~Yes…~

  ‘The Burning Hand are here for it. That will be why they are in the city. This is their lair.’

  ~They would… hunger for it, yes, but I cannot feel any taint in the tide. Just power. Cold and dark and without end… This catacomb is made to protect itself as much as it is to channel it… There is a heart to it. There are… living souls down here too…~

  ‘More than one?’ he asked, thinking of the figure in the cloak who had vanished in the tower with the blue-and-red door.

  ~Perhaps,~ she replied. Her voice sounded thin, like someone forcing words out while standing in a freezing wind.

  ‘How can you tell?’

  ~They are like shadows. Their life makes the…’ Solia paused, and he could feel the effort as she spoke again. ~Their life distorts the flow of magic.~

  ‘How many and where are they?’

  ~I can’t… I can’t tell… Further down.~

  The feeling of standing in the water of an icy river was growing stronger.

  He looked between the passaged openings. A stone skull capped one arch, a tangle of roses and thorns another, an hourglass in skeletal hands the third. The spaces beyond each opening were black and blank.

  He took a step forward. His foot sent something skittering across the floor. He looked down to see a human thigh bone. Dried strips of flesh still clung to it but dissolved into dust as he picked it up. Then he saw the rest of the bones, lying under the roses and thorns: ribs, skull and vertebrae jumbled together like flotsam discarded by a river. Lying on top of them were bronze masks.

  ~Starvation,~ said Solia. ~I can feel the agony of it eating them… They were down here for a long time… Lost… and the echoes of their deaths are still here…~

  ‘How could they be lost long enough to starve?’ asked Cado as he looked between each of the passageways.

  ~The currents… The tide of magic… It… protects itself… It did not let them go… I…~ Solia’s spirit voice was a whisper. ~The currents are getting stronger… I… Please… I can feel them… pulling… me away…~

  Her presence dimmed. Cado felt an icy breath on the back of his neck. She folded out of being, leaving him alone.

  ‘Solia?’ he asked and touched the ring that held her. She did not appear.

  The sound of distant footsteps came, shifting in the silence. He went utterly still. The false beat of his heart stopped. His senses reached through the dark.

  Cado looked at the heap of bones on the threshold of the rose-and-thorn passage, then back at the skull-capped arch. His eyes fixed on the hourglass passage. He went to it, looked through and paused. No bones or phantoms marked this way, but he could feel the cold flow of magic surging out of the opening.

  ‘Are you trying to show me where they hide or lead me astray?’ he asked to the dark. He held still for a long moment, then he stepped over the threshold.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  Steps sloped down into the thickening dark. Cado moved by touch. His eyes could see in the deepest black, but this was not simple absence of light. The darkness was almost physical, a void pressed against his eyes. There were carvings on the walls: faces, figures, hands. He could feel the chisel marks under his fingers as they traced the wall.

  He had been walking for a long while when the walls were suddenly not there. One second his hands were touching stone, and the next there was nothing. He stood perfectly still. He could feel the empty dark going out and out around him. If he were to step to the side and fall, he would just fall and fall and fall… He took a breath to speak a spell of flight, but there was now no air. He was standing in nothing. Had he been living he would have suffocated, but if that were the case he would likely not have got this far anyway.

  He took a step and his foot hit a solid force. It was not physical. He could feel emptiness in front of his face. He tried to move backwards. The force slammed into his back. Then it was all around him, crushing him, squeezing his flesh. Voices rushed into his skull. He heard a man gasp for air through fluid-filled lungs; a child cried out as they tumbled through the air.

  ‘No… No… Oh…’

  A woman sighed as the fog of blood loss smothered the pain for the last time.

  And more, all passing and not returning. The last sounds of mortals as they left life. Out there at that moment all these instants of ending were happening. He was hearing the tidal surge of death. It pulled at him, and he felt its force grow when it felt the void where his soul should have been. The sounds became a roar. Words formed in the cacophony.

  ‘Liar…’

  ‘Cursed…’

  ‘Abomination…’

  His empty heart felt as though a fist were crushing it. Thorns of ice ripped through his veins. A huge weight pressed down on his head, trying to crush him to the floor.

  No, he tried to say, but his jaw would not open. I am trying. I wish you no harm. I am…

  The crushing force grew. Pain cut off his thoughts.

  Just let it happen, said a voice that was his own from the depths of his skull. Let go and let the anger of the dead tear you apart…

  ‘No,’ he said, and the word forced from his lips. ‘I am one of you. I am not living. I have nothing.’

  The pressure, pain and babble of voices ended. Silence and stillness filled Cado as though the assault had never been. He felt that he had passed a test or perhaps turned a key in a lock. He waited for a second. The echoing dark still surrounded him. He took a step.

  The blackness ended suddenly. He felt a shift, like ropes snapping. His foot had settled on stone. He stood on a ledge that jutted out into a dark space in front of him. He turned his head. The frame of an arched door stood proud of the rock face behind him, but the space inside it was blank rock. He turned his head. He was high on the wall of a large cavern, he could tell, but he could not see the floor or other walls. There was a sound like… water, but not. It was lower, grittier; wind blowing dust across dry stone, perhaps. He took a breath. There was air in this cavern. The ache of hunger in his heart rose, sudden, furious, a red migraine. He staggered and half fell to his knees.

  The feeling passed, draining out of him. He felt his arms and legs shake as he pushed himself up. He felt weak, empty, shivering cold. He found the edge of the ledge and moved along it by touch. The stone felt like ice. He stopped when his fingers found steps cut into the rock face and leading down from the ledge.

  ‘Nulus… meyon… altuss…’ A voice. Cado froze. He had heard a voice, an echo of a whisper, dying on the air as soon as it rose. And there, down in the dark, was a light – pale green and mauve flames flickering as they kindled. He could hear movement, the swish of fabric and the scuff of boots.

  He began to climb down the steps. The flames were still there, gleaming but unmoving in the centre of the cavern. He reached the bottom of the steps and dropped into a crouch. His eyes were wide, black spheres now, pulling in every scrap of light. He could see the cavern more clearly. It was vast, a natural dome scooped out of the rock. The stone of the walls was smooth and rippled, as though it were water frozen at the instant a breeze passed over it. Crystals glinted in the rock. The floor rose in irregular tiers to where a single pillar of rock reached between floor and ceiling. The firelight came from the space beside the pillar. Cado slid his sword from its sheath and moved forwards. The light of the flames grew in his eyes, step by step.

  He could see that the light came from fire dancing in a bowl of oil. There was a figure next to the flames, too, half out of sight. Cado could just make out the faint impressions of fabric, of a hood covering a head.

  ‘Shy’su… ish…’ The sound of the voice rose above the rustling hiss that filled the cavern. He knew the voice. He felt a shiver of weakness pass through him again, but forced it down.

  ‘Tell me,’ Cado said aloud. The figure’s head jerked up, hunting the dark as the echoes spread. ‘How long have you served the God of Lies?’ He stepped from the dark, sword in hand. His eyes were red coal lights of hunger and anger. The fire poured shadow into the recesses of his face. The figure whipped around. Heavy robes rustled. ‘Magister Leragrais.’

  Leragrais stepped back, hands raised. He looked shocked. Cado took a step forward, sword levelled at the wizard. The invisible currents of the river were strong now; he could feel ice seeping into his flesh. Leragrais took another step back.

  ‘No further,’ said Cado. Leragrais’ indigo eyes gleamed black.

  ‘You have made a mistake,’ said Leragrais. His mouth twitched. ‘More than one, I think. But thank you. This, believe it or not, will make things simpler.’

  Leragrais’ left hand twisted in the air. Crystals glowed in the stone pillar beside the magister.

  Cado felt the ice currents shift around him. He lunged. The point of the sword reached towards Leragrais’ chest, and–

  Slid downwards, falling, the weight of the sword dragging on Cado’s arm as he staggered. Cold flooded through him. Sensation drained from his body. He was on his knees, trying to rise, trying to make his limbs move. Leragrais moved his hand through the air as though gentling an animal. Cado buckled. The current of magic in the cavern was roaring through him. The wizard looked down at him, his mouth hooked into an apologetic smile.

  ‘To a man with a hammer, every problem is a nail. To a predator, everything is prey. You think I am a slave to the false gods? Oh, but you are a fool. They are here, make no mistake. Did you think that you tipping a mask and dagger out in front of me was a revelation? I know they are here. The Old Enemy have been trying to get into the heart of these catacombs for some time. Only the magical barriers the ancients created have kept them out. What? You wonder why I didn’t tell you, why I didn’t come blurting out with the truth that this city is rotten? You may hunt them, but you do not understand the enemy. The only way to survive against them is by holding power close and secrets closer. While you have been running around bleating about your hunt, they have been using you to find a way in here.’ He shook his head in disgust. ‘And now you have shown them how and broken the wards that were keeping them out. Well done. Very well done.’

  Cado forced his leaden tongue to move in his mouth.

  ‘What…?’ he began.

  Leragrais curled his lip. ‘What is down here that the disciples of the Dark Gods, and legions of death want? Look,’ he said. He placed his hand on the pillar he had been standing next to, and the grey stone became transparent. The inside of the pillar was a geode. Amethyst crystal formed a hollow funnel that narrowed and then ballooned out again, so that it resembled an hourglass. Pale green light gleamed on the edges of the purple crystal. Grey, metallic sand slid down the throat of the funnel, gathering in the bottom in a pile that did not grow higher. He knew what it was, and the realisation took his breath away. It was grave-sand.

  ‘Everything is magic,’ Solia had once explained to him. ‘The soil and stone, the air, the thoughts in our heads and the stars that wheel through the heavens. All of it. Magic is one, but when it blows through existence it divides. Just as white light falling through rain splits into colours, magic divides into a spectrum. Death, light, shadow, life and more. Each of them pools in places where those elements dominate. The winds of death blow strong where the dead lie and life ends. Tides of shadow are strongest where darkness hides the world from sight. It is a cycle – the magic changes existence, and existence pulls magic to it. The cycle becomes so intense that magic becomes physical. Just as salt forms on the edge of seas and lakes, so realmstone forms in the places where magic touches existence most closely.’

  ‘What is it, though, this stone?’ he had asked.

  ‘Physically, it has many forms. It can be liquid, or a glowing mist or a lump of amber. In the realms where death blows strong, it runs as granules of grey stone. Grave-sand, most call it. But that is just what it looks like. What it is… It is power, my prince. Pure power.’

  ‘This is the heart of Aventhis,’ said Leragrais. ‘A soul-cascade. A naturally occurring nexus of the magic of death and immortality. All the geomantic lines in this underworld lead here. All the currents of magic lead here. The fall of this sand is this place’s magic made visible. Reverse it and you end life or break time. Stop it and its gathered power rips through the underworld as a storm. It has kept us alive in the wilderness, and now I must keep it from those who want to take it.’

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  ‘At first I thought that you had come here for this,’ said Leragrais. ‘That the soul-cascade had drawn you just as it had the cultists of Change. But no, you were just a petty creature hunting for your own wants. Easily used by all, it seems.’

  ‘You are…’ began Cado.

  ‘I am what I am and what I seem – a rarity, I know. I have spent my life to protect this city and its people. Death is cruel.’ He gave a small smile, as though at a joke. ‘Strange for me to say perhaps, but it’s true. Once we mortals feared death because it marked the end of existence. What waited beyond the grave’s doors was a void of mystery. Faith and stories told of paradises and torments, but always it remained behind the curtain of the unknown. Even in the face of phantoms and miracles, people could cling to the idea that a different end awaited the dead. That comfort is long lost. We do not only see the afterlives of the living but live in them ourselves.’ He shuffled forwards, and slowly bent down. Cado tried to move away but couldn’t. Leragrais reached out. Cado showed his teeth, hissing like a dying cat. Leragrais hesitated and then placed his fingers on Cado’s cheek. ‘We see the torments and the creatures that prey on the dead – creatures like you. I will not see the souls I have tried to protect become slaves or playthings for your kind.’

  He let his hand fall and stood, turning away.

  ‘I thought that when the lights appeared in the sky it was the hand of the Great Necromancer reaching out to take us at last. I confess I was terrified. What could we do? Damascene, poor faith-blind Damascene. She thought we could use you, that we could tame you by your pitiful attachment to your soul-cage rings.’ He held up a chain of rings and swung them, so they clinked. ‘But that idea was foolish, wasn’t it? The soldiers of your masters’ approach even now. You met with them before returning. We have seen their riders on the road, following in your wake.’

  Leragrais shook his head. His smile was cold.

  ‘I cannot destroy you. Even here, with all the power of this confluence, something of your vile nature would remain in the dust. I could do what I threatened and sink your ashes into a lake or bury them deep, but you are a creature of vengeance, and I cannot risk that you would find your way free. You are a thing of death. The grave-sand that gathers here both empowers and binds and wards against the dead like you, depending on the intent I place into it. The amethyst tides bind your curse to you, and so I cannot break them with that same power. I cannot destroy you.’ He paused, smiled more widely. ‘But others can.’

  Leragrais peeled open the fingers of his hand. Cado felt the black night swirl inside. The magister closed his fist and darkness snapped through Cado like a rope pulling him down into the dark.

  A blink of lightning. Cold light. Far away, like a crack in the night.

  ‘He is alive?’ a cold voice said.

  ‘That which is dead cannot live and cannot die,’ came an answer.

  ‘His eyes are open.’ The cold voice again.

  ‘This far from the confluence, I cannot keep him subdued.’

  ‘No matter. We have strength enough to take him further.’

  ‘You are certain you can destroy him?’

  ‘Oh yes.’

  He could see a blur. The white light was dissolving to grey. He felt pain. It surrounded and flowed through him. Sudden, black and red, edged with sharp hunger. His jaws snapped wide. He could hear hearts beating close to him. Three of them. Alive.

  The narrow faces looked down at him.

  ‘He perceives us.’ It was Lotharic. The Lumineth shifted her head to look at him from different angles, but her gaze stayed steady. She did not blink once. ‘Strange…’

  ‘What?’ Leragrais shifted into sight. He looked older than he had under the spire, skin loose and grey over his bones.

  ‘There is an air of nobility to him.’

  ‘He is a leech,’ snarled Leragrais. ‘He killed one of the city’s guard this morning.’

  ‘He has not fed,’ said Atharion. ‘The furnace of his curse is burning low.’

  A frown on Leragrais’ face, then a shake of the head.

  Thunder shook the air. All three looked up. A jagged bolt of lightning had crossed the sky above them. Another had flashed into being before the first faded, and then another from that bolt, and on, so that the light was stitching the underbelly of the heavens. They were moving south, towards Aventhis. Streaks of amethyst afterglow remained after each flash. The two aelves and old human looked at the sky for a long moment.

  ‘The time required is approaching,’ said Atharion. ‘We must be at the nexus and paint the runes when it comes. The confluence will not last.’

  ‘It is a good thing that I came to you then,’ said Leragrais. ‘Or you would have to fight your way in.’

  ‘What needs to be done would be done,’ said Lotharic, her voice metallic and cold. ‘If you had not come to us, your people would have perished without need. As it is, many may survive.’

  Leragrais blinked as though he had not heard it put so baldly before. He frowned, as if he were about to object or ask a question.

  ‘You did right and serve a higher purpose, magister,’ said Atharion. His voice was steady and smooth. ‘The Ossiarchs will be at your walls come night. The Soulblight was within your walls. If they did not take your city now, then its walls would fall on another day. The power of the nexus, the power that has protected you until now – it would serve only the Necromancer. It is not enough power to stop them. As it is, it will become a weapon against the march of the cold legions. The lines and magic will shift. The bridges of bone that span the lands of the Ossiarchs shall break, and the Nighthaunt will flee before the light that will shine across the realm.’

 

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