Chapter 21
Amelia
They dressed quickly and followed Ruven towards the city walls.
Ruven flashed a grin at Amelia as she fastened her shirt buttons. “Did you get any rest?”
She laughed, and Casyl frowned at them both.
The Leshies were in the distance. Four of them now waited outside the city.
“What are they waiting for?” she asked.
“They’ve followed us here, but why?” Ruven said.
Elthar joined them on the city wall, looking out at the creatures. “What are we going to do about them?”
“I don’t know, but we need to do something before more of them arrive.”
They left the walls and went back into the palace to meet with the generals and devise a plan.
Eleandor joined them as an adviser. As the most knowledgeable of the fae, he had earned the title of Wise One.
“If we can’t kill them, then we need to trap them,” Eleandor said.
The shrieks of the creatures haunted them from a distance.
Amelia pulled Casyl into another room.
“Where are the human prisoners?” she asked him. “We need to release them.”
“I can’t, Amelia. The men would see it as a sign of weakness.”
She looked at him in disbelief. He was infuriating. “I thought you were different from your father.”
He started as if she’d slapped him.
“I am! But I still need to command an army. If we release them, they could try to attack us and get themselves killed. And what about them, the creatures? They are safe where they are for now. No more prisoners will be harmed. I give you my word.”
“I need to see them,” she said. “I need to find out if Emin or any of the guild are alive.”
She could see his resolve weakening. “Please.”
“Take Ruven with you and don’t try to release them, Amelia. It wouldn’t end well for them.”
The remaining human prisoners had been moved into the city’s cells. Out of the entire city, there were only a pitiful few of them left. She hoped that many more had escaped the attack on the city and had taken refuge in the surrounding cities.
“I’ve made sure that they’ve received food and water,” Ruven said. It was the only comfort he could offer.
She walked down the corridor of the cells and peered through each door, looking for anyone she might recognise. The smell of human suffering was overwhelming. Most of them sat there quietly, weeping, covered in dirt and blood. Some had suffered burns from the fire, and their clothes were singed.
She came to the last cell and peered in. Emin lay curled in a foetal position amongst the other prisoners. She gasped, worried he was dead, but then saw the rise and fall of his chest.
“Emin!” she whispered through the barred window.
He looked up, his eyes widening until she could see the whites around them.
“Amelia!” He scrambled up and came over to the door. “You’re okay?” he asked.
“Yes, but what about you?”
“There are those worse off than me. Some of them are sick from the conditions we’ve been kept in. At least we’ve been given some food and water now.”
“I’m going to get you out of here,” she cried.
She marched back up to the palace. Ruven struggled to keep up as he escorted her.
Raised voices sounded from the council room as she entered.
“We need to release the prisoners. They are dying in those cells.”
Casyl looked up at her. He’d be angry at her interruption, but she didn’t care anymore. They owed her this.
“Perhaps after we’ve dealt with those creatures,” Tharos said.
She turned to him. “I have an idea. But in return, I want those prisoners freed and sent away, far away from here.”
“What’s your idea?” Casyl quietly asked.
They all turned to her. She was surprised that they’d listen, thinking they’d dismiss her instantly.
“First, I’m going to need Emin.”
He nodded.
Her tears fell when Emin was released and brought to her.
After he’d cleaned up and had some decent food, she took him onto the city walls to meet with Casyl and his generals.
“This is Emin,” she said, introducing him to Casyl and the others. “He was my superior in the archaeology guild.”
He gaped at them, forgetting himself, and then bowed his head slightly.
She reminded herself that he didn’t know these fae. He didn’t trust them, and why would he? He’d just witnessed an army of them destroy his whole world and was now at their mercy, and that was the only thing keeping him in line.
“There’s a more terrifying enemy out there,” she told him and brought him to the city wall to look out upon the creatures that stalked the city walls.
His eyes widened, and his mouth opened without producing a sound.
“What are they?” he stammered.
“They are what is stopping this army from leaving,” Casyl interjected. “They are from our land and they cannot be killed, so we need to trap them or contain them. Amelia said she had a plan but needed you.” Casyl looked at her expectantly.
“Look, Emin, do you see where they are?” She pointed. “The catacombs spread for miles beneath the city. You know those catacombs better than anyone. If we go down there with enough chrysonium bombs, will they collapse the tunnels and the ground above them?” she asked him.
Her idea was a little on the imaginative side, but she was desperate, and so were they. Maybe desperate enough to try.
She caught Casyl looking at her in bemused wonder.
Emin stayed quiet, considering.
“Could it work?” she asked.
“I don’t see why not. We’d have to find out the exact area beneath them. I need access to the maps,” Emin said.
“And the explosives?” Casyl asked.
“I don’t know where they are kept. I didn’t even know that they’d perfected them,” she said.
They’d been working on creating weapons with chrysonium for a long time, but she wasn’t privy to that type of information.
“I know where they’re kept,” Emin said. “The guilds have been helping the palace develop them, but there aren’t many.”
Emin led them to a building near the palace on the royal grounds. It looked like a normal building. Amelia had walked past it most days without noticing. They went inside and Emin gestured to a door. “I don’t have the key.”
“No problem.” Ruven kicked it in. The door splintered, revealing a stairwell as fragments of wood clattered down the steps.
At the bottom was a room packed with weapons, including the explosives. A blue glow emanated from the bombs as they came closer. A pain formed behind Amelia’s eyes.
“How many do you think we’ll need?” she asked.
“Well, we only dropped two of them on that army,” he mumbled, avoiding eye contact with the fae. “I think two would do it, perhaps three. Each one is highly unstable. You need to carry it carefully, or you risk detonating one prematurely.”
They would need a team to go down there with her to plant the bombs, and they’d have to run fast before they went off and all the tunnels collapsed.
“Can you show me where we need to put them in the catacombs?” she asked.
“Absolutely not,” he said. “You are not going anywhere near it, and don’t argue!
” he added as she began to speak. “That is my condition. I will show them where to put the bombs, and you will stay above ground. Safe. That, and the other prisoners are released.” He looked at Casyl, who nodded his assent.
“You show them where to put them and then you return right away.” She smiled at Emin, tears welling in her eyes.
A team was assembled from fae volunteers. The bombs would not kill them if they exploded, but the collapse could bury them alive, which seemed a worse fate.
Amelia walked with them to the entrance of the catacombs, a shaft in the ground near the palace temple.
The tradition of burying the city’s dead there dated back hundreds of years.
She remembered the first time her father had taken her down into the catacombs as a child, how the flames from his torch had sent shadows crawling across the bones.
She hadn’t slept properly for weeks after.
“Be safe.” She hugged him.
She watched as they climbed into the shaft and the bombs were passed to them carefully.
“Do you think this will work?” she asked Casyl.
“It was your idea,” he said. “You’d know best. It was better than any of ours, anyway.”
They climbed back up to the city walls to wait anxiously for the explosions. It would take them a while to get to the right place.
The creatures paced across the bare earth outside the walls. She hoped they were far enough away to avoid the walls being damaged by the explosion. If this didn’t work, it would be her fault.
“Where are they?” she asked. “Why haven’t they come back yet?”
Casyl leaned over the wall, watching the creatures. His knuckles whitened where he gripped the stone.
Amelia joined him, placing her hand beside his.
She frowned as small blue flecks glimmered in the stone beneath his grasp.
A tremor travelled through the wall.
The creatures began to move.
They were moving away from the city. If the explosion didn’t go off soon, they wouldn’t get a second chance, as the catacombs would most likely collapse, blocking the tunnels. They needed to lure the creatures back. The others looked at each other, thinking the same thing.
“Damn it!” she shouted. “What are we going to do?”
One of the generals she didn’t recognise descended from the city walls and ran through the gates.
He carried a large bow as he ran towards the creatures, shouting a battle cry.
He stopped close to where they had been and waited as they turned and rushed towards him, running on their gangly limbs, snarling through their exposed teeth.
The general looked back at the wall, and the fae watching from above nodded in recognition of his sacrifice.
He turned, nocked his arrow and fired at the beasts. As the creatures closed in, the bombs detonated, tearing open the ground, shaking the city walls and buildings, throwing Amelia and the others from their feet.
She scrambled up, coughing at the dust, her ears ringing. She could see Casyl mouthing something at her, but she couldn’t hear what he was saying.
They looked over the wall as the dust cleared, revealing a gaping hole where the beasts had been. The ground had swallowed them whole.
She glanced around, expecting to see Emin and the men, but they hadn’t returned.
“Emin!” she yelled and ran over to the catacombs entrance to see dust rising from it. She searched through the dust for Emin’s familiar shape, but no one emerged. It had collapsed, sealing the entrance.
She threw herself at the collapsed entrance, pulling at the rubble with her bare hands.
“Emin!” she cried.
Strong hands pulled her away.
“No.” She shook her head. He couldn’t be gone.
Amelia sank to the ground and sobbed.
Emin had always been there for her, championing her after her own father’s death.
He’d done it for her because she’d asked. Guilt pressed down on her like layers of the earth.
Casyl put his arms around her, and she let him.
“Free the prisoners,” she told him. Then she pulled away, rose and walked back towards the palace.