by Beth Alvarez
The hall branched in multiple directions. She stopped in her tracks and stifled a sigh. She raised the mage-light, but its cool illumination revealed no hint what waited ahead. “Well, General Daemon, where do we go now?”
“Just Daemon will suffice,” he replied curtly as he limped forward to peer through each doorway. “I hate titles.”
Firal stepped aside to let him look. “And yet you’re so willing to flaunt that you have one.” But if he really was a general, why was he out in the ruins on his own? Generals belonged in war rooms or planning tents, surrounded by officers in tidy uniforms. She twisted a curl of her black hair between her fingers.
“That’s not flaunting, that’s informing. Come on, it’s this way.” Daemon jerked his head in the direction he’d chosen. His limp grew less evident as he took the lead.
“Have you ever been in these catacombs before?” she asked, unable to mask her doubt.
If the question bothered him, he didn’t show it. “No.”
“Then how do you know we’re going the right direction?”
He halted just long enough to press a clawed hand to the wall. “Look.” He wiped over the surface of the stone. Dust and grit flaked away to expose delicate etchings so worn, they were almost invisible.
Squinting, Firal held the mage-light closer. “What is that?”
“The closest thing to a map you’ll get, in the ruins. Your efforts to draw a map of the place have been valiant. Some drawings in your book are close. But the only real way to get around?” He tapped the etchings with a claw before he continued down the hallway. “Learning how to read these.”
Firal did not follow. Instead, she held her pebble light closer to the wall and touched the symbols, her brow furrowed. She had paid utmost attention to her surroundings in the ruins. Surely she would have noticed if there were etchings in the walls above ground. She’d only seen something like them a handful of times, carved into corners where corridors intersected. “And on the markers along the path to the market,” she murmured to herself. The markings did appear similar. Perhaps he was right after all.
“You coming?” Daemon’s voice scattered her thoughts. He was some distance ahead by now, and the mage-light barely illuminated his figure.
“Coming.” She recharged the light once more and hurried after him.
“How long have we been walking?” Firal groaned, rubbing her eyes. The mage-light in her hand had grown dim again. Recharging a light took little power, but she wasn’t sure she had the energy—or the concentration necessary—to spare.
“How long have you been whining?” Daemon retorted, though he paused to lean against the wall and let her catch up. Even with the lingering pain he must have in his leg, he had better endurance than she did. She’d let him take the lead some time ago.
More than once, Firal had thought about trying to ease his pain. He hid it well, but after extensive healing, he had to be just as tired as she was. Despite the edge of irritation in his voice, she thought she heard a hint of sympathy for her weariness.
Firal rubbed her cold arms and frowned when it didn’t make her goosebumps go away. Elenhiise was a tropical island; it was strange to be cold. But then, being in the winding corridors of the underground was a new experience. It was wet, musty and, now that she thought about it, frigid. At least, in comparison to the temperatures she was used to.
Undeterred by his sarcasm, she persisted. “How much longer until we get out of here? I’m tired and it’s freezing down here. Do you even know where we are now?” She was well aware the onslaught of questions sounded like more whining, but she no longer cared. “Can’t we sit down for a bit?”
“There’s still a ways to go. But I’d be happy to stop if you’d like me to warm you up a bit.” His luminescent eyes raked over her from head to foot and narrowed with an unseen smirk behind his mask.
Firal gaped, folding her arms over her chest and shuddering. “Keep moving.”
“Then quit complaining.” Daemon shrugged.
She dropped her eyes to her toes as she scuffled forward. Her feet were sticky and numb from sloshing through slimy, icy puddles, and the constant rubbing of her sandal straps had given her blisters. The edge of her skirt was damp and dirty and stuck to her ankles when she tried to walk. The weakened mage-light in her hand began to flicker.
“Fix that,” he said.
“I can’t.” She held out the little rock at arm’s length. “You do it, I’m too tired to focus.”
Daemon paused where a new pathway opened to the side. “I can’t.”
Firal raised an eyebrow. “You’re Gifted, but you can’t even make a simple mage-light?” If that was the case, it was laughable. Even the temple’s least skilled students were capable of creating lights.
“That’s not what I meant.” That he didn’t sound offended caught her off guard. “I can’t do it because I’ve never been shown how. You know how magecraft works.”
He had a point, but Firal wasn’t about to validate his thoughts. Some mages could fumble their way through tasks by following an example, studying the flow of power in someone else as they worked. Others stumbled into the knowledge of how to wield their power in a few rudimentary ways on their own. Both developed clear pathways for the torrents of power to follow, but without a mentor, it was difficult to learn how to further access and expand those paths. A teacher was necessary to understand the nature of the magic in their blood.
And heritage was a concern. Until she’d sensed the Gift within him, Firal had assumed only the Eldani were Gifted. It was well known that humans never were. Daemon did not seem to be either, and so she didn’t know where he fit.
“It’s too bad they don’t accept the likes of you into the temple.” She lifted her chin. “If you can’t figure out how to make a mage-light after seeing me recharge it this many times, then you’re hardly a mage.”
Daemon snorted. “Oh, is that the reason they wouldn’t accept me? I would have thought it was because nobody believes Underlings exist.”
She bit off a retort and flicked the dimly-glowing pebble at him. “Here.”
His reflexes were good; he snatched the stone out of the air and rolled the stone between his green-scaled fingers before letting it settle in his palm. “What?”
“Charge it.”
“What?” he repeated. “I just said—”
“All you’re doing is transferring a bit of your energy into it. I felt you reinforcing my healing with your strength when I mended your leg. This is the same thing.” She lifted the damp hem of her skirt above her ankles and tip-toed closer. “Feeding power flows to someone else’s healing can be a challenge. If you could focus your magic enough to do that, I’m certain you can make a simple light.”
Daemon hesitated, but said nothing. He turned the pebble over with a claw. Its light pulsed as it faded.
Magecraft was a fickle thing. Though it was called magic, Firal had never been certain if that was the right term for it. It was energy in its purest form, able to be shaped and molded to the user’s will, with the assumption that the user knew how to manipulate it—and how to seize it. The ebb and flow of magic was everywhere; everything that existed contained potential energy, and that shifting tide was the reason they called the power flows to begin with. The trick was to harness it and redirect those flows into a manifestation of one’s intentions. But energy was to be borrowed, never taken. Consuming all of something’s potential power was dangerous, and the risk of something being unmade was too high a price for power.
She watched Daemon closely, gaining the distinct feeling that he frowned, though she couldn’t see his face. Perhaps the healing had been different. He’d felt what she was doing and fed her raw power, nothing more. Mages could not heal themselves, and she hadn’t felt him trying to manipulate her power once it poured into him. He would have felt the energy move through her each time she’d recharged the light, but without being connected to that stream, perhaps he didn’t know how to mimic it on his own.
The longer he stood in silence, the more amused she became.
“I can see perfectly well in the dark,” he said at last, catching hold of her hand and pressing the pebble into her palm. He twitched his cloak forward over his shoulders and stalked off into the shadows.
Firal hurried after him. “Wait for—” Cold hands burst from a dark side passage and wrapped around her arm. She shrieked and the dimly glowing stone fell from her hand as the soldier twisted her arms behind her back.
A second soldier emerged from the shadow and strode toward Daemon. “We’ve been looking for you for hours, sir. Is everything all right?” He offered an arm.
Daemon pushed it away. “Fine, though I can’t imagine why it took you this long to find another entrance.”
Firal writhed in her captor’s grasp. The man covered her mouth with a gloved hand before she could shriek again.
“What do we do with the girl, sir?”
Daemon studied her, the strange light in his eyes seeming to dim. “Bring her. We’ll take her to Lumia and decide what to do with her after that.” He turned and jerked his head in the direction he meant them to go.
Firal’s heart plummeted.
“Yes, sir,” the men echoed in unison, following Daemon’s lead. Their hold on Firal’s arms tightened and they marched her onward, into the dark.
The passages grew warmer as they traveled and the ground underfoot went from slick and clammy to bone dry. Firal did not know what to make of the change. Nothing on the island was particularly dry, save the temple’s library. A team of Masters supervised the environment the books were kept in, protecting them from humidity and decay. Somehow Firal doubted the place they were headed was under the influence of cautious temple mages.
She had struggled and shouted until her throat ached. Eventually, the soldiers and Daemon tired of shushing her. Once her throat turned raw and her voice raspy, she’d given up. Defeated, Firal shuffled along between her captors. Her blistered feet were rubbed raw, the dust underfoot a faint but constant sting in the wounds.
She could no longer see Daemon leading the way. The soldiers carried no light, and the glow of his eyes had vanished some time ago. From time to time she thought she heard one of the soldiers brush a hand against the wall. She assumed they were checking the directional engravings on the walls. Had anything been visible, she would have tried to commit the marks to memory.
Though the air grew fresher as they ventured onward, knowing they would emerge somewhere unfamiliar provided no comfort. The two soldiers spoke now and then, but the words were in a harsh, guttural language Firal couldn’t understand. One pulled her hair and made a sound of disgust. Both of them laughed and, though she couldn’t understand what they’d said, she felt a flush rise into her cheeks.
“That’s enough,” Daemon barked. “Just walk.”
His voice startled the men to silence. A moment later, Firal stubbed a toe on the bottom step of a stairway and yelped in surprise. The stone floor of the passages they’d ventured through had borne dips and ridges, but she hadn’t expected a staircase. Her captors shoved her forward and she stumbled. How was she to climb stairs in utter darkness? Firal bit her lip as she slid a foot forward to scout out the first step, then a second. It wasn’t until they reached the top that she noticed the light.
The walls and floor were pure black, cut and carved of solid stone so there were no seams. A chilly blue light gleamed somewhere far ahead, reflected on the glassy, polished walls. It was bright enough for her to see Daemon’s silhouette, now just a few paces ahead of them.
“Come,” he said.
The soldiers urged Firal into motion again.
Few and far between, peculiar torches mounted on the black stone walls offered those tiny flickers of blue light. Firal studied the first one they passed. It behaved like some sort of magic, though she couldn’t sense any hint of energy. There was no flame and no warmth, and Firal was not certain the torches were even wood. The glowing end provided feeble, icy illumination that made everything look just as chill as the air. Not that there was much to see. Every hallway and door looked the same as the last, plain and black, though remarkably well-crafted. It was dismal, to say the least, yet it held a proud beauty. Never had she imagined there could be anything like this below the ruins.
The more doorways they passed, the more Firal noticed the little details she’d first overlooked. The coarse grain in the lacquered black wood stood out, as did the web-like metal sconces that held the torches. Even the dark stone of the floor was unusual, shining black and specked with ashen flakes. Firal had seen stone like that before, though a small piece, in possession of one of the Masters. A particular sort of obsidian, she recalled; she knew little about it beyond its name, but the glittering flecks of gray-white made her imagine smoldering motes of ash trapped within the black glass. That a Master had seen fit to keep it meant it was something important.
The puzzle began to come together. It wasn’t just a maze or labyrinth they walked through, nor an underground extension of the ruins she knew. They walked inside a palace. The realization had only just cemented itself when one last turn put them before a pair of large black doors, ornately carved with swirls and thorns, its corners decorated with matching shapes in wrought iron. Daemon pushed open one door and slipped inside without a word. Before Firal could identify more than one leaf carved into the door’s thorny mural, the soldiers forced her inside.
The great hall was no brighter than the rest of the palace, but the light here was warmer and rose from small fires held in spiked iron braziers between fluted stone columns. Dismal tapestries lined the walls. Traces of a carved relief along the ceiling’s edge caught and refracted flickers of the ruddy light. A threadbare red carpet ran the length of the room, and Firal’s eyes followed it to a throne atop the high stone dais.
A fair-haired woman sat upon the throne, as frigid and beautiful as the cold lights in the corridors behind them, and Firal’s breath caught in her throat when she met her icy blue eyes.
“Well, now.” A strange smile played upon the woman’s full lips as she brushed a curl back from her face. “It’s not every day we have a guest. You’ve done well to retrieve her, my pet.” Her words were tinted with amusement, her tone almost sultry as her eyes slid to Daemon.
He moved to stand beside the throne, the limp gone from his stride.
“I didn’t mean to intrude,” Firal started, twisting her arms in the grasp of the soldiers that stood with her. “I was just—”
“Lost?” The woman chuckled and shook her head. She wasn’t beautiful; that had been a poor choice of words. She was glorious. Her skin was like fine porcelain and thick, dark eyelashes lined her too-blue eyes. Platinum blonde curls fell past her full breasts, and her fine red silk dress hugged her supple hourglass figure in a manner that was almost obscene.
Firal had to swallow before she could speak again. “You’re the queen of the Underlings, aren’t you?”
“Really, is it that terribly obvious?” Lumia laughed, a sardonic edge to her voice. “And here I was told the Eldani didn’t believe in our kind.”
“I know only what I have been taught, M...Majesty.” Firal tried not to cringe at the bitter taste the title left in her mouth. She almost didn’t catch the flick of the queen’s hand, but the soldiers released her, bowed, and retreated to the doors. They’d held Firal for so long that the sudden absence of their hands left uncomfortable cool patches on her skin.
Lumia pulled back Daemon’s hood and threaded her fingers through his dark hair as he crouched beside her throne. Her eyes never left Firal’s face. “Tell me, girl. What is your name?”
“Firal, Majesty.” She offered a curtsy, suddenly aware of how dirty and ragged she was in comparison to the woman before her. “I’m a student at the Kirban Temple.”
“I recognize magelings when I see them.” Lumia lifted her chin. “If not by appearances, then from feeling the magic within them.”
Firal blinked at the Underling woman
in surprise. Were all of their kind Gifted? She had sensed it in Daemon, but not in Lumia. Come to think of it, she couldn’t feel any energy in Lumia at all. As a healer, she should have at least sensed the queen’s life force. A shiver stole down her spine.
The queen did not seem to notice. “Are you planning to tell me what you were doing in my ruins, little mageling? Last I knew, leaving the temple grounds without an escort was against the rules. Or has that changed in the last century?”
How could the woman know temple rules? Firal’s brow furrowed, but she did not ask. She doubted Lumia would appreciate questions instead of answers. “I did not mean to trespass, Majesty. I beg your forgiveness. I was only curious.”
“I assume, then, that you don’t know the ruins are sacred.” Lumia sniffed and drummed her unoccupied fingers on the arm of her throne. “Visitors are not welcome, and from what I understand, this was not your first venture into my territory.”
“No, Majesty.” Firal’s heart pounded in her ears. Here she thought she’d escaped punishment by evading the attention of the temple Masters. “I went for a walk and I lost something precious to me. I hoped to find it again. But I didn’t know the ruins belonged to anyone. I thought they were only forbidden because we could get lost, or—”
“Then none of you have been taught what this labyrinth once stood for! What a pitiful state the temple is in. Why, if I hadn’t been sent off like a—” Lumia stopped herself short and swallowed the words before they could escape. Her shoulders bunched as they went down hard.
She drew a deep breath before she spoke again, her voice dangerously cool. “With that sort of attitude, it’s no surprise we are rejected by your kind. My followers, they have done no wrong. Their only fault is that they were not born Eldani.”
Firal shrank back as the queen went on.
“This is our home.” Lumia curled her empty hand to a fist. “Every day, my people struggle just to keep living, hiding here, forced into caves and tunnels beneath our glorious island. Why should you be allowed to crawl into our home? Why should you be allowed to walk free, when the rightful rulers of the island hide to protect their very lives?”