Secret of the Gargoyles (Gargoyle Guardian Chronicles Book 3) (11 page)

I stumbled back to the gargoyles, two inches of hail crunching underfoot. I tested all seven twice before I believed my readings.

“They’re okay,” I said. Cut up and abraded from the flying rocks, but their internal balance wasn’t skewed, as I’d feared.

“They’re better than okay. They’re stronger.”

I glanced at Marcus, surprised by his accurate guess, then realized we hadn’t broken our link. Letting our connection unravel, I said, “I felt something in the storm. At the end. Did you catch it?”

“The repulsive bit of earth?”

“I think it was the baetyl’s warped magic.”

“That makes sense. If all these storms are coming from the baetyl, they should be tainted with it.”

“It fits with our theory of why the storms are attracted to the dormant gargoyles.”

“Rourke hasn’t been this healthy in years,” Celeste said, showering us with sand and ice when she shook out her wings.

After getting her permission, I checked her with a tuned blend of the elements. Celeste had a few scratches but was otherwise unharmed.

“You can heal me when Rourke is safe,” she said when I reached for a seed crystal.

“She’s right. Conserve your strength.” Marcus scanned the broken terrain. “Are we close, Celeste?”

“About halfway there.”

I slumped against the side of the sled, eyeing the steep ascent ahead of us.

“This is good news, Mika,” Marcus said, taking in my tired expression. “The energy in storms doesn’t hurt the gargoyles, not like it would us. Plus, the gargoyles do a great job of making the storms predictable. That means we can switch strategies, which is damn lucky. Defense isn’t working; we’re going on the offense.”

We put Marcus’s new plan into action with the next storm—this one a whirlwind of water, wood, and air. It barreled down on us in the middle of a scorched gully where burned stumps and fallen logs had slowed our progress to an aggravating creep. Celeste ducked out of the rope and took to the air before the storm reached us, and Marcus used the anchor rod to pin the sled in place. Then we sprinted toward the storm again, angling up the hill out of its path.

“Same as last time: Cut the storm apart, but this time focus on air,” Marcus ordered.

I nodded. He was playing to my strengths: In the destructive cycle of the elements, earth destroyed air. He could use fire against water and wood with more efficiency than I could.

“Should we link?” I asked.

“No. We’ll be more efficient apart.”

Holding a stitch in my side, I watched the seething magic tumble across the ground. Chunks of ash puffed into the air whenever the storm touched down, lifted by the storm’s wind and the plants bursting from the soil. Sporadic showers fell from the midst of the energy, and the rich aroma of freshly churned soil and rain drifted through the air. It was almost a shame to break apart this storm; it left a string of plants in its wake, rejuvenating the otherwise barren hillside.

Well before the storm was close enough for me to reach, Marcus tore into its outer edges, burning through the wood element. I tapped a foot impatiently, useless until Celeste landed close enough to offer me a boost. I grabbed at the magic she offered and flung earthen blades into the vortices of air.

Despite our assault, the storm bounded toward the dormant gargoyles, picking up speed until it pounced, frothing around their frozen shapes. Plants erupted from the soil, growing taller than the sides of the sled in seconds, but they couldn’t obscure the wild magic from us. Methodically, we slashed it to pieces until it weakened enough to unravel on its own. I jogged back to the sled even as I tested the gargoyles. They all felt the same as before: stronger than they’d been in Terra Haven but still comatose.

“Not too shabby,” Marcus said with his first real smile of the day.

The storm had shifted a few gargoyles on the sled, and we set them back in place. Then Marcus cut through the vines and small trees choking the sled, and we pushed onward.

We weren’t so lucky with all the storms. Most were more violent, tearing up earth, striking with lightning, belching flames and ice alike. But our strategy was sound. Fatigue proved to be a greater obstacle. The higher we climbed, the more frequently we were forced to stop to deal with the storms. Oliver returned to my side to give me a boost, but even with his help, every encounter drained my energy, and my sprints toward the oncoming storms became jogs. In between storms, my feet dragged along the path. I ate the snacks Marcus handed me. I drank the water he gave me. I focused on not tripping. Only the dormant gargoyles and their improved health kept me going.

The dead gargoyle beside the trail caught me completely off guard. She was small and looked like a cross between a hedgehog and a wolverine, though twice the size of either animal. Her butterfly wings were spread as if to catch the sun, but her body had faded to gray and her right side had eroded into the dirt. I fell to my knees beside her and tried to help her anyway, but my gargoyle-tuned magic didn’t penetrate the dead rock.

With trembling fingers, I brushed a layer of dirt from her face. She had been so close to her baetyl, and she had died. Alone. Her life fading until nothing but the husk of her body remained.

I’d begun to hope that if we unraveled enough wild magic, the pieces of the baetyl inside it would fill the dormant gargoyles on the sled with life and they’d wake, but staring into the lifeless gray eyes of the dead gargoyle, I knew it wouldn’t be enough. Nothing short of fixing the baetyl would be enough.

Oliver whined and twined around me, tugging me from the corpse.

“Come on. There’s nothing we can do for that one,” Marcus said.

“Shouldn’t we do something? I don’t know—bury it?”

“It is customary to scatter the body,” Celeste said. I glanced toward the old gargoyle. She hadn’t stopped. The trail was steeper here and momentum was precious. She plodded past, head bowed.

“Is it okay if I do that?”

“It’s part of your duties as a healer and guardian,” she said.

My heart squeezed. I gathered earth and wood and wrapped the deceased gargoyle. The body crumbled under the weave, the once life-filled quartz disintegrating into pieces no larger than sand. With a boost from Oliver, I lifted the remains on a current of air and scattered them across the hill. Oliver hummed a sorrowful note, and Celeste added high-pitched harmony.

Swiping tears from my lashes, I pushed to my feet.

The hedgehog-wolverine was only the first of many dead gargoyles we found along the ridge. I stopped counting them after a dozen, and it sickened me how quickly I perfected the magic to decompose their bodies and scatter them. I began to look forward to the storms. Those at least I could do something about.

Heart weary and exhausted, I didn’t understand why we stopped under a clear sky with no storm on the horizon until Celeste spoke.

“This is the entrance to the baetyl.”

We’d made it? We’d survived Reaper’s Ridge? Relief swamped me, followed by a wave of nausea as I realized that deep down, I hadn’t expected to make it. I bent in half, taking deep breaths until my innards settled back in place.

When I was sure my shaking legs would hold me up, I fumbled around the sled to look at the entrance. Cut into the steep hillside and shadowed by a rocky overhang, the crooked opening was no wider than my outstretched arms and thoroughly unimpressive. I would have walked right past it without noticing if Celeste hadn’t pointed it out.

“This is it? It’s so . . . accessible. Anyone could walk right in.” All gargoyles had wings. Why wasn’t the entrance somewhere only they could reach?

“Normally, humans wouldn’t be able to get this close. Thank you.” The last was for Marcus, who had lowered anchors on the sled to take the burden from Celeste.

Summoning my energy, I jogged up the incline. A ledge of unnaturally flat ground lay in front of the opening, and the rest of the hill above us was too steep to traverse. The baetyl entrance itself was nothing to look at, but when I turned around, the view took my breath. Reaper’s Ridge fell away beneath us, ravaged and misshapen, giving way to a view of the lush rolling foothills and the valley farther away. If I had wings, it would have been easy to launch into the sky.

Oliver landed next to me and peered inside the dark opening. His ruff flattened and he backed up so quickly he tripped over his hind legs and crashed to his side.

“Oliver!” I reached for him, but he’d already scrambled to his feet. Turning, he barreled into me, knocking me to the side of the entrance and pinning me against the slope.

“Something’s coming! Something big!” he cried.

I sprawled against the rock slope, trying to catch my footing. Before I found my voice to ask what he meant—nothing big would fit through the opening—Marcus sprinted to the opposite side of the entrance, tossing the null traps into the cave. Using a spear of earth magic to drill a hole, he plunged the battered anchor rod into the rock in front of the cave.

“Celeste, to me,” he ordered. He flattened himself against the rock face across the baetyl opening from me. “Storm or beast?” he demanded.

“Storm,” Oliver said, releasing me. I staggered at my sudden freedom and braced a hand on the hill to steady myself.

“I can feel the energy building,” Celeste said.

“Do we have time to move the sled?” Marcus asked.

As if in answer, the ridge shook, raining pebbles onto our heads. Beneath my hand, the rock heated and reshaped. Fear flooded me with a burst of energy and I scrambled back, Oliver at my side. When I reached for the elements, his boost was already there, waiting for me.

Marcus threw a five-element ward across the opening, anchoring it into the rod and tying it off.

“Ready?” he asked. Anticipation tightened his features and lit his eyes.

“I hope so.”

Wild magic burst through the ward, tearing it to shreds and shattering the rod. The concussion knocked me to my butt and robbed me of my hearing. Marcus caught himself on a knee and stayed there, ripping into the magic as it emerged. It swelled from the baetyl to fill the sky, endless writhing bands of destructive raw elements building into a deadly monstrosity.

In a stomach-dropping rush, it dove back to the earth and swallowed us.

9

The earth pitched beneath me, and I rolled to the right, narrowly avoiding being swallowed by the shifting ground. Without rising, I slashed through twists of earth and wood, destroying the elements nearest me. The hillside stabilized, but I couldn’t catch my breath; fire and water rolled in a tight mass of lung-scalding steam. Lashing out, I cut the loose coils of writhing fire. A deluge of water spilled from the storm, soaking me, and I sucked in cool oxygen.

The storm dwarfed all we’d encountered along the way. It wasn’t two or three elements but all five bunched together, creating mayhem. The violent magic wouldn’t boost the gargoyles until we could unravel it, and in the meantime, it ricocheted between them, knocking their frozen bodies into each other. I struggled to rise and protect them, but layers of wild magic pinned me to the hillside.

Rocks surged and grew behind me, burying Oliver in a pile of sand and stones. Frantic, I snapped a dozen strands of earth where they touched the ground around him, and he burst free, shaking grit into the air. A spear of wood element lanced from the storm as if aiming for me. I lurched to the side, narrowly evading the wild magic. It plowed into the soil, sprouting a two-foot sapling in a spray of rocks and dirt. Shielding my eyes with a hand, I burned through the tangle of wood before it could bury the ledge in a new forest, then rolled back to Oliver’s side. His eyes were as wide as an owl’s and he trembled as he curled around me.

Seeing his fear cut through my own panic. He was depending on me for protection. If I continued to react instead of attack, we wouldn’t survive. I needed to think like a guardian.

“I’ll keep us safe,” I promised. “Stay close.”

I concentrated on our immediate vicinity, unraveling earth and dousing fire, refusing to let any of the storm touch the ground near us. Across the ledge from us, Marcus did the same, holding a storm-free bubble around himself and Celeste. He wielded massive bands of the elements, slicing through fire more often than any other element. Taking my cue from him, when I had a chance to pick my next attack, I struck at earth; it was my strongest element and, after fire, the most deadly.

Snow and sand blinded me, winds knocked me flat and lifted me from the ground, and fire scorched me more than once. I fought through it all, hunting for the disharmonious quartz-tuned knot of earth holding the whole storm together. The wild magic blurred into a huge, shape-changing monster, and my control of my magic slipped and fumbled with weariness. Occasionally an explosive blaze or a sheet of ice forced me to shield Oliver and myself, but I dropped my barriers as soon as it was safe. Defending would do nothing but tire me out—attacking was the only option.

I whittled away the storm’s power with increasingly clumsy strokes, and when I found the snarl of quartz-tuned earth, it was pure happenstance. I pounced, clinging to it with strength born of desperation. As fast as I could finagle my fatigued magic, I tore it apart. The wild elements collapsed and dispersed in a harmless gust of warm air.