CHAPTER 97

“What is he doing?” Essa.

“I don’t know. He said he knew where they were, then he just started running.” Hilde.

Mounds of ash-grey and fine white dust surround me on all sides. I’m covered in the thing. Black and grey and dusty, searching. But the ruins are amorphous, the rooms detestably difficult to distinguish from one another, especially when several floors have collapsed and blended together.

“He knows that’s dangerous, right? There’s broken wood and metal and glass and gods know…”

“I think he knows that, yes. Isn’t he a healer? He’s a healer, right? He knows what he’s doing.”

Gotta find it. It’s here somewhere…

“What is he doing?”

“I have no idea.”

Wooden beams, mangled paintings, a door laden with reliefs, now burnt and indistinct. I raise the thing up, dislodging an entire mountain pass of ash, and there I find it, gleaming in the grey. A half-melted pan.

If this was the kitchen, then…

Wide strides bring me out of one pile of crashed habitation and past Hilde and Essa. If the kitchen was there, then through here should be the corridor, then—

A grip like a carpenter’s vise brings me out of the map unfolding in my mind. Essa’s holds my shoulder, stops me from walking away.

“Hey! What—”

“No,” she interrupts, her face serious and her grip even more so. “Stop it. You’re no Valkas, and we’re not henchwomen. Don’t walk away and do things without explaining, and don’t treat us like we’re supposed to stand around and wait for your royal highness. Understand?”

My mouth is still open, but the string of aggrieved expletives I was preparing fails to materialize. I look from Essa to Hilde, and nod.

“You’re right,” I say. “I’m sorry. Got caught in the moment. Can I explain as we walk? I’m making a mental map and I’m afraid I’m going to lose track if I don’t keep at it now.”

Essa relents and releases me.

“Here is the corridor,” I say. “The kitchen was there, where I found the pan. Right about here… Right, yeah, in front of the tree. This should be the entrance. So—”

“So?” Essa says. “What are we looking for?”

“Getting there!” I protest. “So, here—” I grunt, going up a particularly steep bit of rubble. I think I recognize a bit of melted gilding as belonging to a chandelier. “Would be the main staircase.”

“Following,” Hilde says, almost under her breath but not quite. I roll my eyes.

“And under it, there was a private area. Like the private rooms in Black Sword keep, only bigger. There was a training area, and another place where the housekeeper, uh…”

“She uh?”

“I don’t know,” I admit. “She never let me inside.”

“That never kept you out before,” Essa says happily, climbing next to me.

“Sure,” I nod. “But Valkas has nothing on Amelia. She was one scary lady.”

I only realize it when I say it. Was. In a detached way, it’s interesting to feel the regret that suddenly feels my brain to the brim. That I can feel for Amelia’s passing what I couldn’t for my father’s.

Only at the top of the hill of rubble and destruction do I realize that this is what I was looking for. The staircase makes a well, a suitable place for collapsing floors and ruined roofs to cave into.

“Hey,” Essa says, lower this time. She’s looking at me seriously, without a hint of mocking or derision. “Maybe she’s still somewhere here. We didn’t find any bodies. We’re searching for the basement, right? Let’s focus on that.”

I shake my head. She’s right, of course. The scrawls on the floor in the groundskeeper’s loft triggered something in me. There’s a chance, or at least there might be a chance. But seeing the first step in exploring that flimsy hope buried under feet of stone and broken wood dashes most of my confidence.

“I just…” I struggle with the words, and take comfort in Rue’s soothing rumble to go on. “If they’re in there, if they’re alive, why didn’t they climb out?”

Unauthorized duplication: this tale has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

Essa punches me in the shoulder, perhaps with more strength than strictly necessary.

“No worrying,” she says. “I mean it. We make sure about this step, and then worry about the next. Deal?”

I grimace.

“The decision might be out of our hands.” I point back towards the North, where the smoke has gained yet more ground. “Can we get through all of this before they arrive?”

“Maybe so,” Essa says. “Maybe not. Maybe we should start—”

“Wait!” Hilde calls from bellow.

We turn. In a small platform under our position, the dwarf is bent double, breathing heavily.

“Everything alright?” I call down.

Hilde gives me a pointed look amid her laborious breaths.

“Yes, everything is alright. It’s just that while you two got to enjoy the outdoors and battle training, I got to be stuck in a tiny room thinking about darkness. I’m not used to the exertion.”

“Hah!” Essa laughs. “Well, don’t worry, we’re not about to leave you behind.”

“I’m also not worried about that,” Hilde answers with narrowing eyes. “But unless I’m mistaken, I’m the only Mage in the team.”

Me and Essa share a look.

“So?”

“So, while you two might be great at…” her hand cuts vaguely through the air. “I assume none of you decided to go with Move Rock as one of their adorably small list of options.”

Essa furrows her brow.

“Move E—?”

Hilde stands tall – taller – and swipes her hand through the air again, but this time in a slow, concerted manner, a swipe that goes from one side of her body to the other.

Under us, me and Essa, the unstable hill shifts. We dance in place, jump, and end up falling inelegantly on our asses, watching a few bits of rubble shift from under the pile and roll down the incline, gathering below.

I catch the look on Essa’s face. If the o her mouth makes is any inclination of the expression of surprise on my face, then Hilde’s broad smile is completely justified.

“I can’t shift the whole of the rubble,” she says. “I can only affect rock. But with that and a few other tricks from the Combat Tradition, I think we might be able to get down there before Valkas arrives.

Silence. Then:

“Hilde, you’re amazing.”

Her smile broadens, shifting her entire beard.

“I am, aren’t I?”

*

“Hilde, this is a mess,” I say after I finally cut my hand for the fourth time. “Does anyone see a door?”

I lift my head to look at them. We’re now so grey and black that who is who is more a matter of height than facial features. I hung my war mantle on a piece of broken wood at the top of the rubble, fearing damage to the delicate strands of moss, and is shifts like a banner in the wind with Rue on top. He’s the lookout. Which also means I’m reduced to throwing rocks one handed as my only means of help.

“No door,” Essa says, grunts, then moves an entire beam of wood, shifting it away from the places we’ve been digging in. “Does Rue see anything?”

Anything yet, Rue?

Nothing, Malco, he answers. The smoke is still there. Sometimes it tilts a little to the side.

That’s wind, Rue, I think back, trying to keep the irritation from the stream of thoughts. You know what you’re supposed to watch out for, right? When the smoke…

When the smoke reaches the edge of the woods, I’m to let you know, in his answer, there doesn’t seem to be any attempt at hiding his annoyance at my reminders. Yes. It hadn’t happened yet.

Alright. Good. Thank you. You’re doing good, Rue.

“Everything’s fine. The column stopped.”

“Good,” Essa says. Then she grunts once more, throwing the same bit of wood onto the new pile we’ve built up.

Between Essa’s incredible Warrior strength and Hilde’s spells, the work has been moving swiftly. My own efforts consist more in searching for likely avenues to gain access to the still-buried door, and even then Rue, who from time to time will go into a crack in the rubble and poke around, has proved more useful.

Beaten by my own Familiar. The irony does little to lessen the sting.

“Hilde, what about you?”

I roll another bit of blackened furniture down the pile, clearing the space for Essa to come lift the heavier beams underneath. A stream of ash and splinters follows, burying my ankles.

“It has to be here,” I reassure Essa. “We’ve found the steps. All we need to do is keep uncovering them until we reach the floor, and then—”

The smoke is moving again, Rue says. It’s coming to us. There is fire, Malco.

“Shit.”

My feet sink into the rubble as I move to Essa.

“Rue says they’re coming,” I say. “We need to hurry. Either we rush this, or we leave, but we can’t—what?”

Essa’s brow is furrowed, her dark forehead now gray and powdery. But I can tell it’s not my words who’re affecting her so deeply. Something about her eyes tells me a whole other problem has just reared its head.

“Hilde?” Essa calls out.

My eyes widen. Hilde never answered.

I bolt away from Essa. Hilde was working on the other side of our little dump hill, unearthing a hole that seemed more filled with rock than the rest. Gone. The hole is wider, the rock moved away, but the dwarf is nowhere to be seen.

Rue! Did you see Hilde?

Hilde, Malco? She was in there with you. Digging.

Nononononononnononononono—

Essa comes running after me, dislodging a loose shelf that miraculously survived the fire and the crash and the digging to end whole and greyed-up facing the midday sun—Focus! Observant is firing in all directions, giving me the wrong details, asking the wrong questions which are compounded by Essa’s, a stream of questions, of words, of—

Malco, Rue interrupts my thoughts with his own. They feel like a confusing splash of cold water. The smoke has turned white.

White?

People are coming. They’re coming from the trees.

Goddamnit!

“Essa, they’re here. Maybe they took Hilde, I don’t know.”

I turn to her, hand spasming, squeezing on nothingness to calm its own tremors. Essa’s eyes widen as I speak. It lasts a moment only, and then her hand dives to the Black Sword, tied around her waist.

That’s when I catch the ash behind her shift. It falls in streams, a long cascade, and before I can say anything it bulges out and jumps.

The ashy figure falls on Essa, binding her arms together and throwing her down on the ground. I yell and thrust my hand down to him, fire lacing my fingers as I prepare and Incendiary Dart. I never reach Essa or the large figure laying on top of her, trying to wrestle her into submission. A wavy, thin substance flies in from nowhere and wraps around my wrist, pulling me off-course. The Incendiary Dart sinks into the ash and I fall to my knees.

My hand is pulled up again, and my face along with it. A figure is standing on top of an ashy hill, blue coat streaming in the wind. He looks as surprised as I am.

“Malco?” Gedden asks.