IN A CASTLE THE size of Durhelm, the upper levels were well-organised but overrun by servants, while access to the lower levels including storage chambers, armouries, treasuries and extensive, well-populated dungeons was far more controlled. Ashueli strode along the corridors without haste or apparent concern, carrying a large artwork covered by a grey cloth under one arm. Fake errand in hand. This allowed her to conceal items more obviously related to impending travel beneath the cloth, including one rogue Scintillant Faerie.

What a rogue she was! Rider of Felidragons, burglar of dungeons and now, aspiring kidnapper of Elven Princesses. Allory brightened – ooh, moving up in the world!

Now, if she could just add a little girly sparkle, life would be fragrant nectar.

They had talked over but not been able to settle upon any family errand or urgent matter that would require a Princess to travel unescorted through hostile territory. Durc forbade his consorts and children to leave the castle without express permission. Ever. In the end, Ash had snapped, ‘I can’t stand it a minute longer, mother. Just tell him that I’ve run away, alright? At least that puts the responsibility where it belongs, on me. I can’t live like this.’

Caged indeed. Tension thrummed within the girl, more than palpable to her Fae passenger. Allory turned the idea about in her mind. Could she be detecting emotions through a lens of ariavanae? It did strike her as a kind of outlandish song, urgent and febrile.

Heady stuff! Very unlike any gentle Scintillant song she knew.

Within a few minutes, Ashueli had descended the main carpeted staircases down four levels and slipped into what she quietly called the working area of the castle, in other words, where the servants reigned supreme. Spotless white uniforms and unstinting industriousness proclaimed their zeal to serve the master of the castle well. No-one questioned the Princess, although the eyes she spied all took note her presence.

Who could bear being watched around every bough and tree like this, all her life?

Stealthily padding down the next staircase, this one deliberately made wide enough to accommodate large loads, Ashueli noted in an undertone, they entered an underground area of cavernous arched storerooms supported by ten-foot-thick walls. Allory shivered. Cold stone enclosures. She smelled preserves and fruits, flour, many more herbs and spices than she had names for, here a veritable mountain of dried spiced meat – disgusting – and then they turned a corner and slipped down a long, long corridor lined by storage rooms and workrooms. Hmm, damp and mould in the air, now. To their left, Allory noticed in passing, a guarded stairwell behind a locked iron grating that led down to one wing of the dungeons.

Even worse. Stone that entombed lives forever.

Shudder!

Ashueli marched on unheeding. Shortly, she breathed, “Here’s where our first excuse runs out. No more places I could reasonably claim to be. Gate’s coming up.”

A puff of even iffier air greeted them as the Elf rounded a stone pillar and halted, her eyes darting about in suspicion.

“What?” Allory hissed nervously, muting a cough. Ugh. Sewage again? What was it with these Humans and their penchant for steeping their lives in rich, organic whiffs? “What’s the matter, Ash?”

“They must be changing the guard,” Ash breathed, indicating the open gate. “Suggids.”

“As in, all the suggids are gathered down below?”

“Nice thinking, girl!”

Oh. Her flippant comment had been mistaken for actual tactical advice. Oops.

Before she could figure out how to break the news of her utter ineptitude at anything relating to fighting or military pursuits to her new companion, the Elf had set the painting to one side, popped open the cage door, hissed, ‘out’ and swarmed down the spiral stone stairwell with a startled sapphire Fae fluttering in belated pursuit. Allory heard faint, discomfiting sounds like groans, yelps and coarse laughter. Dice rattled upon a wooden surface. Far colder air wafting upward freshened the lovely pong of man-sweat and stale boots. Ash ran her fingers lightly along the grey stone wall, holding her balance perfectly on the very unevenly worn stone steps as she descended at full speed, apparently uncaring of the eye-watering aromas seeping up from below.

“Incoming,” the Elf warned.

Allory realised that she meant the boots of soldiers on the steps. “Oh no.”

“I’ve a plan. Fly behind me. Stay close.”

Light flickered against the walls. Two soldiers, the sounds suggested, shared a crude joke as they jogged upward. Ash suddenly slithered down the stairwell with breakneck abandon. Somehow, she balanced with her arms while still descending the stairs and extending her feet to the fore. Her feet danced. Whap-clonk! Two bodies fell almost silently onto the steps, cushioned by her grasp.

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Eep! How had she just done that?

Rushing on with Allory having to put on a burst of speed to keep up, the Elf darted into the entryway of a large underground guardroom. Yellow lamplight spilled brightly through the doorway. Her dangerous friend tossed a dark, sticky ball of something inside with an underhand throw.

Touching her neck circlet, she hissed, Incandus impactus!

Sounded like Pixie magic – “Whaa!” Allory yelled as a barely seen hand struck snakelike, snatching her out of the air. Perhaps all the soldiers spied was the departing wingtips of a shocked Fae before a body pressed her against the wall, under cover of the thick doorframe.

WHOMP!

A concussion rocked Ashueli’s frame. Protection? How thoughtful.

Nice not to be blown to smithereens.

Oddly honey-scented smoke billowed out of the room. Men coughed and hacked before she heard sounds that she took for the crashing of furniture or the thuds of bodies falling to the ground. The din subsided with scandalous speed.

“I meant to advise you not to follow me too closely,” Ashueli breathed, pushing back to allow the Scintillant to breathe. “Sorry. I haven’t used that one in a while. Alright?”

“Thanks.” Allory dusted off her wings, a touch narked. She might be the one with eight wings but she still felt like the ninth spare behind this capable Princess, who could hardly be older than her, surely? It was hard to tell with Elves – in her wide experience of exactly two of them. She shook her antennae. Right. Moving on …

Ash added, “Need to find the keys.”

“In this smoke? It’s enough to knock out a Hyperdragon.”

“Suggids!” The nefarious Princess touched her neck again. “Sulphurous blusterous no impactus. There. Breathe easy and, by my ancestors, please remind me from time to time that there are two of us to think about around here?”

“I didn’t want to be a burden.”

The Princess eyed her incredulously, slinging her light pack containing travel leathers behind her left shoulder. “Allory Fae, that’s so nonsensical I can’t even begin – talk later. Someone’s still moving down there. Inside. Go fast.”

Excellent hearing from the fellow pointy-eared one. As they scoured the unconscious bodies for the keys, a slight jingling coming from near her feet – aha, from below a large grating set in the centre of the guardroom – betrayed the presence of one more guard father inside. Perhaps he had been patrolling the cells? Not that she had the slightest idea of what a dungeon was supposed to look like, this being her first, wholly undesired education in matters relating to the practice of Human incarceration. The overwhelming impression here was of overripe body odours mingled with darker flavours emanating from beneath that grating; chilling echoes of bygone pain, suffering and languishing.

Infinite echoes of pain within pain skitter across the bones, where the shadows lurk unsleeping …

Suggids, this place would bring out her darkest memories, of course.

Beastly odours. Fighting a clinging sense of faintness, she helped Ashueli to locate a large keyring clipped to a man’s belt. A relief to see that he still breathed.

“Guys? Guys?” A voice echoed hollowly up to them. “What’s going on up there? What was all that noise?”

The Princess rolled her eyes. “Oh, that’ll be Hanzuk. Insufferable.”

He did sound like he whinged and whimpered for a living. Allory grinned briefly. “Shall I go distract him?”

The man called, “Do I need to pull the alarm cord? Guys?”

Raising her voice, Ashueli called, “No need, Hanzuk,” meantime matching keys to the lock of the floor grating and discarding options at high speed. “You may stand down.”

“P-Princess?” he spluttered. “What are you doing down here? It is Princess Ashueli, right? Where are the men?”

“Sleeping.”

She grinned fiercely as she found the right key. Clink.

“Sleeping? Are you playing games with me?” he puzzled, his voice rising to an even more galling pitch. “It’s not right for a Princess to play games with us ordinary soldiers. You could get us into terrible trouble, you know. What’s this all about?”

Ash grimaced as the grating refused to lift. Allory pointed to a second, much smaller keyhole. Silent death stare from her companion. Thankfully, Elves also did not appear to eat intelligent creatures – as best she knew, that glare reminded her with alacrity. Ash sorted through the keys a second time with a muted hiss of exasperation.

The man called, “Does your father know you’re down here? I really should talk to my superior.”

“And?” Allory prompted.

The Princess gave her a pleading glance. “Need a second. Go. Don’t get yourself swatted.”

Swatted? The cheek!

Ducking through the grating, she shot down the stairs into a darkness lit by widely spaced sconces. Allory had to hold her breath. For the first time, the air down here smelled like it always did in the stories – rancid, rat-ridden and wholly rank. Green streaks of moisture adorned the stone walls. Ignore the closing-in sensation. Pretend it was just a dark tunnel through jungle foliage.

Abhorrent place!

“Please let me explain, Hanzuk,” Ashueli called meantime, still intent upon deception. That tactic had to fail soon, surely? “I’m actually here on an important errand for my father, as it happens. Are you holding a Felidragon in the deep cells?”

“How do you know about that? It’s meant to be a secret.”

“My father tells me lots of things.”

Stony silence. Suggids! Has to be a mistake …

Somewhere behind her, the lock clicked a second time. Allory redoubled her speed. The tunnel was low but wide, the walls stained with runnels of water and green algae. Twenty feet ahead, in a pool of light, a young soldier stood comically at attention beside a small alcove which must house the pull cord for some sort of alarm system, she supposed. His pasty, squint-eyed face screwed up in suspicion as he clearly debated which course of action might land him in the least trouble. Hope the wind did not change. The result would be nasty.

Zipping toward him, she screeched, “Hanzuk! Here I come!”

He froze.

She supposed that high-speed attacks by eleven-inch sapphire Faerie were not generally to be found in the soldier’s trusty manual of situations one was trained to respond to. Whatever the case, Hanzuk had only just decided to throw up his hands in a hapless effort at self-defence when Allory, in an attempt to copy Ashueli’s feet-first assault, slammed into his large snout with a part of her anatomy she would have preferred not to admit to just then.

“Oof!” Zap! A spark leaped from her body and disappeared up his left nostril as if returning home in a hurry. With a horrid, fleshy and mercifully brief sizzle, smoke curled back out.

Hanzuk collapsed in a heap, screaming in high-pitched hysterics.

She gaped in shock. Wow.

Brutality had nothing on this result. Was that scintillance? Never in her life.