Chapter Thirty-Seven
R ask just lay there for a long moment, staring at another great sun opening in the stormy skies and spilling out a tornado of beings. Some were huge and godlike, in the form of elves but the size of towering trees and glowing like stars. Their hair floated around them on the currents of their power, and they were so bright that he could barely look at them.
But he tried because the others, flanking them on both sides, were. . . He didn’t have words for what they were. As hideous as the others were beautiful and hungry, like a baying pack of wolves.
Suddenly, Rask returned to himself and started struggling, grabbing the cage bars and trying to pull them apart. Not because he thought he could get away, but because he didn’t want to die like this, like vermin in a cage. He would die on his feet like the warrior he had someday hoped to be.
“What are you doing?” Someone yelled. “Come on!”
He looked up to find his silver hair staring at him. He’d found a guttering torch and held it up with one hand while holding the back door of their prison with the other. From the outside.
“How did you get it open?” Rask asked, blinking.
“By taking the goddamned keys off the goddamned guard, you big oaf! Now come on, if you want to live!”
Rask came on, scrambling out of the hated iron prison and getting back to his feet. The silver hair hadn’t waited on him but had sprung at the rest of the cages, some still upright, others not, from their caravan. He was running about, fighting guards, why Rask didn’t know.
The world was coming to an end, and it hardly seemed worthwhile.
But he had nothing better to do, so he helped, pulling off guards who apparently had not yet looked up as they were beating on his ally instead of running. Something that Rask put a stop to by smacking their heads together until they stopped moving. Meanwhile, the silver hair had grabbed more keys and opened more cages, screaming at people to go, go, go!
Although where they were to go, Rask had no idea. He stared around, getting a brief glimpse of a vast expanse of rain-slick stone, where people were running and screaming and smacking into each other or standing and staring upward as if they couldn’t believe what they were seeing, either. And of a vast city behind them made of golden stone and topped by massive, bulbous domes like nothing he had ever seen or dreamed of.
Normally, the city would have left him speechless with awe, all on its own, but these were not normal times. The tornado was landing, with some of the strange, terrible creatures close enough now to jump to the ground, hitting with terrible splats, growls, and screeches that hurt his ears. But the fall did not seem to harm them.
They were back on their feet in an instant and tearing into the crowd. Their prey included those still trapped in the cages, some of whom were trolls like him and taken in the same raid. But others had silver hair, just like their captors.
In the end, it didn’t matter, as the beasts didn’t care; they—
“Stop staring!” his silver hair screamed. “And come with me!”
Once more, he came, dragging some of the wounded they had been able to save under each arm, one a silver-haired woman shrieking her head off and the other a troll even younger than him, who should have been chasing minnows in the pool's clear water.
Instead, he looked around dazed, his eyes reflecting the torchlight yet probably seeing nothing. Rask hoped his mother was among those saved, but no one was calling for him. No one was doing anything but running, seeing gods and demons, for that was what they must be, returning together to destroy everything.
Rask risked a glance behind him just as something huge jumped at him so quickly that it was merely a blur against the darkness. And was hit by an enormous bolt of lightning from somewhere above, just before it could devour them all. Its smoking body slammed into a door as Rask ran through it, already crumbling to ash, and he glanced back again to see crisscrossing bolts of power tearing through the night.
They hadn’t been saved, he realized as they ran down a hall; they had gotten lucky. One of the gods’ energy bolts had taken out their servant as they were throwing them at everything now. No one was likely to help him here, as the whole sprawling city seemed to be under attack at once.
But his silver hair knew where to go, and the people he had released surged around them in the hall, following his lead as they had no other. Rask kept pace with the fleet-footed throng despite his size, living up to the name his mother had given him long ago when he passed older boys in races when most of those his age could barely toddle about. He had always been fast for his size and had more reason than ever now.
The wall they were racing beside started crumbling around them. It hedged the great stone expanse outside, or rather, it had. It was quickly falling apart, forcing him to jump over huge sections that were failing and falling or being blasted inward even as he tried to run past them.
He dodged as best he could and kept going while parts of the ceiling broke on his back. He did not know why their group did not turn more toward the place's interior, away from the bolts, but perhaps the silver hair was afraid it would collapse on top of them. Although it seemed to be doing that already!
It was getting hard to see, with billowing clouds of dust highlighted by the bolts of energy cutting through and zigzagging across the hall. They were catching some of the runners broadside, evaporating their bodies into scatterings of ash before blowing out more walls farther in. Rask ignored them as there was nothing else he could do and kept moving.
And in moments, his decision to trust his would-be rescuer was rewarded, although he wasn’t sure with what. They burst out of the disintegrating hall and into an enormous cave, the biggest he had ever seen, yet more caves were connected to it. He could see some of them ahead in a long line, but they weren’t full of trolls.
They were full of silver hairs.
There were so many that Rask just stared for a moment, as he had never seen that many people at one time. Nor had he ever seen the silver hairs, who always seemed so icy cold and devoid of emotion except hate, full of the same panic he felt clawing at him. And holding onto small, mountain-shaped wooden creations, like some that Rask had seen flying over his homeland occasionally, and been told to avoid at all costs.
They could spit fire, he had been warned and were there to search for the locations of his people’s settlements from the air. That was why they had to hide their cave entrances carefully and never return home while the wooden birds were in the sky. He had only glimpsed them through the treetops before and hadn’t realized how small they were.
Yet multiple people were packed inside them, and more were clinging to the outside and begging not to be left behind.
Some of those were getting towed along the ground and into the air as a few of the strange creations took off, with no flapping of wings as they didn’t have any. They levitated how Rask had seen some magic users do to small items back home. Were they magic, too?
He supposed they must be.
But there weren’t enough of them for all the people, and some of the desperate crowd didn’t know how to operate them. Many of the birds stood idle while people hedged around them, screaming into the crowd for those with knowledge. The knowledge that his silver hair seemed to possess, for he threw a guard out of one and made it rise jerkily into the air.
But those inside were fighting him before he could make off with it, and more were on the ground, jumping up with the springy grace of their kind, latching onto it, dragging it back down.
“Let me go!” the silver-haired woman he had been carrying yelled. “Leave me and go help him!”
Rask let her go and left her with the troll child, who she hugged to her bosom, both of them watching him with huge eyes. He pushed through the crowd to the odd craft, grabbed the edge, and started towing it back across the floor while being hammered by the guards inside and the people around him. But his blood was pumping so hard that he barely noticed, and when he reached his small band, who had gathered together in a defensive knot, he tipped the craft over and watched the guards inside fall out.
They didn’t seem to have expected that but were quickly back on their feet and brandishing the lightning spears that Rask had learned to hate from his experiences on the road. They could rupture even his skin, and he wasn’t sure what to do about so many until his silver hair yelled, “Drop!”
Rask dropped, and his rescuer activated something inside the craft that had lightning emerging from underneath it, spearing out just above Rask’s head and targeting the guards. They fell twitching to the ground, people screamed and ran, and he looked up at the elf.
Who had just attacked his own people to spare a crowd full of trolls.
“Get in!” he screamed, looking half-crazed.
Rask did not get in. He helped the others do so instead, not sure that the craft, which was one of the larger varieties but still relatively small, would hold them all. But they made themselves fit, and somehow, there was room for him to stand in the doorway and cling onto the side, gripping the roof with all his might as the crazy thing went skittering over the floor, knocking people down and causing even more unrest, if that was possible. But not taking off because his half was too heavy and was dragging the whole thing down to the point that it scraped the floor on his side.
But when he went to step off, his silver hair screamed at him incoherently, and some of the women grabbed his legs and would not let him go.
And then they were over the edge of a cliff, plummeting and spinning about like a top as the unevenly weighted contraption struggled to fly. But fly it did, in fits and starts, while other such craft zoomed past it, heading off into the night as fast as they could. His vessel was more sluggish, and when the silver-hair finally got it to stop spinning, they moved away from the burning city slowly enough to give Rask an excellent view.
It was not one he would ever forget. The great domes were burning now, as the gods seemed to be concentrating primarily on them. The fires were already so huge that they stained the clouds that the city sat among at the top of a great peak, almost as if it was composed of them itself.
But this wasn’t the pretty red-gold of a sunset; it was a bloody hue to match the carnage as everything burned. The city went up like a torch as he watched while the rains beat at him, the light dazzled him, and the terrible beasts feasted on live and burning flesh. And as their tiny band of survivors slowly limped their way into the night, entirely silent.
For what was there to say?
The vision shattered, and I found myself on the floor, unsure how I got there. Probably rolling around with Rask, for the Common’s images were so real it was almost as if you were experiencing them yourself. And while this hadn’t been as deep of an immersion as I’d felt before, where the lines between myself and the person I was following had blurred, it had been deep enough.
I felt the bruises Rask had taken in my own flesh, smelled the burning city in my nose, and tasted his panic on my tongue. And I guessed ?subrand did, too, because he suddenly tore up from the floor and launched himself at the first enemy he saw. Which must have been me because all I could see through the still-turning shards of that other time was his face. And if ever anyone had looked like murder—
Bodil dropped him with a word, and he fell flat on the floor. I lay there, still half out of it and wondering what had just happened. And watching a shard of memory showing Rask and company dodging pieces of the fiery city that explosions were sending flying out at them.
I hoped they made it, I thought dizzily; I hoped—
“What the hell—” Alphonse said, jumping to his feet.
“We have to leave him,” Pritkin told me flatly.
“What?” I looked up at him, uncomprehending.
“We can’t risk bringing him with us. I can’t watch him every second, and he obviously means you harm.”
I blinked at the fallen silver hair, my mind and Rask’s still intertwined enough that that was the only name I could remember for his people. “Did they make it?” I asked Faerie. “Rask and . . . and the others—”
“Yes,” she said. “Surprisingly. Their craft was overloaded, but it took them back to the road where the slavers had been. There, they met up with some of his people and, after a discussion, were taken into their caves. They retreated farther into the mountains and remain there, one of the dwindling islands of survivors.”
“Cassie!” Pritkin’s voice brought me back somewhat, and I felt Rask slipping away. I looked at ?subrand some more. Svarestri, I thought.
That’s what we call them.
“So what do we do?” I asked, looking up at Pritkin. “Tie him up and leave him for those things?”
“There’s an idea,” Alphonse said. “Anybody got a belt?”
“We aren’t leaving him,” Bodil said angrily.
“You saw what just happened,” Alphonse argued. “And in case you forgot, we need Cassie alive or none of us is going anywhere. So unless you feel like becoming a permanent resident in this little corner of hell—”
“I do not,” Bodil said, kneeling beside the fallen man. “But he is young and excitable. And consider what he just learned, what he experienced—”
“None of which is Cassie’s fault!” Pritkin said.
“No, but Issengeir was,” Bodil said. “And he lost many friends that day.”
“So did I!”
“I’ll make it quick,” Alphonse offered. He made a twisting motion with his hands about neck width apart that did not improve Bodil’s temper.
“You will do no such thing!”
“You know we’re right. You just don’t want to lose your champion.”
“That is part of it,” she agreed with surprising candor. She seemed to do that a lot. I didn’t know if it was a long-term character trait or if she was simply too old to give a damn. She also seemed to be throwing off the vision better than the rest of us.
I could still hear the wind.
“But he isn’t Aeslinn,” she added. “He is impetuous and acts on emotion far too often—”
“Something we can’t have in a situation like this,” Pritkin said. And unlike Alphonse, he wasn’t arguing. He was stating a fact and ending the discussion.
Only he wasn’t, damn it.
I sighed.
“No,” Pritkin said flatly, shooting me a look.
“Yes.”
“Why the hell would you want to risk it?”
“I’m not Aeslinn, either?”
“You’re also not a fool,” Alphonse said. “Get over the bleeding heart shit. This is the third time that moron tried to kill you—once in Feltin’s office, once when we first got here, and again now. And in times like these, three strikes, and you’re out.
“Only with me, it woulda been one.”
“He’s right,” Pritkin said, earning an approving glance from Alphonse.
“He also saved me in the pool,” I said, remembering.
“After you’d just rescued him,” Alphonse retorted. “He thought he might need more help; he wasn’t doing you a favor!”
“And how do you know that?” Bodil snapped. “I thought I was the only mind reader in the group.”
“I know the type.”
She gave up on Alphonse and looked at me. “He is a boy. Not that much older in our terms than the troll you saw. But unlike him, who seemed to have had a loving family, ?subrand grew up with incredible abuse, enough to have turned most others into monsters like his father. Instead, he’s tried to do the right thing, advocated for his people, fought Aeslinn on their behalf more than once, and supported his mother in running away from their kingdom, even though discovery meant death for both of them—”
“Oh, boo hoo.” That, of course, was Alphonse. “Lots of us got the shit beat out of us as kids—”
He broke off, maybe because the other half of that sentence, “and didn’t turn into murderers,” wasn’t exactly true in his case.
“At least I’m on the right side,” he mumbled as our eyes met, and finally shut up.
“—and when she turned out to have more vengeance in her heart than concern for their people’s welfare, he left her to come here,” Bodil continued grimly. “And risk his life for a force to unseat his father and restore order to his lands.”
“The Alorestri have been battling Aeslinn’s people for centuries,” Pritkin pointed out. “Even if he won control of their army, how could he hope to triumph now when they never could before?”
“He knows his father’s kingdom like no other,” she said. “Knows who are disaffected and might turn against him given enough help, knows secret ways into the castle—a hundred things! And Aeslinn’s forces have been weakened in the war; he is vulnerable. Why do you think I partnered with the son of our oldest enemy?”
“I had wondered about that,” I said and was ignored.
“We only end centuries of war by ending Aeslinn, and this boy is our best chance to do that. So, no, he doesn’t die. I will talk to him when he comes around—”
“Talk! That’s great,” Alphonse said.
“—and explain that the girl must live.”
“The Pythia,” Pritkin said sharply. “And explain it to her.”
Suddenly, everybody looked at me as if this was my choice, which I guessed it was as it was my life on the line.
I wondered if there had been a reason that Faerie had shown us what she did from that precise angle. She didn’t need a slave being dragged back to Dolgrveginn to be a late-night snack for a god to make her point. She could have shown us the city’s destruction through a thousand different eyes.
But she chose that one.
Maybe because he had been saved by someone who was supposed to be an enemy, and only by working together had they been able to survive and help the others with them. Subtle, I thought, looking up and meeting her eyes. Like a brickbat.
But effective.
There were just six of us against ridiculous odds. We needed everyone, even an arrogant fey prince with anger management issues. So, I was just going to have to suck it up.
“?subrand lives,” I said shortly. “This time.”