by Blair Drake
Whispers strained on the edge of hearing. It didn't feel like his ice magic. No, this sounded like a babble, a stream of different magic's melded together. It was starting to distract him, and he lost track of time and the tunnels around him, as the whisper grew stronger and he followed on Zandui's heels.
It was probably a good thing Yeorfac and Zora were behind him, or he'd have probably wandered off into one of the branching tunnels.
"We're here," Zandui's harsh whisper broke Elijah out of the stream of soft noise distracting him. The hunter extinguished his torch, plunging them into a darkness so absolute, it reminded Elijah of the vortex that had sent him to this world.
The rasp of someone drawing a sword broke the silence.
"This way," Zandui barely breathed, taking Elijah by the forearm and easing him up the first flight of steps they'd encountered that was going up.
A chill ran down his damp spine. He was sweating far too much. The Current took all of his attention. Elijah reached out to try and meld with it, but it skittered uselessly through his grasp. He didn't know how he'd done what he'd done at the lake. Had this power always been inside him, waiting to wake up?
How would he ever master it, if he didn't even know the basics?
Did he even want magic?
Light began to gleam, a chill gray sliver that beckoned, nonetheless. Zandui paused beneath a grate, and bars of light broke across the man's harsh features. "This one."
Zora and Yeorfac moved quickly, kneeling to cup their hands. They lifted Zandui, and he curled both hands around the iron bars of the grate, easing it from its settlement. Sliding it aside, he hauled himself through the narrow opening.
Elijah went next.
He found himself in an enormous hall, with stone walls soaring what seemed like miles to a dark, timber ceiling. Tapestries hung on the wall, some of them ripped, and all of them faded. The carpets looked like they'd once been red, perhaps, but years of dust and the weather had dulled them. A mouse scampered out of their way, racing along the wall and vanishing in a dusty tapestry that had long since fallen. Dead. This place was dead and empty. The only light came from broken windows and the gaping ruins of the main doors.
"This is the cathedral," Zandui murmured, slinking along the wall. The soles of his boots made no noise, and Elijah tried to emulate him. "They came here to pray to Eloa when Dameron began destroying the city, and it turned out the head priest had a secret tunnel beneath the altar. He'd been transporting casks of wine into the city that he wished to pass beneath the nose of the local tariff agents. My grandfather was one of the lucky few who escaped Agramorh."
"What happened to the rest of the people?" Elijah copied Zandui and pressed his back against the wall. Whatever had sheared through half of the city had caused roofs to fall and walls to plummet in some places, but the other half of the city remained solid from what he could see through the windows. Just empty.
"It was winter. The wolves came. And the wyvern. They've always hunted these mountains, but the walls held ballista to keep them away. The three towers that fell held the largest ballista, and the range on the others couldn't stop the wyverns from slipping into the city from the eastern edge. It was a bloodbath."
The man peered around the edge of the cathedral doors. They hung open on rotted hinges and snow had swirled into the foyer, icing over the carpets. Snowflakes blew in on a wisp of wind, floating like blown seeds of dandelion. It must have started snowing while they were in the tunnels.
There were paw prints in the snow.
Big paw prints. Like, the size of his hand.
Elijah swallowed. He was no zoologist, but it occurred to him that whatever had made those prints shouldn't have been that big. Especially if it was a wolf.
The whisper of the Current seemed a little louder here. He pressed a hand to his walls to try and steady himself. Big wolves, Elijah. Probably not the best time to be off with the fairies.
"The courtyard is clear." Zandui said, as Yeorfac and Zora met them breathlessly. He pointed across the courtyard to the arch that seemed to lead into some sort of wilderness. "There. The Well is in the gardens. I'll go first."
Slipping his white fur hood over his head, he vanished into the softening drift of snowflakes. He and Yeorfac would be almost invisible out there.
Zora and Elijah would not be.
"Us next," Zora said, as if coming to this same conclusion herself. "Keep your eyes on the skies, Yeorfac."
Grabbing Elijah's hand, she dragged him across the courtyard. Elijah sprinted at her side, not daring to take his eyes of the ice-slick cobbles. The boots the monks had given him held little ridges on their soles and were much easier to keep his feet on ice than his school shoes had been. Even so, he was well ahead of Zora when he plunged through the arch.
Snow covered the wintry gardens beyond. Bare branches stretched into the sky, almost like the trees wailed silently for the loss of the city. Thorns curled up the walls, overgrown and wild, and Elijah skidded to a halt as he faced an entire wall of them.
A hedge. No, a maze. He could just see Zandui beckoning to him through the first row of thorns.
Zora drew her sword, as Yeorfac puffed and panted to a halt beside them. "The Well of Tears is in the center of the maze apparently."
"You don't know?" Elijah whispered. "I thought you guys had been in this city before."
Yeorfac watched the skies. "A man doesn't come to Agramorh unless he needs to these days."
The snow was starting to come down a little heavier now. The whisper seemed to swell in his ears, a trickle of ghostly fingertips down his spine as if in warning. Elijah thought he saw a shadow ripple over the ground and shoved the pair of them under the arch that led into the maze.
Heartbeats ticked by. Zora slowly eased out a breath, as if she'd been holding it.
"Well spotted," she said.
"Is it gone?" Yeorfac asked.
Elijah peered upwards. He couldn't see a thing in the curtain of snow. Nor could he explain how he'd known the wyvern was circling overhead.
I felt it. I know I did.
The pain drilling between his brows wasn't as frantic now, as if he'd opened himself up enough to allow some of the pressure to relieve itself. He held his palm out, feeling the flesh vibrate like he had the speakers as loud as they'd go. An echoing pulsation shivered back at him, like something else turned the bass up to match. Closing his eyes, Elijah lifted his hands and face to the sky.
It felt like he reached out invisibly, feeling the world shape itself around him in a whisper of sound and vibration. Magic sonar.
The Current.
"What is he—?"
"Quiet," Zora whispered harshly, but this time her frustration wasn't with him.
Elijah swept the skies with this invisible force, feeling shapes form out there, until he could almost feel the shape of them. Wings flapped. A heartbeat echoed like the sensation of a struck drum, heavy and pulsing with life. One. Maybe two of them out there.
The rest were nowhere to be "seen".
Elijah slowly lowered his hands and opened his eyes in wonder. "They're leaving," he said. "I think they're seeking shelter from the storm. I can feel them flying away."
He met hard, flat eyes, as Zora's lips thinned as if she saw something else in his face that didn't please her anywhere near as much.
"If there's a storm coming, then we should take this chance," she said roughly. "Come. Before the storm breaks, or they come back."
Chapter 7
It took them over an hour to traverse the maze, taking several wrong turns before backtracking. The snow was starting to come down heavily now, bringing visibility down to a narrow field. The whisper became a hum, but now he'd opened himself up to the current he no longer felt like it was drowning him.
"This way," Elijah said, as they paused at the final intersection.
Turquoise light gleamed through the walls of thorns.
"Seems like you're catching on to mage craft fairly quickly," Zand
ui commented.
"It's like a beacon," he said, distractedly. "Or a drumbeat only I can hear. The closer we get, the louder it becomes. It's amazing. I feel like there's so much about the world around me that I've never seen before."
But it was the ice that called him, the snow and the wind. The rest of the world remained a hum. The power was there, but he could only listen to it, not touch it. Ice remained the only ability where he could wield the weft of Current into strands of energy he could use.
"Here we are," Elijah said, as they exited the final turn of the maze, and passed beneath a crumbled arch.
There was a circle of cleared space in the center of the maze, and he suspected it had once been covered in lawn, or perhaps tiles. In the very heart of it stood the Well, a stone-lipped circle filled with that beckoning turquoise light. It soared up into the heavens, and the drumbeat was a roar now. A full-throated, heavy metal concert of vibration that almost overwhelmed him.
"—not sure if we can take him through–"
"—got no choice—"
"—but look at him—"
A hand latched around his arm and Elijah blinked, seeing Zoe in front of him. No, not Zoe. Zora.
"Elijor? Can you focus?"
He pinched the bridge of his nose and waved her away. "It's... pretty overwhelming. But I'm okay."
They peered into the well, and Elijah had to force himself not to open his arms wide and throw himself in. Diffractions of light rippled, reminding him of water.
But the well wasn't filled with water.
The light seemed thick and viscous deep within the well. It moved, as if something stirred it. A globule of thick liquid reached up toward him, and he almost thought he saw a hand emerge, until it slumped back down, collapsing like a whale that had broached the surface of the sea and smashed back down. The lump on his forehead, where Yeorfac had struck him, ached as if the power of that whisper was drilling straight between his eyebrows.
"It's pure Current," Zandui explained, his grim face softened by the light. He pointed to the runes around the edges, carved into the stone well. "If we activate the runes in the correct sequence, they shall take us where we want to go. The Agramorhian mages created the Well here so that anybody could use it, if they knew the code."
"Like a portal? Is that how everyone travels in this world?"
"Like a portal." Zandui nodded. "But it is said that one should only ever use each well once. To dally twice, is to invite madness. There's a cost involved in travelling through the wells."
"If our cause wasn't desperate," Yeorfac admitted, the first time he'd ever spoken to Elijah with any warmth, "then we wouldn't risk it."
"The well's levels are low," Zora murmured. "Shall that be a problem? I thought it was supposed to almost spill over the lip of the well."
"Why are they drying up?" Elijah asked.
The three of them exchanged a long, slow look.
"There are rumors the Pasternakians are doing something with the Yarlstone to extract the Current from the land," Zandui whispered. "The edges of all the territories are beginning to show signs of it, as if something is sucking the life from their lands."
He'd mentioned it before, but more as a footnote to the main story. "I thought Current existed in all things."
"It does," Yeorfac muttered. "But the Yarlstone is a magic focus made of pure Current. Nobody truly knows what it can do."
It had done this to a mighty city. Elijah looked up. The nearest tower was shorn at an angle, as if a razor had sliced through it in one sharp slash. "That's why you want to get it back," he said slowly. "That's why you're so worried about Zora making it to the Ascension in time."
And that's why you have a hard-on for the Pasternakians.
But where did he fit? He knew they were hoping he'd enter the Ascension and fight at Zora's side, but why this side excursion if the Ascension was so important?
What secret were they keeping about this mysterious Keeper? About Elijah?
A sudden screech shattered his concentration. Elijah's head whipped toward the sky as a vibrating force slammed against his conscious mind. Wings suddenly appeared, spreading like the wings of a glider as a wyvern came out of nowhere.
He'd been so distracted by the Well's power he hadn't even seen it coming.
Claws reached out, and curled around Zora's shoulders, plucking her into the sky.
It all happened so quickly, Elijah didn't even have a chance to cry a warning.
"Zora!"
She screamed as the wyvern flapped, trying to haul her higher.
"Her chainmail's weighing it down!" Yeorfac bellowed, leaping into the air and trying to snatch at her boot.
Elijah bent and picked up one of the shards of shale that lined the well, yanking it from the remnants of its thin concrete. He hurled it into the sky, and the wyvern squawked in fury as it veered sharply to the right to avoid it. Zora's weight drove it lower than it expected, and Elijah could see her fighting to draw her sword.
The weight of sonic vibration suddenly slammed against him. Heartbeats pulsed in the storm. One, two, three.... Five.
"Get the Well working!" Elijah screamed at Zandui. "There are more wyvern out there!"
Yeorfac grabbed the bow and quiver of arrows off his friend, and ran to Elijah's side, nocking an arrow swiftly. There was a small cylinder attached to it, just behind the arrowhead.
"What can I do?" Elijah demanded, as Yeorfac drew the bow—
—And paused.
Zora stabbed upward with the sword, driving it into the stomach of the wyvern. It screamed, and snapped down at her, its teeth razoring uselessly over her chainmail. Her sword tumbled from the sky and landed with a whumpf of white powder, vanishing in a drift.
"What are you waiting for?" He ran across the ground, staring up at her helplessly.
"If I miss, then I'll hit her," Yeorfac ground out. Tension strained in his face, as he stared along the arrow helplessly. "The charge is enough to blow her to pieces, even if I do hit the wyvern."
They'd used the same exploding arrow against the troll.
"Use your magic!" Yeorfac snarled, cursing as he lowered the bow.
It doesn't work like that— He ground his teeth together.
But if he didn't do something then Zora would die.
Ice. Ice worked for him.
Elijah held his palms up, vibration shivering through him. The wyvern's heartbeat called at him. Another darted out of the skies, its sharp teeth trying to close around Zora's hips. She screamed as it tried to jerk her from the first wyvern's clawing hold.
Zora. All he could see was Zoe. And whether she was this world's Zoe or not, he had to save her.
"Ice," whispered the world around him, calling to him as he closed his eyes.
"Ice," he breathed, spilling power through the world, as he struck at the second wyvern.
Ice suddenly solidified along its wings, and the beast gave a startled squawk as it let go of Zora. It plummeted toward the ground, and landed flat on its back, the ice shattering from its wings and spraying across the courtyard.
"Kill it," Elijah yelled to Yeorfac, sprinting toward the first wyvern, which jerked higher in the skies, now nothing else was dragging it down.
He reached for the wyvern's heart—that wild, rapturous drumbeat he could almost see throbbing in the wyvern's chest—and curled his fingers into claws as he called ice into being again. The drumbeat stopped abruptly as Elijah froze its heart in its chest, and he could feel blood thundering through frozen arteries as the chill spread. The heat of the beast's blood poured through the frozen vesicles of its six-chambered heart and burst into a slurry of red icy shards, as hot met cold.
Zora screamed as the wyvern dropped her. Elijah didn't think. He lifted a hand sharply into the air, and the snow across the entire courtyard swept into an icy hand that reached up and captured her, frozen fingers locking around her and hardening.
The wyvern landed with a heavy thud, but it was already dead.
; Elijah stared at his hand. Then at the frozen pillar he'd conjured out of thin air. It was working. He controlled ice!
Other wyverns circled the skies above them, and snow pelted into his face as he looked directly up. An arrow hissed through the stormy skies, and exploded with a loud bang as it scored a direct hit on the largest wyvern's chest.
They scattered like startled pigeons, the largest wyvern limping through the skies behind them, and careening down into the hedges of bare thorns as it crashed to the ground.
"Two kills for you," Yeorfac shot him a wild grin, looking years younger. "One for me."
Weirdo.
"Hurry!" Zandui yelled as a wash of power suddenly swept outward from the Well, rolling over them like a heated wave.
Elijah ran to where Zora was trapped in the frozen hand he'd created. Reaching up, he slapped a hand against one of the frozen fingers, and it broke off with a sharp snap, leaving her enough wiggle room to slip free from its grasp.
"I've got you," he called, as she tumbled free with a steely rasp.
Zora landed in his arms and Elijah went down with a weighted crash. Pain rammed through his ribs as her knee clipped him.
Chainmail. He groaned, trying to roll to his knees. Couldn't breathe. Again. "Come on," he managed to gasp, as his lungs opened up. He was still winded, but he'd had plenty of practice being smashed up against the boards of the hockey rink at GCA. Just keep breathing, keep moving, pushing through it.
Zora staggered to her feet as he hauled her upright. Blood dripped down her thigh, and she made a pained sound as she tried to put her weight on her right leg. Their eyes met, and in them he saw how frightened she was.
"You saved me," she gasped, as if the idea was simply ludicrous.
"Probably going to regret it later." He forced a grin. "When you're hauling me over hot coals for losing your sword."
Zora didn't smile back. All of the color had drained from her face, and her hair hung in snarled tangles from the strip of leather she'd used to tie it back. The sight of her strained face made his gut tighten in fierce knots. She wasn't Zoe, but he'd come to admire her fierce nature, and dependable fearlessness.
