Stolen Songbird(99)

My knees were trembling so badly that I had to reach out and rest a hand on his shoulder lest I topple off the edge and ruin the moment. I understood now why trolls bound themselves to each other, despite the risks it carried. To feel so much myself and have him feel the same – it was like drowning, only I had no desire to seek the surface. Tristan’s hands circled my waist and I willingly let him pull me closer, lost in the moment. Then something over my shoulder caught his attention.

I saw his eyes widen in shock just before his light winked out.

Sluag.

Tristan jerked me round to the far side of him and pushed me backwards along the ledge, but it was too late. Something slammed into him and he fell backwards, knocking both of us off the ledge and into the pool below. The impact of hitting the slime knocked the wind out of me with a wicked slap that made every inch of me scream in pain. Out of range of the creature’s ability to nullify magic, Tristan’s light flickered back into existence long enough for me to see the white bulk of the sluag squeeze out from behind a rock and slide down the incline towards us.

BAROOOM!

“Cécile!”

Tristan dragged me backwards, but Luc’s skeleton tangled in my skirts, holding me in place. The light went out and the soft bulk of the creature collided with me, driving me beneath the surface of the pool. Sharp pieces of gold dug into my back and the slimy body of the sluag pressed against my face, holding me down. I pummeled my fists against it, but they sunk deep into the monster’s soft form with little effect. My lungs burned, and panic flooded my veins. Snatching up a piece of bone, I jammed it into the creature’s soft hide.

The sluag shrieked and squirmed its bulk off me. Grasping hands caught hold of my cloak, helping me struggle upwards and pulling me back as I gasped in breaths of precious air. Tristan’s light flickered faintly, growing in strength as we struggled out of the sluag’s range. I kept my eyes fixed on it, watching it squirm its way onto a rocky perch where it sat, whip-like tongue flickering in and out. It had no more eyes or face than a garden slug, but I swore it watched us with the amused expression of a cat watching a mouse.

“Hurry, Cécile!” Tristan had me by the hand and was dragging me through the tunnels, but I kept my head turned back, watching the sluag as we rounded a corner. “Why isn’t it attacking? What’s it waiting for?”

“For me to die.”

My head snapped back around and only then did I see the blood running down his hand, dripping onto the ground. “No,” I whispered, and every inch of me grew cold as I remembered élise’s words: their venom is deadly – even to one of us. “You can’t die.”

“It can’t be helped,” he said. “There is nothing that can be done.” I could see the tightness in his face, feel the fear and anguish in his heart, but I knew he’d never admit any of it. Anger at his fatalism drove away my terror. Trolls did little to help their injured, leaving it up to fate to determine whether the victim lived or died. But I wasn’t a troll. I’d seen village wise women pull men back from the brink of death with herb-lore. More importantly, I’d seen my father save one of our neighbors from a viper bite that would surely have killed him untreated.

“Stop,” I said, pulling Tristan to a halt.

“Have you lost your mind?” Tristan hissed.

I pulled up his sleeve, exposing the puncture wound. It was small, but already the skin around it was inflamed. Tearing a strip of fabric from my cloak, I tightly bound his arm beneath his elbow. “It’s just like a snakebite,” I whispered. “Just like a snakebite.” Taking a deep breath, I raised his arm to my mouth and sucked on it hard like I’d seen my father do. The faintly metallic taste of blood filled my mouth, but it was foul with the bitterness of poison.

Tristan jerked his arm away, horror on his face. “Do you want to die too?”

I spat the noxious mixture onto the ground and gripped his arm again. “This is how it’s done. It’s just like a snakebite.” I repeated the process until all I could taste was blood, but still the inflammation grew. “Knife,” I ordered. He pulled one from his boot and handed it to me.

“This will hurt,” I warned, and then made a series of cuts around the wound and left it to bleed freely. Tristan didn’t flinch, but I could feel that he was in more pain than the knife cuts warranted. “You need to stay still now,” I said. “Wait for them to find us.”

On the tail of my words came the soft swish, swish from the tunnel behind us. The sluag was on the move, tracking its injured prey.