Eventide (Meratis Trilogy Book 2) (34 page)

But when Jasmine opened the door, no other dark rooms greeted them, just the grey afternon light at the top of a set of stairs. A backdoor. They climbed up into a small hall. The roof in this room remained intact, but most of the exterior wall had crumbled away, leaving a view of the forest and the trees.

“We may just make it of here alive,” said Jasmine, giving Jeff a nudge.

No sooner had the words left her mouth when the room went dark.

Chapter Twenty-One

I
t took a moment for Jeff to realise that something had fallen in front of the gap in the wall. Only the smallest amount of light came through over the top of it near the ceiling.

“You just had to say it, didn’t you?”

Jasmine once again grabbed her daggers as Jeff took a step backwards, holding onto his arm. He wished he hadn’t lost his stick. The closed-in room filled with the scent of smoke and sulphur, and Jeff didn’t know if it was from the lab or the mystery object.

“I’ll get us some light,” Jasmine whispered.

He heard her edge back down the stairs, and a minute later she returned with torch in hand.

Whatever blocked their exit reacted strangely to the light, absorbing it more than reflecting it. Strange patterns moved across its dark surface, but no definition emerged to give them an idea of its shape.

When it did move, Jeff and Jasmine both stepped back, Jasmine tripping on Jeff’s feet so they both crashed down.

In front of them, a section of the blackness lifted, revealing a rich golden eyeball beneath.

Talfyr had come home.

As the glow from the fire and the hint of light from outside fell across the beast’s face, details of the eye came into view: millions of golden facets with one vertical pupil that made Jeff feel like he could fall into it if he weren’t careful.

The massive lid dropped down in a slow blink, the eyeball twitching back and forth as it took in the room.

“What do we do?” Jeff whispered.

“You could stop trying to rip off my arm,” Jasmine hissed back, tugging herself away.

Jeff realised how hard he’d been holding onto her and let go.

He couldn’t
not
stare at the dragon, and the dragon didn’t seem ready to stop staring at them. On the other hand, he wasn’t turning them into charred goods either. Jeff wondered if he might be seeing things because, somehow, when he looked into the dragon’s eye, he swore he caught a glimpse of recognition.

After a seeming eternity, Talfyr snorted, raised his head and let out sharp cry that turned Jeff’s bones to jelly. The dragon climbed up to his feet, tossing his head, and the grey light, darkening now as the sun began its descent, flooded back into the room.

Jeff inched closer to the gap in the wall to see Talfyr in full. The dragon sat crouched, nearly half the height of the fortress. His enormous wings, still tucked up against his body, twitched, and Jeff held his breath. If Talfyr decided to spread those razor-sharp appendages, they’d knock down the walls of the hall, and he and Jasmine would be trapped under a couple tonnes of rock.

But the dragon didn’t fly away. He rose and lumbered forward with ground-shaking steps, snapping at something in the woods, smoke billowing from his nostrils. A layer of steam rose from the green scales as the raindrops evaporated on his body. His tail swung close to the hole in the wall, and Jeff and Jasmine backed away just in time before it crashed through, rock crumbling under the force of the strike. Dust and stones shook down on them.

The tail swung again, Talfyr’s cries getting louder, angrier. His wings spread out from his body, so big that Jeff couldn’t see from end to end through the wall. Dirt and gusts of rain-filled air blew towards them, and Jeff turned his face away to protect his eyes. He heard a thunderous clamour as Talfyr got himself in the air, and a few seconds later the fortress trembled as he landed on the higher tower.

Slowly Jeff uncurled from his protective posture.

“What do you think he saw?” He squinted into the dim twilight, trying to make out anything through the rain and trees.

“I don’t know, but if it makes a dragon panic like that, I don’t know if I want to find out,” said Jasmine. “Here’s hoping whatever it is didn’t hurt the horses.”

“Think the soldiers are gone?”

“If they aren’t, they’ll get a stern talking to.”

They went back out in the rain, which now came down with a vengeance, the raindrops hard and pelting.

The horses were right where they had tied them, somewhat protected from the worst of the weather by the thick canopy of trees, but neither of them calm. Either from Talfyr’s presence or whatever else was lurking in the woods, Nalen and Swish both danced around their tethers, their whinnies bordering on screams. As ordered, the soldiers were nowhere to be seen.

Jeff and Jasmine did their best to soothe their mounts, but the Friesian and gelding were having none of it.

As the horses’ panic rose, Jasmine reached for her weapons. Jeff grabbed a branch among the forest debris and held it out in front of him. One of these days he would learn to arm himself before leaving the Keep.

A cool breeze blew at the back of his neck, and he shook his head, the hairs on his arm raised, amplifying every sensation that ran over his skin.

Nothing moved ahead of them, but the horses kept pawing at the ground, straining to get free.

Another tickle on his neck, and Jeff eased his sore arm up to rub his hand over the spot, trying to brush away the bug or leaves distracting him from his focus on the woods.

A faint giggle sounded at his attempt, and Jeff’s insides tensed, his breath coming in a gasp. Slowly twisting his head to look behind him, he jumped with a yell to see Lan standing there, a heavy yellow cloak over her usual yellow silk gown, with a panel hiding the bottom half of her face. Her eyes crinkled with a smile, and then she vanished.

“You can put the daggers away, Jax,” Jeff grumbled, throwing his stick down. “We’re not being attacked. Just toyed with.”

Jasmine turned towards him, and he rolled his eyes as Aya appeared behind her, her blue cloak matching Lan’s yellow. She disappeared before Jasmine could turn around again.

Jeff watched as comprehension sank in, and she sent him the silent question, rolling her eyes when he nodded.

Jasmine stepped back and spun in a slow circle. “Reveal yourselves if you have something to say. We’ve no time for tricks.”

Jeff reached for Jasmine as the air shimmered in front of them, the three Sisters stepping forward as if from nowhere, Kay in the centre.

“Even Talfyr doesn’t like you,” Jeff commented in greeting. “I like that dragon more every time I meet him.”

“You waste time playing with puppets,”

“While danger grows,” they warned, their usual seductive teasing gone from their eyes. “The threat,”

“Is the sorcerer, not the pets,”

“He wields.”

Jasmine’s lips curled back in a snarl. “We were trying to make defeating Raul easier. We’ve got nothing else to go on, since you seem happy to keep whatever you know to yourselves.”

“Lies,” said Kay. “You know his goal, his method. Even here,”

“We feel the pull,” Aya said, rubbing her hands over her arms as if stopping a chill. “Like someone crawling,”

“Under our skin.” Lan shuddered. “The more the moon changes,”

“The stronger the pull,” Kay finished. “Stop him.”

“Why don’t you stop him?” Jeff demanded. “Why does it have to be us? And don’t give me any of that illusion-only bullshit, either, because I know first hand that you’re capable of some real damage. And if it has to be us, then give us some damned idea
how
!”

Aya tilted her head, considering him. “And what would you give,”

“In exchange?” Lan asked.

“Another trade? Seriously?” He turned to Jasmine. “You demand our help, but expect something in return for yours?”

Jasmine stepped forward. “I’ll trade with you.”

Jeff heaved a sigh as his words went ignored.

“Woman of Feldall,” Kay said, green eyes twinkling over the green covering the lower half of her face. “Flower of blood and steel. What do you have,”

“That we would want?”

“Nothing,” Jeff cut in, fuming so much he almost expected the rain to evaporate on his skin the way it had off Talfyr’s scales. “She has nothing that you’re going to get. I am sick and tired of your fucking games. Either you tell us what we need to know, or I am going to go back to Maggie and have her transport all the people I care about from this world into mine, and then I’m going to close the fucking book on this place and let Raul destroy you.”

He put himself right in Kay’s face, close enough to see the shimmer on the surface of her skin, the only sign he’d ever seen that these forms they took were not true representations, only what they thought he wanted to see. He waited for Kay to laugh, to get angry, but it was Aya who spoke.

“We believe you, Storychanger. We will tell you what,”

“You need, but know we will demand repayment.”

“The debt is yours,” Kay warned.

“Of course,” Jeff grumbled.

Aya smiled. “Life is always a trade.”

“Fine,” Jeff growled. “Lay it on me. Once I get back to my world, I’m done. You can hold your debt as long as you want, but good luck trying to collect. So tell us, how do we stop Raul?”

“The one with the Ancient Tongue,”

“Must be allowed to die for all,”

“To live.”

They stopped and Jeff sputtered. “Seriously, that’s it? All that about a debt, and you give me some poetic dribble to decipher?”

Lan ignored him and fixed her stare on Jasmine. “Look to your House.”

“The Spider lies dead while the Rats,”

“Roam free.”

Jasmine clenched her teeth, the muscles in her jaw tensing as she glowered.

Lan disappeared and Jeff felt her breath on his neck, the smell of vanilla intoxicating. The air around him grew warm, and then hot. The gouges on his arm and shoulder, the scratches on his leg, they burned as though touched with acid and he hissed through his teeth, eyes squeezed shut. A moment later, the heat disappeared, taking the pain along with it. Jeff glanced down at his arm and saw nothing but the faintest scars.

“It’s a steep climb, but,”

“The storm is brewing. It will end,”

“In a clash that makes,”

“Mountains fall. Find him soon,”

“Or the world falls with them.”

Like someone turned the light off, the Sisters vanished. Only the smell of them lingered in the dampness.

Jeff looked to Jasmine, but she was already stomping off towards Nalen.

“Why do we even bother?” she demanded, as she mounted up. “Sure it’ll make perfect sense after it happens, but how is that helpful?”

She continued to mumble to herself as she started to ride away, leaving Jeff to mount Swish and try to steer him on the same path out of the woods. He shot a last glance over his shoulder at Talfyr, but the dragon hadn’t moved, still perched on top of his tower, his tail flicking over the rubble.

Jeff felt a pang of jealousy. He wished getting away from the Sisters could be as easy as that.

***

Jasmine waited for him on the outskirts of the forest, and they reached the road side by side. The rain finally started to let up and now an annoying drizzle beaded on their hair and shoulders.

Since Jasmine had just as little interest in conversation on the ride back as the trip there, Jeff used the time to loop the Sisters’ words through his head. Ancient tongues, spiders, rats—were they talking about the future or the adventures on Noah’s Ark? It boggled his mind that they came up with these things off the top of their heads. He wondered if they wrote them down in advance.

Rotating his shoulder, he wondered what the extra healing would cost him down the road.

As was usually the case, the ride home felt faster than the ride away, and soon the gate appeared up ahead. In the bad weather, and after the encounter they’d just had, Feldall’s Keep looked almost as gloomy as Treevale.

They rode to the stables and dismounted in the front paddock, letting Paul come to take the beasts off their hands. Swish snorted and tugged at his reins to go inside, happy his part of the ordeal was over.

“I feel you, buddy,” Jeff said with a sigh, clapping his hand against the bay’s flank. Then he crossed his arms and turned to Jasmine. “So, what’s next?”

“Next, we head south. Now that the roads are clear, we should be able to keep on that southeast road until we find Raul. And then we kill him.”

They neared the bridge leading to the stairs up to the Keep, and Jeff tripped on something sticking out from beneath a row of bushes. He caught himself before he fell, cursing his own clumsiness. But his irritation fell away when he saw what he had tripped on.

“Holy shit, holy
shit
!” he yelled, gagging.