“What is it?” Alison asked.
“I think these tunnels connect to the buildings.”
“What makes you think that?”
“Because this branching point would be where we would come across the building that collapsed.”
“That you collapsed.”
“Fine, that I collapsed. I suspect that one would lead us to the building where the archer had hidden.”
“I don’t see any signs of anyone else here.”
“I don’t either,” Fes said.
“Where would they have taken Micah?”
That wasn’t even Fes’s biggest concern. Micah, as one of the rebellion, had known what he was getting into. Anything that happened to him would be considered part of what he had gotten himself into. Theole, on the other hand, had done nothing wrong. He was a merchant who had been trying to reach his family, nothing more.
“I am going toward that one,” Fes said, motioning toward the tunnel on the right.
“Why that one?”
“Because the other one likely leads to the building that was destroyed, and I couldn’t find a way into the building with the archer.”
He made his way down the hall. The tunnel was barely wider than his shoulders, and it forced him to stoop. He was tall, but not so tall as to typically need to hunch over when passing through doorways. The farther they went, the more Fes worried that perhaps he had been wrong.
And then they reached another branching point.
In one direction, the tunnel veered off, likely heading toward another building. In the other, Fes suspected there would be stairs. He motioned to Alison and Indra and started down the tunnel until he found the stairs he expected.
“I don’t think we could’ve found this without your help,” he said to Indra.
“My help?”
“Your light. Without it…”
He almost shivered. Without the light, they would have been wandering in the dark, and though Fes wasn’t necessarily afraid of the dark, coming into unknown tunnels that led deep beneath a thousand-year-old dragon base left him uneasy.
When he climbed the stairs, he found a door. The door was newer, and the lock was solid. Fes twisted it and finally was forced to jam his dagger into it, prying at it.
The door popped open.
He stepped inside. It was a small room, and the building was small to match. He found the fallen archer near one of the archer slits, but there was no one else here. Whether or not they had been here at one point or not, Fes didn’t know.
Indra’s breath caught when she saw the fallen archer.
“Is he…”
Fes nodded and placed himself between her and the body. “He was shooting from here. He took down several of Alison’s people.”
Alison looked at the archer, noting the wound, and turned her attention to Fes for a moment. “We shouldn’t have gone into that building.”
“If we wouldn’t have gone in, more might have died. Think about what would’ve happened had all of them come after the rebel caravan.”
Alison frowned, but she didn’t say anything.
Fes looked around the room. Something about it left him unsettled. There had to be more. What was it that he was overlooking?
“They have to be somewhere,” Fes said. “We couldn’t have missed them, and we’ve searched most of the buildings.”
“Maybe there’s some other place down here,” Indra said.
Fes looked back down the stairs, behind him. Where else could there have been something? He hadn’t seen any sign of anything in the tunnels below, but what of the others he hadn’t looked through?
Then again, these buildings were a thousand years old. Old enough that they were lucky to have survived. In some of them, it was evident that people had rebuilt the buildings over the years, but in others—those like the building he had destroyed— the decay had taken hold. Fes had a hard time believing that these buildings had once been strong enough to withstand an attack from dragons.
Maybe there was something deeper in the earth.
Fes started back down the stairs, Alison and the other rebels following him. Once again, Indra stayed close, not wanting to let him get too far in front of her. Fes didn’t want to get away from her, either. He owed it to her to protect her if he could after everything that she’d been through, losing her father and getting attacked in the way that she had.
He glanced back at her, forcing a smile. “Do you have any other figurines that might be helpful?”
Indra shook her head. “Nothing that will help us now. I haven’t had the chance to spend enough time on them.”
“Maybe when this is all over, you can explain to me exactly what it is you do with these figurines and help me understand the magic that you use on them.”
Indra studied him for a moment before nodding.
They reached the central part of the tunnels and Fes halted after going about a dozen steps. Another sound indicated the presence of something or someone.
Fes handed the light over to Indra and reached for his other dagger. With both daggers in hand, he continued forward.
He paused at the intersection and looked down the hallway, searching for movement. He didn’t see anything obvious and turned back, motioning to the others with him to follow.
When Fes turned the corner, the shadows flickered.
He raised his hand gently pushed Indra back. Thankfully, she didn’t argue, and took a step back around the corner, moving out of the main part of the tunnel.
Fes slipped forward, clutching the daggers tightly. There was a sense of irritation that washed through him. How many men had Carter stationed here? What exactly would they do?
He stepped forward, aware that the light he’d left with Indra had made him vulnerable. If there were others in the room—and he was certain that there were—he exposed himself by coming this way so openly.
Alison accompanied him, and Fes glanced over, thankful for her presence. They fought well together, regardless of whether they wanted to acknowledge that. She had a quick sort of brutality, and he had his daggers, along with the strength that he managed to summon when the anger boiled within him.
“What did you see?” Alison whispered. Her voice was soft, barely more than a hint of the wind, and it reached his ears and hopefully no further.
“I don’t know what it was I saw, but there was movement.”
“Movement?”
Fes stared at the end of the tunnel, and that movement came again. He motioned toward it and darted forward.
When he reached the end of the tunnel, he didn’t find another person as he had expected. Instead, there was a curtain hanging in front of an opening in the wall. A strange breeze blew through it, causing the movement that he’d seen.
Fes pulled the curtain off to the side and Alison stared at it, as if expecting a curtain would provide answers. “What do you think this is for?”
“I don’t know. Whatever is back there is meant to be hidden, even here.”
“But it’s not hidden that well,” Alison said.
“I don’t know that I would’ve seen it were it not for the fact that we were at the opposite end of the hall, and for the fact that we were looking for something else.” He nodded to the curtain. “It looks like we found something else.”
He used his dagger to push the curtains open, and he carefully stepped inside.
The air was different here. There was heat, but it was unnatural and burned in his nostrils.
“What is this?” Alison asked.
“Get the others,” he said.
He waited while she hurried off and grabbed the other rebels along with Indra, and when they joined him, Fes had taken a few steps into the room, barely more than that. The heat continued to build, rising around him. It was unpleasant but tolerable.
One of the rebels coughed when he stepped inside the tunnel.” What is this, Alison?” the man asked.
“I don’t know. Fes saw it.”
“We sh
ould return for the others,” another of the rebels said.
“If we return, we will lose the opportunity to see what they did with our people.”
“And her father,” Fes said, looking at Indra. She gave him a nod of thanks. Fes wanted to find Theole almost as much for himself as he did for Indra. What had happened with him? There had to have been something, and he hadn’t seen anybody, which meant that wherever the others had gone, it wasn’t above ground. The only other possibility was for them to go deeper. Which meant going deeper into the dragon base.
They made their way through the narrow tunnel. As they did, Alison leaned toward him. “I think this has been here from the time of the dragon wars,” she said.
“Probably.”
“That doesn’t impress you?” she asked.
Fes glanced over. In the light from Indra’s figurine, he was able to make out the walls of the tunnel. They were more irregular than the walls elsewhere, and the ceiling seemed even lower, though it was difficult for Fes to determine. Everywhere that he’d been in these tunnels had been too low for him.
“Why should it? I don’t know what it was like a thousand years ago when the empire was slaughtering the dragons. All I know is that I don’t have to worry about fire raining down on me from the sky. I don’t have to worry about entire cities destroyed by those creatures. I don’t have to worry because the empire took care of that.”
“And at what cost? All stories speak of the dragons having a connection to some men. A desire to protect. Was it worth losing that?”
Fes shook his head. The price had been the dragons, but for the safety the dragon relics offered, wasn’t that a worthwhile price?
He turned away and continued deeper into the tunnel. The farther he went, the more he began to feel that there was something to what Alison said. These tunnels were old, and there was something impressive about that. The age of the tunnels amazed him. These had been here when man had last faced the might of the dragons. What magic did those men know? What power did those armies have to enable them to defeat the dragons?
“Why is it so hot in here?” somebody asked from the back of the line.
“Probably some ancient dragon relic down here,” another person muttered.
If there was a dragon relic here, it would have to be enormous for it to put off this much heat. Most of the relics that he had encountered had put off some heat, though none with much significance.
The tunnel turned and began to descend.
Fes was forced to duck his head, more and more needing to keep from scraping his skull on the stone above. Every so often, he would crack his head on the rock, and he winced, dropping back down, ducking his head to keep from doing it again. None of the others seem to be having the same difficulty.
“I’m not sure that we should be going this deep into the tunnels,” Alison said.
“We need to know what happened to your people.”
“That’s the only reason you want to come here?” she asked.
“I’m curious.”
“About what?”
Fes looked around at everything. “About the tunnel. About everything. I have no idea what these tunnels are for or where they might lead.”
Now that they were descending downward, Fes had even less of an idea of where they were going. How deep into the earth would they go?
The heat didn’t change. It remained a constant presence, a persistent, dry heat that sucked the moisture out of his mouth and dried the sweat off his brow. The strange breeze that gusted the curtain remained and whispered along his skin. Fes could almost imagine voices within that wind, though he shook away that thought.
In the distance, he saw a glowing light. He motioned to it, pointing at Alison. “What do you think that is?”
“Whatever it is seems to be where we’re heading.”
Fes continued to hold onto his two daggers. He glanced over at Indra, who tightly clutched the figurine that glowed. She was brave—possibly braver than he would have been were their situations reversed. Then again, Indra had traveled extensively, and she likely wouldn’t be as concerned about meeting new people, not the way that Fes might be.
When he reached the light, he hesitated. It was bright, and though it might only be his imagination, it seemed to shimmer, reminding him of the glow of dragon relics.
This seemed to be the source of the heat. Whatever was causing it came from there, and it gave Fes a moment of pause. He didn’t want to enter too quickly, especially as he had no idea what he might encounter. He glanced back at the others with him, counting the rebels, and his gaze drifted to Indra before he turned his attention back to the room.
What choice did he have but to enter?
As Fes looked at Indra, it motivated him to step inside.
Three men were bound to chairs, one of them with his neck split, his head hanging forward. Blood pooled around him.
Micah was one of the men, and he looked at them with a wild-eyed intensity.
Fes darted forward and slipped Micah’s bindings, releasing him. “You’ve got to get out of here. You’ve got to—“
Micah’s eyes widened. He looked over Fes’s shoulder, and Fes followed the direction of his gaze, realizing that they weren’t alone.
He turned to see what he could only consider an altar. It was a long table that glowed, filling the room with the light. Behind the altar was a woman dressed in all maroon leather. Her dark hair hung to her shoulders, and in the flames that flickered along the table, giving light to the room, her hair seemed to burn.
She turned to him and pointed.
As she did, she said something, though the word was not one that Fes knew. A finger of flame leaped from her hand.
A fire mage.
Fes did the only thing he could think of, and he swiped at it with his daggers.
The flame disappeared.
The woman stared at him and turned entirely to him. “Who are you?”
“What are you doing with this man?” Fes hazarded a glance at the others and was both relieved and worried that he didn’t see Theole. Where was he?
“Where did you get those daggers?” the woman asked.
Fes took a step toward her, and as he did, heat pushed him back. He slashed at it and managed to take another step before he was thrown back once more.
The woman studied him, almost as if he were a puzzle that she needed to solve. “Interesting. Perhaps I have misdirected my attention.”
“Who are you?” Fes asked again.
“I am Reina,” she said and as flames began to flicker around her, Fes understood.
This was the person responsible for the destruction of the Bayars’ caravan. This was either the fire mage Carter had hired—or the person she worked for.
Chapter Eighteen
Fes attempted to take another step forward and was once more thrown back. Only then did he think to look over at Alison and the other rebels waiting at the door. None of them moved. They seemed frozen in place—or more likely, burned in place.
“What happened?” Fes hissed at Micah.
“I don’t know. We were captured and then we were brought down here. She’s using us in some—“
Fes didn’t need him to finish. He could see that whatever Reina was doing involved using them in a ceremony of sorts, almost as if she intended to sacrifice them.
Even those who worshipped the ancient dragons didn’t believe in such sacrifice.
They had to get past this Reina. In order to figure out what was going on here, he would have to somehow stop her.
She continued to hold her hands up, what looked like fire glowing between them in a ball that formed between her palms. She held them out toward him, directing the ball of fire as it floated in the air. As it neared, heat continued to build, growing hotter and hotter, to the point where Fes was forced to take a step back.
When he did, he slashed a dagger at the ball of fire. He already knew his daggers could withstand heat and flame, but he was surprised at the
way they seemed to force the fire to evaporate, almost as if it wasn’t there.
He continued to push forward, but it did no good. He couldn’t get past where he was.
“Help the others,” Fes said.
“With what?”
Fes thought about handing him one of the daggers, but the daggers seemed to have some resistance to whatever magic Reina used. He didn’t dare give up the dragonglass daggers.
He had the dagger Tracen made for him, and he fished it out of his pocket and handed it to Micah. The other man began to work quickly and cut the others free. When they were freed, they joined Fes and Micah and stared at the woman.
“It was a mistake for you to come here, Deshazl.”
Fes frowned. Something about that word that was familiar, though he didn’t know why. Had he heard it somewhere?
“All I want is to get these people to freedom. Then I’ll leave you.”
“Leave me? No, I don’t think that you will be leaving me, certainly no time soon. The fact that a Deshazl still exists…”
“You can go ahead and try and stop me, but—”
Reina pressed her palms toward Fes. She made a sharp movement, much quicker than any she had made before, and when she did, heat and fire erupted from her palms.
Fes dropped to the ground, pulling the others with him, ducking beneath the flames. They streaked over his head, and he smelled burnt flesh and realized that one of the men who had been with Micah hadn’t managed to move in time. Fes looked over to see the man’s face scalded, a chunk of flesh burned off his cheek. The stench of it was incredible and almost unbearable.
How were they supposed to get out of here?
Fes started crawling, pushing Micah and the others in front of him, bringing up the rear as they worked to escape.
The woman began to make a swirling motion with her hands, and Fes jumped to his feet, sweeping the daggers out in front of him. With them, he somehow cut through the heat in the air, and Micah and the others reached the doorway where Alison, Indra, and the rest of the rebels waited.
“Go. I’ll meet you.”
Dragon Bones (The Dragonwalker Book 1) Page 20