15. Making a Run for It
Astra finally makes a play for their freedom...
Escape from Ice Mountain marks the start of an epic fantasy, one where a middle-aged fish-out-of-water librarian (and necromancer!) navigates love, betrayal, and the complexities of power as she struggles to embrace her destiny and uncover the mysteries of her own origins. Yes, there are dragons too! And also magical dogs. It’s gonna be awesome!
Previously: Astra decided to make a deal...
They made their way down slowly, more for Xavai's fading sense of balance than Astra's cloak, skirts and petticoats. Once through the crevice, they zigged-zagged back down to the floor of the compound at the base of the tall cliff side, where Dzrezor sat on a flat rock covered with a prayer rug, his dress spread out resplendently. He looked impatient. The sun had risen all the way over the top of the mountain and shone down on them, warming the night chill out of the air.
“Where is it?” Dzrezor asked loudly.
“Trazkhor has it.” Astra walked up in front of him, waving Xavai to the side where Zochur was struggling to keep Hiloh on his feet. He gave her a short bow of assent as he peeled off to see them.
“Trazkhor is not here, though.” Dzrezor looked around pointedly.
“You may play games with him, but not with me.” Astra stood up, trying to feel tall. “You will get the grail, but we will leave here with our lives.”
He arched an eyebrow, but kept his hands folded in his lap.
“Zochur, the Am-Ayat soldiers, and myself will leave by way of the Golden Inkstone Steps. We will bar the door behind us. When we are safe, Trazkhor will announce where he has hidden the grail.”
“I want the grail first, before you leave,” Dzrezor said politely.
“No.”
The rangers and the nuns in his entourage shuffled on their feet nervously.
“Bold of you,” Dzrezor observed, as if amused.
“Our lives are at stake. It would be foolish of me to trust you.”
“I could send rangers over, now, to hold a blade to your neck. That might convince that idiot boy to do as I say.”
“Or it would convince him all is lost and that he must run for his life. You will never find where he hid the grail, I promise you that. He knows these caves better than you do.”
Dzrezor looked to be grinding his teeth. “It is in everyone's best interest to turn over the grail, Little Monk. The Yosoi and the snow dragons are not working together so much as they are united in their desperation. I kept them out of this roost with the understanding that I could, shall we say, persuade you to turn it over. One sharp whistle and they will land.”
Astra stood there for a moment, sinking in the feeling of being outmaneuvered. The dragons clearly could not sniff out the grail precisely or they would have done so, but they had hundreds of years to look for it. They could simply settle on the mountain top and take their time. They wanted it quickly, then, for some reason that Dzrezor was not sharing or, more likely, did not know, but the dragons could wait if they had to. In the meantime, he had the upper hand and knew it.
Astra shifted on her feet for a moment, her mind tumbling through options, knowing that the lives of Zochur, Hiloh and Xavai were on her shoulders, when she noticed a large, ink-black blur pass through the rocks behind Dzrezor and his entourage. The rangers did not seem to notice, which they should with their magically enhanced senses. As the blur moved again from rock to rock, Astra realized it was both of the temple dogs, hiding just out of sight. She did not know if they could simply walk through rock or had found a different tunnel exit somewhere, but there they were, moving as if they had some place to be.
“Well, then?” Dzrezor motioned at one of his rangers, a vicious-looking nun who moved forward, his sword held in front of him with intent.
“Tor Astra!” Xavai yelled out, running towards her.
The ranger had barely made it to Astra when a huge dark boulder dropped down on him, crushing him in a spray of blood and bone. Shocked, Astra stumbled backwards and looked up to see the fire dragon crawling down the face of the cliff, head down, wings spread wide against the rock. It had snuck up just as unnoticed as the dogs, somehow.
It stopped on a cave ledge, grabbed another boulder and hurled it at a clutch of three rangers, who tried to break and run but were too slow. The boulder rolled right over two of them and nicked a third, who went down screaming and broken by the speed and weight of the rock. Xavai had run past Astra to pull his sword and start swinging at the rangers who were converging on her. Everyone was shouting and Dzrezor, with a handful of followers, ran for the entrance to the Golden Inkstone Steps.
Down the mountain, the ominous, bone rattling trilling of the snow dragons echoed.
The temple dogs ran out and barked at the fire dragon, deep sounds that shook the ground under Astra's feet. She reached for them and they were there, letting her lean on them for a moment before she lurched toward the lead ranger, marked by the bright green bands on his short-smock and trousers. He was covering the flight of Dzrezor and his aides, sword ready as he jogged backwards. Around her, Xavai and Zochur were fighting with the rangers who remained, and the dragon landed and simply grabbed one to tear them apart in a gruesome spray of blood. Astra was less stunned by that than the wails of the dead as they realized that they had, in fact, died.
The lead ranger looked directly at Astra as she approached, deciding that she was the nearest threat, and changing direction to charge her. The temple dogs converged on him and he fell with a piercing scream, his sword clattering as Ruby ripped his arm off.
“What do you want?” Astra yelled at him as his soul clawed its way from his body, shocked and furious strands of dust whipping uselessly at the dogs who bit at them, obviously seeing the dust as clearly as Astra did. She pushed Emerald's bloody muzzle aside. “Tell me what Dzrezor wanted. Tell me where it is safe for us, and I will release your soul from your deathbed!” The thrum of magic and death pulsed all around her, giving her energy to focus on this one thing, but her knees were weak and she clutched at her skirts just to have something to hold. The base of her skull was pounding.
“You killed me!” The dust took a semblance of form, nearly the same as the dead body on the ground.
“Do you want to be free or not?” Astra snarled, holding herself tense. She had never talked to a spirit before, never addressed one directly in her own language.
The ghost's eyes rolled uncontrollably, trying to see but unable to focus. “I'm dead! I'm dead!”
“Tell me what I want to know!” Astra yelled with all the force she could, then reached out instinctively, thinking to shake his shoulders, forgetting he was nothing but dust until her skin came into contact with him. His soul flared to life like it was being burned, and it felt as if everything had stopped around them. Astra's hand seared with pain but she could not scream, all of her senses were dialed down to the dust floating through her hand and the memories of the dead ranger—the sharp, peppery incense in Jaga's temple, the droning sounds of Dzrezor's voice, a damp and unfinished tunnel, the strange, sharp language of the Yosoi all rolling over in her mind. She felt a sting from her knees, realizing that she had fallen down on them when they gave out, and something about that pain drew her consciousness away from the dust of the ranger's soul. She pulled her own free, holding it to her chest as it throbbed in pain, only then seeing that her soul had reached out to pierce his with dark shards of blackened dust. She kept withdrawing until she fell backwards on the ground, staring up at the sky, which was promptly blocked out by the huge, shelled head of the fire dragon. She reached up to touch its muzzle with her injured hand, and as soon as it connected with the dragon's hide, the pain momentarily drained away.
“Run, little one. We will meet you on the western side of the mountain. Go.” She spoke with the assurance that the dragon would understand her, hoping she was right.
When it moved to leave, she saw snow dragons circling up above, but strangely not coming in to land. She rolled to her side and found Ruby laid out there, longer than she was, settled down next to her. “Oh, thank you,” Astra mumbled, using the dog's shoulders as a prop to get standing again, trying not to use the hand that still felt like it had been dipped in burning oil. Then she remembered how the dogs had helped her in the cave, and gently ran her injured fingers through the dog’s shaggy fur. The burning, aching sensation dissipated as if the temple dog was drawing the pain out of her. Her hand still looked red and swollen, but felt pleasantly numb.
She looked around. Xavai was standing in front of Hiloh and Zochur, staring at her in horror, his sword still ready for battle. Around all of them were the bloodied remains of the fight, some with souls clawing at the ground, desperate to flee their deathbeds. Too weak to help them, Astra stumbled toward Traz, who had appeared in front of her.
“Traz? What of the snow dragons?”
He pulled her into a hug, using the motion to also pull her away from the dog. “They will not land with you here.”
“Me?”
“They will not land while a crypt-keeper stands on this hallowed ground,” Zochur said, sounding exhausted and sad.
“Dzrezor and his staff have fled down the Golden Inkstone Steps,” Traz added.
“To go to the Sunken Lake, I'm sure,” Astra said, trying to hold on to Traz and stand on her own at the same time. She looked at Zochur, who looked back at her, unwavering. “I did not mean to do this,” she said, pointing at the body of the ranger.
“No matter, it is done, and we must escape.” Zochur's voice was hard, though, and Astra's stomach clinched in shame.
“I told the fire dragon to meet us on the western side of the mountain, down in the blue forests.” She pointed past the cliffs, to where Ice Mountain dropped off into fiercely magical, uninhabited lands.
“Did you now?” Traz said with a small smirk. “I thought dragons did not understand the spoken word?”
Astra shook her head in confusion. “I don't know.”
The loud trilling of the snow dragons above made them all look up.
“The Yosoi will have fewer qualms about facing a crypt-keeper, and they will surely climb up here within a bell's time.” Zochur turned to Traz. “We must go.”
“Go where? All the tunnels lead back to the monastery proper, except for one that goes to the Cavern of the Sunken Lake.” Traz flapped his arms in frustration.
“I know of another exit out of the tunnels,” Astra said, thinking of what she had seen in the soul of the dead ranger, a secret that had almost died with him. Again, everyone stared at her, this time with varying degrees of mistrust. “It is an ancient tunnel, unused and forgotten. We will have to capture moonstones to carry with us for light. It will take us down into the blue forests. From there we can travel north.”
She headed for the tunnel entrance, the eerie calls of the furious snow dragons above them grating on her nerves. Traz grabbed her arm.
She spun on him. “Do you not trust me either?”
He raised his hands. “I do trust you. But I don't speak Atyim, and the soldiers are looking like death.” He pointed over to Xavai and Hiloh.
Astra rubbed the bridge of her nose, remembering too late that it was a habit she had picked up from Naboch. She lowered her hand, pushing back the sting of grief, and marched over to where the men were barely standing, weak from the altitude. She pretended not to notice Xavai's flinch when she came close. His earlier admiration of her was far distant.
“We are going back down now. I have learned of an unused, forgotten tunnel that will lead us out to where we will not be seen, into the blue forests of the valleys. Follow, or stay and let the snow dragons end you.”
There was a pause as she turned away from them before Xavai spoke. “We will follow, Grav Astra.”
She did not know what the titles he gave her meant, but she suspected that the change did not bode well for her.
Zochur stepped up the help Xavai with Hiloh, who was nearly delirious. Astra was genuinely uncertain if he would make it down alive, but it seemed like an unwise observation for a crypt-keeper to say, so she kept her mouth shut.
“Give me a few moments to go grab what I can from the pack. You cannot travel in the nun's habit, and my clothes will fit you,” Traz announced, already bounding away.
Astra looked up at the circling snow dragons. “Shoo!” She flapped her arms at them, and a few trilled at her, but they did not leave.
Ruby and Emerald, who had shuffled off to the side of the gathering, slowly unfurled from their prone positions and trotted her way until they stood like sentinels on either side of her. Xavai carefully did not look at her, focusing on trying to re-wrap Hiloh's chest before putting his armor back on him. It hurt to think that he had once thought so highly of her and now could not even face her.
“It is an evil magic you weave, sibling nun,” Zochur said, coming to stand a little ways from her, their eyes on the dogs. “The temple dogs are attracted to power, nothing more, nothing less. Without souls, they have no true master.”
Astra sighed but refrained from arguing about the dog's souls. “I cannot undo any of this. And I would not, even if I could, because then you would be dead along with Traz and myself.”
Zochur gave her a 'harumph' in return, still not looking her in the eyes.
Traz stumbled back into the clearing with two packs and a few utility belts strapped around his waist and crossed over his chest. Most notably, he had the grail as well. He caught Astra staring at it. “Would you have me leave it behind? If Dzrezor thought it was the Grail, surely others will to. It might help us at some point.”
Astra knew she would have to reveal the truth to him soon, but simply shook her head. “No. It's why we must go north.”
“We must?” He looked at her thoughtfully, then glanced around and up at the snow dragons before wincing. “Yes, I suppose this has become a group effort.”
He tossed the lighter pack at Astra, who caught it, but wondered what his plans had really been, originally. He had already told her multiple layers of lies, and it struck her oddly, after everything that had happened, that he might have ever been genuine in his desire to return to Qordashi permanently.
He pushed her toward the door. “Change later, in the tunnels. I saw a large band of Yosoi moving up the main path from the north ward.”
Zochur turned quickly and headed over to help speed up Xavai and Hiloh as they stumbled towards the tunnel door. Dzrezor and his guards had been in such a hurry to leave they had not even closed it behind them, thankfully.
Astra clutched the pack to her chest, as it was no easy thing to put on a pack while wearing a smock, at least not without strangling oneself. They all plunged into the tunnel, even the temple dogs. Zochur and Traz pulled the heavy door closed and barred it shut. It would not hold forever, but without a battering ram, the Yosoi were not getting through.
Zochur led them down the Golden Inkstone Steps, with Traz cautiously nabbing moonstones with scarf-wrapped hands and shoving him into his pack as they went. Hiloh leanedheavily on Xavai. It was going to be a long and much more treacherous walk down, but there was no chance the Yosoi would know how to follow them. Even Dzrezor and his staff had been unaware of the tunnel the lead ranger held in his memories.
It would simply seem to everyone outside that the mountain had eaten Astra and her companions, which was not going to be far from the truth. As she clutched the pack to her chest, the temple dogs on either side kept her from falling down in a heap of exhaustion, pain, and despair.
Part of her wanted to simply sit down and cry, but she knew it was not the time. It might never be the time.
She hoped that the lost tunnel would give them a chance to escape and completely disappear.
NEXT: Epilogue! Arc 1 wraps up!
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