Maylin's Gate (Book 3) Page 16

  “No.” She shook her head. “Please, not now.” Her voice came out a bare whisper. She touched the dreaded black magic at her core. Magic she loathed but had leaned into a million times. Not this time. The world would not suffer her curse any longer. She dropped her head and willed the trooper’s crossbow bolt into her chest.

  The trooper raised the crossbow and squinted through the weapon’s site.

  A single tear fell cutting a path through the sharp chill in her cheeks. “I’m sorry.” She owed the apology to untold thousands. She owed them her life.

  A hissing gurgle came from the trooper’s throat.

  Blood rushed through her cheeks and she jerked her head up.

  The crossbow fell from the trooper’s hands and clattered across the deck. The bolt lodged in the weapon’s firing chamber, rattled outward, and rolled across deck.

  Wide eyed, the trooper fell forward and slammed, face first, against the deck. The crossbow crunched beneath the soldier’s weight.

  She jumped back startled. Her gaze drifted upward.

  Jo stood behind the trooper holding a blade slick with the trooper’s blood.

  The girl’s eyes registered neither the fear nor horror she expected. Jo stared at the fallen trooper with an expression of cool detachment.

  Jo knelt before the trooper and wiped the blade clean across the soldiers back. The girl met her gaze.

  A sharp chill ran along her spine, and she nodded indicating her gratitude.

  Jo sheathed the blade and stepped forward. “Sorry. I was distracted. Let’s go.”

  Across the deck, troopers launched arrows through a haze of smoke and fire. Overhead, shielded guardians swarmed the transport.

  She took Jo’s hand and ran toward the life raft. “Hurry. They’ll be on us any second.”

  The ship groaned and pitched higher shifting the deck beneath her feet. A few feet ahead, the lifeboat swayed from heavy ropes attached to a wooden arm dangling over the hull.

  She reached the lifeboat and pulled free the knife hidden in her boot.

  Jo flashed past her toward the lifeboat’s bow. “I’ll cut the rope in front.”

  She offered a quick nod, leaned over the railing, and pressed the blade against the frozen rope. With a slight tug, she severed the rope.

  Jo sliced away the rope.

  The lifeboat fell free and landed with a splash in the waves below.

  She glanced over her shoulder and froze.

  Three troopers descended on Jo.

  The sharp hiss of an arrow cut the air and Jo lurched sideways.

  Jo rolled following the deck’s shifting downward slope.

  The arrow struck the railing with a sharp thud.

  Jo snagged the railing and yanked to a stop beside her.

  Perched on the railing, she thrust her hand outward. “Take my hand.”

  Jo lunged and grabbed her outstretched hand.

  She pulled as the troopers spun and trained longbows on both women.

  She glanced behind her and peered into the darkness. Waves pounded the ship’s hull. Firelight revealed the lifeboat below.

  The craft bobbed in the waves and drifted six feet from the hull.

  “Stay where you are,” a trooper said from behind.

  “Kill them,” a second trooper said. “We’ve no time for this.”

  She whirled and faced the baerinese troopers. Jo didn’t deserve to die. At least she could do something to spare the girl’s life. She reached for death’s magic, and hoped General Demos would forgive her.

  The troopers knocked their arrows and readied their bows.

  Black mist swirled across her fingertips. She glanced again at the lifeboat drifting further from the sinking ship. She turned her gaze on Jo. “Jump. I’ll make sure they don’t hurt you.”

  Jo glanced at her with eyes narrowed.

  Blue light flashed and she flinched pressing hard against the railing.

  Three spirit orbs smashed into each of the three troopers. Fist-sized holes ravaged their armor and flesh beneath.

  The troopers screamed and the air filled with the stink of burning flesh.

  She released the mist and something grabbed her collar. Her stomach sank and she twisted trying to grab whatever had taken hold of her.

  The troopers writhed on the deck while blood pumped from the holes in their chests.

  “Stop fighting,” a female voice said. An Ayralen voice. “I won’t drop you.”

  Her feet left the deck and a war bird’s screech filled the air. She ran her fingertips over talons gripping her collar.

  Beside her, Jo writhed and grabbed the guardian’s ankle. Lora’s child had taken them both.

  The guardian flew higher rolling over the sea away from the transport. The war bird drew the women further from the burning transport.

  Her stomach dropped and she gasped. She locked onto the bird’s ankle afraid to glance toward the black sea churning a hundred feet below.

  Above and below, shadowy figures swarmed the guardian. Circling dracos' high-pitched wails came from all around. The thrum of a longbow sounded and then another.

  The guardian swerved and a shower of blue sparks rained down bouncing across her arms and legs.

  She screamed and kicked trying to keep the spirit away from her clothing and exposed flesh.

  The guardian rolled in a slow arc toward the baerinese convoy.

  The transport she and Jo had lived on as stowaways burned with half its hull submerged beneath the waves.

  Beyond the ships, lights from the village marked the shoreline and escape.

  The guardian turned left and angled over the deck of a sinking cutter in front of the transport.

  Like the transport, the cutter burned while dead troopers lined its deck. Smoke poured from portholes scattered along its hull. Flames licked the cutter’s central mast. The ship rolled halfway over laying at an odd angle on its starboard side.

  Arrows whistled by. Draco swarmed hammering the guardian’s spirit shield. More sparks rained down on her and Jo.

  Jo gawked at the gleaming orbs of shield energy dancing over the baerinese convoy.

  She closed her eyes willing away the blue, green, and yellow soul threads. Once they discovered her identity, they would make her suffer. Would they punish Jo? She’d done nothing to deserve the king’s justice.

  Shadows swarmed and a dozen more arrows whistled past her. The guardian’s shield disappeared.

  The guardian flew low over the cutter’s burning deck and the whistle of a nearby arrow sliced the air. The sickening crunch of breaking bone sounded and the war bird screeched letting go of her collar.

  She gasped, arms and legs flailing. She slammed into a trooper’s corpse atop the cutter’s deck.

  Jo smashed into the deck beside her. A sharp snap came and the girl loosed an agony-filled scream.

  Swirls of stars clouded her vision and she strained gasping for air that wouldn’t come. Ash-filled smoke stung her eyes and burned her nostrils.

  Flames licked at the deck around her. The guardian careened over the hull and disappeared.

  She rolled from the trooper’s body and squinted through the smoke searching for Jo.

  “Jo.” The word came out as a short grunt. She pushed herself to her knees and crawled toward Jo’s scream.

  Pain flared in her arm and spread across her shoulder and chest. Soot from the blackened decking streaked her hands and clothes. Wracking coughs shook her body and a line of drool stretched from her bottom lip to the deck.

  Like an amorphous blob she shuffled her broken body ahead using her one good arm.

  Through the smoke and haze, Jo’s body appeared. The Meranthian girl’s right leg twisted at an unnatural angle.

  She couldn’t make out the girl’s face beneath a stew of soot-streaked hair. Chin quivering, she edged forward until she reached Jo’s side. She pushed away the tangled nest of hair from Jo’s face. “Please be alive.” She whispered into the girl’s ear and pressed her finger
against Jo’s neck.

  A pulse, faint but steady, thrummed beneath her fingertips.

  A broken smile twisted her face. “That’s it Jo. I’m here.” She glanced around the deserted ship.

  Through the smoke, the dim outline of a lifeboat hanging by a single rope appeared ten feet ahead.

  “This is going to hurt,” she said. “But, I can’t leave you here.” She took Jo’s collar between her fingers and scooted forward. With a grunt, she pulled the girl’s dead weight behind her.

  The ship groaned and pitched. The lifeboat swayed by a frayed piece of rope hanging from a wooden support arm.

  Overhead, troopers hissed and dracos screeched. Lines of blue spirit streaked the night sky.

  Her stomach sank. Were the guardians leaving? Were the humans abandoning them to their fate? Jo hadn’t left her. “Come on.” She tugged Jo’s collar. “We’re leaving.”

  Her breath came in hard ragged pulls and she tugged Jo’s dead weight forward inch by agonizing inch. The muscles in her arms and legs spasmed and she hacked spitting up black bile and phlegm.

  The lifeboat creaked two feet away. Blessedly, the cutter had sank leaving the lifeboat less than six-feet above the sea.

  With a grunt she reached across her body and yanked the knife from her boot. Clutching Jo to her chest, she reached behind and hacked at the frayed rope.

  With a splash, the lifeboat hit the waves. The dying cutter floated a dozen yards from the shoreline.

  The ship’s railing had splintered and fallen away leaving the way clear for her and Jo.

  With her back to the sea, she couldn’t see the raft behind her. It didn’t matter. Better the cold take them than the fire.

  She tightened her grip on Jo’s chest and rocked backward falling toward the sea. A second later, she struck the life boat’s wooden bottom and fresh pain flared in her lower back.

  Easing Jo from atop her, she laid the girl in the lifeboat’s bottom and searched the craft.

  Three wooden seats stretched across the lifeboat. The oars had gone missing.

  The undertow and the swelling seas pushed the craft nearer the rocky shoreline.

  She leaned back and breathed in the fresh, smoke-free air. She had accomplished the unthinkable. She saved another living soul. The idea brought a weak smile to her lips. What would Elan think of her now?

  The waves boomed against the rocks less than a dozen feet away and the lifeboat moved.

  Her eyes fluttered open. The boat’s movement felt wrong. Unlike the bobbing and swaying of the ocean, the movement felt deliberate.

  She struggled to a seated position and peered over the side.

  A great black and white whale appeared beneath the surface. A whale with an arrow jutting from its flank pushed the boat through the harbor toward the village.

  Her jaw fell open. The guardian hadn’t abandoned them. She sank deeper into the lifeboat and blinked away fresh tears.

  The hulking carcasses of baerinese warships burned in the inlet. More ships would come. More troopers.

  On the pier ahead, a man and a woman stood. Their souls burned green and white.

  Would they recognize her? Could she kill them? Who was she fighting for?

  The lifeboat stopped beside the pier. The impaled guardian shifted into a bird before landing beside the strangers on the pier.

  The wounded guardian shifted.

  The white souled woman, a healer, rushed to the injured guardian’s side.

  The guardian fell forward and sucked in ragged breaths. An arrow sprouted from the woman’s thigh.

  She squinted through the darkness and peered past their blinding soul auras.

  The female guardian, the one who had pulled them from the sea, turned toward the lifeboat.

  Blood drained from her face and she stifled a scream.

  The male guardian knelt beside the prone woman on the pier. The man appeared every bit the king’s twin. “Well done Rika,” the man said resting a gloved hand on the king’s lady. “Well done.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  Stairway of the Gods

  Dozens of waterfalls stretched in an arc across the crater’s rim. The last rim among seven they’d passed since leaving the Maltha River Basin.

  Ronan glanced behind at the waterfalls stacked one on top of another like a staircase.

  Beyond the waterfalls, the Adris Mountains appeared as a distant haze painted on a faint blue sky. Thoth called the cascading range of waterfalls the ‘Stairway of the Gods’.

  Looking back on them now, he agreed.

  Lush ferns and high grass spread like a green blanket across the lowlands ahead. Winding streams carved paths through high, saw-toothed grass. A never-ending series of lakes, ponds, and rivers stretched to the horizon. They’d reached the swamp.

  He’d deemed the place the madman’s swamp although he kept that bit to himself.

  Thoth’s wings beat faster and they climbed over the swampland. “Look to the swamp’s center where the horizon begins.”

  “What are we looking for?” He said.

  General Demos leaned over the saddle and studied the rivers draining into the swamp. The general’s tongue flickered as if tasting the humid lowland air. “This place,” General Demos hissed. “It tastes like home.”

  He glanced behind and eyed the general. “Like Baerin?”

  General Demos’s gaze lingered over the lush green horizon. “If I’d known of this place….”

  “Do you see the tree at the swamp’s center?” Thoth said and rolled right.

  A brown tree with a bare trunk and short sturdy limbs towered over miles of patchy green vegetation.

  “I see it,” he said.

  “The man Abzu spoke with lives beneath that tree,” Thoth said. “He called it the Tree of Life.”

  “Who did? Abzu?”

  “No Silver Soul, the madman did.”

  “Why?”

  “We can ask him ourselves,” General Demos said through the link.

  “Another hour,” Thoth said. “Maybe two.”

  “It doesn’t look that far away,” he said.

  “The swamp is a deceiving place,” Thoth said. “Should you become separated from the pack, take care with your steps.”

  “What sort of creatures live in the swamp?” General Demos said.

  “Serpents large enough to swallow a man whole,” Thoth said. “A strange breed of monkey lives in the inner swamp, and I’ve seen spiders as big as dogs.”

  He’d picked a fine time to lose hold of Elan’s magic.

  “Tiamat has seen vast schools of red fish clean the flesh from a two-ton water bull in less than a minute.”

  His gaze drifted over the placid scenery. Thoth might be stretching the truth just a bit. “How does the madman survive such dangerous creatures?”

  “That is a mystery for which I have no answer,” Thoth said. “Perhaps he’ll tell you.”

  The air above Thoth shimmered like heat waves reflecting from the desert sand.

  “What’s that,” General Demos said pointing to the strange flows.

  Like melted wax, the air swirled forming a circular current of glass-like energy.

  Thoth roared and rolled away from the rotating flows.

  The short hair on his neck prickled and he leaned forward gripping Thoth’s saddle with both hands.

  The scent of ozone filled the air and the swirling current pulled on his body.

  “It’s a portal,” Thoth said through the link. The dragon roared and blue flames leaped from Thoth’s gaping mouth.

  A deep hum came from the forming portal and shot outward sending a wave of vibrations rippling across the sky.

  His teeth rattled and his fingertips buzzed, but he couldn’t take his eyes from the portal.

  Like a minnow struggling against a mighty river current, Thoth’s wings beat faster and the dragon struggled to keep them from the swirling vortex.

  The energy swirled faster. Wisps of electricity crackled at the portal’s
center. Currents of black spun while blue, white, and yellow light pulsed in a rhythm that felt ordered.

  He stared at the blinking lights mesmerized. The lights beckoned him in a way nothing had before. Something locked away yet ready on the tip of his tongue.

  Patterns emerged. A long blue light followed by two bursts of white then a long yellow.

  Long blue—two whites—long yellow. Time slowed and the ever-changing pattern drew him in.

  Thoth’s wings heaved against the gate’s pull. General Demos clung to the dragon’s saddle.

  The blinking lights vanished and the doorway spread open.

  He blinked and the spell snapped.

  A window to another place appeared dangling a hundred feet above the swamp. A blood-orange sky and thin wispy clouds came into view.

  With jaw agape, he stared through the portal into another world. Was it the Seeker’s world? If he ordered Thoth through, would he find the Tower of Souls?

  The portal’s overwhelming tug vanished. Thoth broke free and flew in a slow arc above the window hanging over the swampland.

  A toe-curling screech came through the portal. A beast unlike any he’d ever seen slid through the opening.

  General Demos reached for a longbow dangling from Thoth’s saddle.

  The winged beast appeared Thoth’s size and half again. The creature bore no skin or scale. Bone, muscle, and sinew covered organs visible to the naked eye. The beast’s heart pumped inside a muscled chest cavity. Blood pumped through exposed arteries. The creature’s eyeballs rotated in an open socket tracking Thoth’s path in the sky above.

  A shiver pulled at the base of his skull. He recalled the visitor’s words. Agents were already among us. Was he witnessing an agent?

  Seated atop the beast, a shrouded figure clad in black turned a shadowy gaze in his direction. Bony fingers clung to a linked silver chain strung through the beast’s nostrils.

  His skin crawled, and he wanted nothing more than to be far away from the creature and its rider.

  A fifty-foot spray of fire erupted from Thoth’s throat.

  Blue flame rolled over the creature’s body.

  Six-inches from the beast’s heart, transparent skin glowed cherry-red. The beast never flinched.

  The creature’s black-clad rider snapped the silver reigns. The beast responded soaring higher and setting a path toward him and Thoth.