In a corner of the clearing, in the deep shadow of the mountains, snow had been churned up. “When was your grandfather last there?”
“Years, I think. He has not been in any form to travel for a long time. Why?”
“I think I see footsteps.”
“What?”
“There are footsteps in the snow in the city,” I replied.
“Old?”
“Fresh. They haven’t been wiped away by the winds.” I followed them where they stayed close to the mountain, in the shadows that would be there whether the sun was rising or setting, and saw a figure walking that was not a trick of the snow and light. “There is someone down there.”
I moved aside as Dalandaras peered through the telescope. “I see him.”
“A man, then?”
“Yes. And human.”
The door creaked, and my father slipped in. His eyes landed on Singael. “It is all right to enter?” he asked.
“I don’t think he’ll notice,” I replied. “”Someone is in the city. Human.”
“Are you certain?” my father asked.
“It is not an elf,” Dalandaras replied. “Evalandriel, look once more, see if you recognize him.”
I peered through the eyepiece, but the man wore a plain white cloak with a hood pulled far over his head. He walked towards the mountain, and then seemed to go down a slope and disappeared from view. “He’s gone.” But he hadn’t left the city.
“We have no trade routes this way,” my father said. “No outposts. No human should be here.”
I adjusted the dials on the telescope. On the wall near where the man disappeared was a pair of crudely shaped circles, one inside the other, drawn with what looked like chalk. “I don’t like this. I don’t like him in there.”
“How do you not like him in there?” Dalandaras asked.
I looked at him.
“Is it a feeling to do with the ruins and the apparition?”
“Yes.” I looked at my father. “We have to go there. I don’t like him there.” Why was I asking for permission? But it seemed important to have him along.
Father nodded.
“What is all of this noise?” Alid entered, her voice a low whisper. “Do not disturb Singael.”
He didn’t look too disturbed.
“We need men and women of the watch,” Dalandaras said. “There is someone in the city.”
“And?” Alid asked. “They are fools to venture there, but there are always one or two who find it amusing to travel through.”
“Not when they are human,” he replied.
“Then it is one of your friends.”
“Nobody followed us. The watch, Alid.”
“Have you seen anyone from the watch here?” Alid asked. “We have no one to spare. We are not the outpost we once were.”
Obviously.
My fingers were tapping rapidly against my leg. With effort, I stopped them.
“You could spare a few if you wished to,” Dalandaras said in elvish.
“I do not wish to,” Alid replied in the same language.
“Eva,” Dalandaras said. “Get your sword. Lord Baradan, your rifle could be of use as well.”
We obeyed, slipping back into our rooms to grab our weapons. Zarah didn’t move as I took my sword from my pack and strapped it around my waist. Part of me wanted to wake her, but she probably needed the sleep. I tied my cloak around my neck and closed the door carefully behind me.
Father was only two doors over. He emerged with both his sword and rifle; his ammunition pouch hung from his side.
“Eva,” he whispered. “I don’t know what’s going on with all of this, but are you sure that we should be going into the city alone? None of us know what’s in there.”
“I can’t explain it,” I replied. “I just know it’s not good. I need you to trust me.”
He hesitated, but nodded.
I tried to find something to say to him. Something needed to be said between us. “I remember you were a good shot. I remember you practicing.”
“That hasn’t changed,” my father replied. He sounded surprised.
“Good.” It reassured me.
We met Dalandaras, who had grabbed an unlit torch, and faced the disapproving gaze of Alid as we left the outpost and wound our way back down the mountain.
I should have been reassured that the apparition liked darkness, but the rising sun did nothing to stop the chill that ran up the back of my neck. The Fort was a bustling place, with people coming and going and the roads were always crowded; but all that was here were a few gulls riding the winds up into the sky.
It took two hours to reach the city without snowshoes or skis to help us. We were on our guard, expecting the man to emerge, but once we reached the city it turned into a maze. The white stone walls were only a few feet higher than our heads, but snow drifts hindered our path into the city. We could only head in the general direction of where we had seen the man, doubling back at times, taking the long way away from the mountain side before finding our way back again. If there had been any order to the city it was lost with time.
Finally, we found footprints. But the sea wind was already brushing them away. I drew my sword, and Dalandaras his, my father’s rifle loaded and ready. We found the courtyard I had spotted through the telescope, and we followed the prints to the base of the mountain.
The man hadn’t disappeared down a slope, but a set of stairs. A rectangular corridor had been cut into the rock, and the stairs disappeared into the darkness. Above the corridor, drawn onto the rock, was the double circle seal. In between the two circles was an inscription that had been rather sloppily done.
“I cannot read it,” Dalandaras said.
“It’s not correct,” I said. “They got it wrong. Some of their letters are not the right shape. I think what they meant to say was ‘keep this hidden’ but it has come out as saying, roughly, ‘hidden maybe’. I think.”
“’Hidden maybe’?” Father asked with a slight grin.
“Perhaps that’s why it did not work,” Dalandaras replied. “Or not very well.”
“Your grandfather knew something about it,” I said as I lit Dalandaras’ torch with my flint and tinder. “If his telescope was pointed this way.”
Dalandaras went down the steps first, and I followed, my father bringing up the rear. It was a steep descent, and only when the entrance was a pinprick of light did the stairs level off into a narrow hallway. It was another minute before the hallway opened up into an enormous cavern.
It was arched like a dome, soaring hundreds of feet up and across until I couldn’t see the edges. Our footsteps echoed loudly, but we heard no one else’s. I moved away from Dalandaras’ light. As in the ruins, things became easier to see. There were great rectangular stones set across the floor, waist-high and six or seven feet long. There was something else, too.
“Do you smell that?” Father asked.
“Yes,” Dalandaras replied, his nose wrinkling. “It is very strong to me.”
It was decay.
I stepped forward cautiously, walking around one of the stone blocks. There were small white chips on the top, and white powder mixed in the settled dust.
“Bone chips,” Father said. “It’s an altar.”
“Dozens of altars,” I whispered.
The stench of copper and rotten eggs grew. Two altars away, there was a body.
This was not the quick decay of the looters in my ruins. The smell lodged in my throat and stuck there. I covered my mouth with my cloak, but it did no good. His skin was mottled purple and black with patches of yellow, his clothes soaked with his own body’s secretions. His arms were mutilated and torn apart.
“He was tied,” Dalandaras said, his torch hovering over his feet, and I could see dark strips of cloth that had bound his ankles to metal rings anchored in the stone. “He is human.”
Father reached out and, with a careful grip, tugged at the fluid-soaked tunic. “It’s my crest,” he sai
d. “And the crossed pickaxes of the mining company.”
“Would you be able to find out who they are?” Dalandaras asked. “And when they went missing.”
I couldn’t look at the body anymore, and turned away.
“Not with his face like this. And we have dozens of deserters each year.”
The farther I stepped away from the torchlight, the clearer my sight was, and I saw more bodies. “There are three others out here,” I said, my voice trembling slightly. I tried to quell it. “They’re all scattered around.” But I couldn’t see the man who had come down here.
“How can you see…” Father asked, but didn’t finish his question.
I moved cautiously towards the other bodies. There were several other altars between them and me; some had old bones on them, and farther in the darkness was the shape of a skull on another.
There was a spread of ash on one altar. As I drew closer, I saw that it wasn’t just ash, but a dried mixture of ash and blood shaped like a seal, with a drawing in the center. I stood on tiptoe, and leaned over the altar.
It was a crude map that someone had drawn out of the ash and blood with their fingers. The dead city was marked in the very center with a cluster of squares, and this hidden place was no more than a dark drop within it. The bay was plainly drawn, and the Dagnar lands were marked by what looked like a castle. The mountains were simple straight lines meeting in points. The Fort and town were marked as well, and the valley that led to the south was left as a blank spot. There were other things marked as well, other cities or outposts. The map must have covered a distance of two or three hundred miles.
The ruins near the Fort were marked with a small five-pronged crown. They had been drawn with something else, what must have been the tip of a blade or a small stick or pencil. But the design that marked the apparition’s deep prison was different. No stick or fingers had drawn that one out. Veins of blood had snaked in from the inner circle, tracing around the finger smears, to congeal at the spot where the apparition had been imprisoned.
“He’s alive!” Dalandaras said.
“What?” I asked.
“He can’t be!” Father said. “He’s decomposing!”
I ran back to them. Dalandaras’ hand rested on the man’s chest. “I can feel his heart beating. It is very slow, but it is there.”
“Is he…could he feel all of this?” I asked. “Could he be in pain?”
“I do not know.”
Help me.
I spun, knocking into my father. There were four of them, four ghosts of men. Their silvery forms stood only a few feet away. Even in death, they were as dirty and disheveled as the miners would have been in life.
Help me, one of them said.
Please, another begged.
“What is it?” my father asked.
“Can you see them?”
“I…I think I hear them,” he replied, a tremor in his voice.
“I can see them,” Dalandaras said grimly.
“They…they want my help.” They were ghosts, but they were still alive. How could they be alive and yet here to haunt me?
“It’s blood magic. The same as that which the apparition used to bind you to him.”
“So…we have to kill whoever has done this?”
“Or kill the miners.”
That was the quickest option. I took the torch from Dalandaras. One of the ghosts, who looked no older than I, stepped closer. Help me, he pleaded. Ghostly tears coursed down his ghostly face.
“I’m sorry,” I whispered to him as I touched his body with the torch. “I’m very sorry.” Sorry for his pain, sorry for his death, sorry that I didn’t want him to haunt me if I allowed him to live.
His clothes, then his skin, caught. I repeated my apology, my voice barely above a whisper as I walked around the altar, lighting as much of him as I could. The flame charred his flesh and bits of it curled back as if it was paper that was burning.
“Thaeglir,” Dalandaras whispered, and the flames flared high, consuming him in an inferno.
Thank you, the ghost said, and as his body was consumed his spirit faded away.
I fell to my knees, and vomited. Everything came up. When nothing was left, I dry heaved.
Hands smoothed my hair back from my face. It was my father. “Are you all right?”
No, I wasn’t all right. “I want to go home.” My voice broke.
“I know.”
I spat out the sick still left, and wiped my mouth on my glove. My arms trembled as I picked up the torch and moved across the darkness to the next man.
“I’ll do it,” Father said.
“No.” I should have let him, but I had to be the one. It was important. I may have led the looters to the apparition and let it loose; I had to be the one to finish it for good. Even if it meant I had to kill these men. Father held my hand and we walked to the next body. Another ghost stepped forward, begging me for help. Dalandaras whispered his word, and we watched another body burn.
The stench was nearly overwhelming. I could feel another dry heave coming as I approached the third body, and held my sleeve firmly over my nose and mouth.
I don’t want to die, the third ghost whispered.
I nearly dropped the torch. Father wrapped his arm around my waist and steadied me. “It’s not your fault,” he whispered.
Yes it was.
I don’t want to die, the ghost cried to me. I burned his body.
The flames just barely illuminated the far reaches of the room. There were dozens of altars, and several doorways leading elsewhere. The human trespasser didn’t show himself.
We headed towards the fourth, and the shadows behind the altar shifted. The man, hood over his face, crouched down low, darted out between altars.
A roar filled my head, a roar of pain and hatred demanding a death for the killing I had had to do here today. I dropped the torch and drew my sword. The man was quick on his feet. He disappeared in between the altars, heading towards the hallways.
“Father! Shoot at the back wall! Over my left shoulder!”
The rifle cracked, and I could see the stone chip at the far wall. The man switched directions, staying low, zigzagging between the altars.
I hurried after him, colliding into the corners of the stones. His arms swept at the altars, knocking skeletons and bones into my path.
Father’s rifle cracked again, the ping of an impact on the wall halfway in between the man and I.
He switched again, this time on a path to the exit.
“He’s doubling back!” I shouted.
Another pop from father’s rifle. A few seconds later, another.
I dodged around the altars. “Go back to the door! Don’t let him out!”
My feet slid on scattered debris. Me knee landed on a bone, crushing it.
In the side of my vision, Dalandaras tossed the lantern towards the way we came, the flame stopping a few feet short of the doorway.
Father’s rifle kept cracking. The man hunched low and the bullets pinged high. He made it through, his figure disappearing into the darkness.
“Stop shooting! I’m going through!” My foot kicked the torch as I ran down the corridor. He was faster than me, and when I reached the stairs he was already far up them, taking them two at a time.
I half-ran, half-crawled my way up. The man reached the exit, and was gone.
I made it into the light, my sword at the ready. But the sun stung my eyes, and I covered them. After a moment they adjusted, and I lowered my hand.
But all I could see were white snow and walls. I could hear the cries of the gulls, and my own harsh breathing. The wind was already sweeping away our footprints, and I could see none that branched off from ours. We’d never be able to search every single nook in this city. It would take hours, even if we had more people. And by the time we could get Aerik and Zarah, the man would be long gone.
Father came up beside me, his rifle at the ready. “Which way?”
“I don’t know,�
�� I replied.
There was a trail of blood droplets. Even now, the wind was burying them, and in a few minutes they would be gone.
On impulse I found the largest droplet that had not yet completely sunk into the snow, and wiped at it with the corner of my sleeve. I used the heat of my palm to melt any snow that had caught, until the blood had soaked into the fabric.
“You hit him,” Dalandaras said to my father.
“Now we just have to find an injured man,” he replied. “When we return to the Fort, I can send word to all the outposts that anyone with a gunshot wound is to be arrested and sent to me.”
There was movement at my shoulder. The last man’s ghost stood next to me, his face pleading.
Help me, he whispered.
“I’ll be right back,” I said, and went inside to finish the job.
CHAPTER NINE
The strength I had gained when I had release the apparition started to fail me on the walk back up the mountain, until both Father and Dalandaras had to support me. I twitched and jumped at every brush of the wind or call of the gulls. My legs shook. My hands could no longer hold Dauntless. The sun screamed down from high overhead until I was as good as blind. I could barely remember how to breathe.
We crested the top of the stairs and headed down the path to the entrance. My legs gave out as we reached the door. I tried to get my feet beneath me, but I had no strength left.
They dragged me to the door, and Dalandaras tried to open it. One of the elves had locked up after us.
“Open up!” Dalandaras shouted in elvish. The anger in his voice boomed out, and I jolted. “Now!”
There was yelling from behind the door. I saw the young elf’s face for a moment before Aerik barged past him, followed closely by Lorandal.
“What happened?” Aerik demanded.
“Bad things.” Dalandaras replied. “Could you take her for me?” He handed me over before he turned on the guard. “Where is she?”
The young man must never have faced an angry prince, because all he could do was stare and shake his head.
“An answer, or I will hold you responsible with her.”
“The observatory,” he managed to reply. “In the tower.”
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