“I don’t know, but she said it was the only way to stop them from spreading those cantrips around the city.” I glanced at the golden disc on the ground. “They’re everywhere. It’s how they’re distributing the virus, and they cut off the nodes to ensure nobody can get out.”
Anyone who picked them up would unknowingly get infected. How were we even supposed to fight against an invisible force most people weren’t even aware of?
Dex flew up to me. “When your friend was on her way to rescue you, she was talking about the House, too. And… she mentioned a cure for the virus.”
I clapped my hands to my mouth. “Is that what she wanted me to go back for?”
Did the House have the cure, or had she hidden it herself while she’d been imprisoned? It wasn’t like we could get near the House of Fire either way, unless we got past the earthen barriers surrounding the middle of the city and then fought our way through the chaos. Not good odds.
“You’re sure she didn’t want you to get arrested again?” said Miles. “Just saying, a cell is safer than being outside at the moment.”
“Not while the city is in this state,” I said. “I doubt there’s anyone left in the House to arrest me at all.”
A bright light dazzled my eyes as the glow around the citadel intensified, forcing me to turn my head away from the vibrant light. We still needed to shut down that transporter, but Tay had died to give me a fighting chance to stop the cantrips spreading the virus around the Houses. If we didn’t stop it, the transporter wouldn’t matter. Everyone in all four Houses would be dead.
“All right,” said Miles. “If you’re sure it’s in the House of Fire, I’ll hold the fort out here, and you take Dex with you.”
I opened my mouth to argue and then closed it again. “Okay, but if things get too rough out here, run. I don’t want you touching one of those cantrips and getting infected.”
“I know, don’t worry. We’ve lost too many people already.”
Tears threatened, but I blinked them away. I couldn’t afford to get sentimental, not when I had a job to do, and one chance to stop the virus before more lives were lost.
The fire sprite swooped ahead of me, peering over the nearest wall of earth. “Nobody’s on the other side, but unless you’ve learned to fly, you’re not getting in.’
“I’ll go via the rooftops, then.”
I did a running jump and leapt onto the windowsill of the nearest house, pulling myself up onto the roof with my fingertips.
“Whoa.” Miles gave me an admiring stare. “Watch out for those assassins, okay?”
“Way ahead of you.” I scanned the rooftops, picking out a likely route to the middle of the city. Then I broke into a sprint and leapt to the next roof.
As kids, Adair and I had held endless competitions where we raced one another over the rooftops of the Family’s estate. While I didn’t generally come out the victor—Adair had always hated to lose—I’d retained my excellent balance skills and knack for picking out the best climbing routes, both of which came in handy when dodging assassins and duelling mages while navigating my way to the middle of Elysium. The citadel’s glowing light guided me over the rooftops, until I dropped to the ground behind the House of Fire. Amazingly, the building was still standing, but someone had barricaded the doors once again and more golden cantrips littered the ground outside.
I flicked on an invisibility cantrip first, then strode towards the back door. While a spell opened it easily enough, the guards nearby zeroed in on Dex and me immediately. And of course one of them was Harris.
“Who’s there?” he demanded.
Ignoring him, I walked into the corridor, while he kept staring at the same spot. “Who’s there? Show yourself.”
“Up yours, motherfucker,” said Dex, and spat fiery sparks into his face.
Harris recoiled with a yelp, tripping over his own feet. While he shouted for backup, I ducked between the guards into the main corridor. Dex continued to throw sparks among them, causing enough of a distraction for me to remain undetected. Where would Tay have hidden a cure? I’d have to start with her cell, so I went downstairs, leaving Dex to keep the guards busy.
Once I reached the lowest level, I made my way to Tay’s cell and peered inside. The cell, however, was empty, the door ajar. Had someone already removed the cure, or had I guessed wrong?
Footsteps sounded behind me, and I rotated, still unseen. Harris stood there, blocking my path back to the stairs. “I know you’re there, Bria. I might not be able to see you, but I know it’s you.”
Dammit. I didn’t have time for this. “Get out the way.”
“Why did you come back? Did you think we had that friend of yours again?”
Anger clenched inside me at the memory of Tay’s body lying there on the ground. She’d died to give me a fighting chance to stop the Family’s deadly cantrip, and I wouldn’t let this dickhead get in my way.
“Where is it?” I asked. “Tay had the cure for those lethal cantrips. Did you take it off her?”
“What?” he said. “What are you talking about?”
“The cure,” I said. “You know those cantrips killing all your guards? There’s a cure, and Tay had it. What did you confiscate from her when you imprisoned her?”
He stumbled back a step. “What? There was no cure.”
“She wouldn’t have told you she had a cure in case you destroyed it out of spite,” I said. “Come on. Tell me.”
“We confiscated some cantrips off her when we first brought them in, but Zade put them in his office.”
Dex flew downstairs, and a blast of fire hit Harris in the back. “Need a hand?”
“Someone must have stolen the cure,” I said, as Harris spun and swiped at the sprite, unable to touch him. “I didn’t see it in Zade’s office, so I bet they took it straight back to the Family.”
“Dammit.” He threw another shower of sparks, forcing Harris to duck, and I ran for the stairs and sprinted back up to the surface. I hadn’t seen anything in Zade’s office that might have resembled a cure, but someone had cleared out the place. Not Tay, either.
The Family must have had it all along.
On the way out, the guards tried to grab me, but I dodged, kicked and when all else failed, threw fireballs into the air until they left the path free for me to run to the exit and out into the street.
The world flew by as I sprinted down the street and took the closest route onto the rooftops, where I climbed up and retraced my steps to the barrier cutting off the middle of the city. Over the barrier, I spotted Miles and ran towards him, leaping down to land at his side.
“No luck?” he said.
I shook my head. “Zade confiscated everything from Tay when he took her in, and someone cleared out his office ages ago. If the cure was in there, they’d have taken it straight back to the Family.”
“Damn,” said Miles. “I had a thought, though. The people spreading those cantrips throughout the city can’t use the nodes to get around, so they must be moving on foot.”
“They’re earth mages.” I indicated the earthen wall behind us. “What’re the odds that they’re under our feet right now?”
“Pretty high,” he said. “But only an earth mage can track them, right?”
“Not necessarily.” I pushed against the earthen wall with my palms, but it was totally solid. Elysium wasn’t like Arcadia, with a wide network of underground paths, but the earth mages could easily create one of their own.
“There are only two of us,” said Miles. “We can’t take on the entire House of Earth. I mean, I can give it a shot, but Shelley will be pissed off if I die and leave her to run the Spirit Agents alone.”
“I can bring backup,” said Dex. “The others are back at the citadel or on the Death King’s territory. I’m sure there are some liches who’d be willing to lend a hand.”
“I’d rather not take even more people away from the Death King’s security.” It was bad enough that the man himself was absent.
“I doubt the entire House of Earth is involved, but I reckon collapsing their tunnels will slow them down. If they’re leaving the cantrips through the city, they must have left a trail behind we can use to track them down.”
I backed out of the street, my eyes on the rooftops in case any more assassins appeared. It wasn’t until we’d walked for nearly ten minutes that I found an upturned heap of earth concealing an opening to a tunnel.
An earth mage was here.
Miles hissed out a warning when I kicked the earth away, exposing the hole until it grew large enough to accommodate a person. Below, a proper tunnel had been carved out through the middle of the street. In true earth mage style, they’d created tunnels which looked like they’d been there for years. I’d bet the rest of the centre of Elysium contained similar tunnels to enable them to spread their cursed cantrips throughout the city.
“Sure you wanna go down there?” he said.
“No, but we need to stop those bastards.” I dropped into the tunnel, while Dex flew down and lit up the way through the gloom.
“Incoming!” Dex warned.
Two mages flew through the tunnel, crashing in front of me. I tensed, ready to attack, only to see they were both unconscious. A lithe figure with pointed ears followed.
“Trix?” I stared at the elf in disbelief. “What in the world are you doing here?”
“I heard Liv was in trouble, but I can’t get into the citadel,” he said.
“So you decided to go underground instead?” I said. “The Elemental Soldiers are still in the citadel, as far as I know.”
Trix leaned down to pick up one of the cantrips the mages had dropped.
“Don’t touch that!” I said sharply. “It’s infected with a magical plague. Hang on. I can get rid of it.”
I kicked a pile of soil on top of the cantrip. Not perfect, but it’d have to do for now. In the meantime, I climbed aboveground to join Miles, who regarded the elf with an expression of confusion. “You came here alone? Did you know the House of Earth has been taken over by the Family?”
“Is that why they’re all underground?” asked Trix.
“Wait, you saw them?” I said. “Which way did you come into the city? Through a node?”
“Yes,” he said. “I came as close as possible to the barrier around the citadel and started looking for ways in, but most of the tunnels lead to dead ends.”
“Did you run into anyone else?” I asked. “Because we’re looking for someone carrying a cure.”
“There’s a cure?” said Trix.
“Maybe,” I said. “If not, then we’re screwed.”
But Tay seemed to think there was. We needed one, badly, and despite everything she’d done, I wanted to honour her last wish.
20
Dex led the way as we descended into the tunnel again. Trix had left a trail of unconscious guards along the way, and it was a good job he hadn’t picked up one of those cantrips. Though it might not have as much of an effect on an elf. They were immune to most diseases which affected humans, which was why it had always surprised me that so many of them had died in the war or been driven out. After Lex’s revelation, though, I couldn’t help thinking there was more to their fate than any of us knew.
I did my best to bury every cantrip I found below our feet, but all it’d take was one more earth mage to dig them up again, and without a cure, we had no way to stop their effects.
“This must be why they took over the House of Earth first,” I remarked. “They needed the tunnels to get around, and an earth mage can move much faster belowground than a regular person. It’s easy to hide a cantrip smuggling operation if nobody can follow you. They dug a bunch of tunnels on the Family’s estate, too, probably for the same reason.”
Trix’s face screwed up in confusion. “What family? Yours?”
“No, the Family,” I said. “They experiment on mages and create illegal cantrips for their own amusement. They’re behind this whole operation.”
Trix stopped walking. “They created the cantrips? The infernos, too?”
“Yes… why?”
“Because,” he said, “it was something similar which wiped out the elves’ communities years ago, around the time of the war.”
My spine stiffened, while Miles turned to look at the elf, too. “Seriously?”
The elf gave a solemn nod. “Yes. Few people remember, but it’s true.”
My throat went dry. “I didn’t know.”
But it made a horrible kind of sense. Lex had hinted that she and Roth had used the war to do much more than take advantage of the chaos the warring mages had unleashed on the Parallel, and it would have been easy to hide any crimes in the confusion which had followed.
Trix’s head drooped with sadness. “The elves tend to be forgotten because the war affected the whole Parallel, but we were driven out of our strongholds long before the war reached the humans’ cities.”
I swallowed hard. “They didn’t wipe out all the elves, did they? Some of you survived.”
“We did,” he said. “I was born after the war, but I don’t remember my family. They were killed when my town burned down when I was a child.”
“I’m sorry,” I said. “Um—you should know, I’m half elf, and I don’t remember my family either. My real family, not the ones who raised me.”
He was silent for a moment. “They raised you? The same humans who are killing people in this city?”
“Did I mention I had a messed-up upbringing?” I picked up the pace, hearing movement aboveground. “I’m pretty sure they helped the spirit mages destroy one another in the last war, too. And now they’re trying to do the same again.”
We passed beneath another opening leading aboveground, while the tunnel came to an abrupt halt against a dead end. Trix climbed up through the opening first, and there came the sounds of a scuffle from above our heads. Two mages fell unconscious in his wake, and we stepped around their bodies and surfaced into the light. At once, I recognised the area as the northern part of the city. Not far from the facility where the Family had once been imprisoned… and near the path that eventually led to their home.
Last time I’d tried to take Lex on alone, and I’d lost badly. I was under no illusions that I could beat her and Adair in a fair fight, but to get the cure, I’d have to find a way to get past them. Otherwise, it was only a matter of time before all my allies succumbed to the virus, too.
“Hey.” I leaned over one of the fallen mages, who was still conscious. “Where is Lex? Where’s Adair?”
Laughter rippled from his throat. “It’s too late… for all of you.”
The ground exploded, and the wyrm shot out of the earth, tail lashing, leathery wings beating.
“Shit.” I dropped the guy and backed away from the wyrm. “Miles, please say you have another of those mind control cantrips.”
“No, I’m all out.” His hands glowed. “We’ll have to use force.”
“No need for that,” Trix said blithely, approaching the creature. Its tail lashed, its teeth dripping drool onto the ground.
“Trix, don’t go any closer,” I warned. “That thing is lethal.”
“Not at all.” He waved up at the wyrm. “It’s just confused, isn’t it?”
“So am I,” Miles said. “But I’d rather not watch you get eaten. Get away from it.”
Trix whistled, and the creature descended, landing in front of Trix with its head bowed as if in submission. Miles and I both gawped at the improbable sight of the giant monster greeting the elf like a loyal dog and not a giant fanged beast.
“What the hell is going on?” I said.
Trix glided forward and petted the wyrm on the head. “The elves have always had an affinity with animals. Even creatures like this are easy to get along with if you know how to tame them.”
Nonplussed, I watched him stroke the beast until it made a contented noise, as though it hadn’t tried to kill us all—several times.
“This is the weirdest day of m
y life,” said Miles. “And yes, I include the vampire chicken incident.”
“Tell me about it,” I muttered. “All right. Trix, would you be able to set that wyrm loose on the Family?”
“What?” he said. “No. Creatures like this one are calm under normal circumstances.”
“I wouldn’t call this ‘normal circumstances’,” Miles remarked.
“Not to mention the Family is hoarding the cure,” I added. “If we don’t get it from them, the Houses are screwed. Their house is north of the city, somewhere in the wasteland over there.”
“Excellent,” said Trix. “The wyrm can take us there. I’m sure he’ll be willing to lend a hand. Or wing.”
Miles and I exchanged baffled looks. “Help? How could that creature possibly help us?”
“Wait and see.”
Ten minutes later, I was riding on the back of a giant wyrm, over the city and into the wasteland to the north. Miles sat behind me while Trix sat in front, whispering instructions to make the wyrm fly according to his directions. I had absolutely no idea whatsoever how he pulled it off, but at this point all I could do was sit back and enjoy the ride. Okay, ‘enjoy’ was a relative term, but it was better than being eaten alive.
The citadel was the only obvious landmark from up here, a giant obsidian pillar glowing against our backs. Ahead of us, I could make out the shape of another similar pillar, further in the wasteland. Elysium was closer to the place where we’d ended up stranded than I’d thought… and so was the Family’s estate.
“Where is the house?” Trix asked.
“It’s north of Elysium.” I pointed. “Somewhere up there. The estate is totally flattened, but it’s where the wyrm came from so it should know the way back.”
Trix muttered something to the creature and we veered away up north. How could he possibly be communicating with it? If he could teach me that skill, it’d come in handy, that was for sure. I’d be able to get control over Neddie the zombie horse, for instance—but that was a lesson for another day. Before long, the wind picked up until I could no longer hear anything except for the sound of the creature’s wings beating below us. Then I recognised the shape of the rugged cliffs bordering the Family’s estate, the golden glow of the mines near-invisible from above.
House of Fire (Parallel Magic Book 2) Page 20