Chapter 22
VOICES WHISPERED through the shadows around her—hundreds, thousands. The words were indistinguishable, bleeding into each other, rising and falling like waves. All around, nothing but darkness.
And then they arrived on the island.
Kaelan sagged. She held onto his arm, easing him down into the tall, rustling grasses.
She knelt before him. “Are you all right?”
His head hung between his knees. “Yes. I’m just . . . I haven’t done this very often.” He fell back, forcing the stiff grasses to bend and break under him.
She gave a quick look around, rising to peer above the grasses. Rolling hills sprawled in all directions. No light or smoke, or any other signs of life.
“Okay,” she said. “Rest here. I’m going to take a look around.”
His eyes opened, but he didn’t lift his head. “Alone?”
She touched Hero’s head, where he nestled against her neck. “I’m never alone.”
“He’s a rat.”
“A highly intelligent rat.”
“Thank you.”
“It’s true,” she said. “Enough talking. If there’s anyone else around, we don’t want to draw their attention.”
“Anyone like us?” a new voice quipped.
She snapped her knives out and spun to greet whoever had spoken. But there was no one. The night was calm, nothing moved.
The grasses murmured and protested as Kaelan pushed up to his feet.
She was just about to ask Kaelan if he’d heard what she’d heard when another voice, this one gruff and low, said, “Twitchy, isn’t she?”
The first voice, higher and nasal, said, “A criminal, no doubt.”
A third gravel-filled voice asked, “Those knives certainly look stolen to me.”
“Who are you?” she demanded. “Where are you?”
“Down! They’re down!”
But Hero’s warning came too late. He leapt from her shoulder. The ground undulated as if filling up with water from below or . . . collapsing.
She grabbed Kaelan’s tunic to throw him clear, but not fast enough. Under them, the land gave way.
They plunged.
The fall lasted less than a second, a couple of blinks, but the impact knocked the wind out of her. She choked on loose dirt. Grasses had fallen on top of her too, slicing and clawing at her with their sharp edges.
In the next moment, she was trampled upon by crushing feet, as though she were caught in a rhinoceros stampede.
They pinned her, preventing her from moving and breathing, while they tied and trussed her up like a lamb set for Python’s chopping block.
Grasses and dirt still lay over her face, preventing her from seeing anything.
Fortunately, she had just enough time to thrust her fingers into her shadow’s vault and release her knives.
An oily tasting rag was stuffed into her mouth.
She was flipped over onto her stomach and slammed down again.
Tears stung her eyes as her hands were roughly bound.
“You didn’t get the knives?” the nasal voice cried.
“Why didn’t you get them?” the gravelly voice demanded.
“I was tying up this one.” A hard thumping sound was followed by a muffled cry.
Magda lifted her head as much as she could, considering a boot was planted between her shoulder blades.
Kaelan was on his side, bound and gagged too, limp. Though they weren’t touching and true telepathy wasn’t possible between a Rae and a Prince until after they claimed each other, she could see his thoughts quite clearly in his reddened and watery eyes.
Now what?
A hand like an anvil barreled into her head, smashing it against the rough dirt tunnel they’d been dropped into.
The lowest voice said, “Don’t matter. She’ll hand them over . . . eventually.”
The hand came away, and she was flipped over again quickly, like she was no heavier than a wooden spoon. Fairies, the size of her pinky finger, darted around, casting their ghostly luminescence through the tunnel. Three squat men with long beards and faces like wet paper sacks glowered down at her.
“Elves have to learn,” the one with the lowest voice said. His beard was the rusty hue of dried blood. “This land belongs to the dwarfs.”
Though no taller than three feet, the gruff one lifted her up and threw her over his broad shoulder with apparent ease. He had a hard, yet damp scent, like the bug-covered underside of a stone.
He may have been inordinately strong, but due to his height, her forehead struck the floor every time he shifted her weight or took a step down, which seemed to be often.
They moved from the tunnel where she and Kaelan had been captured to another and another, each seeming to take them farther down.
Bringing up the rear was the one with the nasal voice.
He had piercing blue eyes and his pocked nose looked like a dried-up sponge glued into his fuzzy black moustache.
As she attempted to keep her head clear of the ground, she glimpsed Sponge-Nose building a stone wall over the tunnel behind them.
His thick hands moved in a blurred flurry.
Seconds later, the entrance was filled. After giving it a pat, he caught up with them easily.
As often as she avoided smacking her head, she failed. Soon, she hung as limp as a sack of sand, gazing dully at her blood. Red drips first trailed onto dirt floors and then rough stone pavers, then onto smoother ones, and at last puddled upon dark, polished marble.
At the same time, the bobbing pale glows of fairies increased. Eventually, this was joined by the wavering flamelight of torches, which then transformed into the glinting sheen and rainbow flashes of fire burning behind cut crystal.
It grew quieter as they traveled downwards. Deafening clangs and the stomps of hundreds of boots gave way to the shuffle of softer soled feet and hushed whispers, to near silence when she and Kaelan were finally and unceremoniously dumped onto their butts.
Her head pounded. Her vision blurred. Blood ran along the bridge of her nose, skating hot and salty over her lips. But at least she was sitting up. Kaelan rolled onto his side next to her, his eyes fluttering. He, too, had a bloody wound on his forehead.
Before them rose a dais, upon which loomed a geometrically embellished throne carved from the same greenish-blue stone that made up the grand hall around them.
On that throne sat a wizened and imposing dwarf with a star-white, blue-streaked beard.
His deep brown eyes were half lost under his bushy eyebrows.
A golden, gem-encrusted diadem crowned his white mane with its blue braids.
His clothes were no different than the those of the dwarfs who had brought her or those who gathered in the periphery of her vision—lamellar-studded leather tunic, scuffed but sturdy-looking boots.
Dwarfs and fairies weren’t the only ones gathered there. Between the towering columns clustered sharp-eyed brownies, bobbing bald imps, long-nosed warty goblins, even a hulking, yellow-eyed troll.
The dwarf on the throne, Lord Froenz, she supposed, wrapped his thick fingers around the arms of his chair and leaned forward.
“Guilty!” His voice boomed like a man ten times his size. “To the death!”
She tried to speak, but the oily rag, now damp with her spit, only seemed to work itself deeper into her mouth from the effort.
“Wait, my lord,” another voice said.
From the crowd, a limping man in loose linen clothes emerged.
She tensed, going for her knives, but the ropes lashed her hands palm to palm, preventing her from reaching into her shadow’s vault. The only daggers she could throw at Python were from her eyes.
Kaelan remained slumped on the ground beside her, insensate.
“Oracle, step forward.” Lord Froenz waved him towards the throne.
Python offered Magda a snake smile as he approached the dwarf lord, giving Froenz a low bow.
Froenz pinned Python with an obdurate look. “You wish to speak in defense of the convicted?”
Python’s hands flew up. “No, my lord. They are guilty of being Elves.”
A strangled protest came out of her throat, but was ignored.
Froenz continued to watch Python fixedly, waiting.
“But I thought it might behoove you to know that I believe these two may be of some import and may be worth saving . . . for a time.”
The dwarf lord leaned back, running his hand over his beard.
“Before I was driven out of my home by that bastard Elf King all those years ago, may he and all his heart-places rot in the bellies of the Forgotten Caves . . .”
A murmur of agreement rippled through the hall.
When it quieted, Python resumed his speech, holding his audience rapt.
“I foretold the coming of a Prince, who would bring about the war against the Dokkálfar that we have long waited for. The one who would see the Throne bow.”
A raucous cheer greeted this. Even Froenz’s eyes took on a happy twinkle. At that moment, something warm and soft brushed up against her hand and along her back.
Hero.
Everyone was too busy pumping their fists, cheering the mention of war. No one seemed to notice the rat burrowing between her back and hands.
Delirious at his appearance, she imparted an image of the pile of bread to him.
“Oh sure,” he said, as he began chewing into the ropes binding her hands. “Still waiting for the first one.”
She wanted to smile and cry at the same time. Even if she managed to free herself, she didn’t know what good it would do her in a hall filled with hundreds of Elf-haters.
Though she probably could’ve spoken telepathically to Hero, she found it easier to impart another image.
Finally, the crowd settled down enough that Python could be heard again.
“As you know,” Python went on, “I made the mistake of telling the King of my vision. I thought soon I would die. I did not realize that the great and strong Lord Batri, 614th ruler of the Petra Islands, would come to my aid.”
More cheers.
Hero slunk along her hip and thigh. She bent her knees up to allow him under.
“When I made this prophecy, the Elf King tortured me with basilisk venom, dripping it upon my legs so it ate holes straight through my flesh and my bones. Under this agony, I was compelled to reveal to him everything that I had seen. Most importantly, that this Prince, who would see the advent of this great war, would be of his own blood. A second born twin.”
The hall was silent. Python held them spellbound. Even Magda hung on his words.
Suddenly, Python swept his arm towards her. She lowered her legs.
“Careful!” Hero cried as he was pinned under her calves.
“Later, I had another vision. One of a King to come, whose wife would bear these ill-fated twins, and then the death of that second son by his father’s own hand. And I despaired. For it seemed the time of war would not come, and that we would fail in our noble quest against the Dokkálfar.”
The mood in the hall darkened. Even the lights seemed to dim.
“But then I met this Rae, this Ljósálfr, exiled by her own kind, and I received yet another vision. I saw her in the Shadow Realms. She reached into the tempest of darkness and withdrew two swords. One was red with blood, and upon its blade was the King’s diadem.
And that was when I knew the twins had been born, but that the father had failed.
The second son had escaped and survived.
I knew this Rae would find him and bring him forward. ”
Every eye turned towards her. The weight of their attention fell as heavy as dwarf boots on her.
A second son of the king? One she would bring forward? But that didn’t mean . . .
She glanced over at Kaelan, still unconscious on the floor. When she looked at him, everyone else did too.
Her eyes snapped back to Python. The soft gnawing and groan of rope filled her ears, but if anyone else heard it, they didn’t appear to realize what it meant.
“And so she has,” Python said, his slick eyes sliding over to her before he turned back to face Froenz, who had pressed himself far back in his throne, his eyes wide and yet distant—as if he was both eminently aware and deeply thinking.
“I know that our cause has always been against the Elves, of all names,”—Python threw this comment back over his shoulder at Magda—“but I implore you to consider that this Rae and this Prince might be our only hope of seeing an end to the reign of the Elf King once and for all.”
“Well, now,” a voice said from the back the hall, smooth and deep and haunting, “isn’t that interesting?”
Magda twisted, accidentally snapping the ropes that Hero had loosened. With all eyes on the back of the hall, she was able to shake them free and surge up to her feet without challenge. Hero darted over to Kaelan, perching on his arm protectively.
“Seize her!” Froenz bellowed.
She retrieved her knives and unleashed them, backing up until her heel bumped Kaelan.
The crowds remained frozen despite the King’s command.
The deep pockets of shadows filling the grand hall swept out from between the columns, like the blacks hands of an ogre, crashing together in front of the massive entrance doors.
The shadows parted, unfurling across the floor and up towards the ceiling in billows. As they cleared, they revealed a lone figure in black armor.
Endreas.