Ignite the Fire: Incendiary by Karen Chance
Chapter Twenty-Eight
We immediately dove after him, a sudden move that had me screaming internally, because our mount had turned into a brown and white bullet shooting straight at the ground. I could see it through a gap in the fluffy white nothingness below, which parted to reveal a beautiful blue lake. It was almost perfectly round, and reflected the mountains in its placid surface like a mirror.
Will we splat or drown, I wondered, staring at it.
Probably splat.
Even water, when hit from this high up, would be as hard as concrete.
But the fey didn’t seem to be experiencing the same terror. He laughed instead, an exultant, natural sound that I’d never expected to hear from one of them, when we hurtled past the small wooden craft mid-air. And before I could scream again, he banked and swooped and headed for the side of the mountain, talons first. I had a moment to stare at the massive wall of stone rushing at us like a huge, pale fist, but found that I couldn’t utter a sound.
And then we landed, on a tiny shelf of rock that I hadn’t even seen, maybe because it jutted out just above the sea of clouds, which partly hid it from view.
“Perhaps next time!” my fey called out, to the pilot who had just drawn up alongside the cliff.
“That makes you one out of four,” he replied, laughing. “I like my odds!”
“And I like Sorjen red. See you below.”
The pilot nodded ruefully, and the small craft spiraled upward again as we dismounted.
My legs felt like jelly, but the fey’s were strong and steady, as if he did this every day. And maybe he did. He pulled messy hair out of our face, still grinning, as an older fey came running up.
Unlike the other two, the new arrival wasn’t in armor, but wore a simple brown tunic over gray leggings, and had straw in his hair. He also looked about as freaked out as I felt. “You’re going to splatter all over the cliffside one of these days,” he said, before he’d even reached us. “Mark my words!”
“Duly marked,” my fey replied. “Unfortunately, in that case, I won’t be around for you to say, ‘I told you so.’”
“You will if you get another mount—a normal one—like everyone else!”
“But I like this one. And I did go to a good bit of trouble stealing him.”
“Bah!” the old fey said, and reached for the bridle. “You’d have done better to—”
He never finished the sentence, because the gryphon clearly didn’t like anybody but its rider touching it. It tossed its great head, hard enough to drag the old fey off the ground and almost off the cliff. My fey grabbed him just in time.
“Let me handle Azurr?” he suggested, setting the old fey back on his feet.
“You’re damned right I’ll let you handle him! They’re nasty, bad-tempered, dangerous beasts, every one—”
“Nonsense. They’re brilliant, intuitive creatures. You just have to get to know them.”
“I don’t want to get to know him! Put him in the stables with the proper mounts, and let’s hope he doesn’t eat one, this time!”
“Perhaps you should try feeding him on time,” the rider said carelessly, and led his mount to a stable in a cave just ahead, where a bunch of horses started whinnying and looking seriously unhappy as soon as we came in.
“Azurr,” the old fey grumbled, moving to quiet several stallions. “I assume you were being sarcastic with that name? He never listens to anyone!”
“He listens to me,” my fey stopped to pet the great neck, marveling as always that he could tell where feathers met fur, even with his gauntlet on. “Most of the time.”
“Well, tell him to stop disturbing them! They’ll be in a panic soon!”
“War horses should be stouter of heart. Perhaps you should train them better?”
The old man grumbled something just out of hearing, and my fey looked sternly at his mount. “Be good?” he suggested, taking off the bridle and hanging the saddle over a rail.
The gryphon ignored him with kingly aplomb, settling into a larger than usual stall with the air of one who was only staying because he felt like it.
That was probably true, since the muscles on the great body looked like they could destroy the sturdy wooden sides without effort, but I didn’t get to see if they did. Because we were on the move again, through a series of similar stables, with the inner ones having a symmetry that natural caves never did. Like the shallow depression we turned into suddenly, and then spun about to face outward again.
For a second, I thought that the fey was lying in wait for someone, because I couldn’t imagine why else he’d be standing in a hole, in a dark corridor, all alone. But then the stone on either side of us began pushing together, not caving in but closing in front of us, until there wasn’t even a crack anymore. It blocked out what little light the corridor had, leaving us entombed in darkness.
And solid rock.
I felt my pulse start to pound as I stared around at nothing, with my breath coming faster in my throat. The rock had closed up all of a couple inches away from our face, to the point that it felt like being sealed in a coffin—or a stone sarcophagus, ready to wait out the ages until some poor archeologist got the fright of his life. I was way ahead of him there, desperately wanting to push against the wall, to force it open, to beat and bang on the cold, unfeeling surface—anything to get out! But the fey just stood there.
And before I could give in completely to fear, the floor jerked under our feet and we started to—
Well, I’ll be damned, I thought, staring around some more, because a little ambient light had just come on, from where I wasn’t sure. But it allowed me to see that the little capsule or shield or protected area—whatever we were in—was moving quickly upwards, through solid stone. But it wasn’t carving a path; there were no sparks or flying shards here. Instead, I watched the rock slide around us like a river, parting to let us through and then closing back after us again.
I remembered Pritkin doing something similar, although with great effort, in medieval Wales. We’d been captured and confined in a room surrounded by disgruntled fey. We’d had zero chance of reaching the door, even when a bevy of pretty girls brought dinner to everyone, creating a small distraction.
Until the wall behind us, composed of huge old stones, had liquified and let us through.
It wasn’t a great memory to have right now, because Pritkin’s ability with earth magic was pretty minimal, which had resulted in us getting stuck halfway. I vividly remembered the feeling of claustrophobia, of being entombed in stone, of running out of air and of everything getting too hot and too close while terror clawed at my throat. I’d wondered if I was going to become a permanent resident of the wall, a Cassie-shaped fossil for someone to discover, centuries later, and marvel about how I ended up there.
But then we’d popped out the other side, with Pritkin red faced and panting, and me practically kissing the ground underneath my clutching hands.
I’d never been so happy to see open air in my life.
Kind of like now, when the ‘elevator’ stopped and the ‘door’ opened, and we stepped calmly out. At least, the fey did. I was having a silent hissy fit, trying to gulp in extra oxygen because that had been a really small capsule, only his body wasn’t cooperating.
But then I looked up and forgot all about it. A huge, flat cave spread out before us, as big as a couple of football fields placed end to end, with a jagged, horizontal fissure in one side that looked out over the snowy vista beyond. The fissure spread across most of the length of the cavern, and was tall enough to serve as an exit point for the strange, pyramid-shaped craft that were lined up in rows, what had to be hundreds of them. Including one that had just zipped in and was slowly rotating in the air, while several fey jumped out.
Neither of them was the pilot we’d met, who I now saw jogging this way with his hand outstretched. “Old Tagget just got in a barrel of Heart’s Gold—twelve years old—that he declares to be divine,” he informed us.
My fey snorted but clasped arms with him, nonetheless. “I’m sure. But you won’t get off that easily.”
“Forgive me for trying to improve your sadly deficient palate.”
“Forgive me for thinking that you’re more worried about the deficiencies of your purse.”
The pilot laughed. He did that a lot, more than my fey, who other than for the brief moment of excitement outside, seemed pretty dour. But the pilot was young, with a round and surprisingly pleasant face for a Svarestri and amused gray eyes.
I looked into them and got a sudden flash of piles of silver haired bodies, lying dead and broken on the battlefield, during the fight for the capitol. There’d been heaps of our dead lying around, too, which was why I hadn’t thought much about it at the time. I’d just been trying to stay alive. But now . . .
I really wished I could stop remembering now.
But I didn’t have time to hear any more of their uncomfortable banter, because another fey had just hurried up.
“The wine will have to wait,” he said, panting slightly as he came to a stop beside us. And caused me to do a double take, because he was the first light fey with a belly that I’d ever seen. It was pretty small in comparison to the vampire’s from the imprint, but it nonetheless managed to stretch the front of the blue velvet robes he wore. He also likely had a double chin, only I couldn’t tell because he wore a beard.
I hadn’t known that the fey could grow those, either. But I guessed so, since it cascaded down his chest in a silvery white ripple, as if Father Christmas had just come back from the salon. And was having a really bad day, I thought, seeing his expression.
“What is it?” My fey asked, sounding like he already knew.
“He’s in a temper. You’re needed.”
The pilot clapped us on the shoulder. “Annnnd I’ll have that drink in your honor—or your memory,” he said, and walked off.
My fey scowled; I could feel it stretch our face. “Where is he?”
“Where he always is.” The bearded fey looked up at the ceiling and then back down, and his expression was troubled. “There’s something else . . .”
“What?”
The bearded fey shook his head. “You’ll see when you get there. You’d better hurry.”
My fey did not hurry. Nor did he get back on the claustrophobic elevator. Instead, he crossed the huge expanse of what I guessed was a landing bay at a saunter, giving me time to look around.
The newest pilots to arrive had disembarked, and their still levitating unit was being pushed into line by a couple of flunkies in bright red tunics. It was the flashiest color I’d ever seen the Svarestri wear, who usually matched their mountains. But I guessed it helped with visibility, so no careless flyboy ran them down.
I tried to count the small craft but gave up after a moment because there appeared to be another cave linked to this one, and I glimpsed some in there, too. And maybe more on the other side, for all I knew. There could be thousands all together, which made me wonder what they’d been doing during the battle for the capitol.
Maybe they were too flimsy to take part? They certainly looked as if an accidental blow from one of the stone giants would obliterate them, much less a well thrown battle spell. But they could have stayed high and dropped potion bombs, the way Caedmon’s fey had done from their gryphons.
Yet Aeslinn hadn’t used them.
Maybe he’d been afraid to hit his own people? Because, by the time we’d deployed the gryphons, most of our troops were either dead or under heavy shielding. We hadn’t had much to lose.
But when I thought of the fey that Aeslinn’s dragon form had ground under his huge belly, crushing them to pulp, I wondered—did he really care so much for his soldiers? Because it hadn’t looked like it then. It hadn’t looked like it much period, frankly, as far as I could tell.
So, what was he doing with his airborne armada?
I had no idea. Just like I didn’t know what he’d been doing in Romania. We’d only found him because we’d been looking for the goat creature, which my powers had allowed us to track to roughly the right place. Only to find, upon arrival, that Aeslinn was having a party with the local disaffected vampire clans.
They’d long had a problem with the current system, ever since our consul introduced the idea of rules back in the fifteenth century. They’d even rebelled against her for a while, until she proved that she deserved her reputation, and killed half of them off. The rest had learned some manners, but they’d never been what you would call staunch supporters.
The fact that Aeslinn had been meeting with them worried me. What worried me even more was that it had been the Aeslinn from our era—Zeus had admitted as much. Jonathan, the time traveling necromancer, had taken the king back to eighteenth century Romania, presumably to evade us after his defeat.
Except that it couldn’t have been after, could it? Because Aeslinn hadn’t been at his capitol when it was attacked. That was one of the reasons we’d won: the king had not been there to lead his troops. It had been a hard fight, but if the Svarestri had had aerial support, or if their king had been on hand to rally his fey . . .
Things might have been far worse.
So, why hadn’t he been?
The more I thought about it, the weirder it got. Jonathan had even warned Aeslinn about what was going to happen. Or what had already happened, because we’d fought that battle twice—the first time when we won easily, taking the fey by surprise, and the do-over when we’d barely pulled it off, because they knew we were coming. The necro had used Jo’s time travel abilities to go back after the first battle, and give Aeslinn a head’s up, so that he was expecting us.
Yet, he still ran? He still didn’t use all of his advantages? He still lost?
It didn’t make sense. It might have if Aeslinn was a coward, but I hadn’t gotten that impression on the Thames. He’d run then, too, but only when he was out of options, and badly injured. It was a retreat that anyone would have made, not a cowardly refusal to do battle.
He’d battled just fine, as long as he thought he had a chance to win, and with no one else there to absorb punishment except himself. And Zeus hadn’t said that Aeslinn was cowering in a corner somewhere afterwards; he’d said that he was furious. That didn’t sound like a coward to me.
Yet he let his capitol burn?
Because he’d fled before the battle started, before we even got there, almost like he didn’t care. Like whether his capitol survived or not was irrelevant as long as it bought him time. But to do what?
I didn’t know, and it made me want to chew my fingernails off, only I couldn’t because they were currently covered by a gauntlet. One that the fey was resting on a rail as he ran up a curving staircase made of that same buttery marble, scaling flight after flight without so much as getting winded. And then emerging at the top on a long, wide corridor that changed dramatically as we walked down it.
Unlike some things around here, it didn’t actually move, but the thick bands of different types of stone that covered the walls, ceiling, and floor, that gave the illusion.
It started off normally enough, with a gorgeous cinnamon granite that reminded me of the giant we’d passed on the way here, sparkling with little flakes that caught the light from a line of torches on the walls as we walked by. The torches were needed as there were no windows here, unlike the rest of this place, which had felt airy and open to the elements. But this hallway closed around us, long and dark and gleaming with treasures.
But the wealth wasn’t displayed on plinths or glimpsed in storerooms; the treasure here was the walls themselves, and they were breathtaking.
Like when a huge stone visage suddenly pushed out from the granite, blinking sleepily at me. The fey I was hitchhiking with stopped and stood there, tapping his foot impatiently. The creature—because the face definitely belonged to one of the great stone creatures the fey made, just sans a body—did not get in a hurry. It yawned, so big and so long, that I could have stepped into the huge open mouth had I been there, and then blinked some more. There were no eyelashes on the huge eyes, but everything else, down to the pores in the “skin”, looked real.
A hand formed itself out of stone with a finger extended, to gently poke us. The fey sighed, but turned around, I guessed so that the head could get a full look at us. And could delicately relieve us of our weapons, despite the size of the hand doing it.
We completed the circle to find our weapons affixed to the wall, not held in place by the rock so much as partly buried within it, but the fey didn’t object. I supposed he’d get them back on the return trip. And that seemed to have been all the head had wanted, because it was already disappearing into the rock, with only the nose and lips still visible.
Until the wall swallowed them, too, and then smoothed back out, as glossy fine as if it had never been disturbed at all.
We walked on.
After the granite was a section of petrified wood, only off of the biggest tree I’d ever seen. Its heart curved over top of us, like the tunnels I’d seen carved through fallen sequoias, big enough to drive a semitruck through. But this tunnel had striations of amber, crimson and gold peeking past the brown and stabbing down towards the earth, like a wooden sunburst.
There must have been a skylight above it, because the colors were vibrant, almost boiling with light as if the tree was on fire. They shed multihued rays down on us as we walked underneath, so thick and so strong that I would have put out a hand to touch one, had I been able. I belatedly realized that the inclusions were opal that had infused the wood over time and had left it a piece of art.
Then came a section of stacked sandstone, in tan and gray and white, which had been magicked or carved—I couldn’t tell which—into a herd of horses galloping down the hallway. The strata of the stone were clearly delineated and curved along the horses’ flanks, flowing manes and huge, wild eyes. The frieze was carved in extreme relief, as if coming off the walls, and the animals were fifteen, maybe eighteen feet high. The flowing manes almost closed together over our heads, giving the impression that we were in the middle of the herd, running along with them. Or about to be trampled, because they were so lifelike, I could almost hear their hooves thundering all around us.
Then, just when I was sure that nothing could top that, came a section of sedimentary rock, filled with huge seashells, their surfaces still iridescent with mother of pearl. There were also the fossilized remains of large sea creatures trapped within the rock, most of them fish or eels—the latter’s skeletons rippling sinuously through the stone—or the imprints of ancient plant life, so perfectly preserved that I could almost see them move with the current. There was no color here, except for the vague, brownish tan of the rock, yet my brain kept trying to add it anyway—red to some coral, green to a turtle peeking out of some rock, yellow to some sponges—because it was all so real.
Including stranger things, scattered here and there, which I couldn’t explain: a strand of pearls, perfectly strung and still gleaming softly, fallen to the sand; a three-pronged impression in the rock, too straight-edged to have been made by nature; the skeleton of a crab, clinging to something that almost looked like a human hand.
I squinted at them, not sure what I was seeing in the dim, flickering light. It made the whole tunnel seem to move, as if splashed with rolling waves, confusing the eyes. And added to the strange realism of the scene, as if we’d plunged beneath a reef without knowing it.
But then the corridor curved, and I saw something up ahead that assured me that I wasn’t seeing things, in the most gruesome way possible.