Kell stumbled as he tried to run. Saeldian caught him. “Think of Lorzok. You can find him. You always can. Where is he?”
“Are you sure it’s not them?” He was choking on it. That smell stopped his nose and coated his tongue, and now he could smell blood and terrified sweat, and Saeldian shouted, right next to his ear, and a streak of purple hung in the air where their spell bolts had fired, knockingsomethingback. And on the edges of that purple burned into his vision, it rushed toward them.
Saeldian flung something in its direction, and the air filled with moths, fluttering and bumbling.
“Come on.” They yanked Kell along, leaving the cloud of moths behind. “Find Lorzok. You know him. Where is he?”
“I have to hold still.”
“Do you think we have time for that?” Saeldian yelled. “That spell’s not going to hold that thing forever.”
“I can’t do it on the run!” Kell dug his heels in. “It’ll only take a moment, but I need a moment.”
“Fine.” Saeldian stepped around Kell and faced the way they’d come. “Take your minute. But be faster than that.”
Right. Lorzok. Kell’s breath shuddered too hard to be calming, and the rotten mushrooms and blood smell tainted the air.Don’t think about that. Think about Lorzok, who is looking for you, who is worried.They were all worried, but Kell’s glad big-hearted friend, who had everything to give anyone who needed kindness, who was kind and strong and subtly funny, was looking for him and Saeldian right now.
From behind him, an outraged scream of pain, and another. It was close, it was too close.
“I’ve got it,” Saeldian said, and a moment later, it screamed again.
The smell hurt his eyes. He closed them even though his eyelids scraped as they sank shut, and the smell pulsed like puffs of breath, then there was another screech as Saeldian struck it with another bolt.
Had it been a minute? No. Lorzok. Kell reached for the feeling of him. Lorzok felt like warm comfort. The kindness of fixing tea and listening. And the feeling of him warmed his senses in that direction. He wasn’t far. He was coming.
Kell grabbed his crossbow, turned around, and saw Ikariel, half burnt and the rest bruised, rushing at Saeldian with a scream that made him want to scream too. The sound cut straight into his mind, and it hurt so badly. He wanted to run, but his feet wouldn’t move. There was nowhere to go.
If he put his hands up, Ikariel would know he was sorry. If he dropped the crossbow, she would stop this.
No.That wasn’t Ikariel.
Saeldian stepped aside and stabbed at it.Ikariel—no, not Ikariel, not with that smell, not with those rows of teeth and claws.Kell shook his head, trying to make room for doubt. He raised the crossbow again and fired a bolt straight at Ikariel’s heart. “Tough luck!”
She clutched at it with one hand and howled so Kell’s own heart turned to ice. Saeldian couldn’t do this alone; he had to do something—
It burned when he drew in a deep breath, but he sang, “Second daughter’s hands can never bring the wedding banns before her sister’s fortune, Eldest Astrid said, spin the bobbins, wind the skeins up—”
“Bobbins and Skeins” was awful drivel, and Kell sounded like he was strangling it. His voice sounded like a marble in a glass jug. But the magic didn’t care, and Saeldian’s next bolt of magic stopped the monster’s awful scream and knocked it backward into the water. Kell braced himself for the monster’s splashing struggleto rise, but the ripples spread as time ironed them flat, and Saeldian stood staring at him, wide-eyed and speechless.
Kell couldn’t talk even if he wanted to. All he could do was watch Saeldian as shouting and footsteps grew gradually louder behind him. He didn’t know when he stepped close enough to lay hands on their shoulders, and Saeldian couldn’t take their eyes off him.
They licked their lips and said, “But I hate that song.”
Trust Saeldian to have feedback about the first thing he’d sung in years. “It saved us.”
“Kell!” Lorzok shouted. “Saeldian! Are you all right?”
“Here!” Kell shouted. He turned toward Lorzok’s voice and waved. More practically, Saeldian cast fireworks into the sky to mark their location. Jubilee wove around Lorzok to dash into Saeldian’s arms and pick them up off their feet.
“You were there and then you weren’t there,” she said.
Timtim hopped to Kell’s side, and Kell picked him up. The almiraj propped one paw on Kell’s shoulder and glared at him with flattened ears. Even his nose wiggled disapprovingly.
“I’m sorry, Timtim. We didn’t mean to get lost.”
“We could hear footsteps,” Lorzok said. “Then I realized that they didn’t sound right, so I turned around.”
“You could tell by our normal footsteps?” Saeldian asked.
