Minotaur grunted and Sholto nodded his head in a bow of sorts.
“We hoped to find safety in your swamp, Sholto,” I said over the growing noise. “I hope you don’t mind. I mean, we didn’t really have a choice. This was our only option.”
“I did sssay you were welcome here, did I not?”
“Yeah, but I didn’t mean to bring trouble. It’s just we were flying and were attacked. Our plane crashed in here and Aoife and I fell out there,” I pointed out to the plains. I felt myself rambling but couldn’t stop the stream of words “And there were these big mechanical dragons. We just needed to find shelter and the plane.”
“The plane?” he asked, unfamiliar with the word.
“The metal flying thing,” Aoife explained, holding out her arms to mimic wings. She looked at one and dropped it, indicating a missing wing.
“Oh, yesss,” Sholto hissed. “This ‘plane’ did crash in my ssswamp not far off from here. I found it quite the curiousss oddity.”
“You saw it?” I asked. “There were two people on it, Seanna and a man. Are they okay?”
“Yesss, I was there and saw them,” he replied. “Sssadly, one did not make it.”
I felt myself go pale and Aoife’s eyes went wide. “Who?” I asked, afraid of the answer. I didn’t know which death would be worse.
“They’re here,” Minotaur said before Sholto could answer.
I turned to find the Balataur materializing out of the mists like hulking beasts emerging from the gloom of nightmares.
“You are not welcome in my ssswamp. You must leave,” Sholto said.
A few of the Balataurs’ heads turned to the tree, surprised to see the cloaked figure there. “We’ll leave when good and ready, with the boy in tow,” one of them answered. “He’s already caused enough trouble for Master, including the destruction of three of his Death Serpents.”
“Death Serpents?” I asked.
“The flying dragons, Gaige,” Aoife answered.
“I thought those were Daresh’s.”
“Apparently not.”
“If you do not leave my ssswamp upon my request, you shall not leave it at all,” Sholto said.
The Balataur puzzled the statement over a moment. “Is that a threat?” he finally asked. “Because we are not going anywhere without the boy.”
“I was kind of hoping you’d sssay that.” Sholto dropped from the tree, barely making a splash in the water below. He pulled open the cloak and let it drop.
Aoife gasped and I stared in shock. My mouth hung open a little. Sholto had remained in the shadows of his cloak throughout our first trip through the swamp, so we never knew what was hiding in those depths.
He stood a bit over five feet tall. His body was lean, rippling with muscle underneath a hard skin of scales. His face stretched into a short snout full of sharp little teeth. The kicker was the thick tail that reached down from his tail bone and swished in the brackish water. He looked almost exactly like a lizard standing on its back legs.
His yellow eyes flicked around at the surrounding Balataur. He reached to his back where he pulled a weapon strapped there. It was a single piece of black wood, wickedly curved and sharpened into a blade. The sticks Minotaur had given me looked like pencils compared to it.
The Balataur snarled, showing large, yellowed teeth. “Kill them all but the boy!”
All hell broke loose.
Sholto’s grey body was a blur of motion, slipping easily through the water, while the Balataur lumbered. Their heavy hooves sank deep into the mire, slowing them. A red slash appeared across the chest of the closest to Sholto. He snorted in surprise as blood welled up, stumbled backwards, and fell backwards into the water.
One down , I thought. Plenty more where that came from . They came from everywhere out of the mists, rushing in as one.
Minotaur struggled just as much in the mud hidden beneath the water. His movements weren’t nearly as fluid as they were out on the plains. He managed to deflect the strike from a Balataur’s sword with the larger blade and rammed the smaller dagger into the soft flesh under his jaw.
Sholto dipped and spun. He whipped the legs out from under one of the beasts with his tail. In the same movement, he slashed the belly of another Balataur.
Minotaur ducked a long, slow ax swing, and rushed in horns first. A horn caught the Balataur in the midsection, while Minotaur stabbed the longer blade into its back.
Sholto dipped into the water, disappearing with barely a ripple. The Balataur that was about to engage him blinked and looked around in confusion. Sholto reappeared behind him and slid the wooden blade across its throat.
I was so engrossed with the fighting that I didn’t notice a Balataur until it loomed over me. He peeled his lips back from his teeth as he raised a long, curving blade. He didn’t seem to be in the mood to follow that whole keep the boy alive order. The blade whistled through the air as he brought it down. It hit an invisible wall about a half foot from may face. The Balataur’s furry face crinkled in confusion.
“Wasn’t expecting that, were you?” I asked.
Frankly, nether was I. Activating my telekinesis was more of an unconscious and instinctive reaction. I held his massive arm in place and swung a stick. It cracked across the thing’s wrist. The Balataur’s hand flexed open and the blade plopped in the water at my feet.
He jerked his hand back in pain. I attacked again. The other stick fell on the trapezius muscle on the side of his neck—with a little added umf from my power. It twitched under his red fur and the beast’s face flinched with pain. After another strike on his snout, he staggered back, trying to get out of reach. I lashed out at his legs with my power. His lower half swung out back and he flipped face first into the water.
From there, I was at a loss for what to do next. The two sticks might be painful, but they were far from lethal. Luckily, I didn’t have to come up with a way to keep the Balataur down. Sholto appeared out of the water beside the Balataur struggling to stand, his wooden blade burying in the monster’s back.
He turned to us as he pulled the weapon out. “I think it is time for you two to leave,” he hissed. “We will deal with these beastsss. Your plane isss that way.” He jerked his long, scaled head deeper into the swamp. “The way isss clear for now. Help awaitsss to aid your flight from my ssswamp.”
“What about Minotaur?” I asked. “We can’t just leave him.”
Minotaur’s eyes rolled my way as he finished off the Balataur he fought. “Don’t be stupid. These will be handled.”
He turned back to the fight before I could object. “But...” I began lamely.
Aoife grabbed my arm. “Come on, Gaige. I want to go home.”
I turned to her, ready to protest, but it retreated from my tongue as she looked at me with hope—something we hadn’t been able to muster lately. “Okay,” I agreed.
And we were off, stumbling through the swamp as fast as we could manage.
15
THE SURVIVOR
The grunts and squeals of dying Balataur faded quickly behind us. When the Balataur had surrounded us on all sides, the thick mists caused sounds of their approach to echo around us. In contrast, they had the opposite effect as we put distance between us and the fighting. The mist muted the sounds of fighting, the noise fading faster than expected.
Aoife and I tried to cut the straightest we could manage path through the swamp. Sholto had pointed the way we should go, but all sense of direction was lost without anything to help us keep our bearings. No sun. No horizon. Nothing. Just thick, lifeless gray mists that smelled worse than I remembered. Within minutes I was sure we were off track. We had to circle around deep pools of retched water that rose too high for our comfort or around large, long dead trees that had given up its roots and fallen over. Every side step threatened to lead us astray from the plane and the help Sholto promised.
I was anxious to find the crash site plane and dreaded it at the same time. Sure, he was a little occupied fighting Bala
taur at the time, but Sholto could have shouted who had died in the wreck. Instead, I was left wondering and arguing with myself. Tias had helped us escape. We were nothing to him. Just three strangers who were the enemies of his enemy. That made us his friends in his book. He took this huge risk for us. Not to mention his little girl back in Delicia. I didn’t want him to be dead.
Seanna. She was a slightly different story. Did I really wish harm on her? Even after all she had done to Aoife and me, could I really say I hoped she was the one who had died in the crash? I was sick of people dying. Seanna came about as close as somebody could to deserving it in my book, but I couldn’t bring myself to hope it was her over Tias.
Maybe Sholto was mistaken. Maybe they both survived. It was just wishful thinking. My stomach knotted and I thought I was going to be sick. The putrid smells of the swamp didn’t help matters any. I needed to focus on moving in as straight of line as possible. Worrying over who survived the crash would do me no good if we never found the crash site.
Aoife stumbled on something unseen in the murky, shin deep water. She grabbed my arm to steady herself. “Sorry,” she murmured.
“Don’t worry about it.” I grabbed her hand to not only keep us both steady, but also to give me something solid to hold on to. I needed that comfort.
“Are we still heading the right way?” she asked.
I stopped and looked behind us. I could only see about twenty yards or so before the mists swallowed everything up. “Yeah, I believe so,” I replied with more conviction than I felt.
We continued on step by step. I kept an ear out, expecting to hear the splashing of the Balataur coming after us again. I worried about Minotaur and Sholto. The Balataur had been coming from everywhere. There didn’t seem like there was an end to their numbers. How could the two of them possibly face them all? How could they survive? If they didn’t, I hoped I never found out. That would be just two more deaths on my head.
“Gaige.” Aoife’s squeeze on my hand brought my attention forward. “There’s someone out there.”
We stood motionless in the swamp water, squinting but not seeing making anything out. Anything beyond ten yards or so was nothing but distorted grey lumps.
“What is it?” I whispered.
I caught movement out of the corner of my eye. I whipped my head to the right. Something out there moved. It was nothing but a gray slash through the mists, so I couldn’t tell if it was a branch or something else.
“Hello?” I called out.
“Don’t do that, you idiot,” Aoife hissed.
“She’s right about that,” a voice called back from the mists.
I knew that voice. Seanna’s slight form materialized from the grey. Her hair was frazzled and her eyes were tight with the strain of surviving the plane crash.
“How in the roots below did you survive?” she asked. “Both of you.”
“I could ask the same thing,” I said.
She hung back a bit, just enough that the mists hanging motionless around her obscured her. It was like looking at her with hazy dream eyes. She looked everywhere but at Aoife or me. “I imagine my survival had a lot to do with you. The plane took a dip, heading nose down for the ground when there was a sudden jerk and we were heading for the swamp.”
“Tias?” I asked. “Sholto said...” My voice faded.
“I’m sorry, Gaige.”
I sighed. What about Awar? I thought. Would the other members of the Delician Underground take care of her? “How did you survive when he didn’t?”
“I did the only thing I could do to survive,” she said, stepping forward. “Unfortunately, I could not protect us both.”
She drew closer. She was still in human form, but her skin looked different. It was hard and rough—layered like the protective bark of a tree.
I nodded. These things didn’t surprise me anymore. Magic, death, and constant threat of danger—they were things that were starting to register little more than a blip on my radar. That scared me. I was prone to stupid acts before, but becoming—well, not comfortable, but used to them would only make things worse. I could end up doing even stupider things than jumping from a plane’s wing onto a mechanical dragon in midflight.
Seeing Seanna shifted, however slightly, into her true form didn’t even faze me. It should have. Back in Elder Narit’s hut, I had been so shocked when I felt rough skin on her wrist. How naïve. This was the first time I actually saw proof that she really was one of the tree-dwelling Ashlings and I didn’t care. What really mattered was Tias was dead. Awar had lost her father. That was something I knew a little about, but to make it worse, he had died because of me.
Her form cleared as she walked closer. She was still in human form, but her skin held a roughness to it, layered like the protective bark of a tree. I could only nod my understanding, didn’t trust myself to speak. As unmanly as it may sound, I wanted to flop down right there in the water and cry. The funny thing was I didn’t want to cry for those who lost their lives. The thought of Awar losing her father brought tears to my eyes.
Long moments past with nobody saying anything, nobody even wanting to look at the others. Finally, Aoife broke the silence.
“We should get moving. There might be time to save the Mother Tree.”
I looked at her, a little surprised. “I thought you wanted to go home.”
“Of course, I do, but some good should come of this trip, shouldn’t it? I’m not saying her people deserve it.” She paused, stopping herself and shook her head. “No. They don’t deserve it. No matter what they were willing to do to you, they don’t deserve to be wiped out completely.”
Normally Seanna grew defensive when her clan was talked about, but she stayed oddly quiet.
“Are you sure?” I asked. The thought of helping stirred something in me. Aoife was right. This trip and all the death that came with it would mean nothing if we ran home with tails tucked firmly between our legs. Saving Seanna’s clan wouldn’t take what I was responsible for off my shoulders, but if I could do something to help me find a little redemption in myself.
Aoife made an exacerbated noise. “I said it, didn’t I? Let’s get out of here. I’d really like to get this over with and get home before I reach middle age.”
I smiled and turned to Seanna. “Sholto said help would be waiting to lead us out of the swamp.”
She nodded, her lips tightening. She didn’t look like she was in favor of whatever Sholto had sent to help, but she turned and led us through the mists.
***
“No way I’m getting on those things!” Aoife protested.
Seanna let out an irritated noise. “If I’m willing to, you should be able to lower yourself just as much.”
“I have a long way to go to lower myself to your level,” Aoife said, her voice lined with frost.
“Come on, Aoife. At least we’ll be staying on the ground,” I said.
“That’s true,” she admitted. “At least there we won’t be repeating the experience of sky diving without a parachute. You’ll probably find a way to get us killed anyways.”
“Come on. I’ll help you on,” I offered. I might be able to speed up the process if I gave her no other alternative. I lifted my foot. The swamp let go of it with a reluctant squelch. “It beats walking through this again.”
“I already climbed onto one thing I really didn’t want to today. I almost died.” She folder her arms. “I don’t care to again.”
“Just think of them as horses.”
Aoife rolled her eyes.
Seanna gave up and walked to the creatures in question. There were three of them—large, lizard like creatures that only occasionally regarded us with curiosity. For the most part, they preferred to keep their snouts stuck in the swamp water, only bringing them up when they found a wiggling munchie to chew. They were about the size of motorcycles, if motorcycles had long necks and tails, and were covered in thick gray scales. They reminded me of Komodo dragons on steroids, minus the ill temper.
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They stopped their rooting to watch Seanna approach. The Ashling slowed and held up her empty hands when she neared.
“See,” I said. “If they won’t eat her, we should be fine.”
“She probably tastes like rotten cabbage.”
Seanna threw a glare over her shoulder before reaching out a hand to slide it down the flank of the nearest lizard.
I held out my hand to Aoife. “Come on. You said you wanted to help the Mother Tree and you trust Sholto, right? This is faster than walking.”
“Fine,” she said. “But if I get eaten, I’m blaming you.”
Seanna circled around the creatures to the one in back as Aoife and I approached. I led her to the closest and she laid a hesitant hand on the lizard.
“It’s rough and hard.”
“Look, there’s a place to hold on to, I think.” I pointed at the base of its neck. Two small plates jutted up from in between its shoulders. “It’ll be like holding on to a horse’s reins.”
“I’ve never even rode a horse,” Aoife said.
“Neither have I,” I admitted. “It’s probably nothing like riding a horse.”
“You’re not helpful at all, are you?”
“We are losing time,” Seanna said, ignoring Aoife’s glare. She slipped over the lizard’s flank with fluid grace.
“You’ll do fine,” I said. “I’ll help you on.”
She ignored my helping hand and positioned herself next to the creature. It swiveled its head to watch her.
“If you eat me, I’m going to give you the runs,” Aoife told it. “Don’t try me.”
The lizard flicked its forked tongue out once in reply.
Aoife gripped the shoulder plates and kicked her leg over its back. She pulled herself on it and grimaced. She wiggled, trying to find a comfortable position on its boney spine.
I rounded to the middle lizard and touched its flank to let it know I was there. That’s what I had heard people did with horses, so I figured it wouldn’t hurt to do it here. The thing didn’t register my presence as I pulled myself onto its back. It kept its snout in the water, snorting out bubbles in the murky gunk as it searched for little tasties.
The Gatekeeper Trilogy Page 42
