by Pat Esden
I pulled Chase up. “We have to go.”
He blinked at me, his eyes coming into focus. “What happened?”
“I’ll tell you on the way. Mother, my dad, and Jaquith are waiting in a shelter. We’ve got an hour at the most to get to a weak point.”
Filled with renewed energy, I found one of my castoff veils and used it to quickly bind a gash in his arm. I wiped off the worst of the blood from around his nose and eyes. It wasn’t much, but hopefully it would let him see and breathe easier. Then I gathered up his scimitar and scabbard, and helped him strap them on. I retrieved two of his knives from the sand and gave those to him as well. But my stomach tightened as I reached for the moonstone knife hidden within the folds at my waistline. He had changed. I was certain of that. My gut told me he was a Death Warrior now. But I’d only guessed what that meant.
Ignoring a whisper of guilt, I let my hand drop away from the moonstone knife and fall loosely at my side. I loved Chase. My blood sang from what had happened between us. I couldn’t believe he wasn’t okay. He looked sane. Still, I couldn’t afford to take chances with this knife, not now.
Jogging close together, we hurried down from the low dune we were on and started up the next one. As we neared the peak, the loose sand pulled against our feet. But the wind had died down, only faint gusts remaining. When we reached the summit, I stopped to catch my breath and gestured toward the outline of the shelter below, a crisscross of gray and black in the predawn light. “They’re right over—”
My voice died in my throat.
A troop of a dozen or more dark-robed figures were moving away from the darkness along the fortress’s outer wall and toward the shelter, their unsheathed swords glinting in the last of the moonlight.
CHAPTER 28
Respect strength, but honor the victor.
—Djinn saying
“Run to the shelter. Warn them,” Chase shouted, unsheathing his scimitar.
Fear burned inside me. Even if he was a Death Warrior, a dozen men were too many for him to fight. I grabbed his wrist, fingers digging in. “No, you’ll get killed.”
His eyes trapped mine. “Don’t worry. I was trained for this.”
The confidence in his voice said he was determined. But one hand swept his branded collarbone, a motion that told me he didn’t fully believe it himself. Sure he’d been raised to be a Death Warrior, told what he’d be capable of if he survived the change. But knowing and wielding skills were two different things. Still, did we have a choice?
“Okay,” I said. “But be careful, use your head.”
He nodded and then charged down the dune toward them. With each step, he sliced the air with his scimitar. In response, the sand sprayed up all around him, like music rising to the strokes of a conductor’s baton. He pivoted his scimitar and the sand coiled into a dust devil, gathering size and strength, circling around him like a blood-red shield.
I raced for the shelter, the whine of Chase’s dust devil echoing in my ears. I could barely see anything through the flying sand, but I found the shelter just as Dad and everyone were coming out from it.
“We have to help Chase,” I shouted. My pulse drummed in my head. Adrenaline screamed for me to fight. Maybe I’d die. But I wouldn’t let Chase go down alone.
“What’s going on?” Dad said.
A cloaked figure dashed out from the swirling sand, and then another, running toward us fast.
I pulled the moonstone knife, ready for their attack. But Jaquith leapt at me, pinning my arms behind my back. The figures darted by us and I realized my mistake. Not guards. Not berserkers or even men.
“They’re teenagers!” Mother screeched. “Boy-slaves.”
“Oh my God.” I gasped. My throat was raw from the battering sand, the taste of blood tainting my mouth. Chase had attacked them, intent on slaughter. But they weren’t warriors. They were boys in training. What if he realized too late—what if he killed . . .?
A lanky boy flew past. He was twelve years old, maybe thirteen at the most.
“Stay strong! Stay proud! Stay free!” Jaquith yelled after him, as the boy careened up the dune Chase and I had come down from.
The boy’s voice echoed back. “Stay strong! Stay proud! Stay free!”
The whirling sand thickened, wailing and darkening the air around us. My gut told me Chase was causing this and that the real storms had passed. But my head reeled with confusion and fear as the outline of a younger boy hurtled by, heading up the dune and deeper into the desert.
The cycloning whine silenced.
The sand around us settled.
But when I glanced toward where the boys had gone, all I could see was a dark wall of sand, like a thundercloud moving up over the dune, shielding the boys from sight and rushing deeper into the desert.
“What the hell was that?” Dad said.
“They’re escaping.” Jaquith gestured at the vanishing sand cloud. “If they can get to the mountains, they’ll be outside Malphic’s territory. Some have made it.”
My heart lightened for a second. Then a sick feeling chilled me to the core. Chase. He’d attacked teenagers, boy-slaves like he’d once been. When we’d first spotted them, I’d seen at least a dozen. But I’d only spotted a few getting away.
I turned, searching for Chase.
He stood on a dark-red hummock halfway between us and the outer wall. His scimitar hung limply in his hand. His shoulders were slouched, his expression grim.
Shoving the moonstone knife back into the fold of my sarong, I sprinted toward him, not knowing what to say, not daring to look anywhere other than his face out of fear of what I might see.
“I almost killed them,” he mumbled when I got up to him.
Almost killed? I glanced around, peering intently into the half-light. There weren’t any bodies. Not even a cast-aside sword or any sign of a battle.
Pride swelled in my chest. I stroked my fingers down his face. “But you didn’t. Instead you created that sand cloud to hide them—like a smoke screen. You didn’t hurt them. You helped them escape.”
His fingers cupped my chin, lifting it until our eyes met. His voice quaked. “I almost killed them.”
“But you didn’t,” I repeated firmly. “You didn’t even come close.”
CHAPTER 29
The fact of the matter is that guilt, love, revenge . . . and all their ilk affect the nature of the human body, both the mental and the biochemical aspects. In turn, this can dramatically alter a spell or experiment, for better or worse.
—General notes on alchemy
Hector Freemont
Dad , Jaquith, and Mother hurried over to us.
Mother pressed her palm against Chase’s face. “Are you okay?”
“Sure he is.” Jaquith cuffed Chase’s bicep. “Tough as iron, this one.”
“Yeah, I’m fine,” Chase said. But his voice was choked with emotion and, even in the dim light and through the scruff of his beard and the dirt on his skin, it was impossible to not see how battered he was. He nodded at the goose egg on Jaquith’s forehead. “You don’t look so good yourself, brother.”
Jaquith touched the lump. “I owe this to that hexad, Lotli. I’ll tell you about it and a lot more, once we get out of this place.”
Chase frowned. “Hexad? What the hell is that?”
“You really don’t know?” Jaquith said. He waved off the question. “I guess I might not know either, if I were still living in the warrior barracks instead of hanging around the magi’s library. Trust me. Hexads are dangerous.”
Dad cleared his throat. “I hate to interrupt this reunion. But does anyone have a suggestion about how we’re going to get back into the fortress? We need to get to a weak point, and fast.” He cocked his head at the outer wall a few yards away from us. It was solid stone, sheer, and four or more stories high.
I glanced right and left as far as I could see. There was no entryway or carpet, nothing to indicate where we’d come out from the cell. But we had to be i
n the right area. Last night, it hadn’t taken us long to walk to the shelter.
I reached for my egg pendulum. “I can probably locate—”
Dad’s hand landed on my shoulder, silencing me.
Chase was walking stiffly toward the wall, one hand out in front of him like a TV version of a sleepwalker. Of course, it was his cell and designed to give him access to and from the desert.
He reached the wall and pressed his hand against the stone. His fingers, then his entire arm vanished through the wall. He withdrew his arm and smiled at us. “I’ll go first and make sure the cell’s empty.”
“Wait a minute,” Jaquith said. “I’m betting the rest of us aren’t going to be able to enter that easily, like the way we can’t get back up the berserker quarters’ stairwell without the hexad and her flute.” He pushed his hand against the wall right where Chase had and the stones remained impenetrable.
Dad tried with the same result and so did Mother.
I raked my hair back from my face. There had to be a way. I nibbled my bottom lip, thinking. Earlier, when Lotli had escaped from Chase’s cell, she’d used her flute to get through the carpet and into the tunnel. For all practical purposes, there had been no difference between what she did then and when she opened the veil between realms. So logic told me, if Malphic’s knife could open a weak point in the veil like her flute, then it might do other similar things. Such as getting us through this warded entryway.
I stepped up to the wall and drew the moonstone knife from my waistline.
Chase eyed me. “I was wondering why you were hiding that from me.”
Not wanting to tell him the real reason, I faked a smile. “You have to watch out for us Freemonts,” I said teasingly. I glanced toward Mother. “Plus, it seems I might just have inherited a few talents from the other side of my family.”
Closing my eyes, I took a deep breath. I had Malphic’s knife, but I needed the incantation that went with it. I couldn’t believe there wasn’t one. I just needed to remember the words.
I visualized Moonhill’s gallery and from there forced my mind back to the day of Mother’s kidnapping. Malphic must have said something when he opened the weak point.
* * *
“No,” Mother says, backing away. There are broad-shouldered men all around her. Dark men, like black paper cutouts. Black like shadows. “Stay away!” she screams.
“Mama!” I shout, running toward them. The glint of moonstone and a knife’s blade flashes in my face as Malphic wraps himself around her. A heartbeat later, he vanishes, turning into smoke, a whirling tornado of shadows. I can’t see Mama anymore. Just darkness, as thick and real as congealing blood.
* * *
Malphic. Mother. The knife. But no incantation.
Frustration balled my fingers into fists. I ran the memory through my head again to be sure. Not a single word, though logic screamed that Malphic must have whispered something. A short incantation. Something easy to remember.
Frantic, I swung toward Jaquith. “Ask Zea what words go with the knife. I know you’re not that connected yet. But if he senses your desperation, maybe his personality can come forward or something. He’s a magi. He must know how to open doorways and veils.”
Jaquith’s gaze met mine. He shook his head. “It’s way too soon. Even if I could let him come through, you wouldn’t understand his whistles. Things could get a lot worse.”
I gritted my teeth to keep from screaming at him to at least try.
“I’ll figure something out,” Dad said.
But I barely heard his voice. Another one whispered inside me. You know it, the voice insisted. You know the words. Look for them.
It didn’t make sense. I hadn’t heard what Malphic said. I couldn’t find it inside me any more than Jaquith could get through to Zea. I hadn’t heard—
Or maybe I had.
My mother’s kidnapping wasn’t the only time I’d witnessed Malphic open the veil.
“Don’t worry,” Chase said, glancing up toward the top of the wall as if he were contemplating climbing. “I’m not going to let you get stuck out here, like a bunch of trapped animals.”
Trapped. The word sang in my mind. Back in the harem gallery it had been the memory of being trapped in the decanter that had given me the words I needed to command the shadow-genie. Maybe. Just maybe if I followed that memory one step further, to just before Malphic ripped open the veil and hurled me out of the realm. That had to be it. There wasn’t any other time.
* * *
Through the decanter’s dark glass, I see Chase, a blue fluorescing outline as much liquid fire as man, fighting the two genies glowing just like him. Tears wet my cheeks.
Malphic reaches to his sash and draws his knife. There is a flash of moonstone as he raises it upward into the air.
* * *
Not letting the memory slip from my mind, I lifted the moonstone knife and pointed it inward until its tip rested against the fortress wall. In my head, the memory of Malphic’s voice bellowed. And I repeated his words one at a time, each inflection, each rise and fall of my voice mimicking his: “What tears also opens. What burns also builds.”
I sliced the knife downward.
Blue light flashed and the wall unzipped like a tent flap. Electricity snapped around the opening, white sparks crackling.
Chase rushed in first, his scimitar at the ready. The rest of us followed close behind. No sooner were we all through and into the empty cell than the opening sealed shut and vanished.
We sprinted into the other room. Chase grabbed his discarded boots off the floor and tugged them on. Then I used the knife again to get us out of the cell and into the tunnel. My voice was stronger now, my confidence branching inside me, energizing every portion of my being.
Chase led us to the left, deeper into the tunnel’s labyrinth. According to him, it would take us to the chamber with the fight cage in the middle of it. I shuddered at the thought of seeing the room again, at the memory of having to leave him with Lotli and at what he had endured in there, fighting against the change and killing to stay alive. But Chase insisted that the fight cage chamber was the fast route to Malphic’s inner sanctum and we needed to go there. It was the closest weak point. A place I knew I could use the knife to get us back home.
The tunnel grew dark as we hurried, only a few torches still burning. Berserkers hammered on their carpeted doorways as we passed. Their screeches and howls boomed down the narrow passageway, drowning out the clip of our footsteps and the huff of our breaths. Even if every guard was busy hunting for Lotli, there was no way they could miss the riot of noise rising from this place.
Dad slid his arm around Mother’s waist, helping her keep up. Jaquith took his longer whip from his belt. We came to a short set of warded steps and once again I sliced an opening for us. Five yards more, and the mouth of the tunnel brightened. The fight cage chamber, no doubt.
Chase glanced back and put a finger to his lips, hushing us. We slowed to a tiptoe, creeping forward along the wall.
A deep voice echoed out from the chamber ahead, a guard most likely. “I wish those maggot-brained berserkers would shut up. All that noise, you’d think it was the full moon.”
“You don’t think that bitch with the flute circled back around?” another one said.
Chase motioned to Jaquith. He slipped by me and up to Chase. The two of them whispered, then slunk forward on their own, no more than shadowy outlines, rippling down the last yards of the dark tunnel toward the brighter chamber.
A jittery sense of terror and anticipation jumped inside me. I blocked out the noise of the berserkers behind us and focused on the sounds coming from ahead. There was the scrape of chair legs. Footsteps moved across the fight cage chamber toward the tunnel. Something swished, like a sword leaving a scabbard.
“Did you smell something?” one of the guards said.
I felt myself pale. Oh my God. Dad. Jaquith had thought he smelled bad, so had the Hulk when he stopped us on the way t
o the main palace. I sniffed my arm and caught a faint whiff of cabbage, lanolin, and cloves. The Methuselah oil. Whatever Kate and Olya had done to make it scent-free wasn’t working anymore. With their superior sense of smell, it would only be a second before the guards knew someone unfamiliar was here.
The guards’ outlines appeared in the mouth of the tunnel, muscles tensed, ready for a fight.
Chase sprang from the shadows. Crack. In one motion, he broke the first guard’s neck. He slammed the second guard in the kidney. Jaquith snapped his whip, jerking the second guard to his knees. Light flashed off Chase’s scimitar and the guard slumped to the floor dead, blood gurgling from his throat.
I scuffed back, my stomach lurching at the swift brutality of what they’d done. But my shock vanished in an instant. This wasn’t a random act of violence or uncontrolled. They were both warriors. They’d spent years in the training yard. I’d attacked Culus and his shadows minion to save my dad when he’d been possessed. I’d attacked the guy at the yacht club. The truth was, I’d have helped Chase and Jaquith now, if they’d needed it.
Whomp! Whomp! Whomp! The throb of the berserkers beating on their doors amplified, followed by more screams and howling.
“Hurry.” Chase waved us forward.
We raced past the guards’ bodies and into the chamber. A woman in warrior leathers crouched inside the fight cage, her face and hair clotted with blood. She snarled and hissed as we ran for the stairs. Halfway up, we met another guard, a lealaps with the face of a wolf. He leapt at Chase, claws like daggers. Chase ducked. I reached for my bags of salt. They were gone. I’d thrown them all at the shadow-genie. “Salt,” I yelled to Dad.
His hand dove into his robe, too slow. The lealaps spun away from Chase, his eyes narrowing on Mother.
Fuck this.
I yanked the moonstone knife from my waistline and threw myself at the lealaps, stabbing him in the side. Once. Twice. Jaquith was on top of him now, his dagger buried in the lealaps’s stomach, one jerk upward and the lealaps collapsed and tumbled down the stairs.