Divided: The Alliance Series Book Four (6 page)

“Don’t you think I’d have used it on you?” he snarled. “Or on these other suicidal idiots. Some of them want to be the Stoneskins’ sacrifices, would you believe it?”

“They do?”

“Nutcases,” he said. “I want out of here.”

“You and me both,” I said. And then blinked, startled at my own admission that we had a common objective. But right now, I was willing to do anything to get back to Earth, even team up with an enemy.

He frowned at me as though the same thought had crossed his mind.

I drew in a breath. “Don’t suppose you have any ideas?” I asked, dropping my voice.

“Later,” he muttered. “We have an audience.”

So we did. The people nearest us were clearly awake, and more than one lay angled towards us, heads cocked. Several others had risen to their feet, lingering nearby, including the long-toothed man and the bloodstained guy. Four others accompanied them. I paused, watching, as they approached us. Like a group of wolves circling their prey.

Long-Toothed Guy bared his teeth at me, and Bloodstained Guy stared blankly ahead. I tensed, checking magic was there for me to call on—it was the only weapon I had.

“Gervene tells us something interesting about you,” said a dirt-smudged boy hardly older than fifteen. “She says you’re the one the Stoneskins were looking for.”

I narrowed my eyes at him. “What’s it to you?”

Long-Toothed Guy laughed. “I like her. Do we have to kill her?”

Bloodstained Guy shot him a glare, as I backed up, moving into a defensive stance.

“Four on one’s unfair,” I said.

“No one said anything about fair,” said Long-Toothed Guy. “We kill you, we delay their plans. Gotta be worth it, right?”

“I’m sensing some faulty logic there,” I said.

He hit out. I blocked his strike and kicked his knee, sweeping his legs from underneath him. I spun around to face Bloodstained Guy as he tried to hit me from behind, catching his arm in a lock. He bared his teeth at me—also bloodstained—and I was forced to let go as Long-Toothed Guy lunged at me from behind again. Big mistake. I was well-practised at dealing with asshats creeping up on me. I reached back, grabbed both his arms and took advantage of his surprise, using his own body weight to flip him over my head. He came down in a crash that probably knocked him senseless.

There was a thud as Aric threw one of the other guys into a nearby rock. I barely had a moment of surprise before Bloodstained Guy tried to hit me again. I blocked him without even turning round, slamming my elbow into his nose. As he yelped in pain, I stomped on Long-Toothed Guy’s hand. His cry was stifled as Aric grabbed him by the scruff of his neck and threw him halfway across camp.

Unsurprisingly, a dozen pairs of eyes stared at us. Nobody bothered pretending to be asleep anymore, and most had thrown their blankets down, sitting or propping on their elbows to watch the show. Gervene was with the claw-footed man and two others, all of whom looked at me like I’d fallen out of the sky. The dirt-smudged boy had fled to the other side of the camp while Aric and I had knocked the other attackers to the ground. Bloodstained Guy groaned at my feet, blood oozing from his nose.

Aric turned to me, eyes set in a glare. “You gonna thank me or what?”

“Thanks,” I said grudgingly.

Maybe we really were on some bizarre reverse-world. Aric, an ally? Not beating the crap out of me?

“Huh.” He slouched over to the middle of camp and kicked at Long-Toothed Guy’s inert form. “Reckon this guy’s out cold. It’d be nicer to kill him.”

I glanced down at Bloodstained Guy, who also looked as though he wouldn’t be getting up anytime soon.

“What’s with the bloodstains?” I asked. “Someone attacked him?”

“He got himself stranded in the swamp,” said Aric. “The Stoneskins found him on Cethrax half-mad. No idea why they didn’t just leave him there.”

“How long have you been here, anyway?”

Now my attackers were starting to drag themselves away—those still conscious, that is—the camp had lost interest in the fight. We hadn’t drawn the attention of the Stoneskins yet, either. I didn’t know whether that was a good thing or yet another reason to be wary. Maybe their pet humans trying to kill one another in the night was common.

Aric shrugged. “Couple of weeks, maybe.” He eyed me with distrust. “You’re not to use magic near me, you hear?”

“What do you take me for?” I said.

“I’ve had bloody enough of magic already. The magic-creatures chased me all over the Passages when I got out of Aglaia.”

So he
had
escaped through the doorway. Those kimaros the Conners had unleashed on Aglaia must have come from the hidden Passage. They’d probably got through a door these lunatics had left open. Serve Aric right, seeing as his family had drawn the kimaros’s attention to Aglaia in the first place.

“You were in the Passages,” I said. “Whereabouts exactly did the Stoneskins find you?”

He ran a hand over his buzzed-short hair. “I was hiding from the magic-creatures. Found a hidden stair downstairs. I checked, figured it was safe, but then a doorway opened out of nowhere. Next thing I knew, three of those bastards dragged me through.”

So they were just combing the Passages? They can track magic-wielders?
A shiver ran down my spine. If I really was what they were looking for, then…

“Any idea where we’re going, exactly?” I asked.

“No,” he said. “No clue where those bastards came from, either.”

“Does
anyone
know?”

“If they do, they won’t talk,” said Aric. “But I’m not dying out here. I’m a goddamned Con— magic-wielder.”

“You were going to say, Conner,” I said, before I could stop myself.

Aric’s huge hands clenched into fists. “Stop that. You’re no one.”

I fought back a laugh, more anger than amusement. He was clueless. “Clearly, the Stoneskins don’t think so.”

“Huh.” He jerked his head in their direction. “Looks like they’re waking up.”

I stared a moment at the shifting rock-like shapes amongst the tents, before common sense took over.

“Shit. Don’t tell them what happened.”

“You think I’m stupid?” he said.

Instead of laughing, which would probably have sparked another fight, I ran back to the pitiful blanket I’d been sleeping under before the Stoneskins noticed me looking. Or that I was with Aric. I didn’t think they’d care for me making alliances with the others. I retrieved my water flask and refilled it at the river, and Gervene handed me another ration bar. Apparently she’d taken control of the camp supplies. What had she done to get everyone to respect her? Maybe it was the smart suit, or perhaps the fact that she was one of few people here who had a jot of sense left.

Once the camp was packed up, we set off through the wilderness again. Surprisingly, the Stoneskins didn’t single me out this time but shunted us all together, even the ones having difficulty moving after the fight. I refused to feel guilty, but it was difficult. My limbs protested at being forced into marching again, my back prickling with sweat, my neck aching. The minutes blurred together with the unbroken rocky landscape. Several hours later, however, I caught sight of a shape on the horizon that formed an odd contrast to the dry ground. The leaders angled our march in that direction, and it gradually began to take shape. It wasn’t rock, but marshland… but something wasn’t quite right. It started and ended just as abruptly, and the air above had an odd, shimmering quality. Maybe the heat was getting to me…

No. It was a doorway.

The smell of the swampland rolled over us, trapped by the heat. It became difficult to breathe. Yet we walked
towards
the doorway, not away.

Soon, it became clear why. A stone building sat on the other side of the doorway, half-sunk into the swamp. The silent, dirty-faced boy walking alongside me muttered to himself, “Not this hellhole again, no…”

“Cethrax,” I said. “This is Cethrax. They’re taking us there… why?”

“Next doorway,” he muttered, not looking at me. “If we don’t get eaten.”

“Oh, fan-bloody-tastic,” I said, twisting to look at the people behind me. No one would meet my eyes. “They’re okay with us getting eaten?”

No answer. Our part of the line reached the doorway. Magic rushed over me when I stepped from rocky ground to marsh—I’d thought Cethrax had barely an iota of magic to speak of, seeing as none of its natives could use it. Apparently not. Maybe I could use it here… but what use would it be? I’d had enough experience with the monsters lurking in the swamps of Cethrax. Wyverns, vox-kind and goblins were mostly magicproof. Just like the monsters that held us captive. And I didn’t have any other weapons, nor any way of convincing Cethrax’s monsters to help me.
Kay could probably do it.
Like when he’d talked the Vox king out of crushing us to a pulp. Kay could talk his way out of anything. He’d probably talked the entire Alliance into sending out a rescue mission. The first stop would be the hidden Passage, which led right into the swamp.
He’s coming, he has to be,
I told myself, ignoring the small, insistent voice asking when I was going to give up deluding myself.

The Stoneskins led us through ankle-deep, murky water and thick mud that clung to the soles of my guard boots. Would the uniform would stand up to wear and tear? How long before the magicproof coating wore off, leaving me doubly vulnerable to an attack from one of the others?

The group halted as we drew closer to the building, leaving us in the middle of a patch of swamp. The Stoneskins continued on their path, but several remained to stand guard around us. Apparently, they didn’t want us going into the building. Flies buzzed in my ears, and the stench was worse than a sewer crossed with a slaughterhouse. Coughing, swatting at the air, we stood in a huddle of misery.

“What are they doing?” I hissed, to anyone nearby.

“Gathering supplies.” Gervene inched closer to me, her feet entirely submerged in mud.

“They don’t trust us?”

“They don’t need us,” she said. “No weapons here, I don’t think. That place is just an outpost.”

“For what?”

“No clue. Trade, maybe. The few times the Alliance tried to set up trade with Cethrax didn’t go so well, did they?”

I might not know all the Alliance’s history, but that was pretty much a given. I nodded. “So the Stoneskins hop through the nearest doorway for supplies… how do they even track the doorways?”

“I have no idea,” she said. “Same way they found us. They can track magic-wielders, and doorways, too, I guess. Does it matter?”

“It might help us get out,” I said in an undertone. “I’m trying to figure out how they operate.”

“Don’t let them find out,” said Gervene. “They overheard a few people discussing wild ideas for escaping, couple of days before we found you. They took them away to their tents, and no one’s seen them since.”

I shivered. “Damn,” I said, and quickly checked to make sure none of the Stoneskins were close enough to see us talking. Lucky we were right in the middle of the group. “Were they talking about anything in particular?”

“This one has a death wish,” the dirty-faced teenage boy said.

“Just because you’ve given up, doesn’t mean we all have,” said Gervene. Gratitude rushed through me. Maybe I could pull a team together. Maybe some of us could get away.

The presence of the other people, the ones with haunted eyes and closed-off expressions, tugged at my conscience. Nell’s voice repeated in my head:
You can’t save everyone.

But I had to start somewhere. “Have any of you ever eavesdropped on them?” I asked everyone closest by. There was something to be said for standing in a swamp—the Stoneskins had been forced to move several metres away otherwise they’d start to sink in the mud. Being made out of rock had its disadvantages, too.

Aric edged closer, not very subtly, knocking the dirt-stained boy headfirst into the swamp. “Hells, yeah,” he said.

“Quieter,” I muttered, and he glared at me again. “What did you hear? Anything about… I don’t know. Where did they come from originally? Some of them speak English…”

“And other Earth languages,” said Aric. “And Klathican.”

“Valerian dialects, too,” added Gervene. “I have… a theory. Call me crazy—they’re invincible, I think, but something tells me they might have been gathered together. Like us.”

“Like us,” I said. “They—they were human.”

“Some of them were,” said Aric. “You seen those little devil-like ones? They talk like dreyverns.”

I vaguely remembered some of the short, scaly creatures being amongst the ones which had attacked Kay.

Kay.

I clapped a hand to my mouth. “Oh my God,” I said. “I—do you think someone… did it to them? Made them like that?”

They clearly
weren’t
natural—not in the sense they’d been born that way. All looked and talked like people from at least some of the allied worlds. On some worlds, maybe it was possible—somehow—to embed adamantine into human skin.
Is that why they need me?
I’d been an experimental subject of sorts myself, after all, and the Alliance had once conducted similar experiments, injecting humans with magic-based substances. I presumed they’d been trying to create artificial magic-wielders, because on Earth, they were such a rarity.