Trading by Shroomlight

by C. M. Simpson

Before they try killing them? Marsh snapped, but she didn’t stop, hitting the entrance to the tunnel at a dead run as her stomach churned with anxiety.

  The scan showed nothing in the first stretch: no Mordan, no bodies, no one waiting in ambush. The reason became apparent as soon as they rounded a sharp bend.

  Marsh caught a glimpse of the rock face with barely time to turn side-on. She hit hard and bounced back into Roeglin. “Merde.”

  “Bet you wish you’d brought Aisha now.” He teased, eyeing the stone in frustration.

  “Henri and Jakob are in trouble,” Marsh said, “and I can’t feel Mordan.”

  Roeglin laid a hand on her shoulder. “We’ll find a way around.”

  “Why?” Gustav asked, coming to a halt behind them. His armor was torn in several places, and Marsh wondered just how badly he’d been injured when the force from Shamka had arrived.

  We didn’t come from Shamka. Tabia’s voice intruded in her head. We came from Haven. Shani dreamt there was need. Her voice grew heavy with grief. I did not think she dreamt the need was yours or that Khalifa had already fallen.

  “You had friends here?”

  Tabia answered her out loud. “You could say that,” and in her head, My lover.

  She gestured toward the wall and looked back. “Lekan, Mosi, Bahati, you’re up.”

  16

  Retrieval

  Marsh and Roeglin stepped aside, flanking the druids as they worked. They slipped through the parting stone as soon as the gap was wide enough.

  “Scan.” Gustav’s reminder slid after them, adding sibilance to the tunnel, and Marsh woke the magic that would let her do exactly that.

  Behind her, the mages sent the rock face back into the walls that had spawned it, and the rest of them followed. She tried not to let the sound of their footsteps distract her, searching ahead, hoping to find the three lives she had come to save. Any more would be a bonus.

  She caught a sense of them just as Roeglin reached out and laid a hand on her chest.

  They’re ahead.

  Well, she knew that the bright flare of human life hadn’t slipped past her. She shifted to take a closer look at what the shadow threads touched and slowed to an almost complete halt.

  Tell them... she began and stopped as she registered the sudden silence behind her.

  Already done. Roeglin was smirking. She could tell that without even looking at the man.

  Smartass.

  Concentrate.

  She knew then that he was taking what she saw and relaying it directly to the mind mages behind them...and to Gustav.

  Seriously. You have to focus.

  And he seriously had to shut his mouth, or she’d never understand what it was that she was seeing.

  Ahead of her, the tunnel widened into a low-ceilinged cavern with the trail running through the middle. She got that. There were two distinct groups in the cavern, and she got that too, even if one of those groups was split into three clusters.

  The prisoners from the Grotto proper were held at bay by the loaded crossbows aimed at them from three directions. What Marsh didn’t understand was the raider standing between them.

  He had his back to the prisoners, his hands upraised as though trying to placate the crossbowmen.

  “Please,” he begged. “We don’t have to do this. We can just leave them here and come back for them.”

  “They’ll be free by then,” one of the other raiders snarled. “Better we leave their bodies as a lesson to those that followed.”

  A despairing moan flowed through the prisoners, and several adults turned to shelter the children beside them.

  “If you leave them, we can recapture them later. Their remaining forces cannot stand against the army we’ve been sent.”

  “If we leave survivors, more will resist.”

  “Not true,” the raider argued, glancing back at the children being sheltered closest. His voice broke. “Please...”

  The raider leader lifted his crossbow.

  “No.”

  His quiet rejection was echoed in Marsh’s shout as she charged forward, sighting on a patch of darkness at the end of one of the shadow threads. Behind her, Tabia’s soldiers and druids broke into a run.

  Marsh leapt into a deeper piece of shadow against the tunnel wall and willed herself to come out in the place she’d seen via the shadow threads. Roeglin’s expletive followed her through the shift.

  “Shag the Deep!”

  She might have laughed, but she’d arrived. This time she didn’t bother with a sword and shield. Instead, she demanded the lightning from the darkness at cavern’s ceiling, bringing it down on the raiders farthest from her.

  “Get down!” she screamed, hoping the villagers would pay attention. There was no way she could stop all the crossbow bolts aimed at them, but this way, they’d at least have a chance.

  You can’t, but I can, Roeglin said, coming through the shadows behind her. He created a wall of shadow between the villagers and the raiders. It split the cavern in two, the three groups of raiders on one side and the villagers and the protesting raider on the other.

  Marsh kept her attention on the lightning, drawing it closer to where she was standing as men fell screaming before it. The raiders’ leader looked from her to the men being shattered and pivoted, altering the crossbow’s aim.

  Marsh sidestepped as other raiders followed their captain’s lead. She was so much toasted-shroom she didn’t want to think about it, but there was one last thing she could do.

  Instead of walking the lightning slowly forward, she called more lightning from the ceiling. She was vaguely aware of Roeglin’s shout of alarm and the sound of crossbows being fired. Somewhere in the distance, she also heard Gustav’s panicked shout.

  “Halt! Halt! For the Deeps’ sake, STOP!”

  As his cry reached her ears, Roeglin flung himself over her, dragging her down to the floor and encasing them in darkness.

  You are shroom-shaggingly insane, and we are going to talk about your temper later!

  Temper? Marsh didn’t think her temper had come into it. She’d done what she’d needed to do to stop the raiders from killing the villagers. From taking down Gustav and Tabia and their people as they came into the cavern. From... Okay, she hadn’t stopped them from killing her.

  No, I did that. Didn’t Roeglin sound just too pissed for words? You have no idea.

  Marsh wished he really was too pissed for words because then she wouldn’t have to listen to the tirade she knew was coming, but Roeglin had other things on his mind.

  Do you think you can turn the lightning off now?

  Like it was a tap, but Roeglin’s request was echoed by Tabia. Please turn off the lightning. We can’t tend to the wounded until you do. Then she heard Gustav.

  “I am going to kick her Deeps-begotten ass all the way from the Devastation to the Deeps-be-damned Deeps!”

  Wow. You sure know how to impress a guy, Roeglin told her, and it didn’t help that he was laughing.

  Even with the dome pressing down around them, his amusement was almost infectious, and Marsh caught herself smiling. She rolled her eyes. She was in so much trouble.

  “You have no idea.”

  Marsh remembered the outraged frustration in Gustav’s voice and the consternation in Tabia’s tones. “Yeah, I think I do.”

  Roeglin caught a little of what she was thinking and agreed. “True, but you saved them, which is more than any of the rest of us could do.”

  “Weren’t you the one who blocked the crossbow fire?”

  “Don’t you drag me into your reckless insanity!”

  Marsh curled her lip. “Huh. I didn’t. You came along all by yourself. I don’t get to drag you anywhere.”

  She caught his quickly stifled disagreement and resisted the urge to pursue it. It took her a moment to soothe the lightning, sending the shadows back to the quiet of their corners and thanking them as they went.

  She waited a little bit longer, trying to sense
when they settled, even as she willed them to do so. After a few heartbeats, Roeglin dropped the dome from around them. Marsh gasped, but he smiled. “Tabia gave the all-clear. That was some display.”

  “I still haven’t found Mordan,” Marsh murmured but was interrupted by Henri.

  “Sure, worry about the kat,” he snarked. “Never mind about the two men who went after the raiders you were letting get away.”

  His comment was followed by the sound of a fist meeting flesh.

  “Ow! What was that for?” he asked, sounding hurt.

  Izmay was merciless. “As if you didn’t know.”

  “I...” He made a strangled sound of frustration, which was abruptly muffled.

  When Marsh looked toward him, she saw Izmay had pulled him into her arms and was kissing him soundly. Henri’s look of surprise had her smiling with the rest.

  “I wouldn’t be smiling if I were you.” Gustav’s voice wiped the expression from her face as surely as anything else, and Marsh turned toward it. As soon as he had her attention, the Protector Captain made a sweeping gesture with his arm. “This is nothing to be proud of.”

  Marsh followed the direction of his arm and then turned abruptly away, her stomach roiling. Roeglin wrapped an arm around her shoulders and pulled her head into his chest. His next question was addressed to Gustav. “Did you see Mordan?”

  Marsh lifted her head and was in time to catch Gustav’s gesture toward the back of the cave. “They made the prisoners carry her.”

  Carry her? Marsh turned, pushing clear of Roeglin.

  “Where is she?” she demanded. “Is she all right?”

  Gustav caught her eye, reminding her that she hadn’t known where the kat was when she’d called the lightning. That Mordan’s remains could have been on the side of the cavern she’d obliterated with lightning.

  “But they’re not,” she whispered, trying to block the memory of the carnage she’d created.

  For a long moment, she thought Gustav wasn’t going to answer, but then he decided to be merciful. “No, they’re not.” He pointed. “She’s over there.”

  Marsh followed the direction of his finger and saw several druids crouched together. As she looked, one of them turned his head in her direction and nodded. Marsh took a quick breath and hurried toward him, only to stop as a small commotion rose from ahead of her.

  “No!”

  “You can’t!”

  “Please don’t!”

  These protests were followed by a voice laden with a weariness that stretched to the soul. “It’s okay. I deserve it.”

  Recognizing the voice, Marsh hurried forward.

  The raider who had tried to stand between his companions and the villagers was kneeling in the center of a knot of people. This time, two of the villagers faced off against Tabia and her warriors.

  “He tried to stop them,” one explained.

  “He wouldn’t have raised a hand if they hadn’t been going to kill you.”

  The two villagers defending the raider looked back at him, and he momentarily bowed his head before raising it to meet their eyes. “They are right. I don’t deser...”

  Whatever they thought of his admission, the villagers stood fast. “You don’t deserve to die either,” they told him.

  He paled and shook his head. “I deserve very much to die,” he told them. “I’m sorry.”

  Tabia lowered her bow, but the warriors around her did not. Marsh hurried to join the group just as the shield leader’s eyes turned white. “Tell me why,” she ordered, and the raider lifted his gaze to meet hers.

  “Elaine,” he replied. “My wife. She would never have forgiven me if I’d let them...” He gestured helplessly toward the villagers and their children.

  “Yet she would have been fine with you taking them from their homes to whatever fate awaits them?” Tabia demanded, and again he bowed his head, his shoulders sagging.

  When he replied his voice was riddled with emotion. “No. She was not all right with what we were doing. Just because it happened to us, she said, did not give us a right to make it happen to others. She said...” His voice caught. “She said we should try to leave, but I couldn’t take the risk. Our children...”

  Tabia was relentless. “Even so, she would never have known. You didn’t have to tell her. So why did you do it? Why didn’t they?”

  She gestured to where the other raiders had once stood and he flinched, his face paling even as he met her gaze. “Some would protect their families, no matter what it cost them or others.”

  He bowed his head, ashamed. “Elaine, she...she would never have accepted it. Theirs would have felt guilty and sad but still accepted it, but Elaine...”

  He broke off and shook his head. “You’re in my head already,” he murmured. “Why don’t you see for yourself?”

  As if that was an invitation to all, Roeglin took Marsh’s hand and walked up behind the man. He tensed when he heard them approaching and flinched when Roeglin laid a hand on his shoulder.

  Roeglin’s voice was hard when he spoke, and Marsh almost pulled out of his grasp. “Let us in.”

  After a moment of quiet, the man sighed. “Sure. Why not? The more, the merrier.”

  Bitterness laced his voice, but it was mixed with an overwhelming sense of defeat and loss. Marsh touched the edges of his consciousness and drew back. There was such sadness, such regret, that she didn’t want to see the source of it. She followed Roeglin despite that.

  His name was Arlin, and he had lived in a small enclave in the Devastation. Had. Until the day the raiders came. Unlike the caverns, there had been nothing to restrict the raiders’ attack, and nowhere for his family to run that they could not follow. They had been taken inside the span of a day and reunited two days later.

  And he had vowed not to put them in so much danger again.

  Despair crashed through him, and the raiders knew that. They knew he and Elaine worked as one, and that their children were exactly like their parents and worked in concert with them. Most of the time, anyway.

  And now he might have condemned them all. He curled over his knees, trying to suppress the sob that wanted to claw its way out of his chest. He had failed them all.

  How? Tabia wanted to know.

  Because they will kill my family because of what I have done.

  But they do not know.

  They will...There is always a force that travels ahead.

  Marsh pulled herself out of Roeglin’s grip and the raider’s head. Across the cavern, Mordan growled. The druids around her scattered, giving her the space she needed to roll to her feet and gather herself.

  Dan!

  I come. This hunt is mine! The kat was utterly sure of that, her mind voice adamant.

  Marsh wasn’t about to let her take action on her own. They are mine too.

  Memories of another raider rose unbidden. My wife and kids get to live even if I don’t.

  Her vision blurred, but not enough that she couldn’t see the path ahead.

  “Leclerc!” Gustav’s voice rang out as Mordan joined her and they broke into a run.

  “He lives!” she shouted back, bolting for the cavern entrance. It was as much of an order as she dared to give.

  Gustav groaned, but she was past him and not slowing down, even though she needed to scan the cavern ahead. Roeglin bounced into her head.

  How much do you like being on latrine duty? he asked but didn’t wait for an answer. Because I don’t think you’re ever getting a night off.

  Not his soldier, Marsh snarled back and heard Mordan give a real-life echo.

  Fine. Then the Shadow Master will no doubt have something to say about this too.

  Marsh did her best to give him the impression of a mental shrug, and he replied with a mental slap upside the head. If you’re going to go charging into danger, at least pay attention to the danger you’re running into.

  For a moment, she wanted to ask him if he was coming after her, but then she caught a glimpse of what h
e was doing. “Merde.”

  I’m coming. He couldn’t, not until he convinced the raider to accept their mercy, and Tabia to grant it.

  “What’s the point? My wife and children are dead.”

  “Not yet, they’re not,” Roeglin told him. “Marsh is going after the advance party. Did you have a mind mage with you?”

  The man shook his head. “No.”

  “So if she catches them, no one will know what you tried to do?”

  “No, but they’ll find out. They always do.”

  “How?” That brought Arlin up short, and Roeglin pushed him on it. “How?”

  The man’s face cleared. “Oh.” Marsh saw the brief flicker of hope Roeglin caught flit through his head. “Can she really catch them?”

  Mordan had been following the conversation through the link between them, but she had also been tracking the cavern ahead using what Marsh was fielding with her scans. She pulled Marsh back into the present.

  The prey is close.

  The prey was indeed close. Marsh saw that as soon as she turned away from Roeglin’s mind and paid attention to her own. From what the shadows showed her and the life signs reflected, the advance group had heard her footsteps coming after them as she ran down the tunnel.

  They had slowed their pace but didn’t look as if they suspected she was not one of their own. Some looked back, dropping into a jog, but they didn’t stop. Marsh looked for gates. She had already stepped out of one she’d seen only through the shadows. Perhaps she could do that again.

  I’ll meet you there, Roeglin told her and was joined by Izmay’s declaration of agreement.

  Merde, she thought, wondering where the shadow guard had learned the skill so fast. Knowing he and Izmay were watching, even if she couldn’t work out how, she chose a distinctive patch of shadow.

  We learned by watching you, Roeglin told her and Marsh frowned.

  Since when had she given him permission to share?

  Focus.

  As if she needed to be told. But Mordan’s roar from the far edge of the trail suggested that she’d needed it very much. Marsh threw herself into a roll that carried her forward and under the flight of several crossbow bolts. The raiders had finally realized she wasn’t one of their own.