Chapter 12
Under us, the ground shook with a force that terrified the incubus, all the animals and me. The soldiers, too. I could see their hearts beating rapidly in fear as they ran about searching for a safe stable place to stand. I felt Blackfin tear into his magic trying to tether the forces of the earth and quiet her. Yet, he could not.
The ground ripped open under my feet and a huge crevasse yawned with a gaping mouth. I could not see the bottom, only the blue-green translucent walls as I slid into them. The incubus leapt over me and tried to snag my chains but succeeded only in being pulled down with me.
We tumbled. Bouncing off one side and each other and then the other walls until I landed on an arch of ice with him dangling from my ankle chains. His weight tore at my bones and I could feel the manacles ripping off my skin. I tried to kick him loose but he hung on with the desperation of a mother cat.
When I thought I couldn’t bear anymore, the arch under me broke sending both of us plummeting into the darkness. He hit first and I heard his legs, arms and back break as his eerie blue eyes remained open until that was all I could see in the dark tunnel of the ice crack into which we had fallen. Twisting and turning, we fell and as we descended into the darkness, I saw the unmistakable metal of an air vent ripping open the walls of ice and embedded in the stone. I saw the tower’s base flash by and knew that the city was close but not close enough to save us.
At last, we hit water. Frigid water that was flowing at an incredible rate and was almost cold enough to be frozen yet it wasn’t. I hit the water after he had carved a hole in it breaking way for me. Yet, we hit so hard that it knocked me out the instant I touched it so I didn’t feel the icy burning torture of it or the battering as we were swept downstream beyond the glacier towards whatever hell it wanted to take us.
Mile after mile, the glacial stream burst through the canyons of the crevasse. It bisected the Newlands, crossed the border wall until finally, the melted ice waters of the Caladienne glacial river puttered to a gentle stream in a deep valley hundreds of miles from the nearest town or city. Deep in the wilderness of the middle section of the interior of the Borderlands known as the Midden Marches where those of the folk over the border had settled and merged with Elassai until it was hard to tell who was what.
I woke to pain and hunger. I wasn’t sure which was worse. When I tried to move, every muscle in my body seized up in a cramp that had me gripping handfuls of moss and biting sticks that lay under my face until I crushed them in half between my teeth. I thought I was dying only it hurt too much for someone who had only minutes to live. My legs screamed that they were shattered; my arms yelled that they had fallen off my shoulders and my ribs believed they came in pairs of eighty not twelve. My head hurt worst of all; I could feel dried blood crinkling on my face. I tasted it, too.
Vaguely, I remembered falling. A long way down and with someone else. I looked around carefully but there was nothing near me. Except the small stream chuckling sweetly across granite rocks with rounded edges. Tall aspen and spruce trees. Tiger lilies and lupine scattered on the verges of the banks. A pretty place but not familiar, I watched it all fade to a gentle gray realizing that it meant something was seriously wrong with me.
The next time I woke, something was pawing at me and it hurt. I opened my eyes to see a man dressed in tan leathers and carrying bow, quiver and a long bladed knife. He was tall and slender, as quick as an elf as he searched through my pockets of which I had few stripped nearly naked.
“Am I dead?” I mumbled and the fingers stopped. Whoever or whatever it was jumped back in alarm. It stood on two legs so I knew it wasn’t a wolf or big cat checking to see if I was edible. More likely, it was the two-legged kind of predator–human or Elassai. “Just don’t…eat me,” I said and passed out.
*****
The world was moving around me. I saw the trees walking slowly pass me. Boles of Alder and Linden, Chestnut and Elms. Giant Oaks whose acorns were the size of my fist. We passed stonewalls bordering small meadows inside the woods that were fairyland dells rife with jonquils and bluebonnets. Fir trees as large as I had ever seen. Up and down motion that was gentle yet hurried as if the world wanted to go somewhere fast. I smelled things but they made no sense–brass in my mouth and ice on my tongue. Colors receded from my touch and when I moaned, it felt warm. The sun on my skin tasted like lemons. I heard the color purple. My senses were overwhelming me with information and I couldn’t understand any of it.
It was strange but interesting. Something bright hovered over my face and landed on me. It left me with a taste of gold, the shape of cubes and smelled like fear.
I sighed. Bells jangled discordantly, the scent of cinnamon lay on my face and the world stopped moving. Blackness leaned over me and touched me on the face. I shivered. Bones scrabbled at my throat and misery coughed in my lungs. Words flowed over my head and I saw them as butterflies with sharp proboscises that dripped venom.
I didn’t care. I was puzzling over the thought in my head on the concept of ‘me’. It was one I knew was important but it meant nothing. I was ‘me’ but that didn’t bring any images to mind except the flat screen of blood red upon which nothing floated. This terrified me in some fashion and left me rigid from head to toe making me hurt in such all-consuming pain that I sank back into the dark where nothing touched me.