“Shouldn’t there be more traps?” I asked.
“The door wasn’t complicated enough for you?” Warner teased.
“There will be more,” Kett said.
We rounded the wide curve, continuing to walk until we arrived at a narrow stone bridge. Or more of a ledge, really, which jutted out over the crevasse and led to a narrow set of stone stairs that cut straight into the wall on the other side.
The walkway continued onward, but I assumed it simply circled back around to the bottom of the main stairs. Plus, the firefly bobbed helpfully about halfway across the bridge. Or, from my perspective, the single-file stone ledge that ran across a crevasse with no safety rail and no perceivable bottom.
Fan-freaking-tastic.
“It isn’t a wall, then,” I said.
“The stairs lead upward. Perhaps to a wide platform?” Warner said. “Ringed by the fissure. We should circle it to be —”
Kett started across the ledge without a second thought.
“Don’t look down,” I called. I shook my head at Warner and moved to follow the vampire, who passed the firefly without bothering to answer me. Then he started to climb the stairs.
I really, really missed Kandy. The green-haired werewolf could always be counted on to laugh in the face of impending death.
Halfway along, the ledge was narrower and longer than it had appeared from the other — stable, thicker — side. I briefly wondered if it was a magical optical illusion.
Then the freaking firefly dive-bombed my head without warning. I instinctively threw my arms up to shield my face, but lost my balance on some inconveniently loose rock. Though perhaps the rock was convenient for the firefly, which had apparently been luring me to my death.
Damn my stupid fascination with shiny objects.
My ankle twisted and I went over sideways.
Warner snagged the back of my jacket.
I was suspended over the bottomless crevasse, hanging at an almost forty-five-degree angle out from the ledge.
“Holy fu —”
A light flared beneath me. Way, way too much silver light. I screamed as it seared through my eyes and into my brain, throwing my arms around my face a second time.
I was blinded. The silver light exploded through my mind as the metallic taste of the metallurgy flooded my mouth, plugged my nasal cavities, and choked off my scream.
“Bend your knees, Jade,” Warner growled.
Clinging to the command in his tone for sanity’s sake, I bent my knees. Even though I desperately wanted to claw the metallurgy out of my eyes and throat.
He hauled me back until I was crouched over my firmly planted feet.
I tried opening my eyes, but all I could see was silver, silver, and more silver. “I can’t open my eyes,” I cried.
“They’re open,” Warner murmured as he picked me up and — I could only guess — carried me the rest of the way across the bridge.
I twisted my fingers through my necklace instead of scratching at my eyes. “What the hell was that?” I was thankful I could talk, even though the silver felt like it had completely filled my throat. I tried to not cling to Warner as I attempted to rapidly blink away my apparent blindness.
“A river of molten silver.” Kett’s cool voice came from somewhere behind me.
Warner placed me carefully down on a step. I sat, desperately gripping at the edge of the stone rather than his leg.
“Impossible.” Warner stepped away from me, perhaps to look at Kett’s ‘molten silver.’ “It’s just water spelled to appear silver.”
“It’s a crucible,” Kett countered. “And we just stepped onto a platform at its center.”
“But you can see?” I asked.
“Yes,” Warner said. “As before, I can’t feel any magic. But I assume the concentration of metallurgy is affecting your sensitive senses differently than mine or the vampire’s.”
Kett pressed his cool fingers to the back of my neck. “Shall we proceed?”
I still couldn’t see a damn thing, nor could I grab or push away the magic that was affecting me, but I nodded.
“Give her a damn second,” Warner said as I stood. I reached through the silver light toward his voice.
Still grumbling under his breath, he flipped me over his shoulder and followed Kett up the stairs. The taste of his black-forest-cake magic soothed me as I attempted to discern individual objects within the haze of silver that was all I could see. If I squinted madly, I was fairly certain I could see the line of the bridge behind us, but only because it was a slightly darker gray within the pervasive silver blur.
∞
We made it to the top of the stone stairs without me seeing or doing another damn thing.
I heard — twice — some sort of kerfuffle ahead of us as Warner climbed. Some sort of smashing of what sounded like metal. I assumed Kett had confronted and overcome some sort of metallurgy, but the vampire didn’t offer any verbal enlightenment.
Warner paused at the top of the narrow stairs, shifting me off his shoulder to set me on my feet in front of him. He kept his hand clenched into a fist at the back of my ski jacket, like I might wander off unexpectedly. But still silver-blind, I wasn’t going anywhere.
“Kett is walking the perimeter of what appears to be a completely flat area, about three times the width of the nexus,” Warner said. “The river of molten silver, if that’s what it is, encircles us. As with the bridge, no barrier stands between us and a sheer fifty-foot drop into the silver lava.”
“Magic?” I asked. “More traps? Doorways?”
“More of those silver lights have illuminated as you have passed, and I assume they will continue to do so. No traps or doorways that I can see, though a stone table set on a center pillar has been hewn out of the rock. It stands closer to the edge opposite to us than to the center.”
God, I never had been great at visualizing things. I blinked a few more times, almost squealing in delight when I figured out I was seeing basic Kett and Warner shapes within the gray blur as the vampire crossed back toward us.
“Another altar, you mean?” I asked grimly.
“That would depend on the sect that created this site,” Kett said. “But yes, most likely. I would assume that sacrifices were conducted here at some point. Tributes to whatever god they worshiped, from whom they believed their power over metal was a divine gift.”
“Conjecture doesn’t help us, vampire,” Warner said. “Whether or not it was considered to be an altar doesn’t help the alchemist get her eyesight back.”
I sensed more than saw Kett shrug. “Is it always going to be altars?” I sighed.
“Would you prefer a treasure chest?” Kett asked.
“Yes,” I answered, though I got that he was being sarcastic.
“There’s one of those too,” Warner said. “On the table.” The word ‘table’ was delivered bitingly. Yeah, my boyfriend was in protective mode again. If I wasn’t all freaked out and blind, I would have paused to swoon. I also would have questioned whether Kett had just tried to joke with me, except …
“Why is it getting darker again?” I asked.
The shadow leeches attacked.
Warner yanked me back and to the side, trying to shove me behind him, I think. I stumbled and fell instead. Standing over me, the sentinel pulled his knife. I could see and taste the sweep of the blade’s magic, a blur of blue and gold.
Kett hissed in pain as he dove in next to me. “I’ll need your knife, dowser. I doubt I can wield it as well —”
I pressed the blade into his hand, then he was gone.
Shailaja laughed. Shadows whirled around me, but the demons didn’t bother testing the personal ward my necklace provided. So they learned, maybe. Did that make them sentient? Was that anything to be concerned about right now? No.
I could feel Warner and Kett moving around me. Seated on the cold stone, I wrapped my arms around my knees and pulled them into my chest to make myself as small as possible. Streaks of gold,
blue, and red magic cut through the darkness as the sentinel and the vampire darted and spun to slash and stab at the shadow leeches.
Shailaja clapped one hand across my mouth and tightened the other to a fist in the back of my hair, whispering in her annoyingly uppity English accent. “Thanks for the way in, alchemist. Time to collect the prize.”
Okay, maybe her accent wasn’t the annoying thing. Maybe it was the fact she always had the upper hand — even though we’d been expecting her this time — that pissed me off.
Still holding me only by the head, she started hauling me toward the altar.
At least that’s where I assumed she was taking me. Getting dragged by the head wasn’t terribly comfortable. I was also exceedingly aware of how quickly, then insistently, my neck ached at this treatment, and how easily even a teenage dragon could snap my spine should she so desire. I’d already done the broken neck thing — twice — and I really didn’t want to tempt fate for a third go. Even the healer had cautioned me about this vulnerability.
So I tried to bite her hand instead of digging in my heels or twisting away. Unfortunately, she held her palm firm but flat, clamped tightly across my lips and lower jaw. Actually, if her hand hadn’t been covering my mouth, it might have appeared as if she was just hugging me from behind.
You know, if rabid koalas went around giving hugs. I gurgled a laugh at the ridiculous ways my mind kept me from going into shock or freezing up.
“Why are you being so lame?” the crazed koala whispered as she dragged me to my knees. “Tell me what you see before you, alchemist.”
She lifted her palm partly away from my mouth, though she kept the side and heel of her hand clamped to my jaw and chin.
“I’m freaking half-blind, you stupid twit,” I said.
“Jade?” Warner called through the dark … well, the grayish shadow. I wasn’t sure he could see anything more than I could through the swarm of shadow leeches.
Shailaja giggled. “Over here, my sentinel.”
Yeah, I really, really didn’t like the ‘my’ part of that. If I’d had my knife, I would have jabbed it in her freaking eye. Instead, noting I could actually see the leeches roiling around us now, I reached up and wrapped my hands around each of her wrists.
She giggled again. “Shall we have a contest of strength, half-blood?”
“Nah,” I said. “I get that you’re stronger, but your nose ain’t half as thick as my skull.”
“I don’t —”
I slammed my head back into her face. Something crunched, and Shailaja’s hold loosened enough for me to pivot on my knees and knock her feet out from underneath her.
Unfortunately, she didn’t let go, so we rolled together — scratching and fighting for a hold or a handful of hair — until we slammed against the stone altar. Me, forehead first, of course and always.
Starbursts exploded in my eyes. Had they not been accompanied by an instant migraine, they would have been a relief to the endless press of gray.
My limbs went rubbery, and for some reason, Shailaja let go of me. I rolled onto my back, lifted a shaky hand to my head, and felt warm liquid.
Lovely.
I just hoped my brains weren’t leaking out. I really didn’t have any to spare.
I could see Shailaja standing over me. Well, her general shape and golden-tinted magic. The region I assumed was her face was sparkling with gold, as was something else down lower. Blood on her face and hand, maybe.
I was seeing magic. The gray was the shadow leeches, and I could see flashes of gold and red among that gray. Warner and Kett.
Shailaja grabbed a handful of my curls, and I stood swiftly so as to not lose a good chunk of hair.
“Look,” she hissed.
A silver treasure chest sat on the stone table. It was about one and a half feet square and deeply etched with runes that I couldn’t have hoped to translate even if I wasn’t still half-blind.
“Take the chest,” Shailaja demanded.
“We’ve both played this game before, crazy koala,” I said. “It would be seriously stupid to —”
All the shadow leeches left us so quickly that I was actually buffeted by the breeze of their passing.
Kett hissed in pain — a muted noise that pinched my heart.
I whirled around, dragging the ever-clingy Shailaja with me and wrenching my neck to do so. Warner was standing about ten feet away, his blade still extended in midslash though no leech was within his reach. Or at least I saw a gold-sparkling outline of him and his knife.
A vortex of gray shadows twisted and churned in a funnel around a red blur. Kett.
The vampire didn’t make another sound.
“Stop it!” I shouted. “No one is fighting you, you freaking idiot. How many freaking times have we offered to help?”
“I don’t like your terms,” Shailaja said.
The Warner-shape pivoted to face us. He’d lowered the sacrificial knife to his side, but then he deliberately pointed it at the crazed teenage dragon.
“For me?” she asked. “A lovely gift, my friend. But not containing nearly enough of the power I seek.”
“I don’t know you,” Warner said. His voice was low and deadly. Jesus, I never, ever wanted to hear him sound like that while speaking to me. It pained me to hear it directed at someone else.
“Warner!” Shailaja gasped mockingly. “We’re equals. Unparalleled equals. Together, we could reign —”
“There is no together for us,” Warner said as he advanced toward her. “You decided that for yourself without even consulting or considering me. And why? Because I was never a consideration for you, as you were never for me. I want no part of your grand delusion.”
“Stop there, sentinel.” Shailaja lost all sense of the sweetness she’d previously been attempting — and failing at. “Or my shadows will suck the vampire dry.”
Warner shrugged. My eyesight was getting better, but my stomach bottomed out at the sight.
“The vampire is old, powerful,” he said. “He wouldn’t hesitate to sacrifice me.”
My knife materialized in my invisible sheath. I moaned as I felt the weight of it against my thigh.
Kett must have dropped it in the vortex. He’d be defenseless against the leeches without it.
I called the knife into my hand and awkwardly slashed sideways at Shailaja. The teen saw me twist toward her and knocked my hand away, breaking my right wrist as she did so.
“Mother of freaking God!” I screamed, involuntarily dropping my knife and instinctively cradling my wrist as I spun away.
Unexpectedly, she didn’t attack me again. I looked over to see Warner a few steps away, his arm outstretched. This stance placed him as far away from Shailaja as he could be while still having his knife pressed up underneath her chin.
She was up on her tippy toes, with her head tilted as far back as it could go. Even from this awkward position, she still managed to glare at me, not the sentinel.
A thin line of blood formed at her neck, seeping onto the blade.
“Sharp, isn’t it?” I asked.
“How’s the wrist?” Shailaja snarked back. Her words were muddled, but she could barely move her jaw to speak. Enunciation took a backseat to having your throat slit, presumably.
I brashly snapped my wrist back into place, trying not to scream while doing so and not quite pulling it off.
“Free the vampire,” Warner said.
“Absolutely not,” Shailaja answered. “The alchemist will retrieve the instrument and use its magic to restore me to my rightful shape and power.” She shifted her gaze from me to Warner. “Then you will join me to hunt for the third instrument.”
“Absolutely not.” Warner threw the teenage dragon’s own words back in her face, with no hint of the playful smile I’d grown to adore.
She shrugged one boney shoulder. “The alchemist is pretty enough. Not so beautiful to be threatening, and not powerful enough to be of any concern. I agree that her magic is valuable. We can k
eep her if you insist. But you will soon grow bored of her mortality. I would see you gain your rightful place, Warner, son of Jiaotu.”
“Segue much, crazy?” I asked. “And, wow, that wasn’t an icky image at all.”
“I’m exactly where I’m meant to be,” Warner said.
They glared fiercely at each other, with their dragon magic swirling all around them. The glare was sexy on Warner, and somewhat silly on Shailaja. No one takes a look like that from a teen seriously.
We were in the ‘ignore Jade because more important things were being discussed and more powerful plays were being made’ portion of the day. Which was fine by me, because peppermint rose to tickle my taste buds and focus my thoughts.
The vampire was still fighting.
I spun away from the Warner-and-Shailaja soap opera, circling the stone table while I looked for runes or hidden spells.
I was here to collect the second instrument of assassination, after all. Plus, I wanted Shailaja’s attention on me, not on whatever Kett was doing in the swirling vortex of shadow leeches.
“Good girl,” Shailaja said.
“Jade,” Warner said tensely.
“Just get ready for the backlash,” I said.
Warner widened his stance, his knife still pressed to Shailaja’s throat. She spread her arms slightly, her fingers splayed as she grinned at me.
I reached for the lid of the heavily runed silver chest that sat in the middle of the stone table, but I couldn’t lift it. I ran my hands around its edges and over its rune-carved top.
“No keyhole,” I said.
“The runes?” Warner asked.
I nodded in acknowledgement, but continued to examine the remainder of the table first, just in case I was missing something. “No other magic here. Just the metallurgy.”
“What did you expect?” Shailaja asked sneeringly. “Is she always this slow …?”
The teenaged dragon sucked in a pained breath that made me guess Warner had pressed his blade more firmly against her neck, but I didn’t look up to confirm. I could actually feel the magic the leeches were siphoning off Kett, and was beginning to worry that was why I was tasting peppermint. The longer I took, the more they harmed him.
Maps, Artifacts, and Other Arcane Magic (Dowser Series Book 5) Page 19