by K. Gorman
Or gate flare.
“It’s an old, strange thing,” Caracel told her. “You will see.”
And, with that, Catrin knew precisely what they were talking about. An image of the ancient, sealed door flashed through her mind—and the massive creature that lay behind it—and she shuddered.
Yes. It was definitely a good idea to keep her woodcraft closed.
Nales was watching the two fey, his eyebrows drawing into a frown. “What is it? What are they talking about?”
“It’s nothing,” she said. “We’re going to walk past it.”
Sure enough, in another ten minutes, they came to the intersection with the door.
Unfortunately, they did not walk past it. Nales stopped. Several paces away, Yena stopped, as well.
They both regarded the door, and Catrin had a sudden sinking feeling in her gut.
“I can read these,” Nales said. “They’re sealing scripts. Meant to keep something inside.”
Catrin snorted. Even without a working knowledge of rentac, she’d been able to tell that.
“There’s something big on the other side,” Yena said. Her eyebrows furrowed, and a hand came up to her mouth. She took a step forward. “It’s… old.”
As she took another step closer, and her hand reached out tentatively, Caracel flashed a dead, sarcastic expression toward Catrin that wasn’t hard to interpret.
It would seem she wasn’t the only one who was tired of royal stupidity.
“It’s desecrated, Your Grace.” Gently, he took her hand and steered it away. “It would not be a good idea to go closer—it is clearly strong.”
She pulled her hand away and shrugged him off. Her frown turned into a hot anger. “It’s hurting. I can feel it. It’s one of the old ones.”
As one who communed with fey gods, Catrin supposed she would be susceptible to this kind of scenario.
“It’s dangerous,” Caracel reminded her.
“It’s likely the forest lord Grobitzsnak corrupted all those years ago. Her name was Franas,” Nales said. “I can’t imagine what else he might seal away with this much power.” Then, proving he had definitely not exhausted his quota of idiotic royal ideas, he continued: “What if we let her out?”
Temdin. Maybe I will keep hitting princes.
“This is not the time for opening magic doors in demonic fortresses,” she growled. “Not when there’s something big and scary and magical right behind it.”
As if on cue, a low rumble came from behind the panel. A wave of magic crackled through the atmosphere, and her woodcraft exploded across her brain. She grimaced, blocking it out. “See? Leave the magic door.”
He looked back, catching her gaze. Then, in a twist of irony, he began to feed part of her own argument from earlier back at her.
“Do you know how many demons are in this castle? Hundreds. Maybe even thousands. If we can lure a few of them away…” He squinted upward, to where the stairs promised a fancier set of hallways. “We’re close to the library. It would be a good distraction.”
She stared at him.
Great Goddess, they’re actually going to do it. They’re going to open a magically sealed door in a demonic castle and let out an ancient power. For a distraction.
“I’m starting to think they should require intelligence tests for royalty,” she muttered, low enough so that only Doneil could hear it. Then, louder. “I advise you to not open the door.”
“It’s hurting,” the priestess said. “If we leave it here, it will continue to do so—and Grobitzsnak can continue to exploit its corruption.” She tilted her head up. “I think we should let it go. If Grobitzsnak wants to keep immortal deities as pets, then he can live with the consequences of one getting out. Besides—” she gestured to the paper script that lay across the door, looking more slapdash and hurried than the others. “—that last mark is not very strong. I expect he already had trouble with this one, likely during the gate malfunction. If we broke that, it will probably break the chain on its own.”
Catrin played that through in her mind.
Well, at least they’re giving us all time to run.
Yena and Nales looked to each other for a moment. Then, they both stepped forward, their hands lifting. Yena’s magic stirred the air.
Catrin and Caracel exchanged another deadpan look. She slid one of her knives back into its sheath and, grimacing, cracked open her woodcraft.
A wave of pain and energy assaulted her mind, loud and angry. She winced, wrestled mentally with it, and whittled it down to a sliver.
The thing was right at the door. Big, loud, and immediate. Energy burned inside it like the sun.
Fuck.
She let out a slow breath and braced herself, signaling to Doneil.
“Get ready to run.”
The priestess lifted her hand, fingers splayed and delicate. Magic sparked like a note of music.
The paper fell away.
Catrin tensed, waiting. Her heart raced, eyes darting between Nales and the door.
Why isn’t he moving?
Then, the thing inside gave a big heave of its energy. She hissed as pain spiked into her head. The air drew inward, as if the room were taking a breath.
Something large smashed into the inside of the door with a massive boom.
She darted forward—Nales was backing up now, she noticed, practically racing for the stairs. She got in front of him, bracing as a second wave of energy crashed into the panel.
The large doors burst open with a splinter of wood. Whatever was inside had smashed the locking mechanism on the second try. Blackness appeared in the gap, and the wood rocked against the chain.
Its links looked as flimsy as a necklace.
Something moved within. A massive avian foot emerged, cobalt-blue, with dry, cracked scales and talons big enough to claw a horse in half—as if some giant, prehistoric chicken had bred with an equally massive eagle.
It slashed at the chain, making it rattle and ring with a fury.
Then, whatever was inside screamed.
The sound broke her ears. She shoved Nales up the staircase. Caracel scooped Yena into his arms and rushed up the stairs, faster than she’d ever seen him. Matteo and Doneil were already halfway up the second flight, sprinting for the next level.
Adrenaline raced in her blood. She didn’t look back when the creature banged against the door again, too busy shoving at Nales—gods, humans were slow. The sounds of the chain scraping up the door rang through her bones, urging her faster.
When they hit the second flight, it quieted for a moment, and she risked a look over the banister.
Yellow eyes, tinted with darts of red and flashing a bright gold in the dark, looked back at her through the gap between the now partially-open doors. A large, stony crest reared up between its eyes, its top scraping the left panel’s inner edge. The beak was strong and curved slightly—not like an eagle or other bird of prey, but like a ground dweller.
The chain still looped in front of the doors, blocking them from opening fully, but it looked comically thin and strained beneath the obvious strength of the colossus within.
She urged Nales on. They both flew up the stairs, taking them in twos and threes. One of the giant crystals shivered its light in the hall above, rotating gently over its pool. She barely spared it a glance. They reached the top and ran on in a broken line, putting as much distance between them and the bird as possible.
Behind them, Franas let out another roar, its energy spiking through her woodcraft, and banged against the door.
Chapter 25
“Did we just let a giant chicken loose in the demonic fortress?”
Catrin let out a breath. It was Doneil who had asked the question, and his face still looked incredulous, like he’d been stunned.
“If you use the royal ‘we,’ then yes, we did.” She pinned Nales with an exasperated look. “So, now that we aren’t running for our lives quite as fast—can we agree to not open any more magical doors that w
e find?”
“We’ll need to open the door to the orb,” Yena said. “And the one to the gate.”
Caracel had finally let her down from his grip, but her speech was still breathless. Like Doneil, she also seemed stunned, and wasn’t quite walking straight, her steps taking more of a wandering lilt than Catrin liked.
Then again, the priestess had spent the last couple of days in the unloving care of the fortress’ demonic master. She wondered when the fey had last eaten—and what the meal had been like. She doubted very much that Grobitzsnak kept a fully stocked fey kitchen in his domain, and Yena was likely more accustomed to meals befitting both a royal and a high priestess—exquisite, sacred, and well-prepared.
She grimaced as her mind wandered.
No, she did not want to think too hard on what, precisely, Grobitzsnak fed his prisoners.
“But—” Doneil glanced back, looking more like an elf whose Name Day celebration had come early. “Really, was that a giant chicken?”
“The great spirit Franas takes the form of a ground-dwelling bird that was common in demonic forests of this latitude in ancient times. Although it ate predominantly grubs and roots, it was very capable of defense,” Nales said.
“So, it’s a giant demonic chicken.” Doneil’s smile took on a happy, mischievous quality. He tilted his head. “It’s working, I think. At least two separate groups of demons have gone after it so far. I can hear them shouting.”
Catrin groaned. She heard it, too. The first squad had missed them by a hallway and had been greeted by an unearthly, uproarious scream that had lifted all the hairs on the back of her neck and sent a shiver down her spine. The second squad had been greeted similarly, along with the distinct clanking crack of a breaking chain and the thud and scrape of heavy, clawed footsteps.
She wanted precisely zero part of that.
“Where’s this fucking library of yours?” she asked.
“Up ahead,” Nales responded, his curt tone suggesting that he, too, wanted to push the giant demonic chicken and ancient magical door episode far behind him. “Very close.”
They ducked around another corner and ran up a long hallway, narrowly avoiding a third squad that raced past. As she plastered herself to the wall, she caught a whiff of the soldiers. Brown skin mixed with a grayer cast and faces populated with eyes that stared without blinking and veins that sat dark with old, dead blood. The stale odor of rot mingled with the scent of sweat and sulfur.
Only a handful of the soldiers actually breathed. The rest were undead.
Back down the hall, the giant ancient chicken let out a roar. Energy spiked. Magic crackled, touching the air.
The next thing she knew, she and the rest of the party had landed on the floor, and her muscles were screaming as if each of them had been pounded with electricity.
She pinned Nales with another look—like the others, he lay gasping for breath like a beached fish—but, a second later, a series of screams echoed up the hallway, along with another, quieter roar. The sound of swords ringing mixed into the din.
Okay, so maybe it was working. They still had to avoid the thing.
She rolled slowly to her feet, ignoring the paralysis in her thoracic cavity. By the time she stood, the bottom of her lungs was starting to respond.
“Come on,” she said, pulling the prince to his feet. “Let’s go.”
Another group of demons ran around the corner, the rattle of their armor lost in the ringing of her ears and the yells from back down the corridor.
They stopped abruptly. Catrin felt their attention rake over her and the rest of her group.
Belatedly, she realized that the buzz of the glamour spell was gone.
Fuck.
She staggered upward. Numbness still crawled through her lungs, but an enemy wouldn’t care about that. She pulled out her second blade and limped into a jog. A chorus of drawn steel invited her in.
Five of them. And three of them undead.
She went for the live ones first.
The leap was more of a lurch, but she signaled a feint with her shoulders and took the first demon off-guard. Blunt force rang through her wrists as he blocked her first strike, and a prickle of pain batted up her bones. She was gripping too hard on the hilts—could feel that in the tension on her wrist—but the nerve endings were still dead from the spell, and she couldn’t feel the muscles to gauge anything.
She disabled his guard with brute strength, slid her knife into the opening, and jabbed it into his throat.
He jerked. Warm blood spilled over her fingers. Her hearing came back sideways, delivering the sound of his gurgle.
Caracel cut into the undead one going for her back. She shoved her opponent down with a kick and spun into the next, the movement sloppy, dull, and blunt. A dart of light sped past her shoulder, and Matteo’s shot sniped out the next demon’s eye in a chunk of blasted blood and bone.
She stabbed her knife into his other eye. An extra shove forced it into his cold, undead brain.
He fell like a heap of bricks. She jerked the knife out, giving it an extra pull when it stuck. Rnari blades weren’t typically meant for stabbing people through their face, but she hadn’t been about to waste the opportunity.
Caracel finished with his demon—the other live one—and lopped its head off.
Three down. Two left. The feeling was coming back into her bones.
A pike stabbed at her. She dodged back, her feet light and nimble. In a flash, she’d doubled into a spin. Her left knife rang hard as she smashed it into the stem of the pike and drove herself into the demon’s open guard. He made a grab for her. She cut his fingers off. Cold blood sputtered against her skin like drops of acrid rain. She stabbed her blade into his throat, leaning too far in to nudge it into the spine at the back and ignoring the rush of cold that spread over her selectively numb skin.
Thanks to the thick curve of the blade’s end, it sliced into it neatly.
The demon fell. Half his head ripped away from the wound, the neck gaping like a mauled, bleeding mouth.
Matteo sniped the last undead demon’s face, two blackened marks gouging deep past the bone, and Nales arrived in time to cut its head off.
Both body and head toppled to the ground in a spurt of black blood.
She glanced around, took stock of the group, made sure there were no more demons around, then looked at Yena.
“Glamour?”
“Franas fried it,” Yena said, walking up. She shook out her hand as if it stung. “I can guard against that spell, but not while a glamour is up.”
Great. She glanced over to Caracel and grunted. “I’d rather not be knocked down and vulnerable. How about you?”
He gave her a curt nod. “Agreed. We’ll proceed without glamour.”
She nodded back and snapped her gaze around. “Nales—library?”
“Around the corner,” he said, and took off on his own. Alone.
I’m going to have to train him better than that.
Doneil and Matteo caught up. She glanced back and began jogging.
By the time she turned the corner, they had both veered toward the wall and adopted the quiet shuffle-jog she recognized from stealth training.
At least that was one pair she didn’t have to worry about training.
She caught up to Nales, shadowing him silently. He led them, blade out and ready, adopting a similar quiet jog. She quietened her breath. The enormous halls spread out around them, tall and gaping, silent. Far away, the clashes of blades and beast rang like a violent, distant festival. Magic pulsed through the air, shivering like pond ripples. Once, that sharp, crackling spell snapped into the atmosphere, but Yena must have been dampening it. It slid across her skin, little more than a shock of static.
After a few minutes, a sound interrupted the quiet—the tromp of feet and jangle of armor as two demons ran.
She pulled Nales to a stop, two paces from the corner, and stared, listening hard as the thump and jangle drew swiftly closer.
<
br /> Ten paces. Then five. Then one. Shadows appeared on the floor ahead of them.
She lunged across the distance, a short, three-strided sprint, muscles bunching in her legs, and slammed into the first demon.
He yelped and shoved at her, shock turning swiftly to fear then anger. She grabbed his arm, spun, kicked out his knee. When he buckled, she used his momentary disability to smash the hilt of her blade into his face. His nose crunched like winter ice.
The second demon swung at her. She ducked. In the next second, Nales lunged at him from the back, stabbing a sword straight through his gut and out the front.
The demon growled, and they both jerked to the side in a clash of metal, Nales pulling a shorter blade from somewhere and jumping into an offensive. Fire bloomed into the air as he activated his kimbic scripts.
She wrestled with the first demon on the ground, trying to get her blade through his face. He struggled, making her rock with his strength. Then Matteo jogged in front of her, his gun drawn.
She looked up at him, down at her demon, and back.
Then, she reversed her grip, let the demon get his hands free, and jerked her hands away from the kill zone.
Matteo fired, the first shot sniping through the side of the demon’s hand and chewing into its cheek and the rest pounding hard into his head and chest. The demon jerked.
A moment later, it slumped forward, half of his face missing. Blood spread on the ground, black and oozing and warm.
She knifed him in the nape of the neck just to be sure and stepped back, glancing up at Matteo.
He gave her a hand gesture that she didn’t understand. She let the confusion show on her face and sheathed a dagger, allowing her gaze to slip past him to focus on where Nales had finished with his fight.
She gave him a double pat on the shoulder as she slipped past.
Nales’ demon was smoking. Some parts of him still glowed, like embers on a cooling fire. His head lay several paces away, also smoking.
