Thorne (Random Romance) (11 page)

As we lined up Finn looked straight at me and I realised she hadn’t forgotten at all, because she said, ‘You can do this.’

The bell tolled and we were away.

I knew immediately that I couldn’t follow the plan. It made sense theoretically, but not when you took into account our different skills.

I looked at Isadora and nodded towards Penn. ‘Go with him.’ She nodded, knowing what I meant. The slender girl leapt after Penn, who had shot off over the ropes, swinging easily towards the first cage, quick as a monkey.

Jonah and Finn had also leapt into their climbs, taking different paths to their cages. I followed Finn slowly, forcing myself not to look down. Nausea crept up and I swallowed the hot flood of saliva in my mouth. Everything seemed to be shaking as I swung out onto the rope. My entire body was dangling over a huge crevice and I didn’t like it one bit. I liked solid earth – bodies like mine with a heavy centre of gravity needed their feet in the soil or everything turned upside down.

Something hurled into my body and I looked around to see that there were catapults flinging rocks at us. As if I needed any more obstacles. I jerked
out of the way and my sword promptly fell all the way to the ground. Watching it, I cursed profusely under my breath, dizzy with the sight.

Finn was approaching the first cage. But she paused, looking back for me. Before I knew it she was swinging back.

‘What are you doing?’ she panted. ‘Keep going.’

My jaw clenched and I tried to remove my left hand in order to swing forward. But the damn hand had a mind of its own and wouldn’t budge.

So Finn budged it for me. She took the wooden sword over her back and whacked it onto my knuckles. My hand let go and I nearly fell, jerking against my right grip.

‘Get a move on!’ she snapped.

I reached forward and clutched wildly at the rope. My eyes darted down to the bottomless pit beneath me and caused my head to spin.

‘Eyes forward, big guy,’ Finn ordered. ‘Keep them on me. Aren’t I beautiful? Why would you want to look at anything else? Now let go with your right hand or I stab it.’

‘I’m slowing you down.’

‘You are indeed.’

I let out a long breath and unclenched my fingers, lurching forward an arm-span.

‘Great. You’ve moved half a metre. Only about a thousand more of those to go. You know, I sort of thought you were joking when you mentioned a fear of heights. Who’s really afraid of something as banal as heights? I assume you’re not afraid of a whole lot of other dangers, being a giant and all, so why this? It’s only a drop to your death. Would probably be quite a pleasant way to go, really …’

As Finn rambled on I used her voice to anchor me as the ground would normally. She edged her way backwards and I followed at a snail’s pace,
every so often trying to glimpse where the others were but unable to get a good enough look from my perilous position. Long minutes passed.

‘Thorne,’ she said suddenly. ‘Open your eyes.’

At the tone of her voice, I did as she said. She was hanging from the rope in front of me and something about her expression was the wildest I’d seen it.

‘There are metal hanging bars to your left. If you can reach them, you can pull yourself up and crawl along the top of them. It’ll be a lot easier than trying to swing like this. But to do that you’re going to need a considerable leap through the air.’

I stared at her, frozen.

‘Do you understand what I’m saying to you?’

Swallowing, my throat felt like it was closing up.

Finn edge closer, so close we were almost touching. Her lip curled and she whispered, ‘Where’s my fierce berserker prince? Let him free. Let him show me what he can do.’

I felt the words strike inside me and take hold of my beast, who had been curled in sleep, but now rose to his full size and gave a roar of pride. Every one of my thoughts turned to keeping him caged, and the fear of falling was forgotten; there were much darker things to be afraid of.

Finn smiled. ‘Show me.’

I started swinging to the left, back and forward, gaining momentum. Timing it right, I let go with both hands and reached for the distant metal bars. My hands were slick with sweat as I caught hold and nearly fell, but I gripped tight and pulled myself up onto the top. As soon as I felt my hands and knees land on something solid my head cleared, grew sharp.

Looking around, I reacclimatised myself to what was going on. Penn was perched on the top of his swinging cage, poking the guard through its holes. Isadora was hanging from the bottom of it, stabbing the man’s feet and
ankles. As I watched Isadora resorted to a different method. She opened the cage door, swung herself into it, cracked the soldier over the head and caught his box before it dropped. She swung herself out and leapt back to the rope. But Penn was still on the top of the cage, and the soldier was still conscious. He climbed out to attack Penn, but that was when the small boy did an incredible thing. He untied the knots connecting the cage to its tether, and just as the cage pitched and fell away he launched himself through the air to grab hold of Isadora’s outstretched hand.

She managed to hold onto him, groaning aloud with the strain. But he quickly scampered up and took hold of the rope, swinging forward as though nothing had happened. I would have been heaving my guts up if I’d been on a falling cage.

It had dropped to the ground, but hadn’t been destroyed upon impact; I suspected warder magic was being used to ensure nobody died.

Jonah had already claimed his box – the cage he left behind was open and burning with a blue fire, the soldier nowhere to be seen.

I turned quickly back to Finn who was swinging arm over arm to her cage. Crawling after her, I concentrating not on the gaping chasm below me, but on what was ahead. Our cage hung suspended mid air. It was made of tightly bound wicker and was big enough to hold a man. In this soldier’s hands were a small box and a wooden sword.

Finn paused, considering the best way to tackle it. If I were in any way nimble or light enough to manage it, I would climb on top like Penn did, reach through the holes and put the man to sleep by placing pressure on his neck. But since I was neither light nor nimble, I couldn’t help much. So I kept moving forward towards the first platform, to where I could see a soldier waiting. This soldier had a proper sword, not a wooden one.

As I passed Finn I heard that she was whispering quickly to her soldier through the cage, and I caught a whiff of fear – not hers, but his. Curiosity
spiked inside me, but I forced myself forward to clear the path for her. Reaching the plinth I ducked beneath the swing of the sword and hammered my elbow into the guard’s ribs, sending him flying into the air and down towards the ground. My breath froze in my chest as I watched him fall, only to be caught in what seemed like an invisible net. Thank Gods.

Finn got the box from her guard without resorting to any kind of violence – the man just handed it to her – and now she held it between her feet so she could swing arm over arm towards where I waited for her on the platform. She arrived just as I heard an odd hissing sound and looked down to see an enormous scorpion climb onto our platform.

Finn yelped in surprise. The creature was at least four metres long, and barely fit on the block of wood with us.

‘Hand me your sword,’ I told Finn and she did so quickly.

I watched the scorpion’s long razor sting rise ominously behind it; it watched me as I inched closer. With a quick feint of the sword to the right, I ducked around behind and snatched the scorpion’s stinger while it lunged in the wrong direction. I was just about to haul the huge thing into the chasm when Finn made a strangled sound and hurled herself towards me. I didn’t know what she was trying to do, but the scorpion was too fast – it had a second stinger that curled out and jabbed me in the arm.

White fire erupted in my wrist as I dragged the scorpion over the edge.

‘Gods damn it,’ Finn snapped. Without waiting she placed her mouth over the puncture wound and started sucking. My blood trickled down her chin and neck, long pale rivulets of red. I didn’t know how much time passed as I watched the macabre sight of her head bent over me and got lost in the sensation of her lips against my skin. There was an itching pain but eventually she spat onto the ground and looked up.

‘Can you feel that?’ she asked, tapping on the soft flesh of my underarm.

I nodded.

Finn breathed out, dropping my arm. ‘I got it out then. Come on.’

I stumbled after her, dazed.

This time I kept a good hold of the sword and dispatched the next three soldiers in our path, sticking to the tops of the metal bars.

Penn and Isadora were making an excellent team. Together they’d circled around for the furthest key, Penn as quick as Isadora was deadly. They now had two and were going for a third. Jonah was approaching a second key, having been delayed by something I’d missed during the scorpion debacle. But he looked rattled, and his left arm was hanging limply at his side.

A rock sailed through the air and clipped my ear, reminding me to stay alert. The scorpion poison had addled me, but I was still conscious, so that was something.

‘I’m going to help Jonah with the last –’ Finn started to say but was abruptly cut off as something swooped out of the sky at her. She screamed in surprise as the huge sea eagle raked its talons through her shoulder.

There were dozens of them, careening through the sky.

I lunged for Finn as I saw her feet slip off the edge of the bars. My right hand was holding the sword, so I didn’t think as I threw my left arm out. But it was slick with blood from the scorpion sting. Our fingers slipped and she fell, as quickly as that.

Finn

Time slowed and the world froze around me. Everything ceased to exist except the knowledge that I could stop this fall if I wanted to. Dark power curled in my belly, coiling itself in readiness, and if I but breathed in this moment I would will my body to reappear back on that plinth. It was a terrifying awareness. A notion of being capable of so much more than I’d ever allowed myself to be.

But if I did that they would know I had used my forbidden warder power, and I would not only be disqualified from the quest, I would be sent to the cold prison of the warders, most terrible place in all the world.

I made my choice, and the world erupted into movement around me. Air whooshed past me, my stomach lurched out of my body and a scream was ripped from my throat.

‘Jonah!’

Swift as lightning my brother turned towards me, flinging his hands out even though one of his arms had been broken by a rock. I felt rather than saw his eyes turn completely white with the power coursing through him and my body stopped mid air. He wouldn’t be able to lift me now, not without my help. So I began to channel my own coil of power through the bond between us and into his body, praying that there were no warders close enough to feel the transference of energy.

Slowly I rose through the air as Jonah whispered a stream of fierce words and sent everything the two of us had into manipulating the air around me. Thorne reached out and grabbed me, pulling me back onto the platform.

There was a long moment of silence, and then I felt the noise around us slam into me – the crowd was screaming in excitement and awe to have seen such magic. It was a mighty wall of moving, throbbing energy, spectators having jumped to their feet to cheer with abandon.

I laughed breathlessly: this was fun.

‘Get Jonah,’ I panted to Thorne.

‘But you –’

‘Please, Thorne. He won’t be able to move.’

Thorne nodded, going for the hanging rope that connected our platform to Jonah’s, atop which my brother had collapsed in a heap. The Pirenti Prince clenched his teeth in discomfort and his hands trembled badly,
but he didn’t hesitate. He swung out onto the rope and started making his way inch by slow inch towards Jonah.

I closed my eyes for a second, just in time to feel a rock slam into my shoulder. A gasp of pain rose from my throat and I dragged myself forward. I couldn’t look as though I’d been sapped of energy, or they might suspect I’d had something to do with the magic.

‘Finn!’ I heard suddenly, and whipped around to see that Penn was upside down on the rope, hanging with his knees hooked over. And dangling from his thin arms was Isadora. ‘I can’t hold her!’ the boy screamed.

Woozy with exhaustion, I launched myself forward, scampering across the metal bars towards them.

I saw a guard take hold of the rope Penn hung from and start to jerk it up and down, hoping to fling them off. Penn was wailing wildly, but he didn’t let go of the rope and he didn’t let go of Isadora, even when she was hit by a flying rock and jerked in pain.

Another bloody sea eagle swooped me but I ducked as I ran, managing to avoid this one. The creatures were undoubtedly being controlled by warders; I could hardly believe that all these animals had just decided to randomly attack us.

I reached one end of Penn’s rope. At the other end the soldier looked like he was having a seizure he was shaking so hard. The man took his job a little too seriously. I couldn’t think what to do. My mind was slow and slushy. A glance to the left told me that Thorne had reached Jonah and was carrying the smaller boy in his arms.

‘Hold on, you two,’ I shouted, getting an idea. A crazy one. I was probably about to disqualify all three of us and lose our four keys.

Squatting, I started to undo the knot tying their rope. It was knotted with an anchor hitch, which meant the more pressure applied to the knot, the
tighter it would be. And with Penn and Isadora’s weight pulling against it, it was one damn tight knot.

‘Don’t!’ Isadora snarled.

‘Relax
,’ I muttered. This girl was really starting to irritate me.

My mouth was numb from the poison in Thorne’s wrist, and I realised saliva was dribbling out as I concentrated. Gross.

I nearly had it. I was working the joins, using the weight to allow me some manoeuvrability. Once I had the first round turn undone, the tension would go slack and then this was going to be a race. It all depended on how smart that soldier was. And if he was any good with knots. Which I assumed he was, given you ought to be ashamed of yourself if you lived in Kaya and weren’t good with knots.