Allen flashed Shawna a grateful look as they came within reach. Bethany forgot her anger as she saw her father. He was panting, sweaty, and pale. His feet moved with drunken, wobbly steps as Allen supported one of his arms.
Shawna steadied Dormael’s other side. “What’s happened?”
“Don’t you hear the howling?” Allen motioned for them to keep going. “Monsters! Big gods-damned teeth! Let’s move!”
“What about D’Jenn?” Bethany glanced to the square, but Allen grabbed her by the arm.
“Go, piglet!” Allen spun her around with a single hand. “No more questions! Move!”
Bethany stumbled as her uncle pushed her, ushering her further up the mountain path. She would have yelled in protest, but she could sense the growing fear in the air. Much as she hated it, she turned and ran.
The entrance to the tunnel loomed in the side of the mountain, the great steel doors visible at the end. Bethany sped up as they entered the tunnel and slipped through the space between the doors, coming to a halt inside the gate.
Dormael, Allen, and Shawna appeared through the hole, panting with exertion. Dormael almost fell, but Allen levered him back to his feet. Shawna put her shoulder under his opposite side, and the three of them danced awkward steps across the floor until Dormael got his feet planted.
“What happened?” Shawna eyed the cuts on Dormael’s hands. “Did you find it? Was it there?”
“It was there.” Dormael wobbled on his feet. “It…showed me what it did. I saw it.”
“He’s been like this since D’Jenn yanked him from the statue.” Allen glanced back through the opening. “He’s not making any bloody sense.”
Allen and Shawna shared a private glance, but Bethany saw the concerned expressions pass between them. Bethany looked to her father, who mumbled to himself under his breath. His right hand clutched his spear in a loose grip, while the other drifted to the satchel hanging at his side.
Bethany cleared her throat, drawing everyone’s attention. “Where’s D’Jenn?”
A shadow appeared in the light beaming through the doors. D’Jenn appeared a few moments later, sweat beading on his forehead. He skidded to a stop and bent over, resting his hands on his knees to catch his breath.
“They’re coming,” he said between gasps of air. “I slowed them down, but they’ll find a way up here eventually.”
“What now?” Allen glanced through the opening. “I hate those damned things.”
“We close these doors and head for the top.” D’Jenn stood and turned toward the doors, backing a few steps away. “This should hold them back. It will give us time to head for the summit, at least.”
Shawna looked between the doors and D’Jenn. “I thought you said those things were too heavy to move.”
“To lift, but hopefully not to move.” D’Jenn glanced at Dormael and winced. He turned a sharp look on Bethany. “Come on, little one. I’m going to need—”
Dormael cried out and fell to his knees. The song of the Nar’doroc cut through the ether, washing through Bethany’s mind like a choking mist. It reached inside Bethany’s body and made her bones sing with pain.
The world retreated from her physical senses. She heard the echoes of shouting voices, saw blurred forms struggling across the stone. Something bright and silvery threw shadows over the ground in vicious red and terrible amber.
The singing in Bethany’s mind intensified, filling her limbs with a warm, gentle feeling. Bethany’s teeth ground together until the muscles in her jaw throbbed with pain. She focused on that sensation, used it to draw her mind back.
Focus! The voice in her mind sounded like D’Jenn. An unfocused mind yields unfocused magic.
Bethany filled her mind with a stone. It wasn’t the stone she had pictured when her power had first awakened, back when Dormael had first made her sit and imagine a rock for hours on end. The old stone had been large and jagged, something Bethay might sit on if she stopped to rest. Her new stone was small, rounded, and smooth. It was no larger than the end of her finger, and it rested in the center of a pile of other stones.
When did that happen?
She reached her mind toward the stone, down into the center of the haphazard pile. Her consciousness slid into the spaces between the rocks, moving toward the center with fine wisps of thought. She ignored the other stones but was careful not to disturb them. They didn’t concern her, they weren’t important. There was only one rock that Bethany needed, a single piece of stone sitting at the center of her being.
Just the one. She calmed as her mind touched the pebble. Just one.
When Bethany opened her eyes, her Kai was singing in her ears. The Nar’doroc filled the air with its alien voice, the two pieces warring with each other and sending the ether into chaos. Its song fluttered in her stomach, but her magic held it back.
Allen and Shawna struggled with Dormael, all of them trying to pull a silver mass of liquid metal from his body. The Nar’doroc thrashed in mindless fury. It crawled toward Dormael’s neck, wrapping tendrils over his body. Allen and Shawna tore at the thing, ripped at the filaments even as they fought to regain purchase. Dormael’s face was locked into a rictus of pain while Allen and Shawna screamed curses. Their voices were lost in the chaos.
D’Jenn was down on one knee, hand outstretched toward the singing Nar’doroc. His lips moved, though the noises he made were nonsense. Bethany skipped over to his side and tried to help him stand.
“D’Jenn!” Bethany tugged at this shoulder. “Get up! What do we do?”
D’Jenn turned bleary eyes in her direction. His mouth moved, but an empty croak was all that came from his throat. His hand faltered, made to touch Bethany, then stretched once again toward the Nar’doroc. His eyes followed the direction of his hand, Bethany forgotten in his stupor.
“D’Jenn!” Bethany pulled harder on his arm. “Wake up! Focus!”
The first howls of the Garthorin echoed through the tunnel, sending a chill down Bethany’s spine. She redoubled her efforts to wake D’Jenn, tugging harder at his shoulder, but it was no good. She looked to where Allen and Shawna struggled against the Nar’doroc, but there was no getting their attention.
Bethany called to them, but no one answered.
Her gaze went to the great steel doors and the faces carved into them. They stared with blank expressions, but in the dim light, Bethany thought they looked challenging. It wasn’t the challenge of a rival, nor the same as a kid daring her to do something dangerous, but a deeper call to action. To Bethany, the faces seemed to be looking down on her in judgment, like the gods weighing the worth of her soul. They demanded action.
“Right.” Bethany didn’t know many tricks. She didn’t know how to summon fire. She couldn’t call lightning from the sky like her father, nor could she perform masterful deceptions like D’Jenn. There was one thing Bethany could do better than anyone else, one thing in which she could take pride.
Bethany was strong—she was really strong.
Bethany rushed to stand in the middle of the floor, where she could see both of the giant steel doors. She dodged past the struggling trio of Allen, Shawna, and Dormael, slipping past the whipping silver tendrils with a quick duck of her head. Angry noises echoed down the tunnel beyond the gate, filling the cavern with the voices of hungry Garthorin. With one last look to D’Jenn, who was still struggling to rise, Bethany planted her feet and faced the doors.
With a deep breath, she filled herself with magic.
The power rushed into her, filling her limbs with crackling energy. She tasted dust in the air as the magic warmed her senses, and felt the vibration of the stone beneath her feet. The Nar’doroc sang at the edge of her Kai, but now that she could focus with more skill, it was only a distant irritation. Bethany pulled on her Kai until the air was alive magic and stopped herself just short of drawing too much.
“Pirate-Queen of the bloody Seas!” Bethany drew up her hands and made a pushing gesture.
Her power rushe
d forth like the tide of an unstoppable ocean. The magic touched the doors and held fast, pushing against the weighty steel. Bethany’s feet slid backwards along the stone, almost causing her to lose her balance, but she realized her mistake and anchored her power to the floor. She came to a stop, pressure building in the air around her. Her stomach quivered with the power coursing through her body. Her arms and legs were feverish, but she focused through the discomfort and redoubled her efforts.
“Rescuer of princesses!”
The doors gave a deafening whine, the noise echoing through the cavern with earsplitting volume. Dust fell from the hinges in a great cloud, filling the air in front of the gate. Bethany pushed with all her magical might, leveraging everything she had to the task.
“Slayer…of…beasts!”
The stone under Bethany’s feet cracked with a terrible sound. Her body was hot, sweat beading on her face, but as she poured more power into the spell, she knew she wasn’t yet close to her capacity. There was no nausea as there had been before, no suffocating heat in the air around her.
I’m doing it!
With a loud grunt of effort, Bethany pushed for all she was worth. The hinges uttered a whine of displeasure as the doors moved. The light filtering between them shrank to a bare sliver. With a thunderous boom that threatened to rattle every one of Bethany’s teeth from her skull, the doors slammed shut.
A moment passed in silence as darkness fell. The struggle with the Nar’doroc must have ceased at some point during Bethany’s work, because it was no longer singing. Coughs rang out from somewhere nearby, and someone called her name from the shadows.
A strange light kindled to life near the doorway. With startling speed, more lights appeared, rushing along complicated patterns and illuminating alien symbols. Twisting, iridescent runes appeared, and glowing lines of red and blue flowed along the edges of the door.
Silhouettes stumbled in Bethany’s direction through the dusty, multi-colored haze, and voices called her name. The howling had ceased as the doors closed, cutting off the light and noise from outside. Bethany waved to her friends, hoping they would see her, and coughed through the dust.
“I did it!” Bethany was unable to keep the satisfaction from her voice. “I really did it!”
Before anyone could answer, a flash cut through the dust, making Bethany shut her eyes in response. The light left a searing afterimage burned across her vision. The magic in the door hummed with an angry tone, grating against her senses like a whetstone against a blade. A deafening, metallic groan cut through the hum, as if the steel was bending of its own accord. Dust rained down from above, peppered with the crackle of larger stones hitting the ground.
Dormael’s voice cut through the darkness. “Bethany!”
There was a crash, a terrible rumble, and the doors toppled inward.
Begging Dinner with Vipers
The Nar'doroc had gone quiet, but Dormael could still feel its presence in his mind like the touch of oil on the surface of water. It made his movements sluggish, his reactions dull. For a moment, he did nothing but stare up at the growing shadow of the doors, his feet pinned to the stone in a moment of awestruck stupidity. When his brain started working, Dormael spun around, searching for Bethany.
The air was full of dust, which made billowing shadows dance in the light shining through the growing crack in the doors. Dormael called out to Bethany but she didn’t answer. Dormael’s feet moved in one direction, then the other, fear sending mad little jolts through his legs.
Dormael had just enough time to clear the dust from his eyes when the doors began to fall.
“Bethany!" The sound of his voice was swallowed by the roar of crumbling stone and whining metal. Something crashed to the ground nearby, sending pebbles flying out from the impact. One of them struck Dormael in the calf, leaving a sharp sting of pain behind. Dormael’s steps faltered and he slipped, falling to one knee.
No time!
“Bethany!” Dormael spun, eyes darting through the dust, heart beating in his chest. “Bethany!”
Dormael's skin erupted with a hot tingling sensation, and Bethany’s song rang through the ether in a fierce, clarion tone. As Bethany drew in her power, Dormael could feel her presence nearby. He turned in her direction, made to sprint toward her for all he was worth.
Bethany clenched her hands into little fists and stared at the falling doors. A tense look of concentration passed over her face, an intensity of focus Dormael hadn’t seen from her before. Bethany screamed, letting an angry, defiant cry erupt from her chest as she thrust her hands into the air.
Her power rushed forth like an invisible pillar, slamming into the doors and slowing them down. A wave of force washed out from her body and took Dormael from his feet, tumbling him across the floor. He bumped his head and clapped his teeth together, making white spots dance before his eyes. When his motion stilled, he scrambled back to his unsteady feet.
Bethany stood at the center of a halo of light. It wreathed her body in a subtle glow and sent flickering sparks of energy to contact the ground at her feet. She stared upward with an intense glare, teeth bared. Her hands were outstretched, fingers splayed to the sky, voice ringing through the cavern.
It’s too much! She can’t!
The doors had stopped moving.
They hung in the air amongst falling debris and clouds of billowing dust. The massive steel portals were close to hitting the ground—mere seconds from smashing everything to mush. Dormael’s eyes went from the doors to Bethany and back again, his mind trying to process what he was seeing.
Light blasted through the opening, illuminating the silhouettes of his friends stumbling in the shadow of the doors. He spotted Allen and Shawna, who crouched in sudden confusion, caught in the act of darting to one side or another. D’Jenn was rushing towards Bethany, one hand stretched in her direction.
Shooting to his feet, Dormael sprinted to meet him.
Before either Dormael or D’Jenn could do anything, Bethany let out another pained scream and pushed her arms forward.
The doors slid through the opening and crashed into the shadowed forms of the nearest Garthorin. The sound of steel grinding on stone was deafening. Dormael opened his Kai and summoned a wall of air to protect his friends from the oncoming cloud of dust and debris. Gravel clattered against his shield, but the dust was halted as if by a wall of glass. The violence was over in moments, but the noise echoed through the caverns like the roar of a great beast.
When it was over, Dormael turned back to Bethany. He followed the shouts of his friends and found them huddled around the girl, who had fallen unconscious to the stone. Everyone was coughing and waving hands in front of their faces. Dormael pushed through them and gathered Bethany in his arms, picking her up and cradling her head. Her body was limp, her skin feverish, but her breathing was steady. A trickle of blood ran from one of her nostrils.
“She’s alive.” Dormael breathed a sigh of relief and smiled at D’Jenn. “She’s alive.”
“Did you see that?” Allen said. “Did you see what she did?”
The stunned moment was cut short as the sounds of injured Garthorin rose once again. Conversation ceased as everyone stiffened, eyes darting to the open doorway. Dormael used his magic to retrieve his spear from the ground and float it to Allen’s hands. Allen looked at Bethany’s limp form in Dormael’s arms and nodded as he snatched the spear from the air.
D’Jenn gave everyone a grim look. “We have to get further into the city and find a chokepoint to slow them down! If you get separated, make your way to the top and don’t stop for anything. Let’s move!”
With the noise of the oncoming Garthorin dogging their steps, they turned and fled into the darkness.
***
I am pleased to hear of your progress, although not entirely surprised. The royal line of Thardin is clearly formidable. That you have been able to bring the Maihdrim to the treaty table in the first place is a great feat, but to further negotiate a pause in
the hostilities is quite impressive.
As per the terms of our agreement, I will not intercede in this tribal summit. Given the results you have produced thus far, I will trust that you have the negotiations well in hand. Instead, I will provide you with the embodiment of my blessing. The dagger is an old tradition from the days when Galania was a fractious, warring collection of small kingdoms. When needed, a king would choose a champion upon whom to grant his personal dagger, symbolically imbuing that champion with the King’s Will and Word. It is a tradition I revived in my early days as Emperor, but one that has rarely been awarded. I name you, Nalia Arynthaal, my Will and Word. Go forth with my blessing.
The dagger is more ceremonial than functional—not that I think you would use it to slice your meat.
I corresponded with your father. He was not happy about this, but I made it clear that his displeasure is unwarranted. He will have returned from the field by the time your negotiations are complete.
I wish you the gods’ own luck in your negotiations. Lieutenant Hardin continues to be at your service, and I will augment your detachment of Red Swords. I look forward to reading your report, Highness.
The letter was signed with a stylish “D.”
Nalia let the letter fall to the camping table and sat back on her cushion. She was surprised to feel satisfaction at the words, perhaps even a sense of pride. It was only natural to be proud of one’s accomplishments, though she rankled at the source of the praise. On one hand, it was good that she was ingratiating herself with the Emperor. On the other, she wanted nothing more than to claw his eyes from his face and put a dagger through his heart.
Perhaps I’ll use the one he awarded me.
The dagger was a big thing, wide and flat, with a thick handle. It was modeled on an ancient design, with no cross-guard or quillons, only a rectangular piece of metal which served as a setting for the blade. The pommel was a detailed representation of the Imperial seal, and the hilt was covered in intricate carvings. Nalia drew the blade from its jeweled scabbard and was surprised to find it keen enough to draw blood. The Emperor had sent it with Lieutenant Hardin, along with a belt made of silver medallions and deep blue sapphires.
The City Under the Mountain Page 33
