by Terah Edun
“But it didn't feel like that long,” Terris said.
The Muareg said in a low tone, “The catacombs are more than just physical entities. They are magical connective links in the land itself. What felt like minutes were hours.”
“It's whispered that sometimes even what felt like hours were days to the miners who came to these tunnels to work before the western lands were abandoned,” Rachael added.
Ciardis turned a questioning face to her. “How do you know that?”
Rachael gave her a mild smile. “My people do much more than guide helpless caravans through these lands. We also used to harvest the crystals for the rich mages in the east.”
Ciardis ignored the wicked barb in Rachael's voice, but she couldn't help responding with a dry smile of her own as she said, “Lucky for northerners, we rely on our own magic and land to use for our gifts. We've never harvested anyone else's.”
Sebastian let out a pointed snort and turned his glare on the still land-bound daemoni prince.
“Well, I mean…deliberately,” Ciardis stammered.
“If you all don't mind, I'd like to put this magical artifact discussion aside and continue on into the city for which we traversed dozens of miles and were nearly killed at least twice,” said Thanar.
“Right, he's got a point,” Terris said. “I got us here. It's someone else's job to get us inside.”
At that point, more than a few people started laughing.
“What?” snapped Terris with a pout, her hands on her hips.
“Nothing,” said Christian with a click of his tongue and a crinkle in his human eyes. “Nothing at all.”
Terris glared at them all, but nobody said anything else so she let the matter drop.
“Terris is right, though,” Sebastian said. “Combined with the time it took us to traverse the tunnels and come up with a plan, we've lost about two days of mobility and negotiations.”
“And gained at least three days,” the dragon ambassador added from where she sat cross-legged in the sand. “Thanks to yours truly.”
Sebastian glared at her. “Your little stunt nearly got us killed.”
“Yes,” the dragon ambassador said with a flash of sharp teeth, “but it certainly got us here ahead of schedule.”
Ciardis turned her face away from the group and back to the skies and the fortress that rose to meet the heavens.
“We shouldn't waste the time we've made up,” Ciardis said. “No matter how we made it. Thanar, take to the skies. Terris, Raisa, and I will scout the walls from the base. Sebastian and Rachael will see if there are any magical weak points in the perimeter. Christian and the soldiers will form a lookout.”
She took her eyes off the skies to see everyone staring at her. Some in shock. Others with…respect.
Ciardis snapped before she could think, “What?”
Everyone shook their heads.
Terris chuckled and said, “Well, you heard the Lady Weathervane. Let's get to work!”
They all went off to their assignments without dallying further. Ciardis and her two companions began walking closer to the wall itself.
“Terris, you take the portion of the wall directly ahead and one hundred feet in both directions,” Ciardis said. “I'll take the wall to the left of that and Raisa will take it to the right.”
To Ciardis's surprise, it was the dragon ambassador who asked her, “How far do you want us to go?”
It was said respectfully and without an ounce of sarcasm. Ciardis had to hand it to her—she didn't think she'd ever seen the dragon ambassador take her marching orders so well.
Or at all, Ciardis thought.
“About a quarter of a mile out will do,” Ciardis said.
Terris and Raisa nodded, and off they went.
Ciardis started pacing off herself as she walked toward the sun. She brought up her hand to shade her face and looked along the base of the perimeter wall for any clue to an entrance, any markings that gave instructions to passersby, any clues at all.
She had to laugh to herself as she said, “Come on, Lady Weathervane. This is a city for the plagued. They don't want anyone coming out and they certainly didn't want visitors coming in. I doubt there are instructions carved into its walls.”
Even so, she made a careful search of the perimeter.
But, as expected, she came up with nothing. No writing on the wall. No drawings with mage symbols laid into stones. No barely concealed doors that would open with the touch of a panel.
Nothing but perfect white stone and an eerily silent desert.
She finished pacing off the allotted distance and turned to walk back to Terris. At least this time the sun was to her back. Which made the walk slightly more comfortable, if not precisely cool.
Though they were in a desert. Cool was relative, and right now she was able to stand in the partial shade of a quite massive wall.
Ciardis smiled. You had to take your conveniences where you could.
By this time she'd walked all the way back to Terris, she was whistling.
Terris took one look at her and said, “Don't tell me you found it. The entrance?”
“What? No,” Ciardis said, puzzled.
“Then tell me, Lady Weathervane,” Terris said patiently with a glint in her eye, “why are you grinning like a fool?”
“Oh, well,” Ciardis said, “if I tell you, don't make fun.”
Terris crossed her arms and made a come-on gesture with her left hand.
Ciardis looked around for the dragon ambassador, who was walking back toward them but far off enough to still give them an air of privacy.
“Well,” the Weathervane said, “I was thinking this is pleasant. This cool air.”
“Have you gone off your rocker?” Terris said with her mouth agape.
“No,” Ciardis hurried to say, “I just meant that compared to everything on this journey, this is relatively nice. No one's trying to kill us. None of us are fighting.”
An unreadable expression crossed Terris's face. She flung out an arm at the black and red ooze that was slowly dissipating into the desert in the distance.
“That's because we killed them all!” shouted the Kithwalker.
Ciardis felt her face blanch in shock, her good mood immediately evaporating as sorrow overtook her.
Terris said, “I'm sorry. I didn't mean that. I just…I just need a minute.”
And her friend turned away and paced along the wall, in the process walking past the dragon ambassador, who stopped in front of Ciardis.
“Trouble in paradise?” Raisa said softly.
Ciardis snapped at her, “Shut up. Shut up. Shut up.”
She didn't bother saying any more as she turned and went back in the opposite direction.
The wall needs a more thorough look-through anyway, she thought.
But this time, she knew she wouldn't enjoy it nearly as much as she had the first time.
And she didn't. By the time the others had returned to a convening circle, Ciardis was twitchy and irritable.
Terris wouldn't even meet her eyes.
And Sebastian was looking back and forth between the two of them like a spectator watching a sporting match, his eyes filled with curiosity.
“Well?” Ciardis asked Thanar. “What did you find?”
“Not nearly as much as you did, judging by your visage,” Thanar said as he watched her face with a too-perceptive gaze.
Ciardis glared at him and said, “I'm not in the mood, Thanar. Just tell us what you know.”
“If I might interject,” the shaman said. “The prince heir and I did find something that will interest you all.”
Ciardis turned the politest face she could on the shaman and waited patiently for her to explain her words.
Rachael looked to Sebastian, and he shrugged.
“We used mage sight to view the magical ley lines running through the stone and underneath it,” the prince heir said. “The lines run like the network of a spider web to one central
source. It's just east of where Terris paced off.”
“And you think this might be the entrance?” Ciardis asked.
The shaman shrugged. “Unless the winged man saw something else or your walk discovered a crack in the stone big enough and deep enough for all of us to shimmy through, it seems our best option.”
Ciardis couldn't argue with that. She looked to Thanar with a question on her face.
“My task was merely to view the physical structure of the way and the city within,” he said with an irreverent shrug of his wings.
Ciardis opened her mouth to ask why he hadn't bothered to check the magical layout, but Sebastian beat her to it.
“You didn't think it pertinent to look through your mage sight as well?” he said with a tight look.
“I didn't think it wise,” Thanar corrected. “What I could see with my natural eyesight might be something that was overlooked when mages constructed this monstrosity and magically sealed it from outside penetration. Mages can be fooled to think that what they see is fact, when in fact it’s what other mages want them to see. In this case, I chose naked eyesight as the better parameter. Besides, I had no idea what defense spells are built into this fortress. I wouldn't want to go blind opening mage sight to look at it.”
“How thoughtful of you,” said Christian dryly. “So did you find anything?”
“Not a thing,” Thanar said.
“Well, that's just great,” Terris said with a bite in her voice.
The daemoni prince gave her a look that said he would bind her over a spit and roast her if she wasn't careful.
Terris gulped and avoided his eyes. She knew exactly what that look meant.
“However,” the daemoni prince said in a casual tone, “the interior view of the city was…enlightening.”
“Well, don't keep us in suspense, man,” spluttered a soldier.
“Yes, do come out with it,” Raisa drawled.
“It's not as dead as one would have us believe,” Thanar said with a smile.
The Muareg stepped forward. “What do you mean?”
“I mean, I saw people,” Thanar said. “People gathering at the easternmost point from here. About the same area where Sebastian said he saw his ley lines.”
“And what were they doing?” Sebastian said warily.
Thanar shrugged. “Gathering. Talking.”
“That's impossible,” the Muareg said. “Nothing inhabits the city of Kifar but the dead. And the dead don't talk.”
Thanar smiled. “Well, these do, little desert creature. And they have a lot to say.”
13
Raisa gave a cheerful smile and said, “Well, I think we should check it out.”
Across from her, the Muareg, with his hands still bound in front of him, was practically quivering with rage.
Whether at the insult to his perceived intelligence or the very idea that someone was alive in the city that his people had guarded so zealously for years, Ciardis didn't know.
As far as the dragon ambassador was concerned, it didn't take a mind reader to figure that Raisa took smug satisfaction in anything that agitated the Muareg.
The history that the Muareg had touted of abuse of his people by dragon kind had obviously slighted Raisa more than she let on, judging by the nefarious glint in her eyes.
And, well…everyone knew that the only things that held grudges longer than goats were dragons themselves.
Ciardis started walking off to the eastern perimeter of the walled fortress while thinking that the Muareg had better watch his back.
The group was protecting him now, but they couldn't keep an eye on him and Raisa forever. And anything could happen in the few seconds that a back was turned.
They tramped through the sands, which were almost as bad as snow when it came to gathering a good foothold.
Her feet didn't exactly sink into the ground, but it was a much tougher walk than on the emperor's road for sure.
Ciardis ignored her discomfort as she thought, Maybe I'm just out of shape.
She heard a guffaw from a certain prince heir who was walking just behind her and to her left.
Out of reach of a quick hand swipe, but he certainly saw her glare.
“You said it, not me,” he quickly said, and sped on up past her.
Ciardis rolled her eyes skyward and wondered what she'd done to be saddled with two male idiots instead of none.
She could have been one of those pretty ladies at court who did nothing but eat truffles all day and gossip.
They didn't traipse across the empire on various missions or act as errand girl for a vindictive ruler.
Grumbling to herself, Ciardis kept thinking of inane things. Anything to keep her mind off the words between Terris and herself just a few minutes before.
Before long they had reached the section that Sebastian indicated was the one.
Thanar landed beside her with a soft thump and said, “There's throngs of them in there. All waiting.”
“What are they saying?” Christian asked as he walked forward to trail a questing hand on the stone wall that looked no different from the rest of the perimeter.
Ciardis watched him move back and forth along the wall, almost expecting it to disappear beneath his hands. Even if there was a convergence of ley lines at this particular point, that didn't mean that this was the entrance they sought. It could have just been a focus on the strengthening spells.
Or spells that maintained the wall's immaculate appearance. Because that alone was certainly an object of bountiful magic. She didn't care what kind of stone it was. Limestone, marble, sandstone. All of it was subject to the laws of nature, and the strong desert winds would have carved into them the same way they had whittled down the temple walls of the shelter they had taken cover in just the night before.
But this wall showed no scars. No pockmarks. The glimmering white nature of the stone shone with the same brilliance as the day it had been polished and carved.
“Or in this case, magicked in place,” Ciardis said with a frown.
She walked forward and put her own hand beside the koreschie's. Not expecting to find anything but stone warm to the touch.
And she was not disappointed.
Ciardis looked over her shoulder. “If it wasn't for the mass of people Thanar says is on the other side, I wouldn't believe anything was here either.”
The Muareg sniffed but said nothing.
For a creature with a wrinkled face and scarred mouth, it looked oddly perturbed.
“So what do we do?” asked Terris.
“We do nothing,” Thanar said in a clipped tone. “It's time for the prince heir to earn his keep.”
Sebastian turned to the daemoni prince. “I could say the same thing about you.”
Ciardis rolled her eyes and interrupted. “Can we please focus?”
Sebastian gave Thanar a chilly look, walked to the wall, and put his bare hand on the surface with no more fanfare than he would if he was leaning against the wall for balance.
“Well, I meant—” Ciardis said with hesitance.
“What?” Sebastian said as he looked over at her in confusion. He didn't take his hand off the stone.
“I mean…don't you have to do some sort of ceremony or something? Announce to the wall that you're here as a representative of the imperial family?” the Weathervane finished.
Sebastian looked at her thoughtfully. “It's not alive, Ciardis, not in the way the land was. But that's not a bad idea.”
“It isn't?” said the shaman in a shocked tone.
“No, it's not,” Raisa interjected with an artful twist of her hand. “This is essentially a very large, very powerful, very massive residual object. It was built to keep mages and non-magical folk alike contained within its walls. But like most such objects, it will respond to its bearer, or in this case its keeper.”
“That would be the prince heir?” Terris questioned with a frown.
“That would be the entire imperial family,”
said the dragon ambassador with a bored look.
Christian murmured something under his breath.
“Something to say, koreschie?” the dragon asked with slightly hissing sibilants.
Ciardis winced. She hated when the dragon ambassador brought out the reptilian hiss. More often than not, it was because she was upset.
And an upset dragon was an angry dragon. An angry dragon was a dangerous dragon.
Fortunately, Christian said in a calm and even tone, “I was saying that that might explain exactly how the princess heir managed to secret her wyvern in this city behind these very formidable walls. A fortress that has been sealed for decades, after all, is a tough nut to crack unless you have an automatic way in.”
“Hmm, true,” conceded the dragon. “Though one has to wonder what her end game was, and why use one of my lesser dragon brethren at all? There are better and more controllable ways of destroying a city.”
“You should know,” the Muareg muttered. “Your people perfected them.”
The dragon deliberately chose not to hear or respond to the Muareg's words. Which was just as well—Ciardis didn't feel like seeing more blood spilled this early in the morning.
“So,” said Sebastian, “as keeper, I just need to tell it I'm here…and to open up.”
“To put it simply, from what I’ve read, yes,” Christian said as he eyed Sebastian speculatively.
“Well, then,” Sebastian said while shrugging as he turned back to the wall, “let's give it a whirl.”
He closed his eyes.
“Prince heir, if I may!” the koreschie hurriedly interjected.
Sebastian turned to him with a raised eyebrow.
“Perhaps you could speak the announcement aloud and let us see your magic rise?” Christian asked in an eager tone.
“Why?” said Sebastian.
“Well,” said Christian as he shuffled side to side, “in case something goes wrong, it'll be easier for us to point it out.”
Sebastian's eyebrows lowered in confusion. “But there's nothing you can do to intervene, so why?”
