“Steep.” Jagger tipped his head back and shaded his eyes, as if trying to see up the mountain. Clouds capped its peak. “The Cave of the Worlds just has to be somewhere like that, of course. It can’t be in the cellar of a tavern or the back room of a beauty salon.”

  “Yes. I mean no.” Brick made an effort to pull himself together. “It’s high, yeah.”

  Jagger shot him a sidelong glance. “Could you…try to shift? It’d be so much easier if we could fly there. Oh, not if it’s painful, of course. I—”

  “Yes.” Brick held up a hand to stop Jagger. He didn’t need to hear Jagger apologizing for asking him to do something that should have been a breeze to his kind, something that wasn’t even second nature to wyverns, but part of them, for earth’s sake. “You might want to stand back.”

  “Of the wingspan? Or the tail length?” Jagger backed off.

  “Something like that,” Brick replied, rather than say blast range. And you probably want to hold your nose. He tried to assume his first form, focusing on the shift. Nothing happened.

  “Neeeeaarggh!” burst from between his clenched teeth as he tried harder…to no avail.

  “Look, it’s no prob—”

  “No!” Brick half-yelled at Jagger, who was trying to brush things off. “I got this!” He wiped away what he thought was a drop of blood from one nostril, to discover it was snot. Great. Just great. He was a majestic wyvern, for gods’ sake! One of the noble beasts, as Jagger had said, with scales and talons and pointy teeth and— “Wiinnnggss!”

  He had them, and a tail and ridges and a large snout! He flapped his wings, and as soon as they met, over his broad head, he lost his wyvern self and shrank back into his other-form. Not a problem, he could try again. He clenched his fists and gritted his teeth, but then Jagger was there, right in his face.

  “Stop. Right now.” He grabbed Brick’s upper arms. “I’m sorry I asked.”

  “Because I’m such a failure?”

  “No, because I don’t like you putting yourself under that kind of strain. You’ve burst blood vessels in your eyes and you look like you’re about to shit yourself.”

  “I feel like it too,” Brick muttered, giving a surreptitious shimmy to check his pants. No, all clear. Seeing Jagger watching him made him lash out in his shame. “Can’t you do something? Some elf magic?”

  The laugh Jagger gave was short and didn’t sound amused. “Hardly. Look, let’s just walk, okay?”

  “Fine by me,” Brick announced, setting off with a hard stomp…and getting his foot stuck in mud. The squelching, sucking noise it made when he tugged it free was obscene, and the brown liquid splatters sprayed on his pants by him shaking his soiled boot made him look as though he had crapped himself. “Great. Just great. Let’s hope there’s no dress code at the cave.”

  The air grew danker and grayer and the going got harder the more they ascended. Vegetation grew scarcer, and the sightings of mountain goats and rabbits less frequent. The route they were following, courtesy of Kevin and the map he’d scratched into the side of a soft rockface for them, became an actual mountain path, and would soon be a pass, tight and narrow, between some of the peaks up ahead. Underfoot was alternately boggy and slippery, the latter due to the deposits of broken rock fragments that littered the way. Some were large and easy to see and step over, while the smaller bits—

  “Brick!” Jagger made a dart for him as he skidded on scree.

  He didn’t manage to stop him, and Brick’s momentum carried him on backward, down the way they’d just climbed, stumbling and flailing, right to the edge…and beyond. His foot went over the side and he tried to turn round or turn aside, but all he succeeded in doing was grabbing at an overhanging jut of rock.

  “Jagger?” he cried, clinging on, locking his hands around the spur and trying to swing his dangling legs up onto it. He couldn’t. Not once he’d gotten a look at the ground below him…at how far below him it was, where he hung, sticking out over a mountainside on a crag of rock. He banged his eyes shut and looked at the side of the mountain. It wasn’t sheer. It was grassy and rocky, with ledges and cracks, bumps and holes. He could work his way to the start of this lump of rock and get his hands and feet to the surface. He could—

  He froze, his hands supporting his entire weight.

  “Is there…?” Jagger’s voice wavered, and Brick risked a peep up to see him standing there, pale. He coughed and his voice worked again. “Any point in me suggesting you shift?”

  Brick didn’t bother answering.

  “Fine. Well, I won’t bother telling you to hang on.”

  Noise suggested Jagger was scrambling down the side of the mountain too. Taking peeps, Brick saw him climbing down lower than where Brick hung like a broken pendulum. “What are you doing?” he yelled.

  It was obvious what Jagger was doing, or trying to do—get himself below Brick, onto a ledge of the mountainside that stuck out in a bulge. The mountain wasn’t straight or uniform and this shelf put Jagger as far out as Brick and directly under him. Jagger crouched.

  “Drop onto me,” he instructed Brick. “Go on. Just let yourself fall. It’s not far, see, and you’ll land on my back. I’ll catch you and hold you.”

  He couldn’t. No matter how much he wanted to. Emotions churned in him, all contradictory and mixed and needing an outlet.

  A muffled shout came from below him. “Brick, you nearly had me off this ledge!”

  How—? Because he’d shifted his tail, and the long, sinewy appendage was flicking back and forth and up and down in his fear and frustration. It was lashing the shelf below him, where Jagger waited, and if it knocked him free, Jagger would tumble down the mountainside too. “Sorry,” he muttered, the word inadequate, focusing on staying in his other-form.

  “Drop,” commanded Jagger again, and Brick could have sworn he couldn’t, wasn’t able to, but he did, landing on Jagger’s crouched body with a whump. It took the elf a few seconds to recover his breath, but when he did, he straightened, Brick clinging to his back and shoulders like a monstrous monkey. Before Brick understood what Jagger intended, and before he could stop him, Jagger found handholds, then footholds, and pulled himself and his passenger up the mountainside to the path.

  It seemed to take forever, and Brick felt too scared to breathe, but as soon as Jagger heaved himself and Brick over the edge and onto the pass, Brick sucked in air. He rolled off Jagger and made sure to haul him clear of the side, onto the relative safety of the trail.

  “That…” he started but couldn’t finish. “Thank you.”

  “You’d do the same for me,” Jagger replied, flopping onto his back too, to lie beside Brick. He raised his head to peer at him. “Wouldn’t you? You’d better.”

  Brick grinned. “Yeah, my turn to rescue you again next time.”

  “Again?” Jagger jumped to his feet. “How so?”

  “Well, let’s see…” Brick started to list all the times he’d saved the day, or the quest. Fine—there weren’t that many but…

  “What if we turn back?” Jagger said, not looking at Brick. “Don’t go to the summit to seek the Horrorcle?”

  “Because of that?” Brick demanded, jerking his thumb over his shoulder at the edge of the mountain.

  “No. Well, yes, in a way.”

  “And not seek out the true meaning of the foretelling? But we wanted to know,” Brick replied.

  “We did,” Jagger said, after a pause. “So, upward and onward?”

  He didn’t sound any more enthusiastic about it than Brick felt. Brick swung an arm around him as he went to pass him and pulled him close. “Thank you,” he murmured, wanting to say much more.

  “You’re…welcome.” Jagger didn’t move, instead standing close to Brick and staring into his eyes.

  Brick was tired of being weighed down with words unsaid.

  “Look, I’ve never had a serious relationship,” they both said together, and stopped.

  “I thought we’d stopped doing that!” Jagger exclaimed. “Go on?”

  “Oh, I…” Brick didn’t know what he’d been going to say but knew what he wanted to. “I’m kind of in love with you,” he confessed.

  He half-expected Jagger to make some joke about yeah, you got good taste or well, in that case, take a number, get in line, but instead Jagger reached up a hand and ran his thumb over Brick’s bottom lip.

  “Since that first meeting in the tavern,” Jagger said.

  “Yes…” Brick was halfway through his answer when he realized it wasn’t a question, that Jagger was saying, or admitting— He couldn’t catch what Jagger said next, because he whispered it and his face was tucked into the crook of Brick’s neck. But as they started walking again, Brick wondered… Had Jagger said, ‘I’m sorry?’

  The day darkened about them, the air growing cold. Brick couldn’t keep churning it around his brain any longer. He had to ask. “Jagger—?”

  “We’re here.”

  It wasn’t the summit but flat ground, indicating they’d arrived at the top of the pass. It didn’t look inviting. Wisps of cloud hung around as though the mountain had pierced it, and the atmosphere was dank. The trees grew bare and skeletal and heaps of rocks and stone suggested burial mounds and ruined buildings. Night-black birds cawed from on high, then, one by one dived low, to circle them and perch on the roof of a rocky cave across the space that reminded Brick of a village square. The birds were huge.

  Jagger had stilled, and Brick turned to him. “What?” he asked. “Sure, it doesn’t have the charm of Kevin’s crib, but…”

  “I’ve seen it,” Jagger said, his voice quiet. “This.”

  “So, we’re at the right place?” Not that there could be much doubt. “Best get this over with, then?” Brick took a step forward.

  “No!” Jagger tried to stop him, but Brick had already put a foot onto the flat rock that was like an arena, he suddenly thought.

  And as soon as his weight pressed down, the ground shook, then cracked.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  “You must have tripped a switch!” Jagger exclaimed.

  “I’m sorry!” Brick shouted. “You know what I’m like and what I do!”

  “I do.” And he loved it, loved Brick and everything about him. He hoped Brick could read that in his eyes, could see it in the slow up-and-down perusal he gave Brick’s gorgeous body, could understand what Jagger’s lick of his lips meant. He loved Brick for more than his looks, of course, but that was all he was able to convey right now.

  If Brick did get it, there was no time for him to reply. Jagger raised his leg, and Brick slid his dagger free of its sheath and hefted it in his hand. He swung himself back to back with Jagger and they revolved in a careful circle, surveying their surroundings. Jagger drew his sword.

  “There!” Brick called, and Jagger twisted to see a small metal point emerging from the flat stone of the ground, something sharp piercing the ground with an ear-hurting scrape-squeal.

  The metal tip looked like the point of a knife or a dagger, but as it rose, it was long. A sword. With an arm attached. Brick nudged him. “I see it,” Jagger replied, not taking his eyes from it…from first the skeleton arm, then body, that pulled itself free of its stone grave to settle its sword and shield into place with a loud rattle of bones that made Jagger shudder.

  Crrrr-ack. Sc-rrritch.

  The noise to the side of him had Jagger glancing that way, to see a second metal point splitting the stone that they stood on.

  “That one’s got a spear,” Brick muttered.

  “No shit.” Jagger watched it and its skeleton bearer rise, its movements assured and practiced.

  “Oh, I’m pretty close to crapping my pants, believe me,” Brick confessed. Another noise came from the other side of Jagger. “More so now…”

  Now a third skeleton’s risen over there too, Jagger finished for Brick. This one was another spear-carrier. One in front, one to the left and one to the right. “Three’s not—”

  A series of noises cut Jagger off and dragged his attention in front of him again, where a row of metal points was splitting the ground behind the first skeleton. Seconds later these skeleton bodies emerged too, one by one in deadly synchronization, their weapons ready.

  “Tell me that’s not what I think it is?” Brick begged, his back still to Jagger’s and him presumably unable to see what Jagger couldn’t take his eyes from.

  “You’d better turn around,” Jagger told him, sorry to make him do it but glad when Brick stood beside him once again. He pressed close.

  The skeleton army stood to attention with a clatter, resting their spear or sword tips on the ground, then moved as one, startingly swift, to drop into half-crouches, like animals.

  “What is it? An army of the dead?” Brick wiped his forearm across his sweating forehead.

  “Undead,” Jagger suggested. Meaning they can’t be killed.

  The rattle was loud, the shriek louder, and both things Brick and Jagger’s only warning before the army advanced en masse, moving as one, step by step by step.

  “Gods, they’re ugly!” Brick said.

  Jagger agreed, if ugly meant terrifying, especially the black voids in the skeleton’s round eye sockets and triangular nose holes, a match for the polished obsidian of the round shields that they bore aloft. He and Brick took a step back, then another, then, when the arms raised their weapons and howled a war cry, turned and bolted.

  “Get to higher ground!” they both said at the same time.

  Jagger was slightly quicker than Brick in running up the wide ledge of a large rocky outcrop to get to its top. It was flat, like a platform, and the skeletons swarmed it, hacking and jabbing at them.

  “They fight like people!” Brick exclaimed.

  “And fall like them,” Jagger said, kicking one away before it could get up with them. Another took its place within a second.

  He felt sick when he slashed with his blade and chopped the sword arm of another. It fell back with an inhuman shriek and a clatter, and again another took its place. Were more coming out of the ground, even as this battalion fought?

  “Jagger!” Brick cried and jerked his head to alert him to something to his right—a skeleton was starting a run up the ledge, to breach their stronghold. It ascended, using the momentum of its run to leap onto their platform, and Jagger threw himself flat so the enemy soldier flew over him and clattered to the ground behind him in a heap of bones.

  Another had made it up to where he and Brick fought, and Brick took care of this one, tripping it, pinning its leg down and stomping on the long femur with his other foot. The crunch of broken bone set Jagger’s teeth on edge. Brick kicked the skeleton back down to the lower ground, hitting a further two with it on the way.

  “Watch it!” Jagger called—another had scrambled up the side and was rushing Brick while he stood bending near the edge.

  “On it.” Brick bent lower and the skeleton, unable to halt its flight toward him, tumbled over him and off their platform, aided by Brick’s foot kicking it on its way.

  Jagger heard it shatter on the ground below. He couldn’t spare much attention, not when another was slashing for his legs, perhaps trying to hobble him by cutting his hamstrings. It must have fought dirty when it was alive. More alive. As if catching his thoughts, it opened its mouth in a broken yellow and gray grin. It wasn’t smiling when Jagger jumped over the swing of its blade. No, it looked evil—more evil—at that.

  Jagger backed off a little then turned and ran the few paces he needed to get enough thrust to jump from the ground he was on to the higher rockpile next to it. His foe followed him, or attempted to. His jump lacked the momentum necessary to propel his skeleton body from one level to the other and, with legs skittering in midair like an obscene bug, it fell through the gap between ledges and crashed to the stone ground below.

  Jagger spared it a glance and watched its skull roll free of its neck. What were these creatures? Who could have animated them? The Horrorcle, he supposed. He cursed when he saw there wasn’t space on this plateau for Brick to join him, or for them to fight. Why had he leaped up here, anyway? He scrambled down broken bits of rock to the ground, swinging his sword in one hand and punching with the other to fight off the skeletons who just kept coming and coming.

  With a “Yeaargh!” Brick leaped down to join him…losing his dagger on the way. Shouting what Jagger supposed was a wyvern curse, he grabbed a shield from a skeleton and used it to bludgeon and smash.

  “There’s so fucking many!” he gritted between swings and hits. “Got a plan? Any tricks? Bit of magic?”

  “Maybe if I had a second to think,” Jagger retorted, disarming a tall skeleton and slashing at another. He didn’t think them chanting how much they believed in themselves and their quest would do much here, but he was prepared to try.

  “I’m trying to shift,” Brick said, as if Jagger had been demanding it.

  “No, I…” He lost his train of thought, trying to make sense of what he was seeing, what the enemy were doing. They’d paused and in a reversal of their synchronized striding forward when they’d first attacked, were now moving backward, all as one unit.

  “They’re falling back?” Brick asked, his voice hopeful. “Or maybe it’s the end of their working day?”

  “I don’t think they’re in a union.” Jagger shook his hair out of his eyes to have an unobstructed view of the line of enemy a few feet away.

  The day grew suddenly dark and a rusty, grating bird call filled the air, as if those huge dark birds perched on the roof of the cave had blotted out the sun. Then suddenly, it was the nightmare scene Jagger had viewed in his tear-globe. One skeleton detached itself from the line and flew to them. It was the same one Jagger had seen—when it opened its mouth, he recognized its stumpy teeth.

  He knew what was going to happen. It would feint that it was going to attack Jagger but turn just enough to plunge its spear into Brick’s chest instead. Into his heart.

  “No!” Jagger yelled.

  The skeleton was on them, spear raised, and Jagger, his foreknowledge as heavy as boulders, dropped his sword and grabbed at its arm. As soon as he closed his hands around its bone, cold as freezing as a winter ocean swept over him, numbing him from his toes up and stopping the breath in his lungs and the blood in his veins. The skeleton arm he was clutching vanished from between his hands. It didn’t crumble or dissolve, but just disappeared, from one second to the next…as did all the others, leaving him and Brick alone.