Mind of the Magic (Arhel Book 3) (13 page)

Now she knew how to find them. And if they weren’t listening, she could go for a big finish without embarrassment. She tore into the song’s last verse, soaring through the lilting melody, and the walls of the ancient library rang with her amplified voice.

“Don’t LOOK for your love by the sea—by the SEA,

For the sea loves the sailor and WON”T let him

GO-O-O!

If ever he leaves her she’ll KILL him—she’ll—”

“Hel-l-l-ppppp!”
someone screamed. “By all the gods and demons, help!”

The song died in midnote. Faia froze and looked around.

Help?

The screams came from just ahead. She heard a rumble—rhythmic pounding on something that boomed like thunder. Then the noise stopped and the screaming began again.

“Help, for the love of the gods!” Whoever it was sounded ragged and desperate.

Her mind raced ahead of her body as she tried to recall emergency rescue procedures, and as she tried to imagine what sort of trouble the two scholars could have gotten themselves into. What could have happened to them? She broke into a run, her lantern swinging in front of her.

“I’m coming! Where are you?” she yelled.

“They heard us!” a second voice shouted. “By the gods, they heard us!”

And the first shrieked, “Here! We’re here!”

But the echoes in the library made it impossible for her to tell, just from sound, where the two men were. She lifted her lantern at each doorway, and checked each side room, hurrying as fast as she could.

“We’re in the tunnel!” one of the men suddenly shouted.

The tunnel? She knew of the passageway that led to the ancient First Folk burial grounds. It was hidden behind a secret panel in one of the statuary rooms at the very back of the library—but surely the two scholars would not have gotten themselves trapped in
there
. The panel had a latch that led in, but nothing that permitted anyone inside to let himself back out. Everyone had been very careful of that tunnel, always making sure that someone waited outside to open it.

A single icy finger of fear traced its way from her neck down her back, and she stopped, shivering.

The scholars hadn’t gotten themselves trapped in the tunnel.

Edrouss Delmuirie and Thirk Huddsonne had wakened.

They’re awake—they’re awake—awake—awake… . Little voices welled up from deep inside her, like ghosts from the Lord’s long night, whispering. Awake, they said—and now you have to face them, Faia. You have to face the man who tried to kill your daughter, and the man who tried to take you away from her forever. They’re awake—and now that they are, you can never pretend again that your world will go back to being normal.

“I could leave you in there,” she whispered. “I could walk away—but then you’d just come after me, wouldn’t you?”

She walked into the statue room, where the First Folk had hidden the passageway to their burial grounds. The towering statues of the First Folk, carved of stone in heroic poses and still covered with layers of bright paint, leered down at her, obsidian eyes glittering. Their wings formed arches over the passageway that led to the secret door; their tails curled like serpents down the sides of the pedestals on which they sat. Walking among them, she wondered what the world had been like when they’d been in it.

She heard the men on the other side of the concealed door, and she pushed thoughts of the First Folk out of her mind. Thirk and Delmuirie shouted and pounded on the stone, their muffled voices pleading to the gods and to anyone who might be listening for immediate release.

Faia stood beside the lever that would roll the door upward. She caressed the cool polished stone with her fingertips; if her fingertip had been a single snowflake falling into the room, she could not have rested it on the hidden lever more lightly. She waited and listened to the shouting men begging for rescue, begging with voices of increasing desperation as she did not respond and the hidden door did not open. They shouted instructions on where she would find the lever—on how she would operate it. She knew all of that; her dilemma was not in discovering how to free the men, but in convincing herself that she should.

It would be so simple to walk away. Thirk Huddsonne and Edrouss Delmuirie would never get out without her help. They would die in the warm, waterless, sand-floored stone burial chambers of the First Folk, and someday someone would find their bones resting among the mummified remains of Arhel’s extinct first people.

But Faia had never cold-bloodedly killed anyone. Turning her back on the two of them would put her on a level with Thirk—and she was not like him. She swallowed hard, then pressed down on the smooth stone panel, and a section of the wall rumbled and began to slide upward—and the tone of the men’s voices changed from desperation to rejoicing. “Saved!” they screamed “We’re saved!”

Then Thirk’s voice rose over Delmuirie’s. “Don’t follow me or I’ll kill you!”

“Why would I want to follow you, you lunatic? I do not want the cup back.” Delmuirie’s accent sounded like Faia’s maternal great-grandmother’s—only thicker. It was what the city-bred folk of Ariss referred to, with great derision, as a “back-hill frog-eater” accent. Faia, when she’d first arrived in Ariss, had spoken with a similar accent.

Funny she hadn’t been able to pick that up when they were communicating in the emeshest. She might have liked him a little better the first time they’d met had she been able to hear him speak.

“You don’t think I’d believe
you
, surely.” Thirk’s snarl still turned her stomach. Faia heard him scrambling behind the slowly rising doorway. “Light Ah, gods, I see light,” Thirk shouted.

Faia saw hands under the stone panel that slid upward into the ceding high above, and then heads, as two men scrabbled out on hands and knees. She didn’t stay to watch; she turned and headed for the front of the library. She didn’t want the thanks of either man—she would be happiest if she never saw them again.

“Heya!” Edrouss Delmuirie yelled after her. “Lass! Don’t go!”

She turned, and the lantern threw long shadows around the room, shadows that for an instant seemed to bring the sculptures of the First Folk to life. Faia looked back between the rows of statues, arch-necked and bright-eyed. She looked from Thirk, who clutched a metal chalice in one hand and gripped the pommel of a sword with the other, to Edrouss Delmuirie, who looked confused and lost. Delmuirie smiled tentatively, while Thirk’s face went hard and cold while his eyes narrowed.

“You!” he yelled.

At least the bastard remembered her. “Me,” she said, feeling bitter, and turned to walk away.

Thirk swore something under his breath; she heard his heavy footsteps thudding toward her at a run. She bolted, but not fast enough; Delmuirie shouted and the next instant pain blossomed in her lower back and she went sprawling, slammed into the stone floor by an unyielding weight. The lantern flew out of her hand and smashed against one of the statues. Flames licked along the spilled oil, casting a wavering light that blazed brightly for an instant; then the flames guttered low and died, leaving Faia in darkness—and pain.

A fist struck her full on the side of the face as she raised her head, so that she took two ferocious blows—one from Thirk and the rebound blow as her head hit the stone floor.

She lay stunned; Delmuirie shouted something and Thirk answered, but while she could make out the voices, she could not make herself understand the words. Then the weight lifted from her back with an awful suddenness that somehow made the pain worse.

Faia couldn’t move. The agony of her right side burned so ferociously that every tiny breath was torture. She wondered if Thirk had run her through with his sword, and if she was dying. She hoped, if that were the case, that she would die quickly—she wanted nothing more than for the pain to go away. She lay curled in a ball on the icy stone floor; she felt the running footsteps of both men racing toward the outside world and freedom.

I should have left them trapped in there to die, she told herself.

Then a single set of footsteps grew louder again, returning at a walk.

“Lass? Did he hurt you?” A darker shape knelt beside her in the darkness, and a hand rested on her shoulder. Delmuirie’s hand.

“Go away,” she mumbled. She wanted nothing more than to die in peace.

He slid his arms around her and scooped her into a sitting position, and the terrible pain, impossibly, grew much worse. She clenched her teeth to keep from screaming. No matter how badly she was hurt, she wouldn’t give Edrouss Delmuirie the satisfaction of helping her.

She forced herself to remain upright, and with one hand tentatively felt along her side and up her back. She found no bleeding, no holes in her side—but the lightest touch along her right ribs made them feel like she was trying to cut them out one at a time with a dull whittling blade.

“I’m fine,” she told him, though even the breath she needed to speak those three words cost her more strength than she had suspected she had. Those ribs were broken—she didn’t doubt that for an instant. Her jaw throbbed, too, from where Thirk had punched her.

“Yon madman got away from me when I pulled him off of you—I tried my best but I couldna’ catch him.”

“Too bad,” Faia muttered “If you had, you could have killed him.” She moved her arms forward slowly; then closed her eyes while red agony washed over the insides of her eyelids.

“You know him, then.” Delmuirie offered her his hand. She didn’t take it and after an instant, he pulled back. “I suppose I could have killed him when we were trapped in the Klog burial grounds, but I thought him merely frightening—not really dangerous.” Delmuirie’s voice grew thoughtful. “He tried to be worshiping me at first. It was the uncanniest thing—he knew my name, and all manner of tales about me, though only some of them were true. But he kept asking me to show him magic, as if he thought I were some ourzurd from a child’s tale. He would not believe me when I told him I was only a man like him.”

“I’m not surprised. You didn’t believe it when I told you the same thing.”

There was a long silence. “We have met before?”

“More’s the pity.”

A sigh. “We have met before and I managed to offend you.” Another pause, another sigh. “You must be pretty, then. Every time I open my mouth to a pretty lass, I say something I should not… though I am never entirely certain what I say that is so wrong. No matter. Please accept my apologies for whatever foolwords I threw on you.”

Faia had no intention of accepting his apology for his attempt to trap her in the emeshest forever. “You were talking about Thirk.”

Delmuirie sighed again. “Bad enough that I am not to be forgiven, was it? Ah, well. It usually is.” He paused “About the madman, then—” Faia could hear bewilderment in every syllable. “—though I cannot hope to tell you why he did what he did. He stole my cup and my sword, and would not give them back. Called me a fraud, and said he would use the ‘holy relics’ to create a ‘new age of magic in Arhel.’ In my whole life, I have never heard a stranger thing.”

Faia shook her head “Holy relics?”

“He meant the cup and the sword, but I know nothing of holy relics, girl. The sword I bought from an armorer in Bog-Ariss, the cup I found in the burial grounds. I’d hoped it would have water in it, but it was dry.” His voice trailed off, and for an instant he said nothing. “Everything was dry.” His voice grew stronger again. The madman had wine—he gave me some of that when we… when we woke.”

Faia shoved her right arm tight against her side and went to one knee, then leaned into the staff she held in her left hand, and tried to push herself to her feet. The pain, which had seemed unsurpassable, instantly became worse, and she screamed.

Delmuirie lunged to his feet and slid an arm around her waist to support her.

“NOT THE RIBS!” she howled, and he let go.

“I thought you said he didn’t hurt you.” The voice was accusing. Faia was glad it was too dark for him to see her; pain tears poured down her cheeks.

“I lied.”

“Why?”

“Because I didn’t want you to know.”

She heard the exasperated sigh. “Why by Falchus not?”

The pain was making her queasy. She wanted to find a hole and fall into it. She wanted the pain to stop. She wanted Edrouss Delmuirie to go away. The last she thought she could probably have. “Because all of this is your fault,” she snapped, “and I didn’t want you to have the satisfaction of knowing I needed help, Edrouss Delmuirie.”

She heard the sharp intake of his breath, and felt momentary satisfaction that she’d at least hurt his feelings. Then he said, “Huh. You sound nearly as mad as he did. I had hoped to have sense from someone.” He sighed. “Perhaps the whole world has gone mad. For the Klogs to have left Skeeree dark during the Long Night, it could almost be so.” He clucked his tongue and brusquely slid his shoulder under her left arm. “Come, then. You cannot walk on your own—I can see that. Tell me where you came from, and I will take you back there.”

He walked slowly, and Faia hobbled beside him. From time to time as they worked their way back to the front entrance he clucked his tongue and made comments about the disrepair in the library. Once he said, “By Falchus! Kekkis scattered on the floor. Keeven will claim the skull of the flirt that did that!”

Faia hurt too much to ask him to explain.

As they neared the entry, though, Delmuirie’s steps slowed. He began to look constantly from side to side, and Faia heard his breath quicken. “Where are the
gallens?”
he asked at last. Faia heard distress in his voice.

“The what?”

“The
gallens
. The
GALLENS!”

“Shouting it doesn’t tell me what they are.”

“The Klogs’ wood panels. To… keep… the… snow… out. The
gallens.”

“If they were wood,” Faia said coldly, “I don’t suppose they exist anymore.”

Delmuirie fell silent but his head continued to turn—left, right, left, right. They reached the doorway; the stars and the corona of the Tide Mother cast enough light to give the snow that covered the ruins a pale sheen. The sight would have been far lovelier, Faia thought, if her pain had not been so intense.