Reap the Wind (Cassandra Palmer 7)

“Aughhh, aughhh!” the guard screamed, as the floor rose up to meet us, because I’d been wrong, it wasn’t straight down. It was a slalom course of turns and twists and dips, in between collapsed heaps of ceiling for us to run into and wide fissures for us to fall into and no way to avoid them except by throwing our body weight one way or the other.

Which might have worked better if we’d been touching the floor more than half the time.

“Bring us down! Bring us down!” the little guard was yelling as we scraped across the ceiling. But we didn’t come down until he let go of my neck to smack the board over his friend’s chest. Which was the last straw for our charmed, trapped fey, who punched him right in the jaw.

They started fighting, and we started dropping, and rising, and dropping, and rising, and slamming and ricocheting back and forth between floor and ceiling, and banking and almost flipping, and screaming our way down, down, down, until I was sure the damned thing would never end—

And then it did.

Because we burst out of the side of a cliff, on a waterfall that was no longer there. Just an opening onto sunlight and air and a river that could best be described as way the hell too far below. Especially after our little patch decided to take that moment to finally give up the ghost.

“Oh, shiiiiiiit!”

• • •

“Is that really your name?” Pritkin demanded as we crawled up onto the shore some time later.

I staggered onto a pebble-lined stretch of sand, heaving and sniffling and making strange little shock-y sounds that I’d probably be embarrassed about later if I survived long enough. I flopped down, rolled over onto my back, and watched the smoke rise from a completely destroyed stretch of mountainside. Trees, bushes, and streams had all been swallowed by a scar that had to be a mile long. Had to be.

I lay there, too exhausted to even gasp and too shaken to freak out. Even when the smaller troll started doing it for me, emitting a terrible, ululating cry at decibel levels not meant for human ears. Luckily, mine were too full of water to burst. And then he ran off, the sound of tiny running feet and an answering cry echoing back to us from somewhere nearby.

Pritkin dropped down beside me, breathing heavily. The remaining troll started cursing weakly. Another piece of mountainside collapsed, like a soufflé somebody had taken out of the oven at the wrong time, loud enough, even at a distance, to make me cringe.

“Ohshit?”

“It’s more the story of my life,” I said miserably.

And then I passed out.

Chapter Forty-five

Two hours later, I was sitting on top of a platform perched high in a tree, while a tiny Wookie barred the only exit. The platform was connected to a lot of other platforms on a lot of other trees by rope bridges, swinging vines, and weighted boards that went up and down and sometimes around via a complicated system I was too tired to figure out.

Especially since I wasn’t likely to be using it.

The tiny Wookie regarded me steadily out of a wildly bearded face. Ewoks, I thought. The little ones had been called Ewoks. Only this version wasn’t quite that hairy, and there was human intelligence in those dark eyes. And human-ish features under all that hair.

Well, except for the nose, which managed to make even Pritkin’s look petite. And the large, gnarled hands. And the beard, which was black and bushy and big enough to have hidden anything, including more of the weapons he had draped around everywhere. And the teeth, which were more canine pointed than human blunt . . .

On second thought, I didn’t think Lucas would have cast these guys, after all.

I told myself to get a grip already. Only it didn’t work so well since I didn’t know where Pritkin was, and that went double for his father. And I didn’t know where to find another, preferably nonflooded, portal to take us back to earth. And I couldn’t have reached it even if I had known because there was an Ewok in front of the only bridge out of here.

Who was starting to look a little worried, maybe because I was now glaring at him.

I turned around and glared at the scene beneath me, instead.

It was pretty. The sun had set about an hour ago and the stars were out. But they were hard to see because of the thickness of the leafy canopy overhead, and because of all the light scattered around below. There were fires burning among the trees, cheery campfires and twinkling torches and a big bonfire-type thing just below us, where a bunch of tiny, hairy men were trying to wrestle something onto a huge spit.

They hadn’t managed it yet, but other scents were starting to drift through the air, making my stomach growl and my mouth water. But there was nothing to do but sit and salivate. And scratch. Because what had once looked like an unfortunate Muppet had degenerated into a large, hairy wart after being soaked and dried.

But nobody else was wearing shorts, so I’d thought it best to keep it on.

“You know, they gave Leia a new dress,” I told the guard, over my shoulder.

He didn’t feel it necessary to reply, maybe because I didn’t have any PowerBars to share.

God, I thought fervently, PowerBars. Or jerky. Or really anything, anything at all. They never showed this part in the movies, how adventures mean you’re constantly filthy and beat-up and exhausted and starving. No, Leia had been pristine with perfect hair, and her dress—her nice, soft, flattering dress—had been well pressed and she hadn’t looked like she was getting ready to start gnawing the boards off the damn platform!