by Spurrier, Jo
‘I thought I heard you stirring. I can’t sleep any longer, either. What do you say we go and look for this cache?’
‘I … Now, madame? But it’s the middle of the night —’
‘You don’t know that. It could be full daylight outside for all you know.’ Delphine crouched on her heels beside him with her dark curls spilling over her shoulders and her eyes bright with excitement. ‘Come on, you know you want to … If we wait until morning those wretched Battle-Mages will do all they can to beat us to the post. I think we should start on that ledge overlooking the cavern, what do you say?’
Isidro sat up, and reached for his coat. ‘Madame, is it wise for us to be seen alone together? There are bound to be sentries out there.’
‘Good point,’ she said. ‘I’ll bring Kora along as a chaperone.’ Kora was the name she’d chosen for Sierra.
Delphine ducked back through the curtain and Isidro felt Rasten abruptly withdraw. He held his breath, waiting for a shout of alarm — he’d known Sierra for only a few weeks before his capture, but in that time he had never seen her wake suddenly without loosing a storm of lightning through her skin.
From the other side of the curtain he heard Sierra gasp, and felt a surge of power from Rasten as he drew the flare away. ‘Get dressed, quietly, and follow me,’ Delphine told her. She ducked back through the curtain, and in the faint light Isidro saw Sierra in silhouette as she struggled into her coat.
‘Are you ready?’ Delphine asked him, breathless with excitement. ‘Let’s go.’
Sierra followed in meek silence as they left the tent. Isidro wanted nothing more than to wrap his arms around her, but he took his usual position at Delphine’s left shoulder while Sierra yawned and stumbled along behind.
Akharian camps were always laid out in a neat grid. Every other tent bore a mage-lantern on its ridge-pole, set to a dim glow. Delphine led them towards the stream and the sound of falling water. Near where the channel cut through the rocky floor, Isidro saw sacks and bushels of supplies heaped up in a pile.
Away from the glow of the lanterns, he saw more light streaming down from the highest ledge — someone had found a way up to the vantage-point.
It was not so much a waterfall as a cascade of tumbling water. A series of stepping-stones broke the surface, forming a zigzag path that climbed the slope like a staircase. A haze of mist hung over the water, but no ice clung to the rock. Steam, Isidro realised. ‘Madame, the water’s warm. There must be a hot spring nearby.’
‘Indeed. This channel isn’t natural — but it is very like the one at Milksprings, isn’t it? Take your time, Aleksar, I don’t want you to slip and jar that arm,’ she said, and leapt across to the nearest stone.
It struck him then that Delphine could be hurt or even killed when the attack came. As much as she infuriated him, the thought of her coming to harm made him turn cold. She had saved his life and spared him from torture, and he was grateful for that, if nothing else. He did not want to see her harmed.
Once at the top, Isidro went to look over the camp, reaching for Rasten so he too could see what they faced. There were sentries stationed around the perimeter, but none patrolling the distant tunnels. The supplies were placed beside the stream to his left — he had no idea of the direction by the poles — while on the far right was a collection of squat, low tents. Slave quarters, he guessed.
Two sentries were stationed at the top of the ledge, and they strolled over as Delphine reached the top. Delphine turned to them, squaring her shoulders and raising her chin. ‘Now listen here, my good men. My slaves and I have come to see if we can find this cache, and if you have a problem with that, you’ll have to send for the general.’
‘That won’t be necessary, madame,’ the sentry said. ‘General Boreas left orders that you were to be allowed to do as you wish.’
‘I … He did?’
‘Indeed, madame, though we’ve been ordered to provide an escort should you wish to leave the main cavern.’ He turned to his fellow. ‘You owe me five silver. I told you she’d be here before the sixth bell.’
Delphine sniffed and turned her back on them. ‘Go on, Aleksar,’ she said. ‘See what you can find.’
With the sentries looking on, Isidro felt like a performing dog ordered to do a trick, but he dismissed the thought and turned to the wall above the ledge.
The stone was identical to the rest of the cave, covered with grotesque warty growths of cooled lava. The terraced floor of the cavern must have been sculpted by mages, but the only man-made touch here seemed to be a culvert where the water flowed out to the cascade. Hesitantly, Isidro reached towards it, and a tingling touch of power curled around his fingertips.
Isidro closed his eyes, and was distracted by a very different vision — Cam’s face, somewhere in a dark and cramped tunnel. Rasten was still watching him, even while he passed news on to his unlikely allies.
Isidro pushed the image aside and focussed on the irregular stone. After a moment, Delphine joined him. ‘There’s something here, I’m sure of it,’ she muttered. ‘Aleksar, what do you feel?’
‘… It’s waiting, madame. Something has been waiting for a very long time …’ A prickle of sensation drew him towards the culvert. The stone itself tingled with power, throbbing like a heartbeat.
He found the trigger quite by accident. Isidro swept his hand over the stone, half expecting an illusion like the one in the valley. When he found the spot it seized him with a great thump of power that swept through him in a wave, rolling down through flesh and bone before sweeping back up again.
Then, the stone moved under his fingertips, the uneven surface melting away in a heatless flood, leaving behind a perfectly smooth, flat patch in the outline of a hand.
‘Uh … madame?’ Isidro said, not daring to break the contact.
Delphine came over in a rush, and even the sentries crowded close, swearing softly as she ran her fingertips over the smooth stone.
He closed his eyes, reaching for the enchantment. He found it at once, or perhaps it found him — Isidro felt questing strands of power reach into him, brushing across his own meagre store. Tendrils threaded through his skull, such a peculiar touch that he tossed his head like a fly-stung horse. His hand took his weight, pressing forward, and the stone swung away from him, weightless and smooth.
The only sound was a faint sigh. There was no grind of stone, no squeal of untended hinges. A breath of warm air played over his face.
No one made a sound, and Isidro opened his eyes to see a dark passage leading away into the mountainside. Light flickered deep within the gloom, and then lantern-stones set into the walls lit up one after the other, illuminating a passage lined with brightly polished stone, rising gently through the solid rock.
‘By the Good Goddess herself,’ Delphine breathed.
She stepped inside, but as she crossed the threshold, one of the sentries started forward. ‘Madame, perhaps you’d best let us go through first, to make sure it’s all quite safe.’
‘Stay back,’ Delphine told him. ‘I’ve seen one soldier killed by a mage-crafted trap, and I’ve no care to see another.’ She glanced back at her slaves, and only then noticed the other sentry watching Sierra with an appraising eye. ‘Come along, Kora,’ she said. ‘Stay close.’
Isidro followed at her heels, trailing one hand along the polished walls. It was nothing like the stone that made up the rest of the cave, or the rough basalt from which the temple and the bolthole had been built.
The warmth was puzzling, too, after the deathly chill of the tunnels. As they climbed the gentle rise of the passage, Isidro began to sweat beneath his coat, and he pushed back his hood and loosened the front wrap. ‘Madame?’ he said.
Delphine glanced back and reluctantly slowed her pace. ‘What is it?’
‘The lights — how can the enchantments have any charge? Our stones have to be refreshed at least once a day, and no one’s touched these in nearly a century.’
‘It’s a good ques
tion,’ Delphine said.
The passage covered perhaps two dozen lengths, but rose so steadily that the end couldn’t be seen from the entrance. It was a heat-trap, Isidro realised, preventing the warm air from leaking out into the cavern.
When the passage opened into a chamber, Delphine paused at the threshold and brought her power to the ready. Isidro expected something huge, majestic and overwhelming, but what greeted them was an almost empty space, a rectangular chamber perhaps fifty paces long and half that in width, little more than an empty box at the heart of the mountain. Light-stones were set into three of the four walls, with the fourth left bare of any feature, although the others were broken by doorways leading into adjoining chambers.
Delphine took a cautious step through the doorway. ‘Aleksar?’ she said softly, her voice echoing off the polished stone. ‘Do you sense anything of concern?’
‘No, madame.’ He stole a glance at Sierra, and she shrugged with a small shake of her head.
Delphine paced to the end of the chamber and back again. ‘This is … odd,’ she said. ‘Not what I expected.’ She ducked through a doorway in the long wall, and the lights within that space awoke as she entered.
Isidro made his own cautious way into the chamber, and felt the hairs on his arms begin to rise. He felt the distinct sensation of being watched. Sweat prickled the edges of his healed scars and, irritated, he shrugged the fur off, casting around for a place to put it.
There was a row of hooks on the wall near the entrance; as Isidro hung his fur, a streak of light at the edge of his vision made him freeze. It had come from the dark wall. Isidro held himself perfectly still, but after a moment he dismissed it as his weary eyes playing tricks.
‘Aleksar! Come here!’ Delphine called. ‘There are books, dozens of them!’
‘Coming, madame,’ he replied and strode over to find her in a chamber lined with bookshelves, the largest library he’d seen since he’d last visited Ruhavera. Delphine was leafing through one with great interest, although Isidro knew she couldn’t read more than a few words of it. ‘This is a treasure worth finding,’ she said, ‘but I confess I was hoping for a wonder like Milksprings. Oh, I see you’ve lost your coat. It is rather warm in here, isn’t it? Call Kora over, and I’ll give her mine to hang up as well.’
Isidro went to the doorway to signal Sierra, and found her staring at the blank wall. At his call she turned away from it reluctantly, glancing back as she came to him.
When he returned, Delphine had crouched to press her palm to the flagstones. ‘The heat is coming from the floor. Have you ever seen a hypocaust, Aleksar?’
‘Only in books, madame, although our stoves are similar.’
‘I think it must be the water … they’re using it to circulate heat.’
‘With heat and light supplied by mage-craft, they’d only need fuel for cooking,’ Isidro said. ‘They’d have a water supply, too — no need to melt ice.’
‘Just so,’ Delphine said. ‘It’d be much easier to live down here without hauling charcoal down from the surface.’ A yelp from outside interrupted her, and she turned towards the door. ‘What is that wretched girl up to?’
Sierra was standing in the middle of the chamber, as still as a startled deer.
‘What’s the matter?’ Delphine demanded.
Sierra looked around, wide-eyed and pale. ‘I saw something, madame,’ she said in rough Akharian. ‘Something in the wall moved.’
Delphine sighed. ‘I keep forgetting your people have never seen mage-craft,’ she said to Isidro. ‘The poor child’s exhausted, and here we’ve dragged her into the Demon’s lair. Kora, your eyes are playing tricks on you, that’s all. I saw something myself when we came in, but it’s just a reflection —’
As she spoke there was another flash, and for the first time Isidro saw it clearly, a distinct point of light gliding through the wall, like a firefly trapped within the stone. A whisper of sound drifted through the air — a gentle sigh, like the voice of a woman stirring from sleep.
Delphine grabbed Sierra’s arm and pulled her away from the wall. ‘Get back,’ she said. ‘Aleksar, come stand by me. Something strange is going on here.’
A single fleck of light drifted aimlessly through the stone, but after a moment another appeared, then several more, and then dozens, until there were hundreds of lights gliding beneath the surface, melding together as they converged. The sigh came again, louder this time and more distinct.
‘Madame, the priestess said this place was haunted,’ Isidro said. ‘Her apprentice recorded it — she told him the spirits of Vasant’s folk lingered here.’
‘A load of rubbish,’ Delphine said, but her voice wavered with uncertainty.
The lights melted together into a precise outline — the shape of a woman sleeping beneath a blanket. Her form was nothing more than a line-drawing, but it moved before their eyes as she stirred and raised one delicate hand to sweep a lock of hair back from her face. With the effort of one waking from a long slumber, she lifted her head and blinked sleepily. Although they were nothing more than lights dancing within the polished stone, Isidro was certain that somehow she could see them. ‘Well,’ she said in Ricalani. ‘Hello there.’
The voice seemed to come from all around them. For a moment none of them moved. No one spoke, and Isidro felt as though he’d been turned to stone. Then Delphine prodded him in the ribs. ‘Talk to her!’
Isidro shook himself and took a step forward. ‘… Hello?’
The woman rested her chin on her folded arms, regarding him with wide-set eyes. There was something familiar about her face, with its Ricalani features, and the curling hair that betrayed foreign blood. She smiled. ‘Someone’s come at last. It’s been such a long time.’
Isidro steeled himself to move closer. ‘What’s your name?’
‘Nirveli. What’s yours?’
‘Isidro,’ he replied without thinking. As he drew near her smile broadened, and she lazily touched her fingertips to the surface between them. Isidro had an odd sense of vertigo — he saw clearly that she was nothing but lines of light traced onto the wall, but he couldn’t resist the feeling that she was a flesh and blood woman, as real as he was, separated by a leaf-thin sheet of ice. Hesitantly, he touched his fingertips to hers.
In an instant he was swept away, into a world full of pain and screaming. There was a broken arrow jutting from his chest, and Isidro felt it bite with every gasping, panicked breath. People crowded around him, only it was a woman’s body they carried stretchered in a blanket. Isidro recognised the faces from his vision at Milksprings, and at last he placed the woman — he’d seen her there, perched on the railing, her head thrown back in laughter. Another face stood out in his mind as well, a red-headed man with sunken cheeks, and he knew at once it was Vasant himself, the last great mage. Scraping hair back with shaking hands, he rattled off orders as Nirveli was carried into the same chamber that surrounded him now.
Then the vision broke, leaving him gasping on his knees. Nirveli rolled out of her blankets and crouched beside him, pressing her hands to the wall as though trying to reach through. ‘Oh,’ she said. ‘You’re a Sensitive. I’m sorry, I would have warned you if I’d known.’
‘What in the Fires Below was that?’ Isidro gasped.
‘That was when I died,’ Nirveli said. ‘Vasi couldn’t save me, so he put me in here.’ On the last words her voice trembled, and Isidro felt a chill pass right through him.
‘He put you in the stone?’ he asked, and she nodded, although the words made no sense. ‘And you’ve been here ever since? For a hundred years? Alone?’
‘It wasn’t his fault,’ she said in a small voice. ‘I begged him not to let me die …’ She bowed her head as glowing tears welled in her eyes, but she dashed them away with her hand and looked past him to his companions, her gaze falling first on Delphine, and then Sierra. ‘Who’s the Akharian? And what’s that Corrupted girl doing here? Is she with you? She stinks of Blood Magic. Can’t you sm
ell it?’
‘Aleksar, what is she saying?’ Delphine asked. ‘I thought I caught a few words there …’
Nirveli’s light-drawn eyes flickered her way. ‘I said,’ she answered in Akharian, ‘who are you? And that girl behind you is a Corrupted Sympath. Didn’t you know?’
Delphine stiffened and began to turn, just as Sierra darted forward. Isidro felt her power surge, but Delphine’s rose as well. She cast a shield, a veil of violet light so thick it was practically opaque, but Isidro still saw the flare of blue lightning bursting from Sierra’s hands.
Delphine had her back to him. She was a powerful mage, but he didn’t doubt Sierra could take her down. He wasn’t so sure she could do it without killing the Akharian. He had one chance to end this without bloodshed.
Isidro grabbed his mistress by the shoulder and yanked her back, slamming her into Nirveli’s wall. Nirveli scrambled away, as though to avoid the collision.
Delphine had time to give him one bewildered, incredulous look before her head hit the stone with a crack that made him feel ill. Steeling himself, Isidro spun Delphine around and slammed her against the wall again. She crumpled against him in a heap, and he lowered her to the floor.
Sierra rushed to his side, reeling in her power as Isidro gingerly rubbed his thumb over the swelling knot on Delphine’s forehead. ‘Is she badly hurt? She’s been good to me, Sirri; I don’t want to see her harmed. Besides, you’re going to need a teacher, and she’s a good one.’
Sierra laid her fingertips on Delphine’s brow. ‘Nothing’s broken. You were holding back, Issey. She’s out cold, but I’m not sure for how long.’
Nirveli watched with a kind of fascinated curiosity. ‘We have a dampening room downstairs,’ she offered. ‘You could tie her up and put her in there.’
‘A dampening room?’ Isidro said. ‘What’s that?’
‘It’ll prevent her from using her power.’
‘Perfect,’ he said. ‘Where?’
‘Through that doorway, first level down,’ Nirveli said, pointing to the wall farthest from the entrance. ‘You’ll know which chamber it is when you step inside.’