by Eileen Wilks
“Probably.” Benedict looked at Cynna. “What did you do?”
“Heat,” Cynna said, her voice hoarse. “I can’t call fire the way Cullen does, but I’ve been practicing with heat. Easier for me.”
“Is it going to keep boiling long?”
Cynna shrugged. “I was mad and in a hurry. I shoved in a lot of heat.”
He gave the bubbling pool and its dead occupant a level glance. “Glad you hurried. Let’s go. No need for silence. They know we’re here. Same order.”
“It may be icy,” Cynna warned.
Benedict’s eyebrows lifted.
“I had to get the heat from somewhere, didn’t I? Benedict, I need a moment. I need to recast my Finds.”
Benedict paused, then nodded. He turned to Lily. “Where’s Rule?”
“That way.” She pointed ahead and up. “About half a mile away in straight-ahead distance. God knows how far that would mean traveling these tunnels.”
“Can you tell where—”
“I can’t get to them!” Cynna’s face twisted.
“Too much rock?” Lily asked.
“That’s not it. I can Find Cullen even though there’s a lot of rock between us.”
Of course she could. Lily had forgotten that Cynna did have a way of knowing if Cullen was alive. She felt foolish and relieved.
“But I can’t Find either of the children. I’ve got Ryder’s birth name, dammit, I’ve got the power, but . . . I think it’s a ward. A strong enough ward could block a Find. I could get through eventually, but—”
“We don’t have time,” Benedict said. “We go now. Same order.”
The temperature dropped about ten degrees when they stepped into the corridor that led from the pit demon’s lair. It continued to drop as they advanced until there was ice in spots. The floor here was different than what they’d seen, being both level and made from a gritty, reddish rock. The walls and ceiling were still curved like a lava tube, but the black rock was slick enough to reflect the pale glow from the mage lights. This corridor was clearly fashioned, not just appropriated. Someone had made aesthetic choices.
According to Rule’s map, this corridor should run straight to the room where the children were being held. They would not, of course, stay on it.
“Anything?” Benedict asked.
“No. Cullen could just look. Dammit, I need modifiers.” Cynna was using her Gift to try to locate a secret door, but the pattern for “door” alone didn’t seem to be sufficient. She’d said that there were so many spots that fit the door pattern, her Finds went to fuzz, trying to locate all of them at once. She needed something specific to that particular door to modify her search.
“It all looks the same,” Gan said doubtfully. “Old Mevroax found it by looking for the dull spot, but everything’s the same shiny.”
Grandmother made a coughing noise. Lily turned. The tiger was sitting next to the wall about ten paces back, the tip of her tail twitching. “Grandmother? Did you find it?”
A regal inclination of her head.
Cynna started toward her. “It’s spell-locked. I’ll get it undone. It may take a while, but—”
The tiger leaned forward and coughed on the wall. A portion of it vanished.
“Or you can do it,” Cynna finished.
TWENTY-FIVE
THE secret door thought it was a window. At least that’s what Cynna muttered as they entered the tunnel it revealed. She added that she could have located it if Gan had told her to Find a window instead of a door, even if it was still only one of many.
Lily learned that she—and possibly Grandmother—were the only ones who’d seen the window portion of the wall vanish. Everyone else still saw rock, which must have made stepping through the window unnerving. “I thought Xitil wasn’t good at illusions,” she said, looking at Gan.
“Maybe she got an elf to do it.”
“Elves hate demons.”
“Yeah, but they fall through sometimes, and then they really want to go home, so one of them might’ve made a deal with Xitil. Make her some illusions and the elf could go home.”
“Falling through means accidentally crossing to another realm?”
Gan nodded. “The palace and the area around it is full of cracks.”
“Cracks?” Cynna repeated.
“Places where it’s easy to fall through. It’s the twin nodes. They do something that makes cracks. There’s lots of them here. Some of those realms you do not want to fall into. There’s this one . . .” She shuddered. “I don’t want to go there again.”
“Keep it down,” Benedict said. “If you have something to tell us, whisper.”
Belowground windows didn’t look out on gardens, of course. They looked into chambers in the rock. According to Gan, Xitil’s former councillor had regularly used this tunnel to spy on her courtiers via those magical windows, which opened into various chambers . . . including the one where the children were held. In Xitil’s time, it had been called the small audience hall. The main one had been destroyed when the mountain blew up.
This tunnel was much more cramped than the others they’d been in. Lily could walk upright, but Cynna and Benedict had to duck at first. Lily thought of Rule’s claustrophobia and hoped Benedict didn’t share it. At least they could use mage lights freely. They didn’t have to be quite as carefully silent, either; small sounds would be buffered by the thick stone and, as they neared their goal, might not be a problem at all. The small audience hall used to be soundproofed by a spell. Whether that spell still worked, they didn’t know.
Getting there was the trick. Rule had described the tunnel as twisty; they soon discovered how accurate that was. Within thirty feet it had gone up, down, left, left again, down, right . . . it made like cooked spaghetti for all it was worth. Lily was thoroughly lost by the time Benedict signaled a stop and beckoned Gan.
The little former demon came forward and Benedict rumbled in a low voice, “I’m having trouble matching this to Rule’s depiction. You’re going to be able to spot the place where the window into the audience hall is?”
“Sure,” Gan whispered. “Or anyway, I can spot the windows. They’re marked.”
“Marked how?”
“Like that one.” Gan pointed at a bit of rock that looked exactly like every other bit of rock.
“I don’t see anything.”
“It’s right there, that bright dot of urti.”
“What’s urti?”
“I don’t know the English word for . . . oh, that’s right. Humans don’t see urti. I guess lupi don’t, either. It’s the color your body glows in the dark.”
Sounded like Gan was talking about infrared. Lily whispered, “Do all demons see urti?”
“In Xitil’s territory they do. Xitil’s bugs see urti and everyone eats the bugs, so even if you didn’t grow up here, you end up seeing it, too. Not enough time has passed for that to change.”
Benedict had Gan lead them after that. Gan didn’t argue, which surprised Lily. The little one must feel pretty safe in this tunnel, cramped and twisty thing that it was. As they continued, the ceiling height varied. In a couple spots Benedict had to bend nearly double, and at one point everyone but Gan proceeded on hands and knees. The tight spaces didn’t bother her. Being unable to mindspeak Rule did. She wanted, needed, to check on him, ask if he was injured, if anyone else was injured, to . . . just to hear him, really. At one point she was sure from the way he moved that he was fighting. He survived that fight. She knew that much.
It wasn’t enough.
They paused three times to check the windows. The first time was to make sure the window spell still worked. “Be really quiet,” Gan whispered sternly. “If anyone’s in there, they’ll hear you once I open the window.”
“Why?” Cynna asked.
Gan rolled her eyes. “It’s a window.
Sound goes through an open window.”
“Normally sight does, too.”
“Not with this kind of window.”
“What about scent?” Benedict asked.
Gan tipped her head. “I don’t know. Mevroax never worried about scent, but maybe that’s because demons don’t smell as good as you do.” Gan spoke the activating word and breathed on the wall. A large section of the rock wall vanished . . . leaving them unable to see a thing. The chamber on the other side was completely dark. Gan blew another puff of breath and the wall came back. “Works fine,” she said, “but I’m not sure where I am. We’d better check some more windows.”
The second chamber was dark, too.
The third chamber wasn’t. It was occupied.
Three demons appeared to be humping a huge, pink mass of flesh covered in what looked like small mouths and . . . whoa. Were those what they looked like? Yes. Yes, they were. By the time Gan breathed on the window to close it again, Lily had counted six penises of different sizes poking out of the quivering pink mass.
“What in the hell,” Benedict breathed, “was that?”
“A chur-chur. That’s like . . . a sex toy? Or maybe you’d call it a sex object. Xitil kept several of them around for guests who weren’t all that lethal. If you felt like fucking but it wasn’t safe to fuck with anyone nearby, you could go fuck a chur-chur.”
“On another subject,” Lily said, “I can tell you that I can’t sense anyone on the other side of the window when it’s closed. When it’s open, I can. The rock doesn’t seem to be there anymore.”
“It’s dashtu,” Gan informed them.
“The spell turns the rock dashtu?” Cynna exclaimed softly. “How could . . . that’s only supposed to work for living things. And demons can’t go dashtu in Dis, so how could Dis rock go out of phase that way?”
Gan rolled her eyes. “Xitil was a prince. You people don’t seem to get what that means. Going dashtu someplace else is easy because your body already knows it doesn’t belong there, but if you tell it to go dashtu here, it doesn’t believe you. But a prince can do all kinds of stuff no one else can, plus Xitil was really good at rock and all kinds of Earth magic. One of her names was Earth Mover.”
“Good to know,” Benedict said. “I can add that smells move through an open window just fine. That chamber reeked. Gan? You know where we are yet?”
“The next window on the right should open on the audience chamber.”
They travelled another fifty feet, but wound around so much it was hard to say how much distance they actually covered. Finally Gan stopped at a portion of tunnel that looked like every other part, except for the ceiling, which was a lot higher. Ten feet or so.
Gan whispered, “This is it. Everyone get real quiet before I—”
“Hold off on opening it.” Benedict spoke softly and made a gesture that meant quiet. He didn’t move for a long moment. “I don’t hear anything. Either no one’s there, they’re all real quiet, or that spell you told us about is still working. You sense anything, Lily?” When she shook her head, he asked, “Where’s Rule?”
“Not far,” she said, low-voiced. “Less than half a mile. He’s level with us, but he’s barely moving. I’m guessing they’ve hit a barrier of some sort.”
“Or demons.”
“He’s not fighting. Fighting is lots of small, quick movements, and he’s moving really slowly. Listen, I’ve been thinking. You’re hoping to wait for Rule’s party to arrive and draw everyone’s attention again before we enter the chamber, right?”
He nodded.
“It would be good for Rule to know we’re here and waiting for him.”
“No mindspeech.” His decree was no less certain for being issued in a soft voice.
“The situation’s changed,” she said urgently. “I’ve been thinking about it.” Thinking a lot, and arguing with herself about whether to tell Benedict, ask Benedict for permission, or just do it. “I see why a probe could be dangerous. Normally they’d be easier to detect, but right now she isn’t looking for someone using mind magic. She’s too busy keeping everything from blowing up, and even if a tiny bit of her attention isn’t on that, it’s different when I mindspeak Rule. Almost the same as when I touch someone, because I sort of send my probe along the mate bond. That’s of the Lady, so the Great Bitch can’t touch it, can’t even sense it. I think the bond would keep her from sensing my probe, so I can mindspeak him fairly safely.”
“Define ‘fairly safely.’”
“I can’t. I don’t know enough about this shit. It’s mostly a feeling,” she admitted. A feeling that when the mate bond had returned, it came back stronger. As if the Lady had done something to it . . . and why was she so certain she shouldn’t speak of that? “But it’s a strong feeling.”
He considered that briefly. “No. Benefits don’t outweigh the risks.”
“But—”
“No. How long before Rule’s here?”
She struggled to keep her voice even. Benedict was wrong about the benefit-risk ratio. Or she thought he was wrong, but he was in charge and . . . and that was harder to accept than she’d expected. “An hour if he goes this slowly the whole time. That’s if his path is fairly straight. If it’s not straight, or if he runs or walks briskly or stops to fight demons . . .” She shrugged.
“I get the point. All right. We’ll wait before opening the window—”
“We’re running out of time,” Cynna said tensely.
Benedict’s expression didn’t change. “We made it here in forty-four minutes. We’ve got a minimum of an hour and sixteen minutes left.”
Lily blinked. Forty-four minutes? It had seemed longer. Much longer.
“That’s if Reno’s right,” Cynna said. “And in that hour and sixteen minutes we have to get the kids and get out. Get to another node.”
“We won’t reach another node within the minimum safe period no matter what we do now. We do want to be out of the palace by then, if possible. We’ll go in without Rule if we have to, but our chance of success is much greater with him and the others.”
“Benedict,” Lily said, “if Gan opens that window briefly, I can look for the kids. With my mindsense, I mean. We need to know where they are.”
“Can you guarantee that you won’t alert her, if she—her avatar—is in there?”
“Guarantee? No. I’m pretty sure she’d feel it if my sensing did brush against her mind,” Lily admitted. “But if she’s as distracted as Reno thought she’d be, she probably won’t notice. And even if she did, she’s already expecting us to come after the kids. I don’t think it would make much difference.”
“Do you have any reason to believe she knows about your mindsense?”
“I don’t know.” Lily had given that some thought earlier and come up blank. “I don’t know what she knows, what she guesses.”
“I want to keep your ability secret as long as we possibly can. Anything she doesn’t know is an advantage for us. No sensing the room yet.” He looked at the others. “We’re going to take a short break. Everyone should eat and drink. If you need to empty your bladder, do that. Go back around that crook in the tunnel. Even a demon can probably smell fresh urine. Gan, Cynna, I’ve a question for you.”
Lily turned abruptly and, as Benedict asked something about the rock windows, headed for that crook in the tunnel. One of the mage lights went with her, for which she probably had Cynna to thank. Or maybe Grandmother.
Taking orders was easy when she agreed with them. This time she didn’t. Not with either one, really, but especially the one about not contacting Rule. That didn’t give her the right to ignore the order. But the need to reach out to Rule was so strong . . . which was one reason she’d decided she had to get Benedict’s permission, wasn’t it? She wanted that contact too much to trust her judgment.
She did what she had to and pul
led her jeans up. Her hands were shaking. Her heart pounded hard. Too hard. She was so scared. Rule could die. Now, five minutes from now, in the next thirty minutes. He could die without her being with him. She should be with him, at least mentally. She needed . . .
Lily reminded herself that she was no precog. Just because she could imagine terrible things didn’t mean they were going to happen. She didn’t know what was going to happen, dammit, and she needed to pull herself together. This wasn’t the first time she’d gone into action—into battle—and she knew better than to let fear take the lead.
No, taking the lead was Benedict’s role, wasn’t it?
She zipped up and headed back. She’d accepted having Benedict in charge of their party because it was clearly the right thing to do. He was incredibly good at this. Better than her. But if she’d been in charge, she’d have had to be calm instead of feeling like she was a couple breaths away from a panic attack.
Which Benedict undoubtedly knew. He must have been smelling the fear on her for a while now.
Gan was trotting toward her. “Hi, Lily Yu! You finished pissing? Come with me!”
She hesitated, but turned and went with Gan. She could keep watch.
“This is one human custom I like,” Gan said as she undid her pants. “Though I do miss having a cock. It’s easier to piss when you can aim it.”
“I’ve often thought it would be,” Lily responded solemnly. “What custom do you mean?”
“The one where the girls all go to the bathroom together. Gnomes don’t do that. I told them they ought to, but gnomes don’t like to try new things, plus they like to pretend they don’t piss or shit. Isn’t that funny? Humans pretend that, too, but they don’t work at it as hard as gnomes do. Sometimes at a Council meeting I like to fart just to see if any of them . . .”
Gan chattered on. Lily half listened, half smiled, and tried to think her way past her fear. Gan didn’t seem to be scared. Not for herself—probably because she could zip off into another realm if she did get scared—but not for the rest of them, either. Yet Lily knew she mattered to Gan. So did Cynna. She thought that Cullen and Rule did, too. Did it not occur to her they could die? Or was a former demon simply better at setting fear aside than Lily was?