by Nhys Glover
I pushed up gently on the doors, testing the rod. The doors gave a finger-width, but no more. It wasn’t enough. Going back to the hinges, I felt for the screws. But if the hinges were rusty so would the screws be, and they were next to impossible to remove when rusted over.
Just before I lost all hope, I felt a big, warm body pressed up against mine in the darkness. It felt so good that I couldn’t help but relax into it. I needed its strength more than I’d realised. Gods, I was so scared and alone. And Laric was here. With him pressed hard against by back, I suddenly didn’t feel so alone anymore.
He leaned down so his mouth was against my ear, his breath sending a skitter of tingles over my skin. “Don’t give up, warrior-woman. Your goddess expects better of you than this.”
Those words were a mixed message, as so much of what Laric said and did gave off mixed messages. It was part encouragement, part insult. Oddly, it was just what I needed.
My spine straightened and my head came up. I lifted my hands to the doors again, pressing up on them harder this time. A soft chuckle told me what Laric’s mind already had. He was pleased with me. Pleased he could draw me out of my funk and give me back my fire.
Though a part of me wanted to deny he had even that much ability to influence me, I knew it was a waste of energy. After all, hadn’t I already thought just that very thing?
I felt hands cover mine, and then move a little away, to press upward as I did. When we both pressed up there was still no more give than a finger-width.
“I can’t get under this to put my full strength to it. Move out the way,” he ordered.
Reluctantly, I did his bidding. I felt him turn so his shoulders rested against the wood and were horizontal to the opening of the trapdoors. One hand pressed against each door.
He heaved up with his arms and shoulders, uttering a loud grunt as he strained against the doors.
A screech of metal rent the air. I cringed. If there was anyone out there, they were sure to have heard that gods awful noise. Priests could be running in our direction at that very moment.
We had to hurry.
“Something is happening. Again!” I ordered anxiously, trying to work out some way I could lend my strength to the task. All I ended up doing was getting way too close to Laric for comfort.
“You trying to distract me?” he muttered with dry amusement.
I realised that my breasts were pressed into his face. I stepped back hastily and nearly fell over a bag of tubers. This man infuriated me.
His cocky amusement washed over me as he braced himself to try the doors again. I heard another screech, and a sliver of light appeared along the edge of the doors.
Excitedly, I pushed forward once more, then remembered what happened the last time and backed off again. Laric chuckled as he panted. It was taking everything he had to bend that rod.
I tried to imagine what was happening to it as he put pressure on the doors. As the doors pushed up the rod would have to bend, if it wasn’t thick enough to hold. Or if the handles weren’t solid enough to keep it in place, they might begin to give way. But if the force exerted on the doors was too widely dispersed the rod could hold. If it was applied to a smaller area around the juncture between the doors it would bend more readily.
“Good thinking,” Laric muttered, clearly picking up my visuals. He shifted around, I assumed so he could press his back along the edge, rather than across it as he had been doing.
He gave another mighty push upward and the doors gave way so suddenly that Laric fell back on top of me. Glorious hot sunshine poured in on us. I’d never been so happy to see the sun in my life!
Scrambling to our feet, we made to climb out of the hole.
I could see a small ladder next to one open door and a piece of rusted metal, bent double, not far away. I took both in as I levered myself out of the hole. My imagination had not let me down.
“Gods’ balls!” Laric snarled.
It wasn’t a panicked cry, so I didn’t ready myself to run. I looked over at him and then followed his gaze to where two robed priests lay writhing on the ground not far away. They must have barely got us inside before sleep and nightmares claimed them.
Even though I hated them, knowing what torture they planned to inflict on me, I grimaced in empathy. They looked to be in the throes of the worst kind of agony.
I suddenly had an idea. It was the worst one I’d ever had.
“Oh no you don’t!” Laric said firmly, his tone edged with panic.
But when did I ever take orders from someone like Laric?
Chapter Three
I didn’t waste energy or time arguing. He could read my thoughts for my justification if he needed to. I was going to tap into one of these priest’s nightmares and see what insights it could give me into the Devourers. Nightmares were often grounded in real fears. Like Airsha’s had been. Her greatest fear, when Laric had touched her before the battle, was that her husbands would fall foul of an air mage who’d whip up a whirlwind to whisk them and their airlings away to their deaths. Or that was what Calun had told me. He’d actually said she feared for all of us, Zem and me included, but I think he only said that to make me feel more loved and included.
Could these priests have similar fears based on their experiences that I could learn from? What would men who had dedicated their lives to destroying the world fear enough to have them writhing in agony, as they were doing now?
“If you try to tap into their nightmares you might get stuck inside,” Laric warned, though I was more than aware of this possibility already.
“It’s a risk I have to take. We’ve been handed these men on a platter by the Goddess. I need to make the most of the opportunity. It might help us escape. Where are we?”
For the first time I looked around us. I’d already sensed we were alone with these two men. But up until that moment I’d only been partially aware of a derelict shack nearby and that the land was flat and dry and covered with the long grasses of the Badlunds. Beyond that, nothing but the two blue-robed men caught in Laric’s nightmares had claimed my attention.
“I could bring one out and we could interrogate him properly,” Laric suggested anxiously. He didn’t want me to do this. I could feel his determination pressing in on me.
“It would take too long. He’d have to recover from the nightmare first, and we’d have to find some way to tie him up because he’d fight back the moment he could. Do we have that much time to waste?”
I looked up at the sky. The sun was overhead and burning harshly down on us. That’s when I noticed what was beyond the hut.
The mountains! The fraggin’ mountains—on which the plateau of Highlund sat—was no more than a league away! How had we come so far in so short a time? Even on an airling it would have taken at least four or five turns to get here from the capital. So unless we’d been unconscious a whole day, which my body told me couldn’t be the case, we’d travelled incredibly quickly to get here.
Laric must have noticed my change of focus, because he looked around in shock equal to my own.
“This gets worse the further into it we go,” he commented dryly.
“More reason to tap the resource we have, so we know what we’re up against. I’m going in. If I get lost in there... well, do what you can to get me out, all right?” I didn’t want to ask it of him, but I had to know I had a safety net under me.
Laric turned to face me, the bloody broken nose I gave him the least of his injuries. When his bright blue-eyed gaze met mine I saw all the assurance I needed. Either he was the best liar in the world or he was with me every step of the way.
With a grateful nod of acknowledgement, I turned my attention back to the priests. I couldn’t read them at all. Calun had said he couldn’t read Airsha at first either, though her agony had been broadcast to all the Airluds as they prepared for the battle. That ability to feel their woman’s sensations during intense moments was unique to them, though I had to wonder if something of the kind was devel
oping between my four men and me. Not just feelings but thoughts, and not just in times of intense emotion.
“This is a time of intense emotion. I think it applies,” Laric said, yet again hearing my thoughts, and feeling he had the right to comment on them.
“Landor and I can do it at other times,” I told him, hoping the dig would raise a little jealousy in him. Why I wanted to draw that emotion from him was beyond me. I didn’t care one way or the other if this man cared enough to be jealous.
Before Laric had a chance to comment, I sat down next to the nearest priest and placed a tentative hand on his arm, just above his wrist. Physical contact always seemed to make connections better.
Laric sat down beside me, but didn’t touch me. I wondered if he could pull me out, or if he’d have to pull the priest out before me. I hoped he didn’t have to wake the priest. Though I didn’t like to see anyone suffer, we couldn’t afford to have one of these madmen running around loose.
Relaxing, I drifted into a light state similar to a doze. I was aware of Laric’s muttering thoughts for my safety, my own worried thoughts I was steadily releasing, and of the silence beyond.
It was a remarkably rare moment that I had my head to myself. One of the reasons I loved riding airlings was that on Spot I had no thoughts but my own in my head.
Though I’d complained when I lost my ability to read Laric, Landor and Prior, I found it was a relief too. Yet in this moment, I couldn’t work out if having silence would have been better than having Laric’s steady flow of worries scrolling through my mind. At least having him there in the background made me feel like I wasn’t alone.
I let that thought go, along with the rest. In my head, I imagined the priest’s mind as a room with a door, which was currently closed to me. As Laric’s thoughts became a comforting hum in the background, I reached out for the door handle. At first nothing happened. I couldn’t turn the handle.
Tightening my focus even more, dragging my unruly mind back into some semblance of order, I tried to the door again.
The handle turned.
I felt euphoric for an instant, before I was submerged into a world of darkness and terror. I saw blue-robed priests lined up around the walls of a shadowy underground room. They were chanting, droning on and on about the end being nigh, the time of ultimate cleansing being upon us. Oddly, I didn’t think the chanting was in the language of the kinglunds, but belonged to a time long gone. Yet I could understand it. Or the priest could.
The man whose nightmare I now shared was standing with another man in front of a priest. A high priest, I assumed, from the gilding around the edges of his robe.
My kidnapper and the other man dropped to their knees, heads bent, and clearly frightened. The high priest waved his hands above the other man’s head and uttered words I couldn’t make out.
While I watched in horror from my position directly behind my kidnapper, the other kneeling man began to dissolve, like a pen and ink drawing that someone had accidently doused in water. But it wasn’t the odd effect that stunned me, it was the agonised scream coming from the priest as he dissolved, that shook me to the core. It was as if his agony was beyond bearing.
For a few moments more the screaming went on as the priest blurred and dissolved, until he seemed to take up more than the space he’d previously occupied. And then he was reforming, which from his screams was just as terrible as the dissolution had been. By the time it was all over, two priests kneeled beside my kidnapper, not one.
Identical. The two were identical.
My kidnapper seemed relieved when the two stopped screaming. As if freshly woken from sleep, the two stood and began sauntering across the room and into a rippling pool that hadn’t been there before. But the pool wasn’t on the ground, it was standing upright.
As the men stepped together into the pool they exploded. The suddenness of it was shocking. My kidnapper and I both gasped in unison, before blood and guts spewed out everywhere, covering every surface with red slime and the stench of shite and gore. There was so much of it. It was as if we were being smothered in it. My stomach rebelled, but I couldn’t get the relief of vomiting. I was caught in that moment just before nausea overwhelmed you. It was the moment the priest was stuck in.
With his face and robe covered with viscera, the high priest turned back to my kidnapper. His expression was completely blank, not in shock, but as if what had happened was irrelevant. Unimportant. It was this that set my kidnapper to shaking even harder than he had been before his companions exploded.
The high priest began chanting over him. The man fought to rise, to run. But two monstrous priests stepped forward and pressed down on his shoulders to keep him in place. I felt the agony as he began to dissolve.
I was being rent apart and thrown to the four winds. I was becoming nothing. Less than nothing. Laric! Gods, Laric! Help me!
A warm hand closed around my arm. I felt it pulling me back, felt myself solidifying, even as another force was seeking to dissolve me. Not just warmth. Love was pulling me back. I felt love. Like a hungry person scenting the succulent aroma of freshly cooked food, I followed the love and the warmth. Followed it until the darkness lit to bright sunlight, and my shattered soul became whole and... grounded once more.
Panting, my throat sore, I stared up at the sky. I felt strong, gentle arms around me, holding me. Turning my head a little, I saw Laric cradling me as I lay across his lap on the ground, not far from where the priest still writhed in the grip of that agonising dissolution.
Turning in his arms, I buried my face into his neck, breathing his unique but pleasing scent into my lungs. Needing to get the stench of blood and gore out of my nostrils. Needing to get the terror out of my head.
Deep wracking sobs broke free of me then. I had never been so afraid in my life. And now I was safe. It was one thing to fear a sword to the chest, it was another to fear your very soul was being scattered to the wind. But now I was back and Laric was here. He was keeping me safe. So I cried out my terror and pain. I cried out the sure sense that I had been lost. Had Laric not found me, I would never have found my way back.
When it was over, and I was limp with relief and exhaustion, I sniffed self-consciously.
Laric turned his head and kissed my head. My hair was likely dusted with dirt from the cellar, but he still pressed his lips into it.
“You wouldn’t stop screaming,” he muttered softly against my hair. “I’ll have nightmares of that scream forever. It sounded like you were being shredded alive.”
I nodded against his shoulder. “No wonder my throat’s sore. I thought it was the priest who was screaming. The one dissolving and reforming. That’s what they can do, just as I thought. They can dissolve one person into two. But it’s an excruciating process.
“I watched it happen to one priest, who then became two. Then the two walked into a rippling, upright pool. As soon as they entered it, though, they blew up. It was the most awful sight I’ve ever seen.
“What was worse was that the high priest and the other priests around the room didn’t seem to care. They just went on as if it was expected. My priest. Gods, not mine. Ghuuh!” I shivered in disgust. “Not my priest. My kidnapper tried to get away so it wouldn’t happen to him, but he couldn’t. And when it started to happen to him, I felt as if it was happening to me too. I was dissolving like a seed-pod in the wind. Then I felt your hand and warmth and... lo... stability, and I followed it back here. If you hadn’t come for me when you did I would have been lost forever. I’m sure of it.”
I wondered if he picked up my mistake. I’d almost said love. And that would have been all kinds of wrong. Because it wasn’t really what he was feeling. It was just... the Goddess or our soul connection. That was all it was. Not real love.
“So did you get anything that can help us get away?” he asked softly. I bristled, feeling like he was insulting me again by suggesting I’d gotten nothing useful from my traumatic experience. But I couldn’t hold onto the affront, be
cause I knew deep-down that that wasn’t what Laric was implying. For once, he wasn’t trying to taunt or goad me.
“All I really got was an idea of how they travel long distances so easily. I think that was what the rippling pool was about. I think the priests walk through it, and it takes them to somewhere else. The priest or priests that exploded were my kidnappers’ fear of what might happen when you walked into that pool, not what actually happens. I think they brought us through one of those pools to get us here. I don’t know how it works or why here, rather than a Cliffling village, for instance. But I do think you had it right that this is some kind of way-station, but not for wagons with barrels the Godling hid in. I think the soldier was told that to keep their normal way of travelling a secret. I think it’s how they got to us so quickly when we’d rescued you.”
Laric had been stroking my hair, which was a matted mess around my shoulders. I doubt he even knew what he was doing. But it soothed me, so I didn’t complain. When he finally did register his actions and stopped, I felt oddly bereft.
Giving myself an internal shake, I reminded myself, yet again, that I was not fond of this would-be spouse. Maybe I no longer hated him, but I was still a long way from having any warm feelings toward him.
“Come on, I think we need to get out of here,” Laric said, almost pushing me off his lap to stand up.
I scrambled up and brushed myself down, disgruntled by his sudden shift from closeness to emotional distance. In the next instant, I realised my thoughts were now wholly my own. He’d closed me out again.
Chapter Four
“The Airshan army should be nearby. They’re about to make a full-scale attack on the Clifflings. We’ll be safest with them until we can get our airlings,” I said, trying to hide my hurt.
“Do you have any idea where this army is? We don’t even know where we are.” Laric’s sarcasm grated after our recent gentle moments of closeness.