Embers of Darkness (Through the Ashes Book 2)

by J. A. Culican

  She stared at her cousin in disbelief, then heard Jaekob's deep, tight voice say, "It was my understanding that you were joining us on this mission. That was half the reason I accepted your ridiculous story in the first place, talking about how you escaped, how they practically let you out. I have half a mind to—"

  "Only I know where in Fort Washington the sword is," Hawking said, interrupting Jaekob and sounding suddenly tense, "and if you kill me, I am obviously not going to tell you where."

  The two men stared at each other and seconds ticked by, neither one looking away. Bells wished Hawking hadn't jumped to that conclusion, but he had, and she didn't see any way Hawking would go with them now.

  Before one of them decided to do something stupid—probably Jaekob—she said in her most calm and steady voice, "Relax, Hawking, you know Jaekob didn't mean anything of the sort. You're a free man, and no one is going to change that unless it's the elves. I would just like to point out, though, that Jaekob and I are going with or without you. We have a much better chance of getting the sword and getting out alive with you by our side." She turned to look at Jaekob and nodded slowly, practically willing him to agree.

  The dragon let out a deep breath and, still looking at Hawking, gave him a faint nod. "Bells is right. You've done far too much for us for me to even think about trying to stop you if you choose to leave. She's also right that we have a better shot if you come with us. Either way, the choice is yours, as it always has been."

  Another tense two seconds passed before Hawking leaned back on the couch, the tension visibly leaving his body. "Thank you. One likes to be appreciated for the things they do for others, certainly, and I understand your position, as well. Much depends on your success including our safety and the safety of our families. That's the only reason I'm conflicted about the choice. Otherwise, I would have been gone already in the middle of the night while you two were… talking."

  Bells thought she heard a slight pause between the last two words but Jaekob still looked tense, so she let it go without making any comment.

  "Well, then. It seems I should ask you to please tell us more about where to find the Sword of Fire before we head out, in case you decide to leave us." His voice was calm and steady, but with the connection they shared, she could almost hear him thinking, 'before you leave us in the middle of the night as you threatened to.'

  That was her cousin he was talking about, but however close and friendly they had become, he was still a dragon and a prince at that, so once again, she said nothing. Besides, she told herself, getting between these two at the moment would probably get them both more riled up than they already were.

  Instead, she said, "That's actually a good idea whether you come with us or not. It's a dangerous road there. Anything could happen to any of us along the way, even if you do come."

  "Of course. I'll tell you everything I was told about where the sword is, certainly before we leave. In the meantime, why don't you two finish whatever meager breakfast you have, and we can talk about which way to go to get there while you do that." He paused, then reached behind him and pulled out a folded-up piece of colored paper. "I have a map. "

  Bells grinned, sensing tension flow out of the room, and took another bite of her disgusting, dry, human-made granola bar.

  Bells walked behind Jaekob as they headed northeast along I-276 just past the little crossroads town of Plymouth Meeting, now burned to the ground and rebuilt, much like her own village.

  As they traveled, they stayed off the road to avoid the occasional travelers using the humans' paved roadway. It was hard to imagine that, once, that vast roadway they had called a freeway was packed with cars. Now, however, it was just a long strip of wasteland. Jaekob had commented that the roads of ancient Rome were much better after she had said how glad she was that it was beginning to break apart.

  She dwelled for a moment on whether he meant to cheer her up, agreeing that the roads would soon be gone, or if he'd been reminding her that not all human construction was so flimsy and some would last for millennia more. Or maybe it had just been an idle comment. Since that was the explanation that would be least upsetting, she chose to go with the latter.

  Jaekob looked up at the sun, which was not yet directly overhead. "We're almost there but it's only midmorning. We'll have to be much more careful from here on out."

  Indeed. Bells had been feeling her tension rising almost subconsciously for the last few minutes. Her thoughts had been distracted by all the wonderful plants and bugs and furry little creatures, which was pretty much a fae stereotype, but she didn't care. It was a stereotype for a reason, in the case of fae. But once Jaekob broke her from her reverie, she became all too aware of her own rising tension.

  "Remember, if we see any of their warriors on patrol or just passing by, don't kill them,” she said. “If one of them escaped and raises an alarm somehow, then as the humans say, we are all toast."

  Hawking said, "You mean, as the humans said."

  Bells thought she could hear a deep sadness in his voice, but without reading his aura—and she had no reason to violate his privacy at the moment—there was no way she could be certain. She almost asked but thought better of it.

  Up ahead, the high, patchy, mid-succession scrubs and bushes gave way to an older established forest stretching north to south. She smiled, thinking that Jaekob might assume that was an old forest up ahead, but a fae knew better. In fact, the fae rumor network would have led her to believe there were no old-growth forests in the entire region, but that couldn't be possible, not with the vast primeval forest that once covered nearly everything east of the Mississippi during colonial times.

  Still, she hadn't seen any old-growth patches since arriving on Earth. She said aloud, "See that forest up ahead, stretching north and south? The only time I ever see that outside of a park is along streams and rivers."

  Without turning around to look at her, Jaekob replied, "So, unless you can ask a friendly tree to grow us a bridge, we're going to get a little wet?"

  Behind her, Hawking chuckled. "Well, I'll ask, but trees don't usually like to grow sideways. Not unless they're suicidal trees."

  Jaekob laughed aloud, pretty much the first time she had heard him laugh at any of Hawking's usually subtle jokes.

  When they reached the forest's edge, the brief round of banter between them had raised her spirits remarkably, pushing aside her tension. The ancient fae saying, "Laughter is the best medicine," was, of course, true.

  A couple of minutes later, they found the stream. The map showed it had a very unusual name, which Bells couldn't pronounce. At first glance, it seemed to read, "Wise Chicken Creek," which was rather amusing until she realized she had just misread it.

  Jaekob said, "There may be a bridge a bit farther north, but I can pretty much guarantee you that it's guarded. When you said stream, I thought of something we might be able to simply wade through." He bent down to pick up a rock, then threw it side-armed. It passed over the twenty-foot-wide creek and out of sight among the trees on the far side.

  Bells said glumly, "The plants are telling me that this is just about the narrowest point around here. Looks like we're going to get more than a little wet." That thought did not appeal to her.

  "Well," Hawking said, "I don't mind, but if you want to keep dry, princess, maybe the dragon can throw you across like he did that rock."

  Bells scowled, and when Jaekob laughed, she had to clench her jaw from saying something rude. She didn't take jokes at her expense very well, but then again, the jokes she had heard for most of her life had been the cruel sort from the foreman before he gave her a beating. That wasn't her companions' fault, so she bit her tongue. "Well, let's get this over with. I just don't like the idea of walking in soaking wet shoes."

  Jaekob took off his thick-soled shoes, which were really more like slippers, and headed into the water holding them up over his head. After a couple of steps, the water got suddenly deeper and he plunged up to his waistline. It looked
like he had to struggle a little bit against the current, which of course got more rapid as the creek itself got narrower at the crossing point, but he didn't have too much trouble with it.

  Soon, he was climbing up the bank and out of the water on the far side. He turned and gave them a thumbs-up, a uniquely human gesture that looked funny coming from him, and called for them to cross over.

  Bells took a deep breath and looked at Hawking. "All right, here goes. Let's stay close in case one of us loses our footing, okay?"

  "Good idea. See you on the other side."

  The water felt cold, but after a couple of hours hiking, it was refreshing. She only lost her footing once, but Hawking helped her get her balance and she quickly got her feet back under where they belonged. In a minute, they were both trudging up the muddy creek bank to where Jaekob waited for them.

  Hawking asked, "Should we head a bit more east, first, or head north right away?"

  He checked his bag as he spoke, to see if it had gotten wet, but Bells didn't see any damage. She didn't even bother to look at her own carry bag. She didn't think it had gotten wet, but if it had, there was nothing she could do about it.

  She replied, "If I remember right from your map, this 'forest' only goes a couple hundred yards before it puts us back into scrubland. But if we follow this to the north, it takes us to the bridge, and Jaekob said it would definitely have guards."

  Hawking shook his head. "I'm sure Jaekob would say that we need to get as close as we can without being seen if we are to have any chance at the sword. But what if we head north and surprise the guards? We could take their uniforms."

  Jaekob pursed his lips but his eyes sparkled with a suppressed smile. He said, "I highly doubt the elves have bothered to put together pretty uniforms for all of their slave troops. We could probably take on whoever is at the bridge, since they are expecting trouble elsewhere and likely don't have half their army there. If they have more than two or three soldiers, though, one could easily escape. I think we're going to have to head northeast as planned and just go straight toward the camp. That's going to be our best shot, even if we have to crawl there on our bellies to stay hidden."

  Bells' eyes went wide. "On our bellies? That seems like an awful long way to crawl."

  Jaekob shrugged. "Do you have a better idea?"

  Hawking said, "Actually, I might." He paused long enough for them both to look at him, then continued. "I know there's no way that only one of us could convince all these plants to hide us and our tracks the entire way there, but it might be possible with the two of us working together. As they say back home, 'two heads work where one will fail.'"

  Bells' eyebrows shot up. That wasn't a bad idea at all. It wouldn't hurt to try, at least, so she nodded. "Let's give it a go. Even if we only make it part of the way there, it's better than crawling like a snake the entire way."

  Jaekob moved aside and she smiled at him as she and Hawking stepped out from the forest’s edge. "I sense so many seeds out there,” she said. “I don't think that even together we would have brought enough with us to do this, so that's good."

  Hawking didn't reply, instead closing his eyes. She felt his aura extend out into the field and she added her own to his, as well. The plants, talking through the mycorrhizae growing in the thin layer of topsoil, were at first hesitant to grow so fast and so large. They weren't individually intelligent in the way that Pures or even humans were, but collectively, they were sort of a hive mind. In the days before Europeans had arrived in the region and everything east of the giant Mississippi River was one vast, old-growth forest, that hive mind had been staggeringly powerful in its own way. It wasn't until people had chopped down almost every bit of that old forest that the fae had gone from merely second-class citizens to being virtual slaves in that region.

  Wrong time, wrong place—she pushed those thoughts aside and focused on charming the plants. With the two of them talking to the plants at once, her aura harmonized with Hawking's and the combination grew stronger than both of theirs added together would have been. The sum was greater than its parts.

  One by one, the plants changed their minds, and with them, so too did hundreds of thousands of seeds. Through her extended aura, she could feel the flora hive mind working out the absolute most efficient route for them to take, and across the open field they grew. As far as the eye could see, a narrow path appeared, fueled by the combined energy of the hive mind and the fae. The plants on either side of that path grew up in two parallel, winding rows.

  The three of them quickly made their way along the trail, walking in single file. The plants themselves chose the path that would take the least energy, in total, for them to grow, which also made it the easiest path to walk, and they made good time.

  Only once did they come close to being spotted, when a were patrol came across the newly grown obstacle up ahead of her. Still looking ahead toward the weres, Jaekob waived her and Hawking back and they backtracked as slowly as they could, trying to be silent. Weres had amazing hearing, after all.

  Just as she and the others had backed around a corner, the patrol rather noisily hacked its way through the dense shrubs, bushes, and still-young trees. Bells kept a close watch on their auras as she listened to them complain bitterly about the obstacle, but none of them stopped to think about why it was there now when it hadn't before.

  As the sounds of their growling voices faded with distance, Jaekob allowed his lethal dragon claws to slide back up into his hands, grimacing from the pain.

  After that, they waited a minute before they rushed across the narrow opening cut into their hidden path, and the rest of the way was easy going all the way to the turnpike just south of Fort Washington. Thereafter, the plants could no longer help them with the shallow soil and thick pavement ahead. It was time for the most dangerous part of the journey, and Bells felt her throat grow dry.

  As the three of them crouched behind cover at the very end of the trail, Jaekob looked at her intently for a long moment before saying, "It's okay to be afraid. Creation knows, I'm terrified."

  She highly doubted that, but if he was, he had a lifetime of training in overcoming that terror. She did not. "I'm glad I'm not the only one. You know, if we were built for this sort of thing, we would have risen up against the elves a long time ago."

  He grinned and then turned back toward the huge building.

  She glanced at Hawking, and found herself a little relieved that he looked as scared as she felt. He put his hand on her shoulder and said, "Yeah, I feel it, too. But if Jaekob can do it, you can do it, and I can do whatever you can do. We're in it together, so let's go do it together."

  "That sounds like something I would say,” Jaekob said. “And you're right, we need to get past this. We'll have to dart across the street, where our trail winds down to nothing, and make our way toward that big building—you see it, the burned-out one that used to be a hotel? —and then it will be time for me to lead and for you to follow. You got us here safely, both of you, and I'll get us the rest of the way. I only hope I lead the way half as well as you did."

  Bells let out a long breath, readying herself. "Yeah," she said, "I hope so, too."

  As he turned his head back and forth to use his keen dragon eyesight to look for movement, Bells sent her senses outward as far as she could, probing every shadow and every nook and cranny for the telltale aura of people or sounds of movement. She was able to probe almost to the back corner of the hotel and had just decided it looked clear when Jaekob said, "I don't see anyone. Nothing's moving out there that shouldn't be."

  Hawking nodded. He had probably also sent out his senses, though he looked terrified enough that she wasn't sure how effective his search could have been. It took a lot of concentration to do it right, and Bells had an almost unheard-of ability with it. It was a fact she had always kept hidden even from her family, in the hopes that the foreman and other elves never found out. They wouldn't have liked it.

  Jaekob, his voice husky and low, sai
d, "Go on three. One... Two... Three." He shot forward, legs churning, and she sprinted after him. She heard Hawking's heavy footsteps behind her but didn't turn to see whether he kept up. She just let her senses keep watch on him. He hadn't done any work harder than signing shipping manifests in years until this journey.

  The building seemed to grow larger in front of them as they approached it. Fueled by adrenaline, she was only barely aware that her legs were beginning to burn from the effort. It occurred to her that this moment, sprinting across a hundred yards of open terrain and exposed to anyone who might bother to look in her direction, was one of the most terrifying moments of her life.

  That thought had barely finished shooting through her mind when Jaekob reached the hotel wall, using both hands to bring him to a sudden stop before he ran into it face-first. That seemed like a good idea, and half a second later, she did the same. She crouched down next to Jaekob, panting heavily as Hawking also reached the wall. Jaekob's breath seemed regular and even, though. She was a little envious of that.

  Gasping for breath, Hawking whisper-shouted, "I can't believe I just did that." He was grinning like a fool but Bells understood the feeling. To any fae, that moment would be a story to pass down through generations, not just a fragment.

  After he spent a couple seconds looking around, turning his head the way he did when he was using his super-vision, Jaekob turned around to face them, crouched down like they were. He whispered, "We made it this far. After this, we're going to be in a forest of buildings."

  Her breath coming back to her, Bells said, "I think this must have been what the humans called a college. Look at all these buildings, and they are all so big. I've never seen anything like it, have you?"

  He nodded and said, "Yes, but I've done a lot of traveling. I think you are right, good guess. I can't really imagine so many soldiers wanting to live in this place, the way it stinks like humans, but I guess if I could get used to Philadelphia..."