The Girl of Fire and Thorns Complete Collection (143 page)

The scratching is steadier now, louder. It doesn’t sound like
a small creature with claws anymore. It sounds like thousands of them.

Storm pulls his amulet from beneath his shift. Mara strings her bow, her fingers flying. Belén and I draw our daggers, Hector his short sword. Red grabs a burning piece of wood from the fire and stands beside Mara.

The walls of the tunnels pulse with light. Something scuttles over the lip of the tunnel entrance toward us. Fist sized, glowing. A deathstalker.

Then others pour out after it, a whole flood of them. Red screams as our cavern fills with soft light.

“Get ready to stomp!” Hector yells. He grabs another chunk of wood from the fire. Sparks fly as he flings it at the deathstalkers. It lands near the entrance to the tunnel, and the scorpions part to make way for it, like water rushing around a boulder. “They’re afraid of fire!”

The nearest have reached us. Mara and Belén stomp furiously, knees kicking high. Several crawl up Mara’s legs, up her back, into her hair.

I anchor myself to the ground, call the
zafira
, and spring up a barrier between us and the tunnel. They pile up against it, scrambling over one another’s bodies in a frenzy.

It slows the onslaught, but too many are already upon us. My barrier wavers as I shoot fire into their swarming midst, bolt after bolt. When the fire hits, they turn brown and shrivel, but it’s not enough, and I can’t maintain both fire and barrier much longer.

Red screams and stomps; Hector hacks uselessly with his
sword. Then more bolts join mine as Storm enters the fray.

Mara is covered in scorpions now, but she grabs her pack, rummages inside, and comes up with a bottle of lamp oil. She flings it into the thickest part of the swarm. I aim a bolt where the bottle landed. Fire whooshes to life, and wind plasters my clothes against my body. Scorpions die by the hundreds.

Do I imagine that the trickle coming from the tunnel is thinning? But so is my barrier. A few deathstalkers scuttle through. Then a hundred. Something pierces my ankle; the sting shoots up my leg. I cry out, dropping the barrier entirely.

“Mara, drop to the ground and roll!” Belén bellows. I wince at the crunch of carapaces, even as I continue to fling fire toward the tunnel.

I’m sure of it now; the onslaught
is
thinning! I almost laugh aloud. But then something else comes down the tunnel—I hear it before I see it, the way it clackety-clacks against the stone. Storm continues to send his own bolts, but they’re weaker now. Not as weak as mine, though. I stop, saving my energy for whatever comes next.

It’s another scorpion. The mother of all scorpions. Bigger than a tavern building, glowing like a moon. Its pincers snap as its segmented tail curls over its back. A drop of venom collects at the tip.

Hector whips his sword to the ready position. “Belén!” he calls. “I need my forearm shield.”

Belén tosses it to him, and Hector catches it deftly. Then the commander of my guard advances on the scorpion.

It reaches out with pincers as if to snap him in half. Hector
dodges and arcs his sword down, but he’s not quite fast enough, and the scorpion dances away.

Hector darts in, slashing, and nicks one of the legs. The scorpion stumbles but thrusts its tail forward to spear him. Hector ducks, and the tails misses him by a hand’s breadth.

The creature skitters sideways, pulling its tail back for another try. Beside Hector, something sizzles. It’s venom, shaken from the scorpion’s tail when it attacked, now burning through the rock like acid.

“Watch the venom!” I yell. “It burns.”

Hector circles the scorpion, keeping an eye on the tail as another drop of venom coalesces at its tip. “It’s too fast,” he hollers. “Can you weaken it for me?”

But I’m already focusing the
zafira
into a white-hot point of power. I scream, thrusting it from me. My white firebolt plunges into its side. The scorpion screeches, a metal-scraping-metal sound that pierces my head like a knife. But it works—the tail’s next shot misses, and its body smokes with char.

It’s a little slower now, wobblier, as it rounds on Hector once again. Hector attacks in a flurry of movement, slashing so fast I can hardly track him. The tail whips down again, but Hector dodges and rolls out of reach. A drop of venom sizzles on one of his gauntlets, and he backs away to give himself a few precious seconds to unbuckle it and toss it to the ground.

The scorpion advances. Its tail spears forward over and over again, desperately. Finally it overcommits, stumbles. Hector dodges right, leaps, plunges the blade into the creature’s head with a sickening crunch.

It shudders for a moment, then collapses, legs twitching, sword jutting from its carapace. The glow gradually fades.

I look around, collecting my breath, trying not to pass out from emptying myself of the
zafira
so quickly. The other scorpions are gone, burned or scuttled away. The cavern reeks of burned hair.

Mara lies on the ground, her head in Belén’s lap. Purple welts are rising up all over her hands and face. They must be all over her body, beneath her clothes. Her breath comes in gasps. Her lips are turning blue. I drop to my knees beside them.
Not Mara, God, please, not her
.

“Heal her,” Belén says. His one good eye brims with tears. “Please?”

I bury my face in my hands. “I can’t. I’ve got nothing left. I’m barely—”

“Try!”

The world sways; my vision blurs. “All right,” I hear myself saying. “I’ll try.” I reach down and take Mara’s hands. They feel odd, like puffy pillows.

A shape kneels beside me. “Let me,” says Storm. “I didn’t use everything up the way you did. I might have something left.”

“But healing only works for people you—”

“Tell me what to do.”

I’m so dizzy, so tired. But I have to stay awake. “It’s creation magic, so think about growing and cleansing and . . . I always imagine the power going through my hands into the other person. But I have a living stone. So maybe put your amulet in Mara’s hands?”

He wraps her hands around his amulet, holding them there with his own. Mara’s eyelids flutter, but they stay closed. I want to tell Storm to hurry, that there might not be much time, but I don’t want to ruin his focus.

He closes his eyes. My own Godstone flutters in response as he draws on the
zafira
and focuses all the power on his amulet. Their clasped hands begin to glow.

Mara’s back arches, and her sightless eyes fly open—but only for the briefest moment. She crashes back to Belén’s lap, and Storm topples over on top of her. “Not enough,” he mutters. “I didn’t have enough after all.”

Do I imagine that some of Mara’s welts have turned sickly yellow? That the swelling in her face has subsided? A partial healing, maybe.
Dear God, please let it be enough to save her life
.

I sway to the side, barely noting how Hector catches me before I join Mara and Storm in oblivion.

30

M
Y
first thought upon waking is for Mara. I scramble over and put my hand to her cheek. Not feverish. And her breathing is definitely easier.

“Hector says she might live,” Belén says. His voice is ragged, his face bereft. I’d bet my Godstone crown he hasn’t left her side.

“You love her,” I say gently.

He nods. “But she won’t marry me. Says she may never marry. That her first priority is to be your lady-in-waiting, and she’s finally doing something she’s proud of, and she won’t . . . I’m babbling.”

I put a hand on his arm and squeeze.

Footsteps draw my attention away, beyond the scorpion’s giant carcass to the tunnel it came from. It’s Hector and Red, carrying something long and heavy between them.

“No,” I whisper. “No, no, no, no.”

They lay Waterfall beside the fire. Her once-beautiful features are unrecognizable, her face a lumpy mask of hives. But
unlike Mara’s, hers are pale and bloodless. And unlike Mara, she doesn’t breathe.

Red hurries away as soon as she releases Waterfall’s legs. She sits, her back toward the rest of us, and hugs her knees to her chest, head down.

“I knew something must have scared them,” Hector says softly. “They only glow when frightened. I think she went off exploring by herself, to make sure we were going the right way.”

I glance over at Storm’s peacefully sleeping form, dreading the moment when he wakes and learns what has happened. My heart aches for him.

“We’ll have to go back,” I say. “We might be able to find our way. We can figure out how to get back over that fissure, and . . .” I let my face fall into my hands. There is no getting to Basajuan in time now. The city will burn, my friends and my sister with it.

“Maybe not,” Hector says. “She had this.” He hands me a scrap of parchment. It’s faded, the charcoal smeared, but the lines of a map are still visible. “She was scribbling notes when we found her. She started writing as soon as she knew she was dying, and she didn’t stop until she had to.”

“You found her alive?”

“Barely. We rushed to get her here. I thought maybe you or Storm could heal her. But she died on the way. She talked the whole time. Telling us . . . she . . .” Hector’s jaw clenches, and he blinks rapidly.

Tears fill my eyes. People are always so much braver, so
much nobler, then I ever imagine. “What did she tell you?” Though I think I know.

“Everything she knows about these tunnels. See here?” He points to a hash mark on the parchment. “This marks a water source. And this here? This part of the route is merely a good guess, and she says we should be extremely cautious. And this . . .” His fingertip moves toward a small crescent, its top edge blurred from too much handling. “This is our exit. She said it would bring us to within a day’s walk of the northern pass.”

I push away the hope sparking inside me. It’s too soon to be glad.

Storm stirs. He stretches then sits up, rolling his shoulders.

I see the exact moment he notices his sister’s body. He stares, his eyes glassy with shock. Then his fist curls near his mouth as it opens in a silent scream.

I scramble toward him, wrap his slender body in my arms, and bring his head down to my shoulder. We rock back and forth together. Then he starts to keen, a high-pitched nasal sound that sends shivers into my core.

Mara wakes soon after. Her voice is thick and cracked, her movements slow, but she has enough spark to snap at Belén to stop hovering. She makes herself hot tea to help her aching throat and sits beside the fire sipping, staring over the edge of her mug at Waterfall’s body. We have laid it out on a rock and covered it with her cloak, which is not quite long enough to cover the toes of her boots.

I come up behind her and reach down to grip her shoulder. “Not much farther,” I assure her. “Hector thinks we’re only two days’ journey from the surface.”

She nods, staring off into the darkness. “Two more days,” she whispers. “I can do this for two more days.”

I bend over and put my arms around her neck, my cheek to hers. “Thank you for not dying.”

She grabs my forearm with one hand and squeezes, but says nothing.

Inviernos don’t bury their dead; they burn them. We gather as much fallen timber as we can find and built a small pyre. It won’t be enough. The wood will burn too fast, and Waterfall’s half-melted corpse will be open to scavenge. But Storm insists, and none of us has the heart to deny him this small thing.

We light the pyre. Storm mutters something in the Inviernos’ most ancient language, and then we turn our backs and head into the same tunnel where Hector and Red found Waterfall. We move quickly, but we cannot outpace the scent of burning flesh.

We soon reach a larger chamber, and this must be where Waterfall spooked the scorpions, for it is covered in dry moltings. Thousands of empty carapaces crunch beneath our boots as we walk through. One wall is covered in tiny pearlescent orbs that pulse and heave as we pass. Eggs.

We stay as far from the wall of eggs as possible. None of us speak. We are listening hard for the sound of another swarm.

A different tunnel leads us away, and we follow Hector into it eagerly, desperate to leave behind the scorpions’ lair. This
tunnel is less jagged than the others. Our torchlight catches on a thick vein of sparkling quartz, and I am not too sad and weary to find it beautiful.

We pause at an intersection. Hector tells Red to hold the torch for him so he can study the map. “This way,” he says, indicating right again. This time our path slopes upward, and in spite of the burn in my thighs, my steps quicken. The others do the same, for it is the first time in days our path has inclined.

It seems that we travel forever. My awareness of time becomes a palpable, tortuous thing, each step marking a moment, each step coming too slow. I miss arching sun, the changing shadows, rising and falling temperatures. Here in the belly of the mountains, nothing changes. No matter how long we walk, it is still dark, still rocky, still cold and damp, with no end to our journey in sight.

When we pause to eat and rest, Belén frowns at the dried horsemeat in his hand and says something about wishing it was salted and spiced. Mara snaps that he should feel lucky he has anything to eat at all, that it’s not her fault they didn’t have time to prepare proper food. When Red insists that all the food we eat is delicious, they both turn on her and glare.