by Martha Carr
L’zar turned toward the rest of the group as they approached the door-sized rectangle of light floating freely within the in-between. A small, thoughtful frown creased his brows as he gestured toward the door. “Would anyone care to hazard a guess about this one?”
“You kinda put on a lid on that before we could start.” Byrd scratched his head. “I’m not gonna hazard anything I can’t see.”
“Hmm.” L’zar tilted his head, then turned slowly back toward the exit doorway. “Indeed.”
“Okay, there’s something seriously wrong with that drow,” Ember muttered.
“That’s what I’ve been trying to figure out.” Cheyenne gazed around them and caught flickering shadows moving through the smoke. “We’re still being watched, too.”
“Oh, come on. I didn’t need to hear that.”
“Something tells me we’re not having a repeat mock battle anytime soon.”
L’zar stopped in front of the doorway and stared at it, tapping one long slate-gray finger on his pursed lips. “Corian, if I could—”
“I know.” The nightstalker gave L’zar’s back a not-so-gentle thump of encouragement before stepping past him to study the doorway. “We’ll work with what we’ve got when we get there.”
“Now I wish I’d paid more attention to the crone at Aelmhalk.” Maleshi cocked her head. “She specialized in doorways. Though at the time, if anyone had told me I’d make the crossing twice in my life, I’d have ripped their heart out.”
“Hmm. A refreshing reminder.” Corian slowly reached toward the doorway.
The outline of the shimmering rectangle burst into black fire, the flames flickering in suspended animation as if moving through sludge instead of what passed for air in this realm. L’zar stared at the ground between his feet and the doorway. “Interesting.”
“In more ways than one.” Corian nodded. “I’ll take point on this one. Unless, of course, General Hi’et would like to lead her return to the Motherland?”
“It’s hardly a procession in a warlord’s honor if she’s at the head of it, don’t you think?”
“Agreed. I had to ask.” He gave Cheyenne a quick, reassuring nod, then stepped briskly through the doorway and out of the in-between.
L’zar gazed at the slow black flames around him when he stepped through next. Maleshi waved Cheyenne and Ember forward after him.
“Is it gonna feel like I’m drowning when we step out of here too?” Ember asked.
The general chuckled. “It’s always better out than in. I suppose that’s a universal saying.”
“Great.” Ember floated through the doorway, and Cheyenne followed her.
Maleshi, Byrd, and Lumil joined their group on the other side in quick succession, and the party stood at their unexpected destination in Ambar’ogúl.
“What the hell is this?” Byrd muttered.
L’zar stood rigidly alert behind Corian. His wide golden eyes were the only part of him that moved as he scanned the chamber of black stone in which they’d found themselves. Then he took a long, deep sniff of the air and growled. “I believe the last option left to us was very possibly the worst.”
“Great.” Cheyenne wrinkled her nose at the thick metallic odor hanging in the air. It covered something deeper and heavier—blood, a scent not unlike ozone, and a darker element she couldn’t name. “I’d love for someone to just come out and say where we are.”
Lumil leaned away from the warped reflection looking back at her. She lightly flicked the glass and grunted. “Mirror, mirror on the wall and all that, huh?”
Maleshi eyed the dusty, chipped mirror serving as a one-way exit from the in-between. “No fair queen in this hellhole.”
“No way.” Cheyenne blinked in the near-darkness lit by two blazing torches hovering against the far wall of the chamber. “Did the portal ridge at my mom’s seriously lead us into the Crown’s castle?”
“The Heart,” Corian corrected.
“Sure. Whatever. This is it?”
“Yes.” L’zar took another deep breath and finally started moving again. “This changes everything.”
“Dammit.” Byrd rubbed a hand vigorously across his mouth before trudging after the group. “Now all the timing’s off.”
“No, our timing was perfect,” L’zar hissed. He stopped beside a dark metal table bolted to the black stone floors. The surface was scratched and dented in a few places, but that was nothing compared to the long-dried bloodstains on the metal and the stone below it. The drow spun and glared at Corian. “It was perfect.”
The nightstalker glanced quickly at Cheyenne, then headed toward the drow and kept his voice low. “We’ll make it work.”
“We’re too close, Corian. We’re way too close. The first stage has been wiped off the table now.”
“I understand, and we’ll find a way to contact them. But there’s no going back at this point.”
“I don’t want to go back,” L’zar growled. “I want this done right.” A purple light flashed behind the drow’s eyes as he bared his teeth and curled his lips in a snarl. He breathed heavily in hiss after hiss. “We didn’t come here to play it by ear.”
“Well, it looks like that’s what we have to do now. You’re still under the Weave, and you’re still running low. Don’t let this undo what you spent the last week weaving through it, understand?”
“I’m not as weak-willed as you so comfortably think, vae shra’ni.”
Both magicals turned quickly toward the other end of the chamber at the sound of footsteps descending a stairwell.
“That’ll be the first pair of eyes, then,” Lumil muttered.
“Quiet,” Maleshi hissed.
The group waited in silence as the footsteps drew closer. A flickering green flame became visible in the stairwell across the chamber, then the magical carrying it, a short, round gremlin with scrawny limbs and a bulbous yellow nose, appeared at the base of the stairs. The gremlin sniffed the air and turned to look directly at the intruders. “What in the name of the Crown’s vaulted hand do you think you’re doin’ down here?”
Corian’s blast of silver lightning caught the gremlin in the throat, seared clean through, and burst against the opposite stone wall. The gremlin dropped with a gurgling choke, spilling the green fire like a dropped glass of water across the floor.
Shouts rose from the stairwell, and four more magicals in the same dark blood-splattered robes raced down the stairs. Maleshi and Corian sprinted toward them, Lumil and Byrd close on their heels. Cheyenne followed, shooting L’zar a scathing glance, which he didn’t notice in lieu of the sudden appearance of a second metal table covered in dried blood. He needs to cut this shit out right now.
“Ember, can you keep an eye on—” A green dart like a crackling spear shot over the halfling’s shoulder and barely missed the warped mirror on the wall behind her.
“Got it,” Ember said even as Cheyenne snarled and entered the fray.
Five against four shouldn’t have been an issue in this dark chamber that smelled like blood and fear. The Crown’s appointed attendants in this place put up a much better fight than any dozen O’gúl loyalists Earthside. Two of them were gremlins who seemed to have mastered small bursts of teleporting themselves around the chamber. The other two were a skaxen and a shriveled goblin, neither of whom were any easier to lock on as targets.
Silver nightstalker light darted around the chamber as Maleshi and Corian took off after the yellow-skinned gremlins. Every three or four seconds, they’d catch up with one to throw or deflect a spell before the gremlins disappeared and reappeared somewhere else.
The skaxen leaped at Cheyenne, snarling and slashing with long, sharpened black nails at the ends of her orange hands. The halfling missed her first attack with her crackling orb of black energy. The skaxen darted from side to side, narrowly escaping Cheyenne’s next attacks, then the orange-skinned magical headed toward the far wall.
Cheyenne paused when the skaxen skittered up the vertical surface l
ike a spider, leaped to the adjacent wall, and kicked out to come at the halfling from a different angle. That’s new.
She stepped aside and sent her black whipping tendrils to coil around the skaxen’s outstretched claws. Then she dodged again and pulled the orange magical from the wall, tossing it into the closest table with a metallic clang. How many of these torture tables are in this place?
The skaxen scrambled to find a hold on the smoother surface and instead toppled to the floor with a hiss.
Lumil and Byrd took on the goblin together. It tossed small vials at them hand over hand that exploded in mid-air, sending bursts of blue sparks and stinging shards at them in billowing clouds. “Wall!” Lumil shouted.
“Heyup.” Byrd’s palms exploded, and a massive column of green fire roared up between him and the decrepit goblin. The O’gúl servant was blinded to Lumil sliding beneath Byrd’s wall of fire to bring her red-glowing fist up into the goblin’s gut. The chamber filled with a sickening crunch on impact, and the goblin sailed backward to strike the wall with a thump before slumping to the floor.
“Not bad, you backfield greenskin.” Lumil leered at Byrd, then nodded toward Cheyenne, who’d gotten herself pinned against another metal table by the snarling skaxen.
“How ‘bout it, kid?” Byrd called. “Need a hand?”
“Or a fist?”
Cheyenne grimaced at the foaming slaver dripping from the skaxen’s mouth. The orange magical got in a deep slash on the halfling’s upper chest beside her shoulder before Cheyenne finally managed to get a good grip on her attacker’s wrist. She summoned a churning black sphere in the same hand and the skaxen lurched away, clutching the stump of her arm.
“Traitor!” the skaxen shrieked. “The Crown’s fist will have your nilsch úcat’s head on her serving tray!”
Cheyenne sent a roundhouse kick into the side of the bleeding, snarling skaxen woman’s head. Her black Van collided with a crack, and the orange-skinned magical dropped to the dark-stained floor.
“Look at you.” Lumil stalked toward her, nodding in approval. “All agile and shit.”
“Just trained.”
“Not by that guy though, huh?” Byrd nodded at Corian, who’d pinned the gremlin he’d been fighting to the wall, claws extended from both hands, one fistful piercing the gremlin’s throat and the other through the magical’s belly.
With a hiss, Corian ripped his hands free, and the gremlin dropped. Six feet away, Maleshi clamped her black-furred hands around the other gremlin’s head and twisted sharply. The force of it snapped the yellow magical’s neck and sent him flying toward another blood-stained metal table.
“No.” Cheyenne grimaced at the nightstalkers. “I’m not sure Corian knows Earthside martial arts.”
“Ha. Arts.” Lumil stopped beside the fallen skaxen, dropped to one knee, and sent a glowing red fist into her head with a wet, sickening crunch. She stood and shook the blood off her hand.
“Look at that.” Byrd sniggered. “Red spinners, red fist.”
Lumil snorted. “Yeah, I’m accessorizing. Shut up.”
“What the hell?” Cheyenne stared at the skaxen’s broken skull and everything that was once inside it. “I already took her down.”
“No, you put that skaxen bitch to sleep.” Lumil shook another spray of blood and whatever else off her hand. “I put her down.”
“Why is all this necessary?” Cheyenne gestured toward the five bodies strewn around the torture chamber. “That skaxen wasn’t going anywhere.”
Byrd shrugged. “Not yet.”
“Cheyenne.” Maleshi moved swiftly toward her and shook her head. “This is the complete opposite of the day we found the smuggled shipments or even at your ceremony on Thursday. We don’t get to take prisoners here.”
“You don’t get to kill them when they’re down, either.”
“Look, we’re here, no turning back. You can be damn sure that if we left these O’gúleesh alive down here, the minute they came to, they’d be sounding the alarm and bringing the full force of the Crown’s iron grip down on us.”
“You don’t know!”
“Hate me if you want, kid. Hate all of us for what we have to do. Today, it’s them or us, and I promise you things won’t change one fucking iota around here if you martyr yourself because you can’t stomach doing what’s necessary to get us where we need to go. You don’t have to be a part of it on the same level if you have a problem getting your hands dirty, but do not bring this up before you and I are standing Earthside again. That’s an order.” General Hi’et narrowed her silver eyes at the halfling, then brushed past her and headed for the staircase.
“I don’t take orders from you.”
“You do today, halfling. Time to grow a pair. Move out.”
Byrd and Lumil followed the general across the chamber, shooting Cheyenne brief sympathetic looks. Corian paused long enough to make sure no one but the rebel party was moving. Ember drifted quickly to Cheyenne’s side and grabbed her arm to gently tug the halfling forward. L’zar swept his floaty, glazed-looking eyes around the chamber, then approached his daughter and nodded toward Maleshi. “I’ve missed having her around. I have to thank you for finding our general.”
Cheyenne gritted her teeth and stepped after the others. “Yeah, you should be thanking me. All of us. What the hell’s going on with you, huh? Quit standing around and help us fight for once. We need you!”
He turned halfway around to scan the bodies on the floor. “Obviously not.”
“That’s not the point, and you know it.”
“Cheyenne, listen to me.” They reached the base of the staircase and climbed at a steady pace after the others. Ember floated up the steps in a smooth line and tactfully didn’t turn around to watch L’zar’s short heart to heart with his daughter. His golden eyes blazed with the lucidity Cheyenne realized she hadn’t seen in him all day. “If we want any chance whatsoever of getting you to the Rahalma so you can place your marandúr where it belongs, this is how it has to be done. I don’t want to be useless, trust me, but if I play my hand too soon, we’re fucked. I’ve done my part, and I’ll continue to do it until it’s time for you to do yours.”
She studied the intensity of his gaze and hissed in frustration before storming up the steps. “You’re just full of excuses, aren’t you?”
“If it gets the job done, sure. Call it whatever you like.”
If he keeps up this space-case routine, I’ll end up calling it Gúrdu’s prophecy coming true. We bring L’zar Verdys all the way back to Ambar’ogúl, and he’s useless.
Chapter Ninety
When the party reached the top of the stairs, they found themselves in a circular chamber with a lot more magical light than the torture room below. The walls stretched up almost three stories around them, though the only doors existed on this level. Six massive doors of corrugated steel fitted with reinforced bolts closed off every entrance, and the circular room was empty.
Corian gazed around, his nose wrinkling in aggravation. “So far, so good, but it won’t be long until someone figures out there’s been a breach.”
“They can figure all they want.” Lumil raised her fist, swirling with sparking red runes. “Doesn’t mean shit if they can’t tell anyone.”
“Well, let’s hope that continues to be the case for as long as we need.”
L’zar moved in a slow circle around the huge room, his footsteps echoing in muted whispers across the layers of dust. “We need to get a message to the Star.”
Corian rolled his eyes before settling his gaze on the prowling drow. “How exactly do you suggest we do that? We planned for every contingency except this one. We would’ve had the resources at any other entry point, but we don’t here.”
“Let your mind out of its box, Corian,” L’zar growled, his golden gaze flickering over the chipped black stone encircling them. “I’ll get us where we need to go, but if the Star has no idea when or where our little rendezvous is supposed to take place, we might a
s well be walking into this stripped bare-assed naked as well as blind.”
The nightstalker raised an eyebrow and didn’t turn to follow L’zar when the drow circled the wall behind him. “You need to cool it.”
“I know what I’m tempting. Do your job.”
Closing his eyes, Corian took a deep breath, then headed for Cheyenne. “You have the activator?”
“Yeah.”
“Put it on.”
She pulled the silver coil from her pocket and held it toward him. “I don’t wanna screw it up. You know a hell of a lot more about what you need than I do. I mean, we’re in your house now, right?”
L’zar’s bitter laugh exploded through the chamber before cutting out again, and he kept pacing.
“Not my house, Cheyenne. After as many centuries as I’ve spent Earthside, I’m willing to bet the entire mechanism of this place has rewritten itself far beyond what I can make out with what little time we have.” He nodded at her outstretched hand. “That activator’s got more of you in it now than anything else. You might as well be offering me your toothbrush.”
“Oh, ew.” Ember grimaced and turned away.
“Okay, that’s the last analogy I expected you to use, but I get it.” Cheyenne stuck the silver coil behind her ear, waited for the pinch and her eyelids to stop fluttering, then looked around the stone chamber. Her jaw dropped. “This is insane.”
“What?” Ember drifted toward her. “You okay?”
Cheyenne scanned the stone walls, which only appeared to be stone. In most places, they were O’gúl metals, carrying the same frequencies, code, and tech-magic that had lined the walls and streets of Hangivol’s outer circles. A few dark boxes remained in the walls where the stone hadn’t been replaced, but those were few and far between. “I’m more than okay. It’s like reading someone’s mind, but that someone is a massive server network, and I’m standing inside it.”
Maleshi snorted. “That was much better than your analogy.”
Corian ignored her. “All right. I need you to find an access point for sending a message. This is going to a fairly specific location, though it’ll be hard to pin down.”