“Not yet,” Eva said, heart pounding even faster. Her arms felt like willow branches and she squeezed her sword hilt tighter.
The rustling grew louder, like dozens of tiny hammers clinking against the tunnel floor. The volume increased as well. Eva peered into the darkness, but the yellow lights were gone.
“Now?” Ivan asked, apprehension thick in his voice.
Eva hesitated. Behind her, the others shifted, trying to get into some semblance of a fighting formation in the close quarters. All of a sudden, the sound came not only from in front of them but behind as well.
“Now?” Ivan asked, voice cracking.
Eva tossed the decision back and forth faster than the tapping and clinking noise echoing all around them. And then dozens of yellow eyes appeared.
“Now!”
A blinding flash filled the tunnel as Ivan summoned the fire kenning and a ball of flame burst into his hand. The orange light revealed a horde of dog-sized mechanical spiders scuttling on the floors, walls, and ceiling toward them.
Eva bit back a scream as Ivan blasted the closest off the top of the tunnel with a fireball and summoned another to shoot at one on the floor. Eva heard the others struggling in the tunnel behind her, knocking into each other and the tunnel walls in the process of trying to fight off the spiders.
“Let me through!” Eva said, trying to push her way past Chel, Wynn, Tahl and, hardest of all, Soot. The burly smith swung his hammer, smashing a spider into a thousand bits of metal, gears, and cogs. Sliding past him, Eva stabbed out with her sword. One cut from the rune blade was all it took — the sword split the spider in half with ease. But they were fast. Eva barely managed to hold them off as dozens of the mechanical arachnids swarmed forward, reaching with long legs and razor-sharp pincers capable of shredding them to pieces.
Each moment stretched by as Eva cut through the spiders until she pinned the last of the swarm to the ground. It gave a feeble clicking noise through its metal mandible and shuddered before its many limbs went still. Eva sucked in a deep breath, sheathing her sword and shook her aching arms.
“Lovely,” Ivan said, kicking the blackened shell of one of the mechanical spiders. “We’ve got giant golems ready to pulverize us above ground and if that doesn’t work, there’s these little horrors crawling around to flay off our skin in the dark.”
“This don’t bode well,” Soot said. “There weren’t anything like these last time.”
“It would seem the Smelterborn have not been idle, then,” Chel said, doing her best to step around the metal corpses. She, Wynn, and Tahl hadn’t been able to do much in the close quarters but keep an eye out for any of the spiders trying to surround Ivan and Eva.
“Let’s keep moving,” Eva said. “We’ve made too much noise.”
Squeezing her way past the others to the front of the line with Ivan again, Eva followed the Scrawl. She saw the strain on Ivan’s face in the flicker of his rune-flame, the cost of the short but strenuous fight.
The tunnel twisted and turned past dozens of offshoots and dead ends, forcing them to backtrack multiple times until Eva hardly knew where they were or how to get back to the beach. As they continued deeper into the rock, the stone and air around them grew hotter and hotter. Eva started to wonder if they’d brought enough water or if they would lose their way and perish of thirst.
At last, Ivan’s light blended with an orange glow ahead which grew brighter and brighter until the Scrawl could douse his flame. Creeping forward, they saw the tunnel widen ahead. Eva held up a hand to keep the others back while she and Ivan peered around, searching for the source of the light.
The tunnel opened up into a large cavern, a sort of junction for dozens of other passages. From their vantage point high above the cavern floor, Eva saw dozens of Smelterborn working, hammering and heating rods of metal. They formed neat, orderly lines, each golem assigned to a different task. It took Eva a moment to realize they were working in a long line, each Smelterborn crafting a different part of the weapon, all the way down to a section of Shadowstalkers who handled the finishing work and sharpened the blades. The final resulting weapons were crude but made with incredible efficiency.
Eva raised a hand to wipe the sweat from her face — the heat from the room was stifling, making it hard to breathe beneath her chain mail, which felt like a hot blanket. Sliding back on their stomachs, Ivan and Eva rejoined the rest to report what they’d seen.
“I know where we are!” Soot said. “That room is part of the caverns we explored when we came to Palantis the first time.” He nodded to the sword at Eva’s side. “Your father found that in one of the antechambers. There were others, but none of us bothered bringing any — they all looked like a bunch of useless relics.”
“Bet you wish you’d grabbed them now,” Ivan muttered.
“We’ll have to backtrack,” Eva said before Soot could retort. “There’s no way we can get across to another tunnel without being spotted and —”
“Wait up there!” Wynn hissed. Eva shot her an annoyed glance but waited for the girl to speak. “You’re telling me there might be more enchanted weapons that kill the Smelterborn lying around and we’re just going to wander off to look for another passage?”
“We don’t have much time,” Soot said. “But the girl’s got a point — there’s a good chance some of the other relics could do the same damage.”
“If Ogunn has not destroyed them,” Chel pointed out.
Thinking back on their journey through the tunnels, Eva tried to figure out how long it had been since they’d left the gryphons on the beach. At least three or four hours, and there was a good chance it would take them even longer than that to find their way out. They were running out of time.
“If we can dig up even one more weapon, it would be worth it,” Tahl said.
Eva gave a reluctant nod. “Where do we go from here?” she asked Soot.
The smith thought for a long moment and then gave a couple of different guesses where he thought there might be other rune weapons. “Stick to the tunnels small enough the Smelterborn can’t get in,” he said. “If I remember right, that’s where most of the human-sized stuff was anyway, this must’ve been an armory even before the Smelterborn took it over.”
Although Eva hated to do it, she realized they would have to split up to cover the most ground in their limited time. Since Ivan and Eva were the only two with surefire means to kill Smelterborn, they headed the two groups. Soot went with the Scrawl and took Wynn, which left Chel and Tahl with Eva.
After backtracking to a previous split in the tunnels, Ivan marked runes into the walls for direction and they agreed to meet back in two hours’ time, regardless of whether they found anything in their explorations or not. To mark the time, Wynn and Tahl did the only thing they could to keep track in the sunless tunnels: counting.
Before parting, they all agreed that if the other party wasn’t back they would only wait a short time before making their way out to the beach.
“It’s the only way,” Soot said when Eva began to argue. “If we can find something to help us we’ve got to take the chance. But we can’t sit around and wait for one another — the risk is too great.”
After a quick goodbye and round of luck-wishing, they separated. Eva, Tahl, and Chel chose a path to the right of the one that led into the forge area. The others took a path to the left. Soon, the faint scraping of boots faded and they were alone, guided only by the soft glow of Eva’s Wonder cupped in her hands.
The tunnels here were once again smooth and straight, cut at angles rather than winding and curving. Eva thought back to the spider golems and wondered if they’d carved the other tunnel, digging away with their pincers and mandibles, creating an entirely new network of caves. She suppressed the thought of hundreds of machinations scampering around in the dark and focused on Soot’s directions.
After an hour or so passed, according to Tahl’s count, they came across several rooms that looked to have once been a barrack
s or soldier’s quarters, not dissimilar to those inside the Gyr. There were even crystal lamps fashioned to the wall, although none of them gave off any light.
A search through the first room found nothing but dust. Everything seemed to be rotted away. In the neighboring room, however, Eva spotted the corroded, pitted remnants of a suit of armor. She reached for the tarnished breastplate, frowning at the strange design and jumped back. The cracked and yellowed remnants of a skeleton poked out beneath the armor.
When she’d recovered from the unexpected scare, a look around revealed other soldiers’ remains. They looked hundreds of years old, only fragments of bones, skulls, and armor preserved by the cave remaining.
“If this was the garrison, there should be weapons around,” Eva said to the others.
They spread out and combed the tight quarters to no avail. Eva found a dagger hilt and what looked like the rusted remains of a sword blade, but they were so rusted away they wouldn’t have done any good against a mortal opponent, let alone the Smelterborn.
“I wonder when the last time was that a living human walked in here,” Tahl said.
The thought made Eva pause. She felt a small pang of guilt for rooting through the resting place of these people, no matter how long they’d been dead. They searched a few more minutes without any results. That, combined with Eva’s newfound desire to leave the remains in peace, sent them on their way.
Unlike the Gyr, whose tunnels often opened up into wide corridors and various rooms, the passageways beneath the palace were barely wide enough for two people to pass through. The thought crossed Eva that the ancient Palantines must not have been very tall because her head almost scraped the tops of the walls. Tahl had to duck and she couldn’t imagine what a pain it must be for Soot to wander through such confined spaces.
Although the heat from the forge faded, it never went away. Thankfully, they saw no more sign of the golem spiders and Eva wondered if they kept themselves to the darker, cooler parts of the caverns, even though they’d clearly been crafted by someone or something.
Their continued search yielded nothing. After crossing into a side corridor and coming upon their own tracks on the ground, the three decided to head back to the meeting area while they had the chance to retrace their steps. After all their searching, they had only sweat, thirst and a layer of dust and grit to show for it.
“It does not matter, Eva-lyn,” Chel said, sensing Eva’s disappointment. “We do not need more magic weapons to kill the iron men. It will be okay.”
Eva had her doubts, but she bit back a discouraging comment and hurried their pace. An anxious feeling overtook her and she longed to be reunited with the rest of the group and assured they were all safe and sound. It didn’t take long, now that they were no longer searching every room and side chamber to get back to the arranged meeting place.
No one was there.
Eva’s heart sank and she berated herself for letting the group split up. “I knew we should have stayed together,” she said out loud, slapping a hand against the rock wall. “I knew it. I just —”
Tahl took her shoulders in both hands. “Deep breath,” he said. “We don’t know anything has happened yet. Maybe they found something or —”
“Or maybe they were captured or killed,” Eva said, in a flat voice.
Tahl gave her a gentle squeeze. “We don’t know that. Let’s just wait a few minutes and see.”
Eva heaved a deep breath and nodded reluctantly. But the waiting proved excruciating.
With nothing to do to preoccupy their time, the three sat on the stone ground and checked their weapons. The task only took a few minutes and left them with nothing else to do but worry. Eva’s mind conjured dozens of different things that could have happened. What if one of them were hurt? What if they’d gotten lost? What if? What if?
“I can’t take it anymore,” she said after what was probably a much shorter amount of time than it felt like. “There’s no point in us waiting here, we might as well follow their tracks in and meet up with them. That way we’ll know for sure.”
Both Chel and Tahl looked like they wanted to argue, but seeing the determined look on Eva’s face they just nodded and followed her down the tunnel.
Like the passages they’d gone down, the amount of ash and dust on the ground made it easy to follow the path the others took. When they came to the first intersection, Tahl saw another of Ivan’s runes glowing light blue on the wall and felt grateful for the Scrawl’s foresight. However, the sight of the marking made Eva realize that if the others were smart enough to mark their path, the chances they’d gotten lost were slim. Once more, Eva thought back to all the traps they’d encountered searching the bottom caverns of the Gyr and feared the worst.
Unlike the passages Eva, Tahl, and Chel searched, the corridor the others went down didn’t seem to branch off into any rooms or antechambers. They continued to follow the tracks, pointed in the right direction whenever they came to a junction thanks to Ivan’s runes on the wall. Eva wondered how long before the markings would fade and hurried her pace even more.
Much to their chagrin, the air grew hotter again and Eva realized they were swinging back around toward the Smelterborn armory. Eva found small comfort that the tunnels remained too small for the Smelterborn to fit through. There was no sign of the mechanical spiders anywhere, either, or any other struggle.
After an hour, Eva’s stomach twisted as if full of snakes. She didn’t dare call out and they’d seen and heard nothing to suggest they were getting any closer to Ivan, Soot, and Wynn. She knew both of the others were wondering if they should go back to the meeting place and part of her wondered if the group might have circled around another route back and were even now back at the juncture, waiting for them to return.
“Eva…” Tahl began after they continued into what felt like their second hour.
“I know,” she snapped. “Just a bit farther and then I promise, we’ll turn back.”
Inside, Eva doubted they would come across anything but wasn’t willing to turn back yet. The tunnel widened. Eva’s stomach clenched even tighter when she realized the corridor they were in now could definitely fit a Smelterborn. To make matters worse, the ash and dust had been blown away by a slight breeze ahead, erasing all traces of their friends’ footsteps.
“Eva,” Tahl said again, this time in a much firmer voice.
“We should go back, Eva-lyn,” Chel added, although her tone was more nervous than insistent.
“I know,” Eva said, still walking forward. “ I just —”
She paused, mouth dry as the dim light from her Wonder illuminated an object on the floor. Rushing forward she knelt down, confirming her worst fears — Soot’s hammer.
The others joined her. No one spoke as they stared down at the smith’s weapon.
“Maybe…he left it here to mark the way so they didn't risk a rune on the wall?” Tahl said. Eva could tell by his tone that he didn’t believe it. They were in a long, straight hallway, with no offshoot or any possible way to get lost.
“It could be morning,” Chel said, rubbing her sleep-deprived, reddened eyes. “We may have less than a day to go back.”
“I don’t care!” Eva hissed with a venom that surprised her. Chel took a step back, the hurt look on her face falling into a scowl.
Eva paused and took a deep breath. “I’m sorry. But if there’s still time, we’ve got to keep going.”
Continuing down the hall, it wasn’t long before they came across another sign of struggle: a Windsworn sword snapped off just above the hilt. Tahl picked it up, face pale even in the darkness.
“Wynn’s.”
Eva drew her sword but the faintly glowing runes offered no comfort in the heart of their enemy’s domain.
They continued down the hall, which by now had grown into a corridor three times their height and almost twice that wide. The size was similar to some of the main halls in the Gyr, complete with columns down either side. Although the large pass
age looked abandoned, Eva kept the light from her Wonder cupped as best she could, afraid of revealing their location to searching golems.
The light spilled on a large form in the middle of the hall. Eva froze, heart pounding. After a moment’s studying, they walked forward to find the shell of a Smelterborn, followed by two more beyond. Their helmeted faces were still wrapped in ice.
“Ivan,” Eva muttered.
Bright orange light waved and flickered ahead out of a side passage, with an entrance wide enough for a gryphon to pass through wings extended. It was taller than three Smelterborn standing atop one another. Eva moved to one side of the hall, behind the columns, Tahl and Chel close behind. They flitted from one column to the next, hiding in the shadows.
At last, they reached the corner. Eva felt overwhelmed by the heat — even the stone wall was too hot to leave her hand on for more than a few moments. Blinking the sweat from her eyes, Eva peered around the gigantic arch.
The chamber looked like a larger version of the armory complete with anvils and a furnace several times bigger than the one in Soot’s smithy back in Gryfonesse. Smelterborn crowded the room, facing the opposite direction. They were circled around something, but Eva couldn’t see what.
“Are they in there?” Tahl asked from behind her.
Eva shook her head, hair lank and soaked with sweat like she’d been out in the rain. “I can’t tell, they’ve —.”
“Welcome,” a familiar, booming voice said, its words echoing throughout the chamber. “Welcome to the heart of my empire. I thank you for delivering the Deimos to me — perhaps I will make your deaths quick in return for this service.”
The Smelterborn jerked to attention and Eva got a clear shot through their ranks. Wrapped in chains, Soot, Wynn, and Ivan knelt before Ogunn. The dark golem paced back and forth before them.
Eva felt a burning against her chest and yanked her Wonder away from her skin. As soon as she touched the stone, Ogunn’s helmeted head shot toward them. Although Eva ducked away, she could feel his fiery eyes on her.
Windbreak: Gryphon Riders Book Three (Gryphon Riders Trilogy 3) Page 17
