by Shelley Cass
“You’re leaving?” Tane asked.
“I’ve got to tell Dalin and Kiana that we’re having drinks with the Nymphs again. You should probably pass the message on to everyone else, seeing as you said you could all beat Flash and Rebel in a drinking game.”
“Would your friend Dalin really want to come?” Purdor asked. “He doesn’t seem to have taken a liking to us.”
“Which is understandable,” Wolf added to avoid offence.
I shook my head. “Dalin will come round. He is one of the best friends you could have, once he sees that you are friends. He’s looked out for me ever since I can remember, and even the Elves and Nymphs trust him as a leader, as young as he is.”
Thorin had become glum.
“Don’t worry,” I told him. “You’ll see a different side of him tonight. He wouldn’t miss drinking with the Nymphs.”
“See you soon then,” Vulcan smiled.
I think he still felt bad about trying to kill me.
Chapter Thirty Two
Noal
I was whistling as I climbed the steps to Kiana’s tower, checking to see if Kiana and Dalin had returned. But I wasn’t expecting to see the cloaked person lurking in Kiana’s bedroom.
I nearly fell backward down the steps when I saw the hooded figure, which was too big to be a Nymph, as well as too small to be an Elf or one of the other men. But I breathed a sigh of relief when the figure whirled around.
“Agrudek!” I exclaimed, skipping up the final steps and walking across to him. “You startled me! I wasn’t expecting to see you here.”
“Didn’t mean to alarm you,” he said quickly.
“Never mind that,” I reassured the poor man. “Are you well? I haven't seen you!”
“Yes – I know.” he said nervously. “Sorry. Should have come to visit ... I heard of all the ... er ... heroics!”
“You must have come to make up for it by visiting Kiana now,” I surmised. “Well don’t worry,” I told him. “You can keep me company while I wait for Kiana and Dalin too.”
I put my arm around his shoulders and steered him towards the steps, propelling him down to the kitchen level.
“Take a seat and I’ll get you something,” I said. “Kiana won’t mind. She’s used to providing food for Dalin and I.”
Agrudek glanced back up at Kiana’s room, but then he crossed the kitchen to put a pot full of water over a hot globe of Nymph light that was always alight in the corner. “Let … me do it,” he said.
“That’s nice of you,” I took a seat at the little table in Kiana’s kitchen while he grabbed a cup and a plate, both with one hand.
When he placed them on the counter I noticed him pulling a pouch out from a pocket in his brown cloak, and then sprinkling some small grey leaves from it into the cup before pouring the warmed water in.
“Oh. Did you bring your own tea leaves with you? Is that tea that you’re making?” I asked with an effort to conceal my distaste.
“Ah … yes,” he answered shakily. “I brought them from my tower. But now they’re just for you.”
I glared up at the heavens as he turned away to stir the hot fluid. The Gods always seemed to find humour in cornering me into having things I hated.
“And we can have an apple each with it …” he told me. “You said – Kiana won’t mind.”
I plastered a smile across my face when he turned back and brought the cup of tea over.
I stared at the tea as he next carried the apple laden plate over and set them on the table, and I noticed that that cup of tea looked particularly nasty and had a potent scent. The grey leaves had turned the water they floated in into a horrible murky colour.
“Are you sure you want to sacrifice the tea leaves you brought, just for me?” I asked hesitantly. “You can have the cup instead?”
“Oh no – I want you to drink it.” He sat down opposite me and fidgeted, seeming even jumpier than usual. “I … I just came to see how Kiana was and if Dalin had … recovered.” His eyes darted to my cup and back to my face.
“It’s good to have you to wait with then,” I told him amiably, trying to postpone having to drink the muck in front of me.
He glanced back at the steps to Kiana’s room.
“You haven’t touched your tea,” he said then, and I inwardly cringed.
I lifted the cup, trying not to appear overly repulsed. “It looks lovely.”
Agrudek watched me as I lifted it with dread to my lips, and seeing as there was no escaping it, I took a massive gulp.
The grey liquid was worse than any tea I’d ever tasted and I set the cup back down. But he was satisfied enough that I’d only had one gulp.
I forced myself to swallow, and with an effort I managed to smile at him. “Thanks. That’s great.”
Agrudek sat back, as if strangely relieved, and watched me intently so that I started to feel slightly uncomfortable.
“How … how do you feel?” he questioned, scrutinising my face.
“I’m fi –” I began, and suddenly stopped to draw in a sharp breath.
A stabbing pain shot through my chest and stomach, as if my insides were coiling themselves into knots. I gasped and doubled over, clutching my stomach.
“Gods!” I cried.
Another blast of agony radiated through my core, and this time it felt as if every particle of my body was screaming with it. I felt my frame begin to shudder uncontrollably, and I slipped sideways off the chair – clutching my stomach and curling up on the floor.
I heard Agrudek stand. “Yes …” he said quietly. “Pain for now, but it will be over quickly. I’m sorry. I have … so little time.”
I couldn’t seem to control my body anymore, shaking all over as I was wracked with searing jolts. Even my heart felt like it was being pin pricked.
Then, with horror, I realised that the prickling was leading to something else. Something worse.
As the sharp pains faded, no feeling whatsoever replaced it. And I was no longer moving at all.
Finally all I could do was lie on the floor and look up in panic.
“I hadn’t planned … I just needed to get … But, perhaps doing this will help me in his eyes …” Agrudek gazed down at me sadly, and then turned and climbed the steps back up into Kiana’s room.
I was struggling to keep breathing when the inventor rushed back down the steps carrying the box that held the Sorcerer’s communication globe.
All I could hear was the blood surging in my ears, and each gulp of breath.
And as everything started to fade to darkness I watched Agrudek hurry past and down the steps to flee Kiana’s tower.
Chapter Thirty Three
Dalin
Asha was asleep in Kiana’s arms as we headed back to her tower, walking together companionably as the sun began to set.
“I feel better,” I told Kiana. “I am glad we walked together.”
“You’re still a battered patchwork,” she replied. “But you seem much calmer.”
I smiled tentatively with sore lips. “Any tension inside me slipped away as we walked.”
“The Forest does that for me,” she agreed.
“You do that for me,” I informed her as we neared her tower door, and I was glad to see her eyes crinkle with warmth.
“Hi!” Thorin’s voice called and I glanced up to see him breaking away from the small group he’d been with at the rock pool earlier, loping across to us.
At once a twinge of annoyance began again in my stomach as he drew level with us and threw a grin at me.
I nodded back.
“Are you both nearly ready?” he asked.
“Ready for what?” Kiana questioned, swaying Asha gently to and fro.
Thorin’s face became confused. “To go to Flash’s place. Rebel bet all sixteen of us that he could out drink us all.”
Kiana gave her half smile. “He probably can.”
“Noal left to find you both a short while ago, to let you know,” Thorin said. “
Everyone’s already heading over to get started.”
I sighed to Kiana. “Poor Noal has probably been waiting for us to get back.”
“Poor Noal has probably been eating through my cupboard,” she said dryly. “Come on then,” she told Thorin and I. “We’ll collect Noal and head over together.”
And we followed her as she swept into the tower and began climbing the stairs.
I paused to unbuckle my sword, leaning it against the wall of the sitting room below the kitchen so that I wouldn’t have to carry it at Flash’s party. “He’s probably fallen asleep,” I remarked as Kiana continued up. “It’s so quiet in here.”
“Noal?” Kiana gasped as she peered into the kitchen and I glanced up hurriedly. She sprang up the rest of the steps and into the room above. “Noal!”
“Gods, what’s happened?” I asked, my heart skipping a beat as I crossed the room and pounded up the steps after her to find Noal lying on the floor.
His skin was whiter than bone, his eyes were closed and he was as still as death.
I barely noticed Thorin rushing behind me as I sank to my knees by Noal’s side in absolute terror.
“Noal?” I wailed as if he would miraculously awaken. I touched his hand and moaned. “He’s cold! How is this possible? He was fine earlier!”
“What is it?” Asha asked sleepily, rubbing her eyes and climbing out of Kiana’s arms.
Then she saw Noal and in the span of moments her little face underwent a series of changes from confusion, to fear, and then to rage.
“Who did this?” she hissed savagely, her enormous eyes suddenly gleaming with fury. Her red hair seemed even fierier.
Kiana put a hand to Noal’s forehead and winced as she felt the iciness of his skin.
“Who did this?!” Asha roared, rising into the air like a wasp.
“We don’t know yet Asha,” I told her, barely hearing my weak voice. I held onto Noal’s hand as if I could heat it with my own.
Asha stared at Noal’s still body, his deathly pale face. Suddenly she shrieked in a voice louder and more frightening than thunder.
“I’ll raise the Nymph armies to rip out the heart of the one who hurt him!” she screeched in a voice that echoed with energy, and Kiana and I were nearly blown backward by the force of the animosity as it exploded around her magically.
Cups and plates in cupboards rattled and the table and chairs screeched along the floor with her power, exploding like a furious gale in an electrical storm.
I saw Thorin teeter off balance as Asha whisked to the window and burst out of it, screaming and bellowing furiously for the Nymph armies to rise.
“Noal?” I asked again, stupidly, and clasped his hand in both of mine as Kiana knelt to try to listen for a heartbeat. “Please my brother …” I cried. “Wake up!”
Kiana now searched for any kind of wound or mark to signal what could have hurt him and I closed my eyes and began to pray to the Gods to not take his spirit.
“He is breathing,” Kiana said briskly. “And there is no wound. Nothing.”
“No wound?” I heard Thorin question her, and I opened my eyes as he knelt beside her with a worried frown. He face showed more dread now that he had heard there was no injury.
“What is it?” Kiana asked him. “What are you thinking?”
Thorin put a hand to Noal’s forehead, then to his chest to feel his heart beat. Then he leant forward and smelled the air.
The colour drained from Thorin’s face as he turned to us. “If there is no wound that has caused this,” he said slowly, his voice shaking. “Then it is poison.”
The air deflated from my lungs and I rocked back, winded.
Kiana’s eyes grew wide and she stared at him with understanding. “Krarx?”
Thorin hurriedly stood and swept the room with his eyes. His gaze settled upon an overturned cup on the table and he moved to examine it, again sniffing its spilled contents so that he grimaced.
He lowered the cup back to the table slowly.
“It is Krarx,” he said weakly. “The fatal leaves that Krall soldiers carry in case we are caught and tortured.”
“Gods!” Kiana breathed, slumping backwards to the floor.
My eyes went from Noal to Kiana to Thorin. “Stop!” I cried in a frenzy. “He lives! Surely there is an antidote!”
Thorin gazed at me sickly and I had the urge to shake him, to force him to admit there was a cure.
“There is no antidote,” Kiana said hollowly.
“The Lady then,” I grasped for answers. “She helped when you were poisoned. And the Elves helped to remove the Krall toxin from my wound. We must simply be quick.”
Kiana swallowed her emotions. “I was poisoned with dark magic. The Lady could match it with her own magic. And the toxin you were given can be cured with natural remedies. It is not so with Krarx.”
Suddenly Thorin straightened with a hardening expression. “We don’t know that for sure,” he said adamantly. “We have never properly tried because the poison is only ever used on purpose, chewed as leaves, as a means of consciously choosing death. But I have heard talk that there may be a cure. Thale will know!”
Hardly finishing his sentence, he sprinted from the room. But within moments he was skidding back into the kitchen breathlessly, flummoxed.
“No need to look for Thale, they’ve all come to us,” he gasped. “And –”
A tremendous whirring sound filled the air outside, and there was the noise of a storm of voices approaching.
“What’s happening out there?” Kiana asked, rushing to the window.
I looked beyond her and gasped with shock as I saw the sky about Kiana’s tower unexpectedly filling with teeming, furious Nymphs all screaming and growling savagely over each other.
It seemed like half of the Nymphs in the City were there and Asha was at their forefront.
All of the Krall men who had been celebrating at Flash’s grove had followed the abrupt storm of Nymphs in confusion, but they ducked towards Kiana’s tower as she leaned out and waved urgently at them.
In the air-born scene Ace flew directly towards Asha, and with a commanding sweep of his hand the storm of noise and sizzling, angry power dimmed.
Asha flew into the middle of the scene to meet him, her face creased with a snarl of fury.
“We want the blood of the one who has hurt Noal,” she screeched, and the crowd behind her bayed and hissed.
“You cannot have it,” Ace told her, and she lashed out at him like a tiger. Flash zoomed out of the crowd and caught her furiously struggling arms.
“The Lady has forbidden rashness,” Ace said in a low voice. “We have no facts, and we can’t tear through possible culprits without reason.”
“I will know the facts when I find the traitor!” Asha screeched. “I will punish him!”
“When we know for sure who has betrayed Noal we will decide,” Ace rumbled so that the crowds all heard. “Now is a time for us all to bend our minds and magic toward Noal so that he may recover,” Ace said. “The Lady’s will is already fixed towards him.”
Then, as bewildering and awful as her rage had been, Asha’s sudden ringing cries of grief were even more horrific. The energy seemed instantly to drop from Asha’s body, and she sharply turned and let Flash wrap his arms around her while she wept brokenheartedly.
Much of the crowd, now bursting with grief rather than fury, followed Flash as he led Asha away, and I turned from watching this stunning sight as I heard thunderous footsteps climbing their way up through Kiana’s tower.
Fifteen stunned and overwhelmed warriors piled into the kitchen, with Ailill, Frey and Vidar in their midst.
“We swear to you, we have not harmed Noal,” the bearded soldier named Thale at once burst out earnestly.
“These soldiers were at the gathering,” Vidar confirmed. “Please, help us all to understand what has befallen Noal.”
The three Elves and the soldiers listened aghast as Thorin and Kiana explained.
“But you know that we are not sure if we really have a cure for Krarx poisoning!” I heard Thale exclaim as Thorin got to that part of his story. “We might sicken him further by feeding him experimental concoctions!”
“Surely it’s worth trying,” Thorin argued. “It is that or we allow him to die without any attempt to save him.”
“I can feel that the Lady and the Elves are sending healing magic even now,” Frey said. “Yet without an antidote it’s likely that this will slow the damage rather than restore Noal completely. Perhaps the Lady could have helped before, but she has not been well herself,” Frey admitted.
“Try it Thale,” one warrior encouraged, looking with pity at Noal.
“He does not deserve this death,” another said forcefully. “Especially if we do not at least try to cure him.”
Thale rubbed his brow. “I know, I know, but I’ve only ever heard of things that could work in rumours.”
Their talking washed over me as they bustled about, going through Kiana’s healer pack, and some of them leaving the tower and coming back with plants from the Forest.
I was staring numbly when at last I felt Thorin put his hand on my shoulder and I heard him tell me that I had to come away. To let the other men see what they could do.
Kiana knelt beside me and gently helped them take Noal from my arms, resting him carefully on the floor as Vidar sympathetically led me to the end of the kitchen where I could watch from a distance.
I thudded into the wall and slid down it to sit huddled with my elbows helplessly on my knees, watching while sixteen strange men, three Elves and Kiana gathered around Noal and discussed ideas that could, just possibly, bring him round.
Chapter Thirty Four
Dalin
It was dark outside and the room had cleared until the Elves, Thale, Thorin and Kiana were all who remained in the kitchen with Noal and I.
The other soldiers now waited hopelessly in the room below after having poured different concoctions into Noal for most of the night.
And I had myself almost given up completely before I heard a weak voice.