Marsh got it. She closed her eyes and tried to sense where the centipede had gone. The shadows wouldn’t answer, but she found the centipede anyway, using just her ability to search for life. It was chasing shroom walkers toward the back of the cave. Marsh let out a breath she hadn’t realized she’d been holding.
“It’s leaving,” she said. “Chasing chicken-lizards toward the back of the cave.”
“Good.” Roeglin grabbed the pack he’d set on the bench at his side. “Time to go.”
“We should be glad it’s nothing worse,” Gustav muttered, stooping to collect the pack at his feet.
Marsh pushed herself off the floor and discovered she’d been using her pack as a pillow, or someone had thought she should. She couldn’t remember; she had been very tired when they arrived. She bent to pick it up, and a familiar cacophony of gibbering howls echoed through the cavern outside.
She dropped the pack and had her sword drawn before she finished pivoting toward the door.
“What was that?”
“You have to ask?”
“I was hoping it was my imagination playing tricks.”
Something slammed into the door, and the hut trembled. Human-like footsteps stampeded onto the porch outside, and the window shattered.
“Guess they were drawn by the smoke from the chimney,” Roeglin muttered. “Not as stupid as they look.”
“Into the middle!” Gustav commanded, grabbing the two guards closest him and dragging them to the center of the room.
The others followed and they turned so that they stood back to back, swords drawn while the shadow monsters circled the cabin and battered against the door. When they started climbing through the broken window, Marsh, Gerry, and Jakob stepped forward to meet them.
Marsh and Gerry pulled shadow blades from the dark, and Jakob pulled enough shadow to coat his very normal blade. Marsh wondered when he’d learned that, but then she was too busy stopping the monsters from getting inside.
At first, they held their own, but then they started to struggle—and that was when Roeglin intervened.
“Now would be the time for the shadows to come to your protection,” he told Marsh. “Remember what happened at the eatery?”
Marsh did, but she didn’t understand what he was trying to tell her. The shadows had gathered in the eatery because part of her had drawn them close as if they could protect her. She remembered how they had clung to the walls in a thick patina, and how the eatery’s cook had told her to dispel them or she’d be doing dishes until they were gone.
The woman had meant it, too, and the laws of Ruins Hall would have allowed it to happen. Roeglin had told Marsh to tell the shadows she was safe, that she didn’t need them to protect her…
Well, she damned well needed them now!
Good, Roeglin whispered. Call them again. Ask them to cover the cabin.
Cover the cabin? Marsh disagreed, but she didn’t bother correcting him. She didn’t want a sticky mess to clean up. She wanted something like the swords she called to her hands or the darts she could throw, but she didn’t want them in the cabin. Oh, no; she wanted shards of shadow falling from the cavern ceiling to skewer every shadow monster gathered on the porch and in the yard beyond.
She wanted a rain of spears, lightning bolts of shadow. She wanted nothing left outside the cabin but craters. The cabin shook, but Marsh ignored it. She wanted…
“Uh, Marsh? Marchant? Trainee Leclerc?” Roeglin’s voice was tentative. “Marsh? You can tell the shadows thank you, now.”
At this, Gustav cut in.
“Yes. Please tell the shadows thank you. There are no more shadow monsters outside.”
“Marsh?” She felt fingertips very tentatively poke her shoulder. “You with us?”
“Uh huh.”
“You gonna tell the shadows it’s all okay now?”
“You sure?”
“Oh, yes!” Gustav sounded extremely sure. “It is very okay out there.”
“And we need to leave for Ruins Hall.”
“Oh.”
They couldn’t do that while the lightning was still falling.
“Please tell the shadows everything’s okay.”
Roeglin’s voice had taken on a coaxing tone, as though she was something wild and unpredictable that he didn’t want to upset. Marsh wondered why, but she agreed to do as he asked.
“Okay.”
She drew a deep breath, thinking of the shadows, her guardians and protectors.
“Thank you,” she said. “You can return.”
She pictured the ceiling from which she’d called them, thought of it as calm and still and not roiling with power. She felt the air around her calm and heard sighs of relief.
“All good now?” she asked, and the fingertips became a palm patting her shoulder.
“All is very good,” Roeglin told her, and Marsh found her own place in the dark.
9
Chocolate Farms and Ruins Hall
“I’m sorry,” Marsh blurted when she woke—and was abruptly hushed by someone kneeling hastily beside her and covering her mouth with their hand.
For a moment, she came close to panicking, but Roeglin’s voice sounded in her head.
Someone’s here. Please be quiet until we know if they’re friendly.
Oh. Okay.
Marsh nodded and closed her eyes, listening for the sound of footsteps approaching, or voices. Voices would be better. As if on cue she heard voices, adult voices, softly murmuring, and then the frustrated yell from someone much younger, followed by an all-too-familiar piping treble that echoed off the cavern’s ceiling and the cabin walls.
“Marsh!”
Marsh sighed. She knew that voice. She also knew they were in trouble when the pitch went up a notch, and her name was called again.
“Marsh! Is me! You come out. Right. Now!”
“Aysh!” Tamlin was clearly frustrated, and Aisha was just as clearly having none of it.
“Is too here. Rocks say. Shadows say! Is. Too. Here.”
Since when could Aisha talk to the shadows?
“Aysh!” Tamlin had obviously lost his grip on his sister, again. There’d be no stopping her if she knew she was right.
What in all the Deeps was Aisha doing running with Tamlin’s team? She was supposed to be in the repair team behind the one Shadow Captain Envermet was leading, not in the one her brother was running messages for. What had gone wrong?
Obviously, the same thought had crossed Roeglin’s mind, and he stepped over Marsh, making his way to the door and through it.
“Don’t shoot,” he called, and Aisha gave a shriek of delight.
“Roeglin!”
Marsh struggled to get herself off the floor, grateful when Gustav helped her to her feet.
“You okay?” he asked. “Because that was quite a display you put on.”
“How long was I out?” Marsh demanded, and then remembered her manners. “And I’m fine, thanks.”
Actually, she felt anything but fine, but she wasn’t going to admit it. Marsh made her way out the door, trying to walk straight and not weave like a drunk after a long night out. When she got there, she stopped and stared. The floor outside the cabin was pocked with small craters and scarred by shadow. She looked at the cavern’s ceiling, and the shadows sat there, calm and unperturbed.
Marsh hurried over to Roeglin.
“What did I do?” she whispered and then noticed a set of very blue eyes peering at her over his shoulder. “Aisha!”
As the little girl scrambled out of Roeglin’s arms and into Marsh’s, a familiar figure stepped forward.
“Master Leger, we thought you’d be farther ahead,” Master Envermet said.
“We had some trouble on the trail.”
Roeglin gestured toward Marsh, and then the craters pockmarking the floor of the cavern.
“Our mages needed to rest.”
From the look on Master Envermet’s face, Marchant knew the shadow guard had figured out
that it had only been one mage that had needed to rest.
“And you couldn’t very well leave them behind, while you went on.”
From the tone of his voice, Marsh couldn’t tell if it was a criticism, a statement of fact, or a gentle dig at Roeglin’s evasion. Roeglin merely nodded.
“No, Master Envermet, we couldn’t.”
The shadow guard leader gestured toward the cabin.
“I take it the inhabitant is missing?”
“Yes, and he hasn’t returned in the two days we’ve been here.”
Two days! Marsh stared, unable to hide her shock at their delay, but Roeglin continued.
“We were just leaving, if you need the cabin.”
Master Envermet shook his head.
“No. We only came this way because the child insisted.”
He indicated Aisha, who rested in Marsh’s arms, her tiny hands wound around Marsh’s neck as she held her close. Marsh felt Aisha stir, but Master Envermet wasn’t finished.
“It seems she shares some of her guardian’s traits.”
Aisha lifted her head as Marsh turned to face the shadow guard master, but Roeglin cut in before either of them could speak.
“I understand.” He glanced at Marsh. “We need to go.”
It was both instruction and apology, and Marsh saw Aisha’s face fall. She pulled the little girl close, looking for Tamlin. The boy appeared at her side as if by magic.
“Come on, Aysh. You found her, but she has to go.”
“To make the trail safe?” Aisha asked, lifting her head from Marsh’s shoulder, her eyes luminous with tears.
Marsh swallowed against the lump in her throat and nodded.
“Yes, so you can follow me all the way to Ruins Hall and fix the glows.”
Aisha regarded her with a solemn stare.
“Fix glows,” she said, and Marsh nodded before putting her lips close to Aisha’s ear.
“Because I can’t, okay?”
She said it like it was a secret, and the little girl smiled, placing a hand on either side of Marsh’s face.
“Okay,” she whispered, her voice carrying across the cavern, and Marsh set her on her feet.
“Be good for your brother,” she ordered, trying to look stern.
“Always,” Aisha told her, and Tamlin shot her a look of utter disbelief.
“Always!” the little girl repeated, glaring at him and stamping her foot in a clear challenge for him to disagree. Marsh cut in before an argument could occur.
“Always,” she agreed. “Now, go see what Master Envermet would like you to do.”
The children had taken two steps toward Master Envermet when Aisha turned to look back at Marsh.
“Brigitte no has the cookies,” she said, her small voice mournful.
It was all Marsh could do not to laugh.
“Then I’d better hurry so I can buy you some more when we get to Ruins Hall, okay?”
“’Kay!” Aisha said and turned away with a smile.
Marsh pretended not to hear when Tamlin stooped toward his sister and said, “Con artist!”
“Are not!”
“Are too!”
“Are…”
Marsh left them to argue, looking at Roeglin to see what to do next. While she had been dealing with the children, the rest of her team had emerged from the cabin and set themselves by the side of the path. Once Roeglin and Master Envermet had exchanged a brief white-eyed look, the shadow mage led his team past the others.
Since when could Roeglin mind-speak the shadow captain? Marsh wondered.
Since I’ve been connecting through Tamlin. It made it easier, like the boy was a bridge. He sounded puzzled, but just shrugged and kept walking.
Behind them, Marsh could hear the master giving orders for them to secure the area around the cavern, and for Aisha, Brigitte, and Tamlin to find what glows needed recharging so they could secure the prospector’s camp before they left. She and Roeglin reached where the cavern turned into a tunnel just as the bright purple stars winked into existence behind them.
When she thought about it, Marsh couldn’t remember there being any glows around the prospector’s cabin or on the trail, but they were there now.
“New policy,” Roeglin told her. “They’re making sure all trails and home-claims are marked by glows. We’re hoping to slow the raiders down.”
It was as good a plan as any, even if Marsh didn’t think it was going to work. The raiders were as human as the rest of them, and the glows could be removed by humans. It was only the shadow monsters that seemed to have any trouble with them.
“We should have asked them to build a waystation at the junction,” Marsh said as Roeglin signaled for them to pick up the pace.
“Already done,” he replied. “There’s a fourth…a third team following us—with the Masters of Stone and Beasts in charge. They’ll be leaving a small team of shadow guards at the new waystation, and we’ll be asking Monsieur Gravine to send a small squad to join them. The trails need to be monitored if we’re to keep them secure, and the caravans will need safe points to camp at when they travel.”
“I wonder how the prospector will take it?”
“He’ll handle it better if we can get him back from the raiders in one piece, and he’ll see the point of it. He might even tell us it was better late than never, even if he’d have argued black and blue against it before.”
There wasn’t much to say to that, so they walked in silence. Clarinay appeared and disappeared to scout the trail, but Roeglin told Marsh she was on a mandatory rest day after her display of power the day before. Personally, Marsh thought she was being coddled, but both masters opposed her when she argued, so she focused on the cavern around her instead.
The one time she tried to sense life forces in the area around her, Roeglin nudged her hard enough to make her stumble.
“No magic,” he said. “Not unless we need it.”
Again, they lapsed into silence, concentrating on moving quickly until they reached another junction. Roeglin turned and looked at the team.
“The Master of Shadows wants each side trail checked for survivors or raiders,” he said, leaving Marsh to wonder when that particular order had come through.
You were sleeping.
She’d been doing that a lot.
Overextension will do that to a new mage.
Marsh resisted the urge to tell him to shut up as they turned down the trail.
“Who lives down here?” she asked.
“Shroom farmers.”
Marsh sighed. She’d been hoping for something more exciting, but everyone was important, exciting or not. If there was any chance these farmers had survived the raiders’ purge of the trail and the caverns closest, they had to take it. She followed Roeglin down the tunnel, the rest of the guards moving swiftly and quietly after them.
It wasn’t long before the trail widened into a low-ceilinged chamber that swiftly extended into a larger cavern with a much taller ceiling. The floor sloped gradually upward beneath their feet, and the bands of light stretching down from the ceiling made Marsh think of bright, narrow curtains of warmth. As they moved farther in, the scent around them subtly changed.
Behind her, one of the guards gave an exploratory sniff. He was followed by another, and then a third. Roeglin traveled a few more steps down the trail, and then he stopped. Marsh stopped with him, as did the guards, their heads raised as they sniffed at the air. Gerry and Izmay were gazing around the cavern, looks of frustrated wonder on their faces.
“I smell chocolate,” Izmay said, and Gerry nodded, his eyes searching the ceiling and the shrooms around them.
Roeglin smiled.
“Of course, you do,” he said and started back in the direction they’d been going. “Thierry’s Truffles is known for it. Where did you think Marc gets it from?”
“Ariella’s,” Izmay told him. “She grows the only cocoa beans in the area.”
“Ah, but Thierry’s has the only chocola
te truffles in the world.”
“How would you know?” Izmay challenged, and Roeglin grinned.
“There’s a reason they call me the Wanderer.” His face grew sober. “Let’s see how the Thierrys are.”
But the Thierrys weren’t anywhere to be found, not in the neat bungalow at the center of the cavern nor in the processing shed that towered behind it, and not on any of the ladders or scaffolded walkways that took them along tunnels cut into the earth above. After seeing the truffles stacked in baskets and boxes, Marsh thought she could see something similar growing amidst the tangle of tree roots between the galleries.
Here and there, she found where someone had dug something out from in the middle of a root tangle, and, half-way along one of the walkways, she found an upturned basket. More of the ugly black fungi lay scattered over the boards, and a trowel teetered on the edge. As Marsh moved to pick it up, the vibration of her footsteps shook it off the walkway.
Down below, Marsh saw that Roeglin had stepped out of the bungalow and into the path of the falling trowel.
“Look out!” she shouted, and the shadow mage looked up.
If he’d moved, he wouldn’t have had to conjure a shield to protect his head. He was just lucky he was fast enough—but he wasn’t impressed. Marsh finished her search of the walkways and headed back to where he was waiting.
“Find anything?” she asked, and he frowned.
“It’s just the same as the prospector’s.”
Around them, the guards murmured in agreement.
“We’re not far from Ruins Hall,” Clarinay said. “We can be there by midnight if we don’t stop.”
Roeglin glanced at Marsh.
“I can do it,” she asserted before he had a chance to ask. She looked at Zeb. “You?”
He turned back down the trail and broke into a jog.
“Race you there,” he said, but he didn’t increase his pace as she fell in beside him. The others formed up around them.
Magic Below Paris Complete Series Boxed Set (Books 1 - 8): Trading Into Shadow, Trading Into Darkness, Trading Close to Light, Trading By Firelight, Trading by Shroomlight, plus 3 more Page 35