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No one answers.
With a glance at Huey, I make my decision. Surely, it wouldn’t hurt to at least peek outside. I make my way down the stairs to the kitchen, not surprised when Darok tromps behind me, the rattle of weapons accompanying every step.
More banging and shouts come from outside. Huey chirps, but he’s not freaking out which I take as a positive. I’m also loving these soft workout clothes that could pass for a fancy set of scrubs as long as I don’t think too much on the mechanics of how the Spidress wove them. The sight of her squatting to spin might forever be imprinted on my memory. Perhaps watching the twins fight will erase some of the creep factor from my brain.
Rona walks out of the shadows, and Huey squawks like she surprised him as much as she did me.
“Where are you and Darok off to, mistress?” There’s no hint of judgment in her tone. Nope, the brownie acts as though we’re off for a normal stroll into a gargoyle battle.
“I want to check on the twins,” I tell her. Huey hops and flutters, chirping as though he and Rona speak a common language that my translator can’t decipher. Maybe they do since she smiles and nods at him.
“Not too scared?” she asks, and I only realize she’s talking to me and not the owl when she gives me an expectant stare.
What the hell kind of question is that? Of course, I’m afraid. But right now, I have no idea what I should be doing. “It’s either go see what’s happening outside or stay with the Black Widow seamstress who’s the size of a small house while she spins web out of her butt.”
The brownie cackles. “Come on then,” she says as she magics open the door.
When Darok doesn’t dive to stop me, I figure we can’t be walking into a war. He wouldn’t let me do that when his one job is to guard me, right?
Wrong.
Torches of blue and white flames light the courtyard, casting shadows over the gargoyles swarming the Bridge of Souls. Rows of wings in every shade of stone-grey fly above the Bridge and around it as they fight…I blink and stare again.
“Is that a dragon?” I damn near shriek, sending Huey into a hoot fit. An enormous, winged serpent rises above the Bridge with its head in the courtyard, snapping at gargoyles like a deadly game of bobbing for apples in midair.
“Wyvern,” Rona says as if I should know what that is. I give her the most polite WTF gesture I can manage right now, and she continues, “It’s essentially a two-legged dragon.”
“Which makes it less dangerous?” I ask, hoping I guessed right this time since I’m clearly not up on my monster lore.
She shrugs, or at least that’s what I guess she’s trying to do when her shoulders flinch beneath the multitude of sweaters she wears. “Less likely to breathe fire,” she says.
“Good.” I rush to focus on the positive. The wyvern hacks, and gargoyles scatter as though its coughing launched a nuclear attack. A vinegary stench has me wrinkling my nose, but it disappears as quickly as it came. Now, all I can smell is whatever Rona’s baking in the kitchen.
I’m almost comforted by the familiar kitchen scents when she adds, “Fire’s unlikely. They’re more prone to spit venom.”
I take a giant step back even though the wyvern looms a hundred or so gargoyles away from me. Unfortunately, my rapid retreat sends me slamming into Darok whose grunt now sounds like a chuckle. “You think poisonous spit is funny?”
He nods, and the bones and hoops in his ears catch the double moonlight.
Wait. Why is my orc guard standing behind me? Suspicion has me narrowing my eyes. “Are you using me as a human shield?”
Darok merely grunts again. What the hell? He laughs at toxic spit but refuses to answer any of my questions.
Huey’s no help. He bounces on the orc’s shoulder as if he’s all for letting me get spit bombed first. Some soul guardian he is.
Rona hooks a thumb toward the medieval gate behind us that looks as though it has withstood anything that’s come at it since the Crusades. “Darok’s protecting you from any attack that might come from the Borderlands. Besides,” she says, “the wyvern’s a baby. They’ll drive it back to the After Worlds in no time.”
“Don’t baby wyverns have mommas?” I ask, still not believing that a reptile bigger than any billboard qualifies as a baby. Not that I can see more than its bobbing head with all the gargoyles between me and it, but that’s scary enough. I rise on my toes, trying to catch sight of the twins. Surely they would come back to the tower if a bigger wyvern was on its way.
“Perhaps,” Rona says. “But the real concern is how it escaped the inner rings of the After Worlds to make it to the Bridge. Or better yet, how it’s on the Bridge? The queen has to give an express order to allow even a gargoyle on the Bridge. In all my centuries of coming here, there has never been an attack on the keep. A wyvern should’ve been stopped by any number of guards on the other side of the River of Souls before ever making it close to the Borderlands.”
It seems I need to study up on politics, monster species, and realm rules if I want to understand half of what goes on here. I sense Rona’s waiting for me to say something—anything—in response to the insight she shared.
But I have no idea of what to add or even what questions to ask so I blurt out, “At least someone got the queen off the Bridge before the wyvern got here.” Or I’m hoping they did since the twins hinted she’s elderly. The poor woman must’ve been as stunned as I am seeing a giant snake thing coming at her with the way they describe it as a first time ever event. Such a shock might’ve caused a heart attack if her health is already failing. “I could offer to assist any doctor…” Do they even have doctors here? “Or a medic or healer?” I give up on guessing when Rona gives me an are you kidding look.
“The queen rarely goes to the Bridge,” she says. “She doesn’t feel as if the dead are her concern.”
“How could they not be her concern? Isn’t that her one job—to guide souls to the After Worlds?”
