The Crosser's Maze (The Heroes of Spira Book 2)

by Dorian Hart

  He set Kibi down gently and took a collar of bones from around his neck.

  “My first Yarakt,” said Vawlk. “Killed opponent. His family gave me necklace from his finger bones. Great honor. Take it.”

  Kibi bowed and accepted the grim adornment. “Thank you.”

  “Since Yarakt with you, more want to challenge me,” said Vawlk. “Not seem unbeatable. Good to fight again. I thank you.”

  This enormous goblin had killed in the arena, and now more of his people wanted to vie for that same “honor”? Ernie shook his head. Unfathomable.

  “Good luck, little strong man. Hope you find jungle, and magic device to save your people.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  Everything was turning out for the best, the way it always did.

  Dranko was healed, Morningstar felt better, Kibi’s face was nearly back to normal, and Tor’s own lizard claw marks were fading rapidly, thanks to the goblin healer’s salve. He had to admit it did sting quite a bit at first, but it was well worth it since now he wouldn’t have to worry about pulling open stitches if he had to fight.

  You will protect. That was probably the best part—no, Kibi thrashing that gigantic goblin was the best part, but knowing that the shaman’s bones confirmed his role as protector made him feel newly energized, and of course it meant “protect Aravia.” Not that he wouldn’t do the same for the others.

  Tor risked a glance at her and discovered her looking at him. He caught her watching him more and more of late, and each time he did, his heart would speed up and hope would swirl upward from somewhere until he remembered how she thought of him only like a big brother, and then that cold dejected feeling would wash through him. He smiled back at her anyway.

  Her face was easier to see since they were allowing themselves more light. The goblins had told them that the passages east of Aggantis were empty, that the other goblin cities were all to the north, but it wasn’t out of the question that they might come across another dracan, which was their word for the giant lizards. A city had once existed in that region, which was why there were tunnels, but that had been abandoned long ago since while a river flowed through the area, it didn’t branch or provide any fish. It was also farther from any exits to the outside, to the secluded valleys where the goblins raised their cattle and chopped their wood and grew their crops. Worsk, who had told them all of this, had said they wouldn’t likely run across the remains of that city if they kept to the truest course. “Go east when you can. Go south when you can’t. Find way out of mountains.” He had heard that the river in the region spilled out of the mountainside into a pool, so that might help them.

  Grey Wolf remained in charge, more or less, though he’d spoken even less than usual since they left Aggantis. There had been that weird thing back in the goblin jail, and now everyone knew that Grey Wolf had some secret that he didn’t want to talk about, and so no one asked him. It hung there like an awkward smell after someone had broken wind at a banquet table.

  Dranko still clomped along on his cane, which limited how fast they went, but they made good time the first day out from the goblin city. Horn’s Company made camp in a small cavern with a flattish floor and only two exits. They could hear the sound of a loud river somewhere nearby; they hoped to come across it tomorrow and follow it to its outflow. With water skins topped up at Aggantis, they drank without worrying about rationing and ate their largest meal yet since leaving Culud.

  Aravia had found a little niche for her bedroll and sat up in it, reading by the light of one of her rods. Surely she must have read through every book they had brought with them by now. Pewter was curled up by her feet, but he looked up at Tor, padded over to him, and jumped into his lap. He scratched behind the cat’s ears.

  “Pewter says under the chin is better,” said Aravia.

  “Oh.” Tor obliged, and Pewter rewarded him with a loud purr.

  “If you’re a cat goddess,” Tor asked, “what does that make Pewter?”

  “He says he must be the high priest,” said Aravia.

  As always, he desperately wanted to make conversation with her while not knowing what to say. “You haven’t said much about what it’s like, being divine.” Though I’ve always thought you divine. Gods, he almost said that out loud! He felt foolish for even having thought it.

  “Honestly, I don’t feel different at all.” Aravia’s eyes were back on her book. “If not for how I felt when the Sparks were killed, I doubt I’d even know what I was. Of course, now it’s impossible for me to forget since Pewter reminds me every minute or so.”

  “I still think you must have cat powers,” said Tor. “Have you tried turning into a cat?”

  Aravia laughed. “No. Would you like me to try?”

  Tor felt himself flush. “I didn’t mean…”

  She closed her eyes and adopted a look of intense concentration. Tor couldn’t help but hold his breath.

  “No. Sorry. I don’t think Sparks work that way. It hasn’t given me new abilities.”

  “Then do you feel more, I don’t know, attuned to cats? You said that Sparks exist to help animals keep in balance with humans. How do you do that?”

  “I…I don’t know, exactly. I’ve always been close to Pewter, and we haven’t met any other cats since Culud. As Inkspot said, the most likely practical effect of my unique status is that I’ll be able to discover and stop whatever has recently killed two other Sparks.”

  “I can help,” said Tor. “Assuming it’s something I can swing my sword at.”

  She looked up at him again, and the way the light fell across her face made his stomach lurch. “I know you will. I’m counting on it.”

  They reached the river the next morning—or at least, in the hour after they woke and started marching. It roared down from a wide crack in the stone ceiling of a natural cave and rushed out through a wide tunnel filled with its thunder. Beside the river ran a narrow stone ledge with a curving wall to their right and a drop down into the water on their left. It made for slow and treacherous travel, the stone slick from the river’s spray, and from time to time their path dipped downward, resulting in a wet stone slide with a nasty drop if one angled too far leftward.

  Dranko needed help navigating the trickier bits. Once the shoreline vanished entirely, the right-hand wall pinching off their narrow walkway until it dropped straight down to the water, but Kibi got them out of that one, or more accurately around it. Using his amazing stone-shaping ability, he coaxed the stone into making a tunnel for them that rejoined the path fifty feet downstream. After that, the ledge widened to a luxurious six feet wide as the river dropped farther away beneath them. They could still hear it sweeping along, its echoes making it difficult to talk to anyone whose ears weren’t practically up against the speaker’s lips.

  All of them had their light-rods out and shining brightly; avoiding a misstep was of higher priority than stealth. Tor walked in front, ready to draw his sword if anything—

  “Augh!” Grey Wolf’s voice came from behind him, in the middle of their line. “It’s happening again—”

  A wall loomed up in front of Tor, a wall of gray bricks that both was and wasn’t there. Similar walls divided the air all around them, translucent, while a wrong-colored sun shone down impossibly through the ceiling of the tunnel, setting water droplets on the walls to gleaming dully.

  There were no people—it looked as if their tunnel was interposed over a ruin, as most of the walls were shattered or pocked with holes or covered with moss. A sapling rose from the stone walkway, its leaves of a strange shape and swaying in an unfelt breeze.

  The overlap lasted only a few seconds, not more than ten, but some of the walls stayed behind, jutting up out of the floor or protruding from the right-hand wall. A few orphaned bricks dropped down into the river below, and a mighty rumble sounded not from where the water flowed but from above and to the side, and the stone wall of the tunnel sagged inward, cracking and shedding chunks the size of sheep. An earthquake boom
shook the air, and Tor was knocked sideways as though a mountain had bull-rushed him, and he was falling, falling, splash, his head beneath the surface of the river.

  Water filled his mouth, and a rock thumped into his shoulder. He fought against the instinct to immediately surface, guessing that he’d be safer from falling boulders if he stayed submerged in the swift river, but after a few seconds he thrashed upward and took a huge breath. He had dropped his light-rod, and everything was dark, and he couldn’t turn around since it was all he could do to keep his head above water. What had happened to the others, to Aravia, he couldn’t tell, since everything was darkness and noise and speed, frightening speed. The power of the river overwhelmed him; all he could do was let himself be swept along and hope everyone else had avoided being crushed or drowned.

  Tor strained his ears for any sound of human voices, some indication that his friends were nearby or alive, but there was only the deafening hiss of water against rock. The complete darkness made it impossible to know if he had any hope of climbing out of the river, but he doubted it, and it would take strength and energy to flounder around seeking a ledge or handhold. Already his muscles ached from keeping his head above the surface while dragged down by his pack and his sword and…oh no! Aravia’s books! They’d surely be ruined by the water, and she’d be so upset, but if the river didn’t empty them out somewhere soon none of that would matter because they’d be dead.

  Up ahead…was that light? A light at the end of the tunnel? Yes! It grew brighter as he hurtled towards it, the river taking him finally to safety. If they were lucky they’d be dumped a few feet into a pool, and if not, the exit from the mountains could be a hundred feet up and they’d plummet onto sharp rocks. Tor was helpless in the water’s grip so he spent the last ten seconds in the river praying as hard as he could to Corilayna, praying that by good fortune they’d end up unharmed, or at least that Aravia would be.

  The river fired Tor out the side of the Stoneguards like a crossbow loosing a bolt, and he was not ten feet from the ground, or even a hundred feet—he was flying, falling, while below him, thousands of feet below, stretched a sunlit panorama of distant countryside, green and brown and yellow and gray. That huge swath of treetops must be the Tangled Green, and on a strip of land between the mountains and the jungle were what looked like buildings, though it was hard to know from so high up. He was falling quickly and getting a better and better view of them, and he ought to do something so as not to die from a mile-high fall.

  Vyasa Vya! Tor kept the carpet rolled up against his back beneath his pack, and it was still there, thank the gods, and even with his cold fingers and the air rushing past him he slid it out and tried unfurling it. It wouldn’t unroll at first, sopping wet as it was, and twice it nearly slipped right out of his hands, but after several tries he managed to get it beneath him, its front and back flapping wildly upward around him, as though it were a basket with him at the bottom. He reached up to grab the madly dancing tassels, and as soon as he did so the flying carpet flattened out, and he pulled up as sharply as he could, swinging around and upward to see what had happened to the others.

  At first there was no sign of them, and Tor was pulled between relief that they had avoided his fate and worry that they had been crushed by falling rocks after Grey Wolf’s gut-churner had caused the wall to collapse. But then the rest of Horn’s Company popped out of the side of the mountain like a sudden spray of sparks from an exploding campfire log, screaming and twisting and flailing.

  His heart sank at the realization that he couldn’t rescue them all, or likely even more than one or two, but he had to try. He flew upward toward them. Aravia was in the middle of the cloud of bodies, and she shouted something he couldn’t quite hear and abruptly their descent slowed to a gentle waft. Amazing! Aravia had evoked a levitation spell that encompassed the entire group!

  Except for Kibi. Whether he had been too far from Aravia or whether the magic failed to affect him properly the way it sometimes didn’t, Kibi dropped away from the group, zoomed past Tor on his way down, and plummeted toward the distant ground. Tor could hear his rapidly receding scream.

  Before his brain had even finished thinking about it, he launched the carpet downward toward the speck that was Kibi, knowing from experience that Vyasa Vya flew its fastest when diving, but also knowing that there weren’t all that many seconds between “very high up” and “the ground.” He clearly gained right from the start, but his perspective made it difficult to know how quickly, and a huge lake waited below so maybe, even if he didn’t make it in time, Kibi would survive his landing. But, no, Tor recalled Master Cawvus warning him about cliff-diving from too great a height because the surface of water was hard like a stone floor and you could still break your neck against it if you struck hard enough.

  Gods, but it was going to be close. Tor willed Vyasa Vya to greater speed while part of his brain wondered if he could pull up fast enough even if he did reach Kibi in time—Kibi, who flapped his arms as if it could somehow slow him down, and maybe even a tiny fraction of a second could help, so good for him! Now Tor was nearly there, the lake looming larger with every quickened heartbeat. Faster! Faster! He pulled even with Kibi, now below him, now swooping directly under him and resisting the urge to immediately level out because he needed to ease Kibi onto the carpet, synchronizing their descents so Kibi wouldn’t push the carpet away out from under him. Once he felt that Kibi had settled enough, Tor pulled hard on the tassels even though that didn’t actually do anything; the commands were all mental. He started to straighten out, the lake looming huge and blue. A cluster of rocks stuck out of it and he swerved to avoid them, but it didn’t matter because his downward momentum was too great, and the carpet crashed into the water. Tor lost his grip on the tassels and everything spun around so that the clouds were under his feet and water and pain and blackness—

  A blurry shape hovered over him. Tor blinked his eyes, trying to make whatever it was come into focus.

  “Tor, wake up! Tor!”

  Something damp scraped against his cheek.

  The blur slowly coalesced into Aravia’s face, those sea-green eyes so close to his own he could see the radiating lines in her irises. Behind her stood the rest of Horn’s Company and Certain Step, seven of them, all of them, including a waterlogged Kibi.

  “Aravia, I love—” Some part of Tor’s foggy brain just decided on its own to say what he’d been longing to for so long, but the sound of the words actually coming out of his mouth sent the rest of his mind into a panic, sharpening his sense of his surroundings. “I love that now you’ve saved everyone with your magic. With your levitation. Not just me.”

  “Oooh, close call,” said Dranko.

  “Sounds like he’s going to be fine,” said Grey Wolf.

  Tor shifted his eyes to the left, to where Pewter leaned against his shoulder, licking his face, then back to Aravia, who knelt so closely that if Tor sat up quickly, he’d end up kissing her by accident, which of course he wouldn’t do, though the very thought of it made him light-headed. Or was that merely the result of his crash into the water? He remembered everything up until his landing, but nothing of how he’d ended up on dry land.

  Tor wished he could figure out the intense expression on Aravia’s face. “Tor, that was the bravest thing I’ve ever seen,” she said quietly.

  “That any of us have ever seen,” added Ernie.

  Tor felt his face redden. “I don’t know. Aravia saved five of you, and I only saved one. Two, counting myself.”

  “Yes, but for me it was a simple matter,” said Aravia. “A spell I’ve practiced regularly for just this sort of emergency. You risked your own life to save Kibi and nearly didn’t survive.”

  “When we hit the water,” said Kibi, “I got thrown toward shore and landed half in the water and half on a rock. Lucky thing, since I swim ’bout as well as a rock floats. I’ve never been so sure I was gonna meet the gods, fallin’ like that out a’ the sky. Never been so scared, ne
ither. Droppin’ through thin air is worse than flyin’ on the damn carpet—but given you just saved me with it, maybe I shouldn’t knock the thing so much.”

  “Would have been nice for the goblins to have warned us just how high ‘high up’ meant,” said Grey Wolf.

  “We didn’t think it would matter,” said Ernie, a bit more sharply than Tor was used to hearing from his friend. “Remember? If we hadn’t been launched by the river, Tor would have flown us down without any excitement.”

  “What matters is that we’re down and we’re safe on the east side of the mountains,” said Morningstar. “We saw two villages as we floated down, one of them not far from here. We should discover if someone there knows about Calabash. Tor, do you think you can stand and walk?”

  “No need to,” said Dranko. “We can just wait here and let them come to us. Look.”

  He pointed eastward. Horn’s Company rested on the northern shore of the lake. The bottom of the waterfall was a hundred yards away, a wide spray of droplets drifting down and reflecting a hundred little rainbows. From the east a small group of people approached, winding along a lakeside path in a single-file line.

  “Not again,” said Grey Wolf. “Dranko, stand in the back in case they share the Culudians’ love of greenbloods. Everyone else, weapons ready.”

  Tor struggled to his feet. Kibi and Ernie helped him up; his head felt a bit muzzy. Someone had rescued his pack and set the flying carpet out flat to dry. He hoisted the pack to his back and rolled the carpet back up in case they had to flee. Water dripped down his back. They watched in silence as the procession came ever closer. Their clothing was brown and green, their skin a pale yellow, and they carried no visible weapons. There were eight of them, five women and three men. All were short; the tallest of them looked barely five feet.

  When they had come to about twenty feet away, seven of them dropped to their knees and touched their foreheads to the damp grass. The eighth, one of the women, advanced slowly until she stood only a few feet from where they waited.