There was no time for him to grieve or cry, either. He had a mission that needed to be done in the coming year and a half, which meant he had to find a long ladder, a pick, and a shovel. There was going to be a lot of digging. That reminded him—he needed torches, too. It was awfully dark down in the cave with the strange name of metro tunnel.
Lavr Nalin had given him a job to do.
Chapter 6
THEY WEREN’T LETTING anyone out of the city. For three days, Baron Equire’s guards swept the area in search of the escaped lixes. And of the twenty-two that had gotten away, they were able to find and take out twenty-one, the last one gone without a trace. It was almost as if it had disappeared into the ground. The farmers were nervous, refusing to head out into their fields for fear of the toothy beast finding and shredding them in seconds. None of them had a shield capable of standing up to it for long. Of course, the guards led by Motar and Tekhor did their best to assist the troops, but they still came up empty-handed.
“This is pointless,” Darod Bifo, the commander of the baron’s troops, announced after yet another fruitless raid. “We’re just wasting time—the animal already headed back home. Let’s go! Motar, the defense of the city is on your shoulders. I’ll be expecting a report in a week.”
Their horses squealed as spurs dug into their sides, the detachment galloping out of the city and leaving the townsfolk to look at each other. The same question was plastered across all their faces: what if the lix hadn’t gone home and was actually hiding somewhere?
“What are you all waiting for? Let’s go! It’s our job to defend the city!” Motar was the first to come to his senses. Boots tramped dully across the pavement as the guards rushed off, and the commander twirled his mustache in satisfaction before turning to Tailyn.
“Hey, kid, don’t go too far. I want you to be visible from the wall at all times, got it?”
Tailyn nodded, still completely out of his element. Over the previous three days, he’d become a town legend complete with all the fables that came with the title. The guards didn’t help; instead, they threw in their own embellishments. In fact, it got to the point that everyone considered Tailyn the hero of the battle, having completely forgotten about the mages. Gone and more feared than respected, they were better scrubbed right out of the picture. But Tailyn was there and one of their own. They could give him a cuff or a slap if he didn’t listen, and who doesn’t like giving it to a town legend?
Motar’s order completely derailed Tailyn’s plans. He’d already asked the plumber to make him a ten-meter ladder, the guy having been taken aback by the unusual request until he’d been handed a nice, little coin. That had been enough for him to get to work. By the time the finished product was ready for Tailyn to pick up, an enormous crowd had gathered to mock the kid. Being a hero certainly didn’t mean they were going to let him live his life in peace. No, everyone wanted to feel just a bit superior, and so there they were to laugh at the absurdly long piece of equipment. The boy was surprised and embarrassed to see everybody there. Not understanding what was going on and without thinking twice, he dropped the ladder in his virtual inventory. There, it joined enough food for two weeks, a few large bottles of water, a shovel, a pick, a sleeping back, coils of rope, torches, and even a few bundles of firewood. The cave presumably didn’t have anything to burn in it, and the boy was definitely going to be looking to warm up during the cold nights. The expedition was going to be a long one. At least, Tailyn was planning on staying down there until he’d dug far enough to reach the tunnel.
A surprised gasp rippled around the workshop as soon as the ladder disappeared, further accentuating the legend of the great warrior. Tailyn’s guardian couldn’t be bothered with him—he’d spent the previous three days locked up in his palace letting nobody inside. Everything was perfect, which made Motar’s order that much more frustrating. Still, he left the city. Sitting around was getting on his nerves, and he wanted to cheer himself up.
“Remember what the boss said?” the guard at the gate asked.
“Yes, gather my herbs and come right back. When the new herbalist shows up, she’ll need them,” Tailyn replied. Rumor had it that Master Isor had written the baron and asked for someone to step in for Mistress Valanil. The replacement for the woman who’d been kidnapped by the lixes was supposedly going to be showing up shortly.
“Good, just don’t go far. The god only knows where that lix is hiding.” The guard peered out at the area surrounding the gate, doing his best to spot their foe. Needless to say, it was nowhere to be found.
For two whole days, Tailyn followed Motar’s instructions to the letter, gathering flowers right by the city walls. Surprisingly enough, there were plenty of them—there were lots of herbalists in the city, though none dared venture outside it. A level three lix was an excellent reason to call in sick and spend a few days at home. At first, Tailyn shared their concern, constantly looking around and keeping his electric strike card clutched in one hand. But nothing happened, and the anxiety gradually subsided. Tekhor’s squad continually patrolled the surroundings in a fruitless attempt to find the last beast. Quite possibly, it really had run off back home. People slowly began leaving the city and getting to work. The first few headed out, then whole groups left, and finally, Motar was forced to lift all restrictions and call off the hunt. The lix was assumed to have run off.
Tailyn’s two days of work resulted in 112 daisies, 87 lavender flowers, and plenty of sideways glances from the other herbalists. And as soon as the quarantine was lifted, the boy headed straight into the ancient city. He was accompanied by a veritable crowd of boys looking for their first stone, with adults and a few guards standing somewhat farther off. Just in case.
But nobody had any desire to venture any deeper into the city. The boys, looking around nervously and expecting the evil monster to come leaping out from behind every rock, grabbed a stone and dashed back to the safety of the adults. Meanwhile, Tailyn “accidentally” ducked behind some ruins, waited for everything to die down, made sure everyone had headed back without noticing he’d gone missing, and then headed higherup. He was on his way to the hole.
It took the boy a few hours to reach his destination. Never in his wildest dreams would he have imagined that there could be so many loaches growing in the city of the ancients. And since there was no way he could leave the loot just lying there on the ground, by the time he got to the hole, he had 94 flowers in his inventory. If he could find an alchemical lab somewhere, he was finally ready to make elixirs. But where was he going to find one of those in a border town?
Everything was as quiet by the hole as it was in the rest of the dead city. Materializing his ladder, Tailyn rubbed the nape of his neck—he hadn’t thought about how he was going to get the enormous piece of equipment down below. It weighed quite a bit, almost as much as the boy himself. And he didn’t just have to get it down into the hole; feeding it into the opening meant getting it almost vertical. Tailyn wasn’t sure if he was strong enough for that.