Lilliane looked sick, but Dormael could tell the girl was smart enough to have seen it already. Jev was smart enough, too, but the man was too hopeful by half. Dormael hated to do it, but he knew that he had to step on that hope like a cockroach, and crush it under heel. It would get them killed faster than anything else.
“Where are we supposed to go, Deacon?” Jev asked. “You say we’re running, then fine—but where? Don’t we have a plan?”
“East, to Alderak,” Lacelle said. Her expression, though, betrayed the uncertainty.
“There are lots of places in Alderak,” Jev said. “Alderak could mean Lesmira, or Cambrell. It could also mean the Dannon Steppe, though, or Thardin—not to mention the Galanian Empire.”
“I heard they’re kidnapping wizards, using them in experiments,” Torins said.
“That’s just a rumor, you drooling idiot,” Lilliane said.
“I don’t want to be experimented on,” Jev said. “They burn wizards at the stake in Alderak! Or hang us, or stone us to death. I’ve read the stories.”
“We’re not going to be burnt at the stake,” Lacelle sighed.
“Just this morning, I’d have said that there was no way I’d be stumbling through Indalvian’s bloody tunnels with these two,” Lilliane said. “Here I am, though. The gods and their bloody humor.”
Shawna touched Dormael’s shoulder, and he looked up as she spoke.
“You can go to Cambrell,” she said. Lacelle gave her a sharp look, and the other three regarded her with frightened interest. “In Ferolan there’s a man by the name of Alton Dersham. He’s my cousin, and he’ll take you in.”
“Can we ask that of Alton?” Dormael whispered in her ear. “We’ve asked so much of him already. This will put him in direct danger.”
“Alton understands what is at stake,” Shawna whispered back. “And he’s already in danger. Sending him four wizards sounds like a smart thing to do, don’t you think? Look at them, Dormael—they don’t know what to do. They’re pitiful.”
Shawna was right—they did look clueless. It wasn’t very long ago that Shawna herself had been the clueless one, but no longer. Dormael hadn’t realized just how much Shawna had changed until this moment, with the Philosophers’ ineptitude on display before him.
“He’s your cousin,” Dormael said, shrugging. “It’s your call.”
“We wouldn’t want to impose on anyone,” Lacelle said. “Are you certain?”
“Alton helped us escape Ferolan when we fled the city,” Shawna said, nodding. “He won’t shy from offering our friends aid when it’s needed. He’s the most honorable of men.”
“Thank you, Lady Baroness,” Lacelle said, inclining her head. “Genuinely, thank you.”
“It’s nothing,” Shawna said. “We’re all in this fight together now, like it or not.”
Lacelle narrowed her eyes at Shawna, giving her a considering look. Dormael wondered what Shawna would say if she knew that Lacelle had referred to her as his ‘concubine’. He decided to keep silent, though—Lacelle would change her opinion of Shawna in time.
Dormael looked down the corridor in the direction from which they had come. He fingered the copper mark in the pocket of his cloak—the twin to the one he had spelled and given to D’Jenn. Anxiety kept gnawing at him, worrying him. D’Jenn was the most capable man that Dormael knew.
The most capable, anyway, except for Victus.
Dormael had called the halt to give them a bit of a rest—after all, Lilliane looked like she was going to keel over and die at any moment—and to give D’Jenn a bit of time to catch up with them. Dormael couldn’t help but glance back down the tunnel every now and then, worrying at its emptiness. Only silence stared back at him.
“We should get moving,” Dormael sighed.
Shawna gave him a knowing look, glanced down the empty corridor, and pushed herself to her feet. Allen followed her, and Bethany scrambled after the gladiator, questions about his weapons rolling from her tongue. The others—except for Lacelle—all gave him reluctant expressions, making a big show of shouldering their gear and getting their feet moving. Jev had a unique gift for melodrama, uttering grunts and whines and groans with every protracted movement. It had been so long since Dormael had been confronted with such behavior that he was unsure what to do about it.
He smiled at them and walked on by, leaving them floundering behind him. Lacelle stepped off beside him, bringing the light with her. Jev, Torins, and Lilliane rushed to keep up, and the complaining noises died off.
For a long time the only sounds were running water, echoing footfalls, and muttered conversation at the edges of Lacelle’s magical light. The Deacon of Philosophers kept pace with him in silence, making his walk more than a bit uncomfortable. Lacelle had never liked him—or, at least, he thought that was true. Even now, being in his presence stiffened her back, and chilled her expression. She stared straight ahead as they walked, jaw muscles clenched tight. Every once in a while she would glance over at him, as if she was going to say something, but then the moment would pass. Dormael didn’t press her—he had no real desire to talk to her.
They passed through what Dormael was thinking of as ‘the maintenance tunnels,’ and moved into an older part of the corridors that branched off from the main path. Dormael hoped that the Mekai’s escape route would take them wide of the main sewer, but the constant sound of churning water hovered just at the edge of hearing.
The smell also hovered, and so strong that it was almost a taste.
Dormael had studied Ishamael’s sewers during his First Four. They had been built to last a thousand years, so the scholars said, and had lasted longer. The tunnels ran deep into the ground—so deep, in fact, that entire parts of the sprawling complex were beneath the river. Dormael cringed at the thought of the water that might be overhead even now, waiting to fall through the ceiling and drown them all.
After all, he thought, these tunnels have been here for over a thousand years.
“Have you ever been down here?” Lacelle asked, startling him from his reverie.
“Just today, actually,” Dormael said, favoring her with an empty smile.
“I got lost down here when I was a girl,” she replied, looking around at the stone. “I thought I was going to die. Do you know how I found my way out?”
“How?” he asked. Anything to get the conversation over with.
“I followed the water,” she said. “I knew that the water had to go somewhere—back up into the city, or out into the countryside—so I followed it until it led me back to the surface.”
Dormael nodded, but didn’t say anything.
“My friends had all dared me to come down here, called me a sissy,” she went on. “I was too afraid back then to stand up to them, so I went into the tunnels instead. I nearly died.”
“Did your friends get in trouble for daring you to go in?” Dormael asked. He wasn’t sure where this was going, but he uttered the response without really thinking. D’Jenn kept intruding on his thoughts. An urge to run back the way they had come and catch up to him was making his bones itch.
Lacelle smiled. “The little cowards tried to say that I had dared them into the tunnels, and got lost myself when they refused. This was a very long time ago, back when I was in my First Four…with your deacon.”
Dormael looked up at her.
“He was different when we were children,” she said. “We hated each other back then—he used to throw things at me in class. Thought it was hilarity of the highest order. I was always nervous around him, because I knew that every day he would irritate me until I wanted to scream.”
“He was one of the kids who dared you into the tunnels?”
“No,” she said, shaking her head. “That was a group of girls I had thought were my closest friends—at the time, anyway.”
“Some friends,” Dormael said.
Lacelle smiled. “Some friends, indeed. No—Victus found out what happened from them, and went to find one of the Mas
ters. I had already made my way back into the streets only to find that a search had been organized, and the whole Conclave was in an uproar.”
“What happened after?”
“We had to stand before the Mekai,” she said, smiling at the memory. “All of us—the girls, Victus, and me. I’d had no idea at the time that Victus was even involved. I was so frightened.”
“I can imagine,” Dormael said. “If I’d had to stand before the Mekai during my First Four, I’d probably have been wetting myself.”
“I would have, but I was too nervous to let anything out,” Lacelle said. “Victus, though…he stood right in front of the Mekai and called every one of those girls liars. He wasn’t frightened at all. He told the Mekai that he’d be stupid to punish me because the fault lay with my ‘bitchy friends’, as he put it.”
“That sounds like something he’d say,” Dormael replied.
“I was in love with him for a very long time after that,” she said. Dormael almost fell over in surprise. It was strange enough to learn that Lacelle was human in the first place, but hearing those words come out of her mouth made him stumble. Lacelle raised an eyebrow at him, but kept walking.
“What?” she said. “Is it such a strange thing to hear? I know you Warlocks talk. The Philosophers do, too—in that, at least, you’re all alike.”
“Well,” he hedged, trying to recover, “there have always been rumors, but there are always rumors.”
“Oh, yes—he spurned me, and that’s why I hate him so much,” she smiled. “Or I went behind his back with another man, and that’s why he hates me so much. Stay silent on something, and people fill in the blanks you leave with their imaginations. It is the nature of things, I suppose.”
“Did you ever tell him?” Dormael asked. “That you loved him, I mean.”
“We were inseparable,” Lacelle said, another wistful smile creeping onto her face. “After that, we sat in the back of the room together and threw things at other students. He was…I don’t know. He was my first love, my first everything. The first person to stand up for me, the first to treat me with actual respect.”
“What happened?”
Lacelle let out a long breath. “The Warlocks happened, of course. Victus had a strong gift, and was wickedly smart—he was that way even then, when we were just becoming full wizards. He wanted to be a Hedge Wizard at one time, you know. He always said that he wanted to move to Orris, enjoy the beaches, and help people grow their crops and birth their children.”
“What?”
That didn’t sound like Victus at all.
“Oh, yes. He was very interested in communities, and people,” she said. “And he loved the beach. We traveled there sometimes, back in those days. Victus would have pitched a tent on the beach and stayed there for the rest of his life.” Her eyes darkened. “Then, the old Deacon of the Warlocks started spending time with him. He convinced Victus to try out for the Warlocks, if only for the challenge. Victus always did love a challenge.”
“It’s exciting,” Dormael said, eliciting a look from the Deacon of Philosophers. “It’s easy to get addicted to the nature of it all. I couldn’t imagine my life any other way, now that I’m a Warlock—former Warlock, I guess.” A black feeling twisted in his guts at the thought.
“I suppose I can understand,” Lacelle said. “It was fine at first. I decided to join the Philosophers, and stay in Ishamael. I couldn’t imagine my life without Victus, so staying seemed to be the right choice. Victus, though…he just changed.”
“How?”
“He just…I’m not sure. He started to look at things differently. He’d spend days brooding in silence, his mind somewhere else. He got angrier, sharper. The world ate away at him, like the ocean at the beaches he used to love. Then, he just disappeared for an entire season. He didn’t say anything, didn’t warn me, sent no letters. When he came back, he had changed. Something in him had darkened, I don’t know what. And the rest of the Warlocks, they just closed ranks around him. That’s the way you all are, you know—bloody insular, bloody secretive. I’ve always hated it.” Dormael could hear the emotion in her voice.
“I’m…sorry.” He wasn’t sure what he was supposed to say to that.
“No, you’re not,” Lacelle sighed, giving him a sidelong glance. “I don’t know why I’m telling you this, maybe just to allow some of these thoughts out of my skull. Maybe…listen, Dormael—I know how this ends. I’ve watched him for years, for longer than the two of you have been alive, probably. I just…I just wanted you to know that he’s not evil, that he’s…I don’t know—”
“I know,” Dormael said, cutting her off. “I understand.”
“Does your cousin understand?” Lacelle asked. “I…I noticed that he had left. I was there, I heard what he said to the Mekai. I know where he’s gone.”
“He understands,” Dormael said. “Nobody wanted this, Deacon. We all have to survive.”
“Just call me Lacelle,” she said, holding out her hand. “I’m not a deacon anymore.”
Dormael nodded and took her hand.
“I’m not happy about the circumstances, but I’m glad you’re with us,” he said. “It will probably take me a long time to stop calling you ‘Deacon’, though.”
“Fair enough,” Lacelle said, smiling.
They walked in silence for awhile. Time meant nothing in the endless maze of tunnels, intersections, and rivers of pungent slime. Bethany held her nose and made gagging noises whenever they passed through one of the sewer tunnels. The hum of magic was ever-present, and it kept the effluvia moving to its next destination, while also doing something about the air circulation—though it did nothing about the smell. If Dormael had designed the thing, he would have thought to do something about the stink.
Dormael understood the way the system worked, if not the magic at play beneath the surface. The waste was collected on the upper levels, washed through a series of churning rooms that separated the waste from the water. At that point, the water would drain to a deeper level where the process was repeated. Dormael couldn’t remember how many times the water was filtered, but he knew that at some point in the process, more magical filters had been slapped in place.
The lowest level was said to house giant cauldrons that boiled the filtered water on magical braziers. Dormael had never been down there, nor did he know anyone who had been, but he had heard stories about it growing up. It was supposed to be the lowest chamber built into the tunnels.
The Mekai’s escape route led them deeper into the sewer. Sometimes the path followed a spiraling stairway, and sometimes a wide, curving ramp, but it always went downward. Lacelle’s light held the shadows at bay, but the halls felt more ancient the deeper they went. The conversation went from hushed tones to complete silence, and each footfall echoed from the stone around them.
Dormael began to jump at every sound. Once, he even hoisted his spear at the darkness behind them, making Lacelle jump so hard that her light flashed in reaction. There had been nothing, but Dormael couldn’t shake the dread that had latched its claws into his shoulders. Even Jev, Lilliane, and Torins were quiet.
The hum of old magic moved against Dormael’s senses like noises heard from underwater. The spell that had run the sewer system had been operating since antiquity, quietly rendering drinkable water from an entire city’s worth of waste. Most of the people living above never appreciated just how ancient these tunnels were. Dormael hadn’t either, until tonight.
“Dormael!” Shawna called from ahead of them, her voice echoing from the stone. “Come see this!”
Dormael and Lacelle shared a look, then rushed ahead to where Shawna and Allen had been walking with Bethany. The three of them winced at Lacelle’s magical light, which the woman toned down with a muttered apology. They stood framed by a wide doorway cut into the stone, and it took Dormael a moment to realize that there was a low, orange light coming from the room beyond. He closed his eyes for a few seconds to relax them, then opened them whe
n he could see farther into the darkness.
The room beyond the tunnel was vast—so vast, in fact, that Dormael couldn’t see the other side. Dormael walked into the enormous room, onto a walkway that was raised above the floor. He went to the edge of the path and looked down, trying to gauge the distance to the floor below. It wasn’t high enough to kill a man if he fell from the walkway, but certainly high enough to break his legs when he hit.
Spaced in even rows along the floor were pillars, and on those pillars were huge globes made of bronze. Glowing sinuous lines carved paths along the globes’ surfaces, and it took Dormael a moment to realize that they were hot. The globes were giant, magical kettles. They stood like monoliths, their shapes disappearing into the vastness of the chamber.
“This must be the mythical boiling level,” Dormael said.
“I was just thinking the same thing,” Lacelle smiled. “I’ve never seen it before.”
“Nor I.”
“The boiling level,” Shawna muttered, looking around at the towering globes. “I see. That’s why it’s so hot in here.”
“This is supposed to be the lowest chamber under the city,” Torins said. “We’re under the river now. Amazing. The gods are good for having shown us this sight.”
“I agree, and all,” Lilliane huffed, “but I’m about to bloody sweat myself to death over here. Can we get moving?”
“I think the sweating is probably good for you,” Jev said. “Maybe you should stay down here, Lilliane. No one would ever look for you here, and you’d make a perfect cave beast.”
“Jev, do you really want me to hold you down and make you cry in front of all these people?” Lilliane asked. “I wonder what that steely-eyed Warlock would say, were he to see you blubbering like a fool because a fat girl had twisted your nipples off.”
“That’s disgusting,” Torins said.
“You’d have to catch me first, Lilliane,” Jev shot back. “I don’t know if your hooves can get enough traction on this walkway.”
“Traction, is it?” Lilliane asked, reaching over to punch Jev in the leg. Jev squealed in pain as the girl hit him right in the meat of his thigh, making his leg give out. He sprawled onto the walkway with all his gear, clutching his leg in a grand melodramatic performance.
The Knife in the Dark (The Seven Signs Book 2) Page 42
