Chapter 34
The rain stopped and dawn crept over the lava-rock terrain as Syla navigated higher on the slope of the volcano, the pack she’d dragged all over the island heavy on her shoulders.
There wasn’t a trail, and she kept stubbing her toes and banging her knees.
Though Lesva’s magical torment hadn’t been as debilitating as physical torture would have been, she could feel the aftereffects bogging down her movements.
Making her slower and wearier than she wanted.
Aware of the minutes passing—the candles burning ever lower as Vorik slept—she sighed in vast relief when she spotted the cave she’d visited years before, the one that led to the shielder.
She hurried toward it, hoping Fel and Tibby were safe within and had gained access to the artifact chamber.
But she couldn’t help but worry that they were dead, that Vorik might have found them before he’d come to her.
It hadn’t sounded like he’d yet located the shielder, so she hoped that wasn’t the case.
But everything might have been a lie. The artifact might already have been destroyed.
No. Syla glanced upward. Though she couldn’t sense the magic of the barrier unless she was right next to it, the lack of dragons in the sky suggested that it remained up.
She scrambled through the tunnel, down an old rockslide, and into a lava tube. At the end, a door within a stone wall was swung inward, and silver light flowed out. She sensed magic in that direction as well, mingling with the illumination.
That had to be from the shielder, its protective door opened by Tibby’s moon-mark.
Syla ran, needing to verify that she was correct and that her allies were both alive.
When she peeked through the wide doorway, the glowing orb and the intricate mounting surrounding it were the first things she saw.
Then she noticed her aunt among a scattering of old parchment scrolls—where had those come from?
Tibby was using a wrench-like tool to unfasten the orb from the mounting system while Fel stood guard behind her.
He spun toward the doorway and lifted his mace but lowered it again.
“Your Highness!” Such an expression of genuine delight came across his face that it warmed Syla’s heart.
“Sergeant Fel.” She smiled, relieved to see them alive and well. “Aunt Tibby. I’m glad you’re both all right. I worried… Well, that Captain Lesva captured me, and I’ve been worried she, uhm, they might have gotten to you before finding me.”
“The horrible woman who tried to kill us with her dragon?” Tibby asked.
“Her dragon, her troops’ dragons, her sword… All in all, she’s had it out for me.”
“I dare say so. You… escaped?” Tibby knelt back and looked her up and down.
“I…” Syla thought about mentioning how she’d learned to use her power for something besides healing, but being able to threaten to stop a man’s heart was nothing to be proud of.
Besides, there wasn’t time to explain everything.
In the end, her power hadn’t been what stopped Lesva anyway.
“Vorik found me and knocked her off a cliff.”
Technically, lightning had destroyed that section of the cliff, but he’d been the one to drive Lesva back to the edge.
Fel groaned instead of cheering and looked toward the lava tube. “Is he with you?”
He hefted his mace again and bared his teeth.
“No. I left him unconscious in a cave near that cliff, breathing in the vapors of two Candles of Serenity.”
Tibby’s forehead furrowed, but during the various surgeries Fel had endured over the years, he must have learned about the candles because he looked enlightened rather than puzzled.
“Good idea,” he said. “Smart of you to bring some from the temple.”
“Thank you.” Syla hoped he wouldn’t think to ask how she’d managed to convince Vorik to loiter in the back of a cave long enough for the vapors to affect him.
“But why is that rider unconscious? Why didn’t you cut his throat while he was out?” Fel made a slashing motion across his own throat.
“I didn’t have a knife.”
True, but they both knew she wouldn’t have done it anyway.
Fel looked at her in exasperation.
“You could have rolled his body off the cliff.” Tibby knelt forward, returning to her task.
“He’s heavy, and I’m not that strong.”
She scowled. “I would have found a way.”
“That’s because you’re a clever engineer and know how to build a travois out of kelp and driftwood.”
Tibby lifted her chin. “Yes. And we may need another travois to haul this across the rocks and to the cove.” She glanced at Fel. “You said it’s a couple of miles from here?”
“The spot where I fired the flare? Yes. There’s a cliff there, too, but in that spot, it’s only twenty or thirty feet down to the water. Assuming your friend is watching and shows up with a ship, we ought to be able to lower the shielder down to it.”
“Do you need help? We’ll have to do that all quickly.
” Syla waved to the great artifact, wondering if the three of them together would be able to lift it out of the cave and carry it two miles.
Her aunt might need to build more than a travois.
“We’ll only have a few hours before the candles burn out, and Vorik wakes up.
And… I think he knows where this place is. ”
“I thought I sensed someone watching us last night.” Fel shook his head.
“Whether he knows where we are or not, he can hunt us down,” Tibby said. “He’ll especially be able to hunt us down once the barrier drops, and his dragon can help him.”
“Yes.” Syla shrugged.
She’d known she was only buying them a few hours. Hopefully, it would be enough. It had to be enough. The idea of doing all this and losing the shielder in the end and leaving both islands unprotected… It would be as bad a betrayal as the one her sister had inadvertently made.
“I don’t suppose you would like to tell me where Vorik is.” Fel drew a dagger sheathed on his belt and held it up, turning the blade as if Syla had wanted to examine it. “I keep my weapons very keen. He wouldn’t feel a thing.”
“No.”
“It’s for the good of the kingdom.”
“No.” Syla waved at the shielder again. “We’ll just have to do this quickly.”
“Your niece is stubborn,” Fel told Tibby.
“That runs in the family, yes.” Tibby pushed one of the scrolls toward Syla.
“Here. The schematics I was hoping to find were here. As well as magical tools. There must have been a kit left with every shielder, but some ancestor of ours probably moved them into a special spot in the castle and forgot about them. Look at the schematics, and grab a tool from that kit over there. The shielder wouldn’t let Fel touch it while its activated, but you should be able to help.
Apparently, the artifacts trust that we—” Tibby waved her moon-marked hand, “—aren’t a threat and will do the right thing. ”
The significant look that Tibby gave to Syla suggested that she was less certain they were doing the right thing.
Unfortunately, Syla wasn’t certain either, but she knelt to help. They didn’t have much time.
The great and powerful, created-by-the-gods-themselves orb that was the shielder… rolled.
Syla almost laughed as, after having heaved and levered the artifact out of the lava tube and the cave above, they were able to push the heavy sphere across the ground.
At first, she worried about scratches or even breaking it, but Tibby, who was alternating pushing and waving her newly-discovered scrolls and tools, assured her that it was very sturdy.
Had the rider who’d infiltrated the chamber under the castle not had a magical gargoyle-bone blade, he likely wouldn’t have been able to cut into the shielder there and destroy its parts.
Despite its rollability, the orb still weighed more than two hundred pounds, and there was nothing like a road or even a path on this side of the volcano.
Pushing it along wasn’t easy, but it was doable.
If slow. Syla couldn’t help but glance at the sun creeping higher in the sky as they navigated toward a cove Fel had visited earlier.
“Maybe you should run ahead and see if a ship has arrived,” Syla suggested to him, feeling the weight of time.
Any minute, those candles would burn out, and Vorik would wake soon after.
Few trees grew out of the rocky landscape, so there was little to no cover.
A man might have found a spot to crouch down and hide, but the orb was taller than any of them, and, even though its silver glow had ceased when they’d removed it from the mountain, it gleamed, its sides iridescent and strikingly beautiful in the morning sun.
“Are you two going to push this thing without me?” Fel grunted, straining to shove the orb past a rock, bags under his eyes promising he needed sleep. They all did. “She can’t even push for more than a minute without stopping to push her spectacles up or look at a scroll.”
“I’m not stopping that often,” Tibby said with a shove of her own, “and it’s not my fault that my nose is sweating, which causes my spectacles to slip. I lost my strap for keeping them in place.”
“And the scrolls?” Fel asked.
The orb scraped past the rock and rolled more freely for a few steps.
“They contain information and the schematics for the shielders, for devices made by the gods.” Tibby touched one of the scrolls tucked into a rope she’d tied around her waist like a belt.
Her trousers had been torn at some point and were half falling off.
Everyone in their little group was bedraggled and in need of sartorial care as well as medical treatment.
“While we do all this shoving, I’m thinking, wondering if the schematics might be used to repair the shielder in the capital.
With this one to look at, as well, maybe it’ll be possible, and we can return protection to both islands. ”
Fel’s grunt suggested he didn’t accept that as a suitable excuse for not pushing.