by Evie Manieri
Soon the steps grew less steep and the air steadily warmer. The space between her and Eofar widened unexpectedly and only a few steps further the floor levelled out in a small cavern, not much larger than her apartment in Arregador House. Guards filled the space up ahead of her and more pressed in behind; she had no room to draw her sword. They had blundered right into a snare, like a bunch of stupid rabbits—but no, the cavern opened up on the other side and the strike force had only paused to draw their swords before charging through. Kira fumbled Virtue’s Grace out of the scabbard and went after them. As she passed through the crooked archway, she heard Gannon and then Vrinna give the order to keep going.
Kira charged into the cavern with the other high clansmen all around her, and just like them, she ran five paces and then stopped in awe before the people coming in behind her forced her forward again.
The cavern glowed with light, thanks to some silvery substance coating everything she could see with an iridescent, subtly colored sheen. Kira had often looked down into the cracks around Ravindal at the gently glowing mists, but nothing had prepared her for this. She felt like she was inside a snowflake, or an infinitely faceted jewel. Slender white cones hung down from the ceiling and rose up from the floor, but the vaulted spaces in between them were left in darkness. Streams and miniature waterfalls bubbled up and down out of the rocks and collected in pools; the steaming water filled the caves with a creeping, faintly aromatic mist. The weird glow and the vastness of the space played havoc with her eyes and they started twitching as she tried to focus. She tightened her grip on her sword, intimidated by a beauty that was as indifferent to her approval as it was to her existence.
The soft light illuminated a series of caverns on either side, while across the ethereal landscape the cavern floor rose in tiers, winding around the rock pillars toward the top of the cavern. Chasms fell away on either side, and from them came a faint but deep-noted roar that Kira thought might be the underground river gushing through the cliff and out into the sea. Death lined the way forward: bones lay everywhere, both singly and in heaps, yellowed, but blotched with the same silvery stuff as everything else. Some lay within nests of shriveled, hairless pelts, while others sprawled out across the floor. Skulls, some of them distressingly small, were scattered like pine cones under a tree, and abandoned among the bones sat the kinds of things people didn’t normally leave behind: swords with leather-wrapped hilts still in their scabbards; chains of simple gold links; time-eaten spearheads without their shafts.
A white bat with red eyes dropped from an invisible niche up above her head and streaked off into the mist. So far, she had seen and felt no one else.
Gannon ordered the strike force into a tight phalanx behind him as he made his way across the cavern floor; the rest he left behind to safeguard the way out. The cave rang with the strike of metal-tipped boots and the jingling of buckles as the emperor’s expedition led the rest of them through into a low-ceilinged tunnel. Kira found herself still just behind Eofar and his fussy sword, and she counted the gold claws on his silver triffons to keep from thinking of suffocation. Just when fear had squeezed nearly all the breath out of her they emerged into another cavern, this one running on longer and lower than the last. She strained to listen into the darkness beyond the reach of the steady silver glow and kept her eyes down to avoid stepping on the bones, but all she could hear was the pounding of her own heart and the constant drip and burble of the water.
There’s nothing here, Kira told herself: not the Mongrel, nor Trey, nor the cursed, nor anyone at all but the bats and whatever they fed on. The stories in the Book were all lies. She was ashamed of herself for having given them even a moment of credence.
Several dark tunnels led out of the second cave, but after a quick conference between Gannon and Vrinna, their party moved toward the largest. For a moment Kira wavered, wondering if she should stay behind with the guards at the tunnel entrance, but she steeled her resolve and carried on. She had come down here to set her mind at rest. She would see this through to the end.
She regretted her decision when she came out into the next cavern, not more than one long leap from a wide crevasse where luminous mist rose into the stifling air. Cairns of rough stone mottled with the same silver slime crowded the wide ledges on either side, leaving hardly any room to walk between them, with precious possessions and offerings, rotting furs, tarnished jewelry, even daggers, swords and battle-axes, piled on top of each tomb. And there, standing alone at the back of the cavern, was the largest cairn of all, and Valor’s Storm must surely be the sword laid across the top, bathed in the shaft of soft daylight shining down through the crack just above it. For the first time Kira thought about Ravindal, far over their heads, and awe lanced through her fear.
As Gannon continued forward the guards and remaining clansmen followed him, threading their way in single file through the tombs. Sweat dripped down Kira’s back; she wasn’t the only one to have removed her helmet and hood. The taste of chalk filled her throat, and the warm spray came at her like a triffon huffing in her face. The heat, the claustrophobic surroundings, the sound of running water were all combining to send her into a kind of stupor, and she imagined her body turning as insubstantial as the mist and sinking down into the rock beneath her feet, where she would see the army of the cursed crawling over itself like an insect swarm, ready to burst out in a storm of disease and destruction.
She stepped back, wanting to put more distance between her and the crevasse, and the heel of her right boot crunched down on something behind her. Gingerly, she moved to one side, dreading the sight of a crushed skull, but found only the shards of what might have been a clay vessel or a cup, still with traces of gold decoration. She bent down to touch one of the pieces and found it wet and just a little sticky. A little of the silver stuff rubbed off on her hand, but she could see the glow only very faintly. The feel of it between her fingers reminded her of the yellow scum that collected in the cracks around the hot spring pools.
A silent cry sent her straightening up again with her sword at the ready, but the guards were only responding to Gannon, who, wreathed in mist—like Onfar himself looking down from the Celestial Hall—was lifting the sword ceremoniously from Eowara’s tomb. The scabbard must have been perfectly fitted, because not only was the sword intact after seven centuries but it had not a single spot of tarnish or blemish on it. The bronze blade tapered to a longer point than their modern swords, and a two-pronged guard separated the blade from a cylindrical grip ringed with time-darkened golden bands.
They all waited for something to happen, but nothing did. The water pounded ceaselessly somewhere down below, and though every eye watched the crevasse for some sign of movement, there was nothing: no Mongrel, no Lord Valrig, no cursed.
Kira managed her first real breath since she had entered the tombs—and then Gannon’s wrath blew through the room like a gale.
s it struck a ledge or outcrop further down before the roaring waters deep in the chasm finally swallowed it up.
Onfar’s Circle—nearly within sight of where Trey and the others were hiding. Kira’s throat closed up on her all of a sudden like someone was squeezing it, and a sharp pain flared in her chest. She didn’t fall, but the cave went a little darker.
said Vrinna, her gray eyes flashing behind the mist.
she said, clutching her forehead.
She started backing up, but then Eofar took her by the arm and pulled her aside.
She could hear Gannon behind her, issuing orders to keep guards posted in the caves at all times, and to send squads to search the tunnels they had not yet explored.
Even though her bad turn was genuine, she couldn’t have found a better excuse for getting out of the caves ahead of Vrinna. Eofar kept hold of her as they made their way back through the caverns and to the dark stairs, but he never said a word, and she noticed he was keeping his emotions tightly locked down. In the darkness she could see the silvery stuff blotching her clothes and hands and even patching her companion’s face. The color reminded her of lamplight shining on the snow through a green-glass window. She could still taste the mist; she wondered if her lungs were now glimmering on the inside like a glow-globe.
Eofar helped her over the last few stones and out into the Front. She turned her face up to the sky in relief as she slid through the slush, loath to tear her eyes away from the iron-gray clouds even as the points of five thousand weapons nervously rose up to greet them. The generals Gannon had left in charge came forward to find out what was going on, and as Eofar began to explain, she continued walking back across the Front toward the city, barging through the ranks of the soldiers, colliding with shields and pushing through the groves of spear-shafts without making any effort to hide her distress. Let them think what they liked.
said Kira, but then hesitated. She had never lied to Aline before, but she balked at explaining how she had just drawn a target on her little sister’s back by antagonizing Vrinna.
She left Aline, but had only taken a few steps when she realized her hand-servant had not moved. She sighed, and came back.
Kira started off again, but then turned back once more.
Kira swallowed. So he had flubbed it after all.
As Kira walked down Ward Street she tried to calculate how long it would take Aline to give Rho her message, but it wasn’t until she turned the corner that she realized her mistake. She thumped her fist against her thigh in frustration: she shouldn’t have told Aline to look for Rho in his room—she should have told her to look in the first place he’d be able to get a drink.
Chapter 23
As Kira hurried through the streets toward the stables, she couldn’t stop picturing Vrinna and her guards following right on her heels. The caves had left her disoriented, and the echoes of her own footsteps chased her across Berry Street, along the covered walkway and into the alley behind tiny Alvarig House, where the snow covered everything with silence.
The stable complex sprawled at the opposite end of a deserted street—the usually bustling shops
were all closed because of the opening of Eowara’s tomb—and now Kira broke into a run. She had to get her triffon saddled and away before Vrinna and her squad reached the stables. She kept thinking the nervous energy charging through her should have made her run faster, but instead her boots stuck to the ground as if they’d been covered in sap. Her mind kept swerving back and forth: first she saw Trey running to her and pulling her into his arms, and then he was looking right through her and recoiling in disgust as she reached out for him. She tried to concentrate on just getting to the stable, but she could not stop thinking about how the last three years might have changed him.
She was halfway down the long street when a hand shot out of the darkness of a porch and grabbed her coat, pulling her sideways with enough force to drag her off her feet and send her flying into a dirty yard. Her sword banged hard against something that turned out to be an anvil standing outside a shuttered smithy and the impact knocked the wind out of her. A shape emerged from the porch as she looked up; it was obvious from the scarlet hostility burning in the air that Vrinna had beaten her here.
The captain drew her black-bladed sword and held the point to Kira’s chest.