The remaining two, one large and the smaller one, stay focused on me. I give up on singing and start running, grabbing Kaelen’s hand when he catches up to me. We swerve toward the left wall at the same time Trick lashes the wagon horses to speed them around the right wall, Sergeant Neville following him with the rest of our horses.
The two draugrs lose a bit of focus, swinging their blocky heads back and forth between me, Bern, and Kaelen on one side and everyone else plus our horses and wagon on the other.
“Keep going,” Kaelen shouts, his face hard. He speeds up and pulls me behind him, sure-footed as ever. He runs like he’s practiced racing around this cave for his entire life, while I stumble over piles of fallen jewels like the clumsy non-athlete I am.
Fora moment or two, I think we have a chance, but then, before we can reach the tunnel, the smallest draugr intercepts us. Kaelen draws his sword, and I duck, screaming, when the monster sweeps one thick arm at us.
I’m not fast enough to avoid it.
The huge stone hand smashes me into Kaelen. Both of us fly through the air, and I’m still screaming. I try to twist or somersault, like Chitai did, but physics, or the laws of motion, or my complete lack of desert warrior training defies me.
The prince crashes to the rocky ground, and I fall on top of him, mostly, but my head bangs against a pile of jewels, and I feel a spurt of warmth from my forehead stream down my face.
“I can’t see! I can’t see!”
“Soli! Move!” Kaelen shouts, but I don’t understand where to move, and I can’t see. I try to wipe the blood—it must be blood—out of my eyes with my sleeve and regain my sight just in time to see Bern crash down next to me.
And he’s not moving.
It doesn’t even look like he’s breathing.
“Kaelen!”
But it’s too late. I look up from Bern’s lifeless body just in time to see the draugr pick Kaelen up by one arm and then smash him down, hard.
So hard there’s no way the prince can survive it.
And then Kaelen disappears.
My head is still bleeding profusely. Maybe I hit it so hard I’m hallucinating? There’s no way the draugr smashed Kaelen into the ground so hard he …dissolved, but maybe it’s magic, maybe it’s the unspeakable evil Artemisen warned us about, maybe …
The draugr turns to me.
And he smiles.
Hesmiles.
I try to stand up, but I’m too dizzy, and my head aches like nothing I’ve ever felt before. When I fall to the ground again, I scrabble backward on hands and knees toward Bern. At least I can protect thesoldier, though the draugr keeps coming.
I remember the others and look across the cave to see Neville and Trick fighting one of the creatures, and Chitai fighting another, with Elianna shooting balls of energy at it.
The fourth draugr is down, bleeding, with a sword sticking out of one eye fissure.
“Soli!” Trick yells. “Hang on!”
I want to hang on, I do, but Kaelen disappeared, and Bern is dead, and the draugr is still advancing, still smiling, as he bends down with a horrible grinding-rock noise and grabs my shoulder in one giant hand. Then he lifts me up over his head, and I just have time to scream before he smashes me to the ground like he did Kaelen. I close my eyes, because I don’t want to watch my own death.
But then I’m falling. Falling, not being battered against rock or piles of jewels.
Falling into darkness … until something grabs me by the neck and yanks hard, nearly strangling me.
My scream turns to choking. I look up, expecting to find a draugr’s stony arm connected to a hand around my neck, but my peril has nothing to do with the draugr. My scarlet cloak is caught on a jutting stone sticking out from the side of the pit I now dangle above, and it’s threatening to choke me to death.
“Soli!”
It’s Kaelen’s voice, down beneath me, but I have to untie the strings before I die from lack of air. I get a hand between the ties and my throat and gasp in a breath, and then I frantically look and find him balancing on a tiny ledge a few paces below me. The pit seems to be incredibly deep. Worse, I see nothing but total darkness beneath Kaelen.
“Soli! Can you climb back up?”
