by Layton Green
“Abandoned clay mine,” Marguerite said.
Alexander turned to Mala. “I can set wards there.”
The howling grew closer. Mala cursed again and shooed everyone forward. “We’ve no choice.”
The riders had to duck through the entrance. Mala reached into one of her pouches and extracted a small oval stone. She shook it, and it started glowing with a soft white light, revealing a cavern supported by wooden beams. Allira spread more powder outside the entrance, then Alexander stood a few feet back from the doorway and glanced to either side. Face tight, he made a sweeping motion with his hands, and a huge boulder lying ten feet away levitated over to block the entrance.
Will noticed that it had taken all of Alexander’s concentration to move the stone, much more than it had taken Zedock to fling the dumpster.
After Alexander completed a series of intricate hand movements, which Will assumed meant he was setting the wards, Mala led everyone to the rear of the cavern. Three mineshafts branched downward, and Will heard the trickle of water from below.
Everyone listened in tense silence as the cackling barks grew louder and then gradually faded. Will’s heart was beating a rapid pitter-patter against his chest, and he couldn’t stop swallowing. What if the owners of the hyena wolves had a wizard as well? What if their wizard flung that stone aside and broke through Alexander’s wards?
“Who were they?” Val asked, his voice thick.
“A Byway patrol,” Mala answered. “Most likely a search party.”
“For us?”
“Doubtful,” she said. “Though I’ve no desire to engage a pack of hyena wolves, it’s not the search party that troubles me most. It’s who sent them. If their quarry is important enough, they might have a scryer watching over the pursuit.”
Will’s mouth felt dry. “And then what? They could . . . step through and join the battle?”
“Only a spirit mage could manage a feat like that,” Alexander interjected. “But they would certainly know who we are.”
“Quiet, everyone,” Mala said.
Sword drawn, Will had no choice but to huddle behind a dilapidated mine cart. Long minutes later, Mala waved to Alexander. “We should be clear,” she said. “We’ll continue on this path as far as it takes us, then cut over to meet Hashi.”
Will used the mine cart to rise to his feet. To his surprise it lurched forward, and he gripped the lip to keep his balance. On his second step he realized it had been concealing a hole in the floor, through which Will promptly fell.
He landed in a heap ten feet down and dropped the sword. The fall knocked the breath out of him. As he struggled to his knees, pushing against the cold and slimy surface of the mine, he looked up and saw a pair of twin red dots, inches apart, burning in the darkness.
At first he thought they were laser sights. He remembered what world he was in at the same time the crimson pinpricks of light inched towards him. Not red dots, he realized with a flash of hysteria, and certainly not lasers.
Pupils.
-24-
“Will! Are you all right? Can you hear me?”
It was Val’s voice. Will could only wheeze in response, because panic had snatched his throat and held it tight. Unable to see his sword in the darkness, he was forced to crab away on his back, slipping over the slick clay as his diaphragm constricted. The eyes in the darkness moved forward with him.
Will shuddered through a long breath. He gritted his teeth and summoned all of his reserves, fighting away the panic. “Val,” he croaked, not loud enough for anyone to hear.
“Give me that light,” he heard Val say. “He couldn’t have just disappeared.”
Will tried again, but couldn’t croak out his brother’s name. The red dots moved closer. Will was forced to keep crawling backwards. He had moved so far past the hole that he knew no one could see him now, even with a light.
Paralyzed with fear and panic, he had to bite down on his tongue to force his body to respond. When pain lanced through him, he mustered everything he had and managed to shout, “Down here!”
“Will!” his brother replied. “We’re coming!”
The pupils picked up speed. Will scrabbled faster. “There’s a hole,” he heard Val say, and then a ray of light penetrated the shaft. Will saw his eldest brother plummet straight down the hole, landing with a grunt. Mala dropped down lightly after him, followed by Alexander floating through.
The light also illuminated the owner of the pupils. A hairless humanoid was caught in the glow, crouched on all fours, its front two limbs longer and more muscular than the back two, like a gorilla. Eyes the color of fresh blood provided a flash of color in a body devoid of pigment. Its grub-white head looked human, except for the gaping mouth filled with rows of pointed teeth and a forked serpent’s tongue. Sticky strands of saliva trailed from its jaws.
Will managed another hoarse shout. “Over here!”
The albino thing hissed and whipped its head towards the light. When it saw that Val and the others were still twenty feet away, it turned back towards Will. The translucent skin bunched with corded muscle as it lunged. Will leaped backward, just avoiding a swipe of claw-tipped hands that looked more like knives than fingernails.
Will kept scrambling, but the thing lunged again, too fast for Will to avoid. Its claws raked through Will’s shirt and across his chest. Burning pain seared his breastbone, sharper than the knife wound, sharper than anything Will had ever felt. He shrieked and arched in pain.
He tried to scramble away but the thing pounced on him. Mala’s sash whirred as the monster put its front limbs on Will’s stomach, jaws widening, eyes alight with hunger. A tendril of spittle splattered on Will’s face. He screamed as the creature’s jaws cranked downward. Right before they snapped shut, one of the weighted ends of Mala’s sash slammed into its cheek, the other wrapping around to crush an eye.
“Run, Will!” Val yelled.
The creature emitted a high-pitched scream and raked the sash off its face. As Mala unsheathed her sword and sprinted forward, Will jerked to his feet and ran away from her and the creature, headlong into the darkness. Twenty feet later he crashed into a wall. Dazed, he heard the thing scream again, this time louder and longer, an unnatural keening that bristled Will’s nerve endings. A death rattle.
Still smarting from the collision, his chest on fire from the touch of the monster’s claws, Will turned to see Val standing beneath the hole, next to Alexander. The geomancer had illuminated the entire tunnel with light from Mala’s glow stone. The nightmare creature was prostrate on the tunnel floor, its head almost hacked off and tilting to the side. Mala stood above it, her sword and curved dagger dripping salmon-colored blood.
Will heard rumbling from overhead at the same time he noticed three more of the creatures emerging from the darkness at the opposite end of the tunnel. “Behind you!”
They turned. Alexander put a hand up, holding back Val and Mala. The creatures hissed and loped down the corridor, knots of muscle rippling along their colorless bodies, jaws wide and clacking. Alexander reached into his cloak and tossed a handful of baseball-sized green stones into the air. They leapt from his hand, hovered in midair, then whipped towards the albino monsters and crunched into their skulls. The impact made a dull thud, like pumpkins smashed by a hammer.
All three of the humanoids dropped. Two didn’t get back up.
The remaining creature crawled to its hands and feet with a dazed expression. Alexander made a whipping motion with his hands, and the emerald stones rose off the floor and came halfway back, then sped off again. The stones smashed into the sole remaining creature, cracking its skull like a piece of plastic. It slumped lifeless to the ground. Will forgot his wound for the moment, staring with a mixture of awe and nausea at Alexander’s handiwork.
Alexander wiped his stones with a cloth and replaced them in his cloak. Will turned, realizing that what he had thought was a wall was in fact an aged wooden post supporting the ceiling. The post had cracked where
Will crashed into it.
The rumbling sound returned, as if the earth had just shifted. Mala’s voice was sharp. “Everyone back through the hole!”
The rumbling increased, and Will sprinted towards the others as loose rock and dirt started falling on his head. Then he slipped in blood and gore and crashed flat on his back.
He rolled over just in time to see the entire ceiling give way, ten feet in either direction. He put his hands over his face and closed his eyes, knowing it was the end. Calmer than he imagined he would be, he prayed Val wasn’t caught in the collapse.
“Wiiiillll!!”
Val’s scream of despair careened off the tunnel walls, a primal thing ripped from the depths of his soul and thrown into the air with the force of a hurricane. Will almost wept with love for his brother—and then wondered why he wasn’t dead yet.
“By the Queen,” Mala said in a near-whisper.
When Will risked moving his arm away from his face, he saw an ocean of rock and dirt and cracked timber hanging three feet above his supine form, the entire collapsed ceiling suspended impossibly in midair.
-25-
Will centipeded his body out of the collapsed section. Mala helped by crawling over and dragging him backward. Seconds after Alexander lifted them through the opening, the suspended portion of the tunnel collapsed with a roar, a cloud of dust filling the hole.
Caleb ran to Will with a shocked look on his face, followed by Lance, but they stopped short when they noticed the blood on Will’s chest. Caleb put an arm around Will’s back to support him.
Will’s hands felt the place where the creature’s claws had raked him, just below his heart. It burned like acid to the touch, and his knees gave out. He thought he heard Val choke off a sob. The only time Will had seen Val cry was at Dad’s funeral.
Alexander moved the stone blocking the entrance. Mala shepherded everyone out of the cavern. Once they cleared the mine, Mala turned to the geomancer, her eyes brimming with respect. “I couldn’t hazard a guess as to the weight of that collapse. And to stop it in midair . . . I didn’t realize you had that sort of power.”
Will grasped Alexander’s hand. “You saved my life.”
Instead of the humble reply Will expected, Alexander let Will’s hand slip out of his grasp. He turned to Mala. “I don’t have that sort of power. Not even close.”
After a few moments of silence, Mala and Alexander seemed to come to a wordless agreement. Mala’s eyes widened, and Alexander pursed his lips and nodded, once.
Then they turned towards Val.
Will was even more surprised when Val looked dazed and said, with a rare note of uncertainty, “I think I might have done that.”
Val was staring at his staff, but it looked the same to Will as it always had, no wisps of smoke or glowing blue lights.
A gentle breeze stirring the leaves was the only sound in the clearing. Finally Mala turned on her heel and swept a hand towards the horses. “Saddle up.”
Before they left, Allira tended to Will’s wounds, four long but shallow cuts across his chest already filling with yellow pus. Will clenched his fists and bit down on a rag as Allira dabbed the wound with alcohol, then applied a brown paste that burned worse than the cut itself. Mala came over to inspect the wound, her head bobbing in a gesture that Will interpreted to mean he would probably live.
He swallowed. “What were those things? They looked like vampire baboons.”
“Cave fiends are hardly vampires, though I see the resemblance. Fiends dwell in underground structures and cave systems, and their teeth and nails contain a toxin that causes rapid necrosis. You were lucky it only grazed you.”
Grazed? Will shuddered at the thought of how that encounter could have ended. He shuddered even more at Mala’s blithe acknowledgment that vampires existed, and decided to press her. Nothing greased the wheels of information like a good dose of sympathy.
As Allira dabbed the wound again, her face impassive, Will gasped and said, “Vampires are real?”
Mala looked amused. “You won’t find many in the Protectorate, as they tend to prefer more ancient cities. I haven’t seen one since I was a child.”
“You’ve seen one?”
“I’m an Old World Gypsy. A freshly made vampire stumbled into our caravan one night, and my father slew it.”
Will tried to imagine being a child and having a vampire stumble into one’s home. “I didn’t realize you weren’t from Amer—from New Albion.”
Instead of answering, her dark eyelashes flickered, cracking open a window to another place and time. She rose, the window slamming shut as quickly as it had opened. “It’s time to set out,” she said.
After Allira wrapped Will’s wound, Mala led the group away from the abandoned mine. The trail ended thirty minutes later, and they cut through the woods to rejoin the Byway.
Will rode next to Val, who had remained silent since the incident, eyes fixed straight ahead.
“Thanks for saving me.”
Val nodded.
“Did you,” Will hesitated, not quite sure what to say, “I mean, how did you do that?”
“I wish I could tell you. I’ve been replaying it in my mind, and all I know is that when I saw the tunnel collapse on top of you, I lost it. I didn’t think, I didn’t plan, I just wished with every ounce of my being that the ceiling wouldn’t fall on you. That it would stop right where it was, in midair, so you could escape.”
“And then it did,” Will said softly.
Val was still looking off in the distance. “And then it did.”
“Sort of like mothers flipping over cars to get to their trapped children. Only you did it with magic.”
“I don’t know what happened. It did feel as if something snapped inside me, but . . . unexplained power of the mind, I suppose.”
“Um, that stopped a tunnel collapse?”
Val shook his head in frustration. “I don’t know. I just don’t know.” He moved his horse closer, reaching out to clasp Will’s shoulder. “It doesn’t matter,” he said, his voice husky. “You’re alive and that’s all I care about.”
Will heard hoof beats behind them. Hashi and his men approaching on the Byway. They rejoined the party, and Mala decided to stop soon after, leading everyone to a leaf-strewn glade just off the road, surrounded by hickory and ash.
After tending to the horses, Mala took Will to a corner of the glade for the next training session. His chest burned, but the pain was manageable, and he was guessing Mala didn’t believe in sick days.
She sat across from him on the ground, her short sword in her lap. Will unsheathed his own sword.
“Your carry your sword as an article of clothing,” she said brusquely, “rather than a weapon. You didn’t have it when you faced the cave fiend.”
“I fell ten feet to the ground.”
“There’s no excuse for dying. You either do or you don’t. Your sword must become an extension of your will, as important as an arm, a leg, or a vital organ. It must always be at the ready. Always.”
“Point taken.”
She rose to her knees and leaned towards him. To his surprise, she put her hands to his cheeks, cupping the sides of his face and pulling his ear close to her lips. Her scent enveloped him, a mixture of worn leather, salty perspiration from the journey, and the hint of an exotic perfume. He felt a bit dizzy, and when her warm breath entered his ear, his left hand twitched.
“Look down,” she whispered.
Something pricked the middle of his neck, and his eyes shifted downward. The tip of her sword was resting on his Adam’s apple.
She leaned back without a hint of playfulness, returning the sword to her lap. “Lesson the fourth: never lose focus. Especially when there is a weapon close enough to strike you.”
Will felt indignant at her deception, and couldn’t help thinking she could have chose a different tactic. “Even my teacher’s weapon, before the lesson has even started?”
“That was the lesson.” She reache
d a hand out. “Your sword, please?”
He hesitated and then gave her the sword. She ran a finger along the straight, thick blade. “It’s heavy,” she murmured. “Very well-balanced, and the craftsmanship is quite unusual.”
“It was my father’s.”
“Where did he acquire it?”
“I don’t know,” he said honestly. Charlie said Dad had found Charlemagne’s sword on his archeological expedition, but even if true, that didn’t explain the ultimate origin.
She stared at him, and he shrugged. “Our father raised us in a place far away, left us with a bunch of questions, and now he’s gone.”
Her gaze moved from Will to the sword, which she examined for so long that he grew uncomfortable. Finally she held both swords up, side by side, and clanged them together. Her face turned quizzical.
“What?” Will said.
“Observe closely,” she said, and smacked the blades together again, harder. “Did you notice anything?”
“Your sword vibrates. Mine doesn’t.”
“Precisely. Only it’s not just my sword. All swords are flexible, else they shatter when struck. Your sword doesn’t bend, yet doesn’t appear the weaker for it.” She returned his sword, stood, and indicated with a curled finger for him to do the same.
She held her sword upright. “Meet my swing halfway,” she said, “half as hard as you can.”
His eyes widened. “What if it breaks?”
“Then you don’t want to use it in battle.”
She had a point.
“What if yours breaks?” he said. “It’s much smaller. I’ll feel guilty.”
Her smile was thin. “It won’t.”
On the count of three, Will met her swing, and the two swords met halfway. The weapons made a terrible clang, and Will’s hands ached from the blow. Mala’s sword vibrated, while Will’s didn’t so much as tremble.
“Remarkable,” she murmured. “You do realize your sword is magical? That, or the alloy and method of forging are something I’ve never encountered. Which would be even more remarkable than a magical sword.”
