the huntress 04 - eternal magic (19 page)

Aidan and I had woken after only a few hours of sleep and were now hiking over a field in the wee hours before dawn with my
deirfiúr
and Connor and Claire. The moon was setting over the trees in the distance, shedding a silvery light over the recently-harvested hay.

“Think we’re close?” Del asked.

“It’s right up ahead.” Aidan pointed into the distance.

I squinted through the dark, trying to find the passage tomb we sought.

“That pile of grass?” Del asked. 

“That’s the one,” Aidan said.

“Not very impressive, is it?” Claire asked.

I had to agree with her. It looked like nothing more than a grassy bump in the field, maybe a hundred meters wide.

“Wait ‘til you get inside,” Aidan said. “That’ll be where it gets good.”

 From what I knew of passage tombs, it was a massive pile of stones with a central passage leading to a collection of rooms built inside. There may have once been a stone wall marking the exterior and possibly even a stone top. But in the thousands of years since it’d been built, grass had grown over the entire thing, concealing the magic within. 

The six of us neared it a few minutes later. 

“Taller than it looked from back there,” Connor said.

“Yeah,” Claire added. “Wider too. Not so unimpressive anymore.”

“But where’s the door?” Del asked.

“Let’s look.” I started around the side, hoping it would be obvious. I raised my hand, igniting the magic in my lightstone ring so that I could see better. The grass could have completely obscured the door, and that would suck.

“How long since anyone has used this thing?” Nix asked. “And what did they use it for?”

“It was ceremonial, like a temple. And possibly also used for burial,” Del, our resident historian, said. “It’s probably been abandoned for thousands of years. Passage tombs like these are over five thousand years old.”

“Old as the pyramids.” Surprise rang in Connor’s voice.

“Yep,” Del said.

On the other side of the cairn, we hit the jackpot. A massive stone slab was set into the side of the hill, too steep for grass to have grown over it. I held my lightstone ring closer. Beautiful swirled designs had been painstakingly carved into the stone. 

“There’s the door,” I said.

“What’s that hole above it?” Nix asked.

I looked up to see a horizontal shaft built into the cairn. Four slabs of stone made a square hole. I looked around, searching for the glow of the rising sun to get my bearings.  Behind me, the haze of dawn crept over the horizon.

I hiked my thumb back toward the sun. “Sun rises in that direction, so that hole is meant to let light in during the summer or winter solstice,” I said. “Assuming this is like other passage tombs, it would shine down the passageway into the main room.”

“Cool,” Claire said. “So how do we get in?”

I stepped up to the stone and peered around the edges, running my hands up the sides. But the slab of rock made a seal with the grass on either side. Which meant it made a seal with the stone behind it, effectively blocking the entrance.

“There’s no easy way in,” I said.

“When humans built cairns like these, they often put a big stone like this at the front,” Del said. “Anyone who wanted in would have to climb over it.”

“So the supernaturals made their cairn even harder to enter,” Connor said. “Of course.”

I laid my palms on the stone, hoping to feel the magic and get an idea for what we had to do to get inside. All I could feel was the dull hum of the protective spell, which prickled against my skin like gnat bites. 

I withdrew my hand and stepped back.

“I can try transporting in.” Del looked at me. “Can I borrow your lightstone ring?”

I pulled it off and handed it to her. 

She shoved it on. “Can someone give me a boost so I can peek through the light shaft up there? I don’t want to transport straight into rock.”

Aidan crouched by the stone and cupped his hands. Del put her foot in his hands, and he lifted her up. She peered into the light shaft, sticking her arm through so that my ring could light up the interior.

“Looks like a narrow passage,” she said. “You can let me down.”

Aidan lowered her. 

“See you in a sec.” She closed her eyes, and I smelled the clean laundry smell of her magic.

But nothing happened.

She turned to face us. “Doesn’t work.”

“Damn.”

Her magic swelled again, and her skin faded and turned a glimmering blue. “I’ll go see if there’s a switch to open it, like in the pyramid.”

She glided toward the stone door.

Then bounced off.

“Well, that’s weird,” she said. “Never had that happen before.”

“Okay, right,” Nix said. “We have a problem.”

“Not yet, we don’t.” I liked these kinds of riddles. My job was all about getting into places like this. 

Del tugged off my lightstone ring and handed it back to me. I put it on and raised it, then stepped up to the stone again and tried to clear my mind, looking for a pattern or a clue.

There had to be a way in, and if the obvious hadn’t worked, then it was going to be subtle. I glanced over the carved swirls, looking for a pattern. This place had been built in the time before metal tools. Someone had sat here for hundreds of hours, pecking away with rock against rock. Had they done it for art? Or for a more practical purpose? Or both?

Eventually, my eyes picked out a loose pattern. More like a cluster, as if the swirls were pointing toward the right side of the door. Or flowing away from that side of the door. There was a blank space there that had no carved decoration.

I stepped up close to the blank space, shining my light at an angle across the rock and pressing my face into the stone to look sideways.

My light caught on a little edge of rock, casting a shadow and revealing the clue I’d been seeking.

“A handprint,” I murmured. It was such a shallow indention that I hadn’t seen it when shining the light directly on it. I’d needed the shadow to see.

“Really?” Del shoved her face close to mine and looked. “Yep. Totally a handprint.”

We stepped back.

“Here goes nothing.” I pressed my hand to the space where I’d seen the handprint, settling my fingers against the shallow groves.

But nothing was exactly what happened. I waited a second more, but still nothing.

“Okay.” I stepped back and looked at the door. 

“We’re close,” Del said. “That’s definitely a handprint, and it’s definitely the way in.”

“We need something more,” Aidan said. “We’ve only got part of the puzzle.”

Tomb raiding was kinda fun with a team. Usually I did this stuff on my own—with Nix on the comms charm for backup—but many hands made light work, as someone smarter than me once said. In this case, it was many minds, but I’d take it.

“These places were usually ceremonial,” I said, thinking out loud. “People came here to honor the dead, maybe even to bury them. And to honor their gods.”

“Gods like sacrifice,” Del said.

Her words triggered something in my mind. “That they do.”

I pulled Lefty from its sheath and made a narrow slice across my right palm, wincing as the blade bit into my skin. Sharp pain flared as blood welled.

“Smart,” Del said.

“You should have told me to do it,” Aidan said.

I ignored him, though I appreciated his willingness, and pressed my palm to the handprint, letting my blood soak into the stone.

Magic flared, and the prickling sensation of the protective charm dissipated. The huge stone door shimmered, turning transparent.

“Cool,” Connor whispered.

I withdrew my hand. “Yeah, very.”

I stepped forward and held out my lightstone ring, peering inside. A long, straight passage led deep into the cairn. It was incredibly narrow, and the walls and low ceiling were built from dry-stacked stone. No mortar, just cleverly placed rocks that properly distributed the weight of thousands of pounds of stone overhead. 

I shivered to think of it collapsing on me, but if it had lasted this long, it’d probably keep standing.

“Connor and I will guard the entrance,” Claire said. “You go do your thing.”

“Thanks.” I stepped into the passage, vaguely aware of the fact that Del and Nix followed behind me, and Aidan behind them.

The haunting beauty of this simple place wowed me, even more than the pyramid had. Maybe because my fate had been prophesied here, thousands of years ago. 

Was my magic really that ancient? Was I really tapped into something that old? I’d always felt an affinity—love, even—for the ancient sites I’d visited, but this place was something special.

The passage narrowed in places, and I turned sideways to slip though, keeping my daggers at my thighs from scraping against the stone walls. Twice, I had to duck when the ceiling lowered. Aidan was probably having a rough time of it, considering how much bigger he was.

After about thirty yards, the passage ended in a small room. It was only about twelve feet by twelve feet, with three smaller rooms extending off of that. One directly ahead and one on either side. They were accessible only by a hole to crawl through rather than a real doorway and were about half the size of the room we stood in now.

“A cruciform passage tomb,” Del said. “The room’s laid out so it’s shaped like a cross. These were common.”

I looked up. The low ceiling of the passage had given way to a high domed ceiling made of stone. Once again, there was no mortar. Just carefully placed stone that overlapped at regular intervals, creating a beautiful ceiling.

There was nothing on the ground in the main room, but when I peeked into the smaller rooms, there were massive stone basins sitting in the middle of each one.

“The ones on the sides hold bones,” Del said.

I peered into the room directly opposite the passageway. “This one has offerings.”

Bowls, a few golden trinkets, and bone carvings were laid neatly in the stone basins. I retreated and looked into the other rooms at the bones of long-dead people. They weren’t laid out like bodies, but rather small clusters, as if the person had been laid here a while after death once all their bones could be gathered into a neat pile.

The walls in each of the small rooms were covered in carvings.

“I don’t understand the carvings,” I said. “They’re just swirls and flowers.”

“Nature symbols,” Del said. “Makes sense, for a culture so in tune with the land.”

But none of them were recognizable. They had been, once. But not to me. I didn’t know what I’d expected—a picture book story of my life? One that told the future and how to fix it?

That would have been nice.

Unlikely, but nice.

“See what kind of magic you can feel,” I said.

We each chose a room, pressing our hands against the stone and trying to sense any ancient magical signatures that might have been left behind. When I got to the room opposite the passage, I felt a strong thrum of magic. 

“There’s something weird here,” I said. “The magic feels like it’s contained, but it’s pushing against the boundary. It wants to be set free.”

“None of us have that gift,” Aidan said.

He was right. The ability to manipulate old or latent magic was a rare one. I stepped back and looked around, trying to get a feel for how this would work if I were a person from this temple’s heyday, paying a visit.

There was no guarantee that person would possess the ability to release the magic stored in the stone, or that they would even know someone with that ability. It was likely they wouldn’t. I lived in a massive, modern city, and I’d never met someone like that. 

“I don’t think that’s our answer.” My gaze traveled around the room, landing on the exit passageway. I couldn’t see the outside because it was blocked, but the passage glowed slightly with the golden light of dawn. The sun had risen while we’d been in here.

“Ooooh,” I murmured as my gaze darted back to the room that contained the latent magic. It was exactly opposite the entry and light shaft. “The solstice.”

Del’s gaze darted between the entry and the room with the magic. “Holy shit. You’re right.”

“Right about what?” Nix said. “I’m going to need some help here.”

Del was the history buff. Nix had other skills. This wasn’t one of them.

I pointed to the exit. “At the solstice—summer or winter, I’m not sure which—the sun shines through the light shaft, travels up the passage, and hits the wall. It probably ignites the magic.”

Nix’s brows rose. “Cool.” She looked down the passage. “But I can’t see the exit from here. Shouldn’t I be able to see it if the light will travel uninterrupted?”

Aidan grinned. “The floor slopes up. I thought that was strange. But it’s so the light, which enters above the door, can shine right on the wall, which is at the same level.”

“Bingo.” I knew I liked him.

“But it’s not a solstice,” Del said. “We’re months away from either one.”

“We won’t have to.” Excitement laced Nix’s voice. “We’ll make our own solstice.”

“How?” Del asked.

“Okay, hear me out. Aidan will go outside and use his elemental mage powers to make a fireball the size of a house. Claire’s a Fire Mage, so she can help. I’ll conjure mirrors. We’ll send light down the shaft, and the magic will ignite. Easy peasy.”

Whoa, that was good. And yep, Nix had her own talents. Clever problem-solving was one of them. And, holy magic, was I glad I had such a sharp team at my back.

“I like it,” Aidan said.

Del nodded. “Definitely worth a try.”

“Good one, Nix,” I said. “I’ll wait here. You guys go do your thing.”

They retreated, and Del went with them to help hold the mirrors. When I lost sight of them down the passage, the chamber became eerily silent. I looked around, a chill going over my skin. 

It wasn’t a bad chill, or a fearful one. Just one of enormity. I stood here with what were very possibly the bones of my ancestors. Five thousand years before I’d been born, someone had prophesied my birth and my gift.

It was huge. It was weird. It was my life.

“Stand against the wall!” Nix’s voice drifted down the passage.