by Ellyn, Court
She plied the key to Doc’s chains, then shoved the keyring into his hands and ran to Rhian.
His efforts had exhausted him. On his hands and knees, he panted, fought nausea or faintness or both. Carah threw her arms around him. “You mad, mad fool,” she cried, then laughed with unmitigated joy when he returned the embrace. “You’re too good a liar.”
“Learned a thing or two from the Elarion.” Like an avalanche, his thoughts barreled over her. She reveled in that intimate exchange as though it were sunlight on her face. Too much, too many thoughts at once. She couldn’t sort through them. Rhian was disoriented, invigorated with the rush of battle, of freedom, of the need to move and keep moving until this place lay far behind him.
“I don’t understand,” she said. “The pain trance?”
He nodded. “Elliona taught me. Sorry.” No wonder Frogtongue had thought him dead, or nearly so. When an Elari entered the trance to deter pain, eyes dilated, breathing grew shallow, skin cool.
Rhian’s hunger was no lie, however. Carah felt his bones under his skin. His eyes were bruised and glassy, and a sickly pallor muted his face. Every muscle trembled as he tried to rise. “Help me up. The tunnel. No way they didn’t hear.”
As Carah pried him to his feet, she watched the black maw of the tunnel. Roars and screeches proved Rhian right.
Jaedren ran to them. “Teach me to do that!” He still clutched Carah’s cup to his chest. Inside, he had stowed the baernavë key.
Doc and the rest of the avedrin came along behind him. They were thirteen in all. Except for Jaedren, who grinned with teeth too large, half of them looked confused, while the other half looked sick with terror. Doc put a hand to his forehead, as if he couldn’t believe he had a reason to hope.
“You’re going to get us all flayed!” cried the shivering woman. Her fever had wasted her. She was as gaunt as a skeleton, skin stretched tight over her brow and teeth.
“We’re going to get you out of here,” Carah retorted, guiding Rhian up the steps.
“How? We don’t know the way.”
Others argued or pleaded in languages Carah didn’t know.
“Die here or die trying,” she said.
Rhian was more diplomatic. “We’ll find the way out.”
The roars of alarmed ogres careened down the tunnel, nearer now. In Carah’s ear, Rhian whispered, “The woman’s right. I waited too long. Don’t think I can fight us out of here.”
“Let me.”
Rhian shook his head, incredulous. Carah grinned. It had been his abduction, after all, that had accelerated her tutoring and demanded her presence on the battlefield. Before he could protest, she deposited him against the tunnel wall. “Watch my flank. Is anyone else trained?”
“To do a-that?” A man with a sing-song Doreli accent pointed at the incinerated ogres. “Certainly a-not-a.”
Heads shook. Foreigners who spoke no Westervaeli squinted dumbly.
Doc scratched his nape. “It’s been years. But … le’an er sha.” He raised a palm and at his fingertips a little storm cloud spat rain and lightning.
Carah nodded. “Guard our rear. You, Doreli, grab a torch.” A couple of others hurried to nearby sconces and tore torches free as well. “Jaedren, hold onto my belt. Everyone else? Stay between us.” She turned to face the long dark tunnel. Hands splayed before her, she edged forward. The three torches sent her shadow dancing ahead of her. Announcing her location.
A curve in the tunnel, the stamping of graceless feet. An ogre wielding a spear rounded the bend. Flames erupted from Carah’s palms and bathed his face. He scuttled back, dropping his spear to claw at his eyes.
Rhian picked up the spear. “Anyone a soldier?”
A sinewy man with the olive skin tone of a Harenian claimed it and buried it in the wailing ogre’s chest.
The avedrin pressed up the winding slope. Side passages branched off the main tunnel, deep blacknesses suddenly there and gone again. Rhian or Doc sent spouts of storm into them, but the ogres came at them from the main passage alone.
Two broke into the light, roaring, swinging blades. A long stream of fire, like that breathed from a dragon, ignited the ragged clothes of the first and convinced the second that he wasn’t as brave as he thought. He ran back along the tunnel and out of sight.
Rhian said, “Short bursts. Conserve your energy.”
Carah nodded. Aye, it might be a long trek out of here. She clenched a fist over the burning corpse, whispering, “Chill.” The reeking flames died under a swath of frost, letting the avedrin safely pass.
“How do you do that?” asked one of the pair who had huddled together.
“Is that what we’re supposed to be able to do?” asked the other. “All I’ve got is this bloody torch.”
The tunnel widened. Three ogres knelt across the path. Three more stood behind them. Shields of hide, iron, and wood shaped a wall. Put the fire anywhere, Carah remembered her uncle saying. So she put it directly under the knees of the front line. The ogres leapt up, crashing into those behind. Carah shoved her hands toward them, releasing short bursts of flame like Rhian suggested. Left, right, left, right, which each exhale of breath. It was clumsy, unsophisticated, unimaginative, but it routed the ogres nonetheless.
At last, the tunnel broke into an open cavern. Hides of animals, Elarion, and humans adorned the walls. An arsenal of spears, fresh torches and barrels of pitch, presumably to equip the Pit and its sentries, lay abandoned amid the floor.
“Everyone, grab a spear and a fresh torch,” Doc advised.
Jaedren tugged Carah’s shirt hem. “Which tunnel?” The boy was right. Three tunnels branched off the cavern.
They chose the one that angled up the sharpest. If the Pit was deep underground, perhaps this one would lead them toward daylight. Into the other two, they rolled barrels of pitch to block pursuit, and Carah set them alight.
The steep tunnel led them through still more caverns. Some were abandoned; others appeared to be dwelling places for families. Ogrelings no taller than Carah’s waist screamed with toothless mouths and scrambled up their mothers to cling to their necks. Litters of them backed into corners. The mothers had no breasts. Instead, bowls of red mush, raw meat chewed up or mashed, spilled as the babes scattered.
Whatever those youngsters might become, Carah had not the heart to kill them. She started past them, but Rhian suffered no such compunction. An ear-splitting wave rolled over them, breaking little bodies, sending them tumbling. Survivors raced away. Screams of terror echoed down narrow tunnels.
In other caverns, warriors made a stand. Most were young bulls, fresh scars on their faces, tusks bright and sharp. Eager to prove their prowess, they showed more bravado than brain. They ran at the avedrin in pairs, or alone. Carah had no trouble fending them off before their axes swept within range. Trails of the dead lay behind her, masses of scorched flesh and featureless gore.
Her hands grew sensitive to the heat spewing from them. But with each gout of fire, the working became easier. She no longer had to speak to focus the energies. They sprang up where she willed. The buzzing in her brain grew intoxicatingly loud, dampening the shrieks of agony in her wake.
Word spread. Or the thunder of approaching avedrin was too obvious to be mistaken.
Ogres fled ahead of them, ducking through side tunnels. The sight of them receding in the dark made Carah laugh. She sent flames bouncing after them to hasten their departure. What did they care about Lothiar’s scheme to eradicate the last of the avedrin? They seemed only to want the infiltrators out of their home.
The tunnel ahead forked. The branches looked identical to Carah. Everyone had an opinion about which way to go.
“Left!”
“No, right!”
Feet padded fast toward them. Carah raised her hands. An ogreling raced down the right-hand passage and skidded to a halt when he saw the avedrin in his path. “No!” He raised empty hands before his face and backed toward the left-hand tunnel. “Out! Dat way! Dat
way!” He pointed back the way he’d come, then raced away into the dark.
Something had scared him, and it wasn’t the escaping avedrin.
“Should we trust him?” Doc asked.
“Hell, no!” shouted another.
“So we follow him?” Rhian argued.
Carah slashed a hand. “Shut up and listen.”
The walls rumbled. Dust sifted from the ceiling. Carah laid a hand to the wall, closed her eyes. An outside force, not the shifting of the earth itself, hammered against the stone in brief, angry intervals. She turned down the right-hand tunnel. It snaked gradually upward. The others had to hustle to keep up.
After a couple hundred yards, the light of many torches illumined the end of the tunnel. A cavern larger than those they had seen opened ahead of them. Shouts, brays, grunts channeled toward them, a river of irate voices. Underfoot, the stone trembled.
Carah crept ahead, her back to the wall. The avedrin filed along behind her, whispering. “There’s an army of them in there,” someone said.
The speaker was right. Dozens of ogres, eight-foot-tall brutes, buckled on armor, tested the edges of axes and swords. Beyond the warriors, the cavern walls narrowed. Where the stone formed a bottleneck, there was a gate. The shiny silver bars could only be baernavë, and the gate was shut. “No,” Carah gasped.
Lothiar had prepared ever so thoroughly. Even if the avedrin in his care broke free, they’d never make it past such a gate. Carah could bring down the walls around it, but likely bury herself and every avedra and ogre inside with her.
“There has to be a key.” Rhian was peering over her shoulder. “And look.” He pointed past the gate.
The bottleneck opened wide on the other side, the ceiling vaulted up, shaping a great mouth. Daylight flooded in. The flush of sunset faded from a lavender sky. The sight of it wrenched a sob from Carah’s throat. So beautiful. So close. Forbidden.
“We need to strike before they see us,” Rhian said, nodding at the ogres arming. “That gate will have to open for them, and maybe one of them has the key.”
“I have a key!” Jaedren said, shaking the tin cup and jangling his prize.
“Let’s hope it fits,” Rhian said. “Fierce now, back to back, moving steady for the gate.”
Carah remembered watching Rhian and Uncle Thorn use the same method outside the guard tower in Avidan Wood. As if a fulcrum were attached to their shoulders, they turned, turned, fire and lightning and booming energy crackling from their palms, a deadly dance.
“Go!” Carah hurled a fount of flames into the thickest gathering of ogres, then charged into the open. Rhian raced behind her, attacking in the opposite direction.
“Move! Move!” Doc shouted, urging the rest to follow. From his palm a strange sizzling snake of oily-looking lightning sped past Carah’s ear and skewered the ogre running toward her.
The corpse’s denmates scrambled into ranks, shaping a tight wall across Carah’s path. She leaned back, finding reassurance in the press of Rhian’s shoulders. Though fabric lay between their skin, she felt the avë rippling up his spine and releasing in thunderous waves.
Carah spread her arms. A line of fire erupted beneath the feet of the advancing ogres. With a shove of her hands, the line thickened, becoming a blanket that engulfed them. They scattered, diving left and right, retreating, rolling forward. Didn’t matter. The fire was there too.
When she clenched her fists and quelled the inferno, the path to the gate lay clear. She leapt over smoldering bodies, the stink of burnt flesh slapping against her face. She grabbed the bars with both hands. The baernavë seared.
In the cavern beyond, the clash of battle echoed. Swaths of ogres lay dead. Lines of them formed a wall and pushed, pushed, roaring, bashing with shields and clubs and axes. But against whom…? The glow of twilight cast the ogres in silhouette. And smaller, quicker fighters too. Elarion. Regulars in bright armor, with red stripes on their faces. “Rhian, look!”
He couldn’t. Ogres poured from the tunnels behind them. A sweep of his arm raised a semicircle of fire, a barrier to surround the cornered avedrin. The bolder ogres leapt through, blades thirsting. The Hereti jabbed with his spear as Rhian rolled clear. Doc’s oily lightning coiled about the ogres like ropes, strangling them, tripping them, yanking weapons from their hands before bursting through exposed skin and burrowing like a parasite.
Thunder shook the air, rocking Carah onto her heels. Not Rhian’s or Doc’s. The flash of light came from beyond the gate. This was no random raid. He had found her. Carah shook the bars, ignoring the cold burn in her fingers. “Uncle Thorn!”
The other avedrin fell against the gate. “Help us!” they screamed, reaching through.
On the other side, the ogres heard the cries and turned with weapons raised. The fire in Carah’s hands fizzled out where it touched the baernavë, but thin tongues of lavender flame licked through, holding the ogres at bay. They paced and snarled beyond reach of the flames.
“Jaedren, the key!”
The boy huddled at her feet, face blank with terror. Carah nudged his shoulder with her knee to shake him out of it. He dumped the key from the cup. One of the avedrin snatched it from his hand and plied it to the great lock.
“That’s mine!” Jaedren shouted.
The key jangled and rattled, a cold mockery. The avedra peered over Jaedren’s head at Carah. “No good.”
Carah brushed him aside, grunted and swore, but the key wouldn’t turn for her either. “Search the bodies! There must be a key.”
But the dead ogres lay outside Rhian’s fire, trod under the clawed feet of their denmates. No one dared venture out to search.
A foot-long iron spearhead sliced past Carah’s shoulder, nicking skin. It passed over Jaedren’s head and into the key-thief’s throat. In her desperation to make the key work, Carah had abandoned her efforts to keep the ogres from approaching the gate. She wrenched Jaedren away from the bars as blades sang through. Claws reached. Tusks gnashed. The bars rattled.
Carah flung bursts of flame at them as she backed toward Rhian. He was tiring. His arms rose sluggishly with each booming wave he hurled. His chest heaved. Sweat dripped, spending water he couldn’t afford to waste.
Carah looked to the stone holding the gate in place. Last resort. Long had the cave walls been exposed to wind and water and the leavings of bats. One wrong nudge and the ceiling might slough down on top of them.
Thunder boomed. The ogres bashing against the gate convulsed. Sparks danced along tusks and axe blades. Chips of stone flew past. Carah ducked, then heard the ogres outside Rhian’s firewall squeal as they fell. Not chips of stone. Arrows.
A sound half-laughter, half-sob burst from Rhian. “Dranithion!” he called over his shoulder. “Vorilanë yora shun de’ah!”—Get us out of here!
The ogres at the gate had toppled in tangled heaps, not only burned by lightning but pelted with arrows. A forest of gray fletching grew from limbs and shoulders and bellies. As if their bodies were boulders, an Elari climbed over them to reach the gate. “Carah?” A smiling face smeared with bright blood. A hand shaking a large shiny keyring.
“Azhien!” Carah shoved an arm through the bars and hugged him around the neck.
He endured the choking embrace while he plied the key. “That bastard na’in hold onto this key like it is his mum’s tits. Then Dathiel show him some lightning, eh?”
“Hnh, your duínovan has improved.”
The lock sang with a glorious click. Azhien pushed open the gate. “Yes, your brother teach me much.” Grinning, he dived past, daggers naked. He rolled through the firewall and danced among the ogres.
Elarion flooded after him, dranithion and Regs both. Rhian let the semicircle of fire die, and his knees buckled. Carah tried to raise him. “Way’s clear, let’s move.”
“I’ll take him,” said someone at her shoulder.
Laniel Falconeye was smiling at her. “Looks like you saved us some trouble. Thought we’d have to search the bowels
of this place to find you.” He sheathed his daggers and stooped to wrap Rhian’s arm about his neck.
“My uncle?” She looked for him at the gate. And there he was, stepping over the mound of ogres. One palm was raised, commanding a barrier of blue flame that trailed behind him. Carah’s composure crumbled. She was sobbing before she reached him. Thorn swept her close and held her fiercely, as if he had snatched her from a flood. Waves of emotion struck her, unchecked. Fear and rage, joy and love. Regret, regret, regret. Enough to drown in. “I knew you’d come.” She released him; he refused to let go of her hand. “It’s what Lothiar expects. We must leave before he finds out.”
“Is this everyone?” he asked, glancing over the other avedrin.
The Harenian soldier lay underfoot, his spear hewn. Beside him, the skeletal woman. A savage swing of an axe had opened her torso. And the key-thief, a dark pool spreading from his throat.
Doc held Jaedren by the shoulders, and Jaedren clutched his tin cup. The two avedrin who had clung to one another in the Pit held onto one another again. Rhian drooped in Laniel’s care. The other four gathered close, bewildered, skittish.
Carah nodded. “Yes, everyone.”
“Listen,” Thorn said, “we’re moving fast. Hard as it may be, you must keep up. If we get separated, head east toward the rising moons. The Regulars will keep the naenion busy, while the dranithion cover our rear. Do not get in front of me.”
He marched over the mound of corpses, and with a shove of his hand sent the wall of blue flame gliding ahead of him. It ignited the hair and garments of bodies lying in its path. Embattled ogres and Elarion dived away from the approaching heat. As it passed, the ogres tried to regroup, fall in behind Thorn’s fiery shield, but dranithi arrows hissed. Regulars formed ranks to each side, boxing in the terrified avedrin. Carah pressed close behind her uncle, fist clutching the back of his shirt.
Darkening skies loomed ahead. Air scented of dew and moist earth eddied, lifting away the odors of spilled blood and rotting meat. Horns blasted. Steel rang. A thousand voices shouted. Horses bugled. An unceasing din amplified by the cavern’s vaulted ceiling.