Chapter 12
The tunnels had been a mistake.
Oliver hadn’t had a choice in the matter.
His fever had progressed: he’d gone from roasting inside his clothes, sweat pouring down his face to sting his eyes, to shivering so violently he’d given up on steering his horse some two hours ago.
The cold that wracked him came from within, the kind he’d known all his life; a shard of ice at the core of him, leaching its cold out, and out, so that no cloak, or robe, or blanket could ease its chill.
He sat slumped in the saddle, gripping its swells, the reins slack.
The carved stone walls, smooth from years of dripping water and the brush of overloaded wagons, kept his horse from straying.
Torches snapped and crackled, their light dancing in a way that turned his already-woozy head into a ship on rough seas.
He kept his eyes closed, concentrating on staying upright, aware that, at some point, he would lose consciousness and fall.
He felt so terrible that the idea of cracking his head on the stone floor sounded like a blessing.
The clop of hooves echoed strangely, and the men were silent save the clank of gear and shuffle of footfalls. Oliver’s temples pounded along with the uneven lurching of his heart, and so he was thankful for the lack of laughter, shouting, or singing, too exhausted to be unnerved by the silence.
He drifted. In and out, in and out. It was black behind his eyelids, but a soothing gray when his addled mind sought again and again to propel him to the Between.
“Oliver.” That voice wasn’t coming from the tunnel. It was inside his head, and he wanted to crawl toward the comfort it promised, wrap himself up warm and tight and sleep for a week. “Oliver. Come.”
Yes, he thought. I’ll come. He just wanted to rest. He wanted to no longer be a prisoner inside his traitorous body.
“Oliver.” He started when he felt a touch on his knee. Though it was a sluggish start: an inner leap that manifested in the laborious lifting of his eyelids, a blurry glimpse of the torchlit cave.
It felt as though it took whole minutes to realize that his horse had halted, and that Erik stood below him; that it was Erik’s worried voice that had called his name, and Erik’s large, beringed hand resting on his knee, squeezing gently.
“What?” he croaked.
Leather and armor creaked as the men riding ahead of them twisted in their saddles to see what was causing the hold up. Oliver’s vision was too blurry to distinguish their faces.
Erik’s voice was hushed, and gentle, when he said, “You’re swaying in your saddle, love. Why don’t you come and ride with me?”
Somewhere beneath the fever, he knew that being seen like that, seated before the king and bracketed by his arms, would be a show of weakness. There was nothing dignified, lordly, or inspiring about nodding off, flush-faced and head-bobbing, weak as a kitten.
But he was too tired to argue. Too tired to nod. Too tired, it turned out, to climb down out of the saddle. “All right,” he murmured, and let his toes slide out of the stirrups. That was as far as he got.
Erik took a quiet, sharp breath full of worry. Still low and gentle, he said, “Come here,” and reached up to grip Oliver by the waist and haul him bodily down out of the saddle and into his arms.
He drifted again.
When next he was able to open his eyes, he felt Erik’s solid chest at his back, the sturdy bars of his arms holding him upright in the saddle.
“Oliver. You can’t fight this. You aren’t strong enough.”
That voice again. Romanus’s voice.
Oliver reached for Percy, and found only gray mist. He could hear and feel nothing of his drake.
He tipped his head back against Erik’s shoulder, and Erik murmured something soothing he couldn’t decipher. All that was clear was Romanus calling him: “Oliver, it’s time for you to join me.”
He wanted to scream. Wanted to cry. But he was so very tired.
“What is that?” someone shouted, and Oliver tried to duck away from the sound. It was a sharp crack, a rip like a ship sail tearing.
More shouting.
The frightening calls of horses, and a shuffle and scrape of iron shoes over the stone floor.
“Oliver. Come.”
The world tilted. Erik bellowed something.
Then there was pain. Pressure. He couldn’t breathe.
And then he gave in, finally, and fell into the gray.
And all was blessedly quiet.
~*~
Erik had begun riding as a toddler perched on the front of his father’s saddle.
He’d ridden to victory in the pony games at the Festival each year, the most agile of the lads, able to scramble up onto a running pony, and then lean down and snatch a flag from the ground, hanging upside down.
He’d ridden for sport, as a means to quiet his troubled thoughts, and he’d ridden to war, wielding shield and sword from horseback. He could sit any rear, or shy, or buck.
But when his hair stood on end, and his skin prickled as though a lightning storm loomed within the confines of the under-mountain tunnels, and the horses all started to toss their heads and jig in place, his main concern was for Oliver, who went limp, and slumped forward onto his mount’s neck.
“Oliver? Ollie!” Oliver had been weaving and half-limp since they first passed through the gates, but he went suddenly boneless. Lifeless.
Erik switched his reins to his left hand, and hooked his right arm around Oliver’s waist to keep him from sliding head-first to the ground.
Just ahead of him, he heard a horse squeal with fright; heard its shoes clatter across the tunnel floor.
“Your Majesty!”
“Erik!”
“Watch out!”
A frigid gust of wind that had no place miles beneath a mountain peak rushed against Erik’s right side. It seemed to come from below. He had a fast glimpse of a yawning blackness; a voice in the tunnel floor.
A hole.
A portal.
And then his horse reared and shied away from it in one impressive leap, and Erik’s sole worry was for Oliver. For his vulnerability.
One moment he was astride his horse, then next he was free-falling through the air, clutching desperately at Oliver’s limp form. The tunnel revolved around him, churning horseflesh and dancing torches, a cacophony of shouts. Then he hit the hard stone floor shoulder-first.
The impact shuddered through him. His whole right arm went numb on contact, and the force of the landing tossed Oliver out of his arms…
And straight into the open portal.
“No! OLIVER! NO!”
Headfirst, as graceless as a sack of grain, Oliver tumbled into that awful, oily void, and was gone, the scuffed soles of his boots the last thing Erik saw before the portal snapped out of existence with a quiet pop like a pulled cork.
~*~
Alfie wasn’t thrilled about toting a second passenger.
She tolerated Rune, because Tessa loved him, and had stroked her face and assured her that he would be a gentleman.
She even liked him, ordinarily, her affection a genuine ripple of pleasure through the bond when Rune scratched behind her frill or offered her a scrap of meat from his dinner.
But the distribution of weight on her back was different.
She didn’t struggle, per se—Tessa would have put her foot down about taking Rune along if the test flight had proved unsuccessful—but there was an adjustment period, when they first started climbing into the sky.
Now, morning officially underway, the sun a washed-out lemon wedge along the horizon, they’d reached altitude and Alfie didn’t have to flap her wings so hard.
She conveyed her comfort to Tessa, and Tessa, sitting forward in the saddle, hair streaming back from her face beneath her helmet, finally began to relax.
The view was breathtaking.
Jagged, snow-capped peaks pierced a layer of cloud so thick and opaque it looked like a fluffy bearskin rug rolled across the earth.
The air was frigid up this high, as cold as the height of winter in Aeretoll; it stung her cheeks, made her eyes water.
She was glad of Rune’s arms warm and strong around her; the heat of his chest pressed tight to her back.
Had they not been riding to their certain doom, it would have been romantic.
Once they’d pushed through the cloud layer and landed amongst the thin, cold air of the mountaintop, Náli had steered Valgrind out wide, away from them, hunkered low over the drake’s withers.
Percy, riderless, flying in the lead, had turned his head and trumpeted what sounded like a warning to his son.
Valgrind had called back, but obeyed his rider, and kept his distance.
Tessa’s last glimpse of Náli’s face, before he was too far distant to make out his expression, had revealed an unhappy scowl beneath the brow of his helmet.
Now, drawing a little ahead of them, Valgrind started to swoop and dive, ducking through clouds, playing. If Náli performed his usual theatric protests, the wind was too fierce for Tessa to hear them.
Because the drakes could cover the distance to the capital much more quickly than the men on horseback and foot in the tunnels, the plan was to swing east, following the natural curve of the mountain range and scouting the old watchtowers from a safe distance to see if Sels were posted there.
If yes, they would double back and head toward the coastline, do some reconnaissance, and then find someplace to lie low until Oliver signaled Percy through their bond that it was time to descend upon the palace.
If Oliver could signal Percy through the bond.
Every few minutes, worry for Oliver swamped her all over again.
In the past it had taken him at least a week to recover from a marsh fever relapse, sometimes two or three.
Every time, it had felt as though it might be the final time.
The physician would shake his head grimly, and Amelia would press a cool cloth to Oliver’s flushed brow, and Tessa would begin to cry, because it didn’t seem possible that the fever could break.
It always did. It always had.
But who was to say that it would now?