It all happened so quickly. One moment the elves were laughing at them, torturing them with the knowledge that their rescue had failed; a second later, the elves could speak no more. The castle’s thorny vines gagged them, and then quickly wrapped themselves around the elves’ limbs. Hunter did not hesitate to take advantage, diving forward and disarming Raider Two even before the elf’s sneer could leave his face. Phaedra looked away as Hunter swung the blade, shutting her eyes against the world until vertigo forced her to open them again. The floor was shaking, and the elf kept screaming.
When she opened her eyes, the roof was plummeting down at them. Phaedra fell to the floor, covering her head with her hands. To her surprise, the ceiling did not crush her. Instead, with another shriek from the elf and an angry groan from above, the roots froze in place halfway to the floor. Raider Two’s cries, however, continued. Phaedra followed its voice and realized to her horror that the shrieks were coming from his disembodied head.
“Curse you, Illweather!” screamed the head, even as the blood ran out through its neck. “What have you done? Godserfs! The Godserfs have escaped! Come and catch them, tear them to pieces, crack their bones and drink their blood!”
Nobody responded. The elven lieutenant glared up at Hunter. “May you be cursed for as long as you live, Hunter of House Tavener! And you, Phaedra Merchantsdaughter, may your life be brutal and short!”
Wordlessly, Narky bent over and seized what remained of Raider Two by the hair. He stood, spun around once and flung the head away with all his might.
“May you die at the hands of your friends, Kanarke Coward’s Son!” Raider Two howled as he sped through the air. Then his head landed, bounced twice, and, still cursing and howling, fell with a splash into the pool of water at the far end of the room.
“One day they will learn–” the elf sputtered, his head bobbing up sideways for a moment before sinking below the surface with an infuriated gurgle.
Hunter took a step back, hesitating before attacking the other two elves. Immobilized as they were, they did not seem to pose any threat at the moment. Besides, it no longer seemed clear that fairies could be killed. If a beheaded elf could still curse and scream, then what good would stabbing them do?
“Let’s get out of here,” said Narky, raising his voice above the chorus of sobbing children.
Hunter nodded, took another step back, and hit his head on a tree root. He turned around, blinking without comprehension. “The roof caved in!” he exclaimed. “When did that happen?”
“The question is,” said Narky, “why did it stop? Was it something the elves did? Either way, we should get out of here as soon as we can. The castle’s obviously trying to kill us.”
“Which way should we go?” Phaedra asked. “If any of the other elves heard him–”
“Wait,” said Hunter, shushing her. “I thought I heard something. Quiet down, everyone.”
Sure enough, as soon as they stopped speaking they could hear something above them, scratching at the semi-collapsed ceiling. Hunter circled the lowest roots, sickle in hand, waiting.
“Over there!” cried Narky, pointing.
A foot was descending through a hole in the roof, long, dark-skinned and callused. Criton! Soon his waist appeared, and then his whole wonderful self came floating down through the hole as if his body weighed little more than the air around him.
“Thank God,” he said. “I thought I heard you. I feel like I’ve been wandering around in here forever. Do you know the way out?”
“How did you get in?” Narky asked. “Where’s Bandu? Isn’t she with you?”
“She couldn’t come,” Criton said. “She’s still trying to open the gate for us. And I came in through the roof, so that wouldn’t do you any good. What happened down here?” He had finally noticed the elves.
“Illweather tried to catch them and crush us,” said Narky. “It’s only done half the job so far, but let’s not wait for it to finish.”
“Suits me,” said Criton. “Out through that thornbush? Oh, and Hunter, I brought your sword.”
Considering Illweather’s potential for motion, the thornbush had become strangely inert. Criton and Hunter swapped weapons and began hacking a way through it, leaving little but broken stems where a formidable guardian had once stood. Phaedra beckoned the children, and they all followed Criton and Hunter out into the hallway.
“Which way from here?” asked Criton.
“I’m not sure,” said Hunter. “We took a lot of turns to get here, and that was days ago.”
“They take us that way for the games,” Delika piped up, pointing left.
They went right.
It did not take them long to reach a fork, one that Phaedra did not recognize in the slightest. “I think we must have come in the other way,” she said.
“Let’s take a left here,” said Narky. “If we do our best to keep going in a straight line, we should at least reach an outer wall at some point.”
Hunter nodded. “The left hand hall it is.”
They walked on, taking the occasional left or right turn but always heading in more or less the same direction. To Phaedra’s surprise and relief, they did not come across any fairies on their way. Narky, however, did not seem relieved in the slightest.
“This is wrong,” he said. “It’s too easy. There should be someone around here.”
“I don’t know,” said Criton. “I heard a group of them ride off while I was trying to get in here. I didn’t ever see them, but it sounded like it might have been a pretty good number.”
Narky did not look convinced. “Huh. Still doesn’t feel right, though. Ambush, maybe?”
“Well,” said Phaedra, “all we can do is be careful.” As she said it, she stepped in something sickeningly soft. She looked down to find horse droppings scattered throughout the hall.
“We’re getting closer to the gate!” she cried excitedly. “There are horses around here somewhere.”
“And thank Ravennis for that,” said Narky. “Without horses, we wouldn’t get more than a mile from this place before they caught up with us. I hope there’s a carriage, or a cart or something, or we’ll have to leave the kids behind.”
“He’s joking,” Phaedra told the children.
“Right,” said Narky. “I’m joking. If it’s a little selfishness or death, I’ll take death, thank you. All I’m saying is, if it’s between them being caught and all of us being caught, why shouldn’t some of us choose survival?”
Hunter spun around and glared at Narky, looking angrier than Phaedra had ever seen him. “You’re going to die, Narky,” he spat. “Sooner or later, you’re going to die. Wouldn’t you rather die a decent person?”
His words struck Narky like a blow. Phaedra thought she saw tears welling in his eye, though they never fell. Hunter turned and stalked off down the hall.
“Don’t worry,” Phaedra told the little ones. “We’ll all get out of here safely. Just follow Hunter.”
In Illweather’s dank, windless tunnels, it did not take long for them to smell the horses. They followed their noses until they came to the indoor stable, where two elven grooms stood attending to some six or seven horses. When they saw the humans in the archway, the grooms snatched up a pair of unused sickles and charged, shouting an alarm as they did so. Hunter impaled one with a smooth thrust, then let go of his sword and yanked the sickle out of the groom’s hands. With a flexibility that surprised Phaedra, he then lifted his leg high, planted a foot on the groom’s chest, and kicked him away.
Criton, in the meantime, only barely managed to fend off the first two blows against him before Hunter spun around with the sickle and lopped off the second groom’s arm. The elf screamed until Hunter gave him a vicious crack over the head with the butt end of his new weapon, and the groom collapsed in a heap.
The other elf had by now pulled Hunter’s sword halfway out of his body, but his arms were too short to finish the job. He was still pulling at the blade when Narky snatched the sickle from the severed arm on the floor and rushed forward, bludgeoning him over and over until he too lost consciousness.
“They take a lot of killing,” noted Criton.
“You haven’t seen the half of it,” Narky told him.
Phaedra hadn’t shut her eyes this time, afraid to look away. She thought she might be sick. She bent over and put her hands on her knees, staring at the floor and waiting for her nausea to subside. She almost tipped over due to her uneven legs, but somehow she kept her balance.
“What are you looking at?” asked Delika, who had come to stand beside her. The little girl gazed wonderingly at the ground, as if it held some mysterious wisdom that only big people could see.
Phaedra smiled despite the churning in her stomach. It was sweet that Delika should assume all of her actions were so purposeful.
“Nothing,” she said, before suddenly realizing that she was wrong.
The moss of the floor had a deep groove in it, where a cart must frequently have rolled. She followed the groove with her eyes to the far end of the horse stalls, and saw there the edge of a chariot peeking out from behind the last live-wood stall. Excitement bubbled up inside her, banishing her nausea completely. She limped past the stalls as quickly as her lame leg would allow.
It was beautiful. The front of the chariot featured a fantastical design in gold and silver leaf, but the lovely part was its size. It could have fit a driver and three well-armed men, even with a barrel for spears or arrows in the middle.
“Look!” she cried, with sudden hope. “Delika, Adla, all of you, come here!”
The children ran to her, and Hunter looked over and said, “The prince’s chariot?”
“It’s perfect!” she told him.
Sure enough, all eight children could fit aboard with Phaedra, if they squeezed. Hunter and Narky fastened a pair of horses to the front while Criton tried and failed to find saddles for the other horses. There were none. In retrospect, that shouldn’t have been surprising: the elven raiders had all ridden bareback.
Even without saddles, Hunter and Criton had no difficulty climbing on. These horses were unnaturally docile. It was as if the fairies had sucked the spirits from them and left only the shells behind. The horses did not buck or snort or whinny, only placidly followed where they were led. As convenient as this was, it still bothered Phaedra immensely.
Narky did not immediately climb onto his horse as the others had done. He stood beside it hesitantly, looking back at the two remaining horses that waited patiently in their stalls. Then he walked over to the stalls and swung the elvish sickle at one of the horse’s legs. Phaedra gasped as the horse fell forward, its hot blood soaking into the mossy floor. But still the horse made no sound of protest, nor did the second one shy away when Narky approached it to repeat his grisly task. It was not really cruelty, Phaedra tried to tell herself as Narky swung the blade once more. These horses were more vegetable than animal.
When he was done, Narky dropped the sickle and climbed onto his mount, wiping his hands. “We can’t have them following us,” he said, defiantly fixing Phaedra with his one good eye.
“I know,” she said. “It’s just… I know.”
“Let’s go,” said Hunter.
He gave his mount a kick and it sprang into a light trot. Phaedra shook her reins, and the chariot followed. They rode through the halls, following the trail of wheel grooves and old horse droppings toward the entrance. Soon they began to hear the elves, seemingly from all around them. Was it some unnatural echo, or were they being surrounded?
“Don’t slow down,” warned Hunter. “If they’re ahead, we’ll need to break through.”
She thought she heard Narky snort at Hunter’s statement of the obvious, but she said nothing. She knew what Hunter really meant: he did not believe he could prevail in another fight. He wanted to make sure they did not rely on him.
They spurred the horses on, bouncing down the hall as the soulless animals hastened their steps. Then they turned a corner, and Phaedra’s pulse quickened.
The gate was ahead, closed but unprotected. From the right, a crowd of elves rushed toward them, led by their prince. He looked like a minor God, his clothes lush and dark upon skin of blazing white. A tiara of gold nested upon his silver hair, its brilliance reflecting the unnatural glow of his skin. It hurt to look at him.
“Stop!” he cried, and Phaedra’s hands began to pull on the reins of their own volition. Even Hunter reined in his horse, and the humans lingered uncertainly while the elves approached.
The prince held out his hand expectantly. “You have something that belongs to us. Give it back.”
He did not promise them anything in return for their compliance, only stood there with complete authority, knowing that they could not help but follow his commands.
“Give it back, Criton,” Phaedra heard herself saying.
Criton held tightly to the head-sized acorn, still somehow trying to resist. Phaedra wondered at his strength. Then he raised the seed high and breathed fire upon it.
The elves cried out and charged toward them, and the prince’s spell was broken.
“Go!” Criton shouted, dropping the seed and digging his heels into his horse’s hide.
Phaedra shook the reins and her horses began to trot placidly forward, as if urgency was completely foreign to them. The others might make it to the gate before the elves cut them off, but at this rate, the chariot never would.
She never knew what got into her. One moment she was impotently shaking the reins, and the next, she was a madwoman, leaping half out of the chariot to scratch and bite at the horses’ rears. Her nails dug into their hides as the animals finally began to canter and then to gallop.
Had it not been for the children, Phaedra would have fallen off and been crushed as the chariot rolled by. But they caught her legs and pulled her back, her stomach and chest connecting painfully with the chariot’s lip. She clung there as the horses sped onward, their reins flapping loose and free.
To Phaedra’s great luck, the elves were too focused on Illweather’s seed to attempt to cut her off from the gate of vines. The gate was already badly damaged by Hunter’s sword, but now its destruction became complete. The chariot crashed through it, snapping the strong vines like deadwood, flinging debris to all sides. Phaedra sat aching in the back, watching Illweather fall farther and farther behind. They were free.
For now.