Getting back to the crystal chamber was easy. The guards were patrolling, but they apparently didn’t know that I’d escaped again, so they weren’t looking particularly hard for me. With the map I had in my head of this place, skirting those guards was a simple enough matter. When I reached a room adjoining the chamber, though, I discovered that the heltharvis had finally gotten around to shielding the room from me. A shimmering barrier filled the stone wall separating me from the inner chamber, one that was nearly identical to the one enclosing me in the ritual room. This one, though, was a lot more powerful, no doubt using a large chunk of the valskab’s energy to power it.
“Can I get through it the way I did the other one, Sara?” I asked silently.
“Absolutely, John,” she replied with a sigh. “Unfortunately, you’ll need to spend another hour tapping Fifa’s crystal, and you’ll probably have to supplement that with power from the mortal spirits you’ve melded. Even then, slicing through the barrier like that is going to let the heltharvis know that you’re here.”
“Any ideas for how to get in there, then?”
“Actually,” Kadonsel suggested slowly, startling me, “I might have one. Why not use one of those circles you make?”
“What do you mean?” I asked a little irritably. My plan relied on me getting in that room again without being detected, and if the Inquisitor caught me, I’d have to fall back on a backup plan that was a lot riskier. “I always use a circle to get through a wall.”
“Yes, but why not use it to get through the barrier, too? Your circles seem to hold out all spiritual energy. They should hold out that barrier, as well.”
I blinked in surprise at her suggestion. “Would etching a circle in the stone affect the shield?”
“No, but you can draw one on the spell itself.”
That surprised me even more. “How? There’s nothing to draw on!”
“That doesn’t matter. Circles aren’t physical, remember? You can draw them anywhere you like, and as long as you can envision it, your will should hold it. One of your circles should be able to cut a hole in the barrier and let you pass through without collapsing the whole spell as long as you believe that it will.”
I paused, thinking it over swiftly. “Sara, would that work?”
“It—it might, John,” she admitted after a moment. “Normally, I don’t think it would because most letharvisa draw a circle and fill it with power—at least, Aeld and Fifa do. You’d be fighting power with more power. Your circles are different, though. They create a gap in the spirit field where that energy can’t exist, and that includes the magical energy of a spell.”
I turned my thoughts irritably back to Kadonsel. “Why didn’t you suggest this when I was trapped in that ritual chamber?”
“It wouldn’t have worked,” she laughed easily. “You can’t affect a circle from within it. That’s the whole point of the circle, after all. We’re outside this one, though. It’s different.”
I let my irritation go with a grunt, then slowly drew a circle on the stone. I had to palm a Henguki crystal very carefully to gain access to a stone spirit to open the wall—Bregg seeing me with one would probably end our tenuous alliance in a hurry—revealing the room beyond and the shimmering barrier. Taking a deep breath, I touched the barrier with my spear and pulled, moving it slowly around in a glowing circle that Sara lit up for me as I made it. Power surged into me, stolen from the energy of the spell, and I tucked that away. I could definitely use it later. It took me a full minute to complete the circle, but when I did, the barrier within it winked out, vanishing instantly. I instantly tapped into the local network with Silent Communication and listened for several seconds, but no alarms rang out, and the heltharvis remained silent on it. I sighed in relief; Kadonsel’s idea had worked.
I turned back to Bregg, speaking just loudly enough for him to hear as I pointed at the hole. “I breached the barrier. Once we’re in, we split up. You remember what to do?”
He rolled his eyes at me. “Of course, Hemskall.”
“Good.” I paused. “If Aeld or Fifa see you, they’ll probably try to stop you, Bregg. You might have to fight them.”
His eyes hardened, and his voice turned cold. “You’re going to have to trust me, Hettlug, just as I’m trusting you with the lives of my people.” He jabbed a finger hard into my chest. “Don’t let me down.” He slipped past me without a word and crawled through the hole, vanishing a couple seconds later as he used whatever camouflage ability he possessed. It was one I wished I had, but according to the hunter, I needed a specific type of beast spirit to use it, and obviously, I wasn’t about to go try to find one.
I eased through the barrier, closing the stone behind me but leaving my hole in the shield intact. I shivered as I entered the room; power filled the air so thickly that I could practically taste it, and the sense of it made my fur stand on end. The crystals around me glowed with energy, telling me that the letharvisa had been working on them, but the sluggish way the energy in the room moved told me the array wasn’t active. I breathed a silent sigh of relief at that; if they’d already activated the array, I’d have had to go to Plan C, which involved killing everyone in the room and hoping that stopped the ceremony from proceeding. I wasn’t even sure if I was capable of that, to be honest. I could take Fifa and Aeld out easily enough if I caught them by surprise, no doubt, but I had no clue what the Inquisitor’s capabilities were. She could be an expert martial artist, a powerful spellcaster, and a talented assassin, all in one, and she could have abilities designed to let her spot me no matter how I snuck around. Fortunately, I’d been shooting to get here early, so Plan C could stay on the backburner for now.
Of course, that didn’t mean there wouldn’t be any killing. As I glanced around, I saw a figure standing not too far away, one holding a spear and facing the middle of the room. The heltharvis wasn’t taking any chances, it seemed, and had placed guards to protect her from interruption. I looked around for more of them and saw the outline of a second guard mostly hidden by the crystals near them. I couldn’t help but grin. The guards had spread out too thinly, no doubt counting on their telepathy to warn one another if anyone attacked them. That was a mistake, and I intended to capitalize on it.
I activated my new Fade ability, hoping that it would help conceal me as I slipped up behind the closest guard silently, my spear held low and steady. The blade darted out and punched into the back of his neck, severing his brainstem and shutting him off like a light. I lowered him gently to the floor and dragged his corpse back to the edge of the room, tucking it behind a crystal where I hoped it wouldn’t be seen. I considered stripping him of his armor and using it as a disguise, but the Menskies’ silent communication nixed that idea. I could tune in and listen to their telepathic chatter, but I couldn’t talk back, which meant my disguise would fail the first time one of them asked me what I was doing. Stealth would have to serve instead. I did take his knife, though. Mine had been taken from me, and a knife would be faster and quieter than a spear.
I made my way back to where the guard had been standing and pulled two items from my storage. One was a henguki crystal; the other was the flask of silver fluid I’d taken from the Oikie ship so long ago.
“Are you sure this will work, Sara?” I asked nervously.
“It should, John. I was right; that fluid is some sort of metallic oil laced with powdered crystal. It should conduct magical energy as well as whatever the Inquisitor used to paint this diagram. And thanks to your alterations to it, it should have a much greater effect.”
I quickly dipped a finger in the fluid and began to paint on the floor, flowing the glowing lines that Sara lit up for me. My Runecrafting skill from Puraschim came in handy there, keeping my hands steady and sure and making the lines perfect and slim as I traced them. I drew a small circle, no bigger than my hand, traced some lines in it, and placed the crystal on top of it. I examined my handiwork carefully, and so did Sara.
“It looks good, John,” she assured me.
“That’s great, but I need it to work, not to be pretty,” I chuckled. “Will it?”
“It should do what you want it to,” she hedged. “Whether or not it’ll work is a different thing entirely. That depends on a lot of factors, I’m afraid.”
I stifled a sigh and stepped back. I slipped to the edge of the room and made my way around it, heading for the next part of the array I needed to reach. I’d learned valuable lessons in Soluminos and Puraschim. In the first, I’d simply broken Ilinca’s ritual, killing her in the process but also shattering the moons. I considered that mission a failure, personally, as I had no idea what long-term effects the broken moons might have on the world. For all I knew, I’d made things worse than they were. In Puraschim, I’d short-circuited Kamath’s ritual, and that caused an explosion that nearly killed me and everyone nearby. I’d planned to deal with that, but I’d gotten lucky, too, and I couldn’t count on luck.
This time, I was hoping to succeed without blowing anything up. If this array went critical, I was pretty sure it would cause the volcano to erupt, and there was no way any of us would survive that—and neither would the surrounding valskabs, especially if it happened after the Bargain broke. I’d end up killing a large chunk of the Menskie population, and without their Bargain to shelter them, that could be a death sentence for the whole species. As horrible a person as I’d once been, even I’d never committed genocide—at least, not that I knew—and I really hoped to keep it that way as long as possible.
I moved as stealthily as I could around the edge of the room. I avoided the guards when I could—which was fortunately most of the time—but twice, I had to take one down when they stood too close to a spot I needed to reach. At one point, I drew close enough to the center of the room to see the others, and I watched them for a few moments. The heltharvis stood near the flawless crystal, walking around it and examining it closely. She stopped occasionally and touched either the crystal or the floor around it, no doubt making sure the layout was as perfect as possible. I was glad of that; I felt sure that a mistake in the placement of that crystal would be catastrophic.
Aeld and Fifa, on the other hand, moved about the circles containing the high and elder spirits, doing the same with them as the heltharvis did in the center. I noticed that two of the three high spirit crystals were now full; the heltharvis had put either my spirit or hers into its container, it seemed, and set Aeld and Fifa to watch over everything. The pair stayed well away from one another, and Silent Communication revealed that they weren’t speaking telepathically. I understood why not; using the ability filled my brain with an odd hissing and crackling sound, no doubt from all the ambient spiritual energy nearby, and I had no doubt that made communication far more difficult.
This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.
I swiftly dispatched another guard by plunging my stolen knife into her brainstem, then knelt to begin my changes. As I did, though, Sara stopped me.
“John, someone’s altered the crystal close to you,” she said quietly.
“What?” I stared at the crystal, trying to see what she meant.
“The placement has been changed. Not much, just a few millimeters, but it has. And the energy of the crystal feels—wrong somehow.”
“Wrong how?”
“I’m not sure. The energy inside it feels more chaotic than it did.”
“Kadonsel, what would happen if one of the outer crystals got moved?” I asked the ojain silently. “Just a few millimeters?”
“Just one crystal? Not much. It would introduce a bit of instability, but it would be like a pebble in the middle of a rushing river. The flow would correct itself. You’d need to move several of them to create a real backflow.”
“Which would do what?”
“Well, in smaller arrays, backflows short out the array and can damage the crystals. In one of this size—I don’t know. It wouldn’t be good, though.”
“How not good?”
“I have no idea,” the woman said helplessly. “It might just cause all the energy to stop inflowing. It could alter the focus of the array, causing the power to be lost. It might cause the centermost crystals to overcharge and explode. Power doesn’t always scale up the way you’d expect it to, so it’s impossible to predict.”
“Can I shift it back?” I asked Sara.
“You might be able to use the earth spirit in your crystal to do it, but it’ll take time, and there’s a decent chance that one of the letharvisa will sense it. And if there are more of the crystals out of alignment, fixing one might not make much of a difference—and I’m betting there are from what Kadonsel said.”
Sara was right, as it turned out. As I moved through the room, we found several crystals shifted slightly out of place. After the fifth such, Sara appeared beside me, examining the crystal with a curious expression.
“Okay, I can sort of see what these changes will do, John,” she said slowly.
“What?”
“They’re creating a secondary focus,” she said. “On the opposite side of the central crystal as the main one. Assuming that the pattern I’m seeing holds, the ritual will split the energy flow in two, channeling about a third of it into that second spot.”
“Can you show me where?”
“Of course.” A pillar of light suddenly shot up in my vision, one far too close to the central crystal for me to reach it safely. “It should be right about there.”
I frowned in thought. “Could Fifa have done this to sabotage it?” I wondered if she’d taken my words to heart and decided to act directly against the heltharvis.
“That’s unlikely, John. She wouldn’t understand the array well enough, I don’t think. These changes are subtle. Whoever did them had to have known what they were doing.”
“Maybe the ojaini did it in an attempt to coopt some of the power for themselves,” I guessed.
“These changes weren’t here when we were last time. Unless the heltharvis let the ojaini work on the array after your attack, which seems unlikely, I don’t know how it could have been them. The only other possibility I can think of is that the heltharvis did this herself. Maybe she anticipated your plans and made these changes to guard against them.”
I worried at my lower lip. “Could she complete her calling from the second spot?”
“Probably. She’d be losing a lot of power, and she might not have enough left to perform the chaining ritual after, but she could probably send the spirits in the crystal into Enverthen to break the barrier around this world. It just might take longer to do it, is all.”
“Can we adapt our design to target both spots?”
“Yes, but that’ll weaken the effect on both targets, and it’ll probably throw out your secondary plan. You’ll need to beat her in spiritual combat to make it work instead.”
I only thought for a second before letting out a mental sigh. I simply wasn’t confident of my ability to take the Inquisitor in any sort of combat. I had to assume that she could do anything I could only better, after all. “Okay, then we’ll gamble that she’ll still stay in the main focus and target it. If she doesn’t, we go to plan B and start breaking crystals.”
“Of course. Here’s the next place to go, then…”
Another hour slid by as I crept around the edge of the room, using my Stealth skill and Fade ability to stay unseen by the guards. I went from spot to spot, placing the circles I needed. I found more and more alterations as I went, but I ignored them and painted my silver rituals on the stone, placing a crystal in each one. The power in the room rose steadily as the minutes passed, and I found myself fighting not to hurry. Part of me wished I’d taken the chance to do this when I’d first been alone with the array, but the fact was that if I had, the heltharvis probably would have found my additions already. Only now, when she and the letharvisa were too preoccupied with last-minute preparations to be aware of the rest of the room, was this possible.
At last, I sank back on my haunches. I’d done what I could. My supply of crystals was exhausted, and while I still had more silver paint, without spirit energy to power it, it wasn’t going to be terribly useful. I slipped the flask back into storage and crawled over until I could watch the letharvisa. I settled in to wait, but fortunately, I didn’t have to wait for long.
“It’s almost time,” the heltharvis declared aloud, glancing up at the ceiling above her. “Flikkur nears its zenith on the horizon. Step back and clear the inner circle.” She glanced at one of the guards. “Bring the patriarch and his lackeys. He should witness this.”
Aeld and Fifa dutifully stopped what they were doing and walked backward away from the middle crystal, standing behind the row of elder spirits. A few of the guards walked off, then returned dragging the finely dressed patriarch and his bound and gagged ojaini with them. All looked somewhat the worse for wear, with torn clothing, bruised faces, and blood spotting their clothes, and I assume the Menskies hadn’t been gentle on them.
“What is the meaning of this?” the Oikithikiim demanded in his own tongue. “You think that I’ll still work with you, treacherous snake?”
“Treacherous? When you were planning to wait until I was weakened by the calling, then take the crystal for yourself?” the heltharvis chuckled. “When your clan’s soldiers stand poised south of the Halio, ready to move into the Haelendi the moment the Bargain is broken? When you have a fleet in Anekla ready to sail to the eastern coast of the Haelendi the moment the Endelbarat fades? You call me treacherous?”
The patriarch’s eyes widened and grew fearful as she spoke. “I—I don’t know what you’re talking about!”
“Yes, you do. It doesn’t matter. Your assistance was still invaluable, Patriarch, and you’ve earned the right to witness this—considering that it’s likely the end of your entire species.”
“What? What are you talking about?”
“You’ll see soon enough.” The heltharvis pointed to the two ojaini, then down at a familiar-looking circle drawn on the floor near her, one I recognized immediately as a ritual of chaining that had been heavily altered. “Place those two in here. Make sure they can’t move.”
As the guards complied, she lifted her hands, and her massive, silver high spirit raced upward from her and slammed into the ceiling. I watched in surprise and a little trepidation as the ceiling overhead began to ripple and swirl. There was a lot of stone up there, and I really didn’t want it coming down on my head. Fortunately, it seemed my fears were pointless. The stone quickly liquefied and flowed sideways, opening a hole into the space above. The spirit continued to forge upward, parting the ceiling of that space and the one above it, continuing until an outer layer of rock peeled away, revealing the starry sky overhead.
Flikkur shone down as always, glimmering almost directly above us. The spirit lights danced and swirled serenely in the air, not shifting and twisting madly the way they had when I’d seen the spirits attacking the valskab. As I watched, the high spirit swept back down, circled the heltharvis a couple times, then rushed into the last remaining empty crystal around the center.
“So, that’s how she got them all to go into those crystals,” Kadonsel said with amazement. “She could just command them to! If we could do that…”
“Sounds like a good reason for your people and the Menskallin to start talking,” I chuckled. “Maybe you could even help one another, who knows?”
“Maybe,” she said with a sigh. “I wish I knew a tenth about these people when I was alive that I do now.”
“Would it really have mattered? Could you have changed anything?”
She hesitated. “No, probably not. I wasn’t really important enough to make a difference.”
“What if you were?” I asked thoughtfully.
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, what if you had the ability to make a difference? What if you had influence and power over your people? What would you do with it, knowing what you do now?”
“I—I don’t know,” she stammered.
“Do me a favor and think about it.”
“John, it’s starting,” Sara interrupted, and I quickly returned my focus to where it belonged. The air in the room felt heavy and thick as energy saturated it, and the power shone as a mist in the air even without my See Magic ability. As I watched, that mist began to move, shifting and churning sluggishly. The movements were slow and chaotic, but I suspected they’d be picking up speed soon as the array set up the current that would swiftly draw every spirit in the Haelendi into this room. A touch of anxiety filled me that I quickly pushed down. I’d done my best, and now I had to see what would happen.
The mist in the room curled and drifted past me, and I felt a faint sense of pressure against me, almost like a breeze tickling the back of my neck. As the seconds passed, that pressure steadily increased, from a faint breath of wind to a steady breeze pressing on my back. I was surprised to see that my fur wasn’t fluttering and dancing in the wind, but this breeze was entirely spiritual and didn’t affect the physical world at all.
“This is amazing,” Kadonsel breathed silently. “The flux levels here are astounding! We could power the entire capital with an array like this!”
As the power gathered steadily, I glanced backward at one of my circles. It glowed faintly as it siphoned some of the energy flowing past it, but the power seemed to flow on undisturbed. I felt a knot of tension ease within me. That meant I’d placed it correctly. If I’d screwed up, either the ritual wouldn’t have been able to draw on the incoming currents, or it would have pulled too much and disrupted the inward flow. I didn’t really like the glow, as the light was dim but noticeable if someone looked for it, but I couldn’t do much about that. I could only hope that everyone’s attention was on the main show. I turned back to focus on it myself. My rituals weren’t completely integral to my plan; they would just help. This could still work even if they were discovered; it would just be a hell of a lot harder.
The faint silver circle I’d seen from above began to glow on the floor around the main focus of the array, and the heltharvis moved quickly to stand inside it. She tilted her head back and raised her hands, and I could see the gathering power suddenly sucked into her, drawn by what had to be a very overpowered version of my Draining Aura. More and more energy surged toward her, but she simply stood there and accepted it all. Power filled her until she burned with it like a brilliant flame, and as she continued to gather more, I couldn’t help but feel a sense of awe. The heltharvis already held far more power than the high spirit I’d melded; in fact, as the current in the room rose from a breeze to a steady gust that pounded against my back, she glowed with more energy than the high spirit of the volcano had shown. The power continued to rise, but as it did, a sudden shout of alarm rang from the back of the room. I swore and activated Silent Communication to verify what I feared was true.
“…Ottlaug’s…killed!”
“What?”
“…body…stabbed…intruder!” The static from the rising power of the ritual made the voice hard to hear, but enough of it got through to make its meaning perfectly clear. Someone had found one of the bodies I’d left, and the heltharvis seemed to immediately realize what that meant. A pulse of power rippled out from her, and belatedly, I tried to call up the shroud to hide my presence from the spirits. It formed too slowly, though, and the woman spun toward me, her rage-filled eyes burning directly into mine, blazing with the power she held. She lifted a hand toward me, and I felt the energy surging within her arm, building to a terrible crescendo.
“Damn you!” she swore in Verkish. “I was a fool to let you live, but now, you die!”
My cover had been blown, and now, I had to hope to live long enough to see my plan through.