by Raymond Cain
A rope dropped down from an open grate ahead of them and when azurans slid down it, Kylara changed direction down one of the branching passages. After a few minutes of running, a low growl stopped them in their tracks. Three pairs of yellow eyes with slit-like pupils emerged from the shadows.
“New direction,” Kylara said, running away from the cats.
The direction changes left Flynn disoriented and he wondered if Kylara really knew where she was going. Lycia created thin sheets of ice on both paths flanking the sewer behind them, slowing the deadly creatures.
Another grate opened above them and an armored azuran with his hair tied back in a ponytail peered into the sewers. The man produced a crossbow and a bolt ricocheted off the wall by Flynn’s head as the four of them ran. Kylara was in the lead and she stopped, causing a collision with the others.
“What are you doing?!” Lycia said.
A dark figure emerged from the shadows and a sick feeling gripped Flynn’s stomach. The man wore darkness like a cloak and Flynn gasped when he realized it was Gideon.
“Back,” Kylara said. “Up that last sewer grate.”
The idea of returning to Deepstone’s streets sounded suicidal to Flynn but with Gideon on one side of them and darkcats on the other, there weren’t any good options. The four companions turned back and Kylara once again resumed the lead.
Light streamed into the tunnel from the open grate above and a trio of azurans in black chain mail were waiting for them. Two of the azurans fired crossbows and Kylara knocked both bolts out of the air with her staves. Lycia launched a pair of ice arrows that struck one of the crossbowmen and Kylara struck the other man down before he could bring his sword up to defend himself. With longsword in hand, the third azuran launched a deadly thrust toward her midsection. She parried it with one stave and struck the man in the head with the other, knocking his unconscious body into the sewage.
Flynn yanked Stingray off his brother’s back, splitting the water strap. The liquid quickly reassembled into one loop. “Up the rope,” he said. “I’ll slow Gideon down.”
Straining to see in the darkness, Flynn guessed where Gideon was and fired. The bolt disappeared into the shadows and a loud tnk echoed off the walls. Shaking his head in disbelief at Gideon’s ability to deflect bolts in the darkness, Flynn was dimly aware that Lycia was laying more ice in the darkcats’ path.
“Come on, Flynn,” Lycia said, climbing the rope. “We have to get out of here.”
Flynn looped Stingray over his shoulder and climbed up after them. Kylara sliced the rope as he pulled himself up, and it made a soft thud as it landed.
“Those darkcats should take care of Gideon,” Lycia said, and Kylara snorted as though such a possibility was preposterous.
To Flynn’s relief, they were not out in the open. The grate was in a narrow alley between a row of buildings, not far from the second exit out of the city. Kylara pulled the cloak over her head and peeked around the corner. She held one hand out behind her, urging them to stay quiet and out of sight.
“It’s not far to the northeast exit,” she whispered, stepping back into the alley. “We might make it if we remain concealed.”
“We’re hardly inconspicuous considering what we’re covered in,” Flynn said.
“A factor that could work to our advantage,” Tasker replied. “The guards are more interested in those entering Deepstone than those leaving it, and they’ll be even less likely to oppose us in our current state of disarray.”
“Disarray?” Lycia said as she brushed off flakes of waste from her cloak. Her face looked as though it was trying to tie itself into a knot. “That’s a gentle euphemism if I ever heard one.”
“Enough,” Kylara said. “Tasker’s right. And we have no other options. We need to get out of Deepstone quickly before a city-wide alarm is raised.”
As if to emphasize her point, an agonized howl resounded from the sewer tunnel. “Sounds like Gideon met the darkcats,” Lycia said.
“In case you haven’t noticed,” Flynn said. “I’m not cloaked like you three. Anyone have something I can use to hide my face?”
Kylara used a dagger to cut a large piece from the hem of her cloak. “Here,” she said, handing the cloth to Flynn. “Fashion a head covering from this.”
Flynn tied the material around his head like a bonnet, covering his head and nothing else. He hoped his armor would not be enough to reveal his identity.
The four left the alley and Flynn walked between them with his head down. He fought the urge to look up and see if anyone was looking at him. His mouth was dry from fear and excitement, and his heart sank when Theoric’s voice cried out behind them.
“Stop them!” the pirate shouted. “They’re human!”
Theoric was flanked by his ten crewmen. Flynn’s shoulders slumped when he realized that each pirate survived the attack in the arena. Two had burnt faces but appeared otherwise uninjured, one of the Lycia’s victims limped after taking an ice arrow in the thigh, and a handful of others were beaten and bloodied from Kylara’s staves.
Theoric chose his accusation wisely. In Deepstone, being human was a serious offense and no other accusation could have commanded such attention. The four of them ran for the exit and dozens of nearby azurans looked around, their gazes settling on them.
The exit was a stone wall fortified with steel and it housed a portcullis nearly as large as the one that stood over the entrance into Seahaven. There were six guards, five of whom wore chain mail, and the last wore a scratched suit of plate armor. Swords and maces dangled from the guards’ swordbelts and they stared into the tunnel, evidently not anticipating threats from behind.
A pair of burly warriors walking the street were alerted by Theoric’s yell. They drew swords and moved into Kylara’s path. A blue glow emanated from Lycia’s left hand and ice formed on her sleeve. Icy daggers launched from her hand, striking one of the warriors in the chest and killing him.
Without slowing her pace, Kylara removed the staves from their clips. The uninjured warrior sliced at Kylara, but she deflected his sword high with one stave and slammed him in the belly with the other. The man keeled forward and the four of them kept running.
Flynn slowed his pace enough to draw his sword, and slashed the uninjured azuran across the thigh. The man fell backward, using both hands to try to stem the flow of blood from his leg.
“Beside you!” Tasker said.
A staggering azuran with a wineskin in one hand and a shortsword in the other nearly cleaved Flynn’s head from his shoulders. Thanks to his brother’s warning, Flynn managed to duck under the blade and keep running. The failed swing threw the man off balance and he fell over in the stone street.
The sound of booted feet running after them revealed that Gideon, Theoric, and the other crewmen were only a handful of steps behind. More azurans were closing on them but Kylara performed a forward roll that enabled her to slip between two men, roll up to her feet behind them, and smash both their skulls simultaneously. Tendrils of flame dripped from Lycia’s right hand and two fiery spears struck two more men in their path. A third azuran, well-dressed and armed with a gold-handled crossbow, was taken down by one of Stingray’s bolts before he could fire his own weapon.
“Almost there,” Kylara said.
A horn sounded, loud enough to be heard across the entire city. A second horn followed it, and then a third. The guards snapped to attention and looked around, their purple eyes wide when they spotted Flynn and his companions. The azuran in plate mail pulled a lever, and the portcullis was released. It slammed into the ground, creating a deafening thooom that echoed off the cavern walls.
The city was sealed shut.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
“Let’s go this way,” Tasker said, leading the group away from the exit and toward a nearby home carved into the cavern wall.
Only the front of the residence was visible. The entrance, a large stone door, was open and hanging on rusty hinges. The dwelling appeared
uninhabited.
A family insignia was carved over the door and Flynn found it eerily familiar to the Arcturus family symbol. It depicted a miner’s pick and shovel crossed over each other, at precisely the same angles and style as the tridents on their family emblem.
Tasker shouldered his way through the door and Flynn stormed in after him. Once they were all through, Flynn shoved the door closed and held it shut.
The room contained an ancient fountain half-full of muddy water. Tasker tossed a pinch of crystal dust into it and thick, viscous water oozed out like slime. The sludge flowed across the floor, filled the cracks around the door, and hardened. The thud of azurans slamming into the door from the other side shook sand from the ceiling, but the door didn’t budge.
A freezing storm raged over Lycia’s left palm, and icicles dripped from her fingers like blue, glowing jewels. The storm intensified and she released it on the door, reinforcing it with a thin wall of ice. By the time she was finished, she was breathing heavily, her shoulders were slumped, and her face was pale. The magic was taking its toll.
Their pursuers reached the front door and the sounds of yelling azurans chopping away at the ice reverberated through the room.
Lycia looked to be on the verge of collapse and Flynn caught her and lowered her to the floor. “It’s okay,” he said, giving her shoulders a reassuring squeeze. “Just rest. They won’t get through that for a while. I’m going to help the others search this place. Hopefully we can find an escape route.”
Lycia nodded and Flynn helped the others search the home. It was a small dwelling, containing only a handful of cobweb-filled rooms, and anxiety grew each time a chamber turned into a dead end. The thuds of azuran weapons grew louder and the sound of cracking ice increased his anxiety.
“I’m casting more ice spells on the door,” Lycia shouted, “but it won’t hold them back much longer.”
After another chamber turned out to be a dead end, Kylara looked accusingly at Tasker. “Why did you bring us here?”
Tasker stepped through rocky debris scattered on the floor. He dragged his fingers through a thick layer of dust on one of the walls. “Because whoever lived here was very likely a miner. And perhaps an Arcturus.”
Kylara narrowed her eyes at him, her expression a combination of anger and confusion. “So?”
Tasker drug his fingers along more dusty walls. “All of my ancestors were miners, and they built hidden basement levels below our home. I suspect this dwelling’s former inhabitants had a similar skillset and predilection toward constructing surreptitious hideaways.”
Kylara turned toward Flynn. “Does he always talk like that?”
Flynn shook his head. “Only when his mouth is open.”
Tasker stood back from a wall near the northeast corner of the home and scraped his stubbled cheeks thoughtfully. “That’s interesting.”
“What is?” Kylara asked.
“This wall is too wide. The neighboring rooms don’t appear to connect. I think there’s something behind it.”
The three of them wiped the wall, filling the area with dust. Flynn removed his head covering and used it to cover his nose as he wiped dust from the wall.
“They’re almost inside!” Lycia yelled in a shrill voice from the entry room.
Flynn, Tasker, and Kylara kept searching the wall and before long, Tasker found a small crimsonite crystal behind a loose stone. Nothing happened when Tasker touched it, but when Flynn laid his hand on it, the crystal flared. An instant later, a wall section slid into the floor, revealing a narrow staircase.
“Get in here, Lycia,” Flynn yelled, and she came staggering in a moment later.
The stairs were lit by red glowdiscs and once the four of them reached the bottom, the wall at the top of the stairs began to rise. The crash of breaking stone and ice revealed the azurans made it inside the home and the wall sealed the staircase shut as their pursuers reached it.
“That was close,” Kylara said, “but it won’t hold them off forever.”
There was another red crystal at the base of the stairs and Flynn smashed it with a dagger. “Hopefully that will prevent them from being able to open the wall the same way we did.”
The stairs led to a chamber containing four statues, representing four different races. There was a portcullis at the end of the chamber leading to another hallway. A winch stood next to the portcullis but instead of being attached to a chain, it was connected to a series of large gears.
The gears ranged in diameter from two to three feet wide and they were mounted in a row traveling up to the ceiling. The gears appeared to be an ingenious way of winching up the portcullis, but one of the gears appeared to be missing. The portcullis was thousands of pounds of solid steel, far too heavy for them to lift.
“Looks like we’re trapped again,” Lycia said, echoing Flynn’s thoughts.
The four statues represented four different races. The first was a Kuru warrior, a man-sized humanoid sporting two eyes in the middle of its face that were positioned one over the other. It had a mouth full of serrated teeth and its muscular arms ended in pincers. It wielded a short spear in one hand and a weighted net in the other. It wore armor made from eelskin.
The second statue was a merman with an athletic build. Its hair was painted green, its eyes were blue, and its body was purple. In its right hand, it held a two-handed trident. In its left hand, it carried a round shield with squared off, toothed edges like the battlements of a castle wall. The shield was painted red and emblazoned with the picture of a merfolk warrior.
The third statue was a salari. Green paint was peeling from its body and the flaky remnants of blue paint clung to its hair. There were fins on its arms, back, and legs. The statue wore armor made from sharkskin. It wielded a crossbow in both hands.
The last statue was a voluptuous mermaid. It wore a clamshell bikini fastened together with inkskin. It wore no armor and wielded no weapons. It stood in an alluring pose that reminded him of a mermaid encounter he experienced not long ago.
Kylara pushed on the winch and the device groaned in protest, unwilling to turn after centuries without use. The grinding sound of steel against metal reverberated through the chamber and before long, the winch slowly turned. Some of the adjacent gears turned with it but without the missing gear, it would not winch up the portcullis.
The clang of steel on stone indicated that the azurans were trying to smash their way into the staircase.
“We need to find that gear,” Lycia said, kicking through dust and scanning the floor.
“Obviously,” Kylara said, studying the walls.
Tasker stood in the middle of the room, holding his chin in contemplation, and Flynn inspected the statues. The Kuru, salari, and mermaid statues did not yield any clues but something about the merman statue struck him as odd. The large trident made sense but the round shield he carried seemed wrong somehow. As far as he knew, merfolk didn’t use shields and even if they did, the trident was too large to wield in only one hand. It would have required both hands to use the trident effectively. Perhaps it was an oversight committed by the sculptor.
An unseen peg on the statue’s arm fit snugly into a round depression on the underside of the shield, enabling the statue to wield it. Flynn lifted the shield from its perch and found it to be quite heavy, much too heavy to be effective in underwater combat. There were no arm straps or buckles, and it was hard to believe that any race would consider the cumbersome device to be effective in battle. Something about the warrior painted on it didn’t strike him as being merfolk-like either.
“You’re brilliant!” Tasker said, and Flynn flinched in surprise at the proclamation. “Bring it to the gears.”
It took a moment to realize what his brother meant, but Flynn did what he was told. He placed the shield on a stone peg in the middle of the gap. The shield’s toothed edges slipped between the teeth of the other gears perfectly. It was a cleverly disguised gear.
With the gear in place, Kylara winched
up the portcullis until it was high enough to duck under. There was a latch on the floor and Tasker pushed it into an opening in the winch, locking it in place. The two of them let the winch go and the portcullis dropped an inch but remained open.
The sound of sliding stone rumbled through the chamber, indicating the azurans had pried open the door. Flynn’s shoulders slumped disparagingly. He had hoped the hidden door would hold off their foes much longer.
“Come on, Flynn,” Kylara said, ducking under the portcullis and joining Tasker and Lycia on the other side.
Flynn ducked under the bars and found that there were gears on that side of the wall as well. The portcullis was partly exposed, and it had toothed edges along the sides that gears fit into. Gideon, Theoric, and the azuran crewmen entered the chamber. The throng ran for the portcullis as Flynn tried to pull one of the gears free. It wouldn’t budge.
“Run!” Flynn yelled at his companions, pulling again on a different gear.
“Not a chance,” Tasker said, unsheathing Flynn’s sword and jamming it under the gear he was pulling on.
The blade provided enough leverage to free the gear from the wall and send it clattering to the floor. The remaining gears whizzed as the portcullis dropped. It slammed into the floor, creating a dust cloud. A latch was built into the floor and Flynn kicked it into place, locking the gear—and the portcullis—in place.
Gideon arrived at the other side of the bars and he removed his bone mask. The man’s blue-tinged purple eyes locked on Flynn, chilling his spine, before settling on Kylara. She returned the assassin’s glare. Theoric joined Gideon and the crew joined them with swords drawn.
“You can’t run forever,” Theoric said. “This is a dead end. The portcullis just prolongs the inevitable.”
“You might be right,” Flynn said, cheerfully. “We really have no idea where this goes. But in the meantime, I hope that you and your crew have fun trying to get past those bars. Take care.”
Chuckling, Flynn headed up the hallway and the others followed. It veered left from the previous chamber and they walked a great distance before they were out of earshot of the sounds of Theoric’s crew as they struggled to pry open the portcullis with their weapons.