Unbroken Chain (single books)

by Jaleigh Johnson

  The door opened before he got there, but Ashok saw it was Cree. He breathed a sigh of relief. The warrior’s left arm was covered in blood, but from no wound of his own.

  “You found them?” Cree said. He sounded out of breath.

  “Ilvani is the only one still alive,” Ashok said. “The others are …”

  Cree put a hand on his shoulder. “Skagi told us,” he said grimly. “We met up with him in the tunnel.”

  They ran as they talked, backtracking to the intersection where they’d all split up. Vedoran, Skagi, and Chanoch were waiting for them. Chanoch had a small wound at the corner of his mouth, but otherwise they were unmarked. Shouts echoed from all directions, but the cries were disorganized, and Ashok heard the metal clash of weapons, and the screams of wounded.

  “You found them?” Vedoran said.

  “Only Ilvani,” Ashok said. “But Natan will be relieved.”

  “If we make it out of here,” Vedoran said as he beckoned them all to keep moving up the passage.

  Ashok, still holding Ilvani, ran up beside Vedoran. “What happened?” he said. “Did they raise the alarm?”

  Vedoran shook his head. “We encountered a group in the tunnels, heavily armed,” he said. “We thought they were a patrol, but then they were set upon by another, larger force. They decimated each other, and when they saw us-”

  “We joined the fray,” Chanoch said, his voice trembling with excitement. “We took them all.”

  “They’re fighting each other,” Vedoran said. “As near as we can tell, instead of realizing they’d been invaded, they thought they were betrayed from within.”

  Skagi hooted with laughter as they ran back through the tunnels the way they’d come. “Ikemmu!” he cried. “Tempus!”

  A few more steps and they would be at the long tunnel and beyond that, freedom. They fell into close formation as the passage widened.

  Ashok felt a stirring in his arms.

  “Stop!” Ilvani cried. Suddenly awake and alert, she was struggling to free herself from his grip.

  “It’s all right,” Ashok said. He set her down on her feet and grabbed her elbow when she swayed. “You’re safe now.”

  She was smaller than Ashok had realized, just over five feet tall. And with her skeletal thinness, she was barely visible in the folds of his cloak.

  “I need my satchel,” Ilvani declared. “He has it.”

  “Who does?” Cree asked.

  Ilvani didn’t reply. Her eyes went vacant. Ashok could imagine her going back to that slaughter chamber in her mind, to Reltnar, and the locks of her hair he’d kept. It wasn’t a thing anyone should have to remember. Ashok had a feeling he would be trying to banish it from his own mind for a long time.

  “The guard who was watching the prisoners,” Ashok said. “He must have had it. I left his corpse back in the room.” He touched Ilvani’s shoulder, drawing her back from the dark places in her mind. “Is it important?” he asked.

  “It holds the winds,” Ilvani told him soberly. “All the voices-they broke some of them, but not all …” Her voice failed. “Not all,” she whispered.

  Ashok was torn. The voices-the real voices-in the tunnels were growing louder. Scattered as they were, it was only a matter of time before the enclave pulled itself together enough to realize what had happened. All it would take was one look at the dead guard and the open cage door.

  Ashok looked at Vedoran. “She doesn’t know what she’s saying,” he said. “She’s been through too much; it’s hurt her mind.”

  “No it hasn’t,” Cree said. “She sounds almost normal.”

  “What?” Ashok said.

  “She was like this before,” Skagi said. “Weren’t you, mad witch?”

  But Ilvani wasn’t paying attention. She got down on her knees and pressed her ear against the cavern floor. “We can go now,” she said. “They won’t know.”

  “We’re not going back,” Vedoran said. “With those intersections, we’ll be hemmed in from all sides. You’ll have to let it go, Ilvani.”

  Ilvani stood up slowly. She turned to stare at Vedoran, her empty gaze uncomprehending. Ashok felt the look like a knife twist in his gut. Vedoran didn’t blink.

  “Come on,” Chanoch said, weaving his bloodstained blade in the air. “We can take whatever they have. Let’s get the witch’s satchel.”

  Vedoran caught Chanoch’s wrist, stopping the display of waving steel in midair. “You heard me,” he said in a low, dangerous voice. “We’re leaving.”

  “Damn you,” Chanoch said, wrenching his arm from Vedoran’s grip. “Go on, then, you Blite coward. I’ll do it myself.”

  For a breath it stunned them all. Ashok recovered first and cried, “Chanoch, no!” He lunged for the young one’s arm, but his hand passed through empty air as Chanoch teleported down the tunnel. By the time he reappeared, he was half out of sight around a bend in the tunnel.

  Skagi cursed. “Now it’s done, and we have to go,” he said. “Ready, brother?”

  Cree saluted with his blade. “Always,” he replied.

  Ashok noticed neither of them looked too disappointed. “Vedoran?” he said, looking to their leader, who stood frozen, his expression unreadable. “Vedoran?”

  A muscle in Vedoran’s jaw worked. He looked at Ashok. “Yes, let’s go,” he said.

  They ran down the tunnel, Ashok behind Ilvani, all of them plunging back into the heart of the chaotic enclave. Ashok felt a swell of dread in his stomach. He pulled his mask up around his face and took up his chain.

  At the first intersection they collided with a pair of shadar-kai, man and woman, who’d been running just as hard from another direction. When they saw the group, they skidded to a stop and stared for just a breath. That breath cost them their lives.

  Vedoran came at them both, and with one stroke took off the man’s arm at the elbow. The man shrieked as his mace and appendage hit the floor. Ashok saw him try to concentrate, to teleport to safety, but Vedoran came in hard, hacking at him relentlessly. Animal fury consumed his face, making Ashok shiver. He knew at whom that rage was directed.

  Skagi and Cree dispatched the other guard before Vedoran was finished. Vedoran wiped blood from his eyes and mouth and motioned them on.

  They hit the next intersection and heard running footsteps coming from the opposite direction. Cree trotted forward, setting his blades against the charge, but then Chanoch came into view in the dim torchlight. He was blood-spattered and vicious-looking with his blade leading the way. Wild glee shone in his eyes. He held up a dark green velvet bag tied with a black leather cord.

  “Yours?” he said to Ilvani proudly.

  The witch came forward and took the burden from his hands. She handled the bag as if she were cuddling a newborn, pressing the stained cloth against her cheek.

  “I hear you,” she said. “All the little ones.” She looked up at Chanoch. “My thanks.”

  “We have to move,” Ashok said.

  “Go,” Vedoran said. “Ashok, stay by Ilvani; the brothers will back you up. Chanoch and I will lead the way.”

  Chanoch moved to the front to join Vedoran. He didn’t look at his leader.

  They ran back through the tunnels the way they’d come, but Ashok could tell immediately that something was different. The voices had quieted. There was no longer the sound of reckless shouts and the screams of dying shadar-kai.

  “They’re mustering,” Ashok said. He pointed to where the passage widened into the long tunnel. “Once we get to the last stretch, they’ll have gathered. We’re too late.”

  Vedoran kept on running, his gaze fixed on the distance ahead. “We’re not stopping,” he said. “Kill as you run.”

  “Kill as you run,” Skagi agreed, and Cree and Chanoch’s wild shouts echoed in the tunnel.

  Ashok looked down at Ilvani, who ran unsteadily beside him. Her long confinement had taken all her strength. Ashok gripped her elbow when she stumbled, but she pulled away as soon as she’d righted herself.r />
  “Don’t,” she said. Short and sharp. Ashok nodded.

  The group hit the tunnel at a dead run, and there they were. Warriors had gathered to cut them off from the entrance. Ashok didn’t see any of his brothers, but there were plenty of faces he knew.

  “Keep going,” Vedoran ordered, but he needn’t have bothered. All of them knew what fate awaited them should they be captured.

  Luck stayed with them, and they took the first group of shadar-kai by surprise. Vedoran and Chanoch cut through the lead two warriors with their blades and didn’t break stride. Plunging into the next group, the brothers fanned out beside Ashok and Ilvani, protecting their flanks. Together the group was a rolling gauntlet, but the wide space was a blessing in more than one way.

  Ashok whipped his chain above their heads and let it fly at the warriors that managed to teleport into the midst of the group. Instead of scattering them, the warriors appeared to stinging strikes from Ashok’s chain. Over and over he sent out the spikes, and each time they returned to him bloody.

  “Stay at my back!” Ashok cried to Ilvani. The witch moved behind him without looking at or acknowledging him. In fact she appeared oblivious to the battle, or to any fear of its failure. She clutched the green satchel against her chest and ran along with them, stumbling often, but always picking herself up.

  They fought on. Ashok tried to gauge where they were in the long stretch, and when he realized they were not even halfway near the entrance his heart sank. No time to rest. The warriors who survived their initial pass were starting to fall in and attack from behind them, forcing Skagi and Cree to the back to protect Ilvani.

  A shadow appeared in front of Ashok. He had just enough time to bring his chain up before the warrior solidified in front of him and attacked with a dagger in each hand. Ashok blocked the first dagger, but the second got through and found a slit in his armor. Still moving, Ashok didn’t immediately feel the pain.

  He raked his chain down the warrior’s arm. The shadar-kai cried out and took a step back onto Chanoch’s waiting blade. The warrior dropped to the ground, and Ashok stumbled over the body. Forgetting her protests, Ashok hauled Ilvani forward over the obstruction, and Skagi and Cree bunched up against them both. Vedoran and Chanoch didn’t see this and kept running, creating a huge gap in their protective wall.

  “Wait!” Cree yelled after them, but it was too late. Five shadar-kai teleported into the gap and split the group in two.

  “Go left!” Skagi told his brother, and he angled right to cover the far ends of the tunnel. They each picked off a warrior and pressed forward, out of reach of Ashok’s chain.

  Ashok had no time to marvel at the brothers’ skill or strategy. He took advantage of the open space to swing his chain in an arc, striking the ground in front of him to slow the charge of the three other oncoming warriors. Two men and a woman, they tried to dart in to form a circle around Ashok and Ilvani, but Ashok snarled behind his mask and snapped the chain at their legs, catching the woman in the thigh. A bright spot of blood welled up through her breeches.

  “Get down,” Ashok said, and Ilvani crouched and moved a safe distance away. Ashok calculated he only had a few breaths before more warriors closed in from behind them. By that time he hoped Skagi and Cree would be free to cover them again.

  “Not hounds, but you’ll stand in just as well,” Ashok muttered under his breath. He remembered that day on the plain, crouching in the kindling tree. So long before, but the desperation that coursed in his blood was the same. He drew it in with each breath, fed on it, reminded himself over and over that he was alive.

  He thought of the nightmare, of riding the beast through the paddock, blazing bright fire licking off his hooves and mane. The images were so clear in Ashok’s mind-he held onto them all, grasped the end of his chain, and bore down on the three shadar-kai.

  His body became a blur before his own eyes and those of his targets. The chain coiled around Ashok’s body and then flew out like an extension of it. He barely guided the motion with his arm. A black, writhing aura snaked up the chain, settling among the spikes like lengths of silk. The chain ripped a long gash in the woman’s side. Ashok yanked the weapon free and carried on to the next enemy. He moved too fast to assess what he left in his wake.

  He caught one of the men in the neck. A hard leather collar only partially absorbed the blow. The spikes dug into the shadar-kai’s ear and ripped it off, along with a sizable portion of the his cheek. The man screamed and clutched his face, losing his weapon in the process, but even that Ashok did not celebrate. His third target, the other man, was close enough for him to smell, but he had one stroke left in him, and he used it to rip open the man’s thigh.

  The black aura surged once, as if feeding, then it peeled away from the chain, and absorbed back into Ashok’s own body.

  Ashok turned to check on Ilvani and saw the witch crouched several feet away, watching him intently. She stood when he beckoned to her and followed him back to where Skagi and Cree were finishing off their opponents.

  Ahead of them, things were much worse.

  Vedoran and Chanoch were surrounded and bleeding liberally from multiple wounds. Vedoran’s cheek had been sliced open. The flaps of skin and the shadar-kai’s burning, unfocused gaze as he hacked at the line of enemies were ghastly to behold. Chanoch’s hysterical cries to Tempus filled the tunnel.

  Ashok shot a glance at the brothers and saw the fatigue in their faces. Their guards wavered; he knew they wouldn’t be able to hold their weapons up much longer, let alone fight the lines of shadar-kai still before them.

  He gazed up the tunnel. They’d passed more distance with the last surge than he’d thought. They were over halfway out.

  So close. Ashok looked down at Ilvani to see if she realized how desperate the situation was. But she merely stared blankly ahead of them. The mob of shadar-kai could have been a swarm of insects for all she knew.

  “You’re a witch,” Ashok said. “Do you have any magic that might aid us?”

  Ilvani blinked and tucked her satchel close to her neck. She glared at Ashok. “Do you want to talk to them?” she said. “You think they have a care for what you say?”

  Defeated, Ashok could only shake his head. Skagi and Cree had waded in to try to relieve Chanoch and Vedoran, but there was a long distance between them. It would be where they would make the last stand, Ashok thought. He had no dagger to give Ilvani to do away with herself, when the time came. Perhaps, if he wasn’t cut down, he could do the deed himself.

  Ashok put his body in front of the witch and prepared to wade into the fray. Up the tunnel, in the distance, a cry rang out. Not the warrior screams of the shadar-kai, or the death cries, but something much more horrifying, magnified a hundred times by the cave.

  The sound caused the line of shadar-kai in front of them to fold. They went to their knees and clutched their ears against the sound, their faces twisted in agony. Never had they heard a sound such as that, a scream that would invade their deepest nightmares long after the cry had faded away.

  Ashok had heard the sound before; he knew it intimately. And in its wake only he, Ilvani, and the rest of his group stood on their feet, too bewildered with exhaustion and pain to believe what had come to their aid.

  The nightmare thundered up the tunnel, his large body filling the tall space. He burned everything in his path, and the warriors who did not recover themselves to jump out of the way were trampled under his flaming hooves.

  The beast stopped several feet away from Ashok and tossed his head imperiously. He had tasted blood, Ashok thought, and gloried in it. As he watched, the nightmare turned and started a charge back up the tunnel.

  “Go,” Ashok cried, pulling Ilvani along, shoving Skagi and Chanoch and Vedoran until their trance was broken and they were all surging forward.

  The warriors scrambled to get out of their way. Ashok cut down the few who tried to reach for them as they ran past. Breaths before, they’d been trapped behind a wall of death,
and yet they were flying, following the rolling fire, until Ashok saw the brittle daylight of the open Shadowfell.

  The nightmare dropped back as the enclave gathered itself to mount a pursuit. Ashok pushed his group toward the entrance. “Get out,” he ordered, and fell back to join the nightmare.

  “Where are you going?” Skagi cried.

  “We’ll cover your escape,” Ashok said. “Don’t stop until you get back up the valley.”

  The nightmare slowed enough for Ashok to leap on his back. Fire surged greedily along the beast’s spine, but as before it did not reach Ashok’s flesh. Together they rode up the tunnel, and Ashok let his chain swing free at any enemies who got in their way.

  The warriors saw him coming and fell back, but Ashok ran them down, shouting, urging the beast forward. The only thought in Ashok’s head was to let the nightmare taste blood, to let the fire burn a path through the enclave and burn all the images of the slaughter chamber from his mind. He let the nightmare run and let the beast within himself free, hacking a path until the tunnel became too narrow for them to continue.

  The nightmare whickered and pawed the ground, as if he wanted to tear the walls apart. Ashok urged him back and around, and with the way clear of living things, they charged down the tunnel, the wind whipping the flames around Ashok’s face. His eyes stung, but the tears were not caused by the flames. He sobbed and screamed as he rode, and the nightmare screamed with him, warning all enemies and friends away.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  The carved steps up the valley wall were too steep for the nightmare, but when they cleared the caves the beast seemed to know exactly where he was going. That was a fortunate thing, for Ashok was still gripped by the frenzy of the battle and could not tell the beast which way to turn.

  They climbed a steep, rocky hill, and Ashok had to hold on to keep his seat. The bumps and jolts returned some sense to him, and with shaking hands he put his weapon away. Newly aware of the pain from the dagger slash and the blood coursing down his body, Ashok pulled the mask away from his face and wiped his soiled hands.