Of the Abyss

by Amelia Atwater-Rhodes

  From a distance, Xaz saw the dense-­bodied lord of this court acknowledge Alizarin with a bow, never removing one front, clawed foot from the back of another of its kind it held pinned. Then, realizing she had let her attention wander, she snapped her eyes back to Alizarin. Her whole body went cold as she felt other Abyssi circling behind them, pressing close without quite touching.

  Alizarin kept them moving until they once more encountered the gray-­black Abyssi, Antioch.

  Unlike Alizarin, Antioch had not fully recovered from the fight. His fur was shaggy, matted in places with blood that glowed indigo in the dim palace light. He had been lying against the back wall, but now he pushed himself up to growl.

  Alizarin stepped forward to meet the challenge, his growl making the air rumble. Xaz had to look away as living darkness flowed around him, though doing so made her more aware of the other Abyssi, many of whom were inching closer as if drawn to the conflict. How many of them could Alizarin fight at once?

  Abruptly it was over. The sudden, dead silence made Xaz return her attention to the near-­fight in time to see Antioch drop back to the floor, roll onto his back and lift his chin to bare his throat. The expression in his half-­closed eyes was resigned. Did he expect Alizarin to kill him?

  Would Alizarin kill him? The blue Abyssi paused, his own hackles still raised, though he had returned to his solid form.

  He said something to Antioch in the hissing, incomprehensible language he had spoken before, then guided their group past the other Abyssi and to the doorway at the back of the hall. There Alizarin pushed both hands against heavy double doors of shocking crimson. When Xaz glanced back, unable to stop herself, she saw that the defeated Abyssi had rolled onto his stomach to watch them go, his eyes wide with surprise.

  She watched just long enough to see one of the other Abyssi pounce on him, and then Alizarin’s hand was gently urging her to turn her head and look away. Behind her, she could hear a chorus of snarls and yips.

  CHAPTER 33

  As they passed through the doorway and Alizarin pulled it shut behind them, Cadmia realized she was shaking. She couldn’t help it. Those creatures . . . They were Abyssi, like Alizarin, but they weren’t like Alizarin. Their eyes were cold and hungry. When they watched her, she knew they stared with nothing but a predator’s fascination.

  Alizarin picked her up and she laid her cheek against his shoulder and waited for her heart to slow. Umber reached back and pulled Hansa to himself. Xaz and Naples looked at each other, and Naples chuckled, the sound sharp with near hysteria.

  “I thought we were in trouble for a minute there,” Hansa said.

  “Me, too,” Cadmia admitted.

  “Apparently the Numini can bring even an Abyssi low,” Xaz observed.

  “We should keep moving, before the others tire of Antioch and consider following us,” Alizarin suggested.

  The room they were in was empty except for themselves. Its walls seemed to go straight up without end, without a ceiling, impossibly high; this had to be one of the towers Cadmia had seen from outside. In the center of the room was the mouth to a spiral staircase. The visible stairs were long but shallow, and made of what looked like black volcanic stone, pitted in places and in others worn so smooth she knew it would be slick and treacherous to descend.

  “Are there any more Abyssal grudges we should know about before we go in there?” Hansa asked Alizarin, as they all regarded the well before them.

  Alizarin shrugged, said, “I will clear the way ahead,” and started down the stairs with a bounding stride.

  “Alizarin is a prince of the third level,” Umber said. “He wouldn’t be unless he had killed or maimed enough of his kind to intimidate every Abyssi from here to there. That leaves three levels of Abyssi who may consider him an enemy.”

  “Don’t forget he also bested Antioch,” Naples remarked, as if commenting on a bit of market gossip instead of all their potential enemies. “Some will consider that a first assault against the fourth level.” With a pointed look at Cadmia, he added, “It wasn’t only concern for his well-­being that made me hope he would stay behind. I can’t even risk drawing power from him, because the other Abyssi will pounce if he betrays weakness. Can we go now?”

  Hansa cleared his throat, a gesture of unease. “Just walk?” he asked.

  “More or less,” Naples said. “The distance and the path varies, but yes, we ‘just’ walk.”

  “Alizarin opened a rift from the mortal plane to this one,” Cadmia said. “If he opens a rift from here to the low court, we wouldn’t need to risk passing the second, third or fourth courts, right?”

  “And the trip would end with our eyes boiling out of our skulls,” Naples replied. “I need the gradual change in order to raise the power I’ll need to. Even just jumping down to the third level suddenly, I don’t think I could protect us quickly enough to keep us alive once we stepped through.”

  “But . . .” Cadmia trailed off, realizing that she wasn’t raising useful objections, but simply stalling. She did not want to walk into that great maw of a staircase.

  “After you, Abyssumancer,” Xaz said, but this time it was obvious that her sharp tone was a cover to nervousness.

  Naples shrugged. “Keep up. And watch your step. The stairs aren’t made for humans. They aren’t even; there are flat areas, and then there are areas where a single stair might drop six or eight feet. I don’t know what happens if you fall off the edge, but my educated guess is that you won’t come back.”

  Naples led the way, taking the stairs carefully but not slowly. Cadmia followed, happy to take all the time in the world.

  At first, the descent was awkward, uncomfortable, and nerve-­wracking. At times the stairs became too small to comfortably support a foot. They all crept along sideways, and Cadmia longed for railings. At other points, the steps were unevenly wide, and of varying depths, so there was no comfortable stride.

  Alizarin ran ahead most of the time, then loped back to check on them before disappearing down the stairwell again. Occasionally when he returned his fur was wet with the viscous, glowing fluid Cadmia recognized as the blood of other Abyssi. What would happen if someone below raised a challenge he could not best?

  Awkward and uncomfortable became painful as the hours progressed. They reached an area where the “stairs” were so narrow and steep they couldn’t truly be called stairs. They had to use the narrow ridges as foot and handholds while they scaled the way like a cliff face.

  “How long is this staircase?” Cadmia gasped, past lungs and throat that ached from heavy breaths of the increasingly hot, dry air. She longed for a drink of water, but couldn’t reach into her bag without falling.

  “We can rest and eat as soon as we’re back on more level ground,” Naples promised. “I—­gah.”

  Scratching. Scrambling. A whispered curse.

  Thump.

  “Naples?” Her voice was shrill.

  “I’m okay,” he said shakily. “When you reach the last handhold, get as far down as you can using your hands, then drop.”

  Just her hands? She was barely holding herself up using hands and legs both.

  “Let go,” Alizarin said. “I’ll catch.”

  Squeezing her eyes shut, she released her grip on the stairs and let herself fall back. She swore when the fall was longer than she expected, but the sound was only half-­complete before she landed safely in the Abyssi’s arms.

  “Thanks,” she said, looking up. They were now on a flat area, but right in front of her was a vertical face of maybe ten feet, before the steep clifflike stairs they had been navigating. “I’m glad I didn’t see that before I jumped,” she mumbled.

  Umber glanced down, scrambled a little further toward the sheer face, and then let go and landed like a cat, neatly and apparently painlessly. Hansa looked down when Umber jumped, but he seemed less enthused about the drop. He
did as Naples had advised, lowering himself until he was supporting himself with his hands and there was a reasonable drop between the ground and his feet.

  He landed with an “umph.”

  Cadmia pulled open her water bag and took a sip, swishing the water around her mouth before swallowing. The others were doing the same.

  “Catch your breath,” Naples advised, “and then we’ll eat something before moving on. We’re almost at the second level, and we don’t want to stop too near any of the—­”

  “We’re only almost at the second level?” Xaz gasped. “How many stairs can there possibly be?”

  “How many stairs can there be, between the five levels of the Abyss?” Naples replied. “How many stairs did you expect to be in a well that passes between planes of existence?”

  After hours of walking, Cadmia didn’t have the energy to engage in the argument. Alizarin rejoined them as they pulled out rations, mostly tightly wrapped cakes of dried meat and fruit, and she sat against his side. His warmth was less soothing than usual because she could feel the way his body thrummed with pent-­up energy and agitation. He put on a confident face, but he was anxious about this trip as well.

  All too soon, Naples was urging them to stand again. Cadmia winced, discovering newly pulled muscles, especially in her shoulders and down her back.

  “We won’t stop at the second-­level court, but I don’t think we’ll get far past it before we need to rest and cast the protection spell. I can make it almost to the third-­level court on my own, but I doubt anyone without an Abyssumancer’s power or Abyssi blood can stand to go that deep.”

  Cadmia remembered Naples describing Alizarin’s home on the third level as full of steaming seas. Why had he ever wanted to come all the way up to dry, snowy Kavet?

  “I’m going ahead again,” Alizarin announced the moment they prepared to move again, before disappearing into the dim well ahead of them. He had no trouble hurrying down the stairs, like a kitten bounding across hills. Was he constantly fighting other Abyssi or mindless monsters to clear their path before they arrived? Sometimes negotiating for safe passage? Or was he just unable to stand their slow, mortal’s pace?

  “I wish I had his energy,” Xaz said.

  “What are you complaining about?” Hansa asked, hefting his pack with a significant glance to the very light-­looking bag Xaz was carrying, its strap angled across her chest. They had all agreed the mancers would have a difficult enough task with their magic and shouldn’t be additionally burdened by supplies, but in that moment, Cadmia shared Hansa’s envy.

  Talk disappeared as they continued to walk, the way becoming darker and less even. When the stairs turned, twisting into the walls of a tunnel, no one bothered to complain. Naples held up a hand, summoning a pale green orb of foxfire, and in its sickly luminescence they continued into the Abyss.

  CHAPTER 34

  Stairs. Stairs. Cliff. Stairs. Tunnel. Stairs in a tunnel. Hansa’s feet made their way across slick, half-­worn stairs, many of which held pools of water that shone silvery-­pink and which stuck to his boots when he stepped in them.

  The only sign of their progress was the change in the air. It was thicker here, hot and oppressive. There had been a heavy scent in the caves, but Hansa had assumed it was just the dankness in there; as they exited the tunnel, the odor became foul, like marsh-­water. It seemed to coat the back of his tongue and taint the taste of the water he drank to console his parched throat.

  How could the air smell so damp yet still feel like sandpaper when he drew it in?

  “And we have company,” Umber whispered, nodding discreetly across the way before asking Naples in low tones, “Do we greet them or wait?”

  “Wait and hope they won’t challenge us before Alizarin comes back,” Naples advised.

  On the other side of the well was a hole in the wall, large but too irregular to be rightly called a doorway. Slithering out of it was a creature with the wet look of something found under a log. Its long body was lizardlike, and the color of rusty mud except for a mane of orange and black tentacles. It opened its mouth to taste the air with a flickering black tongue, in the process revealing rows of sharp teeth, including four longer ones that were curved like a viper’s fangs.

  With that coloring, it’s probably poisonous, Hansa thought, an inane observation, since the beast wasn’t the size of a rattlesnake. Given that each fang was the size of a hip dagger, a single bite from that creature would kill too quickly for poison to be a factor.

  Its eyes were black pools, without visible pupils, streaked with flecks of red and orange like splattered paint. In them, Hansa could see intelligence. Abyssi.

  “Hansa,” Umber hissed.

  Hansa jerked his gaze away, too late it seemed, since the Abyssi started slinking toward them.

  “Vanadium of the second-­level court greets you.” The Abyssi’s voice was startlingly musical in combination with its owner’s slimy form, almost sweetly feminine. “You’ve brought me presents?” She spoke to Umber, then looked past him to the rest of them.

  “They aren’t for you,” Umber answered.

  “Surely you didn’t mean to pass by my court without offering tribute?” Vanadium asked, sounding affronted. “There must be one you can spare.”

  “I’m afraid not.”

  “A loan? The pretty one, perhaps.”

  Hansa didn’t want to know which of them she meant. Umber didn’t ask. “Perhaps you should ask Alizarin when he returns. He would better understand proper, um, niceties.”

  Vanadium’s brilliant crest collapsed when Umber invoked Alizarin’s name, the color leaching from it as she drooped. “Him,” she said flatly. “I knew him when he was nothing but a plaything to the previous lord of this level.”

  Naples spoke up. “Then you knew him when he devoured the previous lord of this level, too. We’ll wait here if you want to talk to him about tribute.”

  Vanadium opened her mouth to hiss at Naples, then turned and slithered back through the gap in the wall.

  “Move. Quickly,” Naples advised.

  They tried, but it wasn’t easy. As they started down the next set of stairs, Hansa realized he was sweating, though the moisture disappeared from his skin almost as soon as it appeared. His chest ached, and his dry throat hurt so badly it was hard to swallow. Even though the stairs were reasonable for the moment, his heart pounded as if he were climbing a mountain.

  Fighting just to keep moving, he couldn’t judge how much time passed before Naples paused, raising a hand. He glanced back at Hansa, and then at Cadmia, who was lagging even further behind. “There’s a plateau just around the bend,” the Abyssumancer said. “We’ll stop there to sleep.”

  “Thank Numen and Abyss,” Cadmia gasped. “I feel like I have a blood-­fever.”

  “Close enough to the truth,” Naples said. “Much lower than this, your blood would start burning. All the liquid in your body would evaporate.”

  “Well, now I really look forward to tomorrow,” Hansa griped as they reached the plateau and collapsed. He drank in greedy gulps, now understanding why Azo had insisted they would need so much water.

  Naples took a sip and ate a ­couple bites of food distractedly, then sat cross-­legged at the center of the plateau. He drew the knife from his upper arm in his right hand, and the one from his left boot in his left hand. Hansa recognized the black-­red, wavering blade of the former. The other was simpler, made of dark metal, with a fine, slender blade and a handle made of ebony or mahogany wood.

  Matter-­of-­factly, Naples undid the buttons down the front of his shirt, then opened his shirt-­cuffs and rolled back the sleeves to just below his elbows. “Cadmia, you first.”

  Cadmia jumped, eyes widening. “Me first what?”

  “I need to tie the spell to the ­people I’m trying to protect.” He added, “It shouldn’t hurt, and it will only tak
e a moment.”

  She inched forward, apparently not comforted by his words. Hansa understood how she felt. He had responded much the same way whenever Umber pulled out a knife. “Do I have to be first?”

  “You’re the most human, and therefore you’re in the most distress,” Naples said. “You don’t need to go first, but I thought you might prefer to.”

  Again, she looked at him skeptically.

  “I’ll go.” Hansa didn’t want the Abyssumancer touching him or cutting him, but at least he had some experience. He was starting to feel a bit jaded, in that his mind did not come up with a single scenario as he crossed the small plateau to Naples.

  “Thanks,” Cadmia whispered as he passed.

  He shrugged, then he knelt in front of Naples. “What do you need me to do?”

  “Roll up your left sleeve,” Naples instructed. “To the elbow is fine.”

  Hansa obeyed, hoping Naples’ ritual would be less dramatic than Umber’s had been when he gave a similar instruction before slicing Hansa’s arm open to give him the power to pretend to be a mancer.

  Naples shut his eyes. Gracefully, without any hesitation or sign of discomfort, he used the Abyssi-­bone knife to cut a rough triangle over his own heart.

  Blood welled to the surface, but it only beaded there, seeming to thicken like tar instead of running down his skin. Power began to pool around the symbol, spreading like a thick mist which let off light the color of a particularly nasty bruise, deep cranberry-­black.

  “Your hand,” Naples said, holding out his own as he opened his eyes, which now glowed like the Abyssi’s.

  Seeing that eerie light made it harder to calmly reach out, but Hansa forced himself to do so without hesitating. Using the metal blade, Naples made three rapid, shallow cuts in the meaty part of Hansa’s arm, marking a coin-­sized piece of flesh. Then he touched the flat of the Abyssi-­bone knife to the blood.