I felt an expanse of dreamless sleep between the dream and the morning and the slim window was lavender with early dawn. My first thought was the path shown to me the night before. It unrolled from memory like water flowing downhill. My next thought was that Ethelyn wouldn’t see the suns rise today.

Whoever the voice was, they were my only lead. I was almost certain that if I did find my way to some secret underground hideout, I wouldn’t be coming out. I had nothing to offer in this game. They had no reason to keep me around but they might have a reason to get rid of me. It wasn’t that I was afraid to die, at least not enough to keep me from going. It was more that I was afraid this would be a dead end. If I got put out without finding Liana, then Ethelyn would have died for nothing. I thought of her in the café, afraid and wanting to help. I thought of her on my bed, still and cold. I was tired of thinking of her and felt I didn’t deserve to.

I threw myself off the bed, grabbed my hat and put on my jacket and boots. I went through the main room to the entry room and took my bag from the chest. I placed my blades on myself and slung the bag over my shoulder. I went out the door and through the garden along the wall of the cathedral. Light shot down in streams through the great oaks and the glass windows lit up in reversed images. The lady of light stood to the left of the lord of night, the first emperor held his staff in his left hand, but the falling night still breathed white-hot fire down the center of its frame. The ground pushed up the scent of wet earth as I walked, and I thought of that dark cavern deep below.

I found the gate in the far wall open and moved out to the street. It was already getting crowded with people on their way to Unsana mass. At Candle Way, I headed west down the wide cobblestone road fronted by holy gardens, shrines and grave markers. Incense smoke drifted out of the open doors and gazebos and got swept up in the traffic. The towering form of the Church came into view and its fractured tower gestured at the pink sky. The smoke-colored granite was flush with the dawn light it had been drinking all morning.

Inside, the expected crowd was already in their normal places, the old people sitting at the icons and images along the walls, lighting candles in the alcoves or huddled before the pool at the base of the altar, their thinning hair lit up by the skylight above. The few young people, all with the same look. Dreamy artist types, lounging in pews or on the windowsills, sketching the flying beams and glowing glass images.

If you find this story on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the infringement.

I took a candle off the rack and made my way through the church to the crypt. A strange feeling crept into my mind, like a different kind of memory. I went down just as I had in the dream and noticed that small things were different.

There were mourners in the first level of the crypt with candles of their own. The third level had a smell to it that could never have been found in a dream, and the air was stagnant and heavy. I found the empty alcove in the same space, though it seemed darker now.

I blew out the candle and climbed inside and felt a large bug of some kind flutter over my chest, then something else moved over my leg. I slithered through the alcove and dust floated up in my face. When I lit the lamp in the tunnel, rats and insects and other flying things flashed away from the light. The water was higher than it had been in the dream and I almost lost my footing next to the waterfall. The smell of the water was another thing no dream could have carried.

The chamber of the river, however, was exactly as I had seen it the night before. The only difference was the feeling of it. In the dream, I had felt secure, like watching a battle from far away, but as I floated on that poor excuse for a raft, on a small patch of flickering light in a void of almost solid darkness, the deep roaring water and the fractured ancient ceiling overwhelmed me with their presence.

This was no hand-dug sewer, but an ancient vein of the great river itself, widened and formed by Eaman mages thousands of years ago. I knew there were others like it below the city, millions of gallons of rushing water flowing in darkness beneath solid stone. That feeling of being surrounded by something so old and powerful, a force with its own goals and methods that were unthinkable to me, never left my mind, and has been lying quietly since that moment, as if waiting to rise up again and show me something.

The glint of the copper plate brought me back. I landed the raft, climbed the staircase, found the slit and passages, and at last got to the hallway. I had come out in the middle of it. To my left it stretched straight on into darkness, and to my right it curved into shadow just at the edge of my lamplight. I moved down to the left until a recess emerged in the worn stone.

The door was the color of forest soil with an eye slot and hinges of blackened iron. I knocked on the wood and the sound danced in the hall. The slot clanged open and I was looking into a pair of sharpened eyes the color of blued steel. They stared at me for a moment and I saw the corners crumple into a smile. The cover on the slit was slammed shut and I heard the locks working on the other side. The door opened inward and something in the way she stood reminded me of my loneliness.