EPIC: Fourteen Books of Fantasy (394 page)

Tzala waited until all of Jorena’s team were dead, then another ball of fire blasted the human survivors to oblivion. This time the smell of roasting flesh was sickly sweet, of kobold scent, and I felt sick.

An eerie silence persisted for a time. Hope began to swell in my heart. Had the humans retreated, their losses too great?

The faint sound of spellcasting reached my ears. I did not recognise the spell cast, but Tzala’s eyes widened with fear.

“A killing cloud!” she said, grabbing hold of my shoulder. “Back! Do not let the mist touch you!”

Mist? I looked down at the kobolds all around me. Those too sick, hungry, or injured to wield weapons.

“What about the wounded?”

Tzala shook her head. “There’s no time! Run!”

Khavi turned and sprinted into the gloom. I started to move backwards, away from the passage to the surface and towards the deeper passages, the area of the underworld lit by the blue light. A roiling green cloud began to pour in through the entranceway. It moved over the few remaining torches, extinguishing them one by one, and the entire area was black.

I panicked and ran. The wounded didn’t try to stop me or cry out in panic or do anything but await their end. They knew they were doomed.

I could hear the others running alongside me. I ran snout first into a wall, falling over. I couldn’t find my footing. The vapour would catch me.

“This way!” shouted Tzala in the darkness. I crawled in that direction, scrambling as fast as I could.

It wouldn’t work. I needed light. I focused inwards, pressing my claws into the arcane symbol required. Light sprung from my clawtips.

The mist was almost upon me, silent death a mere foot away from where I crawled.

I scrambled back to my feet and ran. I ran as fast and as hard as I could, letting my light be my guide. Had the others fallen behind me or run ahead? I couldn’t think of that. Instead I continued till the tunnel became lit again, blue light shining at the edge of my vision.

Blue crystals dotted the tunnel. I ran until it forked then turned back to where I’d come. The roiling gas seemed to flow to the lowest point, always downhill, so I took the higher road. To my infinite relief it flowed down the lower tunnel. It would dissipate long before it reached Ssarsdale.

I hoped.

Footsteps. Large outerfeet, not the agile feet of kobolds. They were following the gas, giving it a healthy distance. At least three or four of them, based on the noise.

I slipped farther back, walking backwards, my eyes on the fork in the tunnel. My heel hit something faint. I looked down.

The tripwire. Twice now I had not seen it.

Although I had hardly touched it, this slight pressure should have been enough, but it hadn’t activated. I knew that Jedra had to adjust her traps to trap larger creatures, so doubtless the Ssarsdalians had to do the same for heavier humans.

I gingerly stepped over the wire. The outerfeet were coming. I backed up again, keeping my shield held in front of me.

The humans rounded the corner, flames on sticks held high. “There’s one!” their leader shouted, pointing his spear at me.

They approached, careful and slow, weapons and shields raised. I took one step back for every two of theirs.

“Come on,” I hissed, careful not to look at the tripwire and give away its position. “Come on, you overgrown gnomes. Come on…”

Click. The tripwire whizzed as it activated, the sound of gears and cogs whirring in the stone to either side. I hoped it would be enough to wound them, enough that I could escape.

A dozen spikes flew out of camouflaged holes below the humans, impaling their legs and bodies with spears as tall as I was. They shrieked and clutched their wounds.

I poured fire onto them until they were charred hunks of meat and my spells were exhausted.

The last of the green poison disappeared down the tunnel. I crept forward to the junction. I had to make sure there was nothing trailing in its wake. I risked a peek around the corner. Nobody. Nothing but the darkness that held the corpses of the refugees. Had any survived the poison?

Light would give away my position if there were any more humans left. I inched forward in the dark, moving as silently as I could. I crept forward until I bumped into something half way between our ambush point and the fork. Something soft.

It was a body, I knew it was, and this far back it could only be one of ours. Was it Khavi? Tzala?

I risked casting another light spell. I saw that it was Praxa, her face distorted. She had died in agony. There was not a wound on her.

The radius of my light revealed no other corpses.

A noise.

I looked up, straight into the eyes of Quennax the eidolon, his snakelike body curled around a stalactite.

“I wonder if I’ll get to eat you now?”

He fell towards me, four arms outstretched, each carrying a long blade. I had no hope of dodging; I simply raised my shield above me, curling up in a ball underneath it.

Four blades slammed on the sides of my shield. His teeth snapped at the edge, trying to find a way around. I tilted it to one side, pushing up with my tail, slamming him in the face.

He howled in pain, and the distraction was all I needed. I rolled to a side, drawing my rapier.

“Tell Melicandra her little trick didn’t work.”

Quennax advanced on me, his four blades weaving in the air before him. “And yet you are alone, the corpse of your companion at your feet.”

He struck, his four weapons each taking a different route to my body. I blocked the with my shield, turning his upper left hand aside with my rapier. The lower left slashed into my side, but I trusted my armour and scales to take the hit; I stepped past Quennax’s reach, using my shorter blade to my advantage. I twisted my hand, driving the weapon against his chest.

His scales were as tough as mine, the tip barely penetrating, but I saw green blood.

“Brave kobold.”

He had four blades, but I had forgotten one of his weapons. Quennax snapped at me, long incisors latching hold of my shoulder, piercing my chain and into my flesh. I dug my rapier deeper, growling away the pain.

Quennax’s right hand weapons hammered at my shield, but I kept it close to my body. I twisted my rapier, tearing his flesh, but he struck me again.

My arm went numb. I had to stop. I pulled my weapon out and retreated, using my shield to protect me.

Quennax made a noise half way between a chuckle and a hiss, straightening himself on his tail, four blades outstretched before him. “Foolish. This is but a flesh wound, and I can smell your blood. Now I know your tricks.”

I took a step backwards, then another. “You don’t know all my tricks.”

“I know you’re a spellcaster. You use fire as your element. I saw the burning in the night after your escape, when you killed and butchered the goat you fled on. A goat is valuable to farmers. It produces milk from grass, feeding them for years. They will suffer because of you.”

I had not intended to make the owner of the barn suffer. “I didn’t burn the goat. Electricity from the sky did. My fire was sealing a wound.”

“It matters not in the end.” He pointed one of the swords directly at my throat, a triumphant smirk plastered on his face. “You would do well to surrender yourself now, goldling. Your crimes will earn you a swift death, and one for your friends as well. Refuse and fate will be far less kind.”

“I don’t think you want to kill me.” I lowered my rapier. There was no way I could fight a creature with four arms. “I think you want to let me go.”

Quennax’s voice eyes flashed a bright blue, the same colour as his mistress. Suddenly he was speaking with Melicandra’s voice.

“Why did you kill the men we set to guard you?” There was hurt in her voice. Pain. “I trusted you.”

“I didn’t kill them.” I glanced down the corridor. “Khavi did. My companion. He thought you would execute me and wanted to save my life. I was angry that he had done this, especially when I heard about the child, but he could not know differently.”

“Your companion?” Melicandra asked through Quennax, “Some of the farmers said there were two kobolds, but I dismissed their claims as hyperbole. An ally? Comrade? Hireling?”

The question was easy to answer. “My friend.”

“Kobolds rarely make such a claim.”

Not true. We had friends. I understood now why she would think I did not. “
I
do.”

Quennax’s face scrunched up. I couldn’t tell which one of them was doing this thinking, but Melicandra’s voice remained. “So you did not kill them, but you ran? If you were innocent, why did you not turn in the true killer?”

“He is my friend,” I said, “and the act would serve no ultimate purpose. The dead cannot be brought back to life, least of all with good intentions.”

Quennax sheathed three of his weapons. The edge of his single blade, held in his upper right hand, hovered above the ground. “Correct,” said Melicandra, “and nothing we do here today can undo the past. All we can do is trust our sense of justice.”

“So is that what you seek, then? Justice?”

“That, or as close as I can get.”

Justice. The concept was a strange one to kobolds. Every crime, no matter how minor, was punished with execution. I tossed my rapier to the side, dropping my shield at my feet and easing down onto my knees.

“Then come. Make things as right as you can.”

I closed my eyes. I knew then what No-Kill had felt, kneeling beside the gaping rift that had once been her home, and the strange peace that came over her when she accepted she was going to die. There was no anger, no fear, just the realisation of the end.

The prick of a fine weapon tip against the back of my neck, its point trying to find the gaps between my vertebrae. I didn’t resist, tilting my head forward to help.

“Goodbye, Ren of Atikala,” said Melicandra. “I believe, even now, that you are different from your kin.”

Not that it had meant much in the end. “Goodbye,” was all I could say.

I waited for the death strike to fall, determined to have my final thoughts be happy ones. I thought of the good work I had done for my community. Of talking with Tyermumtican. Of talking with Melicandra.

Strangely, I thought of Khavi and all we had shared. I had broken my promise to him. We would never make an egg.
 

Right as I was about to die, I desperately wanted Khavi here with me.

“Ren?”

I opened my eyes. Quennax was nowhere to be seen. “Khavi?”

It was him. Tzala was with him, crouched beside Praxa, checking his body.

I threw my arms around Khavi’s shoulders, crushing the air out of his lungs. “I thought the vapour killed you!”

“That’s what I thought about you!”

Relief and joy. I hugged him so tight, so closely that his scales rubbed against mine. Without thinking I pressed my lips to his.

I kissed Khavi. I kissed him because I was so glad to be alive. So glad that we were alive.

He pulled his snout away. “Blech!” Khavi wiped his lips down. “Why did you do that?”

“I don’t know!” I laughed. “Does it matter?”

Khavi stared at me. I wasn’t sure if he enjoyed what had happened or not, but I was too happy to care.

Tzala, politely ignoring the two of us until now, gave a cough. “If you’re quite finished?”

The sound of horses from the incline reminded me that our work was not yet done. Khavi wiped his tongue on his sleeve, trying to purge a foul taste. I retrieved my blade, then Khavi and I stood in front of Tzala, ready to fight for our lives.

We waited and we waited, but the sound became more distant. Daring to hope, I moved between the bodies of my fallen kin, letting my light guide the way as I made my way up to the surface.

The surviving humans were riding away, back towards the home they had come from, their dead slung over the backs of their horses.
 

I didn’t understand, watching just over half the humans sent to hunt us down turn around and retreat, but I was filled with a wild exhilaration.

We had won.

Chapter XXIII

T
HE
JOY
EVAPORATED
QUICKLY
,
AND
it was a much more solemn march back down the tunnels towards Ssarsdale, just Khavi, Tzala, and I. Although we had survived, we had set out with thirty kobolds and returned with three. Although we had killed a dozen humans, this was a loss by any way it could be measured.

The only victory was that we were still standing.

Soon we were standing outside the gates of Ssarsdale. I reached into my haversack and withdrew the severed head of one of the humans, tossing it at my feet.

“Hail fair Ssarsdale. Your task is complete, and your city is safe.”

They did not answer immediately. I knew that they wouldn’t. They had not expected us to come back, so our return with proof that we had fought their enemies would seem impossible.

Soon enough though, the gates opened. This time it was not a lone leader coming to negotiate; it was a tide of the common folk—warriors, caretakers, and gatherers. They swarmed out to us, crowding around in the wide tunnel. Several kicked the severed head I had presented, while others recoiled from it in fear and wonder.

We were taken into Ssarsdale past the iron gates, and I saw the inside of the city for the first time. Much like Atikala, it was embedded in a naturally occurring cave, a sprawling metropolis that was interwoven into the subterranean land as intimately as any natural growth. Lights came from hundreds of windows and glowbugs crawled all over everything here. Even the omnipresent blue crystals were gone, replaced by the familiar yellow light the insects shone everywhere.

I had never been a hero before. The attention was too much for me. I tried to answer as many questions as I could, hardly having enough time to catch my breath before the next question was chattered at me. The same questions were repeated over and over. How many humans had I killed? What did it feel like to kill them? Did they really bleed red?

A team of warriors from Ssarsdale moved through the crowd. Their leader, a scarred and sour looking kobold, introduced herself as Itkhava and offered us escort. I accepted gratefully.