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“HOW ARE YOU DOING?” Philip asked Theo, giving him a grin as he lowered his sword, finishing off his adversaries. “I’ve taken care of these three.”
Theo watched as Philip lunged his sword forward, just barely missing the large man who had stepped out and blocked his path moments earlier. “Good shot,” he said, as he clashed with another trader.
Theo shuffled low and managed to elbow his opponent in the gut, sending him to the ground, knocked out. “I’ve got two of them knocked out now,” Theo replied.
“Where’s the leader?”
“Ethan and Sophia are working on him.” Theo nodded toward the pair of siblings as Sophia climbed on his back and Ethan punched him in his gut.
“There are a couple of younger traders that ran away down the tunnel,” Philip said.
“You want us to follow them?”
“Not now,” Philip said as he shook his head. “If they really were younger, there’s little chance they are the ringleaders.”
“Where’s Rose?” Theo glanced around. “I don’t see her.”
Roderick came barreling through, helping Sophia and Ethan finish off the last attacker. “She ran ahead after her horse to get Mary,” he said. “And I haven’t seen her since.”
Theo glanced over at their attackers. Bruises were beginning to form on their faces, and many of them looked well beaten. “Captain,” he called. “Watch over these traders. Bind them up and take them back out of the cave. King Derick’s men should be able to come and gather them.”
“What are we going to do?” Ethan asked.
“Find Rose.” Theo wiped the sweat off his face, hiding his concern.
“I’m here,” Rose called.
Together, all of them turned around to look at her. Mary was on her shoulder, her wings giving off a soft bubble of growing light.
He nearly ran to her in relief. But he stopped the moment he saw her face. “What’s wrong?”
Sophia came up to her, pushing past Theo, and gave her a hug. “Rose,” she said. “What happened?”
“I got lost.”
“I saw you disappear,” Roderick said. “Was it the Wandering Caverns?”
“Must’ve been,” Rose said, brushing off their concerns in an easy tone. “I apologize if I’ve worried you.”
Theo saw her wring her hands, and he was only slightly comforted when she reached for the rosary beads he knew she wore under her sleeve. He had given her his rosary beads when they had returned to Rhone for her seventeenth birthday. While Theo doubted she used them for prayer, he took comfort in knowing that she carried them with her.
As the others began to talk with her, Theo noticed the expression Mary wore on her face. The small fairy was silent as her wings fluttered, and she took off from Rose’s shoulder.
“Tell me about the attack,” Rose said. “Did we get everyone?”
“Not everyone,” Philip told her. “But the ones who ran away were the smart ones. They seemed young. I think Derick’s forces can take over from this point. They were not too far behind us when we left.”
“You managed to fight off a group of Magdust traders,” Rose said. “There might be more. We should continue onward and keep looking.”
“True,” Philip said. “We didn’t see any sign of Magdalina, anyway. It’s possible we could still see her.”
In the soft, colorful light of the cavern’s atrium, Theo saw Rose’s face pale. He was willing to bet that Rose was not telling them the whole story. He watched her as she began asking Philip and Ethan more questions, while Sophia tended to the horses, and Roderick and the other guards were binding up their newly-bound prisoners, preparing to take them out of the caverns.
Something is not right, Theo thought.
“Send Lannister back to the King,” Rose said. “He’s the lightest man we have. He’ll be able to ride to the palace quickly. Captain, you and Roderick can stay with the men until they are arrested.”
“Yes, my lady,” Captain Locke replied. He bowed his head. “But please be careful as you make your way through the rest of the countryside. Bandits and traders are often reluctant allies in places such as this.”
“I will be careful, Captain. You do the same.”
Theo watched as the captain nodded and set out to do his assigned work. The older man never had a problem following Rose’s orders, he thought. It was gratifying to know he was as reliable as he was.
As soon as the captain took his leave, while the others were getting themselves together, Theo took Rose’s arm. “You’re lying,” he told her softly.
“And you’re bothering me,” Rose snapped.
“Something happened while you were gone. Tell me.”
“You’re paranoid.” Rose tugged her arm free and stomped away from him. “And I have work to do.”
“Rose.”
She shook her head. “We have to get to Einish. We can still make it to O’Lin before too long if we hurry.”
He sighed.
“Come on, Theo,” Rose said. “Isra is waiting for us. I’m sure you’d love to see her.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Theo asked, surprised by her accusing tone.
Rose glanced over her shoulder at him, frowning. “Never mind. Now, let’s go.”
“I’ve never accused you of being ugly before, Rose,” Theo said. “And no one in his right mind would. But this is coming awfully close.”
“Well, it’s good that I’m tired of hearing how beautiful I am, then,” Rose retorted.
Theo said nothing else. He looked at Mary, who gave him a sympathetic look. He felt like following Rose, fighting with her until she admitted what it was she was keeping from him. But he knew it would only cause his relationship with Rose to be further fractured in the end.
Sophia called out to him from further down the trail.
“Theo?” Sophia called. “Can you help me?”
“What is it?” he asked, coming over beside her.
“This.” Sophia held up a small object in her hands. It took Theo a moment to realize it was a pixie.
He had never seen a pixie before in his life, outside of drawings. He knew the pixies were a diverse race, with different languages and different physical traits. The one Sophia carried had a twiggish face, twisted and hard, almost as if he had grown out of a tree like a branch. The pixie’s large eyes were closed and his body was limp as Theo looked him over.
“Is he ... okay?” Theo asked softly.
“I don’t know,” Sophia said. “I was hoping you could check.”
Theo nodded and began looking for any sign of a pulse, hoping he would find any sign of life. The instant his finger touched the creature’s neck, he felt a small amount of breath inhaling and exhaling from the body. It wasn’t a pulse, he thought, but it was enough for him. “He’s alive.”
“Is he hurt?”
“Likely. We better tend to him. Are there anymore pixies around that you’ve seen?”
“No.” Sophia shook her head. “Not yet, anyway. Ethan and I saw him crawl out of one of the caverns while we were fighting. I think he was hit with something while we were distracted with the traders. Ethan went down the side path some, to check for more.”
“I’ll go and get Ethan. He shouldn’t wander off on his own. In the meantime, take extra good care of him, then,” Theo instructed, pointing to the pixie in her hands. “We’ll need to see if he can answer some questions for us.”
“What if he was working with the Magdust traders?” Sophia still cuddled the small creature like a baby, but Theo knew for all her compassion, she had a right to question the pixie’s motives.
“Go and get Mary,” Theo said, brightening at the idea. A distraction for Mary could mean that he would get some time to see if Rose would tell him what happened while he had been fighting off the traders with the others. And, he added, trying to justify it, Mary would be able to make sure that the pixie did not cause them any trouble. “See if she can help with him. She might be able to use some of her healing magic.”
Sophia nodded and hurried off, while Theo went off in search of Ethan.
He walked into the side tunnel and felt a strong presence of magic. Theo’s fingertips brushed against the wall, and he felt the tingle of magic.
Magdust.
“Ethan,” he called. “Ethan, come back this way.” A sense of foreboding came over him.
He breathed a sigh of relief when he saw his young companion appear only a few yards ahead of him.
“Theo,” Ethan said. “You won’t believe what I found here.”
“I don’t know about that,” Theo said as he went over to stand next to Ethan.
There was a small crevice in the rock. Glancing through it, Theo saw a blueish glow. He looked through it and immediately felt a rush of sorrow.
The cave reeked of painful death. Theo was already praying for peace as he pushed through the small opening in the rock, and stepped into the cave opening.
Blue light washed over him instantly. It felt cool on his skin, and even through his armor, he could tell some time had passed since the death of the fairies.
Ethan stepped in behind him. “What is this?” he asked. “I don’t like it.”
“It’s a death chamber,” Theo told him. “The blue residue you see is from fairy blood.”
“Fairies? Not pixies?”
Theo nodded. He looked around, careful to watch his step. He saw the old, dusty footsteps in the rocky dirt. “The traders must have brought them here after they captured them.” He saw a cage in the corner, smashed in. He examined it closely.
Fairies were not supposed to like iron, he knew; that was part of the reason that almost all the steel used in making swords contained iron. The cage gleamed dark silver against the blueish glow.
“Theo, look.”
At Ethan’s startled gasp, Theo came over to stand beside Ethan.
“It’s a spinning wheel,” he said. “To make thread.”
“Well, we have to keep Rose away from here for sure now,” Ethan joked, his voice humorless. “The spindle is still on it.”
“They were using the Magdust,” Theo said examining the spinning wheel more closely. “Spinning it right into the yarn.”
“Why?” Ethan asked. “Why not just consume it?”
“I don’t know,” Theo replied. “It’s probably a mystery to people like you and me because we would never do this sort of thing in the first place. But that’s a good question.”
His thoughts went back to his own upbringing, where his mother had hung that tapestry in his house. Thad had mentioned that their mother might have found a way to force his father’s hand in marriage, but things were starting to wear off by the time they had to leave their home. Was she able to use the Magdust in the tapestry to convince her father to stay? “Maybe it is easier to use by a human when it comes to granting wishes for things other than power.”
Ethan did not seem to hear his speculation. “We should go back,” he said. “Before someone gets worried about us.”
Theo nodded slowly. “I’ll leave a message for King Derick with Captain Locke,” he said. “So he knows about this place.”
The two of them made their way back to the main trail. Ethan was quiet and sober, while Theo was contemplative. His heart ached for the fairies and their losses. How was it that humans were able to capture and kill them so easily? Theo wondered. It did not seem like the men they had fought were that powerful. They were missing something. But what? Mary could have told them easily if it was something she knew.
Theo knew the church’s teachings on the fallen state of human beings and the rest of the world. It was not hard to imagine why people would do something as terrible, something that required the reality of the scene he had just left. Desire, power, magic ... all of it held an allure to the fallen soul, and some souls could not help but search after such things.
“There you are.”
Rose’s voice might have been edged with impatience, but it still carried the same graceful song. Theo couldn’t stop himself from smiling at her, even if it made her frown even more.
“Ethan,” Rose said, “you shouldn’t have gone off on your own. You’re lucky we didn’t end up losing you.”
“Sorry,” he said. “I was just doing a quick check for other pixies. How is the one Sophia and I found earlier?”
“Still unconscious,” Rose said. “We’ll have to see about getting him help once we arrive in Einish.”
“I’ll rig up a pallet for him,” Ethan offered.
“Sophia said she could carry him. Mary’s watching with her.”
Ethan rolled his eyes. “Trust Sophia to find a way to have all the fun.”
Theo came up beside Rose as Ethan sauntered back over toward his horse.
“I need to leave some notes for the King,” Theo told Rose. “There’s a cave back there with a multitude of dead fairies inside.”
Rose’s eyes watered. “So we were too late.”
“Considerably,” Theo agreed sadly. “But the cave has been in use for some time.”
“Did you find anything else?” Rose asked. “No more guards or traders or anything else?”
Theo shook his head, deciding not to mention the spinning wheel. “There might be more throughout the caverns,” he said. “Tucked off to the side.”
“Or just hid with other magic,” Rose murmured. “What do you think? What should we do?”
“We have removed one band of Magdust traders,” Theo said. “Let’s keep an eye out for more, and take care of them if we see it.”
“And if we don’t find any more?”
“There’s no need to go looking for more trouble, Rose,” Theo replied with a smirk. “We always find enough of it on our own.”
“So we should just keep going through the cave?”
“I think we can head out for Einish without worry. Didn’t the king say he was going to send some of his own men to take care of this matter anyway?”
“Yes, he did.”
“Then he will. So we can move onward.” It was so tempting to tug on a lock of her hair as he had done many times before. It was something that always seemed to cheer her up. But Theo knew Rose was still upset with him, and it would be better if he kept their conversation focused on business. “Philip needs to get to his betrothed, after all.”
Rose gave him the smallest hint of a smile. “You’re right,” she said. “Thank you.”
Her hand reached out and gripped his for a brief moment. Theo did not allow himself to be happy over it; he knew Rose was only allowing them to reestablish their normal boundaries.
And if there was one thing he knew, it was that he did not want their normal relationship any longer. He wanted more.