That sharper look in my uncle’s eyes smoothed marginally.
“They should be there. If not, there is a storeroom on that same hall.” Musing, he gave me a faint smile. “I had wondered if that was the door you’d used... your mother might be less forgiving, had you used the one inside your Regent aunt’s quarters.”
Despite his words, he spoke easily, smiling wider.
He glanced at Donal again. That time, I could have sworn he focused directly on his face, shadowed or not. His eyes didn’t linger, however.
“Good luck finding your book,” he said to me, smiling. “I’m afraid I’m rather late for the banquet this evening, so I must ask your leave.”
I bowed to him in the customary fashion, but he didn’t return my bow.
Stepping towards me instead, he bent his dark head to kiss me on the cheek. Through his very hands, I felt a whisper of sadness I couldn’t yet let myself think about.
“Good luck, my darling,” he whispered softly.
He squeezed my arms, tight.
Then he let me go.
Turning, I watched him leave through the same arched doorway my aunt and her servants had used, moments before. He walked without turning back, his blue-robed form entering the stone pathway across the grassy lawn that stood just outside the rose garden’s walls.
Only when he was out of view and earshot did Donal touch my arm.
“We should go,” he said, soft. “We don’t have much time, Maia.”
Without speaking, I nodded, still staring into the dark of the palace gardens.
Then, forcing my mind back on the here and now, I turned with Donal, facing the reception hall of the Regent’s Blood.
After another bare second, I and Donal began to walk, our footsteps echoing as we ventured inside those stone, cave-like walls.
Chapter 9
THE WAY BELOW
DONAL BROKE THE iron lock on the outer door.
I worried about the noise.
He managed to muffle the worst of it with a throw blanket he found on the wooden bench outside my mother’s sleeping quarters, but I couldn’t help wincing and looking around, thinking servants must have heard it when the lock snapped. Donal must have been thinking the same; he pulled me into an alcove immediately after that loudest report.
We waited there, in the dark, beside a balcony window, listening for if anyone came.
No one did.
Over my protests, Donal bid me to continue to wait behind the curtain while he checked for witnesses, looking around the wall to the main corridor.
Finding none, he signaled me to come out.
He still hadn’t said a word about who I was, who my mother was, or my uncle, or anything about what he must have deduced, hearing my uncle and I talk.
I hadn’t said anything about those things, either.
Donal returned to the door as soon as I joined him back in the corridor. Pulling off the broken lock and yanking open the creaking door, he stood with me as we peered down into the dark together. From the door’s sound alone, I got the impression my uncle was right; this passage was not oft-used, if at all.
In any case, it was pitch black, and a stale smell rose from it.
Looking around at the inner walls, I didn’t see any options for electric light.
After a pause, I grabbed a candle off one of the nearby sconces, hoping its absence wouldn’t be noticed until we returned. Either way, we’d left enough traces of our path behind by then, we couldn’t afford to wait. The urgency to complete this before the broken lock was noticed, or the missing candle... or any part of my story to Uncle Karlen was questioned and found wanting... grew strong enough that my primary thought at that point was “hurry.”
I lit the candle with another burning in a silver candlestick on the table beside the wooden bench. Once my candle caught, I immediately returned to the door. I didn’t wait, but descended those first steps as quickly as the candle’s light would permit.
Donal followed me, silent.
The corridor was just narrow enough for the two of us, and nearly pitch black once he’d shut the door. The candle cast its glow into that darkness, but it seemed a feeble light indeed, swallowed within a few meters by the pitch darkness surrounding us. It also flickered madly from some breeze I could feel coming up the stairs from below.
I now actively worried about us getting out.
I wondered how we could possibly do this cleanly, given where we were now. Worse, we might be trapped down here. I feared violence might be inevitable, no matter how we tried to escape, especially if we tried to take any but a tiny number of red witches with us.
Donal hadn’t said it in so many words, but I definitely got the sense he wouldn’t go willingly back into slavery. If we got pinned down, he would fight, with no ambiguity in his heart or his mind, unlike me.
I also feared, based on what he’d said about the red witches themselves, that they might not want to come with us, regardless of what we told them about who we were. What if they decided we were the enemy? What if they raised the alarm on us themselves? What if they agreed to come, then went into shock once they hit the open air?
It would do us little good to get them free of the crypt if they merely stood, paralyzed, on the main palace lawn. For all we knew, none of them had any memory of seeing the sky.
If Donal was right, they’d been taken as babies.
We had to assume that living down here, in this dark hole, was the only life any of them had ever known. Or, at the very least, the only one they remembered.
The candle cast disconcerting shadows on the walls as we descended the stone stairs. The shapes disoriented me, writhing like watery snakes on Donel as well, reminding me how short a time I’d known him. Yet I’d risked everything for him. My very life, in fact. Thinking about it now, I couldn’t really explain to myself why I’d done so. I still didn’t trust him totally, but some part of me felt moved to risk everything to help him anyway.
It grew cooler, the further we descended into the rock.
The air also grew more humid.
I found I was sweating from that wetness in the air, even while shivering from the cold. I wondered if we would find a lake at the bottom of those stairs, even as I wrapped my free arm around my torso, trying to keep warm. Donal and I continued to walk side by side, pacing one another, although there was no real reason to. He still hadn’t spoken since we first encountered my uncle at the entrance to the building.
Even as I thought it, he muttered to himself. I only caught the tail end of it.
“...maybe we should use magic, to even know if we are going the right way.”
He wasn’t really talking to me, but I answered him anyway.
“Do you think that is a good idea?” I said. “Using your magic in here?”
“I was thinking yours, not mine,” he said, glancing at me in the dim light. “And not unless it was an emergency. I wondered if you knew enough white magic to try it. It might not be noticed in here, if you said you’ve practiced in here before.”
“That was a lie, Donal.”
He gave me an impatient look. “I know that. But your uncle believed it.”
I relaxed a little. But only a very little. After another pause, I shook my head.
“My white magic is terrible, Donal,” I said after another beat. “I wouldn’t trust whatever result we got, and if this place is as much a secret as you say, they’d have shields all over it, misdirecting anyone who tries to look. I’d never get through that.” Pausing, I added, “Do you really think we’re going the wrong way? Has something changed in your mind on this?”
Both of us murmured, our voices lower than whispers. Even so, the words struck me as disturbingly loud, like shouting, despite the absence of even an echo.
“I think we are,” he said after a too-long pause. “Going the right way.”
I agreed with him. Yet my nerves twisted tighter under my skin.
Perhaps because, like him, I had nothing to base m
y belief on; I simply felt us being drawn deeper down as if by an invisible string.
I had a sudden flash of being trapped down here, in this watery, cold hole. No sunlight. No wind on my face. No rooftop views of the river, no Water Market, no crowds of commoners or witches, my uncle or any of my friends.
Nothing but darkness and cold and the silence of the grave.
What if we ended up locked down here with those we intended to liberate?
The possibility terrified me.
It also made me more determined than ever to free anyone we found.
Those steep stairs seemed to stretch into the dark forever; we descended down them for an endless-feeling stretch of time.
Somewhere in it, Donal reached for my hand.
I didn’t fight the contact; I welcomed it, and for the first time, it scarcely crossed my mind that to touch him skin-to-skin was “against the rules.” Our fingers wound around one another’s without us acknowledging it overtly, clutching for heat, for contact, for reassurance perhaps. It was strangely grounding to have both of my hands occupied, in either case. When he gripped my fingers firmly, something in me began to breathe once more.
“I shouldn’t have brought you here,” he said.
I let out a nervous sound. “You brought me? Is that what this is?”
“Yes,” he said, ignoring my half-laugh. He gripped my hand tighter. “I didn’t tell you everything, Maia. There are things I didn’t tell you.”
I exhaled slowly, nodding. “Yes. I know. Do you want to tell me now?”
I felt a flicker of surprise off him. “Yes.” As his surprise faded, his words sobered. “But I can’t. And it doesn’t matter now anyway, Maia... most of it can wait. Once we find the witches and get out of here, then we can talk. Then we can really talk, Maia.” He paused, massaging my fingers with his. “But there is one thing I should say now.”
I turned, looking up at his shadow-mottled face.
Glancing down at me, his dark eyes reflected the candlelight briefly and shimmered.
“I know one of the witches down here. Or I think I do,” he said after another pause. “That’s why I couldn’t leave them behind.”
I felt my throat tighten. For some reason, I found myself wondering if he was married. Was it his wife who was down here? A girlfriend, perhaps? I didn’t ask, only bit my lip as I waited for him to go on. After a longer pause that time, he did.
I felt him look over at me first, reluctant, like he might be holding his breath.
“The witches down here... they are not common knowledge in the slave colony either, Maia. I’d never heard any red or white witch talk about them, not until a mere ten days prior to this one. I was told about them by a white witch. Purposefully, I mean.” Pausing, as if waiting for me to ask, he went on when I didn’t. “One of the red warlocks, one I’ve known since I was a child, verified what I’d been told. So did my handler, and several Defenders.”
I frowned, unsure of the import of his confession.
When his silence continued, I prodded him to go on.
“And?” I said. “Are you saying this might all have been a lie?” Hesitating, I went on in a gentler voice. “It crossed my mind that it might be a myth, Donal, even if it were not a deliberate untruth. It is only natural that such myths would exist among slaves. Even in free society, stories are told and retold until they are twisted beyond recognition. That, or stories once true are repeated and retold even though they are true no longer.”
He shook his head, winding his fingers tighter around mine. “No, Maia, that’s not it. The story is true. I am certain.”
I was relieved to feel no anger on him for what I’d said. Even so, I was puzzled by his utter lack of doubt. “How can you be so sure?”
Donal hesitated. He glanced down at me reluctantly.
“The same white witch told me my sister is here,” he said. His breath came harder in the pause after he spoke, as if he doubted the wisdom of his confession already. “She said my sister is among the red slaves under the palace. That she was given to the Regent as a baby... only two or three years... to replace one here who’d died.”
I could only grip his hand, feeling his pulse as if through his fingers.
Taking another breath, he exhaled it slowly. “I remember her being taken, Maia,” he said, looking at me so that his dark eyes flashed again with candlelight. “I think I thought it was a dream before now, but I remember. The Defenders told me my sister had died. They said she died after bein’ bad sick, an’ my mother died o’ the same, tending her. It’s how I first discovered my handlers weren’t my real parents.”
Donal shook his head. I felt a curl of disgust off him. I couldn’t tell if the disgust was aimed at his so-called “handlers,” or at himself for believing them to be family.
He went on in the same voice.
“I remember the struggle,” he added. “I remember it clear as day now, ‘though I must’ve blocked it for a time. I remember my mother’s yells, our house filled with white-robed monks...” He looked at me again, as if gauging my reaction. “Old Alec, the red warlock I mentioned, he reminded me of all that. He said the white witch was telling me true, that my sister lived at the palace now, and had since that day. He said palace monks came for her in the middle of the night and my mother fought them. So they murdered her.”
I flinched and he paused, staring at me without slowing his pace down the stone stairs.
He renewed his grip on my fingers.
“I barely remember her, Maia. But she was kind. I’m told she was also a strong witch. My memories are more like snapshots, images. I know she loved me and Kaitlin. She loved us fierce. I remember her singing to us... laughing.”
He spoke the words so calmly, a few seconds passed before everything he’d said fully sank in. Once it had, I felt sick. I didn’t know how to respond in words, so I didn’t, but I squeezed his hand in mine, and he returned my strong grip.
Exhaling, he pulled my hand closer to his side a moment later.
His voice came out as calmly as before.
“When I confronted my trainer, Coran, he continued the lie at first. When I wouldn’t let it stand, telling him the few pieces I remembered and what Old Alec and the white witch had said, he admitted to me finally that it was true. He also bade me never to speak of it, and not to trust the white witch...” He hesitated, and I felt Donal’s eyes on me again, saw them sparking with a grim fire past the candlelight’s arc. “I knew he was right. I knew it then. But knowing Kaitlin was here, knowing the truth of her at last... it burned at me, Maia. I couldn’t let it go. I couldn’t just do nothin’. So in the end, I came here anyway.”
Again, I didn’t know how to respond.
Feeling swelled in me when I felt the emotion coming through his cold fingers.
I knew there was some part to this story he still wasn’t telling me, but he’d admitted that to me already, and said he intended to tell me the rest when he could. Right now, I was content with that. Something about the openness I felt around him made all my questions evaporate.
I found myself wanting to touch more of him instead, so badly I curled my hand tighter around the candle, my fingers making imprints in the soft wax.
He exhaled, and his voice grew more subdued.
“My sister was a baby when they took her.” He looked at me. “She’d be about your age now. Twenty? Twenty-one?” When I nodded, squeezing his hand, he nodded back. “It’s likely she doesn’t remember me. Or our mother. Or anything about that life. Especially if she’s lived all her life down here, steeped in their magics.”
I nodded, thinking about his words, and about how little I’d known myself, living at the palace. When he next spoke, Donal’s voice grew bitter.
“...So, you see, I know what it is, to be wrong about who your family is.” His voice turned more gruff. “Anyway, I could hardly expect her to remember something I scarcely remember myself, even being five years older. If it was hard on me, being a young ‘un, it must
have been even harder on her, to lose everything she knew in one night.”
I saw a faint flash of that red in his eyes, just visible in the dark.
He gave me a grim smile.
“Don’t laugh, but when I first saw you there, standing outside that wooden cage the river dwellers put me in, I thought you might be her. Your ages are about right, as I said... and despite how they’d dressed you, I could plainly see ye must be from the palace yourself. But when I saw your face... your eyes... I knew there was no way you could be her.”
I frowned, puzzled. “You remember her face so well? Even so young?”
“I remember her eyes,” he said at once. “Her eyes are dark, like mine. They weren’t even blue as a babe.” He nodded towards my face. “Your eyes are blue still, huntress.” Following the candlelight down the stairs, he inclined his head. “Anyway, she’ll have changed beyond normal recognition, it’s true, but I feel certain I would know her if I saw her. Perhaps that’s childish, but it’s true... I do think I’d know her. And not in the way I knew you when I saw you.”
I wasn’t sure what he meant by that, but I didn’t ask.
Instead, I focused on the darkness ahead.
It occurred to me suddenly that we had been speaking almost normally.
“There’s no one in range,” Donal assured me, again, as if feeling my thoughts, which I was increasingly sure he could do. “I can sense such things,” he added. “Especially other red witches. It’s only you and I here, within range of my perception... unless white witches are hiding them from us.” He glanced at me. “If that’s true, we have far greater problems, Maia. Either way, it’s safe for us to talk. I’ll let ye know if that changes.”
“I thought you couldn’t use magic down here?”
He glanced at me again. “Some magic is inherent. I feel things without consciously exerting my abilities. If they are able to pick up vibrations at that level, they would have felt me the instant I breached that wall... so again, it wouldn’t matter now.”
Red Magic: an Adult Dystopian Paranormal Romance: Sector 6 (The Othala Witch Collection) Page 10