Bloodsinger, page 36
The fear of being buried alive chased out all common sense. Cistine screamed and barreled forward with all her might, ghostlamp stretched ahead, seeking any glint of hope, any sign the end was near.
There. A flash of wider darkness, the tunnel mouth bowing in ahead of them. She reached back blindly, grabbed Thorne’s hand, and dragged him with her; her heart stammered and bucked defiantly when his broad shoulders snagged and his gasps of pain became almost constant.
With a violent roar, the tunnel roof gave way behind them, spilling soil and stone in their wake. Cistine burst into the open, her hand ripping free of Thorne’s, plunging her to her knees. She lurched up and spun back to find him caught, hips wedged in the gap, struggling to push free.
Swearing wildly, she gripped his shoulder in one hand and his belt in the other, and with a hard twist and thrust, helped him wrench out. He slid free of the hole just as the largest boulder smashed down where his legs had bucked loose a second before, sealing the tunnel mouth. His momentum drove them both down, and he landed on top of her, flattening her to the rock, his hand barely catching the back of her head in time to spare her a hard impact with the floor. His brow met her collarbone, panicked pants fanning the side of her neck. “Thank you for that.”
She wiggled her hands loose to grip his hips. “Are you all right?”
“Just…give me a moment.”
She was content to do that, though she feared he could feel the heat radiating from her face in this compromising position. After several moments—what felt like hours, and not entirely unpleasant ones—Thorne rocked back on his heels and pulled her upright. Together they stared at the tunnel behind them.
Utterly sealed. Not a hint of air seeping through.
“You were saying,” she whimpered, “about augments not having any power here…”
“Later.” Thorne lurched up, offering his hand. “Let’s see what we have to conquer still before we search for a way out.”
Later. Later. When had that become her perpetual mantra for all things she was too frightened or overwhelmed to deal with yet? All the things she’d delayed would catch up with her eventually; and knowing her luck, it would happen all at once.
But even that thought was meant for later. She scooped up the ghostlamp and turned to stand side-by-side with Thorne, studying their surroundings: a narrower room than the first, but the shadows were deeper, clinging to the hewn rock walls and masking the vaulted ceiling. Whatever lay wrapped within that darkness, no glowworms dared make a home here, and the ghostlight didn’t cut far enough to reveal what lay ahead.
But they had no choice, nowhere to go but forward.
“Ready?” Cistine murmured, and Thorne dipped his head. She sidled out, keeping a careful watch for pressure plates or any change in the stone’s surface below her feet, ears attuned for the sound of weapons cutting free. She halted only when the ghostlamp’s glow painted a ledge before her, and then she raised it high, shedding light across an empty chasm. The walls continued on, but the floor ended in a clean slice—an earth augment’s work. Far in the distance, she glimpsed the suggestion of another side. “What now? Do we climb the walls again?”
“Cistine.” Thorne’s tone was strange—hard, even, and forcibly calm. “Do not take another step. Do not move.”
Her heart jolted when she lowered her gaze, but nothing seemed out of the ordinary. Thorne was a shadow at her left, moving into her line of sight several paces away. He crouched, fingertips scraping the stone at level with her boot, and only when she rotated the ghostlamp toward him did she see it: a wire, hair-fine, the exact same shade as the rock, snaking from the wall and across the ledge. She followed it by the glint of ghostlight on its razor-thin edge until it vanished underneath her boots.
Thorne’s gloved fingers assessed the line with the lightest touch, tension feathering his jaw. Then he braced his hand on the floor and looked left and right, around at the walls, up at the ceiling. He strode back to the tunnel mouth, scooped up a stone fallen loose from the landslide, and positioned himself to her left again; then, deft and true, he flicked the rock up toward the ceiling.
The echo that returned was not rock on rock; it was rock on steel, loose and whispering.
Cold sweat soaked Cistine’s palms, and the ghostlamp wobbled in her hand. “Thorne…”
“I’m thinking.”
A sob rolled up her throat. There were knives up there, steel ready to crash down on their heads if she so much as shifted her weight. And they had no escape, the tunnel sealed at their backs.
She’d brought them both down here to die.
She couldn’t even form an apology past the knot of terror lodged in her chest while Thorne returned to the collapsed corridor and grabbed a handful of stones. He flung the first a bit farther, at a different angle, cocking his head at the damning report of stone on blade. Then the second, higher, farther. Then the third.
At the fourth, rock and rock cracked together.
Thorne dusted off his hands, measuring the distance with his gaze from the ledge forward, then from side to side. “Do you trust me, Cistine?”
“You know the answer to that!” Terror made her voice shrill.
“Look at me,” he said softly, and she did, angling her body but keeping her boots flat. “I will not let you die here, Wildheart.”
Only her lips bitten together kept the sob from escaping now. She nodded, and Thorne took a step back.
“When I say, take your feet off the wire and step toward the ledge.”
“But those blades—”
“Trust me.”
Cistine swallowed her protests and fixed her gaze on him—those earnest blue eyes, that face full of determination—and nodded.
Thorne rocked his weight and settled his stance like a man preparing for a race. “Brace.”
She turned and coiled her muscles, focusing on nothing but Thorne’s steady presence behind her. Not the blades, not the black chasm below. Just him.
“Move.”
Yelling strength down into her shaking muscles, Cistine sprang off the wire. It withdrew in a singing shriek, and the clatter of falling blades filled her ears—dozens of chains stringing free and bolting down toward their heads. Thorne’s weight smashed into her from behind, his arm looping her waist, and with a mighty thrust he shoved them both from the ledge.
The rock on their left and right shattered outward and twin battering rams hurtled from the hewn divots in the walls, wicked iron poles bashing together with a crack so loud it drove ringing pain into Cistine’s skull. She and Thorne slammed into the rams gut-first, driving the wind from them both. Thorne’s arm tightened around her, holding her in place against the iron while her hands found purchase of their own.
They hung there for endless, horrifying seconds while blades dropped and bobbed, riving the air just above their heads, so close the tips stroked Cistine’s hair. Feet dangling over nothing, a sheer drop to death’s embrace, they clung on side-by-side until the blades stopped falling.
At last, Thorne panted, “Up.”
Cistine scrambled over the carved edge of the ram, and Thorne lunged up beside her, snagging one of the fallen blades by its chain and stepping up on the crossguard like a foothold. Then he swept her up against him and shoved off of the battering ram’s edge.
Their momentum and height sent them careening forward through a hacking forest of steel they could not avoid. Pain erupted along Cistine’s limbs, and Thorne’s muscles spasmed as the blades whipped through his armor; there was no dodging them, nor the second set of rams that broke through the walls, hurtling toward them while they swung.
Cistine reached up wildly to snag hold of the chain above them, lessening the pressure on Thorne’s arm; as one, they put their feet to the battering rams that slammed together and rebounded before them, vaulting up the rounded iron edge and over the top. Then, with a desperate leap, they snagged another bladed chain and hurtled past another set of rams, out from under the space where Thorne’s third rock had struck—gliding through empty air to the other side.
The moment her feet grazed the opposite ledge, Cistine pivoted, heel sweeping the rock and metal chain chafing her hand, spinning with her back to Thorne’s to scan the darkness behind them while he searched out threats ahead.
Nothing. The cavern fell quiet, the last blade and battering ram rattling silent on their joists.
For a moment, shoulders resting together, they caught their breath. Blood dribbled down Cistine’s arms, and Thorne’s breaths wheezed slightly. Carefully, she separated her fingers from the chain and turned to wrap his waist, ducking under his arm to look ahead with him; her stomach plunged so steeply she feared she would be sick.
A door was set into the rock before them, strong and iron-banded, thrice-sealed with chain and lock. Impenetrable, by the look of it.
But they had to get through. Because that wild, frantic thing hurling itself around her ribcage, that guttural, desperate call, was right on the other side of this door.
Thorne stepped forward first, running his hands along the chains. Cistine moved in his wake, weighing the locks themselves, knocking on the metal. “This feels like ordinary iron. Were they harvesting Svarkyst ore yet when these were forged?”
“We’re about to find out.” Thorne drew a saber. “Pull that chain as taut as you can.”
She tugged out the lock as far as it would go, and Thorne rested his blade to the links, pressing lightly. Then he hefted and stroked down.
Sparks spat, and the impact vibrated through Cistine’s arms straight into her shoulders. She hissed at the whine of metal on metal, and Thorne’s gaze leaped to her.
“I’m all right.” Centering her stance, she pulled the lock. “Try again.”
It took six blows to the same spot for the links to give; Thorne whooped quietly under his breath when they shattered, and Cistine drew out the next, then the next. They unthreaded the chains, slung them off into the chasm, and put their shoulders to the door.
“On my count.” Thorne numbered down from three, and they surged against the wood and iron with all their might, shoving the heavy doors inward with a low, endless grind of metal on rock that crescendoed the cacophony of pain in Cistine’s head.
Then it was over. They were through.
The room beyond was so utterly ordinary, it took Cistine completely off guard. No traps to be seen, no hint of a compromised floor or walls set with rams and blades. There was only a simple locked chest in the very center, its banded lid lined with runes.
It was the origin of the call screaming through Cistine’s body.
She and Thorne prowled around it, examining it from every edge and angle before they approached. Skin rearing with endless chills, Cistine set the ghostlamp on the lid, shedding light across the markings so she could read them aloud. “Hval en dermattae kmar hed var.”
She glanced up at Thorne, and he translated in a voice soft as shadows, “What is precious comes with a price.” Blue eyes burning in the gloom, he smoothed his hand across the runes. “If you break this flagon, be certain you’re prepared to pay the cost.”
Cistine’s skin crawled. “We aren’t going to use it, just keep it from being abused.”
“I know.” Thorne motioned her back, and in a dozen strokes, shattered the ancient lock and pried open the chest.
It was not an augment they found inside; it was a flagon pouch, and it too was sealed. She’d never seen a lock like it before—round, barely as wide as her thumb. There was no keyhole, no latch. The seal was all one piece, inscribed with Old Valgardan runes.
The breath rushed out of Thorne, almost in relief. “Impenetrable. The old Order knew how to guard its assets.”
Her arm like lead, her heart buzzing with need, Cistine reached into the chest. The moment her fingers encountered the pouch, godlike energy punched through her, a blow so hard it set her rocking back on her heels, all the breath rushing out of her. A ceaseless, screeching current stroked through her body like a pounding surf and flashes of lightning, and she was only dimly aware of Thorne’s fingers taking her shoulders to keep her from falling, of his voice shouting her name.
Take defend use come and see come and see COME AND SEE
“No!” Cistine shouted, and the wailing power faltered, the pain in her skull releasing. The cavern swam back into focus, the clench of Thorne’s hands on her wounded arms shooting a focusing pain into her body, bringing her back to the room—to him.
“What is it?” he demanded. “What happened, Cistine?”
“It’s so gods-forsaken loud. I’ve never felt any augment like this.”
Thorne’s fingers flexed. “Even with the seal?”
“Even then.” Ears ringing, she settled forward again, turning the pouch over in her hands to study the lock. Why was it so familiar?
Then it struck her. That pattern of runes, where she’d seen it before: in Stornhaz, below the courthouse.
“The old Order practiced Gammalkraft as well as augmentation, didn’t they?” she asked slowly. “Before Gammalkraft was outlawed.”
“So the stories go.”
“Except it was used again.” She smoothed her finger over the lock. “Just once, by another Order who grew too much of a taste for power.”
For a beat, Thorne was silent. Then he took the lock, twisting it toward the ghostlight. His mouth slanted and his brow creased, arriving at the same conclusion she had.
“It’s a bloodlock,” Cistine whispered. “Just like the rune-lids over the Doors to the Gods.”
Thorne’s eyes snapped to her face, asking the silent question she did not know the answer to: if her blood would open something sealed so long before her time. Had the ritual made the Novacek bloodline the key to all doors sealed shut by augmentation and Gammalkraft? Did the tie to locks forged by those entwined powers transcend decades, centuries, generations, from the time of this augment’s sealing-away until now?
Cistine pressed down against the spectral surge of the call rising once more in her chest. It didn’t matter, because she wasn’t going to try. The moment this pouch was opened, the flagon was twice as vulnerable to Bloodwight theft, twice as much a threat to their armies and all the kingdoms in the world. As the Key, it was her duty to protect it, not to tamper with it to sate her own curiosity.
She shoved the pouch into her pocket. “We have to find a way out of here.”
Thorne frowned at the smooth walls. “This room was not designed to release its inhabitants again. Whoever entered, this was meant to be their end.”
“Unless you were right, what you said before…that the Order might’ve had a contingency in place. A way for someone to take this augment if there was truly a need.”
“That’s speculation, Cistine. We’re here now, and I don’t see a way out. This vault was forged to contain, not release.”
She didn’t see a way, either. But she was learning that often the only path forward was one forged in power, by choice. That was why she was here, after all—what had brought her back to Valgard. Because the war and the Bloodwights seemed so hopeless, a threat beyond surmounting, so she chose to lay contingencies of her own, to map and plot her steps back to the North on her own terms. To return a victor, not a victim.
Cistine Novacek would not fall to ancient traps, nor to Bloodwight plots. She would rise again.
She dipped into her augment pouch, chest tearing with regret at using yet another flagon. But if there was no other way, then she had to do this. She would not be buried alive here while her friends waited above; and she would not subject Thorne to rotting in the darkness with her. “Well, they’ve never tried to contain me.”
She smashed the flagon between her hands, freeing the earth augment’s power in a crackling halo against her palms. At once, elements of the world woven into the rock itself pushed back, trapping them in a dome of augmented energy; but Cistine did not give way. She shut her eyes and spread her arms, letting the power dance and sing around her, searching for chinks and weakness in the fibers of stone, the places where it buckled, vulnerable to her reach.
Power throbbed in the bones of Kosai Talis. Somewhere above, not within, the world shuddered and trembled, an aftershock spearing all the way down to them.
Something was happening outside.
Fear for her cabal spiked through Cistine, sharp as any armor-piercing steel shaft, and at that pulse of desperation, her power lifted—then punched through. Stone turned to gravel, and a small seam fractured in the wall, letting in a gust of air from beyond.
A tunnel.
“Logandir,” Thorne breathed.
“I see it,” she panted, and aimed her focus toward that tiny crater. It gave a bit more, shuddered a bit wider.
Selv Torfjel.
The heart of all mountains with bloodpaths between, caves and tunnels connecting the Vaszaj Range to the Isetfells and every mountain beyond. But it wasn’t only the mountains themselves that were connected; it was Detlyse Halet and Thalma Geris, Kalt Hasa with its broad lower caverns where supply trains came and went, and here: Kosai Talis, bricked over but still part of the chain.
The old temples were built on a web of tunnels, all linked together by an ancient Order more whole and fierce and frightening than even the Bloodwights, joining their places of prayer and practice to the North’s beating heart.
“That’s our way through,” Cistine gasped.
Thorne’s hand brushed her spine. “Let me help.”
Not trusting herself to speak again, she reached out blindly, hand locking around his, and pushed the power into him so swiftly his body strained and he snarled under his breath; but he did not let go of the strength she gave him, or of her fingers. The power flowed between and from their bodies, hurling itself over and over at that vein in the wall until it widened to a crack, then to a crevice. Then to a wound stricken against the ancient temple’s body.
