The Wings of Dragons: Book One of the Dragoon Saga (15 page)

“
We have to press on,”
Balear said, clearly trying to sound stronger than he felt. “Even
if he has fallen, we have to carry on Captain Angustion’s orders.
The Quodivar leader still lives, and we also have to rescue Dirio’s
fellow villagers.”

Rondel gave him a skeptical look. “The three
of you can barely move. Don’t forget that in addition to that
Quodivar leader, we also face an Oni and who knows what else. You
think you can handle all that in your condition?”

“
You said you’ve fought Oni
before,” Iren pointed out. “We’ll have to rely on you.”

Folding her arms, Rondel replied, “In case
you haven’t noticed, I’m not as spry as I used to be. Yes, I’ve
fought Oni before, in my prime. Even then, I barely survived. If I
need to fight one down here, on his terms, in his territory, with
my movement confined by the narrow walls of the cavern, what chance
do you think I have?”

Iren forced himself to his feet, wobbling on
shaky knees. He steadied himself by sticking the Muryozaki’s tip
into the gravel floor and putting his weight on the blade. “If we
retreat,” he countered, “we’ll never get this close again. They’ll
move their headquarters. We must keep going, for the sake of Veliaf
as well as all of Lodia. The Quodivar are out there right now
ruining lives, Rondel! They’re ripping apart families and sowing
chaos throughout this country! As long as I can still breathe, I
won’t let them do that!”

Rondel remained silent for a long time. Iren
wondered if she was waiting to see if his resolve would falter. He
knew it wouldn’t. Even if he died in the process and no one ever
knew he had gone to such lengths to help them, he would go on. He
had seen Veliaf. He had seen all of the misery they had endured.
His own paled in comparison.

At last the old woman nodded. “It is
Okthora’s Law. Evil must be annihilated.”

Iren glanced at Balear and Dirio. “Can you
two stand?”

Thanks to Iren’s healing and their brief
respite, Dirio rose to his feet. He grasped his pick and hammer
tightly. With grim determination he replied, “I will go with you to
the end. For Veliaf.”

Balear, however, remained seated. “I’m
sorry,” he said. “My body has gone numb. I can’t move at all. Go
without me; I’ll catch up with you later.” He paused, then he
hesitantly continued, “Oh, and Iren? Thanks for saving me.”

Iren grinned sheepishly, but even as he did,
Balear leaned back against a stalagmite, closed his eyes, and
slipped into unconsciousness.

Leaving Balear, the three remaining fighters
took off down the canyon. Iren brought up the rear, while Rondel
lead the way. Once more they entered an unnatural-looking passage,
perfectly straight and round.

“
Obsidian,” Rondel muttered
as she rubbed a hand on the tunnel’s smooth wall. “I
wonder . . .”

Iren wanted to ask what she meant, but he
could barely form words. Every step brought more pain. Despite his
rest, his breathing remained heavy. More than once Rondel glared
back at him, wordlessly begging for quiet, but Iren couldn’t help
it. He’d never felt so tired in all his life.

They traveled several minutes before the
black tunnel ended. At that point, the passage widened into a
gigantic domed space easily twice the size of Haldessa Castle’s
main hall. An underground lake took up most of the room’s center,
leaving a ring around the edge about twenty feet wide.

Iren gasped as he entered the chamber. More
torches lined it than any other room they had yet encountered, but
its enormity still made it hard to see all the way across the lake.
Dozens of short wooden structures, perhaps six feet high at most,
encircled the water. Heavy iron bars blocked their fronts. Dirio
clenched his fists, and Iren understood why. He knew what those
buildings were: cages.

Without a trace of caution, Dirio ran to the
nearest enclosure, crying for Rondel and Iren to join him. Sure
enough, though the cage could only comfortably hold two or three
people, the Quodivar had shoved ten Veliaf citizens into it. Their
bodies had bruises and whip marks all over them, and their
dejected, empty stares told Iren more than any words could. They
didn’t give Iren, Rondel, or even Dirio a second glance. They had
long ago accepted that the only people down here were those who
wanted to hurt them.

Running his fingers over the bars and door
of the cage’s front, Iren despaired. There was no way to free the
prisoners without a key. He couldn’t cut the bars, and even if he
could, he’d likely collapse the cage on the hapless prisoners.
Dirio pounded a fist on the iron door, the harsh ring echoing
through the round chamber.

Rondel’s eyes sparked, and a moment later,
she said, “There’s a key on a nail by the entrance we just
used.”

Iren stared hard at the wall around the
tunnel. He couldn’t see anything. Throwing up her hands, Rondel
stormed over to the passageway. She quickly returned with the
key.

Dirio and Iren both shook their heads in
amazement. At least fifty feet separated them from the wall, and
the tiny key, no more than a few inches long and made of black
iron, had rested squarely in a shadow where no torchlight reached.
Rondel’s Lightning Sight was not to be underestimated.

“
Quickly,” Rondel barked,
“let’s get them out before anyone else comes. We still have an Oni
down here somewhere, remember?”

Fortunately, no Oni or anything else
interrupted them as they moved from one cage to another. They
worked around the circle, growing increasingly nervous. The room
had another tunnel at the far end, this one leading up, and
something about it made Iren jittery. Their journey through the
mine and cavern had been too easy. Ten Yokai and a half-dozen
Quodivar weren’t nearly enough to guard all these slaves plus the
treasure room earlier. Maybe the bandits had simply become so
certain of victory that they no longer considered defense
necessary. Enemies as capable as the Quodivar, though, didn’t seem
likely to make such a blatant mistake.

More than the lack of guards, the Oni’s
absence particularly bothered Iren. It must have come through this
room; the tunnel had no other exits. It could easily have faced
them here, preventing them from freeing the prisoners. Instead, it
had retreated up the far passage.

The lack of enemies apparently didn’t bother
Dirio. With each cage he opened, his smile grew wider. He hugged
each person tightly, telling them their slavery had ended. When he
headed to the last cage, he practically danced with glee. As soon
as he reached it, however, he stopped short and called to Rondel
and Iren.

Unlike the previous cages, which had all
held at least eight people, this cell contained only one. Amroth
leaned against the cage wall, a streak of blood down his back.
Dirio entered the cage and looked him over. The captain was
unconscious, and despite his best effort, Dirio couldn’t rouse him.
Still, Amroth looked remarkably unharmed, considering he had fought
an Oni. The foreman determined that Amroth had no broken bones,
though he did discover long furrows down the back of the captain’s
clothing. Heavy claws had left fortunately shallow wounds along
either side of his spine. Iren started offering to heal him, but
Rondel silenced the young Maantec with a slap to the back of the
head.

When Dirio emerged from the cage, Rondel
said to him, “Take the villagers and lead them back through the
mines to Veliaf. Iren and I will go on ahead. Leave Amroth here. If
he comes to, maybe he can help us.”

The foreman opened his mouth to protest, but
Rondel cut him off, “You’d only get in our way. Besides, someone
who knows the path back should go with the villagers. They may know
their way around the mine, but probably not through this
cavern.”

Nodding reluctantly, Dirio assembled his
fellow residents by the tunnel they’d used to enter the room. With
a final glance back, he and the rest of Veliaf’s townsfolk
disappeared.

With everyone else gone, Iren and Rondel
stood side by side before the passage on the opposite end of the
room, staring into its black abyss. Iren gulped. “What’s waiting
for us up there?”

Rondel palmed the obsidian wall. “Something
I hoped I’d never see again.”

“
What are our
odds?”

“
Don’t ask.”

The torch-lined tunnel led up, seemingly
forever. Iren hadn’t realized they’d traveled so deep underground.
This path had no offshoots or large chambers like the others they’d
passed through, though it did have occasional side rooms. They
checked each one briefly for enemies, but all were deserted. One
had a familiar-looking hand-and-a-half sword leaning against a desk
piled high with sheets of parchment.

Each step made Iren more nervous, if only
because of Rondel’s anxious expression. After her display
yesterday, he’d thought Rondel invincible. Apparently, she didn’t
see herself that way.

Finally the tunnel peeled away, returning
Iren and Rondel to the surface. Instead of relief, however, Iren
felt more claustrophobic now than at any point in the cavern.
Densely crowded conifers towered over him. When he looked straight
up, he could discern a miniscule patch of distant blue sky, but no
more. His knees began wobbling uncontrollably. Although he’d never
been here before, he’d heard enough from the others to know where
he was: Akaku Forest.

The cavern passage had dumped Iren and
Rondel into a courtyard hemmed in by a palisade of standing logs
each wider than Iren and over forty feet high. Several structures
made of crudely stacked logs and with spruce boughs for roofs
dotted the area inside the wall. Most of the buildings were short,
but two or three watchtowers rose above the stockade. None had
windows, though Iren quickly noted the numerous arrow slits in all
of them. Equally unsettling, the fort’s builders had kept quite a
few of the imposing Akaku spruces growing inside the stockade. Iren
tried hard to convince himself that he only imagined the shifting
shadows within their crowns.

“
What is this—” he started
to say, but Rondel covered his mouth. Apparently she wanted
silence.

The old hag took a few steps forward,
motioning for him to follow her. Slowly, she crossed the courtyard,
stalking through it toward what looked like a stable built against
one of the palisade walls. Her small frame generated no noise as it
passed over the dense layer of spruce needles and icy slush
covering the ground. Iren did his best to mimic her, though several
times she glanced back at him with an exasperated look.

They should go back. He kept thinking that
over and over again. They should go back, back into the cave, back
to Veliaf, back to Haldessa. He didn’t care about revenge. He
didn’t care if he lived the rest of his life alone in the Tower of
Divinion. It was better than sneaking through this unnaturally
silent fort, waiting for the inevitable ambush. He kept listening
for the thrum of a bowstring, the whistle of a sword, or the swipe
of a clawed hand from the shadows that would end his life.

Then he heard it. From inside the stable
came a most un-horselike noise: the low moan of a person calling in
pain.

Rondel unsheathed the Liryometa and entered
the stable. Iren followed, his katana ready. He crossed the
threshold and turned a corner, ready to fight for his life.

The stable itself was well stocked for a
primitive wooden fort run by bandits in the middle of a forest.
Well lit with candles, the stable housed extensive supplies of
oats, straw, food, water, and riding gear. Over half a dozen fine
war chargers, each putting to shame the horses Iren’s group had
ridden, whinnied and shook their heads in irritation at the
newcomers. Despite their annoyed disposition, however, Iren had
seen enough of horses in the past four days to know that each of
these stood fully adorned and ready to ride at a moment’s
notice.

Other than the horses, the stables appeared
uninhabited, at least until Rondel started inspecting the stalls.
Inside one at the far end of the building was an unconscious woman,
slightly taller than Iren and looking to be in her late twenties,
with her arms and legs bound to the cross beams using heavy cord.
She had several wounds that Iren could see, including a long gash
down the right side of her face. Without thinking, he cupped the
Muryozaki in her hand, letting Divinion’s healing magic flow into
her. He expected Rondel to yell at him, but she remained
surprisingly quiet.

When he finished healing the woman, he
sheathed his sword and stepped back. The warm glow of the candles
accentuated her soft features, making her positively alluring. He
knew he had never seen a more elegant woman in all his life.
Haldessa had its share of beauties, but none of them could match
this woman’s grace. She had a rich tan complexion, darker than that
typical of Lodians. Tight leather boots, leggings, and jerkin
accentuated her slender yet muscular form. Adding a bit of color,
an elaborately embroidered pattern of swirling vines with dark
green leaves wound across her outfit.

More than any other part of her, though, the
woman’s hair caught Iren’s attention. Rimming her face, her tousled
locks reached midway down her back. Had that hair been brown,
blonde, or any of the other colors common in Lodia, he still would
have considered it beautiful, but nothing he’d witnessed at the
castle could compare with this.

Her hair was the same shade of green as the
leaves on her clothing.

Iren glanced at Rondel in search of
direction, and for the first time, he saw her truly unnerved. He’d
thought she had looked concerned on their journey through the
tunnel, but she’d been stoic by comparison to how she acted now.
Her eyes bulged, and her jaw hung wide open. Rondel’s entire body
trembled as though the young woman were, in fact, the most
terrifying Oni she’d ever faced. Repeatedly, she tried to form
words, but none came.