Prisoners of the Keep

by Susan Bianculli

  CHAPTER 14

  We set up camp for the night a couple of hours out from the Morning’s Glory in a little ground hollow near the dirt road we’d been following. It was located in yet another miles-long orchard of some elongated pink fruit I’d never seen before. Since it was my turn for first watch, I set up the fire while Arghen and Jason prepared dinner. Eventually the two males settled into their bedrolls and went to sleep, leaving me to my thoughts.

  Time passed slowly on watch as clouds rolled in and out, in turn blotting out and revealing the moon and stars—especially the Milky Way. At least they still looked the same as I’d known them back home, although there was a lot more of them because there was no light pollution here. I remained alert enough, though, to hear a quiet rustling behind me over Jason’s snores. I half drew my saber and whirled around, ready to sound the alarm if necessary. But it turned out only to be Arghen rising from his place by the fire.

  “You have good ears for a Human, Paladin. I have been waiting for Jason to be sound enough asleep so you and I can talk,” he said softly.

  “Talk? Talk about what?” I asked in a quiet, nonchalant manner.

  Arghen wasn’t fooled. “You know very well what about. About Jason. There is something going on between the two of you, and both of you in your own way know this. I want to know what it is.”

  I sighed. “You’re right, of course. Jason—well, he’s not exactly a friend, even though he’s from the human world,” I said.

  I told the Under-elf everything that had happened to me from the moment I crossed over up to meeting him.

  “I see your caution about Jason,” he agreed when I’d finished my tale. “You hold to an Under-elf teaching even though you do not know it: ‘Be wary of your enemies, but be warier when they are to hand’.”

  Arghen was going to add something more but Jason jumped up and yelled, “So you are the chica I was chasing!”

  He stalked forward, face angry, until we stood almost nose-to-nose.

  “See? See?” I said hotly to Arghen.

  I looked right into Jason’s eyes and didn’t back down. “I should’ve known you’d fake being asleep! I just knew this would be your reaction if you ever found out who I was, which is why I didn’t want you around me to begin with!”

  “Oh, yeah? You knew I’d react this way, huh? Huh? Yeah, well, how else should I react! You’ve stranded me on whole ‘nother freakin’ world!” He shouted this last in my face.

  I balled my hands into fists. “Stranded you? What are you talking about? You were the one that chased me into the woods with a knife and then through that stupid gate! This is all your fault!”

  His bronzed face grew redder by the minute. “Yeah, I was chasing you because you butted in where you weren’t wanted! I owe you a lesson, chica!”

  “Owe me?” I screamed at him, angry tears now in my eyes. “I’ll tell you what you owe me! You owe me for chasing me in the first place, for the time I’ve lost with my parents and friends, and for taking pity on you with your tale of being alone in this world and letting you come along with me even though I knew who you were after only a few words! But the main thing you owe me is to leave me alone!”

  “Enough!” shouted Arghen, clapping his hands sharply.

  Jason and I both looked at him crossly.

  “Enough, I say,” he said in a quieter voice. “You cannot change the past. What you can change is the now. If you cannot live in the present, then you will not live to have a future.”

  Jason stabbed his finger at me. “The present is the fact that this persona butted into something I was doing in the past. And the future is that if I have to find other humans in this world to help me to get revenge and get home, I will!”

  I swelled up indignantly. “Oh, you think so, do you? Well let me tell you, Mr. I-Don’t-Care-About-Anyone-But-Myself: there ARE no other humans in this land! You and I are it!”

  I was about to continue and tell him about the gate but he interrupted, yelling, “Oh, come on, chica! You really think that you’re going to make me believe a bald-faced lie like that?”

  He raised his hand like he was going to backhand me. I sprang backwards, drew my sword and held it in a defensive position.

  Arghen stepped in swiftly in between us and faced Jason. “She is not lying.”

  Jason, ready to snarl at me, stared at the set face of the Under-elf and realized Arghen wasn’t kidding. Stunned, he closed his mouth and lowered his arm.

  Arghen said into the sudden quiet, “I told her this the first night I met you both, before you woke from your blow. It is true; you and she are the only Humans in this world.”

  Silence filled the hollow for a time as Jason tried to digest what he had heard.

  I finally broke the quiet. “So there it is, Jason. And we can’t go back home until someone on the human side opens another mist gate. We’re stuck here for who knows how long.” I folded my arms and spun away from him. “So, while we’re setting things straight, you both may as well know that Paladin isn’t my name. It’s Lise. Not Analise, but Lise.”

  “Very well, Lise,” Arghen acknowledged behind me.

  I peeped back over my shoulder to see him smile, and I smiled tentatively back. Jason merely glowered. I glanced at him, shrugged, and turned away to go back on watch.

  A few minutes later out of the blue, Jason said, “You know, I knew about the gate thing because of Quiris. I’ve been looking for other mist gates to go home through since getting here, but there hasn’t even been a foggy day since then.”

  I sighed. “And you won’t find one because they’re all on our side. I mean, on the human side. So we have to wait for someone else to stumble into one and open it like we did. Caelestis promised that when another portal happened she would keep it open for me; but until then, we’re stuck. And even before I can go back, I kind of promised I would do this quest for Her first.”

  He grimaced. “So, Caelestis will keep a gate open for you if one appears, huh? Then I guess I’ll have to stick with you and make sure you survive your quest so we can go home. Since we’ve seen already just how much more dangerous this place is than New York.”

  I gulped, realizing the truth of his words. It had been drummed into me hard by my grandfather and my stories that fairy tales weren’t always nice, and that the people in them didn’t always survive. And I was now living in one.

  “Do you even know where you’re going?” he asked.

  “You’ve heard about that already,” I reminded him.

  “So that was all true? Just great! Not only are we stuck on this world, you don’t even know where you need to go?”

  “Caelestis said she’d tell me the closer we got!” That wasn’t strictly true, but I wasn’t about to admit that right then. “I have no control over what and when she tells me stuff!”

  He was silent for about another minute, and then said grudgingly, “Okay, Lise. But no more secrets.”

  I gave a half nod—enough to let him know I heard him, but not enough for me to be able to say I’d agreed later if I ever needed to defend myself in an argument.

  Arghen said, “Now that this is settled, good night to you both. Jason, it is your turn at watch.”

  Jason and I looked up at the moon peeping in through the branches of the trees overhead. Arghen was right.

  “Hey! I didn’t get enough sleep!” protested Jason.

  I said with a yawn, “It doesn’t change the fact that it’s your turn.”

  I rolled myself into my bedroll without another word, leaving Jason to grumble behind me.

  CHAPTER 15

  The next morning over breakfast, Arghen said, “I believe it would be good for us to speak together this morning as candidly as last night.”

  “Oh? What do you mean?” I asked, nibbling at my journey bread.

  “Since we have been traveling together I have been assuming that you know how to handle the weapons you bear. But you are Humans, and from another world. For all I know, the outcome of th
e encounter we had with the Field Catamount was pure luck.”

  “Hey!” interrupted Jason. “I got a hit in on the damn cat’s side, remember?”

  “True. Could you do it again reliably?”

  “Maybe,” Jason hedged.

  Arghen continued, “We have the supplies from Meritzon and all the meat from the Catamount, which means we do not need to go hunting just yet. But with my dranth eating what he needs of the Catamount, it will run out faster than you think. We should go hunting during our travels for two reasons. First, hunting will stretch out our provisions. This is not something to take lightly since we cannot guarantee every hunt will be successful. If a hunt is not, then we have our stores to fall back upon. Second, hunting will also provide practice for the bows and knives you have, though not Lise’s sword. Which brings to mind a question: have either of you had any experience in defending yourselves?”

  Jason shot me a look I couldn’t interpret and then said, “I’ve lived on the streets of New York with a gang since I was a little niño. There you learn to defend yourself because there is always someone who is bigger and nastier who’ll try to take what you have, or maybe mess you up just for fun. So yeah, I can use my knives.”

  My mouth opened in surprise. Now his attempted robbery of Heather made sense. It didn’t excuse it in any way, but I could see maybe why he’d done it in the first place. I felt incredibly sorry for him.

  “In a gang?” I asked. “Don’t you have any parents at all?”

  “No,” he said flatly.

  “What about, I dunno, social services or something?”

  He laughed harshly. “Social services doesn’t find you unless you’re in the system to start with. And I never was.”

  Oh. Not only a homeless orphan, but maybe originally the son of illegal aliens. I’d read news stories about the plight of illegal aliens and some of the conditions they found themselves living in, and I felt really bad for him. And then I felt guilty on top of that about that ‘manners’ crack I made back at the Inn.

  Jason, both mad and uncomfortable at having told me that, asked me almost belligerently, “What about you, Lise? Do you fight?”

  I squirmed. “Yes. Well, sort of. I, uh, take fencing lessons.”

  Jason yelled indignantly, “Fencing lessons? That’s it? I trusted my life during that cat fight to someone who prances around waving an oversized needle?”

  “You didn’t worry about that before,” I pointed out reasonably.

  “Yeah, well, that was before I knew you weren’t really from this world!”

  Arghen clapped his hands sharply again, and we fell silent.

  “What do your lessons entail?” Arghen asked me.

  “We dress in protective clothing and try to touch each other with our swords for points. The one with the most points wins the match.”

  Jason scoffed but said nothing else.

  “Have you ever used your sword to hurt someone?” the Under-elf asked.

  “Uh, no. Well, except that whole Redcap incident I told you about last night.” I grimaced at the memory of that fight.

  Arghen said, “Perhaps we should all cross weapons and see what may be seen.”

  He rose from his seat and went to his saddlebags to retrieve a sword instead of his spear. The Under-elf stepped away from the fire and gestured first for me to join him. His longsword was made of silver and decorated like the reverse of his spear, but of course was heavier and thicker than my saber.

  He waved at my weapon as I took my place across from him. “A sword whose like I have not seen before you. From Caelestis?”

  I nodded ‘yes’ as I took an en-garde stance. Arghen’s face wrinkled a little at it, but he adapted his opening stance to mine. I understood in a flash that my style of fighting was going to be very different from his. His was probably more of a frontal attack like from my stories, as opposed to my more directed style. I was intrigued to see which would triumph. Arghen called ‘Begin,’ and moved to attack with the flat of his blade. I lunged forward and to the right to both avoid Arghen’s strike and to hit him in the gut, and then remembered with horror that there was no injury-preventing safety button at the tip of my sword!

  He twisted out of the way and blocked me with his blade, and I backpedaled hastily out of reach. “Hold! Hold! Oh, I am so sorry, Arghen! I forgot for a moment that this was live steel! I do beg your pardon!”

  “You have an interesting style of attack, Lise. I have not seen its like,” he commented dryly as he readied himself again. “Once more?”

  After a good workout that explored different ways we could attack and defend against each other’s style, Jason took my place. That was something to see. Jason was pretty fast and fought kind of crouched over with his knees bent. He swiped at Arghen rather than flat out attacked, and rolled out of the way of a lot of the return attacks. He looked like he knew what he was doing. I was torn between being horrified he knew so much deadly fighting and being impressed. I didn’t think I wanted to go up against Jason if I could help it.

  After our practice bouts Arghen suggested that we go hunting.

  I felt a little squeamish at that. “Umm, I’ve only ever used a bow at the Renaissance faires I’ve sometimes visited, and I’ve only shot at unmoving targets. I’m only okay at it.”

  “Renaissance faires?” Arghen asked. “You have used that term before. What is it?”

  Jason scoffed again, but I ignored him. “A gathering of people dressed in what we would call costumes, looking to be entertained, eat, and play games and sports,” I explained. “There’s usually a knife or axe throwing booth as well as the archery stuff. I can hit somewhere on the board something like fifty percent of the time on a good day.”

  “We should stay here for a while and see if today is a good day,” he said with a smile.

  Thanks to the 4-H, I’d been able to recognize wild potatoes as we were hunting, which lead to us having rabbit-and-potato kebabs for lunch. The potatoes turned out to be purple on the inside, but they still tasted potato-y.

  While we were eating, Arghen said to us, “I am pleased with how you both have performed today. I think you will do fine in any simple encounter with a hostile force that we may have on our way to finding our mission.”

  I gulped at the reminder that there might be more killing of sentient beings before we could go home.

  “In fact, I think it would be well to take the two of you hunting on a regular basis, each in turn.”

  I smiled a lop-sided smile, looking at the remains of the delicious rabbit kebab I’d devoured in my hand. “Yeah, I guess it would be a good idea.”

  Arghen said, “Then it is settled. We can place a limit on how far we are willing to go to find something so as to not detract from our travel. And we can also practice target shooting with knives and bows, as well as fighting in pairs, when we make our nightly camp.”

  Two days later we had the chance to put our new practices to the test. We were crossing a rather sandy area, so the vegetation was low and scarce. Tall conical stone stele occasionally marked the trail so travelers wouldn’t lose their way when sand blew across and hid the path. Just past one of those road markers the trail suddenly caved in under Maris’s hooves. With a scream, Jason and his horse disappeared from sight down a hole!

  Arghen and I leapt from our mounts and into the pit after him, and a rank smell assaulted our noses. I saw Jason, a stunned look on his face, free himself from his stirrups and tumble from the saddle. He landed on the pit’s floor to the right of a monstrous brown spider and rolled out of the way of a swipe from one of its front legs. The spider, seeing us jump down too, backed up to keep all of us under its eyes. That gave Arghen and I room to reach Jason. Arghen had grabbed his war spear from its saddle holster on his way down. He pointed it at the spider and used the silver decorations on it to reflect what sunlight he could into the spider’s eyes. The spider didn’t like that and lashed out with both its front legs to try and drag Arghen close enough to be bitten. I
could see big drops of an evil looking liquid beading on the tips of mandibles and knew any of us would be poisoned if it succeeded in its attacks. Maris screamed, wild eyed, and backed up as much as the pit would allow.

  Jason drew his knives and skidded right under the monster’s left leg, stabbing upwards and scoring a hit. I slashed at the middle right leg on its side and nearly severed the first joint. Arghen ducked under the two hairy forelegs and lunged with his spear to pierce the place between its mandibles, dodging the liquid as it flew off the points. The spider’s scream was a breathy, eerie sound, echoed by the harsher one of the horse. The monster reared up and came crashing down on us. The massive, fleshy weight of it crushed my head down and abraded my neck on the shoulders of my armor, but I managed to turn my face down and away to relieve the pressure and to get air. I used two hands to repeatedly shove my saber up into the ribbed underbelly. The spider’s scream was louder this time, and it scrambled to get off while dripping a blue, smelly ichor all over us.

  “Forward!” Arghen yelled.

  A quick glance to my left showed the Under-elf pressing the attack. Jason and I followed him, and the spider backed up before us into the rear pit wall. We had now trapped the trapper, and it turned at bay on us. It waved its legs and tried to smash us flat, but Arghen started calling out battle directions to Jason and me. We wove in and around the spider in response to him. In the beginning it got swipes in on us that knocked us in turn to the ground, but as the fight went on that happened less as we coordinated better. Time and time again either Jason would block a swipe meant for me, or I’d deflect something for Arghen, or Arghen would redirect a blow meant for Jason. It was almost magical. What killed the spider at last was that it ran out of ichor to keep it alive. When the monster collapsed the three of us were winded, though Arghen was less out of breath than Jason and I.

  “Wow, what a fight!” panted Jason. “What was that?”

  “You–you said it,” I gasped back. “I’m thinking it was the big brother of a trapdoor spider from our world.”