, then brought my sword around with both hands to neatly sever the head off the next.
An arrow came singing by my ear and into the throat of a gray-clad Pacifican soldier. We all wanted to take down as many as we could. But we all knew our main goal was to keep any of them from entering the tunnel after Cyrus, Andriana, and her parents. Especially the trackers, and there were four in this group. There’d been four on the Hoodite field, and we’d come against them with the entire Ailith force.
Not alone,
I repeated silently, as I blocked a tall female soldier’s strike and swung her into the cement wall with every bit of strength in me. My sword severed the next man’s arm, and an arrow from Bellona finished him off. I sidestepped the pointed end of a spear, caught it with my hand, and wrenched it out of the surprised man’s grasp, pulling him into the end of my sword. On and on it went, one after another. I heard Vidar cry out, wounded, and saw
his bleeding arm. Now he and Bellona were each battling a tracker while the other two trackers stood back, waiting. For what? For us to be so weary they could finish the task?
The next soldier I encountered was not only big, he was good. Faster than I fathomed he’d be, parrying and dodging every thrust I made. And when I turned, another Sheolite stabbed me in the side, his face an angry sneer as he twisted the short blade.
Niero leaped upon him, then, swiftly killing him as I staggered backward, the knife still embedded in my side. I stared back at our captain, wondering how he always managed to be right where we needed him . . . but then gasped, my body in agony. I tried to ignore the pain, use it as fuel for retribution, but I knew my actions were now slower, weaker. And that was when the last two trackers left their positions and moved toward us.
“Niero,” I began, panting. There were still two Sheolite scouts standing beside the trackers.
“I see them,” he said, blocking a scout’s blade, inches from his head. He punched the man in the nose, so hard that the man wheeled back and fell on his rear, blood spurting from his face. Niero whirled and took off his head, all the while keeping his eyes on the oncoming trackers. I’d never seen anything like it — so many elite Sheolite in one place.
I glanced wildly around for Vidar and Bellona. They were both down, and I hoped to the Maker that they were only unconscious, not dead. For the first time, I wondered if Niero and I would die here too. Maybe I was dead already. How else did it make sense that Niero was here with us? He was supposed to be in the Desert or elsewhere by now.
But I cannot
die, I told myself. Dri and her parents were counting on
me. The least I could do was give them a few more precious seconds.
“ ‘I do not fear those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul,’ ” Niero bit out, straightening to face the trackers.
The trackers froze and actually took a step back. Niero advanced. “I ‘fear the One who can destroy both body and soul and send his enemies to the pit.’ ”
One of the trackers took another step backward and let out an animalistic cry, every inch of his face betraying fear and twined with fury. What was this? Words as weapons? But even as I thought it, weakly parrying another soldier’s strike, I knew the truth of it. Niero was invoking holy words, the Sacred Words. Long forgotten words.
Every one of them resonated, as much a strengthening agent for me as they were an apparent wound to our adversaries. There was power in those words. I forced myself to stand straighter and shouted, “We fight for the One who was, and is, and is to come!”
The nearest tracker winced, and the other one now fighting Niero grimaced. But the scouts didn’t seem to be as affected. They both strode toward me, studying me, my bloody hand over my wound, clearly taking into account where I might be weakest. It was as they both struck at once that I saw the first tracker whirl just out of Niero’s reach and run headlong for the tunnel entrance.
He knew. That we weren’t all that were left. That Dri and the others were ahead. And he was surely bent on finding them before they reached the end.
As I swung at one of the Sheolites, the other managed to drive his fist against the hilt of the knife still buried in my side, cutting it free. I bent over in agony, fighting for breath, fighting to remain conscious, falling beside the Pacifican
guard who had helped free us in the palace, now dead. My vision tunneled even as I willed myself to rise again, hearing my name distantly on Niero’s lips.
But my own were moving in a whisper. “Run, Dri. I’m so sorry. Run, love.
Run.
”
ANDRIANA
W
e paused only when we had to stop and listened, trying to hear the battle behind us, to discern what might be happening. But we could hear nothing more than our own panting and blood pulsing in our own ears. The silence made us at first jubilant, thinking our friends had claimed victory. But when there was no whistle, no shout . . .
“You don’t think . . .?” I said to Cyrus, unable to say the rest.
“No,” he said firmly, but I detected the lie in his eyes before I sensed it in his heart. He hoped he could protect me, buoy my spirits to keep me from collapsing.
We heard the footsteps at a distance, and then I knew who was coming too. It wasn’t Ronan, or Vidar or Bellona. It was a tracker.
I looked at Cyrus in fear, then back down the tunnel. Did I see dark wisps? Wraiths?
“What is it?” Dad asked, voice rising.
“A tracker. Like Sethos. And wraiths,” I spat out. “Their favorite companions.”
“Don’t panic,” he said, consciously lowering his voice, taking my hands and squeezing them. “Do not give in to the dark. If it comes to it, you and I will take him down together. The wraiths will follow.”
“And we will help you,” Cyrus said, wrapping his fingers around the shaft of an axe he’d found.
“Yes,” Mom said, her own hand on a length of cloth. She’d always been a dead shot with the sling.