by K. Gorman
Matteo stood a few paces away, his firearm aimed at the demon. The light on its side was glowing—the same red glow as the shots had been—and his eyes had that flash in them again.
Definitely not normal.
He fired again—another quick succession of red flashes—and the demon above screamed and fell.
To her left, the screeches of other demon birds ripped through the sky. Magic rippled in the air. The ice runes on her shoulder pulsed with cold in warning, filled with power.
They needed to get out of here.
She waved her blades at Matteo, then made a gesture to the crevasse.
“Go!”
The word might have been foreign to him, but he got the gist of it. Another bird came crashing over the rock next to them with a piercing squawk. She lunged forward, a hard slash of her blade slicing through its wing membrane. Warm blood splattered across her arms and chest, and an unearthly, pained keen blasted her ears.
She shoved it off, slashed at the next one—it braked and swooped hard to the front, narrowly avoiding its brethren’s fate—then she was rushing Doneil after Matteo and hustling them both up the steep slope.
A crackle of magic whistled by her. She jerked to the side just in time for another bird to explode on the rock some paces back, its chest ripping apart in a burst of glowing seams—fey magic, by its feel.
The entrance to the crevasse loomed closer. Fifty paces, give or take.
Behind them, the rustle of wings grew more numerous. When she looked back, the dark sky above them seemed to writhe, black shapes swooping and ducking like fish in an agitated school.
Her runes prickled with cold again. This time, a connection surfaced—and a familiar awareness.
Magic.
She didn’t question it. With a shout, she cut down at one darting bird, hacked it nearly in two, and scrambled her landing, blades clunking against the dirt.
When she landed, she grabbed onto the ice as hard as she could and pulled.
The temperature dropped like a stone. A frozen cold descended on the scene, so close and sudden, it lifted all the hairs on the back of her neck. Kodanh’s power flooded through her, flashes of him shivering into her mind—the strong, jagged frills that rose from his neck, the darts of ice-blue that threaded the rough scales of his torso like glacial cracks, the great talons of his feet biting and scratching deep into his ice-cave home.
And his eyes—pale and hard; a murky, frozen white. Snow blind, her mother had called them once, though that was inaccurate.
His mind was full of ice and rock, of cold caverns in a northern tundra. Caves and crevasses, and water crystals so chilled, they could freeze a person through in minutes.
She let the cold flow through her. Then she drew it out, shaped it, and threw it out to the sky.
The nearest birds dropped like rocks, making grotesque cracking and squelching sounds as they landed, half-frozen, on the slope below. Frost slashed away from them in feathered bands, Kodanh’s power rooting into the ground. Another bird dove for her. She stabbed at its chest, felt her blade hit ice, turned her strike into a spin.
Power slid in through her runes, released into the world around her. It flew, producing more streaks of frost on the rocks.
But, already, the connection was faltering.
She sprinted for the door. “Go, go, go! Get inside!”
More birds dove at her as she moved. Matteo fired on a few ahead, forcing them to drop or veer. The sour smell of demon blood rose. She stumbled on the stair, knuckles smacking hard into the rock. Up the mountain, white flashed like magnesium bursts, lighting a thick vein several meters deep into its side. Above, the flock seemed to twist and undulate. Raucous cawing filled the air.
Gods, how were there so many of them? Had the entire mountain come calling? Maybe they were like crows, that way.
Caracel stopped at the entrance to the cavern, and a shot of adrenaline spiked through her—Temdin’s light, was it a dead end?—but he only helped Doneil and Matteo get inside, his sword slashing at a bird that tried to attack.
Seeing her, he hesitated.
She made a violent gesture with her blade, a shout gasping through her throat. “Move!”
He took the hint, ducking in only paces ahead of her as she pounded up the rocky trail.
She skidded in, already pulling on Kodanh’s power. Pain roared through her shoulder as the connection faded. She bit it back, gritting her teeth as light flashed again and illuminated the view of the sky outside.
Hundred of birds raced for them, grotesque forms flying with a surprising agility, all heading for the crevasse.
She tugged on Kodanh, made a gesture with her hand.
With a distinct click, the magic took.
Spears of ice slammed across the entrance. She strained harder, growling through her teeth at the burn, stabbed several more down, and worked to build webs of ice between them. Her arm was on fire. Pain lanced from shoulder to sternum—Kodanh, taking his payment in energy and a taste of blood—but she kept one eye on the door, letting the magic flow through her to seal off the entrance.
She filled the space with more than a half foot of ice.
The sounds from outside became muffled. Birds thumped at the barrier, their talons scraping over its surface, but it sounded like they were in a different world. Their shadows played a shivering pattern on the surface, masked by frost, the light still casting a strobing glow over the mountain.
Then, that glow died. And with it, her magic.
The pain redoubled in her shoulder. She yelled and hunched over, putting a death grip on the hilts of her blades as the sound turned into a low, throaty hiss. She bared her canines to the cave. As the connection withdrew, she chased it, focusing as hard as she could on maintaining it even as blood dripped from the wound.
But, despite her efforts, the ice lizard vanished from her thoughts.
Only blood remained. And pain.
She sagged onto the cold ground, the remnants of his power radiating back from the stone. Her breaths became short and sharp, whistling around her bared teeth. Her arms shook.
“Catrin?”
Behind her, Doneil crept close, a soft footfall at her side. The rest of the group was breathing hard, too, but she was the only one on the floor.
“I’m fine.” She took a breath and rocked back. Her blades made dull metallic clanks on the ground as she picked herself up. “Give me a moment.”
She grunted, hitched herself up, rummaged the light stick from a belt pouch, and cracked it against the stone to activate it. A glow shivered from its end, strengthening as the chemicals mixed.
She sat up and looked around.
They were in a narrow cave, little more than a gash in the side of the mountain. The ceiling tapered above them, its sides sharp and rakish, parts of them wet with run-off. More water trickled off to her back, dribbling in a small waterfall over a large drop-off.
But everyone was there. Matteo stood closest to the entrance, his gun ready in his grip, the red light on its body glowing and active, gawking at the wall of ice that now blocked the entrance. Doneil squatted beside him, looking battered and unkempt, his armor bruised. He held one rnari blade in his hand, blood fresh on the metal. Caracel examined her ice from the back of the cave. The fey was easier to see, at least, standing tall and elegant with his white hair near the wall. His body was scratched and hard-won from the battle, and a fresh wound caught the skin just under his shoulder armor, seeping more blood into his clothing.
After a minute, the muffled scrapes and thumps from the demon birds outside stopped.
By the sound of it, most of them had left, cawing and cackling up a storm. Only a couple still scratched at the ice wall.
Guess they only like easy targets.
Either that, or they were circling around for another entrance. Or to alert Grobitzsnak of intruders.
If he didn’t already know.
She groaned and settled back onto her elbows. That was not something
she wanted to worry about right now.
“That is Kodanh, isn’t it?” Caracel twitched his head her way. “The great ice snake?”
Lizard, she thought, but she gave him a pass. The fey root word for ‘snake’ had a closer connection to both the fey and elven words for ‘reptile,’ which might explain the slip—plus, anyone that could name Kodanh likely knew what they were talking about.
“Yes.” Her blades flashed. She put the light stick down and wiped them on her thigh armor as best she could before resheathing them. “Why? You know him?”
“No. My grandmother could call on him.” The fey nodded in her direction. “You must be very strong.”
Yes. Yes, she was. Though Kodanh took quite a lot of her power—he was an exclusionist, leaving little room for other spells.
Still, it was high praise to receive compliments on magic from a fey, especially a heartsworn as himself.
She shrugged it off. “If it keeps working, I will be. If not, I suppose I’ll have to pick up some kimbic tattoos.”
Doneil snorted. “Now that would piss off the Council. I approve.”
She cocked an eyebrow. “Really? The Council would continue with mercari spells that no longer work? They can’t be that stupid. They want a functioning army, don’t they?”
“You think they wouldn’t? After all the crap you’ve been through?”
She froze up, shoulders stiff. Anger surfaced, shivered under her skin like a hot, bubbling pit. Her back straightened, mouth opening.
But she shut it again.
This was not the right place for an argument.
“Kodanh is part of the demnir. A… calling, I think you say.” The fey hesitated as he struggled to translate his mother language. He was looking at her oddly, his ink-black eyes intense and focused—as if her new display of power had made him consider her again.
“Probably,” she said, her tone more of a grunt. She stepped her injured side in to Doneil, offering her shoulder to his healing. Golden light flared.
This time, her arm was too numb to feel the weird, crawling sensation of his magic—only the relief. She let out a breath as the pain slipped away, and turned her attention to Matteo.
He’d moved into a crouch, still by the entrance. The red of his firearm flared in the dark like a window to a cooling forge-fire, reflecting off the ice wall beside him. His eyes, openly staring at her, had that strange retinal flash she’d seen before.
Deliberately, she moved her other hand up to her face, tapped at the edge of her eye socket, and tilted her head.
Briefly, a frown passed across his brows—then he understood. He copied her motion, tapping a finger to the bone of his right eye. The flash happened again, slower this time, the surface of his retina catching a brief reflection, then it faded.
She gave a nod.
Beside her, Doneil finished his healing. He let out a breath and shifted. His gaze went to the wall of ice at the entrance.
“Well,” he said. “That was subtle.”
Catrin cringed. The bird’s raucous shrieks could still be heard on the outside. Every so often, one of them would grow close enough to scratch its talons against the ice.
“The entire mountain will know that we are here,” Caracel observed, a grim expression taking his face. His voice was smooth and luxuriant, the elven-fey-Janessi mix he spoke growing easier over time and use.
“Yes. We need to move.”
She met his eyes for a moment, then picked up her light stick and shifted to shine the light farther into the cave. Behind him, the crevasse’s path continued on, leading inward.
Well, that made their decision easy.
“Looks like we’re going that way. Let’s move.”
Chapter 20
She’d never liked tunnels. They made her feel caged, as if the walls had enveloped her and were growing smaller with each bend and twist. Half of it, she knew, was in her head—she just wasn’t accustomed to them, not the way a dark elf would be. She was used to having a tree canopy above her, or the high-ceilinged corridors of the Raidt palace and training grounds. Fresh, free-flowing air, or at least something close to it.
This was too like the paths to the second armory, or the winter storerooms, neither of which she liked—and they didn’t have floors cut by sharp, jagged, ankle-twisting outcroppings of stone.
Temdin, she thought as her foot slipped down yet another awkward slope, slapping a hand to the wall awkwardly for balance. When I find Nales, I may hit him for making me come in here.
“So,” Doneil said, breaking the several minutes’ silence. “Do you think demonic fortresses keep their dungeons upward or downward?”
She grunted. “Nales is the demon expert. We can ask him when we find him.”
“Given that he likely lied through his teeth to get the demon to set you free, I doubt we’ll need to ask that when we find him—he’ll already be in it.”
“Hopefully intact,” she said, her breath hitching as she climbed around another outcrop of rock, a jagged part of it digging into the hollow of her hip as she passed. “Your runes can’t regrow limbs.”
Ahead, Caracel paused and gave them a strange look, his expression firm and rippling with a frown. His dark eyes slipped from her to Doneil, and back.
Black humor, she surmised, was not a fey trait. Either that, or the language barrier hadn’t translated the joke well.
Temdin, he looked good, though. Like a god descended, or a hero from one of the Raidt foundational epics. Ghostly and ethereal. Every so often, the mercari on his armor would catch in the glow of her light stick and flash like a school of fish underwater. And, every so often, his power shivered in the air.
He used magic the way most people breathed.
“Perhaps your priestess and our prince will be together,” Doneil said, switching into the Common Fey-Elven mix they’d been using and lifting his voice for it to carry. “They are royal hostages, after all.”
The fey’s face rippled. “The blatspel demon will need Lady Yena for the gate. Its maintenance and guardianship are part of her sacred duty.”
“He’ll want her alive, then,” she said. “That’s encouraging.”
“Yes,” he replied. “Although, she doesn’t need all of her limbs to maintain the gates.”
Without a glance back, he vanished around the next corner.
She cringed.
No, that humor definitely hadn’t carried over. She grunted as her foot slid down a short incline, jarring against the broken rock.
Perhaps she needed to do a stint with the dark elves. See how they worked with their caving. It wouldn’t help untangle the fuzz her woodcraft was currently in—it still jangled, wriggling in her brain as a series of messy, half-finished, discordant sketches. Hells, it even hurt, presenting like a low-key headache—but it would at least help her footing.
“Having some trouble there, Twelfth?”
Behind her, Doneil was apparently regarding her with some amusement. Though his tone seemed strained, and he was definitely picking at the pathway more carefully than he would have usually, he hadn’t yet managed the scrapes and slides she had.
“Oh, shut it.”
Temdin, I hate caves.
Gritting her teeth, she scraped around another outcrop—and almost ran right into Caracel.
She jerked to a stop, narrowly avoiding a collision, and snapped her attention to the end of the craggy passage.
A faint green glow shone from ahead.
She dropped her voice to a small whisper. “What is it?”
He made a noise in his throat, unsettled. “This is crystal light.”
Crystal light? Unconsciously, her eyebrows lifted. That’s what the fey used to illuminate their castles and cities. The Raidt still had some, in the inner sanctum of the main temple.
What was it doing in a demonic fortress?
She made to move forward, but he stopped her, suddenly catching her arm. She jumped, visions of Volaon’s steel-handed grip cracking through her mind.
Her free hand flew to her blade as he turned toward her, but she stopped herself from drawing it.
Barely.
She forced her shoulders to relax. “Yes?”
His claws scraped over the leather as he adjusted his grasp, examining the tattooed script visible under her armor. “You summon Kodanh through mercari, yes?”
She remembered to breathe. “Yes.”
“Do you have other spells?”
“Yes.”
“Do they work?”
She frowned. This time, when she answered, she put a question in her tone. “Yes?”
“What are they?”
Her eyebrows lifted. Asking about some spells was quite private, given that more than a few families had spells sourced through their lineage. Her first one, for example, had been the tree-growing one passed down from her mother’s line.
Plus, it was embarrassing to admit she only had basic wind-calling.
“Wind calling, first level, and a matrilineal growth spell for a specific subspecies of Dogwood.”
“Ah,” he said, as if she’d just told him something he’d expected. “They are different, then.”
He released her arm and moved forward.
She waited. When he didn’t continue, she slid her gaze briefly toward the ceiling and, putting a false sweetness into every syllable, started after him. “And this is important how, exactly?”
“Calling spells require connection. The other spells do not.” He looked back, a perfect eyebrow rising back at her. “If you want to call on Kodanh’s power, you need access to the fey world. Now that it is shut, you have to wait for the gate to open.”
Understanding dawned. Her mouth opened, brain working to process it.
That light on the mountain, the shock wave of magic—it had been gate flare.
Somewhere in this mountain was a world gate.
That’s why she’d made the sudden connection to Kodanh. And why his power had vanished with the fading light. And that was also why Caracel had been so concerned about his priestess’s gate-maintenance ability.
She’d thought it an odd comment at the time, but now, it made sense—Grobitzsnak had a gate in his basement, and he could use the priestess to work it.
