“And brought you the cloak. The first one made for hundreds of years. It is a beautiful thing.” Revan half-lifted a hand as if to touch the cloak, dropping it back to his side. “What was wrong with Duraner?”
“No. Not until you tell us more,” Arrow answered, voice hard. She did not want to believe that this man, who had been Oliver Anderson, who had created beautiful sculptures with powerful protection spells woven into them, was capable of being part of a conspiracy involving surjusi. She did not want to believe it. But she did not know him. And he was not Oliver Anderson. Not anymore.
“I … I didn’t know that was what they were planning,” he answered, whispering.
“Explain, please,” she requested, crouching so that she could meet his eyes.
“It was supposed to be a surprise,” he told her, voice a hoarse whisper, and ran his hands through his already tangled hair. “Get everyone into the temple, the Gardener said. Then there would be a surprise. A revelation of the lady’s wishes.”
“You were there.” Arrow remembered the voices just before she had lost consciousness. “You said you wished it was not necessary.”
“The Gardener said it was. But I don’t understand how the lady could … I mean.”
“What happened?” Arrow asked, tense. A room full of people falling asleep and losing their magic was not the cause of his distress.
“There were strangers here. Erith. I didn’t know them. They took you. And others. Into a boat.” Revan shook his head. “He said it was the heartland’s will. But we do not have boats here. The walkway is supposed to be the only way. But there were boats.”
Arrow could feel the tension in the rest of the group. Other Erith had been involved. Other Erith had been admitted to the island, and conspired with the head Gardener.
And Revan was not finished with his story.
“He kept some,” Revan told her, voice lowering to a whisper, tears standing out in his eyes. “He didn’t want us to know, but I saw them. He kept some. Underneath the temple. There were rooms that I didn’t know were there. Chains. Screams. And others. They didn’t see me. I ran.”
Arrow tilted her head up to make sure the others had understood. Kester was providing a rough translation.
“Miach and Elias’ cadres. And Ferdith’s.” Kester speculated, face pale.
“Probably.”
“We need to get to them.” Iserat looked like he wanted to storm the temple single-handed.
“We need to be clever about it,” Willan cautioned.
“We need to bring the rest of our people across the walkway,” Arrow told Revan. She was speaking Erith again. “Can you bring the wards down?”
“Not down. That would set off alarms.” He answered her in Erith, brushed tears from his face, jaw set. “But I can give them permission. And hide their crossing.”
“Hide?” Willan picked up the word.
“The island is hidden from the world most of the time,” Revan answered, mouth twisting, “concealing a group of people across the walkway is nothing.” He tilted his chin up, “And night is falling. That makes it easier.”
Arrow followed his glance and saw he was right. There did not seem to be night or day in the shadow world, but in the first world the sun was fast disappearing. The fading light was no hindrance to the Erith or the Prime, at least.
“The next low tide is not for a while,” Iserat pointed out.
“We can arrange it,” Revan told him. “This is the lady’s island. A lot of things are possible.”
“Good. See to it.”
“Prime, will you give the others the signal to cross?” Arrow asked.
“You’re going to the temple?”
“Yes.”
“In the shadows?”
“Yes.”
“I’ll bring the others as soon as I can,” he promised, then grinned, white teeth prominent. “Don’t keep all the fun to yourself.”
“We will try not to,” she promised him gravely.
“By the time you get to the shore, the walkway will be ready,” Revan told the Prime, speaking common tongue.
“I move quickly,” Zachary told him, teeth bared again.
“So does the island.”
The Prime melted away, moving faster than Arrow’s eyes could track. Revan closed his eyes for a moment, lips moving in a silent mantra. Or spell. As he spoke, Arrow could feel the power in the air around them shifting.
“That will alert the other Gardeners,” Willan said.
“They are used to it,” Revan told him, eyes still closed. “Go now. I will see your friends across safely. They know where to go after that.”
Arrow did not move. He had helped them. And had asked a reasonable question about what had happened to his friend.
“Duraner was tainted,” she told him. “Something here that he swallowed. He fought the taint all the way across the heartland.”
Revan did not open his eyes, somehow maintaining his focus, although fresh tears fell.
“He did not deserve that,” he whispered.
“No. No one does.” Arrow watched him a moment more. A good man, she judged. Her uncle. An odd thought. “Stay safe,” Arrow told him, voice soft.
“Good hunting, mage,” he answered, not opening his eyes.
Arrow shook out the cloak again, gathered the others to her, and stepped back into the shadows.
“We should hurry,” she said, and set off across the island, using the odd nature of the shadow world to lengthen her strides. Here, she could travel vast distances quickly and easily.
She was outpaced in moments by the warriors, Willan keeping pace with her.
“Revan said others,” Willan noted. He was slightly out of breath from the pace they were maintaining.
“I heard.”
“And the Gardener kept some. Serran is missing, too.”
“I know.” Arrow did not want to think about that, pressing herself to keep the fast pace.
CHAPTER 23
They arrived at the temple in a fraction of the time it had taken to get there on their first visit, all of them out of breath and hollow-faced with the effort of moving in the shadow world, the building rising stark and solid even in the shadow world. It was also coiled with an inky dark that Arrow identified for the others as taint.
There was no one else around, so they crept into the building, through the first row of columns. The tapestries were still there, but there were rooms to either side of the tapestries made of solid stone walls, with open doorways. Nothing seemed to be warded. So they went into one of the open, unwarded, rooms. Arrow pulled them out of the shadow world, every part of her quivering with effort, and collapsed again, familiar taste of copper in her mouth as she lay on the stone floor trying to get her breathing under control.
By the time she had managed to sit up and take food from Kester, the others had recovered a little. Willan and Iserat were standing either side of the door, pressed against the walls, out of sight of any passersby, listening intently.
Night had fallen while they travelled across the island. The temple was deeply shadowed inside thanks to the tapestries. Even enhancing her sight did not help much.
“No one else in earshot. I do not think it would be wise to use magic if we wish to remain undetected,” the war mage said, voice low.
“The others will be a while yet,” Iserat commented, finishing the last mouthful of his food packet. “We should look around.”
Arrow still felt light-headed, trying to refuel as fast as possible. She felt rather than saw the glances the others sent in her direction.
“I am not good at sneaking around,” she told them and almost laughed at their expressions. She pulled sheets of parchment out of her bag, gifts from House Sena, and spread them on the floor, careful to make sure she and the parchment were out of sight of the doorway. “If you will scout, we can make a map.”
“Good idea.” Willan and Iserat were out of the door on those words, silent and quick.
Arrow
lifted her brow at Kester, who put his back to the wall beside the door and folded his arms over his chest.
“Make a map?” He lifted a brow. “I know you too well. I am not leaving you alone.”
Arrow opened her mouth to protest. His brow lifted again and her face heated.
“No one else can fight surjusi.”
“True. But we can protect you while you fight,” he answered. She could not read his expression until his mouth turned up in a smile that made her pulse skip and her face warm. “I want to help.” His voice was warm, serious.
She found she could not hold his gaze, overwhelmed for a moment. Instead, she looked down at the parchment in front of her, at the folds of the cloak pooled around her. A mage’s cloak. A warrior to watch over her while she worked magic. Things she had wanted, hardly dared to dream of. Now reality.
The cloak felt like a burden, the same invisible weight as her sword, a very potent symbol of who and what she was. She was tempted to take it off and stuff it back into her bag again. Her fingers twitched. And stilled. It was a representation of part of her. The shadow-walker. That rarest of Erith mages.
She looked up to find Kester had also looked away, attention to the door, apparently focused on keeping watch.
He did not move as she stepped up beside him and curled her arms around his waist, simply unfolded his arms and gathered her to his side. One arm around her, the other hand on his sword hilt. Ever the warrior. On guard.
Even as she thought that, he turned his head and rested his mouth on her hair for a moment. Not an accidental move. She leant her head on his shoulder. It was a slightly awkward fit as she was a fraction too tall to fit under his chin. He lifted his chin slightly, she ducked her head, and they fit.
Somewhere beneath them were rooms. With Miach and Elias’ cadre. And others. She remembered Revan’s description. Chains. Screams.
She breathed in. Cardamom. Weapons oil. The underlying citrus. Her favourite blend of scents. He was still, centred and calm. She drew that calm in with her next breath.
“They are coming back,” Kester told her, loosening his hold. “At speed.”
She let him go, took a couple of steps away from him and called her power, ward spells flaring for a moment in the shadows of the room.
Willan and Iserat arrived back at pace, both tense. Willan went immediately to the sheets of parchment and started drawing, with Iserat providing comments. He drew with the assurance of a war mage, with straight lines and precise markings. The outer temple. The inner room where they had been poisoned. The room on the other side of the outer temple that mirrored this one. Behind the inner room, with the tapestry walls, a much larger space with two sets of stairs leading down.
“No cover,” Iserat said, looking up at Kester. “There were no guards on this level, but we could hear movement below.”
“Mostly Erith,” Willan confirmed, shaking his head. “But something else. Surjusi, I think.”
“We will need the shadows to go down. More food,” Arrow said, and went to one of the satchels they had left on the floor. There was plenty left.
She ate until she could not hold any more, fuller than she had ever been in her life. The others had eaten, too.
“Do we wait for the others?” Willan asked. He was calm, focused, and ready.
“We do not know how far away they are,” Iserat began.
“But we can find out,” Arrow realised and scrabbled in her messenger bag, pulling out one of Kallish’s emergency beacons. She activated it and moments later Kallish’s face, tense and concerned, appeared, image blurring almost at once. The warrior was moving.
And behind Kallish, the faintest trace of the rising sun. Morning already. She frowned. She did not think they had taken that long to get here through the shadows. Perhaps Revan had altered the time as well, as impossible as that seemed.
“Mage. What is wrong?” Kallish’s urgent question snapped her back to the here and now.
“We need to know how far away you are?”
“Approaching the temple now,” the warrior answered. “Zachary is with us. He said Revan was helping. And it is dawn already. Too soon.” The warrior was tense, sensing something wrong.
“Come in to the temple and meet us in the outer room,” Arrow told the warrior. “As quietly as you can.”
“Understood.”
Kallish cut the connection. Arrow tucked the expired disc away and looked around the room. Apart from the parchment, which Iserat was gathering up, there was no trace of their presence.
“A full cadre may not be enough,” Iserat speculated as they moved into the outer room.
The others arrived, barely out of breath despite the headlong run to get here.
Arrow’s eyes travelled over their resources. A full cadre. Two of the foremost warriors of the White Guard. The six. The Prime. A war mage. A master healer. The Academy’s master and his deputy. Kester. And her. Arrow went through the list and shook her head fractionally. Once, she would have thought that more than enough to combat an army. Now, it seemed so little against the surjusi lord. It would have to be enough.
“Can you take us all down?” Kester asked. He was not demanding, making a simple enquiry. “Just down the stairs, I mean, to give us a moment’s advantage.”
“I-” Arrow was about to say she did not know when an all-too-familiar sensation turned in her stomach and she hissed, falling to her knees. “That damned book.” Evellan’s book. That he had left for her, and which had forced its knowledge into her. Knowledge that she had barely begun to read, let alone understand. Another page of the book was unfurling inside her. A way of taking large groups into the shadows.
She came back to the here and now to find that Iserat had placed the makeshift map in the centre of the room and the warriors were taking turns to memorise it, as well as keeping watch.
“Yes,” Arrow answered Kester’s question. He held a hand out, helping her to her feet. “I can take everyone down the stairs. A little further perhaps, but not much.”
“There is no alarm that I can sense,” Willan said.
Even as he spoke the ground shook under them, more violently than before.
“Outside,” Kallish ordered, grabbing Arrow’s arm, and hauling her outside the temple.
The air was heavy, pressing her towards the ground. She could not breathe. Her heart was racing, legs straining to move her faster. Around her she had confused impressions of the others running, too, and stumbling along with her as the flagstones shifted under their feet, jagged cracks appearing in the stone slabs.
As she got her feet back under her, half-stumbling over the next broken flagstone, there was a cracking sound overhead. She looked up, foot sliding away from her, as the roof shattered. Shards of gold-flecked slate fell like rain, the temple’s roof piercing Erith wards, striking off shoulders, arms and heads. Her own wards flared, the gold-flecked pieces bouncing to the floor as she forced herself on.
As they ran past the outer columns, one of the great pillars of stone shivered and fell sideways. Arrow found an extra burst of speed and ran underneath it, almost losing her footing when the stones under her feet quivered as the falling pillar hit the next one along.
And then they were outside, on the grassy slope that led up to the temple. Everyone kept running, trying to get out of the shadow of the temple, warriors making sharp turns as one of the pillars fell outward, thumping onto the grass, broken bits of stone half the size of a warrior flying off, tumbling down the hill ahead of them.
The ground was still shaking, shifting in a way that made Arrow’s stomach turn.
She would have stopped, paused for breath, struggling to breathe in the heavy air, but Kallish seized her arm, urging her on, further down the hill.
And then there was no hill in front of them. The grass in front of them split, the downward slope parting ways leaving a jagged gap that not even a warrior could jump across.
The warriors closest to the edge scrambled back, hands reaching out to
help them back to solid ground and safety.
The crack in the land stretched away to either side, this side of the hill destroyed.
“Circle around,” Kallish ordered, sending warriors out with quick hand gestures. “Find a path down.”
“The temple,” Willan said, a break in his voice, looking behind them.
They all turned.
The great temple had fallen. The structure that had dominated the island, stretching up into the sky, its golden roof shining in sunlight, was gone. The enormous, slender columns had shattered. The roof was in pieces on the ground. Cracked flagstones stuck up into the air.
There was a cloud of dust rising from the ruins, hiding some of the details. But Arrow did not think that any Erith craftsman would be able to repair it. Not this much damage.
And there was no magic in the air. Not one spark of the heartland’s normal presence, the fizz against her skin. The pressure that had hurt her chest had eased.
“Wait,” Arrow said, catching Kallish’s arm before the warrior could drag her on. “The shaking has stopped.”
“The temple is gone.” Undurat sounded lost. “We are too late. The heartland is gone.”
The words were repeated by other warriors, shoulders bowed. The heartland was gone. There was no trace of her here. Nothing in the air or the land. They had lost.
Arrow exchanged glanced with Kester. Not quite gone. There was still a warrior carrying the barest part of her.
~
Around them the Erith were still, eyes fixed on the temple. Arrow had seen the warriors face surjusi, face baelthras, and never lose their calm or determination. And yet the destruction of the temple was holding them still, shoulders slumped in defeat.
“We need to get back inside,” Arrow said, shaking off Kallish’s hold.
“There is nothing left,” Kallish protested.
“There was a basement. We think Miach and Elias’ cadres are down there. Possibly Ferdith. And whoever is behind this.”
“Fine.” There was a familiar, stubborn look on Kallish’s face.
“We will need to find a way inside,” Iserat pointed out.
Taellaneth Complete Series Box Set Page 135
