She still wasn’t breathing. I placed both hands on her heart, pumping up and down. One, two, three, all the way up to thirty. Still nothing. I leaned down and covered her mouth with my own, breathing deeply into her lungs twice. Then back up, one, two, three, four.
“She’s was under too long, Lord Miles,” said Samuel. “We must find a way out of here so her sacrifice is not in vain.”
“Like hell she was,” I said through gritted teeth. Twenty-eight, twenty-nine, thirty. I leaned down and gave her two more long breaths. “Come on!” I shouted. One, two, three, four, five.
Calvin pushed a dozen ants into the water as they approached our platform. “Dude, you were down there for like five minutes,” he said. “There’s no way. I’m amazed you made it back.”
“I can’t drown,” I said. “Keeper of Water.” Twenty-nine, thirty. Breath. Breath.
Come on.
Melaine coughed, her chest spasming and her arms convulsing. She struck upward, her hand slamming into my throat. I fell back, coughing, as she struggled to a sitting position, looking around wildly.
“What…what happened?” she said. “Lord Miles. Are you all right?”
“Fine, except I just got throat-punched,” I rasped.
She slid to me across the ice. “I’m sorry,” she said. “You surprised me. Did I fall unconscious?”
“A little more than that,” I said. “But I’ll tell you later.”
To my surprise, Melaine leapt forward and wrapped her arms around my neck in a hug. “Thank you,” she said. “For saving my life, and for not dying as well.”
“Um, sure,” I said, embarrassed. “But right now, we still need to get out of here, and for that we need to get rid of these ants.”
“What is their deal, anyway?” Blade complained. “There’s hundreds of them!”
“It’s an ant colony,” I said. “There’s probably thousands. And they’re mindless. They’re not going to stop or run away until they’ve brought us back to be eaten.”
“Yeah, that’s not happening,” he said.
I looked around the cavern, desperate for a new idea. The shore was positively teeming with ants. There were so many of them, they were on top of each other as they poured out of the tunnel. They seemed to have grown a little leery of entering the water, since every one of them that did ended up roasted or drowned. But that didn’t help us much. They might not be able to reach us for now, but we couldn’t escape either. The hole where the waterfall came out was too small for us to escape through either.
Wait a minute. The waterfall.
I looked down at the surface of the lake. “Of course,” I muttered. “Miles, you idiot.”
“What?” said Blade. “I mean, I’m inclined to agree. But what?”
“The waterfall.” I pointed at it. “It comes in from somewhere. So why isn’t the cave full of water? The waterfall never stops. But the water level is constant.”
Blade’s face was blank, but Calvin rounded on me. “Of course!” he said, excited. “There has to be a drain somewhere!”
“I’m going to go find it,” I said. I gave Melaine a look. “Don’t come in after me this time, okay?”
She nodded, coughing up a little more water.
I dove over the edge of the platform, sinking below the surface of the lake. I pushed myself down, down toward the bottom of the lake. Blade’s walls of flame gave me enough light to see, and I scanned the floor in every direction. But I couldn’t see anything.
I was going about it wrong, I realized. I stopped swimming, letting myself float as I closed my eyes. I reached out, feeling the presence of the water around me. I explored its edges, the way it pressed up against the lake bed in all directions.
There.
There was a flow, and through it the water was slipping away. I pushed myself toward it. It was at the very edge of the light from Blade’s fire, but I could see it. A hole leading out and away from the cavern. It looked just big enough for one, maybe two people to slip down at a time.
I shot back to the surface and pushed myself over to the platform again.
“I found the tunnel!” I said. “It’s over there. We can get out that way.”
“Yeah, but where does it lead?” said Blade.
“If the answer is ‘literally anywhere else,’ I want to go,” said Calvin intently.
I climbed up onto our little iceberg and shot it over to the lake wall above the tunnel. “It’s pretty deep,” I said. “I can use Water to push you all down into the tunnel. After that, the current should do most of the work.”
“Hope you can all hold your breath,” said Samuel. “Well, except you, Lord Miles.”
I nodded. “I’ll go last and push myself along as fast as I can and still be safe. Once I catch up to you guys, it should help move us all through as fast as possible.”
“I’ll go first,” said Cara.
“No, let me,” said Calvin.
“No offense, my Lord, but if there’s danger on the other side, I’d sooner face it myself than have you carried right into its jaws,” she said.
“You ready?” I asked. She nodded and leapt over the side of the platform. I found her presence in the water and shot it downward, into the tunnel. She disappeared from my mind’s eye. Calvin went next, then Samuel, and finally Blade. As soon as his fire died away, the ants swarmed toward us again.
“All right, my Lord,” said Melaine with a cough. “I’m ready.”
“You’re still weak,” I said. “You’re coming with me.” I wrapped my arms around her waist once again and leapt over the platform’s edge.
We flew through the water, firing into the tunnel’s mouth like a cannon shot. The stream rocketed through twists and turns, through narrow cracks and around sudden rocks that sprang up from nowhere. I felt them all coming and avoided them, but I was sure that the others ahead of us were taking a beating.
We soon came upon Blade, and I caught him up in my slipstream as I held tight to Melaine. Then Samuel appeared, and finally Calvin and Cara. Calvin’s face was strained, his cheeks bulging and his eyes wide as he fought to hold his breath.
Suddenly the darkness of the tunnel receded as light crept in. I barely had time to notice it, however, before the stream emerged into the open sunlight. We burst to the surface of white water rapids, the water swirling all around as it threatened to dash us into rocks and the river’s stony sides.
Then I felt something else coming up.
Oh, crud.
“Hang on!” I shouted.
It was another waterfall, and it was big. So big that I couldn’t feel the bottom of it with my power. We shot over it as one big group, everyone screaming. My heart leapt into my throat as I felt the curious vertigo and weightlessness of free fall. The water engulfed as we fell, wrapping around us and propelling us straight toward the ground like a rocket engine.
We hit the surface, the waterfall plunging us under. I reached out to feel the others, all of them being pushed down toward the sharp rocks at the bottom. It would shred them like a meat grinder. I snatched them all up, pushing them away from the turbulent undertow and toward the surface again.
We came up, the others sputtering and fighting for air, sucking it into their lungs with deep swallows. I pushed us toward the shore—a shore covered with vibrant grass that grew beneath the boughs of mighty oak trees whose branches dipped into the river around us.
The water shoved us gently into the dirt, and we all crawled out, collapsing on the ground the instant we were away from the river’s edge. Melaine just lay there gasping into the grass beside me. I wasn’t fighting for air like the rest of them, but I was bone-weary from pushing us all through the tunnel and then pulling us from the undertow. So for several long minutes, there was only the sound of heavy breathing.
Finally I pushed myself up, looking around to double-check that everyone was all right. Cara, too, was sitting. Beside her Calvin lay on his back, his eyes closed, his mouth open slightly.
“Is he
all right?” I said in alarm.
“He lives,” she said. “He collapsed from exhaustion once we reached the shore. He will be no worse for wear.”
I nodded and saw with a glance that Blade and Samuel, too, were all right. “Okay, so what now?” I said. “What time is it?”
“Two hours before sundown, I should think,” said Samuel, looking up at the sun’s position in the sky.
“That’s a bit early to pitch camp, but I’d say we deserve it,” said Cara with a wry smirk.
Blade pointed a finger at her. “I agree with that one. But if we’re sleeping, we need to eat first. Garcon, I will have the salmon, please.” He clapped his hands at me like a customer at a restaurant.
I laughed and turned to the river. I found some fish within seconds and flopped them up onto the shore. “There you go. You can clean them yourself.”
Blade turned up his nose. “Prepare my own food?” he sniffed. “Don’t you know who I am?”
“I suppose I’ll take care of it,” said Samuel with a long-suffering air.
“Oh, chill, Sammy boy,” said Blade, snatching one of the fish from the grass. It gave a flop and slipped from his grasp. “Dang it.”
I flopped back down to the grass, happy to just lay there and enjoy the sunlight on my face again. I closed my eyes, appreciating its glow through their lids.
“What’s that?” asked Melaine.
My eyes shot open. I sat up. Melaine was pointing east, and my gaze followed.
Hovering just above the horizon, at the edge of vision, was a dark brown smudge across the bottom of the sky. It was smoke. Lots of smoke. Something was burning. Something big, like a large town or a small city.
“Yeah, what is that?” asked Blade.
“I don’t know, but that’s where we’re heading,” I said.
“What?” he asked, confused. “Are we on some kind of ‘head right for the danger’ kick or something? What are we, actors in a horror movie?”
“It’s big and noticeable,” I said. “If the girls are within fifty miles, we can set it up as a meeting point with them tomorrow.”
Blade’s lips pursed. “All right, fine,” he said. “That’s a fair point.”
Cara was studying the smudge against the sky with a look of concern on her face. She looked at the sun again, and then back at the smudge.
“Cara?” I said. “What is it?”
She looked at me, her eyes hooded. “Nothing, my Lord. At least nothing yet. I do not want to say until we are closer to the smoke.”
I shrugged. I could have ordered her to tell me, but that was a privilege I didn’t like to abuse. “All right, fine. I’m not hungry. I’m sacking out. This body needs to sleep for, like, a day.”
“Please don’t do that,” said Melaine. “We need to get moving.”
I waved her off and went up toward the forest that stood above the river. Beneath the trees, the air was cool and shady. I found a good spot between the roots of an old oak and laid myself down. My travel sack and blankets were long washed away in the water, so it looked like the ground was going to be my only pillow for a while. I closed my eyes.
Foot steps approached. I looked up to see Melaine. She sat down beside me.
“We didn’t have much time before,” she said. “So I wanted to say again: thank you. I owe you my life.”
“Whatever,” I shrugged. “You’ve saved my life plenty of times.”
“Yes, but that is my job,” she said. “I am supposed to protect you, and yet I find you protecting me more and more as time goes on. It is a sign that you are growing. You are becoming stronger, both as a Realm Keeper and as a man.”
I felt my face flush with embarrassment. “Yeah, well…I don’t know about all that. But I do know that I don’t want anyone else at my back on the way to Wyrmspire. You’re the best bodyguard I’ve ever had.”
She cocked her head, confused. “I am the only bodyguard you have ever had.”
I grinned. “My point.” She punched my thigh. “Ow.”
“Sleep well, my Lord,” she said, getting up and heading for the fire. “I will see you on the morrow.”
I closed my eyes and laid my head in my hands, letting myself drift from consciousness. “Yeah, I suppose you will.”
TO BE CONTINUED IN…
A COLUMN OF SMOKE
TESS
MY NAME IS TESS HERNANDEZ, and I’m living a double life.
If you’re reading this, then by now you probably know a little bit about me. Me, and the others like me. The other Realm Keepers. Six kids who travel to another world every night when we sleep. That world is Midrealm, and when we’re there, we’re wizards of incredible power. But our powers are dwarfed by the scope of Chaos, the force of evil that’s been trying to conquer all for millennia. Their agent, Terrence, had finally figured out how to attack us in both worlds. So we spent our days fighting a war on two fronts: in Midrealm, where we faced the threat of death by sword or spell; and on True Earth, where a secret organization was hunting for us.
But for me, at least, something had changed. I now had a third life. One I didn’t understand, but one in which I spent an ever-increasing amount of time.
It had been this way ever since we’d entered the Sink on our way to meet the prophet Aurora. Since then, I’d started having dreams.
That in itself was odd, since I never truly slept. Whenever I rested in one world, I was awake in the other. I hadn’t had dreams since I’d first arrived in this strange world. But now I would wake in Midrealm with wisps of memory clinging to my mind, haunting my waking moments with images half-glimpsed through a fog. Some of the images were strange, some disturbing. I couldn’t tell if they were related to each other. Some featured wars I didn’t recognize. Some were of people I knew I’d never met, but who looked familiar somehow.
And then, of course, there was the old man.
The old man was everywhere in the dreams. Often he seemed to be their central focus, but sometimes he was just a bystander, observing scenes play out from the sidelines. But he was always there. He never spoke. He only moved, walking with clear purpose from place to place. In the weeks since the siege of Morrowdust the dreams had grown more and more vivid, but I was no closer to understanding their meaning.
I would find out soon, but not soon enough.
The old man was there again. This time he was standing atop a high mountain that gave a clear view of the countryside for miles and miles in every direction. He was atop its peak, his boots buried beneath two feet of snow. His tattered brown robes swirled around him in the mountain’s chilly winds, and yet I knew he didn’t feel the cold. I didn’t know how I knew, but I knew. He was staring with intent, light grey eyes at the sky to the east. I followed his line of sight and saw something like a cloud appear on the horizon. But as it grew closer I saw that it wasn’t a cloud—it was a swarm of…something. Something with wings.
I came awake with a start, throwing off the blankets of my bedroll. Nora, of course, was already awake, and she came swiftly to my side.
“My Lady,” she said. “Are you well?”
I smiled at her, trying to slow my breathing. The transition from the dreams to the real world was much more jarring than the transition between Earth and Midrealm. But I hadn’t told Nora about the dreams yet. I hadn’t told anyone. I wanted to ask Greystone about them, but it wasn’t something I wanted to discuss via telestone.
“I’m fine, Nora. Thank you.”
She smiled back eagerly and held up a skin filled with the cool water of the rivers that ran through the Elven woods. I took a long drink, relishing the feeling of the crystal clear liquid. It was so pure that it didn’t taste like anything, and yet it did, somehow. It was something you tasted with your mind. It washed away the tension I always felt upon waking these days.
“Thank you,” I said. I rose to my feet, slinging my new bow carefully across my shoulders, and glanced around the clearing. Raven was already up and with the horses. She had a hand brush out an
d was running it along her mount’s coat, humming softly to it. The horse’s eyes studied her with interest. I wished I had her way with animals. I was still nervous on top of a horse, and that usually made the horses nervous, too.
Sarah stood at the base of a tall tree at the clearing’s east edge. Looking up, I saw Yinnilith in a low branch above her. Yinnilith was our guide, an Elf who lived in these woods. He was also responsible for saving our lives—the seer of his town had tried to have us killed, and only Yinnilith’s intervention had stopped her. He was an unusual Elf, from what little I’d seen of them. Most of them were quiet and reserved. They almost struck me as sad. But their emotions could fly off the handle in an instant, and then they were scary. But not Yinnilith. He seemed to look at everything with joy. He relished the oddities and quirks in every creature he saw, and in every word we spoke and every gesture we made. He laughed loud and often.
I had loved traveling with him, even though it had only been a day. I’d been overjoyed when he’d chosen to spend the night with us. “You are not yet beyond my borders,” he’d said. “I would hate for you to have another misunderstanding with my people.” Then he’d laughed that loud laugh and disappeared into the branches of an oak.
Though I walked up quietly, Yinnilith looked up the second I approached them. Sarah followed his gaze, turning to me with a smile.
“Morning, Tess,” she said. “You ready to go?”
“I guess so,” I said quietly, ducking further behind my hair as I glanced up at Yinnilith. I loved how happy and friendly he was, but at the same time I found him intimidating. I’d seen him fight in the Elven village when we were attacked. He wasn’t someone I’d ever want to face on a battlefield.
“Did you sleep well, my Lady?” said Yinnilith, smiling.
I glanced up at him again. That was odd. Why was he asking that? Why did I feel like the question was actually about my dreams? But Yinnilith’s face betrayed nothing, his smile never wavering.
Wyrmspire (Realm Keepers Book 2) Page 33