by Karen Chance
Which was a problem, because the guys up top had stopped firing.
Maybe they’d figured that out, too. Or maybe they were just afraid of hitting their buddies. Because they were gaining.
I sat there in awe, watching them practically run down the damned cliff face. They were moving as fast or faster than someone could rappel, but they didn’t have stakes or rope or any equipment at all. And they didn’t need it. Because the rock itself was helping them.
I hadn’t been able to see what they were doing along the riverbank; it had been too dark. But it was lighter in here and I was closer and there was no doubt about it. Fissures and cracks were opening up wherever they needed them, little lips were bulging out from solid rock under their feet or sinking in for handholds. One stumbled and a whole ledge shot out of nowhere to catch him.
It was as if the whole damned rock face was putty that re-formed itself to whatever configuration they needed, as malleable for them as the water had been for Pritkin. And as bad for us. I grabbed Pritkin’s arm. “Do you know any fey insults?”
“What?”
“Insults. Abuse.” I shook him one-handed. “Can you swear in their language?”
“Why?”
“We need them to fire.” I looked pointedly at the trolls, who were back at it again.
And young or not, Pritkin had never been exactly slow. He glanced at me for a second, then at them. And then started yelling something at the fey above us that the spell wouldn’t even try to translate.
But I guess it must have been pretty bad, because the two trolls stopped midpunch to gape at him. And then at the barrage of lightning bolts being hurled down at us again like we’d managed to piss off Zeus. Give me time, I thought hysterically, as we dropped again.
And caught.
And dropped.
And caught.
Our little pontoon was starting to look pretty beat-up, but it was nothing to how bad things were going to be if we didn’t hurry up. Because we’d never fully straightened out from that initial tumble, and had been drifting closer to the rocks every time we stopped. And when I turned around again, the cliff face was—
Right in front of me.
Like the guy with half a face perched on top of it.
Chapter Forty-four
I stared at the fey from the river in horror, not understanding why he wasn’t dead. I had shot him. Two gaping wounds, one under his chin and one in his forehead, were a testament to that. Along with the blood and gore that matted his hair and splattered his chest. And the powder burns that covered half his face, starkly black and ugly against the otherworldly pallor of his skin.
He looked like an accident victim; he looked like a corpse. He should have been a corpse, because the angle of one of those bullets had to have taken it straight through his brain. A senior-level master might have been able to come back from something like that, but nothing else I knew.
Nothing else until now.
Because instead of keeling over, he was leaping maybe twelve feet straight out, from a tiny outcropping onto the end of our boat. And sending us hurtling backward from the impact, almost into the hail of spears from above. And then slamming right back into the cliff again, like a pendulum on a clock, when Pritkin and the guard threw themselves forward in an attempt to knock him off.
It didn’t knock him off.
It did crush him against the rock, though, but not hard enough. Not with the damned stuff churning and moving behind him like wet clay. And then re-forming around his body, to the point that he left a fey-shaped hole behind when he lunged at us again, batted aside the broken oar Pritkin had grabbed, and jumped into our failing ride.
And promptly helped it fail some more.
Pritkin and the silver fey landed in the bottom of the boat, kicking and fighting, and we went into freefall. The little guard started wailing on his buddy again, but this time, it didn’t help. And I grabbed the side of the burning boat and braced for impact.
Which didn’t come.
Not because we caught again. But because Pritkin had grabbed the stick—or the staff or whatever the hell—and tried to get it against the fey’s neck. I think the idea was to throttle him between it and the bottom of the boat. But the creature was too strong, throwing him off and back into me, and then grabbing his end of the staff like he intended to punch it through both our chests.
But he didn’t.
Because it punched through his instead.
I sat there, seeing but not understanding. Unlike with a gun, there had been no recoil, and no sound that I could hear over everything else. And the whole fight had taken all of a few seconds. It literally took longer to tell about it than it did to watch, and humans aren’t built to comprehend things that fast; we’re barely built to see them.
Which is why I was almost as surprised as the fey when he looked down at the gory cavity that had been his chest.
And saw nothing there.
He toppled off the craft, spinning out into the void on a rush of wind, but not disappearing, not dropping. Or rather he was, but we were, too. And just as fast.
Until Pritkin slammed the staff through the watery patch he’d placed over the hole in the bottom, which was still sort of holding. And did something with the staff—I didn’t see what. But I felt it.
Because, suddenly, instead of being feet away from crashing into the base of the falls, we were airborne again.
Very airborne.
Like, whoa, airborne, I thought, completely incoherent while clinging to Pritkin and staring at the line of fey on top of the waterfall, who were staring at us as we rocketed past.
Going the other way.
Which would have been good, which would have been great, if there wasn’t a ceiling, like, right there and ceiling, ceiling, ceiling!
And I guess Pritkin saw it, too, although I hadn’t had time to actually form the words. Because he pulled the staff to the right and we banked—a little too abruptly. Make that a lot too abruptly, slinging us on circuit around the cave while being almost completely sideways. And would have sent us tumbling to our doom except that all of us were already bracing under the seats with our feet and holding on to the sides with our hands and generally had our butts clenched on the seats in cold, hard terror.
Which only increased when we sped by the rock wall and another fey jumped on.
I got a heel to his forehead, but I wasn’t wearing shoes and it didn’t help. Unlike the air screaming through a hole in the hull, which was hitting him in the face hard enough to blow his lips back from his teeth. And the broken edge of the paddle the guard was now wielding, which seemed to be doing some damage until the fey ripped it away from him and tried to impale him on it.
That left the fey hanging on to the boat one-handed, with his body flapping out behind him almost horizontally, which would have spelled doom to anyone who was remotely normal. He just proceeded to stab at the guard again, who was saved only by boiled leather armor and a sidestep. Which turned almost balletic when he rotated in a flash of motion—
And brought a thick-soled boot down on the fey’s remaining hand.
“Yes! Yes! Yes!” I screamed, although no one could hear me. I couldn’t even hear myself, with the wind ripping the words away before they were out of my mouth. Like the fey, who suddenly went flying.
Right into the sheer cliff face that was jutting out just ahead of us. We missed it thanks to a quick swerve by Pritkin, but that cost us half a second. Which was all the fey needed to twist, get his feet under him, and catapult back onto the boat as we rocketed past.
And abruptly the little guard flew backward off his feet.
The fey had almost missed the boat—literally—falling against the outer hull instead of inside, and had snagged the guard’s neck to save himself and to try to strangle him at the same time. But the guard had other ideas, snagging the undersid
e of a seat with his boot and using one of his oversized fists to wail on the side of the fey’s head.
But it wasn’t working, and we were out of weapons—even the broken paddles had fallen out by now. And the fey had the guard in a headlock, so even if I figured out some way to send him flying, the guard was likely to go, too. But he was going to anyway if I didn’t do something, so I grabbed the little guy’s belt and pulled.
I wasn’t crazy enough to think I could overpower a fey warrior, but I hoped to tip the balance enough for the guard to do the rest. But I had only the one arm that worked, and even with both, the fey was stronger than me. A lot stronger. Hell, it felt like one of his fingers might have outdone me, because it didn’t seem like I was making a damned bit of difference at all.
And Pritkin was fighting to tame the power of a hurricane and couldn’t help, and the seat the little troll was using to brace with was coming loose, the bolts holding mostly through rust at this point, and a pair of tiny black eyes were meeting mine—
Not to plead for help, because I didn’t have any more to give. But to tell me it was all right, that I’d done my best, that it was okay, when it wasn’t okay. When nothing about it was okay! The black eyes swam before my gaze, turning older and dimmer and bluer—to those of another man I hadn’t been able to save. And like the other, this one was slipping through my fingers, and I couldn’t hold, couldn’t hold—
And then I was using both hands and screaming because my shoulder felt like it was being ripped off my body, but it still wasn’t enough, and there was no one to help—
Except for the fey themselves.
Because we’d just completed a full circuit of the vast cavern, coming back to where we’d begun in front of the falls. And the spears the fey had been lobbing, which had been missing us because of the distance, were suddenly at point-blank range. And I guess the leader had decided that if he couldn’t have the staff, nobody could. Because a volley of fire tore through the air, straight for us.
And this time, it connected. One glowing spear shattered the prow, exploding the high carved finial into dust and sending us slinging around like a top. Another ripped through the bottom of the boat at almost the same time, right where I’d just been sitting before being thrown into the floor. And a third—
And a fourth and a fifth slammed into their own man, who was sprawled across half the hull, still stubbornly clinging to his prize.
The little troll tore away, falling over by me, and the energy blasts lit up all that black armor like lightning bolts. They didn’t penetrate; they didn’t have to. The shiny black became red became yellow became white, and the fey screamed, screamed while he was cooked like a lobster in its shell, screamed as he began to smoke, screamed until his face turned black, and yet he was still clinging to the ship because he’d melted there—
And then the troll’s boot smashed through charred wood and fey, too, and he fell, spinning off into the void.
And I was screaming, too, because they were about to throw again and we couldn’t outrun them, not in time, and there was nothing to serve as a shield and no way to keep the bolts from landing—
Except the obvious, which I’d somehow managed not to think of at all. But I didn’t feel too bad because it looked like the fey hadn’t, either. They threw, launching an enormous volley like a line of fire stretching across the void. And Pritkin jerked up the staff, sending us tumbling into the floor as the boat went completely sideways and the wave of wind went straight at the fey.
Whose lightning reflexes weren’t quite lightning enough when their own volley boomeranged right back at them.
It was like the shooting gallery at the fair, I thought blankly. I’d been caught halfway through a scream with my mouth hanging open as I watched through the hole-riddled hull as half the lineup suddenly disappeared, while a few others dove for cover. And the rest—
Didn’t do anything.
They didn’t get blown backward by the gale, as I would have expected if I could have expected anything right then. They also didn’t fall forward. I suddenly realized that they were trapped in between the huge amount of air the river was churning up on the one side, as all that water came barreling down from above, and the rush of power that Pritkin was sending on the other. Like bugs between two slides of glass, they just hung there for a long moment, along with the water that was getting blown back into the mouth of the falls.
A lot of water. Almost all of the water, in fact, which was being vaporized and sent back, in long white flowing streamers, like the fey’s hair. More and more of it, until I couldn’t see anything anymore, not the fey, not the rocks, not the mouth of the falls. Nothing except a wall of white where a moment ago there had been a tremendous torrent.
And suddenly was again.
Pritkin yelled something that I guess was hold on, although there was no way in hell to tell. But a second later the whole ragtag little craft swung around, with those of us who remained scurrying to find new handholds in punctures in the hull and on what remained of the seats and on the bare bones of the craft, which is all we were about to have left since more boards were falling away every moment.
And then we dove.
I had a split second to see the boiling wall of white collapse, to see a bunch of half-drowned fey collapse with it, to see the whole screwed-up mess plunge over the falls in a tsunami’s worth of water. And then we were racing the deluge for the ground, the mighty blast of air coming from the end of the crappy little stick sending us shooting back down just as fast as we’d come up. And this time, there were no energy bolts to have to worry about, even from the guys on the cliff, who were far too busy avoiding the water smashing and crashing and sending sideways waves flooding over them to care about us.
And anyway, you can’t hit a speeding bullet. And that’s what it felt like we were, with the wind almost blinding us and a hurricane howling in our ears and the river rushing up to meet us. And then the spray churning at the bottom of the falls slicing up on either side of us as we curved and skimmed and shot ahead, just before the whole thing was obscured by the vast torrent from above.
I looked over and saw Pritkin backlit by the sparkling, crashing deluge, laughing like a madman, while the hairy little guy who’d ended up under my arm was waving his fists around and whooping, and the other guy stuck in the hold was staring around with eyes three times bigger than normal, which almost made them regular-sized—
And suddenly I started whooping, too, because still alive, fuckers, still alive.
And then the ceiling started to fall in.
Not just part of it—all of it.
The long stretch of underground river ahead started boiling and jumping and whipping up, with waves splashing twenty feet into the air to grab at us as we flew past. The giant waves were caused by equally giant boulders that were slamming down all around us. And massive cracks were running in the ceiling ahead, showing lines where even bigger sections were about to break away. Because the corridor, the huge, rock-cut corridor, wasn’t just cracking, it was collapsing.
The fey were bringing a mountain down on our heads.
But not fast enough.
Because a second later, we were swerving hard at the far wall, and then into a crack all of five feet across and limestone slick and going straight down.
“Augghhhhh!” someone said, but it wasn’t me that time. I couldn’t say anything, thanks to the little guard who had just grabbed me around the neck.
“Aughhh, aughhh!” the guard screamed, as the floor rose up to meet us, because I’d been wrong, it wasn’t straight down. It was a slalom course of turns and twists and dips, in between collapsed heaps of ceiling for us to run into and wide fissures for us to fall into and no way to avoid them except by throwing our body weight one way or the other.
Which might have worked better if we’d been touching the floor more than half the time.
“Bring us down! Bring us down!” the little guard was yelling as we scraped across the ceiling. But we didn’t come down until he let go of my neck to smack the board over his friend’s chest. Which was the last straw for our charmed, trapped fey, who punched him right in the jaw.
They started fighting, and we started dropping, and rising, and dropping, and rising, and slamming and ricocheting back and forth between floor and ceiling, and banking and almost flipping, and screaming our way down, down, down, until I was sure the damned thing would never end—
And then it did.
Because we burst out of the side of a cliff, on a waterfall that was no longer there. Just an opening onto sunlight and air and a river that could best be described as way the hell too far below. Especially after our little patch decided to take that moment to finally give up the ghost.
“Oh, shiiiiiiit!”
• • •
“Is that really your name?” Pritkin demanded as we crawled up onto the shore some time later.
I staggered onto a pebble-lined stretch of sand, heaving and sniffling and making strange little shock-y sounds that I’d probably be embarrassed about later if I survived long enough. I flopped down, rolled over onto my back, and watched the smoke rise from a completely destroyed stretch of mountainside. Trees, bushes, and streams had all been swallowed by a scar that had to be a mile long. Had to be.
I lay there, too exhausted to even gasp and too shaken to freak out. Even when the smaller troll started doing it for me, emitting a terrible, ululating cry at decibel levels not meant for human ears. Luckily, mine were too full of water to burst. And then he ran off, the sound of tiny running feet and an answering cry echoing back to us from somewhere nearby.
Pritkin dropped down beside me, breathing heavily. The remaining troll started cursing weakly. Another piece of mountainside collapsed, like a soufflé somebody had taken out of the oven at the wrong time, loud enough, even at a distance, to make me cringe.
“Ohshit?”
“It’s more the story of my life,” I said miserably.
