“Run,” Cyrus growled, pushing Mom and Dad past him. “Follow the white lines until you see white stars, then follow those. Once outside, go to the white house at the top of the hill and take shelter beneath the deck.” Bellona edged her bow off her shoulder, even as Vidar pulled out his revolvers and Ronan his sword. Cyrus held out his hand to me. “Come with me,” he said. “I’ll show you the way.”
“But we can’t leave them,” I protested.
“Yes,” Ronan said, “you can.” He nodded backward, to where my folks waited at the next corner. “Keep them safe. We’ll join you as soon as we can.”
I heard the unearthly screech of a tracker — just like when Sethos caught up to us in Zanzibar — and chills ran down my neck and shoulders.
“Go, Dri,” Ronan demanded. “You may be weaker after your time in the palace.”
So that was it. They didn’t trust me. They doubted me. But I couldn’t help them if they were right. I could actually harm their cause if I faltered again. And the last time we’d battled trackers, in hand-to-hand combat, it hadn’t gone so well.
I turned and ran with Cyrus. When we reached my parents, I took my dad’s hand and Cyrus took my mom’s. And as the roar of an attack echoed down the walls of the tunnel, sounding a hundred times worse than anything I’d heard before, we ran faster still.
CHAPTER
32
RONAN
There was no way I was going to lose Andriana now. Not when I’d just found her again. We threw the flare down to the right and propped the torch against the left wall, then took up our weapons and waited for our adversaries to turn the corner. With each breath, I was thankful — it meant Cyrus, Dri, and her parents could get farther away — and yet I felt I would crack open with the anticipation. Every inch of my skin was alive as my arm cuff grew colder and my muscles tensed.
“Let the Maker flow through you,” Vidar said. “Force yourself to ease up, wait for him to lead, then follow,” he said. “We do not fight alone. Remember that.”
I felt a tinge of warmth on the other side of my cuff, which moved to overtake the cold. Round and round the two sensations went: frigid, then hot. I thought of the battle in the Hoodite field, when Vidar saw angels and demons and Andriana sensed the same. The hairs on my arms stood up with the sensation of others joining us unseen, and Vidar’s words ran through my head, over and over. We do not fight alone.
Which was good. Because what rounded the corner — with even some of them splashing through the sewer muck at the center — was the most fearsome group of adversaries I’d faced yet. We were but three. They were five across and at least three lines deep.
“Not alone,” I muttered to myself, as Bellona let her first arrows fly. Two Sheolite scouts went down, one male, the other female. Before the group reached us, two more were hit, one somersaulting in the stream and causing another to trip. Bellona drew her sword and took on a tracker with Vidar, as I ducked the angry strike of a scout’s sword and thrust my dagger into his belly, then brought my sword around with both hands to neatly sever the head off the next.
An arrow came singing by my ear and into the throat of a gray-clad Pacifican soldier. We all wanted to take down as many as we could. But we all knew our main goal was to keep any of them from entering the tunnel after Cyrus, Andriana, and her parents. Especially the trackers, and there were four in this group. There’d been four on the Hoodite field, and we’d come against them with the entire Ailith force. Not alone, I repeated silently, as I blocked a tall female soldier’s strike and swung her into the cement wall with every bit of strength in me. My sword severed the next man’s arm, and an arrow from Bellona finished him off. I sidestepped the pointed end of a spear, caught it with my hand, and wrenched it out of the surprised man’s grasp, pulling him into the end of my sword. On and on it went, one after another. I heard Vidar cry out, wounded, and saw his bleeding arm. Now he and Bellona were each battling a tracker while the other two trackers stood back, waiting. For what? For us to be so weary they could finish the task?
The next soldier I encountered was not only big, he was good. Faster than I fathomed he’d be, parrying and dodging every thrust I made. And when I turned, another Sheolite stabbed me in the side, his face an angry sneer as he twisted the short blade.
Niero leaped upon him, then, swiftly killing him as I staggered backward, the knife still embedded in my side. I stared back at our captain, wondering how he always managed to be right where we needed him … but then gasped, my body in agony. I tried to ignore the pain, use it as fuel for retribution, but I knew my actions were now slower, weaker. And that was when the last two trackers left their positions and moved toward us.
“Niero,” I began, panting. There were still two Sheolite scouts standing beside the trackers.
“I see them,” he said, blocking a scout’s blade, inches from his head. He punched the man in the nose, so hard that the man wheeled back and fell on his rear, blood spurting from his face. Niero whirled and took off his head, all the while keeping his eyes on the oncoming trackers. I’d never seen anything like it — so many elite Sheolite in one place.
I glanced wildly around for Vidar and Bellona. They were both down, and I hoped to the Maker that they were only unconscious, not dead. For the first time, I wondered if Niero and I would die here too. Maybe I was dead already. How else did it make sense that Niero was here with us? He was supposed to be in the Desert or elsewhere by now. But I cannot die, I told myself. Dri and her parents were counting on me. The least I could do was give them a few more precious seconds.
“ ‘I do not fear those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul,’ ” Niero bit out, straightening to face the trackers.
The trackers froze and actually took a step back. Niero advanced. “I ‘fear the One who can destroy both body and soul and send his enemies to the pit.’ ”
One of the trackers took another step backward and let out an animalistic cry, every inch of his face betraying fear and twined with fury. What was this? Words as weapons? But even as I thought it, weakly parrying another soldier’s strike, I knew the truth of it. Niero was invoking holy words, the Sacred Words. Long forgotten words.
Every one of them resonated, as much a strengthening agent for me as they were an apparent wound to our adversaries. There was power in those words. I forced myself to stand straighter and shouted, “We fight for the One who was, and is, and is to come!”
The nearest tracker winced, and the other one now fighting Niero grimaced. But the scouts didn’t seem to be as affected. They both strode toward me, studying me, my bloody hand over my wound, clearly taking into account where I might be weakest. It was as they both struck at once that I saw the first tracker whirl just out of Niero’s reach and run headlong for the tunnel entrance.
He knew. That we weren’t all that were left. That Dri and the others were ahead. And he was surely bent on finding them before they reached the end.
As I swung at one of the Sheolites, the other managed to drive his fist against the hilt of the knife still buried in my side, cutting it free. I bent over in agony, fighting for breath, fighting to remain conscious, falling beside the Pacifican guard who had helped free us in the palace, now dead. My vision tunneled even as I willed myself to rise again, hearing my name distantly on Niero’s lips.
But my own were moving in a whisper. “Run, Dri. I’m so sorry. Run, love. Run.”
CHAPTER
33
ANDRIANA
We paused only when we had to stop and listened, trying to hear the battle behind us, to discern what might be happening. But we could hear nothing more than our own panting and blood pulsing in our own ears. The silence made us at first jubilant, thinking our friends had claimed victory. But when there was no whistle, no shout …
“You don’t think …?” I said to Cyrus, unable to say the rest.
“No,” he said firmly, but I detected the lie in his eyes before I sensed it in his heart. He hoped he could p
rotect me, buoy my spirits to keep me from collapsing.
We heard the footsteps at a distance, and then I knew who was coming too. It wasn’t Ronan, or Vidar or Bellona. It was a tracker.
I looked at Cyrus in fear, then back down the tunnel. Did I see dark wisps? Wraiths?
“What is it?” Dad asked, voice rising.
“A tracker. Like Sethos. And wraiths,” I spat out. “Their favorite companions.”
“Don’t panic,” he said, consciously lowering his voice, taking my hands and squeezing them. “Do not give in to the dark. If it comes to it, you and I will take him down together. The wraiths will follow.”
“And we will help you,” Cyrus said, wrapping his fingers around the shaft of an axe he’d found.
“Yes,” Mom said, her own hand on a length of cloth. She’d always been a dead shot with the sling.
Hope swelled within me. I would not give in to thoughts of the worst. A tracker had slipped by our shield; that didn’t mean they were all dead. I shook away the vision of Ronan alone, bleeding in that awful muck. No. Instead I directed my mind to my last view of him, standing tall, sword drawn, ready for whatever came his way. With Vidar and Bellona beside him. No, this lousy tracker had simply managed to slip by them as the battle raged on.
Maker, make me courageous. Give me faith!
“Let’s go, get as far as we can before we take him on,” I said, looking to Cyrus, but his eyes were wide and scanning the walls, even as the heavy footfalls grew louder.
“I don’t see the white star,” he muttered, running to the far end. “Do any of you see the star? There was once a star here, on one of these walls!” He turned one way, and then the other.
“Just choose, man!” Dad barked, voicing my own thoughts. “Dig down! Which way does your gut tell you is right?”
As if sensing our rising panic, our adversary let out a screech, sending shivers down my back. “C’mon,” I said, grabbing Mom’s hand. “C’mon!” I cried again, already running, choosing for Cyrus if he could not. We had to get out.
We were running, splashing down the center of the tunnel, trying to keep our feet, when we saw Vidar and Bellona enter ahead of us from the side, via another path.
“Vidar!” I cried. The two turned and slowly awaited us, leaning down, hands on knees, gasping for breath.
“Where’s Ronan?” I said, my heart in my throat. I moved toward the tunnel they’d just left, but Bellona snagged my arm and forced me back.
“He’ll be along shortly,” she said, lying to me. “He’s with Niero.”
“Niero?”
“Niero,” she repeated, drawing an arrow and shooting it into the dark mass of wraiths swirling toward us. “I don’t know why I tried that,” she said with an empty laugh. “But it sure made me feel a little better.”
“You listen to me, Andriana,” Vidar said fiercely, holding my face with both of his hands. I saw then the blood spattered across his skin and shirt, further evidence of their battle. “If you can’t block the tracker, the wraiths, you concentrate on me, okay? Focus on me, and take on my feelings. Not what they try and hook you with. Got it?”
When I hesitated, he shook me a little. “Got it?”
“Yes,” I whispered, agitated when he didn’t believe me. “Yes.”
He let go of my face, took up my hand, and we ran again. Mom and Dad were right behind us, and after a while, at perhaps our fourth or fifth turn, we stopped to catch our breath.
Judging from the silence, we dared to hope that even though we were undoubtedly lost, the tracker might be as well. We were on a path that made no sense. Perhaps he had seen the marks Cyrus sought and figured it out, gone the way we were supposed to. That’s what a good tracker would do, right?
But just as our hearts began to thud at a more normal pace, Mom reached out and grabbed my free hand, not out of comfort, I knew immediately, but out of terror. “Andriana, look.” she whispered, nodding toward a grate ten steps away.
I turned toward it. Tendrils of dark smoke were sliding through the holes and then along the ground, curving upward at the walls. And as they met the ceiling, they arced into forms, then spun and danced toward each of us. As the first rose to my level, I let out a sound of awe. She was lovely, this spirit, perfect in form, with high cheekbones and a bow for lips and round, welcoming eyes. I didn’t remember faces in those we’d seen before, only the dark, swirling smoke-like shape. But as soon as I laughed, caught up in wonder, in spite of myself, she morphed, her lips melting into teeth and then a gaping hole within the skeletal remains of a face. As she melted into her true form, she seemed to be pulling at my heart, slowing its beat, sucking out my very life.
My mother entered my line of vision, oddly coming through the wraith, until all I could see was her. “Andriana, look at me,” she said. “Look at me. Remember who you are. Remember what you were born for. Remember your Call. You are stronger than these leeches! In the Maker, you are invincible!”
I watched her face, trying to digest her words as if I heard them from a distance. But as I did so, I dug into her words as anchors. Who I was. What I was born for. My Call. My strength. In the Maker.
Wraiths on either side of me and my mother recoiled, as if sensing my thoughts like a foul stench. But then the tracker arrived, stopping suddenly when he found us at last, his long, red cape swaying behind him like a clock pendulum coming to a stop.
Vidar was shouting, convulsing, battling both tracker and wraith. “Go to him,” I said to my mother, straightening and striding toward the tracker. My father was by my side. It was he who had spent as many hours with me a day as my trainer; in the woods, along the river, climbing, digging, foraging. He and I had spent many hours sparring. I was confident that he could hold his own. At least for a time.
“Away, old man,” breathed the tracker, not even looking at him. “I’ve come for the empath and the knower alone.”
“You will fail in your mission,” I said, taking a ready stance, raising my sword. I did as Vidar had asked me earlier, concentrating on him — my friend, my brother, the knower — rather than give this tracker any room to infiltrate my heart and mind.
“I agree,” Dad said.
“I will kill you,” the tracker seethed toward my father.
“You’ll have to, if you want to get to them.”
“As you wish,” said the tracker, turning with his sword so swiftly, I didn’t have time to react.
But Dad met his strike, staring up into his eyes. “Be gone, demon. You have no place here.”
“On the contrary,” the tracker said, striking again and again, driving my father backward, eyes only on him. “We own this land and all in it.”
“Not all,” I said, ramming my sword into his side, tip first. Then upward, through what I hoped was his heart.
He screamed and wrenched with the pain, and I faltered. He backhanded me and I whirled away, sprawling to the ground with such force I skidded several paces. When I caught my breath and turned to look at him again, he was upon me, leaning down to grip my neck and lift me up, so high that my toes left the ground. “They said I could not kill you,” he whispered, coming close, the nearness of his skin like ice on a Hoarfrosted river, “but they didn’t say I couldn’t bring you to death’s door.”
He grinned, and over his shoulder three wraiths danced and smiled and then gaped with their horrible yawning mouths that seemed to suck in the very air around us. Even Vidar’s torch flame curved toward them.
Vidar. Could he help me? My eyes shifted hard to the right, where I’d seen him fall. Mom was with him, rising, and he was pushing himself up to his elbows, blinking slowly, as if just figuring out where he was. Mom was swinging her sling in a circle to her right and over her head, her eyes never leaving the tracker. Meanwhile, I knew I was about to lose consciousness. I clawed at the tracker’s long fingers that were digging into my throat, cutting off my air, my blood flow. I kicked against his long legs, but he didn’t appear to feel it. I wasn’t even entire
ly certain I was making contact.
I felt the rock fall against my forearm, and only vaguely understood it had bounced off the tracker’s head. A big, bright spot of red dripped from his temple and his eyes shifted slowly left, slowly right, then backward, leaving only an eerie white in the sockets before me. The wraiths hissed and recoiled. The tracker’s hands dropped from my neck and I fell heavily to the floor, gasping for breath as he teetered on his feet and then fell straight backward. My father staggered forward and raised his sword, praying in a whisper with fast moving lips, then brought his blade down across his neck.
I watched his blood spread, thinking it’d make much more sense if these horrific beings bled peacock blue or vermillion orange instead of the same dark red we all bled. He’d been a man once, this tracker. Just as Sethos had once been a man. And even full of the dark, they died as men.
Vidar staggered over to me and offered me a hand. I clasped it and rose, and he hooked a hand across my far shoulder, pulling me close, looking over at my parents. “So, uh, Dri, I know the elders never wanted us to be with our parents again after the Call,” he said, panting. “For their safety and all. But if they want, I vote that yours can stay.”
CHAPTER
34
RONAN
When I came to, Dri was binding my wound with a long, clean cloth. “Wh-what are you doing back here?” I managed. She roughly rolled me over, stealing my breath, then the other way, before I finally gathered enough air to cry out.
“I’m so sorry. I’m almost done,” she said, looking miserable about causing me pain. She caught my expression. “Look, I’m sorry! You were bleeding out. I had to stop it. What would you have me do?”
Season of Fire Page 29