Anger at Theros, at Avan, at Ardani, at the Varai. Anger that they hadn’t had more time. Anger at the gods for cursing them with misfortune over and over.
Just anger.
The cavern outside the inn was quiet and empty and still. People lay unmoving on the street and on stoops and at tables—women, men, and children alike. She spotted a group of guards on the street corner, collapsed in a heap of metal armor and weaponry.
The entire city had fallen into deathly silence.
It was unnatural and eerie. Some deep, ancient part of her mind urged her to flee.
She went to a young woman lying prone on the street and pressed her fingers to her throat. She had a pulse. They were all still alive. Sleeping. But how long would that last?
A soft sound echoed off the cavern walls. Novikke put a hand on the hilt of her sword. A sun elf man wearing a magic-suppressing collar stood down the street, staring slack-jawed at the unconscious Varai. He looked up at Novikke, apprehension lacing his features.
“What’s happened to them?” he said.
Novikke swallowed. She dropped her hand from her sword. “Can you tell me how to get to the Temple of Ravi?”
His dazed confusion turned to dark amusement. “Why? Are you going to take the opportunity to burn it down? You wouldn’t be the only one to consider it.”
What was it with Ysurans and fire? “Where is it?” she said more firmly.
“It’s on the eighth level,” he said. “Below.” He gave a complicated set of directions that Novikke only partially followed.
“Thank you,” she said. She eyed the man, suddenly guilty. There would be other people wandering the city, free for the first time since their enslavement. And she was trying to wake up their oppressors again.
“This isn’t going to last forever,” she said. “You should gather as many people as you can and leave the city, now.”
He gave her a suspicious look, but then nodded and hurried on his way. Novikke took out her mage torch and started down the stairs he’d pointed her to.
None of the Varai had been spared. They lined roads, and she could see them through windows, all eerily still. Every so often, she came across another slave. Some wandered, confused, like the sun elf upstairs. Some ran, hardly sparing her a glance.
In one cavern she spotted a human man with a knife, kneeling over an unmoving Varai. He stabbed the Varai in the chest, over and over. When Novikke passed, the man glanced up, his face twisted in rage, then kept stabbing.
She went down, down, into the depths of the earth far from the cliffside. The air grew damp and stagnant and cool, and the tunnels grew wide and empty. She got the impression that no one lived here. Whereas above, the tunnels and caverns had been lined with dwellings and shops, this was empty but well cared for. The spaces she walked through were immaculate, with smooth, pristine walls and floors carved into dark stone.
A strangely warm breeze hit her face, as if she was nearing a fire, and then the tunnel opened up into a massive natural cavern lined with stalactites and black stone columns. An enormous archway marked the entrance to the temple. Pillars covered in elaborate reliefs of foliage and animals decorated the entryway and the room beyond.
Most shocking of all was a statue, twenty times her height, that stood at the front of the temple. It was an elven woman sculpted from shining black stone, encircled in ethereal flowing robes, with waist-length hair that streamed behind her as if in a fierce wind. Her expression was serene but strong in a way that reminded Novikke of Aruna.
“Hello, Ravi,” Novikke said quietly, and her voice echoed. The goddess seemed to look down at her, judging. She half expected the statue to come to life and block her from entering the temple. Her shoulders hunched as she passed.
Inside the temple, fires burned in braziers, casting flickering light on the walls. Niches carved into the walls held statues and burning candles. Lush scarlet carpet lined the floors.
No one could say that the Varai did not value artistry.
Priests in black vestments lay on the ground along the carpet and in corners. There were more than Novikke had expected. She doubted there was any way she and Aruna could have infiltrated the temple unseen if they had tried to come the previous day. She stepped over them and kept walking.
At the center of the temple was another statue, an altar covered in flowers, and a fountain. It was beautiful, but none of this appeared to be what she was here for. It would have helped if she’d had any idea what this heart was supposed to look like. Hopefully it was the sort of thing that she’d know when she saw it.
Another warm gust washed over her, and she turned toward it, finding an open door hidden to the side of the altar. Through the door was a dark, narrow passageway that led even farther underground. Warmth emanated from below. Novikke rested a hand on her sword and followed the passage down.
She held her mage torch in front of her to light the passage until she realized that there was a soft, gold light coming from the end of the hall. She put away the torch, letting the strange light illuminate her way.
And then she rounded a corner, and the passage opened up into a room almost as big as the cavern upstairs. She flinched as heat and light bathed her. Something big glowed bright ahead, burning her eyes after she’d grown accustomed to the dim. She squinted until her eyes stopped stinging and the shape began to coalesce into something recognizable.
In the room was a tree. An enormous tree with bark that glowed with life and light and magic, growing deep underground.
The heart of the forest.
She stared at it, and a small voice in her head told her that she shouldn’t be there. She walked toward it anyway. She was so focused on the tree that she didn’t notice the figure beneath it until it moved.
Avan sat on her knees between the huge roots of the tree, glaring up at Novikke. She was awake.
“Avan,” Novikke said in surprise, not sure whether she was happy to see her conscious.
Avan studied her, suspicious. Her eyes went to the sword at her hip. Novikke wondered if she recognized it as the one Aruna had been wearing before.
Her body was sagging, as if she was on the verge of falling asleep like the rest of them had.
She took a step closer, and the woman bared her teeth. “Just stay where you are. Your presence has sullied this holy place enough. You needn’t make it worse.”
Novikke leaned back on her heels. “I wasn’t trying to sully anything,” she said. “But there’s a bit of an emergency up there. You’ll have to pardon me for taking drastic measures.”
Avan glared at her. The light of the tree made her face glow. “What’s happened?” she finally asked, her brows drawn together in concern.
“You don’t know?”
“I wouldn’t have asked if I did, would I?” she snapped. “I saw the other priests start dropping, and I…” She bit back the rest of the sentence. Her mistrust was palpable.
“And you came down here,” Novikke finished for her. So, she’d known that the tree could protect her somehow.
Her throat moved as she swallowed. “Where is Aruna?” she asked.
“He’s safe. I mean, he’s not…dead. Yet.”
“Yet?”
“Everyone in the city is asleep. Maybe dying, I can’t tell. Everyone except non-Varai. You’re the only one still conscious. I think it’s only a matter of time.”
Avan slowly shook her head. “That can’t be.”
“I couldn’t have gotten here alone if anyone was awake to stop me.”
Avan knew it was true. Novikke could see the despair in her eyes. She put her head in her hand.
She wanted to remind her that they’d tried to warn her. “What is this place?” she said instead.
Avan shot her a hard look through watery eyes. “You know what it is. This is what you came here for, isn’t it? Are you here to finish what the others started?”
“No, I’m not.” She took another step toward the tree.
“Stay back,”
Avan snarled, and Novikke stopped short.
Avan’s hand was on one of the roots, holding on tightly. It reminded Novikke of a mother guarding a child, though she wasn’t sure which was the mother and which was the child.
“Ravi will protect us,” Avan said.
“Ravi is dying, and the Varai are dying along with her. I’m the only one left who can do anything about it.” She thought, then amended, “The only one who wants to do anything about it.”
Avan scoffed. “Why would you want to help us?”
“Aruna,” Novikke replied shortly.
Avan didn’t ask why a slave would want to protect her master. Novikke sensed that she’d already guessed she was not really a slave.
“You choose to aid the enemies of your people just to save one man?”
“Not just to save one man.”
If Aruna hadn’t been there to show her the forest through his eyes, if she hadn’t met people like Zara or Shadri, she might have never come to see the Varai as they really were: as people, no different from herself and other Ardanians. If she had never come to know them, she would still have been thinking of them as monsters.
“Would you destroy all of Valtos, if you could?” Novikke asked. “The entire city, thousands of people? Would you kill them all? Burn everything they’d built?”
Avan actually considered it for a while before saying, “No.” She looked almost confused. Maybe she hadn’t expected Ardanians to have the same morals she did.
“What is he to you?” Avan asked.
“A friend.”
“It’s hard to imagine my brother befriending a human.”
Novikke shrugged.
Avan’s eyes softened. “Then again, it’s hard to imagine him doing a lot of the things I’ve heard he’s been doing.”
“He isn’t a traitor.”
Avan shook her head, looking away. “He’s been gone on patrol for months now without returning to the city once. I haven’t seen him in almost a year. Then I hear he’s been seen working with Ardanians, and then he shows up at my door with you, ranting about some disaster coming for us. I do wonder how this all came about.”
“It’s a long story. You should have him explain it to you after all this is over.”
Avan set her jaw as if holding back tears. “I’m really the only one left?”
“As far as I can tell, yes.”
“Then it’s because Ravi protected me,” she said. “But I can feel her weakening. And whenever I let go, darkness starts closing in.”
Novikke looked down at the woman’s hand, which never left the root she was holding onto. “The tree is the source of Ravi’s power?” she guessed.
Avan didn’t answer, and Novikke sensed she hadn’t quite hit the mark. She considered the woman’s words again.
“The tree is Ravi,” Novikke said.
Avan didn’t confirm her guess. She didn’t have to. “Do you understand that no human has ever been where you are right now? Very few Varai have, either. It is a great honor to witness this place.”
Novikke traced the tree’s limbs with her eyes. The branches were thick and gnarled with age. It looked like it had been there since before time had begun. “I know.”
She didn’t know what she’d expected the heart of the forest to look like, but she couldn’t have imagined this. There was a heaviness to the air. The room was thick with magic and…something else.
“Let me help,” Novikke said. “Tell me what I should do.”
Avan looked small with her grand robes in a pool around her folded legs and the fierce, defensive expression gone from her face. “I don’t know what you should do. I don’t know why any of this is happening.”
At least she wasn’t telling her to leave. “I’m open to any ideas.”
Avan hesitated for a long time.
“You came here for Ravi, yes?” she said finally. “Then let’s see if she speaks to you. Come closer.”
Novikke swallowed her surprise. She approached the tree.
It became apparent what the source of the heat was. As she went closer, warmth bathed the bare skin of her face and hands and soaked into her clothes. Somehow, it never grew uncomfortably hot. It felt like an embrace. Like life.
She stopped beside Avan. Worry lined the woman’s face.
“What do I do?” Novikke asked.
“Listen.”
She listened. And now that she was looking for it, she felt a soft pulsing coming from the tree. Like a heartbeat.
Curious, she reached toward the trunk. She heard Avan’s sharp intake of breath, and she stopped. Heat sank into her outstretched hand, and she could not tell whether it felt dangerous or comforting. Power poured from the tree. It skimmed over her skin, a tense vibration of magic or godliness or something else beyond the understanding of mortals.
And there was the presence again. A familiar sensation of something big watching her, very close and invisible to human eyes. The same feeling she’d had that day in the forest.
Something in her urged her to reach forward. The tree beckoned her.
Was that the voice she’d been listening for?
She reached forward. Her hand pressed against the bark.
A shock went through her. White-hot heat seared her fingers. She shouted in alarm before she realized there was no pain. There was only heat and energy and that heartbeat that she could now hear pounding in her ears, echoing through her head.
Black vapor, somehow dark and luminescent at once, flowed around her, crackling like lightning and sparking like fire. It pressed into her hand through the bark, sinking into her skin. She held her hand there, commanded by the wordless, inaudible voice that rang in her head, until she could stand it no more.
She tore her hand away, and the energy binding her to the tree broke off with a snap. She stumbled back and fell to the ground. The pounding heartbeat in her ears faded. The overwhelming heat subsided.
Her hand was streaked with black from her fingers to her elbow, like someone had smeared soot over her. Thin, glowing veins of gold, threads of light and darkness, bright with inner life, wove through her skin. It was in her.
She looked up at Avan, who stared at her in blank surprise. Novikke wasn’t sure whether this had been a punishment or a blessing. “What in the hells was that?”
Avan reached out and took Novikke’s hand. She held it for a moment, as if searching for something. She looked up at Novikke.
“I think she has given you a piece of herself,” she said, looking torn between awe and confusion and disapproval.
“A piece…?” A piece of Ravi. A piece of the heart. That was what she’d needed. It was a blessing after all.
Novikke pulled her hand away. “I have to go.”
Avan’s eyes went wide and sharp. “Where will you go?”
“To fix this,” she said, turning to leave. She glanced over her shoulder, smiling. “I’ll fix it. I promise.”
Avan gave her an unhappy, conflicted look. The look of someone whose life and home rested in the hands of a stranger and an enemy.
Novikke turned, still feeling the rush of Ravi’s magic flowing through her, and went to finish saving all of Kuda Varai.
◆◆◆
Even moving quickly, it took Novikke half an hour to get back upstairs to the inn, but it felt like much longer.
Many of the slaves had gone already, but a few had remained to wreak havoc on the city. She passed a few fires.
She pushed open the door to the inn and went up the stairs to their room, stepping over bodies as she went. Her heart pounded as she came to the door. A dark part of her feared she would find him dead from the forest’s affliction or murdered by some vengeful human.
But she opened the door, and he was exactly where she’d left him, tucked safely into the bed.
She went to his side, standing over the bed to look down at him with apprehension. She glanced at the black marks on her hand. If this didn’t work, she’d have to leave him there.
She re
ached down and touched his hand.
There was a tiny spark of something when her skin touched his. His eyes snapped open. He looked at the ceiling, then over at her. Reading her concerned expression, he frowned.
“What’s wrong?”
Novikke’s hand trembled. She sank to her knees, resting her head on the bed. “Oh, gods,” she whispered. Thank you, Ravi.
Aruna sat up a little. He looked behind her at the door, as if expecting to find some danger there. “Novikke? What’s going on?”
Night Elves of Ardani: Book Three: Invocation Page 10
