Chapter Twenty
Iraise my voice, but it’s no use. The draugrs are awake and angry, and they’re all heading straight for me.
Kaelen leaps off the wagon and races in my direction, sword in hand, shouting something I’m too paralyzed with fear to understand. Bern is right behind him.
Chitai, on the other side of the cave, whoops a feral battle cry and holds the key up in one clenched hand. “I’ve got your key, monsters! Come and get me!”
First one, then two of the draugrs turn toward her, crashing into each other with unwieldy movements. They trip over their own stone feet, but it doesn’t slow them down much, let alone stop them.
The remaining two, one large and the smaller one, stay focused on me.
I give up on singing and start running, grabbing Kaelen’s hand when he catches up to me.
We swerve toward the left wall at the same time Trick lashes the wagon horses to speed them around the right wall, Sergeant Neville following him with the rest of our horses.
The two draugrs lose a bit of focus, swinging their blocky heads back and forth between me, Bern, and Kaelen on one side and everyone else plus our horses and wagon on the other.
“Keep going,” Kaelen shouts, his face hard. He speeds up and pulls me behind him, sure-footed as ever. He runs like he’s practiced racing around this cave for his entire life, while I stumble over piles of fallen jewels like the clumsy non-athlete I am.
For a moment or two, I think we have a chance, but then, before we can reach the tunnel, the smallest draugr intercepts us. Kaelen draws his sword, and I duck, screaming, when the monster sweeps one thick arm at us.
I’m not fast enough to avoid it.
The huge stone hand smashes me into Kaelen. Both of us fly through the air, and I’m still screaming. I try to twist or somersault, like Chitai did, but physics, or the laws of motion, or my complete lack of desert warrior training defies me.
The prince crashes to the rocky ground, and I fall on top of him, mostly, but my head bangs against a pile of jewels, and I feel a spurt of warmth from my forehead stream down my face.
“I can’t see! I can’t see!”
“Soli! Move!” Kaelen shouts, but I don’t understand where to move, and I can’t see. I try to wipe the blood—it must be blood—out of my eyes with my sleeve and regain my sight just in time to see Bern crash down next to me.
And he’s not moving.
It doesn’t even look like he’s breathing.
“Kaelen!”
But it’s too late. I look up from Bern’s lifeless body just in time to see the draugr pick Kaelen up by one arm and then smash him down, hard.
So hard there’s no way the prince can survive it.
And then Kaelen disappears.
My head is still bleeding profusely. Maybe I hit it so hard I’m hallucinating? There’s no way the draugr smashed Kaelen into the ground so hard he … dissolved, but maybe it’s magic, maybe it’s the unspeakable evil Artemisen warned us about, maybe …
The draugr turns to me.
And he smiles.
He smiles.
I try to stand up, but I’m too dizzy, and my head aches like nothing I’ve ever felt before. When I fall to the ground again, I scrabble backward on hands and knees toward Bern. At least I can protect the soldier, though the draugr keeps coming.
I remember the others and look across the cave to see Neville and Trick fighting one of the creatures, and Chitai fighting another, with Elianna shooting balls of energy at it.
The fourth draugr is down, bleeding, with a sword sticking out of one eye fissure.
“Soli!” Trick yells. “Hang on!”
I want to hang on, I do, but Kaelen disappeared, and Bern is dead, and the draugr is still advancing, still smiling, as he bends down with a horrible grinding-rock noise and grabs my shoulder in one giant hand.
Then he lifts me up over his head, and I just have time to scream before he smashes me to the ground like he did Kaelen.
I close my eyes, because I don’t want to watch my own death.
But then I’m falling. Falling, not being battered against rock or piles of jewels.
Falling into darkness … until something grabs me by the neck and yanks hard, nearly strangling me.
My scream turns to choking. I look up, expecting to find a draugr’s stony arm connected to a hand around my neck, but my peril has nothing to do with the draugr.
My scarlet cloak is caught on a jutting stone sticking out from the side of the pit I now dangle above, and it’s threatening to choke me to death.
“Soli!”
It’s Kaelen’s voice, down beneath me, but I have to untie the strings before I die from lack of air.
I get a hand between the ties and my throat and gasp in a breath, and then I frantically look and find him balancing on a tiny ledge a few paces below me.
The pit seems to be incredibly deep. Worse, I see nothing but total darkness beneath Kaelen.
“Soli! Can you climb back up?”
I try reaching up to grab the stone, but my weight is hanging by my neck, and I’m close to strangling. I don’t even have enough breath left to answer him. My head is still bleeding, and I’m so dizzy, and I hurt everywhere, and … and …
I suddenly realize I may be dying.
“Soli! Take the key!”
I look up, clutching folds of my cloak to relieve the pressure on my neck, to find Trick above me at the edge of the pit. I try to say no, to tell him to stop, but I can’t get a word out.
He tosses the key, and I dazedly watch a flash of gold drop down to me.
And past me.
And below me.
Until it’s gone.
“Soli, I got it,” Kaelen yells, and I want to be glad, but I’m still choking and bleeding and hurting, my interest in keys and even goddesses waning by the second.
“I’m on my way down! Hold on!” But before he can climb into the pit, Trick whips his head to the side, probably because of the draugrs. A lovely rose-colored haze fills my mind, and I smile.
This is so much better. So much better to die with this lovely rose fog instead of the bleak gray that ruined my life. A dim part of my mind recognizes the warning signs of anoxia, but I don’t really mind. Better this than being eaten by a draugr.
“Trick! Now!” Kaelen shouts. “Jump down and rescue her now, or she’ll die.”
Trick swings one leg into the pit, but then he flies up and away, his eyes wide with horror. He’s shouting at me, but I can’t make out anything but my name.
And then he disappears.
I try to say goodbye, but I can’t speak, so I close my eyes and wait to die.
At least I was free for a day.
Part of a day.
Whatever. I’m claiming the day.
“Lady Soli!” The shouting tickles something in my mind, and I blink my eyes open to see Bern crouching on the rock ledge above me, his head bloody and one arm hanging at a bad angle. “Hang on! I’ve got you!”
But no. He can’t. The draugrs! They got Trick. They’ll get him, too.
I need to sing again. Or tell Bern to be careful.
I can’t sing, though, because I’m choking. Stop, I try to say, but then someone yells—the monster, or Bern, or Kaelen, I don’t know who—and the lovely pink fog sweeps up and through and over me, and I fall into it, so far down into it.
My vision tunnels, but then I’m falling for real.
Seconds later, icy water closes over my head, shocking me awake.
I splutter and thrash around, arms and legs flailing, until I break the surface and can inhale gulp after gulp of beautiful, wonderful air.
I can almost feel my lungs expand in my chest, but then I start coughing and can’t stop, still floundering, trying to stay afloat.
It takes a moment to realize I’m alive, since I was so resigned to dying.
The rosy haze is gone from my mind, but crisp clarity eludes me.
I must have been very close to strangling to death.
Okay. Take stock, Soli.
The water is moving, so it’s not a pond or well. Not only that, but it’s moving fast, so I must be in an underground river beneath the Barrows.
A cough behind me snaps me out of my mental inventory, and I splash and thrash until I can turn around enough to see Bern, also flailing, sinking, and fighting his way back to the surface.
“Soli.” He spits out my name with a mouthful of water. “I can’t swim!”
“Me, neither,” I tell him. “It’s not something you can learn from a book, I guess.”
Suddenly, a draugr swims up behind me and wraps me into his icy embrace with one arm … cloaked in embroidered fabric.
Not a draugr.
“Kaelen!”
“Shh, stop fighting me,” he rasps, in between coughs. “There’s a bit of a ledge. If I can steer you over there, you can hold on and rest for a minute while I get Bern.”
Bern goes under again, but one hand shoots up to tell us where he is.
Kaelen quickly swims with me over to the side of what seems to be another tunnel, this one filled with rushing water, and helps me perch on a ledge.
When he dives beneath the water to find Bern, I cling to the ledge with both hands, holding my breath until I see the two of them surface.
Bern is coughing, spitting water, and trying to breathe all at the same time.
Kaelen tows him over to where I sit and pushes him up next to me on the small ledge.
Then the prince raises himself out of the water with his powerful arms and swings around to sit on my other side.
“This is not how I wanted to spend my first day of freedom,” I rasp, coughing between every word.
Kaelen snorts. “You have a talent for understatement.”
Bern slumps over and rests his head on my shoulder, mumbling apologies. “S-Sorry, Lady Soli. Can’t quite catch my breath.”
When he lifts his head, I see fresh blood spreading on his shirt. Luckily, it’s not a huge amount, since I’m in no position to do anything for him.
“You never have to apologize to me,” I tell him sincerely. “You saved my life.”
“Lost your cloak, though,” he says blearily. “Had to cut the ties to free you.”
“It was too fancy for me, anyway.” I put a hand on his arm for support and to maybe catch him if he falls forward. Which is when I realize I can see my hand and his arm and face.