by Martha Carr
“I don’t sing.” The massive shadow covering the slit in the wall moved aside again, and the thin light from inside the chamber threw a yellow line down the center of L’zar’s grinning face.
“You two need to pull yourselves together.” The high, nasal pitch of the third speaker’s voice made Cheyenne think of nails on a chalkboard. “I’m as prepared to see the new Cycle turn as the rest of us. The Crown’s had Hangivol on its knees for longer than anyone wants to accept anymore. If L’zar Verdys truly returned to take the throne for himself, I say we sit back and watch the threads unfold.”
“If L’zar Verdys came here to sit the throne, he brings the deathflame for all of us!”
The huge magical named Folreg growled. “Just because he set you back a few hundred years with that flight scheme of yours doesn’t mean he’s here to kill his own.”
“Set me back? Set me back?” The skaxen leaped across the chamber in a flash of orange flesh and snarled. “That blood traitor took everything I had! For what? So he could power some fell-damn experiment he stole from the tinkerer in Qi’woc.”
“He must have had his reasons.”
“He only needs one! His own greed and insatiable desire to watch the rest of us flail while he skirts by without consequences.”
“Raesh, I said—”
“So it’s treason! I have nothing left to lose.” The skaxen woman pointed a glinting claw at the unseen magical with the nasal voice and shouted, “You’ve been spending too much time in the Goldsmile dens, Hivara. As long as those stay open, you’d be happy with a radan sitting the throne. If I see that Weaver scum in this city before the Cycle turns, I’ll show him a side of O’gúleesh loyalty he’s never seen before.”
L’zar chuckled and raised a hand toward the thin opening in the wall.
The magicals in the chamber fell silent, and more than three bodies shifted uneasily inside the room. “What was that?”
Cheyenne leaned toward him to mutter, “Don’t.”
“I can’t help it.” L’zar waved his hand at the opening, and the narrow slit widened as both doors slid slowly apart to reveal the chamber beyond. “My name’s been invoked.”
When the doors stopped opening with a shudder and an echoing boom, the trio in the passageway looked on a gathering of over a dozen magicals, all of them crouching in surprise and wariness. Half of them had summoned attack spells in their hands, and all but one of them immediately killed their magic when they saw L’zar Verdys standing in the corridor, his arms spread wide as he gave them that feral grin that had given him such a reputation even in prophecies.
“You called, and I answered.” The drow scanned the shocked faces in the corridor. “I wasn’t aware there was a side of O’gúleesh loyalty I haven’t had the chance to examine, but I have to admit I’m remarkably curious.”
The huge magical who smelled like rotting meat—a cross between the gargoyle-like Golra and a rhinoceros—grunted. “You skaxen moron.”
The skaxen woman’s yellow eyes widened at L’zar, her entire body trembling as she raised a handful of hissing orange sparks in her upturned hand. “How dare you?”
“Me?” L’zar gestured toward himself and chuckled. “I merely want to give you the opportunity.”
The skaxen hurled the ball of sparks at him, intentionally aiming for the space beside his head and the far wall of the passageway instead of the drow’s grinning face. Her spell exploded against the metal wall disguised as stone and crackled across the grooved lines spanning the hallway. Cheyenne and Ember stepped toward each other in the middle of the corridor and stared warily at L’zar.
The drow cocked his head and blinked. “Come now, Raesh. That’s no way to greet an old friend. They were only minor damages. I hear you recovered quite nicely.”
The trembling skaxen woman shrieked in rage, her open mouth lined with fangs contorting her already rat-like face. Then she lunged toward the drow in the passageway.
L’zar danced away from her and cast a spell with a quick, one-handed gesture. Raesh careened into an invisible wall before she could set foot out of the chamber and shrieked again, ignoring the dark blood spraying from her broken nose as she clawed at the shield he’d cast around her. “I’ll kill you! I swear it. I’ll kill you myself! Do you hear me?”
“In a fortnight, my dear, you can do whatever you want.” L’zar headed down the corridor again with an extra spring in his step. “Until then, I’d be careful about making promises you aren’t sure you can keep.”
The skaxen shrieked again, fighting both the shield and her fellow conspirators, who were trying to draw her back into the chamber as someone inside activated the doors to slide shut again. L’zar looked over his shoulder at Cheyenne and widened his eyes. “And everyone thinks I have anger issues.”
The halfling slowly shook her head and shot a final brief glance into the chamber before the doors fully shut. Some of the magicals stared at her, their faces lined with a mix of disgust and fear. Then the doors clanged shut, muffling Raesh’s furious screams on the other side.
Ember floated beside her as they continued after the drow thief, intent who was on stirring up trouble. “That was intense.”
Cheyenne snorted. “Yeah. That is why everyone wants to kill him.”
“Not everyone, Cheyenne.” Ten feet ahead of them, L’zar thrust a slender finger in the air but didn’t turn around. “Just those who think they’re better than the rest of us.”
“Like you?”
He laughed. “Oh, don’t be so dramatic. I have a special set of skills, and it takes a rare mind to fully appreciate their scope. I most certainly don’t fall into the category of O’gúleesh who want to kill me.”
Chuckling softly as they came upon another branching set of corridors, L’zar pointed at various places in the walls, illuminating bright flashes of yellow and blue in the grooved metal before doors and walls in places Cheyenne couldn’t see opened and closed and responded in whatever way he commanded. Frustrated shouts rose from one branching corridor on their right, followed by bursts of raucous laughter from a passage coming up on their left.
“Get back here and face me, Weaver!”
“The Crown should have killed you when she turned the Cycle!”
“Rot in the abyss!”
Cheyenne looked straight ahead as the shouted curses of enraged magicals echoed after them down the hall. The laughter on their left came from a group of yellow-skinned gremlins streaked with black grease and soot. They raised tankards of a thick drink that looked like blackened oil in a toast as L’zar danced past them.
“About time someone closed off that bridge.”
“Honor, Cu’ón!”
“Where you goin’, L’zar? You missed two other lounges back down that way.”
L’zar stopped in front of the snickering gremlins and pointed behind him. “The doors to the safes are wide open. It would be a shame to leave them unattended for so long.”
The gremlins started cackling, spilling their oozing black-sludge drinks all over themselves as they fell into each other and tried to raise more toasts at the same time.
Ember laughed with them, and the gremlins raised an indecipherable shout with something about a fae at the end. She elbowed Cheyenne in the side and stuck her thumb over her shoulder as they followed L’zar away from the gremlin celebration. “That sounded a lot like he was telling those yellow guys to go rob the magicals who hate him.”
Cheyenne glared at her father’s back as he pointed randomly at different areas in the wall and hummed a careless tune. “He can play drow Robin Hood all he wants. I’m not buying it.”
L’zar laughed. “Such a warm welcome home, don’t you think?”
“Not really. Do you have to screw with everybody like this?”
He whirled around and pointed at her. “Yes. Yes, I do. You have no idea what I’ve done and how long I’ve waited for this day, Cheyenne. Stop trying to ruin it for me.”
She peered behind her at the still-ech
oing shouts of the angry magicals behind them. “This isn’t how you get people excited about you being back and your daughter challenging the Crown.”
L’zar blinked slowly and stopped before a final turn in the hallway. When he turned, his smile was gone. “Stop talking about any of this like you understand a fraction of it. This is my city, Cheyenne. It’ll be yours soon if you want it enough, but I wouldn’t blame you if you didn’t. I certainly don’t, but I suggest you embrace what’s happening. You don’t want to make them think you’re ungrateful, do you?”
“What?”
Holding her gaze, L’zar cast another spell on the wall in front of him. It shimmered with green and orange light that converged into the four-pointed star symbol. The illusion covered by the wards fell away, and two massive metal doors studded with two-inch bolts down either side stood at the end of the corridor. “They’re waiting. I did all this for you, Aranél. Don’t forget.”
Leaping backward, L’zar threw his full weight onto the metal doors, and they burst open into the main room of his secret bunker below the capital city of Ambar’ogúl. Without another word, he turned and strolled through the open doors like he owned the place.
Technically, I guess he does.
Ember peered through the doors at the short staircase leading into the room beyond. The dozens of voices inside faded into an eerie, expectant silence. “That last part sounded pretty genuine.”
“He’s had thousands of years to practice sounding genuine, Em. Come on.” Cheyenne headed through the doors down the staircase. “We better be done with surprises today.”
Chapter Four
When Cheyenne and Ember descended the short, wide staircase into the room beyond, the entire crowd of L’zar’s rebels stared up at them in silence. The doors swung shut on their own with a boom.
Maleshi Hi’et raised a fist into the air and shouted, “The heir returns!”
The room exploded with voices echoing the cheer and shouting greetings of their own. Ember laughed and floated down the rest of the stairs toward the celebrating crowd. Cheyenne stood frozen on the second-to-last step and stared at the dozens of bruised, bloody, battle-torn rebels pounding their fists on the giant metal table in the center of the bunker’s main chamber. “What?”
“Don’t just stand there, kid,” Corian shouted, waving her forward. “Get your ass down here and join us. It’s your party.”
She took a halting step down the stairs.
“First real O’gúl win, huh?” Laughing, Lumil stepped onto the stairs beside the halfling and clapped a hand on Cheyenne’s back to guide her down the stairs. “I remember my first battle, halfling. Didn’t think I’d be able to move again. I mean, it didn’t help that I got stuck right here by a fell-damn spear, but hey.” The goblin woman thumped a fist against her side below the ribs and laughed again.
“I didn’t get stabbed,” Cheyenne said blankly. I didn’t even fight.
“Of course you didn’t! It’s shock. That’ll clear out in no time.” Lumil led Cheyenne toward the other rebels, who gathered around L’zar Verdys’ daughter to clap her on the back and thump their fists to their chests.
“Well done, Cheyenne.”
“You did what you had to do, and you did it right.”
“This is the start, Aranél. The chains are broken and the Cycle will turn, with you at the helm.”
“Wait, no.” Cheyenne shook her head at the orc nodding vigorously, his bottom lip pulled down as he grinned around giant tusks painted with black rings. “I’m not at the helm of anything.”
“Ha!” The orc snorted and pounded a fist into his other hand. “You already are.”
Staring blankly at the far wall of the main room, Cheyenne swallowed and tried not to flinch away from all the congratulatory pats and thumps and shakes of her shoulders. If they don’t stop touching me, I’m gonna lose it.
Standing back from the crowd beside the metal table, Maleshi watched the halfling barely putting up with all the attention. The nightstalker raised her hand again and shouted, “Sakrit! Last time I checked, you had a hundred barrels stashed in this dump.”
“You been counting my supplies, General?” A huge light-gray ogre with dried blood streaked down both bulging arms turned away from the crowd and pointed at Maleshi.
The nightstalker dipped her head toward him, the stiff collar of her military jacket rustling with the movement. “You can’t expect me to come back to this shithole and not seek out the most important part first.”
“Yeah, you came back for the swill. That I’ll believe.” Sakrit laughed and stalked across the wide room. A quick spell from the ogre opened a door in the stone wall barely big enough for him to squeeze through into the tiny hidden room beyond, but he did.
Maleshi’s closed-lipped smile grew as she turned back toward Cheyenne, who hadn’t moved an inch while nearly every member of the Four-Pointed Star gave her a congratulatory thump. We’ll start a brand new battle in here if somebody doesn’t save her from all that. “Cheyenne!”
The halfling blinked when Maleshi called her name and bent forward through the wall of jeering, shouting, beaten-up magicals to get a better view.
“Get over here.” The general waved her toward the other side of the table. “We’ll celebrate this victory in what little style we have left, huh?”
“Right.” Cheyenne grunted when a rebel she recognized from her last visit materialized beside her in a swarm of tiny black flecks before grabbing her forearm for some kind of comrade’s handshake.
“This is where it all starts.” Only a deep blackness existed within the hood of his black cowl, although his black hand was clenched tightly around her forearm. “With L’zar Verdys’s daughter. I had my doubts, sure. We all did in one way or another. You proved us wrong.”
“Thanks,” Cheyenne muttered. “Excuse me.” I’m done. I gotta get out of here.
She shouldered her way past the circle of rebels gathered around her, all of whom reached out again for a thump on the back or a fist nudged into her shoulder.
A goblin woman stepped in front of Cheyenne to get her attention, still cackling at a wartime joke from the snickering orc behind her. “That’s something for the Aranél to decide, isn’t it?”
“I saw you jump off that wall, kid. Wouldn’t have been my first choice, but impressive all the same.”
“You’ve already put your terms together, haven’t you? The Crown won’t stand on her mountain of skulls for much longer.”
“See this right here, Cheyenne? Bull’s Head bastard stabbed me right in the thigh. I knocked him over the balcony seconds before those walls went up. Stings worse than an imp bite, and I’ll show this scar to every young pup born to my line after today. You can count on that.”
“Like you could find a mate willing to put up with you long enough for that to happen, you big-mouthed greenskin.”
Laughter erupted around her as she tried to march through the bodies pressing in on her and shoving each other too. A flare of extra heat churned in Cheyenne’s belly and raced up her spine and across her shoulders, mixing with her intense physical discomfort. She clenched both fists, and a flare of purple light blazed behind her eyes. Without knowing what she was doing, the halfling unleashed a wave of dark, shimmering energy all around her. The shockwave knocked the raucous magicals away from her in a wide circle, sending those closest to the Crown’s challenger barreling backward into their neighbors and clearing a ring of space around her.
The main chamber fell silent again, and Cheyenne took a deep breath. She caught a glimpse of Maleshi standing on the other side of the table before her gaze fell on the surprised expressions of the other Four-Pointed Star rebels. I should explain that one, right? She cocked her head and centered her gaze on Maleshi again. “I don’t like being touched.”
A roar of approval and victory-drunk laughter filled the chamber. Every magical standing within striking distance of a metal surface started banging on it again, and those who had been blasted into t
heir friends were jostled around, jeering at each other and themselves.
Maleshi dipped her head toward Cheyenne in acknowledgment, and the halfling chuckled. Not the reaction I expected, but at least I can breathe again.
“Hell of a way to kick off the toasting, eh?” A dark-purple troll with a blood-soaked bandage wrapped around his throat pumped a fist in the air. “Where’s the fell-damn grog when we need it?”
“Deathflame take your grog, Kayal.” The ogre Sakrit squeezed back out of the magically hidden pantry with two large dark-green glass bottles in each hand and a massive metal barrel strapped to his back with coils of hardened rope. “If you’re gonna mention that swill in my presence, I say whoever started to slit your throat should’ve finished the job!” Another round of laughter rose at that as Sakrit trudged across the chamber and clinked the four bottles down on the table. The metal keg followed shortly after with a heavy clang. “Don’t tell me you brainless mutts need to be told to get the tankards.”
“I’ve got you covered there, friend.” L’zar appeared again from some other area of the bunker, wheeling a heavy metal trunk behind him in each hand. “Who else thinks all this would be much easier if we took down the tech-eaters?”
“Ha! Never thought I’d live to see the day when you made yourself useful, L’zar.”
“Never thought I’d hear intelligence fall out of your mouth, either. I guess only one of us was surprised today.”
L’zar’s rebels roared with laughter as the drow hauled one huge trunk up onto the metal table, slid it away from the edge, and thumped the second down beside the first. He flicked his fingers at the trunks’ latches, which flashed briefly before flying open. The trunks’ open lids hit each other with a loud bang, and the magicals gathered around to pull out empty metal cups, tankards, and goblets.
Cheyenne reached Maleshi as the drinking vessels were passed around with more playful insults and friendly scuffles. After shrugging out of her backpack and setting it on the floor against the wall, she brushed her drow-white hair away from her forehead and turned to watch them from beside the nightstalker general, folding her arms. “The ogre brought out four magnum wine bottles and a keg. Doesn’t seem like nearly enough.”
