Before Kral could answer, Meric spoke, his voice as stinging as his eyes. “Your bird?”
Elena refused to shy away from the accusing look in the man’s eyes. She still cradled the broken falcon in her palms. “I found him in the caves. He landed on my arm.”
“The moon’falcon was this man’s creature,” Kral said. “He claimed—”
“The wit’ch lies!” Meric interrupted. “The bird would shun one of such foul blood.”
Elena shifted her hand to hide her shame farther under the falcon. By now, the og’re had shambled over to them. Kral climbed from Meric’s chest and passed the man into the og’re’s care. Elena scrambled back.
“Hold him firm, Tol’chuk. I will not have him attacking the girl again.”
The og’re then spoke. Its capability of speech shocked Elena: She had not fathomed an intelligence above that of a draft horse behind its thick brow and piggy eyes. Its voice was that of cracking stones. “Meric will not harm her.” The og’re released the claw clasped to the man’s shoulder.
Kral darted forward to stand between Elena and Meric. “What are you doing? Did one of those goblins club you in the head?”
“He won’t harm her. He can’t.”
Elena noticed Meric made no aggressive move toward her. His sword still lay at his feet; his shoulders sagged.
Tol’chuk spoke again. “The moon’falcon landed on her. Meric’s tongue may claim this a lie, but his heart saw it dive, casting its life aside for her own. The truth cannot be denied.”
Kral twisted his head to stare at Elena. His eyes shimmered with understanding. “You can’t mean … ?”
Meric answered, his words strained. “Here stands the blood of my people. The wit’ch is the lost descendant of our king.”
Meric sank to his knees and picked up his sword. His motions and face were so defeated that even arming himself did not raise a word of alarm from Kral. Meric held the shaft of the blade in both thin hands. With a strength Elena had not thought he had, the man snapped the sword across his knee. “I came to find a king and instead found a queen.” He presented the broken sword toward Elena. “My life is yours.”
Elena blinked several times, confused by his strange words.
Uncle Bol saved her from having to respond, but not with words of solace. “Er’ril dies! I need help!” he called from across the cavern.
All eyes swung to her uncle. Elena saw the swordsman’s body clench, his neck thrown back, his eyes open and blind. Breath spasmed from a chest struggling to keep life in its body.
The dead falcon slipped from Elena’s fingers.
ER’RIL SWAM THROUGH a sea of blackness. He struggled against its pull, but he tired quickly, his limbs becoming leaden with his effort. Darkness thickened around his limbs like sap in winter, and he sank beneath its surface.
As he drifted down, he surrendered his struggle against it, not so much because he was resigned to his fate, but simply because he was practical. He had wasted his energy in this fight. As he pulled his energies back into himself, his eyes began to see various hues flowing through the blackness engulfing him. The strongest stream was the brackish green of a stagnant bog. One word came to his mind: poison. He somehow knew the goblin’s blades had been dipped in dire alchemies.
Words from far away itched his ear.
“What does she do?”
“Put the dagger down!”
“I feel no beat of his heart.”
“He’s dead.”
“No!”
Er’ril knew all this should mean something to him, but darkness penetrated his mind and curled into his skull. It spoke with a voice, too. It whispered release. He listened.
The voice consoled him, and the blackness laced with green ice worked through his blood toward his heart. Why had it grown so cold?
As even this question faded from his awareness, a new voice intruded. He tried to push it away but was too weak. “… fight it. Hold on. Please, don’t leave me.” Did he know that voice? He let the currents of blackness carry him away. It mattered not.
He drifted … at peace.
Then a blazing radiance thrust through the blackness to grab him with piercing claws. At its touch, ice and fire fought in his blood. He writhed within its grip. Never had he felt such agony. Every injury he had ever suffered, every pain he had ever endured, came back to him in one searing lance of fire. He screamed as the claw wrenched his body from the sea of blackness into a burning brilliance. No! It hurt too much! He tried to fight his way free of its hold, to dive back into the cool darkness, but it would not let him.
The light burned through him, driving the wisps of blackness from his skull. The streaks of green poison stopped their spread but were not driven out. Like river asps, they swam and hid, waiting to strike when the light should fade.
Brilliant spots of color began to dance across his vision, swirling in slow spirals. He found his eyes could blink. Each swipe of lid slowed the whirling until the hues became faces.
He saw Elena bowed over him, Bol at her shoulder, Kral beside him.
The mountain man was the first to speak. “You saved him! Healed him!”
Elena’s face was pale, her skin drawn tight to bone. Echoes of pain swam in her moist eyes. She pulled her hand from his own. Er’ril saw her palm bright with blood. Her thumb had been sliced deeply at its base. He saw the dagger in her other hand. It was the wit’ch dagger Bol had christened in the cottage.
“No,” she answered Kral, her voice a cry of sorrow and frustration. Her hands clenched. “I couldn’t heal him!”
Er’ril tried to sit, sure he would fail. The measure of his strength surprised him. Wobbling and with the aid of Kral’s hand, he did manage to push himself up. He teetered as shards of darkness spun through his vision, but these faded with several deep breaths.
Beside him, Er’ril spotted the iron ward on the stone floor. Once again it was just a carved lump of ore. He felt no phantom link to the metal. He picked it up and held the small fist in his own as he fought to calm his spinning head.
Kral kept one hand clamped to Er’ril’s shoulder. “See! He is cured!”
Elena shook her head and let her uncle tie a bandage around her wounded hand. “My blood bought him time,” she said, her words grown hard. “Nothing else. He needs rest and a healer, or he’ll yet die.”
Kral still seemed to doubt her. “He lives now. That is what matters. But the goblins could change that unless we get free from here.”
“How? Where?” Bol asked. He had finished tying the bandage. His eyes were strange upon his niece. “We can’t go back to the cottage with the skal’tum waiting.”
His words sobered Kral. “And with us carrying Er’ril, climbing out is impossible.”
Er’ril’s tongue swam thick in his mouth. “L-Leave me.”
They all ignored him. No one even looked in his direction.
The og’re, who hovered just at the edge of Bol’s lantern light, spoke up. “My wolf-brother says he may scent a way.”
Er’ril twisted his neck to where the og’re now pointed. The wolf had his nose to the other passage exiting the chamber, the tunnel from which mad Re’alto had come. The dog stood, his nose raised, and sniffed the sighing breeze of the passage.
“He says he scents a familiar trail,” the og’re continued, “the scent of his brother Mogweed.”
THE SCUFF OF tread on stone pulled Mogweed from his drowse. He opened one eye, not rising from where he sat, thinking that perhaps Rockingham was pacing again. But Mogweed was wrong. The man sat with a branch in his lap as he worked on fastening a strip of cloth to one end. Their torch was jammed into a crevice in the floor. Its flames danced light across the walls. The torch, only half burned, should last until dawn, but Rockingham prepared another, always wary.
Mogweed straightened his slump and drew Rockingham’s eyes.
“So the sleeper awakes,” Rockingham said in his usual mocking tone. “Morning nears. But you could still—”
Holding up a hand, Mogweed stopped his words. “I thought I heard something,” he said, and with a wince, unbent his limbs and stood.
“I heard nothing.”
“Your ears are not as keen as mine.” Mogweed crept along the wall and paused at each tunnel mouth, his head held cocked as he listened. He heard nothing. Perhaps the noise was just the trace of a forgotten dream.
At the mouth of the fourth tunnel, he heard it again: a soft scrape on rock. He froze. The sound repeated. Mogweed waved Rockingham over. The man slipped soundlessly beside him. When the scuff whispered from the tunnel again, Mogweed raised his brows in question to the man. Rockingham shook his head. The man still could not hear it.
Through Mogweed’s mind ran horrible pictures of what might have attacked his brother. Fardale’s howl still rang in his ears. He backed from the tunnel.
“What did you hear?” Rockingham asked. His voice, though whispered, seemed so loud.
“I don’t know. It’s too far away.” Mogweed hunched his shoulders. “Maybe we should see if the skal’tum are gone.” He glanced longingly toward the way back to the surface, then back to the tunnel. His mind could conjure worse things than the monsters above.
Rockingham stood listening by the opening. “I think I hear it now, too.”
Mogweed backed another step.
“I think I just heard someone’s voice!”
Monsters seldom spoke. At least not the ones of Mogweed’s imagination. Rockingham’s words drew him forward again. He pushed aside the memory of Fardale’s howl and listened. Then he heard it, too. Snatches of conversation echoed up from below, too far away to be heard distinctly, but clear enough that they could recognize the cadence as the common tongue, not some flesh-rending beast’s. Mogweed’s heart began to beat faster. Strength came in numbers greater than two; with others, he had a better chance of surviving this night.
A sudden bark of laughter erupted from below. Rockingham and Mogweed’s eyes met. Relief surged through Mogweed at the noise. The ebullient outburst was welcome among these dark tunnels. But Rockingham’s eyes narrowed with warning, and Mogweed’s heart clenched.
“I know that laugh,” Rockingham said sourly, “that boulder-grinding guffaw. I had hoped the beasts of the tunnel had feasted on Kral and by now spat out his bones. Apparently the beasts have a more refined palate than I had hoped.”
“He is strong,” Mogweed argued. He remembered the huge, bearded man and the thickness of his arms. “And he has an ax.”
“Shush!” Rockingham drilled him to silence with his glare. He continued to listen to the echo of voices.
Mogweed heard someone speak. As those in the tunnel approached, the words traveled clearly now. His sharp ears even detected the exhaustion and bewilderment in the speaker’s voice. “You’re saying Elena is descended from this Meric fellow’s king.”
Rockingham, too, must have heard subtle nuances to the speaker’s words. “It’s Er’ril!” he hissed in recognition. “What misfortune is this!”
“Is he another warrior?” Mogweed whispered, his heart singing with hope. He pictured two men the size of Kral—with himself hiding behind their wide backs.
“He guards the demon child,” Rockingham said. His eyes gleamed in the torchlight.
At first, Mogweed did not know who he meant. Then it occurred to him. “Do you mean the girl the winged beasts seek? The one for whose capture your king will grant us many gifts?”
A girl’s voice rose from below. “I think I see a light ahead. Look!”
Rockingham darted away, pulling Mogweed with him. “It is she!” he said with delight.
“What are we going to do?”
Rockingham’s brow crinkled as his mind worked on the puzzle. When he spoke, his voice was sure. A smile without warmth marked his lips. “Stay silent about what lies above. Let me do the talking. I only ask one thing of you. Do this to help me, and you will be richly rewarded.”
Mogweed’s eyes glowed with imagined treasures. His gaze flickered down to his own body. To be free of this form, that was worth all the gold in the world. His tongue wet his dry lips. And if he performed well enough here, there was no telling how vast his reward might be. Perhaps he could both break the cursed hold upon his body and still keep the gold. His eyes rose again to Rockingham. “What must I do?”
Rockingham leaned to his ear and whispered as Mogweed nodded. It was but a simple thing—and the reward so ripe.
ELENA FOLLOWED THE ridged back of the og’re up the steep tunnel. Close behind her, Bol helped Er’ril hobble along while Kral and his ax guarded their backs against a renewed assault from the rock’goblins. Beside her, like a thin shadow, marched the man called Meric. She did not know what his claim of common ancestry might mean, but her mind was too cluttered with other worries to give this one much thought. Her eyes kept drifting back to the swordsman.
Er’ril needed to rest as soon as it was safe. He walked with his head hung as if it was too heavy for his body, and his breathing wheezed. The poison in his blood could resume its attack at any time.
Her uncle caught her staring. “He’s doing fine, honey. Er’ril is strong.”
His words raised the swordsman’s head. Er’ril nodded to her. “I’m fine, child. When the Book was forged, I was gifted with longevity and quick healing. You may not have cured me, but you have given me enough time to heal on my own.” He stared directly into her eyes. “You did save me, Elena—don’t doubt that. Your magick can kill, but it can also heal.”
Elena noted a subtle distinction absent from the swordsman’s words. Her magick truly killed, but it did not truly save. It was not a fair exchange.
Bol tried to bolster Er’ril’s claim. “And your magick gave me the renewed vitality to climb out of this hole. I would’ve hated for this pit to be my burial tomb.”
Elena smiled weakly at her uncle. Worry etched the warmth from her lips. Her uncle did not understand. Her magick was only a cork in the bottle holding the dregs of her uncle’s essence. When her magick faded, so would his life.
She continued to follow the og’re’s back. She kept her eyes forward, suddenly afraid to look behind, fearful of those grateful eyes.
The og’re stopped. “A chamber be just ahead,” the creature called from over its craggy shoulder. “A torch burns. My wolf-brother has gone ahead to spy what awaits there.”
The others now all crowded close.
“Do you see anyone?” Kral called from the rear.
“I see Fardale at the mouth of the tunnel,” the og’re passed on. “A figure stands beside him.” A long pause, then Tol’chuk spoke, his voice relieved. “It be Mogweed and another man—no goblins.”
“Then let’s get out of this foul stone dungeon,” Kral said.
The og’re led the way to the chamber. As the huge creature stepped out of the tunnel, Elena finally had a clear view into the torchlit room. She saw the wolf sniffing at a man in hunter’s colors. The beast wagged its tail, but the hunter ignored the wolf and had eyes only for her. When she caught the man staring, he quickly tore his eyes away.
She moved aside to allow the others access to the chamber. As she shifted, she saw another figure in the room, holding a torch. She gasped and backed into Kral just as the mountain man bowed into the room.
“What is it, girl?” he said in irritation. Then his eyes spotted the torch-bearer, too. “What’re you doing here?” his voice growled.
Rockingham nodded to the party. “Waiting for you.”
Kral swung his eyes over the room. “Where’s the nymph? What have you done with Nee’lahn?”
All eyes were on the two. Rockingham raised his face to the others beseechingly. “I don’t deserve these accusations. I left the young lady with the horses. It was too dangerous for her to accompany us down here. So Mogweed and I, at our own peril, came down to investigate. You were all gone for too long a time.” His eyes ran over the party. “But now I can see why. It seems we’re all back together again—with a few newcomers.?
?? Rockingham bowed to the og’re.
“We should go,” said the og’re. “I smell something foul, and the sooner we leave these tunnels, the better.”
“You probably smell Rockingham,” Kral said. “But you’re right. Let’s go.”
The mountain man organized the party. He sent Rockingham ahead with the torch, the wolf and Mogweed at his side. Kral went next with Elena beside him, both to protect her and keep a wary eye on Rockingham. Bol, Er’ril, and Meric kept close to their backs, while the og’re watched their trail for whatever fouled the tunnels with its smell.
Rockingham set a fast pace toward the surface, and no one asked him to slow down. He kept a constant flow of conversation on the way up. “Dawn is fast approaching. It would be best if we used the remaining darkness to clear out of this valley, maybe try for the highlands or even the mountains.” His words droned on for the entire length of the march.
Everyone was too tired to ask him to quiet down.
“Nee’lahn will be so happy to see you all,” he continued. A sharp laugh burst from his lips. The man seemed positively giddy.
After so many close calls, Elena knew she should feel the same way, but her feet dragged under her. Soon a layer of dead leaves and crumbled branches mulched under her feet. She brightened like a sailor seeing a seagull as land approached: Here were signs of life from above! Everyone’s feet now sped across the slippery bedding. She glanced to her uncle. They shared the first true smile in what seemed like ages.
Her feet felt light. She danced a bit ahead of Kral. She spied a drape of roots ahead in the torchlight. It was the mouth of the tunnel!
A grinding voice rose behind the party. “Something be wrong,” the og’re called. “The smell worsens. Wait.”
Not now, Elena thought in despair. We are almost out!
The wolf also sensed something amiss. A growl flowed from its throat.
“Goblins again?” Kral bellowed to Tol’chuk.
“Not sure.”
Kral faced the others. “Meric, take Elena out of here. I’ll join Tol’chuk. We’ll keep whatever threatens from your backsides.”