Aurora's Rift, page 23
part #1 of Celestial Arcanists Series
Us.
Some of us.
Until now I’ve forgotten that this has happened to the Knolls before.
Until now I’ve forgotten that it happened not long before I was born.
Somehow Apathan survived, but Amathan did not.
I have lived this long without knowing my own family’s history.
The thought intrudes, unwanted: what happened to Ama and Apa?
Ink and Teinath and Aigen—what if they don’t discover that the Knolls has their own plan? I have to trust that they will, because I have no way of contacting them. None.
“Those who have volunteered will go to the places where the barriers are weak. They will engage the army there and buy us time to get the rest out through the tunnels.” Apathan does not look like an old man to me right now. He looks neither tired nor weary nor ready to give up. “Right now, we wait until the smoke’s smell reaches us. The volunteers are already moving.”
He motions around us, and indeed, people are moving. It doesn’t take me long to forge a connection between them.
They are all older, or nearly all. It is Apathan’s generation.
“Apathan?” I am a child again. “Did you—”
“Yes, as’lin,” he says. “I was out of the city the last time. In Rahnbrug. When I returned after hearing the news that the Knolls had been quarantined, it was already burning. These others are like me.”
Survivor’s guilt. That is the word for it in my other world.
But it is more than that here, too. They are bartering it for the lives of others.
Quest Updated: Rift Off This, Part 2. Help Apathan lead the people of the Knolls to safety.
Barm, Barm of the overpriced salted meat—he is standing at the corner of his shop handing out parcels of food to everyone who walks by him.
He meets my eyes sadly as if to say he knows, as if to say this was his reason all along, as if to say he’s sorry. As if to say it was worth it, because in spite of our avoiding his shop for his prices, he still did enough business to save what he needed to prepare.
When we pass him, Apathan calling out instructions to those around us, I reach into my belt pouch and pull out the heavy purse I took from the scout by the river with Elan and Ink, and I press it into Barm’s hands.
“I do not need any of the food,” I tell him. “You can rebuild with this.”
But he pushes it back at me. “If I make it out, I will find you in Viathan, and you can give it to me then. But this is my home, and I will see it empty before I leave it.”
I reluctantly press the purse back into my belt pouch.
A hand lands on my shoulder, and I look back to see Dar, her eyes full and heavy with unshed tears. She squeezes my shoulder once, then leaves her hand there. I reach my own back to place it on top of hers. The contact is welcome, reassuring.
The scent of smoke reaches my nose.
“With me!” Apathan calls out. “As we practiced!”
He’s prepared them. Of course he has.
Together with the assembled families, we move toward a block of apartments I’ve never been in before. It is innocuous, normal, beige and blocky like all the apartments and tenements in the Knolls.
Apathan leads us to a door and inside, down a corridor and down a long flight of stairs. It is claustrophobic with the press of people behind us. When we reach the cellar, the air is musty and damp and smells of stone.
He walks to the far end of it, where there is a heavy wooden door. This can’t be the escape. It’s just an access tunnel for the city water supply, and only the city’s registered workers can use the gates off from it. I only know that because some of the children once got caught playing down here by city workers. They were taken from their families and never seen again.
“Apathan,” I say quietly. “This is a way out?”
“Trust me, as’lin,” he says.
People are starting to fill the cellar, and some of the kids are crying.
Apathan opens the door to the water access. There is a short corridor before the tunnel itself. I’m not someone who’s ever really experienced panic in enclosed spaces, but I don’t want to pile into this tunnel with thousands of others knowing that any of the city’s water workers could report us to Arnantas in a second.
The press of bodies grows stronger behind me.
“Easy, my friends,” Apathan says loudly. “You will need to stay as calm as you can. Wait for my word.”
He walks a short distance into the corridor, but he doesn’t go out into the tunnel itself. Instead he turns to the stone wall, placing his hand against it. Curious, I reach out with my mana…and meet resistance that slaps me backward.
Apathan gives me a small smile, and his mana twists, more deftly than I could manage myself, and it plunges into the stone wall.
If the ward that Teinath taught me was basically the magical equivalent of scribbling don’t touch my stuff on something in crayon, this ward is the vault in a Swiss bank.
The stone of the wall shimmers in front of my eyes, and in its place is a door.
If I didn’t like the idea of going into a wide tunnel with thousands of people, going into a wall with barely even enough space to outstretch my arms feels downright treacherous. Eldan and Dar are still here, looking about as enthused as I am.
“Last chance,” I tell them. “We can leave with the people or go back out there and try to leave our own way.”
“We go with them,” Eldan says firmly.
I can hear in his voice that there’s no dissuading him, and truth be told, I wouldn’t want to. If he is truly a seeker and can find a way out of anything, where better could he use that power?
“Lead them out, Lithrial,” Apathan says to me. “I will see that the last of them makes it through.”
“Apathan, if anyone should stay, it ought to be me. You should go with them. You did all this—”
“I need to close the door behind us, as’lin,” he says simply. “Only I can do it.”
That silences me.
I can’t say goodbye to Apathan. I just found him again.
“This is my duty. You have yours.” With that, he kisses my cheeks and raises his voice. “Follow Lithrial. She will lead you to safety.”
“Nothing dies,” Dar says to him, “that does not remain part of life.”
I start walking before any of them see my eyes fill.
The hidden tunnel-within-a-tunnel is wider than I expected, but not by much.
It quickly grows warm and humid with the breath of hundreds, then thousands of people behind me. If Apathan needs to close the door behind us, what lies in front of us? I don’t have Ferelthin with us to dispel any wards, and I don’t think I could do it myself. Not without endangering everyone I’m trying to save.
I begin to worry about air. With this many people breathing and no apparent ventilation, I don’t know how long we’ll all last down here.
And I have no idea how long this tunnel is.
The walls are simple grey stone, the remnants of elven work, I think, though it looks like the actual tunnel where the waterways go was the original. I’m not sure what the purpose of this one was, or how Apathan found it. I suppose it doesn’t matter.
He’s known about it all these years, kept this secret in hopes he wouldn’t need it.
“How much farther?” It’s a child’s voice, close enough for me to hear the words but far enough away I can’t say definitively how far.
I don’t hear the adults answer. I wish I knew myself. The ground beneath my feet echoes with the footsteps of everyone here. I wish I could see Ara.
The tunnel curves occasionally, turning and then turning back, but always level.
I lose track of time as we walk. We don’t stop, even when it is clear the people are flagging. Some of them eat as we go, using the bundles that Barm prepared for them as rations. There is little water, which is the more pressing worry, and no place to relieve oneself, which is perhaps just as urgent.
I can’t see the end of the throng behind me.
“Do you think Teinath and the others are okay?” I ask. “What will Arnantas do if he thinks we’ve escaped?”
“It will be at least a day before he will know. They will torch the district and wait for it to subside, and after that, they will need to wait for things to cool before they send in the army to hunt for survivors. With any luck, we will be long gone by then.” Dar looks uncomfortable, her eyes blinking too frequently and her whole body tense. “As for the others, I cannot guess.”
That is both reassuring and not.
“The air is changing,” Eldan says quietly. “I think we are approaching an exit.”
He’s right; the air is changing, though I’m not sure what that means.
We walk another quarter of an hour before the air turns unmistakably fresher. It seems we’ve been heading south under the city, and I’m thankful that the river runs to the east of the Knolls where we don’t have to worry about crossing it.
Mithrathan is built on low hills that flatten out to the north and to the west, and the Knolls are named for being among the higher parts of the city. Which means the levelness of the path we’ve been on indicates we have either leaned eastward or moved mostly due south in spite of some of the turns.
An earthy scent intrudes into the smell of rock and people’s bodies and breath.
“Stop here,” I call back to the people behind me. At the front are a gaggle of young folks not much younger than myself. “I want to go ahead and see what is waiting for us.”
Maybe not the best choice of words.
“I’ll stay with them,” says Dar.
I nod to her and glance at Eldan, who follows without me needing to ask.
The tunnel curves around just a bit to the right, and twenty steps takes us out of view of the others.
I expected a door or something, anything at the other end, but the tunnel simply opens up onto a hillside that faces south. It is lightly wooded, like where we left the harts.
“Eldan?” I ask. “Is it safe to let them come out here?”
He looks around, bewildered. “Yes.”
I go back into the tunnel and call out to Dar. “Bring them out!”
I hope that Apathan told them what they were meant to do next, because I don’t like the idea of simply turning them loose in the countryside where they will have to fend for themselves when almost all of them have grown up in the city without having to hunt or fish or forage for their dinner.
As the people begin pouring out of the tunnel, I walk around it on the hillside, wondering how it hasn’t been discovered. The grass looks undisturbed recently, and while some dangles down over the mouth of the tunnel, it’s not nearly concealed enough to go unnoticed.
I try to orient myself. I can’t see the city from here, and from the length of time we were walking, we’ve gone about six miles south of it. A line of trees marks the river in the distance to the east. When I turn due north, a bleak smudge of smoke mars the very edge of the horizon, barely visible over the grass and firs.
There are a few familiar faces in the crowd, though I don’t remember names that go with them. Most people are lingering near the mouth of the tunnel. Dar starts directing them off to the sides at least so they don’t block people trying to get out.
After today, my respect for the young elemental is growing. She seems practical in a tight spot and compassionate when necessary, which I don’t think I would have guessed before this journey.
Some minutes later, Ara’s face appears emerging from the tunnel. She has a rucksack on her back, and her face is pained. I hope her neck isn’t giving her too much trouble.
She comes to me when she sees me. “Thank you for this.”
“I did very little,” I tell her. “I only found out about this tunnel today.”
“Still. It’s important sometimes for people to have someone to follow when they want to simply run away.”
Eldan is some distance away, alert, looking around as if he wishes he could see in all directions at once.
“What were your instructions after reaching this place?” I ask Ara. “I’m meant to meet up with another group that went into the Knolls, but you are all welcome to travel to Viathan if you are able.”
“The plan was that we would move out from here in smaller groups, with the more vulnerable going directly to Viathan and the more hardy taking longer routes so that the whole group isn’t in any one place at any point after right now,” Ara explains. She points to a family, where someone’s ama is holding up a toddler so the child can pee behind a bush. “Families like that will move south immediately. Barm gave us all enough rations to live for about a week, if uncomfortably, and there’s water enough available between here and Viathan.”
“Apathan said there were two routes out of the city,” I say. People are still pouring from the tunnel exit. “Where does the other let out?”
“I’m sorry,” Ara says. “I don’t know. I didn’t even know where this one would. The only people who know all of it are your apathan and Baras, the folk leading the second group. It’s likely they told at least a few others, but I wouldn’t know who.”
“Thank you anyway. How is your neck?”
Ara grimaces. “It’s been better.”
Without a thought, I cast Ela’s Touch on her, and Ara’s posture relaxes after a moment. She moves her neck from side to side with a smile.
“Thank you. If I can do anything for you or your cause, you only have to ask.”
I look down the hill at the scattered crowd. “I hate to do this, but they should get moving. Those coming out should rest briefly, but then they ought to start walking. Put as much distance between yourself and Mithrathan as you can.”
“Lithrial,” Dar says. “The harts have seen Teinath and the others.”
Ara gives me a tight nod and moves off down the hill. “Perhaps I’ll see you again, celestine.”
I quickly go to Dar’s side. “How do you know? Are they okay?”
“All I got was an image. Somewhere to the southeast of here, near the river.”
“What should we do?” I don’t want to leave this place without Apathan, but I have no idea how long it will be before he appears in the tunnel. “Do you think we can catch them?”
We’d planned to meet at a campsite to the south tomorrow if we didn’t find each other sooner, but I’ll feel better once we’re all in one place again.
Dar’s eyes go distant. “Not on foot.”
I hate this. I feel so helpless to actually do anything.
“Give me something I can do, Dar,” I say after a desperate moment. “I can’t just stand around here not knowing what’s happening in the city.”
Eldan comes over from where he’s been standing. “I agree. This was far too easy.”
“If you have something to say, say it.” There’s the prickly Dar I’ve come to know.
“As I see it, there are a few possibilities. Either Arnantas knew about the escape routes and planned accordingly and there will be an army waiting to the south to meet the refugees, or he didn’t know, but will soon.” Eldan frowns. “He is clearly trying to consolidate his power, and he thought he could kill two fish with one spear by luring you and Teinath here at the same time. The biggest clue he’ll have that something has gone awry with his plan is—”
“That he hasn’t seen a glimpse of us,” I finish. “Shit.”
I begin walking up the hill to see if it affords me any vantage at all of the city. I don’t know where Arnantas will be or what he’ll be thinking, but I do think he will want to be somewhere he can observe. I don’t expect anyone to follow, but the elemental does, silently watching me.
I try to remember what Beith said about Arnantas and his motivations.
“Why the Knolls?” I ask out loud. “What is his reason for quarantining the Knolls and not one of the other poor districts?”
Dar is beside me, a look of distaste on her face. “Are you trying to use my mother’s advice? Good luck with that.”
“Help me or go watch the refugees,” I say flatly. “Why the Knolls?”
“It’s easily contained.”
“Too simple.” I move around a tree, trying to ignore that smudge of smoke above the horizon. “The same could be said for the docks, or the Candlewax district, or any number of others.”
As much as Apathan said it wasn’t true, I suspect that in this, he was wrong. While it may not be my fault that Arnantas is torching the Knolls, I do think he chose it because of me. Which means he knows something about me, at least where I’m from.
“He either wants to simply hurt you or he wants to see what you’ll do,” Dar says. “If he succeeds in killing you, he might stamp out this rebellion that easily. If not, he will get a first impression of you that he will use to learn what move should come next.”
“You think that?” I ask.
Dar shrugs. “If I didn’t care who got caught in the middle, it’s what I’d do.”
Twenty-Seven
I don’t know what’s worse: leaving the refugees, or leaving them not knowing if Apathan is safe.
Dar and Eldan and I move back toward the city through the thinning forest.
My feet are hurting and exhausted. I cast the upgraded Ela’s Touch on the three of us, hoping that it will help with any blisters and rejuvenate us a little. It helps, if only a little.
The only sound for a while is our feet in the dry grasses of early autumn.
I don’t have a plan. I don’t even know if I’m following the quest I’m supposed to follow.
The column of smoke from the burning Knolls grows thicker and blacker as we walk. The city slowly materializes under it, the cloud of death hanging heavy, lurking over the rooftops of Mithrathan.
It’s pure chance when we stumble upon the scout.
He’s off his horse looking for tracks when he comes into view, and one look at Dar gives me a chance to see her grim smile as she disappears into stealth.
