Amy snorted.
There was a knock at the door.
"Elissa, it’s Juno. Can I come in?"
"Um, yes."
Juno glided in through the door. "Dido says you're going to get yourself killed trying to rescue the Lamb and Michael."
Amy regarded her coldly. "As to whether I'll die, then maybe I will. Only God can say. But if I don't die I'll definitely save all three of them."
"Then how can I help?" Juno asked.
Amy grinned, and handed her one of her armoured boots.
Together the two women girded Amy up for battle, slotting the reassuringly heavy armour into position piece by interlocking piece. The ringmail that went over her scale-suit. The boots, the greaves, the gauntlets and the shoulder pads, the breast plate and back plate. Each piece thudded into place as they strapped it on her. Then Amy took up her weapons: her greatsword and lance, her net, trident and hatchet, her long knife. Finally, she took her helmet in her hands and prepared to place it on her head.
"Look after Michael," Juno said. "He's less sure than he lets on."
Is that so? Amy thought as she put on her helm. I swear, he never tells me anything.
Her world became smaller and darker, but more solid and more certain too. She knew who she was, and what she had to do. She was a knight about to set forth on a dangerous quest.
Kill the monster, save the boys, what's the difference?
"Are you ready?" she asked Wyrrin.
He nodded. "I will follow where you lead, Ser Knight of the oceans."
Amy made to go, and then paused in the doorway, "Thank you both, Turo's blessings on you. Elissa, if I survive this quest I will send for you when it is safe if you still wish to leave here."
She strode down the stairs, each step a heavy thud. A crowd had gathered to see, but she spared them not a word as she went out into the street. Wyrrin followed silently behind her.
Once outside, they ran. Amy was not as fast on her feet as Gideon or Michael, but she had trained to bear the weight of the armour without effect and she could work up a head of speed once she got going. Wyrrin would have been faster than she was, but he carefully paced himself so as to stay just behind her, following where she led as he had promised.
She tore through the streets of Eternal Pantheia, forcing people to clear the way or be crushed beneath her, searching for the way the boys had used to get into the sewers. Amy doubted that running up to the palace doors and demanding her friends be released would get her anywhere, but at this point she didn't really have a better plan.
"Where are we going?" Wyrrin asked.
"I'm not quite sure," Amy said. "I'm...considering it as we go."
"Meaning that you do not have a plan," Wyrrin said.
"Does that bother you?"
Wyrrin shook his head. "Carefully considered schemes often seem better with hindsight, but they lack a certain flair when practiced in the moment."
In spite of the circumstances, Amy laughed. "You're right about that."
"And yet, as you say, when one looks back upon a course of action one is less likely to cringe at what one did when one planned out their actions beforehand. Unless the plan was truly abysmal. I must confess I have looked back on some of my plans and felt that way."
Amy skidded to a halt. There, standing at the mouth of a particularly narrow alleyway, stood Lady Silwa. Amy had only met her once - when she had appeared to Amy in a dream and asked her to return to Corona and go to Michael's aid - but the fact that she did not enjoy Michael's close relationship with the goddess didn't mean that Amy couldn't recognise her right away. There was something about her that was so unmistakeably divine that Amy wondered that the whole street hadn't stopped to stare at her. Most likely she was masking her appearance from everyone but Amy and Wyrrin. Such a thing was not beyond her power, after all.
"Quite so," Silwa said. "After all, it would be terribly inconvenient if I were besieged by miracle-seekers at a time when I need to speak to you, wouldn't it?"
"Who is this...person?" Wyrrin murmured.
"My name is Silwa," Silwa said. "Well met, Wyrrin of Arko."
Wyrrin hissed. "Mother of Treason."
"She's on our side now, and we need her help," Amy snapped. "Leave dead quarrels to the dead, at least for now."
Something like grief flitted across Silwa's face for a moment. "I do not deny that I have done the fire drakes, and all the elder races, great wrong, but as Amy says we have more immediate matters to consider. Would you like to know where Michael and the others are being held, without having to blunder your way around the streets for hours first?"
"No, I'd rather do that," Amy said. "Sorry, madam. Yes, I want to know. Where?
"The palace, as Elissa predicted," Silwa said. "And I happen to know a secret way, a way not without its dangers but probably safer still than attempting to storm the gates."
"If you will take us there, then rebel or no we will be in your debt," Amy said, bowing her head.
"Be warned," Silwa said. "Though there are fewer guards manning this secret way, what obstacles there are will try you in other ways. Stand ready."
"We already are," Amy said firmly.
Silwa smiled. "Then follow."
She led the way, and as she led the crowds parted ways for them, the eyes of the people in the streets glazing over as they began to abandon their tasks and occupations and wander off, as if they had suddenly remembering other pressing business pulling them elsewhere. Clearly the power of the divine was at work, to keep any from meddling in their affairs. Even the city guard, who might otherwise have challenged two armed warriors moving with such haste and obvious purpose through the city, were brushed off by this exercise of godly will.
Silwa led them to a small square, with a few poor market stalls set up around it, and Amy watched as the square cleared of people as soon as they entered, all those who had filled it making way without a second glance at the naiad knight or the fire drake.
"Thank you, radiant one," Amy murmured, bowing her head. "We are in your debt."
"It's nothing, really," Silwa replied. "A mere trifle, but very useful in certain circumstances. The sewers run under this square. That hatch there leads down into the catacombs. From there we can get under the palace and enter it from below."
"We're going to get into the palace from the sewer?" Amy asked.
"All must relieve themselves," Wyrrin muttered. "Slave or Master our bodies are the same."
"Not quite the same as yours, but I take the meaning," Amy said. "So, that hatch then?"
Silwa nodded. "If you wouldn't mind."
A quick smile flashed across Amy's face. "No trouble at all." She knelt down beside the hatch, a disc of bronze about two feet across, driven into the surrounding cobblestones by heavy nails. Amy dug her armoured fingertips in around the edges, scrabbling for purpose, and pulled up with all her might. She barely had to exert herself before the stones started to crack. She wrenched the bronze disc free, only slightly bent around the edges, taking the edges of the nearest paving stones out with it. Beneath her gaped a dark hole, a passage leading straight down into the sewers of Eternal Pantheia.
"The vigilants are supposed to patrol the sewers, to make sure they don't become a haven for criminals," Silwa explained. "But they very rarely do."
"I don't blame them, have you smelt it lately," Amy said, coughing at the stench rising up out of the dark. "I hope Michael appreciates all that I do for him."
"Is it safe?" Wyrrin asked.
"No," Silwa said. "But keep your wits about you and you should make it through all right."
"Let's get on with it then," Amy said, leaping feet first into the darkness. She landed with a splash in the middle of a sea of filth. Her nose was assailed by such a stench it was all she could to keep from retching.
Wyrrin followed her down an iron ladder, the bars creaking slightly as he stepped on them, making coughing noises as he went.
"Are you all right?" Amy asked.
"I'm afraid my nose is more sensitive than yours," Wyrrin said, in between snorts that sounded like he was trying to expel his lungs through his nostrils.
"You can stay behind if you want," Amy offered.
Wyrrin snorted again, this time with indignation. "I will not be shamed before gods and naiads alike."
"Well don't suffocate before we get there, will you?" Amy said, as Silwa glided down through the whole on a pair of beautiful white-gold wings. As she lowered himself into the muck, the very filth and slime made way for her, parting around her feet so that she stepped only upon dry stone, and not a single drop of filth or blood or human excess touched her pristine white dress.
"It must be great being a god," Amy murmured as she felt all manner of nastiness start to cake to her armour.
"Less than you'd think," Silwa said breezily. "Follow me."
"Of course, radiance," Amy said as she started to wade through the mess. "Hold on boys, I'm coming."
She followed Silwa as the goddess parted the filth around her, and then it resumed its place just in time for Amy to wade through it, parting it around her armour like a majestic whale parting the water around it as it ploughs the deep. And Wyrrin followed in Amy's wake as Amy followed Silwa, coughing and snorting all the while.
They walked the dark. The only light came from Silwa herself, who shone like an ethereal beacon in the lightless catacombs. She led the way, and Amy knew that if they lost sight of her then they would be trapped forever in this place.
"Why would anyone worry about people living down here?" Amy asked.
"Some would," Silwa called from ahead. "Some, after all, have nowhere else to go."
"I suppose that's true," Amy said. "You'd have to very desperate to come down here in the dark and the smell. Although it doesn't seem as dangerous as you made it out to be."
"Some dangers are spears and swords, others are less obvious, but no less dangerous," Silwa said.
"These dangers are so subtle they might as well not be here."
"What a hurtful thing to say," a voice said, echoing off the walls of the tunnel. "How rude of a knight to say such a thing. Even a false knight, deceiving her comrades."
Amy drew her sword. "Who's there?"
"Go back to sleep, Kal," Silwa declared. "We have no time for you."
"Pity. Time is all I have to while away in this confinement. Time...and mischief to make with those who wander to close to my cage."
"The Lord of Darkness," Wyrrin muttered. "Aro's light burn bright and drive away these shadows."
"So it is true," Amy whispered. "He has been held here."
"As many as the leaves on the trees are the follies of men," Kal declared, unseen, but his voice echoing from every direction.
"And as many as the stones that raise their temples are their glories, what of it?" Silwa snapped. "Begone, you cannot hinder me."
"No, I cannot hinder you, Riate's daughter," Kal spat. "Though the day will come when you will kneel before me, and I will throw your head down at your father's feet, I cannot hinder you. Now. But these two are but mortal, and like the mouse that wanders into the lion's cage they are my prey."
Amy closed her eyes, and fumbled with one hand for Princess Miranda's pearl around her neck. "God be my armour, to keep all evil from me. God be my blade, that I may fight in his name. God be my strength, for I am nothing without him. God be my-"
"God be damned, he cannot help you now," Kal roared. "He would not stir himself to help you anyway, Ameliora, daughter of Niccolo. What are you to him but a faithless vagabond, a rebel against his laws? Is it worth it, Amy, to have cast off all you knew and left your world behind? Do you look around and feel blessed by the choices that you have made? Is there no part of you that feels that you made the wrong choice?"
"I have no regrets," Amy said.
"Liar!" Kal shouted. "You can never go back. You can never return to Seafire or the Whalewatch-"
"There was nothing for me there anyway."
"What is there for you here?" Kal demanded. "A man? Is that what you threw away your whole life for?"
"And what if I did, wicked one?" Amy yelled. "I threw away a life of being sneered at, looked down upon, told I'd never amount to anything; I threw that away for a man who knows my worth better than he knows his own. I don't see anything wrong with that."
Kal laughed, the sound seeming to come from all directions. "And what of your glory, daughter of Niccolo? What of the dreams you shared with Fiannuala? What of your ambitions? Are you willing to see them come to dust? Are you willing to die forgotten, unthought of? They will sing no songs for you in this land. There will be no statues to your greatness. Your passing will be unnoticed, your resting place will be unmarked. You will be nothing. Turn aside now, this course will bring you only sorrow."
Amy tightened her grip upon her sword. "Never."
"Why? For Michael's sake?"
"Aye, for Michael and for Felix too. I'll give my life, I'll give my strength, I'll even give my glory, name and honour for their sake. Because they're my friends. They make me feel normal and special at the same time. They accepted me when no one else would. And so I'll go all the way for them, as far as they need me to go, because I'm a naiad and a Coronim and it isn't in me to turn away."
Magnus Alba began to glow with a brilliant light, Kal cried out in agony as the darkness receded and a strange ethereal figure appeared before her.
He was an albino caedan, one the shark-man swordmasters of the ocean world, gills on his cheeks and a fin on his back. His chest was bare, his muscles taut, his eyes grey as they gazed down upon her.
"Valour," he said, "integrity, sacrifice, devotion. These are the values of a true knight, though naiads and men alike forget them. Well done, daughter of Niccolo. You have proven yourself worthy of my service."
Amy's eyes widened. "Who are you?"
"I am Magnus Alba."
"The sword?"
"The soul of the blade, born by the spirit magic of Lord Niccolo and nurtured by hundreds of years of service to his descendants. Now I serve you and shall do so until you put your sword aside. My power shall keep the darkness from you, and I shall instruct you in the sorceries engraved upon my skin." He started to fade from her sight. "Hurry now, your goal yet awaits you!"
"Indeed," Silwa said, looking more impressed with Amy than she had been before. "Come, quickly, follow!"
Amy began to run after her. "Thank you, Ser Magnus."
She could feel the power flowing through her as she charged through the sewers, splashing waste in all directions, Magnus Alba glowing brilliantly in her hands. She ran through the tunnels with Wyrrin struggling to keep up until Silwa stopped.
"Here is the place," Silwa said, gesturing to the tunnel. "Here is our way in, if you please."
Amy bellowed as she swung her ancestral blade at the tunnel wall, splintering it into thousands of tiny pieces of debris.
"Well done," Silwa said. "I must leave you now. I trust you can find your own way out again?"
"We can," Amy said. "Thank you, radiant one."
"Thank you, daughter of Niccolo," Silwa said.
Amy looked at Wyrrin. "Are you ready?"
"My fires burn bright," Wyrrin replied.
"Then let's invade the palace," Amy said, grinning inside her helmet.
She stepped through the breach and into the palace of the Emperors.
"Michael, are you in here?" Amy yelled at the top of her lungs. She didn't actually expect an answer, but she was hoping a guard would come investigate the noise and she could rake him across the coals. Sadly, no one did.
"What a mess, if Ser Viola were here she'd put a boot up someone's backside for laxity like this," Amy muttered.
There is evil here. Men avoid this place. Magnus Alba's voice was a deep whisper in her mind.
I know, we just got away from it. Is he going to come back?
I am shielding you from his malice. You will be safe for now.
"Then let's move
on," Amy said. "I don't have time to waste worrying about ancient menaces. Not right now, anyway."
"Who are you talking to?" Wyrrin asked.
"The um...my sword," Amy said. She coughed. "Let's get going."
They advanced upwards towards the areas of the palace that would, hopefully, be a little more populated.
"Michael!" Amy shouted. "Jason! Gideon!"
"Titus, if you're drunk again I'm going to kill you," a guardsman grumbled as he stomped down a dark unlit corridor with a torch in one hand a spear held in the other. Magnus Alba glowed, shining a circle of light upon Amy and around her. She stood in white light, the Emperor's guard in flickering yellow. Between them all was darkness.
"I'd tell you I'm a little bit lost, but I think that one's been done to death hasn't it?" Amy asked.
The guard dropped both spear and torch to draw his sword, which was clever of him, and charged at Amy with a shout, which wasn't so clever. She took the blow upon her gauntlet, punched him in the gut with such force she shattered his mail, knocked the blade from his grip and lifted him by the neck to pin against the wall.
"Where are the bastard prince and his companions?" Amy demanded.
The guardsman snarled as he squirmed in her grasp. "Go to the black abyss!"
Amy tightened her grip. "The bastard prince arrested today. Where is he being held?" she guessed that Jason would be the most memorable and recognisable prisoner to the guards of the Imperial Palace.
"I'll tell you nothing," he spat.
Amy snarled as she slammed the man back first into the floor, pinning him there with one knee while holding Magnus Alba, still glowing bright, close to his neck.
"You are willing to die for the Empire, I respect that," Amy said. "But this sword of mine can devour souls. It burns them out of bodies. If I so much as nick you with it your spirit will never enter the Heavenvault, nor even wander the shadowlands. You will spend eternity drifting in an empty void unable to so much as scream. Now are you so loyal as to risk that for the Emperor?"
The guardsman's eyes were wide with fright. "The dungeons are on the ground level, east wing, at the rear, past the washrooms."
Spirit of the Sword: Faith and Virtue (The First Sword Chronicles Book 2) Page 32