“Your Lordship?” The bone-white face that floated out of the darkness startled him so that he jerked before recognizing Zentan Dolan staring at him from beneath the cowl of his long, white robe.
“I’m sorry to call you to such a depressing and inhospitable place,” the zentan said. “Perhaps it would be better if we discussed matters further in your chambers.” Hands that felt too dry and smooth closed around the high lord’s, and it was all he could do to keep from tugging his fingers out of the man’s unsettling grip.
“No.” Dinslith swallowed hard. He tried not to let the screams that bounced and echoed through the chambers affect him, but he could feel his hands bunching into fists. “These are my . . . prisoners.” The word felt strange and out of place on his lips. “I will inspect them personally.”
“As your Lordship wishes,” the zentan murmured, his voice oily smooth. He bobbed his head, revealing a hawk-like face and close-cropped gray hair. When he raised his head, the cowl covered his features again.
Dinslith eyed the balanced scales embroidered in gold on the front of the man’s otherwise plain, white robe before following the figure as he turned and strode deeper into the dungeon. When the Keepers of the Balance had arrived two months earlier, warning of treason within the city walls, Dinslith had nearly laughed in their faces. The only reasons he hadn’t had them thrown out at once were the seeming sincerity of their leader, Zentan Dolan, and the strength of the order he represented.
The Keepers were not as numerous in Westland as they were east of the Windlash Mountains or to the northwest in the Borderlands. Most considered their odd philosophy of rebalancing magical power—taking it from the commoners and redistributing it among the influential—nonsensical drivel. Magic wasn’t like water. It couldn’t be poured out of one pitcher and into another.
In the past, the order had kept mostly to themselves, at least in this part of the world. Occasionally a lone Keeper would arrive, predicting certain doom and warning of the unbalancing of Farworld. Then he would leave, continuing to the next town. But lately they’d been popping up more and more. Seeing a zentan this far from his sanctuary spoke volumes about how seriously the Keepers took their claims. Dinslith had thought it wise not to offend them.
Still, he’d assumed their stay would be short. A few days. A week at most. They would discover their mistake and be on their way. Terra ne Staric was a place of learning, a place where people came seeking higher knowledge—not some far-flung village where people bowed and scraped to a zealot spouting fancy words and nonsensical symbolism.
Yet within days of the Keepers’ arrival, the zentan uncovered an act of betrayal by one of Dinslith’s closest associates. Trinstel Wartwood, a master wizard, had been practicing dark magic right inside the tower—an act so vile Dinslith wouldn’t have believed it if he hadn’t seen it with his own eyes.
He would have granted the man mercy, forgiven him based on their long years of friendship. The man was human. He’d made a mistake. But a day later, the zentan offered irrefutable proof that Trinstel hadn’t been working alone. Rashden, Dinslith’s personal bookkeeper, had been stealing funds.
To say Dinslith was shocked would be putting it mildly. Rashden, a mouse-like man with large ears, was not much to look at, but he was so personable and friendly that everyone who met him liked him. He was practically family. He would have become a master wizard himself in only a few years.
Within a week’s time, the high lord—with Zentan Dolan’s assistance—found that Master Wartwood and Rashden were working together. Worse, they were, in fact, part of a group with designs to overthrow the tower and take control of the entire city.
Walking past the rows of prison cells filled with men squatting on the cold stone floors or lying motionless on the filthy straw beds, the high lord tried to focus on the men’s crimes and not on their families, who would be going hungry without their fathers and husbands.
As they neared a cramped cell on their left, a prisoner dressed in ragged, gray robes threw himself against the bars and screeched, “Heeeeelp meeee!”
Dinslith stumbled backward, shocked by the man’s ghoulish appearance. For a moment he didn’t recognize the dark eyes and gaunt cheeks. When he did, he could hardly believe what he saw.
“Rashden?” he said, unable to accept that this was the bookkeeper he’d sent to the dungeon less than a cycle of the moon earlier.
“I beg of you,” the man wailed, pressing his face into the bars. “Free me from this spawn pit!” His bony fingers clung to the iron bars like the claws of a bird. Drool ran from the corner of his mouth and splattered on the dusty floor.
Looking into his former associate’s unfocused gaze, the high lord didn’t think the man even recognized who he was talking to. He spun on the zentan, color rising in his cheeks. “What have you been doing to this man?” he fumed. “I gave you no permission to starve anyone.”
Zentan Dolan seemed unaffected by the high lord’s outburst. “I have done nothing but question him,” he said, his pale brown eyes steady in the dim light. “He is your prisoner. Your guards provide him with food and water.”
“Guard!” Dinslith shouted. “Have you been withholding rations from Rashd—that is, from this . . . prisoner?”
Immediately one of his royal guards appeared. “No, my Lord. He receives meals thrice a day, same as all of ’em.”
Dinslith turned from the guard to study the prisoner, who had collapsed, weeping, to the floor of his cell, clawing at solid rock with his fingertips as though he thought he could dig his way out. What could turn a man to this in only weeks? “Not possible,” he murmured.
The zentan rested a hand on the high lord’s shoulder. “It is not hunger that consumes this man, but the guilt of his crimes. He is eaten by the knowledge that, because of his greed for power, he has failed his family, his friends, and his city.”
Dinslith nodded uncertainly. Perhaps Dolan was right.
“Food cannot fill the emptiness that darkness creates,” the zentan continued. “Only when a man forgives himself can he find peace. Only when he learns to place his own needs beneath that of others’ will he discover true order inside himself. That is why I am here—to help him find an inner balance.”
“The way a cave bat finds balance with a water skimmer.” The voice that spoke out of the darkness was hoarse with exhaustion, but it still cut through the screams and cries with a power that caused both the zentan and the high lord to turn toward it at once. As if responding to the words, the other prisoners quieted their cries or grew silent altogether.
“Who is that?” the high lord called, thinking the voice sounded familiar, but unable to place it. He strode the dungeon hallway, ignoring Zentan Dolan tugging at the sleeve of his robe. The hallway ended in a barred door. Beyond the door was an empty, roughly circular room. At the other end of the room, another barred door fronted a cell large enough to contain a single prisoner.
Peering across the circular room, the high lord could see a bearded figure seated on the floor of the cell, but he couldn’t make out the face. Dinslith tried to enter the room to get a better look, but the door was locked.
“Who is in that cell?” he asked, shaking the bars.
“Stay away from that prisoner,” the zentan said, trying to pull the high lord away from the room. “He is not safe.”
“Not safe for whom?” the voice asked with a tired chuckle that Dinslith could almost remember. The man slowly got to his feet. He favored his right leg as he pulled himself up. His shoulders sagged as though he’d carried a great weight for a long time, and his hands appeared to tremble as he clutched the bars. Despite his condition, he held his head high with the magisterial air of a king or warrior.
“Am I a danger to the man I instructed when he was but a youngster, entering the tower for his first magic lessons? Whom I have stood by and stood up for ever since that time? Or am I a danger to you—Zentan.” He spoke the title as though it stung his lips like an unripe skyberry.
With a gasp, the high lord recognized the prisoner. His eyes went wide as his mind reeled. It was impossible. This man was supposed to be dead. What was he doing locked in the dungeon?
“Therapass?”
Part 2
Land Keep
Chapter 17
The End of the Trail
Kyja smelled it long before she saw it—the stench of rotten eggs, dirty socks, swamp gas, and dead fish all mixed together. “What’s that terrible stink?”
Screech only shrugged and continued pushing through the tall reeds. Riph Raph wrapped his ears around the front of his face and squinted his eyes. “Whatever it is, it’s nothing we want any part of. We should have stayed behind with the water elemental. At least he had the good sense to stop going any further into this cesspool.”
“Well, it can’t get worse,” she said, wiping sweat from her forehead with the back of her hand. Covered in muck from head to foot, she felt like a golem made entirely of dried clay and swamp gunk. The only good part was that the coating kept most of the insects away—probably because they couldn’t tell the difference between her and the rest of the swamp. Her robe felt like it weighed a hundred pounds, and she was forced to scrape the end of the staff every few minutes to keep the mud from clumping.
As the stench grew stronger, the air started to take on a yellowish tinge, and Kyja’s eyes began to water. It was like being trapped in a stable full of rotting cow manure. She was about to suggest they take a different route when the reeds abruptly ended and she found herself standing in front of a large, open circle of bubbling gray mud.
Obviously this was the origin of the horrible smell. Thick mist rose from the mud and hung in a dank yellow cloud above it. The air here was even hotter than the rest of the swamp. Every few minutes, a huge bubble rose from the depths of the pool, stretched several feet high, then burst with a mucus-like pop that shot foul-smelling gunk everywhere.
Screech came to a halt. “Why are we stopping?” Kyja asked.
The trulloch crossed his arms. “The trail ends here.”
Kyja looked down at the gray sludge with the consistency of oatmeal. “Whatever took Marcus must have flown across to the other side. We’ll just have to go around.”
“No,” Screech said. “He did not go across. He went down. In.”
“Into that?” Kyja stared into the sulfurous pit. Her stomach clenched. If Marcus had gone into that, he was dead. Was that why she couldn’t find him? Had the creatures that captured him dropped into the middle of that bubbling mess, knowing he’d never make it out alive?
“Creatures carried him down,” Screech repeated, jabbing a finger toward the mud.
“They carried him?” Kyja stepped closer to the churning caldron. There was something odd about it. The circle looked too perfect to have been formed naturally. At the edge of the pit, her staff clanked against a hard surface. Wiping away the muck, she ran her hand across a smooth stone surface nearly a foot across. A wall of some kind?
Tapping with the tip of the staff, she discovered the pool was completely enclosed by a barrier. What was it, and how did it get here?
Nothing about this made sense. Who would wall off a pool of mud and why? There had to be something she was missing. Whatever it was, Screech wasn’t going to help. The cave trulloch watched impassively as she studied the steaming muck.
“You’ve done all you can,” Riph Raph said, landing near Kyja. “It’s time to find a way out.”
“How many times do I have to tell you? I’m not going until—”
Kyja stopped mid-sentence. Nearly hidden by the foliage where Riph Raph was perched was a straight edge. “What are you standing on?” she asked, tearing away vines and bushes.
“What? I don’t know. A rock, I guess.” Riph Raph flapped his wings and tilted his head. “What does it matter?”
“No.” Kyja pushed aside a tree branch, revealing a stone surface that was clearly man-made. “Look, it’s not a rock. It’s a wall.”
It was a building of some kind—about ten feet by ten feet. The roof had collapsed long ago and the walls had crumbled away, but the floor and several stone pillars were still standing. “Look,” she said, pointing out a rectangular space that faced the pool. “It’s a door.”
Scraping away the moss and debris, she discovered a set of stairs leading into the mud.
“Look how the stairs go into the pool. There must have been an entrance here at some point.”
“Maybe there was once,” Riph Raph said. “But there isn’t now.”
“What if there is some kind of opening down there? A tunnel or something?”
Riph Raph’s eyes opened wide, and his tail lashed back and forth. “It doesn’t matter what’s down there. You can’t go into that mud. If the gas didn’t kill you, the heat would. If Marcus is in that, there’s nothing left of him but bones.”
Kyja’s heart sank. She could feel the heat coming off the boiling surface. It would be impossible to find anything inside it before she was overcome by the fumes. Regardless, she found herself pulling her robe up above her knees and tying it off to free her legs for kicking.
“No!” Riph Raph wailed. “I won’t let you go. How do you even know Marcus is down there at all? Maybe it’s a trick. Maybe the trulloch wants you dead for what you did to the unmakers.”
Kyja paused. Was that possible? Was that what Cascade had been warning her of? She tried to read Screech’s eyes, but she could sense nothing behind his scarred and haggard face. “Is Marcus down there?” she asked.
Screech nodded.
“Is he . . . alive?”
The trulloch shrugged his scarecrow-like shoulders.
It was up to her then. If Marcus had been pulled into that pit, he had to be dead. Adding her death to his would only ensure that neither of their worlds would be saved from whatever the Dark Circle had in mind. But what chance did she have on her own? Could she find the other elementals without Marcus’s help? They’d been a team—pulling each other up when they stumbled, adding their own strengths to the other’s weaknesses. If she knew for sure Marcus was dead, she’d find a way to go on. If there was a chance, any chance at all . . .
“I have to try,” she said, tying Marcus’s staff to her back with a length of leather cord. “If I don’t . . . come back up, get to Terra ne Staric and tell whoever you can find that we failed.”
“This is a really bad idea,” Riph Raph said, eyeing the pea-soup surface. “Skytes don’t swim, you know.”
“It’s all right,” Kyja said. “I don’t expect you to come with me.” She walked to the edge of the pool. Heat radiated off of it. Already the fumes were making her dizzy. If she didn’t go now, she’d lose what little nerve she had.
Talons latched onto her shoulder. “I always thought I’d die surrounded by little grandbaby skytes,” Riph Raph said.
“Really?” Kyja asked. “I never thought you were the fatherly type.”
“Maybe not,” he admitted. “But it’d be better than being cooked in a soup.” He closed his eyes and pulled his wings tight against his body. “If we’re going to do this, let’s get it over with.”
Turning her head away from the toxic clouds rising from the pool, she took a deep breath, turned back, closed her eyes, and jumped.
Chapter 18
Descent
Eyes closed, braced for the heat of the burning caldera, Kyja nearly tripped when her feet collided with a hard surface. Her eyes flew open, and she found herself teetering on the edge of a narrow staircase. In front of her, past the edge of stone stairs, was a wall of bubbling gray mud.
“Get back!” Riph Raph shouted, tugging at her shoulder and flapping his wings. For a moment Kyja thought she was going to fall, then—with the skyte’s help—she managed to regain her balance.
“What happened?” she gasped. Had she somehow missed the pit? No, she was standing in it, chest-high. But the muck had retreated from her, revealing a set of curving steps running along the outer wall of the pit and disap
pearing into the molten soup below.
Where had the staircase come from, and what had made the mud clear away? Kyja moved a step up and the mud rose with her, covering the riser she had just been standing on. Cautiously, running one hand along the wall of the pit, she lowered her foot. The gunk retreated again. She reached toward the center of the pit, and her hand disappeared into the gray surface. Yelping with pain, she yanked her hand back. Her fingers had gone a bright pink, but the burning wall of mud stayed where it was.
“Did you know about this?” she asked Screech, who was watching her from above.
The cave trulloch shook his head.
She moved her foot forward, and another step appeared.
“I don’t like this,” Riph Raph said.
“It’s the entrance,” Kyja said. “It has to be. And it beats drowning and burning.”
Riph Raph shrank against her body, looking at the gray wall with suspicion. “Who’s to say we won’t still do both? That stuff could collapse on us any minute.”
“I don’t think so.” Kyja stepped down to the next riser. As her head dropped below the surface of the pit, the mud suddenly closed in over the top of them, and Riph Raph gave a squawk of terror. Panicked by the darkness, she moved back, and the sky reappeared.
“I told you!” Riph Raph said. “Let’s get out while we can.”
“No.” She stepped forward, and again the mud closed over the top of them, turning everything black. “I think it’s okay,” Kyja said, her voice echoing in the darkness. The tight space gave her the unsettling feeling of being buried alive, and the air still smelled of rotten eggs, but she didn’t have any trouble breathing.
“This must lead to Land Keep,” she said, following the curving staircase downward.
Land Keep Page 9