Chapter Thirty-Eight
We spent the rest of the day walking. We didn’t come across any more corpses and didn’t hear anything that sounded like a roar. I couldn’t get used to the eerie silence.
While we had more than enough water, thanks to the magical waterskins, we began rationing the food. It would take us twice as long to return as we had anticipated since we didn’t have our horses. Part of me kept hoping they would magically appear at some point, but that didn’t happen.
It wore down on me, the endless monotony. Even Zain stopped regaling me with tales of his stealing adventures. I was grateful when we stopped for the night. While we ate, something glinted on one of his left fingers and I leaned in to look.
“Is that a topaz?” I asked, reaching for the ring it was on.
He jerked his hand clear. “It is.”
I was too exhausted to ask him why he didn’t want me to touch his ring. Was he worried I would steal it? I wanted to laugh at the thought but couldn’t muster the energy.
Because we had decided to sleep on rocks just in case of another flash flood, we were both uncomfortable and didn’t sleep well.
I kept nodding off during my turn on watch, which was not something I had ever done before. I was angry with myself for doing it because this desert had already proved it was unsafe.
We left before dawn, both of us wanting to reach our destination as quickly as we could. Zain studied the maps intently, making certain that we were going the right way based on the position of the sun.
It was midafternoon when I saw something that made me come to a stop. “Look! Fruit trees!”
We were headed east, but northwest of us, I saw a luscious, green oasis. And it had fruit trees of every kind. We would be able to make sure we had enough food for our trip back to Epirius!
“There is nothing there,” Zain said to me.
“Yes, there is. I can see it!” I started walking in that direction and he stayed on my heels.
“Illora, stop. You can’t go over there. It is dangerous.”
“Dangerous?” I scoffed. “Oh no, will I eat too much fruit and make my stomach sick?”
“If you’re seeing something, that’s a marjun mirage. It is a trap, and you need to stop! Nothing but death awaits you there.”
The word “marjun” sounded familiar, but I couldn’t place it. Not that it mattered. Zain wasn’t going to prevent me from plucking fruit from those trees.
Then suddenly he was in front of me, his hands on my shoulders to keep me in place. “Marjun serve the goddess of discord. They are tricksters. They lure weary travelers, cast a sleeping spell on them, and then eat their essence.”
I wanted to get away from him. I tried to shove him to one side but he didn’t move.
He stayed where he was.
I didn’t understand it. I was much stronger than him. How could he keep me here? “Zain, if you don’t get out of my way, I am going to—”
His lips moved to mine, kissing me aggressively, passionately. It was the first time since we had left Epirius. When his tongue slid into my mouth, swirling with mine, I made a moaning sound in my throat and wrapped my arms around him.
It would have been impossible to tell how long we stood there, kissing one another, the passion and heat of it enough to put the desert to shame.
He broke it off and said, “What do you see now?”
I looked over his shoulder and realized the oasis was gone. Instead I saw what looked like dancing flames, gliding across the sand. “Flames without smoke.”
“Marjun,” he confirmed. “I kissed you to bring you back to yourself, and now you can see their true form. We should keep moving before they come over to introduce themselves.”
We headed off in the opposite direction and Zain had a firm grip on my hand. He was worried that I was going to wander off. His kiss had the effect he’d hoped for. He had woken me up from whatever spell those creatures had put me under. Whenever I looked over my shoulder, I only saw the marjun.
Twilight settled in around us, making it difficult to see. While we had cloth and the ability to make flame, we didn’t have anything to make a torch with. We kept walking in that near darkness and Zain made a sound when he practically smacked face-first into the opening of a cave.
“Where did that come from?” I asked.
“This is it! We’ve found it! The cave where the caduceus of Eramis is supposed to be.” The excitement in his voice was evident, and I understood it. My exhaustion fled, replaced by a desire to go inside.
He started toward the entrance and I tugged on his hand. “Wait.”
We had no idea what we were walking into. We would both go regardless, but I felt like we should prepare.
All I could think about was Lia and her sisterhood having to pass tests by goddesses in order to retrieve Dea’s god-weapon. It would stand to reason that since we also sought a god-weapon, there might be more than just the dragon obstacle.
I told Zain quickly about what Lia and her adelphia had gone through. When I finished, I added, “There could be one room in there, or there could be twenty. Each with its own trial or test.”
“I’m not worried,” he said. “Between the two of us, we’ll be able to solve them all.”
Although I felt a reluctance because of what I knew, I again experienced a strong urge to enter. “It’s like the cave is beckoning me inside.”
He nodded. “I feel the same thing.”
That couldn’t be good, either.
“We have to go in,” he said. “What other choice do we have?”
He was right and I nodded, pulling out my sword. His grip tightened around mine and we walked into the mouth of the cave.
There was still enough light outside that we could see the area around us. There was a pile of something on the ground, and as we got closer, I realized that they were bones, but they had been hardened. They weren’t human bones, either.
Zain grabbed one and we made it into a torch. He carried it and led while I brought up the rear. Something was going to attack us; I was certain of that.
But I was ready.
He walked into a narrow hallway where we could only fit one at a time. Water dripped down the walls, making a repetitive plinking sound when it dropped to the ground. The hairs on the back of my neck stood up.
Something was about to happen.
Zain walked into a cavern the size of a large room. We saw an opening on the other side. It seemed that all we had to do was walk across the empty floor. He crouched down, his fingers running along a seam in the rocks.
“There are traps here,” he said. “Dozens. Hundreds. I’m not certain.”
“What kind of traps?”
“The kind thieves set, and the kind we can disarm.” He handed me the torch and I held it in my left hand, my sword still in my right. I couldn’t even see what he was talking about.
Zain took out one of his daggers and used it to hold up a trip wire that I hadn’t seen. “Step back,” he said.
I did so and he cut the trip wire, flinging himself back as he did so.
Long, sharpened pikes shot straight up out of the floor where we had been standing just a moment earlier. We would have been impaled.
My eyes were wide as I turned to look at him.
“One down, a thousand to go,” he said. He moved a bit farther into the room, testing the ground in a way that only he seemed to understand. I held up the torch and used it to investigate the rest of the area. I wanted to know if I could locate some traps, too.
When I held the torch off to the right, I saw something I didn’t understand. “Zain? Do you see that? It looks like an hourglass embedded into the wall.”
He stopped what he was doing and followed the light. “Why would there be an hourglass . . .” His voice trailed off and he swore. “This is timed. The sand is falling.”
I didn’t need to ask what would happen if all the sand fell to the bottom. I was sure the answer was “death.”
And there wasn’t much sand left in the top. I sheathed my sword and kept the torch in my left hand.
“We’re going to have to run through,” he said. “Follow me and do exactly as I tell you.”
Zain tapped a ring on his right middle finger and then said, “Ready?”
I nodded and he started forward.
“Jump!”
I jumped and felt a group of arrows slice the air under my feet.
“Down!”
I immediately crouched, just as a massive axe swung sideways out of the rock. I told myself not to look at the hourglass. I would follow Zain and he would know what to do and we would get out of this.
We both straightened back up and began to run again. Before he could say anything, he grabbed me and put me on his left side, keeping us an arm’s length apart.
“Wait,” he said.
Another giant axe came out of the ceiling and swung at us, but we avoided having it split our heads down the middle as it passed harmlessly between us.
He looked ahead of him and then over at the hourglass on the wall. “We’re going to run for three steps and then I want you to jump as far as you can toward that opening! On the count of three. Three, two, one, go!”