Light spun in twisting waves and Kjaelle zipped through it, her speed increasing as the shield claws dug into more of the energy. They rode with the flow, but faster than the magic, and Vantra could not guess how she accomplished it.
Darkness closed in, and not the soft twilight of Katta’s touch.
Do you find reward in stubbornness? Let go, shift to the surface. The Ssuvasst will not harm you, if you do.
Vantra trusted Rezenarza as she trusted the vi-van. Her grip on Kjaelle tightened. He already discorporated her, mocked her, sent minions and unlucky puppets after her; he did not have her best interest in mind, so if these Ssuvasst nabbed her, she much doubted they would smile sweetly and wave her on her way.
The elfine tipped to the right; magic zinged past, leaving wisps brimming with a sinister feel in its wake. She moved up, down, avoiding the attacks by a fingerlength. Ziptrails did not have much room to maneuver; the lines of energy were a body’s width at most, and for that reason, ghosts employed Ether Touch and remained in the center, their essences stretching after them. If any part popped out of the flow, the earth surrounding the trail would tear the unlucky bits away, and, if the being was even more unlucky, the soil would rip them from the zip and shred them as they rose to the surface.
Not a pleasant way to meet the Final Death.
Hmm. Unpleasant, you say?
She spat at his echoing laughter, no words, just a projection of cavernous mental fury.
The shield quivered. Concerned, Vantra slid a layer of her own protections beneath; if the one Kjaelle created broke, additions would grant her time to form another.
Cold brushed past her, and she thought she heard Laken hiss, pained. They hit something; she pitched forward, her essence straining to keep on Kjaelle’s back. Frost crackled across them. Crack. Full stop, and she could not retain her grip. Light and dark spun across her vision as she somersaulted through stickiness, slammed into a hard surface, and slid.
“SHIIIIIIT!” Laken screamed.
She tried to make sense of the darkness surrounding her, the fleeting grey flares to her sides. She felt as if her non-existent brains sloshed around in her skull, and she closed her eyes to stop perceiving her surroundings. Forming a shield over her hands, she dug them into whatever she skidded down; it crumbled under her fingers, and she dug deeper, but her momentum did not slow.
She struck something, spun, fought not to roll because crushing Laken like that would be terrible, bumped up, and crashed forward onto her stomach and right shoulder. Her essence stuttered to a shaking halt, and she stilled.
Waiting for her visual perception to steady, she strained to hear her surroundings. Nothing but the hissy slide of dirt across stone reached her. She squinted her eyes open.
Darkness.
Rezenarza would find her!
She pushed up, her arms unsteady, and slowly slid her left leg forward with a wince. How could she feel so bruised, battered? She was a ghost! Ghosts had no bodies to feel pain with! What was wrong with her, that she kept experiencing it?
Rocks tumbled into her, and earth pelted her backside.
“Laken, can you see anything?” she whispered as she rose to her knees.
“No. But I think there’s a darkness following us, and it’s not Kjaelle.”
Damn. Should she attempt to sense her surroundings, find the ziptrail? What if the enemy detected her, found them through her fumbling? Lorgan, fulfilling his promise about updating her education, had given her reading materials concerning sensory probes, but she, wallowing in depressed resentment after Black Temple, retained little of what she read. Not that the trek across the desert provided a healthy study environment, but she should have accepted his help, rather than grumble about it and listlessly stare out the window at drenched earth.
Decrying her rejection of what she desperately needed to know, she picked her way forward on hands and knees, debris poking into her. Good thing pain proved elusive for the deceased. She smacked into something, and a shudder coursed through her essence from head to her toes; she set her hand against it, training her fingers along the hardness.
Brick. Pitted surfaces, gaps between, but definitely rectangular bricks. She followed the wall until her air met her probing digits, and she paused. A doorway? Closing her eyes to listen, she heard nothing near her, just the faint skidding of earth. She did not want to draw attention to herself, but she needed to know if an enemy lay in wait, so sent a trickle of magic through the door.
Nothing.
She crawled inside and pressed her shoulder into the bricks, not wanting to squish her Chosen against the wall.
“Laken. Are you OK?”
“Nothing in the Evenacht can harm a Condemned. Do you hear that?”
Something sliding across earth, subtle, sneaky.
“Laken, I’m going to hide us. You need to tell me when it’s OK to stop.”
“Vantra, I—”
She slipped from the pack’s straps, planted her back against the bumpy wall, held him tight, and thinned her essence.
And snagged it back, as wisps attempted to flee. Weariness set in, and she hoped whatever sought them hurried up and left the area. She did not think she could continue hiding for long. Her energy fluctuated, though she did not know whether being ripped from the ziptrail, or just the night in general, sapped her strength.
Laughter welled. Or perhaps the couple of yilsemma since leaving Black Temple were to blame. The travel had not been swift or restful, adding to the exhaustion she associated with a lack of mist.
She idly thought of Verryn. Did he recover well? Hopefully he did not encounter an enemy like Nolaris in his recovery.
“Vantra,” Laken said, soft as a flower petal. She blinked and raised her head. She heard nothing, not even the slide of soil. “Whoever that was, they have glowing red eyes with slitted pupils. They looked in, but didn’t see us. They continued down the wall. I can’t hear them anymore.”
“OK. So we won’t go that way. We should try to find the ziptrail.”
“We slid down quite a ways. I don’t think we’re anywhere near it.”
“Do you think Kjaelle was bumped from the ziptrail, too? I couldn’t tell.”
“I didn’t see much of anything but spinning grey light, but probably.”
Even if the blockage knocked the elfine out of the trail, the speed at which ghosts traveled the lines could mean she landed so far away from them, that they would never locate her in the dark. Sliding down a hill added to the distance, keeping her out of reach.
How were they going to reunite with the mini-Joyful?
Vantra peered around her, imagining Kjaelle brave enough to form light despite the presence of enemies, but detected no hint of a glow. She flexed her fingers and her emotions sunk; she did not have the guts or the energy to spare for illumination, and shielding would drain her into discorporating. To prevent that, she needed to avoid whoever searched for them.
Thump.
Fear pounding through her head at the too-near sound, Vantra slung Laken onto her back and crawled across the space. She smacked her head into the opposite wall, winced, and felt along it for another door. After reaching the corner without finding one, she backtracked, discovered a hole, and clambered over the broken bottom.
She continued in the same vein, though she whisked her hand in front of her, striking walls before she rammed into them. She lost count of how many she encountered, but she had the sense of a large space. Did they wander through the remains of buildings? She pictured an old city like Black Temple, underground, but without a caretaker’s light.
She looked up but did not see a break in the ceiling where the dim ambiance of the Evenacht could filter through. No mist, either, which would have provided a minuscule glow, enough she could understand what she crawled through.
She shuddered as cold breached her essence. Laken hissed, so it was not her imagination. No wind blew underground, so the touch was magic.
They come for you.
Apparently she lost everyone but Laken and a nosy ex-Darkness.
Nosy? You’ve quite a way with words.
Who did he send after them?
Me? No, they look to another for guidance, but he is as lost as they.
Who? And in what way?
Secrets are secrets, my dear.
She was not his dear!
You’ve an argumentative streak. I assumed you a quieter sort.
Like he knew anything about her.
I know of your Sun-touched life and your Sun-touched death. Have you never wondered why a Sun badge holds warnings for you? Why Ga Son takes an interest in this quest of yours when he could not bother to take an interest in your life? If he cherished your mother as high priestess, should he not have saved you?
Heated rage shot through her and she chased her churning thoughts away. She did not want a pissy deity rummaging around in them, causing mischief.
You’re loud in your rejection. The fathoms of ocean-deep, malicious laughter triggered a numbing fear, and she fought the pull to senselessness.
Malicious? You misunderstand. More laughter, but with less weight. I am a syimlin you could ask for aid.
He was not a syimlin. He lost his mantle millennia ago.
Poor choices haunt those who make them. And how are yours holding up?
The cold intensified. Crusty frost formed under her fingers. She shuddered and looked around her, but could see nothing. Panic tingled through her essence, and she crawled faster, away from the freezing touch.
And if you refuse me, why do you not call on those you trust? Two avatars can surely discover you, backed by the might of their syimlin. Why not call to Light and Darkness? Afraid they will ignore you, as Ga Son did? Knowledge of your lack of worth is more painful than fantasy.
Her mood grew ever sullener, driving away some of the fear with nasty anger, but she did not want to trade words with him and prompt a personal retribution. She had read of those events in religious texts in the Spiral Sun library, volumes handed her by the vile group who poisoned her. They contained stories too advanced for her elementary years, and terror struck and stayed. Her mother eventually pried the reason for her screaming nightmares from her, and her fury at the unrepentant priests never dwindled.
Her mother exposed her to the good that syimlin did, their kindness and charity, but the priests laid bare the lie of goodness. Deities, like mortals, held hurts, hates, revenges, and they had the power to seek a vengeance that shattered a soul and sent them to the Fields as a husk of their former selves.
Despite her focus on anger, dread kept a slow, methodical pace as it crept up her back, overriding other emotions. She could not see to run, she could not crawl faster . . .
Take my offer, Rezenarza whispered. Safety lies with me.
No. She trusted nothing of him.
“Vantra!” Laken warned.
She stopped and ground her fingers into the earth, jagged edges of rock digging into her essence. Feeling hopeless, useless, she focused her will.
Please, help.
She froze, the typical expanse of thought she expected when she prayed absent. Her mind felt contained, as if she could not think past a mouthed whisper. What was going on?
A mental tunnel collapsed around her, suffocating thoughts before she formed them. A void swallowed her emotions, one by one, until only panic remained. She clawed through the darkness, desperate to break it into shards, but it infused her essence. Thorns danced along vines of power that shot across the emptiness and aimed for the soft touch of Sun within her.
NO!
“Shogo shayne deshua, ambi fel duan
Shogo feyd deshua, ambi fel wyisen
Yembeko kel shada fel nevyi
Son beyko
Son reyko
Myirinko sholk.”
The shriek of agony tore into her hearing, overwhelming, as if she stood too near the speakers at an outdoor festival. Mental blankness cracked and exploded, light erupted from her, as blinding as the ziptrail, and zipped away at a similar speed, leaving sparkling glows behind that blended with the air. The dark became less an oppressive void and more the twilight that rested between the last vestiges of sunset’s rays and a summer night’s long shadows.
She could see.
Walls surrounded her, belonging to ancient buildings of fallen black stone, no roofs, gaping holes, broken bricks. She had crawled into the center of a room with the sad remains of cracked tiles peeking out of rusty dust.
She winced as she realized Laken had slid to her side, and sat back on her heels, pulling the straps to situate him in the middle of her back. She looked at the ground in front of her, not quite understanding, and when remnants of the fuzz vacated, she wished she had remained in the haze.
The being looked like a Talin viper in the head and neck, with scales as orange as the dust, snubbed nose, and a sleek body. Stunted arms with three claws jutted from a scaled chest, and the lower regions thickened before ending in a tiny tail tipped with a red spike. She scooted back from it, staring at the finger-long, broken fangs, the pointed tongue lying in the dirt, the blood pouring from open eyes, open mouth. Deep slices opened the body to the air, and the red of life gushed forth, pooling beneath the still form.
Limp. Lifeless? She killed them?
“Vantra?” Laken asked.
“Yes?” She struggled to her feet and backed away.
“Vantra? What’s wrong?”
She slipped the pack from his shoulders and pointed him at the being as she continued to retreat. Fear had driven her, but she had not meant to end them. Clear Rays healed, not harmed. What had she done, using a healer’s touch to slaughter? Insults upon insults against her upbringing, against the Sun.
“Vantra, there may be more of them.”
She whimpered and bent over, her essence quivering in sickness. Had she lived, she would have puked.
“We need to leave this room.”
Leave? She looked around, saw a doorway, but too near the body. She clenched her teeth, sucked up the tiny bits of bravery that hid under anguish, and ran through, careless to direction. Her burst of energy ended long before she put enough distance between them and their fallen foe, and she drooped, shuddering, forcing one foot in front of the other. She had to keep going. She had to reach the mini-Joyful.
“Vantra.”
“Yes?” Her voice rose in an unnatural squeak.
“Do you see those poles rising above the walls?”
Poles? What poles? She fought to focus; beyond the next two buildings, faint metallic, vertical gleams ran in progression to the left and right. “Yes.”
“I think that’s a street.”
“Yes.”
“We should take that.”
“The . . . enemy is still around.”
“You can run away quicker on a road than leaping over walls and squeezing through collapsed doorways.”
Could she? Her feet dragged through the dust because she lacked the strength to pick them up, so she doubted fleeing to escape would save them. If caught . . . No. Only one enemy had found them. Laken only saw one enemy peek in on them. There was only one enemy. Only one.
“There was only one,” she whispered.
“Vantra.” He sounded conversational, yet firm. “I’m not certain which way to go.”
“I don’t know.”
“There’s more light to the left, so maybe head that way.”
He continued to speak, but his words did not stick. They flowed away, like a trickling stream, taking meaning with it.
“Vantra. Which way?”
She blinked and stopped in the center of the street. She looked up at the soft gleams, noting small broken cages that once contained light hanging at a height that someone standing on top of a carriage roof might reach in passing. The ruts of long-gone wagon wheels did not help, either. She turned to face left. He said that direction held more illumination, so she proceeded that way, kicking up dust with the tips of her boots.
“Do you know what this place used to be?”
She blinked as tears clouded her vision. She lifted her shoulder, wiped her eyes, snagged the ragged edges of her emotions, and stuffed them into a box to worry on later. They did not go willingly, squirming and twisting, and she gave up, letting them messily lie about and become as much a drag on her thoughts as her encumbering weariness was on her essence.
Movement from the pack; Laken was turning on his base, and the fabric moved oddly between her hands. “I wonder why so many places in the desert are under the ground,” he said. “Do you think it’s the heat?”
“Umm, I don’t know. Maybe.”
“This has black stone. It seems a common building material.”
“Yeah.”
“The earth around here is orange. I wonder where they got the black stone from. I guess they mined it?”
“I don’t know.” Her mind meandered the way he led. “I read that the rainforests in southern Uka’s Lament have a lot of black rock. There’s a place in the Parley Mountains called the Black Quarry where Death likes to hide essences. Finder texts mention it because so many ghostly parts are found there, and because they’re guarded by a giant gyirindi. It’s a long way to move this much stone, though.”
“If they had a religious reason, they’d do it,” Laken said. “That motivates beings beyond typical common sense.”
Like Finders?
“Anyway, I’m more interested in the stone bricks. They look like someone carved them to exactly fit, rather than to pile them up and hope everything worked.” He rushed on, but the will to answer questions died under the numbness of misery. How far gone past common sense was she?
She stared at the dirt, fighting hopelessness. How would she meet back up with the mini-Joyful? She could barely walk, let alone attempt a spell to contact them. Her voice clogged in her throat, making a call for help impossible, and if more of the enemy patrolled the ruins . . .
Ruins. Black-stone ruins. Had they reached the Snake’s Den ruins? And she, too stupid to realize—
She walked into someone. Arms snaked around her and clutched her close.
“Vantra! Laken!” Kjaelle laughed, not with pleasure, but with exhausted relief. She did not seem harmed, so the bump out of the ziptrail had not injured her. Vantra raised her head and met tearful green eyes. Had she worried over them?
Kjaelle’s hand slipped down and she wound her fingers through hers. “Come on. The others are waiting for us.”
