Long, Dark Road

by Bianculli, Susan

  “I wonder if this was somehow supposed to be a part of his idea that fulfilled his bargain?” Dusk mused.

  I blinked. That one question snapped it all into focus for me. The reason why Frelanfur had brought us here. It was for us to use one city-state of Under-elves against another to rescue Arghen. Could the Conductivus of Kelsavax be bribed, or somehow swayed to help us to get the Conductivus of Chirasniv to release Arghen? What words could I use to get this to happen? There had to be a way, or Frelanfur wouldn’t have done this. Or so I hoped. I wracked my brain, trying to think about the things I had learned that last time I’d been in an Under-elven city-state, wondering what arguments I could use to get the Kelsavaxian Conductivus to help us free our friend. But if the Conductivus wasn’t convinced by whatever I could say, what would I do then? The image of Frelanfur giving me his dragon scale flashed into my mind—I could use the dragon scale to call him to me! The thought of having a dragon storm into an Under-elven city-state to save us Surfacers helped relax me a little.

  Meanwhile, the scouts’ argument had stopped dead at Dusk’s words. “What do you mean by that, Miscere?” the Under-elf leader demanded.

  Dusk shrugged. “All we can tell you, the non-Conductivus, is that a dragon dropped us off on the Surface somewhere above us, and told us that the path we followed would lead us to the Sub-realms and eventually to the reason why we’ve come underground in the first place.”

  To back up Dusk’s words, I dug through my leather belt box and whipped out as proof the tan, rainbow-sheened dragon scale Frelanfur had given me. The Duty Patrol scouts fell silent for a moment at the evidence of a dragon involved with our affairs.

  The one scout who was in favor of just killing us, Traxis, recovered herself and said snidely, “How do we know that is a real dragon scale? Or, if it is, that you did not just find it somewhere?”

  That earned her a wallop upside the back of her head by Quorik. It knocked her helmet a little forward onto her forehead.

  “Ouch! Why did you do that?” she demanded of him.

  The Duty Patrol leader looked at her with a closed expression on his face. “Perhaps you did not pay attention in the Monstrous Threats lectures, but I did. Dragon scales disintegrate when they leave the dragon unless treated in some way. Scales are only treated when they serve a purpose.”

  When did Frelanfur treat the scale? I wondered, keeping my face expressionless. I saw him pull it straight off his face and give it to me right away. But then I remembered that actually he’d blown it off the tip of his talon to sail it to my feet. His breath must have done something magically to it before it reached me.

  “What, exactly, is your business underground?” the Under-elf Sub-leader finally asked, regaining his mental balance enough to shoot a laser-like amber glare at all of us.

  I spoke up. “With all due respect, as the dragon is my business, I will tell the Conductivus everything. But no one else.”

  “You will tell me now,” he said threateningly, focusing on me.

  Ragar’s tan and black neck fur hackled as his tail lashed, and he said with a growl, “She will tell you nothing.”

  “Oh yes she will,” said Quorik, not deigning to look at the mountain-cat-elf as he pointed his wrist-mounted crossbow at Dusk.

  I could see the discolored tip of the poisoned arrow aimed with a steady pale-skinned hand at my friend. The amber-eyed Surface-elf inhaled sharply and froze.

  Angry, I stepped in front of Dusk. “I already told you I will tell the Conductivus everything! I’ve already overheard you saying among yourselves that if you don’t bring us to the Conductivus that we might say something from the half-life anyway. I can guarantee that will definitely happen.”

  “You do not know where our city-state is, Surfacer,” bluffed one of the male scouts.

  “Doesn’t matter. As long as I eventually find it and then tell the Conductivus everything, you’d be joining me soon after our little chat. Now are you going to take us to the Conductivus, or not?” Daringly, hiding my fear I was going about this all wrong, I reached up my hand towards the poisoned crossbow bolt and prayed to Caelestis that I was not overdoing it. Only a ghost of a response dignified my prayer, which concerned me.

  Quorik wavered a little, but before I touched the bolt he put away the miniature crossbow. “Fine,” he snarled. “You have just answered the question I had wondered about—if you were part of a special test set up by the Elders. You obviously are not. I would just kill you all now, except that you do know of the Conductivus, and so I am forced to honor your request.” He angrily strode up to me and leaned down so that his pale, scowling face was only inches from mine. “But know this: if the Conductivus deems that you have wasted his time, I will ask that you personally be given to me for Central Court use. I have always wanted to try my hand at Art,” he said, dropping his voice in menace.

  I gulped and didn’t reply. Well, at least I had a gender now—the Kelsavaxian Conductivus was a male and not a female like the one in Chirasniv. Quorik turned away, and I shot a quick look at Jason. His usually bronzed face definitely looked green, and no wonder; he’d both seen and had had a taste of what Under-elves called Art during the time he’d been the Chirasnivians’ captive. I smiled at him as reassuringly as I could, and Jason gave me a sickly one in return. A picture of Arghen in one of the small metal barred display cages flashed through my mind, and my smile dropped. I shook my head to get the image out, not wanting to think about what Arghen might be going through now in the name of Under-elf Art. But then my eyes widened involuntarily as an unwelcome thought occurred to me. What if I was wrong? What if my friend and mentor had already been summarily executed?

  Stop that, I told myself sharply. Remember that Quiris said she can still feel the presence of his prayers. Which means he is still alive, so that points to Central Court. Probably.

  The Under-elf leader motioned to his subordinates to gather up our packs and to mount up on their dranths, which had been standing with their usual lizard-like patience nearby. They left behind the rolled up flying carpet on the floor against the cavern wall. I wavered between whether or not to tell the Kelsavaxians it was magic and that they should bring it along. I ended up choosing “not” because I was afraid they would just destroy it or something in contempt. I shot a look at Dusk as the scouts gathered up the packs, wondering if I should I tell them about the iron. What if one of them got hurt on one of the bars and blamed us for not telling them? Dusk shook his head slightly, so I let it go and hoped for the best.

  Quorik, once the packs were settled then ordered us into ranks: Dusk and myself in front, Heather and Auraus in the middle, and Jason and Ragar in the back, with two mounted scouts in back of us, and the leader with the scout who’d wanted to kill us in the front. Though apparently no longer concerned that we were some sort of test, our hands were tied in front of us. The Duty Patrol then took us across the Cavern of Convergence to one of the tunnel openings. At the tunnel mouth were the usual Under-elven markings, and I looked at the wall closely as we passed to see if I could figure out which signs were the name of the city-state for which we were headed.

  “So, out of curiosity, which tunnel writing is the name of Kelsavax?” I asked the pair in front of me.

  “Quiet, prisoner!” the kill-happy Traxis said sharply, but Quorik begrudgingly pointed the appropriate signs out.

  “Why did you do that? Now they will be able to return!” the scout complained to him.

  The Sub-leader raised a white eyebrow at her. “Do you really think so poorly of our city-state defenses, and of our Conductivus, that such a thing would happen?”

  Traxis turned bright pink in the cheeks and shut her mouth with a snap. I grinned to myself because we had escaped from a city-state before—they just didn’t know it. A soft growl reached my ears and let me know that Ragar at least, and probably Jason, were bristling at being called prisoners. But, really, that was what we were—though it was more like prisoners on our terms instead of theirs. Sort
of.

  As we marched to Kelsavax along the rocky corridors, I kept an eye out for the wall writing each time we changed tunnels. I wanted to make sure I could recognize the city-state sign since this time we did not have Arghen with his knowledge of all things Under-elf. We walked for some time underground. After a while my walking got slower and more unsteady as I tired. Quorik, who had been looking over his shoulder at us from time to time, saw me careen in an almost drunken manner into Dusk as I tried to navigate a curve in the rocky tunnel, but my friend caught me and set me going straight again. The Sub-leader begrudgingly gave the order to stop a little further down the corridor, and I gratefully sat down right where I was. Jason’s hands encircled my shoulders from behind, and I was pulled backwards onto his lap. He looked as tired as I felt. I glanced over and saw that Heather leaned up against Ragar’s furry arms. Surprisingly to me, Dusk and Auraus hadn’t sought each other out, but I was too tired to figure out why.

  “We will rest until the next Darkening, and then we will set out again,” Quorik said authoritatively, squinting a look at the luminescent lichen plastered on the walls.

  “That’s how they tell el hora down here,” Jason whispered to me. “By how bright the lichen glows, or isn’t glowing. It’s kind of like their clock. The plant stuff seems to always be going through a cycle of lighting up or dimming down.”

  I smiled at him as I didn’t have the heart, or energy, to tell Jason I already knew that from our trip to Chirasniv to rescue him. Quorik whipped his head around and eyed Jason sharply with suspicion. I was about to ask the Under-elf how long we actually had to rest when the sound of a rhythmic thumping came echoing down the corridor towards us from the way we’d come.

  “Cave Bear!” one of the scouts yelled, sounding a little panicked.

  At the sound of fear in his voice, adrenaline pumped into my veins and made my fatigue vanish. Everybody jumped to their feet.

  “Defensive formation Skorran!” shouted Quorik, and the scouts maneuvered their dranths into a line across the tunnel. “You prisoners, up against the walls up the corridor and stay out of the way!” he said over his shoulder at us. “But do not try to escape, or it will go the worse for you when this battle is done!”

  How they could tell what was coming without even seeing it I had no idea, but given that we were tied up and didn’t have any weapons, the order made sense. Ragar, Heather, Dusk, Jason, and myself moved further down the corridor but didn’t take our eyes from the direction the sound was coming. Surprisingly, once Auraus was beyond the line of the riding dranth, she turned and held out her wrists to Ragar. The mountain-cat-elf used his talons to slice her free, and she faced the same direction the Under-elves did. My eyes widened with disbelief.

  “Auraus! What …?” Heather started to shout, but Ragar put his paw hand over her mouth and stopped her.

  “Magic!” he hissed in explanation.

  I mentally smacked myself. Of course Auraus could attack with her spells—I’d just forgotten because she usually fought with a sword or used her magic in non-hurtful ways. And, maybe, if these Under-elves saw magic being used to help them, maybe then they wouldn’t think of us as Abominations. Ragar, flexing his muscles, burst the ties around his wrists and freed each of the rest of us before he went and sank into an attack crouch beside the Wind-rider. Heather looked like she wanted to go stand with him, but she realized she had nothing to fight the coming monster with. I glanced at Dusk, whose eyes were glued to Auraus’ form, worry furrowing his handsome brow.

  “We need to help too, somehow!” I said urgently to Dusk, Jason and Heather. “We can’t just stand here and do nothing! Because if the Under-elves die fighting this thing, it’ll be after us next!”

  “How can we help?” Heather shot back. “We don’t have any weapons, and we don’t even know what the monster looks like!”

  The monster chose that moment to round the curve we’d passed and burst onto the scene. We gasped at its appearance.

  Chapter 14

  The mottled grey-furred monster the Under-elves called a Cave Bear was a bear, sort of. It was huge—it practically filled the whole ten-foot high tunnel. I’d seen an artist’s rendition of the largest bear fossil that had ever been found to date, which was a South American Giant Short-faced Bear, and this thing looked a lot bigger and longer than that. However, the drawing I’d seen definitely hadn’t had beady red eyes, spittle spewing from over-sized jaws, large pointed fangs sticking out from its mouth, and deadly dragon-sized talons on the ends of its paws.

  “Santa Madre de Dios!” Jason swore in shock.

  Heather screamed at its frightening appearance, and I gasped at its fury.

  Ragar took a running leap and hurled himself over the Under-elves and at the Cave Bear’s head as the Under-elves scouts emptied their poisoned wrist bolts into its face just below the mountian-cat-elf’s leap. The Cave Bear slammed into the fighters, and chaos erupted. Traxis’ dranth was flung backwards, sending the female scout tumbling. Her pack, plus those of our packs that she carried, also went flying and landed not far from us. Auraus nimbly dodged both Under-elf and dranth without taking her eyes from the battle. The Under-elf scout glared and shouted at the Wind-rider to go back to us, then snapped battle orders to her dranth. Traxis raced on foot to rejoin the fight around the Cave Bear’s head, and her dranth galloped to harry the paws of the monster. Jason and I both instinctively raced to where mine and Heather’s packs had fallen. Jason grabbed the modified sword and sheath that housed her iron bar out of Heather’s pack and used the weapon to cut my bonds. He then tossed Heather her saber, keeping her iron, as I yanked out my sword from my pack and cut his bonds. Just then a tingle ran across my skin, and without thinking I turned in time to see a spell explode under the Cave Bear’s chest, setting its belly and chest fur on fire. But the flash of the spell blinded me, and if it did that to me, I knew it definitely had blinded the Under-elves. The swears of the scouts and the crying hisses of the dranths somewhere up in front of me seemed to confirm this. I blinked furiously as I tried to clear my eyesight.

  “Lise! Stay put!” Jason yelled, his words sounding further away from me than they should.

  “Jason! Wait!” I cried, groping in front of me and hoping to catch him before he went and did something stupid like attack the Cave Bear on his own.

  “I’ll help him!” Heather’s voice shouted, and I felt her pass me as she ran to where the cacophony of yelps, roars and curses grew louder and louder.

  I cursed at my temporary blindness. Then I wrinkled my nose as I smelled something familiar, but as soon as I figured out what it was, I wished I hadn’t. Smoke! Some of the air moss intertwined with the lichen light on the tunnel walls must have caught fire from the explosion! Limited eyesight or no, we had to put that Cave Bear down and get out of here before the air moss burned away and took the oxygen with it.

  My eyesight started coming back just then, so I headed for the battle, hoping that the bear’s size would mean that it didn’t matter I couldn’t see clearly. The Cave Bear lashed out all around itself in pain from the flames and the attacks on it, but it could not hit anyone. Its hugeness was intimidating, but its size played against it when it was half distracted by being on fire. I squeezed between Quorik’s and Traxis’ dranth and swung my sword at the front paw that the creature used to steady itself on the ground while it swiped with the other. My Goddess-given saber sheared into the muscle, and blood gushed upwards in a small fountain. I couldn’t tell whether some of its roars were because of what I’d done, but I knew I’d at least hurt it.

  Jason was doing his ducking and rolling thing, staying out of the way of both the Under-elves’ swords and deadly claws. Then he slid partly under the Cave Bear and struck upwards with the iron bar into the burned patchy fur and skin left behind by the fire. The iron must have been able to do its work because the monster gave out a truly tremendous roar that set the tunnel to ringing. Involuntarily I clapped my hands over my ears, and out of the corner of my e
yes saw all the Elves, with their sensitive hearing, flinch away in obvious agony. The Cave Bear backed up a few steps and somehow managed to dislocate some of its joints, bend like a pretzel over its own back, and in the process extinguish the fire in its fur. Now facing the other way, the monster ran back the direction it had come, roaring its pain. I stared after it through the growing smoky haze, which reminded me there was a fire to put out. Everyone, Under-elf and Surfacer alike, hurried to pat out the flames.

  “Let me fix this,” Auraus said when the fire had been extinguished, and raised her hands to cast another spell.

  “No more abominations from the Abominations!” screamed Traxis, blood from a talon score running down her face, and drew her sword to strike Auraus down.

  Ragar, Dusk, Jason, Heather, and I leapt to Auraus’ defense as the other two scouts joined their comrade.

  “I have iron, and I’m not afraid to use it, bastardos!” Jason yelled in reply, brandishing the bar.

  The three scouts faltered, having seen what the power of iron had done to the Cave Bear. The wet sound of metal hitting bone caught our ears, and shocked, we turned to see Auraus slump to the floor. The Sub-leader stood above the unconscious Wind-rider, his sword pommel raised.

  “You idiot!” I screamed at him. “She can clear away the smoke and make this place breathable again! Why did you stop her?”

  Dusk, an anxious look on his handsome face, made to rush to her side to see if she was all right. He was stopped by four Under-elven swords still wet with Cave Bear blood—three pointing at him and one pointing down at Auraus. Jason became uncertain of what to do, and the bar in his hand wavered.

  Quorik, blood decorated but stone-faced, said to us with an undercurrent of menace in his tone, “Words cannot express what I am feeling right now. You fought with us, and fought well. That earns respect. But you are Surfacers. That earns you contempt. But overriding that delicate balance of respect and contempt is the fact that you have brought abomination underground with you, which outweighs everything. That earns you far more than contempt—that earns you despisement.”