PART THREE
Nettle and Thorn were led along the quarry road to a great cave in the white stone. The chalk mine had been abandoned, picks and shovels laid out to rust in the rain. Likely the curse the sorcerer had brought to the island had scared the workers away.
The pair were taken down winding paths within the ground, lit only by the torches of the undead. The sorcerer came behind them, his enchanted chain still holding Thorn prisoner and his servants forcing Nettle onward with her, waving their flickering flames at his heels.
Soon they came upon a great subterranean chamber, walls carved out from the heart of the island itself, shining white. It was lit by a shaft of daylight from a passage in the middle of the ceiling, which led straight up, all the way out to the open sky. The air down in the chamber, however, was heavy with the stench of decay.
All around them stood the living dead, blank eyes watching and waiting for the orders of their wicked master. There were dozens of them, some not long deceased, some decayed almost to the bone. Two guarded a pile of looted treasure, simple trinkets and small gems looted from graves, atop which sat the stolen bronze sword taken anew from Nettle’s old scabbard.
At the command of the sorcerer the pair were strung up by black iron chains, Nettle with wrists manacled together over his head and feet only grazing the ground, Thorn with a single hinged clasp at her waist, suspended in the air by his side.
There were similar black chains hung throughout the chamber, dark against the white stone, many caked with a ruddy brown that could have been rust or dried blood.
Even as the rough wrought metal cut and chafed Nettle’s wrists with every vain struggle he saw the unnatural pain its touch caused in Thorn, her little wings drooping, silent tears on her cheeks.
“Well?” Nettle yelled at their torturer. “Do you plan to kill me and enlist my carcass in your army of the damned? Do not try my patience with your games!”
If nothing else he thought he might distract the wizard for a moment from Thorn, who he was certain awaited a more terrible fate, still living yet bound to this madman’s will. At least for him there was an end.
No... No! He was alive yet, and while living he could fight. With deep breaths Nettle attempted to steady his nerves, his eyes darting about for some means of an escape.
Meanwhile the sorcerer ignored his pleas, instead striding towards the far end of the underground hall, black robes trailing in the chalk dust. There he reached a statue of some monstrous man-faced beast, hewn from the pale rock and decorated with an enormous length of that same black iron chain, draped over its terrible form.
“O! Chained god!” cried the sorcerer in sudden ecstasy. “The time approaches! You have granted me your power, and I, your servant Odo, will bring you your freedom! I have found at last a worthy sacrifice, the blood of a warrior and a living spirit. Today, you shall feed!” And he sank to his knees in prayer to the fell spirit, pale head rolling, eyes fixed on its grim likeness.
Nettle began to move. His hands still bound overhead he grasped the chain between them and held fast, every muscle tensing, lifting his entire body by the very trap by which he hung. So he raised his legs, his only free limbs, and with them reached for the chain that bound Thorn.
Curses! He had missed, his lean bulk swinging back with an exhale and a clanking of the heavy chain. The sound echoed, but the sorcerer seemed too enraptured to notice.
Nettle ached already and the manacles bit his flesh, but like a man already dead he moved past the pain to try again. Once more he lifted himself skyward, reaching with his sandalled feet for the chain beside him. He overshot, but while swinging back hooked it behind his heel.
Stomach clenched, he held his position. Then slowly he let himself down, drawing Thorn’s chain steadily closer with him. The spirit stared at him wide-eyed through her agony.
“What are you doing?” she whispered. She could not keep the pain from her voice.
“When I release,” hissed Nettle, hoping the sound would not carry, “move with the swing as best you can. Then to me.”
She frowned, unsure, but nodded. Nettle pulled her chain to him as far as he was able, took it between his sandals, then pushed it hard. Thorn swung away, then back like a pendulum.
The strength in Nettle’s long legs and the shifting of the spirit’s tiny weight brought the chain further than it had swung from, and Nettle strained his hands against the manacles to reach and grasp it.
With a tug he felt the other end was secure, bolted deep within the stone, just as his own chain must be. Wincing at the loud clank of metal and the blood now trickling down his arms, he fed the chain he had barely caught through his strong fingers.
Soon the clasp that held Thorn’s ailing body was in his hands.
“If I break the bonds, will your strength return?” he asked the spirit.
“Can you?” came the reply.
“Let’s find out,” he said, and his fingers found purchase on the two halves of black iron, and with the strength of his wrists alone he wrenched them apart. The hinge snapped and Thorn’s body fell like a stone.
Nettle’s eyes went wide, but in an instant the fairy was floating before his face, wings aflutter, her bright smile restored. The sight was enough to make him smile in turn. She planted a kiss on the tip of his nose, then flew up and out of sight.
He felt her little hands about his bloody manacles, fiddling with the bolt that held him captive. Her fingers burned to touch the black iron, but it did not bind her, so her strength was her own.
So bellowed the oily voice of the sorcerer Odo, who had spied his prisoners in the act of escape.
He strode across the room towards them in wild fury, raising both hands and letting loose more chains from within his shadowed sleeves that crawled before him like black snakes in the white dust. Ahead of him the watchful dead sprang to action, trudging towards the captives in a closing net of mouldering flesh and rusted blades.
The bolt came undone, and fell to the floor. Nettle and Thorn turned to face their foe.
“I’ll hold them off!” Nettle shouted as the fallen warriors encircled them. He felt no pain at his wrists, the skin already mended by the spirit’s touch.
Quick as a flash, Thorn darted over to the stolen bronze blade. Heaving it in her arms, wings straining, she lifted it from the treasure pile.
The fallen were already closing around Nettle, and he swung a couple of punches into their sagging flesh to keep them at bay a moment longer. Then he saw the glint of bronze above him and caught the sword by its haft as it fell. Thorn descended after it, taking her place by his side.
“Well,” she said, “you did steal it first.”
The pair let out a battle cry and charged forward into the throng, two dancing flashes of bronze as Nettle’s blade hacked and Thorn harried, flitting into their faces and jabbing at their glassy eyeballs.
Nettle’s fear was mastered and his strikes rang true, interrupting their attacks with his own. The bodies soon began falling, limbs and heads rolling across the floor. He saw a bronze blur as Thorn tore into them with the edges of her wings, sharp as knives, opening up fresh gashes and staying their assault long enough for Nettle to press his attack.
Against the pair of them, the living dead stood no chance.
Nettle swung at a black chain, puppeteered into false life by Odo, as it uncoiled itself eerily towards Thorn. His bronze blade struck it down, and the fairy whizzed past unharmed, emerging from the melee suddenly and aiming herself straight at the sorcerer.
More chains reared up and the fallen turned creakily to defend their master, but they were too slow. Odo’s dark eyes flashed with fear and he ducked away in time, but barely. Thorn’s wing had drawn blood, and he yelped as a line of blood appeared across his face, cut open from cheek to brow.
The sorcerer reeled, staggering, and as the last of his undead army went to defend him Nettle came at them from behind and dispatched them swiftly. The lurid white stone of the floor was littered with writhing corpse parts and the long-dried blood of those once again sent to the grave.
Nettle stalked towards Odo, who clutched at his bleeding face. The pale man looked up, blood trickling out between his fingers, and smiled.
Nettle faltered. The sorcerer raised his free hand like a claw, slowly as though it met resistance in the air, and the ground beneath their feet began to shake. Trails of dust fell first from the ceiling, then stones. Then a thud, as a boulder of brilliant chalk loosed itself from the cave above, and Nettle was forced to sidestep out of its way.
“Fool!” crowed Odo. “None can stop the coming of the chained god!”
Then Thorn flew out of nowhere across his face and he fell out of the way, startled. And as he lay there in the dust, face gaunt with fear, Nettle strode past the boulder, loomed over the cowering sorcerer, and plunged his blade deep into Odo’s black-robed heart.
The wizard spluttered, smiled faintly in wonder, and died.
But the rumbling in the bowels of the world did not end there. More and more rock was shaken free, and the billowing white dust began to obscure Nettle’s vision.
“It’s caving in!” Nettle shouted to Thorn. “We must escape!”
He wheeled around to the passageway that had brought them down to this terrible place, only to see it blocked by a fallen boulder five times his size. Not even he with his great strength could hope to move it, and his eyes saw no other way out.
Then Thorn appeared, and in her hands she held the end of a long, black chain. The statue of Odo’s evil god was bare, and the little spirit grinned despite the burning pain as she flew up, towards where the ceiling opened up and daylight shone through.
For a moment she disappeared overhead, then returned and danced through the air in front of Nettle’s face. The chain hung from the shaft in the ceiling like a great, dead snake.
Nettle grinned and ran towards the light. Stowing his sword he gripped the black iron, testing its strength. Like those that had kept them prisoner, it held fast.
“I tied it to a tree! Quickly now, follow!” Thorn called, and she sped away.
Nettle climbed, hand over fist, strength and the thrill of the fight coursing in his blood. Once again lifting his own weight by the grip of his hands, he hoisted himself as quickly as he could. Clouds of chalk dust came up behind him and the ground shook but still he climbed, until finally he felt daylight on his face.
Thorn was there to greet him, sitting on a stone and smiling brightly in the sun as Nettle wrested his body from the ground and collapsed on his back upon the hillside. This far up the ground had stirred, but now settled, and below them the distant rumbling in the hollow finally ceased.
The dust that lingered in the air was swiftly blown away. For the first time since before either of them had come to the island, the air was no longer still.
“I suppose I ought to thank you again,” said she.
“I suppose I ought to thank you too,” he replied. Then, “Ah! Curses. They took my coin pouch. Now it lies beneath the rubble. Lost forever, I suppose.”
“Oh! I had almost forgotten,” said Thorn, and from behind her stone she revealed a stack of golden coins, each marked with a three-pointed crown and so thick that she strained to lift them all. “I helped myself to some treasure on our way out.”
Nettle stared agog. He had never seen such riches in his life. “I thought all a spirit longed for was freedom?” he teased.
Thorn beamed. “Yes, and think of all the freedom this could buy us!”
The fairy flitted over to sit by the traveller, half disappearing in the waves of tall grass. They laughed and lay upon the hillside as the sun rose high above them.
“The curse is broken then,” said Thorn. “Do we tell the villagers?”
“They’ll find out soon enough,” Nettle replied. “They’ll have their reward, and we have ours. Besides, we have more important things to think upon.”
He smiled up at the midday sun as a breeze blew in from the sea.
“Such as what kind of trouble we get ourselves into next.”
NETTLE AND THORN WILL RETURN IN...
ESCAPE FROM THE CRYSTAL CITY
