by Thomas Locke
“I really am that, aren’t I? An acolyte.”
“That and far more besides. You are a wizard.” Edlyn smiled in encouragement. “Now cast the first spell.”
Dally found the spellwork to be utterly thrilling. She had asked the dragon for something similar to what their enemy had used upon the forest beasts. The image had come to her in the final series, how the resulting surprise and even fear might well work to their advantage. And keep them alive. Perhaps.
The spell’s words condensed in her mind, in her very bones. Then they extended outward as she spoke. The wand’s gemstone glowed with a blinding flash as she reached over and touched Nabu directly between his trusting golden eyes. It would hurt her the most if she wounded the dog, or if the dragon had been mistaken, or if she cast the spell incorrectly, or if it could not be applied to a wolfhound . . . Any number of things could go terribly wrong. But it would be her dog. She would endure the loss as punishment for her errors. If they survived.
In the end, though, all her concerns were for nothing. She finished the spell and stepped back, amazed by her own handiwork.
Nabu had grown to twice the size of a horse. His fur gleamed a bright blue, like flames seen through ice, save for the streak of white lightning along his spine. What was more, each breath sparked a puff of blue fire.
As she cast her spells over the other three dogs, the distant rumbling gradually became an earthquake. The screams and shouts were so loud now they could be heard echoing up and down the empty tunnel.
Connell surveyed the massive beasts and declared, “The sight gives me hope.”
“It will be a genuine pleasure,” Edlyn said, “to give our enemy a taste of his own medicine.”
“I almost look forward to it,” Connell said.
As though in response to his comment, there was a crashing sound from upstairs, followed by water cascading through the hole. They jumped back as the water fell harder and harder.
Edlyn cried, “Seal the opening!”
Connell was the first to react, creating a temporary block while Edlyn carved out segments of both walls and the floor, fitting the stones into place and melting the edges so that they melded together. Finally she said, “All right, release your spell and let’s see if it holds.”
Here and there the ceiling dripped. Edlyn decided, “Hardly my finest crafting. But it will do. And now we must hurry.”
51
They walked down the tunnel a hundred paces. Two. Connell softly counted out the distance they covered. The dogs padded ahead so as not to huff blue fire upon the humans. Dally thought the city revealed its age much more clearly here belowground. The tunnel was carved from solid rock, a gigantic tube perhaps ten paces wide—a perfect square with slightly curved corners. The floor and walls held a subtle ridged pattern, as though the tunnel had been fashioned by some magical drill.
Finally Connell said, “According to Alembord, we should be directly under the treasury.”
“Cast the dragon’s second spell,” Edlyn said. “Hurry.”
The casting contained none of the fireworks of the first. But its impact upon Dally was even stronger. Her gemstone’s force was reduced to a ruddy glow, yet it was enough. More than that. Dally cast the spell and stood entranced by the result.
“My dear,” Edlyn said, “we have very little time.”
The words were enough to bring the tunnel back into focus. “The vial is here,” Dally said.
They looked at her, their expressions colored blue by the dogs’ illumination. Both were severely intent.
Connell asked, “Are you sure?”
“I am. Yes.”
“Describe what you feel,” Edlyn said.
“I don’t exactly know how to put it into words.”
“Try,” Connell pressed.
“I can sense her so clearly . . . It feels as though she is standing here beside me.”
“Who?”
“The Lady Joelle.” Dally smiled. “She’s singing to me.”
Edlyn asked, “What is she saying?”
“Just one word. Hyam. It’s lovely.”
Connell planted his hands upon his hips and stared at the distant ceiling. “We could cut at an angle. Carve stairs in the side wall.”
“No,” Dally said. She pointed to her right. “The vial holding Joelle’s breath is right through there.”
“Of course,” Edlyn said. “The Milantians are suspected to be a race who prefer to live underground.”
“There’s more,” Dally said. “I feel the current.” She stomped her foot in the puddle. “Right here.” She lifted her wand, closed her eyes, and shouted the spell with such force her echo filled the tunnel. Or so it seemed to her.
When she opened her eyes, her wand glowed more brightly than all the dogs together.
Edlyn reached out. “Give me that. Now recharge ours while I make us an opening.”
52
Connell and Edlyn worked in tandem, melting their way through the side wall, while Dally recharged one wand after another. Dally insisted that the opening had to be large enough for the dogs to fit through comfortably. The rumbling overhead grew steadily louder. The occasional scream could be heard echoing faintly down the empty stone tunnel.
As she switched wands with Connell, Dally said, “We may be leaving in a hurry.”
“Almost certainly,” Connell agreed.
“I don’t want the dogs to have to slow down and squeeze through,” Dally said.
Edlyn extinguished her wand. “Stop, please.” When Connell’s wand went dark, she stepped forward and said, “Now that is interesting.”
The tunnel’s wall was reduced to slag and dust and steam where it touched the puddles. Before them was something else. Connell examined it carefully and declared, “New stone. Finely trimmed.”
“And magically protected.” Edlyn swept back the sleeves of her robe. “Give me that wand and recharge this one. All right. Stand back, everyone.”
Connell and Dally retreated a dozen paces and drew the dogs with them. Edlyn called out words that caused the hair on Dally’s neck to stand on end. The dogs all growled as one, illuminating the tunnel with more blue fire. Edlyn tapped her wand to the wall. A spiderweb of power grew between the stones, bright as summer lightning. Edlyn spoke again, and her wand became too bright to look at directly. She touched the wall a second time, a very delicate tap. The spiderwebs began to pulse, running in brilliant sequence from left to right. A third spell, and the wall blasted away.
Water spilled through the opening, rushing about Dally’s ankles. Cries and shouts instantly became much clearer.
Then, in the distance, a bell began to toll. The sound was low. Mournful.
As solemn as an announcement of their doom.
53
Edlyn led them inside, raised her wand, and called out in a loud voice. All around them the torches sprang to life.
They stood inside a chamber that was the largest internal space Dally had ever seen, at least two hundred paces long and almost as wide. The distant ceiling appeared to be polished bedrock. The wall through which they had entered was new stone, but the floor had the same grooved ripples as the tunnel. To their left, perhaps thirty paces away, a vast stone staircase rose toward the city’s clamor. Water spilled down the steps. And the alarm bell continued to sound.
“The time for subterfuge is past,” Edlyn said.
“Speed is everything,” Connell agreed.
Edlyn pointed to the staircase. “It appears that is our only entryway.”
“Other than the way you just made, of course,” Connell added. Not even the distant tumult or the alarm bell could completely extinguish his humor.
Edlyn scurried toward the stairwell. “I’ll go stand guard. You two make all possible haste.”
Dally took a firm hold of Nabu’s shimmering fur. It felt somewhat the same as before the transformation, only now there was an electric bristle that sparked where she gripped him. She reached out to all the dogs and spoke the
words aloud. “Stay with Edlyn. Obey her every word. If she commands you to attack, use everything you have to protect us. Stay safe. Remain alert to my signal. Come when I call. No matter how fierce the battle. Come when I call.” She repeated the command three times, then released them with, “Now go.”
All the while the great bell resonated through the chamber, inside Dally’s bones. Doom, doom, doom. She was certain now the sound came from no forged instrument. It was magical in design, fashioned to freeze the invader with dread and woe.
Dally had no response save to raise her wand once more and repeat the spell. Hunting for Joelle’s breath.
Instantly the bell’s clamor was overlaid by a far sweeter sensation.
But there was a problem. A huge one.
Connell saw her dismay and demanded, “What’s the matter?”
The cavern was set up like a gallery. Ornate shelves lined with every imaginable form of treasure stretched out before them. Rows of chests stacked like gaming chips leaned against the opposite wall. The nearest lanes contained hundreds of beautifully carved gemstone statues, many depicting animals Dally could not name. Barrels of ornamental swords with jewel-encrusted hilts. Hundreds of crowns. Thousands of necklaces and bracelets. Rows containing nothing but royal scepters. The treasuries of entire civilizations lost to time and defeat, all on secret display.
“Dally, talk to me!”
She swept out her arm, taking in the whole chamber. “The sense of Joelle’s presence comes from everywhere!”
54
Doom, doom, doom.
Connell showed fear for the very first time. “What are you saying?”
Dally’s second sweep of her arm was swifter, more frantic. “I hear Joelle’s voice from a dozen different places. More.”
“You hear her.”
“Hear, smell, taste—none of these are the right words and yet they all are. That’s not the point.” She tried to stifle the shrill fear. “The echo resonates from a dozen different items. More. What do we do?”
Connell looked around, not at the treasure, but for an answer. “Is it a ruse?”
“I don’t . . .”
“Camouflage? A masquerade?”
“I know what ‘ruse’ means. And no, that’s not what I think. They all sound too real.”
Connell’s strength of resolve shone through his fear. “There’s only one answer, in that case. We take it all. Everything that resonates with you comes with us.”
Water rushed down the stairs, so much that the floor was awash to ankle depth. Connell dumped over a barrel, scooped out the swords, and extracted a red leather sack that had been used as lining. “Here, take this.” He moved to a tall, narrow crate holding six identical ceremonial staffs. “Symbols of a royal council at public gatherings,” he explained, then dumped them on the floor and extracted a second leather sack.
“Wait. Take that sword with the big jewel in the pommel,” Dally said, pointing to the staff by his feet. She rushed away, twenty paces on, to where a crown called to her. She stuffed it in the sack without pausing.
Each magnetic attraction was a light she could not see, a flame she didn’t feel. She explained this to Connell as she directed him down to a mock wand of woven gold wire. She picked up two necklaces and a diadem from the next lane.
“Where to now?”
She pushed through the rising water. “Three shelves to your left, eye level, a scepter all by itself.”
Connell hurried over, his footsteps splashing loudly. “What if the vial isn’t here?”
“It’s here.” Of that she was certain. “Joelle is still singing to me.”
Edlyn descended the stairs far enough to see them. “Can we withdraw?”
“Not yet!” Connell called back.
“They’re coming!”
“Hold them off!”
Edlyn hesitated, clearly ready to argue. Then she scampered back out of sight.
Doom, doom, doom.
No matter where they went, how fast they struggled through the rising water, or how many treasures they dumped into their sacks, Joelle’s voice continued to echo through the vast chamber, calling Dally on and on and on . . .
The first two sacks became so heavy they could not be lifted free of the rising water. So Connell hauled them back to the opening in the side wall, found two more, and returned. In the meantime Dally had scooped up three diadems, a ceremonial dagger, and a bird with four wings carved from a single ruby bigger than her two fists.
Connell took the prizes, handed her the empty sack, and gasped, “Do you see it yet?”
“No, no, no!” She was already running, or trying to, pointing two rows over as she did. “The sword with the violet jewel in the hilt! Take it!”
The sound of wizards doing battle echoed from the staircase. Sparks of power drifted over the ceiling and fell like electric snow to hiss and die in the water. But she did not hear the dogs, which Dally took as a good sign. Clearly Edlyn was holding them back as a final last-ditch surprise.
Dally was called to another goblet, this one golden and crystal, with a dragon carved into its side. Two more crowns, another necklace, then a dozen royal seals. She rounded the next corner . . .
And met Joelle.
“I have it!”
Connell rushed over. He gasped, “Are you sure?”
“I am certain.”
“What’s the matter now?”
“Nothing,” she replied. “Everything is beautiful.”
Of course, all Connell could see was an unadorned golden vial, two fingers in width and a bit longer than her hand. It was held within a stand of golden wire encrusted with some of the cavern’s smallest jewels.
Dally picked it up and fought the urge to weep. She whispered, “Hello, dear friend.”
Connell patted her shoulder, took the half-filled sack from her hands, and rushed away. “I’ll go fetch Edlyn. Start moving the other sacks through the portal. We take the treasures, yes?”
“We take them all!” But Dally did not move. She felt immensely privileged. She stood there staring at the vial and knew with utter certainty that meeting Joelle like this had already enriched her life.
55
Dally carried her second sack back across the cavern, the water sloshing up to mid-calf now. She felt Joelle move alongside her. Singing of love and friendship and sunlight and hope . . .
Then Edlyn’s shriek echoed down the stairwell. “ATTACK!”
The instant the wolfhounds bellowed, Dally entirely lost connection to Joelle. All four dogs roared. The water trembled violently, then washed over her knees as a massive blast of noise and force caused dozens of shelves to topple over.
Edlyn appeared. She needed both hands to keep her balance as she struggled down the stairs. Water rushed and pummeled her legs with each step.
Only when she was midway across the cavern did Dally realize the old woman was laughing. “I would not have missed that for the world.”
Connell helped Edlyn through the opening, handed both women a sack, and then hefted the two heaviest himself. Staggering under the weight, he gasped, “Make a light.”
Dally used her free hand to raise her wand. Water spilled through the portal, as did the sounds of magic and battle. They hurried away, fast as the heavy sacks allowed.
Connell was bent almost double under the weight of his load. “Who attacked you?” he asked Edlyn.
“Mages. Or rather, they would have, had Dally not thought to ask the dragon for that spell. Now they feast upon a taste of their own magic.” Even burdened as she was, Edlyn still sounded merry. “What on earth are we carrying?”
“All the items that called to Dally,” Connell replied.
Edlyn’s good humor only increased. “In that case, each one is precious.”
As they ran down the tunnel, Connell and Edlyn began a discussion that emerged in tight gasps. Connell wanted to call back the wolfhounds and seal the cavern’s entry.
“Nonsense,” Edlyn huffed. “Any wizard wit
h a week’s training would reopen the portal and fill the tunnel with flames.”
“If there were mages at all,” Connell said.
“Of course there were.” She ran with remarkable ease for a woman of her age. “Don’t be silly.”
Dally hated putting so much space between herself and the wolfhounds. She had never tried to connect with four over such a distance. And of course there was their current magical state to consider. She had no idea if this would alter their ability to hear or erase their willingness to obey.
Even so, she knew Edlyn was right. Most likely Connell did as well.
They ran.
And through the distant portal came the sound of the wolfhounds’ roars and the echoing refrain of the magical bell. Promising the direst of consequences.
Doom, doom, doom.
56
Connell saw it first. His every step faltered slightly now, and his hoarse breathing echoed loudly in the tunnel. Their footsteps sloshed and the dogs roared and still the bell sounded. But through his film of sweat-drenched hair, Connell cried, “Up ahead!”
Far in the distance glowed a faint light, one that should not have been there. But which ignited in all three of them enough strength to accelerate.
With each step the light grew stronger. Their footsteps lifted out of the water now, and they all grunted with each stride. The bags clinked loudly, and Dally’s dug into her shoulder. Despite it all, she loved the run. She fought the fatigue that seeped through her bones, willing it to burn away in the race toward the light and safety.
A young voice called, “Who goes there?”
But they were too busy drawing enough breath to force their bodies forward. The light was strengthened until it illuminated both them and the torrential rain that blasted down through the hole in the tunnel ceiling.
“It’s them!” The young lad’s relief lifted his voice to where he sounded like a frightened little girl. “It’s really them!”
They halted and let their sacks fall into the water by their feet. Dally’s body ached now that she was able to stop. All three of them stood on trembling legs, gasping desperately for air. Connell faltered and would have gone down had the young mage not caught him.
