Pursuit of Shadows (The Keeper Chronicles Book 2)

by JA Andrews

  “Good thing there’s nothing unusual about this group,” Patlon muttered.

  A pair of Roven rangers rode slowly across the grass between them and the mountain.

  Rass gave a small sigh. “We could go under the grass.”

  “There are no more tunnels,” Douglon told her.

  “No more dwarves tunnels. But”—she wrinkled her nose—“the frost goblins have tunnels all over down there.”

  No one answered for a moment.

  “We can’t go into a goblin warren,” Hal said. “We’ll be ripped apart.”

  “Only if goblins come,” Sora said.

  “The one thing we know,” Hal answered, “is that Killien plans to call goblins to the enclave. And when that happens, I really don’t want to be standing in the way.”

  “I can tell if they’re coming,” Rass said.

  “From how far away?” Will asked.

  She set her hand on the ground. “The closest ones are far to the west of here. There are none under the grass close by.”

  “How can you tell?” Hal asked.

  “The roots of the grass reach down to the warrens. And when the goblins brush past them”—she shivered—“the grass knows.”

  “Can you tell if they’re under the mountains we’re on?” Douglon asked her.

  Rass shook her head uncertainly. “I don’t think they tunnel in the mountains. They can’t get through rock, just the soft earth of the Sweep.”

  “I agree,” Sora said. “In the mountains they travel above ground, I’ve seen their tracks.”

  “Can you lead us through the warrens?” Will asked Rass.

  She wrinkled her nose and nodded, pushing herself up. “The closest one is this way.”

  The mouth of the warren sat at the bottom of the slope, gaping open just as the grassland flattened out. A few trees straggled out into the grass, and a small finger of bushes ran almost to where the warren started. When there were no Roven rangers in sight, the dwarves clambered down into the hole and disappeared. In a matter of breaths they were back.

  “Filthy worm hole,” Patlon said, brushing clods of dirt from his head.

  “It’s not pleasant,” Douglon agreed, “but it looks stable. Rass is the only one of us that’s going to be able to walk upright, though.”

  A hoarse screech echoed off the rocks behind them and Talen dove out of the sky. His wings faltered slightly and there were gaps in the feathers of his left wing. He landed hard on Will’s arm with a weak chwirk. Feathers along his neck were disheveled and wet with blood.

  Sora came over and ran her fingers gently down his neck, smoothing the feathers. Talen flinched once. Will opened up to the little hawk and felt a tangle of fear and exhaustion.

  “A larger bird must have attacked him.” Sora pulled out a piece of dried meat and offered it to Talen. The hawk snatched it up, his feet unsteady on Will’s arm.

  “You have bad timing,” Will said to him. “We’re about to go into another tunnel. But we’ll be out soon, over on that mountain.” He walked over to a nearby stump and set his arm next to it. “I’ll leave you some food, and you can meet us over there.”

  Talen’s claws tightened on Will’s arm. Will rolled his forearm toward the stump, but the little hawk turned his head away from it and grabbed Will tighter. A spike of fear flashed across Will’s chest.

  “Ok, you can come with us, but that means the hood again.”

  Sora helped Will slide the leather glove on his other arm and the hawk willingly stepped onto it. Talen didn’t move at all as Sora put the hood on him.

  “Can we go?” Douglon asked. “Or are we going to collect any other animals that have no right to be underground?”

  Will waved him on, offering Talen more meat.

  “You’re sure there are no goblins?” Patlon asked Rass.

  She nodded and, although no one looked happy about it, the group dropped down into the hole, one at a time.

  The hole was wide enough for two people to walk next to each other, but even the dwarves had to duck to avoid the ceiling of loose dirt and dangling roots. Will held Talen close to him and stretched his other hand out to run along the wall. His feet sank into the soft churned up earth on the floor and the wall crumbled off beneath his fingers while he hunched over and took a few steps into the gloom. The walls and ceiling were gashed from the scrambling mass of goblin claws that had burrowed through. The smell of the earth mingled with the fetor of rotting meat.

  The tunnel ran straight ahead as far as he could see, past the stooped forms in front of him, and the dwindling light lasted long past the point when his back began to ache from bending over. Roots brushed past his head and down his back, pellets of dirt showered down on him, crumbling and rolling down his neck.

  Their feet sank silently into the soft earth, so the only sound was the breathing of his companions. Something from the wall tangled wetly in his fingers and wriggled across his palm. He flicked his hand and the squirming larva gripped his finger for a breath before flinging off.

  The warren dimmed to the point where the orange glow from the glimmer moss was visible, tinging the dark earth a bloody red.

  Time stretched on interminably. Will’s back and neck ached from hunching over and the rotten stench had settled into a sour taste in his mouth. The arm holding Talen had developed an ache that demanded he shift position. He stretched his shoulder and elbow, trying not to alarm the bird.

  To pass the time he concentrated on the little hawk. It could have just been his imagination, but when he cast out toward Talen, the bird felt dimmer. Gently, Will funneled bits of vitalle into him. Letting it seep up from his arm through Talen’s legs. Inside the hawk were three different injuries. The cut at his neck, and two slashes on his wing. Will drew in vitalle from the roots brushing over him as he walked and fed it into Talen, directing it toward where the little bird was healing. Slowly Talen’s grip relaxed. Will offered Talen the last piece of meat, and the little hawk gobbled it up, standing straighter than before.

  “We’re half way.” Rass’s voice trickled back, muted from the front of the group. She walked next to Patlon with her arm stretched above her head, trailing her fingers through the hair-thin roots that hung down.

  Alaric fell back next to Will, holding glimmer moss up near Talen. “How did you get the hawk to come?”

  “I’m not sure.” Will ducked under a low-hanging clump of roots. “I sort of threw the idea of where I was out at him.”

  The edges of Alaric’s eyes tightened in such a familiar way, Will laughed. “I know that doesn’t tell you anything.” Will explained the connection he’d built with Talen.

  “More interesting than that, though,” Will said, “is that Sora can…push her emotions at me, and I feel them when I’m not trying to.”

  Alaric’s eyebrows rose. “Did you know that was possible?”

  Will shook his head. “Gerone spent all his time developing ways to close myself off to people. We never got to the point of experimenting with anything else. And outside the Keepers, Sora’s the first person I’ve told that I can feel them.”

  “The first?” Alaric said mildly. “Interesting.”

  “Can we stay on topic? The important part here is that she was able to do it. To show me how her childhood memories made her feel.”

  “Is that really the important part?” Will could hear the grin in Alaric’s voice.

  Will shook his head. “Evangeline has changed you.”

  Alaric laughed. “You have no idea.” He was quiet for a moment. “Can you push your emotions into me?”

  Will searched for a good emotion to share. What was the last strong emotion he’d felt? There was the conversation with Hal, but that was too complex. There was the dark tunnel with Sora, but that was even more complex.

  The dragon.

  Will focused on the memory of the dragon, plummeting down toward them, the flames licking the trees next to them as they ran. The rush of air from the wings, the glint of red scales. Hi
s heart quickened at the memory of being utterly defenseless in the face of such overwhelming power. He gathered that feeling and pushed it toward Alaric.

  Alaric’s breath caught. “I feel…scared? It’s small, and distant. Like the echo of being terrified.”

  Will cut off the push of emotions with a surge of triumph. “The dragon.”

  Alaric let out a long breath. “Yes, that’s what it felt like. Both times. He gets no less terrifying upon the second meeting. How have we never tried this before?”

  “I don’t know if I could have done it before. In Queensland I did nothing but try to close people off. It wasn’t until I came here that I was nervous enough to need to read people around me. I’ve gotten so much better at it. I can pick out individual people in a group and filter out only their emotions. And I can feel people from much farther away.”

  Smaller warrens branched off to the sides, but Rass led them on without hesitation. Alaric and Will continued to test what Alaric dubbed Will’s trans-emotive skills. Thankfully they soon spilled out into a slightly larger warren and there were groans and grunts as the group stretched slightly taller.

  “Not far now,” Rass called back over her shoulder. “This warren runs—”

  She spun around. “Goblins!” she hissed.

  “Where?” Patlon yanked his axe out of its sheath and turned.

  “Behind us. They’re pouring into the warren.”

  “Can we get out before they get here?”

  Rass shook her head, her face terrified. “They’re coming!”

  “Get us out of this main warren,” Will called up to her.

  She nodded and ran forward, her hand dragging along the roots. She paused and pointed to the side, and everyone poured into a wide but short side tunnel.

  Douglon and Patlon took up positions facing the main warren, kneeling so they could be upright, their axes out.

  “This isn’t going to stop them from finding us,” Sora pointed out.

  “We have enough metal to call an entire hoard down on ourselves,” Patlon agreed.

  “Rass,” Douglon said, “Can you collapse the warren between us and them?”

  “Not without burying us too.”

  “So buried alive or torn apart by goblins,” Patlon said. “I think I preferred the dragon.”

  “How many are there?” Sora asked, kneeling next to the dwarves.

  Rass cowered against one of the walls. “So many.”

  “How far to the nearest exit?” Will asked.

  “Not far. The next one to the right goes straight to the surface. But we’d still be on the grass and the Roven will see us.”

  “We could drop all our metal here and try for it,” Patlon offered.

  “Talen can fly faster than a goblin can run, right?” Will asked Sora.

  “Easily.”

  “Then let’s give them something else to chase,” Will said. “What sort of metal do they like most?”

  “Silver and gold,” Sora answered.

  “Anyone have any coins?”

  Alaric offered him two, and Will, with a surge of calmness offered to Talen, pulled off the hood. The little hawk shifted and blinked into the darkness. A dislike grew in the bird, a discomfort with the closeness of the tunnel. “Tie the silver into the hood,” he told Sora. “And then tie it to his leg. And let’s hope it’s not too heavy for him.

  “A bit of coin’s not going to fool them,” Patlon pointed out.

  “It just needs to distract them.”

  “What about the glimmer moss?” Evangeline asked. “Should we cover it?”

  “The only thing that would make this situation worse,” Douglon said, “is if it was happening in the dark.”

  “Agreed,” Patlon said.

  “Then let’s at least get the light farther away from us,” Alaric said. “Put the bowls out in the main warren along the edges. Then maybe we’ll see them but they won’t be as likely to see us. Unless that will make them suspicious.”

  “They’re not that intelligent,” Sora said. “They’re driven by smell. Some odd lights won’t matter to them.”

  “How long until the goblins reach us?” Will asked Rass as the moss was put out in the hall.

  “Not long.”

  “Tell me when they’re almost close enough to see.”

  She nodded and Will squeezed past the dwarves to stand hunched at the mouth of the main warren. The glimmer moss was spread along the tunnel, lighting it with the dim orange glow. Past it, the warren faded into blackness.

  “There’s a way out ahead,” he told Talen, setting a restraining hand on the hawk’s chest and putting the idea into the little bird’s mind of the warren and the branch to the right, leading to wide open grass and endless sky. Talen shifted eagerly on his arm, but Will held him back.

  A guttural cry cut through the darkness from behind him.

  “They’re here!” Rass hissed through the darkness.

  Will thrust his arm forward and pushed the idea of freedom and open sky at Talen. The hawk spread his wings and flapped into the darkness of the warren.

  Will ducked back in past the dwarves and sank to his knees next to Alaric. “And now we just need a wall that can block our smell.”

  “How can I help?” Alaric asked.

  “I’m going to need a lot of energy.” Will closed his eyes and cast out. Above the bright vitalle of the people around him, the energy of the grass dangled down in the roots. He set his hand on the ceiling and drew some in, turning to face the entrance.

  Alaric wrapped one hand around Will’s wrist and reached for the roots with the other. A stream of vitalle flowed into Will’s arm.

  More cries echoed down the tunnel, couched in grunts and rustles.

  Concentrating on the air, he formed the idea of the wall. Not a clay wall this time, just a wall of dirt, like the rest of the tunnel. Anything to block their passage from the notice of the goblins. The energy seeped into his hand from above, singeing through the new skin on his palm and he fed it out his other hand, forming the air, shaping it, infusing it with the idea of earth. The air formed up immediately and the light of the glimmer moss shimmered as Will moved the air. The sound of the goblins faded until the warren was utterly silent.

  Sora reached out and pushed her hand into it and there was a burst of pain across Will’s hand as the magic was interrupted.

  “Don’t touch it,” he gasped and she pulled her hand back.

  “He’s making a wall out of the air,” Alaric explained to the others, his brow drawn in concentration. “It should trap any smell we have here in this tunnel.”

  “Should?” Douglon asked.

  “Keep your axes handy.” Will pushed more energy toward the wall.

  “If any come through,” Hal said, “kill them as quickly as you can. If they realize we’re here, the rest will know too.”

  Sora and Douglon knelt facing the main warren with Hal and Patlon directly behind them.

  Something pale flashed into view.

  Chapter Forty-One

  Grey, wiry limbs flew past the opening. Round eyes glinted like milky orbs. The group stood in silence, watching dozens and dozens of goblins rush past, scrambling past each other with sharp, jutting heads and claws that glinted in the mosslight.

  The vitalle from the grass began to fade and Will grasped for more from the above them, stretching out farther along the Sweep.

  The skin around Will’s wrist where Alaric touched him burned. Alaric shoved their sleeves up and pressed their forearms together, spreading out the energy until it flowed through with a bearable heat. Will funneled the new energy toward the wall.

  Two goblins shoved into each other and the closest one flew into the wall of air, breaking through and slicing pain across Will’s palm.

  A grating screech ripped out of the creature’s throat and a rotten stench filled the air. Sora grabbed the creature’s neck and plunged her knife into its chest, tossing it down behind her. Douglon’s axe swung down, severing the go
blin’s head. Blood pooled out onto the dirt in a steaming puddle of glistening black.

  One of the creature’s feet still stabbed into the wall and the pain across Will’s hand was excruciating. Evangeline scrambled forward and grabbed the creature’s arms, dragging it farther in.

  The energy from Alaric faded and Will felt the wall begin to weaken.

  “How many more?” he asked Rass.

  She pressed back against the wall, her face terrified, her hand grabbing at the roots above her head. “So many.”

  Alaric grabbed the shoulder of the dead goblin and for a brief moment, Will felt a surge of vitalle before it faded.

  “We need more energy,” Alaric said.

  Rass pointed to a spot on the wall of the tunnel. “There’s a lot of roots behind there.”

  Evangeline crawled over and scraped away the dirt. Loose earth tumbled down until she was up to her elbow. With a grunt, she yanked and pulled a wide, knobby root out of the wall. Alaric stretched across the warren to grab it, and the energy poured into Will.

  Another goblin tumbled through the wall with searing pain, scrambling and scratching. Patlon’s axe fell almost faster than Will could see and the creature fell. Evangeline pulled it back, and the endless river of goblins flowed past.

  “They’re almost done,” Rass said quietly. “Many of them followed Talen. The rest are heading toward the enclave.”

  Will’s hand burned. His arm, where it touched Alaric, felt like it was pressed against hot metal. The root in Alaric’s hand had withered to a thin, brittle stick and the flow of vitalle weakened.

  The last of the goblins rushed past and the group stood still, waiting.

  “Hold it as long as you can,” Sora said. “Or they’ll smell the metal and come back.”

  “They’re turning down another warren,” Rass said, her voice stronger. “And another past that…I think they’re gone.”

  Alaric dropped his arm down and Will cut off the flow of vitalle. The air relaxed back into normal air and the glimmer moss glowed clearly through it again. The stench of rotten meat rushed in. Two of the moss bowls had been trampled.