by Linsey Hall
I withdrew my hand and stepped back.
“I can try transporting in.” Del looked at me. “Can I borrow your lightstone ring?”
I pulled it off and handed it to her.
She shoved it on. “Can someone give me a boost so I can peek through the light shaft up there? I don’t want to transport straight into rock.”
Aidan crouched by the stone and cupped his hands. Del put her foot in his hands, and he lifted her up. She peered into the light shaft, sticking her arm through so that my ring could light up the interior.
“Looks like a narrow passage,” she said. “You can let me down.”
Aidan lowered her.
“See you in a sec.” She closed her eyes, and I smelled the clean laundry smell of her magic.
But nothing happened.
She turned to face us. “Doesn’t work.”
“Damn.”
Her magic swelled again, and her skin faded and turned a glimmering blue. “I’ll go see if there’s a switch to open it, like in the pyramid.”
She glided toward the stone door.
Then bounced off.
“Well, that’s weird,” she said. “Never had that happen before.”
“Okay, right,” Nix said. “We have a problem.”
“Not yet, we don’t.” I liked these kinds of riddles. My job was all about getting into places like this.
Del tugged off my lightstone ring and handed it back to me. I put it on and raised it, then stepped up to the stone again and tried to clear my mind, looking for a pattern or a clue.
There had to be a way in, and if the obvious hadn’t worked, then it was going to be subtle. I glanced over the carved swirls, looking for a pattern. This place had been built in the time before metal tools. Someone had sat here for hundreds of hours, pecking away with rock against rock. Had they done it for art? Or for a more practical purpose? Or both?
Eventually, my eyes picked out a loose pattern. More like a cluster, as if the swirls were pointing toward the right side of the door. Or flowing away from that side of the door. There was a blank space there that had no carved decoration.
I stepped up close to the blank space, shining my light at an angle across the rock and pressing my face into the stone to look sideways.
My light caught on a little edge of rock, casting a shadow and revealing the clue I’d been seeking.
“A handprint,” I murmured. It was such a shallow indention that I hadn’t seen it when shining the light directly on it. I’d needed the shadow to see.
“Really?” Del shoved her face close to mine and looked. “Yep. Totally a handprint.”
We stepped back.
“Here goes nothing.” I pressed my hand to the space where I’d seen the handprint, settling my fingers against the shallow groves.
But nothing was exactly what happened. I waited a second more, but still nothing.
“Okay.” I stepped back and looked at the door.
“We’re close,” Del said. “That’s definitely a handprint, and it’s definitely the way in.”
“We need something more,” Aidan said. “We’ve only got part of the puzzle.”
Tomb raiding was kinda fun with a team. Usually I did this stuff on my own—with Nix on the comms charm for backup—but many hands made light work, as someone smarter than me once said. In this case, it was many minds, but I’d take it.
“These places were usually ceremonial,” I said, thinking out loud. “People came here to honor the dead, maybe even to bury them. And to honor their gods.”
“Gods like sacrifice,” Del said.
Her words triggered something in my mind. “That they do.”
I pulled Lefty from its sheath and made a narrow slice across my right palm, wincing as the blade bit into my skin. Sharp pain flared as blood welled.
“Smart,” Del said.
“You should have told me to do it,” Aidan said.
I ignored him, though I appreciated his willingness, and pressed my palm to the handprint, letting my blood soak into the stone.
Magic flared, and the prickling sensation of the protective charm dissipated. The huge stone door shimmered, turning transparent.
“Cool,” Connor whispered.
I withdrew my hand. “Yeah, very.”
I stepped forward and held out my lightstone ring, peering inside. A long, straight passage led deep into the cairn. It was incredibly narrow, and the walls and low ceiling were built from dry-stacked stone. No mortar, just cleverly placed rocks that properly distributed the weight of thousands of pounds of stone overhead.
I shivered to think of it collapsing on me, but if it had lasted this long, it’d probably keep standing.
“Connor and I will guard the entrance,” Claire said. “You go do your thing.”
“Thanks.” I stepped into the passage, vaguely aware of the fact that Del and Nix followed behind me, and Aidan behind them.
The haunting beauty of this simple place wowed me, even more than the pyramid had. Maybe because my fate had been prophesied here, thousands of years ago.
Was my magic really that ancient? Was I really tapped into something that old? I’d always felt an affinity—love, even—for the ancient sites I’d visited, but this place was something special.
The passage narrowed in places, and I turned sideways to slip though, keeping my daggers at my thighs from scraping against the stone walls. Twice, I had to duck when the ceiling lowered. Aidan was probably having a rough time of it, considering how much bigger he was.
After about thirty yards, the passage ended in a small room. It was only about twelve feet by twelve feet, with three smaller rooms extending off of that. One directly ahead and one on either side. They were accessible only by a hole to crawl through rather than a real doorway and were about half the size of the room we stood in now.
“A cruciform passage tomb,” Del said. “The room’s laid out so it’s shaped like a cross. These were common.”
I looked up. The low ceiling of the passage had given way to a high domed ceiling made of stone. Once again, there was no mortar. Just carefully placed stone that overlapped at regular intervals, creating a beautiful ceiling.
There was nothing on the ground in the main room, but when I peeked into the smaller rooms, there were massive stone basins sitting in the middle of each one.
“The ones on the sides hold bones,” Del said.
I peered into the room directly opposite the passageway. “This one has offerings.”
Bowls, a few golden trinkets, and bone carvings were laid neatly in the stone basins. I retreated and looked into the other rooms at the bones of long-dead people. They weren’t laid out like bodies, but rather small clusters, as if the person had been laid here a while after death once all their bones could be gathered into a neat pile.
The walls in each of the small rooms were covered in carvings.
“I don’t understand the carvings,” I said. “They’re just swirls and flowers.”
“Nature symbols,” Del said. “Makes sense, for a culture so in tune with the land.”
But none of them were recognizable. They had been, once. But not to me. I didn’t know what I’d expected—a picture book story of my life? One that told the future and how to fix it?
That would have been nice.
Unlikely, but nice.
“See what kind of magic you can feel,” I said.
We each chose a room, pressing our hands against the stone and trying to sense any ancient magical signatures that might have been left behind. When I got to the room opposite the passage, I felt a strong thrum of magic.
“There’s something weird here,” I said. “The magic feels like it’s contained, but it’s pushing against the boundary. It wants to be set free.”
“None of us have that gift,” Aidan said.
He was right. The ability to manipulate old or latent magic was a rare one. I stepped back and looked around, trying to get a feel for how this would work if I were a person fr
om this temple’s heyday, paying a visit.
There was no guarantee that person would possess the ability to release the magic stored in the stone, or that they would even know someone with that ability. It was likely they wouldn’t. I lived in a massive, modern city, and I’d never met someone like that.
“I don’t think that’s our answer.” My gaze traveled around the room, landing on the exit passageway. I couldn’t see the outside because it was blocked, but the passage glowed slightly with the golden light of dawn. The sun had risen while we’d been in here.
“Ooooh,” I murmured as my gaze darted back to the room that contained the latent magic. It was exactly opposite the entry and light shaft. “The solstice.”
Del’s gaze darted between the entry and the room with the magic. “Holy shit. You’re right.”
“Right about what?” Nix said. “I’m going to need some help here.”
Del was the history buff. Nix had other skills. This wasn’t one of them.
I pointed to the exit. “At the solstice—summer or winter, I’m not sure which—the sun shines through the light shaft, travels up the passage, and hits the wall. It probably ignites the magic.”
Nix’s brows rose. “Cool.” She looked down the passage. “But I can’t see the exit from here. Shouldn’t I be able to see it if the light will travel uninterrupted?”
Aidan grinned. “The floor slopes up. I thought that was strange. But it’s so the light, which enters above the door, can shine right on the wall, which is at the same level.”
“Bingo.” I knew I liked him.
“But it’s not a solstice,” Del said. “We’re months away from either one.”
“We won’t have to.” Excitement laced Nix’s voice. “We’ll make our own solstice.”
“How?” Del asked.
“Okay, hear me out. Aidan will go outside and use his elemental mage powers to make a fireball the size of a house. Claire’s a Fire Mage, so she can help. I’ll conjure mirrors. We’ll send light down the shaft, and the magic will ignite. Easy peasy.”
Whoa, that was good. And yep, Nix had her own talents. Clever problem-solving was one of them. And, holy magic, was I glad I had such a sharp team at my back.
“I like it,” Aidan said.
Del nodded. “Definitely worth a try.”
“Good one, Nix,” I said. “I’ll wait here. You guys go do your thing.”
They retreated, and Del went with them to help hold the mirrors. When I lost sight of them down the passage, the chamber became eerily silent. I looked around, a chill going over my skin.
It wasn’t a bad chill, or a fearful one. Just one of enormity. I stood here with what were very possibly the bones of my ancestors. Five thousand years before I’d been born, someone had prophesied my birth and my gift.
It was huge. It was weird. It was my life.
“Stand against the wall!” Nix’s voice drifted down the passage.
I climbed into the small chamber on the left and pressed my back against a side wall so that I wouldn’t block the shaft of light.
A few moments later, a sharp beam of warm yellow light stretched across the floor, reaching from the passageway toward the back room.
It was a magical experience, watching something that had been the peak holy experience for a group of people long dead.
The golden light stretched farther, reaching for the back wall, and I could imagine Aidan and Claire casting enormous fireballs, with Nix, Del, and Connor holding up three massive mirrors to strengthen the light and send it this way.
I held my breath as the beam of light reached for the wall. When it finally hit the bottom, it illuminated a carving of concentric circles.
Magic swelled, ancient and powerful. It made the hair on my arms stand up and my breath catch in my chest. The wall glowed as more magic swirled in the air and coalesced into the form of a person.
The figure was featureless and slender, though it seemed to be female.
The seer.
“Hi,” I said, then felt quite stupid. But what else was I going to say? Good morning, Madame Seer?
Her form became clearer, glowing golden and bright. Her face looked young, no older than me, but she gave the impression of age and wisdom.
“Cassiopeia McFane. Cassiopeia Clereaux.” Her voice sounded like the wind and ocean and birds, unlike any human’s voice I’d ever heard. And her magic smelled like springtime, flowers and grass and a cool breeze.
“Both work.”
“I have been waiting for you.” Though she didn’t speak English, I understood her.
I grinned. “You didn’t exactly make it easy for me to get in and chat.”
She smiled. “But you got in all the same.”
“Hard to keep me out of a temple I want to get into.”
“I imagine so.” She turned and looked around the temple. “But this temple is special. You are here amongst your ancestors.”
“It’s pretty cool.” Cool? Who said cool to an ancient seer spirit who was probably also their great grandma one thousand times back? Hang on. Was she related to me? “Are you my great grandmother, times a million?”
“I am not. But I am of your family, somewhere down the line.”
“Which is why I had to come here for answers?”
“Our magic is old and great. You must come to the source for the answers you seek.”
“About my powers. What was my root power? Where did it go when I pushed it toward Del? How do I get it back? How do I get rid of the Nullifier’s power?”
“That is a lot of questions.” She smiled. “But they are all connected. I have some answers. The rest are at the Black Fort. You will be able to unlock what you seek there with the help of your deirfiúr.”
“But how?”
“That is for you to find out. I do not know how to unlock the secrets of the Black Fort. It was built after my time.” She knelt and picked up a thin ring made of twisted golden wire, then handed it to me. “Take this. It is enchanted to help you focus your magic.”
Focusing and using the Nullifier’s new power had been one of my problems. I took the ring and put it on, surprised to feel that it fit perfectly on my middle finger. But my magic didn’t feel any different.
“It was left here thousands of years ago,” she said. “Intended for you.”
“Wow.” I shivered at the idea of one of my ancestors enchanting the ring and leaving it for me.
“But I can get my power back, right?” I needed an answer to that question more than any other.
“Yes.”
My shoulders loosened. As long as that was true, I could face what came at me.
“The Triumvirate will help you with your coming task,” she said. “It is the source of your magic and your strength. Rely on them when times are hard.”
“What does that mean? What are we supposed to do?”
“A great battle is coming. You three will have a role to play if the light is to succeed.”
“Victor Orriodor.”
“He is part of it.”
“There’s more?” Of course there was. And of course she spoke in the usual seer language. All twisty and random. Like how Victor Orriodor’s seer had spoken. “A couple weeks ago, another seer spoke about me. He called me ‘the Gifted.’ Does that have anything to do with my root power?”
She nodded. “It could. Your root power is one of a kind. It is linked to your role in the Triumvirate.”
“But I represent power in the Triumvirate, which doesn’t make a lot of sense.”
“Doesn’t it? Along with life and death, magic is the other leg of the tripod that supports the world we all know.”
Power-fueled magic. “So I have more power than others?”
“Power everlasting. Power eternal.”
Everlasting? Like the Energizer Bunny, just going and going and going?
“Am I a magical battery?” I asked.
“I do not know what that is.”
Of course not. The most
advanced technology she’d known was fire.
“My root power is the ability to never run out of magical energy,” I guessed. No wonder Victor Orriodor had tried to steal it all those years ago. That was a valuable power. “I could fuel a million spells without growing weak.”
“Yes, precisely. Though it would take practice to control that much magic. You would still become physically exhausted by the strain. But with practice—years of it—you could become the most powerful magical force in history.”
Whoa.
Whoa, whoa, whoa.
“So where did it go? How do I get it back?”
“It went into Del.”
“But she can’t feel it inside herself.” Had she lost it somehow?
“She cannot access it, though she does have it within her. If you were not linked by the Triumvirate, she may have lost it forever. She was able to save it for you.”
“And I can get it back from her?” Hope—real, solid, tangible hope—filled my chest. This was something I could work with.
“Yes. If everything goes well, you can get it back. But you must unlock it within her.”
“How?”
“At the Black Fort. That is a sacred place for the Triumvirate. The magic there will help you.”
“Okay.” My mind raced with the questions I had for her. So many. “But how do I use my magic if I still have the Nullifier’s power dampening my own? And what about the great battle you spoke of? How will Del, Nix, and I win?”
“You start by getting your power back. Then you each have a role to play.” The golden glow that formed her body flickered. She looked at her hand. “I am running out of time.”
“No! You haven’t answered my questions.”
“I have answered the most important. The one that I have been waiting to answer. And I have given you the ring that has been waiting for you. You have the tools to get your power back. The rest is up to you.”
The rest seemed like a lot. “Please stay. What can I do to make you stay? Do you need more light?”
I prayed Aidan and Claire had enough juice left to keep their flame going.
“There is nothing you can do. I must go.” She faded, her body becoming a transparent cream color rather than a glimmering gold.
