The Tide of Ages (The Mira Brand Adventures Book 2)

by Robert J. Crane

  “Oh—” Carson started. “Um—where are—”

  Heidi snatched the umbrella from my belt—the metal loop attached to it pinged off yet again—and shook it. Extending the spear’s tip high above, it was just tall enough to rear out of the maze’s walls.

  “Here! Now tell us where to go, damn it!”

  “Right! It’s, uh—okay, two rights, then a left, and you’re taken to the first building. I—I can’t guide you while you’re in there, but you should come out … somewhere on the right, from what I can see.”

  “Good enough.” Heidi slapped the spear back into my grasp—I shrank it back into its glamoured form to make navigating tight corners feasible—and then we bolted in the direction Carson had instructed.

  “Give it up, Brand!” Borrick shouted from across the way. “You’re simply outmatched. Fitting revenge for stealing my chalice, wouldn’t you say?”

  “Twenty quid says it’s our chalice,” I muttered, skating a corner thinly and almost smashing into Heidi in the process, “seeing as it’s sitting in the corner of our hideout.” She gave me a rude look, and we charged on.

  “It’s not your chalice!” Carson shouted at him, as though he had to answer for me when he didn’t hear me challenge back.

  “If I wanted to hear from imbeciles who can’t keep their hands off things that don’t belong to them, I’d be speaking to you, not her,” Borrick griped.

  “What do you mean?”

  “My ring, fool,” he retorted. “Though I’ve heard your handsiness doesn’t cease there. Almost walked out of a shop in Ostiagard with some things that didn’t belong to you just this past week, eh?” Borrick huffed, a sound like a horse exhaling that was loud and fierce enough even to make its way to our ears here in the maze. “BumblingYank thief.”

  “How did he know about Benson’s?” I asked.

  But even as Heidi answered, I’d already put it together.

  “That damned elephant thing tipped him off.” She gritted her teeth. “I told Carson not to just bandy our business about willy-nilly.”

  If he’d been with us, he’d have been in for an earful. But currently he was yelling some retort back at Borrick—and now, turning the last corner, Heidi and I found our way to the entrance of the first strange building constructed in the maze. We pushed through the opening—

  Suddenly, the world was dark. Even the light coming from behind us was dampened to practically nothing, as though as invisible black-out veil had been draped across the entrance.

  We skidded to a stop.

  “Great,” I murmured.

  “Follow the wall,” Heidi told me.

  I reached out for it, easing forward with painfully slow steps.

  Even the noises from outside had ceased. Not a word of Carson and Borrick’s bickering came to us. It was just me and Heidi, together in near-pitch darkness, hands against frigid stone that was almost unnaturally cold, breathing in an imprinted scent left by the sea that had long since abandoned this place …

  Heidi knocked into me from behind.

  I hissed. “Careful!”

  “I can’t see!”

  “I mean with the cutlass. You just stabbed me in the side!”

  “Well then, watch where you’re going—”

  “How can I watch where I’m going when it’s pitch dark—”

  “OW!”

  I’d trodden on her toes.

  Good. Made up for the poke she’d given me with the cutlass. Not a deep one; there was no real force behind it, and in any case I’d flinched away on contact. But there’d be at least a small spot of blood on my t-shirt when we were out of here.

  “Sorry,” I lied.

  “You don’t sound it.”

  “Yeah, well, I just got stabbed by the weapon I gave you.”

  “Maybe next time—”

  Before she could say something she’d … probably not regret, but I could dream … I cut her off. “Can we just shut up a minute? We need to get back out of here.”

  “Fine.”

  “There’s a fork here, I think.” At least, I could feel a place the path shifted. And if I stepped far enough across, leaving one hand on that corner to keep my orientation, I could feel another wall of stone start up again. Definitely a hole cut here.

  “Follow it then,” Heidi said.

  “I don’t know if we’re going the right way now, though. I’ve lost my bearings.”

  Heidi harrumphed. Skirting past me, her hands ran across my back as she used me as a guidepost, then down my arm to the opening—and then her clipped steps, themselves muted, were heading in that direction.

  “Wait!” I said, and followed.

  “For Borrick to get this key? No thanks. I’ve had enough of dawdling this past month.”

  “I’m not—I haven’t been dawdling!”

  Heidi didn’t argue; instead, she said, “I think there’s another fork here.”

  “So take it,” I grumbled in my best impersonation of her.

  “I am. I was just telling you so you don’t whine at me for leaving you standing like a stick in the mud.”

  I gritted my teeth. If I knew how much space was around us, I’d be sorely tempted to extend Decidian’s Spear and give her a little revenge poke with it. Just a really little one. Enough to draw blood. But small, and somewhere incidental, like the buttock. She’d have trouble sitting for a few days, I’d grin every time I saw her try, everything would be great.

  After another turn—I was well and truly lost now, no clue of the direction we were facing, if we were retracing our steps, destined to follow the same forking circle through this building until the universe died—a thin spot of light bled from up ahead.

  “Exit,” Heidi said and lunged toward it.

  I followed, hoping she was right. The other option was that it was our entrance—and we were back to square one.

  But we blundered out and—

  “Mira, Heidi, watch out!”

  Carson’s voice came from closer. I was confused—and then, from a path on the left, they came, like a flood down the ancient passages of the temple, but with deadly urgency, knives raised high:

  The marachti.

  10

  Wiry, elongated and yellowish, Borrick’s marachti were not much taller than I was. But where the orcs Borrick had previously retained wore thick armor covered in protruding spikes, these creatures were bare to the waist, bundled with cloth below. Their frames were pure muscle, like a snake’s—and the expressions on their serpentine faces were menacing leers.

  Unlike Heidi and I, they were ready to pounce. They leapt as one—

  Heidi was already swinging. Feruiduin’s Cutlass was extended, glinting the temple’s faint light. The blade sailed, splitting skin and spraying ice-blue blood. The marachti she hit shrieked and squirmed backward.

  The other two were heading for me.

  I shook out the spear to full length, brought it around—

  The one I jabbed at dodged. Not his full body, but a part of the torso; it seemed to curve out of the way, like a cartoon character avoiding its own spiky fate. I gasped in surprise—

  Heidi swung again. A backward dodge from the creature she targeted meant she missed—

  It swung a fist, and Heidi yelped as she ducked, and it slammed the stone behind.

  Then it retracted, and her eyes met mine in the instant before it slammed toward her again—

  “RUN!” she cried.

  She burst into a sprint. I followed—and Carson, who somehow was racing along the wall above us, began to shout directions again.

  We forked away, and he disappeared behind the edge—

  The two remaining marachti pursued. Their legs were almost too stout for them, and yet somehow they kept pace. Growled epithets came our way in a language I didn’t understand.

  Heidi did, though, and she yelled back, “And your mother, too!”

  “What are those things?” I cried.

  “The bad guys, clearly,” said Heidi, diverting
rightward. I scrambled after her. “Muscle for hire from their world. They often work construction. This lot’s doing something a bit different.”

  “Not really,” I said, and she shot me a confused look. “They’re in demolition—of people.”

  Heidi snorted, and we hurtled around the next corner, her in the lead, me following.

  Then suddenly I wasn’t following.

  Decidian’s Spear slammed stone as I took the corner too short, and I gasped as it collided with my stomach.

  Heidi turned. Her eyes flashed.

  “Mira—”

  I spun—

  A fist slammed the side of my face.

  I gasped. Decidian’s Spear held, but the sheer force pushed me over it. The world spun, upside-down and then right again—

  Then they were bearing down on me from the other side of the spear.

  Heidi doubled back around and leapt in, swinging—

  One of the marachti dodged it. But the other was too slow. The blade sliced the side of its face. Only skin deep—but ice-blue beaded, and it hissed, slitted eyes widening above a maw of unevenly spaced teeth.

  I yanked the spear back and brought it around. I jabbed—but another expert curve of the body allowed my quarry to escape. And then it was coming in again, this time for Heidi as she recovered from a missed swing of her own—

  “Leave her alone!”

  I stabbed at it. It ducked—but the spear sailed into the webbing between its thumb and forefinger, pinning it against the maze wall. It screamed—no, full on shrieked—

  “Move!” said Heidi, dragging me along again. “Quick! That’s a rallying cry!”

  “So more are coming?”

  “Yes!”

  “Two more rights,” Carson yelled from far behind. “Then you’re at another building—and then it’s the home stretch!”

  “Stop them!” Borrick shouted.

  “That was your plan last time!” I shouted at him. No point in holding back now, given there were marachti on our tails already. “I’d consider a different one if I were you, something like, ‘Go home, pour a nice brandy, and reconsider being a wretched git seeing as I’m a disappointment to everyone in my life.’”

  He ignored me, but the glee that had been present in his voice earlier now gave way to a nervous quaver of anger. “Do not lose me the key.”

  Right once, then twice—

  From another opening, another trio of marachti poured forth.

  “Damn it,” Heidi huffed. She shuddered to a stop in front of me, Feruiduin’s Cutlass drawn.

  “Behind you!” Carson called.

  I turned on my heel, swinging the spear up and over my head so as not to get it caught again between the walls. The two in pursuit were almost caught up. A breadcrumb trail of sorts lay behind them: droplets of blue against the bottle-green stone of the maze. The streak on the face of one of the creatures was particularly stark against its jaundiced skin.

  I pushed the spear out in front of me, warning them not to come any closer else they’d get the pointy end.

  They stopped. But the one with the sliced face said something, eyes fiery. The lip movements necessary might have been comical if not for the menacing tone of its voice.

  “We need to get out of here,” Heidi said over my shoulder. “We can’t fight off—GET BACK!” She lunged with the cutlass, leaving my back for a moment before pressing against it again.

  “We don’t have a choice,” I muttered back.

  Heidi grunted. “The key—”

  “Is no good to us if our skulls are smashed in by a bunch of contortionist snake people!”

  One of the marachti behind me clearly made another move, because Heidi swung again. The air whistled, but the blade didn’t connect.

  She hissed, “This is my chalice, Mira. I didn’t block you in your pursuit.”

  “I’m not blocking you now!”

  A moment’s pause. Then: “Good. I was hoping you’d say that.”

  And suddenly she burst away from me. She belted a battle-cry, darting out and swinging. I spun in shock, to see the marachti dodge back—and then Heidi was past, hurtling to the right and into the next building-like structure.

  “HEIDI!”

  Two marachti sprinted after her—leaving me with three, one ahead, and two now to my rear.

  I had just time to think, I cannot believe you did that! before—

  They flew at me, lightning quick as though they were springing from coiled tails (even though they didn’t have tails. They should have, though).

  I ducked, tripping backward over my own feet. I swung the spear around—but the reach was too far, and one of the marachti was well within the radius of its swing. He—the one whose hand I’d pinned—swung into my ribcage. I tried to dodge, same as they had. But my body was not even close to that flexible, and the blow connected full force.

  I choked back a gasp, the air fleeing my lungs like riders bailing out of a rank carriage on the afternoon tube.

  Another swing came in from the left, catching me in the eyebrow. I grunted and my head flung back, slamming the maze wall.

  Carson was shouting something that sounded an awful lot like “fun” or “gun”—damn, we were in a mess of trouble if they had a gun—or …

  RUN.

  I forced the fog to clear. Somehow I’d still been moving, my feet working on autopilot. They’d done a good enough job for me, pushing me away from the wall and toward the building. But the throng was still coming at me—

  I lurched with the spear, dragging it back and slicing the air—

  The marachti with the sliced face wasn’t quick enough. The spear’s tip ran across its cheek, turning the cut into a cross of blue blood. It reeled backward, hissing, just moments before the spear cut across its eye—and as it backpedaled, it grabbed out for its compadres, to brace—

  It gave me just enough breathing room to run.

  I turned and sprinted. The spear I kept with the tip pointed behind me, right until the last moment as I passed through the building’s door, through that dark, silent veil—

  Then I shrank it to the umbrella and found a wall with my free hand. And as fast as I could, fingers tracing the wall, I worked my way through. Taking the first turning I came to each time, I prayed it wouldn’t lead me right into their path again, that I would be ejected close to our prize, whatever it might be—

  A hiss seemed to reverberate around me. It must have come from behind, but in the enclosed space it bounced off the walls, coming at once from every direction. The darkness was claustrophobic, closing in around me. Every sound was magnified, down to my own breathing, my own hammering heartbeat.

  I increased my pace, feet shuffling over the cracked and aged stone floors. Around a corner … following the wall … then another—

  Light.

  I sprinted at it, bursting free—

  Center. Dais. Orb—the key. There was a thirty-foot stretch of maze direct to it—and the fight going on between Heidi and the two marachti who had pursued her.

  “Heidi!” I shouted.

  She glanced my way. Then— “Look out!”

  I pivoted.

  Two marachti—the unscathed, and the one with the bleeding fist—had spilled out behind me. They were caught off-guard, momentary confusion on their faces—

  Decidian’s Spear leapt to its full length. I swung it low—and slammed the shaft against those stubby legs of theirs as I put everything into my attack. They landed in a heap, scaly arms akimbo as they struggled against one another.

  From behind them: the last marachti. Eyes blazing, it stepped out from the building, found me—and stumbled on its companions, planting its face into the stone floor in a spray of blue blood as it crumpled its nose with the force of its landing.

  Breathing room.

  I ran for Heidi—for the orb.

  Heidi slashed—Ice-blue blood sprayed from two throats, owners distracted by the commotion—

  Behind, the sliced-faced marachti roared an
alien cry, and scrabbled over his fallen brethren—

  On the opposite side of the central room, more marachti were suddenly appearing from around a corner, summoned in slow-motion—

  “The key!” I shouted—and even that too seemed to have slowed to a crawl—

  Heidi was frozen for one moment, weighing the marachti opposite as they surged forward—

  Then she darted for it. Cutlass in one hand, blade forward, she leapt with hand outstretched—

  A marachti’s fingers extended from the opposite side, long, knuckles bulbous and bony—it connected—

  Then the blade flicked. There was an ungodly howl, and the limb vanished, replaced by a fountain of blood.

  And then the orb was in Heidi’s hand.

  11

  “IT’S MINE!” Heidi shouted. “I HAVE IT!”

  At the same moment, a rumbling noise filled the air. The dais descended. Heidi leapt back, though still on guard, with the cutlass pointed at the marachti whose progress had been momentarily stalled by their companion’s loss of arm—

  I joined her side.

  I began, “You—”

  Heidi cut me off before I could articulate a reprimand. Eyes over my shoulder, she said, “Company!”

  I turned. The pursuing marachti was nearly on me. Behind him came the two I’d tripped.

  I jabbed with Decidian’s Spear.

  “Back off,” I warned, “unless you want to be sanctified.”

  Heidi groaned. “Holiness? Really?”

  The marachti paused. Didn’t understand the words, probably, but did understand the intent.

  Eyes on mine, hateful, it gabbled something short and harsh.

  “Yeah, you too, buddy.” I made a rude gesture.

  The dais in the room’s center had vanished now, replaced with an empty hole where it had once stood. It curved down and out of sight, disappearing back the way we’d come.

  “Our route out of here?” I asked.

  “One way to find out.”

  And with a last parting swing, Heidi dropped into the hole and disappeared.

  “It’s done, Borrick!” I called. “Bad luck!”

  He said one word only, sour and clipped: “Retreat.”

  One marachti shouted something back.