Bethany followed the tracks in the dust lower and lower into the tunnels, until she was sure that she must be very far underground. She’d gone down four more levels and ended up in a hallway that was a little different than the ones she’d been in before. The metal designs were still laid into the stone of the walls here, but there were also designs along the floor. The walls were already shining when she’d gotten here, but the metal on the floor looked like the steel of Shawna’s swords, and it hummed with a different sort of magic than the other strange metal designs. There were two thick bars of it set into the stones underfoot, one next to each wall. Between them, symbols were interspersed along regular intervals, but Bethany had no idea what they meant. Maybe Dormael and D’Jenn hadn’t gotten around to teaching her to read those, yet. She was afraid to touch the steel with her Kai, so she just left it alone as she made her way down a curving passage, following the tracks.
Eventually, she realized that she was walking around in a large circle. She could feel something strange in the magic. The very air seemed to be humming in the hall, and as she followed the footprints down the corridor, she began to hear a lilting, alien song moving through the air, but muted as if it were far away. She’d heard that song before, and it stopped her in her tracks.
It was the armlet – the fiega. It had to be down here, somewhere. But how had it gotten here?
It recognized her, just as she recognized it. It reached out to her, touching her magic with a tentative greeting. It was happy to see her, she could feel that, and talking to it didn’t hurt so much, now. Her Kai flowed through the air, rushing out of her and singing with the song of the fiega with a strange harmony. Bethany giggled at the elation that was leaking into her from her Kai.
“Hello,” she whispered to the armlet, and she felt it reach toward her, gently this time.
She reached into the silver box as the noise of battle raging above her made her afraid. The floor was heaving back and forth, but she didn’t have any trouble staying on her feet with the ship rocking. The armlet was singing to her, begging her to open the box and talk to it. She did, wondering what it wanted. It begged her to put it on. She’d thought it would be too big, but the armlet had sent her a feeling that everything would be alright if she just put it on. It wanted to help her.
“I remember,” she whispered back to it, “you scared me that day.”
She floated up the narrow wooden stairs toward the noise of the storm and the screams and the sounds of steel on steel. She was scared, but the armlet sent her a calming feeling, and she thought it was trying to tell her that it was alright to be scared, but that it would help her and she would be alright. They were friends. They were going to help their friends, and everything would be alright if she just went outside and let it BURN.
“I know,” she replied, “You did help. Thank you, it’s just that I don’t like hurting people.”
The fiega sent her a confused jumble of feelings, and she wasn’t sure how to respond. She tried to send it a calming sensation, the feeling of Dormael hugging her, Shawna laughing with her, D’Jenn calmly teaching her, or Allen telling her funny stories. The alien song calmed a little, beckoning to her. It wanted her to come find it, to talk to it or just be close. She could feel how lonely it was, even when it sent her dreams, and she knew that it was lonely right now. It wanted a friend.
“Alright,” she whispered to it, “But no burning anyone this time.”
The armlet calmed a little, accepting her terms, and sang to her so she could find her way to it.
****
“And I’m telling you that if you don’t let me through, we’re going to have a serious problem,” Dormael snarled at one of the guards, who flatly refused to move aside.
“Listen,” Shawna cut in with a soothing tone, “There’s a lost little girl that could be down there. We just need to find out if this has anything to do with her. Please, just let us go down and have a quick look.”
“I’m sorry,” the wizard replied, “But I’m just following orders. No one can pass unless they’re officially cleared.” The wizard look around at the milling people, all trying to get a look at what was going on, then leaned toward them and said in a low tone, “But, as far as I know, it has nothing to do with a little girl. There’s a body down there, but it’s a full grown man. No one has said anything about a child, and I’m really sorry but that’s all I know. I wish I could help, but if I let you through, I’ll be in a load of trouble.”
Dormael grunted and looked down at his feet, feeling defeated. “Thanks,” he said to the guard, and started to move away as someone came up the steps.
“Dormael!” Victus called out as he came into sight on the stairs, “I’ve been looking for you all day, my boy.” Victus seemed to notice the guards barring Dormael’s way, and gestured them aside with an irritated expression. “Come, I want you to take a look at something. I’ve sent for your cousin, as well.” With that, he turned and headed back down the stairs into the lower level. Dormael and Shawna looked at each other, and then stepped through the space that the guards had made for them, and walked quickly after Victus.
“What’s happening, Deacon? What is all the commotion about?” Dormael asked, walking quickly after the Head of his Discipline, but leaving a respectful distance. Victus made a grumbling noise in his throat and shook his shaggy head, not stopping or turning to reply.
“Murder, Dormael. The first I’ve seen in the Conclave since I was a boy.”
“Do we know who it was?”
“No…I’ll let you take a look at the body, and you tell me what you think about it. It’s…disturbing. I hope you haven’t eaten anything.”
Dormael looked to Shawna, who shot him a worried glance but stayed silent. Victus led them through the halls of the storage tunnels, passing a few old, decrepit doors that seemed to have been pushed open and forgotten. Dormael glanced at them, furrowing his brow but remained silent until they came upon the scene.
It was the smell that hit him first – a charred stench that reminded him of burnt pork, and was far fouler for the similarity. The body lay just beyond the intersection of a few tunnels, just at the edge of what would be the torchlight, if Victus hadn’t been lighting their way with magic. It lay on the floor, one hand reaching up as if in supplication, but the rest of the body was flat upon the ground. It struck Dormael as odd, but he couldn’t think of a reason why at first glance.
The skin had melted and crackled with the heat, hardening and blackening at the edges, until the features of the deceased were beyond recognition. The odd thing was that there was still soft tissue on the body – it wasn’t the normal blackened remains that one found when dealing with burnt corpses. There was still smoke curling lightly up from the body, and Dormael could feel the leftover heat rising slowly from the corpse. What had done this had either been very hot and short lived, or it had happened fairly recently.
“Who found the body?” Dormael asked, putting his sleeved arm over his mouth against the stench.
“A serving woman, come down to investigate the smell,” Victus replied, “Apparently a couple of the torch-tenders had been making their usual rounds, and had notified the floor supervisor that they’d smelled something burning, so she came to have a look. It happened about twenty minutes ago, and she said that the body was still smoking pretty badly when she found it.”
Dormael grunted. That didn’t tell him much. He tore his gaze from the burnt carcass and looked around the scene a bit. The walls were blackened around the body, as if the stones themselves had burnt right alongside it. There was a torch near to the dead man – or woman, it was hard to tell, but Dormael thought it was a man from the size of the body – that was burnt down to a charcoal stick.
Magic, then. That explained the way the man was laying on the stones. He’d been held there by magic. But why use the torch fire? If Dormael was going to burn someone, he’d have done it a little more efficiently. This had been…wild, in some way. Unfocused.
&nb
sp; “Alright,” Dormael said, “So it was magic that killed him, that much was obvious from the start. What you wanted me to see was the way it was done.”
“Aye,” Victus nodded, and then gestured down the hallway past the dead body, “Now go see the rest of it.” Dormael raised an eyebrow at his mentor, then turned and stepped carefully past the body, and walked down the hallway. He stepped slowly, looking around at the walls and floor, trying to see what Victus was talking about. Further down, about twenty links or so away from the dead man, he found a strange sight.
The walls had cracked here. Floor, ceiling, and both walls had a web of thin cracks spreading from a space in the center of it all, as if some force had pushed outward hard enough to crack the very stones of the tunnel. In the floor were two small spaces that were unmarred, the cracks spreading out from them. Outlined by the destruction, in the center of the hallway floor, were two footprints small enough to be those of a child.
Dormael caught his breath in his throat, and was suddenly afraid. He closed his eyes, and sent his Kai out among the destruction, touching his senses to the scene around him. There was so much power here, floating around in the hallway like the remnants of a fog being slowly burned away by the sun. He’d never felt a more powerful magical resonance in his life.
The song floating through the magic belonged to Bethany.
Dormael looked to Shawna, and he must have had the horror he felt painted across his face, because as they locked eyes, her expression became as worried as his was. Victus saw what passed between them, and look askance at Dormael. His Deacon’s expression was curious, and even a little suspicious.
“You know something about this, Dormael? If you do, now would be the time to start talking,” Victus said, a veiled threat of anger concealed in his tone.
Dormael sighed, “Bethany is missing. D’Jenn and I came back from the city, and we can’t find the girl anywhere. This…murder…” Dormael couldn’t bring up the courage to speak it aloud.
“What? Out with it, boy!” Victus commanded.
“Bethany did it. She killed that man. This is her resonance. Her song is all over this hallway.”
“The child? Bah…you can’t be serious. The magic used here was…well, it was powerful, by Eindor’s Eye. I’ve never seen so much in one place, used by one person.”
“I know. Bethany is…unnatural in many ways. She’s done this sort of thing before, by accident, and in fear of her life. It was some sort of instinctual reaction.”
“It…well, it just can’t be. There’s been no one that powerful, at least not as far back as any of our records show. That much power in the hands of an untrained little girl…,” Victus trailed off, shaking his head.
“Deacon, I know you’ve seen these footprints. I know Bethany’s magic almost as well as D’Jenn’s, and this was her. There’s no doubt.”
“But why would the girl have been down here in the first place, and what in the name of all the Gods would have caused her to do this?”
“It seems obvious to me. That man was probably trying to hurt her in some way. It’s the only explanation,” Dormael said, gesturing with his hand to emphasize the point.
“No one in Conclave would try and hurt the girl, Dormael. It could be that she lost control of her power. You seem to have told me that the armlet has caused something similar to this in the past, if you remember.”
“No. That is not what happened here.”
“We won’t know until we’ve captured her and had a chance to find out.”
“If anyone touches Bethany, I will burn them to ashes myself!”
“You’d best watch your tone, boy. You’re speaking to the Deacon of your Discipline, unless my friendly manner with you has made you forget! I’ll pretend I didn’t hear you say that, and you’d better start doing some thinking, Dormael.” Dormael bit his tongue and looked away, trying to calm himself before he said anything else. Victus sighed, and stepped up to Dormael to place a comforting hand on his shoulder. “Look, we don’t know anything, yet. I didn’t mean that we were going to hunt the girl down like a criminal, but we do have to find her, and get her side of the story. And you have to get ready to hear something you may not want to hear. Losing control happens sometimes, Dormael. She’s a child – and obviously she has immense power. More experienced and less powerful wizards have killed themselves and others in the past. You know that.”
“I’m sorry, Deacon. But I know Bethany would not do this unless she was forced to it. Hells, look at the destruction! It’s obvious to me that she didn’t even know what she was doing. Bethany never touches her Kai unless D’Jenn and I are there to supervise her. Eindor’s Eye, she can barely even hold a rock above the ground on her own. She wouldn’t know how to use forces like this, and you know that.”
“I believe you, Dormael. But now…there’s been murder done, in the very chambers of the Conclave Proper. Whatever the girl’s reasons were, people will want answers. I know you love the girl. But the fallout from something like this will have repercussions, no matter what we feel.”
“The Mekai will never allow her to be harmed,” Dormael replied. He thought that there was a great deal of empty hope in his voice, and Victus sighed in response and gave him a pitying look.
“The Mekai…well, he’s having a hard time maintaining his influence these days, Dormael. I hate to say it, but you know that it’s true. I have a sinking feeling that change is coming, my apprentice. I just hope that we all end up on the right side of things.”
Dormael furrowed his brow and looked at his Deacon. That had been an odd comment to make, especially given the situation. He shook his head and put it out of his mind, though. He was in no mood for politics, and it definitely didn’t help them to find Bethany. Victus seemed to have the same thought.
“Well, you said that the girl was nowhere to be found, correct?” Dormael nodded. Victus nodded back, and said, “Then there’s only one way she could have gone from here.” Dormael nodded again, and Victus set off down the hallway to find a staircase leading down. Dormael motioned Shawna to follow, and he set off after the Deacon of Warlocks.
Would he really sacrifice Bethany just to satisfy some political motive? Her hands signed in the Hunter’s Tongue. Victus was ahead of them, and couldn’t read their conversation.
I don’t know, Dormael replied, this all gives me a very bad feeling. There’s one thing they’re not counting on, though.
What?
No matter what has happened, Dormael signed to her, No one is going to touch Bethany. I’ll send this entire place to the Six Hells before I let that happen.
****
“Child? What are you doing down here, little one?”
The voice startled Bethany. She realized suddenly that she’d been walking down the hall with her eyes closed, following the song of the armlet. She was surprised that she hadn’t bumped into anything, but she hadn’t even noticed that she’d been doing it. The song had filled her senses, and she’d simply been reveling in the way that her magic intertwined with it. The harmony really was beautiful, if a little scary.
There was a pretty woman standing in front of her in the hallway, near an open door that spilled an orange-colored, flickering light onto the stones of the passage. She was pale and blonde, and her eyes were a beautiful light blue. It made Bethany think of the sky in spring. She was crouched, and Bethany thought that the woman was trying to get down on her level so that she didn’t tower over her. That was nice; Bethany liked when people talked on her level, it made her feel more important. The woman was wearing a white dress that cascaded around her legs as she hunkered down in the hall, holding her hand out and beckoning Bethany forward. She had a worried and slightly confused look on her face, but there was an honest energy coming off of her, and she made Bethany feel at ease.
“I’m lost…someone was chasing me,” she said timidly, taking a cautious step forward.
The woman looked down the hallway past her, and suddenly Bethany felt her reach
out with her Kai, her song lilting through the air like a light, airy melody. Bethany smiled, she liked the sound of the woman’s magic, and she reached out tentatively with her own Kai, and tried to see what the woman was doing. Their powers touched.
The pretty woman let out a startled, amazed gasp as Bethany reached out, and she hastily drew her Kai away from the woman’s song. She felt rude, all of a sudden.
“No! No, child, that’s alright, you didn’t do anything wrong,” the lady soothed, and Bethany smiled a tiny, embarrassed smile. The woman smiled back at her. “What’s your name, little one? Are you alright?”
“Bethany,” she replied, taking another hopeful step toward the lady in white, “I’m lost…can you show me the way out?”
“Oh, you poor thing. Of course I will.”
Suddenly a voice called out from inside the room.
“Send the girl in, Lacelle, if you please. There’s something…odd going on. I think the little one may have some insight.” The voice sounded like an old man. Now that she realized it, Bethany could feel another song in the magic, and it was…different than others she’d heard. More…wise, somehow. It reached out and touched her magic gently, as if in greeting, and then receded back into the room.
The armlet’s song was coming from in there. It was excited now that she was here. Bethany smiled. She was so relieved to have made it here, out of the dark and away from the bad man. She had been scared and lonely in the tunnels, but now there was someone here to help her, and Bethany felt like she could trust Lacelle. She didn’t know why, but it felt right. Lacelle smiled and reached out a hand, and Bethany took it and let Lacelle lead her into the next room.
It was the largest room that Bethany had ever seen. It was round, and the size of it made her think that this must be the only room on the entire floor. There were more of those steel rings laid into the stones of the floor, one inside of the other, with more symbols in between them. In the center, there was one big symbol that pulsed with a magical light, almost like a beating heart. There were even more symbols on the wall, and circles too, each one just a few hands higher than the one underneath it, running like stripes around the entire room. She could feel magic moving through the metal, interacting with it in ways that she didn’t understand. There were also metal posts sticking up from the floor at regular intervals, each one vibrating as it hummed a different tone into the air.
The Sentient Fire (The Seven Signs) Page 67