Chapter Thirty
That was why they’d pressed the map into her other hand, the one that was already damaged. They’d probably tried her good hand first, but she wouldn’t release the key. She stared at it and wondered why.
“Feel any better?”
Loki’s strained voice drew her attention back from the key to her brother. He lowered his hand, the glow of his healing magic dissipating.
“Yes,” she said, though she could secretly sense that she’d lost too much blood. But her hand and shoulder felt for the most part restored, and that was all she wanted Loki to know. To prove it, she tucked the key into a pocket on her vest, switched the map into that now empty hand, and used her newly healed fingers to gently wipe at the stream of tears that had stained his cheek. When she did, she noticed the thin white scar left over on her hand.
He turned away, clearly ashamed of the tears. Defensively, he said, “I’ve got no stomach for this.”
“For seeing girls get hurt?” Raven asked. “I know. You never could stand it.” He’d always been the one to stand up to bullies in their home village, especially when it had to do with girls. And he’d always been extra protective of her. “But I’m not just any girl, Loki. I’m your sister and I’m half devil, and I’m tougher than you think.”
She wasn’t sure why she’d just told him all of that. She suddenly felt like she’d needed to say it for a long time. Like she needed him to know she could take care of herself. That she was different – that she wasn’t normal.
So that maybe he would understand and accept it when she finally did what she knew she was going to have to do.
He stared at her for a long time, his brow furrowed.
“Why haven’t the colors turned?” Grolsch’s concerned question pierced their silence.
They looked up to find the ork was staring at the walls of the portal with a grim expression. He was right; the portal was still mainly composed of red and black, despite their having transported out of Phlegathos.
“I don’t know,” she said as her brother helped her to her feet. She looked down at the map and concentrated.
It was still blank, and frankly, they were all lucky the transportation magic had worked even though she, the map’s reader, hadn’t been the one to initiate the transport. Though, that explain be why the transport was going so very slowly. They should have been somewhere by now.
The map began to draw itself into familiar lines, both dotted and solid. As the page filled in, Raven’s chest felt tighter and tighter. Her ears began to ring.
This couldn’t be right.
“This can’t be right,” she said aloud without meaning to.
“What can’t be –” Loki began to ask. But the portal suddenly slowed, an abrupt change in speed that wreaked havoc with their momentum.
The duo shades of red and black melded together and darkened, taking on the appearance of blood that sparkled like melted rubies. The exit of the portal cracked open in a display of spreading lightning. It split a doorway into what they could immediately see was hot, choking air beyond.
“Oh no,” Raven heard someone whisper, just before they were shoved out of the transport with mighty magic.
The wind was knocked from her lungs again, but this time, she was a little more prepared for the rough expulsion, and she managed to keep her feet beneath her as the three of them stumbled forward.
Grolsch and Loki relinquished their holds on the map as they stumbled. Raven turned back to the portal to see it slam shut behind her. In truth, she no longer had the sense so much that it didn’t like the taste of her and her companions. Instead, its impatience felt more like time was running out, and the portal was in as much a hurry as they were to get where they needed before it was too late.
When she turned back around, it was to find that Loki and Grolsch had made their way across a large stone room and were staring out a single immense, floor to ceiling window that stretched three stories high.
The view beyond the window was what they’d been able to see from inside the portal. What they hadn’t known until now was that it was separated from them by a barrier of crystal and a force field of incredible strength.
This was a cell in Castle Nisse’s “dungeon,” which, rather than underground, was actually located in a tower near the palace’s center. The dungeon consisted of nine rooms. Each room was lavishly decorated, constructed of ruby-veined gray marble and clear quartz crystal for the windows, which truly did encompass one entire wall of the tall cell. A chandelier hung from the ceiling high above, replete with two-dozen lit candles. They were enchanted never to melt.
Also in the room were a lavish bed with blankets and sheets that looked inviting, a plush bench for resting, a dressing screen, and a fireplace. Which was ridiculous in Nisse, and clearly unnecessary. However, despite the burning inferno outside, the temperature in the room was moderate, even on the cool side, and the hearth had no doubt only been added to make whatever prisoner might be kept here more “comfortable.”
It might seem odd to someone from outside of Abaddon that a prisoner would be treated with any means of kindness. But a true Abaddonian knew that Hell was an enterprise. It was a well-oiled machine. Any devil worth his or her salt knew that a prisoner one day, might be a king the next. It was best to make friends of enemies whenever possible. If you were going to keep someone rather than kill them, there was no point in treating them poorly.
Raven knew all of this about Nisse’s dungeon the way she’d known about the Canton of Corpses. Drake was right. She was a part of Abaddon. It was a part of her. She belonged here.
But she still could not believe that the Hunter’s Map had actually thrown them out of the frying pan and into the fire by bringing them to the very core, the very heart of Abaddon.
“Loki!”
Raven spun toward the dressing screen, where someone had obviously been hiding.
“Summer!” Loki exclaimed. The two met in long strides at the center of the room. They hugged there, as all formality leaves a person in the midst of mortal danger.
Raven could see that Summer was much thinner than she’d been the last time they’d met. Guilt coursed through her, dotted with images of a war-torn city. It reinforced her need to find that Phylactery and turn back time.
Summer pulled away and began speaking very rapidly, as if she didn’t believe she would be able to get it all out before something happened to stop her. “I didn’t know what was happening! The ground was shaking and Lord Tanith was here and then he was gone again and the air in the room started spinning, and I hid behind the screen just as there was this terrible cracking noise, and –”
The sound of keys in the locks on the door to the prison cell stopped her mid-speech, and the four of them turned to watch with wide eyes. It turned out she was right about not being able to get it all out.
“We’ve got company!” Grolsch warned. In one smooth move, he’d pulled his axe from its sling on his back and was brandishing it in a waving, “I’m ready,” stance.
Raven’s heart pounded. She heard shouting and she knew a handful of Nisse’s very powerful, very determined soldiers were in the hall on the other side of that door. She knew that as soon as they saw her, they were going to recognize her.
Wait! she thought, remembering Magus’s assistance. She was in disguise! Maybe fighting wouldn’t be necessary.
Oh, it’ll be necessary, her inner voice corrected. They aren’t stupid. They’ll know you at once. And it doesn’t matter who you look like anyway. If you aren’t Raven, then you’re bounty hunters who’ve stolen into the very center of Castle Nisse and are planning to escape with one of Tanith’s prisoners. No Abaddonian soldier is going to let you out of here without laying down his life trying to stop you.
The door crashed open, and a column of roiling, broiling fire shot into the room.
Mages! Raven’s mind bellowed. She dove for cover, dropping the map. Her brother and Grolsch dove as well; Loki covered Summer’s body wit
h his own, and the column shot directly over them, missing by sheer inches.
Chapter Thirty-One
Raven felt like she was standing too close to a bonfire. It pricked at her with distinct discomfort; she was sensitive to heat like no one she knew. Her body reacted before her brain could tell it not to. At once, her palms became cold and heavy with stored-up, ready-to-use magic.
The dressing screen, bed sheets, and a fur rug near the hearth caught fire and began crackling with the singed remnants of the column of fire as it dissipated and went out. Then Raven was shoving herself to her feet and throwing her power at the first soldiers to file into the room.
The mage, of course, would be at the back of the group, protected by the “meat shields” of the soldiers. But she would get him.
The air in front of Raven’s palms crystallized, and a cone of frigid air formed like foggy lightning, surging across the room in a wintry blight. The parts of the room that were on fire immediately snuffed out in the frozen temperatures, and rime followed the magic’s path, fast and furious.
It found its first marks in the surprised soldiers. They cried out in pain, but the sound died out nearly as quickly as it had begun, freezing in their throats as their bodies crystallized. The cold, however, was not finished with them. Cold power built up inside their bodies, and a moment later, they exploded in a shower of shimmering flesh-colored chunks.
Raven saw the others duck in her peripheral vision, but she couldn’t have cared. Nothing came anywhere near her. Her own power protected her from the results of itself, and she was readying another attack before the first one ended.
The soldiers at the door scrambled to escape her second onslaught, diving for cover on either side of the entrance, which inadvertently allowed those behind them to be slammed with the magic instead. This time, the cone of ice sliced right through them like a barrage of icicle arrows, drilling holes in four more men. The ice pierced armor and flesh, severed bone, and came out the other side to embed itself in the wall of the hall behind them.
Raven saw the mage come forward now, emerging from his hiding place around the corner. He was a tall man in red and black robes, and already, his magic was spinning in his open palms as he manipulated it into a deadly spell. Raven’s magic surged and roared in response, ready to meet his fire with frost.
But as soon as he saw Raven, his face went unaccountably white, and his hands ceased in their movements. His magic snuffed out. “It’s the princess!” he exclaimed in shock.
But, he was too late to save himself. Raven’s defenses were in control, and the third blast she released was one of wind and snow, a spinning, condensed blizzard that whipped away from her open hands to blast across the room. As it passed by the singed bench on its way to the door, it lifted it and sent it sailing in a brown blur. The seat hit the wall and shattered, splitting into a shower of tiny splinters.
Then the storm was in the doorway, and Raven had no idea what was happening to the mage and remaining soldiers beyond, because Loki was at her elbow, and his grip on her arm was tight enough to cut off her circulation.
“Stop! Raven, we have to go! Now!”
When she turned to meet his gaze, she caught the reflection of herself in the rime that had coated the walls. She no longer had red hair and ink markings across her face. She looked like herself. She was once more Raven.
Her disguise was gone, and so was her brother’s.
Loki’s pull on her was insistent. Raven noticed he’d picked up the map. Grolsch was striding forward to meet them, and Summer had already taken hold of one corner, as if she knew what it would do. Or perhaps Loki had told her.
“Take the map!” he told Raven, voicing a phrase that was fast becoming habitual.
She grabbed the corner he held out for her. But it was with an odd, disconnected feeling. Despite the fact that she hadn’t changed into her Abaddonian form, she felt more like Winter in that moment than like Raven, and all she wanted to do was make unwitting snowmen.
“Your highness!”
She heard someone call after her as the Hunter’s Map tugged at her body, and once again, she went shooting through a gap in time and space. This time, the red and black in the portal’s walls faded instantly to be replaced by the transport tunnel’s more common and brighter hues of blue and white. They were leaving Abaddon.
They were leaving Hell.
Raven looked down at the map in her hands. She willed it to tell her where it was taking them. The lines on the scroll raced to do her bidding, drawing themselves out and shading things in until she had a clear picture of their destination. No one spoke as she read the legend. Speaking in a portal was difficult anyway; it was loud, and one normally had to yell to be heard.
But she knew it was more than that. She could feel her brother watching her, searching and silent. She could feel his questions, unspoken and dangling around them like dancing question marks. What had happened to their disguises? Why had they been sent into Nisse? Was there something in that castle they had been meant to find other than Summer? Could she possibly be that great a coincidence?
Why had Raven lost control and lashed out as she had?
She didn’t have the answers anyway. What could she say? What was she supposed to tell him? That being in Abaddon felt natural? That wouldn’t go over well, she imagined.
Was she supposed to tell him that seeing Drake’s past and realizing how tough he’d had to be his entire life, how determined, steadfast and strong, had only endeared Raven to him even more, just when she’d thought her desire couldn’t possibly be any stronger?
Was she supposed to admit that she had loved Drake from the very moment that he’d first captured her, and that she craved him now, not just with her body, but with her very soul?
Did she admit once and for all, here and now, that there was a part of her that wanted nothing more than to be… the queen of Abaddon?
No. She didn’t.
Instead, she read the map, swallowed hard, and said as loudly as she could without her tight voice cracking, “We’re headed into a populated city. It must be one of the survivors of the war.” The drawing on the scroll was one of a thick mesh of buildings, some several stories high, and most bearing minimal battle scarring. The map had even drawn people in the streets, a smattering of booths where sellers had stacked up food and other wares, and a city square replete with a working fountain.
Wherever they were headed, Raven didn’t recognize it. It was some place she and her brother had never before been.
“Our disguises….”
Raven looked up to find Loki leaning in toward something on Grolsch’s belt. Grolsch’s brow furrowed, and she could tell he wanted to scoot back from the invasion of his personal space, but he couldn’t release the map. “Raven, look at your reflection in Grolsch’s belt buckle.”
Raven leaned in and peered closer. Grolsch attempted to bend over and look as well, but when he did, his shadow fell over the polished silver of the buckle. “Sorry,” he said, and straightened again, clearly a little less uncomfortable now that he knew what they were looking at.
“We’re still disguised?” The image in the reflection showed a woman with red hair and face inkings. The red haired woman looked quizzically back at her, and Raven straightened. “But in the castle –”
“Non-Abaddonian magic doesn’t work in Castle Nisse,” said Summer.
Everyone looked at her. She stood at her corner of the map, both hands desperately grasping the document in tight fists. She returned each of their gazes and shrugged. “I read a lot,” she said by way of explanation. “And the priests in Haledon’s temple have many books about Abaddon.”
So that was why their identities had been revealed to the guards. And why, as soon as they’d left the castle, their disguises were back in place again. Raven wondered whether the transition had further weakened Magus. She hoped not. She hoped that the brief stay in the castle had instead been a sort of respite for him.
“This is good news,
” said Grolsch. Loki and Raven moved back a bit to their respective corners of the map. “Because if we’re headed into a city still thriving after the war, there’s only one it could be.”
“One thriving city?” Loki asked.
Grolsch nodded. “Aye, Culling’s Eve. The reason it thrives is because it’s inhabited solely by people who stand to profit from the war.”
Raven processed that. “You mean soldiers?”
“I mean bounty hunters, assassins, and spies.”
Raven took a deep breath, and it wasn’t easy. Her chest was bound tight with invisible ropes. They may have their disguises back, but it wouldn’t matter if Raven couldn’t control her magic. She knew Loki was thinking the same thing.
Raven was thinking something else too. If Culling’s Eve was full of the kinds of people Grolsch suggested it was, then chances were very good that there would be Bounty Hunters of Tanith. And after what she’d seen of the people Drake had chosen for that particular organization, she was fairly sure no disguise at all would be able to hide them.
Chapter Thirty-Two
The portal dropped them off in a forest a few feet from a dirt road that clearly led into Culling’s Eve. A sign pointed the way, but even if it hadn’t, the fact that the road was well traveled and the noises coming from the near distance were enough to confirm it.
“Culling is right down that road,” Grolsch said.
“Should we head in and try to get a room?” Summer asked.
Raven shook her head. “I think we should wait until morning. Less chance of running into trouble. If we move further into the woods and make camp there, we know what we’re getting.” She was thinking of the bounty hunters that would doubtlessly prevail in Culling’s Eve. And any number of other unsavory characters, such as thieves and assassins. They were usually nocturnal.