by K. Panikian
I will go with you.
Julian released his breath.
When you return again.
“Wha—” he started to ask and then something hit him in the back of the head and everything went dark.
WHEN Julian woke up again, he lay on a cold, stone floor and his pack sagged on top of him. His head aching fiercely, he gingerly reached his hand behind to feel a knot. Nausea swamped him and acid filled his mouth. He spat to the side.
Sitting up slowly, he looked around. He was in a cell. The ceiling disappeared high above, out of sight in the gray darkness. The bars in front of him blocked the tunnel and he was alone.
He whisper-shouted, “Astrid!”
Waiting, he heard back a whispered, “Here.”
Making his way carefully to the bars, he tried to peer through the gloom. He saw in the blackness a hint of movement in the cage across from him. Going over to where he woke up, he felt around on the uneven floor for his headlamp. His fingers brushed against it and he let out a sigh of relief. After switching it on, he went back to the bars.
Astrid sat on the ground behind her own bars. She had muddy tear tracks on her cheeks.
“Are you hurt?” he asked.
She shook her head. “They didn’t hit me. I saw you go down and turned as they threw a net over me.” She gripped the bars to try and see him closer.
“Who?”
“Two psoglavs.”
Julian flinched, envisioning the demons’ hands on her. He couldn’t let anything happen to her. It would destroy him to lose her. It killed him a little just to see her out of reach.
“The net knocked off my headlamp. I couldn’t see where they dropped me, but I felt the bars. I couldn’t see you. You didn’t answer me.”
Julian tried to reach across the passageway to her, but their cages were too far apart. “I think I was unconscious. I have a bump.”
She nodded, wiping her cheeks.
“What do we do?” she whispered.
“We need to get out of here,” Julian answered firmly. “Right now.” He thought furiously, looking around his cell. His pack was there but none of his weapons. He checked a bundle of rags in the corner—someone’s old blanket, musty-smelling and full of holes.
Going to the bars again, he tried to bend them. They held firm. That was odd. He tried again and strained with his super strength. Nothing budged. They must be some kind of special rod, he guessed, made to enclose magic people.
He looked up. The walls of the cell looked smooth and slick. Peering as high as the red light reached, he still couldn’t see the top. Maybe if he could get up there, he would see another tunnel or a different way out.
Julian turned back to Astrid, her face anxiously watching his, and started to call over his idea when she suddenly scrambled away into the corner of her cage.
Footsteps approached along the path between the cells. Julian switched off his headlamp and moved back too.
He heard voices, a deep, raspy one and a more high-pitched, whining one.
Two figures stopped in front of his cell and he could see their shadowy forms in the gloom. The tall one with great, sweeping bull’s horns and red eyes snarled out, “Why are you here? Who are you? Where did you come from?”
Julian shrugged, pretending not to understand. He made his face look dull and stupid. He backed up more and bent his head.
The tall one, which he thought might be Abaddon, turned to Astrid’s cell. He barked out the same questions and Julian held his breath.
Astrid pretended too. She asked in a quavering voice, “What does it want? Is it talking to me? Why can’t I see anything?”
The bes commander aggressively rounded to Julian’s cage again. “Show me your hands!” he barked.
Julian slowly lifted his hands into the hair, palms facing the minotaur. Abaddon’s red eyes blazed bright blue and Julian felt a blast of cold air go through his body. Abaddon shook his head, scraping his horns against the cage bars, and turned to Astrid’s cell again.
He commanded her with the same directions and Julian watched the blue light from the demon’s eyes illuminate Astrid’s trembling form.
Abaddon snorted, sparks flashing, and spoke to the short, hairy bes beside him. “Neither of them is an earth elemental. They are of no use to me. Feed them to the bauks.” He spun and strode away.
The hairy bes, which resembled a small weasel walking upright, hissed at Abaddon’s retreating back and then scampered in the other direction. As soon as it was out of sight, Julian strapped on his pack and called to Astrid.
“I need you to lift me straight up. I don’t know how high my cell walls go; I can’t see the top. So go slow. I don’t crash into it. Can you do it?”
She walked to her bars again, stretching out her hands. Her face looked frightened but resolute. Julian held perfectly still and felt invisible bands tighten around his body. Astrid’s scent, fresh and citrusy, enveloped him. Then he was airborne, moving up slowly but steadily.
He looked up, waiting for his red lamp to illuminate the ceiling, but never saw it. His upward journey continued into the empty space above. Eventually, he slowed and knew Astrid must be reaching the limit of her control. Finally, his motion stopped. He still couldn’t see a ceiling. After hovering in place for a long moment, his body started to slowly drop. He scanned the walls around him, sweeping his headlamp left and right. When he saw an opening in the wall, he didn’t think—he lunged.
He felt the bands around his body break and he hit the wall hard. He dug his fingers into the rocks, pressing out little chunks with his fingertips to hold his body in place. He climbed up, digging hard into the wall, and heard small pieces of rock falling very far below him. Finding the opening again, he climbed through.
A narrow tunnel stretched ahead of him into darkness. He started to crawl as quickly as he could through the constricted space. He needed to find an exit and he needed to find a way back to Astrid.
The tunnel stopped in a dead end and Julian felt despair fill his heart. Then the thin rock on which he rested on his hands and knees broke and he dropped, sliding down.
The chute had no rocky protrusions at all and no way to slow his descent. Tumbling, he tried to protect his head and neck. Suddenly, he fell from a great height, the air whistling past his ears. His headlamp flew off and he snagged it. He cartwheeled his arms, spinning in the air, and knew he was going to die, broken in pieces on the ground.
He took a moment to think of Astrid, of his mom, and braced himself.
I have you.
Julian blinked and then crashed into a large scaly nest of necks and heads. He blacked out. Again.
THIS time when he woke up, he lay cradled in the forearms of a dragon. A great, green nose nudged him and smoky air blew across his face. He sneezed.
Awake? Where is the niece of my mate?
Julian scrambled to his feet, tumbling out of the scaly coils. “We have to go rescue Astrid! They’re going to feed her to the monsters!” Julian tripped over his headlamp, tangled around his feet.
“I left her in the cave with the cages. Do you know which way to go?”
Break my chains. I am ready.
Julian ran to the giant chains and started pulling them from the dragon. They clanked and rattled as he heaved, his muscles straining. Drawing on his super strength, he knew his eyes blazed like blue beacons in the dark space. He ignored the pain in his shoulders and back and strained with every drop of Varangian magic in his blood.
Finally, the links broke with a tremendous crack. Julian yanked them off the dragon, first the ones surrounding her body, then the larger ones pinning her legs in place.
The dragon sucked in an enormous breath, her immense chest expanding. She rose, shaking the rest of the chains loose, and towered over Julian. The horns on her head scraped the cavern’s ceiling, causing a storm of stalactites to fall around their feet. Julian ducked as the rocks rained on the cavern floor in a discordant crash.
The dragon flexed her wings,
but then pulled them tightly to her body again with a wincing roar. Julian smelled blood in the air.
I cannot fly.
“Then we run! Which way are the cages?” he shouted to the dragon that loomed above him.
This way, mate of my niece.
Julian turned, following the rampaging dragon through the tunnel. More rocks crashed down around their heads as they charged into the darkness.
Chapter 26
When Julian broke my air filament bands, my heart stopped. I stared at the cell across from me, expecting at any moment to see his body plummet and break apart, but he was gone.
I sucked in a breath. He must have found a way out.
I looked around my own cell. I couldn’t see much without Julian’s headlamp. It was full of shadows that were black, midnight, and gray. I paced around slowly, feeling for the walls with my hands and shuffling with my feet.
The walls felt damp, streaming with water and moist pockets of moss. The floor sloped away from the bars, uneven and hard.
Unearthing my pack against the back wall, I dug through it. I found my skinning knife and slipped it into my pocket. My bow, quiver, and long knife were gone. The psoglavs pulled them out of my net when they dragged me here.
I found my water, took a long drink, and then tucked it away again. I decided to strap the pack on, just in case. Eating some smoked rabbit meat, I paced more.
The silence around me deafened. At least now I knew that Julian was out there, trying to find his way back to me. Before, when I’d been alone in the dark and he hadn’t answered my calls, my heart had turned to lead in my chest and I’d fallen apart. I’d cried so hard my hands shook. I was glad by the time Julian woke up and turned on his headlamp, I’d gotten myself back under control. No need for him to see me completely unhinged and weeping for him.
Finally, I heard footsteps approaching again. I crouched in the shadows and held my breath, hoping it was Julian.
But it was not.
The little hairy bes with the weasel face leered into my cell with glowing yellow eyes. It pulled out a key, bouncing the metal from hand to hand. Its fingers were long, with sharp, black nails. Wriggling its hairy body, the demon performed an impatient dance.
“Come,” the bes hissed at me and unlocked the door.
I flung my skinning knife straight at its face. It flinched into the passage, preternaturally fast, and I blasted it into the bars of Julian’s cell with a powerful gust of air. The weasel face gaped at me and the bes started to struggle, still suspended in the air. Holding it in place with my elemental filaments, I strained to sustain my grip as I stepped forward out of my cage.
The demon arched its back away from the bars, writhing to get loose of my hold, and I bent quickly to grab my knife where it lay in the dark corridor.
When it saw the knife approaching, the demon’s yellow eyes flared brighter and it freed one claw to slice at me. I felt the talons scrabbling at my arm and smelled its stinking breath. It started to hiss at me again and I pushed my knife into its body, feeling the skin and muscles part under the blade.
Gagging, I stabbed it again and again, keeping it pinned against the bars with my iron threads of air. After few moments, it stopped screeching and I stepped away, letting its furry body flop lifelessly to the ground. The air stank of blood and I wiped my hands on my pants, feeling my breath coming in pants. Shaking with fear and adrenaline, it took me a long moment to fold the knife away and slip it into my pocket again. My heart galloped in my chest in a rough rhythm that seemed to echo louder and louder in my ears.
I gulped, realizing it wasn’t my heart filling my ears with sound; out of the darkness rasped a choking laugh.
Turning my back to the dead bes, I darted my eyes everywhere in the gloom that surrounded me. I couldn’t see anything!
Dread filled me as a red eye attached to a vicious canine face and a distorted chimera body stepped out of the tunnel—a psoglav.
The demon laughed, kicking aside the weasel-bes’s limp body as it moved closer to me. I froze in place. The psoglav towered over me and I instinctively cowered.
It wore a knife strapped across its humanoid torso and the claws attached to its strong fingers reached for me as it licked its lips.
I backed into Julian’s cage; I had nowhere to run.
Chuckling again, its hooves scraped across the rocks as it followed me into the cage.
Pulling the knife from my pocket, I waved it at the demon, knowing how puny the blade looked in comparison to its claws. I tried to move to the side, back toward the bars, and it tracked me with its bright red eye.
My brain told me it was toying with me. It could grab me at any moment, but it liked playing with its food.
I tried to run again, darting around the monstrous form and to the corridor. It slashed at me as I slipped by and I felt a sharp pain in my hip.
Gasping, I tripped and fell to my knees. My hip burned and tears filled my eyes. This is it, I thought to myself. It was going to carve me up and laugh while I tried to crawl away, and then it was going to eat my dead body. I would never leave these dark tunnels under the mountain.
I spun around, watching it pace toward me again, and slashed my knife at it. The psoglav punched my wrist and the knife fell from my grip. I screamed in pain, clutching my arm and scooting backward along the ground. My boots scrabbled at the stones, trying to push my body faster.
It watched me squirm away, grinning, and then bent to trail its claw through my bloody tracks along the rocks. It licked out a long, pink tongue and cleaned the talon meticulously.
Bleeding and aching, I reached out with my air powers, searching desperately. I felt the echo of a massive stone just beyond the psoglav, and straining, I lifted it.
Black spots swam in front of my eyes as I watched the demon rise to its feet and ready its legs to pounce. With a groan of effort, I dropped the boulder on top of it.
The sound of flesh and bones crumpling under the heavy thud of the stone made my gorge rise again. The psoglav’s feet drummed on the rocky floor and then it was still. Dead.
Struggling to my feet again, I pushed my hand against the pain in my hip and felt wet blood. My other wrist throbbed in time with my pounding heart. I looked left and right. Which way to go? One way lay the dragon, if I remembered the setup when Julian and I passed this way earlier, and one way was the large cavern with the fire pit. Which way was Julian?
I listened carefully, my breath hitching. Then I sent out my air echoing pulse, searching for a heartbeat, down the two different directions. One bounced back, empty, and the other reflected a cacophony of four separate raging pulses. I turned and sprinted in the empty direction.
I ran desperately, but I couldn’t see. The tunnel was dark and every shadow was a crack in the floor, waiting to trip me, or a reaching monster. I shied back and forth a few times before deliberately calming. If I didn’t slow down, I’d probably brain myself on an outcropping and then whoever followed would find my prone body, ripe for eating.
Ducking into the next alcove, I hid. Grabbing the skinning knife again, I held it in front of me, waiting.
Back in the direction of the cages, I heard a roar and a wisp of smoke floated past my hiding spot.
Then I heard, “Astrid!” in Julian’s bellowing voice. I jumped out of my hiding place, sprinting toward it.
I saw a red headlamp beam and launched myself at it. Strong arms caught me out of the air and hugged me tightly. “Julian,” I wheezed into his shoulder.
The arms clenched me close for another moment and then I was on my feet again.
“We have to go,” he whispered, kissing me all over my face. “The dragon is loose. She’s raging through the tunnels. Everything’s in chaos.” He found my mouth and we kissed, hard and desperate.
“I was coming for you,” he promised and I nodded, twining my arms around his neck and lifting onto my toes for more of those frantic kisses. He was safe; he'd come back for me.
More smoke filled the
tunnel.
Julian broke the kiss. “We have to move,” he rasped out. He grabbed my unhurt hand and we started running, back toward the fire pit cavern.
A little bit later, we crept along another deserted tunnel. I didn’t know where the demons had gone, but the signal had obviously gone out to evacuate the mountain since we didn’t cross paths with any of them. Still, we slinked with our knives drawn.
We’d found the main pit cave again and headed down one of the empty tunnels on the far side by the dais. Everything was in pandemonium. The passageways collapsed, smoke filled the air, and the still-open tunnels echoed with screams and roars.
Every few minutes, the ground shook and we heard new howls and bellows. The dragon was destroying everything and Abaddon’s forces were in disarray.
The tunnel we crept along was smooth and full of scents of recent bes occupation—foul and stinking. The sounds of the dragon and the other demons seemed muted.
Julian’s headlamp was off and we relied on the ambient, dim light of the limestone walls and glowworm larvae.
I heard a sudden roar ahead of us and we dropped out of sight in the next alcove. The same guttural, evil voice that I remembered from outside of my cell now growled down the tunnel.
“Evacuate the troops!”
I heard a harsh voice ask, “What about the other creatures that await their turn?”
“Their turn is gone!” Abaddon roared back. “The dragon has escaped! Chernobog does not care what becomes of them. Take our troops and march. We go west. Now!”
I heard the smaller voice ask plaintively, “Is it enough? Can we defeat the Varangians with such a small force?”
Abaddon’s laughing, imperious voice echoed in the tunnel. “Enough?” he rasped. “With the dragon’s power, we are now immune to Greek fire. The citadel will fall.”
I inhaled sharply. The enhanced besy were immune to Greek fire? The citadel would indeed fall. Everyone would die.
I heard a thunderous noise in the tunnel and ducked, covering my head. More rocks rained down. A psoglav stumbled into sight, dusty and bleeding. I leaped at it, my knife slashing. I cut across its thigh and when it dropped to its knees, I sliced its neck. Then Julian was there to stab its heart. It collapsed and we ducked into our hiding place again.
