“I haven’t harmed him,” Borrick said, sounding irritated. “I even let him keep that ghastly satchel on his person.”
Sure enough, he still had it slung over one shoulder.
Looking to Carson and then me in turn, Borrick added, “You ought to be very thankful. That little bag of his sent more than a few of my orcs to their graves. Those remaining were very keen to exact a fitting punishment. They’re a very honor-driven race, you know.”
“Doesn’t much seem like it,” I muttered, “seeing as they’re helping a thief.”
“Ironic,” rumbled a low voice emanating from the chest pressing into my back, “coming from you.”
I flinched. Looked up and around.
The scar-faced orc from the elven temple. He was the one who had me. And although it had been Heidi who’d lopped his fingers off, going by the dark sneer on his face as he looked down at me now, I was the focus of his rage.
In another universe, a better version of me would have asked, “How’s the hand?” This me only swallowed.
“You got your toys,” Heidi grunted, “now let us go.”
“I will, I will,” Borrick said dismissively. “I’m a man of my word. But first—let’s go for a little journey together, hm? What do you say?”
“A journey where?” I asked.
A smile curved his lips. Cruel, I thought—or just the cheeriness of a man who had won—and who, going by his next words, felt he was offering me a great unrivaled kindness.
“You came so very close to the Chalice Gloria, Miss Brand. An admirable effort, unquestionably so. I feel it’s only right that you join me in the final chamber to witness it in the moment of its long overdue acquisition.” And without waiting for my answer, he ordered several of the orcs at his elbow: “Move.”
They shifted, clearing a path.
Behind him was a passage. Like the one blocking the way to Feruiduin’s Cutlass, it was blocked by a sheet of unbroken rock.
“Let’s see,” he said. “If I just …”
The spear and cutlass extended, shaking off their glamour.
Borrick inched closer to the barricade. “How did it work before? Was it—ah, never mind, here we go.”
The rock rearranged. Even from here, in Scarface’s clutches, I could feel the static electricity growing in the air. It darted over my skin, causing goosebumps to rise. Stronger here than before, it ratcheted up, and I felt the hair on the back of my neck begin to rise as though I were touching a Van de Graaff generator.
Two openings formed in the rock.
“Oh, really?” Borrick asked in surprise. “The keys are the glamoured forms. How very strange.” He shook the weapons, and they accepted his unspoken instruction, once again becoming an umbrella and a thin black speaker. Slotting the umbrella in the higher opening, he muttered, “It’s really very peculiar, isn’t it? How the keys are so modern. They change according to the times, do you think?” He glanced around at me with a look of genuine curiosity.
“Couldn’t tell you,” I murmured.
“No. I don’t suppose you could. Well then, let’s just …”
He pressed the speaker into the bottom slot.
A dim green glow illuminated both.
“It wants me to retrieve them again, does it?”
He was looking at me again. I said flatly, “Yes.”
Borrick slipped them out carefully—
The rock face split in two, perfectly down the middle, just as the other had, along an invisible seam. Rumbling filled the air as the halves were retracted by some unknown mechanism—and then the corridor was open.
Borrick was already moving down it, face alight.
The orcs followed. I was ushered in first, still carried by Scarface. Heidi was dragged behind, and going by the gasping noises coming from over my shoulder, Carson was being manhandled along too.
“Can’t believe it,” Borrick was saying. His muttering came doggedly over the clicking of his boots as he half-jogged down the tunnel. “All my research … knew it would pay off … if Father could see …”
Then he burst out the mouth—and stopped.
The orcs followed, us in hand.
The chamber was staggeringly huge, an enormous cube, and we had entered onto the bottom. At the very top, some three hundred feet above, was a single stone platform. It hung by chains in the middle of the ceiling—and standing upon it, although invisible from here, was the Chalice Gloria.
There were no other platforms whatsoever. No vines, like the first temple. No bridges or walkways or staircases. Just the one ledge at the chamber’s apex—and thousands upon thousands of handholds etched into the walls.
“What is this?” Borrick said in disbelief.
I allowed a smirk to curve my lips. “A temple. What … your research didn’t tell you there were no platforms?”
Borrick gaped. Then he whirled on me with manic eyes.
“And how did you intend on dealing with this?”
“Simple.” And flicking a glance to Carson that I hoped communicated the words HOLD ON, I answered, “Like this”—and pushed my body back into Scarface’s as hard as I could.
The flask in my back pocket broke.
As it did, a flash of energy swelled out from me in a spherical blast, and the gravity in the room switched off.
Suddenly lifted from the floor, noises of surprise went up from the orcs around us. Scarface released, rumbling in shock—
Heidi was in action first. Kicking off from her captor like a gymnast, she twisted through the air like a missile aimed straight at Borrick.
He gasped, jerking back, still caught off-guard by the fact he was floating through the air—
Then Heidi was past, and in her hand, fully extended, was Feruiduin’s Cutlass.
“Catch!” she cried to me.
I slipped out of Scarface’s grasp as the umbrella sailed end over end.
“NO!” Borrick shrieked.
I caught it, and brought it round as Scarface grappled for me.
The sharp metal tip, tinged with purple ooze, cut him short.
Then I was darting for Carson.
The two orcs who had been holding him grabbed out. But they were unprepared, and off-balance. As though the air had been replaced with millions of gallons of water, they swum in slow-motion, maladroit and lumbering like dogs still under the effects of a general anesthetic.
I swiped Carson out of there, using the shoulders of a nearby orc to kick the both of us up and toward the wall.
“How is this happening?” he asked, sounding like he was two steps below full-on freakout.
“The spell from Lady Angelica,” I answered.
“So you knew about this?” Maybe only one step.
“I’ve been researching it for years. Of course I knew.”
Borrick was just springing into motion, as were the orc army. Five or six were swimming toward Heidi already. She made easy work of them, spinning in a flurry of onyx strikes as she pirouetted away time and again. But yet more of the army were coming toward me and Carson—and these ones were taking notes from us, because they grasped the handholds, pushing themselves higher.
“Get them!” Borrick roared. “Get my keys!”
Carson glared at him, eyes flashing. “Borrick.”
He untangled himself from the arm I’d slung around his back—”What are you doing?” I shouted—and then kicked off.
“CARSON!”
Orcs grabbed for him as he shot overhead, miraculously missing—
Borrick’s face flashed in panic. He held up his hands, ready to block—
Then Carson slammed into him.
They tumbled in the air, end over end.
“What’s he doing?” Heidi shouted.
“Carson!” I yelled—then swung the spear below. An orc’s fist had swallowed my foot. I slammed the tip into the fleshy patch between thumb and forefinger. Purple spurted, and he howled, sinking into the writhing mass beneath. Another replaced him, and I swung again, pushi
ng myself higher up the wall.
Carson’s hands clawed at Borrick’s face. Borrick gripped his neck in return, squeezing as he bared teeth, roaring as Carson pressed thumbs into his closed eyelids—
“Leave my friends alone!” Carson shrieked.
“Get off—!”
“Mira is a better Seeker than you’ll ever be!”
“I said—”
“A million times better! You hear me?”
“I said get—OFF!” Borrick swung a punch into Carson’s face.
Carson grunted, spinning backward in the air, head jerking back—
“Carson!” I yelled, fighting off another grabbing hand from below.
Borrick swung again, holding Carson steady around the neck. The blow hit him hard in the cheek, and he groaned, jerking around. His glasses came lopsided, somehow holding to one ear instead of flying off.
“No one is a better Seeker than me!” Borrick threw another punch, the ring on his middle finger glinting as it sailed—
Carson grabbed for him, catching Borrick’s hand between his fingers. He gasped—but he held it, grappling—then it came away, and Carson’s fingers hooked into claws, sailing down bare fingers and drawing long bloody lines—Borrick screeched in pain—
I swung Decidian’s Spear in a wide arc. The orc army had truly sorted itself out now. Climbing up the handholds with untold ease in this field of zero gravity, they no longer reached but swung bony clubs. I met them with the spear, fighting them back—being pushed back myself—
And still Borrick and Carson grappled, floating toward the room’s center some fifteen feet from the floor.
Only now Borrick had the upper hand again.
His hands tightened around Carson’s neck.
Carson tried to claw at his face—but the motions were weak, ineffective.
“Useless simpering boy!” Borrick’s voice was strained, strangled. “You—are—nothing compared—to—m—”
He didn’t finish. After one last swing of Decidian’s Spear, I kicked off the wall, sailing across the space—
And slamming into him, ramming an elbow solidly into the small of his back.
His hold on Carson released immediately. Now tangled in a ball with me, he yelled in confusion as the world spun around us, grappling for anything he could manage to make contact with—then his face met mine from above the spear, horizontal and gripped between us. His eyes bulged, manic.
“You—!”
“Leave my friend alone,” I spat—and booted him in the stomach.
He released, ejected, and sailed away.
My arc carried me past Heidi. She spun like a ninja, carving with Feruiduin’s Cutlass at the four orcs swinging at her. Their clubs clanged off the blade. She used the momentum to push higher.
“What now?” she called to me.
“I need to get up there!” I jabbed toward the platform holding the Chalice Gloria. The fray had brought us some fifty feet closer—but it was still a long way from being within reach.
“I’ll do what I can to hold them off,” Heidi said. “What about Carson?”
I looked over to see him swinging his manbag around in a wide arc at one of the orcs snatching for him. It yelled and jerked back, and Carson loosed a victorious hoot—then another orc fist sailed out of nowhere and clapped him hard in the chest.
“Carson!” I cried.
He spun in an endless cartwheel—and clattered to a stop at my side. Upside down, he looked up at me in a daze.
“Hey, Mira,” he said. “That was lucky.”
“Come on,” I told him. “You’re coming with me.”
“Where?”
“Up.”
And snatching his hand, I pulled us toward the ceiling.
Borrick’s roar echoed after us. “They’re going for the chalice! Stop them, damn it!”
“Go, go, go!” Heidi cried.
We leapt up, handhold after handhold.
“I can’t believe you came back for me,” Carson was saying in my ear.
“Of course I came back for you.”
“And—did you mean that? About being a friend?”
“Yes!” I leapt again, casting a look below. Heidi was still managing—but Borrick and his orcs were gaining on us, vastly more of them than I could ever hope to deal with. “Now can we keep the real-talk to a minimum, just until I have this bloody Chalice?”
“Sorry!”
Up we went again. Another leap. Another.
A hundred and fifty feet still in it. Halfway there.
“Mira?” Carson suddenly said.
I shot a frantic look below.
Twenty feet between us and the ascending orc army, if that.
Scarface led it, climbing one-handed. A furious sneer clouded his face, eyes almost black as they stared as down.
“Mira!”
“I know,” I said. “I can see.”
“No, not that. That!”
I looked up to where Carson pointed—
My stomach dropped.
Shooting toward us over the chamber’s expanse came the Order of Apdau.
30
I released Carson and swung Decidian’s Spear around. It clanged as three cinquedeas slammed it all at once. I slung it up and over my head and the force sent the Order of Apdau spinning backward.
“Quick,” I ordered, clambering higher one-handed, and sweeping the spear beneath me at the encroaching orc army.
The Order of Apdau shot back in again. Carson gasped as a cinquedea swung over his head. Then I was swinging the spear again, blocking the jab.
“Leave—my friend—alone!”
I flung them back again.
“Mira, orcs!”
Scarface was right below. He grabbed for me. I shunted sideways, grunting, my ankle just sailing through his fingers before they closed—
“Piss off!” I shouted, and thrust the wooden end of the spear down at him. It stabbed him in the eye, and he wailed and dropped from the handhold, knocking the orcs below him back too.
Before I had time to enjoy it, the Order of Apdau were sailing in again, as though they had jetpacks hidden under those black robes.
“Oh, come on!”
Spear and cinquedeas collided. I thrust with it, sending them backward—
“Mira,” Carson suddenly said. “Where’s your compass?”
Before I could answer, he reached across me and snatched it from my belt.
Apdau were back again. I blocked, yelping at the high-pitched whine as steel rang on steel—shoved them back, already swiping at the renewed orcs pushing from my feet—
“What are you doing?” I cried as Carson scrabbled up and away.
“Seeking!” he called back, climbing higher still.
“But you don’t have a talisman!”
No answer: he was gone, hand over hand—and I was stuck, Order of Apdau on one side and orc army on the other.
I had no idea what he was thinking, doing—but the orcs were still coming, the Order reorienting themselves for another strike. At least I had a weapon. Carson didn’t. Now that he’d broken away from me I couldn’t directly keep him safe without following. So I’d do the next best thing instead.
Leaping sideways, I stilled my upward climb, turning it into a horizontal one. I wanted to get to another wall—the opposite one, preferably—and take as much heat off Carson as I possibly could.
The Order came after me in flawless flight. Without Carson to protect, I was freer to move now, so I kicked away, cutting off the corner. Spinning in the air, I whipped Decidian’s Spear around.
It sliced black cloak—but there was no flash of red; I had just swiped off a corner.
I landed, lifted the spear above me to absorb the Order’s blows—
“Can you just bugger off?”
I thrust them away—body aching now—and hurtled down the wall.
“Get her!” cried Borrick.
The orcs leapt off of the wall, swimming across for me.
Damn it! Why
did there have to be so many balls to juggle?
Had to get to the next one, the wall opposite Carson.
I dodged another attack from the Order—why were they so acrobatic, able to relaunch attacks so fast?—and skittered farther across. When I turned, I cried out as I moved to block another attack. I wished I could see what Carson was doing, how Heidi fared. All I could do was trust they were safe.
I leapt to cut off the next corner. Opposite wall now; the heat was as far from Carson as I could take it.
I gripped the handhold as I sailed into it—
A cinquedea slammed the wall just above me. Sparks flew.
I yelped, retracting my hand, turning—
They were right on me, swinging—
I lifted the spear—
The impact sent it spinning out of my grip.
I gasped.
The cinquedeas were coming around now, to slice again—
They sailed, metal gleaming—
In my moment of panic, I did the only thing I could do. I reached into my pocket and pulled out a well and truly shaken can of energy drink. I lifted it, eyes tight, fingers on the ring pull as I popped it and hoped—
Stinging fizz erupted in a fountain.
It was the first noise I’d ever heard any of these Apdau guys make—a sudden hiss of pain. Acidic spray found its way into their cowls. Blinded, they flailed, cinquedea swings cut short as hands grappled for their eyes.
I had just short seconds to savor the victory. Leaping sideways again, I grabbed Decidian’s Spear where it turned a slow cartwheel—
And then an orc’s fist enclosed around my ankle.
31
Not Scarface, this one, but another. He looked up at me with bulbous yellow eyes. In his other hand, he held a club. His fingers tightened, the knuckles paling. Then he was lifting, ready to swing—
“Mira!” Carson cried from across the chamber.
I ducked the first blow. Tried to bring Decidian’s Spear around. But it was too late; the orc clambered higher, dragging me down like an ape with its hand on a toy. I tried to grip a handhold, keep myself up—but he was too strong, his hand wrapping my thigh now, like I was a rope he could climb, end over end.
The World Beneath (The Mira Brand Adventures Book 1) Page 19
