Chapter Fifty-One
I came to a stop. The magic sputtered inside me, as if struggling to surface. I tried the sword. “Dea Nikos.”
Nothing happened.
Artemisia continued stalking toward me. “Did you really think you could stand on the soil of my god and use your goddess’s powers?”
The dirt was everywhere. They had covered the entire valley floor in it. I would never make it back to my horse before she reached me. I would have to fight.
My aspect was there, but barely.
The fortification potion wasn’t working, and the magic started to drain me immediately.
I wasn’t going to last.
I wouldn’t beat her.
I would die on this field.
A hysterical part of my brain reminded me that I was about to break my promise to Xander.
Artemisia slammed her hammer into the ground, and the shock wave of it swept me off my feet.
I lay on my back, trying to catch my breath, but the wind had been knocked out of me. My entire body ached, as if the soil were draining me even more.
She strode toward me with her war hammer.
My fury aspect was quickly fading, and I tried to turn it off but couldn’t catch my breath to say the words. I struggled to keep my eyes open. I was going to pass out.
This was all familiar—I’d had a vision of this moment. Why had I felt like I was fated to go onto this field if this was how it would end? I hadn’t even had my last two trials of the elements.
My heart beat faster the closer Artemisia got to me. I felt the sword of the goddess in my hand but I was too weak to lift it.
“Now you die, Locrian.”
She raised her hammer over her head, intending to slam it into me.
Luna appeared on my chest.
That caused Artemisia to stop, to take a step back. “What is—”
My little aether dragon roared and shot silver flames at my enemy and I felt the intense heat of it.
Her roar set off something with the earth dragons and they all roared in return, making the ground shake violently beneath me.
Then I heard something that sounded like my sisters calling to me, and arrows began to fly overhead, toward my adelphia.
Five lightning bolts landed directly in the Carian camp and I heard the screams from the soldiers.
Suri started tearing the earth apart, creating another hole to eat up the army.
“This ends now,” Artemisia said. She again lifted her hammer to bring it down on me.
But Luna made a circle out of her body on my chest.
Hold on.
It was like a giant hook had been inserted right behind my navel, and I was yanked backward into a black void that suddenly filled with sparkling stars. It felt like I was coming apart and being put back together again, wind rushing around me.
Then I was lying on the ground and looking up at my adelphia.
Luna had brought me here.
“What was that? And did you talk to me?” I asked as she flapped her wings and moved away from me.
I transported you. And yes.
“Lia!”
I sat up and saw that things had gone terribly wrong.
Ahyana was holding on to her ribs, her face racked with pain. Suri was still opening holes for the army to fall into.
And Io was breaking off part of an arrow that protruded from Zalira’s shoulder.
I ran over to help. “What do you need?”
“Brace her other shoulder,” Io directed. “It went straight through at the best possible spot. She won’t have permanent damage, but we have to get it out of her right now.”
The best possible spot? It made me think that Dolion was the one who had shot this arrow. Not only because he was the only one who could have made it over that distance, but because he still cared about Stephanos. Instead of killing Zalira, as he so easily could have, he injured her instead.
With an injury that could be healed and recovered from.
I held on to Zalira. She screamed when Io yanked the arrow out. Io poured a salve onto the hole to cleanse and close it and gave me a potion. “Have her drink this.”
Zalira opened her mouth and I poured the healing potion in. “What happened to Ahyana?”
“The dragons roaring spooked the horses. She went over to stop them from fleeing, and one of them twisted and fell on her. I think she has some broken ribs,” Io said as she wrapped a bandage over Zalira’s shoulder.
I turned to look. “Where are the horses?”
“Gone.”
That was very, very bad. We should have had about a half-hour head start on the army, but without the horses . . .
Suri finally called off her aspect and I went over to check on her. “When things went wrong, you were supposed to go.”
She lay on the ground, panting. “Did you really think that we would leave you?”
Io was talking to Ahyana. “The healing potion doesn’t work on bones. Your lungs aren’t punctured, which is good. But there’s nothing else I can do for you. It will take a few weeks to heal.”
We didn’t have a few weeks. We had to go now.
“Luna! Can you do that transport thing on all of us? Take us back to Troas?”
No. Too many. Too far.
Given the state everyone was in, we wouldn’t get very far just by walking. I closed my eyes. “Dea, I know that I ask for more than my fair share of favors, but I need one now for my sisters. Please help me save them.”
I felt a surge of power, and for a moment, I thought that Luna had moved me again.
But instead I turned to see five white horses trotting over to us. Their manes were silky and silver, glittering under the sun.
“What in the—” Zalira started to say.
“Asteria’s sacred horses,” Io breathed. “The goddess’s daughter has sent us her horses.”
“Everybody mount up,” I said. It was a struggle getting everyone on their horses but we had no other option. We had to move.
Now.
Luna sat with me, and without a word, the horses all darted forward. I reached for the reins, but all they did was help me to hang on. The horses knew where they were going and shrugged off any attempt at direction.
The landscape around us was a blur. The horses ran so quickly it was almost like they were flying instead of running.
And the ride was the smoothest I’d ever felt.
They didn’t have to stop to rest or eat or drink. They ran all through the day, straight for Troas.
It was nearly nightfall when I first spotted the high walls and I wanted to weep. We had made it.
Alive.
“The gates are closed!” Zalira yelled to me.
I heard Io behind me say, “And the horses aren’t stopping!”
They were going to run us straight into a stone wall.
Just as I was about to throw my arms up to brace for impact, the horses leapt over the wall.
As if it were no more than a few inches high.
They ran for the palace, their gait never slowing. They ran through the labyrinth like they had done it a thousand times before.
Instead of taking us to the front of the palace, the horses went around to the back. There was an entrance there that I’d never seen—it was big and led down.
The soldier posted there saw us. “Hurry! We’re about to seal this shut!”
We all climbed down from our horses. I quickly pet mine on the nose and told her, “Thank you.”
The horse neighed in response, and as one, they all turned and ran off. I grabbed Luna, and my adelphia and I made our way into the entrance. The ground beneath our feet slanted down.
“You’re the last ones!” the soldier told me. He had an axe in his hand. “Back up!”
We did as he said, and he cut a rope on one side and then moved across the path. When he hit the second rope, he turned and ran to us.
A moment later a rockslide sealed the entrance. No one would be able to get past that.
“The other citizens are down in the lowest cavern,” he said. “They’re gathered there for safety. You should join them.”
“I know the way,” Io said, taking the front.
Xander was here somewhere. I could feel him. I wondered if he would come looking for me or if I should track him down.
We went down, down, down. It became noticeably cooler and I was grateful that there were torches every few feet, lighting our way.
Io led us to the cavern the guard had mentioned.
It was a massive, massive room filled with a sea of people, too many to count.
Xander had done it. He had gotten everyone down here to safety.
It was mostly women, children, and the elderly.
I supposed all the men of fighting age had been called up to protect the city.
I became aware of the fact that water was pooling beneath my feet. I lifted my sandal as Ahyana asked, “Where is this water coming from?”
Io looked down and went completely pale. “No. This can’t be happening. No.”
She grabbed a torch and darted out of the room. We followed after her and she led us through several different tunnels. I would have gotten lost immediately but Io knew where she was going.
“What’s happening?” I tried to ask her, but she kept running.
We came to a small room with a large hole in the middle. Water was gushing out of it.
“The cavern is under sea level. I told you that it could be quickly flooded to fight off an invading army who used the secret tunnels. Like what happened in the Great War, when the Achaeans used the tunnels to attack from inside the walls.” Io’s voice sounded detached and it was so unlike her that I wasn’t sure how to react.
“This will take a while to flood,” Ahyana pointed out.
“No. This is the first. Within the next fifteen minutes, a hundred more of these will all start pumping water down here. The engineers wanted to make sure that the Ilionian who set off the mechanism would be able to flee before it flooded completely. That’s why there’s a gate.
” Io gestured toward the circular latticed gate that was made to fit the top of the hole, but it looked rusted.
“To shut it, lock it, and make sure the water kept flowing.”
Zalira tugged on Io’s arm to get her attention. “Then we have to get everyone out. You said that there were exits that only the royal family knew about.”
“And those are tied to the entrance we just came in. Because the guard set off that rockslide, it will happen at every other entrance. Another defense. The only way to save people would be to lead them up through the palace itself, but that’s a narrow path, so we’d only be able to get a few. The rest would die.”
“What aren’t you telling us?” Suri asked calmly. “How do we stop this?”
She had correctly sensed that Io was holding something back.
“There is a fail-safe at the bottom of the hole. A metal lever that must be pushed in the opposite direction. It will close a door and stop the water from coming in. But it’s designed so that whoever pulls the lever will die.
There’s no way to make it all the way down there and back up before you run out of oxygen. ”
I looked at my adelphia as they questioned Io, trying to find another solution.
A sense of utter calm, of peace, settled through me. I knew what had to happen.
When I’d first met them, I’d taken a vow to give up my life for theirs. I had thought it strange at the time, but now . . . they meant more to me than I could have adequately expressed.
Quynh and her baby were in that cavern.
Haemon.
Xander.
I loved them all too much to let anything happen to them.
This was what Dea had created me for. I was made for this moment, for this purpose. To save these people and, by extension, my own.
I was Ilion’s savior, no matter how much I had tried to fight it.
And I knew that meant I had to die.