Angst (Book 4)

by Robert P. Hansen

  The king frowned. He knew of only one renegade mage powerful enough to risk such a conjuration, and that was Voltari. He couldn’t—he wouldn’t trust him. But Voltari had an apprentice. “Angus,” King Tyr muttered as he stepped forward and reached for the index.

  23

  Embril’s shoulders ached from the tension that had been building as they rode up the narrow road. It seemed like it had been chiseled from the mountainside: the road was barely ten feet wide, and on either side of it a sheer cliff stretched upward for hundreds of feet. Had some long-dead wizard pulled the mountain apart so the road could be made? Giorge had said it was a natural formation, but she couldn’t shake the feeling that the mountain could squeeze back together at any moment. She knew it couldn’t, but…

  Giorge slowed the horse to an easy walk as they neared the summit. The road continued over it and dropped into the valley beyond, and he turned in the saddle to look at her. “The temple ruins are in a valley just over that rise,” he whispered. “If anything has claimed them, they will have sentries posted there,” he pointed at the top of the rise—an ideal place for an ambush—and added, “It is an easy place to defend. There’s an echo, which means they probably already know we’re here.”

  Embril nodded; she was already on edge, and if something was waiting for them she was ready for it. As they edged forward, she brought the magic into sharp focus and tried to push aside the glare surrounding Giorge. The magic encasing him was a strange one, and its energy permeated through the magic within him, blended with it in a way she had never seen before. Could a curse do that? She wasn’t sure. Most of the knowledge about curses had been lost after The Taming because the kings had confiscated and burned the books and scrolls that contained anything related to them. If it was a curse, it was old magic, and his aura suggested something of that sort. The spell—curse?—was a complex, variegated pattern that contained every form of magic she knew, but it wasn’t connected to the magic around them. It was as if a pocket of magical energy had been separated from the nexus array, and that meant it predated that array. The aura was quite distracting—almost captivating—and before she realized it, they were at the summit.

  She needed a better look at the magic if she were to be of any use to them, so she leaned forward and whispered, “Wait here for a moment.” Once he had stopped the horse, she slid out of the saddle and down to the ground. She took several cautious steps forward, just far enough to escape the glare from the magic surrounding Giorge, and turned her attention to the landscape beneath her. The valley was nestled in among three mountains, and in its center, enveloped by a matted-down field of grain, were the ruins of the Angst temple. The wall facing them had collapsed, and there was no smoke or other sign of habitation coming from it. There was a rich array of flame magic visible even at this distance, but it didn’t look much different than the flame magic near the nexus point under Hellsbreath. It was close, and it was powerful, but it was also still under control. Darby hasn’t found it yet, she thought, turning back to Giorge and the horse. She took a step toward them and stopped. At a distance, the magic wrapped around Giorge looked almost like an apparition superimposed over his body. But if it was an apparition, it looked almost exactly like Giorge.

  While she stared, Giorge nudged the horse up to her and reached down to help her back into the saddle. “What is it?” he asked, his boyish face wrinkled with concern.

  She shook her head and climbed back into the saddle. “It can wait,” she said. “We have to stop Darby. He hasn’t found the nexus yet.”

  Giorge hesitated a moment, then shrugged and urged the horse to a gallop again. He kept up the pace until they reached the ruins. Darby’s horse was milling around, nibbling on the grain outside the ruins, and when it saw them, it whinnied and hurried to join them. It nickered excitedly as it bumped up against their horse, and Embril held out her palm for the young mare to nuzzle.

  “We’ll have to leave the horse here,” Giorge said as she rubbed the newcomer’s muzzle. “When we were here last fall, we couldn’t find an easy path for the horses to get inside. There was too much loose rubble in the way.”

  They dismounted, but when Giorge reached up to remove the saddle, Embril held out her hand to stop him. “We have to get to the nexus before Darby does,” she said. “If we don’t, we may need to leave in a hurry.”

  Giorge nodded. “This way,” he said, jogging over to where they could climb over the rubble of the outer wall and into the temple grounds beyond. At the top of the pile of settled stones, he pointed down at a soot-ringed crater and said, “Angus did that. He didn’t tell us how, and we didn’t think it wise to ask. It burned him pretty bad, though. If it weren’t for the healing balm he had with him…” Giorge shook his head.

  Embril nodded. Angus had told her to be careful with her spells when she cast them near the nexus. He had said they would be more powerful, but when she had asked him for details he crimped his lips together, shook his head, and repeated, “Just be careful.” A trail of hardened slag led from the crater and into the remnants of the temple, and Giorge hurried to follow it. They were footprints.

  The front wall of the temple had partially collapsed, exposing a large room with a big hole burned through its ceiling. They were still a few steps away from the room, when Giorge paused. He turned to her, and a wry smile fell into place as he said, “I hope you aren’t squeamish. If you are, keep your eyes on my back.” Then he darted through into the room and came to a stop so suddenly that Embril nearly knocked him over. “That wasn’t here before,” he said, pointing at a crumpled heap near the far wall.

  Embril clenched her teeth as she saw the remnants of a wizard, his broken bones sticking out through the rotting flesh and frayed robe. She looked away quickly and saw two candles still standing upright in the center of the charred floor. A diviner, she thought, wondering why he had come here. Be careful casting spells….

  Giorge hurried over to a bag leaning against the wall and picked it up. He began rummaging through it, and Embril turned her attention to the room. Someone—Angus?—very hot had been in this room, and he had incinerated a number of fishmen. For some reason, he had also burned a hole through the ceiling. The power involved…

  Giorge finished searching the pack and joined her.

  “We need to hurry,” she said, pointing at fresh footprints in the dust and debris on the floor. “Darby’s been through here.”

  Giorge nodded and reached down to pick up the two candles. He used his flint and steel to light one of them. “This way,” he said as he led her through an open doorway, down a corridor, and to a small room. He pointed at an open trap door in the far corner and whispered, “We closed it when we left. Either Darby found it, or that dead wizard left it open.” He handed her the candle and moved up to the small opening, dropped silently to his belly, and stuck his head into it. He brought it back out again almost immediately and asked in a soft voice, “Do you know the Lamplight spell Angus uses? It’s sort of like a little sun that he attaches to things.”

  Embril nodded. “Yes,” she said, quickly casting it. The strand of flame magic was more potent than any she had ever used, and the glow of the Lamplight was brighter and hotter than the spell normally was. How powerful can the flame-base spells be in here? she wondered, thinking about the charred room they had passed through. The Angst worshipped a fire god, didn’t they?

  “Good,” Giorge said. “Attach it to my shoulder and follow after me. It’s a narrow tunnel that runs from this room to another trapdoor in the room at the other end of the corridor. Halfway between them is a trapdoor in the floor of the tunnel. We need to go down that one. There’s a big octagonal room down there with a long spiral stairwell that we have to follow. The stairwell is a trap; it collapses when someone reaches the bottom unless they can see what Angus saw and do what Angus did. He said he saw some kind of red shadow and pressed a part of it, but the rest of us couldn’t see anything.”

  “All right,” Embril said. “Let�
��s go.”

  “Wait,” Giorge said. “Did you notice all the footprints in the dust on the floor of the corridor?”

  Embril shrugged. “Not really,” she admitted. “Are they important?”

  “Well, most of them were ours from last fall,” Giorge replied. “But the rest had to be Darby’s. It must have taken him awhile to figure out how to open the trapdoor.”

  “Good,” Embril said, brightening a bit. “He may not be able to read the scroll!” If Darby’s knowledge of ancient dwarf was weak, he might overlook the nuances of the language that Angus had used. Without an understanding of them, he only had the thread in the scarf to go by, and that meant— “We need to hurry,” she said. “He may not know where to go!”

  Giorge shrugged and dropped down into the trapdoor. A moment later, all but the Lamplight’s glow had disappeared, and Embril picked up the candle and hurried to follow him. When she caught up to him, he had his head and shoulders dangling through the next trapdoor, and when he retracted them, he shook his head and said, “Darby left a rope dangling for us to use to lower ourselves. I’ll go down first to see if it’s safe.” He paused and reached for the candle and set it aside. “Take the Lamplight back. I don’t want it attached to me if he’s waiting for us down there. I’ll call for the candle if I need it.”

  Embril nodded, reached for the little globe of flame magic, and attached it behind her left shoulder. As soon as it was in place, Giorge twisted around and lowered his feet over the lip of the trapdoor, got a firm grip on the rope, and slid rapidly down to the floor below. She waited until he came back before she dropped the candle down to him and climbed shakily down the rope.

  Giorge led her to the stairwell and hesitated. He looked at her with a sly, hopeful grin, and asked, “I don’t suppose you can fly?”

  “Why?” she asked.

  He shrugged. “It will be faster than climbing down and might not trigger the trap.”

  Embril nodded, brought the magic into focus and squinted involuntarily. The flame strands were brighter than they should be, and it took several seconds to isolate out a strand of air magic to use for the spell. When she finished weaving the spell, she moved in front of Giorge and bent down. “Hop on,” she said. “Try not to strangle me.”

  When Giorge hesitated she turned around. Before she could ask what was wrong, he pointed at the Lamplight hovering over her left shoulder. She nodded, reached for it, and attached it to his shoulder before turning back around.

  This time, he clambered onto her back wrapped his legs and arms around her, and she dropped into the pit. She steered herself to the center of the shaft and let them fall until she saw the bottom approaching. Then she reached out to slow them until they were hovering a few feet above the floor. As she eased down to the floor, Giorge let go and landed cat-like on it.

  “Don’t release the spell,” He said as she landed beside him. “We will need it if you can’t see what Angus saw and can’t open the door.” He oriented himself and moved up to the wall. “I think the Angst symbol was about here,” he said, gesturing at the wall just above his head. “He said it was like a red shadow.”

  Embril focused on the magic, but she saw no symbol; nor was there any residual magic indicating a spell had been there. It was just a wall permeated by flame magic. “I don’t see it,” she said. “There’s nothing but the wall.”

  “Maybe I’m wrong about its location,” Giorge offered, looking around. “It will be about this high,” he said, holding his hand a few inches above his short-cropped black hair. “I’m pretty sure he said it was red.”

  Embril quickly scanned the circumference of the wall and returned to where Giorge waited. “I don’t see anything,” she said. Could the magic have been a temporary spell? One that only worked once? Or was it a different kind of magic altogether? The Angst had disappeared during the Dwarf Wars, and they had been a secretive sect to begin with, so maybe they had discovered something that—

  No. Angus had seen it. She should be able to see it, too. If she couldn’t see it, maybe Darby hadn’t been able to see it either? A slight burst of hope filled her, but it quickly disappeared. Darby’s trail had led into the tunnel, but it hadn’t left. He was still down here somewhere. That meant he had found a way to get through the door, and that meant the Angst symbol had been there and he had seen it.

  “If Angus saw something,” she said, “it wasn’t the magic I know.”

  Giorge frowned and then looked at her for a long moment. “Could it be a different form of magic?”

  Embril shrugged. There was old magic that had been lost during The Taming—like the magic surrounding Giorge—and it could be something like that. There could also be other magic that she didn’t know anything about. “Possibly,” she admitted.

  His frown deepened as he muttered, “Like the curse? Angus said the magic of the curse was different.”

  Curse? she thought. It was the second time that he had mentioned a curse, but now—

  The sound of collapsing stairs echoed down from above them, and the floor began its slow slide into the wall.

  “Look,” Giorge said. “If you can’t find the symbol, we’ll have to find another way inside. Do you have anything like Angus’s wand? It blew a hole through Hellsbreath’s wall, and if we can make a hole in this wall, it will bypass the trap.”

  Embril frowned and bit her lip. If they didn’t find the way inside, they would never be able to keep Darby from getting The Tiger’s Eye. If he was inside—and there was every indication of that—then he had seen the Angst symbol. That meant she should be able to see it as well. How would he have done it? What spell could he have used to make it appear? What spells did he have that she didn’t? He was a Truthseer. He could see past lies—and he could also cast spells to obscure the truth.

  “No,” Embril said, reaching for the strands of magic she would need. It was easy to find the flame and earth magic—they were everywhere—but the rest were more challenging. Angus had said this nexus was oriented to flame magic, but she hadn’t realized how strong its influence really was until she had seen it for herself. Still, in time she found the strands she needed for the Negation spell. If Darby had used his magic to obscure the Angst symbol, the Negation spell would counter it and allow her to see it again. “Where do you think the symbol is?” she asked Giorge.

  Giorge barely glanced at the floor before pointing at a spot above where it was receding into the wall. “There.”

  Embril nodded and directed the Negation spell toward the wall. In some ways, it was a simple spell. If magic had been confined in a spell, it would align itself with it and negate its effects by fusing the opposing magical forces to it. It was a mirror image of the spell, the inverse of its potency. In other ways, it was as complex as any spell could be, since it required knowledge of the spell to be negated and the ability to weave the reversal of that spell’s knots—and tying knots backward was not at all easy to do. Fortunately, the Obscuration spell that Darby must have used was a fairly simply one, and Embril knew how to tie it. Tying it backward, though…

  She closed her eyes and concentrated on the knots, bringing each one into focus and taking the time to tie it backward. When she finished, she threw the Negation spell at the wall, where Giorge had pointed. It struck like a fistful of bread dough and spread rapidly outward, each knot seeking out its counterpart and sparkling to life as it found it. Half a minute passed before the spell had completed its unraveling of the Obscuration spell, and then a shadowy red image appeared. It was like the insignia on the Angst bracelet Angus had given her, but it was incomplete. The bracelet’s insignia had had three teardrop shapes radiating out from a circular center, but this image only had two teardrops. The top teardrop was missing. She floated up to the red shadow and said, “I see it. What do I do?”

  “There’s a panel,” Giorge said. “Push it inward and it will open the door.” He glanced behind him and added, “It wouldn’t be a bad idea to hurry. About a third of the floor is already
gone.” He set his pack down by her feet and hurried away from her.

  Embril pressed each teardrop and the central circle, but nothing happened. Did that mean they had to be pressed in a specific order? If so, that would take time they didn’t have. But Angus had been in the same situation, hadn’t he? It would have been very fortunate if he found the right combination on the first try. She shook her head. It had to be something else. What was it he had said in the scroll? The key to surviving this journey is to see what isn’t there and to recognize the absence for what it is. She pressed against the wall where the missing teardrop should have been, and a small panel moved easily inward. There was a soft click, and a section of the wall started to pivot inward. She smiled and turned to Giorge—and her eyes widened. He was hanging over the edge of the floor and was about to fall!

  She flew rapidly over to him and reached out to grab his belt. She had barely caught hold of him when he started sliding off the edge—and almost lost her grip completely before she was able to pull him back. He scampered back on his hands and knees and glared at her. “What’s wrong with you?” he demanded. “You almost killed me!”

  Embril bristled. “I just saved your life!” she retorted. Angus had told her about the spikes in the pit, and she had caught enough of a glimpse of them to realize how deadly they were. “You were about to fall off!”

  He blinked angrily and shook his head. “No I wasn’t,” he said. “I was fine until you grabbed me and changed my center of balance.” He shook his head again and started laughing. “Wizards!” he scoffed. “You’ll be the death of me yet!” Then he stood up, moved to the wall, picked up his pack, and stepped through the now-open doorway. He paused and grinned back at her as he asked, “Coming?”

  She flew up to the doorway and landed. “Do I need to maintain my Flying spell?” she asked his back as it retreated from her.