Chapter 21
The Rope
Trust the rope. –Jijari
--
The rope seemed to be a vengeful snake, willfully tightening, punishing his attempts to escape by tightening its hold. His back was up against the rough bark of the elm. A knot in the tree dug between his shoulder blades like a knuckle.
Harth looked no happier. The beast lay ten paces away, staked and tethered. Her cat-like face rested in the mud, so the lower half of her face was more dripping black than glistening ivory. The ropes were no match for her, but there were the magical ropes to contend with, Gar’s magical snare was far less easily unraveled.
The smell of burning herbs, roast boar, and smoke wafted over the bracken of Deep Woods from the bonfire, thirty feet away, to a nearby clearing.
The smell made Wayden’s mouth water and his stomach growl. It had been a day since he’d dined on venison with Rif, and the Sky Raiders had yet to feed him. The sounds of goblets clinking, bottles shattering, men shouting, and laughter filled the night air.
It was the last that grated on Wayden the most. How could the guilty be happy, and the innocents be dead or captured? Why did the Source do nothing? Wayden was supposed to be wreaking vengeance, not be tied to a tree.
To his left, two young Sky Raiders stumbled off into the brush with a wineskin. To his right, a game of swordplay turned into a wrestling match. One of the drunken fighters, a tall human male, pricked a male Mantu. The Mantu grew so angry he threw down his sword and tackled the man. It looked like they were hugging, till the man pulled a bloody blade from the Mantu, letting the corpse drop onto the cold ground. He wandered back to the bonfire, drenched in blood. “I just killed Elkar. Give me some wine."
Roars of approval met this announcement. One Sky Raider said, "Never liked that wraithin' frog-skin."
Then, for a while, Wayden was alone, except for the hemp snakes, digging into his flesh with their fiber fangs. He fought off the urge to cry. Heroes don’t blubber, he told himself. Even if they felt like it. Even if they needed to. He would hold onto his anger like a knife, and when the opportunity came, he would slit the Skymaster’s throat with it.
Footsteps and the sound of crunching leaves caught his attention. A lithe girl approached. Her skin was lime green and her hair a mix of red and green. Part Mantu, a quarter blood, perhaps.
There was something about this girl. The girl’s golden eyes weren't the cruel eyes of the other Sky Raiders, but softer, wider, sparkling with a deeper inner life. Her demeanor seemed less cocky, her face more pensive. She wore no finger necklace. He felt a bond to her, like he felt towards Rif or Mavik… the Connection Spell... he could sense it clearly now, as she approached.
“She bears one of the Grandmasters!” Kolram said.
The girl nodded at him with her pointy green chin. "Oi, burnt boy. You feel Zaburn's Connection Spell as well, don't you?"
She wasn't one to waste time bandying words.
"Zaburn cast the Connection spell?” Then suddenly, it came flooding back into Kolram and Wayden’s collective memory. When he and Solita were in Dark Fist, Zaburn had muttered some words- a Connection spell. Had he known what was to come? He was friends with Mavik’s host Jijari.
“So you do host one,” the girl asked. “Kolram right?”
“Aye," Wayden answered. "Which mage is inside of you?"
The girl spat out a wad of half-chewed red leaves. "Kolram’s ex-fiancé, Nadra."
“Source help us,” Kolram said.
Nadra, the grandmistress of Fire-Whisperering, whom Kolram had jilted. Any hope of acquiring an ally disappeared like a stone skipped across a mire.
The girl uncorked a water skin and held it to Wayden's chapped lips. Her fingers had tiny suction cups on their ends.
She's caring for me? Is this some sort of a trick? Trick or not, the water felt blissfully good, though half of it dribbled down his chapped lips and onto his chest. He suckled the water skin. Could this be an unlikely ally?
Wayden swallowed. Now that his thirst was quenched, his hunger intensified, his mouth watering at the scent of roast meat. "How did you know I hosted Kolram?"
"You were casting a Beast Tongue spell on the horse when we captured you." The girl pulled out hardtack and fed Wayden a bite. "And my father’s magic-finder said so."
"Your father?"
"The Skymaster. I'm Alaina Skydaughter."
The spark of hope that had been rekindling in Wayden's heart was blown out with those words.
Alaina screwed up the corner of her mouth, as if appraising a questionable piece of meat. "You look just like your brother. Well, except the burn mark.”
Wayden tried to sit upright until the ropes reminded him of his bounds. "Mavik! You know Mavik?"
Alaina brushed a tangle of red and green hair behind her pointy ears. "He's a prisoner in our slave camp. He just painted a picture for my father. He seems healthy enough, though a bit scrawnier than you.”
Mavik is alive! He felt as if somehow everything else that was going wrong just didn't matter. His brother was alive!
“Your father’s there too, though...he’s…”
“He's what?” Wayden felt, dread coiling in his chest. Was his father crippled? Dying?
“Well, you may be a bit disappointed with him. He's been with the slave camp a long time and has gained rank by helping us out."
A traitor. Crippled or dying would have been better.
Alaina pressed another bite of food against Wayden’s lips. As her skin touched his, Wayden Glimpsed his father, disheveled and with a bent back, standing with the other Sky Raiders, holding a whip, a rat upon his shoulder. He spat out the tack. It was too hard to swallow. "My father...is... a collaborator?"
Alaina turned sideways to stare at the tethered dragon. Shadows played off her high cheekbones. "A lot of slaves want to gain rank, but only your father was picked. It's considered an honor."
A shooting star zoomed across the sky. The night sky seemed to be crashing in on Wayden. Wayden laughed a maniacal chuckle. "An honor. An honor."
"We're all a victim to the crowd we fall in with," Alaina said, offering Wayden another bit of tack.
Wayden didn’t bite this time. "Is that how you justify it? Keeping slaves? Kidnapping people? That you fell in with the wrong crowd? Is that how you sleep at night?"
Alaina narrowed her eyes and threw the jerky to Harth, who just sniffed at it. "I sleep at night by closing my eyes and laying my head on the soft goose-feather pillow my father gave me. Will your sanctimoniousness help you sleep tonight? All you Red-Landers think you are so much better. But are you? With your Mantu servants? How free are they?"
Mantu servants weren’t the same as Gar Skymaster’s slave camps. Still, Wayden wasn't going to argue away what might be his opportunity to gain an ally. He bit back the urge to retort and said, "You’re right."
Alaina turned away. “No. No, I’m not. When I’m Skymistress, the slaves will be freed. The old Sky Raiders never kept slaves, back in the days when they worshipped the Wolf Woman.”
“Will I be brought to the slave camp with my father and brother?” Wayden asked. The image of the watercolor Mavik had painted flitted through his mind, the vulture with a knife for a beak standing guard over fingerless magi slaves. “What do they have planned for us?”
"He's gathering magi for some ceremony the Dracon is conducting on Three Moons' Night."
"Like the ceremony that killed Nadra."
Alaina looked away, shadows playing off her face. Finally she said, "I don't know what the Dracon has planned. My father won't talk about it."
Shouts and laughter erupted from near the bonfire.
"I met another like us―Arth's host.”
“Arth- he was one of the few Grandmasters that could compete with Nadra for the highest cell in the Tower of the Loons,” Alaina answered. A skywolf howled from over by the pine grove.
"Aye, he was mad enough to study Soul-stealing, a type of w
raith magic. That's what Dakarth and the Dracon used on Nadra and the other. The souls traveled like mists and entered babies born on Three Moons' Night. You were born on Three Moons' Night, am I right? You host one of the souls your father is selling for an outlandish profit."
"What are you saying? You think my father would sell me?”
"He's going to take the magi from us with his sharp blue knife. His knife is blue isn't it? When were young my brother Mavik painted a watercolor prophecy- a vulture with a blue beak, dripping with blood. We didn’t know what it meant at the time. The Dracon is paying handsomely for each mage you say? Let me ask you this. Does your father love you more than gold?"
Alaina’s golden eyes quivered. "I'll listen to no more of your lies." She turned back into the night.
--
Skarak and Desha snored loudly. Too loudly. Mavik was afraid some patroller might hear them. Slipping kava root into the wine when they weren't looking had been simple. Emerelda fetched them meat and added the root powder to their wine.
"Does something taste different about this wine?" Desha had asked.
"All human wine taste like donkey piss," Skarak replied. He chugged down the goblet and turned to Emerelda, "More."
Three goblets of wine later, Mavik was getting nervous. They were out of the sleeping root. Desha had drifted off, but Skarak was still awake. He stumbled over to Desha and shook him. "Come on. Gar will have our fingers... he finds out ...we sleeping."
The Ozac himself then slumped over; his huge gray head resting on the Tulkarian's shoulder. His mouth opened wide, producing the loudest snores Mavik had ever heard.
Mavik was tempted to slit their throats as they slept. He still had nightmares of Skarak's mace coming down and crushing his poor nanny's skull. And Desha bragged incessantly about firing the arrow into Mavik’s mother. The Sky Raiders deserved to die, but Mavik was worried if he tried to kill them, they would awake.
"The effects of the kava come quickly, but won't last long,” Laeko had told them. “You'll have to run as fast as you can."
So they ran against the cold, biting wind that sailed across the icy plains, whistling through the scrubby pines and boulders that dotted the valley. His heart pounded and his fingers were so cold that he didn’t think he’d feel it when they’d chop them. So far, he heard no sounds of pursuit, only the wind howling across the plains. They came to a twelve foot, headless statue of the Weaver which lay on its side in the snow.
Emerelda stopped him. “Do you be hearing something?”
He listened: the snort of a wolf, male voices, and footsteps crunching across pine needles and ice. Mavik motioned for them to hide behind the huge broken statue. A Sky Raider foot patrol approached. The patrol was walking in their direction.
"Wraithin' cold tonight," a Sky Raider said.
"Wraithin’ cold every night." It was Mavik's father.
Mavik chewed his lip. He decided to risk a peek through the stone legs of the broken statue. His father and a blond-haired Sky Raider were heading straight towards them. They would soon spot Mavik and Emerelda. His mouth felt dry.
Then Kelsen froze in mid step. His eyes caught Mavik's. His father had seen them. He and Emeralda would be captured and lose a finger each. Kelsen and Mavik seemed to study each other for a moment. Mavik could see the evaluating eyes, the choice being weighed. Whether or not to turn his own son in.
But to Mavik’s amazement he didn’t.
"Hey. Did you hear something? Over there." Kelsen pointed away from them, out towards the pine forest. “I heard voices. An escaped slave?”
"We had better go check it out," the blond Sky Raider said. “I’ve been wanting a fresh finger.”
They headed towards the evergreens.
“My father saw us,” Mavik said. “He saved us.”
“I knew he can’t be all bad,” Emerelda said. “He be fathering you after all."
Warmth flushed across Mavik's face despite the cold. As they continued their journey towards Dark Fist, the wind kicked up a spray of ice, but running kept them warm. Mavik's legs felt like iron and Emerelda's breathing grew ragged.
They crossed an icy lake upon which they skated more than ran. When they could run no more, they walked. Then a wolf howl made them rush again. At the lake’s edge, the ground spiked upwards. The air felt cold and dry in Mavik’s mouth. They struggled up the icy hill. For every step forward, they seemed to slide two steps back. They had to tread diagonally, digging foot holes as they went. When they at last reached the summit, he could see the anvil ahead.
Emerelda was looking back. "They be comin' fer us."
She pointed at the sky behind them. Four skywolves flew in front of the orange and yellow moons, gliding towards them. Mavik gripped Emerelda’s frozen hand, and they increased their pace to a sprint.
Emerelda panted. “Yah... Hold on tight... to me fingers. Don't let 'em... take 'em.”
The thought of them cutting off Emerelda's fingers was more than Mavik could bear. His legs felt like giving out, yet he pushed them on faster, muttering a prayer from his childhood: "Darius protect us, guide us, let our fires burn bright inside us."
The bitter wind swept up a spray of snow. Mavik felt a tug, the Connection Spell. It emanated from the earth itself, from the Weaver's World. Was there another soul host below their feet? Could the Source be leading them underground because he needed to find him or her?
As they drew closer to the Anvil, the beating of the Heart Stone grew louder, deeper, more resonant. Mavik didn’t need to look in the water to know danger was coming. Terrible danger.
The ice beneath his foot broke off, and he fell on his belly, sliding down the steep, slippery hill, towards the base of the Anvil. His head was on a direct trajectory towards the huge obsidian rock. He grasped for a handhold, digging into the hard packed snow. He twisted himself, to try to stop himself. Emerelda was sliding too, behind him. The huge rock wall seemed to be growing larger and larger, his own body would be the ore to be hammered on this anvil.
He twisted, clawing at the ice. He extended his feet to cushion his crash. His legs pushed into the rock. Something slammed into his back. The Sky Raiders, he thought, but then he saw tufts of blonde hair and a vine tattoo. Emerelda gave him a sheepish wave. Mavik put his finger on his lips and they came away bloody. His legs were sore. But they were alive. They were free! For now. A skywolf howl pierced the air, sounding too close for comfort.
Mavik and Emerelda helped each other clamber to their feet. He shook snow from his mane of red hair. Mavik ached from head to toe.
"Can you open the passageway?" Mavik shouted over the howling wind.
Guardian snakes glowed on Emerelda’s fingers. She touched the Anvil with her Guardian magic, but nothing happened. "Er, did the Source show ya how I is doing it? Cause, I right don't know."
Mavik took Emerelda's hand and guided it against a crack in the stone. "In my vision, you placed your hand here." In contrast to the cold, her skin felt like fire.
"Let go of me hand."
Mavik felt blood rush into his cheeks. He’d been too bold. "I-I I’m sorry."
Emerelda must have noticed his embarrassment. "You ain't bothering me. I just need be summoning the energy snakes. I don't want yer hand bit, is all."
“I wasn't bothering her,” Mavik thought, his heart reversing course from its plummet, and just as speedily rocketing back up towards the stars. “Does that mean she liked me touching her?”
"Sky Raiders are coming to remove your fingers and you are worrying about this?" Jijari asked. "The sins of the flesh will blind.”
Emerelda studied the rock, running her fingers over the space Mavik had shown her. The howls were even closer. Mavik chewed his lip.
Emerelda lifted her hands, spreading her fingers. "By the Order of the Gold, be lettin’ us in from the cold." She winked at Mavik. "See? I be talkin' fancy when I needs to."
The Glowing amber snakes slithered towards the center of her palm, gathering to
spin in rapid circles, before peeling off one by one and burrowing into the Anvil. A sound like a sigh came from the rock, which glowed for a moment, and then rumbled, a hole sliding open, until it formed a large doorway.
"We better hurry."
Through the doorway, by the light of the moons, he could make out an obsidian ramp. As the passage curved, the light of the moon diminished. Emerelda summoned Guardian snakes to help light the way, for even a dim light was better than stumbling in pitch darkness. He could hear the distant thumping of the Heart Stone grow louder as they walked further into the blackness. Then a rushing sound erupted from behind them and Wayden could smell the breath of a skywolf.
Mavik caught a glimpse of their pursuers: Desha with his bow, the blond haired Sky Raider gripping a spear, and Kelsen with a net. If Kelsen had really tried to save them before, it seemed he must have been forced into helping the Sky Raiders recapture them now.
Emerelda threw up a Guardian shield, blocking the passage, just as Desha’s arrows shattered against it.
Desha shouted over the crackling energy. "Drop the shield, girl, and we’ll leave yer fingers."
That was a lie. They always took at least one finger. Mavik and Emerelda scrambled through the doorway. He looked for a way to close the door behind them, to lock the raiders out, but saw neither hinge nor knob.
"Me Shield won't last long. Come on," Emerelda said. "We best be moving."
The amber light of Guardian snakes illuminated only so much and Mavik cursed as he stubbed his toes on a stalagmite. Behind them they could hear the pounding of the mace, and the fizzle of the shield. Damage was already evident, holes big enough to stick a finger through.
The Guardian shield crumbling reminded Mavik of when their manor had been attacked by the Sky Raiders. They had built a barricade in front of the door, but Skarak had bashed through that barrier as clearly as he was making way past this one.
"Can't you cast a stronger Guardian shield? The one around Asgaroth lasted a thousand years."
"Do I be lookin' like Centuron to you? It be takin' a specially strong spell to make a lastin' Guardian Shield. And Centuron had to use blood magic, blood from each branch of magic."
They ran as quickly as they could manage in the dimly lit corridors. They wove between stalagmites that sprung up like teeth from the damp cavern floor. Mavik was beyond tired, but he forced his legs to continue forward.
For a notch they heard no sounds of pursuit. Had the shield held them after all? The corridor changed from rough stone to smooth metal. Mavik had never seen so much steel. An army of smiths and a mountain of ore must have been employed, or some lost art of metal magic.
The passage was lit by something similar to glow stone, except they were glazed and set in the ceiling at regular five foot intervals. If they were lamps, they had no wick or oil. Perhaps they were Glower magic of some sort.
Echoes of footsteps and yells interrupted Mavik’s reveries. Their pursuers had broken through the shield after all. He willed his legs to sprint, but the tiredness of running through snow had taken its toll, and his legs only managed an insufficient stagger. The darkness slowed their pace as well. The Sky Raiders had no Guardian magic to light their way, but likely had torches or a lantern. They would be caught within moments.
"Please Darius, keep her from harm," Mavik prayed. "You can take me, just leave her."
"Child, the Source can help you, but it will not grant you wishes, only wisdom."
Their footsteps clanged against the metal grate as they raced down the corridors. The sound of Sky Raiders footsteps clanged behind them only moments later. They were as good as caught already. The biggest question was, would they take a finger or smash a skull?
There was a juncture, one corridor muddy, the other Mavik. Mavik saw a chance. He whispered his plan to Emerelda. They left footprints leading one way in the mud and then removed their muddy shoes and raced the other way. With any luck the Sky Raiders would follow the wrong trail.
They passed through another chamber with a junk pile of rusted shields and armor. The armor had shattered glass visors and metal backpacks built into them. A strange rusted metal carriage lay on its side, split in the middle.
Clanging footsteps and Skarak's deep voice sounded in the distance. “This can’t be right,” Desha said. “Look their footprints disappear. It’s a trick.”
Mavik's heart sank. That had been their last hope. Emerelda threw up another Guardian Shield, but it was weak looking with large patches. It wouldn’t slow them long.
They hurried down the corridor. The ground changed back to stone, and then to mud as the corridor snaked lower.
They rounded a corner, and stepped into another cavernous room, this one traversed by an underground stream. Stalactites hung from the ceiling, red with minerals, like bloody teeth in a monster's maw. Mavik saw no exit.
"A dead end?" Mavik despaired. "What game is the Source playing with us now?"
"You must climb the cliff," Jijari asked.
"You wish to discuss mountain climbing? Now?"
"You are so high up, but you have to let go. Trust the rope. Have faith in it."
"And if it doesn't hold?"
"It will. It does. It has to."
"Let's see if we can find a secret passageway," Mavik said.
“Already on it,” Emerelda said, “But no luck so far.”
Emerelda was poking her fingers into crevices, using Guardian magic, seeking a secret door, with increasing desperation. Sweat glistened on her brow and curse words spewed from her mouth that made Mavik’s cheeks flush. The metallic clanging of footsteps and angry voices echoed in the distance.
Mavik felt like his bones had jellified. Emerelda mumbled to herself as she searched for a secret door, “The wraithin Source lead us here? Scagazi-humping Splashers with their wraithin' prophecies.”
He was stupid. This wasn’t how this was supposed to have worked. He meant to save Emerelda, not get her lovely fingers chopped off. The Source had betrayed him.
"Mavik," Desha's leathery voice called from the darkness. "You're making Skarak angry. You don’t want that, do you?"
Mavik’s heart sank. They were trapped.
"Skarak want to teach bad boy lesson," Skarak said.
"Now, now Skarak,” Desha said. “I'm sure Mavik will be a good little slave, like his father, and give himself up. Won't you Mavik? Maybe you can join your father? Rise up in our ranks. Things will be better for you if you do."
Mavik held his breath.
Desha's voice called out again, closer now. "Come on, Mavik. Don't be like that. We'll send your pa to fetch you. If you come back with Rat peacefully, we'll let you choose which finger."
That was another lie. No slave was given a choice when facing the chopping block. Desha probably knew that Mavik would see through the lie. What Desha was really telling Mavik was that his own father was coming first, and whatever trap Mavik had planned, Kelsen would spring it.
However, there was no need. Mavik had no trap, no clever plan, no ploy, and no hope. Why couldn't he have been the host to a useful wizard like a Digger mage? Then he could seal the tunnel behind him. Or a Glower magic could blind the Sky Raiders, a Fire-whisperer send a kiss of flame. Arth could suck their souls, Kolram would bring some sort of animal to help them, and a weather mage shock them with lightning. He had nothing. He was nothing. All he could do was know something bad was coming, and that there was nothing he could do about it. He needed no water to tell him that.
Kelsen drew closer. Mavik made out his hunched silhouette approaching. "Come on, Son, be smart. Surrender. They'll show mercy."
"Mercy, mercy, mercy," the corridor echoed back.
A third lie. There was no mercy.
Kelsen rounded the corner, clutching his net. His father looked even more haggard than normal. His pet rat peeked out from the pocket of his robe, staring at Mavik with two pink eyes.
Two paces back followed Desha, Skarak, and the blond Sky Raider. Desha
had an arrow nocked and Skarak, a rusty iron mace. The blond Sky Raider clutched his spear. Kelsen shifted from foot to foot, and wouldn't meet Mavik's eyes. Mavik had nothing but a handful of water.
At least Emerelda could cast her shield. She formed one now, as the Sky Raiders approached. Her face looked strained and tired in the amber, writhing light. "I can't be holding them fer long. Any ideas? What about Jijari- she be any help? She be seein' anything about this in the water?"
The water, why didn't he think of it earlier? He knelt down and gazed into the stream. He placed his hands into the brook. He felt a pulse, a vibration in the ground. The ground split open and a hole formed. The water glided through the growing aperture, a newborn waterfall.
As the opening expanded, a surge of hope coursed through him. Perhaps this was their salvation. This was what the Source intended them to find. Here was a secret door, right here in the water, opening upon his touch. The streambed vibrated and churned as the hole widened. Mavik smiled. Everything would be all right. A singular sense of salvation elating him. This was bliss. Like Jijari had felt at the Blessings of the Water ceremony, after three days of fasting and vision seeking. She was right. All he had to do was trust the rope.
Then a pincer-like hand burst right through the creek, and took him by the throat.
Soul Hosts Page 21