A chill wind off the river ruffled Eldan’s hair as he and Cale stood on the flat rock where they had taken lunch as they left the 32nd annex, staring into streets that didn’t belong there.
Eldan had played out every scenario he could think of about their return, imagining empty, desolate homes, or strangers occupying the familiar spaces, and nursing an aching hope of finding the annex just as they had left it, and facing down his irritated mother’s questions about why he wasn’t at Court before she pulled him into her arms. He had even considered the idea that the entire space might be missing, the thought of barren ground, buildings razed from existence, crossing his mind, but the reality directly in front of him was so much worse than anything he could conceptualize.
The streets of the 31st and 33rd annexes collided into each other in an ugly, desecrating scar, a seam that bulged and frothed like a vile, sleeping mouth snapped shut. Eldan began to shiver, his teeth chattering from the tension in his jaw. “Can you see this?” His voice came out in a strangled whisper and he couldn’t bring himself to look away from the hideous tear in reality to turn toward Cale.
“The passageway? Yes, I see it,” she breathed, sounding both fearful and reverent.
Eldan did turn toward her then, searching her freckled face as she stared forward, curly hair whipping around her head. Her arms were folded, wrapping her cloak tightly around her chest, her knuckles white where she gripped the cloth in her fists. “I… think we see something different,” he said tentatively, “can you show me?”
Cale’s eyes, as dark as a thunderhead, met his for a moment, and then she turned her head forward again, pointing into the center of the seam. “There, that’s the way in,” she said, her voice quiet but resolute.
Eldan squinted, trying to see the passage, but the perverse wrongness of the scene was overwhelming, it looked both impassable and unapproachable to his eyes. Even focusing on it intently made him feel sick and vertiginous, as though space itself was bending where the two misplaced annexes met.
He felt Cale’s hand close on his own and she raised his arm with hers, pointing again. “Look, Eldan, it’s right there.”
For a moment Eldan was staring at a landscape in flux, the seam widening, flickering with glimpses of streets and houses that he had never seen, and bleeding at the edges with tendrils of untamed wilderness. Just as suddenly, it resolved, contracting into a wavering line terminating in an arched, square opening, a dark tunnel with stone walls hanging in the air.
Despite the passageway’s apparent solidity, he could see people from the 31st and 33rd annexes walking through the seam and the tunnel itself as though it wasn’t there, disappearing from view on one side only to reappear momentarily on the other. Cale drew in a shuddering breath, releasing his hand and letting her arm drop back to her side. Eldan quickly snatched her hand back when the tunnel warped, the seam splitting with scenery from places outside existence, and it sealed before his eyes when their hands connected, the passage reopening into the unknown.
“I can’t see it unless I’m touching you, I think we have to stay together,” he mumbled uncertainly, still nauseated from the sight of the rift. The passageway was foreboding purely in its arcaneness, but exuded none of the grotesque aura of the seam.
Cale cocked her head toward him again, her mouth drawn in a tight line. “I have to go inside. I don’t know how I know, but I’m supposed to go there.” She closed her eyes, her eyebrows knitting in thought. “When I was out, after the river, I spoke to someone, or really several people. It’s like trying to remember a dream, but I know they told me to come here, that there is something I have to do for them. They talked about you, too, saying that the shield of paths walked again. I don’t know what that means but I knew that you were the shield of paths. We have to follow that passage, I think there are answers for both of us inside.”
Eldan stared at Cale, trying to take in everything she had said. “Is this why you asked Usher Wen what you did?” he finally asked.
Cale nodded, turning back to the passageway. “The people that I talked with were dead,” she said softly. “It wasn’t scary, it felt like they are trapped, or guarding something, and they need me because I got close enough to hear them.” She chewed her lip, stepping forward and tugging at Eldan’s arm, looking back at him pleadingly. “I have to go, please come with me.”
Eldan took a step to stand beside her, gripping her hand tighter. He needed answers about what had happened to their annex, what was happening to him, and, it seemed, what was happening to Cale. If there was even a chance of finding them in this passage he would take it. His stomach roiled but squared his shoulders resolutely. “Let’s go, then.”
Cale and Eldan scrambled over the low wall from the riverbank, keeping their hands clasped. The passage looked even stranger when they stood before it, their feet planted on the cobbled stone streets, appearing to hang in two and three dimensions simultaneously. The passage itself looked utterly real and tangible, but the people walking around and through it made it seem wholly illusory, like a trompe l’oeil painting hung on thin air. They tried walking to the sides and back of the passage and it disappeared completely, leaving only the sheen of the shimmering line dividing the annexes running as high as they could follow into the sky.
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Finally they walked back to the opening, only a single step separating them from standing on the sunny, cobbled street and the smooth, dimly lit tunnel floor. They shared a look, lacing their fingers tightly together, and stepped inside.
The light from the street vanished the moment they stepped over the divide, their backs suddenly against solid stone. Eldan whipped around, running his free hand over the wall, feeling in vain for some catch or lever to reopen the entrance. When he didn’t find one he turned back forward, finding Cale staring down the passageway ahead. He blew out a breath, reaching over his shoulder to slide his stave from its sleeve, gripping the smooth, familiar wood tightly in his right hand.
The passage had the look of stone worn by water over centuries, the walls and ceiling completely smooth and seamless. Only the floor’s flatness and perfectly arched ceiling made it appear cut by hands rather than a natural process. The tunnel sloped downward in an even grade, wide and tall enough for the two of them to walk side by side. As they made their way further into the passage the dim light remained constant, as though the stone itself was suffused with faint luminescence, and Eldan’s eyes slowly adjusted to the cool, pale illumination. The passageway was utterly silent, the only sounds coming from their footfalls and the soft whisper of their breaths.
They walked for an indeterminate amount of time in silence, which was finally broken by a loud growl from Eldan’s stomach. Cale snickered in spite of the tense atmosphere of the journey, and Eldan felt a knot of anxiety loosen at the sound of her laughter. “Should we stop to eat?” He said in a half-whisper, his voice sounding far too loud to his ears.
Cale gestured at the wall in response and they sat down. Eldan laid his stave across his lap and turned his back toward Cale so she could fish out an assortment of snacks while they kept one hand connected. Eldan had no idea if they still needed to maintain touch but the idea of being trapped alone in the rend was terrifying, so he refused to let go.
They ate their rolls and pastries quickly, anxious to resume their journey through the seemingly endless tunnel. Eldan was growing increasingly concerned about finding their way back out as the passage remained featureless and unchanging, descending ever deeper in the same, gradual slope. He could see a curve coming up ahead, the passageway slowly bending out of sight, but they had already followed several similar curves only for the tunnel to continue on exactly as it had before at the end. Every so often he would use his stave to scrape at the stone, leaving a faint mark in case they needed to retrace their steps. Despite the fact that they had seen no branches or turns, if he had to walk all the way back up he wanted to be sure they were going the right way.
Cale had given Eldan a heart fruit and he attempted to open it with one hand, wishing he had brought his knives with him. He squeezed the fruit between his fingers and the heel of his hand, trying to crack the thick rind, when his grip slipped and the fruit suddenly launched into the air, bouncing down the inclined floor and out of sight around the bend.
Eldan sighed and he and Cale stood up, brushing themselves off to continue their walk, treading down the long curve in the path. When they neared the end of the curve Eldan heard a familiar, faint thrumming, the blood in his veins seeming to warm in response. He slowed warily as the tunnel began to open up into a large room with a shimmering pool of water at the center.
Cale gasped in surprise and Eldan had to admit the space before them was beautiful. The cavern was so large the far walls were hard to see in the distance, and the ceiling rose up completely out of sight into blackness above, pierced with tiny, flickering lights like a starry sky. The pool was massive, with a beach of glowing, luminescent pebbles, the crystal clear water lit from within by ever brighter stones at the bottom leading toward the center, where large chunks of stone, deep below the surface, glimmered with tendrils of bluish light that danced across the surface in patterns that made his mind buzz with recognition, as though they held some meaning that was just beyond his grasp. He longed to dive in and swim down to see them closer, which made him even more distrustful of the space and his reaction to it.
Eldan saw movement in the corner of his eye and twisted toward it to see his lost heart fruit rolling across the floor, coming to rest with a gentle tap on his boot. His eyes narrowed as he searched the shadows of the rocky shoreline, trying to see what had sent the fruit back to him. A dark figure on hands and knees slipped from the recesses in a pile of stones and Eldan drew in a sharp breath, reflexively dropping one leg back, readying his stave in a one-handed grip.
The figure glided forward and he realized it was an animal walking on all fours, which was only slightly reassuring. As it came into view he saw that it was a cat of some kind, with tall, tufted ears, two long, spiraling horns with gentle curves and sharp points rising between its ears, and huge, feathered wings folded at its back. The cat had a thick, tawny coat with dark spots that reminded Eldan of Glade’s, but its tail was long and sleek, with a tuft at the end, rather than her thick, bristled tail.
The animal stalked toward them silently, stopping a short distance away and tossing its head, its body rippling and wings fluffing before settling again on its back. It sat back on its haunches, then laid down, crossing its front paws and cocking its head to regard them with what looked like amusement. At this distance Eldan could see, to his surprise, that the cat, if it could be called that, still had slightly juvenile features. It fixed its golden eyes on Eldan, examining him slowly, then turned them on Cale.
Eldan maintained his defensive posture and attempted to step in front of Cale, but she pulled him back, shaking her head. The winged cat opened its mouth, revealing long, curved teeth.
“I have been asked to greet you, as one of very few who might speak to you both,” it said in a deep, growling voice with a distinctly inhuman cadence to its words. “I belong among the sunken, those that are no more and have need of a voice,” it lowered its head toward Cale, “and my kind are path-fliers.”
Eldan blinked and suddenly the cat was directly in front of him, almost nose to nose, still lying on the ground with its paws crossed. Eldan flinched back, raising his hands to hold his stave protectively in front of his face and throat before he realized what he was doing, dropping Cale’s hand in the process. The animal remained still until he slowly lowered his hands, then bowed its head a second time.
“We did not know if another shield would rise. You are long awaited,” it rumbled.