Long, Dark Road

by Bianculli, Susan

  “This many dranth left unattended at the gate will arouses suspicions. There is a corral to the left for mounts to be kept in while waiting for riders. Take them there,” Venire ordered the guards.

  The two guards exchanged a glance. Venire’s eyes went black, and then both helmets were flicked forward onto their foreheads. They looked more respectfully at Venire after that and left to follow his order. Venire’s eyes went back to white.

  “So where do we go from here?” Dusk asked him.

  “We will have to make our way along the cavern wall to the tunnel that will eventually take us to the controls room,” Venire replied.

  Jason sighed and ran a hand through his black curls. “Can you at least tell me that we don’t have to cross the cave out there that’s filled with warriors exercising and doing who knows what else?”

  “The tunnel that leads to the controls room should not be far from here if this city-state was constructed like my own,” Venire replied.

  Auraus, concern in her grey eyes, broke in to the conversation. “How long does it take to put dranth away?” she asked. “And did you give the guards orders to return here that I somehow missed?”

  The white-eyed Under-elf looked young and unsure of himself all of a sudden. “I-I thought I did. Did I not?”

  We shook our heads.

  “We need to get going,” he said, striding towards the door leading out of the room.

  “Can’t you send one of your ghosts after them or something?” Heather asked.

  Venire paused at the door to the gate house. “I am a venire, not a full Conductivus. I can only give power to souls if I am within reasonable eye sight of my target. As they are no longer within my view, even if the souls knew where those two are, the souls could not affect them. If we go looking for those particular warriors, we would only bring more attention to ourselves. Those two gate guards are probably reporting to some superior right now, and if we do not wish to be stopped before we have begun, we must make our way to the controls room in a hurry.”

  Chapter 25

  “Wait. You just said that you cannot give power to souls if the targets are not within your sight. What then of the quad of guards we left behind us in the tunnel?” Auraus asked.

  Venire grimaced. “That was a bluff. One I am hoping that the quad does not try to overcome. Those souls I left there did not come and find me after we were out of sight, so I am assuming they returned to the Conductivus.”

  I was flabbergasted to learn that just then, and saw pretty much the same kind of look I had on all my companions’ faces, too.

  I said sharply to the Under-elf, “Don’t you think all that should have been told to us a while ago?!”

  “I did not think it important,” Venire replied, defensive arrogance creeping into his tone.

  “We can argue about this later, Lise,” said Dusk. “I advise you that we should not remain here, and that we do as Venire has said.”

  I nodded reluctant agreement. We all wrapped our cloaks tightly around us and walked quickly out of the gate house. We didn’t run as both Dusk and Venire told us that would be the fastest way to bring attention to ourselves. Instead, we had to do a march like we knew where we were going and that we had been ordered to be quick about it. Once we were in the cavern, the low hum of Under-elves exercising both themselves and their dranth filled the cavern with a soft sound. I hoped there were no sharp-eyed warriors looking around. Since we were not Under-elves we could be seen at a distance, and that would probably be unusual enough to investigate. Amazingly, we made the quarter way around the cavern’s perimeter without being stopped and turned down the proper tunnel without slowing our pace. A few steps into the tunnel, though, Venire stopped abruptly.

  “I am told there are guards ahead. I cannot stop them all. I can try bluffing them into submission, but if it comes to a fight I can only affect one of them. You all will have to take care of the other three. I will wave my hand if I do not think my words will be enough.”

  “Does that mean you only have uno–uh, one soul left?” Jason asked.

  Venire grimaced. “Yes. The ones I had at the gate house have split up. One is looking for the two gate guards so she can come back and warn us of anything coming from them, and the other is waiting by this tunnel’s mouth to warn us in case something like a relief quad comes our way.”

  “You only had seven souls with you to begin with?” Ragar asked incredulously.

  Venire shrugged. “That was all who volunteered to come with me. It is not like we Conductivi or venires can force a soul’s cooperation. They are free to choose what they wish to do since they are as individualistic as you or I.”

  Ragar’s green cat-pupiled eyes were embarrassed as he looked down at the tunnel floor. “Ah. Right. I forget that they are sentient and not at one’s beck and call, like magic.”

  Auraus gave a small smile to the mountain-cat-elf. “Ah, I would not go so far as to say that magic is at the beck and call of the user. There is a price to be paid even in clerical use, and sometimes it feels like the magic uses you as much as you use it.”

  Hmmm, I thought to myself. It almost sounds like souls and magic are kind of one and the same. But surely that can’t be right?

  “While this is fascinating and all,” Heather said, breaking my train of thought, “don’t you think that now is a bad time to be standing around and chatting?”

  “She has a point,” I said. “Venire, do you want to lead the way again and try the bluff?”

  He nodded, and we followed Venire down the corridor again, with most of us Surfacers assuming honor guard positions except for Ragar. The mountain-cat-elf buried himself as deeply into his cloak and hood as he could. Venire, on the other hand, made himself as obvious as possible. Before long in a slightly widened tunnel area before a closed door, we spotted a quad of four warriors standing on guard in front of a thick metal door. They started to shift their war spears into an “X” of defensiveness at our approach but wavered in confusion at the sight of Venire. Slowly they pulled themselves and their spears up in an “at-attention” stance of wary respectfulness. After a couple of seconds of both sides saying nothing I subtly poked Venire from behind, but he steadfastly waited for them to make the first move.

  “A Conductivus-venire?” the Sub-leader in charge finally asked. “But you are not our venire. Where do you come from? How did you get here? What are you doing here?”

  Venire drew himself up with the haughtiness I was becoming accustomed to from him. “It is not your place to be questioning me, Sub-leader. I and my retainers have been given full leave to inspect Chirasniv. I have never been to another city-state before and was curious about the differences between yours and my own.”

  “He has to have been given permission, Sub-leader,” said one of the Sub-leader’s warriors. “How else would he have gotten in the gate?”

  “But it is highly irregular,” the Sub-leader argued back. “Beings do not wander through the city-state without an escort. Not even venires.”

  Venire’s eyes went black, and the helmet of the guard was knocked off his head. “Do you doubt my words?” he said icily. “Step aside. I am curious to see if your controls room is any different than ours.”

  The Sub-leader stood his ground politely. “Conductivus-venire, with all due respect, the rules of your city-state cannot be much different than ours. You are not a Conductivus. You are a Conductivus-venire. Do you have the seal of Free Passage?”

  Seal? Uh-oh, I thought.

  Venire flicked his hand. That was the signal I’d been hoping not to see but had been waiting for in case it came.

  “Now!” I said sharply.

  Because it was unexpected by them, Venire took out the Sub-leader with the last soul remaining to him, Auraus got a warrior with a sleep spell, and the rest of us dog-piled on the last two and knocked them out. Venire shot a disgusted look at Auraus for casting the sleep spell while we tied the unconscious guards up.

  “What do we do with t
hem now?” Heather asked, eyeing the four bodies.

  “We take them into the controls room with us,” Ragar replied. “Yes, it will be irregular if someone comes and sees no guards on duty, but it would be more alarming if that being sees four tied up warriors instead.”

  “It was a rather easier fight than I was expecting,” Jason said with suspicion.

  Venire said, “Those who guard things, inside my city-state at least, are either those on punishment or those who are not the most skillful of warriors. I believe that this may be true here, and so we faced lesser warriors.”

  “Make sense to me,” I said, lifting one shoulder. I tried the door, but it was locked.

  Jason raised an eyebrow at me as if asking if he should pick it, but I gave him a slight head shake not to. I wanted to hide that particular skill from Venire unless it became absolutely necessary.

  I said to no one in particular, “Search them. One of them has to have the key to the door.”

  Not surprisingly, Dusk found it on the Sub-leader in one of his belt pouches, reminding me of how Jason’s jailer had had the key on her when Jason was imprisoned in the Art section. Dusk used this key to open the controls room door. Sound practically assaulted us, and we hurriedly dragged the guards in and shut the door behind us. Turning around, we saw the far edge of the room. Literally. The floor ended in a cliff, and the loud sound came from below it out of sight. We walked to the edge, and the sound turned out to be from an underground river some distance below us rushing from the far wall and out through the wall across the way. Pipes of varying sizes were submerged in the water that ran from the river straight up to an oasis column standing in the middle of the river.

  “I was right! It IS hydraulics,” Heather said with a grin.

  “So you were,” I said with a laugh, remembering how the first time we’d headed for Chirasniv Heather had tossed out the idea of hydraulics powering the Shifting Tunnels.

  “Does this mean you know how they work?” asked Dusk.

  “Sort of,” Heather said. “I mean, I’ve never really studied engineering or anything, but the basic principle is that you let the water of the river do the work for you. So the water somehow gets up the pipe, and then goes into a smaller pipe increasing the pressure, and then an even smaller pipe, increasing the pressure more, and then the pressure pushes on levers attached to gears, which pushes on other gears, and so on and so on until the tunnels are shifting. It’s a long process, but it gets it done.”

  “Which is probably the only reason why we escaped last time we were here. We were faster than the water powered gears,” I said.

  “And why the Chirasnivians couldn’t come after us right away, because they would have had to reverse it and that would have taken time,” Jason added.

  “I can fly over to the place where the pipes are coming up, Lise. Is that where these gears you speak of are housed?” asked Auraus, taking off her cloak in preparation.

  “Probably not the gears, but the levers that change the water flow to create the pressure are likely there. All you really need to do is wreck them if Venire gets a message stating that’s what the Conductivus wants to have happen.”

  “But, really, we should go ahead and wreck it anyway,” argued Jason. “Then we can be assured of a better chance of escaping with Arghen.”

  “And it’s not like you even need to know which one to move. All you need to do is make sure they can’t move,” Heather added.

  I nodded agreement with them, but then all of a sudden the door behind us was flung open. We whirled around and were stunned to see several quads of warriors in meticulously positioned lines in the doorway that allowed most of the warriors to have their poisoned wrist crossbows aimed straight at us.

  Chapter 26

  “I thought we were going to get some warning before something like this happened?” Jason asked Venire sourly.

  Venire looked surprised, confused, and lost. “I was! I do not know why we did not!”

  “That would be because of me,” said a fluttering, white-clad figure authoritatively as she pushed her way into the room.

  Venire groaned when he saw her. “Of course. You are the Conductivus-venire for Chirasniv.”

  Great, I thought, of course this city-state had to have a venire, too. I should have thought of that.

  We disguised Surfacers exchanged worried glances.

  The older female nodded regally as she waved a hand off to the left. “Right now, as you can see, your last remaining soul is occupied. As well as your other ones around Chirasniv.”

  We all looked when she pointed out of reflex, but only Venire dropped his head and slumped his shoulders forward in an attitude of defeat. I pursed my lips. I didn’t like knowing that our venire was now powerless. The guards we had knocked out started to stir, and a few of the warriors in the doorway came in to free them of their bonds. I recognized two of them. They were the gate guards who hadn’t come back from putting the dranth away.

  So they had gone to find help, and of course had known to get the Conductivus-venire of Chirasniv involved as well, I sighed to myself.

  While the erstwhile gate guards helped their fellows, other warriors stepped forward to take the vacant places in the menacing line up.

  How are we going to get out of this? I thought, looking around frantically.

  But there was nothing I could think of to do. There was no furniture in here to throw, and nothing else to hide behind. There was only a big expanse of smooth rock floor all the way to the cliff’s edge.

  The Chirasnivian Conductivus-venire looked at us with white-colored eyes filled with anger. “I am disgusted that Kelsavax has stooped so low as to use a venire to do the work of a Military spy. We are not part of city-state society, we are apart from it, and for good reason. We are the wild card, the last resort, the decision breaker and maker. We are not subject to anyone. As a result of your actions you are not even worthy of being brought before my Conductivus, never mind a Grand Council, Conductivus-venire of Kelsavax,” she spat, venom in her voice. “You have shattered both Under-elven custom and law, and so I decree you are to be executed. Immediately.”

  Wait, What?! My jaw about hit the ground.

  “You can’t do that!” gasped Heather, scared.

  “You do not have the authority to do that!” Venire snapped, growing angry in turn.

  She looked at him with disdain and stepped briskly to the side out of the firing range for the warriors in the doorway. Though those warriors now looked a little uncertain because of the exchange of words between the venires, their raised wrist crossbows didn’t lower. Ragar threw off his cloak and roared, Auraus raised her hands in a spell casting position, and everyone else exchanged glances. I thought about throwing myself into the river, but there was no guarantee there would be any air pockets to breathe in once the river left the room, so I decided in a split second that I’d rather not drown. I was the most scared I had ever been in my life. Fear made my brain kick in, though, and my fingers dove for the pouch that held Frelanfur’s scale.

  I whipped the pretty tan rainbow-sheened oblong out and up to my mouth in one movement and blew on it with three quick breaths. On the third breath the scale crumbled into dust, whipped around the room, and then vanished. A Captain barked the command reinforcing the Chirasnivian venire. The Under-elven warriors lost their hesitancy and took active aim at us. The Captain must have enjoyed drawing the execution out, because he called each step out very slowly. With Frelanfur’s non-appearance, I was getting ready to order a hopeless charge when all of a sudden a rumble in the stone beneath the soles of our boots was felt. It threw us all a little off balance.

  “Hold!” called the Captain counting down our deaths. “What was that!?”

  “That was me,” said a large, booming voice behind us which echoed around the cavern room. It sounded stern.

  My knees went weak with relief as I turned to see Frelanfur’s dragon head and a good portion of his neck rising up over the edge of the clif
f. The Under-elves in the doorway screamed. Venire and the Conductivus-venire for Chirasniv screamed. Frelanfur roared in return, causing a massive panic. I had to grab Venire and hold on to him before he rushed out of the controls room with all the Chirasnivians.

  “Venire! Venire! It’s okay, he’s on our side! He’s on our side!” I shouted at him while Dusk leapt for the door and slammed it shut behind the warriors, locking it this time.

  Venire stopped struggling, and I let go of him carefully. He turned and stared at Frelanfur, fear and wonder in his white eyes.

  “You called, Lise Baxter?” said Frelanfur, now sounding amused.

  “Thanks for being so quick!” I said, wiping the fear sweat off my forehead.

  “What did you want?” he asked.

  “Oh, well, you’ve already….” I started, but Dusk cut me off.

  “She wants you to wreck the controls for the Shifting Tunnels and jam the city-state gates open,” the Miscere Surface-elf broke in.

  Frelanfur raised an eyebrow at Dusk. “Oh, so you are talking to me again?”

  Dusk glowered a little bit. “Yes,” he ground out.

  Frelanfur looked back at me. “You really wanted me to stop the Under-elves from killing you, did you not?”

  “Well, not only that, but what Dusk said, too,” I replied hurriedly.

  “Wrecking the controls and the gate is outside the scope of what you called me for, which was to save you from certain death. I could tell what you wanted through the scale,” he said conversationally.

  Drat, I thought. Out loud, I said, “Okay Frelanfur, what would it cost to do what Dusk wants?”

  Just then Venire stiffened and his eyes went black. “The Conductivus has sent me a message. The controls rooms is to be taken out of commission one way or another, as well as the gates, as both parley and discussion have been ultimately refused,” he said when he relaxed again.