Lowell pressed his back against the near wall, hands still on his ears. This was bad. There was definitely a roar in there. A crack formed low in the wall. He could see the weight of the impacts now, growing the fissure with each strike. It began to spider outward and soon pieces began to fall. One final blow and a hole formed. It wasn’t large, but he watched it intently against the insistent warnings of whatever shred of instinct was left in him.
On the other side he saw the swift spin of whirling dreadlocks and the hole widened more.
“MARKA!”
He called out but stayed where he was. Another five strikes and the space had widened to the point that he could get through so Lowell stood and moved toward the edge. She stopped kicking as he came near. The opening was a tight fit but he made it through and stood outside for the first time in what seemed like forever. He’d wished for a breeze or anything of the sort, but there was nothing. Nothing to differentiate the air from the inside of the cell. The same light and air and smells. In the distance, there was a massive flow of smoke from an adjacent building. It moved up into the air along with the sounds of shouts and the odd inhuman screech or creak. The smoked shifted and for a second he could swear he saw a jagged line of light that looked like frozen lightning.
He looked down at Marka, remembering she had been the one to free him. Her leg was glowing intensely and her face was stern. The skin between the tattoos was hot red and there was no possible way she wasn’t in pain. Her expression softened when her eyes caught his and she grabbed the edge of his shirt, pulling him away from the hole in the wall and from the chaos behind them.
There were no guards the entire run toward the front gates that Lowell hadn’t even realized were there on his trip inside. He figured he couldn’t really be blamed for that. The guards must have been all pulled to that massive collapse. Lowell watched Marka as they ran. She was favoring her tattooed leg just the slightest bit now that the glow had disappeared.
They took a much less direct route through the streets than the guards who had dragged him to wherever he was locked up. The area was much more obviously lived in, with clean streets and well-kept walls on all the houses they passed. Had they just consolidated for some reason? Moved everyone inward? Maybe it was something worse, hard to tell. Certainly there was physical damage that had been done to outlying buildings. Maybe those monster things tunneled in out there?
The scenery blew by without so much as Lowell feeling particularly winded. Whatever the girl had done in the cell had worked. Or maybe it was the awful meat he’d forced himself to choke down. Either way he was finding he could more or less keep up with Marka’s ruthless march forward.
Soon enough they were well out of the center city and were moving for the outskirts. Street after street passed and some of the terrain began to feel familiar. Lowell was willing to believe his mind was playing tricks until they came to a stop in front of a crumbled wall.
“No, Marka. This… we shouldn’t be here.”
She tugged on his shirt and went in without him. Standing alone in the street he gave a final plea to no one.
“They know about this place.”
She knew that, surely. He followed her in to find her rooting around the bookshelf, flipping through each of the books and tossing them to the ground when they didn’t hold whatever she was looking for. Lowell watched quietly as she ran through each tattered book left on the shelf. She came to one he recognized and started flipping. It was the book with the picture. He felt a strange sinking feeling as she flipped through it.
Sure enough, she came to the picture and pulled it free. Marka turned and held it up for Lowell. She brought it to him and handed him the picture, pointing to it.
“I don’t understand. It’s a picture. Is this your mother?”
She nodded and pointed to the woman’s neck. Lowell hadn’t seen it before, but she wore a ring on a thin chain around her neck. It was barely visible in the rough rubbing.
“The ring? Is this what that old man wanted?”
Marka stepped back and motioned for him to turn around. He did. There was a distinct sound of stone sliding against stone. It didn’t last long and then it happened again. A tug at his clothes told him to turn around again. She held the ring up to show him.
She took the picture from him and placed it flat in her hand. She put the ring in the center of the paper but nothing happened. She looked at it a moment, curiously, and adjusted the ring. Another second’s wait and the ring began to let off a slight hum. It filled with the magical light that he’d seen so often and as it did, it pulled the etching away from the paper, leaving bits behind here and there. The ink sucked toward the middle of the page and up through the halo of the ring. When it was done the page that had held the picture now held words in a script he couldn’t decipher but he knew the shapes well enough.
She handed him the paper and pointed to the ring and then back to the paper. He didn’t understand. The ring maybe had some sort of hiding magic? Maybe they were supposed to hide with it?
“The ring hides things?”
She shook her head impatiently. “End.”
End? End what? The book maybe? She pointed to the paper before he could try to get anything else out of his mouth.
“More.”
“More of the book? It’s not from that book?” he asked, pointing across the room at the pile of tomes on the floor.
She shook her head again. Then where?
She led him outside and pointed in the direction of the tower. Not quite at it, but at a tower beside it.
“The giant tower? We’re going there?”
She nodded solemnly.
“Well. Fine. Should be fine. Right?”
He forced a smile and looked down at her. She looked at him with her unchanging face.
“Yeah, we’ll be fine. Can’t have you running off by yourself anyway.”
Chapter 10
They had taken another series of unpopulated back roads to get to the building Marka had pointed to. The tall, grey stone was opulently decorated with facades and inlayed murals. Again an ever more youthful parade of figures in heroic poses. He’d noticed that whatever sort of creature Marka was fighting the night they’d met never seemed to appear in any of the art, though several of the books had had labeled sketches of things that looked extremely similar.
Lowell pushed the thought aside as they moved quietly down the side of the long building. It was a tall place as well, maybe three storeys. Before they’d left, Marka had been deeply focused on the page she had showed him. She tucked it into her clothes and patted at the area regularly to ensure it was still there.
The pair rounded the corner and a pair of large, wooden doors stood in front of them. Lowell was almost taken aback. Wood had been an entirely foreign substance since he’d entered. He hadn’t expected to see it used for doors, especially not a run of six doors, each of them ten feet tall and much more subtly designed than anything there had been around.
Marka was quick to move up the granite steps, passed the pillars, and to the doors. She grabbed a ring on the door nearest the edge of the building they’d rounded. She opened it just enough to squeeze through and Lowell moved to keep pace. The door was heavy, as massive pieces of wood tended to be, and smooth with use. It was old, the corners worn smooth just from years and years of being touched.
He pushed into the place and looked up. A dimly lit cavern stared back at him, walls lined with shelf after shelf of books. The floor scattered with statues of robed figures, the few faces he could see were old, many bearded. People like that Degoed bastard most likely.
A voice rang out, female and chastising. Lowell began to run toward it without thinking. A yelp rang out, the same voice. Past the statues, in front of a pair of much smaller wooden doors, there was a stone desk in a stark dark marble that laid in contrast to the smoothed granite of the library. On the ground beside the desk was a woman in a pale blue draped robe. More of a toga, really. She was bleeding slightly
from her head with Marka behind her, already making for the wooden doors. They were plain, made of a dark heavy wood, and again carved in a very simple style compared to the bulk of the city.
Lowell hurried to catch up to Marka, the woman left motionless on the ground. He imagined he could see her breathing but he wasn’t so confident about that. The lack of any sort of first aid training and the hope that Marka had a good reason for braining the lady helped him put any real concerns at the back of his mind.
Marka pushed the doors open quickly and stopped just inside the room they had opened to. It was a much smaller area, maybe only a dozen shelves, none much taller than six and a half feet or so. He wouldn’t need a ladder even in the worst case. The books here were musty and the spines of many had faded with the occasional use of many passing ages. Maybe that was the case in the rest of the library, but Lowell hadn’t been close enough to the books to truly know. Was there some special reason for this room? The lack of any understanding of the language was beginning to be a bit of a bother.
There was rustling below him and Lowell looked down to see Marka pull the paper out and unfold it. She pointed to a set of characters that had been underlined at the top of the page and walked off to begin looking for books.
“Okay,” he said blithely to himself. “Everything’s perfectly clear now. Don’t know why I didn’t put it together before.”
He sighed and moved toward the nearest shelf, studying the shapes and doing his best to memorize them in some meaningful way. It was wasted effort. The book titles were all an endless tangle of shapes that didn’t seem similar to anything so with every passing volume he was forced to re-check the paper.
There were thousands and thousands of books in the room, though it was certainly a more manageable task than searching the entire library. He’d nearly gone over an entire shelf when he heard the pat of bare feet moving to his side. Marka was coming. He placed a hand on the book so he’d remember where he left off and turned to the side.
She was holding a book. Holding it very preciously, as though dropping it would have been the worst thing that could happen. The tiny girl walked slow and careful up to Lowell and held the book out. She looked down as though she were trying to remember something.
“Take… ke… keep?”
He grabbed the book from her and compared the title to the signs on the paper. They matched.
“Of course. I’ll protect it with my life.”
He smiled kindly and she stared at him. She reached up and touched around his mouth and then her own. He thought for a moment she might try the expression for herself. Instead, she nodded her head and moved past him, back toward the small wooden doors that lead out into the library proper.
Lowell followed, flipping the book open, thinking he might find where the page went. He turned the pages absentmindedly at first, but toward the center of the book there was a sketching of the ring that Marka had showed him before. He stared at the page, hoping the letters would magically form themselves into English. Sadly, Lowell was not magic and the words would remain a mystery. He sighed, closed the book, and followed Marka.
They passed through the smaller library doors and out into the main hall. The woman from before was gone, a small pool of blood still left on the ground where she’d landed. It hadn’t grown at all, so she was probably fine. Well, not fine. Alive. Probably. Lowell stared at the spot as they passed by, thinking it was probably better to just not give it much thought.
They made it back to the massive wood doors and Marka pushed one open ahead of him. The sound of the siren that he’d heard before was blaring again, much closer now. Not only was it closer, there seemed to be more of them. The noise was inescapable but Marka didn’t seem to notice it. She looked around the area just outside the door and motioned for Lowell to follow.
The ghost town aesthetic was in play again outside, no one around and no real need for them to stick to the side streets. Marka moved into the main thoroughfare and began to walk cautiously toward the spire. The area of town was much more clearly lived in. The road was well worn but clean of dust and dirt, the houses much more well-kept. It wasn’t such a busy looking place as the market square had been. They moved through at a snail’s pace, Marka taking only a few steps before she would stop and scan the entire street as though something had changed. If anything had, Lowell was entirely oblivious. It made him feel uneasy, whatever the case.
“I’m going to be really honest. I haven’t really thought about what we’re doing at all, and I’m trying really hard not to. I mean, by rights I should be just running for whatever looks the most like an exit, right?” He took a deep breath. “I can’t leave you here. So, you know, whatever we’re doing, fine. We’ll do it and hopefully then we’ll go. People here don’t seem to really like either of us and I haven’t seen any place that even looks a little like it sells burritos or, really, any sort of Mexican cuisine of any kind.”
Marka was ignoring him or didn’t care. Probably the second one. Still, the talking helped so he kept on.
“Anyway, there’s a bunch of food you can have that’s way better than that weird crap in the brown sauce. I don’t really know how I’d explain it. You don’t really look like you’re from around… earth. Yeah. It’s fixable, though. I guess after we do the ring thing it’s probably over, right? We can go? There’s a lot of good stuff up there for kids. Cartoons, pizza, sugary cereals. A lot less broken ribs in general.”
His rambling trailed off and he stared absently in the direction of the spire. It was close now. Somehow the wail of the sirens had pushed itself into the background and Lowell could manage to think through the noise. He couldn’t help wondering what the place was for. I mean, it stood out so much against the relentless square, columned buildings that made up the entirety of the world below it. It had to have a purpose. His curiosity took his mind away from the road and he bumped into a stationary Marka. Hopping on one foot to angle around her without falling, he ended up a few steps out in front of her.
“Whoa, sorry. I guess I wasn’t watching.”
He chuckled a little as he regained his footing. She wasn’t looking at him. She was staring intently a building nearby. More specifically, at a low wall blocking the alleyway beside the house. Lowell fixed his gaze on the area. All at once the sirens died.
“What—”
His mind hadn’t processed the slight sound of rock shifting before he saw the mass of grey flying toward his head. Before it landed there was an impact in the middle of his stomach. He landed hard and skidded across the ground. He wasn’t hurt, somehow. The impact had been wide across his midsection. He scrambled himself over onto his stomach and pushed up from the ground.
Marka was the best part of five feet away, her leg glowing deep. A drop of blood falling caught Lowell’s eye as it fell from her elbow. There was a divot on her arm where the rock had hit. Her eyes were still burned to the spot on the wall.
Out from the shadows and into the street was the boy from before, his arm as bright as Marka’s leg.
Chapter 11
The humming of the two magics seemed to bounce off one another and scatter down the street as though it was trying to escape. Now over the wall, Brista stood still, his arm in front of his body in a protective stance. Marka stood with her tattooed leg forward. The ball of her foot was just barely touching the ground. Lowell watched them intently, not sure what to do. There was a wave of constant power pouring toward him like a hot wind.
The boy moved, only the slightest bit, to adjust his stance and Marka lit out. She was on him in a fraction of a second, nearly too fast for Lowell’s eyes to follow. Brista moved to block, but he was too slow and her foot slid in under his guard. The front of his cloak seemed to absorb a good deal of the damage but physics wouldn’t allow for him to stay on his feet and he flew back hard into the wall. In the second that she had, Marka ran for Lowell, grabbing him and pulling. She was so much faster than she’d ever moved when she was dragging him through the city. He
could barely keep pace, but he knew he had to.
Marka noticed them first, the forms skipping along the roofs, staying in step with no real effort. Lowell followed her line of sight up to them. The glow was there on all three. They were tiny figures, mostly covered by the large cloaks but he could just make them out. The magic’s purple light was in a different spot on each of them. A taller girl with her leg dimly lit and a pair of boys. The boys were different. One had a run of tattoos up from his throat to his jaw an in toward his mouth. The other had a shaved head and tattoos running up and over to the area around his eye. They were only paying the slightest attention to either of them, which seemed strange given that they were clearly following along.
The horror of there being three more like Brista hadn’t fully settled when a small rock moving at tremendous speed caught his ankle. His foot pulled to the side from the force of the impact and he lost his grip on Marka. The ground was as unpleasant as ever and this time he was skidding along it. He rolled a few times and came to a stop with the breath half knocked out of him. He was tiring as it was, but the impact had done him in. Marka stopped dead in the street, but he waved her on without even taking the time to think.
“Go! I’ll catch up!”
She looked up to the roof, the three had stopped and were watching. The sound of bare feet pounded down the street, the boy who was fond of throwing rocks was closing quickly. Marka nodded and turned. She was gone far too quickly as were her pursuers. Lowell pushed himself up, searching the ground for the book. He found it a foot or so away, still closed and no pages obviously missing. The glowing arm passed in a blur, not so much as giving over a passing glance as he tore down the street. Lowell scrambled for the book and pulled it in close to his body.
They were well away now, down the street and around who knows how many corners. He’d have held her back and probably meant the end of both of them. The book in hand, he ran toward the alleyways hoping to stay away from the main streets. Marka’s kick had saved him but it wasn’t entirely without its cost and his ankle was hurting more and more with every step. There was plenty of room to move in the alleys in this section of the city, no juts out from the wall and no nasty surprises around any of the corners. It was well kept but empty none the less. Surely the people were just inside from the sounds of the sirens. They’d stopped a few minutes prior, but people didn’t seem in a rush to come outside and see what the alarm was all about.
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