26. Museology
Dammit.
Ciarán was probably right.
Magick lit in my hands, but the blue fire did nothing against the stone of the door.
“Retinas,” Ciarán hissed. I blinked a retina guard into existence over my eyes, turning the room blue. “Check for hinges. That’s where doors are weakest.”
“Wren?” Orla asked, backing away from my swirling fire.
I scanned the doorframe, holding my flame aloft to better survey the ridges of stone.
“No hinges,” I reported back to Ciarán, and then remembered, “The door raises up and down out of the floor.”
“Then be ready, Blue. That door will open again, and who knows who Caitria will have waiting on the other side.”
“Lysanor’s getting the guards,” I said out loud.
Orla and Iseult exchanged a glance, and then Orla snapped her newly purchased goggles into place over her eyes while Iseult climbed up to steal the helm from Lady Lyria’s armor.
She left the journal on the counter as she did so, and an idea occurred to me.
“If you create a Nightmare, do you decide where they appear?” I asked Ciarán.
“More or less.”
“And what sort of range do you have?”
“It depends.”
“My mom. Summon her to me.”
“She’s a Saergrim. It’s not—”
“I don’t care if it’s not proper. You have my permission, so do it,” I growled.
Ciarán growled back, but dust gathered at my feet. I stepped back, watching the dirt glow orange and take the shape of a short, slight woman in her favorite robe and slippers. Iseult and Orla backpedaled away from the growing Nightmare.
Her eyes snapped open, and she twisted around the display room. She saw Iseult and Orla first where they stood in front of Lyria’s armor.
“Oh,” Mom sighed. “Hello. Sorry, I think the Grimguard summoned me, but I don’t see—”
She cut off as she turned and saw me. Her eyes softened but her nostrils flared.
“Mom, wait—”
“Where’s Sorcha?” she demanded. “Wren, you were supposed to stay with Sorcha!”
“I know! And then I decided not to! But we need your help!” I gestured at the journal, but Mom ignored it.
“You were supposed to stay somewhere safe!” she seethed. “I told you not to involve yourself!”
“Too late. I involved myself, and now an army is on their way down here to capture us, but we need you to translate Lady Lyria’s journal before they try!”
“Translate—?”
Orla pressed the journal into Mom’s hands, and Mom froze at the sight of it.
“Please,” I said. “It’s supposed to have information on where the secret door into Keldori is, but it’s in Old English. We can’t read it.”
“This is at least two hundred pages long, Wren!”
“Just skim it for the important parts!”
Mom growled something incoherent, but Ciarán’s orange magick flared in her fist before settling into the corporeal forms of a paper notebook and a pen.
“Fine,” she hissed, “but you and I are going to have a talk later.”
“Thank you, Mom.” I wrapped my arms around her, and she relaxed into the embrace.
I lined up with Iseult and Orla so that we stood between Mom and the door. Iseult flipped the visor of Lyria’s helm down over her face as she ignited a silver longsword in her hands. Orla’s dual amethyst blades blazed to life in her grip.
“How long do you think it takes to summon guards?” Orla whispered.
“Not long enough.” A blue flail lit in my hands, not because it was the only thing I could make but rather because it was what I was most comfortable with at this point.
Minutes ticked by, painfully slow and silent, as Mom worked behind us. Dried pages rustled, and the longer we stood there, waiting, the more I worried that maybe Lady Lyria hadn’t recorded anything about the secret door in her journal after all. Maybe she had let the information die with her.
But then Mom broke the silence.
“I’ve found something.”
Pen scratched against paper, and I looked back to watch her head rock back and forth between the journal and her procured notebook as she scribbled furiously with the pen.
“Just in time,” Iseult said in a low voice and brandished her longsword at the marble door.
Footsteps echoed on the other side, still distant but loud enough to hint at more than just a few soldiers.
“Iseult,” I turned back towards the door and readied myself, “some of them might be Nightmares. Skalbreak as many as you can.”
“And the ones who are real people?” Orla asked.
I hesitated, but Mom answered.
“You do whatever you have to do to make sure my daughter gets out of here alive. If they’re real people, they know what they signed up for. Make them regret it.”
Orla nodded, but her cheeks had taken on a green hue.
The thundering of footsteps crescendoed, then stopped.
The door dropped, and Second Sentinel soldiers swarmed inside. One of them started to recite commands, but he must’ve been a Nightmare because Iseult dissolved him with a press of her palm against his face.
Soldiers surged through the cloud of dust he left in his wake, and Iseult tried to stem their flow. Most of them were Nightmares, easily identified by their lack of both protective goggles and expression. Iseult made easy work of them, but she could only block so much of the wide doorway.
Orla and I cut down those that got through, keeping them back from where Mom continued to translate and transcribe the journal. I’d forgotten how horribly silent Nightmares were when they attacked. No panting for air, grunts or gasps, or warnings called out to their comrades.
Just the never-ending, silent onslaught of body after body.
A Nightmare made it past my swinging flail and managed to nick my arm with the end of her emerald sword, but Orla ran her through and reduced her to dust.
In turn, I brought my flail arcing down onto the skull of a Nightmare trying to blindside Orla.
“Nice save,” she panted.
“Same to you.”
The Nightmares thinned, giving way to a second wave of assailants.
“Wren!” Iseult warned from the doorway. Goggled guards in the Baron’s red uniforms swarmed, sturdier, smarter, and louder than the Nightmares.
Iseult swung her leg of Skal at the first one, and it hissed at the fabric of the man’s coat, but his comrades drove her back so she stood between Orla and me.
They formed a half-circle around us, red weapons drawn and pointed. We pointed our purple, silver, and blue right back at them. We were outnumbered, but I was certain we could fight them.
There were less of them than there had been Nightmares, anyway.
“I’m almost done, girls. Just a bit longer,” Mom said behind us, pen still scratching. “God, I hope you can read my handwriting.”
A whirring sound buzzed from the corridor outside, and the guards at the door parted to make way for a woman.
Caitria stepped forward, a golden rope-dart of Skal spinning on its tether in her hand. The yellow light caught the curls of her dark hair and the amber of her eyes, and she reminded me of fire.
Her resemblance to Tiernan was uncanny, despite the more feminine angles of her heart-shaped face and being at least a few years older.
“That was a cute trick,” Caitria crooned. The wide legs of her pants swished against each other as she prowled closer. “Luring Ferrin to the canyon just to drown him. Very clever.”
“We didn’t lure Ferrin anywhere,” Orla spat. “We don’t pull dirty tricks like you.”
“No?” Caitria grinned. “Did the Saergrim not tell you? She let Ferrin into her mind, gave him a glimpse of where you were hiding. I warned him it was probably a trap, and I was right.”
“Wren?” Orla whispered. I refused to look at her, which was probably all the confirmation she needed. “Iseult, did you know?”
Iseult didn’t respond, keeping her eyes and sword trained on Caitria.
Caitria cocked her head and grinned. “Ferrin loved you, Orla. If you are having second thoughts about who to align with—”
Purple fire burst forth from Orla in response, and the guards and soldiers scattered, then converged.
I staggered back, temporarily fending off the onslaught with my own Skal flames of blue, and a body bumped into my back.
“Wren!” Mom pushed her spiral notebook into my hand. “That’ll get you to your doorway but—”
She broke off to bat a guard back with an orange shield.
“But what?” I pressed, swinging a flail at my own assailant.
“There’s more. I didn’t have time to write it down. The tides—”
The guard broke through, and Mom kicked him in the gut. Her Nightmare strength launched him across the exhibit, but two more guards took his place.
“Mom?”
“I’ll have to explain later! Just promise me you won’t try. Leave it to the others, Wren.”
I opened my mouth to protest, but Mom knocked me to the ground and out of the way of a zipping dart. It crashed into the empty journal case behind us, and the glass shattered on impact.
Mom’s head twisted to face Caitria, and her form shifted as her skin thickened and her hands elongated into claws.
“And you’re the bitch who wants my family dead.” Her voice came out low and monstrous, and Caitria’s eyes widened. “What a genuine pleasure. Wren, my love, run. I’ll see you soon.”
Iseult pulled me to my feet, and I ran from the room with her and Orla, clutching the notebook to my chest and trying not to listen to the screams of soldiers behind us as Mom ripped the room apart.
“This way!” Iseult called. My steps faltered at the sound of Mom roaring, but Orla grabbed my wrist and pulled me forward.
“Orla, I’m sorry,” I panted.
“Don’t,” she snapped.
“Ferrin killed my grandfather,” Iseult said, running several paces ahead of us. “He wanted to kill you.”
“He’s my uncle!”
“And I’ll do whatever it takes to keep you safe.” Iseult looked over her shoulder at Orla as she ran. “Even if it means you never speak to me again.”
“We didn’t want to make you responsible for killing your own uncle,” I admitted.
Orla barked a single, cold laugh.
“Or you didn’t trust me!”
“We didn’t tell Fana either,” I said. “Orla, now’s not—”
“Fana is ten, Wren! I’m a grown woman!”
“We’re sorry!” I insisted.
“We are running for our lives right now!” Orla snapped. “I do not care about apologies—I care about surviving long enough to be properly angry at you!”