Ivo swore and his eagle sailed into the air like an arrow loosed from a bow.
There was an odd, wailing sound.
I looked over my shoulder to see figures dropping down from the side of the rock, holding ropes.
No – not ropes. Glowing, spirit snakes.
Zayana screamed as one of them snatched her up, his snake twisting around her body and binding her arms to her sides.
Five more attackers were in our boat already as I struggled to my feet, feeling for the short sword that wasn’t there. I pulled my belt knife instead, lunging toward the nearest figure. This was why you didn’t take a girl’s sword no matter how “violent” you thought she was.
The man nearest me had stone-grey skin and he was dressed entirely in snakeskins and emerald-colored scale armor. His green eyes glittered in the light as he lunged toward me, his snake darting beside him as if it might sink its teeth into me.
I slashed at the snake and it dodged back. I lunged after it, but the snake’s manifestor grabbed my arm, pulling it behind my back and wrenching it up so high that I yelled in agony. I tried to kick back, but he increased the pressure, pinning me in place.
My eyes flicked over to the others. Osprey’s bird dove down between the rocks, snatching up one of our attackers in his talons and flinging him against the rocks. He hit hard, falling lifelessly to the water with a splash.
Osprey pulled his short swords, leaping up with a growl in his throat. He leapt at the same moment that his osprey dipped under him. Os spun slightly as Osprey landed on his back, eyes up. A look of shock flooded his face a half-second before a silver net landed over him and the bird, dragging them back to the floor of the boat.
Another craft rushed down the river behind us, sealing the route out of the narrow chute in the river. Men and women dressed in scale armor stood in the bow of the boat, their expressions grim and their long polearms pointed toward us.
Ivo’s bird reared up, its powerful wings knocking three of the warriors from the prow of the boat.
“Surrender!” the man holding my arm yelled out across the boat. “Surrender and you may yet live.”
A pair of snakes rushed down from above, snatching up Juste Montpetit from the bottom of the boat. They curled around him, rising slowly into the air with his unconscious body cradled in their embrace. His eyes flickered open slightly and his own snake emerged – this time, coiling out from his ear. It curled around the other snakes almost affectionately and their glow brightened with the touch.
My stomach flipped at the sight.
“No moving!” my captor barked, jamming my arm harder behind my back.
I grunted in pain, sweat breaking out across my brow. My vision went black for a heartbeat and then returned in time for me to see Osprey shoving his swords back into their sheathes with a sour grimace on his face. He met my gaze and winked – one of those harsh winks that I was starting to think were his way of saying “hang in there” more than anything playful or secretive. He jammed a new toothpick in his mouth. Would he ever run out of those things? Os rose from his shoulders and passed through the net. He rose, up, up, up past the rock faces and the snakes and high into the sky as if to escape all of the chaos.
Behind Osprey in the rear of the boat, Ivo’s hands were raised, a dozen polearm blades tickling the edge of his neck.
A long snake manifestation slithered down, dangling in front of him, its tongue darting in and out of a too-large mouth. I swallowed and then it struck, wrapping itself fiercely around his waist and shooting upward into the tangled trees above the river.
“Please,” I said, worried now. “Please don’t say we all have to go up that way. We don’t mean any harm.”
I was starting to hate snakes almost more than the Forbidding.
A snake dropped down beside us and my captor moved so quickly that I gasped. He released my arm, wrapping his arm around my waist and grabbing the snake in the other hand. My feet were ripped from the ground as we rose into the air so fast that my breath caught in my lungs. The boat was below me, the net holding it in place as white water frothed around it. A glowing yellow spirit-snake dipped downward toward Osprey.
I opened my mouth to scream but the harsh voice behind me said, “No screaming or I’ll hit you over the head.”
And then we were stumbling onto the ground above in a single slash of open space between waves of Forbidding. The land twisted on either side of us, splitting into ribbons and curling or spiraling in every direction as if infuriated by our presence. The man holding my waist released it, moving his grip to my upper arm so he could direct me forward. He stepped toward the Forbidding and I froze.
His harsh laugh sounded sincere as he dragged me toward the tangle, his spirit-snake sliding before us like a rolled out rug. The moment his snake met the Forbidding, it stilled, seeming to part for him.
I tried to look back, to see what they’d done with Ivo and Osprey or where they had taken Juste and Zayana, but my captor pulled me roughly forward.
“Where are we going?” I asked him.
Was he taking me away from the group? What was he planning to do?
I tried to feel my bees, but everything was a blur mixing with the buzzing in my chest.
“You have one of ours in that boat. And we keep what is ours,” my captor said roughly.
“And the rest of us?”
“He’ll tell us what to do with you.”
I almost snorted at the irony. Even when Juste wasn’t conscious, what he wanted ruled. Even when crazy grey-skinned people emerged from the wilderness dressed in the skins of snakes – it was still what he wanted. There was just no winning with him.
Chapter Six
I HARDLY HAD TIME TO gasp and a blindfold was jammed over my eyes. I shivered. It was probably more snakeskin.
My hands were lashed together, and I was pulled by the arm through the woods – with what I could only imagine was the Forbidding or more of those horrific snakes tangling around my legs. My stomach lurched at the thought. Something snagged my foot and a spike of fear shot hot through me. What were they going to do to us? And who in the world were these people? My captor spoke with a strange accent and his clothing was unlike any I’d seen before. Wouldn’t we have heard if the Far Stones had been invaded?
“Aella?!” the call sounded far away.
“Zayana!” I called back. “Are you hurt?”
“I’m fine,” her words were a little breathless. “Do they have Le Majest?”
“Yes,” I called back. Her loyalty was unshaken – as always. I would have thought that his snake manifestations would change that.
My captor tugged me roughly. “No talking. I would not like to stretch your pretty neck, but I will if I must, bird girl.”
I opened my mouth and pain blossomed across my cheek. He’d hit me. I clenched my jaw tightly and tried to focus on what I could feel, blinking past the pain. We’d all been captured. That meant no one was coming to save us. I’d have to think of a way to get away from these people – whoever they were – on my own.
I felt for my bees. They hummed in Juste Montpetit’s chest. He was ahead somewhere. I could feel that. I could hear grunts and a cry of pain that sounded like Ivo. I twisted my hands against my bonds. Pain blossomed as I was cuffed across the cheek again.