“So what does it mean?” Lopen asked.
“I’m not sure. Did you, by chance, grab any of those gemstones on the beach?”
Lopen fished in his pocket for the small gemheart he’d picked up earlier. “Grabbed one,” he said. “I was going to ask you what you thought about there being no crem on it, but got distracted.”
She took it from his fingers, then brought out a jeweler’s loupe and began inspecting it.
“You . . . carry one of those in your pocket?” Lopen asked.
“Doesn’t everyone?” she said absently. “Hmm. I can’t be certain, as I’m no expert. But I think . . . Lopen, I think this is a fake. Quartz, not a diamond.”
He frowned, taking it back. Quartz couldn’t hold Stormlight, and it could be made by a Soulcaster. “You think . . . they might all be fakes?”
“It’s possible.”
Lopen gave a mighty sigh. “And thus, my great fortune evaporates like a man’s beauty upon the weathering shores of time. Like how that one time I, sure, almost had a chasmfiend pet that would—”
“Yes, you’ve told me,” Rushu said. “Six times.”
“I have a new joke though,” Lopen said. “For the end of the story. I’m going to say, ‘And that is why I let it eat my arm.’ Funny, yes? Well, it will be. Eventually.” He tossed the fake gemheart up in the air and caught it again. “So . . . why make these? Why set this place up to appear so rich?”
“I’m wondering the same thing,” Rushu said.
“They wanted to wow us, maybe?” Lopen said. “Perhaps they thought we’d be so distracted by the riches that we’d be stunned and confused. They did not know that I am accustomed to such incredible sights, for I experience something even more impressive each morning after I awake.”
“Is that so?”
“When I look in the mirror.”
“And you wonder why you’re still single.”
“Oh, I don’t wonder,” he said. “I’m fully aware that so much of me is difficult for any one woman to handle. My majesty confuses them. It’s the only explanation for why they often run away.” He gave her a grin.
Surprisingly, she grinned back. Usually people threw things at him when he said lines like that.
She led him the rest of the way to the raised section of the city, which did kind of look like an Oathgate platform. She pointed to a structure in the near distance that looked like it might have been a palace.
“If this is like Kholinar,” she said, “then . . .”
They turned and walked to a solitary structure—one of the few that still had a roof—near the center of the raised platform. Inside, they found what they’d been searching for. Kind of.
This had obviously once been an Oathgate chamber. It had the remnants of the same mural on the floor as the ones in other cities, but the mechanism had broken or decayed. There was no place to put a Shardblade, no way to rotate it. The structure had been destroyed by the elements. All that remained was dust and corroded bits of metal.
Lopen frowned, picking up some of these and feeling them with his thumb. He glanced at Rushu, who stood with her hands on her hips, her forehead wrinkled in thought. Something about this place felt wrong. Like it . . . like it had lodged in his throat as he tried to swallow it. And he couldn’t get it down. He had to cough it back up instead.
“This is fake too, isn’t it?” he said.
“What makes you say that?” Rushu asked.
“Well, the Oathgate on the Shattered Plains sat there, sure, for thousands of years—and it still worked when we found it. This place is better preserved. But here, the Oathgate mechanism has disintegrated?”
“I agree,” she said. “I might have bought it, but those gemstones . . . And then finding this next to the palace, like in Kholinar? It’s too obvious.”
“So where’s the real one?” Lopen asked.
“Go fetch the sailors,” she said. “See if they can locate a set of stairs. Or a trapdoor. Or anything in this rubble that would let us go down.”
That seemed strange to Lopen. People didn’t often build down, since basements tended to fill with water. Still, Rushu was a smart one, so he shouldered his spear and walked out to do as she asked. He gathered the sailors and had them, in pairs, start searching for steps.
He couldn’t banish that feeling of wrongness as they did so, and he kept seeing things at the corners of his eyes. Storm him, but this place had him jumping at shadows.
But Rushu was right. It didn’t take too long before they found a stairwell hidden by some debris in one of the least impressive buildings on the outskirts of the central plaza, not particularly close to the palace at all.
“It’s probably a stormcellar,” Lopen said, following Rushu down and holding a gemstone for light.
“Probably,” she agreed.
“Or . . .” he said as they reached the bottom, “it’s just a dead end.” Indeed, the stairwell ended abruptly at a stone wall.
Rushu took a small pouch off her belt, one that clinked as she moved it.
“Why did you want us to find steps anyway?” Lopen asked.
“It’s not uncommon for ancient cities to be buried over time,” she said. “Crem builds up. While modern cities keep chipping at it to prevent being swallowed, many older towns were built on top of the submerged ruins of ancient ones. It’s not uncommon to discover an architectural site when digging a mine, for example.”
“All right . . .” Lopen said. “So . . .”
“So I have double the reason to believe that city above is fake,” she said. “The real Akinah probably sank into the crem years ago.” She held out her hand—which glowed suddenly with a fierce light. The ardent wore gemstones on it, connected with silver chains.
“Storms!” he said. “A Soulcaster?”
“Yes,” she said. “Let me see if I can remember how to use one of these. . . .”
“You know how?”
“Of course,” she said. “The Soulcasting ardents use them all the time. I went through a phase when I was very keen on joining them, until I discovered how boring their work was. Anyway, plug your ears and hold your breath.”
“Why—”
He cut off as smoke filled the stairwell, making his ears scream with sudden pressure, as if he’d dived deep beneath the ocean. He shouted, then coughed. Then drew in some Stormlight.
Ahead of him, the stone wall had vanished. Rushu was wiping the soot from her face with a rag and grinning.
“You’re crazy,” he told her.
“Well, I suspected that if an Oathgate was here in Akinah, we’d have to cut through stone to get to it. I didn’t anticipate this one being underground—more that it would be covered over like on the Shattered Plains. Regardless, I demanded that Navani send me with either a Shardblade or a Soulcaster to get through. Alas, she picked the less exciting option. I do like being right though. It makes my stomach flutter.”
Lopen stepped up beside her, holding out his gemstone to reveal what she’d opened up. An underground cavern, somewhat shallow—maybe twelve feet high—and expansively wide. Like . . . a plateau.
“Storms,” Lopen said. “The Oathgate is down here.”
“It must have taken extraordinary effort to hide it,” Rushu said. “Whoever did this could have simply buried it, but they wanted to leave it functional. So they built a room around it, then let the crem pile up over the years.”
“But why?” Lopen asked, stepping into the place, squinting. His light barely revealed the control building at the center. Yes, this really was an Oathgate. “Why hide it, then go to all that trouble to construct fake buildings?”
“Obviously,” Rushu said, “they hoped we’d find the fake one, then leave, assuming the Oathgate lost.”
Lopen halted in place. The words sank in. This idea he swallowed, but it tasted terrible.
“This was like . . . a failsafe,” he whispered. “So if someone reached the island, they’d find nothing useful.”
“But we outthoug
ht them!” Rushu said. “I’ll have to remember to thank Brightness Rysn for her timely note. It—”
“Rushu,” Lopen interrupted, fishing out the gemstone Huio had given him. It wasn’t blinking. “You’re a genius.”
“Clearly.”
“But you’re also a storming fool. Gather the sailors, stay here, and try not to get killed.” With that, he went dashing back up the steps, pulling in Stormlight. He took to the air immediately, zipping out of the city and toward the beach.
Whoever was watching this place, they’d gone to great lengths to prevent them from arriving. But once that plan had been foiled, they’d probably been willing to let the expedition gather up fake gemhearts and sail away. So long as they didn’t find the real secret of the island.
But he and Rushu had done just that. Which meant the entire group was in serious danger, even if Huio’s gemstone wasn’t blinking. He needed to get to the others quickly.
He was glad for his instincts. Because when he arrived at the beach, he found Huio being eaten by a monster. And that wasn’t the sort of event a cousin should miss.
Rysn’s first clue came as a curious sound. A clicking, like moving carapace?
She’d been waiting for a rowboat to return to take her to join the shore team. She wanted to inspect the greatshell remains there, see if she could spot anything that gave her a clue on how to help Chiri-Chiri. Now, she turned around in her seat on the quarterdeck and looked toward the strange sound. Had Chiri-Chiri returned?
But no. This sound she was hearing was too loud to be made by one creature. It was . . . the sound of hundreds of legs moving at once.
What she saw in the water made her feel as if she’d been struck by a bolt of lightning. Hundreds of cremlings—crustaceans smaller than a person’s fist—were crawling out of the ocean and up the side of the ship. And each seemed to be carrying a piece of flesh on it. She even spotted one with an eyeball on its back.
Had these things ripped apart a person? Were they carrion feeders? Something worse?
She screamed, but did so a fraction too late to be of help—for a shout went up across the ship’s deck. Sailors on watch called out as the water around the Wandersail boiled, spitting out thousands of similar cremlings. Clacking and chittering and scrambling as they swarmed up the sides of the ship.
Violet fearspren gathered at Rysn’s feet. Never before had she felt more trapped by her inability to walk. Cord muttered something in Horneater and backed away. Rysn, however, had to unstrap herself before she could escape.
She was too slow. Her trembling fingers didn’t seem to work as she fought with the buckles. The strange cremlings flooded over the side railing.
She finally got the belt undone, but by then the things were swarming all around her. She couldn’t flop onto the deck and crawl away. She’d be overrun. Instead she tried to pull herself farther up into the seat.
However, instead of crawling up her legs and attacking her, some of the cremlings pooled on the deck nearby. Then, in a bizarre display, they began to fit together. Like people grabbing hands and forming a line, the cremlings interlocked their wriggling legs, putting their backs outward. The bits of flesh and skin on them fit together like pieces of a puzzle.
Humanlike feet formed, then legs. Cremlings crawled up, pulling together into a writhing heap that became a torso—then finally the full figure of a nude man, lacking genitals. The head came last, eyes popping into place as cremlings squeezed inside the “skull.” Lines of tattoos hid the seams in the skin.
For a moment, the look of it was nauseating—the figure’s stomach pulsed with the creatures moving within. Lumps twitched on the arms. The skin of the legs split as if sliced open, revealing the insectile horrors within. Then it all seemed to tighten and settle down, and appeared human. A near-perfect likeness, though the lines across the stomach and thighs were far more visible than the ones on the hands and face.
“Hello, Rysn,” Nikli said. He smiled, and his face creased along lines she now knew weren’t merely wrinkles, but splits in the skin. “Your expedition has, unfortunately, proven very persistent.”
Storms. Nikli wasn’t a man or a Voidbringer. He was something worse: one of the gods from Cord’s stories, a monster from Jasnah’s tales. An abomination made up of hundreds of tiny pieces pretending to be a single entity.
Cord put her hand on Rysn’s shoulder—making her jump—then stepped deliberately forward to position herself between Nikli and Rysn. The Horneater woman spoke in her musical language, and the creature—remarkably—responded in kind.
“Cord?” Rysn whispered, trembling. “What is happening?”
“I did not realize . . .” Cord whispered in Veden. “The Gods Who Sleep Not . . . they can appear as people.”
“Do you know how to fight one?”
“I told you, you cannot,” Cord said. “Lunu’anaki—he is trickster god—warned of them during my grandmother’s time when she was the watcher of the pool.”
“We had not expected to find one of the Sighted on this trip,” Nikli said in Veden. “You have long guarded Cultivation’s Perpendicularity. It is regrettable that you joined this expedition. We do not kill your people lightly, Hualinam’lunanaki’akilu.”
Some of the other swarms formed into similar individuals on the deck, though several remained scuttling masses. The captain gathered the remaining ten or so sailors, but they were quickly surrounded by the strange creatures. Storms. The men had grabbed spears, but how did you fight something like this? One man stabbed a creature that drew close, and the spear stuck straight through the body, then cremlings began to swarm out of the body cavity along the spear’s length.
“Stop this,” Rysn said, finding her voice. “Nikli, let us negotiate. Please, tell me what you want.”
“All opportunity for negotiation has passed,” Nikli said softly, looking away—a very humanlike gesture of shame. “You ignored my warnings, and your friends on the island did not take the bait we offered them. That was your last chance to escape safely, and some of us argued long to give you even that chance.
“But you are persistent, as I said. Some of us knew it would come to this. Some who are less idealistic than I. For what it is worth, Rysn, I’m sorry. I genuinely enjoyed our time together. But the very cosmere is at stake. A few deaths now, however regrettable, will prevent catastrophe.”
Cord shouted something at Nikli in Horneater, and he retorted, sounding angry, then turned to shout toward the others on the deck.
“That was a distraction,” Cord whispered to Rysn, turning. “Be ready. Hold your breath.”
“Hold my—”
Rysn yelped as Cord grabbed her around the waist. The tall woman heaved Rysn over her shoulder, leaped onto the chair, then launched them over the side of the ship toward the dark waters beyond.
16
For a moment, Rysn was transported back to the Reshi Isles.
Falling.
Falling.
Hitting water.
For a moment she was in that deep again, after having plunged from such an incredible height. Numb. Watching the light retreat. Unable to move. Unable to save herself.
Then the two moments separated. She wasn’t in the Reshi Isles; she was in the frigid ocean near Akinah. The shock of the cold made her want to gasp or scream. Fortunately, she kept her mouth closed as Cord—swimming mostly with her legs—propelled them downward.
Deeper.
Deeper.
Fearspren trailed behind Rysn like bubbles. Cord was an unexpectedly powerful swimmer. But being carried this way, pulled into the dark, made Rysn panic. It brought back not only the terror of her near-death experience, but the helplessness of the awful weeks that had followed.
Previously mundane acts—like getting out of bed, visiting the washroom, or even getting herself something to eat—had suddenly become near-impossible. The resulting fear, frustration, and helplessness had almost overwhelmed Rysn. She’d spent days lying in bed, feeling that she should have died
rather than becoming such a burden.
She had surmounted those emotions. With effort, and help from her parents and Vstim, she’d realized there was so much she could still do. She could make her life better. She was not a burden. She was a person.
However, as the ocean swallowed her again, she found her old fears alive and well, festering inside. The abject sense of helplessness. The terror at being entirely at the mercy of other people.
And then she saw the spren.
Not the fearspren, but luckspren—like arrowheads with stubby, rippling bodies. They darted through the water around her and Cord. Dozens. Hundreds. Light from the clouded sky above vanished, and Rysn’s ears hurt so much she was forced to equalize by blowing with her nose pinched.
But those spren were glowing, lighting the way, urging them forward.
I know you, spren, she thought. She should have panicked, should have worried about drowning. Instead she watched the spren. How did I fall from so high and not die? Everyone called it a miracle. . . .
She twisted in Cord’s grip. The spren led them toward a shimmering light emanating from some rocks ahead. A small tunnel?
At last Rysn noticed her lungs beginning to burn. She slipped out of Cord’s grasp and turned, then pulled herself along the rocks. Cord came behind, and the spren ushered them, guided them through the dark depths until—
Rysn pulled herself up into the air. Cord emerged a moment later.
Rysn gasped for breath, trembling in the darkness. What had happened to the light? The spren? Suddenly it was completely dark, though the sound of their breath echoed against nearby walls. They seemed to have emerged into some kind of cavern under the island.
Rysn grabbed some rocks at the side of the pool, clinging to them with her right arm as she reached to the money pouch in her left skirt pocket for spheres. She fiddled in it, then brought out a bright diamond mark, gripping it through the thin cloth of her safehand glove.
Dawnshard Page 14
