Chapter 1-Location, Location, Location
"All right, where the hell are we?"
Lita muttered incoherently, propping Nathair's dead weight against her as she sagged against the vine-riddled walls of the tunnel.
Zacch's eyes were hot with irritation; he was supporting a hyperventilating Aerlene in his arms and would have appreciated being able to pass one female over to another, and he was also worried about Nathair. About to snap at Lita again, he closed his mouth guiltily when he saw the glazed look in her eyes. "All right, darling, you just stay right here and take some deep breaths," he said quietly, setting Aerlene down by the unconscious brunet.
He gave Nathair a quick survey and decided he wasn't likely to be dying of his wound in the next five minutes. Turning to Lita, he took her face gently in his hands. "It's all right, Lita," he told her firmly, not letting the anguish he felt in his heart seep through, "everything's going to be all right. Take it easy, sweetheart. They're gone now, remember?"
She took in several quick, gasping breaths, and her pupils darted to and fro frantically. Zacch sighed, letting go of her to rake his hands through his already disheveled hair. He was stuck with three insensible people and didn't have a clue as to where they were. What would Ami prescribe now, if she were here? Ah. Smelling salts.
His brow furrowed – Lita was feeling terrible already; why subject her to something that smelled so bad? Besides, he didn't have any smelling salts, he doubted Lita had them, and he wasn't about to go through Aerlene's pockets. It might give her worse ideas than she already had about him. He didn't want to be her fair-haired hero any more than he'd ever wanted to be a prince.
Before he decided he was doomed, Lita gave a faint moan and began shaking like a leaf. They were coming back, coming back as they always did, coalescing from old nightmares. She could smell them, the acrid scent of cruelty and unwashed bodies, sense the cold fear stealing over her again, feel the tremors from the fever rattling her bones.
"Lita. Lita." The voice stole sharply into her remembrance, drawing her slowly from the memories.
"Zacch?" she asked hazily, swimming towards him out of the lightless depths.
"Yes, it's me. Listen to me: they're dead. They can't hurt you again unless you let them, and you aren't going to, are you?"
She knew the answer, the right answer. "No." His face, with its sharp angles and intense expression, came into focus with clarity.
He sat back on his heels, relieved. "It's finished, Lita."
If he said it was done, it was done. Zacch was an expert liar, but he never told a falsehood about anything truly important. Even so, she didn't want to see the pity in his eyes, so she turned away.
Zacch let her be, rummaging through their packs for the appropriate items. "Come help me bandage Nath up," he requested calmly, as if nothing had happened.
Wiping her tears away, she unraveled one of the snowy-white rolls of bandage Ami had given them.
"Two of the wider ones, I think," he suggested absentmindedly as he prodded the arrow, "some of the narrower ones, and I'll need your help getting this out."
It was a messy, gory process, and both of them prayed to their gods that they wouldn't have to do it ever again. As Zacch finished the bandaging and she held both halves of the snapped arrow, Lita said suddenly, "He's been poisoned. I should have told you straightaway, only I..."
"Hm," was all he said as he took the pieces away from her carefully.
"It was the smell that brought me back," she admitted.
"Yes. I can see it's not odorless," Zacch replied, examining the dipped arrowhead with great fascination. Still peering at it, he asked, "Do the girls know?"
She blinked at him. "Know that it smells?"
"No, that you're still having nightmares over the time you were captured," he explained patiently.
"Yes. Mina would know right away what it was, and Ami would just try to dose me with something, then she'd hug me. I put up with one for the other."
"Yeah?" Zacch asked, trying to smile. He wrapped the arrow halves in thick cloth carefully.
Lita looked at him, her own troubles forgotten. "Oh, Zacch – what are you doing with those?!" she exclaimed, forgetting that her mention of Ami might have been insensitive.
He went on with the task. "Saving them. I'll take it back to the palace, give it to those I've worked with before, and see what they say. If the humans could figure it out, we can, too."
"Oh! What are we going to do about Nath?"
He favored her with an easy grin. "I don't know; let him rot?"
She let her legs collapse beneath her until she sat down next to Aerlene in the packed dirt, letting up clouds of dust and not sure whether she should laugh or cry.
Hastily, Zacch reassured her, "I'm joking, I'm joking. Unless he lied to us, and I doubt it, because Nath's a terrible liar, he's pure human, remember? Something they made specifically to target folk shouldn't hurt him. Imagine if one of their own reached back for one of their tainted arrows, wasn't careful, jabbed himself in the finger, and died of the potion? It's too much of a liability. We reuse arrows all the time, the ones we find whole. They're not going to use something that can kill them as well as us. If they can make something that specifically targets the folk, they can make sure it won't harm humans."
"All right, all right, I understand. You're a demon, Zaccheus."
But it was said without fire, and he grinned unrepentantly, pleased with the color that was coming back into her face. "Demon, is it? I'll have you know, mistress, that my looks have been likened to those of an angel."
"Oh, please." Lita shifted to a more comfortable position, then glanced at the elfin woman beside her. "Is she all right?"
"Sleeping, I think," he replied in an unconcerned tone. But he had checked on her, discreetly, a moment ago. "Speaking of which, we should all get some sleep if this is a safe place to stop for the night. The ceiling appears to have closed over our heads."
She opened her mouth to respond, but just then, Nathair stirred and cracked open his eyes, blinking owlishly at the green light Zacch had conjured.
"...Zacch? Lita?"
"Right here. How are you doing?"
He shifted away from the walls, pressing a hand to his wounded shoulder. "I'm doing badly, thanks." Then he took a good look around them, and his eyes widened. "All right, where the hell are we?"
****~**~****
"Mmph?" Malina mumbled sleepily as arms that felt like steel bands set her on something soft and cushiony. It wasn't enough to disguise the cold, hard ground beneath the meager layer of blanket, and her eyes fluttered open much more slowly than they usually did because she was so fatigued. When they had adjusted to the darkness around her, she found herself staring into moonstone-gray eyes that peered down at her with an unnerving intensity.
Kentan moved back about five steps the instant he saw that she was awake. "How are you feeling?"
She flung her arm over her face and mumbled, "Like I drank the entire contents of my cousin's wine cellar, and that's a whole lot of wine, I can tell you." Especially considering that it was an entire palace's supply and full of choice wines.
"Yes. Well. I'm not surprised you're tired. Go to sleep."
The arm went down by her side again, and her neck cracked as she angled up to give him a steely glare. "I am filthy, tired, and angry. You were going to leave me at the mercy of the queen's brutes, and I've worked magik for longer than any sane person can be asked to do. Don't order me around in that stiff, know-it-all voice."
He went about his business gathering dry brushwood and lighting the fire, struggling not to look back at her. After about ten minutes, during which she ignored him much more successfully than he ignored her, he muttered, "I do not have a stiff, know-it-all voice. And I wouldn't have left you behind, all right?" He was answered by the sound of light snores.
Throwing down his last armful of wood, Kentan stalked over to her, looking down at her eerily beautiful face. She was relaxed in sleep as she never was when they were arguing with each other during the day. He drew up the second blanket, layered her cloak over it, and, after a moment's hesitation, retrieved his own blanket to cover her. Grimly, he told himself he would make do with his cloak for the night, and spent it staring into the leaping sparks of the orange-gold fire and listening for whatever might disturb her sleep.
****~**~****
He had just dozed off for a second, a second! he told himself, feeling the icy claws of panic digging deeper into his chest. The fire was out, and Mina's nest of blankets looked rumpled, slept in, and empty. Kentan told himself to calm down, that she had just gone to the bathroom or something. All it took was the suspicious rustling noise behind him, and he was on his feet with a knife at the intruder's throat.
An intruder with very long, very wet, very blond hair. "All right," Mina said, speaking with as little motion as she could because the shining blade was much too close to her skin and the important veins inside for comfort, "I understand you may be feeling a little upset about what I said last night, but I don't think it warrants getting my throat slit."
After a tense moment, he dropped his arm and stepped away, almost stabbing the knife back into its sheath. Mina studied his turned back while she counted her galloping heartbeats. It was amazing, she thought with resentment, how quickly he could move. The admiration she felt was warring with the attraction she'd felt the first time she'd laid eyes on him. Unfortunately, the result of their prolonged acquaintance meant that she'd also built up a healthy amount of resentment towards him.
Kentan touched the base of his neck uneasily, almost able to feel her wide blue eyes burning a hole in his back. "It's not what you said."
"W–what?"
He turned around with a grumpy expression on his face. "It's not what you said," he repeated, "you just surprised me. I didn't mean to scare you."
It was her turn to frown as reality intruded rudely in her thoughts. "I wasn't scared." He looked at her wordlessly, one eyebrow cocked. She could have shot him in an instant, and happily...or so she liked to deceive herself. "I wasn't," she insisted. "You just startled me."
"Fine. If we're done with the surprising and the startling, it would be best if we broke camp."
Mina gritted her teeth. He made her sound like some flighty, empty-headed twit who was wasting their time, when clearly, if he hadn't manhandled her first thing in the morning, their time wouldn't have been wasted, and... "Fine."
****~**~****
Twenty minutes later, Kentan was forced to admit, one of the few times in his life, that he was not perfect. "Mina...do you know where we are?"
Sullenly, she retorted from behind him (another battle she'd lost against him due to his superior strength), "I thought you knew where you were going, as you seemed so eager to be off this morning."
He stared at her with those unreadable gray eyes. "Mina, I've barely been out of the capital my entire life."
"Oh, I see. You might want to watch where we're going." When he had turned around again to halt the horse, she baited, "Poor, sheltered little prince, is it?"
He gritted his teeth. He had found her delightful, even surprisingly competent on the ship. Traveling with her was hell. "I think you're the first woman I've ever wanted to hit."
"Why don't you just get it over with then? If it'll make you feel better, I'll take the first swing at you."
Despite his annoyance at the situation, he let out a disbelieving laugh. "Gods, that's a good one. A swing and a miss, I presume?"
Her eyes narrowed dangerously. "I'll knock you flat on your ass in a minute, Prince Kentan, so watch who you're laughing at."
He smiled, a baring of teeth. "I weigh, I'll wager, twice as much as you do, Lady Malina. How do you plan to carry out your threat?"
"Like this." She smiled sweetly, dug her heels into the horse's side until they were galloping wildly, then pulled him to a sudden halt with the reins she had stolen from him, all within a matter of minutes. Sighing blissfully as he landed in a squelchy mud puddle, she announced, "I've always wanted to do that."
Kentan hauled himself upright, spit out a mouthful of substances he didn't want to identify, and strode over to her with murder in his eyes. "Get down," he ordered tersely. She slid down warily, keeping her eyes on him as she did so; they stood about two handsbreadth apart.
"Just what do you think you were accomplishing with that maneuver, there?"
She wouldn't back down, even though the ice was stealing through her veins "Just what I threatened to do. Proving that I do what I say."
"A very high-minded goal right there, is it? Maybe you don't understand exactly what's at stake here. We need as much time as possible to convince the folk to go to war, and we've one of the farthest routes to travel. And once that's done.. Every minute that we spend here playing games is a minute of training lost."
"Do you think I don't know that?" she shot back. "I'm not a child, Kentan. I play no ‘games,' as you call them. I'm not a flighty court lady, either. Don't order me around. I'm tired of being pushed around, lectured, and manhandled onto my horse because you have more muscles than I do.
"I've done more for my people than you've ever done for yours, and you don't even stop think that if I wasn't with you, the folk would kill you right where you stand. The naiads are probably the most gender-equal race around, but on the other end of the spectrum, their society is matriarchal. If we go in with you treating me like I'm brainless, we aren't going to get very far with them, I can tell you that."
Her face was flushed from her tirade, but Kentan remained silent, his expression completely blank now.
"Maybe you haven't seen many sterling specimens of the female gender at the palace, but that's not my problem. You've got your sister, haven't you? Do you think Seren lets everyone walk all over her?"
Something flashed in his eyes. "No, I don't," he said quietly.
"Then–"
"Be quiet. Get down."
Mina spun around, glowering at him. "There you go again, giving me orders, and–" She gave a muffled squeal when he covered her mouth with his hand and pushed them both to the ground. She refrained from biting him when she felt the earth vibrating beneath them, and he took his hand away. "What's happening?" she whispered.
Kentan shook his head. "I don't know, but the tremors are getting stronger." He shifted, craning his neck to look around her for the source of the disturbance. When he found it, his eyes widened, and he allowed himself a brief moment to panic. "Don't look – take a deep breath and hold it in, all right?"
Suspiciously, she hauled herself on her elbows and turned her head to the left, then did as he said and closed her eyes as the tidal wave broke over them. As the water poured over them, cold and astringent, it moved them away from each other with the force of the wave, and he grabbed for her hands before a hollow in the ground opened up and swallowed them and the torrent of water.
****~**~****
She glared at them both. "Treat the place with more respect, will you, and don't curse at it."
"Sorry. What is it, exactly?" Nath asked curiously.
Lita drew her knees up to her chest and covered her mouth when she felt a yawn coming on. "Mm... It's hard to explain, really. We call it a Duena. The translation is close to ‘protect the companion;' it's like a safeway used by dryads – and the friends of dryads, I guess," she said, glancing around at their company with amused eyes. "I've never heard of it opening for anyone but a dryad before. It's the first time I've used it, but I'm sure no one's tried to travel with two elves and a human before. Ordinarily, I'm sure it would have accepted Zacch, being that he's who he is and the elves and dryads are fairly close, but a human..."
Nath squirmed, discomfited by her piercing gaze, while the elfin prince grinned. "My fortune, then. You talk as if its alive, this Duena."
She combed a hand through her hair uneasily, wincing at the tangles. "Well...they say that the Duenas are protected by guardian spirits. I don't know how many of them there are – the Duenas, not the spirits – but they say that each time an innocent dies in this forest when they perhaps could have been saved by the presence of a Duena, a new one is created."
"We're resting over the grave of say – a baby?!"
"Or a young woman, or an old man, or any dryad caught helpless and alone in these woods," Lita answered, apparently less disturbed than he was.
Nath blew out a breath and scrubbed his hand over his face. He was beginning to think it might be more alarming than he'd thought to prolong his acquaintance with the folk, at least these particular folk. The land nymphs who resided in the country had their own legends, but the city nymphs, the ones he'd become acquainted with at the palace while he'd lived with Malina, acted more like what he was used to.
They were both surprised when Zaccheus asked, "Is it safe for us to stay here?"
She raised her eyebrows. "Should be, if it's a hideout. Why do you ask?"
He rolled his eyes and answered, "In case you've forgotten, the last time we ventured into one of these magical places, it chewed us up and spit us out."
"Oh, the place where we found the prophecy, you mean?" Nath asked. They were silent for a moment, remembering how taking the scroll had caused the roof to cave in.
"Well...the Duenas should be pretty strong, and they've been here for centuries. I've never heard of one collapsing before, even set off by magik. Besides, no humans can enter unless they've got a dryad with them, and the storytellers have always said something about needing to be ‘pure of heart' to gain entrance. There's nothing down here for us to take, and the guardians have been reputedly likable the rare times they appear."
Zacch muttered under his breath, "The problem's not whether we'll like them, but if they'll like us."
"All the tunnels lead to the center of the forest, which is where we want to go. We'll follow it as far as it goes tomorrow; it's probably safer belowground than it is above." Lita dug out her blanket from her pack and stretched out next to Aerlene, continuing, "I, for one, am getting some sleep. You two can stay up and worry if you're that concerned."
Even as he copied her actions, Nath glanced nervously at Zacch's glowing sphere of light. Once he fell asleep, it would go out, and they would be left in the dark, among the gods-know-what lurked down here... He really didn't like being underground.
As if he'd read his mind, Zacch said, "I'll take first watch, just in case. You'll be able to fall asleep with the light on, won't you? Otherwise, I can dim it a little."
"That's fine," Nath replied, as Lita seemed to be soundly asleep already. "Wake me up around midnight."
He snorted. "Yes, of course. Number one, I'll have no idea what time midnight is, since it's pitch black down here, and number two, you've just lost who knows much of your blood, and you want to lose more sleep?" Nath opened his mouth to fire back a retort, but Zacch beat him to it. "Just shut up and sleep, will you?"
Grumpily, Nath settled under his blanket and was about to drift off when Zacch asked, "If these tunnels go all the way to your capital, why didn't we take one in the first place?"
Lita slitted open her eyes, which resembled burning emerald ovals in the darkness. "I hate you," she groaned. "We couldn't take the Duenas in the beginning because they only open in mortal danger. If you really wanted, I could have taken a knife to your throat and seen if that would have done the trick as well."
"You're crabby when you're short on sleep." Zacch grinned and let his head fall back against the wall with a soft thud. Clouds of dust drifted around him, and Lita smiled in satisfaction when she heard him coughing and swearing before she slumbered.
****~**~****
They walked in silence, each fatigued and absorbed in their own thoughts. Ami kept her eyes to the ground, away from the piercing shafts of sunlight that had been angled towards them since midday. Her head ached from the constant buzzing of phantom voices in her ears, from the visions that danced teasingly in front of her eyes whether she had them open or not. No clear images had come to her for days, but the foreboding sensation hovered there, just out of reach, like an obnoxious fly that hummed just out of one's peripheral vision.
No matter how hard she strained to see what was coming, she couldn't decipher the gods' omens through the fog clouding her Sight. In her dreams, she would reach out for Zaccheus and see him bleeding.
"No. No," she whispered to herself in denial as the tears welled up in her eyes again. It wasn't true. He was fine; they'd heard from Nathair not two days ago. Two days was a long time; it felt like eternity, she thought dizzily as Jalen's face came towards her with an almost unearthly clarity.
"Ami. Ami. Ami!"
****~**~****
"AMI!" Zacch shot bolt upright, his heart racing. His gaze shot back and forth as his eyes, fiercely alight, scanned the encroaching darkness for signs of movement. His heart was racing like a wolf streaking after its prey.
Nath opened his eyes slowly to discover that the tunnel was pitch-black again. "Zacch? That you?"
"Yes," came the terse answer.
"What's wrong?"
He was silent for a moment, conjuring a fiery sphere of light. "I thought...I thought... Did you hear anything, Nath?"
"No, just you thrashing around and groaning in your sleep. Was it a nightmare?" he asked, sitting up.
Zacch shook his head. Who cared about dark dreams when reality could be much worse? "I heard someone calling her name."
Blinking away the spell of sleep, Nath asked, "Whose name?"
Bewilderment and sorrow were plain in his voice. "I heard them say ‘Ami.'"
****~**~****
He got to his feet stiffly, spitting out what felt like a lake of salt water, and found himself in what appeared to be an underground cavern. The entrance through which they had come in, or more accurately flowed in, had been sealed off, and there was only one path to follow.
The walls of the cavern were a deep, glinting sapphire color and studded with darker-hued mica chips. It was empty but for them. Kentan looked warily at the single passageway and held out his hand for his golden-haired companion, who was still sprawled on the ground.
She ignored his hand, either out of lasting annoyance or because she was too excited to see it. "Oh, we found it!" she exclaimed, her face suffused with delight. She was beautiful in joy, beautiful as she was throughout her life. Apparently it was the latter option.
Mina turned to him, her smile incandescent. Swifter than an arrow zinging its way through the air and perhaps twice as potent, she pressed her lips to his impulsively.
The heat flashed through him, burning him from his feet all the way to his forehead. She smelled as simple as wild flowers fresh from the meadow; she tasted like sin and Heaven intertwined.
She danced away, still smiling happily as if she hadn't scorched him with her lips with the kiss that had lasted a second in reality, forever in remembrance.
"Oh, don't be so dour, Kentan! We thought we'd be dying shortly, and then, after all our traveling and running into the queen's troops, we happened upon just the place we were looking for!"
He thought her request might be easier to follow if she hadn't just shaken him to the core. He would also appreciate it if her moods were less mercurial; the abrupt change from impending murder to an equally (if not more) unsettling, friendly kiss unnerved him.
"Well, all that seawater was unexpected," she had continued, "but we couldn't have expected Ami to have all the details of it, could we? She wasn't an outsider, so it's logical that her experience was a bit different."
Kentan gritted his teeth as she waited for his response, enraged by her lack of reaction and the superfluous nature of his own. "No, we couldn't have, and yes, it is."
She fairly pranced over to the passageway, then paused a foot from it cautiously. It was fortunate that she did so, for an instant later, a shimmering curtain of light was drawn over the entranceway.
"I am the guardian of this portal, diviner of those worthy of entrance to the mighty realms of the Water-folk," a disembodied voice divulged. "Stand and prove yourselves worthy or pay the forfeit of your lives."
****~**~****
AN: Since things are getting muddled, I'll probably focus on about three groups per chapter at once so we don't get confused ^.~ Interlude seems to be running all right...although I think the first line of the chapter expresses my sentiments when I was starting work on the story again ;) but I'm drawn into the story again (mostly because it seems like more people than I thought like the story! :))...and the dialogue's shifted a bit – but we're continuing along happily and not-so-happily. Thank you for reading.
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