by Halie Fewkes
I almost forgot that Jonnath was still out to get me as Nessava scuffled with Robbiel, but I had the knives and he didn’t. I threw them as hard as I could across the room, but he caught each easily. Instead of throwing them back, he kept them, and looked as though he was about to approach. Hand to hand combat, huh?
I grabbed the two knives Nessava had dropped, then dove back behind the cabinet, out of sight. Celesta, Emery, and Karissa were still battling it out by the smashed fireplace, each one fighting the other two.
I jumped out from behind the bookshelf and ran at Jonnath, faking like I was going to stab, but then didn’t. He moved to block my attack, but instead I dove past, turned around, and threw the knife at him.
What had been a game suddenly turned wrong as he failed to catch it and it hit him in the back. Everybody stopped what they were doing to help Jonnath as he fell to his knees bleeding.
“I’m so sorry. I’m really sorry,” I said as Robbiel yanked the knife out. How could I have let that happen?
Emery slapped me on the back. “Don’t be sorry. That was a good throw.”
“A good throw?” I demanded.
Jonnath reached his hand out and shook mine. “I’ll be ready for that next time,” he grumbled, his deep voice making him sound like a bear.
And then I saw it — the wound was already almost gone. I knew we healed fast, but I didn’t know it was that fast.
“You know, I think that’s the best battle we’ve had in a while,” Robbiel said.
“Yeah, ruined my fireplace though,” Celesta said.
Emery scoffed and said, “You were having fun.”
Celesta frowned sourly, then broke a smile and said, “I guess so.” Her words made all of us laugh, and it almost seemed like I hadn’t just stabbed my friend in the back… literally.
“It’s getting late,” Karissa said simply, “I’m going to bed now.”
“Yeah, I’m turning in too,” Nessava agreed.
“Sounds good,” Jonnath said, wincing as he stood.
I found my way back to my room, happy to crawl onto my hammock and wrap up in a thick blanket among the clutter that I’d clean in the morning. Seeing my old friends really had gotten my mind off everything for a while. They were all slightly insane, and I had probably been a large part of the madness back in my old life.
Now, finally alone with my thinking time, I had the chance to fully examine the situation.
It was a strange concept, being a Tally. I liked the other six of us — if that was all there were — but it was just so bizarre. How could any of it be true?
I thought about my mother as I closed my eyes. She had been so strong. She must have really loved that Escali to face the consequences of having a daughter with him, and I wished I could remember more about her.
Archie had mentioned something about not growing old, but I had obviously grown older since whenever that vision had happened… That would have been about thirteen years ago because it was right before Liz was born. That was a crazy thought. I certainly didn’t look as though I’d aged thirteen years.
Someday Liz would grow up and look older than me. Maybe it wasn’t the worst thing, but what would she think? How was I going to tell her about… my situation? I was a Tally. I was half-Human, and I was half-Escali.
Which side was I on? I couldn’t be on the Escali side — it was the wrong side. I opened my eyes and looked around the black cave, imagining the Escali walls in the dark. The bad side, the evil one! And yet… I had been working for the Humans and the Escalis before everything went wrong. What made this side the bad side anyway? I must have been somewhat of the same person before I lost my memory. If I had chosen to help both sides out back then, then I must have had a good reason…
Morning came very differently than at the Dragona. A trumpet didn’t call through the tunnels to wake everybody up. Instead, Nessava came running by each of the rooms shouting the wake up tune.
I laughed as I rolled out of my hammock and realized that unlike the Dragona — frigid if I forgot to light the fire — it was comfortably warm. I heard Nessava’s voice as she ran past the door again, and I got up to start the day. Usually I would have changed clothes, but I didn’t have any normal clothes with me, and I didn’t want to wear the Escali ones I had found. Oh well.
I had decided in my sleep that maybe this was the right course of action. I wouldn’t ever do anything to hurt my family at the Dragona, and maybe being in such a unique position meant I could help out in some way. What if I could end the war someday? Obviously it wasn’t a likely concept, but who was in a better position to try?
The first thing I had to do was get back to the Dragona with a very good excuse as to where I had been. I picked up my stuff, threw some back in the chest, and stood as Nessava pushed my door open to make sure I was awake.
With eyes squinted in resentment of the day, Jonnath plodded down the hall past Nessava who was still shouting. She flung open the door of the room next to mine, bolted inside, and continued yelling the wake up tune, possibly even louder. I ventured over to see her swinging Karissa’s hammock violently back and forth while Karissa covered her face with both her arms and groaned.
“Get up, get up!” Nessava yelled at her.
“Ok, ok!” She got out of her hammock and stood up for a few seconds before jumping right back in it and trying to go back to sleep.
“You’re hopeless!” Nessava threw her arms up and left the room defeated.
Karissa continued to make swatting movements with her arm even after Nessava had gone, but looked up when she heard me laughing. “I’m getting up.” She strenuously rolled from her hammock.
“Not a morning person?”
“Oh, who is?” she barked. She walked out the door and glared fiercely at Nessava, the enemy.
Nessava gave her a big smile in return and exclaimed, “It’s hunting day!”
“You make me get up, but you’re letting Archie sleep in?” Karissa griped as she pointed to Archie’s closed door.
“I forgot he was here.” Nessava then busted Archie’s door open, yelling the wakeup call again.
“Gahhhhhhhhh!” We heard from across the hall. “I am bolting my hammock to the floor, Nessava! Then what will you do?”
“That is not a bad idea…” Karissa mumbled as she stalked off. I grinned to myself as Nessava walked out, followed by Archie who tried fiercely to rub the sleep from his eyes.
“Are you even awake?” I asked. Nessava skipped after Karissa and Archie set a hand on his doorway to stay standing.
“No. I had to meet with another Escali after Izfazara, so I only got two hours of sleep.” He let out a big yawn. “But.” He pointed at me and yawned again. “We did come up with a plan for getting home, which we need to start on right now.”
“I think it can wait. You should get some more sleep.”
“It can’t wait, and the lack of sleep will help make this convincing. You should have stayed up all night too.”
“So what is the plan?”
“I’ll tell you on the way. We need to get up to see Krelaran.” Archie started walking through tunnels, still half asleep. I wondered if he might be lost.
“Another Escali?” I asked.
“Yes, one who is going to taint your magic. Anna will make both of us take blood tests the second we get back, and we can’t have our half-Escali genes knitting our arms back together in front of her. Once we taint it, our magic won’t work for a day or two.
“Getting back won’t be fun either. You already used the “I escaped” excuse last time, so we can’t use it again. Since the Humans don’t think that Escalis know where the Dragona is, a couple Escalis will drag us straight through the sparring field where everyone can see us. They’ll help us escape our captors, and we’ll be safely home.”
Archie knocked on a door in the wall, and a tall blond Escali had both of us come inside. We sat down in chairs, facing each other, while the Escali left us alone.
“What are y
ou so deep in thought about?” Archie asked me.
“All this secrecy,” I replied, thinking hard.
“You aren’t going to tell anyone about this when we get back, are you?”
“I don’t know. I’m considering it.”
“Allie,” Archie shook his head. “We can’t. They won’t accept us. You saw what happened in Prince Avalask’s memory.”
“But that was different. That was on Tekada. People at the Dragona are more understanding.”
“People at the Dragona accept magic. They don’t accept Escalis. I can tell you now that Sir Darius’s entire family was killed in this war. If you tell him you’re a Tally, you’re going to get a one way jump to the top of a cliff.”
“You’re probably right,” I admitted. “What’s our story going to be?”
“We’ll say we were out talking when the Escalis showed up. They chased us up the mountain where we spent all night trying to lose them. We’ll say that in the morning the falcons showed up and found us. We got caught and dragged back down the mountainside, where we were then rescued.”
“And you’re sure we’ll be rescued?”
“Yes. The Escalis will make sure we’re rescued. We’ll both get blood tests, but nobody will see our half-Escali abilities since we’re tainting our magic right now. Everybody will be confused, but hopefully we’ll be able to return to normal life.”
The Escali who had left came back into the room and bluntly said, “This will hurt.” It was still weird to hear them speak. Everything about this situation was disillusioning.
“Allie, talk to me so you don’t have to think about it,” Archie said, taking my attention away from the apprehension. “I already did this last night. It really does hurt.”
I felt every muscle tense as I asked, “What do you want to talk about?”
“Tell me what our story is when we go back. What are we claiming happened?”
“You lost me on that one. I think I’ll just follow what you say.”
“That will work for most of the time, but you have to know—”
“Gah!” I screamed when Krelaran touched my hand. All the blood from my fingertips to halfway up my forearm boiled, and it didn’t stop! I gripped my wrist with my other hand and pulled it close to my body, but nothing made the pain subside.
“Allie, tell me what the story is,” Archie pushed as I clenched my teeth and tried to block it out.
“I don’t care what our story is!”
“It’ll be gone in a second. Talk to me!”
“Umm, oh holy life, we were out talking, and, and, Escalis came, and they, they chased us up the mountainside, and, then—” I just wanted to rip half my arm off. My eyes watered and—
“Come on, tell me the rest,” Archie pressed.
“And, gahhh, and we eluded them all night, until, until morning when… When…” The pain finally started to ebb away in my arm and I could feel my fingers again. “Shank!” I exclaimed as I shook them out and quickly wiped my eyes.
“That’s when the falcons came and we got caught and dragged down the mountainside,” Archie finished for me.
“Exactly.”
“Thanks Krelaran,” Archie said, standing up. I followed suit and as we walked out the door the Escali nodded gruffly to us, handing Archie a leather satchel right before closing it.
“I hate this,” I said, massaging my hand as we traversed more tunnels. I didn’t even care to ask what was in the bag.
“I’m sorry. It’s about to get worse too.”
“Worse? What now?”
“Not right now, but when we go back. The plan isn’t to walk back to the Dragona, but to be dragged there. It’ll be most convincing if we’re injured when we show up.”
“How injured are we talking?”
“I don’t know. The Escalis who are taking us back won't know we’re Tallies, so it could be bad. They think you and I have been given false information, so they’re supposed to get us to the Dragona in one piece, then drop us off and run.”
“I guess we might as well, since this is one of the few times we’ll actually be able to bleed. Let’s make sure people see it.”
“That’s the spirit.”
I had no idea how the combination of turns we took got us back to the big marble door, but they did. We walked in to see everybody sitting around, their grogginess preventing another war from breaking out.
“What’s in the bag?” Robbiel asked as Archie sat down.
“We’re going back today, the story being that we got captured and dragged down the mountainside.”
As Archie pulled out a length of rope, Emery asked, “So you need somebody to tie you up?”
“Yes.”
Emery grabbed the rope in the middle, incinerating the spot where his hand touched. Were all Tallies mages?
“I’ll do yours then,” Karissa said, taking the other half of the rope to tie around my wrists. I couldn’t have gotten it off with days to try, and she left about four cubits extended, which I coiled and held in my hands.
“What’s the point in tying yourselves up now? Might as well do it when you get to the base of the mountain,” Robbiel said.
“We just got our magic tainted,” Archie answered. “We’ll be scratched up pretty badly by the time we get there.”
Several of my friends grimaced at the thought.
“What’s in the bag?” Celesta asked, pulling a smaller bag from the satchel on the ground. She turned it upside down, and a tiny golden pebble rolled onto the table.
“I am not touching that,” I said, remembering the underwater cave when Prince Avalask had handed me something very similar.
“Well, I guess that’s up to you,” Robbiel said. “But Archie has gone a night without sleep and it’s going to show. It will make more sense if you’re both just as exhausted and hurt.”
“Plus, you only have to touch it for a few seconds. I can make sure you let go of it before you lose consciousness,” Karissa offered.
Yeah… I would be able to handle it. I’d probably be no more tired than Archie already was.
“Ok,” I agreed.
“So just pick it up, and after a few seconds, I’ll pull it off you.” I looked at the pebble, and really, really didn’t want to touch it. I finally reached out and grabbed it, and before I could even think, it started draining. I felt like I hadn’t slept in one day, two days, three days—
“Karissa!” somebody shouted. She pulled it off as I fell over backwards and fought to focus my vision. I lay dazed, listening to the muted sounds of movement and yelling.
“Aren’t you supposed to know what you’re doing?”
“I do know! I counted to four; three to drain the magic, one to drain the physical energy. I’m the expert in anatomy around here, and that’s what you’re supposed to do.”
“Yeah, except that Archie just told us they had their magic tainted and don’t have any magic energy.”
“She was just supposed to be tired, not unconscious!”
“I’m not unconscious,” I mumbled. I wasn’t sure who was saying what.
“Maybe not right now.” Someone grabbed my tied hands and hauled me to my feet.
“Nice job, Karissa. She’ll never make it down the mountain,” someone else said.
“I am really, truly, sorry,” Karissa said to me.
“Naw, it’s fine,” I said sleepily, “I’m still good enough to go.”
“Good enough to go?” Archie asked incredulously.
“Yeah. If I sleep it off, it’ll be too late for our story to make any sense. We’ve put in too much effort to call it off now.”
“Tranaka’s here for you two,” somebody else said, pushing the marble door open to let an Escali in.
Archie said. “Last chance to back out, Allie.”
“I wouldn’t go. You look like Karissa does in the morning,” someone advised.
“Nope, I’m ready,” I insisted, walking to the door with my eyes half open.
Chapter Twenty
Two
I might have even liked Tranaka if he would have just slowed down. I felt like an ant in a chariot race — I just couldn’t keep up with them. The miles of tunnels we had to cover didn’t help either, nor the possibility that I may have been sleepwalking through half of them.
Finally we got close to the surface and Tranaka took hold of the ropes to look like he had led us up. I felt like a dog. I decided on impulse that I would just try to be strong for as long as I could, and when I crashed, I would just have to crash. I stood up straight, opened up my eyes, and followed Tranaka into the fresh air to meet our captors.
They were both Escalis, (obviously,) very tall, (most of them were rather tall,) and looked like they were eager to leave (I really felt tired).
“Remember what I said about how to treat them,” Tranaka said as he handed my rope to the one with dark hair and blue eyes, and Archie’s to the blond one with the flat face.
“That shouldn’t be a problem,” the blond one said in Escalira, grinning toward the other. Tranaka bowed to each of them and then returned to the tunnels. “We’ll have to stay off the trails to avoid further complications,” the blond Escali told his partner. Obviously he was in charge.
Archie edged over to me and whispered, “Remember not to respond. They don’t think we can understand them.”
“Hey!” the Escali yanked on Archie’s ropes, “I bet they were thinking they’d get to talk the whole way over, huh? Let’s separate them.” He marched into the trees, pulling Archie behind him. The one holding onto me started walking and then nodded to me to walk with him instead of dragging me behind.
Even without being dragged, I stumbled and fell enough to scrape myself up nicely. It was strange to be bleeding for more than ten seconds, and the scratches I was accumulating stung brutally. I had never noticed such inconveniences before.
I tripped over something and came down hard on a sharp rock in my side. “Stop waiting for it!” the blond one yelled. My Escali pulled on the ropes more to help me up than to drag me, but I could barely stand anymore. I was crashing a lot sooner than I had expected. We jumped over a creek, and I collapsed on the other side. He dragged me through the dead leaves a little ways, and though I could feel little tiny rocks cutting into me, there was no alternative. I couldn’t get back to my feet.