The Starless Crown, page 4
According to Jace, the ninth tier was nothing like the others. It supported a circle of towers, each holding various levels of study. The western half—its towers built of dark volcanic stone mined from the foundations under the school—held the classes in alchymy. On the other side spread an arc of blazing white turrets constructed of limestone hauled in from the cliffs of Landfall to the east. Among those white towers, the mysteries of godly orders and ancient histories were revealed to the ninthyears.
Knowing such knowledge would be forever forbidden to her, Nyx ignored both sides and fled toward the twin pools of brightness at the summit’s center. The two pyres glowed like the very eyes of the Father Above. For centuries, the pair had stared down at the students below, daring them to come closer, to gaze deep into the wonders and terrors contained therein.
Above the pyres, darker shadows roiled into the sky, stirring with bitter alchymies and sacred incenses. As she drew nearer, the scents overwhelmed Nyx, erasing all detail around her. The roaring fires deafened her. Even the flames cast aside all discerning shadows into one continuous blaze.
It was as if the world had vanished, leaving her floating in a brightness of stinging smoke and grumbling flames. So be it. Knowing she could go no farther, she stopped between those pyres, ending her frantic flight.
She put her back to the fires. She refused to cower.
Steps away, a harsh panting cut through the roaring.
Byrd.
“I’ll drag you back by your hair if I must,” he threatened.
He punctuated his threat with a hard smack of her cane against the stones. She heard the wood crack with the impact, sounding like the break of a bone. It felt as if he had shattered an old friend.
Both despairing and angry, Nyx considered tossing herself into the flames, to thwart him even now. But she had been raised by a dah who tamed bullocks, alongside brothers who never relented. She lifted her arms, prepared to do as much damage as possible before it was over.
As she readied herself, her dah’s last words returned to her: Remember the Mother is always looking out for you. She wished that were true, most of all now. But she held out little hope. Still, she prayed with all the strength inside her.
And an answer came.
Only it wasn’t the Mother Below.
As Byrd rushed at her, the tiny hairs along Nyx’s arms and neck shivered. Then she heard it. A screech split the sky. The cry crashed into her, washed through her, shook her bones and teeth. Then her body ignited into a torch. She felt her skin blister, her eyes boil. She imagined the flames of the pyres had struck her, buffeted into her by the sweep of large wings overhead.
Despite the pain, she ducked low.
Ahead, a scream—not a beast, but a boy—carried toward her.
It cut off in mid-cry.
Then a body struck her, knocking her onto her back between the two pyres. The fire inside her instantly died, as if snuffed out by the bulk atop her. Knowing it was Byrd, she fought to free herself.
As she did so, a gush of hot blood washed over her neck and chest. Her fingers tried to stanch the flow—only to discover torn flesh, the stump of a neck. She gasped and struggled in terror. Byrd’s head was gone, ripped from his body.
Tears burst along with a sob.
No …
She struggled to get free of his weight—then it was ripped off of her and tossed into the alchymical pyre. On her back, she elbowed and kicked her way deeper between the fires. Flesh and blood sizzled and smoked to her left.
No …
Through the brightness of the twin blazes, a dark shadow grew before her. Her left leg was grabbed, pinned to the stone. The shape crested over her. A bony knuckle crushed into her belly, another into her right shoulder. She had once been trampled by a panicked hundred-stone bullock heifer. What held her trapped now was far heavier, its purpose more deliberate.
No …
The shadow covered her fully, ensconcing her in the darkness of wing and body. A hot breath, reeking of meat and iron, blew across her face. Wet nostrils snuffled her from her crown to her neck and settled there.
No …
She felt bristled lips part—then the icy press of daggers into the tender flesh of her throat.
No …
Fangs stabbed deep, bringing a flash of sharp pain, followed by a cold numbness. The press of muzzle choked her. She could not breathe. The icy chill spread outward, pumped into her body, tracing through her blood.
Then shouts cut across the roaring fires.
The ninth tier had finally woken to the assault.
The mass atop her burst away, crushing her worse, then carrying her aloft for a breath, before finally letting her go. She crashed to the stones. On her back, she felt the heavy beat of wings, the roil of heat from whipped flames. Smoke swirled, bringing the smell of sweet incense and burning flesh.
For a moment upon the stones, she again had the strange sensation of both staring up at the sky and down at her body at the same time.
Then it was gone.
As she lay there, the coldness continued to spread. It numbed her limbs until she could not move, barely breathe. She felt the ice, like poisonous claws, dig into her heart and clench. The world immediately went dark, far blacker than any blindness. All sound dissolved to silence as if she were diving into the deepest pond.
All that was left was her heartbeat.
She bore witness to each slowing spasm.
No …
She fought to hold, to will another beat.
As she did so, a new noise rose from the dark depths. It distracted her focus. Screams and shouts filled her head—hundreds, then thousands, then more. The ground trembled under her, then bucked wildly. It all ended with a thunderous cracking that left her hollow and barren. In the aftermath, all that remained was an awful silence, far emptier than anything she had experienced.
If she could have, she would have wept.
Only then did she realize the truth.
In that empty silence.
Her heart had stopped.
TWO
THE ROOTLESS STATUE
Smash the hamer
An’ crack the anvelt,
Karve the brimstan
An’ empti the vein.
Onli then can a hard heart be brok’n,
Brok’n enough to mende.
—Old miner’s canticle
4
RHAIF WOULD HAVE died if his bladder hadn’t been so full.
The only warning came from the cloud of dust shivering into the air from the chalky floor of the tunnel. Rhaif would’ve liked to attribute this unusual phenomenon to the strength and fury of his stream splashing against the nearby wall. But he knew better. Fear crimped off his flow and drove him to his knees. He propped a hand against the large boulder behind which he had sought privacy. The surface vibrated under his palm.
He glanced to the lantern hanging from his leather waistbelt. The oil flame jiggered and snapped behind the pebbled glass.
His chest tightened to a hard knot.
Down the tunnel, the other prisoners hollered and screamed, accompanied by a rattle of chains as they tried to flee. But it was too late. Stone groaned with an ominous intensity—followed by a thunderous clap. The ground jolted up, throwing Rhaif into the air. The boulder next to him bounced high, rebounded off the roof, and crashed to a floor now riven with cracks.
Rhaif landed hard on his rear and scuttled backward as the tunnel continued its collapse. His lantern, mercifully still intact, bobbled atop his knee breeches. Before him, a massive slab of the roof broke free and smashed to rubble and dust. More fissures chased him down the tunnel, coursing across roof, walls, and floor.
A choking black cloud rolled over him, heavy with sand and chalk.
He coughed to keep from drowning in that silt. He hurriedly rolled to his feet and rushed away. The flickering flame at his thigh looked like a lone fireflit lost and bouncing through a dark bower. Its light was too feeble to pierce the thick veil of dust. Still, he kept running, both arms out. His ankle chains rang with each step, giving strident voice to his distress.
In his haste to escape, his hip struck an outcropping. He spun, and glass shattered at his hip. A few pieces pierced his roughspun breeches and sliced his leg. He winced and slowed, taking great care not to lose his lamp’s flame. Only the overseer had a flint to relight it if it should go out.
That must not happen.
He had witnessed other prisoners punished with darkness. Poor souls lowered into pits without lanterns, sealed down there for days on end. They often came out frail, maddened creatures. It was Rhaif’s greatest fear: an eternal darkness without end. How could it not? He had lived all his three decades up in the Guld’guhl territories on the eastern edge of the Crown, at the fringe of the sun-blasted world, where night never fell and the lands were a sandy ruin, where heinous creatures made their home, alongside tribes of savages who eked out a meager, violent existence. Having lived all his life under a Guld’guhl sun, he held night to be no more than a rumor, a darkness to be feared.
As he hobbled free of the worst of the dust cloud, he finally stopped. He unhooked his lantern and lifted it high. He took care doing so, fearing too much jostling might knock the flame from its oiled taper.
“Just stay where you are,” he warned the pale flicker.
As the dust thinned, he listened to the settling of rock behind him. The pounding of his heart grew quieter, too. He checked the passageway. The cave-in had stopped a hundred steps away, completely collapsing the tunnel. A few stray rocks fell from the roof. A timber support shattered with a loud pop, enough to make him jump back.
Still, it looked like the worst was over.
But what now?
He sneezed loudly, startling himself, then turned and searched around him. He did not know this level of the mine, not that he hadn’t heard stories. Earlier, roused from their piles of hay in the mine gaol, he and a dozen others had been kicked and threatened with cudgels to this remote area of the chalk mine. There, they had been lowered on hempen ropes tied to an empty ore cart, winched down by the ox-driven windlass somewhere outside the pit mouth. It was said this section of the mine had been long abandoned. Some said its shafts and tunnels had dried out centuries ago, but most believed it was accursed, haunted by spirits, plagued by malicious ilklins.
Rhaif hadn’t placed much stock in such tales. He knew some miners who snuck crusts of bread into crevices in the rocks; overseers who did the same with coins, mostly brass pinches, once even a silver eyrie. All to appease such spirits.
Not him.
He had learned in the back alleys of Anvil to trust only that which he could touch with his hands or see with his own eyes. He took no account of gods, of stories of ghostlies and spookens. Living in Anvil, he’d learned there was plenty enough to be afraid of. What went bump in the night in Anvil was not some haunting, but someone trying to steal what was yours.
Then again, he was often the one doing the bumping.
Anvil was the territory’s main port. It hunkered along the sea, a squalid pisshole, if ever there was a place. It was a city of cutthroats and rogues of every ilk. It shat and sweated like a living creature, ripe with corruption, pestilence, and decay. By season, by storm, by fair weather, it never changed. Its bay was constantly festooned with the sails of a hundred ships, its dockside a continual brawl.
The saying went that no one lived in Anvil, they only survived it.
Rhaif sighed.
How I miss it …
Not that he held out any expectation of ever seeing it again. Betrayed by his own guild, he ended up being buried a hundred leagues to the south, sentenced to spend the rest of his life in the mines. His offense: crossing the wrong thief, the master of their guild, Llyra hy March. He thought it ill-fitting a punishment for simply stealing from the woman’s former lover, the archsheriff of Anvil. The man was too tempting a mark, and Llyra was not someone prone to pining, let alone loyalty. In fact, Rhaif himself had shared the warmth of her bed many a time.
He shook his head.
Even now, he remained stymied. To be so harshly punished, he suspected there had been more afoot than he had been privy to.
No matter, here I am.
But where was here?
As the dust settled to a haze, he reached a free hand to the secret pouch sewn into his breeches. He removed the wayglass, an item he had pilfered from an overseer of another crew and quickly hidden away. The loss was blamed on those other prisoners, who each lost a finger until someone confessed to stop the torture and claimed he got scared and threw it down a privy shaft. No one bothered to search the filth.
Rhaif lifted the wayglass to the flicker of flame. The sliver of lodestone shivered back and forth. It refused to settle. Strange. He had stolen it in the vague hope of one day making his escape. Though truth be told, he had noted the opportunity to nab it—and could not resist. After he had been buried down here for nearly two years, the thought of freedom was always on his mind. And a wayglass could prove useful. He figured if he ever had the opportunity to escape the overseer’s eye and take flight through some deserted section of mine, such a tool might point him in the right direction.
Like now.
He turned in a circle. He had come to a stop at a crossroad of tunnels. He tried to fathom the best path. He dreamed of his freedom, but he also valued his own hide. If it meant living, he would happily return to the whip and cudgel. Death was an escape he would rather avoid.
He decided on one tunnel, choosing it only because the lodestone shivered a little less in that direction.
“Good enough.”
* * *
AFTER SEVERAL HUNDRED paces, Rhaif was thoroughly lost.
By now, he sensed he was going in circles, slowly traversing downward, as if marching into his own grave. As to the wayglass, it only confounded him. The lodestone now spun round and round the glass, as if as baffled as him.
Maybe this place is accursed.
He turned at another tunnel, growing frantic. His heart pounded in his throat. He had at best a half-day of lamp oil left. His ears strained for any telltale sign of the mine proper: shouted orders, the ring of hammers, the cries of the whipped. But all he heard was his panted breath and his occasional mumbled curses.
He had to duck his head from the low roof—which itself was disconcerting. Like all Guld’guhlians, he was bowlegged and hard-headed in all manners of that term. It was as if the sun had beaten all of them into squat shapes, maybe all the better to work the thousands of mines that spread the breadth of the territory’s coast, from the stone forest of Dödwood to the north to the endless southern Wastes.
He ran a hand along the wall, feeling the cracks in the chalk. Here the timbered supports had long turned to stone, hardened by the centuries in the mineral-rich air. As he continued, those fissures widened and grew in number.
He craned his neck, noting the fractures along the roof.
Distracted, he tripped over a pile of loose stone and fell. He came close to smashing his wayglass, but he caught himself with his other hand. His lantern swung wildly from his waistbelt. He held his breath, fearing the flame would snuff out.
It flickered wildly but held true.
He checked the stones on the floor. Their edges were too sharp and a gap in the roof suggested they had recently broken from up there. If he had any doubt about circling toward his doom, he had proof in hand.
“Gods be,” he muttered. “I’m straight back under the section that caved in.”
He shook his head, pushed up, and dusted himself off. He glanced down to the wayglass. The lodestone had stopped spinning round and now pointed down the tunnel. He sighed and placed his hopes that it meant something.
“So be it.”
He headed along the narrowing passageway, only to discover in another hundred steps that the tunnel had shattered into a slide of broken rocks and sand that cut even deeper. He checked his wayglass. The lodestone still pointed straight ahead, down the precarious ramp of scree and sharp boulders.
His fingers gripped the wayglass with frustration.
“My arse if I’m traipsing down there.”
Exasperated more than scared, he swung angrily away. As he did so, the feeble flame at his hip blew out. Darkness collapsed onto him.
No, no, no …
The blackness drove him to his knees, then to his palms. He gasped and quaked. He squeezed his eyes closed, then open again, struggling to see, refusing to accept his fate.
“Not like this,” he mumbled.
He rolled onto his backside and hugged his knees.
Though godless, he prayed to the entire pantheon. To the Mother Below and the Father Above, to the silvery Son and the dark Daughter, to the shrouded Modron and the bright Bel, to the giant Pywll who held up the skies and the lowly Nethyn who hid deep in the Urth. He continued, leaving no one out, begging everyone in the Litany. He stuttered this way across every prayer taught to him on his mum’s knee.
Then, as if someone heard him, a faint glow rose ahead. He rubbed a knuckle against his straining eyes. At first, he thought it was some figment dredged up by his fear. But it did not go away. Maybe it had always been there.
He shifted to his knees and crawled forward. As he reached the edge of the chasm, his hands knocked loose a rock and sent it tumbling down the slope. The shine—a faint pearlescent blue—rose from the bottom. He did not know what created that glow. All that mattered was that it was a haven from the darkness, a bright port in a dark storm.
With a jangle of his ankle chains, he swung his legs forward into the chasm, gritted his teeth, and set off down the steep slope. The way was treacherous, the descent precarious.
Still …
Anything is better than this infernal darkness.
5
BLOODY AND BONE-BRUISED, Rhaif slid down the last of the rockfall. He dug in his sliced heels and drew himself to a stop at a towering fresh-cracked slab of black brimstan. Ten times his height, it rose from the white chalk floor like the fin of a monstrous Fell shark.
