by Barb Hendee
“I said turn away, now!” Sgäile commanded, and his voice echoed around the cavern.
Leesil turned quickly and dropped one hand to a punching blade.
Sgäile stood before his fallen cloak, his glistening features strained, as if any word or action would cost him. He held a stiletto, its metal gleaming as bright as the doors.
Chap tensed behind Sgäile, ready to take him down if he moved an inch.
The only memory he caught in Sgäile’s mind was a brief glimpse of this place—and Sgäile waiting frozen in dread as the silver-white doors began to swing open. The memory faded too quickly, and now it seemed Sgäile would not tolerate either Magiere or Leesil knowing how the portal opened.
“Please . . . step back,” Sgäile said more deliberately. “And turn away.”
Magiere’s hand wrapped around her falchion’s hilt, and she didn’t move.
Chap was sick of dealing with anmaglâhk and their paranoia. But all that mattered was finding out what waited beyond these doors—what Brot’an had been scheming up this time. Chap circled wide around Sgäile and huffed once at his companions.
“What makes you so obliging to him?” Magiere asked, but she kept her eyes on Sgäile.
“This is ridiculous,” Leesil said. “Sgäile, just open the doors!”
“Keep quiet,” she said. “You’re the one who let him blindfold us.”
Chap huffed again. They had come all this way, and he was not about to turn back. He hopped at Magiere and nipped her breeches at the knee.
Magiere jerked her leg back. “You watch it!”
But she finally turned away, and Leesil joined her with a sidelong glance at Chap.
Sgäile’s expression remained tense, but he did not ask Chap to turn away. He merely approached the door, stiletto in hand, and then hesitated with the blade point held up.
“Your oath . . . ,” he said, “do not forget.”
He touched the blade’s tip upon the portal so lightly it did not even click. A low grating creak began, and Chap watched as the seam split.
“Move away,” Sgäile told him and sheathed the stiletto.
Chap backpedaled toward Magiere and Leesil as Sgäile also retreated.
The doors separated, each swinging outward as they ground across the cavern’s level stone. A wall of heated air rushed out to strike Chap’s face, and the cavern’s temperature rose sharply with a stench like burning coal. He choked on the hot air filling his lungs.
“You will adjust in a moment,” Sgäile said, but he had a hand over his own mouth and nose.
The unpleasant burning in Chap’s throat slowly became tolerable. Leesil’s face was flushed, though he seemed unhurt. Magiere let out a strangled cough and buckled to her knees, fighting for air.
Leesil grabbed her shoulders. “Magiere!”
A few more breaths and she nodded that she was all right.
“You might have warned us,” she gasped.
“Apologies,” Sgäile offered, but his face was as flushed as Leesil’s.
As Sgäile retrieved the torch, Chap circled back to stand between the wide doors. Beyond them stretched a wide passage, and the farther on Chap looked, the darker it became. Sgäile’s torch cast only the barest glistening points of light on its craggy walls. The heated air made it difficult for Chap to breathe.
“You must be joking!” Leesil said.
“It will not be comfortable,” Sgäile warned. “But we will survive.”
With that, he stepped past Chap into the tunnel.
Chap followed, and the hot stone under his pads grew more unpleasant with each step. He heard Leesil behind as Magiere came up on his left. She looked weak and faint. Her dhampir nature worked well for her in the cold, but it did not seem to help in this scorching place.
“You’ve been down here before?” Magiere rasped.
Sgäile shook his head. “Only as far as the doors, once . . . with my past teacher, before I received his assent to take up full service to my people.”
Both Leesil and Sgäile slowly adapted, though their faces began to run with sweat. Magiere panted, trying to bear the heat and keep up. Chap stayed close to her as Sgäile worked his way along the uneven passage. It narrowed suddenly at the top of a carved stone stairway.
A dim red-orange glow from below barely illuminated the close walls. Sgäile set aside his torch. The light increased slightly as they descended, as did the heat in the air. They went down for a long while, stopping once for water. Leesil poured some into a tin cup he always carried for Chap, but the water had grown so warm it offered little relief.
Chap kept a close watch on Magiere, though she stayed on her feet. He reached inside her mind and called up memories of their journey through the Blade Range . . . of snow and freezing wind. She frowned, but this time did not snarl at him to get out of her head. Instead, she put her hand on his back.
“You all right?” Leesil asked her.
“Keep going,” she rasped.
Just when Chap thought their descent might never end, Sgäile stepped down onto a landing. Chap peered around the elf’s legs through a rough opening in the mountain’s rock. Through it, orange-red light brightened slightly, and the opening seemed like the mouth of a dwindling hearth in a dim room.
Chap stepped through and halted at the sight before him.
A wide plateau ran a gradual slant away from the stairway’s portal. At its distant edge, red light erupted out of a massive fissure in the mountain’s belly, like a gash wider than a river. Smoke drifted up into glowing red air from deep in the earth.
“Wait . . . here . . . ,” Sgäile breathed with great effort.
He advanced with slow and heavy steps but went less than halfway to the plateau’s edge. He stopped, digging beneath his tunic, and drew something out.
“What’s he doing?” Leesil whispered.
Sgäile cocked his arm and heaved. A small dark object arced out and over the plateau’s lip to vanish into the fissure. Chap had seen this object in Sgäile’s flickering memories—a smooth basalt stone etched with curving lines, sharp strokes, and dots. Sgäile returned but stopped to rest, hunched over with his hands braced upon his knees. He blinked against the sweat running down his forehead.
“Now we wait,” he said.
Leesil stumbled closer. “How long? For what?”
Sgäile only shook his head.
They stood there so long that Chap wanted to collapse from the heat. But he feared he might not rise again. Then he heard a soft scraping.
Like metal upon stone, it carried faintly across the half-cavern plateau. Chap looked out beyond Leesil, searching. The plateau’s edge was a dark silhouette against the gorge’s burning light.
A tiny part of that dark jagged line bulged and moved.
Leesil desperately wanted out of this place, and even more so when he glanced at Magiere.
Eyes half-closed, she gasped for air, and she hardly perspired at all— which was a bad sign. And Chap appeared about to drop with all four legs quaking.
Leesil was furious with himself for ever agreeing to let Sgäile bring them here. Whatever Brot’an and his mother wanted didn’t matter anymore. He took a step toward Magiere.
In the stillness, a faint scrape carried along the walls, like a blade scratching stone. Chap lifted his head to stare, and Leesil swung about, hands fumbling for his winged blades.
His gaze lighted first upon Sgäile, who held no weapons but straightened with an effort and looked off toward the glowing fissure’s right end.
“Sgäile?” Leesil said.
“Keep . . . your weapons . . . sheathed,” Sgäile managed to say.
Magiere stumbled in next to Leesil, hand on her falchion’s hilt.
A bulge grew at the precipice’s edge, taking form in movement.
At first it was no more than a rippling smudge backlit by red-orange air. Small and blacker than the stone, it crawled up onto the plateau from out of the red depths. Leesil barely made out a pair of thin, spin
dly arms as it crept forward, dragging something behind.
Its size was difficult to gauge, but by the way the little black shadow hunkered, Leesil guessed it wouldn’t be much taller than Chap, if it stood up. And then twin horizontal slits opened in its blotch of a head.
Two eyes, like white-hot coals in the dark, fixed on Leesil.
It crawled a little farther, dragging the bulk of a sack half its size. The charcoal-colored woolly baggage shimmered as if laced with fibers of black metal or glass. Thin smoke rose from the bundle to dissipate in the gorge’s heat-rippled air.
“What is—?” Magiere began.
“Chein’âs,” Sgäile cut in. “The Burning Ones.”
But there was only one, and the little thing fumbled with its sack. It paused, turning searing eyes upslope, and a small maw opened beneath them.
A grinding shriek erupted across the stone plateau.
Leesil cringed as the sound pierced his ears. His skull and bones seemed to vibrate sharply in his flesh.
“Go!” Sgäile ordered, hands pressed over his ears. “Whatever it has . . . is for you, Léshil.”
Chap rumbled and took a few shaky steps forward, and Magiere clutched at Leesil’s arm.
“It’s all right,” he whispered, peeling off her fingers.
Magiere trembled but didn’t try to grab him again.
Leesil crept down the plateau, closing on the black little thing with lantern eyes. As he drew nearer, its form became clearer.
No larger than a naked child of six or seven years, it squatted there with its scrawny arms and legs folded. The whole of its body was covered in ebony-toned leathery skin. Thin digits sprouting from splayed hands ended in short obsidian claws. Its oversized head was featureless except for the slit mouth, the vertical cuts of small nostrils, and its glowing eyes. Instead of ears, it bore two small depressions on the sides of its skull.
Leesil was still well beyond reach when it began to shiver.
It cringed away from him, clutching itself like a deformed and naked child caught in a frigid winter wind. The closer Leesil tried to get, the more the little thing quivered—as if he were the source of cold. Leesil stopped and crouched, waiting.
With a shudder, it uttered a soft hiss like water thrown on a griddle. Both of its clawed hands reached into the charcoal-colored bag, and Leesil caught a glint of metal inside turning red in the fissure’s light. The little one chucked two long pieces of curved metal across the plateau floor.
Leesil quickly scooted back as they clanged across the stone before him. Focusing sharply as the objects settled, he stared in shock.
Twin winged blades lay in the dark before him, so much like the ones he carried strapped to his thighs. A matched set, mirrored opposites but alike in make.
His own blades had been assembled by a master weaponer in Bela, made from sketches he’d drawn himself. But these were not steel. Even in the dark and the chasm’s unnatural light, they shimmered too cleanly. They glinted like silver mirrors—like the sheer perfect doors to this cavern—like the stilettos of the Anmaglâhk.
Their wings would stretch down the outside of his forearms, but unlike his, these turned slightly outward at the back end, slender and graceful. The spades extending in front of their grips were thin and fiercely pointed, perhaps slightly longer than his own.
The oval grips hadn’t yet been wrapped in leather.
Partway down each wing, half-circles sprouted sideways. Round in shape rather than flat and sharp, they might brace around his forearm and steady the weapons in his grips.
Leesil raised his eyes to the shuddering little creature. His mother had never seen his weapons closely, especially not while in use. The only other who had—who knew that Leesil would come here—was Brot’an.
Leesil’s anger began to eat at his insides.
“Take them!” Sgäile hissed from upslope.
Leesil glanced over his shoulder at Sgäile’s shocked and lost expression. It was plain the man had expected something else—perhaps stilettos like his own. Then Leesil saw Magiere watching him as she knelt beside Chap.
He had to get her out of here.
He snatched up both blades with one hand, nearly dropping them from the heat in their metal, and then tucked them under his arm as he stumbled upslope. He grabbed Magiere’s arm.
Sgäile held out both hands toward the small being down the plateau. He began speaking softly in Elvish, his words filled with strange reverence.
Chap was already limping toward the stairway as Leesil hauled Magiere up. Sgäile backed slowly and turned to follow.
Another metallic screech tore at Leesil’s ears.
Chap went deaf for an instant.
He wheeled about, nearly toppling beside Sgäile, and looked down the plateau. The small creature’s sound still rang in his head, and he could not help barking at it to stop.
“What now?” Leesil shouted.
Sgäile just stared toward the fissure’s edge in silence.
The black visitor seemed somehow familiar to Chap, but heat made his mind hazy. Perhaps the memory of this small being was something else the Fay had taken from him at his birth—or was it something he had seen since walking this mortal world? He could recall nothing regarding these “burning” beings—these Chein’âs.
The creature hunched again over its bag, becoming a lumped silhouette, and then its forelimb lashed up and out.
A metallic object flickered with red light as it tumbled from the creature’s pointed digits. It fell to clatter and clang across stone. Before Chap could try to make out what it was, the creature’s hand shot out again.
This time the sound was thicker—heavy and dull—and the second object did not glint like the first.
“What now?” Leesil repeated, releasing Magiere to head downslope.
Sgäile shook his head, his expression anxious, even wary. “I do not understand.”
The creature threw its head back, eyes closing as its maw opened. Another shriek echoed off the half-cavern walls and through Chap’s bones. His ears still rang as the creature raised a clawed hand, hissing like fire consuming water.
It reached out and gouged downward, seeming to claw the air toward itself. The gesture was aimed at Chap’s charges.
Leesil had tried to return, but the dark little one responded in denial. Its call was not for him.
Chap looked fearfully at Magiere. What did it want with her?
Sgäile had only been ordered to bring Leesil. Whatever Brot’an’s scheme, he could not have known Magiere would bully her way into this side journey. What had the black visitor thrown out upon the plateau?
The creature clutched the air again, its gesture aimed at Magiere.
Magiere felt chilled inside, though the air was hot in her lungs. The clash of sensations left her dizzy and weak.
Sgäile stumbled a few steps downslope, shaking his head. But when he looked back at her, his sweat-glistened face twisted in a grimace.
Magiere had seen that look before, the first time Sgäile had watched her crawl under a blanket next to Leesil, and the day he’d looked into her eyes when she’d lost all self-control in Nein’a’s clearing.