I gasped in pain, the sound lost in the shattering of porcelain when the figure whirled and brought up a large stick, hitting the vase like a batter trying for the outfield. Shards went everywhere, causing me to cry out again as what felt like a dozen tiny knives pierced me. And then to choke it back and dart away, breathless and silent this time, because my assailant seemed to be working on sound, too.
For a moment, there was nothing but two shadows circling the dim beam of light, each looking for an advantage. And my assailant must have found one. Because the next thing I knew, I was hitting the wall and then the floor, barely understanding what had happened.
Until I saw someone looming over me, cudgel in hand, splashed by distant firelight—
And then eclipsed by it, when the weak beam from the shard suddenly became a blaze. A searing white glare, like staring into the sun, spilled out of the tiny thing, filling the room. It was so bright and so strong that it blinded me, despite the fact that I had landed underneath and wasn’t even getting the full effect.
But someone was.
I heard a voice curse—a woman, although not Nimue. This voice was higher, lighter, and in pain. Probably from having her retinas burned out of her head, I thought, shielding my own eyes with both arms. It left me defenseless, but I didn’t think it mattered. I heard flailing around, groaning, and then footsteps growing distant. Then nothing at all, as the room fell silent again and that awful light blazed on and on.
It finally cut out, as abruptly as it had come, leaving me panting on the floor, confused and afraid and seriously disoriented. And still blind—my eyes seeing only a leaping sheet of afterimages. But I wasn’t deaf, and once more, I heard a voice.
I rolled to my hands and knees, trying to hold on to the floor, which didn’t seem quite steady. Or maybe that was me. I didn’t know; I just crawled in the direction of that thin sound, like a mother trying to find her lost infant.
Or something almost as small, I realized, as my searching hands finally found a tiny body trapped under the debris, in the next room.
I hadn’t remembered to bring the shard, but it didn’t matter, since I couldn’t see anyway. But I didn’t need to. Because the voice had resolved itself into the most profane curses ever devised, which managed to sound vicious even in a teeny, tiny, squeaky voice and—
“Rosier!” A huge grin broke out over my face.
The curses stopped. “Cassie?”
“Yes!”
“You get me out! You get me out right now!”
I sat back on my heels, grinning.
And then I got him out.
The good news, we discovered, was that the main corridors had a few lanterns still flickering here and there, which my slowly returning vision found helpful. The bad news was they weren’t corridors anymore. Beams, and in some cases whole walls, had come down in our path, some of which I could climb over, but some of which were as tall as what remained of the ceiling, forcing me to backtrack. Or, in the cases where I could see past them, to shift.
Only that wasn’t going so great.
“All right,” Rosier said, sometime later. “Once more. It was just around here.”
I shook my head, staring at the latest blockage and holding on to the wall for support. “I can’t.”
“You have to.” The place shuddered again, the walls trembling harder now, like they’d been doing for the last couple of minutes. Because this wasn’t a pass through to Faerie as I’d halfway expected. It wasn’t a pass through to anything. According to Rosier, it was the magical equivalent of a Winnebago, a portable palace fey nobles took with them when they traveled so they didn’t have to live like peasants.
It was carved out of a portal, something about looping it back in on itself to make a stable pocket—or whatever. I didn’t get all of it. But I did get that said portal had been damaged when Pritkin blasted through it. And then again when the wacked-out princess started ripping the fey a new one. And now it was trying to collapse on us, and apparently bad things happened to you when you were inside a portal that collapsed.
But I still couldn’t. I’d been reduced to doing line-of-sight minishifts, the very easiest kind, but I was out. I was out of those, I was out of everything, I wasn’t going to be doing a damn thing without drinking the last of my joy juice, and I wasn’t doing that. I wasn’t, even if the rest of the ceiling came down on my head!
“What are you doing?” Rosier demanded.
“You said it’s just through here, right?”
“Yes, but—I didn’t mean through through!” he said, as I started digging my way forward, as dirt and debris tumbled down on our heads, as I struggled to breathe with lungs that were already caked with dust, as Rosier cursed and rocks fell and my hands kept digging and then clawing at the earth, which just went on and on.
Until another tremor shook us.
And this one was about a seven on the Richter scale, causing dust to billow and walls to crack and the floor to start bucking wildly under our feet. And the wall of earth in front of me, a previously impenetrable mass, to cascade away, like an avalanche down a mountainside. One that took us with it.
Rosier and I half stumbled, half slid out the other side, and then I grabbed him and ran for the portal, wishing the damn dirt hadn’t mostly blinded me again.
And then really wishing it when we splashed down into a freezing lake of water, almost over my head.
Chapter Twenty-seven
I went under, just from the sheer shock, and came up gasping. And then gasped some more when we were almost run down. I’d been inside ten, maybe fifteen minutes, but everything had changed.
People were wading and swimming through what had to be a five-foot surf. And there was nothing to impede them now, since the only thing left of the little house was the wall holding the portal. And then not even that when it flared out behind us, causing me to duck as fiery bits flew over my head and the wall crumbled to dust.
Like the palisade, which was now just a few smoking piles of logs, crackling with whatever remained of the ward. Which probably explained why the once orderly camp was a working anthill of people, running, splashing, and scampering through the burning remains, making for the hills. And the fey weren’t doing much to stop them; they barely even seemed to notice.
For good reason, I thought, staring upward.
Holy shit.
“What the hell is that?” Rosier screeched, sounding outraged.
I didn’t answer. Like the fey, I was kind of busy. Watching the battle of the ages take place in the air above us.
Or, to be more accurate, a battle of the air—and water, and lightning, and fire, all of which were getting tossed around like . . . like things that get tossed around, I thought, my brain pretty much fried at this point. But it didn’t matter, because how did you describe that?