It seemed almost as if eyes were watching him. That had to be his imagination. Thankfully, he wasn’t trapped here in the darkness. He crept forward, and the sword continued to glow more brightly with each step.
Finally, he found an end point. A door.
The door was different than the last one. Whereas the other one had been almost oval and had rolled in and out of place, this one was rectangular and filled the wall in front of him. The same El’aras writing that had been on the other door existed here as well.
Gavin ran his finger along it, marveling at the complexity of the writing. The lettering had symbols that seemed to be squished together, forming words and sentences. Many of the symbols were far more complicated than any that he saw elsewhere, and certainly more complicated than the typical writing within Yoran. He traced his finger along the letters. Some of them looked to be a jumble of geometric shapes, triangles and squares, and circles. Others were more like swirls, and still others looked to be rune-type symbols that could be patterns and pictures more than actual letters. All of them were intricate, and he couldn’t imagine taking the time to write them out like this.
It was far more detailed than what had been on the other door. This one reminded him of the El’aras dagger, more so than the sword he now carried. He held the sword up and pressed it against the door, but nothing happened. He tried the dagger next, but even though the writing on both the sword and the dagger looked similar, neither attempt made any sort of difference in coaxing the door to open.
On a whim, he flipped the blades over and tried their other sides. The writing was different on each side of the El’aras dagger, as was the case with the sword. When he tried, nothing changed.
It was strange that it had worked with the other door. Stranger still was that the El’aras dagger had caused the hissing sound. Maybe he could try something else. Gavin brought them both together. That didn’t work either.
Perhaps this door wasn’t meant to be opened by him.
He backtracked. When he reached the branch point, he headed in the opposite direction. It took a while before he reached that portion of the tunnel, and he was not surprised when he had to walk or what seemed another impossible distance before reaching the end of the hall. Gavin couldn’t even imagine how these tunnels had been built in the first place. Somebody had taken considerable time to dig them out. Not only time, but given how smooth the walls seemed, he couldn’t help but feel as if it had taken power—magic, probably.
He reached another doorway.
This one was circular, though there were lines within it. Gavin took in the El’aras writing much like he had on the other door, and he held the dagger up to it. It started hissing. He brought the sword out and held it against the door, waiting for any sign of movement.
Slowly, the sword started to take on a faint glow. The glow began to intensify the longer he held it there. He pushed it farther against the door, waiting. For a moment, nothing happened. Then the door started opening.
In a spiraling fashion, the lines created a circular pattern as it opened, twisting into darkness. Gavin lingered for a second before moving the lantern forward, and he could make out a room on the other side.
Once he stepped inside, the door closed again. The combination of the sword and the lantern shone brightly, making it so that Gavin was better able to see everything around him.
The room was enormous. The walls were all made of smooth stone, not stacked block like many of the buildings in Yoran. It looked like the room itself had been carved out of the rock beneath the city. There was a dampness to the walls, and he heard a tinkling of water. He felt a breath of air whisper across his cheeks—a breath that was stale and damp, and one that lingered in his nostrils. This room was shaped similarly to the one he had just come through, only this one seemed to be filled with artifacts.
The shelves lining the walls were packed full of items. The table was cluttered with various relics. Sorcerers’ relics. The items resting on the table were intriguing. He would almost have called them enchantments, but Gavin had never seen any enchantments with such detail. Some of them looked to be carved out of stone or metal, with intricate inlays. He traced his finger along one cylindrical item, which looked something like a bracelet, but as he ran his fingers along the surface of it, he couldn’t tell if it truly was a bracelet or if it was simply a sculpture. It reminded him of the enchantment Olivia had made for him, but only vaguely. The enchantment was a poor replica of this.
At one end of the table, he found three small sculptures, each of which looked like an animal. They were like the items Mekal enchanted. There was what was obviously a wolf, though the snout was slightly shortened and scrunched in. There was a strange humanoid creature that was covered in what looked like fur. The third sculpture resembled a man with his legs curled in toward his body, his arms wrapped around himself. The pose reminded Gavin of how he had often been forced to sit while Tristan worked with him, training him to escape.
Everything on the table had a feeling of power to it. Everything here struck him as something that Zella would love to get her hands on, but he also suspected this was the kind of place that Cyran had wanted to find. Now that Gavin knew who and what Cyran really was, he had little doubt that Cyran would take the power of a place like this and manipulate it in his favor.
This had to be what the Fate was after.
He searched for a doorway. Once he figured out how to get out, he could return if he wanted to. The far side of the room had a door.
Gavin paused in front of the door and tried it. Locked. Focusing inwardly, he used the sense of the core reserve power he had and jerked on the door. The lock snapped, and he pulled it open.
He stopped in the hallway. There was nothing there. He followed it until he reached the end, where he found a ladder. He climbed and paused when he reached the trapdoor. Gavin braced himself for anything that might be on the other side.
He pushed. Resistance greeted him. The wooden ladder creaked.
The resistance didn’t feel the same as it had with the other one. At least in this case, he didn’t think a sorcerer was holding a magical spell against him, keeping him from opening the trapdoor.
He continued to push, though rather than shoving forcefully, he pushed carefully. He kept his shoulder leveraged up against the trapdoor and squeezed, while imagining all the things that might be on the other side.
For all he knew, it was an empty room, though if it were anything like what he had found in Cyran’s home, it would have been covered by a rug. Maybe that was what he pushed against.
He had to be more forceful. Bracing himself with his feet on either side of the ladder, Gavin gave it a hard shove. The door exploded up. He made a point of holding on to the El’aras dagger and poked his head up, but he didn’t see anything out there. He scrambled down the ladder, grabbed the lantern, then headed back up.
Gavin swung the lantern around what appeared to be a small room. All stone walls, barely ten paces in each direction. It was otherwise empty. Why had it been so difficult for him to force the door open?
He found the answer when he approached one of the walls. A large trunk rested nearby, toppled over. Gavin tipped it upright and looked inside of it. A few items were in the trunk, most of them broken ceramics. A section of cloth likely had once been wrapped around the ceramics. There was a slender blade, which he wrapped in cloth and stuffed into his pocket. It didn’t strike him as anything altogether significant, but if it was near a sorcerer’s lair, then it might be meaningful.
Gavin surveyed the room for a moment before flipping the trapdoor closed. He moved the trunk on top of it once again. There wasn't much evidence that the trap door was even there with the door closed and the trunk in place. Considering what he knew about it, though, and its ties to sorcery, he supposed that he shouldn’t be altogether surprised.
Approaching the door, he listened for a moment. He doubted there was anyone here. If there had been, the noise of the trunk slamming ag
ainst the wall would’ve caught their attention. That it hadn’t done so suggested that the home was empty.
Gavin tested the handle, relieved the door was unlocked. He pushed it open slowly and glanced out. There was nothing and no one there. Whereas the other rooms had been in homes—or, in Cyran’s case, in some sort of healer’s enclave—this looked to be little more than a warehouse. It was enormous. The room in front of him sprawled much farther than Gavin would have imagined. He used the lantern to better see what was there, but he couldn’t make much out.
Instinct warned him that something wasn’t quite right here, though so far, he had seen nothing out of the ordinary. The only unusual thing he found was that this warehouse was here at all.
He started along the rows of shelves. It occurred to him that he still hadn’t heard anything from Wrenlow. He didn’t know whether the sorcerer’s lair made it so that he couldn’t hear anything, or if it blocked the enchantment.
Get outside into the open and head back to the Dragon.
Those thoughts stayed with Gavin.
He didn’t see a doorway. As he moved through the rows of shelves, he noticed a soft shuffling sound. Gavin spun, holding the lantern out, but there was nothing. Maybe that shuffling was his imagination.
He moved quickly and came across an opening in the shelves. A doorway wasn’t far from him. As he neared it, he noticed the shuffling sound again. There was something off about that. Gavin couldn’t tell quite what it was, only that he felt as if it were trailing after him. Whatever was there came closer.
He hurried forward. The door loomed in front of him. The lantern glow illuminated it and revealed El’aras symbols on it as well. That couldn’t be a coincidence.
Of course, Gavin knew that none of this could be a coincidence.
The shuffling came closer, and he raced toward the door, threw it open, and ran outside. The moment he was outside, he felt foolish. He turned back toward the building.
He looked for the sound of shuffling that he had heard but saw nothing. As he started to turn, he noticed a hint of smoke trailing out of the building. It was faint, and in the daylight, it was difficult for him to know if the smoke came from the building or simply drifted toward it. What he needed was to head back inside to investigate further.
He didn’t recognize the sign that was shaped like a man leaning over a table with an animal crawling across the tabletop, but as he peered along the street, he knew where he was. He could just make out the building's crumbling stone topping a small rise that he’d been told once housed the sorcery school. When closer to it, Gavin could imagine young sorcerers running through the now overgrown lawn, flittering about with magic and spells.
It was the opposite side of the city from where he thought he would end up, quite a way from where he had been in the first place.
Gavin backed to the opposite side of the street, and he stood for a moment, looking around. He didn’t see anyone nor any sign of movement. Certainly nothing that would make him think he had emerged someplace dangerous.
“Gavin?”
Gavin breathed out. He felt a little embarrassed about how relieved he was to hear Wrenlow’s voice. “I’m here.”
“Something has—”
Wrenlow fell silent.
“Wrenlow? If you can hear me, I’ll be right there.”
Chapter Ten
He approached the Dragon slowly. There wasn’t anything about it that screamed that he would find a problem, only the fact that Wrenlow had fallen silent. He’d tried using the enchantment, but there had been no answer.
Gavin reached the alley leading toward the Dragon. He walked by, keeping the hood of his cloak over his head, moving past the tavern as if it hadn’t been his destination. In doing so, he chanced a look around, sweeping his gaze everywhere. Then he finally turned the corner.
He thought he saw something behind him, though that flutter of movement may only have been his imagination. Gavin could no longer tell. Given what he’d gone through so far today, he felt as if he were overreacting to everything. He looped all the way back around, heading toward the Dragon from a different direction.
He could still make out the tavern in the distance, but as he watched, he realized there was something strange about it.
Constables.
Gavin frowned. The constables left them alone. Ever since the last attack, they’d ignored the tavern, making a point of completely avoiding this area.
Was that why Wrenlow had fallen silent?
He approached the Dragon from the back street. He didn’t want anything happening to the Dragon. Not only because he cared about Jessica, but the tavern had grown on him.
When he reached it, he paused for a moment and looked around, but he didn’t see anything. The constables had to be patrolling and waiting for him to come through. He reached an alleyway and headed to the end of it. He kicked his legs out to the side and scrambled up the walls, using the narrow buildings to give him enough of a grip as he climbed to the top.
Once on the rooftop, he crawled forward, moving carefully. What drew his attention was not on the street as he’d expected. This was on the roof level with him. On the opposite roof, the constable looked below, probably watching for him. Gavin scrambled back down and reached the alley, keeping the hood of his cloak up as he crossed the street. He then scaled up to the rooftop from another alley. He crawled along, heading toward the constable.
Gavin slipped as quietly as he could. He approached the constable from behind and smiled. “This is an interesting place for you to get some sleep.”
The constable turned around and started to back away, but Gavin jerked the El’aras dagger free and shoved it toward him. It glowed slightly. Enchantments? “You and I are going to have a conversation.”
The constable’s gaze darted past Gavin.
He wasn’t alone.
Gavin spun and kicked the second constable’s legs out from under him. This one wore a gray cloak that blended into the rooftop. He had a long dagger, though not El’aras as far as Gavin could tell. He stayed on his hands and knees, the dagger gripped in one hand, watching Gavin.
“Two of you?” Gavin said. “Doesn’t Davel know I don’t enjoy being observed like that?”
“Davel is well aware of what you like. And he’s also well aware that it makes little difference when it impacts his responsibility to the city.”
Gavin turned slowly at the familiar voice. “Davel Chan.”
Davel Chan was short and stout, with dark hair, thin wrinkles along the corners of his eyes, and a tight-lipped smile. His wide cheekbones carried just a hint of a beard, as if he had simply neglected to shave for the last few days rather than intentionally grown it. He had on a thin cloak over the gray jacket and pants worn by the constables, along with a small pouch strapped to his waist. He carried no weapon, but given that he would have enchantments on him, Gavin wasn’t surprised by that.
“Gavin Lorren. I shouldn’t be surprised you observed us, but I must admit to feeling a little impressed,” Davel Chan said.
“Your men aren’t the best at concealing their presence.”
“I think we’re better than you give us credit for.”
Gavin shrugged. “If you think so, but I still found you.”
“And I found you.”
“I presume that one or more of you are in the Dragon?”
Davel cocked his head to the side, frowning. “What?”
“It’s nothing,” Gavin said. Perhaps the constable didn’t know Wrenlow had observed him. “What do you need?”
“What makes you think I need anything? Perhaps I’m only checking in on you.”
“I think we’re both aware of how that went for you the last time,” Gavin said.
He was tempted to reach into his pocket for the enchantment for speed and strength. Facing the constables, he often felt as if he needed to have more of an advantage than he did. Not that he feared that Davel Chan would attack. They had an uneasy alliance, at least for now.
Chan needed him for access to the jade egg to make enchantments.
“Careful,” Davel said, his gaze flicking from one constable to the other.
“You don’t want them to know?”
“There’s no purpose in them knowing anything more than they need to,” Davel said.
Gavin glanced over to the constables. They watched him, both now armed, as if ready to attack. Two constables weren’t enough to eliminate Gavin. Davel would know that as well. Which suggested that they were enchanted.
“Are you here because of what happened to the Captain?” he asked. He shouldn’t be surprised that Davel would learn so quickly.
Davel frowned. “What happened?”
He didn’t know.
Between that, and the strange attack he’d seen, he would have expected Davel to have known. “Why are you here?”
“For what we agreed on. That you would provide access to the egg when requested.”
Gavin shook his head. It wasn’t about the Fates. “I didn’t agree to that. It was your request, but I never made any claim I would honor it.”
Davel watched him, a dangerous glint in his eyes. “You understand the repercussions if you choose not to permit access.”
“Maybe I don’t. Perhaps you should remind me.”
Davel slipped closer to him, the enchantments making him move more rapidly than Gavin could. He didn’t like the idea of battling Davel on the rooftop, even though he didn’t think he would be at too much of a disadvantage. Davel was skilled, but Gavin had already proven his ability in countering him despite his enchantments.
“You know what will happen,” Davel said.
Movement near the street caught Gavin’s attention, and he hazarded a brief glance. It was a mistake.
Davel pressed a knife up to Gavin’s belly. “The egg.”
The Fates of Yoran (The Chain Breaker Book 3) Page 11
