Dormael felt ice form in his chest, and tried to keep his breathing steady.
Mataez said the body was a grown man.
He repeated that thought over and over again in his mind. Some part of him knew that Victus would never set him up to discover Bethany’s body, even if the man was a traitor. Still, seeing her footprints in the dust—and there was no doubt in him that the prints were hers—made him feel a spike of terror he couldn’t hold down.
“Dormael,” Victus called from where he and Shawna stood. “Are you alright, boy?”
Dormael realized he’d been standing still, staring at one of the prints.
“Fine,” he said, “just taking it all in.” He kept his back to them. A fine sheen of sweat had broken out over his forehead, and he didn’t want Victus to see it. Mastering his emotions, he followed the prints around the corner.
The smell hit him as soon as he rounded it.
Burnt corpses had a stink to them that, once known, was never forgotten. Dormael’s first time catching the scent had been outside a small village in Neleka after the Galanian invasion. A major battle had been fought in a field nearby, and the residents knew that their options were either leaving the bodies to rot in the sun, or burning them. The smell hadn’t come out of Dormael’s clothes for days. It was the sort of scent that straightened the spine.
Dormael felt his hackles rise as the familiar stink hit his nose. As his magical light filled the tunnel beyond, he spotted the body. It was lying on the stone near the intersection of a few tunnels, one crispy arm reaching to the ceiling. A sconce was driven into the wall above it—one of a few along the wall—but it was warped, drooping as if the metal had grown soft with heat.
Dormael forced his gorge down as it tried to rise.
He followed the prints up to the body, and past it. In fact, the body sat at an intersection, and the prints went down each tunnel where the heat hadn’t scorched everything away. Unless the girl had skipped past the burning man over and over again, she must have come here before the burnt man—or woman, he supposed. Mataez was right—it was hard to tell.
Upon closer examination, though, Dormael started to feel certain the body was male. Men always had wider shoulders and more narrow hips, and this person had been tall. There were no features left in the scorched hunk of flesh that lay on the stone, but Dormael could see teeth through a hole frozen into a rictus on its face. He shuddered, thinking of the pain.
Why lay there? Why lay on the stone while you’re burning? What were you reaching for?
Dormael looked at the way the body was positioned, and realized something. He hadn’t been reaching for the ceiling, he’d been reaching outward—toward an intersection further down the tunnel. He’d been reaching out in supplication to someone.
Dormael felt a chill run down his spine.
You were begging for your life.
Dormael turned a sharp look backward, and caught Victus’s grim expression. It was obvious what had happened here to both of them, but Victus had made sure that Dormael saw it with his own eyes. A rock dropped into his stomach as the two of them regarded each other.
The man—whomever he had been—had been held down and burned to death.
Dormael turned back to the burned remains and made his way to where the other person in this situation had been standing. He wasn’t sure what he expected, but part of him knew that he would find something terrible. Dormael braced himself.
At the distant intersection, he found something odd. A pair of footprints had been left in the stone, but not in the dust. Two perfect, dainty outlines of bare feet were apparent in the stone, and everything else for about eight hands in all directions was cracked with millions of tiny fractures, as if a great amount of pressure had been put on the rock. Dormael knelt and touched his hand to it, sinking his senses out into the ether.
He could feel Bethany’s magic, still undulating in the tunnel like an angry mist.
“I needed you to see this for yourself,” Victus said from where the body lay. “I needed you to be here, to be a part of this. We need to find her, boy. We need to know what happened here.”
The bastard had known already—but Dormael resisted the urge to be angry.
He knew Victus was right.
“Bethany doesn’t know how to use magic this way,” Dormael said, rising to his feet. “This was wild, unfocused. I know you can tell.”
“Bethany did this?” Shawna asked, surprise warring with disgust on her face.
“She didn’t mean to do this—that’s what I’m saying!” Dormael snapped.
Shawna held her hands up in surrender, and Dormael gave her an apologetic look.
“I can tell that her magic was wild, but that doesn’t say anything about her intent,” Victus said.
“Deacon—I’m telling you, she wouldn’t have done this without a good reason.”
“All I’m saying is that we don’t know what happened here,” Victus said. “The man could have been following her, could have been trying to hurt her. Also, maybe he just startled her, scared her and something went terribly wrong. Maybe it got away from her, boy—you know how strong the girl is.”
“That’s not what happened here,” Dormael growled. “Look at the damned footprints! She’d been all over this hall, up and down the tunnels, looking in the doors as she came through. Her prints run in all directions, so this man was following her.” Dormael cast about on the ground, intensifying his magical light. Another set of prints, marred with haste, continued down the hallway in the opposite direction of the body. Dormael pointed them out. “See? She ran from him, off in this direction. I’m telling you, Bethany must have been defending herself.”
“Just because she came here first doesn’t mean he was following her,” Victus said. “You’re letting your emotions get in the way of your judgment, boy. Don’t look at me that way, gods-dammit—you know I’m right. All we know right now as that the girl is scared, she’s alone…and she’s dangerous.”
“Bethany is not dangerous,” Dormael said, but even as he did, he remembered her burning every Galanian on board the Seacutter to dust. The words tasted bitter in his mouth, and bile rose in his throat. Dormael couldn’t tell the deacon the real reason he knew that Bethany wasn’t to blame—that he himself had been kidnapped off the streets of Ishamael only hours before.
He was terrified for Bethany.
“Regardless, we need to find her,” Victus said. “We need to find her before anyone else gets hurt—including her.”
Dormael nodded, and Victus walked past him, following the prints down the hallway. Dormael let out a long breath and fell in beside Shawna as they followed Victus. She elbowed him, and signed to him in the Hunter’s Tongue.
What does this mean?, she asked.
Bethany is in trouble, he signed back. That’s all I know. She couldn’t have managed that sort of magic on purpose. She was scared, she was defending herself on instinct.
What happens when we find her?
I don’t know, Dormael replied. But I do know one thing.
What?
We can’t let anyone hurt her. I don’t know what Victus wants, and I don’t trust him.
I just hope Bethany is alright.
Me too, he said. Me too.
Dormael was so frightened for the girl that he could feel his hands shaking. His stomach felt like emptying itself, and his chest felt like exploding. It felt like the whole world should be on fire with his concern, but the hallway was full of eerie silence. The only sounds were their echoing footsteps as the three of them followed Bethany’s trail deeper into the tunnels under the Conclave.
***
Bethany drifted down the hallway, following the rivers of pulsing magic through the gloom. She no longer needed for her Kai to sing to the brass runes—the tunnel was alive with power. There was no need for her to see. Her magical senses guided her every step, and the armlet coaxed her along.
There was something nearby, some great, pulsing heartbeat that
vibrated every vein in her body. She could feel each beat of the thing, pulling at her, jarring her teeth with in a steady, humming rhythm. Even as she glided along the floor, something pulled at her magic, leaching a bit of it into the whirlpool that spun at the center of that pulsing heartbeat. Bethany was drawn to it like a moth to flame.
Come.
The alien song walked with her, singing to her in warm tones. It showed her images—stars spinning in a sea of blackness, flame climbing a wall of struggling men, a woman made of nothing but warm smiles and terrible fire. It beckoned.
Come.
Bethany took the woman’s hand, and let her float down the hallway at her side. She was surprised that touching her didn’t burn her skin, but she felt nothing. Bethany had her eyes closed, looking through the sight of her magical senses. Though the hallway was dark to her eyes, in her Kai the ghostly woman burned as bright as the sun.
The alien crooning surrounded her, wrapped her in a warm embrace. The fiega sent more images, but they were so jumbled that Bethany couldn’t make sense of them. She tried to fight them off, but they grew more insistent, slamming into the walls of her consciousness with greater and greater frequency.
“Would you just be quiet?” Bethany asked, her voice echoing through the dark.
Surprisingly, it did. The song dwindled to a silvery thread of music that tickled her senses like an errant breeze. Bethany sighed in relief.
Thank you.
A feeling of warmth came back to her in reply. Come.
Eyes closed, Bethany continued down the tunnel, hand-in-hand with the woman of fire. At times she felt as if she wasn’t walking at all, but floating along above the stone of the tunnel floor, her toes dragging a bit in the dust. At other times the landscape around them would change with the alien song, and the hallway would become a battlefield. Bodies struggled around her, men killing and hacking at each other in storms of blood and flame—none of it ever touched her, or the ghostly woman. They whispered through the scene like wraiths.
The distant hum of magic—the one she had been feeling all this time—grew closer as she made her way down the corridor. The woman led her ever onward, toward the center of its beating heart. Bethany got the impression that she was walking along a curve, maybe around a circle, but she couldn’t be sure.
Come.
“Child?”
The voice startled Bethany from her trance. At first she thought the woman standing before her was the woman of fire, but no—the ghostly woman was gone. The song of the armlet had retreated. This woman was cold, blond, and regal. She crouched in the puddle of light created by her own Kai, willowy beauty wrapped in a blue silk dress. She was as beautiful as a frozen statue.
“Child,” she said again. “Child, can you hear me? Are you well?”
“I—,” Bethany opened her mouth to speak, but the words froze in her throat. What if this woman was with the man she had seen before? What if she was here to hurt her, or capture her?
“It’s alright, child,” the woman said. She crouched and beckoned Bethany over. “Come here, dear, into the light. Wherever did you come from?”
Bethany realized she was standing in the dark. She could feel the woman’s magic flitting about the edges of her own, trying to get a sense of her. On instinct, Bethany reached out to her the way she did to the armlet.
The woman gasped as their Kais brushed each other. For the barest second, Bethany got a sense of the woman—cold, logical, but kind. Then, her magic retreated from Bethany’s Kai.
“You must be Dormael’s child—Bethany, isn’t it?” the woman asked. “I’ve heard of you, little one. They were right about your strength. You’ve a very powerful gift, my dear. Has anyone told you that? Come here, child. I’m not going to hurt you.”
“I’ve been lost,” Bethany said, finding her voice as she stepped forward. “Someone tried to grab me, tried to hurt me. I ran away.”
“Someone tried to hurt you?” the woman asked, looking her in the eyes as she came forward. “Someone in the Conclave tried to hurt you? Where are they now, child?”
“Up there,” Bethany whispered, pointing to the ceiling. “I left them up there.”
The woman’s eyes looked past her, into the darkness from which Bethany had come. She placed a pair of delicate hands on Bethany’s shoulders, and looked into her eyes.
“You’re alright now,” the woman said. “You’ve stumbled on the Crux, little one. My name is Lacelle—I’m the Deacon of Philosophers. Do you know what that means?”
Bethany shook her head.
“No matter,” Lacelle sighed. “No one will hurt you while you’re here with me.”
“They won’t?” Bethany asked. She wasn’t so sure.
“They wouldn’t dare,” Lacelle promised, squeezing her shoulder. “Now, come along. I suppose you can help carry books while you’re here.”
“Lacelle,” called a voice from another room. Bethany realized that an opening lay just beyond the Deacon of Philosophers, shifting light spilling onto the stones from the doorway. “Bring the girl in here, if you would. I believe she has been…summoned.” The last word came out with a healthy dose of incredulity.
Lacelle gave her a strange look, like a merchant weighing her take.
“Very well, Honored One,” she called. Then, she winked at Bethany. “Come along, dear. You’re about to see something that most wizards don’t get to see during the course of their lives.”
Bethany felt a small excited flame kindle to life in her chest, though it was a mute thing. It had been hidden secrets that had motivated her to come down into these dismal tunnels in the first place, and part of her felt like laughing at having found one. The memory of the man she had left in the corridors above, though, killed any enthusiasm that tried to wriggle to life.
Lacelle led her through a circular opening in the wall of the tunnel, and into a room the likes of which Bethany had never seen. It was vast and round, like a perfect bubble made of stone. The topmost part of the ceiling was so high that she felt sure it must go at least four levels up, though she couldn’t be sure. Lacelle led her out onto a narrow walkway, which widened into a circular platform some distance from the door. The room extended just as far beneath the platform as it did above. Bethany turned her head around and peered over the edge, trying to see if there was a column holding it all up, but she couldn’t find one.
Runes were scrawled in concentric lines around the walls of the vast globe, all resonating with charged magic. It hummed in Bethany’s senses like a note so low it could only vibrate the bones. There were designs and geometrical swirls worked over the surface of the stone as well, all humming with their own veins of power. She stumbled after the willowy, blond Lacelle, trying not to go slack-jawed in awe at what she saw.
In certain places, for reasons that Bethany couldn’t discern, gems hung on delicate chains of silver from the ceiling. These, too, resonated with magic. Posts made of different metals rose in intervals along the platform, which hummed with subtle musical notes to her ears, as well as magical ones to her Kai.
Lacelle led her onto a central platform, also circular. A table sat there, with two chairs pulled up to it. Another chair sat off to the side, facing the center of the platform. An old man stood by the chair, waiting with a pleasant smile on his face. Bethany, though, only had eyes for what hung in mid-air at the center of the platform, in what Bethany thought might be the exact center of the globe itself—the armlet.
It turned in the air, revolving around swirling currents of magic. Flame misted away from the ruby set into the sinuous bands of silver, disappearing into the air like mist in the sunlight. Bethany could feel its song, humming in contented tones as it greeted her magic. She resisted the urge to reach out for it once again.
“You may leave the girl with me, Lacelle,” the old man said. “Send word that the Initiates are to stay out of the Rat Holes until we can look into this matter of someone attacking young Bethany, here.”
Bethany didn’t
know how the old man had heard her—she had told the blond woman in barely a whisper, and that had been in the hallway outside. She peered at the old man, and realized that she recognized him. He had long, silver and white hair, and a beard that was even longer. It was wrapped in silver wire, an intricate web of thin, shining strands. Bright blue eyes regarded her with genuine warmth.
It was the Mekai—the leader of the whole Conclave!
Bethany’s mouth went dry.
“Of course, Honored One,” Lacelle replied. “Should I send for one of Victus’s thugs to investigate?”
“Lacelle,” the Mekai sighed, shaking his head. “Would you rather do it yourself?”
The blond woman tightened her lips, but didn’t reply.
“Very well,” the Mekai said. “Send for one of Victus’s thugs, then. And don’t speak so ill of them, Lacelle. You forget that all of them grew up right here under my tutelage. I feel very attached to them, you understand. Some of them were your own classmates, upon a day. Try not to be so persnickety.”
“Persnickety?” the woman scoffed, but it looked feigned to Bethany. “I’m not being persnickety, Honored One.”
“I could use more colorful words,” the Mekai said, “but our company would undoubtedly repeat them, and you’re not going to have me blamed for corrupting the language of such a pretty young girl.” He crouched, spry for his old age, and smiled at Bethany. “In the meantime, Bethany and I are going to talk. I’ll tell you a story, dear. How does that sound?”
Bethany smiled.
“I like stories,” she said. “My favorite is about Leyton Likinian, Pirate-King of the Seas.”
Lacelle gasped, but the Mekai just chuckled.
“Where did you hear those stories, child? The ones about Leyton?” the Mekai asked.
“An old man used to tell them, back when…,” she trailed off. She suddenly didn’t want to say. “A long time ago,” she finished. “I heard them a long time ago.”
The Seven Signs: Three Book Collection Page 74