by S. M. Boyce
Victoria’s brows shot up. “I’ve never heard you cuss like that before.”
“We’ve never been in this much trouble before.” He spun around, staff at the ready for an attack. The landscape that met their gaze was different yet again. The towers and islands of rock had shifted while their backs were turned, and they now faced an entirely new vista.
“Shit,” Diesel muttered.
“It must be bad if you two are suddenly sailors,” Audrey snapped. She drew her sword and crept to Victoria’s side, while Diesel stood at the end of the line so as to sandwich the girls with wizards.
“Four little travelers, lost in the shadows,” a woman’s voice said. It was ageless and eternal, echoing from the depths of the cavern much like the golem’s roar had.
“Fuck,” Fyrn said again, his grip tightening on his staff.
Oh, this was not good.
Victoria summoned her sword, eyes scanning the darkness for something—anything at all—that might reveal what they were up against.
A massive shadow stalked past the jewels deep below, but Victoria couldn’t quite tell how big it was. Without a proper frame of reference it could be several stories tall or no larger than a lion, though neither thought was very reassuring.
A draft of air blew past her face, and she had the dizzying sensation of vertigo. They seemed to be up high, and if that was true this creature had to be the size of several eighteen-wheelers stacked on top of each other.
“What the hell was that?” Audrey hissed, voice hushed as her eyes darted along the cavern walls.
Fyrn raised his staff, its tip glowing brilliantly as he prepared to fight. “I’m not sure yet, but I’m fairly certain we don’t want to know.”
The voice chuckled, the sound echoing several times over. “You’re correct, old wizard. You do not want to know me, but you will. One by one, I will savor your hot blood between my teeth.”
“That’s a little dark,” Audrey muttered.
“Who are you to criticize the darkness, Atlantean? I quite enjoy the taste of hypocrites.”
With that, the shadow deep in the cavern launched itself. It sailed toward them impossibly fast, and Victoria raised her blade seconds before the beast was upon them.
In the chaos time slowed, but still Victoria could barely react fast enough.
To her left, a blinding bolt of light shot from Fyrn’s staff. To her right, a white burst of lightning tore from Audrey’s palm. Green energy sparked and fizzled from Diesel’s staff not far away.
The sudden burst of light illuminated one of the most horrifying things Victoria had ever seen in her life.
A giant woman snarled at Victoria, her beautiful eyes contorted with hatred. Her towering face was easily three times Victoria’s height, and a lion’s mane flanked her cheeks and temples like flawless strawberry hair.
The red fur along her neck and paws—paws?—shimmered copper in the light, and the brilliant blue feathers of her massive wings matched the azure-blue glow of her eyes. She—although whatever the hell this woman was, she was definitely not human—bared her teeth. They were sharp as daggers and she attacked, inches from skewering all four of them with a single bite.
Victoria struck first.
She drove her sharpened blade into the creature’s mouth, drawing a rush of blood that spilled like a waterfall onto the ledge where the four stood. It coated Victoria’s hands and arms, but she gritted her teeth and drove her blade in farther.
The monster shrieked and batted its wings, pulling itself away from Victoria’s blade and fading into the darkness as a barely-visible wraith overhead.
“Hold onto each other!” Fyrn shouted. He struck his staff against the ground as Diesel grabbed Victoria’s waist and tugged her close. Before she could push him off, light splintered from beneath the elder wizard’s staff and the ground beneath them rumbled as though he had started an earthquake.
The ground gave under them, and they fell.
She and Diesel plummeted down the rocky cliff with nothing to catch them as they fell into the darkness.
A second later Audrey screamed, and Victoria had a split second to be grateful her friend hadn’t been lost in the chaos. Her moment of gratitude came and went, replaced by panic, and Victoria couldn’t help but scream as well. Even Diesel yelled on their way down, but Victoria couldn’t hear Fyrn.
She stretched her neck, her panic worsening. She couldn’t hear Fyrn.
They landed with a thump at the bottom, all of them rolling away from the base as small rocks continued to fall down the cliff. Not missing a beat, Diesel grabbed her and Audrey’s hands and bolted, nearly dragging them behind him. Victoria protested, desperate to find her mentor, but Diesel was too strong.
“I don’t see Fyrn!” she shouted.
“He’s— Victoria, look out!” Diesel grabbed her, swinging her out of the way of a massive boulder seconds before it smashed to the ground.
He pulled her and Audrey into a tunnel lit by the dim glow of more gemstones in the rock. He pressed himself against the wall and set his arm across Victoria’s body, pushing her against the rock as well. Since she couldn’t wriggle out of his grasp, she pointed into the cavern’s darkness. “I’m not leaving Fyrn!”
“You don’t have to,” the old wizard said as he ambled around the corner into the tunnel. Though he no longer had his pack, he walked with all the calmness of a man who had merely gone on a morning stroll, not someone who had faced a monster before falling down a cliff.
Victoria let out a sigh of relief and slumped against the wall, heart hammering in her chest. She needed a second to calm down, to catch her breath and—
“No!” the monster shrieked, her shrill voice like nails on a chalkboard as it echoed through the endless cavern. “No one escapes me. No one!”
Fyrn pressed himself against the wall as well, eyeing the tunnel’s entrance as the massive shadow bolted past. The shrieking continued as the creature shuffled around at the base of the cliff. It sniffed, reminding Victoria of a dog searching for a toy to rip to shreds.
She shuddered.
With a gentle wave of his hand, Fyrn pointed down the tunnel and silently crept away from the giant pot of crazy kicking up dust in the cavern. Victoria nodded and followed, finally letting herself pause to process what she had just seen.
A sphinx. Having pieced together the puzzling array of the monster’s features, she knew exactly what it was. Face of a human. Body of a lion. Wings of an eagle.
A sphinx, no question.
Once again the Lochrose tunnels’ wards kicked in, and Victoria lost all sense of time. She might have been traveling for days or merely seconds, but when she looked over her shoulder the cavern was long gone. Only the endless tunnels remained.
Fyrn finally paused and sat in a heap on the ground, wiping his weathered face as he leaned against the wall. “Damn it all. I lost my pack when we fell. All the healing tonics and explosives are gone.”
“At least you didn’t die,” Victoria said with relief.
He shrugged as if he almost preferred that option to losing his precious tonics. Victoria rolled her eyes.
Diesel slumped against the wall, and Victoria followed suit. Audrey, however, paced their makeshift camp. “What was that thing?”
Fyrn opened his mouth, but Victoria answered first. “A sphinx.”
“Yes. Very good!” Fyrn said with a hint of surprise.
“But what’s it doing in a wizard ruin?” Audrey demanded.
“And why did it seem to lose us when we entered the tunnels?” Diesel added.
Fyrn stroked his beard. “I’m not entirely certain, but I believe this has something to do with why we lost Lochrose in the first place. The enchantments on that cavern are powerful. Immortal. Immovable. It is the creature’s lair. Whatever magic we fell into is part of the sphinx’s defenses, and it ensnares victims by changing the tunnel structure. We should never have arrived at that cavern.”
“So we might face it again?” A
udrey asked, exasperated.
Fyrn nodded. “I’m afraid so. We must be prepared, though even I’m not entirely certain how we could possibly defeat such a creature. I’ve only faced something that powerful a handful of times in my life.”
“That’s reassuring,” Victoria mumbled.
“We need to rest,” Diesel said, his familiar smile long gone. His gaze darted round the tunnel as though something might attack them any moment and he shifted, apparently unable to sit still. If the tunnels to Lochrose and the sphinx in its depths had rattled Diesel out of his joking charm, they were truly in deep shit.
“I’m not tired,” Audrey countered.
Diesel shook his head. “You are tired, Audrey. I guarantee it. We’ve been traveling at least ten hours straight, and after that excitement we need a moment to breathe. I’ve read about the wizard enchantments in this city. They were designed to wear you down until you died of exhaustion. You’d amble through the tunnels with no sense that you needed to sleep. Until today, I never thought such spells were possible.”
Victoria shot a knowing glance at Fyrn, who nodded almost imperceptibly. Her mentor always seemed to have the upper hand, and it made her feel a bit giddy to know Diesel was unaware of the secret project hiding beneath Fairhaven. Her mentor had trusted her with something not even the second most powerful wizard in Fairhaven knew.
“I’ll keep first watch,” Diesel said, leaning against the wall as he peered down one end of the tunnel.
Victoria studied him for a moment. She had never seen him truly rattled, not even when they were on their knees before the Atlantean king. It unnerved her to see him serious.
As if he felt her stare, he turned his head and caught her eye. This time he offered the barest of smiles. “It’s okay, Victoria. We’re safe.”
“For now,” she added. With that, his smile fell.
***
Victoria woke to a fizzling silver light inches from her face. She gasped and pushed herself backward, only to hit her head against the hard rock wall. She grimaced, holding the sensitive place at the back of her skull, and tried to get a sense of what was going on.
A blond man scowled at her. He held the piece of wood that had the light coming from the end as though it were a sparkler. He aimed it at her menacingly, and in her sleepy state she nearly laughed at the ridiculousness of a man trying to hurt her with a sparkler.
Only this wasn’t a sparkler. It was a wand.
As she fully woke, the realization crashed into her like a wave. This was a wizard, someone she didn’t know.
She scanned their makeshift camp and in the dim light could make out Diesel bound with glowing white rope between four men, all of whom aimed their wands at him and held a bit of the rope to keep him steady. Diesel glared at the man holding Victoria hostage as though he wished he could reach out and rip him to pieces.
Another six men surrounded Fyrn, and her mentor eyed her warily as if waiting to see what she would do. Styx chattered furiously from a metal cage on the ground, banging his tiny fists against the bars. Two more men surrounded Audrey, who seemed to be holding her breath.
Oh, no. If they find out she’s Atlantean, they’ll—
But they hadn’t killed her yet. In fact, as Victoria studied her friend in the dim light, she realized the tiara was missing from her head.
Audrey had shifted, and she was barely hiding the Atlantean Artifact that would mark her as an instant enemy to these wizards.
The only one left was her…a Rhazdon host. Hopefully no one would lift her sleeve.
The wizard barked an order at her in a language she didn’t understand. Baffled, she turned to Diesel, but he shrugged.
Great. Even the know-it-all didn’t have a clue what was going on.
The strange wizard gestured for her to stand, and she got the gist. She obliged him, calmly surveying the scene as she strategically lifted her hands in front of her. The wizard would think she was surrendering, but she could easily summon her sword and skewer him if need be.
If these men were powerful enough to overtake Fyrn and Diesel without making enough noise to wake her, she might not stand a chance. However, she had the element of surprise on her side. If she could summon her blade fast enough, perhaps—
“Don’t,” Fyrn said simply.
Victoria stared at him in astonishment. He nodded calmly, as though he weren’t being held captive.
Baffled, Victoria lifted her hands in full surrender. The wrist guards on her sleeves were more than enough to keep the cloth covering her Rhazdon Artifact in place.
The wizard shouted something at her and shoved the wand in her face again.
“That’s getting old, buddy,” she snapped, glaring at the wand he kept waving in front of her nose.
He shouted at her again and began to pat her down while holding that stupid little wand in her face.
She frowned, about ready to draw her sword and slice the damn thing in two. “Talking louder doesn’t make me understand what you’re saying!”
“Victoria, comply,” Fyrn said calmly.
“What? Why?”
“Trust me, Victoria,” was all the old wizard said.
And she did. With a sigh she set her hands on her head and walked ahead of the wizard, exposing her back to someone who had just threatened to kill her.
Fyrn had better have a damn good reason for this, or she was going to beat the ever-loving crap out of him.
CHAPTER 15
Victoria trudged through the tunnel with her hands on her head, eyes scanning the half-dozen wizards in front of her and wondering where those behind her were.
Fyrn marched ahead with six wands pointed at him, and the wizard who held both his and Diesel’s staffs also carried Styx’s cage. Diesel and Audrey had been maneuvered to the back, and in the shuffling of so many feet she couldn’t tell where they were.
Whoever these men were, they seemed intent on keeping her in the dark as to where her companions were. Any time she turned around to try to check on her friends, the man at her back shouted at her and gestured for her to face forward.
After an abrupt left turn, the timeless sensation of the tunnels lifted like a fog and exhaustion hit Victoria square in the face. She slowed, her eyes drooping with the sudden need to sleep.
Brilliant light blinded her, and she had to blink several times to rid herself of the imprints on her retinas before her surroundings would come into focus.
Before her was a magnificent paved square covered in elaborate golden stones, and above her an enormous cavern stretched upward for thousands of feet. Massive honey-colored gemstones covered the entire roof of the cavern, casting warm golden light over everything below. The crystals reminded her of Fairhaven, but these were rounded, like domes protruding from the rock. There were thousands, and each gleamed like a tiny sun.
Beneath the amber crystals was a magnificent palace topped with spires and domes like something out of an Arabian fairytale. The castle was painted in reds and yellows, and each of the hundreds of windows was shaped like a massive keyhole.
On either side of the gold-paved road leading to the castle were ornate homes carved from the rock. They gleamed impossibly bright, as though the gray stone were a façade and solid gold lay within every molecule. People stood on the doorsteps and peered from the windows, and they all stared at Victoria.
While the city was beautiful, the hundreds of scowling faces were not.
Everywhere she looked, a witch or wizard stared at her and her companions. It seemed as though every wand in the city had been drawn and aimed at them.
Victoria wanted to crack a joke to alleviate the tension, but she figured it would only make things worse. She kept her mouth shut.
As their captors led them toward the palace, two elaborate doors swung open on a balcony that overlooked the paved square. A regal woman walked out with an elegant red cloak draped over her thin frame. As she lifted a proud chin, the golden chains on her headdress dangling around her beautiful face and
high cheekbones.
The woman said something in a cold voice that sent a shiver down Victoria’s spine. She wished she could understand what had been said, but it was in a language that seemed to befuddle even Diesel. His mouth parted as though he were trying to place bits of the dialect.
Victoria shot Fyrn an icy glare, but her mentor’s gaze remained focused on the regal woman above them as he spoke. “Your Majesty, I—”
She snapped at him in a harsh voice, again in a foreign language.
Crap, this was going to be more difficult than Victoria had initially thought. If they couldn’t even communicate, they stood no chance of solving this diplomatically. She prepared to draw her sword again, though now she wished she had done it in the tunnel when the odds of escaping were more in their favor.
