by Eric Vall
“No, it’s not a flesh wound, it feels--” Zoie didn’t finish describing what it felt like because she gasped, and her legs finally went out on her.
If it wasn’t for my grip on her already, she would have fallen hard to the ground, but because I had her, I was able to lower her gently down to rest against the battlement wall.
“Skree! Skree! Skree!” Roofus flapped frantically with one wing as he tried to get my attention.
“Not now, Roo!” I snapped as I pulled open Zoie’s shirt a little and gasped when an infectious green stain bloomed outward from the center of her chest and crept up the veins in her neck like sickly vines. “What is this?”
“Kaw! K-ar-se!” Roofus squawked, and I turned my head to the gold-seeker as he pecked at Zoie’s pack. “K-ar-se!”
“Cu… rse,” Zoie rasped and then hissed in pain.
“What?” I asked again and then brushed her hair back so I could try and look into her clouded eyes. “Curse?”
“K-ar-se!” Roofus squawked and tore at Zoie’s pack.
“The gold is cursed,” I stated, and the fear in my heart felt like a glacier of ice lodged right in the center.
“I g-guess the stories were t-true,” Zoie said as her eyes welled with tears of pain even though she was trying to maintain her stoic composure.
“Skraw!” Roofus finally managed to rip a hole in the small pocket of Zoie’s pack, and a single coin fell out and landed on the stone with a circling ringing sound. “K-ar-se!”
I reached out and snatched the coin before it could roll away, and I brought it up so I could examine the sickly green sheen that matched the cancer growing in Zoie’s blood.
I checked the rest of the gold in the pack, but only the one Roofus found was glimmering like an enchanted poisoned apple.
“Why isn’t the rest cursed?” I asked.
“That’s the one from the c-crypt,” Zoie coughed.
“Why aren’t I affected, too?” I held the old coin up and then squinted at the river.
“I was the one who put it inside my pack,” she said and then moaned sharply in pain.
“That’s it, I’m throwing this over the wall,” I said and pulled back my arm so I could lob it over the battlement.
“W-wait,” Zoie said as she panted through another spike of pain. “It has to be returned from where it was taken to stop the curse from spreading.”
“You mean… all the way back inside the crypt?” I asked, and I could feel the color drain from my face as I contemplated having to run all the way back through the palace ruins, never mind the iron portcullis with the broken lever that was most definitely too heavy to lift with two people, let alone one.
Then another wolf-cry ripped through the air, and I knew returning the way we came was absolutely out of the question even more than it was ten minutes ago, and my brain whited out in panic for a split second.
“Alex,” Zoie said in a thready and weak voice. “T-training… use your senses. What do you smell?”
“You want to do a training exercise now?” I gasped out a surprised huff of laughter as a few tears trailed down my face. I cupped her ashen cheeks as if I could stop her warmth and vibrancy from fading with my hands, even though it was like trying to stop the sun from setting.
Impossible.
I wanted to break down just then, as if I was the one suffering from a fatal wound, or a strangling poison that robbed my breath and threatened my days with darkness.
Yet, I laughed because here she was, still trying to train me so I wouldn’t die.
“Which direction are the falls, Alex?” she asked and blinked her glassy eyes. “If we find the top of the falls, then we find the bottom where we came in.”
“Like a circle,” I said as my brain snapped out of its depressive feedback loop. I knew there had to be a river just on the other side of the battlement wall, but I couldn’t see up to the ten-foot crenels to see which way it was flowing.
A rough plan began to take shape, and my heart kick-started inside my chest at the thought all was not lost.
So, the falls. Right. I could do this.
I clutched her shivering body closer and closed my eyes in order to bring back as much concentration as I could despite the reality of Zoie dying in my arms.
The seed-pod image floated in my mind’s eye again, and I tipped my head back so I could scent the breeze coming from my right. Only one scent was identifiable when I inhaled, which was the smell of oncoming rain just before the storm.
I breathed again and tried to ignore everything around me so I could pick apart the very scent particles in the air. Part of me wondered if this was where I would hit a wall when it came to Varthan Warrior training. I was just a human no matter how skilled with instincts Zoie proclaimed me to be, and her mixed species probably had a leg-up on my average human senses.
But her teaching methods had never failed me yet, so with a renewed determination, I tried to “listen” to what my sense of smell was telling me.
If our goal was reaching the top of the falls where we came in, we might be able to hike or climb down so we could return the coin to the crypt.
So, water. I needed to find the scent of water, but not just that, I needed to sniff out the slight sulfuric scent that came from the chasm and bled through the cracks in the bricks. Wherever that scent was strongest should lead to the entrance of Falls Keep.
I really needed to not fuck this one up, because at this point, if I picked the wrong direction, I could be taking the wall the long way around, and I didn’t think Zoie had that kind of time left.
The air smelled moist everywhere due to the coming rain, but I concentrated harder even as Zoie’s head began to loll with weakness.
Finally, just on the wind, I could smell the faintest hint of rotten eggs coming from my left.
“Got you,” I said and dropped my pack of gold onto the ground. Zoie’s pack was just going to have to be gold enough because I couldn’t carry both packs along with her.
I secured the straps of the remaining pack across Zoie’s chest and then helped her stand so I could get her situated piggy-back style.
“Alex…” she said, and her breath was shallow and icy cold where it puffed against my neck
“Hang on, baby, hang on,” I murmured and hiked her farther up on my back with my grip around the backs of her knees.
Then I summoned a will I didn’t even know I possessed because I ran along the battlement wall as if the wind really was lifting my soles and I was flying over the ground.
“Arrrroooooo!” came another wolf-cry, and the terrifying noise caused the hairs to stand up on my arms, so I ran even faster.
“I can…” Zoie gasped, “hear falling water… ”
Off in the distance, a bridge connected the two halves of the ancient palace ruins by their battlement walls, and rushing underneath was the river that flowed toward the top of the falls.
The snarling and barking noises from behind me made my heart pound in fear as I ran across the bridge. Apparently, the last wolf-creature had joined up with more of his kind because when I chanced a glance over my shoulder, I could see there was a group at least twice the size of the one that had hunted us before.
“Come on!” I urged myself through gritted teeth as the pounding footsteps grew louder.
“Kaw!” Roofus said from his perch on Zoie’s shoulder, and I skidded on my heels as another pack of wolf-monsters appeared on the bridge across from us, stared at us with their wild eyes, and snapped their razor-sharp teeth.
I spun around and was met with the same sight charging at us from the other end of the bridge, which meant we were effectively trapped.
“Hopefully, these guys can’t swim,” I said and hoisted Zoie up on my back one more time to make sure I had a good grip on her.
She was fading fast, but still holding on to me with clinging fingers.
I walked up to the low wall on the side of the bridge and jumped up the crumbling stones that acted like steps until
I was standing on the ledge and looking down at the river below me.
The howling and rabid barking increased as both packs sped up their approach from both directions.
“Hold on!” I yelled, and then I jumped off the side with the hopes the Goddess would hear my one and only prayer.
Chapter 16
I hit the water feet first but immediately lost hold of Zoie and Roofus when we made impact.
My head broke the surface of the river in a flurry of bubbles, and I turned around frantically in the water as the current carried us toward the falls.
“Zoie?” I called out, but I had yet to see her head break the surface.
Then it dawned on me she had the only pack, and that pack had at least twenty pounds of gold dragging her down.
I dove under the water and kicked as hard as I could. The river was murky, but when I opened my eyes, I could just see the outline of my wife’s blue cloak, and I reached my fingers out like claws so I could hook her toward me. When she was back in my arms, I pumped my legs toward the surface, and my lungs burned as the last four feet felt like four miles.
Finally, I managed to get both of our heads above the water, but Zoie was as still as the grave and losing more color by the second.
“Kaw!” Roofus cried out, and I spotted the drowned crow-moth as he limped up a muddy bank about fifty feet away. He flapped one wing as if trying to flag us down, and I struggled to swim toward the bank.
Combined howls of rage exploded from above as the hoard of wolf-monsters barked down at me from their places on the bridge. I swam harder, and the roar of the falls caused their grotesque and guttural barking to fade, which was nice, but if I didn’t make it to the bank quickly, we would be swept over to slam down on those unforgiving rocks.
“Kree!” Roo screeched, and I smashed into the bank with enough force to knock the air out of my lungs.
“Zoie,” I croaked as I pulled us farther up through the mud and sticks. Then I cupped her cold ashen face and shook her a little. “Zoie!”
“K-ar-se!” Roofus wailed and jumped up and down on my head at least three times, and the obnoxious gesture snapped me out of the sucking panic that almost swallowed me whole at the sight of Zoie’s still form.
I blinked away the icy fear in my blood and forced myself to focus. Zoie’s chest still rose and fell with her breaths even though they were very shallow and spaced too far apart to be normal.
But she was still breathing, and the falls were so close.
Clarity returned along with a surge of fortifying adrenaline, and I jumped into action. I took off Zoie’s pack so I could put it on my back, and then I lifted my wife up into my arms bridal style.
“Alex…” she whispered through her blue-tinged lips, but she didn’t open her eyes.
“I got you, kitten,” I said and cradled her closer as I marched my way toward a large boulder next to the top of the falls. It would be a good blocker from the wind that was starting to get stronger with the incoming storm.
I gently settled Zoie down in the soft grass against the rock and then searched through her pack for anything usable. It was all soaked, but there was a tarp I took a moment to unfold and drape over her body to try and protect her in case it rained.
“I’ll be right back,” I promised before I kissed her cold and clammy forehead.
Her eyes flickered under her eyelids, but she didn’t stir otherwise.
“Roofus, stand guard,” I ordered, and the poor wet crow-moth stopped preening his damp tail feathers and blinked up at me with his bulbous scarlet eyes.
“Ker-kaw!” he said and hopped over to settle down right on Zoie’s chest.
“Good boy,” I said and pulled a bundle of sturdy rope out of the pack before I stood up. “I won’t be gone long.”
I searched for the coin in my pocket to make sure it was still there and then headed over to where the sound of the falls blocked my hearing from all else. If Roofus and Zoie were in danger, I wouldn’t be able to hear them, and the thought made me uneasy.
I needed to move quickly.
I used my fingernails to pry apart the tie that kept the rope in its neat coil, and I brought it over to a tree growing out from the top of the falls. I then wrapped the rope around the trunk and dropped the line out over the edge.
From what I could see, the rope seemed long enough to at least get me down below the mists. If I had to guess, the falls were about sixty to seventy feet high from what I remembered when we first entered the crypt.
If I was lucky, I had at least one-hundred feet of rope here.
“Okay, boy scout,” I said to myself as I finished setting my anchor. “Let’s see how well you can put your book smarts to the test.”
For a short period, I was really into rock climbing as a way to build up my endurance and get my adrenaline fix at the same time. I’d only really climbed with a harness and belay devices, but I was always curious about how to rappel with just a rope like in the old mountaineering days.
I read it was possible to wrap the rope in such a way that allowed the rappeler to basically let physics take over as they controlled the speed of their descent. Reading it was one thing, but putting it into practice was another when I was faced with the reality that one slip of my foot, and I would plummet down to my death.
Zoie’s dear face floated into my mind, and the bolt of fierce love I felt for her shook me of any lingering doubts. There were no other options because living without her wasn’t an option, so this had to work.
“Here we go.” I faced my anchor and straddled both ropes as I tried to remember the steps to secure the manual harness that would let me slide down using only friction and gravity for brakes and acceleration.
If I remembered correctly, I had to hold both ropes tightly while I wrapped them around my hips, through my legs, and then over the back of my shoulders. This rope trailed down next to my dominant right hand so I could control the speed, and with my left hand, I gripped the ropes closest to my tree anchor and then leaned back into my makeshift harness.
A thrill twisted up my spine as I teetered for a second with my back to the void while I got used to the amount of blind faith I had to put into this simple twist of rope. When my heart finally resumed its normal place back inside my rib-cage where it belonged, I began to rappel down with small walking steps until I made it over the edge, which was always the hardest part.
The rock wall was slick with algae, and my foot slipped for a moment, which caused me to over balance and crash into the rock wall with my side. My hands slipped, and I zipped down a few feet before I strengthened my grip and stopped myself from falling out of the rope harness.
The flesh of my palms stung from the burning rope, but it was a small thing when the ground was still so far away and my brain was nowhere near it.
When I was able to regain control and stop the fall, I just dangled there for a second in order to recover my bearings and get the splitting pain in my forearms to go away.
“Fuck,” I groaned, and I could feel every throb of my heart in my hands as if they were nothing but seared slabs of raw meat. I looked up and saw the lip of the cliff’s edge where my rope disappeared, and I figured I’d made it down about twenty feet already.
“Let’s try this again,” I said to myself through clenched teeth and set my feet shoulder width apart. Then, with little bouncing motions, I kicked away from the wall while slackening the rope at the same time so I could rappel down in a controlled and efficient manner.
I hit my stride about three quarters of the way down, and by the time my feet hit the bottom, I felt like a certified expert in gearless rappelling.
“Hell, yeah, I own you, gravity!” I couldn’t help but cheer as I uncoiled the makeshift rope harness from around me. I tied a loose knot so the ends wouldn’t somehow slip from my anchor tree, and then I ran under the back of the falling water where the secret entrance of Falls Keep was.
“Bravery!” I yelled, and the stone slab released from its hidden sea
m.
I jammed my fingers inside the gap and pulled open the heavy door. My hands protested the motion, but I ignored it and kept pulling until there was a gap big enough for me to slip through.
“Here!” I shouted as I tore the cursed coin out of my pocket so I could hold it up to the quiet crypt. “I’m sorry we took it, please take this back and lift the curse.”
I placed the sickly green coin down onto the nearest raised tomb to my right and then stepped back.
The temperature of the crypt suddenly plummeted, and my breath fogged out in front of me. Then a hollow and cruel laugh echoed from multiple directions despite the fact that the voice was singular in origin.
“You thought you could take from me, the great King of the Western Ridge, without any consequences?” came that omnipresent voice, and I spun around in a circle as the feeling of eyes like spiders crawled up the back of my neck.
“Your Majesty, I meant no harm--” I began but nearly had my very skeleton jump out of my skin when a semi-transparent figure abruptly materialized in front of me.
“You don’t smell like you have the Thief’s Sickness,” the ghost king of this ruined palace said as his stringy long hair floated behind him like he was suspended in water.
I reared back my head as he moved his decomposing face next to mine so he could inhale deeply through his missing skeletal nose.
“It’s not me, it’s my wife,” I explained as I forced my feet from backing up just in case I offended this undead lord. “We didn’t know it was cursed.”
“Then you married foolishly, boy,” the king said as he glared at me with his pupil-less eyes. “Tell me, if it wasn’t cursed, would you have even bothered?”
I took a breath and considered my answer. I could grovel and plead, but if the skeleton we took the coin from was any indication, that probably wouldn’t appease this pissed off dead guy. After all, he was dead, and if he was still hanging around here as a ghost, then he probably didn’t have anything else to do besides curse foolish thieves.
“No, I wouldn’t have bothered, because to be honest, my intentions in taking it were good ones,” I said with confidence I barely felt. “As a king, I’m sure you understand honor.”