Winter Be My Shield (50 page)

There were more murals, lurking unexpected around corners or watching from the roof. Most of them were animals — Clan Totems. Isidro spotted his Owl gliding near the roof, with flared wing-tip feathers depicted in exquisite detail. A little further on he saw Cam's Lion, prowling against one wall. He knew the cat only from legends as the beasts' homeland was on the plains in the west of the empire. Lions had come to Ricalan only as a talisman of Cam's distant ancestors.

Deeper still came enormous reliefs of the Twin Suns coupling with their Consorts, the Bright Sun and the Bear, the Black Sun and the Tiger, carved over such length in the narrow passage that those going past could see only bits of it at once. They made the girls giggle, hiding behind their hands; even Delphine blushed and looked away, turning so that the lantern cast that part of the wall in shadow.

Isidro saw no sign they were nearing their destination. There was no noise down here, nothing but their breathing and the dull shuffle of boots on the sandy floor. There was nothing to herald their arrival either; Delphine simply led them around one last bend in the passage and the cave opened up into a vast cavern, a perfect bubble of beauty buried deep with the rock.

The roof was several man-heights above Isidro's head, but the cavern was many times wider than it was tall. They had entered from one end and the void swept away into the distance ahead of them as Delphine's lamplight faded away to nothing in the gloom.

A great pool of water filled most of the floor. It was as white as milk and as smooth as a sheet of ice formed on a cold still morning before the wind stirred the water. There was no ice, though — the surface of the water steamed gently, forming a haze of mist.

Rippling curtains and massive pillars of stone dripped from the ceiling, following contours in the rock overhead. At some point in the long-distant past a portion of the roof had fallen, but the rubble had long since been covered by flowstone like a sheet of molten wax, forming a smooth and undulating slope down to the water's edge.

Another rockfall had provided the stone that formed the path at their feet. It hugged the wall, creating a ledge along the edge of the water, drawing them deeper into the cavern.

Delphine reached into her satchel and pulled out a spare lantern, which she handed to Isidro. ‘
Now
you can go explore,' she said, moving to one side of the path and gesturing him past.

He hesitated for a moment before taking the lantern from her. Delphine had always taken pains to make sure he knew his place in her world. She had told him it was for his own good, as a slave with thoughts above his station would always draw trouble. The fact she was giving him free rein here instead of insisting he remain at her heel made him wonder exactly what she thought he was going to find.

He moved away from them before lighting the lantern and followed the path around a wrinkle in the cavern wall that hid the deeper reaches from sight. He could hear Delphine and the others following him, but they all remained silent. At the point where a pillar of stone blocked the light from behind and cast the void ahead in shadow, Isidro nestled the lantern in the crook of his broken arm to pry the little window open and reach inside and activate the stone.

As the enchantment pulsed beneath his fingertips, he felt another surge of energy nearby, but not from the Akharian mages behind him. It came from overhead. As the lantern flared so did myriad points of light in the ceiling of the cavern.

Faint at first but growing stronger, they glowed like the stars on a clear night. They pulsed once in the space of a heartbeat and then dwindled and died again like a spark fallen on barren stone. Even though the light had gone Isidro could still feel the energy throbbing overhead. There were hundreds, perhaps thousands of stones embedded in the roof of the cavern. They had been untouched for nearly a hundred years but the power contained within them hadn't wasted away.

With the lantern forgotten Isidro craned his head back to gaze up at the ceiling. The stones were the same milky colour as the limestone of
the cave and the white water of the spring. If he could touch them he might be able to find out more about them, but they were well beyond his reach. Even if he had two good hands with which to climb, the walls here were too smooth and sheer to scale.

He glanced back at Delphine, but she said nothing and merely watched him with her lips pursed thoughtfully. The Akharians were silent, waiting to see how he reacted before they ventured any thoughts of their own.

Holding the lantern in his good hand, Isidro followed the path around the edge of the pool. After a dozen or so strides it crossed the pool in a bridge of scattered stepping stones that led to another path on the far side.

Since the cavern was broken by several dog-leg turns Isidro was halfway across before he saw the massive statue carved from a pillar of stone. It was a woman seated cross-legged on a plinth, with one hand raised in welcome and the other touching the earth beneath her. She was naked with only thick braids of hair cascading over her shoulders for raiment and greeted those who approached with a calm and serene smile.

He moved a few stones further across the pool and saw opposite the seated Goddess a little platform up near the roof with the dark maw of a passage behind it.

The path led along the far wall for only a short distance before it crossed the pool again. A few stepping stones led a small diversion to the Goddess's island to allow the priests to tend to her and for offerings to be placed at her feet. Isidro turned his back on her for now and followed the path over several more crossings. He had to traverse nearly the whole length of the vast cavern before he found a passage leading off into the rock. It was on the opposite side of the pool to the little platform he was aiming for, but he could see no other branches leading from the chamber. Once, it seemed, the passage had been closed off with a wall of stone but now there was just a sheet of gravel underfoot. Isidro turned to Delphine, who was following him silently. ‘Was it like this when you first came here?'

‘No,' she said. ‘The passage was closed off. Harwin and I opened it up ourselves.'

‘Does it lead up there?' he said, gesturing to the platform with his lantern. She nodded.

The walls of the narrow passage looked more like marble than limestone. They were smooth and polished and the lamp reflected off them in a dizzying, shifting flash of light.

The tunnel led into the wall for a short distance before descending in a tight spiral. The steps were as smooth as the walls and his felt-soled boots offered little grip. There were no hand-holds, but they wouldn't have done Isidro any good — he needed his one good hand for the lantern. He descended cautiously while the Akharians followed him, still in silence.

The stairs ended in a narrow horizontal shaft Isidro guessed led under the chamber above. There was a slow, steady drip of water somewhere down here, and a channel had been cut into the floor to drain it away into another crevice in the stone. The air was humid, but distinctly colder than that of the chamber above.

At the far end of the shaft another spiral stair led up again. Isidro wanted to hurry but the deeper passage had dampened the soles of his boots and he had to be even more cautious on the ascent. The featureless walls gave no indication of how far the stairs climbed. The only sign he had that he was getting anywhere at all was when the deep chill of the depths gave way to warmth and steam once again.

The stairs opened out onto the small landing overlooking the water and the seated Goddess. It was big enough for perhaps three people to stand in comfort but there was just enough space for the five of them. Isidro was grateful for the rail around the edge, a sturdy balustrade to prevent anyone from slipping off and falling to the water and the rocks below.

He could feel the stones overhead throbbing with power. There was a cluster right at the edge of the platform, little milky nodules the size of an infant's fist, shaped like a skewed cube with each of its faces bowed outwards as though it was under pressure from within. Now he was closer to the ceiling and without the haze of steam impeding his vision he could see the other stones were all the same, spread across the ceiling in an irregular grid.

He set his lantern down on the flat top of the rail around the platform and reached up to touch the stone, to gain a sense of the enchantment it carried.

With one touch he felt
all
the stones throb, as though he was in
contact with all of them, not just one. It was warm to the touch and hummed like the string of a musical instrument.

Isidro closed his eyes and tried to empty his mind. Most of the enchantments he had seen were simple things. The mage-lanterns were either on or off. The locks that kept him imprisoned were either fastened or loose. The most complex enchantments he had seen were the ones housed in the rubies Sierra had been wearing when she made her escape, which would flash to a punishing heat whenever her power spilled, but not when Kell or Rasten used their power around her.

This was many times more complex. A searing flurry of images and sensations flashed across his vision. For a moment he glimpsed this chamber full of people standing on scaffolding made of saplings and bamboo as they set the stones into the ceiling. He saw a man, tall and skinny with a large nose and a shock of red hair, standing beside him on the platform, while a woman perched on the railing, her head thrown back in laughter. He saw people packed onto the paths and the stepping stones, crammed in as tight as space would allow, all staring up at this platform. He saw the cavern dark except for a strange blue light radiating down from the ceiling, casting a complex pattern on the milky surface of the water.

They were images from the creation of the enchantment. It happened that way sometimes. He occasionally caught a glimpse of the one who had created the device but it had never struck him so thick or so fierce before. Now they were swept away in a burst of sensation from the enchantment itself. He smelled ancient paper and parchment, the glue that bound it and the stiff leather of the covers. He saw page after page of crabbed, cramped script and diagrams as fine and as intricate as a spider's web, all flickering past his vision too fast to make out any detail.

The hum of the power filled his head, echoing around and around like a bell tolling within his skull. It grew to a crescendo, more than he could bear, and yet he couldn't pull away. He felt as though he was drowning in a sea of power and information. It was pouring down his throat and filling his lungs, dragging him down to a depth where he would forget who he was, forget his own name …

With a wrench he was lifted out of that ocean of power. Isidro came back to himself sitting on the cold stone with his back to a wall and Delphine crouched in front of him, patting his cheek with one small,
chill hand. ‘Ah,' she said, ‘there you are. Just take deep, slow breaths. Put your head between your knees if you think you're going to heave.'

His heart was racing and his lungs cried out for air. ‘What in the hells was that?' he said. He had forgotten his manners. It was about all he could do to remember to speak in Akharian.

‘You've never come across a really powerful enchantment before, have you? It probably wouldn't have been so bad if they hadn't blasted your channels open. It seems to have heightened your perception of power as well. What a shame we never had a chance to measure your abilities before they got to you …'

‘Madame,' Isidro said, trying to draw her back to the matter at hand and rolled his eyes to the ceiling. ‘What is that thing?'

‘We're not sure,' she said. ‘Harwin and I found this place this morning. We couldn't get anything from the enchantment. I surmise it was created for a Ricalani mage and you are the closest thing we have to one of them. Do you think you can stand now? You should try to activate it —'

‘Madame?' Fontaine interrupted her. She was leaning over the rail to peer along the cavern towards the entrance. Isidro realised he could hear voices approaching and the heavy tread of hurrying feet. ‘Madame, I think we have a problem. Mage-Captain Castalior is coming!'

 

Torren held Isidro by the throat and shoved him back against the railing. Delphine had cast a shield to keep him from going over. Isidro conceded it was better to have a wall at his back than to be held out over the empty air, but the reality was that it gave Torren another surface to slam him against.

His instincts were howling at him to break the mage's nose or gouge at his eyes. Isidro knew that would only make the situation many times worse, but it still took all of his willpower to resist his warrior's training and keep from striking back.

‘Torren, you fool! Let him go! You're not going to drop him over the rail and everyone knows it, so you may as well stop this useless charade!'

Torren turned to Delphine with a wordless snarl of fury. While Akharian tradition made him the head of Delphine's household, his legal authority over her was disputable, as they were related through the female line and his family had disowned her mother anyway. In addition,
she was a mage of no mean power. Torren couldn't lay a hand on her, Battle-Mage or not.

No one, however, would dispute his right to discipline a slave and Torren had turned the fury of his thwarted will onto Isidro.

There came a shout from the cavern below and Torren cursed, slamming Isidro against the insubstantial wall again. Isidro couldn't see who was coming their way, but concern mingled with relief on Delphine's face. When Torren had appeared in the cavern below she had sent Harwin for help. Apparently it had arrived, but perhaps not in the form that she had hoped.

It was a long, interminable moment before the sound of approaching feet echoed up the stairway leading to this little platform. Isidro didn't recognise the man who emerged but he had been among the Akharians long enough to understand the significance of the gilded insignia pinned to the man's collar. ‘Mage-Captain Castalior, stand down! You too, madame, sheath your power. That is an order! Just what in the hells is going on here? Captain, why are you attacking a Collegium slave?'