by Sara Wolf
When we come to a solid diamond set of doors, Fione shows a guard a topaz orb dangling with red thread, and the guard nods. I watch in awe as the bioluminescent moss glitters in the diamond, in all its facets and rainbow crevices. Rainbow, like Evlorasin when it escaped from Vetris. Like the rainbow aura that clings to valkerax when they fly.
“It’s the strongest gem.” Malachite sees me ogling. “But beneathers consider it the unluckiest.”
“Because it’s rainbow,” I mutter. “Like valkerax when they fly.”
He blinks in surprise, and then ruffles my hair with a grin. “Smart is a real bad color on you, Six-Eyes.”
“What color would you prefer, then?” I sniff, but my indignation is short-lived as the diamond doors finally yawn all the way open, revealing a perfectly square room loaded to the ceiling with weapons of all shapes and sizes—Cavanos-style swords, Avellish spears, pneumatic Helkyris harpoon guns using the same jet technology as their airships do, circular throwing blades, jade-encrusted rapiers, swords and axes and knives bent over and around one another, tied together at the ends, so old and bizarre and foreign they might as well be indecipherable puzzles of steel and leather.
“Celeon belduri. How do beneathers even use this?” Yorl muses, strapping on a pair of bladed foot gauntlets. “You don’t have the auxiliary tendons for it—or the paw shape.”
“Nobody uses all this shit—we just like to collect shiny upworld things.” Malachite throws me a wicked toothed dagger just like his, and I strap it to my thigh. “You know, just in case the upworlders accidentally invent something real good at killing valkerax.”
“Aren’t you going to use the matronic, Yorl?” I chirp.
“The council said they’d bring it to the rendezvous point,” Fione says.
“Generous of them,” Yorl murmurs thoughtfully.
“Yeah, well. They’re not the High Witches,” I say. “They want us to succeed.”
“A white mercury sword,” Lucien marvels at a pale, gorgeous ruby-inlaid blade mounted on the wall.
“Not the real thing,” Malachite asserts. “An old prototype.”
“Still functional as a blade,” the prince insists.
“You’re better off with a piercing weapon with valkerax, considering you humans aren’t strong enough to cleave through their scales with something heavier.”
“Are you calling your prince weak?” Fione calls from across the room. She sits on a stone table, a polymath tool in one hand and her crossbow cane in the other as she tinkers with its gears and levers.
Malachite shoots a smirk at Lucien. “Yeah, real weak compared to me. He’s a flexible little shit, though, I’ll give him that.”
“I’ll give him that, too,” I muse thoughtfully, looking innocently back at Malachite as he glowers my way. I make a little finger wave at him to rub salt in the wound and duck just in time to avoid his throwing knife. He wasn’t even trying hard—it quivers in the wall miles away from my head. “Rude!”
Lucien’s heat envelops my shoulder as he walks up behind me and plucks the dagger from the packed earth, inspecting it nonchalantly. “What are you taking, heart? Something flashy, I’d imagine.”
“Nonsense.” I smile up at him. “I’ve got Father’s sword and my own teeth. Anything else would just slow me down.”
“Not even this?” Fione dangles a bracelet of stunning amethysts.
“Oooh!” I coo, hurrying over and grabbing it appreciatively. “You know me so well, Your Grace!”
“Doesn’t look like a weapon,” Lucien muses, taking it gently from my hands and fastening it around my wrist for me.
“S’not,” Malachite agrees brusquely. “It’s an offering.”
“For what?” I blink.
“A grave.”
“Amethysts for the dead,” Yorl agrees softly. “Always.”
A quiet descends. Lucien starts to take it off me, but I stop his hand.
“Everyone who’s died: Vetris, Helkyris. Y’shennria’s family. Mine. Yours. Everyone who died because of these Trees. I’ll keep it. I’ll fight with it. For them.”
Lucien squeezes my hand tight. Yorl nods, satisfied, and Malachite seems proud of me somehow—a thin grin on his pale lips. Fione catches my eye, and then looks somberly away. I stare down at the gleaming purple stones as we leave, Malachite directing us to the River Gate.
This bracelet will be my offering, too.
It’s a pity we don’t have time to sample the wonders of Pala Amna, because it is wondrous. Malachite leads us through only half of it, the great stone widow’swalks we march on looming high over the city of stone and gems. It’s nestled on the bottom of a fearsomely huge cavern, something Yorl calls a “lava tube,’” the buildings stacked and mashed into one another like huddled stone children. Protecting it are seven stone gates, all of them accented with fierce lines of weapons similar to the one I saw in the ceiling of Evlorasin’s arena—a spear mechanism wound tight inside a hole, ready to spring forth and huge enough to pierce even the largest valkerax. Smaller weapons adorn the belts of every guard, and unlike Vetris, every civilian is armed to the teeth with broadswords, axes, and curved blades—the glint of metal bright in the thronging streets below.
An entire city, devoted to the spiral and ready to fight at a moment’s notice.
Like a grim reminder of a fang, a spire sits in the very center of Pala Amna—a huge stalactite of limestone jutting up out of the earth. Intensely incandescent brightmoss curls around it, creating a luminously golden spiral glowing over the city and providing what seems to be the majority of the light to the citizens.
“An artificial sun,” Fione marvels. “I’d heard of it, but to see it is something else entirely.”
“Yeah,” Malachite agrees wistfully, ruby eyes reflecting its brilliance.
“Is that brightmoss?” I squint at it.
Yorl shakes his head. “A distant relative that grows only on limestone. Much rarer. It requires near-constant supervision—the beneather lightsmiths tend to it.”
“Lots of shamed ancestor councilmen flung themselves off the peak,” Malachite snorts. “Or got pushed off by an angry mob.”
Lucien looks mildly impressed. “Certainly one way to do politics.”
“We’re almost there.” Malachite points ahead to a spear-lined gate. It’s nearly three times the size of Vetris’s main gates, the stone so old it makes my immortal arse feel as young as spring grass.
“I’m surprised things aren’t mustier down here,” I say as we descend the widow’s walk via a curlicue flight of stairs.
“Brightmoss creates ample fresh air,” Yorl offers. “Though, yes—the air itself doesn’t move. The flow has to be maintained by heavy duct usage and a few polymath machines powered by white mercury.”
“Must’ve been awful before the invention of those,” I muse.
“Not all bad,” Malachite insists dryly. “As kids we used to draw stick figures in the dust.”
“And come down with the occasional fatal respiratory disease.” Another voice joins ours—Lysulli, their long, pale hair swinging as they walk up to us. They’ve changed out their heavy armor for something lighter, the bone thinner but no less protective.
Malachite practically squawks. “What are you doing here?”
“What else? I’m heading your little mission,” they snort.
“Why you of all adjudicators?” He groans. He was so happy to see Lysulli at first, but now he’s sullen, and I know him well enough to know why. He didn’t want them at the final battle—not when there’s such a good chance we could all die. But Lysulli ignores him and the subtext completely, pushing him out of the way a little, and I start to like them even more. They might be brushing Malachite off lightly, but the double daggers sheathed in a cross over their tailbone look deadly serious.
They study me with piercing bloodstone
eyes. “The council entrusted me to watch you. You better not fuck it up, Heartless, because I’ve got a promotion waiting for me when I get back.”
“Got it!” I salute. Lucien chuckles and follows suit.
“This isn’t some little promotion game, Lys.” Malachite frowns. I see Lysulli smile for the first time at him, all acid sweetness.
“If you want my battalions, then it is now.” They sweep past him, bashing into his shoulder on the way.
“History?” Lucien asks, trying to sound as disinterested as possible.
“A bit,” Malachite grunts. “Let’s just get this over with.”
“And miss all the drama and fun?” I pout. “Nonsense. Who are they? How do you two know each other? Why are they so pretty? What’s their haircare routine like?”
Malachite does his godsdamndest to ignore every question I chirp as we follow Lysulli under the massive stone gate with all its embedded weaponry. Lysulli motions at the massive copper matronic waiting for Yorl a little farther in, and he strokes its armor affectionately before pressing some unseen button. A mortal-sized compartment hisses open on its back, and Yorl jumps in it, the sounds of levers being pulled echoing. Finally, he jumps back out and catches up to us. There’s a split second before I ask him why he isn’t taking the matronic with him when thumping footsteps resound, nearly scaring me into dropping my waterskin.
Yorl grins at me. “It’ll follow.”
“G-Good,” I gasp. “Great.”
The cavern ceiling of Pala Amna narrows down to a series of smaller caverns still lit by brightmoss and evened out on the bottoms by smooth stone roads. The matronic’s hissing and thumping is the only real noise once the bustle of the city fades. Stone signs carved with beneather runes dot the landscape here and there. There isn’t much wildlife to be seen, just the occasional skitter of bugs, which Malachite doesn’t seem to mind nearly as much as the big one we killed. But then Lysulli dislodges a brood of ghostbats from a stalactite and I shriek. Lucien draws his sword, Fione’s crossbow unfurls in a second, and Yorl hunkers down, ready to strike with his bladed foot gauntlets. Nothing. Nothing but my voice ringing around our heads. It echoes ceaselessly in the caves, folded in on itself and fading even slower than the bioluminescent trail the ghostbats leave behind in the air. The party looks at me, some more pointed than others, and most wincing as my shriek comes back around again on the stone.
“Oops.” I smile sheepishly.
“Pair of lungs on that one,” Lysulli admires begrudgingly.
“And here I was,” Yorl murmurs, “thinking your voice couldn’t get any worse.”
“Wait till she sees some fool dress,” Malachite scoffs. “Then you’ll know real eardrum pain.”
“Ahem!” I draw myself up to my full height. “I’m no master socialite, but maybe consider shit-talking me when I’m gone, hmm?”
“Never.” Lucien’s low voice is in my ear. It’s supposed to be comforting, but I turn to look at him and his gaze is heavier than comfort warrants, probably because I used the words “me” and ”gone” in the same sentence. I can’t help but remember the suspicious look he gave Fione and me before we left her to talk to the ancestor council.
He knows? No. He can’t. I’ve been careful—singing the song-poem in my head every time we touch. He suspects, but he doesn’t know.
He doesn’t know I’ll never really be gone.
“Luc won’t shit-talk you.” Malachite hefts his pack higher. “But I will. Because I have the good sense to.”
“Is that what you’re calling your inborn urge to make fun of people you find attractive?” Lysulli’s voice resounds. “I thought ten years would mature you, not keep you exactly the same.”
From what I’ve seen thus far, beneathers don’t really blush, but that doesn’t stop Malachite’s pink cheeks from trying not to. The color gathers around the three scars I gave him, now almost entirely healed, the long, puckered marks starker white against the flush. And it reminds me.
“I gave him those scars.” I point at them and smile at Lysulli. “So if Malachite wants to make fun of me, he can make fun of me. You know?”
Lysulli looks between the beneather and me, then turns away with a disbelieving scoff that sounds suspiciously like “upworlders.”
When they’ve gone ahead, Malachite breathes out a single word in my direction. “Dolt.”
I trot over to his side, blinking innocently. “You called?”
“I think he means to say ‘thank you,’” Lucien offers.
I act shocked. “What is this ‘thank you’ you speak of? And why have I never heard it in beneather?”
Fione and Yorl shoot each other smirks, and Malachite huffs and starts striding so long it takes all my leg-length just to keep up with him.
The Dark Below isn’t so dark near Pala Amna.
The brightmoss ensures that, but there also seems to be more natural light clustered around the city—reflections on water from little bioluminescent creatures and flora that live below, or above. Maybe that’s why they built Pala Amna here. It’s most certainly why, when the twists and turns around stone and abyss finally come to a stop, we see the waiting battalions clearly—a small crowd of beneathers armored to the teeth in valkerax bone, with spears and massive broadswords like Malachite’s. They wait patiently, nursing strands of jerky as their commanding officers meander through them checking equipment readiness.
“The fabled valkerax-slayers, in the flesh.” I whistle.
“Hurry up!” Lysulli demands from ahead, waving us over. The closer I get, the more I realize just how many of the two battalions look to be Lysulli and Malachite’s age. Young.
“Much younger than I thought they’d be, but no less impressive,” I murmur to Yorl, who nods.
“Beneathers don’t have a very long expected lifespan. The spiral takes most of them before their time. Getting older than three decades is a rarity.”
“Aha.” I nod, and think to myself that’s perhaps why the ancestor council was so eager to agree to Fione’s offer—tired of seeing their young succumb to the valkerax, only to be replaced by the younger. And it explains why Lysulli is in a position of power and still so young. I watch them salute the two commanding officers of the battalions by placing their pale fingers together, lightly interlaced. From where I’m standing, the points of Lysulli’s fingertips almost look like a spiral. Always the damn spiral.
In a way, the beneathers are imprisoned just as much as the valkerax they fight.
As much as Heartless.
The battalions are much less impressed with us than we are with them—but the matronic definitely catches their attention and awe. They shoot looks at it as they march, and we march with them. At some point, we pass a long, low, flat expanse of stone, almost like a field. Amethysts have been carved into various shapes of various sizes, embedded in the stone in a way that’s all too familiar. In a way I saw that day I left Nightsinger’s forest, along the Bone Road.
Graves.
Graves innumerable, stretching into the darkness.
But these graves aren’t from the Sunless War. They’re from a thousand years of fighting. Of dying. Of sacrificing.
The bracelet of amethysts jangles on my wrist as if calling out to its brethren, calling out to the place we all go in the end. The place we’re all marching to. A place I refuse to let my friends go to. A place I’ve been many times. A place familiar to me and yet, at its core, still unfamiliar. Frightening. Comforting. A spiral.
Malachite’s scars. Evlorasin’s blood promise within me. Lucien’s memories, of a cool little room overlooking a black sand beach.
No one is ever really gone.
“This is never-goodbye,” I whisper.
30
TO PALA ORIAS
The trek to Pala Orias is far easier than the maze we traversed after the Fog Gate. Or so it feels.
Having two beneather battalions of highly trained warriors cut down every hungry crawly that decides to slither toward us is a true blessing. As is having Lysulli. They know the way to Pala Orias with a bird’s mind for navigation, steering us through tight weaves of rock tunnels and devastated canyons so huge and wide, they put infinity to shame.
The canyons are more unsettling than the tunnels, frankly—the darkness stretching on forever and holding all manner of unknown horrors spun entirely by mind. My thief-brain screams that we could be attacked from any angle, at any time, and the brightmoss torches the battalions bear would detect such an attack far too late. But I suppose that’s why beneathers developed such good hearing in the first place.
And I’m not the only one worried—everyone is on edge in the canyons, Malachite walking with his sword drawn, Fione with her crossbow unfolded. Yorl holds a handkerchief up to his nose, blinking away dust and stale air as he desperately darts his low-light vision in every direction, the matronic thumping after him mindlessly. Even the battalions seem on edge this deep down—beneathers twitching in their armor at the faintest sounds I can’t hear.
Lucien seems to, irritatingly and wonderfully and as always, know how I feel. He walks beside me, close, his body heat a welcome thing in the clammy cold of the Dark Below. He must be even more nervous than I am, considering magic becomes more difficult the farther down into the Dark Below a witch goes. One of his defenses, gone. And one of mine, too. If his magic is weak, he can’t heal me as quickly if I get injured. But I know he’ll try anyway, to his detriment. He smiles sideways at me, his working hand sputtering with witchfire—not strong, but enough to contribute light to the path.
“It’s good news,” he assures me when he catches me staring at the weak fire. “It means that Varia might not be as strong as I thought, either.”
“But stronger than you,” I say. “Because of the Bone Tree.”
“I wouldn’t count me out just yet.” He makes that cocky smirk I love, but it pulls at deeper heartstrings. Worried ones. He’ll have to struggle, to pour so much magic into just fighting her. If I’m not fast enough in my own plan, I could lose him. He could do something brave and foolish and noble and—