He’d lost track of his pulse in the attack, but it didn’t matter now. Kiel’s route out didn’t involve the corridors above. The schedule of the Ishien no longer mattered.
Kaden picked up the storm lantern, slid open the shutters, allowed his eyes a few moments to adjust to the light, then rifled through the guard’s tunic for the keys. At first he thought he’d gambled wrong, that the man wasn’t carrying what he needed, but then, when he pulled aside the blood-soaked neck of the tunic, he found them, hanging on a chain around the neck.
Freeing Kiel was simple, a matter of lifting aside the heavy steel bars, fitting the key into the lock, then hauling the door open. Kaden winced as the hinges screamed in protest, his pulse rising for a moment, then settling.
“The guard is dead?” Kiel asked, stepping from the shadows.
Kaden nodded.
“Then there should be no one to hear us.” He glanced past Kaden, as though searching for someone else. “Where is the girl?”
“This way,” Kaden said, gesturing.
Kaden had found Triste’s cell nearly a day earlier. Their captors had separated their three prisoners in widely spaced cells, making sure they couldn’t communicate, and Kaden had spent almost a thousand heartbeats finding a locked door that showed signs of recent use. He’d considered freeing Triste then, explaining the whole plan to her, even enlisting her to help in the killing of the guard. It was tempting to have a companion, another conspirator, but he decided against it at the last minute. There was no telling what Matol and the Ishien intended, no telling when they might arrive to drag her back up to the chambers above. It seemed safer to leave her ignorant and in darkness until the time for escape had come. As he shoved open her door, however, he wondered if he’d misjudged the situation.
All he could see, by the meager light of his own eyes, was a slumped form crouched against the rear wall of the cell. Even in the cramped space, Triste looked small, huddled in the farthest corner, a clenched ball of fear and pain. She cried out at the sudden light, shielded her eyes with a hand, and turned toward the stone as though she could burrow into it. There were cuts on that hand, Kaden realized, burns and lacerations. This is why I killed the guard, he reminded himself. This is why I defied Tan. He took a few steps forward, approaching the shivering girl as though she were a frightened, wounded beast slipped from the fold and lost in the mountains.
“No,” she moaned. “Please . . .”
“Triste,” he said, the word brittle in the chilly air. He tried again, forcing more warmth into the syllables. “Triste. It’s Kaden. We’re leaving. We’re leaving.”
She half raised her head, blinking at him from between tangled threads of hair, still blind from the light. Blood and grime ran in streaks down her arms and face. Someone had hacked off most of her hair. The Aedolian uniform she had been wearing since the Bone Mountains was nearly shredded. She ran her fingers over the wet stone, caressing it as though it were the cheek of a sleeping child. Her fingernails, Kaden realized, were ragged, bloody.
“Leaving?” she asked quietly.
“Fleeing. We have to move fast, before the next guard comes. Before Matol sends someone else.”
She shivered at the name, then pushed herself unsteadily to her feet. “What do we do?”
“Go with Kiel.”
“Who’s Kiel?”
“Someone who can get us out.”
The still, black pool seemed to drink the lamplight, as though it were pitch or oil rather than salt water, as though anything dipped into it would slide instantly into utter darkness. It was barely more than a pace across, the diameter of a small well, but Kaden could imagine it plunging down endlessly to the very center of the earth.
“This is it,” Kiel said.
Kaden glanced over at Triste. She was trembling, staring at the pool as though into the maw of some great stone beast.
“There’s no other way?” she asked, her voice tiny, terrified. “What about the ship that Kaden mentioned? The one Tan suggested?”
Kaden hesitated. Staring into the dark water, it was tempting to double back, to break out through the main door of the prison, to hope they could hide Triste during the long walk to the underground harbor. It was tempting, and foolish. Triste’s tattered Aedolian uniform did nothing to conceal her identity, less than nothing. Even in shadows, even at a glance, it was obvious that she was a woman, and there were no other women in the Dark Heart. They could sneak into the corridors above hoping for the best, but Kaden was through hoping.
“Too much risk if we go the other way. This will take us straight to the kenta chamber.”
“But the men,” Triste said. “The ones with the bows . . .”
“Will never see us,” Kiel said. “They’re outside the pool, waiting on the ledge above it. We’ll never break the surface.”
“And they don’t guard this?” Kaden asked, gesturing to the pool.
Kiel raised an eyebrow. “Would you?”
“What’s down there?” Triste asked.
“Tunnels. Rooms. Old halls. When the Ishien flooded the kenta, they flooded dozens of the lower passages, too. It was a reasonable decision. No one’s likely to navigate that maze after stepping through the gate, not underwater, not before their air runs out.”
Kaden stared bleakly at the still surface of the pool. “No one except us,” he said.
“Well.” Kiel spread his hands. “We’re going to try.”
“How far?” Triste asked.
The Csestriim paused, eyes going distant and unfocused for a moment, then nodded. “One hundred and eighty-seven paces. Give or take.”
Kaden stared. “Did you measure it?”
“In my mind. It’s been thousands of years. I could be off.”
“Two hundred paces,” Triste groaned, shaking her head. “I’m not sure I could swim that far above water.”
“You don’t have to swim,” Kiel replied. “Not much. I’ll guide you, pull you.”
“And what about you?” Kaden asked, shaking his head. “It seems almost impossible, even without the extra effort.”
“There are techniques,” the Csestriim replied, “to slow the heart, to use the muscles more judiciously. . . .”
Kaden paused, realizing all over again that the man beside him was not a man at all. The Shin, with their training and their discipline, could manage amazing feats, could sit nearly naked in the winter snow or stay awake for a week, but compared to Kiel, the Shin were children, fools, tiny creatures exploring the first rooms of a vast city, the scope of which they could barely apprehend.
“And me?” Kaden asked.
“You will enter the vaniate here,” Kiel replied. “That will do something to slow your pulse and keep you from panic. If you are judicious with your breath, it will be enough.”
“If,” Kaden said, shaking his head. “If you remember the distance correctly, if I can follow you down there, if I can hold on to the vaniate . . . It’s all ifs. I’m starting to wonder if we shouldn’t risk the ship.”
Kiel cocked his head to the side. “Nothing is certain. If we travel the tunnels above, you trust to luck. If we take this route, you have only yourself to rely on.”
“And you,” Triste said, rounding on him, her voice high, close to hysteria. “You’re Csestriim. Now that Kaden’s broken you out, you could take us down there and leave us. We don’t even know the tunnel leads to the kenta!”
Kiel nodded. “I could. And you don’t. What you do know, however,” he went on, indicating the lacerations around Triste’s wrists, the blistered fingers of her right hand, “is what will happen to you if they capture you again. The water may kill you, but not like this.”
Triste blanched, glanced down the corridor the way they had come. Kaden followed her gaze.
“I don’t like leaving Tan,” he said, shaking his head. “The Ishien don’t trust him any more than they do me. When we disappear, they will put the pieces together. They’ll know what happened.”
“So will
he,” Kiel said. “Rampuri Tan is more dangerous and resourceful than you know. He will find his own way.”
“And if he does not?”
The Csestriim met his eyes. “Then he does not. There is no easy path, Kaden. You can save Triste, or you can save Tan, not both.”
Kaden looked over at the girl. She was hugging herself, shivering in the chill dark.
“All right,” he said slowly. “The vaniate.”
“I don’t know the vaniate,” Triste said, voice crumbling. “I don’t know how to slow my breath.”
Kiel nodded. “I’m not sure you’ll survive to the kenta, but the choice is yours.”
She turned to Kaden, eyes wide, pleading. “What do we do?”
He hesitated. He didn’t want the decision, didn’t want the responsibility that came with it, but wanting, as the Shin had told him hundreds of times, was just another way to suffer.
He set aside the fear and emotion both, tried to see the situation clearly, coldly. If they escaped, if he retook his throne, he could come back for Tan. More, if Triste was Csestriim, he needed her, needed what she knew, to understand the plot against his family. It was a hard choice, but Rampuri Tan had taught him something about hardness.
“There is a strength inside you, Triste,” he said. “Something even you don’t understand. It’s why they imprisoned you in the first place. You ran through the mountains. You passed the kenta twice already—”
Furious shouts split straight through his words, cleaving the calm he had so carefully guarded. He tried to count the voices. There were three, no . . . five, and loudest among them, Matol, bellowing his fury.
“. . . want them found, and I want them found now. Two men in each cell, take this fucking place apart. And someone find Rampuri Tan, that treacherous bastard.”
Boots clattered on the stone. Steel hinges screamed. Men barked commands back and forth.
“It’s too soon,” Kaden said, staring down the corridor. “They shouldn’t be here.”
“There is no should,” Kiel said quietly. “Only is. Prepare yourself.”
Kaden measured a long breath, holding it in his lungs, but before he could exhale, the first Ishien rounded the corner, blades bright with the light of their lanterns. For a moment, no one moved. Then the leader—Hellelen, Kaden realized, the same man who had first challenged them at the kenta—smiled.
“Here!” he shouted over his shoulder. “They’re here, cowering in a corner.”
“Quickly,” Kiel murmured.
Kaden reached for the vaniate, but it was like clawing at cloud. His mind passed through the emptiness, but failed to enter it. The gong of his heart tolled in his ears.
“I can’t,” he said, shaking his head.
Triste had turned to face the men, teeth bared, hands twisted into claws as though she intended to rend the skin from their faces.
“They cannot follow us,” Kiel said. There was no fear in his voice, no urgency. “Find the trance.”
“I’m trying,” Kaden replied, but the Ishien were already advancing, moving slowly down the hallway, obviously enjoying the sight of their trapped quarry. And there were more behind, more than enough to kill them all a dozen times over. Even as Kaden stared, another figure rounded the corner at a full run, sword spinning in his hands.
No, he realized, shock blazing over his skin before he managed to snuff it out. Not a sword, a spear.
A naczal.
The first two men went down without a sound, one with a slit throat, the other stabbed through the chest. The third Rampuri Tan hamstrung. The Ishien fell, trying to bring his sword to bear as Tan shattered his skull. Hellelen stood a moment longer, lips pulled back in a snarl. He feinted right, danced left, but Tan ignored both motions, lashing out with one end of his spear, then spinning it in a great, vicious arc that hacked halfway through Hellelen’s neck. The monk didn’t even watch the body slump to the floor, turning instead to Kaden.
“You are a fool,” he said.
“There’s a way out,” Kaden insisted, stabbing a finger at the pool behind them.
It was less than no explanation. It didn’t explain Kiel or Triste, didn’t begin to tell how the motionless water could lead to safety, but after a glance at the dark surface, Tan seemed to understand.
“You are trusting your life to a Csestriim,” he said grimly.
“There was no other choice,” Kaden spat. “I’m not leaving Triste.”
“We are not all what you fear,” Kiel said quietly. “I am not Tan’is. Not Asherah.”
The monk locked gazes with the prisoner, then shook his head curtly. “It hardly matters now. The dice are already thrown.”
“Stay close to us,” Kaden said. “In the tunnels.”
“No,” Tan replied. “There is no time. I will cover your retreat.”
“You don’t have to—” Kaden began, but even as the words left his lips, Matol charged around the corner, a dozen Ishien flanking him, then skidded to a stop at the sight of his quarry. He paused, flexed his free hand, then smiled.
“I will flay the skin from each of you piece by dripping piece.”
“You are welcome to try,” Tan said, turning toward him, the naczal light in his hands. “Go, Kaden.”
“I don’t—”
“Go.”
The vaniate came grudgingly, but it came at last. While Tan held back the Ishien, his spear bright and faster than thought, Kaden found the trance, dropped into it as though into a deep well while Matol roared, bodies crumpled, and blood ran over the stone.
“Follow closely,” Kiel said, then stepped into the pool.
The last thing Kaden saw before the water folded over him was Rampuri Tan, his teacher and tormentor, the last and hardest of the Shin monks, fighting desperately, viciously, trying to hold back the Ishien for another heartbeat, and another, and another, fighting to buy Kaden time to escape. In the blankness of the vaniate, Kaden watched as the monk fought and staggered, watched, but could not care.
The darkness of the flooded levels of the Dead Heart was cold, absolute, and crushing. Even deep inside the vaniate, Kaden could feel fear prowling the edges of his mind like a winter-starved wolf, could feel his muscles wanting to buck, kick, thrash. Normally he would have taken deep, long breaths to quell the faint agitation, but there was no breath to be had in the watery maze, and so he counted the beats of his heart instead, feeling the muscle contract and relax, contract and relax, and he moved forward with careful strokes of his arm, measured kicks of his legs below the knee, keeping one hand fixed firmly on Triste’s ankle.
Her flesh was so cold beneath his touch that she might have been dead already, drowned beneath the great weight of water and stone, save for the occasional jerk or spasm when Kiel bumped her up against some hard, invisible corner. Kaden tried to envisage the darkness around them as halls and rooms, corridors and entryways, the normal architecture of human habitation, but it was no good. There was only the darkness, and the cold, and the salt, and the stone. It didn’t feel like the world at all, but like the weightless, shapeless dreamscape of nightmare.
For all his recent training with the vaniate, the trance felt tenuous, as though a sharp jolt might shatter it. He tried not to think what would happen if he slipped from the calm into the relative clamor of his own mind. The vaniate was keeping him alive during the slow, creeping passage, but more important, it would allow him to pass the kenta at the end. Without it, the gate would annihilate him.
Feel the water on your face, he reminded himself. Feel the wet cold on your skin. This is the world. The future is a dream.
Around his eight hundredth heartbeat, Triste began to twist and jerk. At first the motions were just spasms, like the twitch of a leg from one on the edge of slumber. Within a few dozen heartbeats, however, she had begun to thrash and flail, kicking her legs madly as the panic seized her, heel striking Kaden in the head, the eyes, over and over as he struggled grimly to hold on to her ankle and the vaniate both.
Kaden�
��s own chest felt tight and his lungs burned. Triste couldn’t have much longer. Her body was rebelling, the instinct to tear her way free of danger crushing whatever part of her reason that tried to resist. It was making Kiel’s work harder, although the Csestriim labored on, hauling her down the invisible corridor, moving, if anything, even faster than he had, although it was difficult to gauge speed in the darkness. There was only the water, the cold, Triste’s terror, the rough stone, and the awful empty airlessness searing Kaden’s own chest, the sluggish weight of muscles barely able to move.
They were going to die down there, all three of them, their bodies vanished inside a fortress that had, itself, vanished from the world. Sadness beckoned, like faint sunlight seen from beneath deep water. Kaden turned away from it. If he followed that light long enough, he would burst from the vaniate, and he had no desire to face his own slow suffocation outside the trance.
The pain is just pain. The pressure of the water is just pressure. Listen to the movement of your heart. It is only a muscle. It is only meat.
He repeated the words until his mind swam in the darkness with his body. It was a good place to die, a peaceful place. He let the darkness pour into him, fill him, flood him, until there was no line between his own flesh and the surrounding sea, until the ocean thrummed in him like his own heart, until, with an awful wrenching jerk, gravity seized him, hauling him, dazed and baffled, into the wide awful air and the blinding light of the sun.
Alive, Kaden thought. I’m alive.
Deep inside the vaniate, the thought brought him no joy. No sorrow. It was a fact, nothing more.
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Chronicle of the Unhewn Throne 02 - The Providence of Fire: Page 37