The extent of our day must have been waning when the passage expanded, ballooning outward into the darkness. I could still see faint patches of blue light covering the ceiling, but they were far away, casting no extra light for us. The passageway beyond was indistinct as well—rather than solid walls on either side, the area was full of columns and stalagmites. I started chewing my lip again as we wove among the first few pillars. It felt very much like a maze, the walkable area twisting and turning and zigzagging back and forth. Some ways were flooded, going from solid ground to fathomless pools in a matter of steps. These were crystal clear and bitterly cold, with no bottoms that our lantern could illuminate. We edged along the ones that had passable ledges, praying we wouldn’t slip into the invisible depths on either side.
More than once, I looked up from our desperate circle of light to the Arachnocampa colonies far above our heads. The ceiling was so populated it gave the impression of a hazy blue sky overhead. More larvae meant more prey—more, perhaps, than just their own kin. How did they get in? Where were their secret cracks to the world outside the Stellarange?
We had to be close.
Didn’t we?
The blister on my lip was back from biting it so often. I was squinting at an approaching column, trying to decide if we should go to the right or left, when my feet caught a lip of rock. I arced forward, the lantern swinging in my grip, and landed painfully on all fours in two feet of water. The lantern was instantly doused, plunging us into utter darkness.
“Gemma!”
I spluttered—my face had gone under, and I’d sucked in a startled gulp. Celeno groped for my shoulders and hauled me backward. The lantern scraped against the rock like a dead thing.
His hands gripped me as if I might dissolve into the dark. “Are you hurt?”
“No,” I said. Just stinging palms and knees and the rising crest of panic. “I’m all right.”
“Did the lantern break?”
“I don’t know.” Shaking from cold and fright, I slid my pack from my shoulders and rummaged for the fire capsule tin. With a crunch and a cloud of sulfur, the glass capsule lit. Celeno’s face flashed in the gloom, tense. His brown eyes locked with mine before dropping to the lantern.
“Another shield broke,” he said, pointing to the red glass.
“And the handle is bent.” I felt around the base of the reservoir. “But I don’t think it’s leaking oil. Still . . .” I held the capsule to the wick—sure enough, it didn’t light. “It’s soaked.”
There was a moment’s hesitation while we processed this. “I guess we’ll have to let it dry,” Celeno said. “And hope the water didn’t get inside.”
The fire capsule went out, whisking us back into darkness and leaving a blurred spot on my vision. Slowly I lowered the pliers. I set them back in the tin and slid it into my pack. I sat with it in my lap for a moment. Silence crept in, like a stealthy animal that had been held off by our little circle of light. My knees throbbed where I’d landed on them.
“Where are we?” Celeno asked. My eyes hadn’t yet adjusted to the near-darkness, so the most I could make out in the far-off light of the Arachnocampa was the barest shine on his hair. The rest I had to infer from his voice and shortness of his breath.
“Gemma?” he pressed.
“I’m not sure,” I said.
A pause.
“Not sure, as in, not sure when we’ll get back to the main passages, or not sure at all?”
Silence strangled me. I closed my eyes, pointlessly—as if the familiar dark of my eyelids was somehow more comforting than the skyless dark of the mountain’s belly.
“Gemma, please. Where are we? When was the last blaze? Can we go back?”
I ran my filthy sleeve over my nose in preparation for the slow swell of stress crying.
“The last blaze was too long ago,” I said. “We can’t go back. We can only go forward.”
“It’s only been, what, two days since the petroglyphs? Maybe more? We can make it back there. I’ll help you under the squeeze . . .”
I shook my head, invisible. Sniffing again, I opened my eyes and looked up again at the glowworm colonies—little constellations of living stars.
“Did you know,” I said, “the Lumeni had a word for the different colors in the lake? Waterhue. As the light shifts and shadows, new colors melt in and out, ones we don’t even have names for.”
I could feel Celeno’s palpable puzzlement.
“Okay,” he said hesitantly.
“I read about it,” I said.
“Okay,” he said again.
“Sometimes I think that’s really how the world works,” I said, aware that I was spilling nonsense in the growing realization of my failures. “The Light illuminates things in ways we can’t see or make sense of, and we build our truth based on what we perceive. But everyone is different, from person to person and country to country. Why should we have a name for the changing colors in water? The Lumeni do, because it’s their truth—it exists. But we don’t. We don’t need one. Instead we’ve put names to every celestial body in the sky. Instead we grasp for the Light in the cyphers that specifically name our country, our king. And we say any folk who don’t do the same simply aren’t enlightened, or privileged enough to do so. But . . . what if it’s just waterhue? What if what we call truth is just our limited reality?”
“Are we lost?” Celeno prompted bluntly.
I shut myself up, biting off the rest of my building dissertation. My head felt wobbly and light with fatigue and anxiety, and my eyes burned with their usual film of tears.
“I’m not sure,” I said. “Maybe. And if we are, it’s my fault. I always forget that my decisions don’t carry the same authority as yours.”
He sighed, the sound thick with frustration. “That’s a stupid rule, and I hope you know I’ve never believed it.” His fingers fumbled along my arm until they found my hand. “Gemma, I have no idea what I’m doing. You should know that more than anyone. And Shaula can harp at me all she wants that my decisions are driven by the will of the Light, but it’s never felt that way. I’ve always relied on you more. I’ve always needed your help. And I’m sorry it’s gotten to where you don’t trust your own choices. I do.”
Oh, you shouldn’t. You really, really shouldn’t.
“When we get back, things will be different,” he continued. “We’re going to sort through this business of forgery, and we’re going to have Shaula investigated. I’m willing to bet with a new Prelate, someone who’s not so close to you, you’ll feel better.”
I sat up ramrod straight, focus suddenly flaring in my body.
“It’ll all sort out after that,” he said, unaware. “We’ll be sure nobody challenges your authority, nobody suggests we can’t rule together, as partners like before—”
“Hush, hush,” I whispered sharply, squeezing his hand. “Quiet.”
“I’m only trying—”
“Quiet!” I said again. “Listen.”
He stilled. In the newfound silence, I strained my ears, desperate to find what I thought I heard before. At first, there was only the distant drip of water, the trickling of the mountain’s veins. But then, there, in the vast space, another sound echoed, faint and indistinct, against the rock.
Voices.
There were voices.
In the space of a breath, we both scrambled to our feet, still clutching each other’s hands. The sound died and then rose again, an intermittent swell. Many voices, twined together, as if in song. It came in waves, only reaching us when it hit the right notes.
I dropped Celeno’s hand to dig for the crock of oil in my pack. Fingers shaking from anticipation, I pulled out the packet of papers from my tunic. I removed the vellum envelope holding them, twisted it into a rough wick, and dunked it in the oil.
“What is it?” Celeno whispered. “Is it a trick of the cave? How could there be voices? Did the soldiers follow us in? How did they get all this way without us realizing it?”
&nb
sp; “I don’t think it’s the soldiers.” There was a snap and a flare as I crunched a fire capsule. It burst through the darkness and greedily caught the oil-soaked envelope.
“Then who is it?” he asked. “Where did that paper come from?”
“Hurry,” I said, shoving everything except the pliers and the burning wick back in my pack. “It won’t last for very long.”
“Where are we going?” He stumbled as I tugged his arm. “We’re going toward the voices?”
“We’re getting out of here,” I said, an irrational hope surging in my chest.
“Out of where? Out of this chamber? Gemma, wait—”
“Quiet, Celeno, please!” I said, my voice cracking. “I’m trying to listen!”
Clutching the wick in the pliers, we wove through the columns, our hurried footsteps echoing off the rock. At every turn we stopped, straining our ears to hear the distant murmur. It was like chasing the wind, hoping to get close enough to grab a handful. Once or twice we lost the sound, trying to stifle our breath and beating hearts. But slowly it grew stronger. Soon it wasn’t just coming in swells, but became a steady chorus. Before long, we could make out a melody.
Running water joined the voices—a river rushed out of the darkness to join us, purposeful in its path. The temperature dropped; the air began to move, making the flame on the dwindling parchment gutter. Still, the voices persisted. I could hear a repeated refrain, something sung over and over again, until I knew the rise and fall of the notes by heart.
The ground dropped. We rounded a bend and met with a wash of frigid air. The smoky flame clinging to the wick puffed out. But instead of closing us in darkness, it revealed an ambient glow, golden-white.
“Great blessed Light,” Celeno said, his fist wrapped in my cloak. “Gemma . . . it’s daylight.”
We ran along the edge of the river. There were no columns or stalagmites anymore, unable to grow in the moving air. The cave that had been so quiet now rang with a cacophony of noises—rushing wind, chattering water, and the rise of singing above it all. As the light grew, I set my foot down and skidded, steadying myself on Celeno’s arm. It was ice—there was ice riming the floor, first in small patches, and then in a continuous coat, until we were sliding rather than running toward the light. The wind whipping off the river started to sting, carrying snow and depositing it in drifts along the passageway.
Our pace slowed until we were crabbing along the riverbank, our hands clutching the frozen wall. The river became coated by a sheet of ice until we couldn’t see flowing water any longer. Our breath swirled in front of our faces, our eyes tearing as they adjusted to the growing light.
When I turned the final corner, I had to skid to a stop and cover my eyes—it was like a mirror shining the strength of the sun. But when I lifted them again, blinking through the tears, I saw it wasn’t even full daylight. A sliver of sky shone deep purple-blue, accompanied by a single star. Blocking the rest of the view was a wall of solid ice.
Celeno wheezed on the frozen air as he inched along behind me. “What is that?”
“It’s a waterfall,” I said, my feet crunching on the snow piled around its base. I reached out to brush the ice. “A frozen waterfall. And beyond it . . .” I pointed, and he squinted up at the single visible star—dawn or dusk, I couldn’t tell, and at the moment, I didn’t care. With the light stronger than it had been since we’d entered the cave, I could see the ashen color to his face, the limp tendrils of his hair where they’d soaked and dried with his sweat. He gazed at the single star with bewilderment.
“We found the stars again,” I said, filled with a tense, almost giddy excitement.
His brow furrowed. “I don’t understand. Where are we?”
I inched out over the thick ice covering the river, where there was a natural crack between the waterfall and the rock. A strong breeze whistled through it, the warmer cave air rushing outward into the cold. I put my eye against the crack.
A flat surface, shining blue-gray under the dim sky, broken in the distance by a shadowed landmass rising far out of my line of sight. The surface glimmered, moving.
“We’re at Lumen Lake,” I said.
“We’re where?”
The wind shearing through the crevice died down for a moment, and in the relative quiet, I could hear the singing again. I craned my head, making out the shapes of boats rocking in the water. They were black against the surface, with no lanterns lit on any of them. They seemed to be bobbing in place, even facing the same way, as if waiting for something.
“Gemma!” Celeno’s voice cracked with alarm. “Did you say we’re at Lumen Lake?”
“Yes. Come on, if we break off some of this ice, we can fit through.”
I sat down on the snow, too excited to register the cold, and began to kick the cascade of frozen water. My first few blows did nothing except send a painful jolt through my legs, but one hit near the edge and broke off a fragment the size of a dinner plate. I kicked it again, chipping off another shard.
“Gemma—Gemma, wait.”
But I wasn’t going to wait. I’d done enough waiting. I kicked harder, the impact reverberating up my spine, channeling all my frustration—the silence I’d had to keep, the lies I’d had to tell, the trust I’d gained from no one, the time spent behind locked doors . . . a window-sized fragment broke off the waterfall, shattering on the rocks below. My eyes were tearing, but not from stress crying . . . the light was growing stronger, glancing off the frozen cascade, magnifying against the snow. A bigger portrait of the space beyond came into view—the tops of a mountain range thrust high into the pinking sky, looming over the lake.
“Gemma!” Celeno’s hand closed tight on my shoulder. “Stop—great Light, think about what you’re doing!”
I only realized what he meant as a splintering crash spliced the air. Ice shards flew, and I threw up my arms. The air brightened; the frozen cascades illuminated with golden-white light. With a lurch, I started to slip forward with the momentum of the ice, unable to find solid purchase.
My cloak tightened against my throat—Celeno must have grabbed it to stop my fall. But there was no way he could have held on to the slippery rocks himself, and in the next moment we were both sliding almost straight down. The world was growing impossibly bright, brighter than any normal daylight, too bright to see anything at all.
With a crunch that took my breath away, I landed in a pile of stinging snow. I slid down, my legs tangled in my cloak, my hands scraped raw on the grit. I came to rest where the snow met pebbled beach, the water lapping a short distance away. Between myself and the water, however, was a jumble of feet, all running in my direction. Black boots with silver buckles, leather boots with swinging fringe, a pair of heeled shoes with pearls on the toes, swept by an embroidered blue hem. This last pair came to a running stop just inches from my face.
“What in the blazing, blessed Light?”
Mona.
Chapter 9
I struggled to untangle myself from my cloak and sit up. Queen Mona Alastaire dropped into a crouch in front of me, the opulent embroidered hem of her royal blue gown trailing over the wet pebbles. Her face was split with consternation. I was too relieved to care about what I must look like—dirty and disheveled, with mud on my knees and snow in my hair, my eyes and nose streaming. The world was still intensely bright—too bright for dawn.
“Gemma!” Mona seemed unwilling to believe her eyes. “What in the world . . . how . . .”
“Move, move, earth and sky!” A second figure elbowed her aside, dropping to her knees on the rocks, unconcerned with marring her long green and silver tunic. Where Mona’s skin was moon-pale and freckled, the newcomer’s was burnished copper, darker than mine, her deep brown eyes sharp with alarm.
Ellamae.
She snatched up a handful of my sleeve and started squeezing my arms, up one side and down the other. “Thundering sky, you must have fallen thirty feet—what hurts?” She thumbed my eyelid. “Tilt your head—did you h
it it on anything?”
“I’m all right,” I said breathlessly. I struggled to break her grip. “Celeno—where’s Celeno?”
Mona’s face went white and still as marble. She stared at me a moment longer, and then lifted her gaze to the snow behind me.
It was then I registered the other noises, overwhelming my sensory-deprived brain. The crunching of boots on the pebbles, the rattling of gear and weaponry, the grinding of boat hulls on the beach, the myriad shouting of voices. I pulled away from Ellamae, who was kneading my scalp to check for swelling, and turned around.
I had to duck my head again—no wonder the world seemed so bright. Not only was the waterfall behind us massive, it had turned into a veritable pillar of mirrors, reflecting the early morning sunlight a thousand times over. I blinked against the wash of tears it brought. At its base, on top of the snow pile, Celeno was struggling to steady himself as two blue-liveried soldiers hauled him to his feet.
“You brought him here?” Mona whispered.
I whirled back around and grabbed her sleeve. “Give me time to explain,” I said. “Let us get somewhere we can talk, and let me explain.”
“Gemma,” she said, and her voice was as stark as her face. “Do you understand . . .”
“You said you would respond to me,” I said. “In Dismal Green, you said that if I wanted peace, it was in my power to make it happen, and if I reached out to you, you would respond.” I tightened my grip. “Grant me at least that. Besides—I have news about Cyprien.”
She stared a moment longer, her stormy blue eyes flashing with intensity. Then she sucked in a breath and rose to her feet. She held out her hand. Ellamae took me by my other arm, and together they pulled me upright.
Creatures of Light, Book 3 Page 17
