Krea nodded and tried peering into the rancid cell without stepping in the pooling blood. The gate was blocked by the dead man at Royden’s feet. “I don’t see Sorin? Why did they take him?”
“My guess is that Ulryk heard us fighting. She had him taken that same night. When I left you in the hall, I followed her here.” The man shoved Cricket’s victim away from the gate with his foot. Voices echoed down the hall, still a good distance away.
Sorin’s voice called out from inside the room. “Anytime, you two.”
Royden yanked the gate fully open and stepped into the dank room. With considerably less confidence, Krea followed. In the corner, Sorin waited near the back wall, a cuff around his ankle securing him to a massive bolt. “Well, no hard feelings, Royden. I almost died, is all. Glad to hear you finally got around to doing something useful.”
“I swear on the goddess I could kill you myself, but it looks like Ulryk may have beat me to it.”
“Torbadyn, just like I said.” Sorin swayed a little as he shook his ankle. “Prince Talyth is in here, too. He’s in a bad way.”
Royden ducked around Sorin and reappeared with a lifeless form slung over his shoulder. “You’re going to have to walk on your own, Sorin. You can’t just keep expecting people to carry your burdens for you.”
Sorin chuckled, but his laugh held no humor.
Krea rushed over to see if she could pry the cuff off Sorin’s ankle. No sooner had the blade touched the iron than it flared red-hot. In one clean swipe, it melted the locking bolt right off.
Sorin kicked the burning metal off his leg. “That’s one scary blade,” he said, staggering for the gate.
“Tell me about it!”
As they emptied into the main room, Sorin picked up one of the fallen guard’s swords and beckoned toward the two possible exits. “Where to?”
Krea led them around the corner to the stairs. If they had been steep coming down, they were a nightmare to ascend. The men moved slowly, too slowly. Sorin limped along using the wall for support, and Royden strained under the burden of the unconscious prince. Cricket flashed up the stairs and back, urging them to hurry, but there was nothing more they could do. They hadn’t cleared more than a handful of steps when the faerie turned to face the room with her ears pinned to her head. She hissed.
They all turned as Nyrit shambled across the floor toward them. The beautiful hair now hung in sporadic clumps, and that chiseled face was composed of malformed lumps atop his too-long neck. One eye stared at them, full of fury, but the other wandered off to the side, unseeing and useless. But for all his twisted, mangled appearance, he pulsed with power and hatred. Where a gaping wound should have been, only a torn tunic marked the dagger’s attack, and even weakened, he was deadly.
“First, faerie, we deal with you.” Nyrit raised his gnarled hand. A yellow and orange mist swirled around his fist and finally collected in his palm. “You should have stayed in the forest, sheema.” He threw the ball.
Sorin screamed out a chant and threw a sunball of his own just as Cricket leaped to the side. The mist shattered the sunball. Dots of light filled the air, then disappeared. The sheema tumbled down the steps, stopping in a green heap at Nyrit’s feet.
Krea screamed and leaped forward, but Royden yanked her back.
The elf looked up at her, then at Sorin, and shook his head. “Stupid, pathetic mortals. Do you think your trick is a match for me?”
Cricket didn’t move. The familiar hum started in Krea’s head. She knew what it was. She knew what was happening. The image of Nyrit kicking the faerie aside swam before her as the burning spread throughout her body.
Nyrit raised his arm again. Mist swirled, then blurred. Somewhere behind her, Sorin yelled her name. Cricket! Poor Cricket!
Agonizing pain shot up her arm. Krea opened her mouth to scream, but the screech of a beast filled the air. She spread her arms just as Nyrit unleashed his ball of deadly magic. Her forearm blazed. The spiral burned like one of his runes in front of her. Then the spiral inside the dagger’s hilt stone joined it.
The two runes merged as the ball of mist flew through the air. It hit an invisible wall and exploded back on Nyrit. Krea watched him jerk backward just before a wall of white light swallowed her.
Chapter 26 – Change
When Krea looked around, the room somehow seemed brighter. She intended to jump over Cricket to finish Nyrit off with her dagger, but her leap took her off the stairs and halfway across the room. She spun around again, but her legs didn’t move right. On the stairs, Sorin and Royden stared with mirrored looks of horror.
Krea shook her body. Wings rustled against her back. She backed up a step. Instead of hitting the wall with her shoulder, massive haunches brushed against the stone. Her tail twitched. A wave of panic crashed over her as she stared down at massive talons where feet should have been. She turned two quick circles, dropping her wings down to look at the chestnut and tan feathers. A cat’s tail trailed behind. Cream-colored fur dotted with chestnut spots covered what she could see of her chest and ran down her front legs where the band and spiral still glowed above her talons.
Krea pushed the panic back and shook again. Her muscles rippled. Wings nestled against her sides, aching with power and strength. She stepped forward once, then twice. Those giant paws fell silent as snow, just like Rhin had said. She cocked her head and pricked her ears. Sorin was chanting.
He approached her slowly, not at all like he had in the alleyway. And he seemed much smaller. His words didn’t whisper to her like they had before. They hurt. He kept walking, and the closer he came the more her head pounded, until she finally tried to tell him to stop. A deafening screech filled the room. She backed up and he covered his ears, but he didn’t stop. The pain started again, and she swiped at him with her massive paw. He jumped away, but just barely.
Nyrit twitched on the floor.
When the chanting stopped, Krea had a moment of clear thought. She didn’t want to hurt Sorin, but what he was doing was wrong. Somehow, she knew it. With the same focus she used to talk to the dagger, she focused on Sorin. No, she thought at him.
He stared up at her, wide-eyed. That had to be a good sign. At least he wasn’t chanting. She looked around the room again. Whatever else was happening, they still had to get out. A moan to her side brought her around again.
Nyrit raised his arm.
She leaped forward and landed on the mangled elf. His vile, twisted body convulsed under her weight, and dots of light swirled around his contorted hand. With one more glance at the motionless faerie, Krea dragged her left paw across the torbadyn’s throat and severed his head from his body. To her dismay, he hardly bled. She backed away from the vile creature just in time to watch it dissolve into a puddle of putrid decay.
Krea turned back to Cricket. No way was she going to try picking the sheema up with a giant beak. Instead, she tried shoving her head under the little faerie. All she managed to do was shove Cricket against the wall before Sorin finally came and scooped the sheema off the floor. Krea then nodded her head toward Royden.
“Are you still with me?” Sorin asked, turning his head to look her in the eye.
Krea tried to answer, but screeched instead. She twitched her tail in frustration and snapped her beak together a few times.
Royden heaved the prince’s body up onto her back. “I take that as aye. Don’t know how, but I won’t challenge the goddess on this one.”
“That’s not possible!” Sorin pulled Cricket in close, but continued staring at Krea. “She isn’t bonded. It’s her first shift.”
“How is it that you have seen more impossibilities made into reality than anyone I know, yet with you, still, nothing is possible? Your girl counters with a gryphon, and a striking one at that. Live with it. Krea, are you with us?”
Krea snapped her beak together again and started to screech her irritation at their delay, but a noise made her pause. She put her back to the steps and turned just as a woman rounded the corn
er, several guards in tow. Corn-silk blonde hair hung down the woman’s back in a perfect sheet. Her white skin made her seem otherworldly, and when she locked gazes with Krea, she had Nyrit’s ice-blue eyes.
Dane stood beside her.
She paused to look at Nyrit’s decomposing body. Then she surveyed the group on the stairs. “My son beckoned me to come to this place of mortals. He said the prophecy had been laid at our feet. But instead I find you, caller. Again.”
Royden gasped. “Mishtryl.”
“Dane!” Sorin said, squeezing around Krea. “Dane, run over here. She’s not a mage.”
The boy didn’t move except to turn his pale face to Krea.
“I know it, but she teaches me magic when you won’t. Is that Krea?”
“You don’t want to learn that kind of magic, Dane. Trust me. It will hurt you. Look at Nyrit. That is what torbadyn magic does.”
His hand went to his burl. “You don’t know what’s the whole story. You don’t know nothin’. Is Krea okay?”
“The kyrni is lost, my child,” Mishtryl all but purred. “The mortals are lost as well. Do not waste a thought on them. They are beneath you. Caller, we finish this.”
Sorin started toward Mishtryl, the guard’s sword in his hand. “You can’t stay with her, Dane. She will kill you.” He pushed the rest of the way past Krea and raised the blade. “Run away, Dane! Run!”
“I ain’t goin’ to!” He stepped back. “I’s with her, now. And you can’t make me go, neither.”
Now that he was a step behind the terrifying elf, Dane turned back to Krea. Their eyes met. She didn’t know what to do. She wanted to go snatch him away, but she knew she wouldn’t make it three steps. Especially not with the probably-dead prince on her back.
“Leave. Off,” he mouthed, then glanced up. Dots of light danced around Mishtryl as she prepared to attack. And, as they collected in her palm, rocks began dropping from the ceiling.
She wasn’t leaving him here! Krea pressed her wings against the prince’s body and leaped toward Dane, but he ducked behind Mishtryl. The woman raised her hand. Mist swirled around her in an angry wind, and the dots of light swarmed to her open hand.
“Leave off!” Dane mouthed again as more massive stones crashed to the ground.
Sorin jumped back as boulders shattered in front of him.
“Sorin! Now!” Royden held the sheema in one hand and yanked Sorin up the steps with the other. Krea stepped right then left, but chunks of rock wall and ceiling crashed down in every direction.
“Goddess, Krea!” Royden yanked her tail. “We must go. The roof is collapsing. Now!”
Dust billowed out from the growing mound of stone, but she could still make out Dane’s outline. As he dropped his hand she spun to retreat, sneezing dust out of her nose…beak. She coiled her haunches and leaped for the stairs just as the roof caved in behind them.
The two men rushed up the stairs, and even though they took five steps to one of Krea’s, the narrow hallway and tight twist of the spiral made the ascent nearly impossible. At one point, the spiral twisted so tight Krea was stuck. Her wings wouldn’t bend anymore. When she tried to step back, her feathers caught like barbs on the rock. She couldn’t move.
Footsteps thumped back down the steps, and Sorin rounded the tight, twisted stairwell. He stopped a few steps up from where she was wedged, sucking air and streaming sweat. He didn’t look well. When Royden slid to a stop behind him, she noticed that the sheema looked even worse.
She wiggled back and forth, but it only wedged her in tighter. One of her feathers twisted painfully, and an image of the roof collapsing surged through her mind. If it continued caving in, she was dead. She pushed forward again. The prince’s foot dug into her side as she jammed him against the wall. Panic seared through her thoughts and power burned at her center. Instead of pushing it back, she welcomed it. The magic boiled up and rolled over her. She drank it in, breathed it, felt it in her soul, and just as she was about to burst with it, she focused on being human. White light swallowed her again, and this time when it vanished, the gryphon was gone. The prince was not.
“Ugg! Help!” she called, trying to wiggle out from under the dead weight of the injured man.
Sorin rolled him off and knelt beside her on the steps. “Are you okay?”
She thought for a moment. Took a deep breath and smiled. “Great.”
“Not now,” Royden said, handing the sheema to Krea. Cricket blinked up at her briefly, then closed her eyes again. Royden muscled the prince back over his shoulder and started up the stairs again. “Like you couldn’t have squeezed through for a few more steps,” he complained, already winded.
“The dagger!” Krea checked around her. The room was dark again. It suddenly occurred to her that she had been seeing it through a hawk’s eyes. Now those eyes were gone. But even in the darkness, the dagger called to her. She shuffled her hand along the floor for only a second before she felt the familiar scales of the dragon.
“I found it,” she said, but Sorin and Royden waved her to silence. The sound of feet thumped down the stairs above them, and from the sounds of it, there were a lot of feet.
They stared at each other.
“Now what?” Royden whispered.
Sorin pressed against the wall. “We can’t go back.”
“Well, we sure aren’t fighting off a legion of guards with a half-dead prince, a sick faerie, and a girl who doesn’t even have a sword.”
“Hey!” Krea scowled at him and pulled Cricket in closer. “I have a magic dagger!”
Royden shrugged. Or it looked like he shrugged. In the darkness it was hard to tell. “Do you have any other abilities you haven’t told us about? If not, we’re in trouble.”
“There’s a crack in the wall just ahead.”
“How big of a crack?” Royden asked.
“Not big. Not big enough to squeeze through, but it wouldn’t take much to make it bigger. A sunball would do it.”
Royden frowned in confusion and looked over at Sorin. The sound of feet grew louder.
“A rendo,” Sorin explained. He shook his head. “I don’t think I can make one. I’m dry.”
“I think you better figure it out,” Royden said, and started back up the stairs.
After another twenty or so steps, they came to the gate. Krea wasted no time squeezing through and finding the crack. It was smaller than she remembered. Much smaller.
The feet running down the stairs became louder. She could hear the clang of metal swords hitting the wall.
Sorin stopped in front of the crack and shook his head. He held out his hand. White light swirled, lighting the stairwell, but before it could collect, the light faded and died.
“I can’t. I don’t have anything left.”
“Sorin. Don’t do this!” Royden eased the prince’s body to the ground and leaned over to catch his breath. Sweat trickled down his face and dripped onto the floor.
“What do you want from me, Royden? If I could pull the Essences from myself like the torbadyn do, I would. I can’t. I don’t have any more.”
“I want you to try. I want you to try until you bleed, and then keep trying, even if it kills you.”
Krea spoke up before Sorin could respond. “You need Essence?”
He turned from Royden, his fury radiating from him even in the darkness. “Aye!”
She handed Sorin the sheema and drew the dagger. Drink, she told it. The tail snaked out and stabbed into her wrist. Sorin peered hard through the darkness and gasped. He reached out to snatch the dagger away, but Krea held up her hand. Nausea rolled over her as the dagger sucked her energy. She closed her eyes and let it feed. When she could stand no more, she held the blade out to Sorin. Now give it back, she thought.
The blade jerked in her hand. Sorin stood stone still while Krea fought for control. When she finally forced the dagger to hold still, she motioned to Sorin. “Grab it.”
Sorin wrapped his fae-hand around the blade. Essence flowed int
o him. It wasn’t as much as she had gotten from Nyrit, but hopefully it was enough.
He held out his hand and stared. Krea was wondering if his fae-hand bled sap when tiny drops of light began swirling into his palm. The feet thundered down the stairs. Voices yelled. They had to be close enough to see the light from the sunball. They all covered their heads while Sorin threw the rendo.
Stone cracked and shattered. Dust and debris billowed into the narrow passage. All three of them coughed and hacked and waved away the choking dust as thin beams of sunlight flooded the stairway.
“Go. Go.” Royden dragged the prince over to the hole and looked down. “Mother of mercy! That’s a healthy drop. Sorin go. I will drop the prince down to you.”
They didn’t argue. Krea dropped down first, cradling Cricket against the fall. Some of the Essence had to have spilled out onto her, because her tail flicked around to hold on as they dropped. Sorin dropped down next with a grunt. He was still climbing to his feet when Royden dangled Talyth feetfirst over the edge. The prince struggled for only a second before Royden dropped him. Krea and Sorin both tried to break his fall, but they heard the painful crack anyway. Talyth’s arm twisted under him, broken. He drifted back into unconsciousness.
Royden screamed a battle cry above them. Metal clashed. Men yelled, and then the kyrni leaped out the opening. He landed with a hard thump on his back, but rolled quickly to his feet and ran over to the prince.
“That’s going to hurt tomorrow,” Sorin said, dragging the prince against the wall. An arrow thumped into the dirt an arm’s length away.
“It hurts now!” Royden said. “Run for the grass.”
The two men carried the prince between them as they ran for the cover of the long grass encroaching upon the palace wall. It wasn’t much by way of shelter, but it was all they had.
“Krea can change again and take Talyth. Sorin, you can ride on me. We can make the forest.”
“I can’t hold you, Royden. I used all the dagger gave me to throw the rendo. I think the sheema took some, too.”
“I’m no hatchling! You don’t need to hold me. Just follow me through the change and stay with me. We’ll be fine.”
Hand and Talon (World of Kyrni Book 1) Page 38