by Shae Ford
And she thought that might’ve been the point.
“It was a great stroke of luck,” Shamus went on. “We’d spent days sacking the forts all along the Baron’s highway. Granted, there weren’t very many men on duty — but it was real delicate work. We couldn’t let any of those sandbeaters escape and run off to warn the Baron! After a few days of fighting in this blasted sun, we were nearly dead on our feet.” He beamed as he gestured towards the Spine. “Then we finally make it to the castle, and what do we see? The Baron, himself! He came right out of that pass over there and tried to sneak his way in, but we caught him —”
“Wait.” Kyleigh grabbed the front of his tunic, jolting him. “You say the Baron was coming from the plains?” When Shamus nodded, she felt as if the earth had fallen out from beneath her. “Then we’re too late! He’s already attacked —!”
“No, it wasn’t an army he had with him,” Shamus assured her, catching onto her arm before she could sprint for the Spine. “It was just a bunch of servants and a handful of guards. Gilderick must’ve been having some sort of party,” he mused. “Anyways, we attacked Sahar’s caravan just the second they popped out of the Spine. He got away, but,” Shamus grinned, “he had to leave all of his loot behind.”
She followed his gaze and saw another group of seas men standing guard over what looked like some sort of golden carriage. Packed inside the carriage were dozens of large baskets. And packed inside the baskets, tight to bursting —
“Food!” Silas moaned.
Shamus chuckled. “Aye, we’ve been feasting all afternoon. Go help yourself to the vittles!”
Silas didn’t need to be told twice.
Now that she was certain the way was safe, Kyleigh called down to Nadine, and told her to start sending the army up the rope. One by one, Shamus’s men pulled the mots out of the tunnel, staring openly at their short limbs. They seemed to be extra gentle as they helped them to their feet.
“Small folk, aren’t they?” Shamus said, watching as the mots joined Silas.
Kyleigh grinned. “Just stay out of spear’s reach, and you shouldn’t get hurt.”
Not surprisingly, the mots were thrilled about the food. But they didn’t attack it headfirst, like Silas did. Instead, they hefted the monstrous fruits and vegetables out of the baskets and brought them carefully to their noses, as if they weren’t sure what to do with them. Someone found a thick loaf of dark, rich bread, and their eyes lit up like jewels. They passed the loaf around the circle, smelling its crusted top and chattering excitedly to one another.
“They know they can eat it, right?” Shamus said.
Kyleigh shrugged. “I doubt if they know what half of it is.”
“Oh. Give that here, lass — and I’ll show you how to crack it open.”
Nadine handed over the melon she’d been inspecting and Shamus brought it down across his knee. The hard skin cracked and he pulled it apart — revealing the sweet flesh underneath. Then he showed the mots how to scoop it out with their fingers.
Nadine tried it first, and then the others dug in. They passed the halves of the melon around, taking small bites and grinning broadly as the flavor hit them. “I never knew food could taste like this,” Nadine said, licking the juice from her fingers. “It is even sweeter than wine!”
Shamus seemed to be enjoying himself as much as the mots. He happily answered their questions and showed them how to open some of the fruits. Then he sliced up the bread and passed around a basket of apples, chuckling as he watched them chew.
“Dragoness!” Silas had been busily digging through the baskets, searching for something. When he found it, he broke off a hunk and tossed it at Kyleigh.
She could smell it as it sailed through the air. Her mouth was already watering by the time she caught it: salted pork.
After weeks of stringy goats and tiny fish, she swore the first bite of pork melted in her mouth. Usually, salted meats were tough and made her tongue curl up. But this bit was different: the thick slabs of fat between the meat had been rubbed in a blend of spices that made it taste as if it was fresh — and hot off the roasting spit.
“This prey is long dead … but it doesn’t taste like it,” Silas groaned thickly, moving his lips around the large strip of pork he had clamped between his teeth. His arms were laden with great slabs of beef, smoked chicken, and a long cord of sausages. “It’s like magic!”
Kyleigh took another bite. She remembered the flavor well, and knew the skill that had gone into preparing it. “A giantess made this,” she said, waving the pork at him. “That’s the only possible explanation.”
“Aye, and speaking of magic,” Shamus called, “where’s that mage run off to?”
Between bites, Kyleigh told him of what had happened to Jake. Nadine kept assuring them that he and Elena would find their way out, but Kyleigh wasn’t going to chance it. As soon as her belly was full, she was going to go back into the tunnels and try to find them.
“Oh, there’s little hidey holes all around here,” Shamus said, waving his arm out at the desert. They were camped in the shadow of the Red Spine, along the flattened ridge that served as the Baron’s highway. The ground beneath them was mostly stone, with only a light dusting of sand on top. “I’ll have the men spread out and look for him. If his head pops up, we’ll snatch him,” Shamus promised.
Kyleigh still wasn’t convinced, but she also didn’t want to leave her men unprotected in front of Baron Sahar’s castle. “Don’t you think it’s strange that he hasn’t attacked yet?” she said, staring at the golden gates.
“It’s because he’s scared of us,” Shamus replied. “We gave him a good walloping, didn’t we, lads?”
The men cheered, raising their scimitars over their heads.
Kyleigh knew that wasn’t it. She’d seen the Baron’s army before — up close, and on several occasions. And he certainly didn’t like to let invaders sit on his doorstep. No … knowing Sahar, he was likely just taking his time. He would probably soak himself in some rose-petal bath and wash the stink of the plains from his golden clothes.
Then he’d slip every one of those jeweled rings onto his fingers, perhaps even treat himself to a sprawling lunch — and then when he was good and ready, he’d send his army out to clobber them.
Kyleigh was thinking darkly about this when Nadine wandered up to her. “Would you like a bite?” she said, holding out a chunk of her bread.
“No, thank you. It’ll just taste like dirt to me,” she explained.
Nadine shook her head. “You are strange, outlander.” Her eyes wandered over to the mountains that flanked the right side of the castle, and she tugged on Kyleigh’s jerkin. “What is that place?”
All along that stretch of the Spine, ramps had been carved out of the red stone. Holes peppered it in clusters, as if it had been struck by a handful of giant arrows. Men in ragged clothing moved in and out of the holes, shoving small carts laden with dirt and jewels.
As Kyleigh watched them, she thought she might’ve figured out where the trolls had come from — they’d been driven out of their lands, as well.
“Those are the Baron’s mines,” Kyleigh murmured. She noticed that the guards who watched the miners were still going on about their duties, ignoring the small force that had laid siege to the castle. That, more than anything, told her that Sahar wasn’t troubled over them.
As evening crept closer, her worry only grew.
At sunset, she began to hear the clink of armored bodies moving around inside the courtyard. It was difficult to count them by the noise of their steps, but she thought there might be close to a hundred soldiers waiting behind the golden doors. Sahar was about to attack.
There was no way her little army could hold their ground. They’d camped far too close to the castle, and hadn’t left themselves a lot of room for an escape. Kyleigh couldn’t leave Elena and Jake behind, and she couldn’t risk the Baron’s army leaking over into the plains — but she also wasn’t going to sentence her men to de
ath.
“Gather whatever supplies you can and head straight for Arabath,” she barked. She began hoisting baskets and handing them off to whoever happened to be standing close by.
“Why would we leave? We’ve got such an excellent view of the castle,” Shamus said, waving an arm in front of him.
But Kyleigh was in no mood to joke. She turned him by the shoulders and began shoving him down the road. “Any second now, the Baron’s going to attack —”
“Then let him!”
“We’re too few,” Silas cut in. He stared at the gates, his nose twitching in the evening air. “I smell the stench of humans … and steel.”
Nadine tossed a basket over her shoulder. “If we leave now, we may be able to outrun them.”
“Oh no, we’re not running anywhere!”
Shamus tried shoving Kyleigh back, but she was far too strong. When he tried to spin out of her reach, she grabbed him around the belt. As they struggled, the mots and the seas men looked on with open mouths, as if they were unsure what to do. And then a familiarly-exalted voice drifted through the air:
“I should have known it was you!”
When Kyleigh turned, she saw that Baron Sahar had finally emerged. He stood on the ramparts over the gate. His intricate robe glittered in the fading light, and his jeweled fingers sparkled as he waved to her.
“The Dragongirl, herself — standing on my steps,” he went on. “I must say, I’ll consider it a great honor to bring His Majesty your head.”
There were few people who could make Kyleigh want to punch them simply by speaking, but Sahar was one of them. She’d always thought that he had an extremely obnoxious voice: he carried his words as if they were some sort of precious gift, as if everybody should be delighted to hear them. And they had a peculiar way of grating against her nerves.
Kyleigh was determined to shut him up. She pushed Shamus aside and drew Harbinger. “Make sure your eyes are opened, Baron — because my face will be the last thing you ever see.”
She charged. And just as she’d suspected, Sahar wasn’t going to wait on top of his castle to be an easy target for her flames: he nearly tripped over his fine clothes in his rush to get to the stairs.
“Attack!” he cried. “Attack her now!”
Kyleigh knew she only had seconds to act. Once the Baron’s soldiers escaped the courtyard, they would scatter like ants from a hill, and she wouldn’t be able to stop them all. No, she’d have to blast them quickly.
The golden doors began to open, and she braced herself for a fight.
Chapter 37
The Queen of all Minceworms
The walls were trying to crush them — Elena was sure of it.
She followed Jake along the twisting passageway, straining her eyes to see beyond the feeble, greenish light that spouted from the top of his staff. At every narrow turn, the walls brushed across her shoulders, tightening against them like a serpent’s coils. Wet drops fell from the ceiling. They would strike her neck, startling her. She could do nothing as they slipped beneath her collar and trailed an unsettling line down her back.
Once, her boot slipped off the edge of a damp rock, and she yelped because she thought she was about to tumble down one of the black holes that lined the path. But her foot thudded hard against the solid ground, and her scream echoed off the walls — as if the earth was mocking her.
“How much further?” she hissed.
Jake was bent over, inspecting a cluster of delicate crystals that sprouted from the stone floor like weeds. “Hmm? Oh — I’m not entirely sure. It’s hard to gauge how far we’ve gone, what with everything being so blasted dark.”
“Can’t you make your light any brighter?”
He inclined his head. “I could, though it tends to get a bit … volatile, if I make it too bright. Sometimes it’s better to err on the side of darkness.” He looked back at the crystals. “I probably ought to take a sample of this. One never knows when one might stumble across it again.”
He pulled a tiny pair of tweezers out of his pack and advanced on the crystals. Whatever he was about to do looked suspiciously as if it was going to take a while, so Elena decided to speed things up: she ripped the whole cluster out of the ground and crammed it into his pack.
“There you go. Now keep moving.”
Jake seemed to think better of arguing with her. He moved out, heading in a direction he was reasonably certain was north. Elena didn’t think that was nearly as comforting as being entirely certain. But what choice did she have? She could hardly muster up the nerve to breathe — much less to navigate.
The tunnel they’d been following finally ended, and they found themselves stuck at what appeared to be a dead end. But before Elena could panic, Jake discovered another passage.
It was little more than a narrow crack in the wall, so blackened that not even the staff’s light could illuminate it.
Elena’s limbs froze at the sight of it. “I’m not going in there.”
“Well, you may not have a choice.” Jake passed his light about the room, then he shook his head. “It looks as if this is our only way out. Come on — we’ll travel quickly.”
He was wedged halfway into the crack when he looked up and saw that Elena hadn’t moved. Even if she’d wanted to, she didn’t think she would’ve been able to convince her feet to step towards it. Her lungs tightened at the very sight of the crack, as if they were preparing themselves to be crushed.
“It’s not all that bad.” Jake was standing beside her, now. She’d been so busy staring at the narrow passageway that she hadn’t heard him move. “I’m sure it’s not even that far a stretch.”
She stared at the crack. It seemed to watch her through mocking eyes and dared her to come closer. If they went inside, they might very well get stuck. Then they’d suffer for days as they slowly starved to death. But perhaps it wouldn’t be that bad: perhaps they’d die quickly — perhaps the floor would simply fall out from beneath them, and send them tumbling down into oblivion …
Her heart shuddered and tripped midstride. She realized that Jake had twined his fingers in hers. Their palms were pressed together, but he didn’t hold her down. His grip was more comforting than demanding. She wasn’t sure how to take it.
“One step at a time,” he said, and his thin lips bent in the tiniest of smiles. “Do you happen to know how all of these tunnels were formed?”
Elena shook her head. And as Jake talked, he coaxed her forward.
“I’ve done a bit of research on the topic. Of course, there are a dozen different theories, but the one I think makes the most sense is that this was all once part of a great channel of rivers. They say the desert was every bit as fertile as the plains, at one point. But then the historians claim that the river dried up, and the entire region was left to bake in the sun. I don’t think that’s entirely true. I don’t think the river dried up: I think it sank! Like the water beneath the mots’ mountain, for example …”
They edged their way through the crack, and Elena focused on Jake’s chatter. It was strange … but he didn’t smell as foul as he once had. Perhaps that was because whatever lurked inside the tunnel smelled far fouler. Her hand was so sweaty that the magic in his skin didn’t even itch her.
As they slipped deeper into the earth, she began to forget that he was a mage. It was easy to see him just as she saw every other man. And yet, it was difficult … because he wasn’t like any man she’d ever met.
“Ah, here we are!” Jake said, interrupting her thoughts. He pulled her through the last stretch of the tunnel and they popped out on the other side.
Elena stretched her arms as far as she could, but didn’t feel any walls around her. Jake’s feeble light seemed to make the darkness, if possible, even darker. “Do you see a light?”
“No — but that doesn’t mean anything. Perhaps it’s already nightfall,” Jake said quickly. “In that case, there wouldn’t be a light. Let’s just see.”
He stepped forward, and she caught
hold of his pack. She wasn’t about to be left alone in the dark. There could be holes in the floor, after all.
They only got a few steps in when a blast of hot air suddenly ripped across their faces.
“Ah, there — you see? Fresh a — ack!”
Jake doubled over as the horrible stench hit them. It smelled like a battlefield in the middle of summer’s heat: thick with the odor of rotting flesh and curdled blood.
“Now that is fetid,” Jake gasped.
Elena’s mask was helping to block out most of the odor. She tried to strain her eyes in the direction the air had come from. “But if there’s wind, doesn’t that mean there’s an exit?” She pointed Jake towards the ceiling. “Hold your staff up there.”
He did, but the light was too feeble to reach the top.
“Make it brighter.”
Jake grunted. “All right. But you’d better stand back — just in case.”
Little beads of sweat popped up across his brow as the light brightened. It stretched towards the ceiling, trembling and waving like a soap bubble in a bath. Jake held the staff up as high as he could, revealing the long, ribbed passageway above them. Glistening wet clung thickly to its edges. Thousands of white stalactites grew sideways all around the walls …
Wait a moment — stalactites didn’t grow sideways.
“Ha! I can’t believe it!” Jake said excitedly, even though his arms trembled under the weight of the glowing green bubble. “We’ve found her!”
“Found who?”
The light crossed deeper into the fanged tunnel, and Elena jumped backwards as the whole ceiling convulsed with a wet, smacking sound.
“It’s the minceworm queen!” Jake cried.
Another blast of hot breath rocked them. Jake staggered backwards, and the green bubble quivered dangerously at the end of his staff. The minceworm queen hissed at the end of her breath, drawing in a fresh gasp of air. And the bubble suddenly popped free.
