“We have a long climb ahead of us,” Lashé said. “But I do believe we’ll make it out now. I do believe we will.”
He bent double and grunted as he removed the metal shoes from his boots, then began to ascend a steep spiral staircase that wound up the tower.
Hugo and Cannon followed suit.
“Amazing how quiet it is in here,” Cannon remarked. Hugo hadn’t noticed. Now that he did, it made him feel uneasy. The sounds of the soldiers and the worm were gone now, as if they had entered some separate world.
The stairs seemed to go on forever, which was fine with Hugo. He wasn’t looking forward to what lay ahead. According to the plans that Lashé had stolen, there were four obstacles to overcome before they could reach the gate of the Mechanism. The first was called “The Plunge,” some sort of staircase, supposedly. According to the plans, the key to passing the Plunge was to “take it,” whatever that meant. Lashé assured them it would be obvious once they had arrived.
Hugo was about to ask who could possibly build a staircase so high, and then he remembered what this tower looked like from the outside. He had seen it earlier from beneath the bridge with Cannon, and it stretched from the ground all the way to the Mechanism in the sky.
“How much farther?” he asked instead.
“Not much,” Lashé said.
He was right. Just minutes later they reached the top and stepped out onto a small balcony. “The Plunge,” Lashé announced.
They were staring out into an abyss that seemed to stretch on forever in every direction. His first thought was to guard against Molad. With all that darkness around, he was sure to get excited, sure to make an effort to escape. But he did not. Frowning, Hugo returned his attention to the room. The staircase was to their back, but ahead of them there was nothing. Nothing, apart from a very long, very steep, broken-looking set of stairs which led down. Each one was a slab of black stone hanging unsupported in the air.
“But they lead right back down to where we came from,” Hugo said.
“Not where we came from,” Lashé said. “Remember, we’re inside the Mechanism now. Down may be up for all we know. We cannot trust what we see.”
“Come on, then,” Cannon said, and began to descend.
The first three steps were easy, though each one was a bit farther from the last. By the fourth step, Hugo had to sit down on the edge and lower himself to the next in order to feel safe. Soon his legs were not long enough to reach the next step, no matter how he tried, so he had to drop. The first time he did this, he felt incredibly vulnerable as he passed through the air. There was nothing on either side of him, and the stair that he was falling toward was less than a foot wide. If he missed, it would be all over. No one else was complaining, though, so he kept his mouth shut. A few steps later, he was dropping several feet before landing on the stair below.
Lashé was the first one to slip. It happened when he was dropping to the stair above Hugo. He landed too far forward, perhaps, or maybe his knees buckled with the strain of dropping from such a height. Either way, he toppled over the front edge and only just managed to catch himself with his arms, legs dancing through the air near Hugo’s head.
“Stop struggling!” Hugo said. “I’ve got your legs.” He wrapped his arms around Lashé’s legs and the other man let go of the step that he was clinging to so that Hugo could set him down.
“Thank you,” Lashé said. “I do not think that I will be able to take the next stair by myself.”
“Actually,” Cannon called up from below, “none of us are going to be able to take this one.”
Hugo peered over the edge. Cannon was two steps ahead of them now, and almost twenty feet below them.
“This next one’s a ten-foot drop,” Cannon said. “There’s no way we land it.”
“Use the wind to stabilize yourself,” Hugo said, wondering why he hadn’t thought of it before. The height must have made him dizzy. “Then you can help us down too.”
“Can’t,” Cannon said. “Magic doesn’t work in here. I tried.
Hugo hadn’t even touched his own power, and he was not about to now. Molad was cooperating for some reason, but he didn’t trust him with so much at stake.
“Your powers will not work in the Mechanism,” Lashé said. “It is the power center of the Panthion, and acts like a vacuum for all other power. We are just normal people here.”
“Well, you might have mentioned that before,” Hugo said.
“Would it have made a difference?” Lashé asked.
“Not really,” Hugo admitted. “But you still might have mentioned it. What do we do now?”
“We do what the key suggests,” Lashé said.
“‘Take it’?” Hugo asked. “Take what?”
“The Plunge,” Lashé said.
Hugo glanced down into the abyss beneath his feet. “You can’t mean jump,” he said. “I mean, I know you’re crazy, but you’re not crazy crazy, are you?”
“Yes,” Lashé said. “I am going to jump, and I expect you to follow me.” He hesitated. “I also expect that you will scream like a girl. Do not take too long to follow. We should try to stay together.”
With that, he stepped off the edge of the stair and dropped like a rock.
“Wait!” Hugo shouted. He felt suddenly dizzy as he bent to look over the edge. “I can’t believe he did that!”
“What did you expect him to do?” Cannon said.
“I don’t know, say good-bye or something?” Hugo said. His heart was beginning to beat faster.
“Do you want to go next, or shall I?” Cannon said.
“I’ll do it, I’ll do it. Just give me a minute.” Hugo took several deep breaths and then clapped his hands together and rubbed them. “Okay,” he said, steeling himself. “Okay.”
“Hugo?”
“What?”
“Try not to scream like a girl, okay?”
Hugo glared at Cannon, then closed his eyes and hopped off the edge. He had meant to jump off, but his legs had buckled with nerves halfway through, so that he ended up doing a tiny bunny hop that turned out to be just enough to get him clear of the edge.
He fell and screamed (not at all like a girl), and when he ran out of breath he was still falling. His heart was throbbing like a drum in his chest, louder and louder, as if it sensed, as he did, that he had come at last to the door of death itself.
Chapter Eighteen
In which there is hope
Brinley stepped onto the grass before the foot of the Bridge to Nowhere and gasped at the sight before her. In Inveress, she had somehow failed to notice that Ninebridge was now packed full of people. A crowd of bodies ringed the city, which was quartered off into large sections. The whole place was now dedicated to massivef task of feeding everyone. Rows and rows of makeshift tables lined the center of town and every kitchen seemed to be bustling with action. In the long stretches of grass between the last buildings and the circle of bridges, children sat on blankets and played games, and the men and women huddled together talking; most looked worried.
“You’re here!” Animus exclaimed, embracing her as soon as she had caught her breath. He drew a trembling hand through his beard. “It worked.”
“Yes,” Brinley said. “I’m here, and there should be just enough time.”
Animus nodded. “And I take it this is your father?”
“Ben,” her dad said, extending his hand.
Animus shook it, and continued to speak to Brinley. “Magemother, I felt something yesterday that I cannot explain. Tell me: Where is Unda?”
Brinley took his arm. “Gone,” she said, the word catching in her throat.
“Gone?”
“Killed by the Janrax,” Archibald said quietly.
“No,” Animus said, reaching for Archibald. “Say this is not so. Unda! No, it was my fault…”
“It was the Janrax who killed him, Animus, not you.” She pinched the bridge of her nose to keep her eyes from watering. “But this is not the time to m
ourn our loss. We have much work to do, and little time to do it in.”
“How much time do we have left before the three days are up?” Archibald asked. He was eyeing his pocket watch with displeasure; it had stopped working in the void.
“Five hours,” Animus said.
“Then we must start at once. It will take that long just to get them all over the bridge,” Brinley said. “Is Habis finished with her work?”
A few paces away, Habis broke free of the crowd. “Come on now, let me through,” she huffed. “Yes! I have finished, Magemother. I was done three hours ago. And where were you, might I ask? You were supposed to be back yesterday. You were supposed to—”
“I know,” Brinley said, cutting her off. “I’m here now. Do you have what I asked for?”
Habis held up a shining silver handbell. It was larger than the Magemother’s summoning bell, and had a simple wooden handle instead of the finely wrought silver one.
“Does it work?” Brinley said
Habis stared at her. “Of course it works!” she snapped. “I made it, didn’t I? Try it if you must!”
Brinley eyed the crowd behind her. “I don’t think that would be a good idea.”
Habis rolled her eyes. “I didn’t either, but it will work. Don’t you worry your pretty little head about it. Now, here is the other thing you asked for.” She handed Brinley a leather pouch no larger than her thumb. “It contains the potion that will—with the help of all the mages—heal your mother.”
Brinley’s eyes filled with tears as she took it, but she put it in her pocket without saying anything.
“What?” Habis asked, sounding offended.
“Unda is dead,” Animus said shortly.
Habis bit her lip. “Ah,” she said. “That is unfortunate, to be sure. But you can just call another Mage of Water before we heal her, can you not?”
“Maybe,” Brinley said. “But who knows how long it might take to find the person meant to be the next Mage of Water. Not to mention we still have to find the real Lignumis. I don’t think we can heal her in time for her to tell us how to fix the bridge to the Wizard’s Ire.”
Animus waved a hand. “You can forget that now,” he said. “It will make little difference how strong the line is once Shael is released from the Panthion. He will destroy it.”
“Then there’s no hope?” Brinley said. “No way of stopping his armies?”
“There is hope,” Animus said. “We have been planning since you left, and I think there may be a way to gain the upper hand in this battle. I took the liberty of altering your plan slightly, and requested that Habis make two bells instead of one.”
Habis drew a second, smaller bell out of her robe.
“Two bells?” Brinley said. “I don’t understand.”
“The larger one summons the entire population of Aberdeen,” Habis said. “But not all of them.” She handed Brinley the smaller bell. “This one is tied to every mage, warrior, soldier, and strong man in the land—and not a few women.” She sniffed, rolling her shoulders restlessly.
Animus nodded. “With two bells, you will be able to summon Aberdeen’s armies without risking immediate harm to those who cannot fight. The rest of the plan remains the same: When Shael comes out of the Panthion, he will be caught off guard to find the world empty. At the proper moment, you must ring the smaller bell, and we shall all appear and overwhelm him. If our timing is right, we may be able to destroy him before he has a chance to remove the barrier from the bridge.”
Brinley felt horrified and excited all at once. “I don’t know why I didn’t think of two bells myself,” she said.
Animus hesitated. “I know your plan was to be alone when you release him, but I think that I should stay with you.”
Brinley shook her head. “No. It will be more powerful to surprise him. If he does not feel threatened when he appears, he may drop his guard.” A terrible thought struck her then. “Animus,” she said. “You don’t suppose that March can still contact her father, do you? She will have seen the land empty and guessed our plan by now. If she tells him…”
“No,” he said. “I think not. However they were communicating before, it must have been through the Panthion, and we have it now.”
“Right,” she said.
There was a loud rush of wings and something black collided with Brinley’s head. A second later, Tabitha was strangling her in a hug.
“Brinley!” she exclaimed. “You’re back!”
Brinley squeezed her back as hard as she could—partly in relief, partly just in self-defense—and Tabitha finally released her.
“Brinley,” Tabitha said fiercely, “you can’t meet Shael alone! I don’t ever want to leave you alone again!”
“Good,” Brinley said, “I don’t want you to either. We’ll do this together.”
Tabitha nodded. Then she spotted Ben and nearly knocked him off his feet in a rush to embrace him. “And you must be Brinley’s dad! She’s told me all about you, and how you’re the best person in the world, and how you can fix anything, and how you would do anything for her, and how you followed her and ended up in the void! I’m so glad you aren’t dead!”
“So am I,” he agreed. “And you must be the person I have to thank for watching over my daughter while I was avoiding my duties.”
Tabitha snorted. “Avoiding,” she said, stomping her foot in the grass. “Ohh I like him, Brinley. Can we keep him?”
“I certainly hope so,” Brinley said. “But now we have work to do. It’s time to make our announcement.” Brinley took Tabitha by the shoulder and moved them away from the others.
“Oh!” Tabitha said eagerly. “I have prepared the perfect speech!” As they moved away from the others, she called back, “We’ll be back in a moment!”
“Tabitha,” Brinley said, “you are going to just say the words that I whisper to you, remember?”
“Oh,” Tabitha said. “Right.”
As soon as they were clear of the crowd, Tabitha changed into a great white dragon and Brinley climbed onto her back. She jumped into the air and soared above the city, releasing a burst of violet flames to ensure that she had everyone’s attention. Then she landed partway up the Bridge to Nowhere and roared, her strong voice carrying the message that Brinley had prepared to all the people below them:
“People of Aberdeen, listen well to the words that the Magemother gives me to speak to you! She has returned from the land of Inveress. She has secured a haven for us, where we can wait out the storm of battle that will surely come when Shael is released. Those of you who can fight, you have already been instructed as to your duties. I speak now to those of you who are most precious to us, children and wives, parents and forbearers. The Magemother has secured passage into Inveress for you, and she has ensured a way to bring you back out again. It will take great trust on your part, and great courage. She has gone before you, and she has returned, and she has promised that the way is safe. Follow now the leaders of your people, for the time to act has come.”
There was a scattering of applause, though many people seemed unsure how to react.
Tabitha released another burst of flames for good measure, and the applause increased. She rose into the air then, and began to circle above the grass. “There’s something I have to tell you, Brinley,” she began, and rehearsed the story of the naptrap.
“March has it?” Brinley said when Tabitha had finished. She felt sick, betrayed.
“I’m sorry,” Tabitha said. “I should have had it. I did have it, for a moment. I failed you.”
Brinley shook her head and patted the dragon’s side. “You didn’t fail me,” she said. “Thank you for telling me the truth. Next time we see her, we will get it back.”
“Agreed,” Tabitha growled, and together they glided back to the grass to land next to Animus and the rest.
“You didn’t give your speech,” Animus said to Tabitha when she had turned back into her own shape.
Tabitha sighed. “No, I gave Br
inley’s. But I still think mine would have been better. It was so much shorter.”
“And what was your speech?” a new voice asked. “Everyone jump off the Bridge to Nowhere quick, or you will die?”
“Belsie!” Brinley exclaimed, running to embrace him as he came into view. “You’re better!”
“Yes,” he said. “Thanks to Habis’s dutiful ministrations.”
Habis folded her arms. “Hardly. He made no improvement whatsoever until yesterday. One second he was stiff as a board and out of his mind, and the next he was fine.”
“That must have been when the Janrax died,” Brinley said. “It broke whatever spell he had over you.”
“And whatever spell he had over you,” Belterras said, giving her a significant look.
“That’s right!” she exclaimed. She reached out with her mind and touched Belterras. She could feel him again!
Can you hear me? she asked with her thoughts.
Yes, he replied.
She spread her awareness, searching for the other mages. Animus was there as well. Cassis was on the other end of Ninebridge, speaking to the king. Chantra was walking through the crowd toward them. But Hugo was gone. She could not find him. No matter how hard she reached she could touch no more than the whisper of his existence.
Then it hit her. Like waves crashing against the shore, or the world’s rain hanging in the clouds, the weight of water dropped about her. It was more than enough to make her knees buckle, if only it had been a physical force. Then she could have thrown it off and run. As it was, her mind bent under the strain. Intuitively, she reached out, linking herself to the minds of the other mages and shifting the weight onto them as well.
“Unda,” Belterras said at once. “He is gone, then.”
There was a moment of silence.
Tabitha was the first to break it. “Belsie,” she began, changing the subject, “how did you know what my speech was going to be? I didn’t tell anyone.”
“Oh,” he said, pulling her close, “if only Unda had an apprentice as wonderful as you. Then it would not be so painful to lose him. But look, we are about to be in the way!”
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