“It’s hard to eat with this,” he said. “You can have it back later.”
As if she’d want it, but Marsh didn’t reply. She just nodded, again; it was safer that way. Seeing she understood, Ardhur swept his hand toward where the line was moving into a large cavern. The trail ran between two islands of slightly raised stone that looked like they had been tiled a very long time ago. The shrooms had been cleared as far back as she could see, and the loam covering the cavern floor had been scraped back to reveal more of the tiled floor.
It meant they’d be sleeping on something harder than earth, but cleaner, too. Marsh wondered what Ardhur was going to do for stone. It wasn’t like he could encase her in ceramic…or could he?
She let her gaze drift around the cavern, taking in the walls, and the people. By the Deep, so many people! They sat in rows, starting at the farthest wall and reaching halfway across the nearest tiled platform. Something in her recoiled at the sight, and Marsh stopped. All she wanted to do was run.
Unfortunately, she was still clipped to the man in front of her, and he had no intention of running. When the rope drew tight between them, he stopped too. This time he turned and looked back. Taking one look at her face, he reached out and took her arm.
“Come on,” he said. “You don’t want to get into any more trouble than you’re already in.”
He had a point, and Marsh let him draw her forward, noting that the nearest guards relaxed as she followed his lead.
“Thank you,” she murmured, and one of the guards shook his staff in her direction.
Marsh flinched and looked away, but not before she caught something familiar in the cast of her companion’s features. He kept hold of her arm until they were settled in a line in front of the nearest row. Once they were all sitting, one of the guards came along the row, dropping a roll into each of their laps. This time Marsh was quick to catch hers.
She was about to raise it to her lips when the man beside her covered her hand with his own.
“Wait,” he said, and she realized the guard was watching her with a predatory look on his face.
When Marsh rested her hands in her lap, he cast his gaze down the line and then nodded.
“You may eat,” he said, and this time Marsh waited until her companion lifted his roll and took a bite before raising her own.
As Marsh did, however, the guard stepped forward and laid his staff across her forearms.
“Except for you,” he said. “You can wait.”
Marsh lowered her hands but kept her eyes on the guard’s face, refusing to look at her meal. After a long pause, he nodded.
“Now you can eat.”
“Thank you,” Marsh whispered, her stomach lurching as she took a bite.
The guard did not reply, but his mouth tightened with distaste, and he looked back down the line.
“Water!”
Water was given from several shared canteens, and Marsh was grateful there was any left in the bottom of the one that reached her. She drank and waited for whatever was coming next. She was not expecting Ardhur, but she knew what he was there for.
The thought of being encased in stone sent her heart plummeting, and her eyes filled with tears. She still hadn’t been able to get any sense that Roeglin knew where she was, and she still hadn’t figured a way out of her predicament. She knew there was one; she just hadn’t found it yet.
Part of her wanted to beg not to be put back into the stone, and part of her wanted to thoroughly deserve having to go there. That second part might have won if her traveling companion hadn’t laid his hand on her knee.
“I will be here,” he said even as his face asked the rock mage for permission to fulfill that promise.
Ardhur caught the glance and nodded.
“And you will be responsible if she gets up to anything tonight.”
The sudden responsibility didn’t deter the man.
“Agreed.”
He took Marsh’s hand as Ardhur called the rock from the earth beneath the tiles, keeping her steady when she thought about fleeing. As the stone flowed up her throat and over her head, he added one more thing.
“I’m Patrik, by the way.”
It was the last sound Marsh heard until morning, but she felt the weight of his arm on her shoulder and caught the warmth of his hand near the holes beside her nostrils and mouth, and it was enough.
17
Company in Captivity
It was a relief when the stone melted away from Marchant’s face the next morning. She was stiff and sore when she was finally freed, and no closer to working out how she could escape the stone casing, not that she’d tried very hard.
“Patrik?” she asked, not sure she had heard correctly the previous night.
He nodded, casting a wary glance at the guards. Marsh followed his gaze but kept speaking.
“Fabrice’s husband?”
He turned abruptly to face her.
“Yes. Do you know her? Is she okay? Did she—”
He grunted as two of the guards crossed to where they were sitting and drove a staff into his stomach.
“Silence in the lines!”
“Quiet!” added the other guard, striking him a second time.
Marsh reached out and grabbed his staff.
“Hey! I’m as much at fault as—”
It was a mistake. Curling up under the rain of blows that followed, Marsh reminded herself that there were times when she really needed to keep her mouth shut.
But that was not one of them, she told herself. That wouldn’t have been fair—and she had taken their attention off Patrik. That was good, since Fabrice wouldn’t thank her if she got her husband beaten to death just when she’d found him.
She stayed curled up for several long moments after the blows had stopped, waiting until one of the guards nudged her with the toe of his boot. Her hiss of pain must have reassured them that she was still alive because they moved back to their positions by the wall. When she was sure they had left, Marsh uncurled, stifling a groan of pain as she did so.
Patrik gave her a look that said he might be about to offer her sympathy, but Marsh raised a finger to her lips and pulled herself upright.
‘I’m fine,’ she mouthed, not saying a single word out loud.
His mouth twisted in an expression that said he didn’t believe her, but he didn’t reply. Marsh wished she could take that haunted look from his face, but knew she couldn’t afford to speak the words it needed. She settled for resting her hand on his knee instead. After a minute, he rested his hand over hers, and they sat like that until the guards made their rounds.
After they’d been fed and watered and taken to the latrines, they were settled back in their lines and ordered to silence. Marsh watched the guards, wondering when they’d move them out. She wished she had something to do or that they were allowed to talk, but she knew better than to push that boundary again.
It wasn’t long before she discovered what was going on, since the guards were under no obligation to keep quiet.
“When do you think they’ll arrive?” one asked as they walked past, making a cursory check of their prisoners.
“Word is they’re expected late in the day.”
“So we’ll be here one more night, then?”
“Just one.”
Another shipment? Marsh huffed out a long sigh and tried to calculate how many hours had passed since she’d woken. It was too depressing to think about.
Her sigh drew the attention of the two guards, and they turned to regard her. Marsh looked right back and was unnerved when they exchanged secretive smiles and strolled away.
“Do you think she knows?” one asked.
The other shook his head.
“Not a clue.”
They kept walking, leaving Marsh to wonder what they were talking about. She resisted the urge to shout after them and concentrated on the tiles between her feet. There wasn’t much else she could do. She still couldn’t contact Roeglin, but she didn’t th
ink she had tossed him out of her head again. This time, it was more like he hadn’t been there to begin with.
Her boredom continued until mid-morning, when there was an outraged screech and yowl, followed by shouting. The sound had Marsh on her feet—and jerked back off them just as fast when Patrik grabbed the line joining them together and pulled her down. He caught her hands when she reached up to unclip the leash, stopping her before she could start.
It wasn’t enough to keep her out of trouble, though.
Four guards were on them in the blink of an eye. If Marsh hadn’t known any better, she would have said they’d been waiting for her reaction, and they took great satisfaction in adding another layer of bruises to her hide. That wasn’t the worst of it, though.
Patrik also bore the consequences of her actions, and they were both left panting and bleeding at the end of the row.
“Told you we’d hold you responsible for her actions.” Ardhur had come to stand just in front of them.
Patrik spat blood and rolled himself into a sitting position.
“Oui. You did.”
Beyond tilting her head a fraction so she could see Ardhur’s boots, Marsh didn’t try to move. Truth be told, she didn’t think she could. Everything hurt, from her skin to her soul. All she wanted was to be back at Monsieur Gravine’s mansion, facing whatever disciplinary action was coming her way. It couldn’t be any worse than this.
She worked at staying as still as she could, and decided she was okay right where she was. After all, she’d found Patrik, and she’d be willing to bet that the young man casting anxious glances from beside him was the Raph who had saved Eveline by dumping a pile of dirty washing on her head. He didn’t speak, however, just regarded his boss with brown eyes dark with concern.
Ardhur, though, knelt beside Marsh and unclipped the rope linking her to the rest of the line.
“I think it would be better if we did not give her the opportunity to cause you any more pain.”
To Marsh’s surprise, Patrik disagreed.
“I don’t think she’ll do that, again,” he said. “You can leave her with me.”
Ardhur snorted and pivoted on his heels to look at the man.
“I’ll meet you halfway,” he said. “I’ll leave her with you, but I’ll make sure she can’t cause any more trouble.”
He paused, then pulled Marsh out of her ball, setting her on her side and then putting her hands under her head as though she was sleeping. With one hand on her shoulder, he called the stone, but, to Marsh’s surprise, he didn’t cover her head, stopping the stone once it had flowed over her legs and shoulders, trapping her hands to the floor.
“Before I tuck you in for the night, there is something you need to see,” he told her and turned slightly to direct her attention toward the tunnel.
As much as she didn’t want to, Marsh followed the turn and felt her heart sink with despair. Mordanlenoowar came into view, dangling upside down from a pole carried by four shadow mages. The big kat’s eyes blazed with azure fire, and her lips were lifted in an angry snarl.
Marsh tried to go to the kat’s aid, but the stone locked her to the floor. Catching sight of the movement, Ardhur stared down at her, letting her watch as a cage was rolled into view. From the sound its wheels made on the tiled floor, it had been drawn from a chamber beyond the last line of prisoners. Marsh watched as the kat was loaded into it and saw her roll to her feet as soon as the poles were slid free of her bindings.
I will get you out of there, she said, knowing her eyes flared green and not caring.
Or I will free you from there, the kat replied, curling up on the floor of the cage.
“As touching as this reunion is, I think you’ve seen enough,” Ardhur said, blocking the kat from view by crouching between them.
Fear coiled through Marsh as the stone flowed from her shoulders to her neck and then over her head, but she refused to beg. He would let her out of the stone soon enough, and by then she would have a plan.
18
A Step Through the Dark
Marchant didn’t have a plan. She’d lain for hours in what felt like a soundless, viewless coffin. Her mind had ranged from near panic to fatalistic calm. She couldn’t work out how to escape and was too tired to manage more than a brief attempt at turning to shadow.
That was the easy part, but when it came to filtering herself through the narrow gaps that made up the holes for her mouth and nose, she froze. She could feel the stone squeezing around her, but couldn’t work out how to lose the shape she usually had in order to extricate herself from her prison’s confines.
And she still couldn’t talk to the stone.
She tried, but it was the same as when she tried to charge the glows. The stone wouldn’t speak to her, and the effort left her exhausted. When she was trembling with fatigue from the effort, Marsh let herself relax. She’d only meant to rest for a moment, but it was much later when she woke to the feeling of the stone slowly parting around her.
Except that this time it was different.
When Ardhur freed her in the morning, the stone flowed off her in the exact reverse of how it had flowed on. What she was experiencing now was more like the stone was being peeled away like clay from around a stone. Marsh came to with a gasp and a hand was clapped over her mouth, one finger gently tapping her lips in a request for silence.
She would have nodded her understanding, but her head wasn’t free. She had the oddest sensation that a small pair of hands was pulling the stone away from her, less like clay and more like paper. What in all the Deeps was going on?
When enough had been cleared to expose her shoulders, another much larger set of hands wormed their way under her arms and pulled.
It wasn’t enough and she got caught in the folds of stone, muffling a cry of pain as it grated against her skin. The pulling ceased, and the small hands went back to peeling it away from her body. Only this time, they concentrated on her head, clearing the rock blocking her ears.
Once that was done, the small hands reassuringly patted her back, hesitating when Marsh gasped with pain.
“Gently,” came Patrik’s voice. “They beat her pretty badly.”
“Typical,” Roeglin replied, keeping his own voice soft. Marsh couldn’t tell whether it was typical of her to need a beating or typical of the raiders to deliver one.
Both, Roeglin said. Now go into shadow form.
Shadow form? Okay.
Marsh focused on blending with the darkness around them, willing her body to become one with the shadows yet separate from them. As she did so, Roeglin slipped his hands under her arms and pulled. This time, her body bent and flowed enough for her to slip free of the shell.
“And back,” Roeglin said before turning to the person who’d freed her.
“Marsh is hurt,” he said, pausing when the little girl gasped, but Aisha didn’t need any instruction.
“I fix,” she said, and Marsh winced as she felt two small warm patches of pressure settle against the back of her armor.
Before long, she felt much better and was able to stand up without wanting to cry out in pain. The sick feeling that had dogged her every move had faded, and she bent down to wrap her arms around the child.
“Merci.”
What she wanted to do was pick the little girl up and race her clear of the prisoners and their guards, but Aisha flashed her a smile, her teeth glinting in the dark.
“Who next?”
We’re freeing the prisoners, Roeglin said, while the founder and his men keep the raiders busy.
Which explained the sounds of battle coming from the other end of the ancient hall.
“We have to get Mordan out of the cage.”
“Me do.” and Aisha slipped out of Marsh’s grasp before she could stop her.
“Wait!” she called, throttling her shout to a whisper as she caught sight of guards emerging from the far wall.
She ducked, but they raced toward the battle without appearing to have heard or
seen her. Breathing a sigh of relief, she looked around for Roeglin and saw him moving steadily down the line, unclipping neck lines and quietly rousing prisoners.
Get the kat, then lead these guys down to the next junction. He flashed a map into her head. You know the one?
Marsh did know the junction. It was the one she’d passed through not two days ago.
Good. Get them there. Henri and Jakob will walk them clear.
Without waiting for any more instructions, Marsh hurried after Aisha. When she got back to the mansion, she was going to strangle Roeglin. He had no right to put the child in this much danger.
She snuck out after us. You and I are going to talk about the examples you set.
This was her fault? But Marsh didn’t have time to be any more outraged than that. Aisha had reached the cage, her eyes flaring green as she talked to the kat.
Marsh looked around for Scruffknuckled and the kits, but didn’t see them. Again, Roeglin was quick to answer.
She left them behind under the covers so everyone thought she was still in bed. It gave her time to catch up with us... on the mule she’d “borrowed.”
Little brat, Marsh thought, but Aisha made a small sound of frustration and caught Marsh’s eye.
“I not talk to metal,” she said, sounding very much like she was sulking.
“I’ll get it,” Marsh said, relieved when she saw that the raiders hadn’t bothered locking the door with more than a bolt.
“Arrogant sons of the Dark,” she muttered, and heard Aisha gasp.
“Dat’s rude.”
“Oui,” Marsh told her, pulling the bolt clear and opening the door. “It really is.”
Aisha giggled and raced around to meet the kat as she came out. Marsh swung her off the floor, and set her on Mordan’s back, ignoring the kat’s muffled grumble of protest.
“Later,” she said. “For now, you need to get my cub to safety.”
To her relief, Mordan seemed to understand what she wanted; the big kat turned and headed for the junction. Marsh was about to follow when she remembered Roeglin’s instructions and looked back at the prisoners he’d been freeing. They’d gathered a respectful distance from the cage, but now they moved toward her.
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 42