Obasi’s face clouded and then went slowly blank. Marsh was about to ask if he was okay when his grandmother laid a hand on her knee. “Hush, child.”
Even Aisha stilled, her large blue eyes growing wide as she stared at him. She crept over to Marsh and crawled into her lap, turning around so she could face the world, Marsh’s body at her back. After a moment, Obasi’s expression cleared and he favored Gustav with a soft, sad smile.
“The Protectors will try,” he agreed, then shook his head, “but we have a long way to travel, and grammama is very slow. We will see you again if the Deeps permit it.”
He rose gracefully to his feet, and his people followed him. Even his grammama, whose scramble to get upright was less graceful because of her age. Gustav followed them to his feet and picked up his pack. “How long will it take you?”
“Most of two days,” Obasi told him. “We will be very careful...and our pace will be very slow.”
“Call me slow one more time, grandson, and you will be carrying me,” his grammama snapped, and he flinched.
“I thought I was going to be doing that anyway, grammama.”
“Cheeky boy.”
They were both smiling as Gustav dug into his pack. Their smiles faded as he took out half the food he’d been given. “You will need this.”
Aisha unslung her pack and set it at Obasi’s feet. “And dis.”
“We will take turns carrying it,” Obasi assured her. “One pack should be enough.”
Zeb, Gerry, and Jakob were next to offer food and they took it, refusing any more when Brigitte, Henri, and Izmay stepped forward.
“You will need it more than we will,” he said, folding Brigitte’s offering back into her arms, “but thank you.”
Before Marsh could ask him what he’d meant by that, he’d picked up Aisha’s pack and turned away. His grammama stepped in front of her and poked her in the chest as she went to follow. “You need to go the other way, child...and take your people with you.”
She shuffled around and walked after Obasi leaving Marsh to stare at her retreating back.
“Your people?” Gustav demanded. “I thought you were all my people.”
Marsh looked at him. “Well, you are our captain.”
He lifted his head and watched as Obasi’s people walked into the shrooms and the gathering shadows. “The other way, she said?”
Marsh nodded. “The way to the water source.”
Gustav sighed. “Which your Obasi says will not be sufficient.”
Marsh met his gaze and then sighed as well. “I’m sorry.”
“Well, at least he understood that I’d need to go see it anyway.”
“He did. Shall we?”
They trekked back to the village and then followed the path that Obasi had termed the swamp trail.
“Damn! I didn’t even feel him add that in,” Gustav murmured as he led them to the turn-off and down the path leading out from the village.
Marsh exchanged glances with Roeglin. She hadn’t felt Obasi’s intrusion either. He shook his head, and Aisha looked from one to the other of them. “He askd-ed nicely,” she assured them and frowned her expression troubled. “I told him he should have asked you too.”
Roeglin was clearly surprised. “You did?”
Aisha nodded, but they had reached the end of the trail and Gustav signaled a halt. They gathered around him, studying the water that lay in a silent pool tucked at the base of the cavern wall. From what Marsh could see, the wall curved toward the back and the pool continued beneath it. A soft glow shimmered across its surface and was undiminished as it disappeared.
Movement caught the corner of her eye, and she turned toward it. Mordan stepped out from between two of the tall brown toadstools and cocked her head. Marsh reached along the connection between them, and the kat welcomed her.
There are others here.
Others? More humans?
Yes...no. Mordan shook her head, raising her lips in a silent snarl.
Marsh stared at her. I will check.
This time when she stretched her senses into the cavern, Mordan rode with her, the kat elated and frustrated by what they shared.
There she said, her mental presence pouncing on an odd life sign. This one. Its scent is human, but it is not human. I cannot find it. I cannot find what it is.
Marsh focused on the life sign and saw what the kat was getting at. It was definitely human, but it was also clearly something else as well. Gustav, meanwhile, had been studying the wall at the rear of the cavern.
“Is that an opening?” he asked, and they turned to follow the direction of his hand.
As they did, one of the conical fungi at the edge of the long dark crack in the cave wall did move. The horizontal strips running along its skin rose and fell, then it began shuffling toward the crack. Staring at it, Roeglin, Izmay, Brigitte, Zeb, and Gerry pulling spears from the shadows.
“Halt!” Gustav shouted, and Gerry lashed out with a long tendril of shadow.
As it wrapped around the fungi’s bulk, Jakob and Henri jolted forward, Marsh racing after them. Mordan came too, the kat closing the distance between herself and the shroom in several long bounds.
Or she would have if one of the shrooms close to the path hadn’t lashed out and caught her mid-bound. The mushroom’s booted foot slammed into the kat’s side, knocking her out of her trajectory and bringing her abruptly to the ground.
The kat landed hard, clawing her way back onto her feet and slinking belly-down toward the offending fungus. Marsh altered course, preparing to defend her familiar, and the team broke into two smaller groups. Roeglin, Tamlin, Gerry, and Zeb pivoted to go after Mordan.
Jakob, Izmay, Brigitte, and Henri continued after the original fungus. It caught them by surprise by shedding its conical outer shell and resolving into a more human form...if humans wore flat shelf-like protrusions like a second skin.
The sight of it gave them all pause, but the man didn’t stop. He bolted for the crack in the wall, and they went in pursuit. As they vanished into the gap, Marsh caught up with the one that had attacked Mordan.
It cast a glance at the crack and then raised its fists. Marsh had the impression there was a human standing in front of her, but also something else. The woman’s eyes were as blue as Aisha’s, but her skin... Marsh blinked.
The woman’s skin was no more human than that of the shrooms that proliferated on the walls around them. Marsh’s eye caught on the flat, shelf-like fungi growing from a rock face and she couldn’t help but compare the similarities with those and the long, flat growths on her target’s skin.
She could hear the voice of Obasi’s grandmother in her head. “Wear masks, and keep your skin covered. The fungi aren’t picky about who they choose to be hosts.”
Marsh stopped, raising her hand. Keep them back, Ro.
Roeglin pulled the why out of her head and swore. ”Shag the shrooms,” he muttered, but he passed on what he saw, and Henri brought his team to a halt.
Gustav called out, his voice echoing over the water, “We mean you no harm.”
A response hissed back from beyond the cavern wall. It sounded as if it had been drawn from vocal cords too long unused. “That issss what the othersss sssaid.”
“And?”
“They are dead.”
Marsh kept her eye on the human-mushroom in front of her, but Gustav hadn’t finished.
“They are not us,” he called.
“Be that asss it may, we are not ready to join your cavernsss.” This was said with such vehemence that Gustav raised his hands.
“Do you mean them harm?”
The voice coughed as if it meant to laugh but had forgotten how. “Not unlessss our homesss are threatened.”
“We are the same.”
“These others. What did you do with them?”
“We killed them all,” Gustav told it, and Marsh tensed, waiting for her opponent to attack.
“Ssso do we. Through thisss cavern, they shall
not passss.” There were a few seconds of silence as though the owner of the voice wanted that message to sink in before it added, “And neither ssshall you.”
Gustav raised his hands. “I understand.”
“You will let my people return unharmed.”
Gustav glanced around, but apart from the person Marsh was facing and the one closest the gap, there were no other shroom people in sight. The Protector captain cleared his throat. “I agree.”
He made a gesture with his hands, clearly calling Henri and others back to where he was standing. Looking at Marsh and the shadow mages and made the same gesture. Everyone but Zeb and Tamlin moved back, and then Marsh uncurled her fists and pulled her hands back to her shoulders.
“I’m going,” she told the creature in front of her. “I hope you can understand me. I am going, and I’m taking the kat with me.”
It regarded her warily, its fists still raised, but it didn’t move as it watched her back slowly away, Mordan reversing at her side. It was only when Tamlin and Roeglin moved in alongside her and joined her in her backward journey that the shrooms around them moved and a half dozen more of the secretive humans stepped out of hiding.
Their skin, Roeglin murmured.
It’s perfect camouflage, Marsh finished.
Does it hurt? Aisha wondered, and Marsh gave her a sharp look.
One of the strangers looked at them, and her voice filled their heads with warmth. No, little one. We are not in pain. This is just the way we are.
Aisha stared at her, her young eyes wide with surprise, but the woman turned away and followed her companions through the shrooms. Marsh and the others watched as they made their way along the edge of the pool to the crack in the wall.
They were clearly being watched because the voice spoke again. “Do not follow.”
They all shook their heads, and Henri backed another two steps away from the crack. When the last of them had disappeared, the strangely sibilant voice spoke. “For that, you have earned our aid.”
In the pool, shadow dimmed the water’s glow, and a small black boat sailed out from under the ledge. It moved straight to the water at Gustav’s feet and bobbed there. Take thisss. If you need usss, blow three short blastsss and help will come...but warn your other alliesss. We do not want to die repaying our debt.
Gustav reached down and lifted the small craft from the water. No sooner did he cradle it in his hands, than the shadows creating it disappeared, revealing a whistle made from a small, hollow tube. It was strung on a cord of woven shroom fiber.
Gustav looped it over his head. “Thank you.”
“Pray the Deeps you never need us.”
Gustav looked around at the team, his gaze taking in Marsh’s return. “Let’s head back. We can’t use this.”
He indicated where it ran back to the wall and presumably under it. “Not if there’s a community relying on it on the other side.”
Henri sighed. “So, we have to pray whatever defenses they cook up for the Surface hold?”
“Oui.”
“Great.”
Gustav didn’t grace that with a reply but led them back to the path. Before the pool was completely behind them, the voice spoke one more time. “They are taking your people to the Devassstation. If you are ssswift, you can ssstop them.”
The Protector captain had frozen at the sound of its sibilant tones, but now he scanned the cavern before him. “Marsh!”
“Oui, Captain.” Her tone made it clear she knew exactly what he wanted, and she jogged up the column to stand beside him, all too aware of leaving Aisha and Tamlin standing forlornly beside Roeglin.
It made her feel sad, but she had no answers, nothing she could do to make it different and nothing she could say to make it better. To give them credit, not a single one of them complained, not even in her head where only she would hear it. It was something she could be grateful for.
Gustav waited until she reached him and murmured softly, “Report straight into my head, please.”
“Oui.”
She followed his gaze out into the cavern, trying to discern what the voice had seen, but seeing nothing. She listened, but couldn’t hear anything, either. Closing her eyes, Marsh tweaked the shadows, seeking what they touched and looking for those connected to the raiders moving through the village they’d burned.
They’d tunneled through a half-mile distant, but some time ago. Marsh caught sight of them disappearing through the tunnel opening, a line of prisoners strung between them. At the same time, the shadows brought her the image of another waystation courtyard. Given the impression of open sky above it and that she didn’t recognize it, Marsh guessed it was the waystation in the main settlement.
Whatever it was, the people of Ariella’s Grotto were being led through the shadow gate that had been opened in the courtyard to emerge in the ruins they’d visited the day previously. Marsh’s head swam as it tried to reconcile the three images, but she kept them separate. Passing them to Gustav, she hugged her arms around her body and waited.
All she wanted to do was to make a dash for the tunnel entrance and stop the raiders from taking any more prisoners through it, although she was torn. She also wanted to take out the mages holding the door open in the burnt-out town and prevent them from bringing any more prisoners through.
While the townsfolk were being held in the Grotto proper, there was some hope of saving them. Once they’d been taken from the Four Caverns, that became much more difficult. “Relay this,” Gustav ordered, and she breathed a sigh of relief.
Given the raiders were short on mind mages, they were going to strike the force going through the tunnel first. With any luck, it would take the ones in the ruins some time to work out anything was amiss, and more of the townsfolk would be brought through...where they could free them.
Marsh caught the thought that if they were very quick, they could travel to the waystation and free the rest of them, but it was shoved aside as an impossibility—and stupid to boot, given how many men they’d seen descending into Ariella’s.
Gustav thought it was much more likely the raiders would send soldiers through to retrieve the prisoners. “We stop the raiders leaving with the prisoners. We get as many out as we can. And we shut down the gate before they can send reinforcements.”
His voice was quiet and firm, his eyes hard as ice in a face as bleak as the winter slopes outside Kerrenin’s Ledge. “We get our people, and we leave none of theirs alive.”
“Oui,” came out as more a growl than an affirmation and Mordan snarled softly.
Gustav looked from one to the other of them. “You have your orders. Move out.”
He’d assigned Brigitte, Tamlin, and Aisha to work with Gerry and Zeb and tasked them with observing the raiders at the gate. “The second you think they know something’s gone wrong, take out the gate. I don’t care who’s coming through it or how many. Shut it down. We can rescue the ones in the cavern, but not if we’ve got half an army up our asses.”
“Rude,” Aisha whispered, and he blushed.
She giggled, and he glared at her. “Am I understood, Apprentice Danet?”
Aisha’s smile disappeared and she straightened, answering as soberly as any of the others. “Oui, Captain.”
15
Ambush Point
They reached the trail leading to the tunnel entrance and slowed.
“I don’t like this,” Roeglin murmured, and Henri agreed.
“There’s no other way to reach it.”
“It stinks of a trap,” Izmay agreed.
“I’ll go first,” Jakob told them, laying his palm on Gustav’s chest. “Trooper’s responsibility. You’re needed to think our asses out of any mess we get ourselves into.”
“Marsh?”
She scanned for lives, not surprised to sense twenty or thirty ahead of them. The signs coming from the shrooms around them, however, were a surprise. They’d gotten the ambush point wrong. It wasn’t ahead of them. They’d walked right into its
center.
“Sons of the Deeps,” Gustav murmured, then shouted. “Go! Go! Go!”
Whatever the raiders were expecting, Marsh thought, it probably wasn’t this. The six of them split up and charged the shrooms at the edge of the trail, using the image Roeglin had transferred from her mind to guide them. Only Jakob and Henri bolted for the tunnel.
Being the only non-shadow mages among them, they couldn’t draw shields to catch the crossbow bolts fired at close range. While the men on either side of the path focused on the warriors charging directly at them, the two ex-caravan guards went to see what they could do about the prisoners.
“Don’t you leave us to do all your dirty work!” Henri shouted, but the battle was joined, and his words went unheeded.
Marsh didn’t think they’d have much of a choice. They were outnumbered four to one, and she wasn’t sure even Mordan could even up those odds.
Help is coming, Roeglin told her, and she wondered why she hadn’t heard Gustav blow the whistle. He hasn’t done that yet.
The raider rose in front of her and Marsh slammed a shield up between them in time to catch the crossbow bolts. She even managed to parry the strike from the raider on the other side of her, and then she was trying to deal with them both. The problem was, they weren’t using blades.
They’re going to try to capture us. Roeglin sounded like he didn’t quite believe it.
Marsh didn’t know whether to be relieved or mortified.
I guess they have to feed the shadow monsters something.
He gave a short bark of laughter, drawing a puzzled glance from the man in front of him but not stopping him from swinging the short length of metal in his hands.
“Yeah, laugh it up, sunshine. You won’t be laughing for long once she gets a hold of you.”
“You talkin’ about your mother again?” Roeglin sneered, lashing out with his sword.
It clashed off metal as his opponent blocked and then bounced his second short-staff off Roeglin’s shield. “You can’t hold these forever, shadow mage.”
He feinted, pretending a strike to the ribs and then directing the blow downward onto Roeglin’s thigh. Roegling grinned as he dodged backward...and stopped grinning as a third staff slammed into the back of his legs, taking his feet out from under him.
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 112