“If you have not figured it out yet, I am not going to tell you. At any rate, as long as we stay in here we are safe. The flickers’ corporeal substance cannot pass through iron or polished stone. There are no miniscule flaws as in regular stone or wood.” Cocking his head to one side, his expression hardened, the lightening of his blue eyes blending toward gray added an emphasis to it she didn’t like. “There is something I am at a loss to understand. You entered the Great Hall from Lord Charn’s personal armory. How did you get inside? I have been trying for months, but there is no way to pick the lock without the dark throne room’s sentinels noticing, they guard it in shifts. Even during a relief change, it is done two at a time, leaving two to watch the Great Hall and guard the golden doors.”
“They watch the armory? Do you think they saw me?”
“Yes, they would not have missed your exit. Their function is to keep the uninvited from gaining access without a key, not question those who obviously do, you still have not answered how you came about your admittance.”
“I, uh, arrived there by accident.”
Camoe frowned, his eyes turning gray. “Accidental? How does one arrive inside a room by accident?”
Jade tried to keep the irritation from her voice. Why couldn’t he accept what she told him? “I’m not sure. I’m beginning to suspect a smaller version of the big obelisks in the hall brought me here.”
Camoe’s frown deepened though his eyes began to darken. “Portable devices like the ascension gateways in the Great Hall?”
Jade found the name for the gateway odd. She hadn’t climbed anywhere. “I guess so. They were a lot smaller than those, though.”
“They must be portables. I’ve heard reports of powerful Users being able to activate portable gateways, but they are extremely rare. I have never seen one. The stationary ascension gateways here and elsewhere, have only limited knowledge known about them, let alone the rarer portable. Most believe the Ancients put them where they are now. I do not believe the Great Lord himself or the combined efforts of the Circle of Light can move them. It is quite strange, I have no knowledge of the ability to create a portable gateway ever existed here, or in the White Lands. You must be someone important to have used them,” he said, slumping back, his eyes blue again. Then he froze. “Do you still have them?”
“I’m not important; my sister activated the…gateway, but not on purpose.”
“So you are not a User?”
“I don’t think so.”
“What about your sister? She activated the gateway, certainly she is one.”
“I don’t see how. Things like this don’t happen on our world.”
Leaning forward, Camoe’s knuckles whitened as he gripped the flask. The blue in his eyes had vanished, replaced by a gray so light they were almost white. “Another world, you say? There is only one world: this one. Too bad, I was beginning to like you. I had thought we were going to be honest with each other. If I could be certain the flickers were not slinking outside the door, I would put you out in the passage.”
“No! Please, I know I’m not on my world any longer. It’s too different here, where am I? Tell me.”
Camoe sat back, his face sullen, as his eyes slowly changed. “Are you toying with me, girl? If so, I cannot detect how you do it. Perhaps you believe a lie instilled in you all your life, which might do it. However, I am one of the few who knows other worlds are a myth mentioned in an obscure passage in the Surbon Codex. Most souls on Astura would not even consider it.”
The codex sounded interesting, but she let it pass. “Please, tell me where I am. I need to know.”
“I have already mentioned it, had you been listening. You are on Astura. I told you, I could tell when someone is lying. I no longer believe you are, but that means someone spent a lifetime, your lifetime, convincing you there is at least one other world somewhere. Or what I have always believed is the lie.” Camoe fell silent. A frown added a line to his weathered forehead, but his blue eyes were thoughtful.
Jade was thoughtful herself after hearing his words. She was stuck on an alien world seething with danger, known as Astura. How could she survive long enough to get home? Convincing Camoe to help was vital or she wouldn’t make it far. But could she trust him?
She gazed at the crack below the polished ceiling. It seemed bigger now. No, denser, like a dark blemish that bled darkness; it seemed poised to consume the light of the entire room. She stared, mesmerized by the feeling. A black tendril flicked out into the room, then vanished inside.
Jade jumped to her feet pointing. “Something came out of that!”
Camoe spun on the bench. “Blast it! He roared. Springing to his feet, he scooped up the flask. “Come! The bloody flickers have bored a way in; we have to head deeper within this infernal rock.”
“They can bore?”
“Only if there was a flaw to begin with, but there is no time to explain. Follow me, and stay close.” Standing the bench upright, he leaned the polished portion over the crack. Balancing it with care, he covered as much as he could. “It will not hold them long. Run!”
Jade dashed behind Camoe as he ran through the rear entry. Charging past a small kitchen table, he slid to a stop in front of a large, iron stove built flush into the gray polished stone. Twisting an iron handle, he flung open the cook-stove door. A layer of ash packed the bottom. Beyond, a small opening gaped. “Our only chance is to follow the smoke ventilation chute. Go on, I will be right behind you.” Without waiting to see if she complied, he grabbed a stringed leather bag from the table and moved to a cupboard. Sweeping some items into it, he dropped the flask in last.
Shifting her bag to hang on her back, Jade crawled into the stove belly on her hands and knees. Ash exploded with every movement, there was no help for it. Coughing, she paused at a dark, circular opening. Smooth gray stone led inward, sloping uphill gently before an ominous blackness swallowed it.
Camoe crawled behind her. “Keep going,” he said, pulling the door closed.
Darkness enveloped her. “I can’t see very far.”
“Can you carry this?” he asked, thrusting a candle near her thigh. She grabbed it by the base, thankful for the meager light. Pushing her way into the opening, Jade awkwardly held the burning candle before her while pulling herself along with her free hand. Thankfully, the vent shaft was smooth, but even so, it was rough going uphill. Occasionally she could feel her bag drag along the vent roof. Sweat broke out on her brow. Pausing, she rubbed her eyes on her upper shoulder. Warm wax dripped on hand. Soon the candle would be small enough it would burn her skin. Then what would she do?
“Do not stop! They may be able to get around the door.” Camoe said softly, his voice urgent.
“I’m going to have to at some point, or throw this candle away.”
“Keep going. It may not go far.”
Jade found that using her feet to push as she pulled her body up the tube with her free hand required far less exertion. Her pace quickened. Speaking was possible. “You’ve never been this way?”
Camoe’s voice echoed past her as if he was right behind her, but she suspected he was still guarding the entrance for a little while. “Why would I? I have never been in any danger in my room. The flickers hunger for you, I can feel it.”
She almost stopped. “What? Why would they want me?”
Finally, she could hear Camoe shuffling some distance behind her. His voice echoed past as if he was floating beside her. “I am not certain, but I suspect your aura ability and your lack of many seasons have a lot to do with it. The Dark Users herd them around by taking advantage of their penchant for souls and innocence. You must be a bright beacon in their barren, colorless world. Desire to feed on you has thrown them into a frenzy.”
Jade hesitated, nearly stopping again, before resuming her pace. Feed on her, Sweet Mother, what kind of place had she brought herself to? “Wait…you said you sensed it? How can you? What are you?”
The sound of a mirthless chuckle dr
ifted past. “I thought you would have guessed by now. Perhaps you are from another world. I almost killed you in the Great Hall; do you want to know why?”
She froze. Her instincts in the hall had been frighteningly correct. “Why would you do that?”
“I will tell you, but you have to keep moving. “Astura knows me as an essence druid, besides viewing a User’s color; I pick up subtle hints of intent. Anyone or anything, living or not, has an intent exuding outward from them, and I can sense it. I have what they call the True Sense. It has only happened a select few times throughout our history, usually when something catastrophic is about to occur. Without fail, my ability has always worked. Until today, that is. I get nothing from you as if you are a creation made by magic with no soul. Is it because you are from another world? I do not know, but I intend to find out.”
Jade suppressed a shudder. Camoe’s cold statement sounded like he intended to slay her if unsure of her motives. Her only intention was to leave his world as soon as possible. Surely, he couldn’t find fault with her intent.
DARK THOUGHTS
Push-pull, push-pull, the chute seemed to go on forever. Jade kept going, snaking methodically onward and upward through the cooking vent. Mechanically, she focused on two words glowing in her mind. Push-pull, push-pull, working her legs, then her arms, she undulated through the darkness like a robotic worm tunneling through space. Dark thoughts lurked in her mind, waiting for an opportunity to gain control, to leave her a gibbering mess. As soon as a random thought coalesced in her mind, it would turn dark, taking on a substance her fears found harder and harder to dispute.
Out of the nothingness before her, a thought seeped inside. She’d crawled into an impossibly elongated coffin ejector—built to propel the deceased sailing off the Mountain and into the gray ocean of the Wasted Sea. She was going to die in here. No one would ever find her in here. Stop it, she told herself. Repeatedly quelling the notion, she wondered if she was going to run out of air. The vent tube was hot and stifling, her breathing labored. Was the air becoming thinner? No. The draft in the chute fanned ash past her head when she moved. It was a vent, after all, designed to draw smoke from the citadel fires. That brought to mind another fear. What could they do if someone lit a large fire below? Nothing, they were as helpless and naive as a bug crawling inside a hover transport, combustion shaft. What were they thinking? Jade pushed on, worry hyperventilating the air in her lungs, each drop of her knee or hand made it harder to breathe through the cloud of unseen ash.
Push-pull, push-pull, her thighs burned, her back hurt as if it carried the weight of the citadel above, and her lungs gasped like a fish trying to survive in one of the few freshwater lakes left in Low or Mid Realm. At this rate, she’d go as most of the fish had there, dorsal fin down and unmoving. She’d give much to know how much farther the bloody shaft was going to force her to crawl.
If only she could see something. The second time hot wax had splattered her thumb and palm she cried out and dropped the thing. Darkness had swallowed her then. The dark thoughts had crept in not long after. Jade hated it. How had bats lived in pitch-blackness all the time? Would she ever see light again?
Push-pull, push-pull, bleakly, Jade realized Camoe’s shuffles behind had grown quiet. She stopped to listen. Had she finally moved beyond hearing him? Or had the flickers found a way inside? Fear knifed her gut as she thought about it. After a short, silent struggle, the flickers had consumed him. Now he was one of them, slithering toward her, his sightless eyes fixed on her vibrant, yummy soul. Stop!
Dark thoughts again, she couldn’t allow them to fester or she’d end up petrified. All she had to do was just keep moving, one knee, one elbow, and one long and lonely shuffle at a time. She kept at it.
Another interminable struggle in the dark brought the realization she was no longer squirming uphill. In fact, she was going downhill at a sharp angle. She must have passed a vertical branch. Gaining momentum, she slid downward without effort, beginning to build an uncomfortable friction on the side dragging the vent tube bottom. She rolled onto her other side until it too, got hot. She struggled back to her original side, but she was slowing, the incline had lessened. Coming to a stop, the blackness seemed brighter somehow. Excited, she gathered a second wind, pumping her legs and arms faster. The dark faded into a gray wall. Push-pull, push-pull, keep your knees moving. Now she made out patches of the purple-gray stone of the vent giving her a burst of energy. Scrambling faster, she found golden light pouring through an open door comparable to Camoe’s kitchen, except larger. Firewood and fire starter was stacked in front. Jade crawled through it, sweeping most out the door. A rough stone floor rose up to meet her, stinging her palms and bruising her knees, blazing light lanced into her eyes. Squeezing them closed, she rolled onto her back and extended her legs, working the cramps out slowly one leg at a time. The hard stone floor helped loosen her burning back muscles, she sighed with relief. After a short interval, she cracked her eyelids open, giving her vision adequate time to adjust. Thankfully, the light wasn’t as bright as it had first seemed, glowing dimly from shards of amber mounted with wire from several places on the wall.
A shadowy figure moved near the stove.
Jade bolted upright and nearly swooned.
The figure turned.
Jade gaped. Mop-like hair, sunken yellow-orange eyes, and brown burlap-textured skin filtered through her disbelief. Unusual characteristics for certain, though normal compared to the thing’s facial features that were drawn with thick, charcoal lines. Wide scowling eyebrows, a round nose, and a grim mouth housing several jagged teeth kept her staring. There was no chin or neck, the face simply fused with the shoulders. But she had no doubts vitality flowed inside the figure. Its yellow-orange eyes shone bright with a candid self-awareness.
Looking closer, she realized there was something strange beyond the color of the eyes; something about the eyelids…The eyelids were nonexistent. Blinking wouldn’t be possible. How dry the eyes must be to the creature. Except “creature” didn’t seem right “figurine” fit better. The figurine looked contrived from whatever material someone had on hand. A white cooking apron covered the raggedy clothes it wore, but exposed the oddly textured skin. The skin appeared as malleable as humans did as it stooped easily to retrieve a branch she’d strewn on the stone floor. The doll-man dumped the wood in the iron fireplace to form a teepee.
She left the figurine to its task and looked around.
Lined in the center of the room, five black-iron cauldrons hung suspended on twisted-iron shepherds’ crooks above metal bins banked with coals. Two cauldrons were bubbling briskly with a brown substance and a whitish mash steeped in a third. The rest were clean and empty, tilted on their side.
Baking aromas smelling strongly of succulent meats and pastries from somewhere close made her stomach rumble—a painful reminder breakfast was the last meal eaten. Two large bread trays with many loaves inside baked a golden brown, took up counter space along one wall, making her dry mouth water. On the far side, three smaller kettles filled with yellow vegetables warmed on a grill behind the big iron vessels. The figurine bent over near one of the pots, then pivoted toward the stove. Gripped in the jaws of iron tongs outstretched before the doll-like man, a coal ember glowed red.
Jade swept the wood out of the stove, scattering it on the floor.
The raggedy man-like figurine paused mid-step, one foot raised. Yellow-orange eyes considered her, unblinking. Then, spinning slowly, it marched back toward the banked coals heating the cauldrons.
Jade shrugged. It should buy Camoe time as she studied the movements of the strange, burlap-skinned…thing. Lifting and bending each leg with precise, jerky movements as if it was a wind-up child’s toy, the raggedy man halted near a bubbling cauldron. Bending fluidly, the figure plunked the coal in a bin. Performing an about face, it began high-stepping back. It had no knees.
Ashes mushroomed from the fireplace, adding to the dust covering her.
W
iping her eyes with the back of her hands, she made out Camoe buckling his sword and sheath around his waist. Now she knew why she’d kept ahead of the druid. The limited space of the vent shaft had forced him to carry his sword in one hand.
Creating a second dust cloud, Camoe slapped his brown leather apparel as he regarded her. “Are you okay? You are grayer then if a death ambler had bitten you. I suppose I look it, too.”
Before she could ask what a death ambler was, the raggedy man stepped between them, bending at the waist, to gather the firewood.
“Blast!” Camoe swore. Springing backward, he drew his sword.
Jade stepped in front of the raggedy man. “Wait! It hasn’t bothered me. I’m sure it’s harmless.”
Camoe’s lip curled, his eyes a hard, light gray. “Stand aside. With luck, it has not yet reported to its master. Pray I am not too late.” Raising his gleaming sword, he advanced.
Jade stayed put. Whatever the raggedy man was, he hadn’t threatened her in any way. There was no indication it meant her harm. “You’re not going to hurt him. It would’ve attacked me by now, had it wanted.”
“You do not know these Dark Creations, Jade! Once created, there is a constant telepathic link to their master unless released by their creator. Most Dark Users have no reason to set them free and every foul reason to keep them under their corrupted control. Now, for the last time, stand aside!” Camoe’s jaw tightened.
“Hold it,” Jade said, raising her hands, thinking furiously. “What about the flickers? Shouldn’t we be going?”
“What about them? I don’t think they were able to get past the iron stove or they would have caught us easily. Now, stand aside.”
“Wait! Won’t it alert the master if you suddenly sever this link?”
“Yes, but we shall be gone from here by then. A Dark Creation’s death can incapacitate the User for many bells. Particularly if it is a sudden and violent death, which I can make happen,” Camoe said, his voice cold. The lack of color in his eyes showed he meant every word. He reached out to push her to the side.
Beyond the Sapphire Gate: Epic Fantasy-Some Magic Should Remain Untouched (The Flow of Power Book 1) Page 7
