And Pritkin was fighting to tame the power of a hurricane and couldn’t help, and the seat the little troll was using to brace with was coming loose, the bolts holding mostly through rust at this point, and a pair of tiny black eyes were meeting mine—
Not to plead for help, because I didn’t have any more to give. But to tell me it was all right, that I’d done my best, that it was okay, when it wasn’t okay. When nothing about it was okay! The black eyes swam before my gaze, turning older and dimmer and bluer—to those of another man I hadn’t been able to save. And like the other, this one was slipping through my fingers, and I couldn’t hold, couldn’t hold—
And then I was using both hands and screaming because my shoulder felt like it was being ripped off my body, but it still wasn’t enough, and there was no one to help—
Except for the fey themselves.
Because we’d just completed a full circuit of the vast cavern, coming back to where we’d begun in front of the falls. And the spears the fey had been lobbing, which had been missing us because of the distance, were suddenly at point-blank range. And I guess the leader had decided that if he couldn’t have the staff, nobody could. Because a volley of fire tore through the air, straight for us.
And this time, it connected. One glowing spear shattered the prow, exploding the high carved finial into dust and sending us slinging around like a top. Another ripped through the bottom of the boat at almost the same time, right where I’d just been sitting before being thrown into the floor. And a third—
And a fourth and a fifth slammed into their own man, who was sprawled across half the hull, still stubbornly clinging to his prize.
The little troll tore away, falling over by me, and the energy blasts lit up all that black armor like lightning bolts. They didn’t penetrate; they didn’t have to. The shiny black became red became yellow became white, and the fey screamed, screamed while he was cooked like a lobster in its shell, screamed as he began to smoke, screamed until his face turned black, and yet he was still clinging to the ship because he’d melted there—
And then the troll’s boot smashed through charred wood and fey, too, and he fell, spinning off into the void.
And I was screaming, too, because they were about to throw again and we couldn’t outrun them, not in time, and there was nothing to serve as a shield and no way to keep the bolts from landing—
Except the obvious, which I’d somehow managed not to think of at all. But I didn’t feel too bad because it looked like the fey hadn’t, either. They threw, launching an enormous volley like a line of fire stretching across the void. And Pritkin jerked up the staff, sending us tumbling into the floor as the boat went completely sideways and the wave of wind went straight at the fey.
Whose lightning reflexes weren’t quite lightning enough when their own volley boomeranged right back at them.
It was like the shooting gallery at the fair, I thought blankly. I’d been caught halfway through a scream with my mouth hanging open as I watched through the hole-riddled hull as half the lineup suddenly disappeared, while a few others dove for cover. And the rest—
Didn’t do anything.
They didn’t get blown backward by the gale, as I would have expected if I could have expected anything right then. They also didn’t fall forward. I suddenly realized that they were trapped in between the huge amount of air the river was churning up on the one side, as all that water came barreling down from above, and the rush of power that Pritkin was sending on the other. Like bugs between two slides of glass, they just hung there for a long moment, along with the water that was getting blown back into the mouth of the falls.
A lot of water. Almost all of the water, in fact, which was being vaporized and sent back, in long white flowing streamers, like the fey’s hair. More and more of it, until I couldn’t see anything anymore, not the fey, not the rocks, not the mouth of the falls. Nothing except a wall of white where a moment ago there had been a tremendous torrent.
And suddenly was again.
Pritkin yelled something that I guess was hold on, although there was no way in hell to tell. But a second later the whole ragtag little craft swung around, with those of us who remained scurrying to find new handholds in punctures in the hull and on what remained of the seats and on the bare bones of the craft, which is all we were about to have left since more boards were falling away every moment.
And then we dove.
I had a split second to see the boiling wall of white collapse, to see a bunch of half-drowned fey collapse with it, to see the whole screwed-up mess plunge over the falls in a tsunami’s worth of water. And then we were racing the deluge for the ground, the mighty blast of air coming from the end of the crappy little stick sending us shooting back down just as fast as we’d come up. And this time, there were no energy bolts to have to worry about, even from the guys on the cliff, who were far too busy avoiding the water smashing and crashing and sending sideways waves flooding over them to care about us.
And anyway, you can’t hit a speeding bullet. And that’s what it felt like we were, with the wind almost blinding us and a hurricane howling in our ears and the river rushing up to meet us. And then the spray churning at the bottom of the falls slicing up on either side of us as we curved and skimmed and shot ahead, just before the whole thing was obscured by the vast torrent from above.
I looked over and saw Pritkin backlit by the sparkling, crashing deluge, laughing like a madman, while the hairy little guy who’d ended up under my arm was waving his fists around and whooping, and the other guy stuck in the hold was staring around with eyes three times bigger than normal, which almost made them regular-sized—
And suddenly I started whooping, too, because still alive, fuckers, still alive.
And then the ceiling started to fall in.
Not just part of it—all of it.
The long stretch of underground river ahead started boiling and jumping and whipping up, with waves splashing twenty feet into the air to grab at us as we flew past. The giant waves were caused by equally giant boulders that were slamming down all around us. And massive cracks were running in the ceiling ahead, showing lines where even bigger sections were about to break away. Because the corridor, the huge, rock-cut corridor, wasn’t just cracking, it was collapsing.
The fey were bringing a mountain down on our heads.
But not fast enough.
Because a second later, we were swerving hard at the far wall, and then into a crack all of five feet across and limestone slick and going straight down.
“Augghhhhh!” someone said, but it wasn’t me that time. I couldn’t say anything, thanks to the little guard who had just grabbed me around the neck.