She peered her head around the corner, but her candle only illuminated a few feet ahead before the darkness swallowed its light. She tried to push down her panic from the thought of getting lost in these cold, underground halls, especially if her candle burned too low. Cupping a flame in her palm was only possible for short bursts, an inviable method for navigating the dark for hours on end.
The sudden sound of scraping stone made Melaine jump and her body writhe. She whipped around, candle held aloft, eyes frantically searching the darkness for the silent moan on the guard statue’s face. She saw nothing in her little patch of orange light. She held her breath and shielded her candle, listening for the ominous sound.
Stone swiveling on stone came louder and faster from the direction of the only exit she knew. The mysterious singing continued to drift through the air from her left.
Melaine spun to the left and darted down the narrow passage, summoning a bit of magic from the bones of her feet in an attempt to silence her steps.
The stench of mildew flooded her nostrils as the air secreted damp cold. The rustle of rats replaced the sound of grinding stone and provided an erratic, scuttling beat to the song ahead.
Melaine stopped. The voice was clear now. It was a man’s baritone, ragged and off-kilter. The song was more of an indecipherable yell with a tune than it was a ballad with lyrics. She raised her candle and saw a short, arched corridor to her right.
She hesitated, her chest tightening. Her heart jumped when the rough scraping of stone sounded again, louder than before and ever faster, as if the statue had gained her scent and was closing in to trap her in a foxhole.
Melaine looked over her shoulder with wide eyes. All was dark, but the noise continued, no longer swiveling stone but instead, the harsh, steady pounding of pursuing footsteps.
Melaine ran. She flew down the passage, toward the singing voice, and nearly fell down an unexpected flight of stone stairs that crumbled with age. She hit the bottom and followed a curve to the right where she saw a solid, wooden door.
She grabbed its heavy iron ring and heaved. The thick door swung open. She plunged inside the new room and wrenched the door shut. She summoned magic to her palms, and her determination to expel the statue pushed a powerful binding spell through her skin and onto the door. The ward snapped into place, freezing the door into an immovable barrier against anyone who should try to enter.
She caught her breath, surprised at the force behind the simple door-locking spell she’d always used for her flat in Stakeside. The Overlord’s methodology of honing in on direct motivations was effective. She smiled in satisfaction with a small, extra flare of pride that his teachings made her powerful enough to stop his guard.
Only then did she realized the singing had stopped.
She turned around. Two everflame torches in sconces illuminated a row of iron-barred cells lining the long room in which she now stood. A large rack with dangling, rusted chains and lifeless ropes loomed on the far wall. A spiked, narrow cage stood in one corner next to a scratched wooden chair with manacles, and various other First Era torture devices glinted sharp, evil threats.
“Not sure this is the kind of place you want to lock yourself into,” said a wry, gravelly voice.
Melaine startled. Her eyes darted across the row of iron cages. A hand dangled through the bars of the second cell down.
She glanced once more at the door beside her. The spell held fast, and no sound of the statue rasped on the other side. She turned back to the cells and walked with cautious steps toward the only one with an occupant.
A man sat on the cold, damp floor, leaning against one wall with his hand propped on his knee, so his fingers slipped through the bars. He looked up at her with curious hazel eyes, but a bitter, lopsided smile curved his mouth upward.
Melaine nearly dropped her candle. He looked like the man she had killed.
He eyed her up and down. “You don’t look like you have anything to run from here,” he said. “What’s your name?”
Melaine frowned, self-conscious as he analyzed her wardrobe. For once in her life, she looked better kept than this prisoner. The rich brocade of her dressing gown glinted with gold silk threads in the candlelight. The soft white chemise brushing her sharp, protruding collar bones was more delicate than any coarse homespun that had ever touched her skin.
She felt a flowering superiority as she contrasted herself with the dirty, rough man below her.
“Melaine,” she answered, chin held high. “You don’t look like you have anything to sing about.”
The man laughed. It was an echo of the dry, ringing laughter of the prisoner Melaine had silenced forever. But this man’s face was rounder than the first, his skin darker, his lips fuller, his scraggly beard and chin-length hair blonder. He was younger as well, around Melaine’s age, it seemed.
“Always something to sing about, Melaine,” he said when his laughter died.
“Who are you?” she asked. “Why are you here?”
“Serj,” he replied. “And if you don’t already know why I’m here, I’m not sure it’s any of your business. Why are you here?”
Melaine stood straighter. “I am the Overlord’s apprentice,” she said with glowing pride.
Serj laughed again but transitioned into coughs. Melaine stepped back.
“Passing on his wisdom, eh?” he said after a moment of hacking.
“He found me worthy of teaching,” she said.
“Or convenient. Not like he’d have to search high and low for someone like you. You don’t match your clothes,” he explained with a wink. “Scooped you outta Stakeside, did he?”
“You don’t look much better,” Melaine said with a snarl. “Neither did your brother.”
Serj stiffened, and Melaine knew she had guessed the familial connection between this man and the deceased prisoner correctly. Her jibe felt hollow as soon as it left her mouth.
“You know where he is?” Serj said.
The full truth caught in Melaine’s throat. But she managed to say the crux of it.
“He’s dead.”
Serj sat very still.
“What happened?” he finally asked, not looking at her.
“The Overlord punished him,” she answered, the half-lie rolling off her tongue with an ease she’d never wanted to achieve before. “Did you commit the same crime as he?”
Maybe learning of Serj’s crime would wash away hers.
“How is our dear Overlord?” Serj asked, ignoring her question with a bitter spat. “Still a shining pillar of strength for Centara?”
Melaine’s eyes narrowed. “Do you expect him to be anything else?” she said, maintaining her superior tone so she wouldn’t betray what she really thought of the Overlord’s condition.
Serj was silent. She saw his eyes flicker with doubt.
“I am sorry, Talem,” Serj muttered. He leaned his head back against the grimy stone wall of his cell. “There are worse fates, I suppose.”
“Than death?” Melaine asked.
Serj rolled his head to look at her. “Worse ways to die. Even the Overlord can only perform so much torture. There are other forces in this world that can do much worse.”
He looked down and swallowed. He then surprised Melaine by grunting to his feet. He swayed a little, grasping the bars to hold himself up.
“Let me out,” he said, pressing his forehead to the bars. “I can help you escape what hunts you.” He nodded at the closed door behind her.
“I don’t need your help,” Melaine said. “It’s only a guard. And I’m sure the Overlord would do far worse to me than that statue ever could if I let his prisoner go.”
“Statue?” Serj repeated blankly. “You haven’t—” His shoulders slumped, and his gaze dropped. “Too slow,” he whispered to himself.
“What are you going on about?” Melaine asked.
Serj’s bloodshot eyes flashed back up to hers. “Find out what he’s going to do to me. Please. That can’t be too much to as
k. I only wish to know what’s coming.”
Melaine shook her head and backed away. Serj’s eyes looked far too much like his deceased brother’s. She couldn’t stand how much his face twisted her stomach.
She looked back at the door. She didn’t want to risk meeting the statue, but that terrifying stone visage was beginning to feel preferable to the wasted face of Serj.
“No,” she said. “You won’t see me again.” She turned and walked to the door.
“No. Wait,” Serj said, his cracked voice rising with desperation. “Please. That old bitch Karina doesn’t tell me anything. I need answers!”
Melaine shook her head in a fierce jerk. She pushed open the door and unlocked her ward spell in the same motion. Then she slammed the door against the sound of Serj’s frustrated yells.
The hall outside was dark and empty. The sounds of grinding stone were gone. Melaine gathered courage and ran up the stairs, candle in one hand and hiked-up dressing gown in the other. She listened hard as she reached the maze of dungeon passageways and turned back the way she had come.
The statue seemed to have given up the hunt. She made it down the hallway until her candle illuminated the long staircase that would take her back to the garden. She ascended the steps and broke free of the smothering darkness into the brisk, open air. The moon was low in the sky, and purple stretches of twilight chased the stars away like Shields scattering a gaggle of homeless children.
Melaine ran across the garden and up the stairs into her living quarters. She walked through the dusty sitting room and opened the curtain that led to the room with the sunken hearth.
She screamed.
A fire roared to life in the pit, spearing flames around the hulking statue of the rage-driven guard. It was waiting for her, blocking the path to her bedchamber. She froze as the statue slowly raised a sharpened battle-axe from the flames. A sound like crunching gravel came, long and harsh and menacing as the statue crouched with its raised axe, readying to leap onto her and drive the blade into her chest.
Melaine ran—but not back the way she came. So far, her chamber was the only place the terrorizing statue hadn’t followed. If she could reach it, she would be safe.
She darted along the wall and raced past the statue, aimlessly casting bursts of simple repelling spells that she’d scraped up from Insights in Stakeside.
She reached the short passage that led to her room and bolted past the row of dormant statues. She wrenched open her bedroom door and ran inside. She slammed the door, begging her magic to punch a powerful ward into place.
The glinting blade of the axe crashed through the door and implanted itself right beside her cheek. She screamed and stumbled back, but the blade didn’t move. It stuck in the door, a warning for her to stay inside.
She listened hard and heard the rough stone sliding closer. She jolted as the statue wrenched the axe from the door, bringing a few splintered pieces of wood with it. Through the slim crack, she could see the statue stand with the axe at its side in a posture of rest. The guard slid away from the door and turned its back. It returned to its place among its frozen brethren and backed into the shadows. It was still.
Melaine watched it for an immeasurable amount of time, waiting for it to move. But it didn’t. Her ward remained in place on the door. She was right in thinking that the statue’s sole purpose was to keep her confined to her bedchamber. Now that she had returned to where she belonged, the guard was satisfied to leave her alone.
She doubted she would sleep, and the statue’s presence wasn’t the only reason. The face of the prisoner in the dungeon melded with his brother’s in her mind. Serj’s eerie, melancholy song had burrowed into her brain and stayed there. His plea for her to let him out replayed over and over, followed by hoarse, deranged laughter that matched the voice of the man she had murdered at the Overlord’s behest.
Chapter 7
The warmth of the library door poured into Melaine’s hands as she rested them on its solid oak skin. Its innate, ancient magic was just as comforting as the first time she’d touched it, almost…parental. Melaine had never known the love of a mother or father, but she imagined this sense of care and protection was similar. It reminded her a little of Salma.
She didn’t know why the library of all places would withstand the dark magic seeping through Highstrong’s walls. She had sensed black magic from some of the Insights on its shelves, and the stack of books the Overlord had tried to give her exuded snatches of darkness as well. Yet the doors and the walls themselves wrapped around Melaine like an embrace. Maybe the northwest tower had not always been a library.
Maybe one day, the books and Insights within would no longer taunt Melaine with their vast but inaccessible knowledge.
She pushed against the strong doors, and they opened at her touch, propelled by their welcoming magic. She stepped inside, and the doors swung shut with a gentle nudge.
She scanned the first floor. It looked the same as it had the day before, except for one thing—the Overlord wasn’t in sight.
“Hello?” Melaine said. “My lord?”
The sound of beating wings made her gasp and stumble back as a shadow soared across her. She looked up into the heights of the tower. A large, black crow landed on the open balcony parapet, casting a giant, distorted shadow onto the shelves below. Melaine scowled and waved her hand at the beast.
“Go away, you rotten pest,” she shouted. The crow cocked its head and looked at her with a beady, black eye as if considering her request. She frowned and snatched a quartz paperweight from a nearby table. She hiked her arm back and threw the sparkling rock at the distant bird.
Crows were a menace in Stakeside. Always stealing scraps of food and shitting on beggars in the streets. They even had an eye for shiny things and were known to steal valuable trinkets—or fake ones meant to be priced and sold as authentic.
The rock smacked into the shelf-lined wall several feet below the balcony. The crow fluttered its feathers a little in indignation, but beyond its cawing bluster, it didn’t seem fazed by Melaine’s attack. The hunk of quartz rattled down the shelves. Melaine winced as it knocked a wooden, gilded sculpture of a horse onto its side and then propelled a glass jar containing some beast’s innards right to the edge of a shelf.
The paperweight then bounced off the top of a mahogany curio cabinet and popped open the glass doors. It crashed inside and hit the protruding edge of a gnarled tree root. The quartz finally settled, but the root spun like the hands of a clock and tipped off its shelf. It fell to the floor and rolled to an uneven stop at Melaine’s polished black boots.
Her breaths resumed as she darted her eyes around the room, looking again for the Overlord and his imminent chastisement. Fortunately, he was still absent. She looked back down at the twisted root at her feet. It was a little longer than her foot, dry and well-preserved. There was no telling how old it was. It looked like an ordinary cutting, but it was surrounded by a room filled with Insights, so it must be one as well.
Her heart started racing again at that thought. The Overlord hadn’t given her permission to touch any of the Insights in his library. Perhaps if she asked him today, he would, but what if he didn’t? What if he didn’t want her knowing whatever powerful knowledge his Insights hoarded? What if this was her only chance alone with them? The Overlord was late today, but would his tardiness ever happen again?
Melaine nibbled the inside of her cheek as she stared down at the root. At the very least, she had to pick it up off the floor. She told herself that was as far as she would go as she stooped down and lifted the root into her hands.
She frowned. She didn’t feel the usual magic she’d always detected on Insights. She twisted the root in her fingers but stopped when she saw words carved into its side. She concentrated on each letter, sounding out the writing.
Roots of the Craft. It sounded like a book title. It was an Insight, one that contained spells of…roots? Something with plants, perhaps. Whatever the spells it held, use
ful or not, Melaine needed to know them. The idea of an Insight in her hands, free for her use, was too much to withstand.
She traced her finger across the carved lettering. The root seemed to shiver under her touch, but that was all.
It was empty. Why would the Overlord keep an empty Insight?
There had to be more to it. She ran her fingers along the length of the root again. Small tremors of energy shuddered beneath her fingertips, but she recoiled as she recognized the tangible reek of residual magic defiling her skin. She dangled the root between thumb and forefinger, watching it sway.
That was it, then. The root may once have been an Insight, but it was spent now. The Overlord had used it, and probably other people had before him, gleaning all of the knowledge there was to know from its depths. All that remained was waste.
She almost returned the root to the curio cabinet’s shelf in disappointment, but as she held it, a deeper, cleaner magic began to pulse beneath the stain of refuse, blooming under her fingertips. Her fear of getting ill from handling the dirty root was overcome by curiosity. Maybe it wasn’t empty after all. There was still a little pure magic left. If she could just tap into it, find it, reach for it…
The new sensation taunted her like a dream buried too deep to remember when morning came. Tendrils of roots and vines pushed through dense loam, seeking water, seeking light, seeding her mind with snatches of spells that she couldn’t catch fast enough to grasp.
She growled in frustration and squeezed the root with clawed fingers. The soil in her mind was hardening into rock; the vines couldn’t push through. They were shriveling; they were dying. No!
The vines burst through rock, and the root in Melaine’s hand pulsed with a thundering wave of magic that knocked her backward.
A table’s edge bit her spine through her goldenrod poplin dress. She winced and righted herself, clutching the root against her chest. Her body shuddered, and her eyes widened as thin, sinuous trails of black smoke, as if echoes of the vines she had imagined, began to seep from the root’s ends. The stench and grit of residual magic was pungent now. She was swamped by the wrung-out refuse from the casting of the original spell on the root. The build-up from years of repeated use had then thickened the taint until the root was devoid of all sweeping, light sensations of fresh magic.
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