“He’ll be fine.” Maleshi straightened one of the pins on the left shoulder of her military jacket and nodded. “Right now, kid, we’re a bunch of magicals trekking through the mountains and hoping a certain other mad drow in Hangivol doesn’t get word of where we’re headed before we get there. Anything else is an unnecessary focus.”
“Oh, yeah? Including the very high possibility that L’zar’s officially insane now and might never come back from it?”
“Yeah, kid.” Maleshi stared straight ahead and shoved her hands into her pockets. “Even that.”
Chapter Thirty-Three
“Ow. Hey!” Byrd darted away from the large mechanical wagon on legs carrying their supplies. “You guys gotta work on the programming for this stuff, man. I’m not losing a foot to this thing and have to ride in it the rest of the way.” He glanced at Ember with a sheepish smile. “No offense.”
The fae girl shrugged. “I still have my feet.”
“If the old one thinks you’ll recover,” Cazerel said and looked quickly over his shoulder at Foltr, “I’m inclined to believe him. He led you to me, after all.”
Ember gave the raug chief a tight smile. “I’m trying to believe it too.”
“The crawler is yours to use for however long you need it, Healer. It is the least I can do.”
The walking metal cart beside Lumil struck an uneven patch of stone and lurched sideways into her, nearly knocking her over. The goblin woman snarled and slammed a fist into the side of the cart, which squeaked and instantly righted itself. “The least you could do, huh? What about putting these things together so they work? You know, get with the times and make some updates already.”
Beside her, one of Cazerel’s warriors rolled his eyes and shook his head.
“Our tech works the way we prefer it to work,” the chief replied. “The new entanglement of magic and Hangivol’s updates? It goes against everything we believe, greenskin.”
“You don’t believe in tech?” Ember looked over her shoulder at Cheyenne, who shrugged and turned her attention to the chief again.
Can’t wait to hear how he explains that one.
“It is not a lack of belief in the technology, Healer.” Cazerel eyed the wobbly cart stepping up on his other side. “It is an aversion to what that technology makes of us when used the way most O’gúleesh have been using it for centuries.”
“Like, side effects?” Ember stared at the control panel of the crawler and briefly touched the cold metal of the outdated activator behind her ear. “I have enough of those to deal with.”
“Not for you, Healer. You did not need metal and code to restore my life.” The chief grinned down at her and nodded. “You are purely of your own magic, as it should be.”
“You’ve obviously been doing fine here on your own without the most recent updates,” Cheyenne muttered. Or updates from three thousand years ago, probably.
“Yes. We thrive in different ways.” Cazerel scanned the rising cliffs and jutting stone in front of them as he led them farther into the mountains. “Magic and technology can work together. We know this. To say it does not alleviate the heavier burdens for my kind would taint my words with lies, Healer. A chief who lies is not fit to be saved, even by one such as you.”
Corian’s ears twitched, and he turned toward a flock of small brown birds darting over the next ridge in front of them. “I assumed Hirúl Breach refused the updates to stand against the Crown or to stay hidden from her.”
Cazerel laughed mightily and slapped his belly. “We do not need faulty machines to stand against the Spider. But it helps, yes. These things should not rely on each other, vae shra’ni—magic and the machines that serve it. For most of this world, they are so intertwined that a magical has no mastery over their own abilities because they have given themselves over to the system, which is quietly weakening them day by day.”
Ember wrinkled her nose and tried not to look at her legs resting beneath the crawler’s control panel. “Like muscle atrophy.”
The chief smiled down at her. “Like a raug in his prime lying useless in his bed while the deathflame calls his name.”
“Or like building up a drug tolerance.” Cheyenne removed her activator and stuck the silver coil into the pocket of her trenchcoat. “Makes sense.”
Ember gave her friend a playful frown. “What do you know about drug tolerance? An elephant’s dose of morphine wouldn’t take you out.”
“Elephant?” Cazerel’s eyes widened.
Cheyenne tried to keep a straight face. Nobody knows Ember’s from Earth either. He’d change his tune really quick if he knew his Healer set foot on this side for the first time two days ago.
Ember caught her slip and shrugged. “A saying we picked up.”
“Whatever you mean, Healer, I have full faith in your knowledge. And drow are particularly difficult to understand, eh?” The chief chuckled and shook his head. “And prone to madness.”
“Hey, don’t lump us all in the same category.” Cheyenne looked back at L’zar, who stared at the ground as he followed the procession, his eyes wide and his jaw working. “I’m trying not to be prone to weakening my magic with an activator, if that’s even possible for drow.”
“That won’t be a problem, Aranél. Trust me.” Cazerel swept his beefy arm through the air, gesturing toward the range of mountains in front of them that still seemed far away. “Where we’re headed, there won’t be any high tech. Perhaps not even as low as these wobbling carriers.” His gray hand smacked down on the rim of the cart walking next to him. The machine staggered under the weight, then righted itself
