Daybreak (77 page)

Nadine slapped him across the arm. “Shhh!”
 

“Well, how was I to know it’d open like that?” Declan grunted.

He had to duck to follow her through the doorway. They stood inside some sort of clutter room. There were bits of things scattered everywhere — so coated in dust that it made Declan’s eyes water just to look at it.

The mots spread out across the chamber, poking their spears through the mess. Though they called out, the voice didn’t answer them back.

“Stay close to me,” Nadine said, waving Declan forward.

He didn’t have to be told twice. Perhaps it was just the grog getting the better of him — but he swore as he watched her move around the dusty chamber that she’d never looked so … beautiful. The way she smiled, the way she fought — the way her people followed her lead. She was a wonder.

And Declan knew he couldn’t live with himself if he didn’t give it one last try.

When she stepped inside a broom closet, he blocked the doorway.

“What are you —?”

“Why won’t you marry me? And don’t say I wouldn’t understand, because you haven’t even tried to tell me. I might understand it,” Declan said roughly. Though the liquor steeled his nerves, he had to press his fists against the doorframe to keep from toppling over.

But even as the closet spun, he could see the surprise on Nadine’s face. Her dark eyes flicked beneath his arm. “No, not here.”

“Yeh,
exactly
here. Right now, before you have a chance to run off again.”

“But everybody is watching!”

“I don’t care! They can watch all they want to. Tell me why you won’t have me, Nadine. Is it because I’m not one of your kind?”

“No —”

“Is it because I haven’t got much to give you? I know my house is small, but —”

“
No
! It is nothing to do with you. It is all my doing.” She looked away and said with a glare: “I am barren. I cannot have your children, and so it would not be right to let you tie yourself to me. You would only be disappointed.”

Declan stared at her for nearly a full minute, sifting through the shock, before he was finally able to work out exactly how he felt. “That’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard. Haven’t we got enough of them? What could we
possibly
need another child for? We’ve got so many little mice running around the fields that I’ve got to look twice before I put my feet down!”

Her glare shone fiercely in the torchlight. “You have been very kind to take us in. I will never be able to repay your kindness. But one day, you will want your own family — what are you doing?”

Declan didn’t trust himself to grab her around the arms. His balance was bad enough that he thought he might accidentally crush her, if he tried. So instead, he fell to his knees.
 

From this angle, he had to look up at her. It was more than a little frightening — it would hurt badly, if she stomped him while he sat like this. But he swallowed his fear and forced himself to say it:
 

“Is that what you think of me? Do you think I’m just putting a roof over your head while I wait around for a family? You
are
my family,” he grunted, his chest tightening against the words. He hadn’t expected them to come out so strongly. They practically burst him, pushing through. “We’re a strange lot, I’ll give you that. But I love those little mountain mice. I don’t care that they aren’t giants. I don’t care that they don’t look like me. They’re mine in every way that counts. If you ever took them away … it’d break my heart.”

The mots were crowded in tightly behind Declan, watching. He could feel their little shadows across his back. But he didn’t care: he kept his eyes on Nadine.

For a moment, she didn’t budge. Then all at once, something twisted across her face. She dropped her spear and, as it clattered to the floor, pressed a hand against her eyes.

Declan pulled it away. “If you don’t want me, I’ll understand it. And I’ll never ask again. But if
this
is all it is … well, that’s not good enough. You’ll have to try harder than that to —”

“Yes,” Nadine said suddenly. She pulled her hand from his and dashed the wet from her eyes, smiling as she said again: “Yes, you foolish giant.”

Declan was about to smile back when a thought struck him. “Wait —
yes
, you’ll have me? Or
yes
you don’t —?”

She kissed him firmly, leaving absolutely no doubt.

The floor shook as the mots cheered and thumped their spears hard against the planks. All of the pounding knocked something loose in the broom closet — a hefty chunk of wood that’d been leaning against its side.

The wood thumped hard into Declan, and he nearly leapt out of his skin when he felt a blast of hot breath against his shoulder: “Sorry about that. I was going to be polite for once and wait till you’d all finished talking, but the floor had other ideas,” a voice mumbled into Declan’s shoulder.

He shoved the chunk of wood back into the depths of the closet, his heart pounding in shock. There was a knot in the wood about halfway up. He groaned when a lopsided face appeared inside its center.

“Clodded pirate grog,” he swore.

But Nadine gasped beside him. “No, I see him as well! It is magic.”

“It’s
Knotter
, actually,” the wood replied. “And I’d very much like to go home.”

“Are we out yet? Are we free?” Knotter hissed.

“Can’t you see we’re still in a tunnel, you clodded thing?” Declan grunted.
 

As he was the only one strong enough to carry Knotter, he’d been given the task of toting the door across his back. Now the tunnels were much tighter than they’d been before, he was sweating through his tunic — and Knotter’s moaning showed no signs of ending.

“I don’t know — all I see are miles and miles of dank, moldy rock.”

“Yeh, and it matches well with your breath.”

“I spent almost a week fully sunk inside a vat of water, a stone sitting atop my middle,” Knotter said evenly. “Yes, I contracted a nasty rash of mold, and I’m afraid being locked inside that closet didn’t help things. But once I spend a few days in the sun, it ought to dry up nicely …
if
we ever get out of here, that is.”

Declan couldn’t help but feel a bit sorry for him. From what he could remember through the cloud of grog, Knotter said that he used to be a part of the front gate at the Wright’s castle. When the castle burned, the King’s mages found him out. They’d ripped him from his frame and taken him to Midlan — where he’d been tortured for weeks.

“They tried magic, but of course that didn’t work. No spell can touch me. The termites weren’t at all interested. So after that, the mages had no choice but to try and drown me.” Knotter’s laugh bounced off the passageway suddenly, causing several of the mots ahead of them to jump. “But no matter what they did, I wouldn’t give them so much as a
murmur
of what I knew. A gate must be loyal to everybody inside his walls — even if they threaten to burn him alive nearly every other day. Such is my burden and my solemn oath.”

“Yeh, well, when you start to smell fresh air, you’ll know we’re almost out. I can’t give you anymore a clue than that,” Declan said.

Ahead of them, Nadine spun around. “
Can
you smell?”

“Yes, I can smell. I can hear and I can taste … and just recently, I’ve learned to love, as well.”

“Plains Mother,” Declan grumbled.

Knotter didn’t seem to hear him. “Yes, it’s true — though I didn’t realize that I loved her until after we’d already been torn apart. She’s always been there for me, always by my side. She is, without a doubt, my other half.”

“Nadine!” One of the mots stuck her head from a passage and swung her spear in a wild, frantic arc. “Come quickly — I hear another voice!”

“Please don’t let it be someone else who needs saving,” Declan muttered as he followed them. “I’ve got my hands full enough, as it is.”

The mots crowded around a small wooden door. Several of them had their ears pressed against it. As Nadine listened to the muffled voice on the other side, her mouth parted slightly — and her brows dropped low.

She only got that look when she was troubled about something. Declan sat Knotter face-first against a wall and eased his way to her side. “What is it, wee thing?”

“They are strange words … the words of a spellweaver.”

Declan pressed an ear against the door above her. “Is it Jake?”

“I do not think so.”

“That’s Ulric,” Knotter called. With his lopsided face crammed so tightly against the wall, his words sounded as if they came out of his nose. “Yes, that’s
definitely
Ulric. I’d know that sniveling, whistle-breathing spell-flinger anywhere.”

Even through the power of the grog, Declan felt a twinge of fury. No sooner had he reached for the door’s latch than Nadine grabbed him around the wrist.

“No, keep yourself calm. We have no power against the mages.”

“I’m not going to attack him,” Declan promised. “I only want to see what we’re up against. I’ll just open it a crack.”

After a moment of glaring, she relented. “Be careful.”

“I will.” Declan eased the door from its frame an inch. “There’s a tapestry on the other side. I can’t get a good look at … wait a moment. Here’s a worn bit.”
 

He peered through a bare section of thread and a large, dark room came into focus. Light spilled from the hearth, but that was it. There didn’t appear to be any windows in the chamber.
 

A man paced back and forth across the flickering trail left by the hearth fires. There were scratches and bruises across his face. He wore gold robes — the same as the mages who’d attacked them in the plains. There was a shackle glowing red upon his wrist. As he stalked, he whispered loudly into the silent room:

“Get her, beast … grab her around the throat … yes!” he cried suddenly, clenching his fists before him. “
Yes
! Drag her down, send her body through the fortress! Crush her!
Crush
—”

A blast stumbled Declan backwards, and a flare of light blinded him for a moment. Nadine grabbed onto his belt to keep from being rolled away by the force of the blast. When Declan finally steadied himself, a new voice filled the chamber:

“Enough, Ulric! The battle is lost, Midlan has fallen. Let the boy go … or I’ll put a stop to you, myself.”

Ulric responded with a roar and an arc of red flame. It flew towards the three darkened figures standing in the doorway: the two on either side leapt out of its path, but the man in the middle caught the flames against a spell of his own.

The noise as the two spells collided stabbed Declan’s ears. He held on tightly to Nadine as the mages tried to blast each other into the under-realm. Back and forth they fought, moving around the room in a dueler’s dance.
 

Though the mage with the green spells held his own for a moment, he was quickly driven back against a wall. His many wrinkles deepened against the fury of the red light, and his gray beard seemed close to catching flame.

“We must do something!” Nadine cried, her hands twisting into his tunic.

The mages’ battle had carried them close to the tapestry. Ulric was only a few paces away. When he tried to outflank the older mage, it left his back exposed. Now he faced the wall and kept all of his focus on the battle. He paid no mind to anything behind him …

Declan had an idea. “Pass me the door.”

“I — what? No, what are you doing with me? Put me down!” Knotter cried.
 

But the mots paid him no heed. They wedged their tiny fingers beneath him and passed him in an ant’s line to Declan — who grabbed him firmly around the wooden sides.

“No spell can touch you, right?”

Knotter replied with an unintelligible groan.

Nadine seemed to realize what Declan had planned. She slid her spear against the tapestry’s edge. “When you are ready, I will cast it aside. The mots will be right behind you.”

“Yeh, and stay close together, wee things. It’s about to get thick —”

“No, wait!” Knotter’s lopsided face twisted with a sigh. “If you’re going to do this, at least turn me around. I’d like to be able see what’s coming.”

Declan flipped him so that his knot faced out. “All right, then. Here we go!”

Nadine slung the tapestry aside — and Declan charged through the door. The chamber shrank quickly beneath his sprint. Ulric twisted around at the sound of his roar and only managed to fire one spell.

It struck Knotter hard, and the door let loose with a battle cry when the fires shook him. Declan’s muscles swelled as he struggled to hold his course. But hold it, he did. He picked up speed the second they struck flesh — and he didn’t stop until he’d crushed Ulric against the wall.

“Is that it? Is he dead?”

“No, not yet,” Knotter grunted.

Declan’s next thrust brought with it the unmistakable sound of crunching bones.

“
Blah
! That did it.”

Ulric left such a mess against the wall that Declan didn’t think the stones would ever recover. To his right, the mots gathered around the old mage. He thanked them quietly as they helped him to his feet.

“Much appreciated, little ones. You were a bit late, but not
too
late. That’s the main thing.”

Nadine stared him in the eyes for a moment, mouth agape. Then all at once, she grinned. “You have the Sight.”

“I do, yes. How wise of you to notice.” The old mage cast his stare around the room, and his mouth went sharp. “We really must be going, now. There’s something —”
 

“Ahoy there, mates!” Jonathan called. He jogged through the door, arm slinging before him in a wave. Eveningwing darted in close behind.

Declan had to squint just to make sure it wasn’t the grog playing tricks on him. “Is that you, wee fiddler?”

“Sure. Who else would it be?” he said with a grin.

Jonathan slung one of the old mage’s arms across his shoulder, and Eveningwing propped him up on the other side. No sooner had they gotten settled than something like thunder shook the stone beneath their feet. A pair of furious roars filled the hallways.