There were already a good number of kobolds heading for the niu cavern, and as more continued to pour in, Kaz realized that there must be far more of the interconnected fields than he had passed through earlier. All of the kobolds were wet and tired, and apparently they were used to seeing Eld outside of the central cavern, because while many of them gave him a respectful nod, they didn’t look closely or linger to find out what was going on.
When Nogz appeared, Eld yipped at him, causing the puppy and a few other kobolds to look over. At first, Nogz tried to leave his niu with a gray-furred pup nearby, but Eld gestured for him to bring the beast, who seemed happy enough to have a chance to eat a few more fresh yumi reeds before she had to rejoin the others.
When Nogz drew close enough to see the two older males properly, in spite of the fact that they were deliberately standing in shadow, his eyes widened as he saw the empty space around their necks. Eld’s warrior necklace made the missing collar less noticeable, but against Kaz’s broken, patchy fur the absence was glaringly obvious.
Quickly, Eld’s hand darted out, clamping around the puppy’s muzzle before he could make a sound, and Nogz blinked in confusion, eyes darting between the other two males. Eld glanced at Kaz, not releasing his grip on the pup, and Kaz pulled in a breath, cycling his core again. It was a little harder this time, the core seeming more reluctant to release the ki it produced, but soon enough Kaz reached out and took hold of Nogz’ collar, and a minute later, it dissolved into a now-familiar shower of metallic particles.
A low whine emerged from Nogz’ throat as his hands went to his throat, combing through the fur much as Eld had done. The fur there was worn away, revealing the skin beneath, but it wasn’t scarred, causing Kaz to wonder how hard and how often Eld must have tried to remove his own in order to damage himself so much.
Eld released the pup, and Nogz instantly threw himself at the young warrior, burying his face in Eld’s fur and whimpering like a much younger puppy. Eld stroked his head briefly, then pushed him back.
“Don’t speak,” the warrior admonished, glancing meaningfully toward Kaz. “We just need to adjust your load.”
Nogz nodded vigorously, and Eld drew Kaz around to the far side of the roll of reeds tied behind the niu. The huge creature ignored them completely as they untied the ropes, and Kaz crawled in. Eld shifted the reeds so they covered Kaz almost completely, with only a small gap above one eye, and then he and Nogz tied the bundle up again, leaving one of Kaz’s hands free and tucking the end of the rope into it. As Eld began to stand, Kaz let out a soft yip, and the warrior knelt down again, ears cocked toward Kaz’s hiding place.
“What will you do now?” Kaz said. Several stalks of yumi were pressed against his jaw, and his voice was garbled, but he had to ask.
Eld looked conflicted. “I don’t know. It’ll take some time to get through the wall to the stairs, if we can’t figure out how to open the door. After that… we’ll see. If everyone wants to go, we may try fleeing through the mine, hoping to find the next set of stairs. Otherwise, maybe it’ll just be me and Nogz, but-” He looked around, and his ears flattened.
Finally, he just said, “I don’t know,” again.
Kaz tried to nod, but couldn’t. “Bright howls,” he said, giving the farewell between friends.
The other male looked surprised, then pleased, and patted Kaz’s tube of reeds, whispering, “Bright howls, and thank you.” With that, he stood, and he and Nogz vanished from Kaz’s limited range of vision. A moment later, the niu jerked into motion with a protesting groan, hauling Kaz and the yumi together over the rough ground.
Several long minutes passed as Kaz stared at the changing ceiling overhead. There were a surprising number of good-sized stalactites there, though there were also some broken stubs left from previous kobolds making sure none of the projections were lurking lopo. Kaz listened to the voices around him, trying to catch any suggestion that anyone had noticed anything amiss, but if they did, they kept it to themselves.
Eventually, the intermittent bumping shifted to scraping over a smooth surface as Kaz’s bundle was dragged onto the platform, and he tensed, waiting for the husede to speak, demanding that they check the yumi reeds for hidden kobolds. Nothing happened, though, and a moment later, Kaz was surrounded by the red flash that he recognized from his trip down to the mines.
He thought they only traveled one level, since the stone ceiling didn’t change much, though he couldn’t be certain without looking around. But when the red surge faded, the bright, clear light of the yumi fields had been replaced by the dim red glow of the rest of the city. He held still, listening, but silence hung heavy around him, and finally he pulled on the rope Eld had pressed into his hand.
The bundle shifted, but didn’t open, and for a moment, Kaz thought he would be forced to lie there, trapped, until the husede or mosui found him. He managed to shift his grip on the rope by a few inches before trying again, and this time there was a definite loosening of the reeds wrapped around his body. He could bend his arm more, so he adjusted his hold again, and this time when he yanked, the knot unraveled, and he found himself rolling across the floor in a clattering avalanche of reeds.
Without taking even a moment to look around, Kaz was up, though a reed rolled beneath his paw and nearly sent him tumbling again. Without thinking, he sent the other leg a bit more ki, stabilizing himself on one paw, and then he was off, darting away from the bundle in which he’d arrived. If some guard or worker was summoned by the sound of Kaz’s escape, Kaz didn’t want to be there when they arrived.
Bundles of reeds just like his flashed by on either side of him, but soon gave way to baskets woven from stripped yumi reeds, holding something that Kaz thought might be mushrooms, though it was hard to tell at the speed he was moving. More and more baskets flew by, holding everything from food to gemstones entirely lacking in ki, until at last he saw a small, dark tunnel to his right and veered sharply toward it. The baskets were too small to hide behind, and he needed someplace to stop and think.
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Once he was far enough down the tunnel that the faint glow of crystals had nearly vanished behind him, and hadn’t yet appeared ahead, Kaz stopped, feeling a little tired, but not much. He didn’t know how far he had run, but it was at least half a mile, flat out, and he wasn’t even breathing hard. Removing Eld and Nogz’ collars had been far more difficult than maintaining the reckless pace he had set.
Closing his eyes, he turned his focus toward Li, finding that she was still safe in her nook, though she was becoming more and more restless as husede scoured the hall looking for her. Neither she nor Kaz could understand why the mysterious ‘Zhangwo’ was so determined to find a lost fuergar, but the search was still going strong.
Satisfied that the dragon was still secure, Kaz began walking further down the tunnel. It, like most of the others in the city, was finished, with square corners and smooth walls. There were no crystals on or in the walls, and Kaz had noted that the storage space behind him was also not particularly well lit. This was a good thing when it came to skulking in the shadows, but made it difficult to see more than fifteen or twenty feet away, even for him.
By the time Kaz reached the end of the passage, he had to summon a small ki-light, which floated in the air before him as he walked. It was the first to touch the door ahead, which turned out to be a good thing, because it instantly went out and Kaz felt a sharp pang of discomfort as some part of its power snapped back to him.
In his mind, he felt Li’s attention focus on him, attracted by the brief stab of pain. She watched through his eyes as he summoned another light, then stared at the flat, unassuming door ahead of him. It was unusual to him in that it wasn’t made of leather stretched over bone, but nothing here was what he was used to. The doors here were mostly made with what he now realized were long yumi reeds, glued or bound together into tight, flat planes. This one, however, was metal, probably iron, judging by the patches of red rust.
He wondered briefly if iron somehow disrupted ki, but quickly dismissed the thought. Not only was Raff’s weapon at least an iron alloy, but iron was common in the mountain, and he had never known it to interfere with a female kobold’s power.
If the problem wasn’t the door itself, then it must be something on, behind, or inside the door, so Kaz leaned forward until the tip of his nose nearly touched the metal. Taking a deep whiff, he wrinkled his nose against the tang of rust and metal, but those were to be expected. This close, he could see that while some scratches marred the surface, they didn’t look intentional. There were no runes carved into it, and while the gouges were filled with rust, nothing strange showed beneath the surface.
Cautiously, Kaz surrounded his claw with ki, then tried to scratch the door, just to see if he could, and if the layer beneath was also iron. Again, as soon as his ki touched the metal, it dispersed, this time creating a spark not unlike those created by Kaz’s fire-striker.
In his mind, he could feel Li thinking, her curiosity piqued. She stuck her nose out of her hiding place, staring down at the hall, which was thankfully empty at the moment, then turning her attention toward the room she and Lianhua had been held in. Sure enough, it, too, had a metal door, though this one was polished, without a speck of rust visible on its glossy surface. Did it also break up ki? Was that how the mosui kept Lianhua from escaping?
Kaz clenched his teeth. If one of these doors had stymied Lianhua, what chance did he have of figuring it out? He would have to go back, and hope that he could find another hall that didn’t end in a door. And yet… surely the mosui wouldn’t bother locking something away if it wasn’t valuable to them. Were there other prisoners on the other side of this door? Or was he already on the ‘inside’, and this was the way out? The stairs might even be through here!
Slowly, Kaz laid the palm of his hand against the door. It was cold, far colder than the air around him. There was no frost visible on its surface, but he wouldn’t have been surprised if there was. Shuddering, he remembered the hoyi, and nearly gave up at the thought that this might lead back to some part of their nest. He couldn’t be sure, though, and after all, the last staircase had been in that very nest, so maybe the next one was as well.
Stepping back, Kaz stared at the door again, pushing more and more ki into his light until it was nearly as bright as one of Gaoda’s. Only then did he see the tiny, thin groove nearly invisible around the outer edge of the door. It caught the light differently from the rest of the door, seeming to absorb it, rather than reflecting, however dully. Reaching out, he tapped it with a claw, and when nothing happened, he pressed a fingertip to it instead, then nearly jerked it away.
Cold! This stripe was even colder than the rest, and as he drew his finger across the door from one side to the other, he found that the temperature of the metal depended on how far it was from that dark, narrow stripe.
Closing his eyes again, Kaz tried to think. Memories began to surface, and he could feel Li sifting through them, plucking out one after another and bringing them to the forefront of his thoughts.
Mosui and husede, filled with mana. Too obvious, and Lianhua could use mana, however peripherally. Red crystals everywhere. Too easy, and red created heat, not cold. Water, gleaming with luminescent black ki. Chi Yincang, filled with black and white ki. Neither unnaturally cold, though Kaz didn’t think he’d ever touched the dark human’s skin. The hoyi queen, also filled with black and white ki, but produced by a core and surrounded by ice and raw red crystals.
Black and white ki, in the presence of red, perhaps specifically surrounded by red, created cold. Red was fire, black was water. Lianhua said Chi Yincang was Duality, water and metal, so if black was water, then white was metal. The door was metal, the door was cold, therefore some part of it also contained red and white ki, creating the chill, and also, somehow, negating Kaz’s ki, or at least turning it into sparks.
Li sent an image of five balls of ki, one of each color, circling each other. Red, white, and black collided, becoming one, leaving gold and blue behind. Kaz nodded. He had come to the same conclusion.
Focusing, Kaz separated the strands of his ki, drawing out threads of gold and blue. He had far more gold than any other color, and far less blue, so the golden strand was easily three times the width of the blue, but he twisted them together, creating a cord, which he then touched to the black stripe around the door.
Sparks flew, jumping and bouncing from the door as a small section of the metal melted into slag. Droplets of iron popped and hissed, and Kaz yelped as a few struck him and sizzled, burning away still more of his poor, abused fur. The whole door creaked in response, and a narrow crack split the metal, trailing away from the spot he had touched.
Tail wagging, Kaz patted out the little fire that was trying to start in the fur on his chest. When a dark patch and the smell of burned fur were all that remained, he took several long steps back, then formed another ball of light, this time powering it only with blue and gold ki. With a thought, he flung it toward the door.