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Moving a large army – or was it two armies, one of men and one of golems? – was not as quick or easy as flying on Saboraak was. Awkward, crowded and irritable, the mass of men and metal squeezed along the narrow mountain road. Often, the carts or golems became mired in mud as winter lost its grip on the earth and the snows melted away into soft earth. Frustrated curses and the grunts of men at work filled the air. It seemed as if we hardly began to move before our caged cart was mired in thick clay ruts.
“Heave! Heave!” the men said, pulling ropes and trying to maneuver the cart out of the mud while a Magika directed the golems that pulled us. I could feel their spark calling to me. And it wasn’t the only thing I could feel that seemed to be alive. The cart with the open doorway was right behind us, stuck as often as our cart was. We hardly seemed to begin to roll again before we were stuck all over again. And every time we were stuck, my gaze drifted to the doorway as it pulsed its call to me.
By noon, we’d only driven twenty cart lengths. By dark, twenty more.
“Just let us walk,” I told the soldiers nearby.
“Shut it,” was the reply.
“If we walk, things will go a lot faster. I’m not sure if you noticed, but we both have functioning legs. You could even just let us out while you pull the cart out of the rut. Wouldn’t that help if there was less load on it?”
The sergeant scowled at his men who were nodding in agreement and then spat in my direction, though the spittle landed short. He was too tired to bother trying again.
“I couldn’t let you out of there if I wanted to, fool. That’s no ordinary lock.”
I strolled over to it, trying to look nonchalant. Just a man engaged in a friendly interchange. In the fading dusk, the lock glowed slightly. When I touched it, it sang to me like the golems.
“They used to keep oosquer in that cage, remember?” the Sergeant said.
“Oosquer flame when they get excited. They’re like big fireballs. They melt normal metal,” Bataar said. “This cage is likely made of heart-metal.”
“Is that like skysteel?” I asked.
He shrugged. “How would I know? I’m no Magika. But it’s magical. And so is that lock. Nothing but magic will open it.”
“Indeed,” a resonant voice said from behind us. I cursed internally. I hadn’t heard him creeping up on me.
I whirled, my best grin on my face, ready to take on the enemy.
Apeq A’kona was not alone. He strutted forward, sleeves rolled up to expose his marked arms in the rising moon. Considering the coolness of the evening, he was probably just showing off. A smile spread across his face.
Beside him, Ambrosia walked in a cloud of filmy white dress and black furs. When had she changed her clothes in the middle of all this chaos? And who wore white in knee-high mud?
“I see you’ve cooled off,” I said to Apeq, putting a hand on my hip. “Last I saw you, things were really heating up.”
There weren’t any marks on him from the fire. Though I noticed that he stood in a way that made it look like he was looking over his shoulder in between talking to me. He hadn’t walked away with his own mimic, had he?
“He should be so lucky,” my mimic opined.
He could just shut up and let me handle this. I saw Ambrosia watching him with hungry eyes. Skies and stars!
“You left me to burn to death. You didn’t expect me to escape.”
“Let me guess, when you arrived in hell, they didn’t even want you,” I was trying to stay calm, but I recognized what Apeq was carrying. He held in his hand one of those lightning rods the Magikas used to fight. And in his other hand, he had a length of metal rope that made my skin crawl. He wasn’t here on a social call.
“You men can leave now,” Apeq said to the soldiers. “Go set up your camp. We’re stopping here for the night.”
“Calling it quits like usual?” I couldn’t help myself. He brought all the worst things bubbling out of my lips.
“We’re making great progress,” Apeq said, unworried. “It takes time to move an army into position to attack a city. But it’s not like we’re in any rush. The Dominion will fall, piece by piece and we will raze it to the ground. Ko’Torenth will take over this land and take the dragons for their magic. In times of want, when resources are small, we need to reduce populations to survive. Cut the fat.”
“So, this is like a Ko’Torenth weight-loss plan?” I asked, but I was worried. Ambrosia was opening the lock.
“You stay here,” she said to Bataar.
I hadn’t realized that he’d moved to stand behind me, standing with fists clenched at his sides like he was ready to fight. He silently looked to me and I nodded. Whatever they had planned for me couldn’t be good. Best not to drag him into it, too.
“If you try to attack us or escape, we’ll kill him,” Apeq said, pointing the rod at Bataar.
I rolled my eyes. “Do they teach you these lines when you sign up to be evil? Everyone uses the same old tired threats again and again.”
It was Ambrosia who replied as she opened the door, waving me out with a curt gesture. “They teach us that magic doesn’t come from nowhere. Nothing comes from nothing. And in a world where magic is fading, any chance to find a new source of magic should be explored.”
“Then maybe you should be doing that instead of slaughtering people. Just a suggestion,” I said as she relocked the cage.
“I’ve always believed in efficiency,” Ambrosia said, taking the metal rope from Apeq and wrapping it around my wrists. “I plan to do both things at once.”
“And you’re going to tie a knot in a metal rope, too?”
“That, we’ll do with magic,” she said, standing so close that I could feel her breath on my face as she placed her hand gently on mine and I felt the metal tighten around my wrists. She was probably trying to be seductive or charming. She only seemed ridiculous.
They both did. This whole situation did.
Only days ago, I’d watched courageous men fight and die for the lives of others and these fools were strutting around a muddy landscape in fancy clothes talking about magic and trying to toy with me. They seemed so meaningless in comparison, like children playing at life.
As they led me away from the cart, holding me with bonds of magic, it felt like they were leading someone else. My mind was on other things.
Bataar might be right about the souls in the golems and he might be right about the World of Legends and if he was, then that should be what concerned me because these childish fools had thousands of souls held prisoner in metal cages and forced to do unthinkable things when they should be free.
And someone needed to be adult enough to stop these two before they broke the world.