The Crimson Brand (33 page)

“Penny, you’re hyperventilating. 
Calm down … breathe slowly
.”

Penny closed her eyes and tried to forget where they were, tried to slow her rapid breathing and pounding heart, to steady her frazzled nerves.

Softly, Katie whispered, “It’s not too late to turn back.”

“I’m not going back,” Penny said, surprised and pleased to feel a new coolness settle into her mind and body, not calm, but almost indifference.  A wordless voice in her head told her that she had picked her path and now she had to follow it.

“Okay, then,” Katie said, and Penny was relieved to hear a similar resolve in her voice. 

For what seemed like a long time, they crawled, Penny illuminating the path ahead and Katie at her heels.  They paused at intersecting paths to listen, to search for signs of Ronan’s passage and, though she didn’t like to admit it even to herself, for more blood or Ronan’s lifeless body.

Occasional sounds echoed to them, manic squeaks and chitterings, something that might have been a shout of pain, something that sounded absurdly like a baby’s rattle.  She could feel the air stirring at each new tunnel they passed, and she knew that there must be other exits to the surface, a comforting thought. 

More time passed, and their slow progress continued.  Penny was about to suggest that if they didn’t find him soon they should use the next intersecting tunnel to turn around and head back to the surface, when something lit the tunnel ahead.  She let the light from her wand go out and dropped to her belly so Katie could see what she was seeing.

Behind her, Katie gasped.

There was a bend in the path maybe twenty feet ahead of them, and a glow that threw darting, malformed shadows up the corridor. 

They waited for a moment, silent and listening.

The rattling sound came again, and the mad chittering of many gathered creatures.

“Is our guest comfortable?”  The voice that echoed up to them cold and crisp, the tone polite but somehow malevolent.  A new chill ran down Penny’s spine at the sound of it.

More incomprehensible chattering was all the reply the voice received, but he seemed to understand it.

“Good … good.  My old friend and I have much catching up to do.”  The voice was decidedly chilly now, threatening, like the point of a poised knife.  “We have much ground to cover do we not, Ronan?”

“I have … nothing to say to you,
old friend
.”  Ronan seemed barely able to speak, his voice drifting to them in a weak wheeze, but the hate that oozed from his every syllable was clear.  “Nothing you do can change that.”

“Is that so?”  Dark humor infused the cold voice.  It seemed eager to take up the challenge.

Ronan screamed, not the howl of a hurt animal, but an almost human scream of pain.

Katie prodded Penny, and they moved forward.

The chittering began again, frantic, alarmed.

“Yes,” the cold voice said.  “I am aware, but never mind them for now.  Patience is my friend too, little ones, as Ronan here could testify.”

Ronan screamed again.

Penny crawled faster, heard Katie’s heavy breathing behind her as she struggled to keep up.

“Our last interrupted encounter was most dissatisfying, old friend?”

Ronan screamed in reply.  Penny could not imagine the torture he was going through, didn’t want to imagine it.

They were closer to the bend in the path. The diffuse light seemed brighter, the dancing shadows more frenzied.

“I had promised long ago to kill you myself,” the voice said, “so you can only imagine my frustration when I learned that the avians had finished you off in the Bad Lands.”

Penny felt the familiar—and now welcome—heat rising from her core, spreading through her.

Ronan screamed, and something inside him seemed to tear loose.

Penny was afraid they were already too late.

“So imagine my surprise to find you here, alive and well.  My
happy
surprise.”

Ronan’s screams became a low, liquid gurgle.

Penny turned the corner, Katie almost on top of her in her rush to get to their dying friend.

The raucous creatures had gone silent, a silence like a held breath.

Penny saw the opening into a large chamber only a few inches away, saw the glowing light globe that hovered in the air above piles of burned wreckage; saw Ronan, bloodied and somehow diminished, in the dirt at the at the other end next to the mouth of another tunnel; saw the glowing golden eyes and shadow of some horrible head in the dark of that tunnel. 

She fell through the opening into the chamber, hitting the hard-packed earth and rolling to her knees, wand out and ready.  Katie hit the ground beside her, similarly poised.

“And Ronan’s lovely screams only served to bring them quicker,” the voice that belonged to those golden eyes informed the homunculi gathered in groups on the left and right of the girls, still and silent, but ready to pounce.  “So patience, my little friends, has saved us the trouble of going to them.”

“No!”  Ronan saw the girls, tried to rise, but couldn’t.  “Run!”

Fresh blood sprayed from his mouth as he screamed and writhed.

Penny pointed her wand at the thing in the tunnel behind him and fired, but there was a sudden shimmering in the air in front of the silhouetted figure, and her fire spells rebounded, hitting the ceiling, the walls, the piles of debris, causing them to blaze.

Beside her, Katie was blasting homunculi to the ground, but though she scattered them, she couldn’t seem to hurt them.

The new firelight filling the chamber fell over the thing in the tunnel, and Penny saw the face that went with those golden eyes.

She screamed.

The thing darted out of its concealment and landed in front of Ronan, its long, sinewy body coiled to spring again.  Its eyes glowed in the firelight like electrified blood, its smile was all teeth, long and pointed.

Between the shining eyes was a mark, a bright crimson shape that seemed familiar to Penny.

“Aren’t you girls a little young for these types of forays?” 

It was a snake, the largest Penny had ever seen.  Fifteen feet long or more, its underside dusty brown, the harder scales along its back muddy red.  Its wide, arrow-shaped head seemed too large for its body, and a pair of horns curved forward out of its flat brow.  But unlike any snake Penny had ever seen, it had arms, two on each side of its thick body.  One of them held a wand, twirling it like a baton. 

“Stop that,” the monster said, directing its evil gaze at Katie, who was still attacking his passive homunculi.  The end of his tail whipped out, and Penny heard it rattle as it struck Katie across the chest and knocked her off her feet.

It flinched back and hissed in pain as its tail slithered through the flaming debris between them.

“Katie, are you okay?”  Penny shouted, not daring to look away from the monster.

“Yeah,” Katie said, but her reply was weak, breathless.

Lowering her wand, Penny charged at the monster, dashing between the piles of flaming rubble.

The monster slithered backward in surprise, and the twirling wand in its hand suddenly pointed at Penny.  Before he could use it, a spell passed over Penny’s head, low enough to toss her hair, and struck the wand from its hand.

A second later Penny was on it, grabbing hold of its loathsome body, her arms just long enough to wrap around and her hands to join.

Penny burned, and the monster in her grasp burned with her.

For a moment the muscles beneath his awful flesh seemed to shiver and roll, then it screamed, and Penny found herself flying backward.  She landed hard against the cool earth, winded but scrambling to her feet, and saw the thing rolling in the dirt, its face a mask of outrage and agony.  Its body still burned, the hard scales of its back seeming impervious to the heat, but its softer underside blistering.  It grasped for its dropped wand and passed the tip down the length of its body, killing the flames that clung to it.

The homunculi waited, poised, eager to join the fray.

The monster faced the girls, surprise and outrage clear on its inhuman face.  It rattled as it backed away and slipped into its tunnel.

“Seize them!”  It shouted at the gathered homunculi.  “I want the red one alive … kill her friend!”

Then it was gone, retreating down the tunnel.

The homunculi started toward them, their golden eyes glowing like their master’s.

Penny aimed her wand at the nearest one and almost dropped it in astonishment as her spell exploded off the thing’s chest, launching it backward into its companions.  One of its arms lay on the ground, like the arm of a broken statue, its fingers twitching.

“Get Ronan,” Katie shouted, firing a fork of lightning into the other advancing group and stunning them.  They shook the spell off quickly and started toward her again, spreading out to surround her.  “I’ll hold them off!”

Penny ran to Ronan, leaping debris and dodging one little gray man who tried to head her off.  It grabbed her leg, and Katie used a levitation spell to pull it away and slam it against the earthen wall.  It fell away, stunned, and left a perfect imprint of its spread-eagled body in the dirt. 

Penny fell beside Ronan, and relief flooded through her when he opened his eyes.

She heard a faint rattle deep in the corridor the Snakeman had fled down, and threw a ball of her Phoenix fire after him.  It exploded, sending a rush of air, stone, and earth through the opening.  From far inside came the deep rumble of collapse. 

“Little Red,” Ronan gasped, and she bent low over him to listen.  “Leave me ….”

“No,” Penny shouted and lifted him from the bloody dirt. 

He winced in pain.

“You can’t help me,” he said.  “You shouldn’t have come down here.”

“You can thank us later,” Katie said, her voice thick with a false bluster that didn’t show on her face.  She looked sick with fear, close to tears.

“… Something important,” he said as Penny rose with him cradled in her arms.

She lowered her head closer, could smell the blood matting his coat.  She was eager to be off for too many reasons to name, but Ronan had fixed her with a look she knew well.  Intense and forbidding, inviting no argument.

“In the box.”  His head rolled against her arm, his gaze sweeping to the ground, and Penny found the small wooden crate he was searching for near the flaming rubble.  “The little red box … the doorway relic.  Get them.  Hide them.”

“Let’s go!”  Katie screamed from her side of the chamber. 

The homunculi concentrated on her now, circling, cautious.  Most bore small signs of her handiwork, burns and scorch marks.  One crawled toward her, pulling itself forward with its hands and pushing with its one remaining leg.  The other leg was nowhere to be seen.  Their numbers were smaller now.

Penny shifted Ronan to one arm, cradling him awkwardly, and bent down to look in the box.  She found the items he’d asked for at once, but could think of no place to put them.

“Penny!”  Katie was growing more anxious.

“Ten seconds,” Penny shouted back, and kicked a shoe off, wobbling one-legged in place as she tugged her sock off.  She shoved the red box in, unable to stop herself pausing for a moment to admire the beauty of it, then a doorknob … one she recognized.

“These are from the House of Mirrors,” she said, tying the end of her filthy, soot-stained sock through a belt loop on her hip.

Ronan either hadn’t heard her or ignored the words.

“Go now,” he gasped.  “Leave me here … I’ll only slow you down.”

“Shut up,” Penny said, and dashed through the flaming rubble to join Katie.  “You go first.  I’ll keep them back.”

Katie looked as if she might argue, then sent a last fork of lighting at the bravest of the crouching homunculi and sprinted the last few feet to the mouth of the tunnel.  She dove in, her wand outstretched and shining bright light into the darkness.

The half-dozen remaining gray men lunged for Penny as she ran toward the tunnel, and she hurled another ball of fire, not at them but at the ground beneath the tunnel.  A second later she and Ronan passed through unharmed as the homunculi shied away.

Katie set a brisk pace and Penny fell further and further behind, slowed by Ronan, cradled in her arm.

“Leave me, Penny.  Drop me and get away.”

“No!”  Penny rolled onto her back and propelled herself upward with her legs, shifting Ronan into her left arm and pointing her wand down the tunnel behind her with her right.  She made a light to dispel the claustrophobic darkness and again was not comforted by what it revealed. 

Two of the little monsters ran toward her, side by side, their heads scraping the ceiling above them.  She tried to think of a spell she could use that wouldn’t collapse the tunnel on them, and, in her moment’s hesitation, they closed the distance and leapt at her.

Reflexively, Penny held her arm up, her wand turned sideways in her hand, to brace herself against the coming attack.  The creatures froze in midpounce, their golden eyes widening in confusion, and when Penny straightened her arm, it felt as if she were shoving hard against something semi-solid hanging unseen in the air.

The homunculi flew, squealing and squawking, down into darkness.

I’ll have to remember that
, she thought, and continued her awkward scramble up the slight incline.

“We’re almost there,” Katie shouted.  “Hurry!”

“I’m coming,” Penny shouted back. 

Just as she was beginning to believe they would make it out, a muffled crashing sounded above them.

Moments later Katie shouted frustration.

“They blocked the way out!”

“What?”

“They pushed something over the hole.  We’re stuck in here!”

Below her, Penny heard the sound of the charging homunculi.

*   *   *

Movement pained Turoc more than he would have thought possible, but the burns would heal, and he
could
move, so he did.

That girl had done something he had only ever heard about in legend, stories from ancient days when his master’s oldest enemy still lived and walked the hidden bridges between the worlds.  He would never have believed it had he not seen it for himself.  Seen it and felt it.