Heiklet said nothing. She looked to me.
“We can stay ahead of them for another hour or two,” I said. “But you're weak. We need to find food.”
“Even if they do check the cave, they’ll have to walk single file, maybe double at best,” Heiklet said. “We won’t have to fight them all at once.”
At the mention of fighting, Raav’s cheek twitched.
“We won’t have to fight at all,” I said quickly. “Heiklet's right. They won't expect us to go in.”
The others looked skeptical, but we didn't have many choices. Someone had to go first. I stepped around the pool and squeezed into the crevice. Immediately, the walls pressed in, closing around me like a vice. The sky narrowed to a thin slice of stars.
My heart raced, but I kept my nervousness from my face as I encouraged the others. The volcano’s fire highlighted five anxious faces. One by one, they stepped into shadow.
The passageway stretched out before us, continuing through hardened stone deep into Ioene’s belly. My palms washed the rocky chimney with a pale glow like starlight. Tkira muttered words I couldn’t make out, the whisper echoing down the passage.
Each time I dropped to hands and knees to scramble over a rough portion of the passage, the others fidgeted uncomfortably in the sudden dark. The chasm narrowed, squeezing, and soon I turned sideways to pass a constriction.
“Gonna be wedged like olives in an oil press,” Gaff complained. But somehow, the man hopped through.
Beyond the rocky throat, we entered a larger chamber. The walls pulled back, arching over the space and pinching down to just a slit above. Our footsteps echoed hollowly. On the chamber’s opposite side, a thigh-high triangle of dark exited the cavern.
“Is it through there, Heiklet?” I asked.
She shrugged. “I didn’t come this far.”
“But what about the fresh air?” Gaff said. “I thought you felt an exit.”
“I did. It was sooner.” Heiklet shuffled to the low passage and placed her hands in front of the gap. “Feel,” she said.
Crouching before the hole, I closed my eyes and leaned my face toward the gap. Yes, there were air currents. Cool, and the scent of an ocean breeze was unmistakable.
“She’s right. There’s—wait . . .”
With the light from my palms cast upon the stone wall above the passage, letters emerged. Ancient writing had been carved into the rock in a flowing script.
“It’s like the writing on the forges,” I said, awed. Over the years, many smiths and glassworkers had etched their creations with the inscriptions. As a result, almost anyone from the Kiriilt Islands would recognize the lettering.
Raav crouched before the stone panel. “Do you know what it says?”
I shook my head. “No one’s ever deciphered the script.”
“But it must mean this goes somewhere,” Raav said.
“Or maybe it says ‘Dead end. Don’t bother,’” Tkira added.
Heiklet tiptoed forward. “I’ll go. I’m smallest. Least likely to get stuck.”
“Good idea,” I said, feeling guilty at my abrupt relief. Heiklet was the best choice. If the passage got much smaller, there’d be no way to turn around. Plus, it was much harder to worm backward than to wriggle forward. My throat constricted at the thought.
Heiklet stooped and shuffled into the breach. The sounds of her progress gradually faded, and we sat on the gravel-strewn floor to wait. Beside me, Raav’s warmth was reassuring.
“I wonder if Katrikki is done stewing about you leaving her.” Islilla looked at Raav, smirking when she spoke. She seemed to enjoy the thought of Katrikki’s unhappiness. I doubted the other traders were any nicer to Islilla and Heiklet than they’d been to me. She hadn’t talked much since the beach—or on the voyage for that matter. This bitterness had probably been building for a while.
Raav raised a single shoulder in a shrug. “Our relationship was always a bit . . . complicated.”
Islilla snorted. “If by complicated, you mean she was insanely jealous that her sister snuck off with you to spend the night while Katrikki was stuck with a live-in chaperone to protect her so-called innocence.”
Katrikki’s sister? Spending the night? An icy bolt stabbed my chest. I forced my eyes to the floor, acting as if I weren’t paying attention to the conversation. I had no right to be upset; it wasn’t like I had anything with Raav. But still . . .
He cast me a surreptitious glance. Though I didn’t consciously mean to, I shifted away from him.
“I’m sure it was hard for Katrikki to be both the baby of the family and the likely heir. Anyway, the thing with her sister . . .” He tossed a pebble. “It wasn’t really like that.”
“Right . . . I’m sure you two were out all night talking about the sea lanes.”
A result of pent frustration or not, Islilla needed to stop. She didn’t realize that her teasing was stretching Raav like a drawn bowstring. He was ready to snap.
“I don’t blame you though,” Islilla continued. “She’d have been a good match for you. The sister. House Korpit is faring well in the commodities market. And everybody feels terrible about the thing with your brother—”
“Enough!” Raav sprang to his feet and stalked to the chamber’s opposite wall. His balled fists were shaking.
Islilla clamped her mouth shut. In the wan light from my hands, her eyes glinted white, wide. I felt a fleeting pang of sympathy for her. She was young, and apparently in need of instruction in tact.
Despite myself, I glanced at Raav. He was a dark presence, everything shadowed except for his gaze. His eyes bored into me, so intense that I had to look away. My skin tingled. What was going on in his head? Maybe he’d seen me as a distraction for the months away from this Korpit sister? If so, was he angry with Islilla for destroying his chances?
Or maybe Islilla had the story wrong. Maybe he’d had a good reason to meet the Korpit girl at night. Right, Lilik. Hidden inside my shoes, my toes curled in anger. How stupid could I be?
Gaff grunted. “Traders.”
“By the time I was twenty-five, my first son was crewing an Ulstat trade vessel,” Tkira said. “Gossip and scandal are luxuries of idleness and wealth.”
I blinked, shocked to imagine Tkira as a mother. I wondered where her children were now. Apparently, the others shared my surprise, as an awkward silence filled the cavern.
No one spoke until the scraping sounds and a few weak grunts exited the passage. Heiklet squirmed out, head first, her clothing crooked and face smeared with dirt.
She grinned wide enough to brighten the chamber. “It’s amazing,” she said.
“What is?” I asked.
“Just wait. I don’t want to spoil it.”
Heiklet motioned for Gaff to follow first, and without pausing to rest, backed into the narrow tunnel. I nodded, immediately understanding. By crawling through the constrictions in reverse, she’d be able to help pull the big man through the tight spots. Raav followed. Because of his height and wide shoulders, the passage’s low ceiling forced him down to hands and knees before the darkness swallowed his retreating form.
Tkira glowered at me while we waited our turn. The burns she’d received on her arms during the eruption would hurt when she crawled through. I winced at the thought. If it were anyone else, I’d feel sorry for her.
“I still don’t like this plan,” she said.
“Well, I didn’t like your plan for Geren, either. But here we are.”
“Geren?”
“The boy you tried to kill.”
She rolled her eyes. “The stowaway, you mean.”
“The least you could do is say his name.”
A sneer on her face, Tkira stalked closer. “So, you think I did wrong by Geren, do you?”
“If it weren’t for the people who helped him escape, you would have murdered him.”
“A gullible one, aren’t you?”
“What?” I was done sitting while she looked down at me. Jumping to my
feet, I got in her face.
Tkira laughed. “You’re too easy to rile, Lilik.”’
I wanted to slap her. Instead, I clutched my upper arms, digging my nails in. Turning aside, I stomped to the exit, listening to Raav’s progress.
“Lilik,” she said more quietly. “We never planned to hurt that boy. The only thing I did was convince Altak to keep from telling you. We had enough help for the escape, no sense risking it by telling more people.”
I couldn’t look at her. Not yet. I didn’t have reason to be embarrassed, but I felt the fool anyway.
“I’m sorry,” she said at last.
Finally, I turned. Short hair stiffened by salt and sweat, and with hands wide as a man’s from coiling lines and hefting cargo year after year, Tkira was as unlikely an ally as I could imagine. She disagreed with all our plans. With Mieshk, Tkira’s strength would surely have earned her privileges. But she’d chosen me instead. Right now, I needed to live up to that choice.
“I’ll back down the tunnel like Heiklet did. If you get caught, Islilla can push while I pull.” I cast a questioning glance at Islilla.
She lifted the broken arm. “Works okay for crawling.”
Tkira snarled before she nodded. “Fine.”
I shuffled backward into the passage, crouching lower and lower until the roof forced me to hands and knees. Shortly, Tkira’s hard-edged form snuffed the almost undetectable starlight that filtered through the slit in the cavern’s roof.
I swallowed and crawled on, casting the tunnel in a strobe of light and dark each time I raised a hand to move it farther back.
Eventually, the ceiling dropped again. Crawling on elbows with my belly scraping the tunnel floor, I wiggled painstakingly backward. Tkira grunted near my face, obviously in pain from her burns. Her breath stank of vomit.
Three times, she asked for help, a tight voice and a gruff request. I wanted to tell her I didn’t like this any better than she did but held my tongue. A hardened sailor forced to rely on people she considered children, her pride was sorely wounded. Not only that, half of us were traders. Soft, arrogant, and far more powerful back in the Kiriilt Islands than Tkira would ever be.
It must have stung, relying on us. I vowed to treat her with more respect. A life spent at sea, far away from her children, had hardened her. But I had no doubt it had given her wisdom, too. We needed her knowledge.
When a puff of fresh air gusted over my head, I sucked deep. After a quarter hour trapped with Tkira’s vomit breath, it was sweeter than ice-cold juice pressed from ripe harvest apples. Pressing up, I found I could move on hands and knees again.
Soon, the walls widened until I felt air on all sides. I climbed to my feet, turned.
And gasped.
Even Tkira let out a satisfied grunt when she stood. In front of us, a deep lagoon pooled, fully encircled by steep black cliffs. The water shone from within, home to hundreds of phosphorescent jellyfish. A deeper blue light surrounded the jellyfish’s aquamarine glow, probably cast by the glowing algae that lit boat wakes and eddies of waves. But here, the water was as still as a mirror. Utterly calm.
Shelves of rock ringed the water at varying heights. Unlike the most of the island’s stone, with a harsh, porous texture and peppered by sharp ridges and uncomfortable potholes, this rock looked smooth as polished wood. At the amphitheater’s far side, a handful of springs gurgled from the rock. Dark clefts around the perimeter looked like entrances to other tunnels or just shallow caves.
But as perfect a haven as the lagoon seemed, the greatest surprise perched on the highest shelf. Structures, at least a half dozen of them lined the wall. The buildings, lit from beneath by the water’s blue-green glow, crowded together near the lip of the rock ledge. Tall, with domed roofs and precisely cut stones, they looked as if they’d been built by the same people who constructed the forges. High on the rock wall above the buildings, a huge mural showed Ioene in full eruption, ash and flame reaching for the heavens while the aurora blazed in the sky. Writings, all in the ancient script, flowed beneath the depiction.
As if that weren’t already amazing, the painting glowed. Red flame, blue-green shimmer of the aurora. And in the center of the picture was a lone figure, larger than life-sized.
Standing on the island’s skirt, where the black-pumice beach met the lapping sea, the figure glowed like the moon on water. I held my palms up. The color was identical.
Heiklet bent over her knees, laughing with delight at our expressions. “It’s incredible, isn’t it.”
“Did you check the buildings?” I asked.
“Not yet. Let’s go together.”
Tkira glanced back and forth between me and the mural. Her gaze met mine, and she shrugged before looking away. “We’re better off getting our defenses in place first,” she said.
Heiklet sobered, crestfallen, and Islilla drew herself up to retort.
I cut her off with a sharp glance. Heiklet’s friend had caused enough strife for one day. Besides, Tkira was right and ought to be recognized for it.
“There’s nothing to keep Mieshk’s people from coming through,” Tkira said. “If not today, eventually.”
“But we chose the tunnel because we decided they wouldn’t follow us,” Islilla said.
“We should assume the worst and deal with it.” Raav stepped next to Tkira. “They’ll find the passage and follow us through. So what do we do? Stand at the hole and bludgeon them when they come out?”
His nostrils flared. I felt bad for him, knowing he was mentally reliving Anker’s death. But then my thoughts returned to Katrikki’s sister, and my sympathy withered. It was petty, but my pride had been hurt.
The reminder of the beach fight sobered the mood.
“What do you want to do, Raav?” Heiklet said gently.
He looked down at the water. “I want to climb on board the Evaeni and sail home.”
Gaff thumped his crutch on the stone as if in thought. “I don’t see that—”
Voices, distant and echoing, made the big oarsman swallow his words. It didn’t sound like Mieshk’s hunters had entered the tunnel—yet. More likely, the searchers had gathered at the spring for a rest. Still . . .
I scanned the lagoon for options. The dark hollows on the far side might lead out, but we had no way of knowing. Our best chance was to stand here.
Tkira crept to the passage’s exit. She laid a finger on the arch of stone that crowned the tunnel. “Weaknesses. Here and here,” she whispered while she pointed. “If we swing the hammers just right . . .”
“A cave-in? It cuts off our only exit.” Raav whispered. “Plus, they’ll hear us.”
Gaff surveyed the ring of cliffs that circled the haven. “Good defenses. And there’s water here. Not the worst spot to be trapped.”
“The jellyfish are edible,” I said. “Just not very tasty.”
“Better a collapse than another fight.” Gaff pawed through the rucksacks and came up with the pair of blacksmithing hammers.
“Wait.” Tkira said, the sharp angles of her face lit by the blue-green glow from the water. “I’ll check the other passages. Might be another way out.”
No. They lead nowhere. A thousand voices whispered at once, filling my head like wind howling through a cavern.
“What?” I spoke out loud before realizing it. Raav and Tkira stared at me.
“I said that I’d check the other caves,” Tkira said.
I shook my head. “They’re dead ends.”
“And you know this because . . .”
Bring us to the passage.
Terrified I’d lost my mind, I grabbed handfuls of my hair and tugged. My scars tingled.
Touch Ioene and we can help you. A single voice now, male, speaking clearly in my mind.
The comforting tone muffled my rising panic. As if sleepwalking, I shuffled to the passage’s entrance and placed a palm on the rock wall. A strange heat spread up my arm.
Heiklet gasped. I ignored her.
Abruptly,
the wall shuddered.
“Get back!” Gaff yelled while hopping away.
I closed my eyes and kept the contact. Rock grated, dust filled the air, and with a roar the tunnel collapsed.
Abzill, Takanom. Souls gone to join the fires of Ioene in sacrifice to the congregation. The voice pinched off as if squeezed from my mind.
“What are you?” I asked quietly.
There was no answer.
“The nightstrands,” Heiklet said. “When she touched the rock, two of them slithered off and into the cracks.”
“Huh,” Gaff grunted. He slapped me on the shoulder and then stumped over to sit on the edge of the ledge. “Nice work.”
I stared at the rubble. What was happening to me?
Chapter Twenty-Two
“YOU CAN’T TELL me you didn’t notice the glowing girl in the picture up there,” Raav said when he offered me a hand up the rocky step. We’d divided into pairs to search the buildings and lagoon. I would have ignored his help if I didn't worry I’d slip and embarrass myself.
He clasped me firmly around the wrist and pulled, wrapping his other arm around my waist to steady me.
“Can I talk to you later about Mareti Korpit?” he asked, leaning down to my ear. He was so close I felt the air move when he breathed.
“I don’t see what there is talk about. But anyway, what makes you think it’s a girl?”
Raav shrugged and stepped back. “You’re a girl and you glow. Also, you can collapse tunnels and wear nightstrands like clothing. I’d paint a picture of you if I could.”
“It’s not me.”
He smiled crookedly. “Tell the truth, Lilik. You’re actually one thousand years old and this is your first time visiting home since you posed for that picture.”
“Pretty sad, isn’t it? I’ve been alive for a thousand years and my family still sells eggs for a living.”
Raav chuckled, which improved my mood despite my desire to stay irritated. Maybe we could be friends, but nothing beyond that.
I sighed. The group was a lot better off than we’d been a few hours ago, but my initial numbness and shock after fleeing the beach was fading, allowing the significance of recent events to slam me. It would take more than Raav’s jokes to fix the situation. Voyagers were attacking one another. Raav had killed someone. Mieshk Ulstat had declared herself a god, was commanding people to hunt us, and those people were listening.
Shattering of the Nocturnai Box Set Page 14