The Forgotten City

by Nina D'Aleo

  Jude nodded in agreement. “Read it out,” he said.

  Eli gulped and held up the paper.

  Chapter 43

  Diega

  Omar Montanya

  The Scorchlands (Dragonsden)

  A tidal wave of brutal heat smashed over them, driving Diega to her knees, her hands shielding her face. Through her fingers she glimpsed an ocean of glowing orange and black molten lava surging all around them. Someone grasped her shoulder and wrenched her backward. Diega sprawled out, putting her hands down, the surface searing her skin. She scrambled up, only then realizing the full horror of their situation. They had landed on a sinking piece of volcanic rock in the middle of a lava river, and she had been crouching precariously close to the edge. The thought sent the blood rushing through her. She coughed, squinting through the sulfur- and ash-choked air. Beside her Copernicus still gripped her arm, his eyes streaming from the intensity of the heat, sweat pouring down his bare chest. A pillar of black steam billowed up suddenly beside their floating rock, followed immediately by a roaring lava geyser. It shot up into the air, raining sparks down on their heads. They got onto Caesar’s skin and he cursed, hitting at them and unbalancing the rock. Shawe, standing at the front, managed to steady them. He was looking around, his face impassive, as though they were in any bar in Greenway and not on a boat ride through hell.

  “When you three ladies have finished crying and jigging about,” he said, “we’ll get off this rock.”

  His eyes went to Diega. The sparks were burning into her as well, but she refused to show pain in front of him. He just smiled as though he knew it.

  They passed under a burned-out husk of a tree and Shawe grabbed for a branch. He cracked it off and shoved it down hard into the lava. It worked as a rudder, propelling them sideways, where they smashed into the side of the river. They all saw the opportunity and made a leap for it, landing the jump, but barely. Once they were off, the rock bobbed away, staying afloat for several seconds before upending and sinking out of sight. Shawe turned to Copernicus with an outstretched hand.

  “You riding a trutting crocodile out of that river. Absolutely bloody priceless, mate. Saving your trutting skin was worth it just for that sight.”

  Copernicus grasped his hand and Shawe slapped him on the other arm, and that was as emotional as things were going to get between them. Diega, on the other hand, felt like she’d just jumped off a cliff. Copernicus was here. He was alive. She wanted to grab hold of him, but held back. He turned to look at her, and his eyes said everything that he couldn’t.

  She held up his weapon belt and he lifted his arms, letting her clip it back in place. With their eyes locked, she felt as though the world had gone back to rights, at least for this one moment in time.

  “What happened?” she asked him. “We didn’t think the algae had worked.”

  “Wasn’t the algae,” Christy spoke up. “It was the fire-breather’s blood.”

  He turned his back and rolled his shoulder to show where he’d been wounded, both now completely healed.

  “As soon as the blood hit me, I felt them closing over.”

  “I saw it happen,” Caesar confirmed. “And I saw blood splatter the algae.”

  “Lucky for you,” Shawe said to Copernicus.

  “There’s no such thing as luck,” Caesar said, regarding Copernicus with his dark-rimmed eyes. “The Great God saw you save my son. It’s said a man who saves a child’s life will come before God’s eyes and be forever in his sight. He repaid you – life for life.”

  “What a load of trutt!” Shawe said. “He’d be fertilizing flowers if we hadn’t carried him halfway across the universe – you and me, not God.”

  “The Great God worked through us,” Caesar said.

  “I worked for myself,” Christy insisted. “Always have, always will.”

  “Each time I believe that I cannot possibly think less of you, you open your mouth and it happens again,” the Pride King growled.

  “Suck it,” Christy said, grabbing his own crotch.

  “Enough,” Copernicus intervened. “We’re on the Omarians’ planet. They have Silho here somewhere.”

  Diega cast her eyes across the barren rock plain behind them. It stretched all the way into the distance to the surrounding volcanic mountains, all spewing a constant blazing stream of lava. Everything was black and scorched, even the orange sun. Diega realized, with a jolt, that the darkness was here as well – she could feel it – the Indemeus X, spreading like a heavy sickness creeping over the land. She looked up into the sky and gasped as her Ohini Fen powers rushed back to her. This was a new planet with daylight stars, the source of her Fen skills. Their glowing forms were concealed from her behind thick layers of smog and ash, but they were still there and they filled her with strength. She grabbed her broken blade out of her weapon belt and morphed it back together. The relief was almost overwhelming. She felt as if her hands had been untied.

  The three men were surveying their surroundings.

  “It’s this way,” Caesar said, tasting the air. “I can hear voices …”

  “They must be in your head, then, because my hearing is just as good as yours as I can’t hear anything,” Shawe said.

  Caesar looked him up and down. “You’re profoundly deluded if you think your senses are anywhere close to mine.”

  “Profoundly – that’s a big word for you, kitty,” Shawe mocked him.

  “I usually try and keep things simple for you,” Caesar returned.

  “I said enough,” Copernicus repeated.

  “I’ll say when it’s enough,” Caesar growled.

  “No, I will say when it’s enough!” Shawe bellowed.

  Diega shook her head – men and their trutting egos. She sidestepped them and walked out across to the edge of the black rock plateau ahead of them. In the far distance, the ragged silhouette of a castle loomed high into the burned sky. Lava was bubbling up from the turrets of the castle and pouring down the sides of the monstrous structure. Diega glanced back at the men, still arguing. They could stay here. She’d go and get Silho herself.

  She started climbing down a crumbling black rock slope to another open plain below them. Soon the sound of voices was replaced by bootsteps as the men appeared behind her. Caesar and Shawe were pathetic enough to be trying to outwalk each other. Copernicus’ normally smooth stride was still slightly dragging. Though his body had recovered, there was no doubting he’d taken a hit. Diega spotted a skeleton laid out on the rocks not far from where they walked. The dimensions and shape of the bones she’d only ever seen in museums.

  “Dragon?” she murmured.

  “Diega! Fall left!” Copernicus suddenly shouted. She threw herself sideways and rolled as a blast of volcanic fire burst up from the ground right where she’d been standing. She scrambled back up, then felt the ground tremble, fall still, then tremble again.

  “Footsteps,” Copernicus said, reading the vibration. “Something huge, moving fast in our direction.”

  “Keep going to the castle,” Caesar said, turning toward the sound. “I’ll hold it back.”

  “If kitty’s staying then so am I,” Shawe put in. “I’m not having him making me look gutless.”

  They both drew their blades – two enemies, standing side by side – two of the most powerful men of Scorpia, and two complete idiots. There wasn’t time for final words. She and Copernicus just took off.

  It was almost impossible to run in such extreme heat, but they attempted it, and as they closed in on the castle, Copernicus said, “Primary plan for entry, I’ll use an enchant to disguise us as Omarian soldiers. Back-up plan – vanishing enchant, you morphing their weapons and then brute force.”

  “Understood,” Diega replied, feeling back in her element.

  But when they reached the narrow bridge stretching to the castle gates, they found it completely unguarded. They ran the entire way up and into an entrance hall without seeing a single soul. Diega thought either the Omarians nev
er had intruders here, or she and Copernicus were about to get ambushed. She hoped they would find some relief from the crippling heat inside the veils of shadow shrouding the castle, but if anything it was worse, as though they’d stepped inside a giant oven. The walls were too hot even to touch.

  A distant bestial scream sent a spike of fear through her. She turned to Copernicus, who had his eyes closed, sending his senses out around him.

  “Can you see her?” Diega asked him.

  He shook his head and Diega hoped it only meant he was weakened and not the other option.

  Their eyes met.

  “Split up. If you find her first, take her and get out,” Copernicus ordered.

  “Same,” she said.

  He didn’t agree – just turned and vanished down one corridor, while Diega took another.

  Chapter 44

  Diega

  Omar Montanya

  Mount Siria (The Castle Scorn)

  Diega ran, keeping to the shadows. An immense thirst dragged at her, and her lungs ached, but she pushed herself on, winding through a maze of black-rock corridors and deserted rooms. Finally she reached a hallway that seemed more brightly lit. Her skin prickled with nerves. She smelled a sharp metallic scent and immediately recognized it. A doorway appeared up ahead. She slowed her steps, moving with caution until she was beside the door. With her blade in one hand, she peered around into the room and saw red on the floor, dripping from a table with leg stirrups and smeared across the bars of a cage built back into one rock wall. Equipment had been shunted away from the table and there were drag marks leading across the floor to a meaty lump. Steeling herself, Diega stepped into the room and walked over to it, nudging it with her foot. Then she recognized it as a placenta. The blood drag lines continued past it to a large metal cask that looked like a bin with a chute going into the wall.

  “Fsx,” Diega cursed under her breath. She didn’t want to open the lid. She didn’t want to see Silho in there. It was not so long ago that she’d wanted Brabel dead – she would have even killed her herself – but now all she wanted was to find her alive.

  Diega forced herself to move to the bin and throw back the heavy lid. On a stash of crumpled papers and towels that were blocking the chute hole, the body of a woman lay pressed up against one of the walls. She had no pulse and her abdomen was cut open wide. She’d been given a rough caesarean and then been left to bleed out. By her bloodline marks she was human-breed, cat-blood. The tear tracks had dried on her face.

  Diega grabbed a towel to cover the girl’s head and recoiled as she uncovered a tiny baby boy, lying so still like a little doll, his skin pale gray and streaked with blood and birth matter. An unexpected grief hit her and she reached down and picked up the cold bundle. She held his little face against her cheek and rubbed his back.

  “No, no, no,” she whispered. “No …”

  Part of her realized it was crazy hugging a dead baby when she needed to be moving on as quickly as she could – but part of her couldn’t let him go. Tears welled in her eyes and she found herself crying aloud for the first time since the United Regiment guardians informed her parents that Ariana had been one of Englan Chrisholm’s victims. This universe was so sick and twisted – she was tired of it.

  The baby shivered against her and she pulled away, staring down at the tiny infant lying in her arms. His eyelids flickered. He was alive.

  A force struck Diega from behind, slamming her against the bin. All her strength drained from her and the baby slipped from her grasp, back onto the towels beside his dead mother. Diega clung to the side of the bin, fighting to keep upright, but the drag was too intense and she fell straight onto her back, smashing her head on the rock floor. She stared at the ceiling with dizzy sparks buzzing around her and heard footsteps approaching.

  A man came to stand over her. He leaned down and she saw firebird dragon bloodline marks and orange-black eyes with long, thin pupils. A red Tehron, similar to Silho’s, glowed from his eyes, and she remembered his face as one of the Omarians who had attacked them at Sirenseron.

  She swore at him in Fenlen, “Kitcher.”

  The man squatted down and ran a hand over her body, touching everywhere, though it felt more like a medical examination than assault.

  “Yes, you’ll do,” he murmured.

  Diega fought against his light-form vision, trying to break out from his influence, but he was far too strong. The man turned sharply at movement behind them and Diega saw a group of other Omarian soldiers dragging Shawe into the room.

  “Imperator Hycinion – we found this one near Dragonsden,” one of the Omarians said.

  Shawe spotted Diega and yelled out, “Get off her or I’ll break your trutting neck!”

  He tried to fight, but even Shawe’s enormous strength was reduced to nothing. The Omarians started kicking him with their pointed shoes, hard enough to kill.

  “No!” The Imperator stopped them. “Lock him up. Let him watch.”

  The soldiers hauled Shawe to the cage in the corner and threw him inside. Fire from their hands welded the doors locked. Once their light-form influence was lifted, Shawe leaped up and grabbed the bars; the metal burned his skin with a hissing sound, but he didn’t let go.

  The Imperator grabbed Diega up and dumped her onto the operating table. She felt the dead mother’s blood seeping through her clothes. He gestured to the other soldiers and they came forward to assist. They took her weapon belt and chucked it onto the ground, then strapped her down and hooked her up to the abandoned machines, stabbing needles into her arms and injecting burning liquids. They worked silently until one of the soldiers took a sudden step back from the table.

  “It’s happening – we’ve run out of time!” he yelled. “He’ll take us all!”

  “Silence!” The Prince’s orders are to continue working!” the Imperator commanded. His soldier kept yelling, so he threw a fireball back and incinerated him, without so much as a blink.

  Diega shivered. They started to rip her clothes away and she shut her eyes, going somewhere else in her mind – if you’re not here, it doesn’t hurt. She sensed she was going to die on this table, and could only think it was what she deserved.

  A roar shook the air, and the Imperator paused. He looked over his shoulder and listened. Then his eyes widened. He abruptly broke off what he was doing to Diega and said to the others, “To the roof – now!”

  He ran out the door, the others following. Their draining influence lifted off Diega, but she stayed lying where she was – too drug-weakened to move and too soul-dead to care.

  “Hey! Wake up!” Shawe shook the bars of the cage. “Morph me out”

  “I can’t,” she said, the chemicals slurring her words.

  “You can! I saw you have your skill back!”

  “I don’t want to live anymore,” Diega whispered.

  “What!” the gangster spat. “What the trutt do you mean, you don’t want to live anymore? We just crossed half a trutting planet, and now you’re giving up?”

  Diega let her heavy eyelids blink closed and she murmured, “She was right there. I let her die – for a bracelet – a piece of metal …”

  “What are you talking about? Who died?” Shawe demanded.

  “Ariana.” She hadn’t said her sister’s name aloud in so long. It hurt.

  “Who the trutt is Ariana?” Shawe said.

  Tears trickled out of the corners of Diega’s eyes. “Sister.”

  “Your sister? Wasn’t she taken by the witches?”

  “I saw them take her,” Diega said, and felt a rush of relief at finally confessing the truth. “And I didn’t do anything to help her.”

  The gangster gave a harsh laugh. “What do you think you could have done? If you’d tried to get her back alone, the witches would have killed you. If you’d run for help, they would have vanished anyway. Either way, there was nothing for it.”

  These were the words she’d longed to hear for so very long, but she found they did nothing t
o lift her now.

  “I was jealous,” she continued, whispering her final confession. “My parents loved her and they didn’t care about me. I heard my mother saying once she wished they’d never had me.” The words ripped open old scars, sending fresh pain coursing through her.

  “So blame them!” Shawe said, his fury rising. “What the trutt were they doing saying things like that? It’s straight unluck you were born to them – you were just a kid. You didn’t deserve that!”

  His words stirred a flicker of anger in her. It was true. She hadn’t been unlovable. She had been just a normal little girl, trying to find acceptance, craving love – and they’d treated all her efforts like an embarrassment. Diega remembered the many nights she’d sat in her room, sent there for some minor misbehavior or another. She’d hugged herself and cried, hoping she would hear her mother’s footsteps on the stairs coming to see her, to talk to her, to tell her it was alright. She never came – not once. But Ariana had, every time. She’d snuck in food, a book, a toy, a comforting smile – always – and Diega had let her die …

  “I just let her go.” Diega felt immense pain in her chest and let her mind drift into darkness to escape from it.

  “Okay, answer one question.” She heard Shawe’s voice from a distance, calling her back. “Did you know she was going to get hurt or killed?”

  It was a question she’d never asked herself, but in all honesty … “No, I never thought that.”

  “You didn’t know. If you had, would you have helped her?”

  “Yes.” Diega answered without hesitation.

  “Then, conversation over – problem solved. Morph these bars – we need to go!” Shawe said.

  Diega didn’t move. None of this mattered. Nothing would bring her sister back.

  She could hear Shawe breathing heavily, waiting for her. Suddenly he said, “Listen, when I was a kid, my brother was a baby. Our mother was useless as tits on a bull, and our father didn’t give two stuffs on the best of days, so I was lumped with him. How well do you think a nine-year-old kid like me is going to do watching a baby? I just wanted to hang around with my boys, not wipe his arse and trutting bottle feed and figure out why the hell he was crying all the time. The number of times he could have got killed … Once he set the house on fire; another time he locked himself in a box; once he climbed up on a high wall and jumped; once he stole a transflyer and crashed it; once I even sold him to a scullion for half a pint and then he ended up in the river. What I’m saying is, my brother means everything to me – you saw what I was willing to do to rescue him – and still he could have died a thousand times when we were growing up. Because I was a kid, too – and I didn’t think! Are you hearing me, sunshine? You were a kid! You can’t blame yourself! It wasn’t your fault!”