Total pages in book: 129
Estimated words: 119158 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 596(@200wpm)___ 477(@250wpm)___ 397(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 119158 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 596(@200wpm)___ 477(@250wpm)___ 397(@300wpm)
“I think Master Binx knows a way for us to get out of Ulmenor,” Jasper stated as the chipmunk seemed to settle in his hair.
I choked on a laugh. Binx the wizard? That was not one of the names I’d cooked up. Fuck, I hadn’t even gotten around to naming all the characters for the Galinaes part of the book. We were way off my plot outline now, but it was best to roll with it.
“Are you sure you can trust Master Binx?” I asked after clearing my throat. “You did turn him into a chipmunk, and I’m assuming you’re the one who blew up his workshop.”
“True,” Jasper agreed, hanging his head. The chipmunk scrambled to get a better hold of his locks for a second. Jasper’s head popped up, and the poor creature almost went flying. “But he also knows that I’m the only one who can change him back to an elf. If I’m caught by the City Watch, I’ll be executed, and he’ll be stuck as a chipmunk forever.”
“Fine. Fine. Let’s follow the chipmunk,” Nylian urged, sounding as if he were willing to follow just about anyone so long as they got moving. I couldn’t blame him. We’d been standing in the alley for several minutes now. The guards and servants he’d set to work on the rescue mission would search for us soon. We needed to put as much distance between us and the explosion as possible.
Jasper and Adeline jerked their hoods up again, and Jasper jumped into the lead. We wound through one alley after another. Sometimes he would stop and lift his hood, allowing the tiny brown-and-black chipmunk head to poke out and survey their surroundings.
It was hard to gauge how far we’d come. On one of our pauses, I gazed at the sky where the black smoke was still rising. The pillar had thinned, and there was now white smoke mixing in, showing that the elf version of the fire department had reached the building and was putting out the flames.
That meant the guards we’d ditched were now free and scouring the city for us. We appeared to be several blocks away in a different district, but I wouldn’t be able to relax until we were outside the high walls that surrounded Ulmenor.
“Here,” Jasper announced, pointing to a circular metal lid in the ground. A sewer grate. Lovely.
“You want us to go through the sewer?” I demanded.
“It will take us outside the wall.” Jasper pointed to the great wall that rose a short distance away. Logically, the trek through the sewer should be a matter of minutes.
But logic didn’t apply to sewers.
Down in the darkness, with a chipmunk leading us, we wandered for what felt like hours. Jasper cast one spell successfully—a small white ball of light that hung in the air in front of him, illuminating a tiny circle of space that pushed back the pitch-black permanent night that resided there. Jasper’s magical light provided only glimpses of crumbling brick walls and old stone that provided a bed for the city’s water runoff and sewage.
On the bright side, the stench wasn’t too bad, and the path seemed well trodden. They probably sent the human slaves in here to clean it out so that there wasn’t a potential buildup of debris to block the water’s path.
Or this was the same route countless smugglers, thieves, and other criminals took to get in and out of the city.
“How is it that we have encountered no one else in here?” I asked as we slogged along.
“Because they’ve been avoiding us,” Nylian replied.
“Seriously?”
He grunted as he took my hand to help steady me over a pile of broken rocks, tree branches, and some other things that I didn’t want to identify. “They’ve been watching us since we entered the sewer. As long as we don’t bother them, they won’t bother us. We’re just passing through.”
“That’s awful generous of them.”
Nylian huffed a laugh and glanced at me over his shoulder. “Not exactly. They can also tell we have a wizard with us. Everyone knows better than to impede the path of a wizard.”
Ah. That made far more sense now.
Of course, I wasn’t going to disillusion them with the truth—Jasper was a horrible wizard. Either his spells didn’t work at all, or you ended up a member of the animal kingdom. Those weren’t odds I’d fuck with.
At long last we escaped the sewer, and we were in the forest.
The only problem was that we were in the forest, in a country very hostile toward humans, with zero supplies. I doubted the chipmunk wizard was going to get us out of this new mess.
Chapter 22
Chipmunk Cheeks Are the Best
Being outside the wall that surrounded Ulmenor was a good start, but that didn’t mean we were safe. Once lost in the shadows cast by the trees and the thick green canopy, Adeline and Jasper shed their cloaks. The chipmunk flopped on the top of Jasper’s head, his tiny chest falling and rising at an alarming rate. What were we supposed to do if the chipmunk had an itty-bitty heart attack? CPR and chest compressions seemed like a bad idea.