Well, that wasn’t awkward at all. I was trying to thank him and say goodbye. The last time we came to Delicia, Minotaur showed his extreme reluctance to approach the human city. We had said bye to the great beast and I marched straight into Daresh’s waiting arms.
“So, what’s the plan?” I asked Seanna.
“I’m hesitant to get too close even under the cover of darkness,” she said. “We will approach as close as we dare and I will send the signal to our man on the inside.”
“You know, you never did explain that whole thing,” I reminded her.
“We put somebody on the inside who’ll help us get in.”
“Yeah, you said that. Who?” I asked.
“You wouldn’t believe me if I told you,” she said.
“Try me.”
“Perhaps we should continue this discussion on the move,” Minotaur suggested. “Do not forget we are followed.”
How could I forget? “Wait,” I said. “You’re going with us?”
“Of course.”
“I didn’t think you liked to hang out with us humans.”
“Normally I do not, but there is something on the wind.” He lifted his snout and flared his nostrils like he was trying to catch a scent.
“What do you mean?”
“Something big,” he said. “I do not know what it is, but I feel I should be near you for now.”
“Oh,” I said. “Well, you’re welcome to come with us. I know I could use you around.”
“You’re going to be a problem in Delicia,” Seanna said.
“We will ford that river when we get there,” he said.
A few hours later, we crouched in the grass just on the other side of the ring of lifeless plains the people of Delicia had created. The city rose out of the dark like a menacing shadow. Big, thick, and terrifying. I knew from our last visit that the wall was tall and thick, built to repel those who meant to challenge it. I wondered if it would hold against Lortmore with his army of Balataur and metal dragons.
I fought a queasy feeling as my stomach twisted around itself. I could smell the dank stench of the dungeons. The pain of my finger twisted until bones snapped. The feeling of giving up. It all came back as I stared at that dark monstrosity of a city a few hundred yards away.
“Are you okay?” Seanna asked.
“Yeah,” I said. “Peachy. Never mind me. How are you going to signal your man on the inside? There are surely guards watching.”
“I’ve already signaled him.” Seanna held up a fist clamped tight. A faint purple light escaped between her fingers. “Just waiting on the acknowledgement.”
“What about you?” I asked Minotaur. “I don’t think there’s any way to hide your…uh, true nature. I think we’re at that river we need to cross.”
He nodded his large head. “I may have to wait here for you.”
I wasn’t too thrilled with that thought. I’d much rather have him with me when I went back into Delicia. His presence would make moving about the city without being noticed impossible, but I’d feel much better with him to back me up if things went south—as they tended to do around me.
“I can’t ask you to do that,” I said. “Especially with the trouble that’s coming.”
He huffed. “I can deal with the Balataur.”
“Don’t be silly,” Seanna said. “There are thousands of them coming here.”
“There are,” he agreed. “Considering your last exodus from this city, you will most likely need my help.”
“Or we might just walk out of there without any trouble,” I said.
He snorted.
“I can hope, can’t I?” I shrugged.
“If all goes well, we will be in and out of the city tonight,” Seanna said.
“We can hope,” I repeated.
“Yes, we can.”
“Maybe if I wore a cloak,” Minotaur said.
“Huh?”
“I could accompany you if I disguised myself.”
I look at his horns sticking about two feet from the side of his head. “I don’t think you’ll have much luck sneaking past the guards.”
“We appreciate the offer, Minotaur,” Seanna said, “but I think you are right in thinking you’ll be more help when we leave the city. Our journey will most likely not be over after tonight.”
He grunted. I was starting to get a handle on what the noises he made meant. I guessed that one meant he might agree with her but wouldn’t admit it—even though she was agreeing with him.
“I’m going a little crazy here,” I said. “When are we going to hear back from your man?”
“It’s not like he can just text me to tell me the front door is open and to come on in,” she said. “He has to wait for it to be safe.”
“If it’s ever safe in there,” I murmured.
“Exactly.”
“I still don’t get what we’re going to do here,” I said. “It’s not like there’s some super-secret tunnel running under the walls that will take us right where we need to go.”
“Actually,” a voice said from behind us, causing all three of us to jump and spin around, “that’s exactly what there is.”
Minotaur rumbled, axe gripped tightly in his hands while I fumbled my sticks into a fighting stance. Seanna hold out a hand to stop us.
“Wait,” she said.
“Where did you pick up that?” the voice asked. “Why are you with a Balataur?”
Minotaur’s rumbling grew.
“He’s not a Balataur,” Seanna said. “What took you so long?”
The figure stepped closer, materializing out of the night. “Humans are positively slow moving when it’s least convenient.”
The man who approached was tall and thin with brown hair like a pin cushion.
“Jae?” I said, my jaw hitting the ground. “Your man on the inside is Jae?”
26
THE UNDERGROUND
I mean, really?” I said. “Your inside man is Jae?”
“I can hear you, you know?” the male Ashling squeaked in indignation.
He walked a few feet in front of me, so of course he could hear me. I didn’t care. “Had I known I was putting my life and Aoife’s future in his hands, I think I would rather have walked up to the front door and knocked.”
“You’re being unfair, Gaige,” Seanna said.
“You are entering Delicia, are you not?” Jae asked, waving a hand overhead.
He indicated the tunnel we moved through. Apparently after our narrow escape on Tias’ homemade plane, the Delicia Underground had decided to formulate another plan to leave the city in times of need. They had spent the year since then digging this tunnel.
It wasn’t exactly an engineering marvel. Wood on the plains was hard to come by, so the tunnel—like most of Delicia—was propped up by hardened mud blocks. It was a few feet wide and at only six feet at its tallest point, I had to crock my head forward to avoid scrapping my scalp. Poor Minotaur had to hunch over and even then, his horns dug into the dirt overhead, causing it to rain down on him in places.
At least it solved the problem of how to get Minotaur into the city unnoticed. Jae had assured us it led directly into one of the Undergrounds’ basement bunkers—one that hadn’t been discovered yet.
I still had my reservations when it came to the two Ashlings. In spite of the insurances from the Mother Tree and Seanna’s parents, Seanna and Jae have both shown a lack of better judgment when it comes to saving their own hides. Seanna had handed me over to Daresh. Jae had huddled in a corner while a Balataur took Aoife from the Ashling city.
I felt better having Minotaur at my side, though. He had been nothing but helpful, putting his life on the line for mine. I didn’t understand his reasoning—apparently being near me gave him the chance to kill Balataur—but I trusted him. Trust wasn’t something I handed out easily even before Seanna’s betrayal. He had earned it. I could count on him swinging his massive axe around if things went south.
“How in the
world did you get the Underground to work with Jae?” I asked Seanna, ignoring her betrothed protests of righteousness.
“We have offered…aid the past few months,” she said.
“Aid?”
She shook her head. “It doesn’t matter.
“They were more than welcome to help when I came knocking,” Jae put in.
“What are you doing here, anyways?” I asked. “It’s not like you’re the pillar of an upstanding citizen of the world.”
He looked back, his thin face all angles in the torchlight. His eyes slid from me to Seanna and back. “I’ve been…inspired.”
I glanced at Seanna. She determinedly looked anywhere but at me.
“What does that mean?” I asked.
“You had quite the effect on her,” Jae said. “Apparently your selfless willingness to help save the Mother Tree after she made the deal with Daresh made our Nashashir more enlightened to Alisundi’s plight.”
The note of bitterness in his voice didn’t escape my notice. “So, what? She had some great epiphany and you decided to follow suit?”
He didn’t answer right away and I started to wonder if he was going to, but when he finally did, his voice was low and bitter. “The Nashisher made it clear she would not marry an Ashling whose motivations are purely selfish no matter the wishes of her parents.”
I turned to Seanna behind me. She was even more determined to watch the uneven ground. “So, you’re helping somebody you don’t even like so you can get married?” I asked him.
He stopped and turned so abruptly we ended up almost nose to nose. “You act like you know me, human.”
“Jae,” Seanna started.
“Yeah, that’s right. I do,” I said.
“You know nothing,” he said, voice low and cold.
“Perhaps now is not the time for getting to know one another,” Minotaur rumbled.
“I know you cowered and nearly soiled yourself when the Balataurs came for Aoife and me,” I said.
“That’s the problem with you,” Jae said. His skin shifted as he struggled to hold on to his human form. “You are so wrapped up in yourself—so selfish that you fail to see others around you. You think the worlds revolve around you and your problems. It makes you blind the plight of others you could care less about.”
“Come on, Jae,” Seanna interjected. “We don’t have much time.”
“Has she told you why we are to be married?” he demanded.
I opened my mouth to throw out a sharp retort, but I hadn’t expected to be reminded of his story. His clan neighbored Seanna’s, but while his was dying out, hers grew strong. It was to be a union of convenience. Jae’s clan needed to merge with another to survive while Seanna’s needed the space his forest would provide.
“I was betrothed to another,” he hissed. “An Ashling of my choosing—one for whom my roots grew deep for. I put her aside so that my clan would live on in hers.” He nodded toward Seanna.
I turned to her. She stared somewhere near my boots, her arms folded. That was a tidbit she had failed to mention when telling me of her and Jae.
Minotaur—clearly uncomfortable with the emotion exchange—grumbled, “We should keep moving.”
We traveled down the dark tunnel for a while in silence. I glared at both Seanna and Jae in turns. Neither chose to meet my eyes.
I felt a mixture of shame and anger. Sure, I was pissed at Seanna for not telling me the whole story, but that was to be expected from her. My real anger, along with the shame, stemmed from the fact that Jae was right. My selfishness was something I had seen in myself many times. As much as I wished I could change, it always found a way back inside.
Maybe that was all there was to me. Maybe I would never rise above what had happened to my parents and what their accident had turned me into. For all my posturing and the stupid situations I threw myself into, maybe it was all for selfish reasons. Did I really come here to search for Aoife to save her or did I need to do it for the validation I could give myself?
We came to the abrupt end of the tunnel. Jae rapped three times on wall to the right and followed it with another two knocks. The wall shifted, raining dust down on us, and swung in. I squinted as light flooded the tunnel.
We stepped into a room lit with torches scattered around the walls. I had a flashback to my first encounter with the Underground. The room was stocked with barrels and men and women sat with eyes turned our way. Their expressions were a mixture of curiosity and wariness. There was one difference this time, though. There were no children in the room.
“By the metalwerks!” one of the men cried out.
Everyone jumped to their feet, grabbing for weapons that ranged from a sword, to an axe, to one of Daresh’s cylinder gun-like thing. I followed their eyes to see Minotaur stooping into the room.
“No, wait!” I said, stepping in front of the great beast. “He’s not a Balataur.”
“He looks like one,” a man with half his head shaven said. He was a small, wiry man with eyes that never stopped shifting.
“He’s a minotaur,” I said.
“There is no difference,” said a thin woman in a dress two sizes too big for her.
Minotaur rumbled somewhere deep in his chest.
“These are the ones I told you of,” Jae said.
“You said nothing of a beast,” yet another man said. He was a hulk of man—taller than me and almost as big as Minotaur.
“He’s here to help,” I insisted.
“And who are you?” he asked.
“I’m Gaige Porter,” I said. “I was here before about a year ago.”
“We are grateful for the Ashling’s help,” the woman said to Jae, ignoring me, “but we don’t want that great beast here.”
I was beginning to see why Minotaur declined to come into Delicia the first time we came here. “If we could all just calm down, you’ll see that—”
“We don’t know you,” the man with the shaved head hissed.
“I do!” came a high voice from behind the gathering collection of Underground fighters.
I looked around them to see a familiar face. “Awar!”
The girl stepped into the room with a big, bright smile. She had grown, her features rounding out, but her mop of tangled red hair was still the same. She waved. I smiled back.
“Awar!” the woman admonished. “This is no place for you.”
“But, I heard we were gonna have visitors! I wanted to come see who it was.” She stepped forward, ignoring the woman’s motions for her to stay back. She looked up at me. “I’m glad you survived. We’d heard rumors you had, but everybody didn’t believe it.”
My heart clenched as the memory of how I escaped flooded into my brain.
“Wait,” the woman said, turning to me. The dagger she held lowered a bit. “You are the Gatekeeper who escaped Daresh’s dungeons?”
“Uh, yeah,” I said. I didn’t think it would be a good time to point out I wasn’t a Gatekeeper anymore.
“Are you sure this is him?” she asked Awar.
“Of course!” she said. “He was nice to me.”
The woman hesitated, looking from me to the girl and back. “Our apologies, Gatekeeper. Even though the Ashlings have aided us, we still must remain leery and on guard. Tias spoke highly of you before he aided in your escape.”
I noticed the smile on Awar’s face grow a bit duller at the mention of her father’s name.
“I am Brande. This is Joost,” he held out a hand toward the man with the half-shaven head. She moved to indicate the other man who had stepped to defend the room. “And this is Izaak. Welcome to the Delicia Underground. Again.”
***
“Times are rough,” Brande said.
“Worse than before,” Izaak rumbled in a voice deeper than Minotaur’s.
“Worse’n ever been,” Joost said around a mouthful of food.
Awar sat nearby, watching me and waiting for me to finish my own bowl of gruel just in case I wanted more. I was happ
y for the food, but I knew I would not be asking for seconds. The flavor wasn’t bad. It tasted a lot like honey roasted ham in some kind of gravy. It was the temperature and texture that got to me. It was a lot like shoveling cold mucus in my mouth. Minotaur seemed to enjoy it, though.
“Losing you made him go crazy,” Brande said. “I don’t know why he needed a Gatekeeper so, but when you slipped through his fingers, he went on a rampage.”
I knew Daresh had gotten what he wanted even though we had escaped. Somehow that ring of his hand pulled some of my ability to control the gateway out of me. That’s how the Getharey were able to open it to invade Earth.
“His soldiers searched with savaged efficiency for anybody even remotely connected to the Underground,” Brande said.
“Witch ‘unt it was.” Joost continued to shovel the gruel into his mouth with alarming speed.
“Neighbors turned on neighbors just to spare the interrogations,” the woman said. “Daresh’s men were cruel. Hateful.”
“Inhuman,” Izaak mumbled.
“Many of us were found and captured,” Brande said. “Buildings were searched. Most of our hideouts found. He damn near wiped us out.”
“How did you survive?” I asked, struggling to keep the guilty feelings down. Not only did I have all their deaths on my hands, but I was also the cause of the end of an entire independence movement.
“We sorta disbanded for a while.” Joost put his empty bowl aside and glanced at Awar. She didn’t seem interested in fetching him more, so he went on. “Kept our meetings down to a few of us core members.”
“We discussed giving up the cause,” Brande said, a catch in her voice. “All seemed hopeless, but we had good cause to keep fighting.”
“What?” Seanna asked.
The woman nodded at Awar. “Our children. Those who came and fell before us. It would be a dishonor to throw their work and lives away after a setback, no matter how big.”
“So, what did you do?” I asked. “I mean, how did you keep this place a secret from Daresh’s soldiers?”
“We began rebuilding right under their noses,” she said, pointing to the ceiling above us.
“What do you mean?” I glanced up.
“Literally right under their noses,” Joost said.
The Gatekeeper Trilogy Page 74
