by Mark Albany
“They’re alive,” I said. “I can tell through our bond. Based on the emotions coming from their side of it, they don’t appear to be in any immediate danger and seem more concerned about us than themselves. That could change, of course, since they’re the ones closest to whatever is left of the monsters.”
“Assuming that the undead survived the cave-in,” Faye said as Lyth pulled her up from her seat on the ground.
“Those monsters have a way of surviving pretty much anything we’ve thrown at them so far,” I growled and shook my head. I wasn’t overly fond of leaving them behind, but at this point, aside from digging our way clear—which would probably make the cave-in worse—we didn’t have many options.
I assumed. I honestly didn’t know anything about cave-ins or their intricacies.
“There should be another way out of here,” Lyth said softly while running her fingers over the walls. “These mazes had to have been built with more than one way out. That’s an assumption on my part, so don’t hold me to it later when we don’t find one.”
“Either way, we can keep trying to find what we actually came here for,” I muttered. I was still a little woozy from the blow to my head and drained from the fighting. At this point, I would have suggested that we pause to recoup our energy in a very popular and satisfying fashion, but Lyth and Faye didn’t seem the types to comply. Besides, they looked like they were all well and good, and didn’t need it the way I did.
We moved through the tunnels, guided by the faint light from my sword. There wasn’t much to see. The tunnels were exquisitely carved, but after what felt like hours of working our way through them, the repetitiveness was annoying.
“Your ancestors sure had plenty of time to dig,” I commented.
Lyth laughed. “There were mages who could control the earth in ways that even I am ignorant of. My grandfather told me that creating one of these would take them a few weeks, at most, and more time was spent carving the walls than actually digging.”
“That… is actually interesting,” I said, looking around. “Could they have carved their way through mountains as well? When we came through the pass in the western mountains the first time, I wondered about that.”
“This was many, many generations before I was even born,” Lyth said with a shrug. “So, I don’t know, but possibly. That pass was a little too neat to have been natural, I think.”
“That’s what I thought too,” I replied with a chuckle.
“Ugh, would you two just kiss already?” Faye asked. She was dragging her feet like a child.
“What?” Lyth asked, looking at the Official, and then at me. “I’m not… interested.”
“She’s not interested,” I agreed, shaking my head.
“Can I kiss him, then?” Faye asked Lyth. For once, I was thankful for the monochromatic darkness, since they couldn’t see the shade of red that my cheeks suddenly turned. I didn’t like the way this conversation was going, although I did prefer it to thinking about the undead suddenly charging at us through the darkness.
I wasn’t sure what the three women I was bonded with felt from me, although there was a lot of amusement pouring in from Braire’s connection.
The subject changed drastically, though, when Lyth pulled us to a halt. I looked around, hoping she hadn’t seen something coming to attack us.
No, instead my eyes were drawn to a fork in the path. The branch on the left looked pretty much the same as what we’d seen in the tunnels so far. There was something about the one on the right, though. There was an arch over it, for one, inscribed with beautiful calligraphy that seemed to reflect the light from my sword in a silvery glow.
I couldn’t understand a word of it, of course, and didn’t remember ever seeing anything like it before. I suddenly realized that I’d only heard Elvish spoken—I didn’t recall any instances of seeing it written.
Had Cyron’s grimoire contained anything written in the language?
Lyth moved closer to the arch and ran her fingers over the carvings. “This is the place. This is where Daryhan was entombed.”
I moved closer. “Are you sure?”
She nodded. “Come. I’ll show you the way.”
With that, she stepped under the archway. She was moving faster than I could keep up with, and it wasn’t long before she was out of sight, away from the light of the sword.
I turned to Faye, who shrugged.
“If you think I’ll let you stay at my back in a dark hallway, you’re crazier than I am,” I stated and indicated for her to step in front of me. She grinned and rolled her eyes as she stepped under the arch. I entered right behind her.
The change was almost instant. I could see Faye from the outside of the arch, but the moment I passed through it, it was like I was struck blind. I couldn’t see anything in front of or behind me. I looked around, just to make sure the light hadn’t vanished from my sword.
Hell, I couldn’t even see the weapon at this point.
The deeper I moved into the hallway, the less I could see. It was like something wrapped around me. A web, for lack of a better word, that tightened around me until I felt like I couldn’t breathe. I sucked in a deep breath.
There was something off about this. I wasn’t sure if I had felt this before, or if it was just something that sprang from instinct. Whatever this was had to be magical. I kept a tight grip on my sword.
There was something there. Something that held me back, like it was asking me a question. A question that refused to be answered until I put that sword down. I didn’t trust it. Not this web of darkness, not this place, not the fact that Faye could be only a few steps ahead of me and I couldn’t see what she was doing.
I closed my eyes. Nothing would work until I dropped that weapon.
And I did. I heard it clatter on the ground, but the noise was muted somehow. Like it wasn’t just stone that the sword landed on.
Aliana had told me that I was a rogue mage. Something in my blood made me more elusive to magical influences. The trait was reflected in my abilities. It took a long time for me to grasp how to use it, but once I broke through, it had all flowed in. All the training I’d thought was for nothing came through and made me better than I would have been had I been able to use magic from the beginning.
As the blade slipped from my fingers, I pushed forward. The web tightened around me for a moment, but after a second, I felt it slip away, strand by strand. Another step forward. I shifted my shoulders, and more strands lifted away from me. Light broke through. Pure white and yellow, it cut through the darkness like a knife, growing brighter with each step as the strands of darkness broke and slipped away.
The last one caught my leg. I tripped, stumbled, and fell on my shoulder, but recovered and smoothly pushed myself up from the ground before I looked around.
My eyes needed a moment to adjust, but there was no mistaking the fact that I was now out in the open. The crisp, fresh air was a welcome change from the stuffy underground version, although it didn’t take me long to realize that it was far too cold for the clothes I wore. I wrapped my arms around myself, looking for where I had dropped my sword. Sure enough, there it was a few steps back, lying in a pile of snow.
It was snowing.
No, wait, it wasn’t snowing properly, but the ground was covered in a thick dusting that crunched under my boots with each step.
I picked the blade up and brushed the snow from it before turning to look at Lyth. She stood about ten feet from me and stared at me with narrowed eyes. “How did you do that?” she asked me.
“I…it just happened, I suppose,” I said. I knew how I’d done it but explaining it to her would just take too long. “How did you do it?”
She shrugged. “I knew to look for it. Now, before you complain…” she said, holding her hand up to stop me from asking any questions. “Explaining would have taken too long. Besides, watching the two of you work your way through the spell is rather hilarious.”
Two of us. Right. I turned a
round and saw Faye slowly making her way forward, looking ahead and trying to push deeper, but there something held her back. Not quite invisible, but not quite there, either. I supposed that this was how people who could see in the dark saw those who couldn’t.
“I think she needs some help,” I chuckled, shaking my head.
“Are you sure?” Lyth asked and looked at me. “She might need to wander through the darkness for a little while longer, just to learn her lesson.”
“What lesson?” I queried, looking at the elf and raising an eyebrow.
“I…we’ll think of something,” she muttered and shook her head. “Come on, let’s help her.”
I didn’t join her, though, simply let the elf step forward. A few runes appeared on her hands as she reached into the webbing that was around the Official.
The webs came free. Faye sucked in a deep breath and reached out to grab Lyth, pulling her close as she too tripped while coming out. She looked panicked and held onto Lyth like her life depended on it while peering around and trying to make out where she was.
“Sorry,” she said, a small tremble still in her voice as she slowly recovered her composure. “I was just living out a very vivid and terrifying version of my worst nightmare.”
“Sorry to hear that,” I grumbled, unable to help myself.
“Where are we?” Faye asked, looking at us before she inspected her surroundings. We were in the middle of what looked like an evergreen forest in the middle of winter. I looked at Lyth, as I had no answer.
“This is where he was entombed,” Lyth softly replied while looking around.
“As tombs go…” I muttered, taking a moment to look around the place as well, “this is pretty damn fantastic.”
8
As we explored what had to be one of the world’s greatest tombs, I realized that there was a whole world inside this cave. We emerged from the forest we’d started in, hiking through the thick covering of snow. It wasn’t quite as cold as one might expect considering the conditions, but it still wasn’t summer weather.
I couldn’t help a shiver as we headed deeper inside. Mountains rose close to the northwest, there was more forest, and I thought I even saw the ocean to the north, indicating that somehow, by some feat of the impossible, we had been transported deep into the northern part of the Empire. Not only that; the northern part in the middle of winter.
“Where are we?” Faye asked as she noted a small castle near the mountains. The architecture spoke of elven design, at least to my eyes. Kind of like the stones in the tomb that we had left behind. No sign of cutting or shaping, and yet the design was there. Lyth had talked about elven mages who could manipulate the earth like that, so I assumed that was the case here, as well.
“The old kings usually made up pocket worlds as their tombs,” Faye explained as we, for lack of anything better to do, headed toward the castle in question. “Considering that doing so required almost enough power to kill anyone, it was always considered a sort of last breath that allowed them to live out their final days in the places that brought them the most joy.”
Faye narrowed her eyes as she studied the place. I couldn’t speak for what was on her mind, but as Lyth explained where we were, I noticed that there weren’t any animals. Even in the winter, there should be the occasional fox, small birds, and magpies. I supposed that the trees were alive, but they lacked the kinds of things that trees usually had in the middle of winter, like dried needles on the ground around them. Sure, a pocket world was impressive, but it was a picture-perfect place that lacked some of the details that would make it real.
Which… I really didn’t see how that was a bad thing. Although being trapped in a world that was constantly in a state of winter and seemed almost too good to be true might wear thin after a while.
We continued toward the castle, watching as the walls seemed to rise out of the ground in front of us as we drew closer. There was no sign of anything separating it from the ground proper, although I assumed there was some kind of foundation to keep it in place. It looked solid enough, though what the hell did I know about magical buildings, anyway? There might be no foundation other than the spell that kept it in place.
We soon found a gate that stood easily twenty or so feet tall, and was wide open.
“I think I’ve visited this place in the past,” Faye said, narrowing her eyes at the open gate. “Although I can’t put a finger on when.”
“I would think you’d know when and where you saw a place like this, honestly,” I replied, while moving closer to the walls and running my fingers over the exquisite craftsmanship. There were designs that looked like writing carved into the stone, I realized, but were subtle enough that you had to be close to see them. That, or they were magical too.
Lyth smirked at me as she moved closer.
“What?” I asked, and she shook her head.
“Nothing,” she replied. “You just look like you have questions about what you’re looking at.”
“More than I know how to ask, probably,” I replied with a chuckle, shaking my head. I wasn’t lying. I was curious about what I saw. There were records that mentioned the ability to work stone and earth with magic, even if the abilities themselves were lost to time, but there had never been any mention of the ability to build pocket worlds, no matter how difficult. And yet, Lyth had shared the information like it was common knowledge. It made me wonder if she had been with the rest of her kin, stuck for hundreds of years, or if she had been wandering the earth that whole time and just hadn’t been discovered.
Or killed any who might have discovered her. That was a possibility as well. It wasn’t like hers was a peaceful existence.
“Well if you two would like to sit down and chat over finger sandwiches, could I ask that you cut me loose to pursue my own interests?” Faye asked, looking at us and pointing out her still-bound hands. “No? Well, then, if you don’t mind, could we keep moving?”
“The woman has a point,” I said with a chuckle and entered the gates. “The sooner we break her free of Abarat’s curse, the sooner we’ll be able to release her. Or…”
I let my voice trail off. We still didn’t know what we would do if the plan didn’t work. I did say that we would do everything we could to release her, but under these circumstances, our options were limited.
I hoped that it worked, otherwise we’d have to make some serious decisions in our near future. And Aliana, Braire, and Norel would not be around to help us make them. For now, of course. I still felt their presence over the bond, and I wished that I could share more than basic emotions with them. They really needed to see this, both because it was part of their heritage, and because it was fascinating.
The gates looked like they were hewn from thick, red wood, but the lack of steel reinforcement told me that they were only for show, since a good battering ram—easily acquired with a forest so close by—could quickly tear through. Unless it, too, was laced with magic.
I was confused about this place. It was gorgeous, sure, but the paradoxes involved in making it just didn’t make sense to me.
I pushed the thought to the back of my mind for the moment as I made my way inside the castle, moving through what should have been a guardhouse but was in fact just a simple wall, and then entered the courtyard beyond.
While everything beyond was made to look perfect and flawless, what I saw inside could not have been more different. There was still a thin coating of snow over what looked like cobblestones, but both cobbles and snow were well-covered in a thick blanket of brambles and weeds. I narrowed my eyes, looking around the place and, more importantly, tried to plot a path through the thorny thicket in front of us.
“What the hell is this?” I asked, looking back at Lyth as she guided Faye through the gates. She seemed as surprised by the state of the place as I was.
“I…it can’t be,” she whispered, looking around. She moved closer to lightly touch one of the plants, like she was making sure that it was, in fact, there.
“I have some very compelling evidence before my eyes that says it can,” Faye pointed out.
“It’s some sort of fading in the pocket spell, but I don’t understand why it seems to be contained to the castle,” Lyth replied, shaking her head.
“Whatever is happening, I think I know what we came here for.” I pointed to the other side of the courtyard, indicating a huge block of ice in front of the door that led into the castle proper. It was difficult to see, but it looked like there was a sword in the center of the block.
“Call me crazy, but I think that’s the sword we’re looking for,” I said, and Lyth looked like she agreed.
There was a solution, of course, that would get us through the brambles and thorns safely. I could always use my sword to cut a path, but I still felt drained from the fight inside the tunnels. I didn’t want to hack through plants to get to a sword that, from the looks of it, would require even more work to get to.
But from Lyth’s listless look, I didn’t think there was another choice. I rolled my eyes, and then my shoulders too before I pulled my sword clear of its scabbard.
“What are you doing?” Faye asked, scowling at me. She apparently thought that I was considering using it on her.
“Well, unless you lot have a spell that will clear all these brambles for us?” I looked at them, but they didn’t have an answer. I stepped forward, cut a couple of branches away and started to open a path for us to reach the block of ice.
I was sweating and breathless by the time we were halfway through, when the brambles thinned out enough for us to walk through them without having to cut any more. My muscles burned and what little energy I had left felt like it had been expended, so I let Faye and Lyth take the front and open the path further.
When they reached the block, I eyed the piece, wiping the sweat from my forehead as I moved closer.
“Well, I have another question now,” I grumbled. “How the hell do we get that damn sword out?”
