by Layton Green
Adaira shook her head. “Never. It’s against their code.”
“There’s a first time for everything.”
Adaira stopped at the entrance to the market. “Your concerns of a wizard assassin are valid, and would be cause for rethinking our strategy, or even our involvement at all.” She glanced around, then said, “There’s something of which you’re unaware. The Congregation keeps constant wards in place on the Canal Street Bridge, to guard against magical incursions. They were never tripped. If an assassin were using magic, the wizards would know.”
They lingered in a booth in a quiet, upscale pub with brass finishings on Canal Street, awaiting the assassin’s preferred hour. They refined their strategy as they waited, though Val kept quiet for most of the evening, not having much to add. Instead he dwelled on the dangers of the plan.
The involvement of an Alazashin was not something he had planned on. He could only hope the assassin never showed, and that he could convince Gowan to divulge information on the Planewalk before Adaira grew weary of her vigilante crusade.
An hour before midnight, they stepped into the French Quarter, a few blocks from the madness of Bourbon. After ducking into a deserted alley, Adaira unwrapped the package from Sinias and handed Gowan a black sphere the size of a billiard ball.
“I’ll wait around the corner,” she said. “The three of you will need to link hands as you crush the veil. The ones I’ve seen before affect a ten foot diameter.”
She left the alley. Val and Dida grasped Gowan by the forearm. With a nervous swallow, the pyromancer held the sphere aloft and squeezed it. It crumbled into a fine powder which swirled in the air around them. Val watched as their bodies slowly disappeared, dissolving into the artificial well of blackness.
“A strange sensation,” Dida whispered. “We should stay connected as we walk, or we might lose contact.”
Val couldn’t see his own hands, making the spell even more potent than his Ring of Shadows, which he was keeping to himself. He still had the Amulet of Shielding as well, though he had no idea if any charges remained.
They stayed twenty feet behind Adaira as she wound through the cobblestone streets and alleys of the French Quarter, walking slow enough to give the assassin an opportunity, yet with enough purpose to deter casual thieves. Quiet, lit by the occasional glow orb, and lined with wrought iron balconies and closed shops, this residential portion of the French Quarter was not too dissimilar to the one on Earth.
“Gowan,” Val whispered. It was odd having a disembodied conversation.
“Yes?”
Val didn’t know of any way to broach the subject, other than with flattery. He also thought Gowan would be less rude in the presence of the bibliomancer. “There’s something I’ve been meaning to ask you. I’d appreciate any advice you could give.”
Gowan grunted in reply.
“I’m terrified of the Planewalk, and was wondering if you had any tips. For the future, of course.”
Gowan’s voice was bitter. “I wouldn’t know anything about that. The knowledge is restricted to spirit mages.”
“Have your parents ever spoken of it?”
The bitterness deepened. “Not with me.”
So far, it was going about as Val had expected. What he was about to propose, however, was the clincher. It was a low blow, but one which he knew would tug at Gowan’s wounded pride. “I was thinking . . . and maybe this is inappropriate, but from what I understand, if one completes the Planewalk, one can become a spirit mage even without completing the proper course of study.”
Gowan waited a long time before responding. “And?”
Val poured humility into his words. “I was thinking perhaps you and I . . . could train for the Planewalk together. It would help both our skillsets, and who knows, perhaps one day you might decide to give it a try.”
“Don’t be absurd. The Planewalk can be fatal, and requires years of training as a spirit mage.”
Val could sense the gears turning, and he could tell from the hint of excitement in Gowan’s voice—suppressed, but there—that Val had struck a nerve. He knew Gowan would dwell on the proposal, and also knew he would never consent in Dida’s presence. To make the conversation look more natural, Val said, “The offer’s good for you too, Dida, though I know you’ll be returning home when the year is over.”
“I wouldn’t dream of such a thing,” Dida said, and Val could tell he thought the conversation an odd one. “I’m quite content with my chosen discipline.”
“Quiet, now,” Gowan said. “If the assassin is out, he might have sharp ears.”
Val fell silent, replaying the conversation in his mind, abuzz with the possibilities. Most of all, he kept remembering what Gowan hadn’t said—that he had no idea where the secret entrance to the Planewalk was located.
Gowan knew where it was. Val could feel it.
They followed Adaira as she turned a corner near the river, entering an alley rife with the odor of dead fish. The secluded byway grated at Val’s nerves. As she stepped aside to avoid a pile of refuse, Val saw a fluttering in the sky, at the edge of his field of vision. He looked up and gripped Dida’s arm.
Twenty feet above Adaira’s head, an enormous bat-winged creature, its furry humanoid body as large as Gowan and its membranous wingspan easily fifteen feet across, was floating silently downwards.
At the same time, a group of thugs emerged from the other side of the alley, fronted by a man in a black sash and a woman wearing a green and yellow patchwork coat.
The woman was holding a gnarled ebony staff and hovering two feet above the alley, drifting towards Adaira with the ease of a seasoned wizard. A quick glance told Val that the winged man had fled or taken cover.
“Don’t be scared, lassie,” the black-sashed man said to Adaira. He was dressed in a threadbare brown suit, scratching his stubbly face with one hand and grasping the hilt of a sheathed sword with his other. “This won’t hurt too much.”
-35-
With Farzal and his delvers in pursuit, the darvish girl wove through the heart of Olde Fellengard, guiding the giant moles to the edge of the ruined city and inside an abandoned house littered with broken dishes and discarded clothing. After throwing on a pair of breeches and a leather shirt meant for a large male delver, she hurried Will and the others through the back door and into an alley.
A hundred feet away, a fissure cleaved the narrow lane in two, Will guessed from an earthquake or a geomancer’s spell. The darvish aimed straight for the crevasse, and the moles stepped lightly down the near-vertical slope until it intersected with a tunnel twenty feet beneath the buildings. There were no mineral lamps. Darkness loomed in either direction.
The darvish girl spoke, and Will’s armband translated. We must hurry. The delvers know of this place, too.
Will relayed her words as their mounts scampered forward. Within seconds, the darkness was so complete he couldn’t see the velvety fur of the mole he was clutching.
“I hope she knows what she’s doing,” Caleb muttered, pain lancing through his words.
“How’s your chest?” Will asked.
“Like a group of scorpions are throwing a stinging party on it.”
“Hang in there.”
Caleb didn’t answer.
Not long after, they heard the sound of delver boots pounding down the tunnel behind them. It felt to Will as if the moles were lurching to the left or the right every few feet, following new tunnels, but he had no way to be sure. He desperately wanted to communicate with the darvish girl, ask her where they were going and if they had a chance to succeed, but he dared not talk.
The sounds of pursuit faded, but the party maintained its silence, in case the delvers or other predators were lying in wait.
Up ahead, a green glow appeared like a blot of color in his mind’s eye. Even with the moles as guides, fleeing through complete darkness was terrifying, and Will welcomed the approaching light.
When they emerged into an intersection of delve
r tunnels lit by mineral lanterns, Will saw no sign of their enemy—and Elegon was dead.
Slumped across the front of his mole, it looked as if he were resting, but when he didn’t respond to Yasmina’s voice, she lifted his head and Will noticed the sightless eyes.
“No,” she moaned, cradling him to her.
Tamás checked his pulse and tried to revive him, but it was too late. Will bowed his head; in the short time he had known the old man, he had sensed a brave and gentle soul.
As Yasmina wept over the body, Will glanced back at Caleb and saw him clutching his mount with a white-knuckle grip, sweat pouring from his face. He looked much worse than when they had entered the tunnels.
The darvish girl was waving them forward. Come. This is not a safe place to stop.
“Wait,” Will said. He jumped off his mole and got her attention, then pointed at Caleb. He went over and lifted his brother’s shirt to expose the three dart wounds that formed a triangle on his upper chest. The area was red and inflamed.
Caleb made a feeble protest about not having time to fool with the wounds, but Will cut him off. “Can you do something?” he asked the darvish girl, knowing she understood the situation.
With a worried look, she jumped off her mole and went to Caleb, giving the wounds a critical eye and gently stroking his face. He shrank from her touch, and Will skipped a breath, expecting his brother’s head to burst into flame. But nothing happened, and she smiled at Caleb and pressed the back of her hand to his forehead.
Caleb gritted his teeth as sweat dripped from his brow. She took off his shirt and, after gently probing the inflamed area, held the shirt up to his mouth. Will was confused, and then he understood.
Whatever she planned to do, it was going to hurt like hell.
Caleb swallowed and bit down on the shirt. Will took his brother’s hand and said, “You ready?”
“No.”
“It’ll only hurt for a second.”
Caleb cracked a weak grin. “Liar.”
He clutched Will’s hand as the darvish girl’s palms started to glow. It took a few seconds for them to reach the golden-red color, and then she spread her fingers and placed her palms on Caleb’s chest.
His back arched and his face contorted, and he moaned and bit down hard on the shirt. A tear fell from the darvish’s eye as the hairs on Caleb’s chest curled and blackened from her touch. Will choked back his emotions as his brother’s fingers dug into him.
It was over in seconds. The darvish removed her palms, eyed Caleb’s blistered chest, swallowed, and nodded.
Caleb swooned, but Will encircled him with his arms and eased him onto the mount. Yasmina, still weeping and gripping the back of Elegon’s cloak with one hand, urged her mole forward so she could grip Caleb’s hand and help keep him upright.
Not half an hour after fleeing through the twists and turns of the lantern-lit tunnels, they heard voices and the clang of metal up ahead. The sounds increased in volume, as if approaching a factory. Will was nervous and didn’t understand why they kept moving towards the noise.
It is the only way, the darvish said, as if reading his mind. The entrance to the Darklands is near.
The tunnel spilled into a walkway that circumnavigated the top of a cavern hundreds of yards wide, sprawling beneath them like a gargantuan fishbowl of stone. Groups of prisoners mined veins of minerals in the walls or heaved wheelbarrows to the center of the cavern, where teams of delvers worked to assemble the exoskeletons of giant ships. Sapphire blue rods and panels—tilectium, Will realized—supported the wooden bases.
“By the Queen,” Tamás swore. “They’re making war machines.”
“How will they get them out?” Will asked.
“They’ll disassemble them, or float them down the river and have the geomancer open the mountain.”
Will looked closer and glimpsed a river on the far side of the cavern, hidden by the half-built ships.
Dalen caught his breath. “There he is.”
In the center of the activity, hands thrust forward in effort, was the unmistakable sight of a wizard, head held high above the collar of his cloak, working to fuse a pile of mined tilectium into a flat panel.
Hurry, the darvish said. With me, along the edge. We are very exposed.
Will sent back a telepathic reply of no crap. “Dalen,” he said in a low voice, “can you shield us along this walkway?”
“I can try,” he said. A moment later, Will noticed the forms of the moles and their riders blurring into shadow. “We should be fine,” Dalen muttered, “as long as the geomancer doesn’t look up.”
“Alchemancer,” Tamás corrected, as he watched the mage work. “A very good one.”
It was at least a hundred yards across the cavern to where the pathway re-entered the tunnels, and it was the longest journey of Will’s life. The moles slowed to a walk, creeping forward on their broad clawed feet. The limited movement helped preserve Dalen’s illusion. Will had no idea how the moles knew to slow down, but his eyebrows rose when he saw Yasmina whispering to her mount.
Halfway to the end, Will risked a glance down.
Then he wished he hadn’t.
Not only was it a thousand foot drop off the walkway, but the cavern was swarming with delvers. If one of them looked up for too long, Will knew the shadow illusion would shatter, and the alchemancer would summon a wizard wind or crack the walkway under their feet, sending them plummeting to their death.
The exit tunnel, wide and unguarded, loomed in the distance like the portal to heaven. The portion of the walkway leading to the tunnel had split, and the moles had to leap over a four-foot gap to reach it. It didn’t seem to bother them, until the last mole, the one carrying Will, missed the landing with its back foot. It slipped and quickly righted itself, but a small piece of rock broke off and fell away, crunching into the floor of the cavern below.
Time seemed to stop. Will didn’t dare look down to see if anyone had noticed. Rocks fall in caverns all the time, he told himself. Urging his mole onward, he tucked his body into the huge rodent as it raced forward, steps behind the others.
No alarm sounded, and they didn’t pause until reaching the safety of the lantern-lit tunnel, which stretched before them as far as they could see. Spurred by the waving hands of the darvish girl, the moles scampered down the wide tunnel. No sounds of pursuit came from behind, and Will gave a silent prayer of thanks.
After a few hundred yards, the tunnel sloped downward, ending at a rune door guarded by two delvers, who scrambled for their weapons when they saw the moles and riders bearing down on them.
Tamás raised his scimitars in preparation. “The entrance to the Darklands,” he breathed.
Marek lifted his war hammer, Will drew his sword, and the darvish girl stood on her mount, balancing on the balls of her feet.
Before anyone could react, one of the delvers grabbed a horn off the ground and blew a resounding series of notes. The clarion call echoed through the tunnel. Somewhere in the distance, another horn sounded in response, sending a chill down Will’s spine.
The delvers rushed to meet the charging moles. The darvish girl somersaulted over the two sentries, while Tamás and Marek jumped off their mounts and met them head on. Will rushed to Marek’s flank, and the darvish girl came up behind the delver fighting Tamás. She set his clothing aflame with her hands, and Tamás cut him down. Will and Marek struck the delver they were fighting at the same time, Marek providing the death blow.
“What about the rune door?” Tamás asked, wiping his blades on the tunic of the dead delver at his feet. “How do we get through?”
The darvish girl stepped in front of him and placed her hands on the smooth surface of the door. Her palms started to glow, and after a minute or so, the rock softened and her hands pushed a few inches into the door.
“King’s Blood,” Dalen murmured.
“Hurry,” Tamás urged.
The stone around her hands glowed brighter and brighter, until the entire
door melted into a molten pudding. She pushed, and the door collapsed inward.
The darvish stumbled with the effort, and Marek caught her. He made sure not to touch her hands, but they had lost their glow, and she looked pale and exhausted. The party returned to their moles and leapt over the ruined portal, into the mortar-less stone tunnels and arched ceilings of the Darklands.
As they raced away, another horn sounded behind them, this time longer and with a more ominous tenor.
Will saw the darvish girl tense and grip her mount. “What is it?” he asked. “What’s that horn mean?”
Tamás rode up beside him, his jaw tight, a tendril of blond hair hanging loose in his face. “It means a war party is coming.”
A few minutes down the corridor, Will said, “How many?”
“If I judge the horn correctly, it’s an elite search party,” Tamás said. “Thirty of their best warriors.”
Dalen was kneading the backs of his hands. “Lucka, we saw their secret cavern and they don’t like it one bit. Will the alchemancer come with them?”
Tamás snorted. “A Congregation wizard sullying his hands chasing the common born through delver tunnels?”
“Dalen isn’t common born,” Will said.
Tamás glanced at Dalen but didn’t reply, and Will could tell he either didn’t trust the fledgling illusionist, or think much of his abilities. Or both.
Dalen released a breath, unconcerned with the slight, and Will shared his relief that the wizard might not come after them. He glanced back at Caleb, who was hunched over, face twisted in pain. Will started to ask if he was all right, and then stopped. His brother had just suffered a localized third-degree burn. Of course he isn’t all right.
“If they catch us,” Tamás said, “they won’t need a wizard. Thirty fighters is far too many for us too overcome, and they’ll be prepared this time.”
“Aren’t the moles faster than they are?” Will asked, as their furry mounts bounded through the tunnel, star-shaped faces twitching.