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Chapter Thirty-Two

I hoped that maybe if they figured we were both unconscious they would just try to carry us out without tying us up.

Sadly, they were far more astute than that. I swore in my head as coarse rope was looped around my hands behind my back. I felt sorry about Foxy having his heart broken but that wasn’t going to stop me from going after Amara if we got out of here. Although I was glad she hadn’t left us where the necromancer would find us, had she not betrayed us, we all could have been safely out of the ruins by now.

Of course the whole reason we’d gone in here in the first place was to find out what was actually going on in my dig site. Something I guessed we were never going to know. No one knew where we’d gone. The girls were probably off introducing more of their wild kin to cat racing. It could be a day or two before they realized I was missing. Longer if the cats raced well.

“You don’t have to tie it so tight. They’re not even awake.” Amara said. “Do you really have to kill them?” She dropped her voice and sounded like she was crying. Really crying. She might have gotten involved with whatever was going on with Qianru, but she hadn’t counted on murdering people.

A bag was pulled roughly over my head and callused hands pulled me up. It took everything I had not to squirm or fight back. I was afraid they’d try and knock me out again if they knew I was awake. I thought I heard a muffled grunt come from Alric, but I wasn’t sure.

“None of your business, the killings. You need to do your job, and nothing else.” The man was holding me and I tried to listen for any hints as to who he was. Providing Alric and I didn’t die wherever they were taking us, I wanted to know who to go after. “She won’t be happy that you left as it is.”

I found myself being thrown over a shoulder and bounced as we moved about the tree bower.

“I couldn’t stay there anymore. He was…he doesn’t know anything about the ruins.” The pause as she changed tracks gave me hope. I was almost certain she was about to say
he was starting to mean something to me
. But all that would do would get her in trouble with Qianru and her henchmen. Providing it was my patroness behind all of this. Whereas Foxy being a poor source of information was more acceptable even if she obviously left without approval.

If Amara was just a pawn, there was still a chance she could help us.

I bit my tongue as the man carrying me had trouble clearing a too small door and slammed me into it.

“Then you have nothing left to do, do you?” The man carrying me put way more threat into those words than I would have thought possible. Their true meaning wasn’t lost on Amara either.

“I know where one of the creatures is, the chimeras. I saw it being chased and trapped when I came in here.”

I really had to fight to keep from reacting on that one. The only chimera I knew that had been recently trapped was the one buzzing around my home. I settled for trying to pull on my ropes, just enough pressure to tell me if they were secure. Unfortunately they were.

“Then you can wait here and tell her that. But I wouldn’t try and run off again. They weren’t happy when you did that. She’ll let
him
take care of you if you do that again. Bringing her the chimera might save you.” I finally realized where I knew the voice of the man carrying me. I’d only heard him briefly. It had been in my dig site right after Alric and I saw the necromancer murder his captain. The man carrying me was the new captain.

***

The trip to our deaths was fairly short, so I gathered we were still somewhere in the jungle. Or in the forest that parts of the jungle were slowly giving way to. A smell of pine trees hit my nose and it felt like we were going uphill.

Alric was either seriously knocked out, or playing that way. I heard the two men carrying him behind us, but there wasn’t any movement to indicate Alric was fighting back.

“We needs to get back. If she comes back and we’re not there, we’ll be the ones she turns over.” This voice was low and whiny and definitely had a southern accent. “And you shouldn’t have let the dryad bitch stay there alone—she goes off again and I’m making sure they know that was your doing.”

Those were fighting words and maybe if the three came to blows, Alric and I could get away. Sadly, the one holding me had more brains than that. I was almost wishing for stupid syclarions instead of the guys holding us right now.

“Anyone says anything, and I’ll make sure you’re under a Sphere when they are brought to full power. Don’t forget who she likes.” The man carrying me dropped me into the dirt. Sadly, there wasn’t enough dirt to cushion the fall, but enough to find a way to get under the bag on my head and into my nose.

I sneezed.

“She’s awake. Want I take care of that?” The formerly silent third man sounded way too happy about helping with that.

The one closest to me kicked my leg and I stayed still. “Naw, they aren’t going anywhere.” He pulled off the bag and kicked me again when I tried to pretend I wasn’t conscious.

“Have a nice time dying. But don’t worry, plenty folks will be following you when she gets the Spheres up.”

“Ain’t supposed to talk about that. Hey, what’s that mark?” The third man came forward into my sight. He looked like your average thug, but he had on the same black and grey livery I’d seen in the ruins before. Not that I really needed confirmation, but it was nice to know who was responsible for your death.

I briefly felt his fingers against my skin as he roughly brushed the side of my face, the side sticky with dragon bane. I felt a surge of heat, then he was flung across the room in a smoking heap.

“Get back!” The man closest to me stood back and made sure the third man did the same. “What is that? How did you kill him?”

Far from being scared, I could tell he was trying to decide if I could bring in any extra coin or not. The mention of the Spheres had pointed out this was something far beyond Beccia. Maybe I could get them to keep me alive long enough to get free.

“It’s nothing you need.” Alric’s voice sounded far more in control than someone who had been knocked out, carried through a jungle, and was currently tied up should sound. Obviously, he didn’t have the same plan I did.

“An’ who you be to be telling me what I need?” Both men walked over to Alric and one kicked him. He didn’t move until the second one swung his foot at him.

In a blur of motion, Alric swung both hands up. How long he’d been untied was just one question I needed answered. He grabbed the man’s leg and pulled back, sending him to the ground. Alric pulled a knife out of his boot, and stabbed out. I was surprised at the weapon as I was sure they’d searched us since my knives were gone. But not as surprised as the guard who died. The last man ran for the entrance, but Alric flung the bloody knife at him as he got there. The man tumbled to the ground right outside the door but with his dying movement he swung a hand up against the wall outside.

Alric swore as he freed my legs, then yanked me to my feet and pulled the rope off my hands. “Come on. He just triggered a—”

An explosion knocked us both to our knees. Dust fell and pieces of whatever the place was made of showered down around us. Judging by the complete darkness that followed, the entrance was now blocked.

I waited until the rumbling stopped, then cautiously pulled my legs out from under Alric.

“Are you okay?” The fact that we both said it at the same time answered both of our questions.

“I take it you were about to say that he had triggered a spell of some kind?”

Alric scrambled around, then I felt his hands fumbling with the rope on my hands. “Yes, I could smell it as he hit the wall.”

I took a deep sniff, but only got a bunch of dirt and dust in my nose and sneezed again. “But if they set a spell loose, shouldn’t we be dead by now?” I rubbed my wrists as the tingling from blood flowing back into my hands made them itch.

Alric moved something around, but in the dark I couldn’t see him. Before I could ask him what in the hell he was doing he muttered a few very spell-sounding words, and a small rock started glowing in his hand.

“You have your magic back? That’s wonderful. Of course you didn’t bother to tell me, but at least now you can get us out of here….” My voice trailed off as I got a good look at his face when he held the stone up.

“I was barely able to do this. I’m not sure how or why, but when we were in that bower I felt something coming back. I wasn’t certain until I realized I could smell that spell.” He got to his feet and went toward the pile of rocks that now marked where the entrance had been. They’d done an excellent job. From what I could tell they’d brought down half a mountain. There was no way we were getting out that way without magic. Possibly not even with magic.

“Okay, good we have light to watch ourselves die, bad we can’t get out. Just what is the spell that’s going to kill us, by the way?” I surprised myself at how calm I felt. But my head was a little light and I felt like everything was fine. Like being drunk but without the alcohol.

He didn’t answer at first, just used his tiny rock-light to check out the perimeter of the room. It wasn’t really a room, or maybe it had been once. But now the walls were heavy and dark and only the very rectangular shape and consistent walls showed it had been built not naturally created.

“It’s already affecting us. It’s a gas spell, simple really, but it’s slowly sucking the air out of this very airtight room.” He pried loose a piece of the wall and brought it over. “This isn’t the first time it’s been used as a death chamber. This is tar and plaster mixed together on these walls. With the only entrance sealed, and if they were thorough there was a spell to seal those rocks also, there’s no way for new air to get in here.”

I looked around the room. Now that I knew what was causing it, my sense of calmness faded a bit. I got up and started pulling at the plaster, but it was insidious stuff. Thick and gunky, it hung on very well. Digging a hole through it before we ran out of air would be impossible.

That didn’t stop either of us from trying. We both spent the next few minutes looking for any weaknesses in the walls. The dizziness returned and I finally sat on a boulder.

The silence grew too large for the room, and finally I broke it. Besides, if this was where I was going to die, I wanted to get some things resolved first. “I have to ask, what was up with the kiss and final words of things not being over when you stole the glass gargoyle from me?” Totally unrelated to anything in our current situation, but I didn’t care.

Alric was silent as he pulled his hair back and tied it in a tail with a band he’d fashioned out of a cord. I had to admit the pointed ears were still startling, but the darker hair helped me see the man I thought he was. And thanks to Covey’s skill this time his hair didn’t look flat and murky.

He tried an offhand shrug. “I was leaving and I needed to distract you so I could obtain the rare artifact my people had sent me to get. It wasn’t stealing.”

I folded my arms and glared at him. After everything that went on, he was going to try and debate the word stealing?

“It felt like stealing to me. Besides, you said “this isn’t over”. What were you talking about if you weren’t planning on coming back?”

He went back to trying to find a way out of the room, which given the amount of time both of us had already spent looking, and the small size of the room, was clearly just a stalling tactic.

Finally he got tired of my eyes boring holes in the back of his head and turned with a sigh. “I was planning on coming back. My people thought the glass gargoyle was the only artifact of its kind. Once they had it under control, the plan was we could come out of hiding. I was the first scout sent out, so clearly I would have been one of the first ones back out. I figured we might just run into each other at some point.”

There was more than a slight chance we were both going to die in here. No one knew where we’d gone. I didn’t even know if the three dead men who brought us here even had anyone who would know where to look for them. I just wished I knew who they had been working for so I knew who to curse with my final breath. My guess was still Qianru, but dying breath curses really should be specific and accurate.

And Alric was still dancing around things.

I’d been cheated, lied to, kidnapped, and poisoned since this man had complicated my life three months ago. But I would be damned if I was going to leave this existence without making him confess to the truth.

“You need to stop lying.” I got up and took a step closer to him. “Your pathological need to lie all the time is what has led us here.” Another few steps to him. “You know why you said it wasn’t over….” Before he could react, I grabbed his head and pulled him down and kissed him. There was a shocked moment when he froze, then pulled free.

“You didn’t drink any of that dragon bane, did you?”

I shook my head and he returned the kiss. It quickly grew serious and after a few minutes we both broke free.

“I knew it.” I couldn’t help but gloat. Of course it was hard to gloat when I was thinking of a lot of other things I’d like to do with him and the fact we’d probably be dead before that happened. That and the lack of air was really making me want to go sit down somewhere.