by Beth Alvarez
“Where?” Vahn shouted back.
Rune pointed vaguely to an area some four rings down.
The barrage of magic didn’t stop. The walls exploded beside them, spurring them to run.
“Why doesn’t she try to unmake us?” Vahn ducked as another burst sent a shower of pebbles over their heads.
Rune hadn’t considered that. It was one more fear he didn’t need. “She’s too far away. She can’t do it unless she’s right on top of us.”
“Better hop to it, then, she’s gain—” Vahn cut off with a shout as the floor gave way beneath their feet and they plummeted to the next ring. They hit hard. Stones slid down the slanted walkway and dragged them both down the path.
Rune clutched his sword and scrabbled against the wall and floor as they slid. His claws squealed against the stone as he sought purchase and failed. The rock battered his body, bruising deep and breaking skin. More stone joined the cascade and they picked up speed.
“No, no, no!” Vahn struggled against the rock and grabbed Rune by the ankle to drag them closer together.
Rune glanced down and the bottom dropped out of his stomach as the rock slide hit a slab of fallen walkway and veered toward the pit. Twisting sideways, he grasped his sword in both hands and jammed the blade into the gap between the slab and the cracked floor.
Sparks flew from the blade as his weight pulled it down.
Vahn screamed as he slid over the edge.
The blade caught and the force of their stop almost tore Rune’s arms from their sockets. He bit his tongue to stifle a cry and gripped the hilt so hard his claws dug into his palms.
Vahn hung from his legs, threatening to pull them both over the edge. “Don’t let go!”
Gritting his teeth, Rune tried to pull them up. His abused muscles protested and his strength flagged. “Swing off!”
“Are you mad?”
“Swing off or we’ll both fall!” Rune snarled. Black blood made his sword’s twisted hilt slick.
Vahn groaned, then moved. Still clutching Rune’s legs with a death grip, he swung back and forth several times, building momentum.
Rune’s hold started to slip. “Hurry up!”
The weight suddenly released. Rune dragged himself back up onto the walkway and spun to look into the chasm. Rocks still tumbled and fell. His friend was nowhere in sight. “Vahn!”
A groan below answered. “Keep moving.”
No time for relief, Rune pulled his sword free and used it for support. He held his ribs with one arm as he limped past the angled slab and continued downward. He no longer knew where Envesi was and didn’t dare turn to see.
The vibrations of the earth made him rock on his feet. The roar of collapsing tunnels grew almost deafening. He found Vahn sitting with his back against the wall, panting for breath.
“We’re almost there.” Rune offered a hand. “Come on, just a little farther before we can get out of here. We have to hurry. The mine could collapse any time.”
Groaning, Vahn grasped his fingers and stood. “Listen, if we don’t both make it out of here—”
“Move.” Rune nudged his side, hurrying him onward.
Vahn grimaced, but moved. “If we don’t both make it out of here, promise me... Promise you’ll...”
For half a breath, Rune paused. “Vahn—”
“Promise me,” Vahn insisted.
Rune swallowed hard. “I swear.” The first words that came to mind echoed the promise he’d demanded, himself, so long ago. “Anything I can do to protect her,” he repeated from memory, “anything to keep her safe, I’ll do.”
Vahn nodded.
“I promise,” Rune finished, nodding back. “Both of them.”
They stumbled down half a ring together before Rune turned toward a gaping entryway. A large metal disk surrounded by gears as tall as a man sat just inside.
“What in the...” Vahn’s mouth fell open.
Rune pushed him onto the lift and grabbed the lever in the center. “Help me.”
Vahn took the other side and they heaved together. The lever shifted, caught, clanked, and refused to go farther.
Rune laid his sword by his feet and they tried again.
“It’s stuck,” Vahn groaned through clenched teeth.
“The rocks must’ve hit the gears,” Rune growled. He dropped to his knees and spread his palms against the cold iron floor of the lift.
Vahn stared. “What are you doing?”
“Seeing if I can find what’s stuck. I may be strong enough to shift—” The lift rocked and Rune stopped short. The massive iron plate beneath their feet shuddered.
Vahn grabbed the lever to try it again. The moment his hands touched it, a crack echoed below them and the plate dropped.
The massive gears whirred out of control and the lift gained speed until it felt like a free fall.
“How do we stop it?” Vahn shouted over the whine of metal and the roar of crumbling caverns.
Rune crawled toward the lever. Progress came slower than he imagined possible—or maybe it only felt that way as the ground rushed to meet them. His sword slid toward him and he slammed a foot down on it to keep it from cutting them both.
He caught the lever just above Vahn’s hands and struggled to his feet. Standing felt impossible, like the lift would drop out from underneath him at any time.
Vahn stood first.
“Ready?” Rune gripped the lever in both hands.
His companion nodded, and together, they threw it.
The lift jerked so hard it pitched them both to their knees.
Pain shot through Rune’s arms as his hands hit the metal. A sharp clank vibrated the platform and made it worse. It took a moment to realize they were still moving. The lift inched downward at its normal pace.
Rune collapsed onto his side, groaning. They both laid there, gasping for breath as the lift eased to the bottom of its shaft and stopped with a clunk. The mine opened beside them, the passage littered with tools and lined with new tracks for carts.
“Almost there,” Vahn groaned too as he struggled to his hands and knees.
Rune grabbed his sword and used it for support as he got up. “Where’s the Gate?”
“Straight ahead and then left. Tobias said to follow the wooden tracks.” Vahn planted a boot on the floor, rested a hand on his knee and took a moment to simply kneel and breathe. “We might just make it out of here.”
“Not until I know she’s still down here with us.” Rune extended a hand and helped him up. He tried to feel her, looking for her Gift, but the ache of his battered body kept him from searching far.
Vahn grunted. “Have fun with that. I’m going home.”
Rune stifled a humorless laugh. All around them, he sensed the force of the crashing rocks. The earth quivered, surrendering. “If you have a home left.”
Neither one of them could run, relegated to hobbling down the mine shaft on legs as shaky as the ground beneath them.
“This must be it.” Vahn turned to follow a branch in the tracks.
Rune followed at his heels, watching the rails beside his feet. It struck him as odd to see the rails here so soon after he’d recommended them. Even in a place as sheltered as Core, the advancements of the modern world had taken root so swiftly, it seemed as if the people had never been without them.
Then again, he’d been a part of it. Even when he’d walked these halls and called them home, Core’s libraries had been home to books of mechanical schematics. They’d hosted the lifts and the waterwheel that powered them. Why not tracks, too?
He paused for a heartbeat, staring at the tracks. “The Alda’anan.”
Vahn turned back. “What?”
“The Alda’anan built all of this. The inverted tower, the tunnels and lifts. The ruins to keep everyone out—they meant them to keep everyone else safe while they developed this, didn’t they?”
“Now’s not a good time to be thinking like a scholar.” Vahn shook his head and put a little more energy
into his step. “We’re almost there.”
Rune lifted his head. The Gate was there, glowing daylight at the end of the tunnel. For a single instant, he felt a wash of relief.
Then the ceiling opened up before them and a streak of white filled his vision.
Envesi jerked upright like a puppet on strings, twitching and shuddering. Around her, the tattered and dirty white robes of a Master mage swirled like cobwebs. Her eyes burned black and a wicked scowl twisted her face beyond recognition.
“You walk their halls, you know their ways. Now you speak their name.” She slid forward, her snowy hair twisting around her shoulders like snakes. “Alda’anan. Elder Ones. People of magic. Keepers of secrets they never deigned to share. But you know their secrets, don’t you? You wear their silver in your tongue.”
Rune took his sword in both hands. She was breathing hard, moving slow, just as bruised and exhausted as they were. If ever there would be an even match between them, it was now.
Her eyes drifted to his sword. Her lip curled and her fingers closed on air. Ice crackled around her hand, forming a long, curving blade.
This time, at long last, he moved first.
He swept forward in one of the graceful forms he’d learned from Garam, the tip of his kingsword whistling against the stone as his blade drew up to meet her.
Envesi’s sword of ice shattered and reformed in the blink of an eye. She twisted back, twirling in a sideways slash that missed him by a hair’s breadth and broke her blade against the wall.
As if that were a cue, the tremors increased.
“For the love of Brant,” Vahn spat, lunging forward. He struck Envesi full force, toppled her to the ground and wrestled her hands to the floor. “Go!”
Rune’s eyes flashed to the gap in the ceiling, where the first pebbles began to fall through. “Vahn—”
“We’re out of time! Get out of here and close the Gate!”
Rune hesitated.
“Go!” Vahn roared. He slipped a dagger from his boot.
Envesi twisted one hand from his grasp and lashed out. She knocked the dagger from his hand and raked claws across his face.
Screaming, Vahn fell back and clapped a hand over his eye as blood poured from beneath his fingers.
Rune snatched the dagger from the floor, seized Envesi’s arm and dragged her sideways, away from Vahn. She writhed in his grasp. The claws of her free hand pierced his leg and dug deep.
Choking back a cry of pain, he threw her against the tracks and drove the dagger through her hand, pinning her to the wooden rails.
Envesi’s shriek shook him to the bone. Raw power crackled in the air and made his skin crawl. Shuddering, he snatched his sword from the floor and turned to haul Vahn to his feet. “We’re almost there.”
Vahn groaned but stood, letting Rune pull him forward. He stumbled and turned his head to squint at Rune’s bloodied leg through his good eye. Then he shifted, caught Rune’s arm and dragged it over his shoulder to lend support.
Together, they ran.
“We have to close that Gate,” Vahn panted, nodding at the portal ahead. “No chance for her or anything else to come through.”
It took a dozen Master mages hours to stabilize the power from a Gate-stone in order to close a permanent Gate. With Rhyllyn, there had been a possibility, but now... Rune shook his head. “I’m not strong enough.”
“You have to be,” Vahn said.
“Easier said than—” Something caught his ankle and Rune went down hard. The kingsword skittered across the floor, slipped through the Gate and came to a rest in the worn grass on the other side. Talons burrowed into his flesh and dragged him back into the mine.
“Ran!” Vahn caught his arm.
“You know them. You know their secrets.” Envesi pulled harder. “Tell me, how many mages does it take? What must be done to reverse the corruption? Tell me!”
Rune wanted to curse her, but when he turned to look back at her, the words didn’t come.
Tears flowed from her ice-blue eyes and left pale trails down her dirty face. She clawed his leg with both hands, her face wild with madness, her eyes lit with a single hint of hope.
She’d pursued him for that. From the palace of Ilmenhith to the bowels of the earth, chancing the collapse in hopes of finding that answer. A single shred of information, given so freely to him but denied to her by every Alda’anan she’d spoken to—a slight they’d answered for with their lives.
In spite of everything, he laughed. “You can’t,” he said. “The corruption can’t be changed. This is it. We’re monsters until the end of days.”
Her hands went slack. “No.”
Vahn jerked him backwards and they spilled out onto the ground on the other side of the Gate.
“No!” Envesi howled. She lashed out with everything she had left. Power poured through the portal ahead of her as she clawed her way toward the Gate.
Rune lifted himself to his elbows. His eyes darted to the clear gem embedded in the stone archway, the source of the Gate’s power, then fell to the kingsword in the grass.
Vahn followed his gaze. “Wait.”
Rune took the blade in both hands and leaped to his feet, ignoring the pain in his legs.
“Wait!” Vahn shouted.
With every ounce of strength left in his body, Rune drove the sword forward.
The tip struck the Gate-stone and sizzling streaks of wild magic shot forth as the indestructible kingsword cracked the gem.
Envesi’s shrieks echoed in his ears as the magic surged.
Wild torrents of energy flowed up the blade and Rune bore down on it harder. The stone shattered and all its power was unleashed. A pillar of pure white magic lanced into the sky as the Gate collapsed.
Light filled his vision. Heat and agony flooded his senses and tore a scream from his throat. Magic seared his flesh until he couldn’t feel, his voice fading with the last of the air scoured from his lungs.
The chaos burned until nothing was left, and only light remained.
25
Awakening
Quiet voices filtered in from somewhere. Gentle laughter, happy tones, things he hadn’t heard for too long.
A soft, red glow filled his vision and Rune stared at it for a while before he realized it was light through his eyelids. He watched it for some time before he found his eyes wouldn’t open. Everything felt distant, hazy, as if he were floating.
He was not floating. Soft bedding moved against his skin when he lifted a hand to rake his fingers through his hair.
His hair, too, was soft. After the grit and dust that choked the air and clung to his sweating skin in the underground, it felt foreign. Too soft, too defined. He rolled a strand between his fingers and his brow furrowed.
His eyes opened.
The arm above his face was not his own.
He jerked his hand back, suddenly wide awake. That was not his hand, either.
Except it was. Five fingers flexed when he tried to move them. The smooth bronze flesh grew pale over his bent knuckles. He reached for it with his other hand, startled to see it looked the same.
Sitting bolt upright, Rune flipped the blankets off his naked body and looked down at himself.
His legs were smooth, the same tanned color as the rest of him. His eyes flashed back to his hands and, tentatively, he put them together.
He felt it. Felt it. The smooth surface of human flesh greeted his fingertips, marred only by the strange scar that remained in his left hand.
Laughter came closer with the sound of footsteps. Edagan swept in through the open door and stopped dead in her tracks when she saw him.
Rune met her eyes, his hands still spread before him. “Am I dead?”
Pure indignation filled the old mage’s face. “Mind your tongue, boy! I’m not that old. And cover yourself, for Brant’s sake!”
Suddenly self-conscious, he drew the blanket back across his hips.
“Well, that answers that,” Edagan called back through
the door. She turned and left as soon as she’d come.
Swallowing hard, Rune made himself look around.
He was home.
Not in the loft of the manor, but in one of the guest rooms. Late-morning sunlight filled the room, the air laden with the warm smell of baking bread. He listened to the muted sounds of people talking for a time before his eyes drifted back to his hands.
They were his hands. The scar still present in the left one convinced him of that, though the fact they were connected to the rest of him should have registered sooner. He flexed his fingers again and marveled at the way they moved before he studied the rest of his arm.
There were no marks at his elbow, no more irritated skin where scales emerged, no sign that scales had ever been. Just a light dusting of hair across the top of his forearm and skin so beautifully translucent he could see the blue veins in his wrist. He cradled his right hand with the left and traced their path with his thumb. It was warm, smooth, and his pulse throbbed faintly beneath his touch. His chest tightened until it hurt to breathe. He bowed his head and covered his mouth.
“We found you that way.” Firal pushed the door until it almost closed behind her. She lingered beside it. “Not naked, but...” She shrugged and paced closer.
Rune pulled the blankets a little farther, covered a few more inches of thigh and stomach.
She sat on the edge of the bed, looking at his hands. “It was the day before yesterday. Vicamros wanted you in the Royal City, but we thought it best we have you somewhere more comfortable. Until this morning, you were so still, I... I wasn’t certain you would wake up.”
Her fingers stroked his forearm, sending an unreasonable thrill up his spine. Then, shuddering, Rune closed his eyes against welling tears.
Firal leaned close and wrapped her arms around him. He fell against her and buried his face in her shoulder as the quiet sobs stole his breath.
She hushed him, stroking the nape of his neck and rocking him gently until the emotion passed.
“I didn’t think I’d see you again,” he whispered, curling his fingers in the blankets, not daring to touch her but unable to make himself move.
“And you shouldn’t have, fool man.” Firal shrugged him away, though she offered a handkerchief from the pockets of her skirts. “If any of you had any sense at all, you would’ve come right back from that prison and left that woman be.”