Forged Steel

by H A Titus

He gritted his teeth and spread the tear in his shirt apart. The graze had stopped bleeding, but the edges of the wound had turned black.

  I looked him in the eye. "I swear to you, I'm going to fix this."

  "Don't make an oath you can't keep, Josh," he said quietly, moving away from me.

  I clenched my hands and looked over the edge of the well. Eliaster's light bobbed off the walls about fifty feet down. I'd never been scared of heights before, but the darkness made the well seem infinite, and the thought that it could be my tomb sent dry, raspy shivers like insect legs crawling all over me.

  I backed away, rubbing my palms together.

  Marc tossed me a line and demonstrated the knot to fasten it into my harness. I copied his movements, then jerked on the line as hard as I could. The knot held. At least I wouldn't fall to my death, though that might be preferable to being cannibalized.

  A beam of light hit the ceiling of the cavern, and Eliaster's voice echoed up.

  "Clear!"

  Larae gestured for Marc and me to go next. Several other fae dropped out of sight, bouncing off the walls, some of them laughing like they were having the best time in their life. Marc sat down on the edge of the well, then turned and dropped, gripping whatever handholds he could find in the rough stone. He edged his way down several feet like that, then released his hold and began walking backwards down the wall.

  I turned around, braced my feet, and leaned back.

  The goblin holding my line slowly let it out. Though every instinct in me screamed not to, I let my weight sink back, then took a step downward, digging my toes into the rock face. The edge of the well rose up past my face. I released my grip on the line, spread my hands to the sides for balance, and twisted my head around. The lights the others were carrying gave just enough light to see the rough edges of the well's sides.

  I took another step down and plunged into free fall.

  Chapter 20

  I flailed, a startled scream jerking from my throat.

  The line snapped taut. I jerked to a halt, flipping upside down. The harness squeezed my waist and hips tight. I groaned and pressed my hands against my stomach.

  I looked up. Llew and Larae stood at the edge of the well, their malicious grins evident even in the dim light.

  "Point taken!" I yelled. My voice cracked at the end of the sentence.

  The two fae laughed and disappeared from sight.

  I started inching downward again. I kicked and twisted myself upright, but my limbs were so rubbery I couldn't support my own weight against the wall. I wrapped my hands around the line and gripped it tight, chest heaving.

  Please, please, please don't do that again.

  Finally my feet touched the ground. My knees buckled, and I sagged against the wall, breathing hard. For a moment, I just stood there, my hands and forehead pressed against the rough stone face.

  One of the fae standing beside me clicked his tongue against his teeth. He unfastened his harness. "Dude, that was a mean trick."

  "You're telling me," I muttered, fumbling with the buckles on my harness.

  The bottom of the well was a little larger, close to thirty yards across. The floor was unnaturally smooth, especially given how rough the sides of the well had been.

  Eliaster and Marc stood on the far side, near the only outlet, a tunnel tall enough that even Scyrril would be able to walk through it without stooping. I joined them.

  "You okay?" Marc asked.

  "Just as okay as Indiana Jones was when he dropped into a pit of snakes." I peered down the tunnel. The builders of the well had expended all their talent on the smooth floor. The tunnel walls were in worse shape than the well walls. It could have been done in haste, or, more likely, done deliberately to hide any traps.

  We stayed out of the way as the rest of the sidhé rappelled into the well, most carrying large packs of supplies. The last three down were David, Larae, and Llew. Scyrril climbed down the wall, his limbs splayed like a scaly green spider. As soon as Larae got out of her climbing harness, she crossed the room to us.

  "You're going first again," she told Eliaster.

  "Wouldn't expect otherwise." He extended his hands, palms upward for easy access to the locks on his iron cuffs.

  She laughed. "You're getting desperate, aren't you?"

  He dropped his hands. "I can't scout with these things sapping my strength and limiting my movement."

  "Sure you can," Llew said, grinning. "Didn't she tell you it was entertainment for the rest of us?"

  Eliaster rolled his eyes.

  Larae glanced at her brother. "Before we continue, there's one more thing to take care of."

  David's arm latched around my neck. He shoved me forward to my knees. Llew grabbed my left hand and elbow, twisting my arm so my wrist was exposed. I pulled back, tried to wrench free, but David pressed his weight against my shoulders, keeping me in place.

  I heard Marc and Eliaster scuffling and glanced over to them. Goblins clutched their arms, holding knives to their throats.

  My heart hammered against my ribs as Larae set the edge of a knife against my wrist. She pressed her fingertips under my chin, forced me to look her in the eye.

  "By trying to bargain with me, you volunteered yourself. Remember, Josh, that you do not toy with me." She kissed my forehead.

  My stomach turned, but I couldn't look away.

  With a sharp jerk, she laid open my wrist. For a second, I felt nothing. Where was the pain? Then I felt it, a white-hot fire that flashed all the way up my arm. My jaw clenched, and I grunted, my hand tightening. Blood pattered on the stone floor.

  Larae cupped her hand under my wrist. When her palm was full, she brought her hand to her mouth, then drew it down her throat, painting her skin red. Her eyes burned bright.

  Llew and David released me. I wrapped my fingersaround my wrist, the touch sending shooting arcs of pain through my arm. I sucked in one deep breath after another, unable to stop, unable to shove away the fear and panic that crushed into me. Blood soaked into my pant leg.

  Larae breathed in deep, then whispered something in Gaelic. My blood soaked into her skin. Her limbs jolted. Larae threw her head back, closed her eyes. Her hands came up to chest level, and she drew in a deep, impossibly long breath. A glow spread over her skin, originating from where she'd spread my blood over her throat, and swept outward, a single wave that turned her into a being of living fire for one split second.

  Larae gasped and collapsed to her hands and knees, pressing a hand to her heart.

  David crouched by her side, offering a hand up. "Are you all right?"

  She nodded, sucking in another deep breath.

  I glanced at Marc and Eliaster. They were both staring at Larae, horror frozen on their faces. "What…" My lips felt numb. I couldn't find the energy to form the words.

  Larae seized my wrist. Her fingers spasmed tight. I screamed as another flash of pain, this time dark and icy, hit me, spreading through my arm. I jerked free and scrabbled backward, my injured arm tucked close to my chest.

  My wrist had stopped bleeding, but I couldn't feel my hand. With trembling fingers, I brushed away the congealed blood covering my arm. A thin, dark line cut across my wrist, marking the sealed cut. I shivered. Magic, drawn from blood.

  "What are you?" Marc hissed.

  Larae turned toward him. He recoiled as if afraid she would kill him just by looking at him.

  "When I befriended you, Marc, I knew that your grandmother would sense any Unseelie magic. I had to purge myself of it. And now, I'm regaining something that I have missed very much."

  Marc looked as sick as I felt.

  "Blood magic," Eliaster muttered. "The worst of the worst. That's sorcery, Larae! Do you really know what kind of dark powers you're dealing with?"

  She snorted. "I should. I've been dealing in these powers since before you were born."

  She was quiet for a moment, letting that revelation sink into us. Before we were born… The only thing I could think of w
as her relationship with Marc. Ugh. Cougar doesn't cover it.

  Larae smirked. "Now, if you're done pretending to be disgusted by me—"

  "There's no pretending about it," Eliaster snapped.

  "Maybe so, but even you, Eliaster the believer, would resort to blood magic if it got him what he needed. I know you, Eliaster. I've seen you work. I've heard what you do." She tipped her head to the side a little and smiled. "Don't pull the holier-than-thou act on me, Eliaster. You're no better than the rest of us."

  Eliaster's fingers slowly uncurled from his cross necklace, and he turned, heading into the tunnels, his shoulders hunched.

  Larae's sharp peal of laughter echoed off the cave walls. She motioned for everyone to follow Eliaster. Llew pulled me to my feet and shoved me forward.

  "This day just keeps getting suckier by the minute," I muttered.

  We crept through the tunnels at a snail's pace,

  Eliaster stopping often and taking plenty of time to examine the next few feet of tunnel before walking forward again.

  Llew stayed beside me, ready to grab me at a second's notice. A few feet behind us, David and Marc walked beside each other. Larae was behind them, tracing lines that left glowing runes on her palms.

  I rubbed my thumb along the dark line on my wrist. It was smooth, not ropey like a scar or lumpy like a scab. I shivered. Was I always going to have this reminder of my brush with dark magic? The sight made me sick. Larae may have called it the same thing, but this felt different than Dywor's sniffing or Opti's swords. It felt heavier, lifeless. I rubbed my fingers together. They were numb, no sensation in anything other than my thumb. I pinched the skin between my first and second fingers. I could feel the pressure of my fingernails, but no pain.

  "Hold up." Eliaster stopped and ran his flashlight beam slowly over the walls.

  Larae pushed past Llew and me, coming up behind Eliaster. "What?"

  "This section of the tunnel is narrower. There's something different about the walls too…can't really tell in this light."

  Larae kicked the back of his knees.

  Eliaster sprawled forward.

  A hail of arrows crisscrossed the area, bouncing and ricocheting everywhere. The rest of us dropped to the ground, curses in Gaelic and English flying as thick as the arrows. I curled in a ball, clutching my arms around my head, and just waited for an arrow to pierce my body.

  After a minute, the chatter of the arrows stopped.

  I slowly opened one eye.

  A dead goblin lay on the floor next to me, an arrow sticking from his eyeball. I scrambled upright and backed away, running into Llew. He grabbed my arm and forced me to stay still. Two more sidhé—another goblin and one fae—were dead, and several others, including the ponytailed fae, were nursing wounds.

  "What were you thinking?" David bellowed at Larae.

  Eliaster stood, shaking and pale, one hand clutching the cross around his neck.

  "I was thinking that he was taking his sweet time. Now we know that these traps are pressure triggered and what weight will trip them."

  "And you almost lost your guinea pig," Eliaster said. He addressed the rest of the group. "Who do you think she'll sacrifice next if I die?"

  The circle of goblins around Larae widened a little.

  Larae shrugged. "Not your concern. Let's keep moving."

  Eliaster's eyes flickered, but without a word, he turned and started forward.

  Shortly after the first trap, the tunnel became a series of twists and sharp turns. I'd lost all sense of direction long ago, but now it felt like we were just walking in circles. The goblins huddled close together behind the fae, as if the death of two of their number had made them afraid.

  What did they have to fear? I glanced ahead at

  Larae, who had stopped playing with her magical abilities and now walked beside David, her shoulders stiff. Eliaster's question must have gotten to them.

  Maybe there was a way we could use this, exploit the goblins' newfound wariness of Larae.

  In the space of what felt like hours, we'd walked for miles and Eliaster had discovered three more arrow traps. With each trap, everyone would back away to a safe distance before Scyrril threw boulders on the pressure plates until the traps were triggered. After the last trap, the tunnel straightened again.

  The longer we walked, the slower Marc became. His face tightened every time his right foot came in contact with the ground, and his right arm hung, limp and nearly useless.

  My stomach turned, the bite of acid in the back of my throat. It hadn't really left since we'd been captured. How long did Marc have left? More than anything I'd been through yet, the sight of my friend so helpless made me angry. It hadn't really been my fault—how could I have predicted that Llew would do something so senseless, so stupid? The pride I'd felt at picking the lock on Tuathal's cage had long since evaporated. I'd always thought I was smart enough to talk my way out of anything, to figure out a solution to any problem, but I couldn't see a good end to any of this.

  The tunnel suddenly widened, the walls stretching from just feet away to yards. The group spread out a bit, Scyrril shaking his shoulders like he'd been cramped.

  "Watch out!" Eliaster shone his flashlight on a wire that ran across the tunnel at its widening point. He followed the wire up along the wall to the ceiling, where it split into a web of silver that held up a cracked, crumbling roof of rock.

  I gingerly stepped over the wire, trying not to envision what would have happened if someone had run into it.

  In the beam of Eliaster's flashlight, I could see a wall at the back of the tunnel. He swung his flashlight from left to right, searching for a turn, an outlet, a doorway. Nothing.

  We were at a dead end.

  My brain blanked in panic.

  Larae turned around. "Marc, I don't recall a mention of a dead end." Even though he words were directed at Marc, she stared at me through narrowed eyes.

  Llew gripped my upper arm, but I jerked away from him. "Where am I gonna run, back through a dozen goblins to a bottlenecked tunnel? Right. That'd be stupid, even more stupid than trying to bargain with you earlier. I'm trying, Larae. I'm only a dumb human, remember?"

  "There wasn't a mention of anything specific," Marc said, his voice calm and soothing. "Just a warning. They didn't even mention the traps."

  At the reminder, several flashlight beams flicked upward. The silver wire gleamed, sinister in the cold light.

  Larae motioned to the goblins. "Okay, spread out and see if you can find a clue of what's next."

  "Anything we're to look for specifically, my lady?" one goblin asked.

  She glared. "A door, another cipher—I don't know, do I look omnipotent to you?"

  The goblins scattered.

  "You four." Larae indicated the ponytailed fae and three others. "Guard the prisoners. Llew, David, I want to talk."

  Our guards directed Eliaster, Marc, and me to sit against the wall, then they sat several yards away next to the tunnel exit. Eliaster waited until they were talking among themselves, then scooted away from the wall and crouched next to Marc.

  "How're you feeling?" he asked.

  Marc raised his t-shirt. Black veins bulged from his skin, radiating from the wound in every direction. Some of them reached nearly halfway across his chest, fingering toward his heart. I cringed.

  Eliaster gritted his teeth and gently probed the wound. Marc hissed in pain. Black pus oozed from the scratch. Eliaster avoided touching it. Working from beyond the poisoned veins, he pressed hard against Marc's chest, pushing the poison back toward the wound.

  I turned away from the sight, my stomach rolling. "I'm sorry."

  "Stop apologizing," Marc growled. "Both of you. We can't turn back time."

  "What, you mean the geek hasn't figured that out yet?" Eliaster said, his tone light.

  I snorted. "Trust me, I would've pulled out my time machine a lot sooner if I had one."

  "Well, daithairne, there's my escape plan down the drain
."

  Marc laughed, then groaned. "Okay, that's all I can handle."

  I looked back. The previously black veins were now just a web of red lines, though black was already starting to discolor the ones closest to the wound again.

  "How long did that buy us?" I asked.

  Marc lowered his shirt. "Maybe another hour."

  "Three have already passed since we came down here. That gives us four, five if what I just did helps at all." Eliaster leaned against the wall and draped his arms over his drawn-up knees.

  "How are you doing?" Marc asked, smacking his hand against the iron chain hanging over Eliaster's legs.

  "I'll survive. I've handled iron longer than this before."

  I'll survive. It was an odd choice of words. Despite his joking of a moment ago, Eliaster looked tense, worry lines crinkled the corners of his eyes and mouth. He looked like he had no hope left. The fae warrior who lost his brother to his own people. His hand crept up and wrapped around his cross necklace again, like he was clinging to a lifeline. Maybe that's what it was to him, a lifeline, a reminder that he had hope, even though at the moment he didn't look like he believed it.

  Did I believe in hope?

  Eliaster had already decided we were going to die.

  But I wasn't ready to die yet. And I wasn't ready to give up Marc or Eliaster for dead, either.

  "We can do this," I said quietly.

  Marc nodded.

  "My lady!" One of the goblins waved his flashlight, then pointed it at a section of wall.

  As Larae made her way across the cave, several more goblins gathered around the wall, wiping years of dust away. A smooth surface began to appear under the grime, a rectangular shape that was wide enough for me to walk through with my arms outstretched, but so short my hair would have brushed the top.

  "Is that a door?" Marc stood.

  "Weirdest door I've ever seen," Eliaster muttered.

  "Mabon, come look at this," Larae said.

  The ponytailed fae stood and ambled over to the door. The goblins backed off as he brushed at the surface, now smooth under just a thin coating of dust. Mabon pulled one sleeve over his hand and wiped the door. The surface was smooth and jet-black. It looked similar to obsidian.