Slight and Shadow (Fate's Forsaken: Book Two) (40 page)

“This prey is long dead … but it doesn’t taste like it,” Silas groaned thickly, moving his lips around the large strip of pork he had clamped between his teeth. His arms were laden with great slabs of beef, smoked chicken, and a long cord of sausages. “It’s like magic!”

Kyleigh took another bite. She remembered the flavor well, and knew the skill that had gone into preparing it. “A giantess made this,” she said, waving the pork at him. “That’s the only possible explanation.”

“Aye, and speaking of magic,” Shamus called, “where’s that mage run off to?”

Between bites, Kyleigh told him of what had happened to Jake. Nadine kept assuring them that he and Elena would find their way out, but Kyleigh wasn’t going to chance it. As soon as her belly was full, she was going to go back into the tunnels and try to find them.

“Oh, there’s little hidey holes all around here,” Shamus said, waving his arm out at the desert. They were camped in the shadow of the Red Spine, along the flattened ridge that served as the Baron’s highway. The ground beneath them was mostly stone, with only a light dusting of sand on top. “I’ll have the men spread out and look for him. If his head pops up, we’ll snatch him,” Shamus promised.

Kyleigh still wasn’t convinced, but she also didn’t want to leave her men unprotected in front of Baron Sahar’s castle. “Don’t you think it’s strange that he hasn’t attacked yet?” she said, staring at the golden gates.

“It’s because he’s scared of us,” Shamus replied. “We gave him a good walloping, didn’t we, lads?”

The men cheered, raising their scimitars over their heads.

Kyleigh knew that wasn’t it. She’d seen the Baron’s army before — up close, and on several occasions. And he certainly didn’t like to let invaders sit on his doorstep. No … knowing Sahar, he was likely just taking his time. He would probably soak himself in some rose-petal bath and wash the stink of the plains from his golden clothes.

Then he’d slip every one of those jeweled rings onto his fingers, perhaps even treat himself to a sprawling lunch — and then when he was good and ready, he’d send his army out to clobber them.

Kyleigh was thinking darkly about this when Nadine wandered up to her. “Would you like a bite?” she said, holding out a chunk of her bread.

“No, thank you. It’ll just taste like dirt to me,” she explained.

Nadine shook her head. “You are strange, outlander.” Her eyes wandered over to the mountains that flanked the right side of the castle, and she tugged on Kyleigh’s jerkin. “What is that place?”

All along that stretch of the Spine, ramps had been carved out of the red stone. Holes peppered it in clusters, as if it had been struck by a handful of giant arrows. Men in ragged clothing moved in and out of the holes, shoving small carts laden with dirt and jewels.

As Kyleigh watched them, she thought she might’ve figured out where the trolls had come from — they’d been driven out of their lands, as well.

“Those are the Baron’s mines,” Kyleigh murmured. She noticed that the guards who watched the miners were still going on about their duties, ignoring the small force that had laid siege to the castle. That, more than anything, told her that Sahar wasn’t troubled over them.

As evening crept closer, her worry only grew.

At sunset, she began to hear the clink of armored bodies moving around inside the courtyard. It was difficult to count them by the noise of their steps, but she thought there might be close to a hundred soldiers waiting behind the golden doors. Sahar was about to attack.

There was no way her little army could hold their ground. They’d camped far too close to the castle, and hadn’t left themselves a lot of room for an escape. Kyleigh couldn’t leave Elena and Jake behind, and she couldn’t risk the Baron’s army leaking over into the plains — but she also wasn’t going to sentence her men to death.

“Gather whatever supplies you can and head straight for Arabath,” she barked. She began hoisting baskets and handing them off to whoever happened to be standing close by.

“Why would we leave? We’ve got such an excellent view of the castle,” Shamus said, waving an arm in front of him.

But Kyleigh was in no mood to joke. She turned him by the shoulders and began shoving him down the road. “Any second now, the Baron’s going to attack —”

“Then let him!”

“We’re too few,” Silas cut in. He stared at the gates, his nose twitching in the evening air. “I smell the stench of humans … and steel.”

Nadine tossed a basket over her shoulder. “If we leave now, we may be able to outrun them.”

“Oh no, we’re not running anywhere!”

Shamus tried shoving Kyleigh back, but she was far too strong. When he tried to spin out of her reach, she grabbed him around the belt. As they struggled, the mots and the seas men looked on with open mouths, as if they were unsure what to do. And then a familiarly-exalted voice drifted through the air:

“I should have known it was you!”

When Kyleigh turned, she saw that Baron Sahar had finally emerged. He stood on the ramparts over the gate. His intricate robe glittered in the fading light, and his jeweled fingers sparkled as he waved to her.

“The Dragongirl, herself — standing on my steps,” he went on. “I must say, I’ll consider it a great honor to bring His Majesty your head.”

There were few people who could make Kyleigh want to punch them simply by speaking, but Sahar was one of them. She’d always thought that he had an extremely obnoxious voice: he carried his words as if they were some sort of precious gift, as if everybody should be delighted to hear them. And they had a peculiar way of grating against her nerves.

Kyleigh was determined to shut him up. She pushed Shamus aside and drew Harbinger. “Make sure your eyes are opened, Baron — because my face will be the last thing you ever see.”

She charged. And just as she’d suspected, Sahar wasn’t going to wait on top of his castle to be an easy target for her flames: he nearly tripped over his fine clothes in his rush to get to the stairs.

“Attack!” he cried. “Attack her
now
!”

Kyleigh knew she only had seconds to act. Once the Baron’s soldiers escaped the courtyard, they would scatter like ants from a hill, and she wouldn’t be able to stop them all. No, she’d have to blast them quickly.

The golden doors began to open, and she braced herself for a fight.

Chapter 37

The Queen of all Minceworms

The walls were trying to crush them — Elena was sure of it.

She followed Jake along the twisting passageway, straining her eyes to see beyond the feeble, greenish light that spouted from the top of his staff. At every narrow turn, the walls brushed across her shoulders, tightening against them like a serpent’s coils. Wet drops fell from the ceiling. They would strike her neck, startling her. She could do nothing as they slipped beneath her collar and trailed an unsettling line down her back.

Once, her boot slipped off the edge of a damp rock, and she yelped because she thought she was about to tumble down one of the black holes that lined the path. But her foot thudded hard against the solid ground, and her scream echoed off the walls — as if the earth was mocking her.

“How much further?” she hissed.

Jake was bent over, inspecting a cluster of delicate crystals that sprouted from the stone floor like weeds. “Hmm? Oh — I’m not entirely sure. It’s hard to gauge how far we’ve gone, what with everything being so blasted dark.”

“Can’t you make your light any brighter?”

He inclined his head. “I
could
, though it tends to get a bit … volatile, if I make it too bright. Sometimes it’s better to err on the side of darkness.” He looked back at the crystals. “I probably ought to take a sample of this. One never knows when one might stumble across it again.”

He pulled a tiny pair of tweezers out of his pack and advanced on the crystals. Whatever he was about to do looked suspiciously as if it was going to take a while, so Elena decided to speed things up: she ripped the whole cluster out of the ground and crammed it into his pack.

“There you go. Now keep moving.”

Jake seemed to think better of arguing with her. He moved out, heading in a direction he was
reasonably
certain was north. Elena didn’t think that was nearly as comforting as being entirely certain. But what choice did she have? She could hardly muster up the nerve to breathe — much less to navigate.

The tunnel they’d been following finally ended, and they found themselves stuck at what appeared to be a dead end. But before Elena could panic, Jake discovered another passage.

It was little more than a narrow crack in the wall, so blackened that not even the staff’s light could illuminate it.

Elena’s limbs froze at the sight of it. “I’m not going in there.”

“Well, you may not have a choice.” Jake passed his light about the room, then he shook his head. “It looks as if this is our only way out. Come on — we’ll travel quickly.”

He was wedged halfway into the crack when he looked up and saw that Elena hadn’t moved. Even if she’d
wanted
to, she didn’t think she would’ve been able to convince her feet to step towards it. Her lungs tightened at the very sight of the crack, as if they were preparing themselves to be crushed.

“It’s not all that bad.” Jake was standing beside her, now. She’d been so busy staring at the narrow passageway that she hadn’t heard him move. “I’m sure it’s not even that far a stretch.”

She stared at the crack. It seemed to watch her through mocking eyes and dared her to come closer. If they went inside, they might very well get stuck. Then they’d suffer for days as they slowly starved to death. But perhaps it wouldn’t be
that
bad: perhaps they’d die quickly — perhaps the floor would simply fall out from beneath them, and send them tumbling down into oblivion …

Her heart shuddered and tripped midstride. She realized that Jake had twined his fingers in hers. Their palms were pressed together, but he didn’t hold her down. His grip was more comforting than demanding. She wasn’t sure how to take it.

“One step at a time,” he said, and his thin lips bent in the tiniest of smiles. “Do you happen to know how all of these tunnels were formed?”

Elena shook her head. And as Jake talked, he coaxed her forward.

“I’ve done a bit of research on the topic. Of course, there are a dozen different theories, but the one I think makes the most sense is that this was all once part of a great channel of rivers. They say the desert was every bit as fertile as the plains, at one point. But then the historians claim that the river dried up, and the entire region was left to bake in the sun. I don’t think that’s entirely true. I don’t think the river dried up: I think it sank! Like the water beneath the mots’ mountain, for example …”

They edged their way through the crack, and Elena focused on Jake’s chatter. It was strange … but he didn’t smell as foul as he once had. Perhaps that was because whatever lurked inside the tunnel smelled far fouler. Her hand was so sweaty that the magic in his skin didn’t even itch her.

As they slipped deeper into the earth, she began to forget that he was a mage. It was easy to see him just as she saw every other man. And yet, it was difficult … because he wasn’t like any man she’d ever met.

“Ah, here we are!” Jake said, interrupting her thoughts. He pulled her through the last stretch of the tunnel and they popped out on the other side.

Elena stretched her arms as far as she could, but didn’t feel any walls around her. Jake’s feeble light seemed to make the darkness, if possible, even darker. “Do you see a light?”

“No — but that doesn’t mean anything. Perhaps it’s already nightfall,” Jake said quickly. “In that case, there wouldn’t be a light. Let’s just see.”

He stepped forward, and she caught hold of his pack. She wasn’t about to be left alone in the dark. There could be holes in the floor, after all.

They only got a few steps in when a blast of hot air suddenly ripped across their faces.

“Ah, there — you see? Fresh a — ack!”

Jake doubled over as the horrible stench hit them. It smelled like a battlefield in the middle of summer’s heat: thick with the odor of rotting flesh and curdled blood.

“Now
that
is fetid,” Jake gasped.

Elena’s mask was helping to block out most of the odor. She tried to strain her eyes in the direction the air had come from. “But if there’s wind, doesn’t that mean there’s an exit?” She pointed Jake towards the ceiling. “Hold your staff up there.”

He did, but the light was too feeble to reach the top.

“Make it brighter.”

Jake grunted. “All right. But you’d better stand back — just in case.”

Little beads of sweat popped up across his brow as the light brightened. It stretched towards the ceiling, trembling and waving like a soap bubble in a bath. Jake held the staff up as high as he could, revealing the long, ribbed passageway above them. Glistening wet clung thickly to its edges. Thousands of white stalactites grew sideways all around the walls …

Wait a moment — stalactites didn’t grow sideways.

“Ha! I can’t believe it!” Jake said excitedly, even though his arms trembled under the weight of the glowing green bubble. “We’ve found her!”

“Found who?”

The light crossed deeper into the fanged tunnel, and Elena jumped backwards as the whole ceiling convulsed with a wet, smacking sound.

“It’s the minceworm queen!” Jake cried.

Another blast of hot breath rocked them. Jake staggered backwards, and the green bubble quivered dangerously at the end of his staff. The minceworm queen hissed at the end of her breath, drawing in a fresh gasp of air. And the bubble suddenly popped free.

It floated upwards as the queen inhaled, drifting calmly through the dark passage of her open gullet, past her gleaming teeth — and into the depths of her gut.

Jake moaned as he watched the bubble grow smaller. “Oh, no. Oh, this isn’t good. This is
not
good!”

He charged for Elena, and the terror on his face froze her limbs. He jumped on her, knocking her to the ground. Then he waved his staff and a blue wall wrapped around them, shielding them against the floor.

“Better hold on tight,” Jake muttered in her ear.

She watched over his shoulder as the green bubble drifted all the way to the back of the queen’s throat … and then it popped.

*******

Kyleigh’s steps pounded in a fierce rhythm as she charged the Baron’s army. She could hear her companions behind her, but they would never catch up. The golden doors opened and a horde of scimitar-wielding soldiers began to pour out.

She knew she didn’t have another second to waste. Kyleigh slowed, concentrating as she arched her back and prepared to become a dragon —

A bright flash of light enveloped the entire castle. It was so fierce and loud that for a moment, she thought the sun had actually fallen from the sky. The insides of her ears nearly burst as the blast threw her backwards. She’d never flown through the air when she hadn’t meant to, and was surprised at how badly it hurt when she finally struck the ground.

She blinked against the brightness. Gold leaves fell towards her, drifting down from where they’d been launched into the sky. They fell closer and closer, growing larger as they twirled and as the air shrieked off their sides. No, those weren’t leaves at all — they were the Baron’s golden doors!

Kyleigh ran for her life. The gates crashed into the ground, knocking her off her feet again as the whole earth trembled. Stones the size of men thudded into the ground behind her. Jewels rained down upon the sand in shimmering, stinging drops. Her companions sprinted back to avoid being crushed, and their mouths gaped open as they watched what was left of the Baron’s castle go sailing through the air.

A monstrous tongue of green flame erupted from the ground, where the courtyard had once stood. It burned very brightly for a few seconds before it suddenly flared out, hissing as it disappeared. Now the castle walls were little more than a pile of rubble. All that was left of the Baron’s great army were twisted bits of swords and armor.

Kyleigh lay still for a moment. Her ears rang the whole way down her neck. When she opened her eyes, Silas was standing over her. He pulled on her, trying to get her to look where he pointed. She couldn’t hear what he said over the noise of the ringing.

He helped her sit up. When his mouth came close to her ear, she could make out his muffled words: “Look — look at the mines, dragoness!”

She did, and she saw that the miners were using the explosion as an opportunity to revolt. They swung pickaxes and shovels at the guards, chasing them out into the open desert. The mots arrived with their spears, quickly dispatching the few guards that had been foolish enough to try to stand and fight. As the guards fled into the desert, Shamus and his men sent arrows after their heels.

Kyleigh put her hand out to try to push herself up, and felt something sharp against her palm. It was a tiny pair of black crystals, grown together like two heads on one body. She normally didn’t care for jewels. But her ears ached so badly that she wasn’t thinking clearly, and she decided to keep it.

She tucked the jewel inside her pocket and dragged herself to her feet. Shamus headed towards her. He stooped to grab something off the ground as he approached. When he drew even with her, he pressed it into her hand. It was a charred, ragged piece of a golden robe.

“I guess this means the Baron’s been taken care of,” Kyleigh said.

Shamus’s chuckle was still a little muffled. “Aye. There’s not enough of him left to scrape into a bottle.”

Kyleigh was just happy that her friends were alive. That blast could’ve easily taken them all out. “What happened?”

Shamus shrugged. “I don’t rightly know. Why are you shouting?”

“Because I nearly had my ears blasted out!” she said, swatting him in the arm.

They approached the castle ruins carefully. It was still smoking in places, and there was so much rubble that it took them a while to get around it. Silas slipped into his lion form and leapt from pile to pile, edging closer to the center of the blast. When he reached it, he jumped back into his human skin so quickly that he nearly tumbled over.

“It’s that stupid Elena!” he cried, clapping his hands together.

“Shut up, cat.”

Kyleigh’s heart leapt when she heard Elena’s voice. She picked her way hurriedly over the rest of the debris and found herself standing on the edge of a giant hole.

Slabs of rock had collapsed into the hole, forming something like a makeshift ramp. Elena had climbed it as far as she could, but it looked as if she would need help getting over the rest: she held Jake’s staff in one hand — while the mage himself hung limply across her shoulder.

“He’s fine,” Elena called to them. “He just passed out. Now get us a rope or something — I’m sick of being underground!”