“Temi?” I croaked, my mouth and throat coated with dust. “I hope you’re right about the sword being here, because we need something powerful enough to dig through a whole lot of rock.” I tried to guess how far we had traveled through that tunnel—how many meters of broken stone would need to be moved. A lot. Twenty or thirty at least. This chamber wasn’t that large, either. With four people breathing the air, we wouldn’t have that long. Unless we went through one of the portals.
Abandoning stealth, Alek stalked around the perimeter of the chamber, checking behind all of the portals.
I walked into the center of the chamber and spun a slow circle, searching for… I didn’t know what. Enlightenment. Maybe I should have stayed in the parking lot with the hippies if I’d wanted that.
“I don’t see anyone,” Alek said after he had completed his circuit, “but I sense that we are not alone. I could smell the person if not for the overpowering scent of that box.” He scowled at a small blue cube sitting in front of one of the portals, almost invisible against the glowing field behind it. Then he turned his scowl on the rock walls. There weren’t any niches or crevices that might hide someone the side of a person—or an elf. Though maybe our elf was dimensionally shifted, the way Jakatra and Eleriss had hidden us earlier. And if she was, did that mean we couldn’t strike at her even if she was standing in a corner of the chamber, munching popcorn and watching us?
I couldn’t do anything about that, but…
I walked over to the blue box, picked it up, and threw it through the nearest portal.
Simon snorted. “I guess that means the jibtab won’t be clawing at the walls to get at us. Too bad. It might have been strong enough to make it through the rock fall.”
“I wonder how many of those bait boxes there are,” Temi said.
“Actually, I was wondering if there might just be the one.” Simon shuffled his feet and looked at me, avoiding her eyes.
She frowned at him. “But Jakatra took the other one away.”
Simon waved at our chamber. “We’re away.”
“You can’t possibly think he would have set this trap for us.”
Simon wore a mulish expression, but he didn’t confront Temi, not outright anyway. He looked at the ground and muttered, “He doesn’t like us that much. But maybe he didn’t know someone was coming with the sword, and he thought he was just putting it somewhere outside of town. Or…” Simon met my eyes. “Maybe he did know the sword was here. Maybe he’s working with the portal authority chick.”
“He wouldn’t do that,” Temi said. “Why would he have bothered teaching me if he was working with the other side?”
“Because Eleriss talked him into doing it?” Simon shrugged.
Temi glared at him, and Simon shrank back, studying the ground again.
“Either way, Temi,” I said, “if the sword is here, I think you’re the one who’s going to have to find it. You’re the most attuned and, uhm, elfie.”
“Lucky me.”
She walked around the chamber, taking the same route Alek had, pausing halfway in her circuit to frown at a wall. I shivered, a cold draft whispering across the back of my neck. I glanced at the tunnel, but there was no way that draft had come from outside.
“I think you’re right, Alek,” I said, deliberately using Greek. “We’re not alone in here. Perhaps we should keep our backs to the walls.”
His eyes locked onto mine. “Yes. I will watch Artemis’s back also.”
Simon had no idea what we were saying, so I planted my hand on his chest and pushed him back to the wall, until we were standing side by side, the cold stone against our shoulders. Not that the elf couldn’t attack us from the front, especially if she was invisible to our eyes, but I felt better knowing I couldn’t take a dagger in the back.
“What are we doing?” Simon whispered.
“Police barricade,” I said.
He opened his mouth but caught on before any words came out. “Got it.”
“It’s here,” Temi said, returning to the center of the chamber. “I know it is.”
“I think it is too.” I gave her an encouraging nod. “Keep looking.”
She cocked her eyebrows in my direction. Maybe she hadn’t caught what I’d meant when I said police barricade. After all, even if Eleriss had spoken about what he was doing, she wasn’t as versed in science fiction and the idea of alternate realities and overlapping dimensions as Simon.
I pressed my palms together in front of my chest, closed my eyes, and bowed in a vague imitation of some Zen meditation master.
“Hm.” Temi closed her eyes, too, letting her chin fall to her chest.
Several long moments passed with nothing happening. Nothing moving. I bit back the urge to joke that I had told Temi to meditate, not sleep.
Her eyes flew open. “It is here.” She looked up, pointing at the ceiling straight over her head.
That whisper of cold air brushed my skin again. Alek startled me by bursting into motion. He lunged at Temi. No, he lunged at empty air right behind her. And he collided with something. Someone.
“What the—” Simon took a step forward but paused, doubtlessly as confused as I was as Alek rolled to the ground, looking like he was wrestling with someone, someone who wasn’t there. Simon removed his backpack and poked inside. He better not be thinking of pulling out napalm grenades.
I shook my whip free of my holder, though I had no idea what I could do. Even if I could see a target, it was entangled with Alek.
Temi crouched low, then sprang. Not at the person wrestling with Alek, but straight up into the air. Her fingers grazed the rock of the ceiling before she dropped back down. Without explaining, she jumped again, but the ceiling had to be ten feet high.
Something clattered and banged on the floor—Alek’s helmet. It had been knocked off and was bouncing across the chamber. As gifted an athlete as he was, could he hold his own against a full-blooded elf?
“Is it up there?” I stepped forward, having some notion that getting the sword would solve the problem, allow us to best our enemy. “Hanging from the rock?” At first, I couldn’t imagine that at all, but I shone my flashlight at the ceiling, and there was a small crack up there. About the width of a sword blade. Temi had cut through rock with the weapon before. What if the elf had thrust it up there somehow, knowing it would be close enough to activate the portal and knowing we wouldn’t be able to reach it? Alek might be able to slam dunk a basketball, but I didn’t think even Temi could manage that. And Alek was busy. Rolling around and—I gasped—bleeding. He had been cut somehow, and blood was pouring from a gash on his forehead, staining the ground even as he continued to fight with our invisible assailant.
Temi jumped again, not answering me until she blurted, “I touched it,” after the fourth jump. She was taking running starts now, and on her next jump, I saw her fingers bump against something. Why we could touch things and not see them, I couldn’t guess. Maybe Simon could explain the rules later.
When Temi landed this time, she almost came down on the wrestlers. Some flailing arm or leg caught her, and she stumbled back. I would have fallen on my butt, but she caught her balance. The wrestlers were thrashing underneath the spot she was trying to reach. One of them cried out, a short staccato note. I couldn’t tell if it was Alek or his enemy. I couldn’t tell if all the blood smeared on the ground belonged to him, either. I longed to help, but didn’t know how. Any intervention I tried might do more harm than good, distracting the wrong person.
“Let me try something,” I said after Temi missed again. If I couldn’t help with the fight, maybe I could help get the sword. I was at a decent angle, and the target wasn’t that far away…
I side-cracked the whip, aiming for the spot just below that crevice. The popper snapped around it on my first try, looking ridiculous since it appeared to wrap empty air.
“Oh,” Temi blurted. “That’s the hilt and it’s stuck in the rock. I had no idea.”
She must have been imagining it somehow lying flush with the ceiling.
“Yeah, but—” I gave the whip an experimental tug, “—it’s stuck way too deep for me to pull it out.” The wrap would simply fall away if I pulled any harder.
“Just hold it there a sec.” Temi backed up to the wall, rubbed her hands on her pants, and licked her lips, her eyes locked on the invisible hilt.
“Look out,” Simon blurted.
I almost dropped the whip, thinking the warning was for me. But he was shouting at the wrestlers, at Alek. Their thrashing had taken them to the brink of one of those portals. If he accidentally rolled in—or was pushed in—who knew where he would end up or what might be waiting for him there?
I took a step, thinking of running over there and standing in front of the portal, but Temi chose that second to make her leap. She sprinted, jumped, and a shiver ran down the whip as she grasped it—and the hilt. Her weight wasn’t enough to pull the blade free, either, and she hung there one-handed, staring down at me with a what-now expression.
“Can you… jiggle it?” Jiggle it. What advice. Sooner or later, my friends were going to figure out that it was stupid that I was nominally in charge of our group.
Temi drew up her legs and bucked her weight, trying to yank the sword free. How she managed to hang up there by one hand without falling, I couldn’t guess. Maybe the whip gave her more of a grip to hang on to. She twisted and pulled, grunting with the effort.
Simon had run over by the portal and had one of his homemade grenades in hand. What was he going to do? Light both wrestlers on fire to stop the fight? Maybe he had already done something, because the combatants had shifted away from the portal. Alek’s face and arms were flushed red. It looked like someone had an arm wrapped around his neck from behind. Simon gave me a what-now expression—they were going around. Shaking my head, I let go of the whip and risked racing over there. They weren’t moving around as much, and it looked like Alek was losing the battle for air. I yanked my multitool free, shaking out the pliers—there was no time to pull out the knife—and jabbed them into the air above Alek. The tool rammed into something. It seemed to be enough of a distraction, for Alek writhed and bucked, making a flinging motion. It was hard to tell, but his opponent seemed to be thrown free, or maybe she rolled away of her own accord.
At the same time, Temi dropped down from the ceiling, the rasp of metal against stone following her. She landed with both hands on the sword grip, the glowing blade now visible.
“To your right,” I barked to her. She ought to be behind Alek’s opponent, if that person hadn’t already moved out of the way.
Temi swung the blade horizontally at waist level, a fast whipping motion that should have caught someone unaware… if that someone had been there. But she didn’t connect with anything.
Alek leaped to his feet. He had lost his own sword early in the skirmish, but he raised both fists.
Even so, he wasn’t prepared when something slammed into him, knocking him to the side. He almost stumbled into me, but he seemed to twist in mid-air, coming down next to me and already facing the person, the elf—who else besides an elf could be so agile and best an Olympic wrestler?
He grabbed my multitool and lunged forward, probably thinking it was a dagger instead of pliers. He figured out what he had, though, and snapped with them, clasping onto something. A soft rip sounded, but then the event horizon on the nearest portal stretched and rippled. Alek took a step in that direction, as if to follow.
“No,” I blurted. “You don’t—”
The portals vanished, all of them. Darkness descended on the chamber, now lit only by the glow of Temi’s sword.
The sound of Alek’s ragged breathing was all we could hear.
I gripped his arm. “Are you all right? You’re bleeding…” Way to state the obvious, Del. He was bleeding a lot. Sweat and blood slicked his hands, and rivulets ran down the side of his face from a gash on his temple. The side of his jacket was dark red too. The elf must have gotten beneath his flak jacket and stabbed him. That hospital might only be ten minutes away by car, but how were we supposed to get out of the cave and take him there?
He had to be in pain, but impossibly, Alek looked down at me and smiled. It was almost a grin. From the man who rarely tilted the corners of his lips upward.
“Let a man learn how to fight,” he said, his voice having the singsong quality of someone reciting a poem, “by getting in close where fighting is hand to hand, inflicting a wound with his spear or sword, taking the enemy’s life, foot planted alongside foot, and shield pressed against shield, breast against breast, embroiled in the action, let him fight man to man.”
“What was that?” Simon asked. “I’ve never heard him say that much before in an entire day.”
“A poem. Tyrtaeus?” I guessed, trying to think of Spartan poets who had lived around Alek’s era.
He nodded, his eyes gleaming with pleasure. Pleasure from the fact that I recognized the passage or from the fact that he had survived his wrestling match, I wasn’t sure.
“A love poem?” Simon asked.
“No, it was about killing people. I think he’s telling us that he enjoyed wrestling with… whoever that was.”
Alek was still holding my multitool, and he held the pliers aloft, his face sobering. A scrap of dusty black material dangled from the tool’s grip. My own face must have sobered as I stared at it, then stepped forward to remove it.
“Black leather,” I said.
“I didn’t realize all elves ascribed to that fashion trend,” Simon said.
“I… don’t know that they do. Alek? Did you ever see what that female elf was wearing? Green Eyes?”
“I saw her only briefly, but she wore a cloak,” he said.
“So we’ve only seen Eleriss and Jakatra in black leather?”
Temi scowled over at me and propped a fist on her hip. “What are you implying?”
“That our buddies aren’t our buddies after all?” Simon asked.
“Jakatra…” I started.
“Wouldn’t attack Alek,” Temi interrupted. “Or any of us. Why would he when he’s been helping us?”
“Is he helping us of his own volition? Or is Eleriss making him help us?” I had no idea as to the social hierarchy of the elven world, but I had always gotten the impression that Eleriss outranked Jakatra.
“I spent a week with him. I know him better than you do. He saved my life. Multiple times. Eleriss wasn’t around. He could have let those animals knock me out of the trees if he didn’t care. He’s not someone who would stab you in the back.”
“Just in the chest?” Simon suggested.
Temi turned her scowl on him.
“I did not fight a female,” Alek told me.
“You’re sure?” Female elves might be as quick and agile as the males. Maybe as strong too.
“Positive,” Alek said, his tone dry. He walked over and picked up his sword, returning it to his belt scabbard.
“Oh, right. I guess you’d probably notice… lady parts in close quarters like that.”
“What are you talking about?” Temi demanded. She sounded frustrated that she couldn’t follow the conversation. I would definitely have to work on getting Alek up to speed on English.
“He said it wasn’t a woman.”
“Eleriss said something about the green-eyed elf having a helper,” Temi said.
“That is true.” I lifted my hands. “All right, we won’t jump to any conclusions yet. It doesn’t matter right now anyway. We need to find a way out of this cave. That sword is probably still close enough to the vortex that the portal is open up there, and who knows what it’s making people do?” I shuddered, the memory of the falling man flashing through my mind.
Temi pointed to the blocked tunnel. “That way?”
“Actually…” Simon gazed at the ceiling. “Judging by where the cave entrance was, how far the tunnel sloped upward, and the fact that we know the sword has to be close to the portal for it to remain open… there may be less rock to go through in that direction.”
“Yeah, but that’s solid rock,” I said, “not loose stones.”
“A few feet verses twenty meters though.”
“We can’t even reach it.”
“Temi can stand on someone’s shoulders,” Simon said.
“Are you volunteering? Because Alek looks like he needs a hospital bed and a transfusion, not a person standing on him.”
Simon pointed to me. “You’re still looking sturdy.”
Sturdy? He was never going to get a girl using adjectives like that.
Temi was alternating between eyeing her sword and the ceiling. “Are you sure it’s only a few feet?”
“Tell you what,” Simon said, poking into his backpack again. He put away his homemade grenade and pulled out a different tin, something about the size of a tuna fish can. It might have been a tuna fish can once. Now it had a fuse sticking out of the top. “See what you can do, carve out a nice niche up there, and when you can’t go any farther, you can tuck this up there…” He pulled out a roll of duct tape. “And we’ll see if we’re close enough to blow us the rest of the way out.”
“You want to blow up the ceiling over our heads?” I asked.
“I’m sure we’re close to the surface. We can take cover in the mouth of the tunnel there. The part that didn’t collapse. If it didn’t collapse with the first rock fall, it must be structurally sound.”
“Uh huh.” I imagined the four of us packed into a space not much larger than a coffin with tons of collapsed rock burying us from either side. “Let’s just—”
“Listen, it’ll be fine. I’m sure. Eight feet of stone to the surface—max. Even if it all collapsed, it wouldn’t fill this chamber. We could climb out over it.” Simon glanced at his phone, and I wondered if something was filling him with urgency. Had he received another message from his brother? “Don’t I always beat you at chess? I’m spatially gifted.”
“Last time, you beat me because you spilled Mountain Dew in my lap and moved the pieces while I was cleaning up.”
“I did not move the pieces. That was your imagination. And your poor spatial memory.”
“Fine.” I waved to the ceiling. “Try digging over there, on the far side. We’ll give it a few minutes, then we’re doing the tunnel.” I jerked my thumb at it. I might see how hard those rocks were wedged in there while Temi cut into the ceiling with the sword.
“Anyone else think we should have taken our chances and gone through one of the portals?” Temi asked.
“Maybe so. I wonder if they all went to the same place. And why they were open in the first place. To distract us?”
“Maybe our elf friend was hoping we’d be intrigued and go through,” Simon said, “Or that we’d think the sword was on the other side of one and figure we had to go through.”
“Good thing Temi could feel it in here.” I waved toward the ceiling. “Willing to try it?”
“All right.” Temi walked to the far side of the chamber. “Who’s my stool?”
Simon started after her, but Alek stopped him with a hand. “I more tall,” he said in English.
“You don’t have to be a hero, Alek,” I said, concerned with all the blood he had left on the floor, not to mention what was still oozing down the side of his face.
He gave me an odd look. Spartans probably did have to be heroes. It must be in the DNA.
While he hoisted Temi onto his shoulders, I pulled off my own backpack. My first-aid kit seemed inadequate for the amount of blood Alek was leaking, but I could at least bandage his torso. Judging by the stain on his jacket, that was the worst wound. Unsporting of his wrestling opponent to pull out a dagger.
“I wish I’d had time to put together my thermic lance,” Simon said, watching as Temi took the first few cuts at the ceiling, trying to dig in off to the side so rock wouldn’t crumble onto her and Alek’s heads.
“I don’t.” I pulled out the roll of bandages. “As far as I know, the sword doesn’t burn oxygen. Fire would. I don’t particularly want to run out of air in here.”
“Oh, we’ll poison ourselves with CO2 before we run out of air,” Simon said cheerfully.
“Good to know.”
I followed the wall over to Alek, avoiding the rubble falling from the ceiling. He was supporting Temi, her feet on his shoulders, his arms up to grip her calves and keep her from losing her balance. Temi couldn’t have had a lot of leverage from her position, but the sword did cut into the rock easily, as if it were melting away the stone.
“I’m going to take off your jacket and lift up your shirt, Alek.” I held up the bandages and some scissors.
He nodded.
“Or maybe cut it off,” I added after I had unzipped the vest, camo jacket, and revealed the T-shirt beneath it. The fabric, drenched in sweat and with the side soaked in his blood, was going to be hard to keep out of the way. “Simon, want to give me a hand?”
“Taking off Mr. Sexypants’ clothes? Not really.”
“Get over here, anyway.”
Though he sighed theatrically, Simon came over and held up Alek’s shirt. With the sword moving around overhead, the glow fluctuated, and I ended up pulling out my flashlight and holding it between my teeth.
“Someone stuck a dagger in your side, my friend,” I said around the handle, grimacing at the puncture wound. He would need stitches at some point. I pressed a wad of gauze against the cut and shook out the bandage one-handedly. “Simon, apply pressure, please.”
As he did so, a head-sized rock hit the ground behind him, and he jumped. I would have too. I wasn’t sure about this plan at all—or his self-proclaimed wonderful spatial awareness.
“Heard from your brother?” I asked.
“No reception since the cave-in.”
“Think he’ll be smart enough to stay in the car?”
“He’s not the type to join geriatric hippies at the bong. But… he might be worried and come looking for me.” Simon bit his lip. “I wish he hadn’t come down here. I don’t need a babysitter.”
I wasn’t that sure about that, but I kept my mouth shut. For once, Simon wasn’t cracking jokes. He might be annoyed at his family’s assumptions, but more than that, he looked concerned that his brother might be in trouble out there.
“Mom would kill me if he got hurt because of me,” Simon added softly. I almost didn’t hear him over the rain of rubble clattering down, the pile growing around us.
“I’m sure she would forgive you.”
He shook his head. “You’ve never met her. You don’t know how much…” He stared at the wall over my shoulder, and I concentrated on tying off Alek’s bandage. “He’s the one she loves, that everyone does. I’m just the geeky screw-up. Until I prove I’m not, anyway. But you know that saying about it being hard to prove a negative? It’s kind of like that. Sometimes, no matter what you do, it can’t change opinions people have had for a long time.”
“I know.”
“I’m not sure how much farther I can reach,” Temi said. “I haven’t found the stars yet.”
“The stars are elusive,” Simon murmured.
“What?”
“Make a little niche. I’ll have you tape my bomb up there.”
“And now we get to the part of the plan I’m really questioning,” I said.
Simon let Alek’s shirt fall down, wiped his hands, and retrieved his tuna can and a lighter. “You need to put it up as high as you can, but still be able to reach it to light it. Everyone else should take cover in the little tunnel.”
“Meaning you?” I asked.
Temi and Alek wouldn’t be able to until they had lit the fuse.
“Meaning us,” Simon said. “I’ll be fine. Don’t worry. The rock up there is fairly stable. That explosive isn’t strong enough to bring down all of Bell Rock or anything.”
“That’s good. I’d hate to be the one responsible for destroying a national landmark.”
“I think it’s only a county landmark.”
“Ah, that makes things much better then.”
“Ready,” Temi said as more rock plunked to the ground.
Alek took the can, regarded it curiously, then handed it up to her. Temi rose on her tiptoes, stretching up into the hollow the sword had carved. I couldn’t believe Alek didn’t wince under the weight digging into his shoulders. But then, he hadn’t winced at having a dagger plunged into his side, either. I wondered anew if that had been Jakatra, or if black leather was simply trendy among elves. Nobody had seen the green-eyed elf woman’s assistant. Maybe he had also stolen a Harley from Montana grannies and dressed himself in appropriate clothes for the road.
“It’s placed,” Temi said.
“Here’s the lighter.” Simon tossed it up, and she caught it.
“How long will we have after I light it?”
“A few seconds.”
“Comforting,” I said, imagining us all stumbling and tripping over each other as we raced for the tunnel.
“No kidding,” Temi said. “For future reference, longer fuses would be better.”
“Not to mention a remote detonation device,” I added.
“You guys do know these bombs were constructed by flashlight and in a tent, right?”
“Again, let me state how comforted I am.”
“If I had access to a proper lab…”
“Ready?” Temi asked.
I grabbed Simon and hauled him to the tunnel. As much as I hated the idea of hiding there while Temi and Alek were still out in the open, it meant we wouldn’t get in the way when they ran over.
“Ready,” I said, my back to the rockfall inside the tunnel. I closed my eyes, hoping Simon was right, hoping the explosion wouldn’t be too big, wouldn’t bring the mountain down on us…
“Go,” Temi barked.
A thud sounded as she jumped to the ground. Alek could have beaten her there, but he waited, pushing her into the tunnel first. She laid the sword flat against the ground so it wouldn’t stab anyone. Alek plastered himself into the hole, throwing his arm around my shoulders, and leaning in to protect my head. I might have objected to this preferential treatment—even if I had agreed to his bodyguard offer earlier—but there wasn’t time. The explosion came first.
The boom wasn’t as loud as I expected, not after the cacophony of the first rock fall. At first, I didn’t even think it had done anything.
But rocks started falling, pounding to the ground with ear-splitting cracks and thuds. Dust flooded the chamber. I couldn’t see much around all of our bodies, but I could feel the fine particles flowing into my nostrils. I might have sneezed, but I didn’t hear it over the hammer of the rocks. The earth shivered beneath us, and I grimaced, afraid we were setting off a cascade of rock falls, and that we would indeed be buried alive.