Moonshadow (Moonshadow #1)

Sophie held out her hands. “Lower me down.”

She half expected Nikolas to start an argument about who got to go first, but instead, he took hold of her hands. They locked their fingers around each other’s wrists, and when she nodded that she was ready, he swung her down into the darkness. When he had lowered her as far as he could, he released her wrists and she dropped, landing in a crouch to save her ankles.

As soon as she hit bottom, she scrambled to the side, and Nikolas leaped in after her. They took hold of the lantern and moved deeper into the pit, as one by one, the men jumped down to join them. Cael and Gareth lit the second lantern.

The pit was larger than Sophie had expected. Followed by Nikolas, she scrambled over the uneven, rocky terrain to reach Robin.

As she reached the monkey’s side, he looked at her, eyes huge and frantic. He said out loud, “Home.”

It was as if Robin had doused the men with gasoline and lit a match. They blazed with so much hope it was almost unbearable to look at them.

“He’s a nature sprite,” Nikolas said. “He knows home when he senses it.” He twisted. “Get anything you can dig with!”

“Out of the way, lass.” Without asking, Gawain picked her up and passed her back to the men behind him.

Braden took hold of her and passed her back to Rowan. She didn’t protest being manhandled. In this case, it was clear she was outclassed, and there wasn’t enough room to take up space just because she was curious.

They attacked the earth with hand axes and crowbars. Watching from the rear, she caught only glimpses now and then of Nikolas. When the men at the forefront paused, at first she didn’t see what was going on, but then she felt a ripple up ahead, and she knew Nikolas was working with the land magic.

Gawain said, “That got us a good six meters. Do it again.”

There was a pause, and another wave rippled out. The men moved forward and started digging again.

Left to her own devices for the moment, Sophie found an outcrop of rock and went to sit down. Something crunched under her feet. Looking down, she realized she had stepped on a long bone, perhaps a femur. A bare skull lay nearby.

She picked it up to study it. Someone had died down here, alone in the blackness. Maybe they had been a criminal, but maybe they had just been an enemy. It was even possible the victim had been one of Nikolas’s people.

Kathryn Shaw might be wonderful, and her father sounded like he’d been a miracle to many, but those earlier Shaws…

They didn’t like to read, she thought. They didn’t like to write. They threw people into black pits. They sided with the Light Court. Those earlier Shaws had been terrible people.

Sighing, she sat, set the skull in her lap, and wrapped her arms around it while she waited.

Another wave rippled through the land magic, and a sharp, cold wind blew into the pit. A thin, pale illumination followed. Someone roared—she thought it was Braden—and then others joined in. They hacked and slashed at the ground in a frenzy until suddenly they surged forward.

Still holding the skull, Sophie stood and picked her way forward through the short tunnel they had created. Details came clearer, as one by one, they climbed out of the hole. Outside, despite the biting chill of a winter wind, they hugged one another while someone laughed. Another one sobbed.

Sophie was the last one out, staring at the heavy snowfall that weighted the limbs of nearby pine trees. Pine trees that grew in Lyonesse. It was twilight, and the thin illumination came from a moon wreathed in storm clouds.

As she climbed awkwardly up, Nikolas’s head and shoulders suddenly filled the opening. He offered a hand, and she took it. When he helped her out of the hole, the fierce exhilaration in his expression hitched as he caught sight of the skull she had tucked under one arm.

“What on earth are you doing now, my Sophie?” he asked.

“I promised him I wouldn’t leave him alone in the black pit,” she explained. “Even though I might be centuries too late.”

In the middle of the other men’s jubilation, he stood still. Then he stepped forward to put his arms around her. He said from the back of his throat, “Thank you for bringing us all home.”

In answer, she rested against the hard length of his body and put her head on his shoulder.

Then his arms loosened, and he pivoted. He said to the others, “We can’t relax. We’re not done. This is the only way we have right now to get back to Earth, and time here moves so much more slowly than it does there. We’ve got to get word to Annwyn at Raven’s Craig as quickly as we can, muster troops, and climb back through to stop Morgan before he closes this passageway for good.”

“Shit,” Gawain swore. “Raven’s Craig is a good ten leagues from here. Even running as fast as we can, it will take us at least two days in this weather.”

Nikolas said, “It might take us two days, but it wouldn’t take Robin that long.”

Shivering as the wind bit through her clothes, Sophie turned to look in the same direction as the others. Several yards away, the monkey played and rolled gleefully in the snow, flinging handfuls into the air.

What did Nikolas mean, it wouldn’t take Robin that long to travel ten leagues? How long was a league? Assuming the men could run for two days, that would make it thirty miles? Forty?

And even assuming they could run that long, she couldn’t.

Gawain said, “Even if he would agree to take a message, we can’t send Robin by himself. He’s been absent for too long. Annwyn would never trust him.”

“Someone would have to go with him.” Nikolas raised his voice. “Robin, we have a favor we need to ask of you! Will you carry one of us to Raven’s Craig?”

As she listened, her questions kept coming. How would a monkey carry one of them thirty or forty miles?

But Robin wasn’t really a monkey.

As Nikolas called out his question, the puck’s head lifted, and he turned to look back at the group.

The puck said, “No.”

Nikolas strode toward the puck. “I wouldn’t ask it of you, except our need is so urgent. You can bargain for anything you like, and if it’s in my Power to give it to you, I will.”

Lifting one hairy arm, the monkey pointed around the group. “Not a single one of you looked for Robin. Not a single one of you asked if a puck might be all right, what might have happened to him, or how you might help.”

“Robin,” Gawain said, stepping forward too. “We didn’t know any better, and I, for one, am so sorry.”

“I’m sorry too,” Nikolas said. “Deeply sorry. You deserved to have someone ask those things.”

Sophie could hear the sincerity in both men’s voices. She held her breath. Could Robin?