“If we find a way out, we will think about coming back to see if the others managed to survive,” Khyber said to the boy. “But we need better preparations and a stronger company to attempt it.”
Redden nodded in agreement. Going on was too dangerous. They had already lost half their number, and there was nothing to say they wouldn’t lose the other half before any of them got free of this place. Only five left, he thought in disbelief. All of the Druids save the Ard Rhys, all of the experts they had recruited to aid them, and most of the Trolls—dead or missing. All in less than four days’ time.
He felt a tightening in his chest just thinking of it.
Nothing could be worse than this.
The trek went on through the rest of the morning, and neither Pleysia nor Tesla Dart reappeared. They moved cautiously, but steadily, keeping a sharp eye out. Khyber used a small scrim of magic to sweep the land just ahead of them, searching out predators and hidden dangers. When she found them—less than half a dozen times altogether—she steered the company clear. When at one point they crossed paths unexpectedly with a huge four-legged beast that was armored and horned, she had them stand still and wait for it to pass. It did so without more than a disinterested glance, lumbering off into the distance.
When they stopped for a brief rest, Redden caught sight of a brilliant green flash that appeared suddenly and was gone again. It reappeared later, after they had set out again, and this time Khyber Elessedil saw it as well. It stood out in sharp relief against the gray of the landscape, and every time it appeared after that—which was often—it caught their attention. But they were never able to get too close, and it didn’t seem to have any particular source.
“What do you think it is?” Redden asked the Ard Rhys after they had seen it appear and disappear repeatedly.
But she only shook her head and kept walking.
Finally, they came to a stretch of heavy woods, the trees barren and skeletal, the grasses gray and dusty and dead. When they began to skirt the woods, the green flash reappeared and settled on a tree branch not fifty yards away, just inside the barren grove. Redden turned and walked toward it, hypnotized by its brightness and mystery, wanting to have a closer look. He heard the Ard Rhys tell him to come back, then heard her coming after him. But he kept going anyway, just wanting to see it a little more clearly, thinking it might be a sort of bird.
He was within twenty feet of his goal when the ground opened up and his feet yanked from under him as a heavy rope net closed about. He had just enough time to thrash in response and to witness the Ard Rhys releasing Druid magic in all directions before attackers bore her to the ground and thick, suffocating fumes filled his nostrils.
He woke again to the creaking of leather traces and the rumble of wooden wheels rolling across uneven terrain. He could smell the heated bodies of two huge beasts pulling the wooden cart in which he rode before he could see them, so thick was the dust. He was imprisoned in a cage constructed of iron bars embedded in huge beams, his arms and legs chained to rings set into the floor of the cart. He was sitting upright, his body and limbs pinned in place so that he could barely move.
The Ard Rhys was chained across from him, her head sunk against her breast. She was still unconscious. A blur of memory recalled itself, and he saw her fighting back against the things that had come out of the earth, fire bursting from her fingertips, engulfing those closest. He saw the Trolls rush to her aid, falling one by one to a barrage of arrows and spears.