Isle of the Ape by Jason Halstead
Chapter 15
Patrina pulled herself up onto the rock shelf and slipped the belt with Alto's sword off. She'd looped the belt around her axe, tightening it to her chest and keeping the axe from falling while she'd swum. She slipped his sword back over her back and held the axe in her hand, and then paused to try to squeeze the water out of her hair. She hadn't wasted the time braiding it again so she tore her old shirt in strips and tied it in a long pony tail that fell almost to her hips.
Patrina dumped the cold water out of her boots and then tried to peer farther up the dark tunnel. She could still see from the light that filtered in at the mouth of the cave's entrance but she knew her visibility was limited. Farther in, she suspected she'd see nothing at all. The troll must have known the cave would be dark; why hadn't he given her a torch?
"A torch while I swam?" Patrina whispered to herself. She glanced at the section of river she'd had to swim against and nodded. It would have ruined it. Plus she had no flint or steel to light it. "Looks like I'll be fumbling in the dark," she muttered.
She started forward along the shelf, padding as quietly next to the river as she could. Her new armor was much quieter than the plate she'd had before, but there was only a fraction of it compared to the last suit. As far as she was concerned, the troll had given her something to wear in the bedroom on her wedding night, not into battle. Even if the magic had proved true and stopped his thrown knife.
Patrina kept glancing at the river, making sure she didn't lose track of the edge of the path she walked upon. The water was cold, a mountain spring, but she was warm. Patrina stopped and looked down at herself. Water was still beaded to her skin but even in the tunnel she felt comfortable. She glanced around and wondered what she'd feel like if she took the armor off.
"Probably not any more exposed," she muttered in answer to her own question. There was magic to the armor, she'd felt and seen as much. Keeping her warm in the cold water was perhaps another facet of it. Just as the metal chain and scales hadn't weighed her down when she swam. Perhaps the troll's gift wasn't as bad as she feared. She snorted in the dark and continued on.
The river narrowed and grew restless. She heard the rushing water but had a hard time seeing it in the gloom. The ground slanted upwards as she walked, forcing her to climb. The burbling beside her changed into the rushing sound of water crashing against itself and over rocks. She frowned and reached out, touching the wet wall of the passage beside her and using it to guide her as she climbed.
Patrina stopped again and stared into the gloom. Everything was an endless shade of deep, dark gray. She couldn't make out any details but, after she stared for a long moment, she noticed a subtle difference in shades of gray before her. Patrina reached out with her axe and gasped just as she felt it strike the rock wall where the darker gray met the lighter shade. It wasn't the impact that stunned her; it was seeing her arm and hand in the darkness.
Compared to the thick gray darkness surrounding her, her arm was glowing. It had no color to it, only a whiteness that nearly dazzled her. She held her other arm out and saw it looked the same. When she looked down at her body, she let her jaw hang open in shock at the uniform whiteness of her body. Details were hard to make out, aside from the dark belt across her chest and belly and her boots. Everything else was a uniform white hue.
Patrina wrenched her eyes away from herself. She shook her head and glanced once again to make sure she hadn't imagined it before she stepped ahead carefully and walked into the darker oval ahead of her.
The cave continued to rise. Above, below, and beside her, she could see nothing but darkness, but ahead of her the air seemed to be growing brighter. She blinked her eyes time and again, doubting her senses and her sanity until she looked down at herself to remind her that she really was seeing something that made no sense. Was she able to see things that were alive, somehow? Was this some magical gift the troll hadn't bothered to mention? Was it another benefit of the armor?
She was so caught up in trying to figure out what was happening to her that she slammed her toe into a rock and crashed forward. She raised her arms in time to stop her head from cracking against stairs that had been cut into the rocks, but the impact still dazzled her and left her cursing. Patrina righted herself so she was sitting on the rocks and took her boot off. Her feet were glowing white like the rest of her. She couldn't make out any details of her bruised big toe, other than to say it was still the right shape. The kelgryn princess put her boot back on and rose up so she could scale the stairs, although in a slow and careful manner to avoid any repeat incidents. It almost saved her from running into a wooden door that was pulled shut across the top of the staircase.
"Damn this dark!" Patrina cursed in a nasally voice. She rubbed her nose and then felt around the door for a latch or a bar. She found nothing on her side of the door. It made sense; if this was truly a secret escape route, why would they put a means for someone to sneak into the castle? She tried feeling at the edges for a lip to grab onto or a hinge. She found nothing.
"This is where you come in," Patrina said to her new axe. She took a two-handed grip on it and, taking care to keep her wrists firm but not too tight, she swung it experimentally at the wooden barricade in front of her.
The axe struck with a crack that echoed in the tunnel. Patrina winced and glanced behind her, nervous even though she knew she was alone. She saw nothing but that did little to calm her fears. She stared into the darkness and took a deep breath. Thork had accused her of being afraid. Damn right she was afraid! She was terrified of being alone. Scared of losing Alto and Namitus. Scared of never making it back home or of ending up one of Bucky's playthings. And what if there was something on the other side of the door? What if it heard her hit it with the axe? What if it was waiting for her?
Patrina closed her eyes and focused on her breathing. She slowed it down and waited until her heart stopped racing before she opened her eyes again and looked into the gray emptiness around her.
"What would Alto do?" she whispered. She felt herself smile and it brought a measure of confidence with it. Alto would have charged ahead. If she were in trouble, nothing would stand in his way. Nothing ever did. He was a man of action. A man who needed to be doing something, not someone who would sit and wait for things to pass.
That meant that Bucky would have his hands full. Would Alto push him to the point where the ape wouldn't put up with him anymore? Carson mentioned something like that happening to other people in the past, probably the people who had survived the shipwreck with him. That meant Patrina had to behave like Alto. She had to push ahead and the hell with the consequences! She would find him.
Her axe crashed into the door a second time. Wood sundered and fell, opening up a lighter gray spot when she pulled the magical weapon away. Her success empowered her; she struck it three more times until the door fell apart under her attack and let her step through.
Patrina kept her axe ready in both hands as she studied the varying shades of gray in the room. It smelled musty and damp. She reached out to the first object before her and touched a cool and hard surface. She moved her hand on it and could feel that it was moist. She pushed harder and felt her fingers dent into the material.
She kept exploring it with her hand and decided a moment later it was a chest of some sort. She found the lock on it and after a few clumsy swings with her axe, she broke it open. The hinges were rusted and refused to budge, a situation she remedied with a few more swings of her axe.
The inside of the chest was the same gray as the chest itself. She glanced around again, nervous about reaching in. What if it held rats or spiders? Sure, it had been locked and rusted shut, but for all she knew the bottom had been chewed out of it. She saw another shape near the door she'd come in. It looked rectangular but she noticed there were uneven outlines sticking out of the top of it.
Patrina's eye narrowed. "Torches?" she whispered before she stepped closer and reached out for them. An unseen grin split her face as s
Several minutes later, she gave up. Even the mysterious chest had been pawed through, much to her disgust. Her hands came out dripping with what she hoped were waterlogged and rotten garments. Patrina turned to the other door she'd found while searching and tried the latch. It released with a faint squeak of lack of use. The hinges protested with a squeal as she forced it open enough to let her out.
Patrina stopped, her heart in her throat again. She heard it again only a moment later. A dull thud. She kept listening and heard it a few more times, growing louder. It stopped as soon as it started, but Patrina wondered if the hammering of her heartbeat in her ears was drowning it out.
She focused on her breathing and reached out, feeling her way along the wall as she started forward again. She felt the wall open up on her left. Was it a passage or another room? She was about to turn down it when she heard something hiss ahead of her and to the left. She jumped back, her back and her head slamming into the opposite wall. Patrina ignored the dull ache in her head and scrambled back down the hallway until she was at the door to the room she'd first found.
She stood there trembling and gasping. "I can't do this," she whimpered. "I can't see a damn thing!"
Patrina closed her eyes and sunk down until she was sitting on the floor and leaning against the cool stone wall. She wrapped her hands around her legs and pressed her forehead against her knees. Her axe brushed the wall, forcing her to shift enough to accommodate it.
Patrina remembered the last time she'd been helpless. She'd been bound to a post for sacrifice then. She needed Alto to save her, just as Sarya, the ancient dragon, needed her and Alto both so she could begin her ritual that would immortalize her in a magical silver statue.
Patrina had given up at times. She prayed for Alto to save her, and then when she regained her strength and her wits, she prayed he wouldn't come. Sarya would be too powerful if she survived the ritual. Her nation and the kingdom would fall. Garrick's people in the north and even the elves rumored to live in the forests to the west would suffer.
She would have killed herself to ruin the dragon's plans if she could have. Instead, Alto came for her. He'd saved her when she couldn't save herself. She'd begged him to kill her. Sarya was old and nearly used up; she couldn't survive long enough to find another sacrifice like theirs. There was no hope; they were going to die—at least they could do it on their terms.
But Alto refused to listen. He cut her free, hewing through chains of silver with the magical sword Thork had made for him. Sarya was coming for them but Alto wouldn't accept it. He just wouldn't listen. He wouldn't let Patrina down. He wouldn't let her die.
Instead, he turned away from her and jumped off the rim of the dormant volcano. He landed on Sarya and wedged his sword into her back, paralyzing her and forcing them to twist and fall. Human and dragon, they crashed together into the crater of the volcano. Patrina remembered staring through blurry eyes as the spoiled magic went awry. There was a flash of light that burst from the dragon and struck the statue. Alto fell away from her and she feared that he was dead. He'd done it; he'd saved her, but at a price that was too high. Damn the people of the north, she wanted him back! They could all go to hell if it meant one more day with him.
When she could, she made her way down. She was numb, in complete shock from what had happened. If she'd had her wits about her, she'd have taken the quicker route down herself and jumped to end the pain that was sure to come.
She found Alto alive and well. Healed by the same errant magic that had trapped Sarya's spirit inside the statue forever. Against impossible odds he'd rescued her, killed the greatest threat the north had seen in hundreds of years, and lived to tell the tale.
Patrina sniffed back her tears and picked her head up. She couldn't see anything but the act alone was symbolic. She'd known darker times than this. This was an absence of light, not darkness. Not the emptiness she feared in her heart. That would only come if she stayed and let the apes destroy what mattered most in her life to her.
"I'm coming for you, Alto," Patrina whispered. "Not even Lady Death herself can stop me."
She gasped as the circlet on her head flushed her with a tingling warm sensation that spread from her head to her toes. When it passed, she realized that everything was still gray but the shades were distinct enough she could make out details. She saw the tunnel that branched off in a T after twenty feet. She saw that it also continued to another doorway straight ahead of her.
Patrina wiped the tears from her eyes and stood up. She could see now. Not well, but enough. Whatever it was that awaited her, she would face it and kill it. Nothing would get in her way.
Patrina moved forward, approaching the junction carefully. She edged along the wall until she could see around the corner. What she found made her jaw drop. An enormous snake was coiled up in the hallway. Behind it, the tunnel had collapsed. Patrina had thought it was inches away from her because her hand had slipped around the corner but her face hadn't. She never saw it the first time. Now she saw the snake was at least six feet back. It didn't matter; six feet, to a reptile as massive as this one, might as well have been six inches.
It hissed at her again and shifted, rising on its coils. She had no idea what kind of snake it was; she couldn't make out any marking on it. All she knew was that it was white and large enough to swallow her whole if she was careless. She continued to edge along the wall, hoping to get past it without inciting it to strike at her.
She failed.
The giant reptile launched itself at her, striking so fast she didn't even have time to cry out. Her axe shifted as she tried to block it but all she did was drive the handle down against the side of its body just behind its head. It recoiled from where it had tried to bite through the metal skirt protecting her upper thigh and hip. The bite had been crushing but so brief Patrina thought nothing of it.
She kept pushing the snake down and away as it tried to pull itself back. She threw her other leg over the snake's body and tried to force it down to the ground. Instead, it shifted and rolled, smashing her against the wall. Its body began to coil around her leg, squeezing with an impossible force that she knew would grind her bones to powder if she let it.
She tried using the shaft of her axe to strike the snake's head but it only coiled itself around her further. It drew both her legs together by tightening its body and constricting them together. She felt her knee being tugged painfully as it bent in an unnatural direction. She cried out and bit her tongue to stay silent.
The snake rolled her over so that her handle was now keeping the head from biting her or, worse, trying to swallow her headfirst. She grunted and heaved, trying to push it away. It stretched its head forward past the shaft of her axe and opened its jaws. They dislocated, opening wide enough to make room for her head once it pushed past her tiring arms.
Patrina pulled her axe back and slipped her hands up to grip it near the head. The snake reacted instantly, lunging forward. She thrust her axe and caught it just behind the head with the spike on the end of the axe, impaling it at an angle and driving the six-inch spike into the base of the snake's brain.
It squeezed her extra tightly for a few seconds and then relaxed and went still. Patrina felt that same refreshing surge of energy from when she'd first picked up the axe course through her. When the odd magical effect faded, she moved the snake's head away and off to the side, and then had to use a hand to push it off the spike on her axe. She struggled to kick its body free but it took her rolling both of them around on the floor until she could finally pull herself away from it.
Patrina climbed to her feet, trembling and angry at the same time. She stared at where the snake had been and saw dozens of white eggs practically glowing in the darkness. She scowled and took a step towards them, and then cried out
She forced herself to her feet again and, moving carefully, crushed every last egg she could find with her axe. The baby snakes weren't ready to survive on their own yet, sparing her the misery of hunting down a hundred baby snakes on a bad leg. She turned away and limped back to the junction of hallways and made her way to the door at the end. It was already opened nearly a full foot, enough room for the snake with a full meal in its belly to slip through. Patrina shuddered and stepped through, only to find herself looking at a staircase that led up.
She paused a moment and then nodded. "Almost there, Trina," she whispered to herself. "Just a little farther and then you can rescue Alto."
She put her foot on the first step and wondered if Alto had been as terrified or as clueless when he'd come to rescue her from the dragon.