by Elise Kova
Jax snickered. He’d been curious to see how Nox would fit in with their trio, but the quartet had been together for under an hour, and she was fitting in as if she’d been there all along.
“We’ll be fine.” Baldair paused to examine the map as they reached a fork in the road. “Speaking of… Which way do we pick, left or right?”
They had chosen the tunnel they were currently in for the very fork at which they now stood. All other paths had been marked by Renalee with X’s or connected to outlets that they knew of, such as back to town or the manor. This was the only path with two unfinished routes. One, Renalee had drawn a dead end for but not marked. The other completely vanished.
“Let’s say she did find the treasure,” Erion started, looking closely at the map. His worry seemed to invest him the most in deciding the path they took. “I doubt she would mark it on the map, in case it was discovered or stolen.”
They all nodded in mutual agreement with his logic.
“So, was Renalee more likely the type of person to leave the path unfinished, and make it look like she was never there? Or would she have finished the marking on the map to give the appearance that there truly wasn’t anything on the route?”
“If the latter were the case, could she have hidden the real location with an ‘X’?” Nox pointed out. “Some of these ‘X’s are a little different than the others.”
There were a few that had been sketched more boldly, or in a different shade of ink.
“No,” Baldair thought aloud. “Even if she was being careful in case the maps were stolen or found, she went to great lengths to hide them away. I don’t think she would’ve made it harder on herself.”
“So, left or right?” Jax looked at the decision before them, trying to put himself in the mind of the dead woman. He would want to make it easy for himself to remember. If he was drawing the map, he might not mark it, but he’d do something to remind himself of the correct path… “What ear did she wear the earring on?”
“What?” Baldair looked up from the map.
“The right,” Erion answered after a long moment of thought.
“How do you know? We never found the earring.” Baldair scratched the back of his head.
“The jeweler mentioned.”
“The right, then.” Jax pointed down his vote for headway.
“Because she wore the earring on her right ear?” Erion seemed skeptical.
“Well, if, as you said Nana told you, Renalee had found the earrings through the lost treasure, then why wouldn’t she use that token to remind herself of where the treasure was? Almost like a badge of honor,” Jax explained, warming to the idea as he articulated it. “Furthermore, she investigated all these caves in secret… Why would she leave one unmarked?”
“She was murdered,” Erion suggested.
“Or she stopped looking because she found what she was searching for.” Jax tapped the map suspended between Baldair’s hands, pointing to the supposed dead end to the right of the fork. “I think we should go this way.”
“It makes sense.” Nox pulled away from her inspection of the map, satisfied. “Besides, if it is just a dead end, it’ll be easy to backtrack to the other path.”
The notion seemed to reassure Erion and Baldair, so the discussion ended there.
Jax ran his hand over the wall as they sloped upward. He tried to imagine Renalee, likely not a Firebearer since she was Southern, pressing into the unknown darkness of the tunnels alone. In his mind’s eye, Jax saw her clutching a single candle to guide her way. The things that drove people to extremes didn’t always make sense. It was likely he’d never know what the young woman’s true story was.
But, in some way, he hoped her memory would find peace at passing along the knowledge she worked so hard to find, rather than vengeance at the notion that she couldn’t take her hard-earned secret to her grave.
Wind whistled in the tunnels, calling them forward. The smell of salt and freshness filled their noses along with the roar of waves.
Which made the dead end they faced all the more confusing.
“So it really was just a dead end?” Baldair looked back at the map.
“It can’t be…” Erion squinted in the darkness.
“No, not with that wind,” Jax insisted.
“A trick of the mind?” Baldair asked.
“A trick of the eyes, more like.” Nox began walking around the room, carefully running her hands over every bit of stone.
Jax was reminded instantly of the illusion they went through to enter the passages from the city and joined her as well. “Baldair, Erion, help us. Press on the stone, see if your hand sinks in anywhere.”
“Sinks in?” Baldair blinked.
“An illusion.” Erion, much more versed in the ways of sorcery, made the connection first.
They all walked around the dead end, sliding their hands along the curving and jagged walls, looking for any passage. But their palms only found firm stone.
“I don’t understand…” Jax had been certain he was right. He could almost feel the spirit of Renalee urging him on.
Nox seemed equally confused, and put her hands on her hips in what Jax had come to associate with her “thinking posture”.
“Stupid ghosts.” Baldair kicked at the wall.
And his foot vanished into the stone.
They all stared, dumbstruck for a long moment, as Baldair stumbled and then, slowly, repeated the process, more deliberately this time. Sure enough, his foot slid past the illusion up to his knee before reaching the edge of the illusion.
The four of them crouched around the hidden opening, running their hands along it, feeling its size.
“Going to be a tight fit,” Baldair, the largest of them, observed.
“I’ll go first,” Jax half-offered, half-insisted. “I’m the thinnest.”
The other three looked amongst themselves, but none could object.
“Be careful,” Erion demanded.
“Aren’t I always?”
“No.”
Jax laughed, crouching down. He crept toward the illusion, sliding his hands forward first and feeling around for anything that may make him regret going head-first into the tunnel. Feeling nothing significant, he dipped his head in.
“What do you see?” Baldair asked instantly.
“Nothing yet, just a tunnel.” Jax shimmied farther. “It’s not much tighter than the other one we went through, Nox.”
“Good!” she called back. Jax took unexpected heart in her encouragement.
He could hear Baldair and Erion asking what other tunnel he was referring to, and Nox was gracious enough to explain. Tuning the conversation out, Jax focused on not snagging his clothing on any stray rocks and wiggling toward the dim light of the exit ahead. A genuine excitement he hadn’t felt in a long time began to grow in him. It was the thrill of learning something new, of finding something out that he didn’t already know. While the day had had its dark spots, it had been otherwise filled with luck.
He pulled himself from the passage and onto a wide platform.
“Friends,” he called back, his voice ushering silence to their discussion. “Come through… You need to see this.”
27. ERION
ERION STARED AT the room before him, trying to make sense of it. “Well, I suppose we know why Renalee didn’t take the whole treasure the moment she found it.”
It was another cavernous space, but even bigger than the makeshift smugglers’ port. Which was saying something, as the prior cavern had been large enough to dock most vessels. There were three notable features of everything that stood before them.
The first was the platform they stood on, just wide enough for them to stand comfortably without fear of falling off the edge. The second was that which awaited them should they fall off the end. What Erion had thought was the sound of waves was, in actuality, the swirling currents of a whirlpool that whipped against the walls of the cavern far, far below them. The waters whipped around the r
oom so fast that they smashed white caps against rocks, and light could not penetrate what was a likely an unfathomable depth. However,
it was the third feature that they took note of more than anything else.
Stretching from the middle of the room—protected by distance from all the walls, the sheer drop, and the deadly water below—was a column. Nestled at the top of this column was a block of ice, so cold it steamed in the air. Through its translucent blueness, each of them could see a small mountain of treasure, frozen within.
“How did Renalee even get to it?” Bladair asked, sliding toward the edge of the platform they stood on, peering downward. The length of the drop alone would be deadly, even without the currents waiting at the bottom. “The woman must’ve been crazy or a genius, or both.”
“Or a Waterrunner.” Jax thought aloud. “She could’ve made a bridge of ice to get to the treasure. And we know the smugglers liked to keep the Adela illusion alive.”
“There was no mention of Renalee being a Waterrunner,” Baldair pointed out.
“Is it so shocking that she would’ve hid it, living in the South?” There was a note of pain in Jax’s voice that Erion keenly picked up on. A wound that he had only endured since being conscripted to the crown and taking up residence in the Imperial Palace.
“I’m sure she would’ve tried…” Erion spoke gently, though he was confident in his logic. “But there’s no way she could have achieved it, not for as old as she was. Her powers would likely have become known when they began to manifest. And precisely because of the South’s opinion on sorcery, I’ve no doubt it would have been mentioned somewhere along the way in our investigations.”
“So, then, who made the ice? It’s still frozen solid, so it must have been recent.”
Erion thought about this. If Renalee hadn’t made the ice protecting the treasure in the center of the room, that meant another Waterrunner knew of it. Leaving magic in a place required the sorcerer to be alive somewhere to feed the magic. Even if Renalee was a Waterrunner and had made the ice, it would’ve shown signs of melting without her power to support it.
“Adela,” Nox said matter-of-factly.
Erion regarded the woman skeptically, still not entirely won over by her. If she hadn’t known they could help her find the treasure, she wouldn’t have fought with them against the smugglers, he’d decided. Plus, there was something about her that seemed slightly off. Like he had met her somewhere before but didn’t know where, yet his mind assured him it was important. He kept trying to place her face but couldn’t.
“I thought Adela was dead.”
“Just because she hasn’t been seen in a few decades doesn’t mean she’s dead.” Nox shrugged. “And she seems to be as greedy as ever.”
It was a valid point, and likely no more than a musing. But Erion didn’t think a woman like Adela Lagmir would merely disappear into thin air. The last known sighting of her was during a particularly bad tempest in the barrier islands that separated the Main Continent from the Crescent Continent. After that, all assumed she had been lost to the sea when there was no further word of the infamous pirate.
“It doesn’t really matter who’s making the ice—made the ice—if we can’t even get to it,” Baldair pointed out. “We have no Waterrunners in our party to cross the gap.”
“Should we go back to town and look for one?” Erion suggested.
“I don’t think we need to,” Nox said thoughtfully, tilting her head at the room before them. “Adela was a smart woman—or it seems she was. She wanted to keep the treasure from anyone else, but it wouldn’t be impossible to believe that at some point, she might need to send someone who was not a Waterrunner to fetch it. Maybe it would’ve been made more difficult for them… But there has to be a path.”
“Or Adela was a murderous madwoman who wanted to keep her prize only to herself and send anyone who attempted to claim it to a watery grave.” Erion thought both possibilities sounded equally plausible. The stories on Adela Lagmir varied, but one thing remained true no matter how, when, or where they were told: the pirate queen was a very dangerous, very ruthless, and slightly unhinged woman.
“No… I don’t think so…” Nox turned, looking up at the ceiling. It was mostly cast in shadow, the only chutes of light coming from three-fourths of the way up on the walls around one side of the room. “We merely have to see past another illusion.”
Nox raised her hand, and fire illuminated the top of the room like an invisible chandelier shining over the frozen treasure.
“Look there.” She pointed up at a consistent line of shadow rimming the cavern, right at its ceiling. “I would bet that’s wide enough to shimmy around.”
“How did you even see that?” Baldair asked in wonder.
Nox placed her hand on an out-cropping of stone just above the tunnel they’d entered, helping Erion notice the narrow grooves worn into it for the first time. “There are cut hand- and foot-holds here. Had to be some reason why someone wasted the time. I would bet that behind that pillar is a bridge of some sort, connecting it to the far wall. We just can’t see it from here, and Adela knew this would be the only entrance.”
A practical illusion. It wasn’t a far-fetched notion, and in fact, it was the most likely thing that could explain everything before them. It also further explained why Renalee hadn’t been able to carry out any substantial amount of treasure.
“Jax, wait, what’re you doing?” Baldair stopped the other man as he gripped the hand-holds on the wall. The prince had moved before Erion could.
“Someone is going to go over, right? We’re not really going to get this far and just wait for a Waterrunner, are we?” Jax grinned.
Erion swallowed hard, looking at the narrow walk. The last thing he wanted was for Jax to assume responsibility for the most reckless tasks. He had risked his name and family’s prestige to keep Jax alive. Now, it seemed the man was intent on throwing it away.
“We all know I make the most sense. It’s not like my life really matters, not like yours or Erion’s.”
“Your life most certainly matters.” Erion couldn’t stop himself. The man would never understand. Erion could live a hundred lifetimes before Jax really began to consider how much his existence meant to those around him. And, if it was going to take a hundred lifetimes, he may as well get started on the first. “If you are reckless here, I will pull you from the Father’s halls myself.”
Jax stopped, caught off-guard enough that he had to formulate his objection carefully.
“You’re our brother,” Baldair said, joining Erion’s cause. “And I don’t want to see you die here.”
They were an unorthodox group, but it would always be the three of them against the world. Surely, Jax had to see the same.
“Is that an order, my prince?” While the question was unoriginal, the voice that asked it was unfamiliar. It was a voice Erion hadn’t heard in some time. Like a glimpse into the man’s broken soul.
“It is,” Baldair affirmed. “Stay alive, Jax.”
28. JAX
IT WAS HIGH. It was really, really high. And the ledge that Jax shuffled his feet along was very, very thin.
Stay alive, stay alive, he repeated to himself.
The swirling waters below were an ever-present roar, filling his ears and echoing between the stalagmites that cast shadowy lines along the outer wall from Nox’s central ball of light. The woman was a few paces behind him. She’d insisted on coming since she was the only other Firebearer, the only person who could be of direct help with the ice.
Besides, even if another set of hands was needed, Jax wouldn’t have let Erion or Baldair lend theirs. No matter what they said, their lives were of greater value to the world than his. Jax’s life mattered, truly mattered, only to them.
He glanced back at the platform, now almost on the exact opposite end of the room. Erion and Baldair had watched with breath-holding, tongue-stilling interest as he and Nox inched their way around.
“You’re al
most there!” Baldair shouted.
And so he was. Sure enough, as Nox suspected, there was a narrow bridge connecting the outer wall to the platform of treasure. Jax held his breath as the arches of his feet ached from holding himself tightly against the wall.
His thighs were jellied by the time he descended to the narrow ledge level with the bridge. Nox was close behind him, pressing against the wall. They both assessed the wooden walk before them.
“Do you think it’s safe?” Jax asked.
“We came this far. Are you really going to turn back now?”
Jax swallowed. It was three narrow planks of wood, roped together and suspended across the chasm. They looked ancient, and cut from sturdy trees, but Jax wondered how secure they could really be.
“I’ll go first,” Nox decided.
“Wait—”
“What?” She stopped, one foot on the bridge.
“Be careful.” He eased away. She’d made up her mind, and he wouldn’t question her on it.
Nox gave him a faint smile. “Worrying about little ol’ me?”
“Have you looked at this bridge?” He grinned and pressed himself against the wall, putting as much distance as he could between them.
“It’s all I’m going to look at,” she muttered, shuffling her weight onto the planks of wood.
They held as Nox walked, arms outstretched for balance. They didn’t so much as creak when she was halfway. By the time she had crossed onto the center platform beyond, Jax’s confidence in the structural integrity of the bridge was reassured several times over.
It was a confidence that quickly waned when he was three steps into his own traversing. He could feel the wood sagging in various places, the softness in it. It likely wouldn’t hold for many more trips, and they would need to get a Waterrunner to remove the bulk of the treasure.
A shift in the light distracted him. The tendrils of Nox’s hair flew backward in waves of heat as she held out her hands directly over the ice. Fire, white hot, ran over the block in pulsing waves. It was a battle of magic, Nox against whoever had established the icy barrier.
