Page 128 of Fortune's Blade

I twisted my neck around and saw three behemoths bulldozing their way into the city, strafing it with fire and causing an avalanche of falling limestone spears, and knew we were too late. The boom-boom-boom still shivered the air around us, but the dragons were now behind the guns, which probably had minutes left, if that. And once they were gone . . .

So was everything else.

Regin, who I hadn’t even noticed following us, broke off to grab an iridescent green monster of a creature almost his own size, and they fell writhing onto a nearby building, crushing the upper floors in the process. But there was only one of him and there were more of them, and I wasn’t even sure that he was winning. Neither was his son, who screamed and banked and shot back to help, only to have his father roar something at him.

It was likely “get to the shield” but I couldn’t tell. I couldn’t hear even the translation spell crackling in my ear, couldn’t hear anything. Because the dragons were flooding in now, with several working together to melt the biggest cannon, sending three streams of brilliant crimson fire down on it that didn’t stop it from getting another shot off, and plucking a black specimen out of the sky, sending him shooting backwards out of the cave’s mouth.

But that was its last gasp, after which it fell silent.

And that created a breech in the city’s armor. One that was taken advantage of by dozens of sleek, firelit forms that were suddenly spilling in on what looked like a wave of flame near the cavern’s mouth, one that was about to roll over the whole damned place. And there was absolutely nothing we could do to stop it.

I saw the truth on Louis-Cesare’s face, his hair flame red in the reflected light. He had seen first hand what Steen’s people had done at the faire, knew what was coming. And so did I, my gut knotting as I fought to hold on, as Antem ignored his father’s orders and joined the fight to save him, because it was already too late for anyone else.

And then a new sound came to my suffering ears. One that cut through the din like a sword through flesh, cleaving it until it receded into the background, until it left only that one, pure note singing above the rest. It echoed around the cavern, vibrated through my bones, and caused me to look around wildly because I knew that sound.

I shouldn’t have, but I did, because I’d heard something like it a hundred times before, and so had Louis-Cesare. A note from another time, but one that, once you heard it, you never forgot. A trumpet’s cry, rallying troops to battle.

And to battle they came, a mass of dragons streaming in the cavern’s mouth and screeching a challenge, so many and so loud that it ran together into a mad chorus in my head, deafening and indistinguishable from each other. But I didn’t need to hear them to understand: Lord Rathen had arrived. And he’d brought friends.

I guess he won the argument, I thought dizzily, as the army he’d been gathering in the forest flowed into the breech, chased down the enemies who had already gotten past, and tackled fire-breathing behemoths in mid-air. It wasn’t an overwhelming force; the odds looked even to me, because Steen had supporters, too. But it was enough.

Instead of a slaughter, we suddenly had a battle, and a reason for Regin to turn on his son, his maw bloody and dripping from savaging his enemy. “Go! Get the damned shield up! We’ll take care of the rest.”

Chapter Forty

Dorina

The “it” Radella had mentioned turned out to be a fissure in the back wall of the cavern, although that description didn’t do it justice. It was maybe fourteen stories high and blazing with light, although the weird air of the cave gobbled it up at any distance, ensuring that it did not help much with the gloom. But it was easily visible as we moved forward, if hazy at the edges.

We made for it as fast as we could considering that the debris field was becoming thicker, with some of the fallen stalactites the size of redwoods, requiring us to go around. Or to find a path through the thousands of splintered fragments standing higher than our heads in places. Mircea and the Pythia suddenly vanished, probably shifting to avoid the extra effort, and the queen flew ahead with her bodyguard.

That left the me, the trolls and Marlowe to flounder around in the dark, but he floundered fast. To the point that I could not keep up with him in this guise, despite the fact that trolls could move quicker than you’d expect when motivated. They were also perfectly suited for this sort of work, with skin that didn’t tear on jagged edges and with instincts honed from years of living underground, almost negating the need for eyes.

As a result, we caught up with the chief spy again at the fissure, where he had stopped to examine it before going in. He was gazing up at the great scar, where the rock of the cavern’s back wall had been cleaved in two. It was strangely sharp-edged and shiny, completely unlike the fractured forest we’d left behind, possibly because this wasn’t limestone.

It reminded me of the hard, obsidian-like stairs we’d used to descend into the cave, with the same dusty black color. Only those had been hewn by axes and then smoothed out by the wind that blew in the cave’s mouth over who knew how many years. While this looked more like glass that had been cut by a laser and then fractured in places than anything naturally occurring.

When Marlowe had examined it sufficiently, he turned around and looked behind us, still staring upward, so I did the same.

And realized what had given him pause.

The stalactites that had made up the rocky hills we’d been laboring across had been sheared off the ceiling in a rough cone shape, radiating outward from the fissure. It looked almost as if something had burst through the massive wall, then slashed a wedge through the thick field of hanging limestone deposits, causing them to hit the ground and smash into rubble. It looked almost exactly like that.

That gave us all pause, and I didn’t know about the others, but my troll was growing increasingly unhappy. He did not like unstable caves; too many of his people had been lost in them, and that was when the cause of the instability was naturally occurring. He definitely didn’t like unstable caves that contained something that could do that!

He didn’t like it at all, and judging by the shifting of the other trolls, they didn’t, either.

But after a moment, we turned back to the fissure itself, because their queen and my father were in there. It could have easily accommodated a giant’s height, but not his build as it was not even as wide as a regular door until perhaps three stories up. It was more of a crack at our level than an entrance, yet Marlowe squeezed inside anyway and we followed.

Of course, by “we” I mean my troll and I, although he had to turn sideways and suck in his gut to sidle along the twenty-foot-long crevasse. The rest of the guards were left behind, their hybrid size simply too big to fit. They called out encouragement behind us, and that they were going to find another way in, but my troll didn’t answer.

That was just as well, as it would have been profane if he had. He was breathing a little quickly, as if he didn’t enjoy the too tight space, being forced to be the hero, or much of anything else. With the light coming from within, I could see his reflection in the side of the crevasse, which was almost mirror-like in places, and it wasn’t happy.

It contrasted with my own growing excitement, for if anything seemed likely to hold a portal to another world, this was it.

But a portal wasn’t what we found on the other side. The crevasse let out into a sizeable, mostly empty, roughly round cave that did not contain Mircea, the Pythia or the pixies. And what it did contain I didn’t understand, even when I squinted, bringing the troll’s best eyesight to bear.

That was actually pretty good for once, as there was plenty of light to help him out. The source of the illumination was a large egg-like structure in the center of the cave suspended by nothing that I could see, yet its bottom didn’t quite touch the floor. It was roughly twice the size of a human in height, three or four times as wide, white in color and . . . well, looked almost exactly like a large, glowing egg.

---