Cursed

by Keri Arthur

  Donal was already racing for the outside door. The earth heaved again, sending us staggering. I grabbed at the nearby railing to steady myself, and swore as a rain of dust and stone debris fell around me.

  “Is this a quake or the bipeds?” Donal pushed away from the wall and headed for the stairs.

  “The earth's being restricted, so the biped mages are up to something.”

  “I thought the earth said the chasm was too deep for them to cross?”

  “It is.” I bounded up the stairs after him. “But you saw the bastards up on the volcano—it's not like the sheer walls of the canyon would contain them for very long.”

  The earth shuddered again, throwing us both sideways. Donal flung a hand at the nearby wall and steadied me with the other. More stone and dust rained down as a large fracture appeared in the wall above us. This garrison might have been designed to cope with earthquakes, but if I couldn't figure out a way to stop the earth's violent response to whatever the bipeds were doing, the whole place could collapse.

  We hit the walkway at the top of the stairs and were confronted by chaos. There were so many globules in the air that the fading blue of the evening sky had become a wasteland of greeny-yellow. Men and women were scrambling to their stations even as the deadly missiles fell around them, but the pulse cannons were of little use against the globules. The walkway was awash with liquefied stone and deep trenches had opened, allowing the acid to drip down into the lower levels.

  Donal swore and raised a fist; the wind instantly responded, swiftly becoming a cyclonic force that gathered strength and speed, ensnaring the globules and funneling them down to the canyon’s floor. Dark clouds formed overhead and thunder rumbled, a gathering promise of relief that might not arrive in time.

  The cannons began to bark, a continuous rattle that was met by a guttural, inhuman cry of fury.

  I ran across to the wall and looked out. While the globules continued to rain out of the forest, a couple of hundred bipeds now lined crevice's far side. They were making no attempt to cross it, which was odd given the spiderlike way they’d clambered up and down the walls of their volcano home or flung themselves down the mountainside after us. Most of them weren't even firing their weapons. They just raised gauntleted fists to the sky and unleashed what I presumed was their war cry.

  It was almost as if they were daring us to try and kill them.

  The wind whipped up around me, sending me staggering. I grabbed at the wall, catching my balance, and twisted around to see a globule explode through the stone. If I'd been standing there, I would have been cut in two.

  I glanced at Donal. “Thanks.”

  He nodded, his expression intent. The ground lurched again, and more fractures appeared in the thick walls surrounding us.

  If I didn't do something, this whole damn place would come down.

  In desperation—and with little hope of it actually working—I drew my knife and thrust it has hard as I could into the wall. The blade sliced into stone as easily as flesh, but for too many seconds, absolutely nothing happened. The earth continued to voice her anger in the only way she knew how, and was now a greater threat to the garrison than few the globules that still were slipping through Donal’s storm.

  Damn it, if the knife had been designed to counter the mage staffs, why wasn't it breaking through the magic holding the earth mute?

  As if in answer to that question, the runes on the blade flared to life and a distant, fury-filled voice said, What is it you wish?

  Show me what’s happening.

  What came wasn’t pictures; it was emotion and sound. I heard the rolling thunder of hundreds of feet echoing through my ears as the bipeds stamped and jumped and taunted us from a distance. Felt the agony of stone as the acid melted its layers and washed them away, and the rise of a heat so deep and fierce it was as if I’d stepped into a furnace.

  Or into a rising tide of magma.

  The globules might be coming from the Wild Lands, but the biped mages weren’t there. They were here, on our side of the canyon, attempting to liquefy the earth and sink the entire garrison.

  Can you tell me where they are?

  The heat spreads from the western edge, close to the point where the fortifications meet the canyon wall.

  I ripped the knife from the wall, but the runes remained alive; energy pulsed through my fingers and up my arm, a heartbeat that matched the fury of the earth.

  But there was no time to wonder what it meant. I touched Donal’s arm to grab his attention; his gaze came to mine, his eyes bright and filled with lightning.

  “The mages are attacking the foundations,” I said. “I’m going down to stop them.”

  Although, given I was without the King’s Sword, I had no idea how I was going to achieve that. Frustration stirred anew, but I pushed it aside. Right now, there was nothing else I could do.

  “Call if you need help,” Donal said. “I’ll hear, no matter what else might be going on.”

  I hesitated, and then rose on my toes and dropped a kiss on his cheek. “Be careful, Donal, and be ready to run.”

  His smile flashed, quick and bright. “Have no fear, Princess. I have no intention of dying until well after I’ve seen you claim your vengeance and your throne.”

  An odd mix of disappointment and annoyance surged, the latter aimed just as much at myself as him. “And your lands their freedom.”

  “If you think I do this solely for that, you haven't been paying attention. Go, and be safe.”

  I hesitated, then turned and ran for the stairs. As I clattered down them at breakneck speed, I tapped the halo and said, “Command center, are you there?”

  For a frustrating second, there was no response, and then Gallego said, “Go ahead, Caracal One.”

  “The biped mages are attempting to liquefy the garrison’s foundations. You need to warn Marttia, and then issue a garrison wide-evac order for nonessential personnel.”

  I half expected an argument, but once again I’d misjudged him. As a secondary siren started up, he said, “Can you stop them?”

  “I don’t know. I’m about to find out.”

  “Not without armed support—”

  “It’s too dangerous—”

  “Nyx,” he cut in, “you cannot go out there alone.”

  “If I don’t, this garrison falls.”

  “Which doesn’t negate my statement,” he said. “Scout teams one to six, meet Caracal One at the tunnel exit immediately.”

  There was little point in arguing and not enough time left anyway. The earth’s rage grew but so too did the heat emanating from it. Steam was now rising from fissures that were rupturing the courtyard, a sure sign we were approaching the point of no return.

  I flew down the remaining stairs and raced across to the tunnel’s entrance. There were half a dozen men and women already waiting and more undoubtedly on the way, but we couldn’t afford to delay. I motioned for the doors to be opened and then said, “Keep the bastards off me for as long as you can. Retreat into the tunnel if you need to.”

  “Scouts don’t leave their people behind,” a voice at the rear muttered. “We retreat or die together.”

  I didn’t reply, but the likelihood of the latter was altogether too high.

  The gate guards tossed me their pulse rifles. I slung one across my shoulder, held the other in my left hand, the knife in my right, and headed into the tunnel. Red flame dripped from knife’s point, giving the thick dust that filled the tunnel a bloody glow. Water and gods only knew what else flowed freely from the multitude of cracks in the ceiling, and the walls were beginning to rupture, spilling blocks of stone into the tunnel. We wove through, and around the broken mess, the sound of our steps lost to the thunder of the earth, the rattle of the pulse cannons, and the screams of the Volker.

  I tightened my grip on my weapons and tried to ignore the fear that had my heart galloping and the voices screaming inside my head. I'd lived with those voices for a very long time now, and no matt
er how much they said I couldn’t do this, that I was a nothing, a nobody who would, in the end, get us all killed, I refused to give them any credence.

  After all, if they'd had their way, I would have been dead long ago.

  The door leading into the canyon slid open, but there was no immediate response from the Volker—either they hadn't yet noticed or they simply didn't care.

  Another shudder ran through the ground and, with a sharp crack, the ceiling above the door came crashing down, accompanied by a thick river of brown water that was earth and gods knew what else.

  We edged past the mess and followed the sludge out of the door. The Volker continued to taunt the garrison from the far side of the crevice, but I was beginning to suspect it was nothing more than a show—a means of diverting our attention away from the greater evil they were currently attempting.

  The earth’s shuddering became more violent. I swung left and raced along the base of the wall, keeping to the shadows as much as practical while trying to avoid erupting fissures and falling debris.

  There was still no response from the Volker. Either they really hadn't seen us or they didn't think we provided much of a threat to their plans.

  We ran on, but with every step, the ground became more heated, until it felt as if the soles of my boots were starting to melt.

  The ground heaved again, sending me staggering sideways for several steps before I caught my balance. Another fissure erupted to our right and thick steam billowed upward; huge chunks of stone tumbled down the wall. But instead of hitting hard and bouncing away, they started to sink

  The earth was liquefying.

  Time had almost run out.

  I couldn't see the Volker mages ahead, but that wasn't surprising if they were using a shield. I had no doubt we were closing in on them, if only because the energy pulsing through the knife had become so fierce my muscles were twitching in response.

  Then the blade went completely red.

  It was a warning I dared not ignore.

  As more of the wall began to crumble and sink, I told everyone to stop and hold and then leapt for the nearest stone. It immediately dipped into the soil, but I only remained long enough to catch my balance before jumping over to the next one. It was a process I repeated, until the canyon wall appeared close enough to touch and the fury pulsing through the knife was so strong it was a scream that ran through my entire body.

  I paused, gathering balance as the slab of rock under my feet dipped and wobbled, then raised the knife and slashed the air from left to right.

  Except it wasn't just air.

  It was a shield.

  Hiding under its cover were three mages; two of them held staffs topped by red stones while the third held one that was clear. With them were four armored bipeds.

  I pulled the blade away to close the shield, swung the rifle I was still holding over my shoulder, and then knelt. My perch wobbled alarmingly and settled deeper into the ground. As brown sludge seeped over the rock's edges, I raised a hand to locate the unseen barrier, and then followed it down to the point where it met the ground. Then, after crossing mental fingers and quickly praying to every god I could think of, I plunged the knife into the soft soil at that exact point.

  I wasn’t entirely sure what I'd been expecting to happen, but it certainly wasn't an explosion.

  The blast was so fierce it ripped my grip away from the knife and sent me tumbling backward. I hit the almost-too-hot liquefying soil and started to sink, and blindly groped for the nearest rock. Then hands grabbed me, hauled me upright, even as a scream of fury rent the air.

  The Volker on the other side of the crevice were no longer ignoring us.

  And while the shield had been destroyed and both the mage who'd created it and the biped guards were down, the two earth mages hadn't moved and their dark magic was still liquefying the ground.

  We had to stop them. I had to stop them.

  But to have any hope of doing that, I had to reclaim my knife.

  The wind picked up speed and began to howl; I looked up to see a stream of globules being battered left and right. Some hit the ground and began to bubble and hiss, while others simply sank silently out of sight.

  Our plight, if we weren't very careful.

  The armored Volker scrambled upright and charged. As one, we fired. Bullets ripped into flesh and gouged huge chunks out of plated chests, but it didn't stop them.

  I swore and knelt, firing relentlessly at a biped's knees, trying to incapacitate rather than kill. But my knees were now sinking into ground that had been solid only a heartbeat before. The rate of liquefaction was increasing; we surely didn't have too much more time before the foundations holding this section of the wall upright were melted away.

  Once that happened, the garrison was lost. I might be able to command earth to solidify and stone to rebuild, but I was only one person and it would all take time. The Volker were unlikely to give us that.

  The biped's knee exploded and he crashed to the ground with a scream of fury. I immediately switched aim, firing several rounds into the back of his head. As it blew apart, the other three leapt high into the air. A hail of bullets followed their movements, shredding armored stomachs and spraying black blood and gore all over us. It didn't don't stop them. They tumbled over us and landed some twenty feet away, effectively blocking our retreat.

  A scream went up. Not from these three but from those lining the crevice.

  They were coming.

  As I'd feared, the wide crevice was no real barrier for them. They were simply flinging themselves into it and dropping down. I had no doubt that at some point their momentum would allow them to catch the other edge and climb back up.

  We had, at best, ten minutes.

  “I'm going to stop the mages. Hold these bastards for as long as you can.” I had to scream to be heard against the howl of the wind and the battle cry of the Volker. “Retreat back to the canyon wall if necessary.”

  “There ain't no escape from these bastards there,” a familiar voice said. Orli, the gnarled veteran who'd only recently joined my team.

  “There will be,” I said.

  And hoped I could live up to the statement.

  I swung around and ran toward the biped mages. But the earth had become so wet that with every step I sank deeper and deeper into the soil, until I was all but swimming through the muck. There was no life in it, no response, and desperate fear began to pound through my body. I couldn't command earth that held no voice, and that meant even if I did stop the mages, I still might not prevent the wall from coming down.

  And yet both the knife and the mages sat high and dry on an island of solidity.

  As the wet soil began to creep up my neck, I made a desperate lunge for the knife. My wet fingers slipped down its hilt and the blade sliced into my flesh. But I didn't let go and, as my blood began to pool around the point where blade met earth, I hauled myself up and onto solidness.

  As I sucked in great gulps of air, a distant voice said, We hear.

  The earth. Despite the fact I was surrounded by a sea of death, she was somehow hearing me.

  Blood, she said. The knife counters and the blood revives. Not far, not enough to save, but we hear.

  I had no idea if she meant save us or the garrison itself, and right now, didn't really care. Can you contain the mages?

  The clear biped staff remains active. It restrains us.

  I twisted around; while the mage who'd used it was down, his staff remained planted into the soil and the clear crystal, though cracked, still glittered with power.

  Then get ready to react the minute I—

  I stopped as an ominous rumble cut across the surrounding noise, and then looked up sharply. The goddamn curtain wall was beginning to subside.

  I hit the halo, ordered a retreat, and then wrenched the knife free from the soil and thrust upright. Light whipped out from the clear crystal, lashing my body, slicing through clothes and down into skin. I swore and lunged for the st
aff, my knife held in front of me like a lance. Red fire flicked out from the blade to meet the white, catching and destroying each whip before they could do me any more damage. Then the tip of the blade sliced into the staff and the white light died as the crystal completely shattered. I rolled to my feet and slashed wildly at the other two staffs. The blade cut through them with ease, but as the red crystals shattered and earth spilled like blood from their hollow insides, their mages screamed and, as one, attacked. I swore and scrambled upright, only to be sent flying backward as the first mage hit hard. We thudded against the ground and air whooshed from my lungs as stars briefly danced. The mage screamed and began to bite and tear at my flesh with teeth and talons. The knife lay between us, embedded deep into his gut; I bucked in an attempt to shift him, but he was so damn heavy I barely lifted him half an inch and was now struggling to breathe.

  I swore, but it was little more than a guttural wheeze of fury and fear. I jerked away from several snaps at my face, somehow pulled one hand free, then quickly shoved my thumb into the corner of his eye and gouged deep. Blood gushed over my face, and his eyeball popped out of its socket, hit my forehead, and bounced away. My stomach rose and I gagged but nevertheless smashed my hand into his other eye, destroying the rest of his sight as I forced his head up and away from me. Then, without warning, he was unceremoniously pulled from me.

  The earth had finally come to my rescue.

  I scrambled upright and swung around, bloody knife raised and at the ready. The second mage wasn't a threat; it had been cocooned and was slowly being smothered. The earth had vengeance on her mind.

  A faint sound had me swinging around. The remnants of the scout group were struggling through the mush, trying to make it to solid ground.

  And at least a dozen bipeds were now hauling themselves over the crevice's edge on this side of the canyon. I swore, knelt, and shoved the knife into the ground. Create an earth bridge out to those men.