Bloodfire Quest (The Dark Legacy of Shannara, #2)(34)

The bluff face wrinkled with her smile. “The pieces of the coin. It works both ways. When they started to glow brightly enough, I knew you were close. I heard something scrape and tear and came looking. The coins brought me here.”

“We got caught in the storm, and the Walker Boh struck a cluster of stone spikes. I was tied to the railing, but it tore away and took me with it.”

“Not a good time to be looking for anyone,” Seersha observed as she helped the Highland girl to her feet. “For either of us. We have to get out of here. This whole place is crawling with things that want to kill us.”

Although Mirai could stand, she could barely walk, her legs numb from being trussed up. Seersha had to support her, an arm wrapped around her waist as she helped her move away.

“Is the ship still flying? Or did it go down, too?”

“Still flying, so far as I know.” Mirai hobbled along as swiftly as she could, casting anxious glances over her shoulder in the direction the lizards had taken. “What’s happened?”

“Good question. I only know a little of it. Let’s save that for when we’re safe. Was it the coin that brought you?”

“It was.”

“Not very quickly, though.”

“The Rovers and I decided not to risk it at night. Too dangerous to try to maneuver a big airship. So we waited until this morning to set out.”

Seersha snorted. “Which didn’t turn out to be of much help, did it?”

“No. The storm just made things worse. I’m sorry.”

The Dwarf tightened her arm about Mirai’s waist in a brief hug. “Don’t be. I’m just glad you came at all.”

The hissing sound was back, suddenly right behind them. Without releasing her grip on Mirai, Seersha wheeled about, stretched out her free arm, fingers extended, and sent an explosion of blue fire into the creature that was reaching for them with open jaws. The lizard flew backward into the dark and disappeared.

“And that’s not even the worst of what’s here,” the Druid said, exhaling sharply.

They moved ahead as swiftly as they could, and slowly Mirai regained the feeling in her legs and her strength began to return. Twice more the lizards came at them, and each time Seersha used quick bursts of her Druid Fire to fling them away.

“Trouble is,” she said, panting for breath as they slogged through the mud and rain, “the more I use the magic, the more of them I attract.”

“How many are there?”

Seersha gave her a look that said it all.

Mirai was moving on her own now, stumbling a bit but able to support herself. Together they pushed on, making their way through a tangle of woods and heavy grasses and then clusters of boulders and empty flats. The lizards had been replaced by something that resembled Gnomes with lots of teeth. These new creatures were smaller, but attacked in packs. There seemed to be more of them gathering with every step.

“We have to climb that cliff just ahead,” Seersha said suddenly, pointing. “The others are up there.”

Somehow they made it to the base of the cliff and found the trail. Together they started up, clawing their way from handhold to foothold, the pursuers snapping at their heels and trying to pull them down again. The rain made their grip on the rock uncertain, and the gloom hid their attackers until they were almost on top of them. Mirai kicked out behind her as she climbed, trying to keep the creatures at bay, but they seemed able to scale even the sheerest of surfaces and came at her from both sides, grasping her arms in an effort to dislodge her.

Then brilliant light flooded the darkness from above, illuminating the climbers and their attackers. A surge of white fire swept across the face of the cliff, peeling the creatures off like bits of lichen and sending them tumbling away. Seersha and Mirai scrambled the rest of the way up and tumbled over the edge to safety.

Mirai lay on her back, gasping for breath. Dark figures clustered around, and one leaned close, a familiar smile on a familiar face.

“Took you long enough,” Railing Ohmsford said.



They sat huddled together at the back of the precipice, the little company that had been defending this ground for the better part of two days and Mirai Leah. The overhang gave them some shelter from the storm, and the wind kept their attackers from trying to mount a sustained assault. One had been attempted at the storm’s onset, Railing informed Mirai, but it had been hampered by the damp and the wind and been thrown back easily. Since then, the Spider Gnome look-alikes had been mostly quiet.

“But they’ll come again once the storm stops and things begin to dry out. Especially when night comes.” Railing was huddled close to her, his broken leg stretched out, and his cloak bundled about both of them. “Unless the ship finds us,” he added.

“It will,” she said quickly, wanting to reassure him that there was hope, even though she was not at all sure there was. With both sets of coins on the ground, the mist obscuring their position, and the Walker Boh already damaged from one attempt at landing, there wasn’t much reason to think an attempt would even be made without something to guide the Rovers besides guesswork.

Seersha had already told her what had happened to the company since they had come into the Fangs. She had heard about the division of the company, the loss of contact between the two commands, and the ongoing attacks by the creatures she had just barely escaped. She understood how desperate their situation was and how much more desperate things might be for those who had disappeared into the defile.