Chapter Seventeen
I slowly returned to consciousness thanks to a blast of stench and the strangely familiar sensation of being eaten. Someone else had not yet had that pleasure and was kicking and screaming and panicking beside me. Either because the two of us had ended up in Pinkie’s belly or because we were suddenly racing down a series of corridors like our lives depended on it.
And maybe they did.
I couldn’t tell. I was woozy, and Enid, my current belly-mate, was hysterical, and her antics were throwing Pinkie off, causing him to hit walls. Or maybe that was the blasts coming from behind us, making colors bloom against his translucent skin.
Or semi-translucent. A piece of digesting octopus floated through the thick membrane around us, confusing my already screwed-up vision. It made me wonder if we were in his stomach or just something adjacent to it, like joeys in a kangaroo’s pouch. And then to ask why I cared when I had more pressing concerns here.
But I was drifting in and out of consciousness as oblivion kept trying to drag me back under, and nudging the bit of octopus along was about all that I was up to right then. It obscured the view behind us, but there wasn’t much to see, even when it was gone. Just what appeared to be miles of hallways dug out of the mountain and almost pitch dark except for where an occasional lantern flashed by, leaving streamers of light across my vision.
It was strangely hypnotic, except for the fact that we were going stupid fast. To the point that the lanterns were almost a continual blur in the darkness, giving me no idea where Pinkie was taking us or much of anything else. Except that it was really tight in here.
I tried sitting up but had no room, maybe because Pinkie’s form had been squashed outward by the burden of carrying two. Making his top, for lack of a better word, push downward, threatening to crush us. It was stupid uncomfortable.
“Can I get a window?” I gasped, pushing against his mucous-covered hide. He opened it up easily enough whenever he wanted to screech at someone, eat something, or tuck a person away in his middle. So, I had the idea that maybe his body was more malleable than a human’s and did whatever he—
Yep, that worked.
A porthole opened under my searching hand and widened enough for me to stick my head out. Uh-huh. Yeah.
People were shooting at us.
A lot of people. A lot of very pissed-off, fey-looking people. One of whom suddenly hit a wall and dropped behind when somebody started shooting at them .
“What is it?” Erin demanded, fighting with me to be able to see. “What is happening?”
“I think Pritkin is behind them,” I slurred, although it was hard to tell.
The fey following us seemed to be riding on something because nobody ran that fast, and they kept zig-zagging back and forth along the corridor, getting in the way of the view. I squinted, and sure enough, their feet weren’t moving at all. Instead, something clear and rippling was tearing across the gorgeous tilework while they balanced on top.
There were surfboards, I thought blearily, only there wasn’t any water under there. Unless the “board” itself was made out of the stuff. Which wasn’t as crazy as it seemed.
The fey could make manlikans, which, in the case of the Green Fey, were man-shaped creations composed of water encased inside an outer ward. The ward also directed the creatures’ actions, allowing the fey to use them as servants, ammunition mules, and spies, the latter because they could transform into almost any shape, including one flat enough to fit under a door or between the slats on a shutter. A surfboard seemed child’s play next to that.
Only these surfboards were allowing them to catch up—fast.
“Get out of the way!” Enid was beating on me now. “Let me see!”
“Make your own porthole. This one’s mine,” I said, only to have to pull back inside anyway, because a spell tore by almost close enough to set my hair on fire.
Enid took the opportunity to poke her head out, red hair flying because she’d lost her cap somewhere, and then abruptly ducked back in. She looked at me with wide, shocked eyes as if she hadn’t understood any of that, either. So much for getting an explanation, I thought, before she snapped out of her shock and grabbed me.
“That is Prince Emrys back there!”
“Is it? I thought I glimpsed him—”
“They’re going to kill him!”
“Are they? Then why’s he chasing them?”
More shaking and then a slap across the face, which I was pretty sure I didn’t deserve. It did clear my head a little, though. I took another peek.
Yeah, that was Pritkin, and yeah, he was chasing a whole group of fey down the hallway, like Han Solo on the Death Star racing after a bunch of stormtroopers. And like Darth Vader’s guys, the fey hadn’t noticed that they only had one pursuer or, indeed, that they had any at all. Maybe because they were too focused on killing us.
And then the lights went out.
I blinked in the darkness for a moment, slowly realizing that it wasn’t just the lights that had disappeared. It was the corridor, too, since we were currently traveling through a blue-black tunnel with a low, ominous thrumming sound. It was underwater, something I could tell because the sides were all but invisible, composed of wards between occasional pieces of round, metal scaffolding.
It looked like it should have been on the Nautilus as an observation corridor, only there wasn’t much to observe. A few crumbled-looking columns shone ghostly pale in the distance, shimmering behind a watery veil. A school of yellow fish, vivid enough to show up even against all that dim water, flitted by like brightly colored birds soaring through a dark sky. And a bunch of merpeople turned from a sand bar a little way off to watch as we zipped by in our crazy ride.
They were on the left-hand side, where they’d been working on what appeared to be more tunnels through the deep, which were dimly visible as they snaked off into the distance. I stared at the builders, and they stared back, their necks absurdly oversized because their gills were fully open instead of tucked against their skin as they had been in the dining hall. Now they were wafting about like the translucent ends of their fish tails. . .
Snap out of it, Cassie!
I tried to wake up, but it was a struggle, with exhaustion clutching at me like spectral fingers. I concentrated on the metal flooring underfoot, which made slight ringing sounds as Pinkie scurried across it and the occasional lights set into the metal scaffolding. There was nothing else to focus on except the endless indigo water—
And that, I thought, as another spell bolt screamed past us, exploding against the side of the tunnel and taking out one of the lights.
And spooking Pinkie, who was already spooked enough. Causing him to veer off the expansive main tunnel into a smaller side one, part of a scrawling network that resembled a rollercoaster track more than the flat, pedestrian pathway we’d just left. Enid must have thought so, too, because she immediately started clawing at me again.
“Get us out!”
“I don’t even know what we’re in,” I said thickly, pushing at Pinkie’s yielding flesh to make myself another convertible. Because I couldn’t halfway see like this.
“It’s the path for an upcoming challenge! That,” she gestured furiously back the way we’d come, “is the passageway into the city from Fountain Court. But this is not and they’re not finished with it yet. It isn’t stable!”
No kidding, I thought, poking my head and shoulders out of the hole that Pinkie had obligingly made. Enid popped up beside me, breathing hard because, yeah. It was ripe down there.
But it was terrifying up here, with us racing along wobbling corridors that resembled less the transparent, glass-like structure of the main tunnel’s wards and more the Jello-like consistency of Pinkie’s flesh. They were also moving the same way, with disturbing ripples as we passed.
They looked like they were about to collapse onto our heads—along with thousands of gallons of water—just any moment now. Yet a glance behind showed that it was too late to turn around. A boiling mass of hate was headed our way, and even though Pritkin was still picking off stragglers from behind, the rest—
Were almost on top of us.
“Do something!” The redhead yelled, practically in my ear.
“Why do people keep telling me that?”
“You’re the goddess!”
“Why does that only get brought up in times like these?” I snarled, and then I shut up. Because I’d noticed that these walls were not only unsteady, they were porous.
I didn’t know if that was because they weren’t finished yet or if the Challenge was supposed to involve drowning, which seemed to be a theme around here. Either way, Pinkie was sloshing through water a couple of feet deep that hadn’t been there a moment ago. Which turned the crazy course from rollercoaster to the world’s most diabolical water slide, with Pinkie less running and more sliding desperately down rollercoaster-worthy angles and taking us with him!
And then I got a phone call.
I didn’t notice immediately as we were falling down a ski-slope-like drop, which was also twisting us around like a corkscrew. But the cursing in my ear was too familiar to ignore. “Pritkin?”
“Can you . . . damn it . . . me!”
It sounded like he was breaking up, which would have made sense except for one smallthing: I had no phone.
“How are you doing this?” I asked as a fey, who appeared to have lost his surfboard, went slip-sliding beside us on his back and got zapped by a half-crazed kitchen maid for his trouble.
A burst of static that threatened my eardrum gave me a clue, even before Pritkin’s voice came again. “Tapped into . . . translator! Now answer the bloody. . .”
“What?” I said, holding my ear to hear better and being cut off anyway because a bunch of fish hit me out of nowhere, along with a ton of water from the rapidly disintegrating sides of the slide.
“Get out! Get the . . . out!” Pritkin was screaming, and I was gasping and coughing, and Enid was trying to get up a shield to act as a makeshift umbrella, but she must not have been able to concentrate well enough because it kept going down, deluging us again.
I didn’t know what Pritkin expected me to do, as I wasn’t even sure which way was up. I was awake now, thanks to getting slapped repeatedly in the face by all that cold water, but could barely see anything, as nobody had put lights down here. The only illumination was coming from the dazzling spellfire exploding around us. It wasn’t hitting us very often, but that was probably because the fey couldn’t see shit, either, and because of the track, which remained the water slide from hell!
Out of other ideas, I reached for my power, even knowing it was futile. And it was. There wasn’t so much as a twinge of magic under my fingertips, either because the portal was turned away at the moment or because I was flat out of the energy needed to channel it.
Either way, we were screwed.
So, I used the only weapon I had left, sending my ghostly knives back to torment the fey some more, and it seemed to help. Maybe because they couldn’t half see, making them easy targets, as the water was spurting in everywhere now, to the point that Pinkie was swimming instead of running. That was good as he was faster in the water than on land and bad because we were all about to drown, so none of this mattered!
That must have been what Enid decided because she suddenly let loose on the fey behind us with a storm of magic that had less fury than desperation. It was impressive, to the point that she might have been a war mage in another life had she not been born a slave to the fey. And she wasn’t about to go out with even a shred of magic left, as she let it all loose in a glimmering cloud around her, grabbing and binding pieces of it to spells as she went, like an archer pulling arrows from a quiver.
I’d never seen it used that way, not even by the Earthly covens, and for a second, I just stared around at the suffusion in the air. It engulfed us like a haze, following its mistress along the crazy, twisting course like a sparkling, beautiful, magical mist. I held out a hand, still half out of it mentally, and watched it glimmer on my fingertips, like something else I’d seen once, something familiar. . .
And then it sank into my skin, a little piece of power, causing a pulse to go through me.
No, not just magic, I realized; it was her life force because that was what human magic was. That was what set them apart from everyone else. Their bodies made magic, the substance that the gods lived off of, and the very thing that I’d recently discovered I could absorb in the same way that my mother once had—
So, I ate some more, pulling it out of the air as I once had back in my court in Vegas, where a strange-looking goat creature had shed enough power to fuel a small star. This wasn’t nearly that potent, as the gods had tinkered with him to become something powerful enough to slake even their thirst, but it was something. Something that might save our lives if my power would return, if I could take in enough of her energy to use it, and if I didn’t get fried in place before either of those things happened!
I ducked again, feeling heat radiate past me as someone cast blind. They must have; none of us could see a damned thing with the darkness and the water falling and gushing and splashing everywhere, like a midnight ride through the rapids on a furious river. But they threw anyway, probably just hoping to hit something—
And they did.
Just not us.
A section of the ward beside us blew out just as we passed, so I didn’t see what happened. But I felt the wave pick Pinkie up and throw him down the tunnel. Although what it was carrying us through, I was no longer sure.
The water slide, or what had been one a second ago, now resembled a limp plastic bag floating in the sea. The only reason it had any shape was the water pouring in and filling in out. We couldn’t even reach the surface like this, being trapped by disintegrating wards like the remnants of a spider’s web, one that was hauling us down to our doom.
My power took that moment to return, but it was too late to help us this time, especially as I still couldn’t use it. Enid’s power had been like a sip of cool water in a desert—wonderful but useless to someone dying of thirst. I couldn’t shift us back to our rooms; I couldn’t make it to the surface; I doubted I could go three feet with how exhausted I—
Three feet.
Three feet.
Three goddamned feet. Damn it, Cassie, think! Why was that so important?
Because it was ringing through my head like a bell. But said head was also doing loop-de-loops down a disintegrating track while Pinkie’s screams echoed in my ears, Enid shook me and yelled something in my face, and fey spells lit up the darkness. And yet, all the while, even my heartbeat was thumping out three feet, three feet, three feet .
Or how about three inches, I thought, as that looked like all the width the remaining wards had left. Get to the other side, even if the strain of it knocked me out, and Enid could get us back to the surface. Or Pinkie could before we all drowned.
“Close up,” I told Pinkie and pulled Enid back into the stinky cavern.
“What are you doing?” she screeched, which seemed to be her preferred tone.
For once, I didn’t mind.
“Something called a Hail Mary back on Earth,” I said, watching the skin over our heads heal together as if there’d never been a rift there.
Demons.
You had to love them sometimes.
“What?” she was shaking me again.
“I’m going to try to get us to the open ocean,” I explained. “But it will take everything I have left. That means—”
“Open?” she screeched. “You can’t break through a Margygr spell! That’s why they were given this task—so there can be no cheating on the course!”
“Well, the course seems to be disintegrating pretty well on its own right now—”
“Because it’s not finished yet!”
“—and I’m not going to break through it; I’m going to avoid it.”
“What?”
“Just get us to the surface, all right? I won’t be able to help you after this.”
She just stared at me because, yeah. Kind of a lot to ask of a kitchen maid. But then she surprised me, set her jaw, and nodded.
Well, okay then.
You’re up, Cassie, I thought, grabbing for my power and hesitating because this was going to be bad. Bad enough that I could almost hear the Pythian power yelling at me, telling me not to try it, warning me without the words it didn’t have by a deep thrumming that echoed through my soul. But I wasn’t going out like this, without even attempting to save myself; I’d rather die the hard way than drown like a freaking fish in a net, and so I shifted.
For a moment, there was nothing, just a blinding light and an echoing silence, with every sense I had cutting out simultaneously.
If this was death, it wasn’t so bad, I thought.
Not like last time.
And then I didn’t think anything except, oh, God. Oh, God. Because the lost senses had returned, all at once, and—
“Oh, God!” I screamed.
I didn’t know if I’d made it.
I didn’t know anything except pain, the soul-deep, bone resonating, I’d-throw-up-if-I-had-the-energy pain that said I had pushed it too far, that even an inch didn’t matter as much as carrying three, that I might have just done like a couple of the old Pythias I’d had to learn about at Gertie’s who had disappeared after channeling too much power and were never heard from again.
Probably because they were in little pieces.
“Oh, God,” I whimpered.
Someone was yelling at me, but I couldn’t tell who, couldn’t think, couldn’t see, couldn’t concentrate on anything except pain—
Until suddenly I could, and realized with a stomach seizing lurch that that had all been for nothing. Because we were out in the dark ocean all right, but ringed by the fey, who had escaped the disintegrating course, too, because they understood this stuff better than I did. And because they’d been rending the half-made spell just fine earlier.
Like they were about to rend us, and I guess they wanted us to see it coming because they’d called up balls of spell light that glimmered over their features like the torches a medieval mob would have carried. I could see it spangling their skin and evil, mirth-filled eyes. They were going to enjoy this. . .
Or not, I thought, as Pinkie lashed out, plunging one of those soft little tentacles straight through the nearest fey’s chest.
It emerged from the other side in a cloud of blood and the approximate shape of a spear, his still-beating heart suspended on the tip of it. Triple points for style, Pinkie, I thought dizzily. But it wasn’t going to matter in a minute.
And it wasn’t. And neither was Pritkin, behind them and letting loose a barrage against the shields the fey casually threw up that seemed to do nothing. I saw his face, staring at me through Pinkie’s wavering hide; I saw Enid, searching my eyes, hoping against hope that I had one trick left; I saw my haggard face in the shiny reflection of all those lights and knew I didn’t.
And then I saw something else.
I wasn’t sure what it was, but it was boiling up from underneath us like a black cloud from an undersea volcano. I couldn’t see any flashes of fire or golden, molten rock. I couldn’t see anything but a spreading miasma that made the dark water around it look as bright as day.
And then I didn’t see anything at all.