Kevlin dove toward the ice-blocked passageway as earth and stones cascaded down. The avalanche started in the center of the room and rolled outward to consume them all.

Panic overwhelmed his ability to think, let alone focus the little bit of magic still available to him. As the cave-in spread, he screamed and lifted his hands in a futile gesture of defense.

Then Leander arrived.

The old Stalwart yanked Kevlin to his feet and shouted, "Help me! We have to hold this back. We need to help Harafin get everyone out."

Leander's words pulled Kevlin from his panicked daze, offering a slender tendril of hope. He could do more than die like a trapped rat. Leander planted his feet and raised his burning hammer toward the falling debris that already filled most of the room.

Blue fire lashed out in a wave, consuming earth and fusing boulders as he transformed tons of collapsing debris into thick support columns.

"Follow my lead," Leander said, burning hammer raised like a talisman. "We can't hold it for long, but we can slow it."

"What do I do?" Kevlin asked. As much as he wanted to help, this was so far beyond anything he'd tried, he couldn't imagine how to help.

Leander took his left hand off his hammer and slapped his palm to Kevlin's head. "Sorry, but I don't have time to be gentle."

Knowledge blasted into Kevlin's mind like a blow from Leander's hammer. He rocked back into the wall, and it was all that kept him from falling. His vision darkened, and his head felt like it had been dunked in a bucket of fire.

The sensation passed quickly, and Kevlin blinked away remembered agony, muttering, "I hate magic."

Leander wasn't listening. Hammer raised and pouring out blue fire, he moved around the narrow remaining perimeter of the room.

Kevlin stumbled after him, legs weak, muscles uncoordinated from the painful lesson. His thoughts moved like molasses in a winter gale. The new knowledge Leander had shoved into his mind settled over him and he worked on assimilating it.

Dozens of questions tried to distract him, but if he thought about them, he'd lose any chance of applying the new knowledge. The ground shook again. The danger was all too real. He needed to move or he'd have eternity to ponder while entombed here forever.

Leander's blue fire intensified and he snapped, "Kevlin, I need you now!"

The temperature had risen from the constant chill of the catacombs to uncomfortably warm, driven by the intense flames. It smelled like charred earth, and surprisingly like his mother's apple crisp.

Kevlin reached for Tia Khoa with a thought and connected with the essence within the stone. Power and confidence filled him like a bucket. He just hoped he didn't leak. He stood taller, grinning from the exhilaration of feeling the mighty rock’s power, despite the danger.

Kevlin focused the thrumming magic and raised his hands toward the fused debris. Cracks had already formed along the temporary wall, and the entire structure vibrated as if about to implode.

Kevlin drove a whisper of thought into it, and he shuddered at the immense weight of earth threatening to collapse onto them. The magnitude of it dwarfed him, and inside the bubble of peace that rested over his mind from Tia Khoa, he shook with fear. He wasn't sure they could do this.

Leander had shared with him the knowledge of how to fuse the earth, but he could already see that approach was failing. He drew heavily from Tia Khoa's power and threw his will into the battle to save their lives.

Green light erupted from Kevlin's hands and spread over the nearby wall. He distributed it across a ten-foot span, from floor to ceiling. Then he solidified the column of power and reinforced it until it stood a full span thick. It consumed staggering amounts of power, but Kevlin drank more deeply from the well of Tia Khoa. He had the power. For right now, he didn't care where it came from.

He left the pillar of magic there, free-standing, buttressing the fused earthen wall Leander had created. Then he moved to the right a dozen steps and repeated the process. The unfamiliar effort soon left him panting, and sweat dripped down his skin.

Leander glanced a couple of times at his work, but didn't spare the effort to comment on it. That he didn't order Kevlin to try something else was a good sign.

Then the ground shook again, somewhere off to their right, and the tremor sent cracks rippling through Leander's temporary wall. It gave way, and tons of earth shifted just a little before Kevlin's magical pillars caught them.

Kevlin shared a scared look with Leander.

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"Good thinking, lad," Leander said. "Let's get out of here."

"How?" They were out of open space. The cave-in blocked their path, having filled the next entire section of the huge room.

"The only way out is through." Leander pointed his hammer like a lance at the blockage. Earth geysered from the center of the obstruction as if he carried an invisible drill instead, and he bored a hole large enough for them to walk through.

Kevlin followed, creating a series of glowing support pillars to help keep the area secure. The effort consumed vast amounts of power, although not as intense as the inferno he'd wielded around the keep of Il’Aicharen.

A flicker of longing tugged at his resolve. He could re-live that moment again. He could blast an opening all the way up to the open air. All he had to do was embrace the magic, give himself to it.

"Hurry," Leander called.

Kevlin pushed the insidious thoughts aside. He'd become so distracted by them that he'd stood unmoving for several seconds. He couldn't afford to delay, or they'd die.

With steady effort, they drilled through the collapsed earth for several minutes, slowly circling the room. On the far side, they emerged from the cave-in into an open space, encircled with pulsing amber light.

Harafin stood in the center, arms raised, a dozen men huddling close around him. Directly above him, a passage bored into the ceiling all the way up to the open sky far above.

Harafin gave Leander a single nod of greeting, then pointed to the nearest soldier. The man stood directly under the opening, with a wounded comrade over one shoulder. At Harafin's gesture, he shot up into the tunnel and disappeared from view.

A few seconds later, Ah'Shan's voice called down from above, "Good shot, Harafin. Send the next one."

One by one, each soldier or Stalwart whisked up out of the depths, thrown by Harafin's power. Kevlin didn't see Jerrik. Drystan was helping a wounded soldier limp toward the escape tunnel, his face covered in grime.

"Where are the others?" Kevlin asked.

"Harafin saved the entire group caught on this side," Drystan said. "Everyone else is already up."

Kevlin wondered how many men had been caught farther out in the room. His earlier fear had been realized. Some of them had taken up residency here among the halls of the dead. He still shuddered to think how close they'd all come to dying.

Harafin threw Drystan and the wounded soldier up and out of sight. Eventually only Kevlin, Leander and Harafin remained.

"That could have gone better," Harafin said with a tired sigh.

"Masego was here," Kevlin said. "He's a Sentinel."

Harafin nodded. "Given the situation, I'm not surprised."

"He attacked me." Kevlin pointed toward the far side of the room, concealed by tons of fallen earth. "He escaped down one of the far passages."

Harafin sighed. "Then we've lost both of them."

"What of Tanathos?" Leander asked. "Did Ah'Shan take him?"

"I haven't heard, so I don't think so. Come, let's find out."

He glanced upward and frowned. "Kevlin, I want you to form a thin layer of air all around yourself. Can you do that?"

"I think so." Kevlin focused, but found the effort far more difficult than anticipated. Why hadn't Harafin asked for a layer of water? He could have done that in a heartbeat.

After his third failed attempt, Kevlin asked, "Why do you need me to do this?"

"I need to push you with air to get you out, and Ah'Shan will do the same when you reach the top to help you land. Unless you want to remove that amulet of yours, the cushion of air will provide a buffer we can push against without alerting Ah'Shan."

"Doesn't he know already?" Kevlin asked.

"He knows you are Bearer, but I have not shared with him the full powers of the amulet."

"Why not?"

"Trust me," Harafin said with a hint of a smile.

Kevlin sighed. Even if he could somehow become Actinopathic, he'd never agree to become a Sentinel. He didn't have the temperament to adopt their cryptic ways.

It took another minute to create the cushion of air to Harafin's liking. The old Sentinel pointed at Kevlin, and a column of solid air formed under his and whisked him up the escape tunnel.

He emerged in an open field filled with cattle and scattered soldiers. Torches bathed the scene with flickering light. Ah'Shan, who stood at the lip of the opening, scowled as Kevlin appeared, and made a flicking gesture with his hand. New currents of air yanked him sideways and dropped him rather hard onto the earth.

A group of Pallian Stalwarts arrived at a jog and immediately moved to help the wounded soldiers. Kevlin caught sight of Jerrik being tended by three of them.

Leander leaped up out of the hole next and landed with a thud next to Kevlin. Without preamble, he demanded, "Ah'Shan, what of Tanathos?"

Ah'Shan pointed toward the east where the inner city wall blazed with lights and soldiers crowded the battlements. "We were situated farther to the north. Before we arrived, he tore the life out of a pair of lovers he found at the edge of this field and used their life forces to launch himself right over the wall."

"Was there no shielding to prevent him?"

"Shields are designed to keep things out," Ah'Shan said.

Leander growled and raced toward the distant wall. Half of the nearby Stalwarts instantly gave chase.

Ah'Shan shouted after him, "A general call to arms has been issued. We already have patrols with Sentinels out searching for him."

Leander didn't respond, but disappeared into the darkness.

Harafin rose at a more stately pace from below and settled to the ground next to Ah'Shan.

"What happened?" Ah'Shan asked.

Harafin surveyed the field filled with wounded and shaken soldiers. "The meeting proved to be a trap within a trap."

The obese Sentinel Felix huffed up to them and wiped dirt from his face.

"Where have you been?" Ah'Shan asked.

Felix grinned. "At the first sign of trouble, I descended into the catacombs to try to cut off anyone fleeing that way. Good thing too. When the cave-in started, we nearly lost another score of men."

The Stalwart Basak followed Felix into their light. "We're grateful to you." The thick-chested Stalwart was covered with mud.

Felix grinned. "I had to dig this one out. Nearly got entombed down there."

"At least one of the conspirators died," Basak said.

"Who?" Kevlin and Harafin asked together.

The huge stalwart shrugged. "An unknown. A young woman. She killed one of our men down there, and called down another cave-in to try to escape justice." He looked down at the ground as if trying to see through the tons of earth. "The entire passage caved in. There's no way she survived."

Felix clapped the Stalwart on the back and asked Harafin, "So, what happened?"

"We missed a great opportunity, my friend. Let's clean up this mess and see to the wounded." He pointed at the small group of attackers they had captured, including the blond-haired leader. "Then we find out what these men can tell us."