Veka decided right then that the next one to mention Jig Dragonslayer’s name would get a knife in his gut. “Why does everyone—?”
Her jaw clamped shut. Through pressed lips, she heard Snixle say, “This place isn’t safe. We have to go deeper. Then we’ll talk.”
The water was cold enough to chill her hands and arms, and her sodden cloak was beginning to weigh her down. Gritting her teeth, she pressed her hands against the rough stone and lowered herself farther, searching for footholds in the algae-slick stone.
Her stomach rumbled as she climbed. How long had it been since her last meal? Heroes’ stomachs weren’t supposed to rumble. Of course, Heroes weren’t supposed to have to squirm down dark, tight, wet holes, talking to themselves and hoping their friends didn’t come along to stab them in the back either.
Her fingers slipped. She dropped hard, landing in a shallow puddle on a ledge. The rock fell away by her ankles. As the water soaked into her undergarments, she closed her eyes and fought for control. When she thought she could speak without screaming, she said, “We’re deeper.”
Snixle didn’t argue. Maybe he heard something in her tone. “The tunnel slants back down toward the pixie cavern. If we’re lucky, we can just follow the water all the way home.”
Veka rested her head on the rock. “We’re running away from two pixies so we can drop in on a whole army of pixies?”
“Most will be busy preparing to escort the young queen to her new home. This place still isn’t safe for her. There are a few ogres roaming free, not to mention you goblins and hobgoblins. But no pixie queen likes to wait. Everyone will be concentrating on her, so depending on where this drainage crack leads, we should be able to get you out unnoticed.”
“Why do they want Jig?” Veka asked.
She felt Snixle taking control of her hand, running through the familiar motions of the binding spell. She recognized the enchantment; he was trying to create light. “It’s no good,” she told him. “Without a source of light, the spell won’t—”
Her fingers began to glow from the inside with a soft green light. The bones and veins in her hand appeared as dark shadows.
“
That
is why they wish to capture Jig Dragonslayer,” Snixle said. Veka suspected it was supposed to sound dramatic, but mostly it just irritated her. “That is why they would want you as well, if they knew what you could do.”
“They would?” Knowing the pixies would want to capture her made her feel a little better. She stared at her hand. “They want us to make light? I wouldn’t think that was a problem for pixies.”
“The magic of your world follows different rules. Your magic is richer, full of power, but also rigid. Learning to manipulate magic here is like learning to breathe stone. We can learn faster if we have a practitioner of your magic.”
“You’re one of them, aren’t you?” she asked, turning her hand. Even her claws glowed.
“I used myself as the light source,” Snixle said.
The dragon’s cave. When she and Slash had gone to spy on the pixies. The pixie who found them in the tunnel had been this exact shade of green. But she remembered defeating him. She had told the others how she bested him. “You changed my memories from Straum’s cave.”
“No, you did that all by yourself,” said Snixle. “You swung at me with your staff. That’s when I cast my spell. By the time you got back to the others, you must have convinced yourself you’d killed me. We control the body, not the mind. We can’t touch your thoughts or emotions. Well, the queen can, but not the rest of us.”
Veka shook her head. “I remember hitting you, and then—”
“Your staff only brushed the tip of my wing. Then you turned around and dragged your friend out of the tunnel.”
“He’s not my friend.” So why had she bothered to drag him out, unless that had been Snixle’s doing? He must have enchanted them both. “That’s why Grell stabbed Slash. They knew you were controlling us.”
“They must have,” Snixle agreed. “Jig’s smarter than I realized.”
Jig hadn’t been threatened by her after all. He wasn’t afraid of her. He was afraid of Snixle and the pixies. To him Veka was nothing. Just like she was to every other goblin.
“Why did you let us go?” she asked, her voice dull and flat. “Why not turn us over to your queen when you had the chance?”
“I . . .” Snixle’s voice trailed off. Her shoulder blades flexed, and she stared at the ground. After a moment, she realized these were Snixle’s movements. He must be flexing his wings. A nervous gesture? “I’m not strong enough,” Snixle said. “If I tried to force you both, I was afraid you’d break free. I thought I’d let you and the hobgoblin go back so I could try to learn more about you, maybe find something that would help me earn the queen’s respect. She was so depressed at the thought of leaving our home. I never imagined you held the key to this world’s magic.”
Her spellbook. “That’s why you wanted me to hide from the other pixies,” she said. “So you could keep me for yourself.”
“If I bring you to the queen, she’ll reward us both,” Snixle said. “Veka, right now they mean to cleanse the mountain, to kill every last hobgoblin and goblin. Come with me, and maybe we can show her she doesn’t have to kill you. She may let your people leave peacefully.”
Veka shook her head. She didn’t like the sound of that
may
.
“Look at what I’ve already shared with you,” Snixle said. “Imagine what else we could accomplish. You can tap into the magic of your world. I can teach you to use that power to save your people. Jig Dragonslayer wants to fight us. The queen won’t like that. She’ll order you all killed. She’ll send more pixies up into the tunnels to—”
“I thought you couldn’t use magic here,” Veka interrupted. “Our tunnels should be safe.” She frowned. If that was true, the two pixies who had flown through above should have been powerless.
“
I
couldn’t,” Snixle said. “But the strongest warriors can wrap a bit of that magic around themselves when they leave the safety of our home. It’s like a magical blanket. They have enough power to fight you goblins at least. Eventually our magic will fill this entire mountain. Then all your people will be destroyed, unless you help me.”
“I know what you’re doing,” Veka said, shaking her head. “This is the Temptation of the Hero.”
“The what?”
“Josca wrote all about it. This is part of The Descent, where the Hero is tempted away from the Path, drawn by promises of power and glory. You’re trying to trick me into betraying my companions.”
“The same companions who wanted to stab you in the back?”
That was a good point.
“We need you, Veka,” Snixle said softly. “There’s a limit to the power we can bring from our own world. We’re exiles, every one, and we would be killed if we tried to go back. We must learn to live in your world. Help us, and you could be the savior of our people. Our people and yours as well.”
Before Veka could answer, a loud snarl rose from the darkness below.
“What’s that?” asked Snixle.
Veka’s stomach tightened. “Tunnel cat.” Naming the beast made her mouth go dry. She nearly lost control of her bladder. Which, given that the tunnel cat was creeping around beneath her, would have only made the situation worse.
This chimney of rock would be the perfect hunting ground for a tunnel cat. They had little fear of water, and their paws could find purchase on the smoothest stone. Prey would be hard-pressed to escape in such close, treacherous confines.
“Can you take control of the tunnel cat?” Veka asked. “Like you did with the bat?” Her heart pounded as she imagined herself returning to the goblin lair astride her own pet tunnel cat. She could almost hear the terrified screams of the goblins as they fled. Hobgoblins might be able to train the tunnel cats, but Veka would master them. She—
“No,” said Snixle, shattering her fantasy with a single syllable. “The bat was stupid and frightened, both of which made it vulnerable to my magic. I doubt this beast shares those weaknesses.”
“No.” As far as Veka knew, tunnel cats didn’t have any weaknesses.
“I might be able to help another way,” Snixle said. “But you have to choose. Save us. Save our queen. In return, I can save you, and I can help you save your people. If not, you and the rest of the goblins will die.”
Veka hesitated. Josca was quite clear on the fate of so-called Heroes who yielded to temptation. In the end, most broke away from their evil ways, but a high percentage died in the process. No, defying the temptation was almost always the right choice. Though in this case, defiance seemed to have a high chance of death too, and that couldn’t be right.
“Wait, you said you were exiled?” Veka asked. She fumbled for her books.
“This is hardly the time to catch up on your reading,” Snixle said.
Veka ignored him, flipping through
The Path of the Hero
until she came to the appendices. “Appendix A,” she said, reading by the light of her hand. “One Hundred Heroic Deeds and Triumphs.” She skimmed through the list. “ ‘Number forty-two: saving a village from invasion.’ The goblin lair isn’t exactly a village, but I think fighting off a pixie invasion would count.”
“What are you doing?” Snixle asked. “I told you, if you try to fight us, you—”
“Shut up and listen to this,” she said excitedly. “ ‘Aiding a banished prince or princess to regain his or her throne’ is number thirty-seven!”
“Thirty-seven?”
“Do you know what this means?” Veka said, slamming the book closed. “Helping your exiled queen is even more Heroic than trying to save the goblins. Josca says so himself!”
“Does that mean you’ll help us?”
She could save the pixies and the goblins both. Better still, she would save the goblins from the very doom Jig Dragonslayer would bring down on them. Jig still wanted to fight, but Veka would be the one who led them to safety.
“Can we fight the tunnel cat now?” Snixle asked.
She blinked. “Sure.”
“Put your hand into the water.”
Veka obeyed. Snixle gave her an extra push, thrusting her hand forward until her fingers smooshed into the wet, fibrous mass of algae. The slime and water shone green with the light emanating from her hand.
She twisted her head, trying to see into the darkness below. She couldn’t see the tunnel cat, but she could hear it making its way toward her. The rough barbed skin of those paws let them climb almost as quickly as they walked. Those barbs would also strip the skin from their prey in a single swipe.
“Okay, I
think
we need to cast another binding. That’s the key, you realize. Back home, we’re constantly tied in to the magic, but here—”
Veka yanked her hand back. “You think? You don’t know?”
“Do you have a better plan?”
Scowling, Veka relaxed and allowed Snixle to trace a quick binding. Lines of magic wove from her fingertips into the algae, knitting them together.
“Excellent. Now push, like so, joining your power to the very life of the algae.”
Her hand flexed, and a bubble of magic pulsed outward from her palm. Veka grimaced. “It feels like I’m farting through my hand.”
“You should have been a poet.”
The tunnel cat’s nose poked up through the darkness, surrounded by a halo of long white whiskers. A pale face stared up at her, the pink eyes never blinking.
A new sensation flowed through her hand and arm: a cool, calm feeling, as if the water were trickling over her own body, refreshing and reenergizing her flesh. She was feeling what the algae felt.
“You’re bound to the plant,” said Snixle. “Forget the clumsy second-rate sympathetic magic you were doing with that levitation spell. This is pure power. The magic is an extension of your body, and the algae is an extension of your magic. Now reach out and grab that tunnel cat before he rips your legs off.”
The cat climbed closer. Muscles twitched along its back as it shifted its weight, searching for the next hold. Tunnel cats rarely rushed. They climbed easily and surely, waiting for prey to panic and fall.
“Grab it how?” Veka asked.
“Less thinking, more doing.” Before Veka could react, Snixle took control of her feet and yanked them from the wall. She began to slip.
Veka grabbed the algae, and the algae grabbed her. Slime coated her fingers and wrists. Even as her legs kicked the air, drawing a hungry growl from the cat, the sludge tightened its grip. Hair-thin tendrils coiled around her fingers, stronger than any rope.
“Excellent! Now do the same thing to that beast below.”
“Shut . . . up,” Veka said. She could feel the cat now as it crept through the slime. Each time a paw pressed into the algae, she felt it on her own skin. The tail tickled as it lashed through the water.
The next time that tail splashed into the water, Veka grabbed it. A great mass of brown plant matter clumped onto the tail and held fast.
The tunnel cat yowled, a furious squeal that echoed through the tight crevasse.
“Don’t let go!” Snixle yelled.
Stupid pixie. As if she couldn’t figure that much out on her own. Veka fought to hold on. Slime crept farther up the cat’s tail, tendrils weaving through fur and clamping around the bones and joints beneath. By now the tunnel cat was clinging to the rock with all four paws, pulling and twisting to escape. It twisted its head, bending its spine nearly double to bite at its own tail. Veka reached out, using another bit of algae to pluck several whiskers from its face.
That was too much for the poor tunnel cat. Fur ripped free as it dropped away, hissing and spitting. She could hear claws scraping against stone as it fled down into the darkness.
“Not bad. We’ll have you commanding the elements and smiting your enemies in no time.”
Veka laughed, no longer caring whether anyone heard. Forget Jig and his temple tricks. Had Jig ever ridden a giant bat or turned plants against a tunnel cat? Josca wrote that the Hero descended into darkness, where she would face her greatest trials and come into true power. Well, this crevasse was not only dark, it was smelly too. And if facing a hungry tunnel cat wasn’t a trial, she didn’t know what was.