Page 111 of Sky Shielder
“You could have rolled his body off the cliff.” Tibby knelt forward, returning to her task.
“He’s heavy, and I’m not that strong.”
She scowled. “Iwould have found a way.”
“That’s because you’re a clever engineer and know how to build a travois out of kelp and driftwood.”
Tibby lifted her chin. “Yes. And we may need another travois to haul this across the rocks and to the cove.” She glanced at Fel. “You said it’s a couple of miles from here?”
“The spot where I fired the flare? Yes. There’s a cliff there, too,but in that spot, it’s only twenty or thirty feet down to the water. Assuming your friend is watching and shows up with a ship, we ought to be able to lower the shielder down to it.”
“Do you need help? We’ll have to do that all quickly.” Syla waved to the great artifact, wondering if the three of them together would be able to lift it out of the cave and carry it two miles. Her aunt might need to buildmorethan a travois. “We’ll only have a few hours before the candles burn out, and Vorik wakes up. And… I think he knows where this place is.”
“I thought I sensed someone watching us last night.” Fel shook his head.
“Whether he knows where we are or not, he can hunt us down,” Tibby said. “He’llespeciallybe able to hunt us down once the barrier drops, and his dragon can help him.”
“Yes.” Syla shrugged.
She’d known she was only buying them a few hours. Hopefully, it would be enough. Ithadto be enough. The idea of doing all this and losing the shielder in the end and leaving both islands unprotected… It would be as bad a betrayal as the one her sister had inadvertently made.
“I don’t suppose you would like to tell me where Vorikis.” Fel drew a dagger sheathed on his belt and held it up, turning the blade as if Syla had wanted to examine it. “I keep my weapons very keen. He wouldn’t feel a thing.”
“No.”
“It’s for the good of the kingdom.”
“No.” Syla waved at the shielder again. “We’ll just have to do this quickly.”
“Your niece is stubborn,” Fel told Tibby.
“That runs in the family, yes.” Tibby pushed one of the scrolls toward Syla. “Here. The schematics I was hoping to find were here. As well as magical tools. There must have been a kit left with every shielder, but some ancestor of ours probably moved theminto a special spot in the castle and forgot about them. Look at the schematics, and grab a tool from that kit over there. The shielder wouldn’t let Fel touch it while its activated, but you should be able to help. Apparently, the artifacts trust that we—” Tibby waved her moon-marked hand, “—aren’t a threat and will do the right thing.”
The significant look that Tibby gave to Syla suggested thatshewas less certain they were doing the right thing.
Unfortunately, Syla wasn’t certain either, but she knelt to help. They didn’t have much time.
The great and powerful, created-by-the-gods-themselves orb that was the shielder… rolled.
Syla almost laughed as, after having heaved and levered the artifact out of the lava tube and the cave above, they were able to push the heavy sphere across the ground. At first, she worried about scratches or even breaking it, but Tibby, who was alternating pushing and waving her newly-discovered scrolls and tools, assured her that it was very sturdy. Had the rider who’d infiltrated the chamber under the castle not had a magical gargoyle-bone blade, he likely wouldn’t have been able to cut into the shielder there and destroy its parts.
Despite its rollability, the orb still weighed more than two hundred pounds, and there was nothing like a road or even a path on this side of the volcano. Pushing it along wasn’t easy, but itwasdoable. If slow. Syla couldn’t help but glance at the sun creeping higher in the sky as they navigated toward a cove Fel had visited earlier.
“Maybe you should run ahead and see if a ship has arrived,” Syla suggested to him, feeling the weight of time.
Any minute, those candles would burn out, and Vorik would wake soon after. Few trees grew out of the rocky landscape, sothere was little to no cover. A man might have found a spot to crouch down and hide, but the orb was taller than any of them, and, even though its silver glow had ceased when they’d removed it from the mountain, it gleamed, its sides iridescent and strikingly beautiful in the morning sun.
“Areyou twogoing to push this thing without me?” Fel grunted, straining to shove the orb past a rock, bags under his eyes promising he needed sleep. They all did. “Shecan’t even push for more than a minute without stopping to push her spectacles up or look at a scroll.”
“I’m not stoppingthatoften,” Tibby said with a shove of her own, “and it’s not my fault that my nose is sweating, which causes my spectacles to slip. I lost my strap for keeping them in place.”
“And the scrolls?” Fel asked.
The orb scraped past the rock and rolled more freely for a few steps.
“They contain information and the schematics for the shielders, for devices made by thegods.” Tibby touched one of the scrolls tucked into a rope she’d tied around her waist like a belt. Her trousers had been torn at some point and were half falling off. Everyone in their little group was bedraggled and in need of sartorial care as well as medical treatment. “While we do all this shoving, I’m thinking, wondering if the schematics might be used to repair the shielder in the capital. With this one to look at, as well, maybe it’ll be possible, and we can return protection to both islands.”
Fel’s grunt suggested he didn’t accept that as a suitable excuse for not pushing.
