Splendor and Spark

by Mary Taranta

  “Not flooded,” he surmises, looking to Kellig. “Which way are we headed?”

  Kellig wets his lips. “I’ll take the lead.”

  “Of course you will,” Chadwick mutters.

  “Wait.” North silences us as voices carry from the main street, too low to be recognizable but too deep into the Burn to be anything but hellborne. His hand strays to his pocket and the pouch of stones, but I shake my head.

  “Don’t waste them,” I whisper.

  “We might not have a choice.” Chadwick falls back a step, bracing his weight in defense. At the mouth of the side street, Baedan and several of her tribesmen stare at us, surprise giving way to fury.

  So we’re headed the right way after all.

  “Go,” Chadwick orders, grabbing me by the shoulder and shoving me toward the grate. “Go!”

  I jump and land hard on my feet, stumbling down a slope of ash before reaching solid stone. The heat of the Burn above has been trapped in the tunnels, and it’s almost too much for me in my heavy coat, but there’s no time to yank it off. North and Kellig are on my heels, Chadwick right behind. From above, Baedan orders several men to kill us, while barking at the rest to continue on.

  It’s a race to Merlock.

  Whether he actually knows the tunnels or not, Kellig moves at breakneck speed, trying to lose the hellborne on our heels. Dimly I’m aware that we’re moving downhill—toward the ocean and the castle. Water leaks through cracks in the walls; the stone turns rough, scaled with barnacles, the air filled with silt and the smell of brine. The warmth is lost to more frigid temperatures; ice coats many of the tunnel’s surfaces, making for treacherous footing, forcing us to slow. We follow a series of switchback tunnels that rise higher, turn narrow, and eventually intersect with an underground bridge hidden beneath the real bridge that spans the inlet separating the castle from the city itself. The way forward is closed off by a heavy iron gate, locked against unwanted entry. Beyond is another world entirely: marble slab floors, gilded arches, and weather-damaged tapestries threaded with veins of silver and gold—starlight and fire, gifts from the gods. This must be the king’s tunnel, his escape route during an attack. A six-foot span of the floor has broken loose, exposing the crashing ocean thirty feet below.

  Chadwick kicks at the lock, but it’s been rusted in place and doesn’t budge. Behind us voices swell in the tunnels as Baedan’s men draw nearer. Swearing under his breath, North grabs the lock and casts a simple spell that briefly illuminates his features. The lock falls loose, and he tosses it aside before he drags the gate open. We hurry through, just as a girl with dark braided hair rounds the corner behind us. She shouts her victory, three men right behind, all of them armed with heavy weaponry.

  Fading light spills in from the broken floor, but shadows cling to the corners and drip from the walls, awakened from their slumber by our arrival and North’s spell. Several begin to gather, slinking along the edges where the light doesn’t quite reach. There are unlit torches braced against the wall, but there’s no time to grab one.

  We run.

  The bridge groans beneath our weight; the entire structure seems to sway in the brutal wind snapping through the inlet. Kellig launches himself over the hole in the floor, landing on his shoulder and sliding several feet on the opposite side. He scrambles back, out of the way as Chadwick lands on hands and feet. North grabs my arm, and we jump together, splintering apart on the landing. The force of it knocks me to my knees with a bone-rattling crush that steals my breath and brings stars to my eyes. My mother’s spell swells and nearly overpowers me, and I waste precious seconds adjusting the scabbard over my shoulder to mute the spell again.

  North pulls me to my feet toward the opposite end of the bridge, to another locked gate. Shadows dart toward us, wrapping like rope around our ankles. North raises a hand, a spell already igniting in his fingertips as behind us Baedan’s men make the leap.

  North’s spell blasts the gate open, and we dive through to the other side. He slams it shut, teeth bared with effort as he holds the bars between his gnarled hands. When the girl with the braid catches up to us and slams into the gate, North backs away, revealing twisted iron woven together, unbreakable. It was an expensive effort, and I see the pain it cost carved into his face. One less hour to survive the Burn, I think.

  “Open it!” The girl rattles the gate as three men join her.

  “Kellig, you bastard,” one of them growls.

  Kellig tips his chin and bows in a mocking curtsy. “No shame in jumping a sinking ship.” Then, with an eyebrow cocked, he says, “Mind the shadows.”

  The four of them spin to see the shadows gathering into a monstrous, hulking form, hunched shoulders, rigid claws, and an open mouth full of teeth.

  “Don’t look,” North says softly, turning me away. But I can’t avoid the screams as they rip through the tunnels around us. Kellig hangs back, as if to savor the sounds of the dying, his fingers flexing at his side. When Chadwick prompts him for directions, he jolts. His eyes are all pupil again, and his tongue slides across his lips in an incessant circle, maybe trying to taste the remnants of magic—or the sound of screaming—still in the air.

  North holds my arm, firmly but gently, leaning away from Kellig when he passes us to resume the lead. Chadwick frowns at Kellig’s mannerisms, exchanging a strained look with North. Out in the Burn, everything was already dead, and our spells were diluted by the open air around us. But in here, penned in by stone walls and close quarters, with North’s skin still humming from using magic, Kellig’s behavior is harder to ignore. Kellig may want a second chance, but until then he’s still hellborne.

  On this side of the bridge, the tunnels were built for luxurious, unhurried evacuation, and there are fewer branches to choose between. Yellowed candles flicker to life as we approach, only to die out as we pass. North spares a precious moment to examine one, dipping his hand around the flame and watching it brighten and dim as it dances around his fingers. A haunted look crosses his face, and when I nudge him, inquisitive, he retracts his hand, dragging it through his hair with a shaky smile.

  “It’s spelled to react to my blood,” he says. “My father’s blood. The monks at Saint Ergoet’s used something similar to verify my legitimacy.”

  “We have to keep moving.” I touch his arm, surreptitiously checking his hands for any sign of spreading poison. His skin has taken on a darker hue, but it could just be the shadows spooling around us, trailing our every move. They keep their distance, and I have to wonder if that’s because of Merlock’s blood too. North will be inheriting not just a broken kingdom but the monsters it bred as well.

  Our footsteps echo against the vaulted ceilings; our shadows dip in between pillared columns. It seems ridiculous, the excess used to make an underground escape look pretty.

  Yet I can’t help but stop and stare when we reach a domed rotunda framed in colored tiles, with a heavy iron chandelier hanging from the ceiling. Water drips from the walls; the edges of the room are covered with frost and slick algae. I almost smell sulfur.

  There are remnants of another life buried here: furniture arranged in a facsimile of a home. Couches and thick carpets have been pulled to one side; on the other side are heavy bookshelves loaded with glass and stone ornaments that have grown cloudy and green with age. An enormous dining room table with room for twenty, but set for one. Bone china, wine goblet, silverware laid out in neat precision on a cloth napkin. There’s even a bed, tucked behind a swag of drapery, the coverlet smoothed perfectly, its lace edge rotting apart.

  “What is this?” I ask, incredulous.

  “A place to hide,” North says quietly. “If the castle was under attack, or the tunnels were blocked, Merlock could be protected down here.”

  “Protected or trapped?” I ask, picking up a pipe from a stack of dusty books, before dropping it again and wiping off my hand with a shiver.

  “Look.” Chadwick nods toward the dining table, where several stones have been neatly
stacked in a round cairn. All black, full of poison.

  “Is this—” North begins, but Kellig shakes his head, eyes squeezed shut. He’s rocking back and forth on his heels.

  “No,” he rasps. “Baedan’s going to the ballroom. I don’t know what this is.”

  Bemused, I look down, only now noticing the way the floor is worn along the center, much like the wallpaper in Dimitr Frell’s stairwell, where somebody dragged something along the same path for years. There’s even a small detour to the table, where Merlock stacked his stones.

  North’s expression has shifted, turned strange. “I know this place.”

  “That’s impossible,” Chadwick says. “You’ve never been this deep in the Burn before.”

  “No. Not physically.” North turns in a circle, head thrown back to scan the painted ceiling overhead. “The monks told us about this room during our lessons. Do you remember, Ben? Merlock would meet with Corthen down here, where no one would see them.”

  “Does it matter?” I ask, strained. “Baedan isn’t admiring the history of the palace as she storms it!”

  North shakes himself, swallowing hard. “You’re right,” he says. “It’s nothing. Let’s go.”

  He brushes past Kellig, their shoulders colliding. With a moan of frustration, Kellig lashes out, grabbing North by the arm. His other hand yanks back North’s sleeve, exposing the protection spell on his wrist. North tries to twist out of the way, but Kellig holds firm, sinking his fingers into the spell, igniting it a bright silver as he begins transferring the magic from North to himself.

  Chadwick reacts half a heartbeat before I do. Between us, we separate them, Chadwick slamming Kellig against the wall as I tug North’s sleeve down, pulling him closer to me. Kellig begins thrashing, trying to reach Chadwick’s spell instead. What little he managed to steal from North has already been consumed by the poison in his hands, and he begins screaming, scrabbling at Chadwick’s face. “Give it to me! I’ve earned it!”

  With a move I’ve seen practiced a hundred times, Chadwick’s arm cuts across Kellig’s throat. Kellig crumples to the ground unconcious. Panting, Chadwick steps back, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand, before his eyes meet North’s. “I have no way to restrain him,” he says.

  From somewhere above us a heavy boom sends a drift of colored plaster raining down around us.

  “That sounded like a door,” I say.

  North nods in agreement. His fingertips glow silver with magic, his entire body crackling with a nervous energy that charges the air around us. “Leave him,” he says, voice husky. “The shadows will be more merciful than I could hope to be.”

  “The ballroom,” Chadwick repeats.

  “I can find my way from here,” says North, still seemingly lost in another world as he gives the rotunda one last lingering look.

  We leave Kellig behind us as North breaks into a run, consumed with an iron resolution that would terrify me if I didn’t feel the same building pressure behind my skin. We chase the dark through several tunnels, stopping only when we reach a heavy wooden door, warped with moisture and webbed with cracks. We spare a moment to catch our breath and steel our nerve. But then, while no one gives the word, I hear it above my racing heartbeat all the same:

  Now.

  Seventeen

  CHADWICK KICKS THE DOOR OPEN into a cocoon of heavy velvet drapery. We edge through a servants’ hall and into the ballroom, the slick marble floor reflecting the stormy twilight outside. The ocean glitters in its endless horizon beyond a wall of glass doors that overlook a veranda jutting over the water—the one we saw in passing from the Mainstay. Bitter wind gutters through the broken glass, twisting my hair out of its bun. I shove my hair out of my eyes as we make a quick circle.

  The room is empty. No stones, no Merlock, nothing to indicate we’re on the right track.

  Frustrated, I move toward the veranda, nearly slipping on the broken ice-coated tiles when I step outside. Hellborne birds jostle for space along the crumbling balustrade, charcoal feathers streaking embers into the wind.

  Nothing.

  I swear into the wind, clutching my hair back with both hands. Chadwick joins me, giving the balcony and the sea beyond a cursory glance before his eyes meet mine. I nod at the unspoken question, already shouldering out of my coat as I storm back inside. Dropping my coat to the ground, I ignore any sense of propriety and yank my tunic off next, then work the latch of Chadwick’s scabbard. Goose bumps riddle my bare arms, and my fingers shake from both the cold and the fury that we trusted Kellig, that we may have lost our final chance of finding Merlock.

  On the far side of the ballroom, two sets of double doors slam open with a thud, knocking several crystals loose from one of the four chandeliers overhead. The sulfuric taste of magic fills the ballroom just as North is knocked back, and he skids across the floor. Baedan stands at the top of the grand staircase leading to the dance floor, grinning, flanked by two dozen men and women dressed in furs and leather, armed with iron and metal.

  Did Kellig set us up? Is this a massacre?

  North scrambles to his feet but hesitates. Baedan’s guarded with a spell written above her heart. Only magic can disarm it, and we have none to spare on her.

  “There you are,” she says. “But where are the armies risen from the ashes, called in celebration of the prince and his new bride?” She cocks her head with a smile. “Don’t tell me you came all this way alone?”

  “Disappointed?” asks North.

  “Not in the slightest,” she says, and attacks.

  Magic scorches the walls and the marble floors like lightning. North casts a counterspell and dives out of the way. I slam behind a column, knocking the scabbard off. My mother’s spell unfurls almost lazily, so unlike all the times I’ve used it before. I watch, transfixed, as it drifts higher, toward the ceiling. Is Merlock on another floor?

  And then I see it. An orchestral balcony, with a tiny curved stairwell leading up to it. Most of its treads have rotted out, but the matching rail is still in place, elegantly carved to mimic the floral motif of the hanging tapestries. My mother’s spell snakes its way up.

  He’s here. Still hiding.

  North is embattled against Baedan, wasting precious magic, while Chadwick focuses on the hellborne, most of whom don’t have the luxury of protection spells. Even armed with a simple knife, Chadwick strikes with a furious grace.

  “North,” I call, and he risks a look over. I point the way, and his expression tightens, turns iron. He nods, but is immediately drawn back into the fight. I can’t wait for him, for either of them.

  Almost there, I tell myself. I dart toward the balcony, my dagger clutched in one hand. Years of scaling the rooftops of Brindaigel make the decimated stairwell an easy climb, and I follow my mother’s spell with mounting fear. The infection in my blood feeds on it, and I force myself to slow down, to breathe. Rushing headlong into anything never garnered me a win in the fighting ring, and being reckless now will cost more than a handful of silver tretkas.

  Blood pounds in my ears as I reach the balcony, sidestepping a small circle of stones—the topmost one still pale with silver magic, newly placed. Merlock has taken a stand at the balustrade, his back to me as he surveys the ballroom below, seemingly ignorant of my approach—and of the fight unfolding. Instead he watches flickers of memories that have appeared and are now waltzing below us: women in ball gowns and men with black waistcoats.

  From this angle it’s easy to see North in the way Merlock carries himself, tall but stilted, proud yet bent beneath the weight of his abandoned responsibilities. His skin is as thin as vellum, the veins beneath as black as ink. He’s not in his tattered uniform but all in black, his circlet a tarnished gold, battered and bent out of shape.

  That he still wears it surprises me. Does he consider himself a king, even after all that he’s done? And why wear it here but not out in the Burn? It’s almost as if he dressed for the venue.

  I can tell his attention is not on
his son, and it annoys me in a way that feels personal. Merlock knew North existed. Was North not worthy of some small act of contrition? How could Merlock turn his back on him, dismissing him the way he dismissed all of Avinea? A part of me begs to know, the part of me that still mourns the mystery of my mother and longs to believe that she regretted her decision to leave us behind.

  My blood is too warm, the infection too hungry. Sweat rolls down my back; the dagger jostles in my hand. A single blow to the back will cut through all his defenses. From there, rip out his heart and bind it in twine.

  I take a step forward.

  All at once the world slows to a shuddering crawl. Beyond Merlock’s shoulder I see North’s eyes widening as he twists away from an oncoming spell. Chadwick is midswing with his blade, teeth bared and his sandy hair flying loose. Baedan stands on the bottom tread of the ballroom stairs, braced against the recoil of magic.

  Even the smoke of their battle hangs suspended around the columns and chandeliers, like colored clouds dripping from the sky, or twining between the legs of Merlock’s ghostly memories. Threads of magic unfurl across the room like twisted braids, forming complicated patterns mimicking those hanging from Dimitr Frell’s ceiling, exposing the complexity of the magic that North and Baedan use. When I look down, I see my mother’s spell with the same clarity. What I called a thread is really a series of knots and lines, the work of a skilled seamstress.

  But I can also see the edges of the threads beginning to fray from too much handling. The spell won’t last much longer.

  “I warned you once not to follow me,” Merlock says, his voice like thunder in the muted silence around us. “Yet here you are. Again. I did not suffer your mother’s stupidity, and I will not indulge yours.”

  My heart seems to slow in time with the world around us as he turns to face me. “To your credit, you stand with far more conviction than she did the night she came to my rooms, with a blade hidden beneath her robes. I could smell her nerves even through her silks and perfumes.” He smiles, cold and cruel. “She paid for her inexperience in more ways than one that night. I like to believe I inspired her to do better next time. And there was a next time. Only, she knew better than to bring a dagger then. She brought a needle and a piece of thread.”