The Duelist 9, page 24
“Over here!” I called to the falcon-man, and he scrambled toward me as the koala began to claw its way up his leg. Its little claws were now digging into his knee, his thigh, and I steeled my resolve as I raised my own makeshift sword and stabbed it down hard into the creature’s back.
With another piercing scream, it went limp and let go of Horus. The body flopped to the ground uselessly, harmlessly, and now that its face was no longer twisted with rage and hatred, it looked even more like Jenner.
“That was a kindness,” Zoie told me in a firm voice, and she reached out to lay a hand on my shoulder. “There was nothing we could have done to save him. Not without risking Horus.”
“Yeah,” I said and managed the barest hint of a rueful smile. “I guess I don’t want my best friend turning into Eng-chow.”
I looked out over the swarm of oncoming koala-people. They’d gotten distracted in part by themselves, because as they scrambled toward us, they bumped into one another and began attacking each other even as they continued to push themselves through the gap in the glass to get to us.
“Aw, I knew you cared.” Horus grinned, but the brief moment of reprieve was cut short as another screeching wail cut the air, and the three of us suddenly remembered that there was a swarm of savage koala-people ready to literally tear us to pieces.
“We have to get out of here,” I said, as if we all didn’t already know that.
“Asher Alda!” The cleric’s voice was faint above the cacophonous screeching of the feral Eng-folk. “This way!”
Zoie glanced at me nervously, since we were too far away from the cleric for him to be able to see any of this.
“Can we trust him?” she asked me.
“He knows these tunnels better than we do,” I said. “And for now at least, he thinks I’m Krev. I say we go with him.”
“I’m with you, Chief,” Horus said, but his face was twisted with pain as he struggled to walk normally on his bloody leg.
I made Horus go in front of me, with Zoie in front of him. That way I could bring up the rear of our little group, since I was in the best condition to be fighting any of the Eng-folk who tried to follow us once they were done mauling each other. Horus kept up a decent pace despite his damaged leg, and we met up with the crazy cleric at the mouth of one of the tunnels that led out of the enormous cavern-laboratory.
“Asher Alda?” the cleric asked me. “Are you alright?”
“I’ll be just fine when we get out of this place!” I snapped as I waved the shard of metal at a koala-person who had gotten a little too close for comfort. It lurched back to avoid my blade and hissed at me like a resentful cat. “How do we get up to the surface?”
“The surface is no good,” the cleric said. “We need to--”
“Don’t explain, just take us there!” I ordered harshly, and I swung again at another koala-person.
Thankfully, the situation was too dangerous right this second for the cleric to question why Krev Alda was bringing up the rear of their group, a decidedly riskier and more selfless thing than he would ordinarily do. But between Horus being hurt, and Zoie being pregnant, there was no way I was going to risk either of them for the sake of our little performance.
The cleric moved swiftly through the tunnels, and we kept close behind him. The system was nothing short of labyrinthine, and I said a silent thank you to the ancient Engish who’d first made these tunnels for making them so smooth and tidy. I barely had to look forward as I ran, because there was no danger of me tripping on anything.
My mind raced with ideas of what we could do. With the horde of Engish now set on us, I doubted there was anything that would dissuade them from their targets now. They were bloodthirsty hunters, and they’d decided we were their prey, and that had been before the cleric’s fucked-up machine made them even more feral.
The only safe place I could think of was the Manta ship, but even if we could get to the surface while evading the savage koala-people, it was still a long way back to the ship. Over flat, open terrain like the deserts, we would be at a disadvantage. In the Engish’s desperation to reach us, to be the first to attack and claw us, they were slowed down in the narrow tunnels, because they were a large group all trying to shove forward. In a wide-open space, they would be much more able to pick up speed, and we would be in considerably more danger.
I glanced back as we moved, and I was relieved to see we’d put a fair amount of distance between us and the horde of Engish. Maybe if we made that distance large enough, we would stand a chance at getting back to the ship. Zoie could whistle for La, and La could fly us to safety.
My train of thought was interrupted a second later when the cleric stopped. Zoie stopped short, since she’d been watching the cleric, but since Horus wasn’t in the best control of his leg and momentum, he crashed into her. Then, because I’d been looking back over my shoulder, I crashed into him, and he groaned.
“Shit, s-- Watch it!” I corrected at the last moment. Krev Alda would never apologize for running into someone, even if it had been totally his fault.
“Apologies,” Horus muttered in an impressively cowed voice.
“Why have we stopped?” I demanded as I looked over the feathered crest of Horus’ head to glower at the cleric.
“Just a moment, Asher Alda!” the cleric said, and he began frantically patting down the wall of the tunnel, like he was a blind man searching for something. “Where is it… where is it… ah!”
With a triumphant flourish, he pressed into a small, almost-invisible indent in the tunnel wall, and a huge section of stone slid back seamlessly and then to the side. It was a hidden door, straight out of some adventure movie, set in the ruins of an ancient-but-advanced civilization, guarded by wacky traps and peculiar puzzles that only the ‘pure of heart’ would be able to solve.
“In here, in here!” the cleric insisted, and he waved us into the little alcove quickly.
Zoie and Horus entered without hesitation, and even though I felt a little uneasy about being shoved into a hidden rock space by a guy I definitely didn’t trust, I felt more uneasy about being torn to pieces by a swarm of feral koala-people, so I went in after Horus.
The cleric entered behind me, and I watched as he had to manually heft the enormous stone door back into place by shoving it along tiny metal tracks on the floor to line it back up with the hole in the wall and then shoving it forward. It looked just as invisible on this side of the wall as it had in the main tunnel, except for those little tracks.
“The Engish were all about collaboration, but there are exceptions to every rule,” the cleric explained. “Such ‘secret workshops’ like these were usually built by the one who intended to use the workshop, so as to remain as secret as possible. Every single one has a different way to find it and enter it. There’s another one in a lower tunnel that requires use of a magnet, to move metal levers hidden on the other side of the wall.”
“That’s all very interesting,” I said in a terse voice. “But I would rather know what the Darkhells happened back there. You said that cuff could control them!”
“It can!” the cleric insisted. “I swear to you, Asher Alda! It’s just-- progress and experimentation aren’t a straight line, and the Engish notes were so sophisticated, yes, but they are incomplete. It will take time for me to perfect the system.”
“For future reference, don’t waste my time with demonstrations of imperfected machines,” I growled. “Those creatures could have ripped us limb from limb. And where would all my grand designs be then?”
“Of course,” the cleric muttered as he bowed his head. “You are correct, of course. My deepest apologies, Asher Alda. I will… I will bear that in mind, in the future.”
“See that you do,” I sneered. “Now, do you plan for us to wait out the rest of our lives in this cramped little workshop, or do you have a plan to get us back to my ship without being mauled by Engish?”
A sort of excitement took over the cleric again, and he nodded.
“Yes, of course!” he said eagerly. “These secret workshops often had secret passageways to the surface, too, so completed projects and materials could be moved in and out without causing too much suspicion. But perhaps we should take a moment to catch our breaths?”
He looked over at Horus, whose leg was now gushing blood. His pale skin had gone waxen and slightly sweaty from the exertion of running with such an injury, and he looked up at me with an expression I could only describe as apologetic.
“You do need a few minutes,” I said in as forgiving a tone as I dared. “I have plans for you, yet. Plans that don’t involve you bleeding out in a tiny workshop on an abandoned Island.”
“Thank you, master,” Horus said, but his teeth were gritted against the pain of his leg.
Zoie’s careful fingers probed at the wound, and Horus winced every time she brushed against one of the actual punctures left by the koala-person’s teeth or claws.
“Until we get you back to Shay, the best we can hope to do is minimize the damage,” the cat-woman explained, and she reached up to Horus’ shoulder. I thought she was going to pat his arm in comfort, but instead she ripped the sleeve of his shirt off at the seams and began tearing it into strips.
Makeshift bandages.
“This should staunch the blood flow just until we can get you somewhere safe,” she said to the falcon-man. “It’s just as well there are secret passageways, too. Even a child could track you with the blood trail you’ve been leaving behind.”
“You always know just what to say,” Horus ground out as he struggled not to yelp at the pain of Zoie tying the fabric strips tight around his leg.
“Perhaps a drink of water will help, too,” the cleric then said.
My eyes had adjusted enough to the gloom of the dimmed lightstones by then that, as the cleric stood up, I noticed this workshop wasn’t quite as small or cramped as I’d initially suspected. It was still tiny in comparison to the cavern, but it was still large enough that I could stand without having to duck my head.
“This is the workshop I use most often when I’m not in the main laboratory,” the cleric explained as he began rummaging around though the shelves. They’d been cut into the stone of the walls, as had a much larger shelf-alcove thing with a mattress on it. “For when the Engish were too loud for me to concentrate.”
I wondered briefly how long the cleric had been keeping the Engish prisoner behind that glass, but I quickly decided I didn’t want to know or think about it. They were the primary threat right now anyway, though I couldn’t help but wonder if throwing the cleric to the horde would calm some of their savagery, if they could enact revenge on the person who’d captured and experimented on them.
But I honestly had no idea if that much of their minds even remained, or if they would attack anyone and everyone and had no memory of who’d imprisoned them.
Right now, I wasn’t eager to find out. Not until Horus was able to move again. I’d never forgive myself if something happened to him. Not to mention, Shay and Anwaar would never forgive me, either.
“Aha!” the cleric suddenly said, and he produced a clay jug from one of the shelves. “Here we go! Something to quench your third and revitalize your energy.”
He uncorked the jug and made to hand it toward Horus, but something inside me suddenly screamed Absolutely Not, and I lurched forward with my arms shooting out to literally snatch the jug from the cleric in a decidedly undignified, un-Krev-Alda-like way.
“You had better not be intending to poison my manservant,” I warned the cleric in a foreboding tone.
“Of course not, Asher Alda!” the cleric gasped. “I would never! It’s just water, I swear to you. Taste for yourself.”
He gestured toward the jug I was holding, and I appraised it for a moment. I was fairly confident this guy wouldn’t try to poison his ‘master,’ even if that master was a supreme dick. The cleric was too grovel-y, too smarmy, for something like that.
And if I was wrong, I could always turn back time.
I sniffed at the water and found nothing suspicious, so I tipped the jug back and took a sip.
The water was cool and clear and refreshing. Something about it energized me, almost, like a small thrill of electricity that ran up my whole body. It was almost sweet-tasting, and despite being water, and technically flavorless, its flavor was nonetheless distinct.
I’d tasted this sort of water before.
I lowered the jug slowly and leveled my gaze at the cleric, whose eyes had gone wide when I’d taken a gulp of the water.
“I’m curious,” I said to the cleric in an even voice. “Why do you have a jug of Ocean water in your workshop?”
The cleric scowled, and at once he transformed from a simpering, eager-to-please lackey to something rather more dangerous.
“I had my suspicions about you, Alex Brightwood,” he spat. “I heard rumors of a fight between Asher Alda and Brightwood, I heard conflicting accounts of who was the victor. I admit, I could hardly believe a newcomer whelp like you would stand a chance against my master, but it seems my worst suspicions have been confirmed.”
“It really wasn’t very wise of you to trap yourself in a small space with me and two of my friends,” I told him in a dangerous voice, and I gripped the piece of metal I was using as a sword.
The cleric just laughed. It wasn’t that weird, high-pitched giggle from before, but the lower, throatier chuckle. The real laugh. He’d dropped a charade of his own now.
I moved around so I was standing between him and Horus, who was still being tended to by Zoie. The cleric was now trapped between me and the door out into the tunnel, where we could now hear the faint scratching, scrabbling sounds of the horde of feral Engish, hungry for our blood.
“That’s where you’re wrong, Alex Brightwood,” the cleric said, and he flashed a sharp, dangerous grin. It held all of the grim excitement of those smiles from earlier, but now there was an edge to it. A base, primal delight in the fact that blood would soon spill. “I am not trapped in here with you and yours. In fact, I am not trapped in here at all. Rather, you are trapped in here with me and my army.”
“Your army?” I scoffed. “The cuff didn’t work. You can’t control them any more than--”
I stopped.
We hadn’t seen the cleric for several moments after the window had shattered. He’d been on the other side of the cavern, alone and far closer to the window than we’d been. But there hadn’t been a scratch on him. He’d managed to push through the horde of Engish without being at all harmed.
The cuff hadn’t malfunctioned. He’d just wanted us to believe it had so we could follow him to a place where we were trapped.
“You bastard,” I snarled at the cleric, and I lunged forward with my free hand balling up in the front of his cloak. “I’ll cut that little cuff off your arm and throw you to the Engish.”
“You could,” the cleric admitted. “But it would only mean I die with you. The cuff is attuned to me specifically. I’d been making a second cuff for Asher Alda, but it’s in the main laboratory, and it’s already been attuned to his blood. I’m the only thing stopping those savages from getting in here and ripping you to pieces right this very second.”
“And what’s stopping you?” I sneered. “If you expect me to give up any secrets of my own, you can think again.”
“I don’t need any of your secrets,” the cleric snorted. “You were kind enough to bring your ridiculous Manta ship with you when you came to Eng. Eng-folk are quite fast when they’re not concerned about propriety or higher-reasoning, you know. I imagine they’ll make quick work of whoever you have sitting up there in that ship. Once I kill them, I’ll have command of the ship, and plenty of resources to perfect the machine with. And I can see Krev Alda’s plans finally brought to fruition!”
He was even crazier than I’d realized.
I let go of the cleric quickly and was almost worried his insanity was catching.
“And all that shit about the demons?” I demanded. “Transformation magic?” “Was that just window-dressing crap?”
“Oh, no,” the cleric said. “The Alemic conspiracy and the origin of the Scourge is real, as far as I can tell from the Engish records I found. But it’s not going to make much of a difference when the three of you are dead, and when I use the remnants of the Engish Curse to bring all of Aventoll to heel.”
He stepped back toward the door of the secret workshop, and both Zoie and I lunged forward to stop him.
The cleric was too quick, though, and from somewhere within the depths of his clothes, he threw a tiny silver dagger. I just had time to see it glint in the light before it glanced off Zoie’s leg and sliced a thin red line across her thigh. She cried out and was caught off balance, and in the small crowded workshop, she didn’t have the proper space to dodge or adjust her stance.
I realized this and lurched forward to catch her before she hit her head on the ground or something. The cleric, meanwhile, had reached for another slight, almost-invisible indent in the wall. The horde would come through as soon as he opened the doorway, I knew, and they would part around him like river water around a rock, not even noticing him while they ripped Horus, Zoie, and I to shreds.
“If you have any last words, I would suggest you speak them now,” the cleric said in a mild, airy tone.
I reached forward to stop him, but with Zoie in my arms I was just a fraction of a second too slow as I called up my time-trance ability.
The cleric pressed the indent, and the wall slid open.
Chapter 19
There was barely half a second between when the door to the secret workshop slid open and when the horde of savage koala-people began to spill in.
But that was of no consequence. Half a second was plenty of time. My time-trance ability had hovered on the edge of my consciousness like a finger on the trigger, and now I pulled.
