She pushed Fletcher’s sodden bag over. At the loss of their precious petals, a pulse of fear spread across Fletcher’s chest—they were their only source of immunity from the ether’s atmosphere’s natural poison—but he pushed that worry aside for the moment. Instead, he opened the satchel and was relieved to find the tight leather casing had kept most of the water out. Rummaging at the very bottom, he dug out the jacket Berdon had given him for his birthday and wrapped it tightly around his mother’s shoulders, pulling the hood over her head. She rubbed her cheek against the soft down of the rabbit fur.
For the first time, he met his mother’s eyes. The swamp water had washed most of the dirt from her face, and Fletcher marveled at the striking resemblance to her twin, Josephine, the woman he had seen by Zacharias Forsyth’s side at his trial. However, she was by no means identical, not in her current state. Her eyes were sunken, staring blankly past him. He brushed a stray hair from her cheek, which was so gaunt that it bordered on skeletal. Who knew what she had suffered in the seventeen years of her captivity?
“Alice, can you hear me?” Fletcher said. He tried to meet her gaze, but there was no light behind her stare. “Mother?”
“Mother?” Othello repeated gently. “Fletcher … are you okay? This is Lady Cavendish.”
“No,” Fletcher replied, helping the woman get her skinny arms into the jacket. “Lady Cavendish died in her fall; the prisoner was never her. This woman had been there for far longer … my whole life. She recognized Athena, and called for her baby, and I remember her face from my dream. This is my mother. The orcs took her when I was a child.”
Othello creased his brow, then understanding dawned upon him. But, even as he opened his mouth to speak, his eyes flicked to the murky waters behind them.
“Get back!” Othello yelled, diving across the shell. Fletcher was tackled to the ground, and he heard the hollow snap of jaws above his head. Fetid, fish-laden breath washed over him, then the creature was gone, slipping back into the dark pools around them with barely a sound.
Fletcher caught a glimpse of a reptilian head, and for a panicked moment he thought the Wyverns had caught up with them. But then he saw the humped, log-like shapes in the water around them, and his lessons at Vocans flashed unbidden to his mind.
Sobeks. Great bipedal crocodile-like creatures that used their claws and jaws to tear apart their opponents, if their large tails didn’t batter them to death first. Hunched over at five feet tall, the Sobek was a level-nine demon.
And now they were surrounded by dozens of them.
CHAPTER
2
FLETCHER SCRAMBLED BACK, dragging his mother with him. They pressed against Lysander’s side with the others, but they were still no more than a few feet from the water—and the humped shapes lurking beneath the surface.
“Where did they come from?” Cress gasped, drawing her seax from its scabbard.
“They must have sensed the Zaratan,” Sylva said. “Sobeks prey on juveniles like ours.”
The shell shook beneath them, and Fletcher saw that they had stopped their slow passage down the waterway. There was a splash as the nearest Sobek thrashed its tail with excitement. They had their prey cornered.
“Our ride’s going to dive,” Othello warned, struggling onto his knees. “Has Lysander recovered? He’ll drown!”
Another tremor rocked them, but they didn’t sink. Instead the Zaratan held its ground, even as the Sobeks began to circle, their ridged, leathery backs barely breaking the surface.
“Why isn’t it diving?” Fletcher murmured. He peered into the water, and the golden eyes of the Zaratan stared back at him.
“It’s … protecting us,” he whispered. “It knows we’d die in the water.”
“Well, it’ll just die with us if we don’t do something,” Sylva snarled, tugging her bow from her shoulders. She reached over her shoulder for an arrow, but her quiver was empty, its contents lost to the swamp.
A Sobek lunged at the Zaratan. The turtle demon jerked, dipping his shell to one side, and Lysander slid down the surface. He struggled weakly to climb back up, but as he clawed at the gentle incline, the nearest Sobeks saw their chance. The water foamed white as two separated from the pack, their thick tails lashing back and forth as they homed in on the powerless Griffin. The others hung back: They were more patient than their siblings.
“No!” Fletcher yelled, drawing his khopesh and leaping over Lysander’s inert body. Sylva followed, her curved falx held high as the two monsters sped toward them. Yellow-green eyes flashed, then the first leaped from the water. It crouched low on its two legs and scraped its claws along the shell, leaving furrows in the algae coating. The long snout opened, revealing a cavernous yellow mouth filled with jagged teeth.
It lashed out, so fast that Fletcher barely had time to parry it, meeting the five sickle-shaped claws in the curve of his khopesh. The power in the Sobek’s arms was immense, and Fletcher could barely keep the needle points from hooking into his face. He heaved his sword with both hands, in desperation.
The demon’s second arm swung up, and only a frantic swipe from Sylva’s falx deflected the blow. Even as she did so, the other Sobek sprang from the water, and she had to turn and meet it.
Teeth snapped over Fletcher’s blade, forcing him to lean back, teetering on the slippery surface of the shell. Then the Sobek broke away and spun low. Its heavy tail whipped around, knocking Fletcher’s feet from under him. His head cracked against the shell beneath, and his vision bruised. The khopesh fell from his nerveless fingers.
The yellow jaws of the Sobek flashed down, but even as its hot breath wafted over him, a ball of flame blasted the demon into the water, leaving the scent of scorched flesh in Fletcher’s nostrils.
Ignatius had come to the rescue.
In his concussed haze, Fletcher scrambled to his knees and saw Othello, Cress and Sylva advance together, hacking and parrying the remaining Sobek. Seeing its partner defeated, it dove back in with an angry bellow, leaving the trio panting by the water’s edge.
“We can’t fight them all,” Fletcher gasped, snatching back his khopesh as Ignatius scampered onto his shoulder. Athena remained with his mother, keeping the confused woman from leaving the relative safety of the center of the shell.
The burned Sobek seemed none the worse from Ignatius’s attack, but it slipped away into the network of trees opposite them. Its retreat did not deter the others—already they were circling closer, perhaps encouraged by the pitiful resistance from the stranded team. It would not be long now.
“Fire won’t work, not in the water anyway,” Othello wheezed. “Kinetic blasts won’t do it either.”
“Lightning,” Cress said, and suddenly Tosk was on her shoulder, his furry tail crackling with electric sparks.
“No,” Fletcher shouted, holding up his hand. “The spell would fan out in the water and hit the Zaratan too. We’ll sink.”
“We can cross that bridge when we come to it,” Cress replied. “It’s the only spell that’ll work.”
“Don’t waste your mana,” Sylva said, gesturing at the circling Sobeks. “It won’t be powerful enough to kill them all.”