by Lisa Shearin
Baeseria reached over and covered one of Agata’s hands with her own, joining the gem mage’s raw power to her ages-old bond with the Heart.
Now I could feel it.
Through Agata. The Cha’Nidaar queen had given Agata her blessing, and in doing so, told the Heart to obey Agata as it would her.
The two women held fast, oblivious to the chaos around them as they became one with the Heart, fighting Karnia’s efforts to force the stone to do his will. He was treating it as though he was flogging an animal with a whip.
And like an abused animal, it turned on him.
His hands were grafted to the Heart. From where I stood, I could smell his flesh being seared, see his blood running bright red down the clear sides of the Heart, the flames beneath the surface lapping hungrily at it, spreading from Karnia’s hands, up his arms. Karnia screamed, and kept screaming, even after the Heart’s fires had engulfed his entire body. Within moments, all that remained was a blackened and smoking skeleton fused to the Heart’s surface.
“Damn,” Talon blurted from beside me. “Remind me never to mess with rocks.”
Agata and Baeseria were scrambling in a near panic down the obsidian blocks.
“This is not good,” Malik said.
The rumbling grew even more violent as the fires beneath the Heart’s surface surged into and through the Heartstone beams anchoring it in place against the cavern walls.
Talon managed to stay on his feet. “Karnia’s dead. Why is it still—”
“It can’t be stopped,” Maralah said. “Karnia went too far.”
With a cry, Baeseria slipped, barely managing to grab a ledge with one hand. Agata would never reach her in time.
The queen wouldn’t survive a fall from that height.
Retrieval spell.
Agata’s thought and my impulse were identical.
“I’ve got her!” I shouted, running to the base of the Heart beneath where the queen dangled.
“Baeseria, I can catch you with magic. Let go!”
To my amazement, she did, almost too quickly for me to react.
To my relief, my magic caught her in midair.
I brought her the rest of the way down as gently as I could, catching her in my arms. I set her on her feet.
Agata nimbly climbed down the rest of the way. She was breathing heavily. “We stopped what Karnia was doing, but we can’t shut down the Heart. He pushed it too hard. Those beams go beneath the mountain and beyond.”
“To the roots of the world,” Baeseria said. “The only way to stop the Heart is to break those beams.”
I channeled all my power into my hands.
“Magic will not work,” Baeseria said. “It will merely add to the destruction. When the Khrynsani last used the Heart, it only destroyed from here to the coast.” She glanced back at the furiously pulsing stone. “This time it is much stronger. It will destroy most of Aquas, and send a wave eastward, a wave perhaps even larger than Karnia intended.” The queen of the Cha’Nidaar was calm, the peace that came with the acceptance of one’s fate. “These bombs will collapse everything above us, the city and the mountain?”
I swallowed on a dry mouth. “Yes.”
“That should sever most, if not all, of the beams.”
“Should?”
“Tamnais, we have no other option.”
“And we have no escape,” Malik said. “The quakes collapsed our way out.” He jerked his head in the direction we’d come. “And the way we came in.”
Baeseria placed her hand on my arm. “Sometimes the few must die so that the many may live.”
We were trapped.
The Heart of Nidaar would be buried, never to be used again—and we would be buried along with it. We had done what needed to be done, and half our team had escaped with the people of Nidaar.
Our mission was successful.
In any mission, sacrifices had to be made, but I didn’t want the deaths of the brave people around me to be among them.
Malik smiled and shrugged. “Well, we’re damned if we detonate the bombs, but everyone else will be damned if we don’t.”
I raised the spy gem to my mouth. “Jash, you there?”
“Where the hell have—”
“Are the bombs ready?”
“Yes, where are you?”
“In the Heart chamber.” I quickly explained what Sandrina and Karnia had done. “We can’t get out. I need you to detonate—”
“What do you mean you can’t—”
“We’re trapped. You have to detonate. The Heart is about to—”
“Wait!” Talon shouted from a section of obsidian wall. “I need a cloth, something I can polish this with.”
This was a smooth, man-sized slab of obsidian. It was covered in dust from the quakes.
Maralah didn’t ask any questions. She whipped out a dagger and slit her robe at the base, slicing free a section.
Talon grabbed it and went to work.
A mirror. Talon was making a mirror.
He talked fast as he buffed. “Last year, I found I had a knack for mirror magic and I’ve been studying with Cuinn Avinel on the sly. You remember Cuinn. The Conclave’s mirror expert? Anyway, Professor Avinel said I have a real gift. And because someone told me who my mom was …” He shot me a look, never pausing in his buffing. “Now I know why.” He stood back and quickly scrutinized his work. “I can link this to the obsidian door in the temple we found back in the canyon. The one I couldn’t help but polish when we came in. It’ll put us out on the surface and miles away from the mountain.”
If it worked.
“Talon, you wanted me to remind you not to mess with rocks,” I said.
“This isn’t a rock; it’s volcanic glass. It’s a black mirror. I can do this. It’ll work.”
Master mirror mages who’d had a lifetime of study and experience would be hard-pressed to do what Talon was about to attempt, and they would have been doing it with mirrors they had made themselves and had worked with for years. Actual mirrors, real mirrors, not slabs of obsidian formed by a volcano ages before.
This wasn’t merely difficult. It was impossible.
And we had no choice but to try.
There were three possible outcomes: Talon wouldn’t be able to link the mirrors and I’d have Jash detonate the bombs, crushing us all under a mountain of rock. Or the link would partially work and we would end up embedded in the mountain between here and the canyon. Or it would work completely, saving all of us.
Two ways, we die. One way, we live.
Talon’s eyes were intent on mine. He was waiting for my order as team leader—and my vote of confidence as his father and a fellow mage.
I gave my son what he needed.
I nodded once. “Get us out of here, Talon.” I raised the spy gem. “Jash, we may have a way out. We’ll need pickup for six at the canyon temple. Stand by.”
There was a moment of silence. I knew Jash had heard me.
“Standing by.”
Talon pried Indigo from his shoulder and handed him to me. The little firedrake shrieked, clearly unhappy.
“I can’t do this with you breathing in my ear,” Talon told him.
But he could do it with Death breathing down his neck. Opening the mirror meant anchoring the mirror, meaning Talon would be going through last. He wanted me to take Indigo in case he didn’t make it through.
Talon stood before the mirror, palms forward and fingers spread toward the gleaming obsidian slab, eyes open and concentration absolute.
Almost instantly, the black mirror began to ripple as it connected to another mirror—hopefully the one in the canyon temple that Talon was imagining in his mind. The ripple turned into a swirl as the connection stabilized, and the mirror was ready.
Damn. He’d done it, and faster than I’d ever seen a mirror linked before.
I stepped forward. “I’ll go first to guard our exit. There could be unfriendlies waiting. Mal, I’ll need you next as backup, then Agata. B
aeseria and Maralah, if you would come after Agata. Talon will follow.” I raised the spy gem. “Jash, detonate on my mark—or in two minutes if you don’t hear from me.”
“Got it.”
Talon never looked away from the mirror, but his lips tightened against a surge of emotion.
“I trust you, Talon, but I can’t take any chances,” I told him.
“I know.”
He did. He also knew that I trusted him, one mage to another.
“Ready?” I asked him.
Talon nodded once. “Go.”
I went through.
Chapter Thirty-Seven
I stepped out of the obsidian door Talon had polished only three days before and into the canyon temple, Malik close behind me.
Agata stepped through the mirror, followed by Maralah, who was supporting her mother. After awakening from centuries of sleep, the queen had tried to wrestle a stone of power into submission. I was amazed she could even stand.
I waited.
No Talon.
Agata’s hand was on my arm. “Tamnais, we only have a few seconds.”
A tremor rained dust down from the ceiling and the floor trembled beneath our feet.
“Come on, boy,” Malik urged quietly.
I wanted nothing more than to run back through and get my son, but mirrors didn’t work that way. It would also disrupt Talon’s link between the two, trapping him on the other side.
I waited.
An instant later, Talon dove through the door, slammed into me and knocked us both to the ground.
I’d never been so happy to have the wind knocked out of me.
Talon leapt to his feet, arms and fists in the air. “Yes!” He was beaming.
I climbed to my feet, grinning. “Great work, Talon.”
“Yes, it was.” My cocky son was back.
I raised my spy gem. “Jash, we’re out. Tell Calik we need pickup for six in the canyon. Detonate now!”
Instead of Jash, I got a chorus of whooping cheers from the other end.
I assumed that meant my message had been received.
“Pardon the indignity, Your Majesty, but we’re in a bit of a rush.” I tossed Baeseria over my shoulder.
“We’re ready on this end,” Jash yelled. “Detonating in three, two—”
We were already running.
The instant we cleared the temple doors, a low boom shook the ground and even the air around us. It felt like the whole continent shifted.
I set Baeseria on her feet, but kept my arms around her. “Do you know if the beams—”
The queen nodded, clearly dazed. “I felt them as they broke. The Heart’s connections to the land are severed. Your people and mine are safe.”
But we weren’t.
My eyes panned the sky. No Calik. No dragons.
I needed to be patient, but patience was hard to come by with the ground shaking beneath our feet and whole sections of the canyon wall starting to come down.
“These are merely aftershocks,” Baeseria said.
After what we’d just been through, and had done to get through it, it would seriously suck to be squashed flat in an aftershock.
Talon had Indigo back on his shoulder. “Would we be safer back in the temple?”
That question was answered seconds later as the massive carved doorframe collapsed, filling the doorway that’d been large enough to admit sentry dragons with rubble.
Talon swore. “Never mind.”
“Stay in the middle!” I had to shout to be heard over the renewed tremors. I called Jash. “Is Calik airborne? We’ve got falling rocks down here.”
“We’re airborne.”
We?
“Could you toss up a signal?” Jash asked. “Everything looks the same from up here.”
I replied by flipping my palms over my head and blasting twin columns of blazing red light into the sky, feeding all my strength into it, and kept it going for nearly a minute.
The ground still shook and rocks continued to fall, but now I heard a new sound, a distant roar that grew louder with every second.
We all froze, eyes wide.
“That’s not an aftershock,” Agata said.
Maralah blanched. “It’s water. The ancient quakes drained all the water to below ground. The Heart … the reservoirs have been breached.”
Malik blinked. “Excuse me? Reservoirs?”
The Cha’Nidaar people weren’t all that’d been set free today.
Talon grabbed Indigo and threw his arm into the air, launching the drake straight up. “Go!”
As the firedrake cleared the top of the canyon, he shot a pillar of fire that was ten times his size. If Calik and the dragons were anywhere nearby, Indigo would be a continuous beacon to our location.
The roar coming from the west grew in volume and intensity. I could visualize a wall of water pushing sections of the canyon in front of it.
All headed toward us.
Another roar split the air—from overhead—as a shadow passed over the canyon, obliterating the sky.
Sapphira.
Two more shadows blocked the sky.
Mithryn and Amaranth.
Malik flung a ring of blue light around us to show our position.
Calik lowered Sapphira into the canyon, turned sideways so her wings could stay fully extended and continue to beat and stay airborne.
Saffie extended her claws and Talon and I pushed Maralah and Baeseria into them. The dragon firmly but gently clutched her passengers and took off, making way for Amaranth—with Dasant in the pilot’s saddle.
“Talon, you and Agata next!” I shouted over the approaching wall of water.
Talon didn’t argue with me.
He just shoved Malik into Amaranth’s waiting claw. Agata was already clutched in the other.
Rocks and debris flew around the turn in the canyon. I stared in awe, but mostly terror as a wall of water and rock, taller than I had ever imagined, extended to the very top of the canyon.
Mithryn was coming down with Jash in the pilot’s saddle, but she’d never make it to the bottom in time.
Something was dangling from her feet, secured to her legs.
Ropes.
Talon and I leapt for them and started climbing.
“Go!” I screamed to Jash or Mithryn, whichever one was in charge.
She began her ascent as everything went into slow motion, the speed that said you were about to die. The wall of water picked up the stone doors from the temple as if they were hollow wood and swept them toward us.
We climbed faster.
The water crashed and rushed just beneath our feet as Mithryn fought her way clear of the canyon’s rim. The torrent spilled over the rim and raced to fill the surrounding valley.
Ancient lakes and rivers refilling.
Mithryn flew us to a high bluff where the others waited. She dipped to deposit me and Talon on the bluff and then landed behind us with the other two dragons.
“The Cha’Nidaar?” I asked Jash once I’d pulled in enough air to speak.
“Our people are safe.” Baeseria said, her arm around her daughter. “Thanks to the bravery of you and your companions.”
“Ma’am, we think of it as stubbornness,” Jash said. “Our people just don’t know when to give up.”
I looked around. In the distance, the peak of what was once the mountain containing the city of Nidaar was gone. In its place was a mound only half the height it once was.
“Calik, we’ll need to fly over that to make sure the Heart is completely buried. There can’t be any kind of opening.”
“We’ll take care of it once you all have caught your breath.”
I gave him a tired grin. “Do we look that bad?”
“You’ve looked better. I could be more descriptive, but there are ladies present.” The sun had just risen on a new day, and it would shine down on a landscape that had not been seen in over a thousand years.
The waters still churned, but eventually they wo
uld fill the dry beds of ancient rivers and the valleys that had once been sparkling lakes—bringing life again to a land that had been barren for far too long.
When the waters settled, Aquas would again be a land of waters, the land Kansbar had seen when he’d arrived on its shores. He was here when it was destroyed.
My son and I were here to see it remade.
Both events had involved violent upheaval, but what we had accomplished had given the Cha’Nidaar a chance at a normal life, and Aquas a chance to be reborn.
Queen Baeseria gazed back at the remains of the mountain, her people’s home that had become a prison. “Our burden has been taken from us, but my bond to the Heart remains and my responsibility continues.”
“There are two people I would like you to meet,” I told her gently. “Raine Benares and her father Eamaliel Anguis—they were bonded to the Saghred. I believe that you and Raine could help each other. Eamaliel’s lifespan was greatly increased by contact with the Saghred. He, too, lived a long life burdened with great responsibility. But both have moved on with their lives and are very happy.”
“I would like that.”
“Then let’s all go home.”
Epilogue
I wasn’t surprised.
The Cha’Nidaar had voted to stay on Aquas—at least for now. Troops would be arriving from the mainland to help build and staff a garrison. In addition to requiring the evacuation bags, Maralah had seen to it that her people had stockpiled food and water in the caves of the neighboring mountain.
These were not a people to relinquish their responsibilities lightly.
And neither were we.
That was where we were. On the next mountain over from where the Heart now lay buried beneath the ruins of Nidaar and the mountain that had hidden them both.
Queen Baeseria had been asleep for centuries, and the escape from Nidaar had taken its toll. Our ships’ healers felt certain she would fully recover, and that recovery was being greatly accelerated by her reunion with her beloved people.
In addition to the Sythsaurian guns and teleportation/weapon cuffs we had collected from the Khrynsani, Agata had come out of Nidaar with a bag of Heartstone crystals. The Cha’Nidaar soldiers had their version of the lizard men’s guns, and they had stockpiled plenty of extra crystals in the cave holding their emergency supplies. While not powerful on the scale of causing earthquakes and mass destruction, the smaller pieces could power weapons like the guns, and Phaelan theorized that they could be adapted to cannons and was eager to experiment.
