Chapter Thirty-Six
B ut . . . if you can do that, we don’t need the portal,” Alphonse said, his whole face brightening. “That’s to let you access the Pythian power, right?” He looked at me, and I nodded. “But you got power of your own. You’re a witch! Just have him do his thing,” he waved a hand at Pritkin. “And top you up. Then we don’t have to go through any of this! We can just go home!”
“That would not tell you what happened,” Faerie pointed out.
“We know what happened! Pritkin slips through old Zeus’s fingers, he throws a tantrum, and—”
“And does what?” Pritkin demanded harshly. “He doesn’t have the power to break Artemis’s spell without me. Otherwise, he’d have done it before.”
“Well, he obviously figured it out!”
“He and Aeslinn were draining god blood from everyone in Faerie who still had any,” I said, thinking about the cages full of captives I’d seen in that awful camp.
Aeslinn’s people had been rounding them up from everywhere, even Earth, where some of the fey had fled for safety and where he’d set up portals to make hunting them easier. Not to mention scattering more portals throughout Faerie, as his god’s appetite was insatiable. And there was little else that could satisfy it.
“Maybe they found enough,” I added.
Pritkin didn’t look like he thought much of that idea, but ?subrand cut him off before he could reply.
“What . . . did you say?” he asked, staring at me.
And crap, way to tell someone that his dad was a butcher. It was a tough conversation, and I wasn’t up to it. But I guessed my silence was answer enough because ?subrand looked appalled.
“Mother said that Father was doing such,” he whispered, “but I didn’t believe her. I didn’t think that even he. . .”
He trailed off, his expression darkening and those pewter-colored eyes shading closer to black. He looked genuinely outraged, making me wonder who the real ?subrand was: the arrogant, power-hungry son of a couple of dodgy-ass parents or the noble fighter? Or, like most of us, somewhere in between.
But right then, I didn’t have time to worry about it.
Only apparently, that wasn’t my call because he grabbed my arm, and he wasn’t gentle . “Are you lying to me, witch?”
“Why would I bother?” I said before Pritkin struck his hand away. It probably wasn’t a good sign that ?subrand didn’t even seem to notice.
“To demoralize me, make me believe outrageous things—”
“We’re not in the race anymore,” I told him. “Nobody cares what you believe.”
But he wasn’t listening. “Were some of our people among them? Were my people?” he demanded, looking a little wild-eyed. And then the hand was back along with its twin, squeezing my biceps hard enough to have broken the bones underneath if not for my armor. Only I doubted he knew it.
?subrand was having a moment, and it wasn’t a good one.
“Ask her,” I said, pointing at Faerie with my chin because my arms were busy. Until Alphonse and Pritkin worked together to pry off ?subrand’s grip.
“This is not the time,” Faerie said, which was true but not helpful, as our resident silver-haired prince had lost his damned mind. To the point of turning on her and grabbing her instead. And shaking her wildly, which was not a great idea since I didn’t know how well attached that head was.
Pritkin and Alphonse grabbed him and dragged him back, and Faerie looked on, unperturbed except for a slight frown creasing her forehead.
“Answer me!” ?subrand screamed, struggling with his captors.
“I already have,” she reminded him. “I said that your father’s machinations did him no good, nor your people, either.”
“You did not say that he murdered them!”
“It did not seem important.”
?subrand stared at her for a long beat, and then he suddenly started laughing. It wasn’t any more reassuring than his rage had been, as it was high-pitched and a little crazed. To the point that Alphonse and Pritkin exchanged a glance while keeping him restrained.
“You shoulda let those things eat him,” Alphonse told me.
“Oh, no, she wouldn’t do that!” ?subrand said, still laughing. “She’s the sweet-faced little human who wouldn’t hurt a fly—but would destroy my capitol and murder thousands of my people! She’s the wide-eyed innocent who ventures where angels fear to tread—yet somehow survives as she’s also the heir of Artemis, the most savage god of them all! She—”
He suddenly decided that he was through talking and made a leap, somehow slipping through both men’s grasp before I could blink, with his mailed hand reaching out toward me. Until Faerie intervened, only not in the way that any of us could have expected. Well, shit, I thought, as a slew of images hit me instead of ?subrand’s fist.
Rask’s wrists were slick with blood. His skin was thick and resisted tearing, but working all night, rubbing it against the hard metal of the cuffs, had taken its toll. The blood was smearing everywhere now.
That was good.
He was almost free.
“Wake up, elf,” he grumbled and listened as the translator spell he used to deal with traveling merchants converted the words into the silver hairs’ strange speech.
When that did no good, he lightly kneed the creature who lay beside him on the trundling cart and who, amazingly, had been sound asleep. Yet still he snored on as if he rested on the feather beds he probably had at home instead of cold iron bars covered with straw, and as if he had a full meal in his belly instead of the gnawing hunger Rask felt. He hadn’t eaten in three days while watching his captors feast each night by the puny fire they made.
And listening as they joked, after slinging his fellow captive in beside him, that perhaps Rask would eat him. As if his people were the barbarians here! They did not steal women and children, they did not enslave, they did not—
His thoughts broke off because the added outrage had lent strength to his struggle, and he had felt the cuffs pop and loosen. Now, all he needed was to finish the job and wake his companion, who had turned over muttering something and dragged some straw over his head like a pillow. What was wrong with the creature?
Perhaps he had been spelled as Rask initially had, or possibly his sleepiness had more to do with the crust of blood covering one side of his head, where his fellow silver hairs had beaten him. It had formed a dark welt that looked like a skewed hat and had splattered his cheek. But it did not appear to be bleeding anymore, which Rask took as a good sign.
For his part, he hadn’t slept in days, as the cage was too small to allow him to lie down without the cold iron of the side bars torturing him. He wondered if that was deliberate, to wear his people out and make them more docile. They would see how docile he was when he got loose!
Fortunately, he could go for a long time without sleep with few ill effects. He had thought the silver hairs could also, but this one seemed to be the exception. He was the exception to many things, as his fine clothes showed.
Most of the slavers came from the surrounding villages and dressed like it. Not in the hides his people wore but in rough homespun and scarred leathers. But this one. . .
He was dirty now, after being hit many times and falling into the muck of the road, but underneath all that were fine clothes of a soft blue. There wasn’t a patch on them, and all were woven stuff, not animal hides. There was also pretty stitchwork around the neck hole, as Rask had seen only once before, on the edge of a cloak owned by one of their nobles.
Rask had been just a boy when he came through their village, but he still remembered how it had flashed like silver fire in the moonlight and the awe he had felt just looking at it. He’d edged close enough almost to touch it when the nobleman noticed him. And, to Rask’s surprise, swung him into his lap to see it closer up.
It had been Rask’s finest moment, not least because he’d been allowed to trace the edge with his finger, feeling the embroidered designs against his skin. He was almost surprised they hadn’t burned him, but they felt cool. And slightly rough, as if they truly were made out of tiny filaments of silver.
“Took it off one of their magic workers,” the noble had said. “The symbols around the edge are supposed to be a protection spell.”
“Didn’t protect him, did it?” One of the elders commented.
“No, but the cloak’s all right,” the noble shot back, and they all laughed.
Rask had made himself a similar garment when he was old enough, although nothing like so fine. Gathering enough pelts had taken many hunting trips, and his mother had tanned them for him and stitched them together herself. The silver hairs had stolen it, leaving him only his hide loincloth.
He supposed he couldn’t complain as his people took trophies, too.
And would again, he thought, sensing movement in the trees on either side of the road, movement that the silver hairs seemed oblivious to. His people were quieter than that, moving silently through the forest when they wished, but they wanted him to know they were there. Wanted him to be ready.
They would save him if they could or avenge him if they could not. His captors would pay a price for raiding their village. All those with silver hair would die this night, which was why Rask was bleeding.
He had to protect the one at his feet. The one who had been captured for trying to rescue him and the others, although he did not know why. Why put himself at risk for those his people had killed for time out of mind? And fight his kin to do it?
Rask did not understand, but he knew he owed him a debt, one that he would repay, even if he had to fight his own. And he might, for his rescuers were likely composed of many tribes, the scattered remnants of which had bonded together after losing so many fighters, and they might not be ones he knew. He twisted his wrists harder, using the blood as a lubricant to try to slip his hands out of the smallish openings.
They were the largest cuffs the silver hairs had had, as they had been hunting women and children the day he was taken. Those made better slaves, as the women could be forced to accept almost any treatment to save their young, and the children would thereafter know nothing but servitude. The silver hairs hadn’t come equipped for the males of his kind, as they were too cowardly to enter any of their cave systems and face them.
They did not like the dark, where his people could see and they could not. They liked even less the many twists and turns in the system, as they provided opportunities for ambush. No, they did not like that at all.
So, they had attacked a group of bathing women and playing children, laughing and splashing in what was supposed to be a hidden pool, and brought only smaller chains.
They had not expected him to be there or understood that, by his people's reasoning, he was only a child himself. But he was older than the others, already knowing how to hunt and fish, which was why he had been there. His young cousin had begged to learn how to search for worms, how to thread them on a hook, and where to drop that hook to make the best catch.
Rask would never teach him that now, as he had hidden him in a bush when the attack came so he would not be caught. He remembered his huge eyes and small hand clutching Rask’s cloak, begging him not to go. But no bush was big enough for him, and he would not flee.
He was not yet grown, but he was old enough to know.
A troll does not run.
But he had almost wished he had when the silver hairs jumped him, and he saw the knife one of them held flash in the sunlight. It would have been the last thing he saw, but another had stayed his attacker’s hand. “No! Not ‘til he’s checked!”
Rask had not understood that, not even when a gray-robed figure pushed through the group and knelt by his side as six silver hairs held him down. It was hard for them even then, for Rask had struggled and done so with all his might. But the gray cloak had murmured a word, his limbs had gone temporarily numb, and he had found his face pulled up into the sunlight.
The gray cloak had searched it for a moment, then made a sign over top of him, burning brightly in the air. Rask did not know what it was, but he felt the strangest sensation, as if all his blood suddenly leaped in his veins. The gray robe smiled and looked up at the one holding the knife-wielder’s wrist.
“Take him.”
And they had.
The shackles they’d used to bind him were so tight that his hands had gone numb. He didn’t know how much hide he would lose to slip out of them, but he didn’t have long to manage it. Bird calls had started sounding within the trees; the attack would come soon.
He had to be ready.
One final, great effort and the bonds that had held him for so long twisted and broke. One cuff dangled free, and now that he could maneuver, he quickly ripped apart the other, feeling the blood rush back into half-starved veins. He flexed his hands, and they obeyed his commands.
He could move!
And barely in time. He ducked down, covering his fellow captive’s body with his own, just as an arrow came whizzing through the night. And took the silver-hair driving the cart straight through the throat.
He didn’t live long enough to do much more than raise a hand to it in shock before slumping over onto the bench seat. The horses were unaware that anything had happened and kept plodding on. But the silver hair beneath him had seen.
“What—” the creature said sleepily.
“Stay down!” Rask hissed. “Do as I tell you and say nothing. I will speak for you.”
But there was no time to speak or to do anything, for the road did not end in a settlement as Rask had expected. That was what usually happened to his kind who were taken captive. They were sold as chattel to the silver hair’s towns, who used them up in fields and mines until they escaped or died.
At least, that was what had happened before his people started fighting back. Now, it was more common for the journey to end in a slave caravan, which would take them so far away from where they’d been found that no one could hope to rescue them. But this . . . was neither of those.
“Get off me, you big lout,” the silver-hair gasped. “I can’t breathe!”
Neither could Rask, but for a very different reason. But he got up because the arrows had stopped, and light suddenly spilled around their cart. It was so bright that he shielded his eyes, only able to see another silver hair jumping onto the wagon seat, throwing his fellow elf off the side, and whipping up the horses.
“Prioritize the first five wagons!” he heard someone yell. “The king has need of them!”
Rask assumed his wagon must have been one of those, as the horses broke into a gallop and the cart plowed straight ahead, swaying alarmingly in its speed, toward what looked like a descended sun. Rask grabbed the cage bars and stared; it had not been there a moment ago. But now, it was all he could see as it rapidly grew closer, blocking his vision.
It was blinding.
But it did not seem to blind the silver hair who had come up beside him, on his knees as Rask was, as the ceiling was so low. “What is it?” Rask asked, his voice full of wonder.
“Haven’t you ever seen a portal before, troll?”
“A what?”
“A gate, a passage to another place, even other worlds.”
“Other . . . worlds?” Rask began to wonder just how hard his companion’s head had been hit.
But the creature just looked at him with those strange, metallic eyes. “You should come down from your mountains more often.”
Rask hadn’t wanted to come down from his mountains at all. He had been taken from them. And he wanted to go back right now!
“Hold on,” his companion said grimly and got a better grip on the bars, using his tunic sleeves to cover his hands.
“Why?” Rask said, hearing the fear in his voice.
And then he understood why.
It felt as if the light suddenly reached out and grabbed them, jerking them forward as the cage they were in turned upside down, or so it seemed. He didn’t know anymore, couldn’t tell. Only that he was being tossed around, that the silver hair was being thrown along with him, that they were tumbling any and everywhere while light seared their eyes and somebody screamed.
Rask was very afraid that it might be him.
Then the light was gone, and they were tearing across a wide expanse of pavement in the pounding rain, for the horses were as spooked as he was and weren’t stopping. Until something plowed into them from the side. Rask wasn’t sure what, but it had been so fast and hard that his cage, already unsteady, toppled along with the wagon, throwing up sparks as it skidded across neatly fitted cobbles.
Fortunately for the silver hair, Rask had landed on the bottom. He felt the creature’s body hit him, but it was so light that no damage was done. And he likely wouldn’t have noticed if there had been.
He found himself lying on the cold iron bars, feeling them start to burn through his hide, as he had no protection like the hand wraps that had covered his palms or the leather wrappings on the cuffs. But he barely noticed that, either, as he was too busy staring through the bars at what was happening around him. And wondering if he’d hit his head, too.
Rain was everywhere, reflecting torchlight across water-slick stones. Some of the torches were in people’s hands, showing their frantic, terrified faces; others were guttering against the cobbles, getting snuffed out by rain or running boots. He didn’t know where he was or what was happening—why were the silver hairs in such disarray?
And then he looked up.