12. As Long As We Have a Chance
12. AS LONG AS WE HAVE A CHANCE
~ RUSH ~
My fingers curled around a bar of Gadiel’s cell as I leaned back to examine the damp stone wall beside Hiroshi, Ryder, West, and me. “What kind of illusion’s on it?” I asked the man on the wrong side of the cage.
The former visdrake, his title now stripped of him, sat on the dank floor and leaned against the same wall. There was no furniture within the shadowed depths of his prison, no bed to soften the endless hours, no commode to preserve his tenuous dignity.
The man my brothers and I considered a comrade, if not an outright friend, rose stiffly from the floor and walked toward us. From his gait alone, I would have guessed he was hundreds of years old. He was about my age, if not younger than my eighty years.
“What kind of illusion?” he repeated, his question rough like a dull saw struggling to make it through wood. Last I’d seen him, his voice had been as melodic as a well-tuned lute. “No doubt, the absolute worst kind. She ’s behind it.”
“And everything she does is awful,” Ryder said, his comment both obvious and distracted sounding. Like me, I imagined he was focused on not reacting both to the sight and stench of the man who’d once been agile, strong, handsome, and elegant. Gadiel used to exude confidence.
His long hair hung in limp, greasy braids around his face, which had grown gaunt in the weeks since he’d fought in the Gladius Probatio. His eyes had lost all their shine, now dark and haunted.
“Man, we’re so fucking sorry we had any part in putting you here,” Ryder told him.
I thought Gadiel attempted a sad smile, but it came off as a pained grimace around his cracked and bleeding lips. “Like I told Rush, it’s all right. We do what we have to do.”
West pressed himself flush to the bars, lowering his voice so there’d be no chance of it being overheard. “If we’d known you were down to fight, we would’ve wanted to work with you. We’ve been trying to take her down for years.”
Hiroshi nodded. “We’re finally close.” His usually calm, unperturbed expression tightened. “Or closer anyhow.”
“We had to apprehend you so she wouldn’t suspect,” West breathed.
Gadiel looked across the four of us, meeting my stare the longest. “I guessed as much.”
“You did? How?” Ryder asked sharply.
We were all too aware the queen probably only believed part of our act. But we needed her to keep thinking she had us in her thrall for as long as possible, that whatever control she had over us was enough so she wouldn’t attempt to exert more.
Gadiel shrugged and laughed morosely. “I know you all too well. And regrettably”—he clenched his jaw, and with how thin his face had become, it stood out like the edge of a knife—“I know her too well also.”
“ She did this to you?” I asked, taking in the many lacerations that marred his body and the many more gaping slices in the fabric of his tunic and britches, where he likely had already healed. A large bloodstain colored the entire front of his shirt.
One of his eyelids drooped, and when he chortled bitterly, I noticed two teeth missing. Those would take months to regrow.
“Of course she didn’t, but she watched some of the time. Ivar had a go at me.” Absently, he rubbed a hand gingerly across the area of his abdomen, as if even that light touch hurt.
Ivar had launched himself between Gadiel’s arrow and its intended target. He would have made Gadiel pay not only for attempting to murder the queen, but also for the arrow to the heart he’d taken in her stead.
“What Braque does is the worst though.” Gadiel’s eyes glistened as they held mine. “He forces a potion on me that slows my healing.”
Hiroshi gasped.
“I feel everything they do to me all day and night long. I heal no faster than a human now.”
“By the Ethers...” Hiroshi whispered.
Still staring at me, as if reaching through my body to touch my essence, Gadiel implored, his voice steadier than it had been so far: “No matter what, don’t let them catch you. Don’t let her send you here. The pygmy ogres think what they do is fun .” Tears welled along the bottom rim of his eyes but didn’t fall.
I sheathed my sword and clutched the bars with both hands before I understood why I was doing it. My friends did the same, and even Gadiel apparently hadn’t lost his warrior instincts as he sank to the floor where he stood and wove both arms through the grate that contained him.
The instant he was seated, a roar rocketed through the dungeon, an earthquake slamming into us at the same time. As captives around us cried out, all I could do was hold on.
An invisible pressure squeezed my skull, my muscles, my eyeballs. I’d never felt anything like it. Instantly, I needed it to stop.
My hair lashed around my face. Braced on either side of me, Hiroshi’s and Ryder’s braids smacked me too.
The bellow was perhaps even more enraged than before, and when it seemed as if it must wind down, it only intensified. Everything around us shook, and my insides followed suit. I sensed internal organs I was usually unaware of as they tensed. My ass clenched as the ceiling released its loose sediment, and I forced my mouth open so I wouldn’t bite a chunk out or shatter teeth.
The howl finally weakened and subsided, a whistling wind left to barrel across the large walkway behind us. When that, too, quieted, the shouts and growls of what sounded like pygmy ogres thundered through the wall to our left, along with the unmistakable cracking of whips.
Our sense of urgency renewed, I still held on, just in case, and asked Gadiel, “Do you know what that is?”
He looked up at me, his eyes at last showing signs of their former enthusiasm. “No, but I have a guess. And I hope I’m right, and that it gets out of there and finds her and eats her alive.” He loosened his hold on the bars a little and bared his teeth, once again revealing the gap where others should have been. “I want to watch.”
“So you think it might be a...” Hiroshi glanced all around us though nothing had changed since he’d last done so. “A dragon?”
Gadiel released one arm but left the other entangled in the bars. “I do. I’ve obviously never seen a live one before, but the sounds that’ve been coming through there seem spot-on for a dragon. And she comes down here regularly, not just to approve of our suffering, but to go through that wall. What else would get her to make time out of her busy schedule of evil to monitor?”
“Nothing,” Hiroshi said on a wave of awe. Of all of us, he’d dreamt most of what life among the dragons might have been like for our ancestors.
“Exactly,” Gadiel said, his voice regaining some of its strength the more he spoke. “She doesn’t even send Ivar or Braque to check for her.”
“It could still be something else,” I said. “I heard the three of them talking when the shaking first started, wondering if it could be ‘that thing’ they didn’t want anyone else knowing about. She could’ve found someone with the skills to breed some other terrifying creature.”
“True,” West said. “Hiro can shape the physical form of anything living. She might’ve found someone who’s willing to create killer beasts for her.”
“Or it might be something from the Sorumbra,” Ryder offered, the suggestion pulsing tension through my body at the fresh reminder of all the danger I’d exposed Elowyn to.
“Whatever it is,” West said, “we don’t want her to have it on her side. Already, we barely stand a chance against her.”
“As long as we have a chance,” I growled, “that’s all we need. We’ll make it work.” I sighed, struggling to keep a familiar desperation from taking hold. “We have to.”
Around me, my friends nodded their similar resolve. The alternative was failure, and we couldn’t allow ourselves to consider it. The mirror world was too magical to be lost forever to the darkness.
“How do we see through the illusion?” I asked Gadiel, and he straightened at the sharpness of my tone.
The use of illusions was strictly forbidden in all of Embermere—to everyone but Braque—but the queen could only practically enforce that rule at the palace. For those of us with the skill and stuck here at court, we couldn’t attempt to cast an illusion. She always found out, and the transgressor found themselves “disappeared.” Nobody that I knew of had ever been seen again.
Ryder had the uncommon ability to wield illusions. But the queen required he remain at court as much as she had me, which meant he hadn’t gotten to practice his power in years.
“I don’t know how you see through it,” answered Gadiel before sliding across the grimy cobbled floor to lean against the wall, as if he didn’t have the strength even to hang on to the bars any longer. He looped a few limp fingers around one. “I’ve never seen the wall change into anything else. But I think Braque’s the one who set it up. He takes extra time with the wall before he walks through it, like he’s checking on his spells to make sure they’re holding.”
“Where?” Ryder asked, stepping toward it.
“I’ve had plenty of time to occupy myself with such questions. I’d say, twenty-two of your paces, which are probably as long as mine, from the edge of my cell.” He winced as he heard himself use the possessive with his prison, but didn’t correct himself. Trips to the fae dungeon were all too often one-way.
A small rumble shook the walls and ceiling, but it was nothing compared to the ones before it. An aftershock, then. The pygmy ogres’ shouts beyond the wall were muted now, little more than grumbles. They could come through the wall and into the prison proper at any time and catch us in the act.
Hiroshi, West, and I released our grip on Gadiel’s cage to watch Ryder measure out the distance. He stopped in front of a patch of wall no different in appearance than the rest of the dull, dark, wet stones, their mortar compacted and worn smooth over many centuries.
“Here?” he mouthed, and pointed to keep from raising his voice. The lighting in the dungeon was permanently and purposefully dim—long, slim, grungy lights recessed into the ceiling to match the gloomy décor.
Gadiel bobbed his head, his hair sticking in heavy clumps.
Ryder stalked away from the wall several feet before he whirled and narrowed his eyes to study it.
Tense minutes passed, delivering another faint aftershock, and still Ryder stared. While the queen, Ivar, and Braque were likely to have left the palace, they wouldn’t stay away forever, especially if the queen suspected whatever she had brewing on the other side of this wall was the culprit of all the damage done to her precious palace.
Well? I thought to keep myself from hurrying Ryder aloud.
He traced some complex geometric shapes in the air, pulling on their edges as if they’d crystallized into the physical for him alone, and stretched them farther open. Then he chirped in satisfaction, stalked toward the wall, and slipped his hand right through it.
With his arm disappearing into the wall to the wrist, he looked back at us, grinned, then waved us forward.
Hiroshi and West ran toward him, but I hesitated, considering Gadiel.
Well aware seconds mattered, I crouched down next to the man, and whispered, “We can find the way to get you out.” The cells had no visible locks, so they had to be controlled by spells. None of us were versed in this kind of magic, but for Gadiel we’d figure out a way—or find someone who could. “But she’ll be relentless when she hunts you.”
He frowned, causing his bottom lip to drip blood. “Yeah, I know.”
“Or you can wait till we succeed.”
I met the question in his eyes without flinching. How long will that take?
“Maybe months, maybe years.”
Ryder ch-ch -ed me. Hurry .
Gadiel understood the message too. “For now, just don’t forget about me. Come find me when you can?”
“I will.” I drew my backup dagger and, hilt first, slid it between the bars.
Gadiel received it with a shudder that racked his chest. “Thank you.” His gratitude shook too, even though I believed he realized I was giving it to him not only for his defense, but also so he might have a way out if what faced him down here became unbearable before we could find the way to free him.
For a few moments longer, I studied him, wondering if it was the last time I’d ever see the man who’d had so much to offer the mirror world.
“Till we meet again, Gadiel,” I finally uttered.
“Till then, my friend.” Then, more boldly than anything else he’d said before, he added, “Forever as one in the light.”
“Forever divided in the darkness,” I finished, resting my forehead against the bars in solidarity.
Next I stood, and without a look back, joined my brothers.
We didn’t exchange a word of caution or encouragement as we drew our blades and followed Ryder through the opening the queen never meant us to traverse.