Chapter 24.5 The Rescue
Dammit. That is not part of the plan. They are all supposed to leave.
What do we do? We don't have long, probably, before the other guards come back. Though whatever Raku and Jeksu and the rest of Araine's people have done seems to have caused quite the commotion.
But we are not supposed to let ourselves be seen by anyone.
What do I do? Should I leap out now while there's only one guard, find a way to disable them? The need to hurry is a desperate song in my blood.
I am just about to move when hurried footsteps come running up the hall, in this direction. The deep male voice of the guard speaks. "Who the blazes—"
Thunk. Thud.
The guard's voice cuts off, and something strikes the ground heavily.
Our closet door is wrenched open, and a figure in a black cloth mask is before us. My heart lurches.
The figure pulls their hood off, and it's Araine.
Wide eyed and hushed, she orders, "Move your asses.
" We do, and as she hurries across the hall to the barred cell door, I stare down at the form of the burly guard who seems to have been hit in the head with a wooden cudgel, which now lies discarded on the ground beside him.
"I had to improvise," Araine whispers, sliding the bar away from the door.
"When I saw only two of the guards come down.
.." She presses her hands flat to the cell door, and heaves.
"Thank you," I manage. And then the cell door scrapes open, and I practically shove her out of the way to get inside first, forgetting her entirely.
Inside, the cell is not entirely dark. There is a weak grayish light filtering down from a circular skylight carved into the ceiling overhead.
Way, way, overhead. Because the cell is enormous.
Dark stone walls curve in rough, natural formations around the space, with a wide, flat area in the middle, large enough for three full grown dragons to stand end to end.
The walls of the cell are dotted with shiny bits of metal embedded in the stone, which in the daylight probably fills the space with brightness reflected from the skylight overhead.
Leading down into the cell from the doorway is a jagged ramp of stone, curving around the wall to the left before coming out on the ground floor of the cell. And in the center of that floor are two figures.
One lies on his back, slumped and unconscious, smelling of manticore and blood and friend. The other figure hovers over the prone form of the first, wiping at his bloodied face with the material of her skirts, pink hair falling in matted tangles around her arms and torso.
Cherry. Vakhrin.
My feet feel frozen to the floor. As the door scrapes open the rest of the way behind me, Cherry tenses. Twisting around, she squints up into the deep darkness surrounding us by the door. She seems half afraid and half hopeful as she whispers, "Hamish? Is that you? Vakh needs—"
I take a step, forced further down the ramp as Araine and Marton file into the room behind me. As I do, a shaft of light from one of the reflecting bits of metal falls across my face.
And Cherry freezes, her eyes going wide as moons. She opens and closes her mouth, no sound coming out. And then it breaks from her on a sob, "Terror?"
That old nickname. Ridiculous and always a little shameful to me. Now it makes my heart soar. It unlocks my rigid muscles.
"Cherry." I fling myself over the edge of the ramp, opting for the ten foot drop rather than a moment of delay.
I'm running as soon as my feet meet the stone, and Cherry half stands a second before I reach her.
We crash into each other. My arms band around her, lifting her up despite the fact that she is a full head taller than me.
She feels even thinner than she was before, and she sobs as her body bows against me, her face buried in my neck.
"Tarah, Tarah, Tarah. You're here. You're really here. I knew you'd come. I knew you would. I told Vakh," a tearful, wet hiccup, "told Vakh—told him that you wouldn't forget about me. That you wouldn't leave anyone behind."
"I wouldn't," I promise against her hair, voice coming out a hoarse whisper. "I wouldn't leave anyone behind. But especially not you."
"Oh, Tarah, it's so bad." She pulls away from me quicker than I am expecting, her sobs swallowed up by anxiety.
Her hands fret at the ends of her hair, her cheeks still wet as she paces on bare feet over to where Vakhrin lays.
His face is beaten to a pulp, his eyes swollen shut, nose broken.
I can't tell what other injuries he may have beneath the rumpled robes he has been dressed in.
Vakh. My heart breaks anew, and it feels like it's located in my throat.
Behind us, scuffling footsteps sound, and Cherry jerks back, tensing. Marton steps into the weak light in the center of the room. The picture is of a dark, shadowy, greenish figure with broad shoulders and long black hair. Dragon, the picture says.
"It's me." Marton puts his hands up quickly, seeing Cherry's reaction, and the voice that comes out of him is the same sweet, educated voice that Cherry must remember from the weeks we travelled with him. She relaxes, squinting at his disguised form in dismay.
"You look—"
"No time for chatting," Araine interrupts, striding into the middle of our party.
Cherry relaxes further. "Araine," she says, in a tone of relief. "You're helping them."
"I am."
I don't have time to dissect their conversation. To get my head around the fact that the two of them seem well acquainted, and that Cherry is relieved to see Araine.
"We need to hurry," Araine urges us. "Get your friend." She indicates Vakhrin. "And get out of here."
"We can't move him—" Cherry worries.
Ignoring this, I bend down, hands going to Vakh's upper arm and waist. Silently apologizing to him for any internal injuries I am about to upset, I grab the manticore and heave him like a sack of potatoes over one shoulder.
I oomph at his weight, and wobble at his unwieldy size, but it's nothing I can't manage.
A groan and several swear words slip out of Vakhrin as I stand up, but he doesn't move.
"Vakh," Cherry flutters by his head behind my shoulder, her voice soothing and kind. "Vakh, it's Tarah and Marton. They're here. They've come to get us out of this place. We're getting out."
Vakh's breathing becomes rougher and louder, but he doesn't respond in any other way. I don't know if he can hear her, but Cherry seems satisfied with having reassured him.
"Come on." Araine is already at the door at the top of the ramp, waving impatiently for us to follow. We head that way in a scuffling herd, my steps weighted down by Vakhrin's ungainly mass. Then we slip back out the door and into the comparative brightness of the hall.
The guard grunts and twitches once upon the ground, and Araine quickly picks up the cudgel and hits him in the head again. Marton winces, but he's the only one. As we pass the guard, Cherry rears back her foot and kicks him in the side.
Again, this doesn't do much, but Cherry seems satisfied.
We round the bend at the end of the hall, and there is a man with ebony hair and blue skin standing before us. Wyvern. I slam to a stop, alarm zinging up my spine. Cherry cries, "Hamish!"
"Shireen." The blue man—Hamish—gives her a polite nod.
His dark eyes track to Vakhrin over my shoulder.
"I watched the fight," he tells us quickly, gaze going to me, to Marton.
"He has two broken ribs, I think, on the right side.
Hell of a concussion. Maybe a fracture in his left shin, but maybe not.
I didn't hear a snap, but it looked bad. "
I have only a moment to process that before Araine is hissing at the man, "You were supposed to stay with Sartok! Your son."
The man—the wyvern, Hamish, Araine's husband?—grimaces. "I thought it would be important for them to know his injuries before taking off with him. In case they don't have anyone with experience in healing..."
Araine is not appeased. "You had one task—"
"Araine," I interrupt, perversely pleased to be the one keeping on mission this time. "Aren't we meant to . . . hurry?"
Araine turns her blazing eyes on me. Then she blinks, outrage fading.
"Yes," she says at once, straightening up.
She smoothes the front of her tunic, narrows her eyes at her maybe-husband, and turns to continue on ahead.
Hamish gulps a bit, but he quickly turns to Cherry, giving her what sound like detailed instructions for caring for Vakhrin's injuries as we all hurry after Araine.
I realize they have been doing this for a while. In my absence, Araine and Hamish and the rest of their people have been caring for my friends. I'm not sure how I'll ever repay the debt I owe them for that. Or for the rest of this night.
We go down two levels before we begin to hear sounds of commotion.
Stone dust blankets the air. Down one hall are ruined chunks of wall where a passage has partially collapsed.
Concerned voices are raised, speculating about how the destruction was wrought.
This, I suppose, is where Raku and Jeksu caused their diversion.
It looks a bit as if they set off a bomb, with a few bits of rubble scattered in the hall from the direction of the destroyed corridor.
We choose a tunnel leading in the other direction. We make it down several twists and turns before things start to go wrong. Before one turn in the hall, Araine stutters to a halt, eyes on the bare rock wall beside her. She presses a hand to the blank stone.
"Raku was meant to place a chalk mark on the wall here if it was safe to take this way."
Down the tunnel branching to our right, the faint, distant smell of the open night air comes trickling back to us. The tunnel is dark and silent.
But there is no chalk mark on the wall.
Araine squares her shoulders, "We will take the next."
We hurry on down the hall, but at the next branching tunnel leading outside, there is still no chalk mark. Araine becomes visibly worried as we hurry onward. Rounding a bend, we head deeper into the bowels of the Trove. Searching out the next exit.
I go crashing into Araine's back as she slams to a stop in the middle of the hall, Marton and Cherry nearly stumbling into me as well. We face a wide, open cavern, where many different tunnels converge into a common area. The space is deserted. I can't see what's stopped Araine.
Not until a husky, feminine laugh rolls out of the darkness of the tunnel straight ahead, sending a tremor down my spine. That laugh is familiar, but different—
A lithe, blueish female figure steps out of the shadows, in a glittering white gown with long black hair falling down around her shoulders. The face I remember as kind and friendly now wears a cold and arrogant smile, aimed directly at me.
Besana.