Chapter 7
She wasn’t dead.
A shrill, incessant ringing stung her ears, and dust coated her eyes and her mouth and every crevice of her body. But she wasn’t dead.
It had taken an age for the ground to stop moving, for the thunderous sound of the mountain crumbling above them to cease, for the dust to settle and for the world to right. She’d kept her face pressed into Arphaxad’s shoulder, breathing in the scent of him, waiting for the end, waiting for the moment they would be buried beneath the earth. No one would ever know what had happened to them. Her sister—she bit back the sob that threatened to burst from her chest.
But the end had never come, just a cascade of dust that had coated her hair and her arms and her clothes, every place that Arphaxad wasn’t covering with his own body. She’d pulled her face back from his shoulder. A wall of earth and stone rose hardly half a foot from them, stretching overhead like a dome.
“Phax,” she rasped. Her throat was dry, and it came out sounding like little more than a croak.
He stirred and lifted his head from her shoulder. His dark hair had turned a dusty gray just as she knew hers had, and she could see a thin red line where a stray stone had bitten into his cheek. “Cassandra?” The way he said her name, with such a tinge of hopeful joy, sent a shock wave through her body.
“I’m here,” she said.
“Are you all right?” he breathed, running a hand along her hair, as if to make sure for himself.
She coughed again and then nodded, shivering beneath his touch. He was still so close, his body pressed against hers, his fingers threading lightly through her hair.
He coughed this time, his entire body shuddering with the pain. She suddenly remembered his shoulder, the arrow, the blood. She swore and pushed him off her. The wound was still bleeding—she could tell by the blood darkening the bandage the Inetians had hastily applied.
“You—why did you do that?” she asked, staring at him in the strange, ambient light. He’d shielded her when the world was crumbling around them. He’d been ready to trade his life for hers.
“I couldn’t stand it if you’d died,” he said softly.
His words hit her like the ton of earth that hovered above their heads. For a moment, she stared at him. He couldn’t just say that to her. Not here, not like this. Not when they were both covered in dirt and sweat and blood, and a rift of horrors pulsed at their backs. “Your life is not worth more than mine!” she snapped. Then she blinked. Light. They could see.
Her head jerked toward the rift. It was only a few feet from them, a terrible black thing, but its edges gave off a strange, otherworldly glow. Arphaxad followed her gaze.
“It worked,” he said incredulously, staring at the darkness of the rift. “I thought it might.”
She remembered with startling clarity the way he’d dragged them closer to the rift rather than away as the roof had started to come down around them. He’d been working off a hunch, but it had been right. The rift, whatever power was emanating from it, had created this little pocket of space beneath the massive weight of the earth.
“Well, that’s . . . something,” she said. The blackness pulsed as she stared at it, a swirling mass of nothingness, of wrongness, enough to drive one mad. She tore her gaze away, the nausea rising again in her stomach.
“So, what now?” she asked. She met his gaze across the small space, and in that moment, the reality of their situation hit. The rift might be holding back the weight of the entire mountain, but it hadn’t changed anything about their predicament. If anything, it had made it worse. They had no food, no water, and what little air was left down here would likely run out in a few hours.
They were going to die here after all.
Arphaxad seemed to realize it at the same time she did, and he slumped down to the uneven stone floor. He winced and cradled his bad arm.
“I’m sorry,” he murmured, running a hand through his soot-covered hair. “I never thought—”
“Never thought what?” Cassandra asked. Tension buzzed in her fingertips. They couldn’t just sit here. They had to do something to find a way out. Anything.
“I never thought it would end this way.”
She stared at him for a moment. “It’s not going to end this way,” she said vehemently. Rendra had to know what Amanakar was planning. Medira had to be warned, and so did Ineti. They couldn’t allow these scums of the earth to win.
“Oh really?” he said, gesturing around them pointedly. “You think there’s a way out of here?”
“We’ll figure it out,” she snapped.
“Come on, Cass,” he said. He sounded drained, beaten.
“No!” she rounded on him, indignation rising in her gut. “I have never once seen you give up before, Arphaxad. What’s gotten into you?”
He let out a bleak “ha”. “They left us to die in here, Cassandra. In fact, I’m sure they already think we’re dead. They dropped an entire forsaken mountain on us!”
Cassandra ground her teeth together. “I’ve beaten better odds before on my own,” she said. “But now I have you. That must count for something.”
His head snapped up, and he stared at her for a long moment, his gaze unreadable. Then he gave her a soft smile. “You have no idea how much I want it to count.”
Her heart gave a fierce thud, and the space between them seemed to grow smaller, until he felt too close, too intense, and she wanted to scream and cry and rage. But most of all, with the way he was looking at her now, she wanted to live.
“I will not let them win,” she said at last.
“I believe you,” he said.
She let out a cry of frustration and kicked her boot against the wall. She swore as her boot clinked against something unforgiving, something harder than the stone surrounding them, sending a shockwave of pain up her leg. Stupid, stupid, stupid.
She paused and dropped to her knees, using her aching fingers to swipe at the dirt where her foot had made contact. Her heart stuttered as she revealed the first sign of hope. A small slice of black glimmered from beneath the gray soot. It was metal. Forged metal. A tiny part of a manmade frame—one of the twelve doors that had glimmered around the cavern. A door that could lead them out of here.
“It’s here!” she cried, pulling more frantically at the stones. She could see the corner of the frame pushing from the debris. Her fingers throbbed as she pulled out another rock, and the shimmering outline of the door became visible.
“What?” Arphaxad said. He pulled himself shakily to his feet.
“One of the enclave’s doors,” she said breathlessly as she hauled another stone away, praying the space wouldn’t collapse around them. “We could use it to get out.”
Arphaxad was beside her in an instant, helping her heave stones aside as quickly as he could with his damaged shoulder.
Sweat pooled down her neck, slipping beneath her grimy tunic and down her back. They had to clear enough to be able to slip through. Right now, they could see enough to push an arm through. The door had to work, had to accept them. It had to lead them out of here, away, and not tumbling out into some nameless void. It was the only chance they were likely to have.
One of the stones they tossed back shuddered, then skittered backward of its own accord and went spiraling into the rift with a sick popping sound. Arphaxad swore, and Cassandra grabbed his good arm as the bubble around them shuddered and the ground began to shift.
Cassandra’s ears popped as a wave of power poured out of the rift, forcing the weight of the mountain back. A cry of frustration tore from her chest, then changed into one of elation as the stones and rocks and earth moved outward. The entire weight of the mountain was moving.
But the power surging from the rift didn’t weaken. If anything, it got stronger. The earth shook, tossing them both back to the floor. With a ghastly crunch, the forged-metal frame bent, its sides compacting under the pressure. The shimmer within the frame flickered out for one dreadful moment, and then came reluctantly back, holding steady for one second, then two.
“We have to go now!” Arphaxad shouted as the earth shuddered again. Cassandra let out a string of expletives as he grabbed her arm, and shouting, dragged them through the door.
They tumbled out into cold, night air. Cassandra stumbled a few feet and almost lost her footing when her boot caught against something hard. Arphaxad’s fingers tightened around her arm, pulling her up and back against his chest. They stood there for a moment, staring at each other with wide eyes, breathing heavily.
A cool breeze picked up in the branches above them, and Cassandra almost laughed in delight. She’d never take something so mundane for granted again. The door had spat them out beneath a rocky outcrop, dark forest spreading out on either side, familiar pines jutting wildly into the air. Somewhere in the distance, a stream babbled its way through the night.
“We did it,” Arphaxad said giddily, giving her a stupid grin.
“And you thought we were dead,” she said, her own grin just as ridiculous.
The door shimmered behind them in the moonlight. It flickered again like it had back in the cave, and Cassandra caught a whiff of sulfur as tendrils of black strayed across its face. There was a strange crackling noise, and then the door winked out entirely, leaving nothing behind but the empty metal frame.
They both stared at it for a moment, and a mix of relief and horror rolled through Cassandra like a tidal wave. A strange, wholly inappropriate laugh bubbled up from somewhere in her belly, and she had to force it back. They were alive. They were alive. Any later and they wouldn’t have made it out at all.
Arphaxad’s face was as streaked with soot as hers was, but even with his usually dark hair ashen and his olive skin pale with dust, he was just about the most wonderful thing she had ever seen.
“Where do you think we are?” she asked. The moon was full, and even in this darkness, she was able to make out the ragged old-growth pines stretching out around them.
“The enclave must have made it here for a reason,” Arphaxad said.
Cassandra nodded. “The trees look the same as they did on the ridge above the valley. We can’t be too far from the enclave.”
Arphaxad stared down the slope for a moment, his lips pursed.
“There’s a river or steam of some sort below,” Cassandra continued, watching him. She knew enough about the Malathi pass, but this was Arphaxad’s territory.
His head snapped up. “I think I know where we are,” he said, and struck out down the slope toward the sound of the moving water.
Cassandra followed him, careful not to lose her footing in the darkness and send them both tumbling down the slope. She was the queen’s shadow, but she wasn’t invincible as she had so recently learned.
The high summer chorus of cicadas rose through the forest, interrupted intermittently by the quick chirp of a toad or the soft bray of a deer somewhere in the trees. Cassandra knew that cougars moved through these parts of the woods as well, and she kept her hand on the knife Karim had slid to her before he left the cave. She’d never expected that sort of kindness from one of the betraying Inetians. Perhaps it had been pity. She wondered if he’d made it out in the end.
They reached the bottom of the slope where a shallow river glittered in the moonlight. A thick hedge of ferns lined the banks on either side, and she could see the dark, glistening mounds of rocks dotted through the moving water. Suddenly, Cassandra realized how thirsty she was. Without a second thought, she followed Arphaxad to the edge and dipped her fingers into the icy water. She splashed water on her face, trying to get as much of the grime off as she could before scooping the water into her mouth. It was cold, tasting faintly of snowmelt from higher in the mountains.
She sat back on her heels for a moment, watching Arphaxad as he drank like a dying man. She grimaced. Perhaps he was. They had to get him medical attention for his shoulder. He was still losing blood, though the flow seemed slower now.
Arphaxad looked up at her, his eyes shining. “This has to be the Malathi river,” he said. “If we follow it down, we should end up at a Mediran military outpost.”
Her heart gave a thud. A Mediran military outpost. One of the last places she wanted to be. “Great,” she said, mustering as much cheer as she could. “We need to get your shoulder looked at.”
They made their way along the riverbank, keeping their eyes peeled for any movement in the trees. With the doors in the cave destroyed, she didn’t think the chanters would be moving in these parts, especially at this time of night. But she couldn’t know for sure. And after what they’d just been through, they couldn’t take any more chances.
Exhaustion ground deep into her bones as they rounded another bend in the river. Arphaxad stopped, and she slowed her pace behind him. Finally, through the trees, there was a haze of orange enchanted orb fire and the outline of a tall wooden fence. The outpost.
Arphaxad gave a whoop of triumph. “We made it!”
Cassandra said nothing. He had every right to rejoice. They had survived the impossible. But she wasn’t certain a Mediran outpost in the mountains could ever be considered safe for the Rendran queen’s shadow.
But right now, she didn’t particularly care, as long as they dressed Arphaxad’s wound and let her sleep for a year. Maybe two.
The outpost wasn’t large, not in this remote of an area, but Cassandra could see sentries with bows posted along the walls, peering into the forest. She and Arphaxad darted onto the wagon-rutted road as they neared the outpost, and Arphaxad raised his good arm as they stepped slowly toward the shuttered gates.
“Who goes there?” one of the sentries called from his post on top of the wall.
“I’m Arphaxad Ilin Serra,” Arphaxad said. He reached beneath his shirt and pulled something out—it glinted gold in the moonlight. “I bear the seal of the king.”
Cassandra’s lips curved. Another thing the inept Inetians had missed when they’d searched them.
There was silence for a moment, followed by the scrape of a metal bolt being drawn back, then the gate creaked open enough to let a person pass through.
“Arphaxad?” A tall, broad-shouldered man with a thick beard stepped out from behind the gate. “It’s been an absolute age. I didn’t expect to see you in these parts for—” His eyes widened as he took in the blood darkening the bandage around Arphaxad’s shoulder. “By the Archer, man, you need a doctor!”
“I think you’re probably right,” Arphaxad said. He took a stumbling step forward and collapsed.