Chapter 15 Vorath #2
“It isn’t magic, Shah. It’s just a really big magnet.
” Carrion swept his dagger along the middle of the door, grinning with satisfaction when the metal caught the metal on the other side, and he began dragging it to the left.
Surprising, really. The dagger was made of Fae steel.
The iron had been refined out of it, and it had been tempered with other alloys to make it strong.
Turned out that Fae steel was highly magnetic, though.
“What’s a magnet?” Shah asked.
“I’ll tell you later. No time for that now. We have silver to collect.”
As Carrion spoke, the huge sandstone block popped out and swung open, revealing a darkened passageway beyond.
“The bell tower is the highest point in the Third. There’s a ladder bolted to the outside of it but no door,” Shah prattled.
“My whole life, I always assumed it was a solid structure, but no. Look at all this. Rooms and rooms. All empty, but still. I asked Eric how he found out about all of this, but he wouldn’t say. ”
He led us up the internal spiral staircase that wound up the center of the bell tower.
Without any windows, the interior of the building was pitch-black, but Shah had come prepared.
He had handed out small vials filled with a glowing green substance that looked an awful lot like liquified concentrated evenlight.
All three of us held the vials aloft as we climbed, using them to light the way.
I could see perfectly well in the dark. I suspected Carrion could, too, since this darkness wasn’t caused by my shadows—I would have to remember to ask him about that later—but we still carried the vials for appearances’ sake.
The light painted the walls a sickly color, illuminating thick cobwebs and the bones of small rodents that littered the stairs.
When we were what I assumed to be halfway up the stairs, Vorath advised, “Watch your step here.” A skeleton lay sprawled out on the steps, the bones pitted with age.
At first glance, I assumed it was the remains of a human, but then I realized my mistake.
The corpse’s canines were far too long to have belonged to a human.
Carrion saw the dead Fae’s teeth, too. He glanced back over his shoulder at me, raising an eyebrow, his profile washed in pale green.
An unsettled feeling solidified in my stomach.
As we rose higher up the bell tower, that feeling grew heavier, weightier, settling like a stone inside me.
There once had been a time when I might have chalked up a feeling like this to paranoia or being overly cautious, but I’d learned my lesson in the maze.
My weapons were sharp, but my intuition was sharper.
It had never led me astray. My nerves were screaming by the time I made out the open archway at the top of the stairs.
I stopped dead, reaching for my daggers and a handful of shadow. “Carrion.”
Up ahead, the smuggler was only a couple of steps behind Shah. The shorter human waited at the dark archway, dramatic shadows from the vial of green light twisting his features into a hideous mask as he turned back to face us. “It’s just through here,” he said.
“Carrion,” I growled.
The smuggler stopped on the second to last step, twisting to look back at me. “What is it?”
“We’re done here,” I told him.
“Uhh, no, we’re not?” He sounded incredulous. “We haven’t got what we came for.”
“We’ll find the silver another way.”
“What are you talking about? This is my money. These are my goods. I have a right to claim them. Why would we make things harder for ourselves?”
“If you walk into that room, Swift,” I said calmly, “you won’t be walking out again.”
“What do you me—”
But the vault breaker didn’t give him the opportunity to change his mind; he grabbed Carrion by the arm and pulled him up the last step. “Sorry, Carrion,” he said. “I am your friend . . . but he’s still hungry.”
“Who’s hungry?” Swift tripped on the top step, falling forward, past Shah, who moved out of Carrion’s way, pressing his back against the archway. Carrion’s hands slapped down onto the ground, his torso crossing the boundary into the room beyond . . .
. . . and nothing happened.
Swift cursed roundly, glowering up at Shah. “The hell is wrong with you, Vorath?”
The sound came softly at first.
Then it became a hum.
“What is that?” Carrion asked, his eyes roving upward into the dark.
Then it became a roar.
“He said it was the only way,” Shah inched away from Carrion. “I wouldn’t have done it otherwise.”
“Vorath?” Carrion went to get up, but as he tried to stand, he realized that he couldn’t. “Why are my hands glued to the floor?”
Gods a-fucking-live. Sighing, I trudged up the last few steps, already regretting the fact that I hadn’t just turned and left.
“It’s a demon’s trap,” I said, peering down at the ground in front of Carrion.
I couldn’t see anything marking the floor of the empty room beyond.
Not until I kicked away the glowing vial Carrion had dropped when he’d fallen and tossed the one Vorath had given me over my shoulder, too.
As soon as the green glow was gone, the marks flared to life, brilliant and white.
They were everywhere: runes, scrawled messily into a layer of centuries-old dust, interlocking, hundreds of them.
Thousands. The walls of the room at the top of the stairs were covered in them.
The ceiling. The floor, too. And Carrion had just slapped his hands down right in the middle of them.
“What the hell is a demon trap?” Carrion asked in an oddly calm voice.
I crouched down beside him, squinting at the runes. They were Gilarian maybe. Ancient Gilarian? Or . . . Ahh. Shit. No. It wasn’t Gilarian.
“Why is your face doing that?” Carrion tugged hard, trying to free his hands from the floor without any success. “And why’s that rushing sound getting louder?”
“You might as well stop,” I grumbled, getting to my feet. “You could cut your hands off and you’d still be fucked. A demon trap is old magic. Alchimeran magic. And it’s exactly what it sounds like. A trap that catches demons.”
“Then why the hell has it trapped me?” he demanded.
“Because magic this old is powerful, yes, but it does deteriorate over time. Not enough to be broken altogether. But it can be manipulated. The beast that was imprisoned here is using the trap like a spider’s web now, isn’t it, Shah? The beast is using it so that it can eat.”
The vault breaker’s eyes sparkled with an unhinged delight. This was who he was—the version of himself that he had been hiding. “My master does have a prodigious appetite,” he said.
“What is it?” I demanded. “Arrangoth? Noltick? Bresheth?” It couldn’t have been Morthil; Morthil had been trapped in the maze with me for the past century. I couldn’t remember the names of any of the other lost demons.
From the mad excitement on Vorath Shah’s face, I knew that whatever he was about to say was going to be bad. “His holy name is Joshin. Lord of the Desert. King of the Dark Dream.”
Aaaaand I was right. It was bad. Really, really, really bad. “Fuck.”
“Will someone please tell me what that sound is!” Carrion bellowed.
Drawing my hands together, I called on my primary and my secondary magic, gritting my teeth as the sword—a replica of Nimerelle, cast in silver—formed in my hands.
“Scorpions, Carrion. That is the sound of a million fucking scorpions.”