Combatant Sneak Peek : Chapter Three
Chapter Three
Jordan’s head broke free of the tunnel, and she took a huge breath of dank, warm air. Eohne’s hand wrapped around her wrist and helped pull onto a cold rock floor on her belly. The slimy, springy sensation of moss squished under her hands and against her cheek as she caught her breath. Her teeth chattered, and her fingers felt numb with the cold. She took a sniff of the air and wrinkled her nose. It smelled like death.
There was an intake of breath as Toth surfaced behind her, and the sounds of grunting as he pulled the weight of his bulk, his armor, and his weapons out of the hole. The sound of his dewclaws raking against stone echoed in the spacious cavern.
Another larger white-blue light illuminated Eohne’s face. “Wow, that’s bright,” Jordan whispered. She blinked and faced away to give her eyes time to adjust.
Eohne held the bright circle of light in her palm, lifted it to her lips, and breathed on it. The light floated into the air, illuminating the cave. “Too bright for the tunnel, but perfect for this cave,” Eohne explained.
“Everyone okay?” Toth’s voice was low. He got to his feet and helped Jordan up. They extinguished their torches and put them away since the Elflight was floating overhead like a small moon.
“All good.” Eohne was bent over the wormhole. There was the sound of water splashing as she collapsed it, which echoed through the cave.
“Here. Wherever here is,” added Jordan.
“If I calculated correctly,” began Eohne, crouched and drawing the string out of the pool where the wormhole had been. She wrapped it round and round her fingers. “We’re about eighty feet beneath the prison. According to the journal, the toxic magic starts just above the waterline.”
Jordan’s eyes had adjusted enough to take in her surroundings. “Whoa,” she breathed. “It’s a tomb.”
The white-blue light of Eohne’s light threw its glow out, illuminating huge wide steps covered in black moss.
“Look at the statues!” Jordan pointed at the massive stone sculptures of bearded men and imposing women.
“Yes, those would be the ancient Rakshaak kings and queens.” Eohne finished raveling her string and tucked it into her satchel.
Jordan crossed the wet stone floor to look up at the two statues guarding the steps: two huge and handsome bearded men, each with their hands crossed, one resting on the hilt of a sword. The swords alone were twice Jordan’s height.
“Do you think these are true to size?”
“I’d imagine so.” Toth stood beside her, neck bent. “Those stairs weren’t built for ordinary men, that’s for sure.” The steps leading up to the shadows beyond couldn’t be climbed by an ordinary person unless they pulled themselves up using their arms.
The natural structure of the cave was broken in places by huge flat plaques, each with a bearded head protruding from its base, as though the dead monarch inside had tried to crawl out of the resting place and turned to stone. The plaques had the remains of writing on them, but time had worn most of the words away. Black moss filled in the deepest crevices of the faces: between the lips, in the holes where the eyes should have been, and within the curls of beards and folds of fabric. Eohne’s light illuminated their foreheads, noses, and lips.
Huge weapons lay scattered on the floor and stood leaning against the cavern walls, rusted and broken. A sword with a missing pommel leaned against a plaque. It would take a man who was at least as tall as a harpy to wield it. The stone face above the broken sword glared down at the intruders, its eyebrows drawn down in anger and the lips twisted with a sneer.
Jordan shuddered. “Creepy. Feels like they’re watching us.” She looked up the steps. Her father was somewhere above them. “Paste first, then compass?”
Eohne nodded and pulled the bag of powder from her satchel. She dumped a pile of it into Jordan’s hand and added to it the prepared fluid containing the Arpak’s frequency. Eohne had collected both Jordan’s and Toth’s frequencies for this very moment before they left Maticaw.
“Mash it together with your thumb.”
Jordan followed Eohne’s instructions and watched as the paste darkened. Tiny particles reflected the light, the way minerals would.
“Sorry about the taste,” Eohne said. “This magic tastes like copper.”
“Better than the smell down here.” Jordan licked the paste off her palm, trying not to think about what she was eating. It stuck to the roof of her mouth and coated her back teeth.
“It’ll take a minute to swallow. Take your time.”
Eohne pulled out Toth’s fluid and dumped the powder into his palm, repeating the routine.
“You have very strange magic,” said Toth. “The Light Elves sing and flick their fingers or wave their arms.”
“True,” said Eohne, now dumping her own powder into her palm. “Our magic parted ways a long time ago and evolved very differently. But I trust the magic I make. Frequency is a language I understand; I don’t have the kind of power in my voice that a Light Elf has.”
“You might be wrong about that,” replied Toth, thinking about how every time Eohne spoke, it felt as though someone had plucked a string that ran through his body. He licked the paste off his palm and let it dissolve in his mouth.
“Yuck” Jordan shuddered, swallowing the last of her paste. “Tastes like blood.”
“Sorry.” Eohne was mashing up her own paste. “My magic can do a lot, but I haven’t figured out how to make it taste like honey yet.” She licked her palm and began to work on it.
Jordan felt her ears pop and watched as a film formed in the air around her. In the glow of the Elflight, it looked like a soap bubble was taking shape. The thin film stretched outward, looking first like a honeycomb, the holes shrinking as the edges met. Little popping sounds could be heard as the gaps closed. When the last of the edges came together, the film disappeared completely.
“Amazing.” Jordan’s voice echoed back at her softly. “This will keep the toxic magic from hurting us?”
“For a time, remember?” Eohne warned. “I’ve never been here before; I don’t know how long it will last. It will wrap around you and stay with your body but don’t make big sudden movements or it could break. The shield is invisible, but as it deteriorates, you’ll notice spots of dirt marring your vision. Eventually, your sightline will become so obscure, you’ll need the shield to break just so you can see.”
“Let’s get out of here before that happens,” said Toth with a moue of disgust as he swallowed the last of the paste. He looked at Eohne. “Shall I carry you up?”
“I’ll manage.” Eohne eyeballed the massive steps. She tackled the first with fluid grace, jumping and hooking her hands over the edge. She pulled herself up and smoothly stood, ready to take the next one.
Toth and Jordan flew, their wingbeats echoing dully in the cavernous space. The Elflight floated in the midst of them, keeping itself between the triad. The path behind Toth and Jordan was alight, rather than the path ahead, so they could only move as fast as Eohne anyway. The Elflight ascended the steps like an apparition, throwing eerie shadows in every direction.
At the top of the steps, three hallways yawned, tall and narrow. They led in three different directions. Eohne, barely puffing from her climb, produced a small disc, and her collection of vials strung together. Using the vial marked ‘human’ and the palm-sized disc, Eohne resurrected the small orange dot she had followed to find Toth in The Conca.
The dot slid to the right-hand side of the disc, directing the way. The threesome shared a look of relief. If there were no living humans on the island, the orange dot would not have appeared at all, indicating that Allan was already dead.
They proceeded down the dark hall, the Elflight illuminating the way. Row upon row of grave markers, much less elaborate than the ones below, sped by as they walked. Black moss crawled between the cracks of the stones beneath their feet. The faces protruding from each tomb were smaller and less imposing than the ones below.
Jordan rubbed her eyes as specks of dust appeared in the air before her. “Already?”
“The closer we get to the Rakshaaks, the faster the magic will deteriorate,” explained Eohne. “It will only get worse.”
As if a command was given telepathically, the trio began to jog. Jordan’s heart rate spiked, and not just from running; the speed at which their protection was wearing down was alarming. Already the specks of black were making her wish for a windshield wiper.
The orange disc bade them turn right two more times. There was a sudden end to the tombs, and a flash of dim light struck them as they passed by an empty one, its plaque cracked and falling apart.
Eohne held the disc up. The orange dot was telling them to go into the broken stone. Eohne pointed and shrugged. Jordan shared a doubtful look with Toth. Eohne might pass through the crack quite easily——she didn’t have a giant set of wings.
As though reading her mind, Toth’s wings pressed inward and seemed to shrink, his dewclaws coming closer to the top of his head. Jordan did her best to mimic this, like pulling her arms tight against her side.
Eohne crawled into the space and Jordan followed, tailed by Toth.
The Strix had to turn sideways to fit but Eohne was able to pass through without crouching or twisting. The most difficult part was their footing; a pathway of rugged stones, broken plaques, and clumps of dirt.
Their fields had deteriorated to the point of dirty glass.
The light filtering into the crack was dull, but bright enough that the Elflight was no longer needed. Eohne put her hand behind her back, and the Elflight flew into her palm and disappeared in her fist.
Toth tugged on one of Jordan’s feathers, and she paused to look back. Toth gestured to his ear and made a flat waving motion with his hand.
Jordan listened. There was the very faint sound of waves echoing through the crack. She nodded.
A tap on Jordan’s shoulder pulled her attention to the front where Eohne had halted. The crack had come to an end. The light was coming solely from the right, and unsurprisingly, the orange dot directed them to the right. Eohne stepped out into a large square depression. Three large steps led up and out of the hole. The walls were cracked and lined with broken tile, and the floor was covered in the rubble of more broken tiles. The Elf and the two Strix squeezed out of the crack and into this strange, square pocket and looked around.
Jordan looked at her companions and mimicked a breaststroke. Toth nodded, and Eohne’s brows shot up as she understood. They were standing in what had once been a swimming pool for giants. A huge crack connected the old pool to the hallway of tombs below.
Jordan took a step forward, and there was a loud snap as a tile broke under her foot. She froze and held her breath, shooting Eohne a look of horror. They became still and listened, breathless, each wrapped inside their own dirty bubble of protection. There was no sound, save their own breathing. It was unlikely this pool had been used anytime in the last five hundred years——longer, if the memoirs of Eohne’s ancestor were correct. The Rakshaaks had no reason to be lounging poolside.
Convinced it was safe enough to move and feeling the anxiety of working against the clock, Jordan peered at the disc that Eohne held. The orange dot now directed them to move left. Jordan and Toth flew from the pool and waited as Eohne crawled out.
Eohne jerked her chin left to where a cluster of pillars obscured their path. The film of black specks on their shields seemed to thicken dramatically as they passed these pillars. Jordan’s heart rate trebled in response; they needed to find Allan, now.
A huge dark shadow obscured the light ahead for a moment, and a big smudge of ruin appeared on Jordan’s field down near her knee.
On the other side of the pillars was a tall, covered walkway filled with broken tiles and rubble. Slat windows let in a muted gray light. The orange dot directed them to follow the shadow that had passed.
As they caught sight of the giant striding down the hallway ahead of them, Jordan’s hand flew to her mouth. The giant seemed to be made more of shade than any kind of flesh, even though its movements belied a heavy weight. The outline of the form was bony and long-limbed, moving almost gracefully. Long skeletal fingers trailed from the wrist joint, curling in and out, as though the giant was thoughtfully working something through. The head and neck were even more startling than they’d been in Eohne’s cartoon story: the head floated above the shoulders on a pillar of dark, wispy smoke. The giant had no visible hair, only the curve of a perfectly smooth skull. Jordan’s flesh iced over. She hoped the Rakshaak wouldn’t turn around. The giant wouldn’t be able to see them through their fields, but Jordan thought she might scream if she saw the thing’s face.
The giant rounded a corner, and the trio followed at a distance, skirting the piles of broken tile and rubble as best they could. Fresh air that smelled like salt and sea blew through the hallway, and the sound of waves crashing told them they were close to the ocean——though well above it.
A turn down the next rugged corridor revealed a body lying on the stones.
Allan’s body.
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