Citadel of Fire (The Ronin Saga Book 2) (53 page)

The Devari spun. “Walamros? How… What are you doing in here?”

The man’s bloody fingers clenched the bars as if they were preventing him from drowning. “I questioned the divisions rising between the Sword-Forged Devari and the younglings. We are breaking, Victasys. You understand, don’t you? I had to say something! Of course, once I did, that bastard Jian cast me down here like a broken sword.”

“Victasys…?” another voice questioned in the dark from behind.

The scarred Devari turned, looking into the shadows. “Gremla? You’re here?”

“I am… We all are,” Gremla said in a grave but excited voice.

Suddenly, more faces appeared, coming forth out of the shadows and into the light of the torches. A flame appeared in Zane’s hand and he lifted it. As it rose into the air, the flame grew, revealing a vast chamber, and hundreds of cells, far bigger than Gray had imagined. Gray saw the faces and counted them all. Not all were Devari. Some were Reavers, some Farbian guards judging by their gambesons—padded jackets that belonged beneath mail. There must have been a hundred men and women at least.

He looked to their dirt-smudged faces, seeing the blood upon their skin, their faces ragged, and many with sunken cheeks. Their clothes were shredded, and a foul smell emanated from their dark hovels—their own waste, he realized.

“Brother, I thought you were dead…” said a big man with arms like small trunks, a cloak of the Devari on his broad back.

In the dim light, Gray could just make out the tattered cloaks of Devari on at least two dozen. “You all have been cast down here by Jian?” he asked.

“Jian or Sithel,” said a dark-skinned woman. She answered with the poise of a queen.
A Reaver.
“If you oppose the will of either of those two foul tyrants, you are silenced and forced down here, into this abysmal pit. Two of my very sisters gave me away. I was betrayed in my sleep.” She cursed, looking away, as if hopeless. “Reavers, Devari, guards, even Neophytes. It does not matter. None are safe from their dark clutches.”

And now Gray saw others too in the bleak shadows. Youthful faces of boys and girls. In the flashing red-orange light, he saw their round faces still held the chubbiness of adolescence, but all youth was gone from their eyes. They were craven with glassy eyes, like creatures left too long in the dark. He felt his anger rise, seeing their dirt-caked features streaked with dried tears.

“What is this hell? Who would allow this?” Zane asked, the fire he had conjured growing. His sword arm shook with bottled rage.

Gray looked down the long corridor. The Reavers were getting away. Yet he couldn’t simply leave these people here… Clenching his sword, he moved to the nearest lock.

“What are you doing?” Victasys questioned.

“We have to save them,” Gray said.

“What about the Arbiter?” Zane asked, conflicted.

“They have an Arbiter?” the woman Reaver questioned, looking aghast.

“My grandfather,” Gray declared. “He is being tortured as we speak.”

“Dear spirits… Then the Citadel truly is gone…” she breathed.

Zane growled. “What do we do?”

“What is right,” Victasys stated firmly, and then spoke in a loud voice, “Brothers, sisters… We cannot see you to safety now. Not unless we dare risk a war, and we cannot win a war as we stand.”

Walamros, the first Devari who had spoken, reached out, grabbing Victasys’ arm. “We understand. Go, brother, but come back for us if you can,” he said in a hard tone. “We will pray for your safe return. Besides, we’re not going anywhere. Right, lads?”

The others gave somber smiles of encouragement, echoing Walamros’ sentiment.

Victasys gripped the Devari’s arm tighter. “I will return with more. We will set you free. Upon my life, I swear it.”

“Good, good. Now go—you’re wasting time,” ushered the woman Reaver, as if chiding children. “Save the Arbiter—save your grandfather, for he is too important to lose if we wish to wage a war against this darkness.”

They each nodded, and Gray swallowed, his heart wrenching as they moved away, continuing down the hall. Voices echoed in the darkness, whispering prayers of encouragement until they passed beyond, entering a different hall altogether.

Ahead sat a red marble corridor.

The walls were not straight, but seemed to waver and distort the longer Gray looked at them. It made him sick to his stomach. He avoided keeping his gaze too long in any one place. Red orbs glowed upon the wall, as if casting the already scarlet walls in shades of blood.

Suddenly, they came upon a huge, black door.

It was shattered, the cast iron slabs hanging from cracked hinges like a broken arm hanging limply at an odd angle.

Gray rushed forward, the others at his side, feeling wind propel him as he dashed past the bodies of two dead guards and into the room beyond. Inside, he froze. It was just as he had seen in his dream, only worse…

In the center of the floor, upon the inlaid Star of Magha, were broken chains and blood. Blood was everywhere. But Ezrah was nowhere. He saw bits of brown robe lying upon the ground and strands of blood-soaked white hair. “No…” Gray croaked. Emotions flooded through him, and he sank to his knees, overwhelmed by it all when he felt a hand upon his shoulder.

Zane stood over him, offering a hand. “Get up, Gray. You are not done yet.”

“But the blood…”

“Trust me. Your grandfather did not die here,” the fiery man replied. He said it with such confidence that Gray could only nod and rise, and they moved out of the horror-filled room.

Outside, Victasys was closing the eyes of the two dead men. Gray realized they were Devari.
Perhaps they had killed a Reaver trying to defend Ezrah?
Gray wondered, but then shook his head. None of it made sense.

Victasys stood and looked to Gray, pointing beyond. Ahead sat a dozen different corridors, each a different color, shades of blue, red, green, yellow, and even black. “Where are they?”

“I—I don’t know.”

“Use your power. Follow the scent of blood.”

The fury in the scarred man’s face almost quelled Gray’s own rage, but instead he let it feed him. He reached into his mind, snatching the nexus and holding on. His mind quavered. The nexus tried to flee, but he fought it as if he were gripping a ledge by the tips of his fingers.
Listen to me!
He pleaded. Slowly, grudgingly, it obeyed. A thin stream of power sifted through the dozen halls.

He heard voices… then the pounding of feet on marble… cries and shouts of fighting, and more…
It sounded like war being waged. He returned back to his body, eyes snapping wide. Gray pointed Morrowil down the middle hall—a hallway of utter blackness, whereupon no light came forth.

Victasys simply nodded and charged forward. Zane gave a thin, wicked grin and followed. Gray, close behind, moved into the darkness. The Devari unsheathed his sword in a loud ring, and the fiery aura blazed along the curved steel, lighting the murky hall in orange flames.

Traps

“
I
T IS TIME,”
M
EIRA SAID PROUDLY,
“Follow me.”

They moved swiftly, gathering their powers and preparing for anything. They wove their way down, passing the sullen Chamber of Solace, cells filled with alleged traitors of the Citadel. They were filled with those who had ‘legitimate’ crimes brought against them by Sithel, unlike those who were simply killed and never heard of again. She saw friends in the dank cells, but did not slow. She would see them freed, but Ezrah came first.

With the others at her side, she neared the red marble hall. Fear clutched her heart as it always did here, but she let it go. Today she had no reason to fear. Today she would save, not destroy. Entering the hallway, she spotted two men standing beside the black iron doors to the Arbiter’s room.

Devari.

They approached, and the Devari shifted.

“Open the doors,” Dagon demanded with authority, not slowing.

The two Devari didn’t move. “I’m afraid not, Reaver Dagon.”

“What is this nonsense? Open the doors this instant!” Tugard roared, his always calm face growing fearsome.

“Apologies, Reaver,” said the muscular Devari, the wider and taller of the two with a long komai braid. He was powerful, even for a Devari. “Unfortunately, new orders just arrived, and they supersede your command, Reaver Dagon. Sithel has canceled the next shift. This is the final shift. You all may go back to your rooms.”

The spark roared inside the eight Reavers.

Meira lifted her hand, and the roar of power abated, momentarily.
Caution,
she pleaded of her companions inwardly.
Make a scene here and we may never set Ezrah free.
“Today, I am here for salvation, not destruction,” she said calmly. “As such, I will give you an option. What you do now, and what we have done, is wrong. You know it in your bones, both of you. Now, if you wish to be a part of change, a part of bringing light to the darkness that has plagued us like night without the dawn, then open those doors and announce the coming shift. If not
…
”

The powerful words hung in the air.

The big Devari eyed all eight of them, and a strange roiling blackness shifted across his eyes, so quick Meira wondered if it was even there.

“She is right, Dundai,” said the younger Devari, gripping his blade tightly as well. “Let us stop this madness. Please—” Steel rung, and the big Devari’s sword flashed, impaling the younger Devari. The boy gasped, clutching the blade in confusion.

Meira was stunned but only for a moment. The eight Reavers embraced their spark, lashing out.

But the big Devari was quicker. He turned, charging, but not at them. His blade roared with flames and he slashed at the black iron doors, and rammed his shoulder, barreling into the dark room.

“We are under attack!” he yelled. “Kill them! They are—”

Dagon lashed out with a tongue of fire, searing a hole through the big Devari’s heart, and the man dropped like a sack, but a dark silence hung in the air…

All eight Reavers inside the room whirled, and the spark flared.

“No…” Meira breathed. But it was too late.

Chaos erupted.

The Reaver leading the Fusing sprung for Dagon, creating mountainous threads of stone and fire. Dagon ducked and the stone and fire blew past, consuming Reaver Isolde in a flash of blood and ash.

“No!” Dimitri screamed, watching his brother die.

“Fuse!”
Meira roared.

As they had planned, Meira’s fellowship of Reavers Fused, and fed their power into her. She gasped from the amount of power roaring through her. She felt as if she were going to explode, her skin bursting and her eyes flaring wide.

Another huge column of stone and fire soared towards her, flames howling through the air. Meira was ready. She met it with massive threads of water chilled to ice. Shards of ice and stone and fire collided—the two beams became one and rattled the ground.
Strong
, Meira’s mind shouted. These eight were powerful.
Too strong, perhaps.
Just then, Dagon rose and lent her his spark. The column of ice exploded forth with a greater power than she could imagine, flowing over the fire and turning it all to a solid shaft of ice like a giant icicle. The ice fell, nearly crashing upon Ezrah’s flayed body. Meira threaded a thousand strands of sun, and the water evaporated into steam, and then was gone.

The eight other Reavers attacked again, but this time Meira was quicker and smarter. She met their attack with the element of moon, threading a blanket of darkness to hide behind. “Get down!” she cried, and dove to the ground with the others at her side, and then she threaded flesh. The veil of darkness fell, but it had done its job by hiding her attack. She watched the spell of flesh spiral and collide with the wielder of the other Fuse, slamming into the four-stripe, black-haired Reaver. The man gasped, clutching his heart. Feeling the beating muscle, as if she gripped it in her hand, she whispered a silent prayer of forgiveness and pulled the threads tight. Seizing his chest, the man fell over dead.

The seven other Reavers looked around in dread. Scattered, they attacked. But without the four-stripe Reaver it was no use. Meira dissolved their threads with ease, and then cast a burst of light that slammed them against the wall, knocking many unconscious. The remaining rose, and Dagon broke from the Fusing. Meira gasped, feeling the room dim, power cut in half despite the other five Reavers feeding her.

Dagon threaded strands of fire and attacked.

“No!”
she shouted, striking the fire from the air with a burst of water. It barely snuffed the flame. How was he so powerful?

The enemy Reavers looked confused, baffled by Meira’s attempt to save them.

“What are you doing, Meira?” Dagon questioned.

“What are
you
doing? Where is your pain in killing a fellow sister or brother? Your alleged compassion?” she questioned, shaking—she wasn’t sure if it was from anger or from the power of the spark still thundering through her.