“Yeh’re a ray o’ sunshine, ain’tcha?” Celine said, glowering at the older girl, but there was no real rancor in her words. She’d faired worse than the rest of them, and while her spirits seemed strong enough, all things considered, Emily knew she was weak. “I trust Em. Yeh would too, if yeh’d been through what we have.” Celine looked down at the ground through the netting beneath her. “I don’t even care that we’re hangin’ up in the air…much.”
Maddy shrugged, her expression inscrutable. “It’s only ten feet.”
“It’s okay, Cel,” Emily said. “Maddy’s right. Either it’ll work or we’re dead.” She was surprised by the acceptance she felt as she spoke those words. Perhaps it was exhaustion…perhaps it was the cold. Mostly, though, she thought it was just the relief afforded by doing something—anything.
Going after Daniel was stupid, she thought tiredly, the wizard was right. But even if that were true, she didn’t know what else she could have done. All the wizard’s talk of saving the world—how she and Michael and Celine were the ones to do it—and all she’d managed was ending up captured by a bunch of creatures out of an old black and white monster movie.
Pushing the pointless rumination away, Emily moved to Celine’s side, wincing at the stiffness in her joints and muscles where the cold had taken hold with its icy fingers.
“Corbb’s going to get you out of here,” she said. “And Maddy and I are going to try to find Daniel. It might be a while before we’re able to catch up with you guys—”
Celine’s face grew serious as she looked up into Emily’s.
“Don’t lie to me, Em,” she said softly, and Emily broke off. “Yeh’re afraid yeh’re not gonna make it back to us. I can see it in yer eyes.”
Emily opened her mouth to protest, but then closed it again—after all, Celine was right. That was exactly what she’d been thinking.
“Look at me,” Celine said, and she raised a hand to her own cheek, letting her fingers trace the deep lines that ran from the corners of her eyes…the wrinkles across her brow. “I accepted this to save yeh back at the lake. I don’t regret it…I’ll never regret it. But don’t go dyin’ on me now, Em. I didn’t give up all that for yeh to throw it away.”
There was a long silence as they simply looked at one another. Emily blinked, and Celine’s face began to blur.
“I know it’s the only way,” Celine said quietly. “But make sure yeh do make it back to us…whatever it takes.”
“I’ll do my best, Cel,” Emily said, remembering another promise she’d made to a young boy in the bowels of a mountain full of crystal. Would she be able to keep this one?
“Yeh’re damn right yeh will.” Celine smiled and, despite everything, it was the bright, mischievous smile of the girl Emily had met in a dark cabin, on a boat, when she’d wakened in an alien world. “I love yeh, Em.”
“I love you, too.” Emily bent down and embraced her friend, holding her close and fighting back tears.
A jolt of pain, white hot and brilliant, shot through Emily’s body, and she gasped, pulling away from Celine and falling backward into Corbbmacc’s lap. He let out a muffled grunt, and the net swung wildly to one side.
“What the fuck…” Emily broke off as she caught sight of Celine’s tired, exhausted, but satisfied grin.
“I knew that’d work. Yeh’d never let me do that otherwise.”
Emily struggled to sit up, realizing that she didn’t feel tired or hungry or even weak anymore. The aches in her muscles had faded, and the numbness in her hands and face was all but gone. She felt revitalized in a way she hadn’t in days.
She glared at Celine.
“I told you not to use your—”
Celine closed her eyes and shook her head. “It’s mine, Em, not yers. I’ve given yeh what I can, so save yer breath. It’s done.”
Emily went on glaring for another few seconds, but then Corbb touched her arm and she looked away, feeling a mixture of exasperation and despair.
“The shift is ending,” Corbbmacc said. “If we’re going to do it, it’s time.”
Emily followed his gaze to the guards trudging their way up the far side of the crater. In another minute, they would disappear from sight, and their window of opportunity—and the countdown—would begin.
“Get Celine,” she told Corbb, and she pulled the dagger from under her tunic as the Reaver guards vanished beyond the crater’s rim.
Moving quickly, Emily made her way to the far side of the net, turning her back to the others and facing the crater’s wall. If someone was watching, she hoped her friends would block what she was doing from view. She selected one of the vertical cords and began sawing through it with the dagger. Behind her, she heard Corbb muttering to Celine, and the whole net swayed as he shifted her into his arms.
The translucent cords were easier to cut through than she’d expected. Whatever the substance was they were made from, it was strong but not especially resistant to the blade’s sharp edge. Within seconds, she had cut through several of the vertical cords. She tugged on the edges of the hole she’d made, wanting to judge if it was big enough to slip through.
There was a strange whispering hiss, the sound of playing cards being swept back into the deck, and the entire net began to unravel with alarming speed. She started to call out a warning to the others, but before the first word had left her lips, they were all tumbling down into the snow below their prison.
For a moment, no one moved, and Emily lay stunned, looking up at the gunmetal sky and feeling the falling snow patter on her cheeks.
“Let’s go,” Maddy said, and the older girl was yanking her to her feet. Emily accepted her help, craning her neck to see what had happened to Corbb and Celine.
Corbb had landed a few feet away on his back with Celine on top of him. Now he was struggling to get up as he tried to avoid dropping Celine into the snow.
Emily and Maddy went to him, hauling him to his feet and steadying Celine in his arms. Celine flashed Emily a weak smile.
“Be safe, Em,” she said.
“Go,” Emily told Corbb. “We’ll catch up.”
Corbb gave her one last look—a look she couldn’t quite read—and then he was running toward the nearest set of steps that led up and out of the crater between rows of hanging nets.
“Where’s the dagger?” Maddy asked, looking down at Emily’s empty hands.
Fuck!
She must have dropped it when they’d fallen. Frantically, Emily fell to her knees, digging into the snow. She could feel the precious seconds ticking away. Maddy fell to her knees beside her, and together, they began throwing handfuls of snow out of the way.
Stupid…stupid…stupid…
How had she not realized she’d lost her grip on the fucking thing?
At last, Emily’s fingers closed around something hard and cold, and she pulled the precious weapon out of the snow.
“You should just give it to me if you can’t hang on to it,” Maddy hissed. “I know how to use it anyway.”
“I can’t,” Emily said, getting back to her feet and clutching the dagger tightly. She could feel the ice beneath her feet under the layers of snow. She could feel it, the way she had when she’d all but flown across a hockey rink. That seemed like such a long time ago now.
She turned, putting the wall to her right, and began to run.
“It’s a tool,” Tamila had told her, speaking of the crystal sword that had guided her into the knowing. “But don’t fall into the trap of thinking it’s the only one.”
As the next net grew larger in her sights, hanging from the wall some six or eight feet above the snow, Emily heeded those words. The snow crunched loudly beneath her boots as she concentrated on putting one foot in front of the other. She picke dup speed as the nets drew closer, but it was the ice she was thinking about. She called out to it with her mind, with her heart, with her timeless, ancient soul…
…And the knowing answered.
Heat raced through her veins, warming her against
the cold. Time seemed to slow—almost stop—and she could see every minute detail of the world around her: every crack and crevice in the rock wall as it flashed past, every snowflake as it fell. This was the knowing—not tied to death or destruction, but to movement and strength. She knew where to plant her feet to stay upright. She knew how to move her body to leap over the jagged spires of black rock. She knew.
The first net came closer, and she leapt from the snow into the air, reaching for it with her free hand. It was a maneuver no human should have been able to manage—and yet she knew she could do it. She knew. Her fingers slipped into the netting and she held on, letting her momentum carry her forward, the net swinging like a pendulum. The dagger flashed through the air, cutting the cords, and with that same slithering sound, the net unravelled. A tangle of bodies tumbled out. Three were humans, one was a small flyer child with flaming red hair, clutching something small to her chest. One of the humans, a woman, shrieked in surprise, and the sound echoed through the crater, unspeakably loud in the silence. If the Reavers didn’t already know something was up, they sure as shit did now.
Emily’s feet slammed back into the snow, and she kept running. Dimly, she heard Maddy’s voice behind her, telling the prisoners to run for it, but she couldn’t pay attention to that. Another net was coming up, this one hanging higher than the last. Even with the knowing, she wouldn’t be able to jump for it.
Of their own accord, her feet turned toward the wall and she ran up its steep, nearly vertical incline, her momentum and the knowing carrying her within reach of the net.
Again, her blade flashed, and more bodies tumbled out on to the snow.
Emily ran on without more than a glance. It wasn’t Daniel.
There were shouts now behind her—not human shouts, but the rattling rasping cries of the Reavers. They had realized what was happening and were coming.
Another net, another tangle of bodies—human, flyer, others she did not recognize.
Another net…
Another…
Galak’s massive form, his arms and legs still bound, sprawled onto the snow.
The knowing nudged her, and she risked pausing long enough to cut his bonds away. He seemed weak, but he staggered to his feet, blinking around him in confusion.
“Run for it,” she tried to shout over her shoulder to him as she started off again, but she wasn’t sure the words left her throat. Time and sound and everything else was strange inside the knowing.
Up a set of rough steps to run along a narrow ledge, never slipping on the ice, flash of steel, prisoners falling like rag dolls into the snow…shouts…screams…
She leapt down from the ledge and ran on…
Net…after net…after net…
The crater was now full with the sounds of shouts and screams as prisoners tried to escape. Roars—was that Galak?—echoed from the stone walls, sounding like an army of angry bears. Some of the prisoners, she thought, were attacking the Reavers that were surely chasing her by now.
Another net…
She sprang for this one and nearly missed. At the last second, she willed herself to reach further, stretching as far as she could, and caught hold of it, slicing through the cords before her fingers had even finished closing around them.
A small figure, all alone, tumbled into the snow, and Emily felt something snap inside her. The knowing winked out, and she found herself staring down into Daniel’s pale face.
He was smaller than she remembered. One of his horns was broken, leaving only a stump amidst a nest of matted hair, caked with dried blood. He blinked up at her, seeming not to see her for a moment.
“Emily,” he whispered.
Emily knelt down beside him in the snow—not caring for the moment about the sounds of battle going on behind her.
“You came for me,” Daniel said, and there was wonder in his voice.
“I did,” Emily said.
For a few seconds, they only looked at one another, then Emily lifted him up out of the snow and held him to her.
She turned back the way she had come—back toward the chaos of the battle—scanning for Maddy. Where was she?
The snow was falling thicker now, but it was nothing to what was being kicked up from the ground as groups of prisoners attacked the Reavers that tried to subdue them. Galak was indeed roaring, and the Reavers were having a harder time with him than the others. He slipped and slid in the snow and ice, leaving gigantic footprints and flailing his enormous arms. It prevented them from coming too close, but it was a losing battle; there were simply too many of them, and they were too quick and too strong.
Emily’s gaze drifted upward, and she scanned the place where she thought Corbbmacc had taken Celine, but there was no sign of them. She hoped that meant they’d gotten away.
“Emily!”
Maddy appeared out of the flying snow, panting hard and sliding to an ungraceful stop beside them. Her gaze fell on the small boy in Emily’s arms, and her eyes went wide.
“Maddy!” Daniel cried, and he wriggled weakly in Emily’s arms. Reluctantly, she passed him over.
Dazed, Maddy pulled him out of Emily’s arms and clutched him to her, burying her face in his hair.
“Danny,” she tried to say, but the word came out as barely more than a strangled croak. With a start, Emily realized Maddy—so sour and taciturn—was sobbing silently, her shoulders shaking as she hugged the boy.
There were more shouts behind them, and they were getting closer. Emily looked past Maddy’s shoulder, afraid of what she’d see.
Some of the Reavers had fought past Galak and were coming toward them with frightening speed, their strange twitchy movements giving the impression that they were almost gliding across the snow.
“Come on!” Emily tugged on Maddy’s armed and yanked her around. “We need to go.”
Together, they started to run.
CHAPTER FORTY-THREE
The Reavers were gaining.
Emily thought she and Maddy would probably reach the next set of rough steps leading up and out of the crater before the Reavers caught up with them, but not by much, and there was no way they’d reach the top before being overtaken.
Again and again, Emily reached out with her mind, searching for that connection to the knowing, but it was no good. The burst facilitated by the ice was spent. If only she had the crystal sword again; crystal made bending the knowing to her will seem so easy.
Instead, all she could do was keep putting one foot in front of the other and keep her gaze trained ahead of her on Maddy’s back. Ten more yards…five…
Emily chanced another glance over her shoulder. The stretch of ground between them and their pursuers was shrinking at an alarming rate. In another minute at most—probably much less—their lead would evaporate to nothing. She had to buy her friends more time.
As Maddy’s feet hit the first step, Emily turned left and began zigzagging across the bowl of the crater, running for all she was worth. She slipped on a patch of ice and sprawled face first into the snow. Rough volcanic rock scraped skin from her palms as she tried to break her fall, and suddenly she was back in Minneapolis, running for her life through the freezing night. The sirens she’d heard then were the screams of the freed prisoners she heard now; the whoosh of traffic was the howl of the wind; the gunfire was the clang of weaponry. All that was different was the exchange of one kind of monster for another at her heels.
She staggered back to her feet and glanced over her shoulder again. The Reavers had taken the bait. They were cutting across the snow toward her, apparently not heeding or caring about Maddy and Daniel.
C’mon, fuckers, she thought, and she started to run again.
As she darted around a cluster of black spires of rock that stuck up out of the stone like rotting fangs, she caught sight of a dark depression ahead of her. She changed course toward it, hoping to confuse the Reavers behind her. It was just a landmark—a temporary goal as she fought to stay on her feet. Behind her, she could he
ar the Reavers’ strange voices, scratching and rasping their alien words.
Just a little longer, she thought.
The depression turned out to be a circular cavity in the crater’s floor, perhaps five yards across. A set of steps, remarkably free of snow and ice, spiraled along its edge and down into the dark. Warily, Emily paused, looking back.
Maddy had nearly reached the rim high above and didn’t seem to have realized that Emily was no longer with her. Good. Emily only needed to buy the other girl a few more minutes. Her gaze flitted to the pair of Reavers that were closing in. Unfortunately, she thought all she had left were seconds.
With a deep breath, Emily turned and started down the steps as fast as she dared.
The tight spiral of the stairs made her head spin, reminding her forcibly of the apprentices’ tower at Seven Skies. The deeper she went, the darker it became, but the walls were adorned, here and there, with the same sort of glowing moss she’d seen beneath the streets of Hellsgate. There wasn’t nearly as much of it, but it kept the dark from becoming total. It was still pretty fucking dark though, and she had to slow her pace, feeling for each step with her feet before taking it.
By the time she reached the bottom, she had no concept of how deep she’d gone. Thirty feet? Fifty?
She stood, staring into the dark and trying desperately to discern some details. Blackness shrouded everything. Was this it, then? The end of the road?
It was the sound of Reaver voices above her that got her moving again. She stumbled forward, willing her eyes to adjust to the meager light. She reached out and found the rough rock wall, then followed its curve by touch. The sound of her pursuers grew; she heard each and every shuffle and thud of their cloth-wrapped feet on the steps, accompanied by the increasing staccato of her own heart. There had to be somewhere else to go—if not, what was the point of this place?
Her fingers slid a few more inches and then found empty air—a tunnel?
Frantically, she squinted at the space in front of her. Yes, there was a tunnel there, albeit a small one. It was situated a couple of feet off the ground, and was just wide enough for her to crawl into.
Haven Divided (The Dragon's Brood Cycle Book 2) Page 43