Shasta skidded over to the next one and repeated the process. When she’d gotten all of one side of Matilda’s head free, she picked up the torch, crossed to the other side, and began working on that set. Unfortunately, some of the most restrictive chains, like the one holding Matilda’s mouth shut, seemed to be attached to themselves in a continuous loop, though she was able to disconnect the chain that ran from Matilda’s lower jaw to her horns.
When all the lines between Matilda’s head and the ground were undone, Shasta took a step back. “Matilda, are you still with me?”
Matilda bobbed her head in what could’ve been a nod and then blinked once.
Shasta nodded. “I’m going to see if I can get the rest of this off your face. I’ll do my best not to hurt you.”
With one more blink, Matilda rested her head on the ground.
Shasta settled on the ground next to the dragon’s head, the torch balanced across her legs. “I’m going to start with this thing around your nose.” While she hadn’t seen any links that would open or breaks in the chain, it was possible that the connection was under Matilda’s head, the one place she had yet to check. “Matilda, can you lift your head up about six inches? I want to look at the underside of this chain.”
With another huff of foul, coffee-flavored air, Matilda lifted the tip of her nose off the ground.
Shasta quickly wiggled around until she could see the underside of Matilda’s head. Long seconds ticked by until she finally spotted the link that would open and close. “If you can hold this for a minute more, I think I can get it off.”
Her fingers had just touched the cold metal when a whisper of sound reached her ears. Matilda snorted as Shasta rolled out from under the dragon’s chin. Shasta twisted her wrist, summoning her sword. She left the torch on the ground as she frantically scanned the area, trying to see what was hiding in the darkness.
Three footfalls, each accompanied by sand grinding into rock, reached her ears. She pulled the sword up near her head, ready to attack or defend. The light on the ground was both a blessing and a problem. If whoever was out there got close enough, she could see them, but until then it both illuminated her and ruined her night vision. Not that night vision was of much use in a cave so dark you couldn’t see your own hand in front of your face.
“Here I was, contemplating where to get another test subject, and one willingly walks into my lair.” The voice was deep and rich, carrying across the space without giving away the man’s location. “We shall have a great deal of fun, you and I.” He laughed.
The little hairs on the back of Shasta’s neck stood on end. There was an edge of hysteria, a dash of glee, and a thread of eagerness in that laugh. There was no trace of sanity.
Chapter Eight
Shasta tightened her grip on her sword while her eyes darted around, trying to locate the man. There was a brush of a shoe against rock to her left. She angled her body in that direction, trying to keep her back to Matilda and still be ready to defend the dragon.
“So quiet?” His words echoed through the cave. “Not to worry. I’m sure you’ll have plenty to say once we get acquainted.”
“I doubt we’ll have time to get to know each other that well.” She had to keep him talking. It sounded like he was in front of her, but with the way sound bounced off the rocks, it was hard to be sure. She felt magic building and wished she had even a drop of power to put toward defense.
“I disagree.”
While he spoke, a spell flashed through the air, hitting her squarely in the chest. A hiss of pain escaped her clenched teeth as every nerve between her navel and throat sparked to life. The magic quickly spread as her body absorbed it, making her veins glow blue through her skin for a moment.
It wasn’t enough power to be useful offensively, but it gave her a much-needed energy boost.
She looked in what she thought was his direction and grinned. “As I said, we won’t be getting to know one another that well.”
He came out of the shadows, blurred movement under an earth-brown cloak that covered him from head to toe. The hood was deep, hiding his face. An arm ending in six-inch curved talons lashed out at Shasta. She batted it aside with her sword before coming back up, trying to slice through the cloth. His other hand came down, aiming for her face. Even in the low light of the torch, there was no doubting the sharpness of his claws.
Shasta darted to the side, escaping injury and trying to draw the fight away from Matilda. He flowed after her, his cloak catching the air as he moved, billowing around him. The hood stayed over his face, and the cloth’s movement obscured enough of his body that she couldn’t make out his exact form. However, not even the voluminous garment could obscure the sizable hump on his back that extended from shoulders to waist or the forward tilt to his posture.
He slashed at her again. She blocked his arm, landing a solid blow and opening up a gash at the same time. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw talons darting for her unguarded rib cage. Wrenching her body to the side, she avoided all but the very tips of his claws, which sliced through her shirt, opening up shallow cuts across her abdomen.
The injury didn’t slow her down. She landed a second blow on the same arm she’d hit before, this time right at the elbow. She couldn’t tell if she cut into him, but the arm hung limply under the cloak. Before she had time to press the advantage, he leaped back, clearing more than fifteen feet in a single jump. Whatever he was, he wasn’t purely human.
Shasta charged him, ready to end this and rescue Matilda. He pulled his head back, then jerked it forward. With a soft splat, something landed on her shirt. At first she kept moving forward, then her shirt warmed before growing hot. The substance oozed into her open cuts, burning its way along the lacerations. Heat and then hot fire spread across the skin of her stomach. She stopped and looked down. Her shirt was slowly being eaten away, and her skin was turning pink before bubbling up and bursting open, showering anything nearby with clear fluid. Whatever this creature was, its spit was corrosive.
Another surge of magic had her jerking her head up and lifting her sword, but it was too late—the spell was already in the air. It struck her stomach, which was already wounded, stealing her breath away and amplifying the fire currently lighting up her nerves. While she was struggling to breathe again, her body absorbed the power and transmuted it, healing the wounds to her abdomen.
With a howl of rage, the creature threw itself at her again, slashing with both hands. Her sword was a blur as it blocked swipe after swipe, connecting with enough force that it should’ve broken not only his skin but bones. As far as she could tell, she wasn’t inflicting meaningful damage, but her blows slowed him down. Even so, bit by bit he was backing her away from Matilda and the light.
The darkness hampered her, forcing her to react to whispers of sounds and slight changes in the air, but it didn’t seem to bother him. He was always a little ahead of her, striking right before she could effectively block. Stepping back to avoid a vicious swipe at her freshly healed stomach, her foot slipped off the edge. She teetered back until her foot finally connected with solid ground, but she went down heavily on one knee. Pain burst to life, flaring up from previous bruises while simultaneously adding to the injury.
He inhaled sharply and a rough gurgle reached her ears. That would be him gathering for another acid attack.
Shasta vanished her sword as she launched itself into a forward roll, desperately trying to escape another round with the acid spit while also trying to reach Matilda. She smacked the ground, rolling twice to get well away from him. A rock crackled behind her as the acid landed on it and began its work. She popped up to her feet, summoned her sword again with a twist of her wrist, and pivoted to face him. Now that she was back in the light, she might finally have an advantage.
A flap of fabric sounded as though it was coming from above. She jerked her eyes toward the ceiling to see him more than ten feet off the ground, hurtling down at her, claws outstretched, face still hidden deep in
side his hood. She lunged to the side, losing her sword in the process. She really had inherited her mother’s luck.
Shasta scrambled after her blade. A thump reached her ears as he landed behind her. She didn’t look back. She had to get her hand on the blade. A thick wad of acid spit landed only inches from her hand. She wasn’t going to make it.
Feet pounded against the ground, sending tiny tremors under her hands. She had to get to her sword.
Another glob of acid hit the rocks, narrowly missing the blade. She reached out, snatched it up, and whirled around.
He was in the air again, leaping toward her. This time she took a two-handed grip on the sword. One way or another, she was going to end this.
Another shape darted through the air, her eyes barely able to track it. It slammed into the man, sending him crashing to the ground with an impact that reverberated through the rock. The other shape rolled, barely touching the ground before popping to its feet, a sword in its hands.
“Narzel bones,” Shasta swore. Now there were two of them.
Her misshapen nemesis slowly got to his feet. Shasta risked a glance at the new adversary but found her eyes on the sword that had appeared in his hands. She knew that sword. She’d spent years fencing against that sword. “Cord?”
Whatever response he might’ve made she ignored when she felt magic, lots of magic, pooling around the clawed man. Before she could decide if would be better to see what spell he came up with or charge him, he simply vanished.
She stood there, blinking, eyes going over the spot and then everywhere else she could actually see. If he was still there, she couldn’t find him.
Cord strode over, sword still in his hand. “Are you hurt?”
“I hurt everywhere, but no, I’m not injured.” She kept her sword in her hand. It was rather too convenient for Cord to show up when she needed help the most.
He stepped forward and lifted an eyebrow. “Really? Then what happened to your shirt?”
Shasta backed up and lifted her sword. “I don’t trust this. It’s too easy. You show up and the bad guy vanishes. I don’t trust that you’re actually Cord.”
“Fine.” His face stilled. “How do I prove my identity?”
She sucked in a breath. “What’s the first thing I said to you?”
“I think you mean the second, but I’ll answer both.” Even though he was looking at her, it felt more like he was looking past her, at something she couldn’t see. “You answered the door of that… place and said ‘Can I help you?’ Then I leaned down to shake your hand. When I straightened, I pushed my hair over my shoulder. Then you said, ‘You have ears like mine.’”
He came back to the present with a shiver. “Prove who you are. What happened next?”
She forgot about everything around them, lost in the memory of the first time they’d met. “I asked if I could touch your ears, but I was afraid. When you saw me hesitate, you gently took my hand and set my fingers on the very tip of your ears.” She swallowed hard, determined to stay in this moment, not one fourteen years past. “Then you took me away from there and helped me find the parents the earth had promised me.”
“And I’ve been your friend ever since,” he finished for her. With a quick twist of his wrist, he vanished his sword. “Satisfied?”
Shasta dismissed her own sword and darted into his open arms. “I don’t know how you found me.”
He squeezed her until her bruises protested, pressed a kiss to the top of her head, and released her. “Full elf, remember? And I haven’t been fighting to keep dragons safe.”
“You and Dad always use that excuse.” At his grin, she simply shook her head. “Come on, we need to unchain Matilda and get out of here before whatever that thing was comes back.”
His smile faded. “Even with two of us, that will take some time.”
“Then we should hurry.” Shasta crossed over to the dragon’s nose. “How are you?”
Matilda sighed, washing Shasta with stale coffee breath, and rolled her eyes.
“We’ll get you out of here as fast as we can.” Shasta resumed work on the chains remaining on Matilda’s head while Cord started on the rest of them. She found herself pausing every few seconds to look for Matilda’s captor. When she caught Cord doing the same thing, they shared a grim smile. Because they’d been trained by the same people, Shasta knew they were thinking along the same lines. It was only a matter of time before the monster returned, likely with some backup or spell it thought would ensure victory. They had to get out of there before that happened.
Time seem to alternately stretch on forever and move by in giant leaps as they worked to free Matilda. After Shasta finished getting all the chains off Matilda’s head, the dragon stretched her jaw. Shasta moved to work on the chains around her forelimbs, keeping an eye on both the dragon and Cord, who’d finished with both hind legs and was working on Matilda’s tail.
Matilda moved her head as close to Shasta as she could with the remaining chains still holding her. “Thank you, Shasta. You were under no obligation to go to these lengths to rescue me.”
“You’re welcome, but you shouldn’t thank me until we’ve all gotten back to town.” Shasta rotated a giant link around until the rest of the chain could slide free, grunting with the effort as she eased the big hunk of metal to the ground.
“Still, you are a teacher, not a protector.” Matilda clamped her jaw shut as Cord removed a chain from her tail.
Shasta muscled open the latch on the back of Matilda’s leg shackle. It popped open, and the dragon was able to pull her leg free. Shasta braced her feet, leaned forward with her hands resting on her thighs, and sucked in air until her breathing evened out. There were a lot of ways she could reply, but in this cave, with the possibility of listeners, she was reluctant to voice the truth. “I’m a very determined teacher.”
From Matilda’s other side, Cord laughed. “I have to agree with Shasta. She spent an entire summer trying to teach me how to assemble puzzles.”
The dragon’s eye ridge lifted. “You didn’t know how to do a jigsaw puzzle?”
Shasta snorted. “He knew. It was his way of getting me to talk.”
“It worked.”
Since she’d yet to find a good retort to that, she left it alone and instead headed for the collar and chains around Matilda’s neck.
Shasta grabbed the torch off the ground, shining it at the chain links that went from the collar to the ground without so much as a welding seam. Biting back rude words that wouldn’t help the situation, she crouched down, examining the plate that was attached to the cave floor. Again, there was no visible method of attachment, but she couldn’t get so much as a fingernail under the edge.
Thanks to the magic she’d absorbed from Matilda’s captor, she was able to form and extend a probe. Her magic collided with sticky blackness that somehow managed to smell like a four-week-old corpse, though she hadn’t noticed the odor before, so it had to be purely magical. Shasta cut herself off from the probe, losing that bit of magic but breaking the connection between the foul energy and herself.
“I can’t find any way to unhook these chains. It’s as if they’re all one piece,” Cord said as he peered over Matilda’s neck at Shasta.
She resisted the urge to wipe her hands on her pants. It wouldn’t get any of the foul magic off her, and there was little point in attempting any type of purification until they were out of the cave. “You won’t. It was put together by a sorcerer or at least someone using blood magic.”
Cord grimaced. “Can you undo the spells?”
“No, and even if I could, I’m not sure I’d want to try.” Blood magic was dangerous and not only because it had to be harvested from an unwilling subject. “It might corrupt my power.”
“Then how do you free me?” Matilda’s tone plainly said that she expected them to give up.
“We figure out a different way,” Shasta said firmly.
From Cord’s side there was a soft thwack of metal hitting metal
. Matilda arched her neck, trying to see what he was doing. Shasta went up on her toes but couldn’t see Cord clearly enough to know what he was up to.
The metal-on-metal sound was replaced by Cord’s voice. “Shasta, come here.”
She circled the dragon, shrugging when Matilda tilted her head to the side and darted her eyes in Cord’s direction. They both could’ve done with a little less mystery and more explanation. When she reached Cord’s side, she found him standing there with his sword in his hand and a dent in the collar. “How did that happen?”
Cord held up the sword. “Yours was created by an elven blacksmith, right?”
Shasta nodded, not at all sure what this had to do with the collar or the dents in it.
“Do you happen to know if your mom put any spells on it?”
Shasta summoned her sword. The dim light flickered across the scrollwork trailing down the blade from the cross guard. The way the runes flowed together always reminded her of vines. “I know Dad got it from one of his friends—as you said, an elven smith, but Mom never said she added any spells. If she tinkered with it, I’ve never been able to differentiate her magic from what the blacksmith did.”
Cord’s eyes went between the two swords. “After I joined the company, your dad examined my sword before pronouncing it finely made, and then your mom claimed it. It was nearly a week before I got it back. I have no idea what she did to it, but from time to time it’s been oddly helpful in ways it hadn’t been before.”
She twisted her sword to and fro, trying to see if there was any evidence of spells being cast on it. She knew better than to probe—she’d tried that shortly after she’d gotten the sword and given herself a headache that lasted for three days. “If she did, it was before it came into my hands. And since this is my first real job with the firm, I haven’t had a chance to put it to the test.”
Earth Born (The Earth Born Cycle Book 1) Page 12