The Flame and the Arrow by Emigh Cannaday
Chapter 45
the Pazachi’s invention
The girl struggled as Talvi began tying her hands behind her back, but his strength was too much for her. She glared at him with her icy blue eyes and dug her heels into the ground, but he only pushed her ahead. Annika tried not to cry as she saw a few women holding their sobbing children tightly, and they backed away from the group as they filed through. Sariel seemed incredibly disturbed as well, but she kept her sword ready in her hand as they delved deeper into the cave, leaving Natari and Takeshi to guard the survivors.
“Well, which way?” Justinian asked. The girl said nothing. Talvi jerked her around to face him, his eyes piercing hers. Annika knew that he was reading her mind, but for having just killed her father, he didn’t act very sympathetic. The girl glanced at his quiver of blue-tipped arrows strapped to his back.
“You’re the one who killed my parents!” she hissed. “I’ll have my revenge, mark my words!”
“Do you really expect me to be afraid of a naïve little thing like you?” he said without a shred of remorse. “Why, you’re just a little girl with a big mouth. You’re not even a woman yet, so I doubt there’s much you’re capable of.” The girl’s eyes opened wide as if she were ready to scream, but she said nothing. He pointed the opposite direction they had been walking.
“She was leading us the wrong way,” he announced. “It’s down the way we came, to the right.”
They wandered into a large bare room. The only things inside of it were the eerie looking mineral deposits that Finn had been so knowledgeable about at the vampire’s cave. Dardis and Chivanni flitted high above their heads, lighting the room with their blue and orange lights. There was indeed a strange wheel made of glittering red and blue stones, spinning quickly with an elaborate series of blue and red gears turning on both sides. In the center of the wheel was nothing, but as Annika and the others drew near, she saw that there was definitely something inside of it. The only thing she could compare it to was the swirl of soapy water when she used to blow giant bubbles with the children she baby sat on the army bases. The circle had a shiny, wet look to it, with swirls of color passing across the strange frame in which it was held. On either side of the bizarre wheel were twenty stones on their own pillar, with elaborate writing next to each of them. Healed by Justinian’s magic powers, Finn stepped close to read them.
“Dardis, come close, will you? I think I can read what this says,” he said. The blue-haired fairy zipped down and hovered near the stone, giving him plenty of light to read by.
“These say…these stones represent all of the gates that have been shut down. I think…” He wandered to the stones on the other side of the wheel and Dardis followed him. “I think…ah, yes. Here is the one from your cave,” he said to Hilda as he pointed to a stone near the back. “This was the last one to be closed.”
“Then what is this big wheel for?” Zaven asked. “Does it say anything about what it is?”
Finn scratched his head, reading the inscriptions next to each stone.
“It says this is the gate that leads to all gates. But it doesn’t say how to operate it.”
Justinian took possession of Talvi’s young prisoner.
“Your father built it, didn’t he? Surely you know how it works,” he demanded, trying his best to look intimidating. But the angry girl just sneered boldly at the large knight, completely unafraid.
“He never showed me,” she spat, glaring at Talvi. Her eyes glanced over to Annika’s left hand before resuming her hateful stare at him. But something had changed; now there was a gleam in her expression that shone just as bright as the platinum rings they wore.
“She’s not lying, not this time,” Talvi said. “She doesn’t know how to operate it. She knows that it’s made of gold and sapphire and ruby, if that helps you at all.” Finn held his chin in his hand, perplexed at the strange riddle of the wheel before them. Annika touched her wedding band, and had a thought.
“Chivanni, do you know where the diamond from my old ring is?” she asked him. He jammed his hand into a bag he was wearing over his shoulder and pulled it out, proudly holding it in front of him in his little hands. He was still hovering over the wheel with Dardis, lighting the room for everyone. The diamond looked even larger, being held in his tiny hands.
“I kept it because it’s so beautiful,” he breathed. “Look at it sparkle! It’s so pretty.” Annika ignored his remark, having just had been struck by a thought that made total sense to her.
“I just remembered something you told me at our wedding. You said magic couldn’t alter a diamond.”
“Yes, I’m afraid I can’t make it larger or smaller. It’s a pity. I would like to make dozens more of them,” Chivanni lamented while he gazed at the enchanting stone.
“But,” Annika said slowly. “If magic can’t alter a diamond, could a diamond alter magic?” Chivanni’s eyes grew wide and before she could ask him any more questions, Dardis spoke up.
“Give it back to Annika! It’s not yours to keep!” she demanded, holding out her little hand authoritatively. Chivanni backed away, fluttering his wings. Dardis reached her own little hands around the glittering stone and struggled with him. Chivanni whined while she argued with him, until they bumped into a stalactite, where it fell into the precious stone gears and was crushed to dust instantly.
“Stop playing around, you two, and just give it back!” Nikola said angrily, wincing as they bumped into a few more stalactites. They too fell into the gears and were crushed to nothing. The fairies were battling it out with each other, zigging and zagging back and forth in the air over everyone’s heads. They finally broke apart, looking at each other with confused expressions before noticing their empty hands. Neither of them had been victorious.
“Oh no!” Chivanni cried as he and everyone else watched the diamond fall right for the gears. Annika gasped, fearing that it would meet the same fate as the stalactites had. The whirring gears made a horrible crunch and jammed in place. The clear, soapy circle began to grow cloudy and dark at once.
“What did you do?” Zaven huffed angrily. “You two broke the machine, and now we’ll never know how to make it work!” Finn was frowning, but not in anger or irritation. The cloudy circle grew even darker, like a thick grey fog was lying behind it.
“They did break it…” he said slowly. “Diamonds are harder than sapphire or ruby. It’s harder and stronger than anything in existence. Perhaps Annika is right. Perhaps a diamond can alter magic!”
Annika gasped as a woman flew out of the giant murky circle, followed by another woman, and then at least a dozen other people before a tall man with curly blond hair fell through. He crawled to his hands and knees as a deer bounded over him, nearly landing on his back. He rolled off to one side and Yuri and Talvi’s eyes grew wide.
“Asbjorn! Are you alright?” the twins asked as they rushed over to help him up. The tall blond had barely enough time to stand before a shorter, dark-haired man was thrown out of the wheel.
“Pavlo, is it really you?” Konstantin cried. All the people that had been trapped on the other sides of the portals were now being spewed out in the order in which they went missing. More animals and even a few birds fell on the floor of the cave, scampering and flying away quickly towards the forest in a flurry of feathers and tails. Everyone scrambled about, trying to pull every person out of the way as more and more people were thrown from the void. At last it seemed the jewel-encrusted gate had emptied itself of all who had gone missing. Then Annika felt her ears plug up as the air pressure changed. The natural balance of the portals that had existed for all eternity was beginning to rectify itself.
“Annika!” called Talvi, while he desperately clutched her against his chest, but it was of no use. She was being pulled by a giant vacuum into the dark circle. She frantically looked to Talvi for help, but his terrified face was being encased in blackness. She reached out for him, and then suddenly there was no sound at all. She couldn’t even s
She was lying on concrete.