Skybuilders (Sorcery and Science Book 4) (9 page)

So Silas’s vanishing portal had spat them out inside an unknown forest that stretched on for as far as she could see. Marin and the Selpe brothers were in there. Maybe. Somewhere.

CHAPTER EIGHT

~
Unicorns and Dragons ~

526AX August 21, The Endless Forest

“I’M TELLING YOU, Lady Cassandra must have had help.”

Ariella looked at Leonidas, bouncing each of her feet against a boulder in turn to stretch out her muscles. Beside her, Silas tapped his fingers along one of his knives, just as he tended to do whenever he was thinking something through.

“She couldn’t have just broken out of that prison cell alone,” Leonidas continued. “I’m pretty sure her powers of persuasion don’t work on metal bars.”

“But they do work on people. She probably talked the prison guard into letting her out,” said Silas.

It had been a day since the vanishing portal had dumped them off in this odd forest. Silas said it was a one-way portal—that it wouldn’t be coming back for them—but Ariella had insisted they wait anyway. Perhaps, it was stubbornness, but she wasn’t ready to give up so soon. Fourteen hours of waiting without even the slightest hint of the portal returning had forced her to consider alternative ways home.

The problem was none of them had the slightest clue where they were. Thick, unbroken forest stretched out as far as the eye could see. Silas had set down the twisting narrow path of mud between the trees, the only thing remotely resembling a trail. With lack of a better idea, Ariella had followed his lead. They’d marched for hours and still found nothing but trees. And more trees. For all she knew, they were heading deeper into an unending forest. They’d passed the time by discussing every topic from Emperor Avan’s assassination ten years ago, to the fall of Pegasus, to Emperor Selpe’s assassination this year. That last one had segued into a discussion of Lady Cassandra’s escape from her Orion prison cell the previous week.

“No, Lord Adrian instructed the guards not to be within speaking distance of her,” Ariella reminded him.

“And Lord Adrian never says one thing and does another,” Silas said with sarcastic bite.

He had a point.

“Lady Cassandra and Lord Adrian were always very tight,” Leonidas said. “But still, the man is a zealous patriot. Had he known that vile woman was working for the Avans, the whole thing would have played out quite differently. In fact, she would have long since been dead.”

“Lady Cassandra always acted like a ‘zealous patriot’ too,” Ariella pointed out. “Maybe it’s just an act.”

“If Lord Adrian is in league with the Avans, then we have bigger problems.” Leonidas kicked his shoe against a tree, displacing the cracked mud that had dried on the sole. “No, not just problems. We’re all completely screwed.”

Silas squeezed the handle of his Bloodfire knife. “The spy is right. I don’t believe Lord Adrian is with the Avans.”

“Maybe it’s Lady Isla.”

The two men looked at her.

“You believe Lady Isla is an Avan agent?” Silas asked.

“I don’t know. Maybe. She and Lady Cassandra are very close. And Lady Isla is a master of pretending to be something she’s not.”

The hint of a glow swirled inside Silas’s pale eyes, but they did not phase. Not yet. “You’re speaking from personal experience?”

“Yes. It was nearly five years ago. Isis and I were in a bodyguard training course at Rosewater. And you know how they like to give practical exams. Well, the two of us had to protect Lady Isla. And the woman we met that day was nothing like the one now sitting on the Selpe Advisory Council. Nothing.”

“I never met her until she took over rule of Westfield. But the members of the council didn’t get there by playing nicely. Every single one of them is devious and cruel.”

“Even Lady Rosalind?” Ariella asked.

“Yes,” he replied without hesitation. “Right now, her interests and ours are aligned. That’s why she helped us. But if we ever end up on opposing sides, you will experience firsthand why even the other Selpe territory rulers are afraid of her.”

Leonidas bobbed his head up and down. “Remember what she herself admitted to when we met with her in Orion. What she did to those who killed her brothers.”

Ariella remembered now. Lady Rosalind had led the massacre of one lord’s entire army and saw the other lord stripped of his title and wealth. In the rush to uncover the Selpe conspiracy, somehow she’d pushed those stories to the back of her mind. Maybe she didn’t really fault the old lady for her actions, but it was important to remember how dangerous she was.

“But back to Lady Isla,” said Silas. “I was there when Lady Cassandra was exposed as the traitor, and she was shocked. Outside and inside. I felt it. Maybe she can fake what’s on the outside, but it takes someone very, very powerful to fake his or her resonance. Some humans, like Lady Cassandra, have learned to mask it—but not fake it. I could probably count on one hand the number of people in the world who could do it. And every single one of them is Elition.”

“Could you do it, Silas?” Ariella asked.

Silas’s lips parted to answer, then he stopped, turning to look through the trees. Ariella turned too. A streak of white behind the green foliage caught her eye. Goosebumps popped up across her skin, summoned by neither cold nor fright. It was more the feeling one got when hearing a moving piece of music. She could nearly hear the lamented song of a violin singing out its woes.

Leaves rustled like chimes, and a creature emerged from the trees. Delicate tufts of silken white hair hugged golden hooves that stepped with majestic grace over caked mud. The creature’s tail, white highlighted throughout with hairs of real gold, whisked in time with each tap of a hoof, and its matching mane cascaded down its snow-white back. A horn of solid gold protruded from its forehead. It was the most beautiful creature Ariella had ever seen.

“A unicorn,” declared Silas. His tone was clinical, not betraying any of the wonder that she herself felt.

Leonidas gaped at the creature. “Come again?”

“Elitions are not the only products of magic in this world and others.”

Leonidas shook his head in disbelief. He kept pinching himself, as though he wanted to wake himself from a bizarre dream. Ariella could not blame him. Until a few seconds ago, she hadn’t thought unicorns were real either.

“Others?” she asked Silas.

“Naturally, our world is not the only one in existence,” he replied.

Leonidas choked out a nervous laugh. “Oh,
naturally
.”

“And magic has manifested differently on different worlds,” he said, indicating the unicorn.

“Do you think we are on one of these other worlds?”

Her stomach sank as she asked the question. If the portal had stranded them on a whole other world, their chances of getting home didn’t look good.

“No,” he replied.

“How do you know?”

“Portals to other worlds look and feel different.”

And apparently Silas had even more secrets than she’d guessed.

“You have taken a portal to another world?”

“Yes.”

His face told Ariella that was all she was going to get from him on the matter. Fine. She’d deal with it. Leonidas had seated himself on the boulder and was shaking his head in disbelief, avoiding eye contact with everyone and everything. Especially with the unicorn, which had found a patch of grass in the mud and was munching, a purr of contentment rumbling in its chest.

“I have never seen a unicorn before,” she commented to Silas.

“They aren’t indigenous,” he told her. “A few dozen herds were brought over by the Xenens centuries ago. They’re mentioned occasionally in old Elition texts. And in human history books as well. That’s how everyone can recognize a unicorn, even though few alive have seen one in the flesh. After the Xenens were expelled, the remaining humans hunted the unicorns to extinction.”

Ariella reached out to the unicorn. “Perhaps some survived after all.” The creature licked her fingers with its rough tongue, shooting tingles of energy down her arms.

“Perhaps.”

She looked up at the thick canopy. “Silas, do you have any idea where we are?”

His eyebrows crinkled in annoyance. “The forest is too dense. I couldn’t even see the stars last night. The sun was still up here yesterday when it had already set on Oasis. It set about two hours later. From that I can only conclude we are west of Oasis. The temperature here likely puts us somewhere around the western side of the Selpe Western Territories or Temporia, the Avan northern continent. The mainlands were cleared of most large forests, so perhaps we’re on an island.”

“Do you know of any forested island in that area?”

Silas sighed impatiently. “Ariella, even I haven’t been everywhere. I do not know.”

“Sorry. I just want to reassure myself that we are not heading deeper into the forest.”

He shrugged his massive shoulders. “If it’s an island, we’ll eventually hit the shore as long as we go in the same direction long enough.”

“Oh, now that’s comforting,” Leonidas grumbled, standing up.

The unicorn tensed at his sudden movement and dashed off back through the opening in the trees. Ariella frowned at him.

“Now look what you did. You scared the poor thing,” she complained.

Leonidas looked at Silas. “Do unicorns have some special magical power to lead lost travelers to where they want to go?”

“No.” His lip twitched, like he was holding in a chuckle. “They were hunted for their gold horn, hooves, and hair. The hair is magical; it can also be used in potions. Some humans decided that eating or wearing the flesh of a unicorn would endow them with magical powers. Naturally, it doesn’t work that way.”

What a waste of such magnificent creatures. Ariella brushed back a tear.

Leonidas turned to her. “So, basically, it won’t help us get out of here.”

“I’m still sad to see it go,” she replied, her voice breaking.

“What’s going on with you?” he asked her. “You’re wearing a fitted black bodysuit that shows…well, everything.” His eyes widened in appreciation. “You carry one of the longest swords I’ve ever seen. You’re damn scary in a fight. And you are crying because I scared away a unicorn you’d known for all of five seconds.”

“It’s the unicorn. They have a special bond with young women,” Silas explained. “They are drawn to each other. Unicorns are especially fond of maidens.”

Ariella blushed.

“She’ll be back to slaying fiends before you know it,” Silas said, patting her hard on the shoulder.

Her bone creaked.
Ouch.
Ariella tried not to cringe.

“Let’s just get moving again,” she said, pushing through the foliage.

Ariella made it about five steps before a bird perched on a nearby branch screeched into her ear. She turned to give it a menacing glare and did a double take when she noticed its two heads. Green and blue, it generally resembled a peacock, if one could get past the two heads. Which Ariella couldn’t. She could only gape at the peculiar bird.

“What’s
that
?” Leonidas asked, coming up beside her.

He pointed at the two-headed peacock, which stretched forward and tried to bite him. He quickly retracted his hand and took a step back. It was a good thing too. Inside the bird’s beak were two rows of tiny pointed teeth. A two-headed carnivorous peacock. Now Ariella had seen everything.

“Odd,” Silas commented, coming in for a closer look at the bird.

It stared at him with green eyes, its neck reaching forward. Silas phased his eyes white, and the bird cringed back, reconsidering its plan. Maybe it thought Silas would bite back.

“Do you recognize this creature?” Ariella asked him.

“No,” he replied to her surprise. “It seems mostly harmless, but let’s walk around it anyway.”

As Leonidas filed in behind Ariella, grumbling, “Harmless, my foot,” she hurried to keep pace with Silas.

“I’m starting to think this is not just any random forest,” she said, gasping as a line of six creatures covered in sparkling emerald scales
—
the biggest no larger than a house cat
—
toddled across their path. They disappeared through the curtain of trees on the other side, the scent of sulfur trailing them.

“Baby dragons,” Silas said.

“Unicorns, two-headed birds, and dragons. It’s like a depository for magical creatures here.”

“Indeed.”

“Why would anyone bring Marin, Hayden, and Ian here?” she wondered.

Silas frowned. “I don’t know. But it’s safe to say the Crescent Order assassins were sent to capture them alive. Otherwise, they would have employed more severe methods in the lab. Perhaps, they were supposed to have escaped with their prisoners through the portal and then brought them somewhere from here. But where?”

“Through another portal? Another vanishing portal?” she suggested.

“A possibility. But if that’s the case
—
if they’re hopping through a series of portals
—
we may find it difficult to track them. It’s already been four days. We have to consider the possibility that the assassins have managed to capture them by now. In fact, perhaps we should hope they’ve been captured.”

“Why exactly is that?” demanded Leonidas angrily.

“Look around. This forest is not safe. Some magical creatures, like unicorns, are benign. Many are not. With no one to protect them, Hayden, Ian, and Marin may not all live long enough for us to find them. With a crew of skilled fighters surrounding them, their odds of survival are significantly higher.”

As a primal howl sounded in the distance, Ariella feared Silas was right.

CHAPTER NINE

~
Hellhounds ~

526AX August 21, The Endless Forest

LEONIDAS COULDN’T BELIEVE his ears. Silas actually wanted Marin to be in the hands of those assassins. Leonidas wasn’t a fan of snappy toothy birds with two heads, but he hardly thought a crew whose profession almost exclusively involved killing people for profit was preferable to a few sparkly creatures.

Then again, he shouldn’t have been surprised by Silas’s warped ideas. The memory of being dangled outside a window by the white-eyed bodyguard hit Leonidas hard, like a punch to the stomach. He shook himself free of the flood of images. Silas always had been a crazy bastard.