Imp Forsaken (Imp Book 5) (31 page)

The sound of alarms echoed through the palace, and I panicked. I'd run out of time. Who knows how many entrances Taullian would have to his safe room. If I didn't find it right now, he'd be behind a dozen salted circles while I was still racing around this damned fake forest.

Taking a deep breath, I closed my eyes and tried to block out the sound of sirens filling my ears. What would Gregory do? WWGD?

A calm filled my mind, the calm of six billion years. Where would Feille sit in this greeting room? The door would be behind him. The safety of his own quarters in his blind spot. Opening my eyes, I looked around and saw a mossy couch, higher than all the others and covered with purple flowers. Behind the couch was a large oak, gnarled and twisted as it rose toward the ceiling far above. As I reached out to touch the oak, it shimmered before my hand, revealing an opening, and beyond that opening, a room.

I raced through it, the sound of sirens pounding through my head. A reception room connected to a private entertainment area, which had both a wardrobe a bath, and a bedroom led off it. The devotional area was off the bedroom, as well as the saferoom. Bingo.

I halted, my feet inches from the threshold, and looked down. A row of runes shimmered along the gilded trim, encircling the door. Carefully, I backtracked and grabbed a chair, throwing it through the doorway. Fifty arrows thudded into it. Then it caught fire. Thankfully, the runes around the doorway vanished in a puff of smoke, hopefully meaning this was a one-charge booby trap. I peeked my head in the door, tensing just in case more knives came my way. None did, but the whole room lit up in a swirling globe of runes. They hummed, rotating in opposing directions around an ornate throne. Idiot. Some fucking panic room this was. Where was the cooler full of beer? The twelve days of dried rations? The extensive library of reading materials? Feille must think whatever threat he would encounter would be over pretty fucking fast. I chuckled, imagining him sitting with his ass in the chair while his country exploded into months-long revolution. He'd be pretty damned hungry and bored by the time he felt safe enough to emerge from his hidey-hole. But where the fuck was he? He should have been here by now, with the chaos of the attack, the absence of a bunch of guards who were chasing demons in the forest, the incapacitation of most of his magical staff with a mysterious paralysis. He should be racing down the hallway right now in a hurry to get behind these runes.

Or not. Something tickled in the back of my mind that Feille would definitely want a saferoom close to his sleeping quarters, but he might be paranoid enough to want a second one closer to the main palace areas, or perhaps even outside. I tore back out into the reception room, frantically trying to think. Would Feille want several entrances to his quarters, or would this one room be it? I weighed the risks of having one escape versus having only one entrance to defend and decided that if there was another entrance, it would be a hidden one. But the silence of the whole area struck me. Feille didn't spend the day in his private quarters; he spent them out and about. At night, the room by his bedroom would suffice. During the day, he'd need something closer.

I smacked my head in frustration. I'd lost my chance. I should have gotten here earlier, before he awoke. I should have taken this fight to him when I realized he wasn't in his quarters, instead of trying to do some kind of wait and ambush. I'd failed. The battle had started, and I had no idea where Feille's other hidey-hole was. I'd lost all opportunity to take him out.

I may have missed my shot at the elven lord, but I sure as heck could make sure the battle turned the way I wanted it to. I raced out of the illusionary doorway and down into the main hall. Just as I rounded the corner, my feet flew out from under me, and I landed ass-hard onto the floor. What the fuck had I slipped on?

Chicken shit.

"Are you okay?"

I looked up from the floor to see the boy from before, a sponge in one hand, a bucket next to him. There was chicken excrement everywhere. Who knew that one chicken could have that much crap and manage to dump it out all over the glorious marble floors of this hallway before being caught.

"You're cleaning the floor while the city is under attack?"

It seemed an odd thing to be doing. He was human, and certainly not old enough to be fighting, but I'd assumed they would have had him caring for wounded, or hiding safely away somewhere.

He shrugged and knelt back down onto the floor, scrubbing the whitish poop around with his sponge. "They're not likely to come here. All the soldiers are outside, and his Lordship is in his sanctuary. Nobody's in here but servants. All the elves who aren’t fighters ran and hid."

Leaving their humans behind like abandoned, heavy luggage. Fuckers.

"You wouldn't happen to know where Fe… I mean, his high lordship's sanctuary is?"

He glanced up at me in curiosity before dropping his eyes back down to the task at hand. "Sure. It's under the gnarled feetig tree garden."

Well, that information was better than nothing, although I had no idea what a feetig tree looked like, where this garden was, or what exactly the boy meant by "under".

"So, like a subterranean room? Or is this a raised garden?"

He laughed, as though I was the stupidest adult he'd ever encountered. "The tunnels. Don't tell me they've never sent you down there? They're under the whole city."

My heart sank. Catacombs, no doubt with all sorts of magical and non-magical traps and many escapes—a labyrinth of underground tunnels. Feille was slyer than I'd ever given him credit for, although these tunnels may have predated his rule, or even his birth.

The boy shuddered. "The rats take over every few weeks, and we have to go down and run them out of their nests. I'm little, so they suit me up, give me a wand, and stuff me down a hole. They can't bite through the suit, but they try."

"Think you can show me this hole? Think I'll fit through it?"

He looked up in surprise, his gaze wandering over my human form. "Probably. Why would you want to go down there? And why would you want to go out of the palace in the middle of a fight?"

I thought of what I could offer the boy for his help, but I had nothing. This whole thing had impoverished me, and I couldn't even trade a favor. I had none of my demon abilities to deliver on it, and I wasn't sure Ahriman would allow me to honor my commitment. All I had was two knives strapped to my calves, hidden by my pants, and a chicken wand. I wasn't giving up my chicken wand.

"If you can show me the hole, tell me how to get through the catacombs to Feille's hiding place, I'll give you this knife."

He sucked in a breath as I pulled it from beneath my pants leg, his eyes growing round as saucers. "Dwarven made! With magical resistance!"

Yes. And I only had two. They were my hope for getting through any magical circles protecting Feille. I'd need multiple knives to pierce multiple circles, but if I couldn't find him, the knives wouldn't do me any good.

The boy jumped to his feet, knocking over the water bucket in his haste to reach for the knife. "Uh-uh," I told him, holding it up out of his reach. "Hole and directions first, then knife."

His eyes narrowed. "The entrance I know is by the kitchen, but the sanctuary is under the gnarled feetig tree garden. You'll need to keep heading west, but there are some places where you'll double back."

"Tell me as we head for the kitchen," I commanded, waving him on to lead. The boy took off, and I raced after him, slipping and sliding on the soiled floor.

"Take the first left, then go for about fifty feet taking the third right."

"Wait, the third right after fifty feet or the third right, which is about fifty feet from my first turn?" I sensed disaster. I sensed I'd be found two thousand years from now, pale and hunched over, my eyesight wasted from the darkness in the tunnels, my body emaciated from existing on bugs and rats for two millennia.

"Third right about fifty feet down the tunnel." He darted through a series of small rooms, and into an unadorned part of the palace, clearly designated for servant use. "You'll go uphill, and the tunnel will turn further right and narrow. There's a portion where you'll have to crawl."

Great. Just fucking great. Cause that's how I wanted to spend my morning, crawling through a dark muddy tunnel wondering where the rats were.

"There's a huge root that comes down, forking the tunnel in two. Take the left fork, then take the fifth left, the eighth right, and the second left."

What the hell? Where was this fucking sanctuary? In the next kingdom?

"You'll begin to see the walls change from dirt to wood. It's the roots from the gnarled feetig trees. They look like striped, glossy wood on the walls. The hallway will seem taller and lighter, with a paved stone floor. The sanctuary is straight ahead."

I frowned. There was no way Feille got there through the kitchens, crawling in the dirt. "There has to be another entrance."

"Well, sure. There are two directly into the sanctuary. There are hundreds into the catacombs."

We'd reached the kitchens, and the boy slowed, looking around in surprise. The kitchen was a huge, long room with two mammoth-sized fireplaces and four stoves. Pots dangled from the ceiling from one end of the room to the other. Three washbasins had an intricate series of tubes and hoses connected to them, and several wands sat alongside the stoves. One pot boiled furiously, another smoked, on the verge of burning. The only two humans in the room were sprawled on the floor, snoring. I hadn't given Leethu any sleep potions. What the heck had happened here?

"Where are the traps to the sanctuary?" I grabbed the nearest wand and turned off the magical fires under the two pots. Safety first. It would really suck to risk everything on freeing a bunch of humans, only to have hundreds of them die in a palace fire.

He grinned. "There are wire traps in the spot where you need to crawl, and spells in place once you get under the tree garden. I don't know what those do since I've always had an amulet on. I've never actually been in the sanctuary. Rats won't go within five feet of the place. Looks pretty though, with all the words on the walls and floor."

Lovely.

"Just how extensive are these catacombs?" I had a bad feeling about this whole thing.

"Huge. They network under the entire city and extend in long underground hallways into the forest. There are lots of entry points, but they're all hidden and magically shielded. Only the elves know where they are." The boy shrugged, his eyes far older than the age his body indicated. "Too well-hidden for a foreign force to use for invasion, but there for any Wythyn agents that need to enter the city unseen. Or leave it."

I took a deep breath. This didn't bode well for Taullian's occupation of Wythyn. It was a good thing Dar would oversee this kingdom instead of the elf lord. Dar was probably better at detecting and heading off any sneak attacks. But that didn't matter right now, because if I couldn't somehow manage to find Feille and end his life, this little rebellion was likely to be short-lived.

The boy went to a small iron door set in a stone wall. It had to have only been three feet high. With a creak, he wrestled it open, letting damp, cool air curl into the kitchen from below. Steps led down from the door into the dark, earthy-smelling world below.

“You’ll see the hole. It’s wide enough for you to squeeze through, and it’s about a three foot drop into the catacombs.”

"Thanks." I handed him the knife, grabbing a magical light globe from the shelf beside the door and murmuring the word to set it alight.

The boy snatched the knife from my hand. "Don't you want me to lead you there?"

I looked at him, so young with tangled brown hair in a messy braid at the nape of his neck. His face was still round with youth, his eyes full of curiosity and suspicion. As much as I needed a guide, he was too young to risk his life. It would be best for him to stay here, safe, while cleaning chicken shit off the floor.

"Nope. First left, third right, left at fork, fifth left, eighth right, second left and straight ahead. You find a safe place and stay there until this is all over."

He looked at me, the suspicion growing. "You've got a really good memory for a human."

I grinned, turning to descend the stairs. "That's because I'm not a human."

26

T
he door closed behind me, leaving me in darkness with the faint light of my globe to guide me. Thirty steps down, my feet hit level ground. I squeeze through the hole in the ground off to my left and dropped lightly down, landing easily on the floor. I held the globe up to see a low hallway stretch before me. It was so dark down here; I'd need to go slow, so as not to miss a hallway in my count. I could only see a maximum of five feet in front of me, the tunnel fading to grey as it extended out. I edged forward, seeing my first left.

At least there were no rocks or roots to trip me. The walls were damp packed dirt, with the floor a softer dust over clay. I paced out fifty feet, counting the tunnels to my right and turning on the third, hoping the boy hadn't miscounted, or been unable to tell his left from his right.

A faint, distant sound caught my ear; a soft scurry, and I once again thought of the boy's tale of rats in the tunnels. I had no problem with rats, but they could be a vicious bunch in a pack, and they were fiercely territorial. I didn't want to stumble upon a nest, so I kept my ears sharp for further sounds.

Ducking down to a crawl, I lifted myself carefully over the thin lines of wire that criss-crossed the tunnel every few feet. It took forever, and I was grateful it was only about fifty feet before I saw the fork in the path. The root that marked it seemed more like an underground tree. It was nearly three feet in diameter, its skin brown like peeling paper. I bore left, standing in the taller space. In spite of the spaciousness of this tunnel, I slowed down considerably, scanning the floor, walls, and roof for any additional wire traps.

The first one was ten feet from the fork, stretched a scant inch from the ground. I studied it carefully, now that I wasn’t on my belly in a cramped space, and tried to figure out if it would set off any alarms if activated. I desperately wanted to see what it did so I could be better prepared for future ones, but, of course, didn't want to alert anyone that I was in the tunnels. After considering it for a few moments, I decided it best to leave it alone. I was guessing it was wire trigger for knives or arrows as the runes had in the bedroom safe-spot.