Petra led the way, staying toward the middle, and Gresh did the same. Endric felt drawn to the portraits, curiosity making him wonder at their importance. Why would the scholars have them here, in a place that seemed far removed from the rest of the university? Were they not important? Maybe they were scholars who had failed the university, men and women they wanted to forget. But even that wasn’t what drew him. Many were strangely made, with colors that seemed to swirl, practically forcing his eyes to follow the lines. Colors flashed, though when he blinked, they seemed to fade. Some of the figures almost looked at him, practically alive, but then he stared at them and realized that was only his imagination.
“What is it?” Pendin asked as Endric slowed to stare at the portraits.
“I don’t know. They’re just—”
“Strange. That one,” he said, pointing to one of the portraits with a man sitting atop what appeared to be a throne, a dog at his feet, “seems to be smiling at me.”
“Probably because he thinks you look like his dog,” Endric suggested.
Pendin shook his head. “I don’t like them,” he said again. “There’s something not quite right about them.”
Gresh and Petra waited for them at the other end of the room. Endric studied the portraits as he passed, but none of them appeared any less strange. Some, especially toward the back of the room, seemed to push him away from them, reminding him in some ways of the teralin when he’d gone through the mines. He shook his head, knowing that had to be nothing more than his imagination.
“You shouldn’t stare at them too long,” Gresh advised.
“Why? What are they?” Endric asked.
“They’re reported to be painted by the gods themselves,” he said.
Endric looked back, studying the portraits. “The gods? Why would you have them here rather than in one of the temples? Why wouldn’t the Magi have them?”
Gresh sniffed. “The Magi do not control everything to do with the gods, Endric. The Tower should be evidence of that.” He glanced toward the portraits, his eyes narrowing. “And they’re here because it has not been confirmed whether they are from the gods. The scholars who found them and restored them are not certain. They are old, and it could be nothing more than that.”
“You don’t think so.”
Gresh shrugged. “There is no denying the fact that they… draw you toward them. There is something about them. Maybe it’s nothing more than their age and the style to them.”
The door closed behind them, triggered somewhere else, leaving them cast in less light than before. The change was dramatic, and Endric had to blink a few times for his eyes to adjust.
When they did, he noted that they were in a small room, one that was something like the room where they had first entered the building. The ceiling was lower here as well, strange since the last room had a much higher clearance. Two lanterns were lit and gave enough light for Endric to see the stair at the end of the hall.
“Down there,” Gresh said, pointing toward the stair.
He started to turn, and Pendin frowned. “You’re not going to come with us?”
“Not there. There are limits to your mother’s tolerance. I think if I attempted to make my way down into her realm, she might have my hide. Besides, as you have seen, today is the selection day, and I have many things I still must do. Follow Petra. Do not touch anything. And good luck, son.”
Gresh clapped Pendin on the arm as he made his way past him.
Pendin watched him go, shaking his head. “That was strange,” he whispered.
“All of this is strange,” Endric said. “What makes that any stranger than the rest of it?”
“Him calling me son.”
Petra looked back at them, watching a moment before starting down the stairs.
Endric took a deep breath before following him, with Pendin right behind him.
The stairs were narrow, wooden for the first few, but they quickly changed to stone, as if cut from the rock. It reminded Endric of the stairs they had taken out of the mine and into the Ophan building, only these led down, deeper into the mountain.
Did they hide something down here? Was there something about the miners that he would find, some secret Pendin’s mother hid?
They continued to descend, the light from above fading, leaving only the darkness in front of them. As they did, Endric’s mind worked through what they had seen, and a question occurred to him.
“Where were you when we first came?” he asked Petra.
The old man glanced over his shoulder. Light from above danced in his eyes. “Nothing quite like I’m sure your mind is creating. I’m the caretaker.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means that I look over the gallery, ensuring its safety.”
“Why would you need to look over it?”
Petra shrugged. “Strangeness sometimes occurs there.”
He didn’t offer anything more as he continued to descend. Endric began to wonder how long they would go down. How deep were these stairs? Would they eventually find light again?
Finally, in the distance, Endric noted the soft return of light in the darkness.
They had never been thrown into full darkness, but enough so that he wondered how Petra managed to see clearly. The stairs had wear to them, a slight slope that seemed to have formed from feet over countless years. Endric wondered how old this place was. The university was nearly as old as Vasha itself, but he hadn’t thought that this building was as well.
At the bottom of the stair, there was another door.
This was made entirely of teralin.
Endric could feel the heat coming off the door, and a fleeting concern flashed through him as he worried whether the teralin was charged. If it had the wrong polarity, what would happen? But then, for it to have the right polarity, someone would have to have charged it, and if the scholars knew how to do that, what other secrets might they have hidden?
Petra fished out a ring of keys and sorted through them before finding the right one and jabbing it into the door. As he twisted it, he cast a glance back over his shoulder at Endric and Pendin, a smile coming to his face. Endric almost shivered at it.
The door opened, and Petra stepped aside, letting Endric step through, followed by Pendin. Once they were inside, the door swung closed once more, and a lock fell.
Endric turned back, but the door was shut. They were trapped.
12
Endric ran his hand along the door but had to draw it back because of the heat. This much teralin was uncomfortable to even touch. He managed to find the handle but couldn’t open it. They really were trapped.
There was a soft light in the room, one that seemed to come from the ground itself, leading to a steady glow that beckoned them onward, away from the door. At least they weren’t trapped in darkness. That might have been worse and would have reminded Endric too much of when he’d been trapped in the mine. There was a part of him—most of him were he honest with himself—that dreaded the mines. He didn’t consider himself scared of many things, but the time in the mines had left him unsettled, and with an uneasy sense of dread in confined spaces.
“Do we follow it?” Pendin asked.
Endric followed the trail of light down the hallway. “I don’t think we have much of a choice, do you?”
“Not since Petra locked us in here.”
Endric forced a smile and took a deep breath. Other than the teralin door, there was no sense of the metal here, nothing that made him think that they were trapped in a space where the mines ran. At least there was that much to be thankful for. The ceiling of this tunnel was high enough over his head that he didn’t have to duck, another thing he appreciated. The walls were smooth, reminding him of the Mage palace or the wall that surrounded the city, stone that appeared to have been hewn from the mountain in one piece. There was no evidence that tools had been used here. How could the walls be so perfect?
“This is old,” Pendin whispered as they made their
way along the hall. The lighting in the floor hadn’t changed, not shifting to anything more than a soft glow guiding them.
“How can you tell?”
“There’s no teralin here. Most places, the teralin is either mined or left within the walls for warmth. There’s none here.”
“Maybe they claimed all of it.”
Pendin shrugged. “Maybe. But that’s not the only reason I can tell this is old. There are no markings here, not like there would be in one of the primary shafts.”
“Other than the colored floor.”
Pendin shrugged. “Other than that.”
They continued along the hall. As they did, the color along the floor gradually began to change, going from a steady white to more of a throbbing with a hint of blue. When he noticed it, Endric paused, staring at it, but the colors didn’t change, not getting any more solid or consistent.
Endric moved on.
Down the hall, he could see that the floor changed again, the color now more clearly a soft blue. He pointed to Pendin, and their steps quickened until they reached the section of the floor where the light was solid.
The hall changed here as well, widening until they could no longer touch the sides with arms stretched out. Eventually, the colored tiles on the ground faded to nothing, ending in a solid wall. Endric stared at them, debating whether they should turn around, but there was nothing behind them either.
“What do you think?” Pendin asked.
“I think that we’ve got no place to go. There has to be something here if this is how we’re supposed to find your mother.”
“I’m not sure it is.”
“What do you mean?”
“This might be my father’s way of reminding us not to sneak into the university through the mines.”
“That’s a pretty harsh reminder.”
“He can be a harsh man.”
“He said he would bring you to her, and Petra seemed convincing.”
Pendin nodded. “There’s that. This is—”
“Strange,” Endric finished for him.
And he’d thought Listain and his secrets were strange. This was something else entirely. He didn’t know what to make of this, or what to make of Pendin’s mother and her connection to Listain.
First, they had to find her to ask. Then he had to see if she knew where he could find Senda.
Endric studied the wall, thinking that if he were to find anything, maybe it would be something on the stone, a sign of a doorway they could activate, but there was nothing. Endric turned and glanced down the hall they’d come down, noting that the floor that had been glowing no longer did. Had it stopped while they were coming down it? He hadn’t paid any attention to it, but maybe it had. Wouldn’t they have noticed if it did?
The lighting beneath them, that of the steady blue glow, began to flicker.
Then it faded, leaving them in darkness.
“That’s unfortunate,” Pendin said.
“Unfortunate? We’re now trapped in the darkness with no way out. I’d say it’s more than unfortunate.”
“We could go back to the door. Maybe if we pound on it enough, we can get Petra’s attention,” Pendin suggested.
“Or maybe they brought us down here to get rid of us.”
“I have a hard time thinking my father would have done that. It’s a lesson. There’s something here, we just haven’t found it.”
“We’re here. That’s about it. And the strangely lit flooring. And the teralin door and the narrow walls and—”
He felt a soft change in the air, like a breeze that pulled through.
That hadn’t been there before, Endric was certain of it.
“Pendin?”
“I feel it,” Pendin said. “I don’t know what it was from.”
“A door opened.”
“Probably. And it would have to be close for us to feel it.”
“What do you think—”
Endric didn’t have the chance to finish.
Light bloomed around them, nearly as bright as it had been in the gallery, filling the room with it. Endric blinked as his eyes adjusted, and he slowly began to realize that they were in a different place than they had been before. No longer were they surrounded by perfectly smooth walls; now they appeared to be in a well-appointed office, one that reminded Endric of his father’s office. A thick rug rolled across the ground, and a massive oak desk took up a large portion of the room. A hearth with a flame crackling softly in it filled one wall.
Endric found his gaze drawn to a small, petite woman sitting behind the desk.
“Is that…”
Pendin nodded. “Mother. You had to have a dramatic entrance, didn’t you?”
“What other kind of entrance is there?” She had a high-pitched voice and barely looked up as they appeared.
Endric looked around, trying to understand how it was that they had ended up inside her office. What had happened to push them in here? They had to have been pushed because he didn’t think that he had walked anywhere. They’d been in the hall—and then they had not.
“Where are we?” Endric asked.
“I thought you were more astute than that, Mr. Verilan. Your father certainly believes that you are.”
“You know my father?”
She did look up then and rested her arms on the table. Where Pendin was massive and muscular, sharing many of the same features as his father, Elizabeth was tiny. Petite. Endric imagined she would be easy to overlook, and suspected that was the way that she preferred it.
“I know many men within the Denraen, Mr. Verilan. Tell me, why are you here?”
Endric didn’t think that lying to Elizabeth would get them anywhere. She watched him with a gaze that seemed to take in nearly as much as Listain. Did he tell her about Senda or would she dismiss his concern?
Was this really about Senda for him?
He had to admit that it was not. “I need answers about Urik.”
Her eyes narrowed. “He’s gone. The Denraen seek him, as do the historians, but you know that, don’t you?”
He nodded. “Novan said—”
“Novan returned?”
Endric could only nod. “He found me while I was trying to get answers about where Urik might have been.”
“And where did you think to get answers?”
“In Urik’s quarters.”
She sniffed, a sound that came out something like a laugh. “You thought that you would find something more in his quarters than we have already discovered? Don’t you think we have searched them?”
“We?”
“Listain. Others like him.”
“You work with Listain?”
Elizabeth leaned forward. She shot him a heated stare. “Gresh would already have shared that with you for you to be here. Now. Are you going to continue to feign ignorance or do you intend to be useful? I thought Dendril’s son would be brighter than this.”
“How do you expect me to be useful?”
“Tell me why you thought to come here. What did you expect that you could discover here?”
“I want to know what Urik might be doing. Why he’s been sighted in Thealon.”
“To answer that, you must think like Urik.”
“Urik betrayed the Denraen. He betrayed the city.”
“And to find him, you must be able to outthink him. Do you think all battles are won with the blade? Most are ended before they ever begin through strategy.”
“Strategy?”
She sniffed and leaned forward. “Urik planned for many possibilities, which is why he managed to escape—and has remained free despite the Denraen and the historian Guild chasing him. To find him—and stop him—you will need to think of more possibilities.”
“You sound like Listain.”
She sat back, her lips pressed together. “I will take that as a compliment.”
Endric studied her. “Why Thealon?”
“Urik has long had faith,” she said.
“That�
�s not an answer.”
“No. I’m not sure why Thealon, but it’s a location that would allow him to make whatever arrangements he wants.”
“What arrangements are those?”
She frowned at him. “Do you think Urik is done with his planning?” She watched Endric through narrowed eyes. “How long do you think that he prepared? How long did it take him to rise within the Denraen, reaching a rank that few men ever reach?” Her gaze shifted to his uniform, noting the marks of rank on it. “For him to do what he managed tells me that he is a patient man, one who can plan. That kind of man would be able to think far into the future. Not only did he utilize the historian guild in his plan, but the Denraen. And you think that you can face him without a similar preparation?”
Endric shook his head. “I don’t know what I can do. Only that I intend to find him.”
She glanced down at the papers spread across her desk. “Why do you think that you must find him?”
“Because he attacked the Denraen. Because he is a traitor and allowed attackers into Vasha—”
“Did he do anything that should not have been done?”
The words hung in the air, and Endric felt a rising anger within him. Was Pendin’s mother actually insinuating that Urik might have been useful? That his attack on the city might have done something of value?
“He allowed my brother to be killed.”
“You brother was killed by the Deshmahne, men your father decided not to oppose. If you think to blame anyone for Andril’s death, perhaps you should blame him.”
It was a sharp rebuke, and one that Endric hadn’t thought much of, but there was a certain truth to it. Had Dendril not allowed the Deshmahne threat to grow, would Andril have even needed to head south, searching for information about them? Would he have been ambushed by their abilities?
“The Deshmahne violate every sacred thing in this world. There are some who think we should allow Urik to do what he has planned.”
“Even if it involves using the Denraen?”
She met his gaze. “The Denraen will not be shielded from them for long, Mr. Verilan. In that, I think even your father has come to understand the truth.”
Endric stared back at her, unblinking. He held her gaze for as long as was comfortable before he had to turn away.
Soldier Sword (The Teralin Sword Book 2) Page 11