A sound like a thousand shards of glass falling onto a stone floor filled the room. The pulsing green light hastened. So quick was it, the conduit appeared to flicker on and off like the beating of a hummingbird’s wings. There was a deeper sound, too, coming from the seed pod – a low thrumming Elspeth could feel in her chest. Whatever was going to happen, it was going to happen soon.
Then, as if breaking an egg for the frying pan, the seed pod cracked open. A sudden whoosh of sound assaulted Elspeth’s ears. The green light, once a flicker, was now a constant glow as bright as the sun at noon.
“It is time,” Zill cried, her voice exultant. “Come, gatekeeper, it is time.”
Elspeth glanced over her shoulder. With all the bright light, she could not have found her way out had she wanted to. All she could see was Zill’s head where it made a silhouette against the glowing seed pod. The rest of the witch’s body seemed to fade. Maybe it was the light, but Elspeth was sure she could see through the woman’s chest.
Suddenly angry, Elspeth stepped forward. The witch was not going to win. Elspeth reached out. For an instant, she heard a voice say, “No, boy. Don’t!” then she grabbed Zill shoulder.
The world turned white. Sound faded. And Elspeth was gone.
* * *
Olivia found the first set of stairs easily enough, but when she reached the conduit room, a sudden stab of searing pain pulled her up short. Raising a hand to her cheek, she actually felt a sore break open. Staggering, she leaned on one of the stools which were lined up in front of the conduit.
“Are you all right?” Nini asked.
Trapper was nuzzling her shoulder. He was likely aiming for affectionate, but every touch brought more pain.
“Of course I’m not all right,” Olivia chided. “I’m falling to pieces. Gods, I feel like my skin is falling – Don’t touch it, Trapper! Please.”
But this time it was not Trapper who had touched her.
Nini flinched. Drawing his had away, he said, “Sorry. How can you stand it?”
He looked over at Chrissa. “Why aren’t you breaking out?”
“Because she has neither the Power nor the Voice,” Olivia said. She glanced over at her bodyguard. “Sorry, Chrissa, but it’s true.”
Chrissa raised her hands. “Don’t mind me,” she said. “If that’s what you get for having the Power, I’d just as soon do without, thank you.”
Nini did not look convinced. “Are you sure it’s that? What about the shyma stones? This is where they kept those wet witches. Maybe Juran used the stones in here and—”
“It’s not the stones,” Olivia said. She wanted to shout at the man, but when she opened her mouth, the stretched skin across her jaw felt ready to split open. Quietly, she said, “I have already told you, Juran will only use the shyma stones on Zill or her red-dress women. It is this room. There’s something in the air reacting with the Power and the Voice. I thought it was that mist, but now the air is clear, I think it must be that machine.”
“Well then,” Nini said, “If that’s what is causing it, you should go. Let me, Chrissa, and the dog find Elspeth.”
“You might need my help.”
“And then again, we might not.” This from Chrissa, who shot Olivia her best bodyguard’s look. “And how much help will you be if you… fall to pieces?”
“Enough questions,” Olivia said. “Just help me to the door, we’re nearly there.”
They had to force the door. Those tendrils had all but covered the frame and most of the wall. When they finally pushed their way through, the door to the machine room was open. A man was lying against the inner wall, holding a chest wound.
Olivia knelt by him. “Where is Elspeth?”
The man – Olivia thought it was Karloth – nodded toward the mass of green tendrils. “In there. Hurry, she has already begun the…” Karloth coughed out a staggering breath. Wincing, he pointed toward a gap in the thicket of green tendrils. “Hurry. She will kill us all. Don’t let her open the gate.”
He closed his eyes. Olivia thought he was an inch from death, but his chest rose and fell. The knife in his breast must have punctured a lung; he gurgled every time he drew breath.
“Leave him,” Nini said. “If we try to move—”
“I have no intention of moving him,” Olivia said. “I wanted to ask… Never mind, we’ll find out soon enough.”
The machine – if that is what it truly was – looked more like a manmade forest of glass-like roots. They seemed to be growing before their eyes. The surface glowed with that same sickly green hue Olivia had seen in the conduit room. Looking up, she could see where the tendrils grew through the ceiling, doubtless on their way up the tower. What was this thing? And what sort of gate would it open, and to where?
Suddenly, the air filled with the sound of breaking glass. A loud thrumming noise beat against Olivia’s chest, and the pulsing green glow quicken to a point where the glow appeared almost constant. Olivia ignored the pain, as yet more sores burst on her face and neck, and ran into the thicket. She entered a rectangular space, just in time to see Elspeth reach out a hand to a ghost.
Trapper pushed past her, shouldering his way through the forest of tendrils. He jumped at the ghost just as a particularly bright flash of light burst from the thing above Elspeth’s head.
“Trapper! No, boy. Don’t!” she shouted.
But her cry was too late. In an instant, and with a pop that sounded like a bubble bursting, Elspeth, Trapper, and the ghost were gone.
Immediately, the green glow faded. The thrumming wore away to a quiet strum, until it, too, was gone. It was then, Olivia discovered where that breaking glass noise had come from – the tendrils were breaking away from the conduit, smashing onto the wooden deck.
Olivia felt a hand on her shoulder. Then she was being pulled back.
“No! Elspeth!” she shouted.
“She has gone,” Nini shouted back. Olivia could barely hear him above the noise of breaking glass. “Come out of there,” the lieutenant said.
“But I have to…”
“She has gone, Olivia,” Chrissa’s voice came from her side. “We have to go before the whole lot comes down on our heads.”
“No!” Olivia wailed.
She spun away from Nini grip. Landing on her knees, she almost tripped over Karloth’s leg.
“Where have they gone?” Olivia asked the dying man. “Wake up! Tell me, where they have gone?”
She was shaking the man’s shoulder. Nini, who was still behind her, tried pulling her away.
“Leave me be,” she told him, terror in her voice. “I have to know, where have they gone?”
Again, she shook Karloth’s shoulder. Was he dead?
Finally, he opened his eyes. “They haven’t gone anywhere. They are right here.”
“No they’re not!” Olivia screamed, tears boiling on her scared cheeks. “Where are they?”
“That’s the wrong question, princess,” Karloth said. “Not where – when.”
“What do you mean, when? Make sense, man. What are you talking about?”
“They are right here, only three hundred years in the past. Likely a bit wet from their fall into the water, I shouldn’t wonder. Damned ship, never there when you need it.”
“What?” Olivia cried. “Three hundred years? What do you mean?” Again, she shook the man’s shoulder. “Tell me. What do you mean they fell in the water? Tell me!”
She felt a hand on her arm. It was Chrissa this time. “He’s gone,” Chrissa said, voice gentle. “And I think we should go, too. Come now, Princess, up with you, we’ll help you out.”
“I can’t leave her.”
Olivia felt the tears burn. Anger and frustration clamping her throat shut. She wanted to wail, to scream, but she could not. Elspeth was gone. Gods, two more seconds, and she could have saved her. She wanted to lay down next to Karloth’s body and die right next to him, but Nini and Chrissa picked her up.
Olivia could not remember what
happened next, but when she opened her eyes, she was surrounded by trees. There was a beach to her left, and maybe twenty people were loading boats. The first shades of dawn brimming the eastern horizon.
“The ship has gone,” Chrissa said.
“What do you mean, gone?” Olivia asked. She coughed. Her throat felt like she had swallowed a bucket full of sand.
“It’s just gone. There are a few planks left, but the tower and everything else the machine touched is gone.”
Olivia closed her eyes. “Elspeth, what did you do?”
The question was for Lady Zill and Karloth. Had Elspeth really travelled three hundred years into the past? And if that were true, how would they get her back if the machine which sent them was gone, too?
“Drink some water,” Chrissa said. “We are on the next boat. Juran is waiting in Raff. We’ll be back in Sugal this time tomorrow, and in Bhail by week’s end.”
“I don’t want to go back.” What would she tell Elucia? Elspeth’s parents? Gods, what could she say to Gialyn? “We failed, Chrissa. Zill made her gateway and we have lost Elspeth. We failed. I don’t want to go home.”
“We have to,” Chrissa said. She was doing her stolid duty-before-all voice. Olivia wanted to punch her. “We have to go back, we have to tell Elucia what has happened, and we have to come up with a plan to fight the Karakin.”
“I… don’t… want… to—”
“I know you don’t want to, but we have to.” Chrissa sat at Olivia’s side. Sighing, she continued, “It is hard when we lose friends, but the battle must go on, Olivia. We cannot give up. Elspeth would not want us to give up. In a few days, when you have rested, and we are back in the tower, we will mourn her, but then we must pick ourselves up and start again. We cannot fail. You are the princess, you are one of the Twelve, folk are counting on you.”
“I don’t care,” Olivia said.
And right then, she did not.
She allowed herself to be guided to the boat – her sores were healing, but still hurt – and sat quietly while the oarsman carried them back to Raff. Two days, two months, two years – it did not matter, the pain would never end. She would go back to Bailryn, live in the palace, and do what princesses were supposed to do. Let someone else fight; she was done with it.
CHAPTER 28
Damari’s Lot: Part Three
“Why do I have to do all the writing?”
They were in the common room of the Purple Mermaid. Damari had not expected Mayash to take them to Sugal, but the old man had insisted they should travel the last twenty leagues to the Raekawn valley on foot. “It will give us a chance to catch up on the local gossip,” he had said when Damari asked why he had not just made a portal that would take them all the way to Tofai – which was barely three leagues south of the valley.
He had also said they should keep a record of their expedition. Which was why Damari was sitting at the table by the fire, writing up an account of their journey into the thin book Mayash had given her.
“Don’t you like writing?” Mayash said.
“Well, yes, but… We haven’t done anything yet. We arrived, we got a room, we ate some food, now we are sitting here in front of the fire. Hardly note worth, is it?”
Mayash let out a quiet laugh. “It is the little things we miss,” he said, voice like that of a kindly old grandfather. “The big events are always there, but without context, they are but islands off a misty shore. What brought you to those events, that is what will matter years from now when you look back on your life.”
Damari frowned. “I’m going to care that I had fish soup for supper and that the wine was sour?”
Mayash shook his head. “You don’t have to write down what you eat, child, unless, of course, you were invited to a royal banquet. No, you should write down what you have seen. That ship, for example, the one with the broken mast; did you make a note of that?”
“No. Why would I? The weather is bad out there; what is so strange about a broken mast.”
“Three things,” Mayash said. “Firstly, who would be so desperate to reach Sugal that they would sail in such a vessel? Secondly, it was riding high, which means it was carrying no cargo – why? And thirdly, did you see the state of her decks?”
Damari nodded. The ship was a mess. “It looked like an old river barge,” she said. “The sort the miners use for transporting ore.”
“Precisely,” Mayash said. “And knowing all that, and given the weather, how is it her captain can afford to make repairs on her mast? I saw three carpenters out there, working in the wind and rain; three craftsmen, risking harm to get that mast fixed.” Mayash raised his palms. “Why all the rush? Who is so desperate to leave Sugal, they would throw gold about fixing that old tub?”
Damari nodded; the old man had a point.
Still…
“But how does that affect us? Why should we care if some rich lord is in a hurry to leave and is paying for that old barge to be fixed?”
Mayash smiled. “Momentous events rarely occur in isolation, child. Which is why we came here instead of travelling directly to Tofai. If we are to understand this island, and why the silver dragon has chosen to make her home here, we must know the lay of the land – see the bigger picture. It is not enough to just go looking for her; we must follow the breadcrumbs. A being of such immense power cannot exist without profoundly affecting those around her; by following those effects, we stand a better chance of finding our silver friend.” Mayash shot her a wry grin. “And besides, I always did like a bit of sightseeing. On the morrow, we shall travel east. See what we can see and talk to folk we meet on the road. I suggest we do a full circuit around the Raekawn before we enter the valley.”
“Go all the way around? But that could take weeks.”
Mayash nodded. “At least two, yes.”
“But we can’t do that; we don’t have enough time. Ella said—”
Mayash raised a hand. “Tell me, child, how long has this friend of yours been searching the valley?”
“You mean Coln? Err… almost three weeks.”
“And has he found anything?”
Damari bit her lip, then shook her head.
“I see,” the old man said. “Well, the first thing you should do is call him back. For what I have in mind, a dragon could prove most useful.”
“And what is that?”
“We need to draw a map,” the old man said.
“But I have maps – a dozen of them.”
The old man shrugged a shoulder. “Maybe so, but you don’t have a Power map, do you?”
“A what?”
Now what was he talking about? A Power map? What was that?”
Mayash sat forward. He took a slow sip of his wine, then, quietly, he said, “You mentioned folk feeling sick when they used the Voice near the valley?”
Damari nodded. Where was he going with this?
“There you go then. We will travel around the valley, use the Voice, gauge the effect by how sick we feel, and draw a map. Once done, we should be able to pinpoint the general location of whatever it is that has been making us ill. That, together with the gossip and stories we pick up along the way, should give us a location.”
“Oh,” Damari said. “I see what you are getting at; find the dragon by measuring the effect she has on the Voice. Yes, that should work. Assuming she stays in the same place, of course.”
Again, Mayash raised his palms. “I did not say it would be perfect, but it will focus our search on a much smaller area.”
The old man took another sip of wine, then gestured for the serving girl.
“I think I’ll have some more of that soup,” he said. “Then we should get some sleep. We have a long few weeks ahead of us, and few nights in a comfortable bed.”
Damari nodded. She did not mind sleeping out in her tent, but the old man was right; they should take comfort where they can.
She had some more soup, another cup of the sour wine, and went to bed.
* * *
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Damari opened her eyes. The room was shaking. It was still dark out, but the first shade of dawn was creeping up over the window sill.
“What was that?” Mayash said.
He was sleeping in the cot opposite. There were four more folk sleeping in the long dormitory above the common room, but none of them had woken. How could they sleep through an earthquake?
Damari swung her legs out of her narrow bed, then rushed to the window.
There was nothing out there. At least, nothing unusual, nothing that might indicate anyone else had felt the shakes. The horses in the stable were quiet, the chickens in the coupe were asleep, and a goat was casually munching something she had found in the yard. Had she imagined the earthquake?
No. Mayash woke up, too.
The old man stood at her side. He, too, stared out the window.
“What was it?” Damari asked.
“I have no idea. But, for a moment there, I thought the building was falling down.”
“Me, too,” Damari added.
“Whatever it was,” Mayash said, “it came from the north.”
“The valley?” Damari asked.
Mayash shrugged. “Maybe, but from here, the valley is more to the northeast. I’d say, whatever it was centred on the northern isles. Sparrow Island, maybe. Or one of the smaller islands that dot the coast.”
Damari glanced over her shoulder at the still-sleeping folk. “Then maybe it was an earthquake,” she whispered. “Maybe these folk were too drunk to feel it.”
“Maybe,” Mayash said, “but I doubt it.”
The old man yawned. “Oh well, we are up now, might as well make a start. I wonder if there’s anyone in the kitchen?”
Damari could have laughed. An earthquake, and all the man cared about was food.
Still, he was right; she was awake now, and no chance of getting back to sleep. Might as well get washed and ready for the day.
CHAPTER 29
A Debt Paid
“Tell me,” Aleria said, “this visit of yours to Arenthenia. Did anyone else talk to you?”
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