“What?”
“I—Mira, what about the storm? If the wind kicks up, you’re—you’re gone!”
He had a point.
But …
“It’s safe,” I told him—and stepped out, far beyond arm’s reach.
“MIRA!”
“We’ll be fine!” I called back. One foot after the other, one foot after the other, and do not look down. “You think they’d put Feruiduin’s Cutlass in a room open to the sky where anyone could get it? There’s, like … a force field or something, I don’t know.”
“How can you know that?”
“I just do!” Didn’t. But I had to get to it some way, right? “Now get a move on!”
Heidi made a defeated sort of noise behind me. I assumed she stepped on, because Carson bleated, “Heidi—oh geez.”
“Come on!” she yelled back.
Lightning forked overhead, lighting my vision from the top with a momentary white bar. The boom followed instantly. I braced, holding steady for a moment lest I trip—then I was going again, counting step after step after step, eyes on the central platform every single moment—
“I’ll just, uh … I’ll just wait here, okay?” Carson called.
“LIVE A LITTLE!” I belted back.
“That’s exactly why I’m not following you!”
But we were creeping farther along—I must be closing in on halfway now, I was sure—because a distant whine came from Carson, and he cried, “Oh, geeeeeeez!!”
I paused, dared a glance behind me.
He was crawling, body as low as it would go. He’d positioned his manbag on his back, like a snail carrying its shell. Though it was hard to tell from so far, his lips seemed to be moving; I imagined him whispering, panicked, “Don’t look down. Don’t look down.”
It seemed a sensible thing to say, so I could hardly fault him for it.
Another blinding fork carved the sky, throwing the central platform into stark relief.
The boom was deafening. And unexpected—with no warning, just one brief fraction of a second between lightning strike and the rolling clap that followed, I was caught off-guard. I screamed without thinking, body flinching—
I took a misstep—
“MIRA!”
—and caught myself before teetering over the edge.
Still, I caught a long, hard look into the swirling abyss below. Black, streaked with churning deep grey mist, it stared back at me hungrily.
My foot had landed half on, half off the edge of the bridge. I shimmied back, not daring to lift it to do so, until I was dead-center again.
Damn, it really was perilously thin. Maybe Carson had the right idea with his crawl. Low center mass, much more difficult to knock aside—plus he could grip either side of the bridge as he went with L-shaped hands, fingers always forcing him to stay as close to the middle as possible.
“Are you okay?” he called, a note of panic in his voice. It was him who’d shouted my name, I realized, as I wobbled on the precipice.
“I’m—fine!” But I didn’t sell it. A quiver shook my voice. And still I stared into that misty void below us, waiting for me to be knocked over, to consume me as I fell end over end into whatever painful death awaited. “Let’s … let’s keep going, okay?”
Body rigid, I forced it into motion, tearing my eyes away from the abyss. Refocus on the platform—on Feruiduin’s Cutlass. I was close. Almost there. Definitely over halfway now. All I needed to do was put one foot down, then another, until I got there. Simple.
With maybe twenty feet to go, another blast of lightning ripped a blinding arc across the sky. My vision flashed again, and the crack that followed was just as deafening as the last. And though I flinched, this time my body was primed to lock itself down, so I froze, teeth gritted, waiting for it to end.
“We—we good?” I shouted when it had silenced. I no longer dared a look back.
“Still here,” Heidi called.
From farther behind her, Carson added, “Yes!”
Good. Entourage intact.
Although, none of us had made it to the central platform yet. I shouldn’t be counting my chickens before they hatched. Twenty feet of bridge was still plenty of time for a lightning strike powerful enough to cleave the world in two, and send me tumbling over—and then I wouldn’t be counting chickens at all.
But I got there; mercifully, I got there. I staggered onto the platform, loosing a shaky breath I hadn’t realized I’d been holding.
Pure adrenaline had kept me moving. Now, it deserted me. My legs turned to jelly, and I fell to my knees. Perfectly smooth tan stone reached up to meet me, and I let myself clatter to it with complete willingness. After that ordeal, I’d probably welcome the embrace of broken glass. It would slice me up like a paper garland, but I’d be alive. And right now, I wasn’t sure I had ever been so thankful. (I had, of course. When rational thought returned, I’d recall being this thankful just yesterday, after miscalculating that first jump in the stupid game of parkour needed to acquire Decidian’s Spear.)
Heidi joined me maybe fifteen seconds later.
“Are you okay?” she asked, voice tight.
I still hadn’t moved from the ground. My head was down, eyes closed, between firmly planted hands.
“Just give me a second here, all right?”
Heidi obliged.
I figured she must have looked back at Carson, because she called, “Almost there!” It wasn’t quite encouraging—she sounded a little flat to me—but it was at least something. And after forcing him through something that had shaken me so heavily, I had to admit: limp rag or not, Carson deserved all the encouragement he could get.
He made it to the platform, scrabbling up behind me.
“Geez,” he whispered. Though strained, a note of disbelief crept into his voice. “I can’t believe I just did that.”
Yeah, me neither.
A hand touched my shoulder, very light and careful.
“Mira?” he asked.
“I’m okay,” I said. Just came far too close to being snuffed out of existence, that was all. It barely even constituted a crisis.
“You made it,” he said. “We all did.”
I pressed lower, forehead against the stone. It was cool. Calming waves seemed to radiate from it through my skull, finding all the little places where my brain had knotted itself into a tight wad. As though touched by softly massaging hands, each tense coil began to loosen.
And something about Carson’s hand on my shoulder seemed to help, too.
“You ever wonder if maybe you’re not cut out for something?” I murmured.
Carson scuffled to a crouch at my side.
“Lots,” he said. “All the time. I mean … just getting on the plane and coming over here. That was scary.”
He went quiet for a while. Not like the silences after being berated by me—or, increasingly, Heidi. Nor was this the silence of a man whose words had run dry. There was something in his voice that suggested he had receded, falling into a black void of his own where it was him and only him. If I could summon the will to push up and just look at him, I was certain his face would be somber, as it so often was, but in a new way, a different, deeper sort.
Finally, he spoke again.
“You’re cut out for this, Mira Brand.”
Was I? I’d been told the answer was no for so long. All that pressure, piled on all the time—and still I faced it, from Lady Angelica, from Heidi. Living up to your famous name? I couldn’t escape. And now, having brushed with death, running on fumes, it all seemed to come back.
And yet—
You’re cut out for this, Mira Brand.
It came from Carson. Carson, who didn’t know what I faced, had known me less than two days—and yet he was honest, almost to a fault, the way every little thought seemed to spill from him at times.
He had seen something.
“I am cut out for this,” I murmured into stone.
From Heidi: “Huh?”
> I pushed up. Opened my eyes. My back cracked, a little pop from midway down that was satisfying and good.
My first look was to Carson.
He met my gaze, face serious. He was paler than normal, and sweat had slicked his hair, sticking it to his forehead. A distinctly grey tinge painted him, although it was on the way out even as I looked at him. But there was concern in his eyes too, worry—for me, who’d sputtered out before both of them.
“Thank you,” I said.
He nodded.
I rose. Carson dropped his hand, retraining it on his manbag’s strap, and stood with me.
Heidi leaned against one of the pillars. Not something I’d have dared, but she was so feather-light, she could probably support herself quite happily against a tower of Jenga blocks without knocking it over. Arms folded across the faded punk band logo, she nodded at me. A slightly icy look had crept into her face again.
“Moment over?”
“Yeah,” I said. “Ready to move.”
“Good.” She pushed herself up with her backside, same as she had on the rails outside Lady Angelica’s, and strode forward. Her gaze drifted over Carson momentarily, a veiled expression of distaste briefly crossing her face before it vanished.
Fugue broken, I took in the platform properly.
It was five meters by five, or thereabouts. Amidst the pillars, right in the center, stood a pedestal. It rose to just below my ribs, and on it, floating perfectly a couple of inches above the pedestal’s smooth surface, suspended by (I assumed) the same sort of magic keeping the storm’s atmospheric effects from bleeding down here, was Feruiduin’s Cutlass. The blade, slightly curved, was inscribed with calligraphic elven script. Onyx in color, it tapered to a devastatingly sharp point. The guard and hilt were bronze, almost gold. We were reflected in its perfectly polished surface, misshapen and out of proportion.
I stepped for it, breath catching.
“Thought seeing it would put some life back in you,” Heidi said. She strolled around the pedestal’s edge, eyebrow raised, one finger tapping her chin.
“Can you just take it?” Carson asked.
“No,” said Heidi.
“But it’s just sitting there.”
“Over here,” said Heidi, waving me over.
“Here’s the thing,” I said, joining her side. Carson followed, coming around in the other direction. “For a race venerated for their wisdom and intelligence, elves have a certain blind spot.”
Heidi smirked.
Carson asked, “What’s the blind spot?”
“They think everyone is either as smart as they are, or a total idiot. No middle ground. Hence this.” I pointed.
Opposite from where we’d come in, a stone slab was affixed to the pedestal’s surface. Wedge-shaped, it flowed with more elven writing.
“What is it?” Carson asked.
“A riddle,” said Heidi.
“Here’s the other thing,” I told him. “Remember I mentioned orcs before? As you might expect, orcs and elves are sworn enemies.”
“Why?”
I shrugged. “Elves had things orcs wanted, I guess.” I waved the question away. “Point is, with the orcs constantly besieging their strongholds and temples—pretty much any place where something valuable might be held—the elves designed all their security features with orcs in mind.”
“So …?” Carson asked, looking a little lost.
“So they left a little riddle here, knowing—sorry, thinking—no orc would be able to answer it. Because of course orcs are utterly stupid creatures with barely a brain cell between them.”
“They’re not?”
“Some are, same as some people,” I said. Heidi snorted where she bent over the slab. “But there are also a bunch of very smart orcs too.”
“So what does the riddle say?”
Carson and I both glanced back at Heidi. She was reading, fingers tracing the script for subtle elements the human eye was not as adept at detecting but which an elf would pick out with ease. Her eyebrows were drawn as low as they would go, and the short-lived snort was long gone, her face set in a determined sort of bafflement.
“It’s something condescending, whatever it is,” she answered. “But the way it’s written is really obscure.” She turned up her nose. “I can’t recall if Muirhannon was a third age philosopher for them or a second age dramatist.”
Carson glanced to me. “Could an orc answer that?”
“Probably not. But elves, all high and mighty, wouldn’t have believed they even had a chance.
“More to the point,” I continued, stepping closer to the pedestal, “they would also have believed orcs to be too stupid to simply ignore their riddle, and do this.”
I reached forward. The same energy that had surrounded the door leading to the atrium, as well as Decidian’s Spear atop the spine, crackled around my fingers. But just as I thought, there was no force field, no security measure worth a damn—and my fingers closed on the hilt.
I pulled it free of the slightly elastic-feeling place in the air where the pedestal hung, and lifted it.
Lightning split the air with perfect timing. Despite the blinding white glow, it was barely reflected from the onyx blade, metal seeming to devour the light.
Carson jumped at the boom. Behind me, Heidi seemed to do the same.
“No way,” she said when the noise had quieted. She stepped to my side, eyes awed. “Feruiduin’s Cutlass. It’s … it’s here.” She reached out to touch it. I let her, holding it steady so she could trace fingers across the script pressed into the blade. “You have it.”
“Told you.” I took the cutlass in, in all its glory. “My research paid off.”
Carson cleared his throat. “But doesn’t this seem too easy to you?”
“Hm?”
“I mean, we end up in a corridor that’s in a perfect straight line from this atrium. We get in here—and the bridge, that wasn’t pleasant, and the storm … but then there’s this riddle, and yet you can just walk up and take the thing?” He glanced between me and Heidi with wild, concerned eyes. “Isn’t that too straightforward?”
“Like I said: blind spots. Now let’s—”
I’d stepped away from the pedestal—and my skin seemed to ripple as though passing an invisible barrier. The static feeling in the air dissipated at once.
The moment it did, the bridges shattered. Every one, on all four sides, broke into pieces, like some oversized hammer had crashed down on them. Carson shrieked in panic—
The shattered bridges tumbled into the abyss, leaving no more than a couple of feet of what had once been our way across attached to the platform, jagged like shark’s teeth.
Carson spun back to me. “What were you saying about blind spots?”
“Huh. I guess I, err … I was wrong.”
23
“Wrong? Wrong?” Carson’s voice was high-pitched and panicked. His knuckles were white around the strap for his manbag like it was an anchor, the only thing holding him from following the broken remains of the bridges into the swirling abyss below. “We’re stuck here! With no way across! How are we supposed to get back?”
“Cool it, Poindexter,” Heidi said.
His eyes flashed with confusion. “Poin—oh, sure, this is the time for insults! In case you failed to notice, Lucy Liu, we just lost our only way back across!”
“And what a shame you must find that, considering how quivery you were climbing across it in the first place.”
Carson opened his mouth to spit back some fire of his own. I cut him off by stepping in between them, free hand raised.
“We all hated the bridge,” I said. “Let’s not turn on each other now, okay? We’ve come this far.”
“So how do you propose we get out of here?” Carson asked.
“I’ve got this, don’t I?” I patted my talisman. “We cut open a gateway. Simple.”
I passed the cutlass to Heidi to free up both of my hands.
Before I relinquished my hold
, however, I said, “It’s mine. I found it; it comes back to me when we’re done. Got it?”
“Comprender.”
I let her take it.
“And be careful,” I added. She didn’t strike me as the sort to take her simmering annoyance with Carson much further than insults, but he already had one nice big hole opened in his sweater; I didn’t want him to leave here with another one.
I detached the compass from my belt. “I don’t remember seeing anything in my research about exit points around the pedestal. But we’re on a flat surface, which is perfect for a gateway, and so … oh.”
Carson waited a second, then prompted, “Oh?”
“It’s a, uh … we’re at a border.”
He and Heidi crowded in at either side, peering at the compass face.
Split in two, one side was thick with pelting hail, a dark expanse of lifeless trees just barely visible beyond the sheeting ice. And on the other …
“Well, I mean, it’s definitely London,” said Heidi. She touched it: a slice of the London Eye. An idle finger traced the curve between cabins before the border terminated its arc. “Only question is, how do we get to it?”
“Can’t we just open a gateway and hope for the best?” Carson asked.
I debated. Possible, but unlikely. “I don’t fancy our chances. We could end up on either side, or worse—and more likely—in the ether between.”
“But we won’t be here.”
“No, but do you really want to tackle that?” I flashed the compass so he could see the deluge of hailstones.
“But we won’t be here.”
“It’s just a little ice,” Heidi muttered.
“And no canopy.”
“Those woods do look pretty dead,” Carson conceded after an awkward second look.
“We don’t know how long we’ll be out there before finding a safe place to open a new gateway. And even if we stumble on one immediately, it might take days of bouncing around to get back to London, weeks even.”
Heidi huffed, folding her arms. “Well, we’d better pin down where the connection point is, then, hadn’t we?”
I strolled around her, holding my compass out, and walked the platform. Although confined to a fairly small circle, at no point did the boundary in the compass face budge. I even held it right out to the edge, and still nothing.
The World Beneath (The Mira Brand Adventures Book 1) Page 15
