Chapter 25 #2
Still, the notion of him sailing separately—sailing without her—caused a tightness in her chest. It was a feeling too close to sentimentality for her liking, yet Calya couldn’t shake it. Focus. HNE. You came here for HNE.
She spotted Anadae standing with Eunny and Ollas and waved, making her way toward them. Anadae hugged her, then held her at arm’s length, eyes sweeping over her with concern. “Are you feeling all right? Do you need another mending? Eun, you should—”
Calya fended them off, batting Eunny away when she reached for Calya’s forehead with a glowing hand. “I’m fine. Goddess break, I already have one mother, and I’m not looking to add any more to the roster.”
Anadae snorted. “She hasn’t any nurturing instincts left.”
Calya gasped, hands pressing to her chest in dramatic fashion. “Are you, Anadae the Eldest Daughter, The Perfect One, casting aspersions on our mother’s name? Will wonders never cease.”
She smirked. “Still a brat, I see.”
Ollas whistled softly. “They’re bringing him out.”
A group emerged from one of the small dockside storage huts that had been used as a temporary holding cell. Rhellians flanked Brint on one side, while members of Orren’s Avenor Guard contingent strode on the other.
When he saw Calya and her friends, he stopped in front of them and took a few shuffling steps closer, intent not on Calya but Anadae.
He ignored the prodding of the Rhellian behind him, raising his hands and clasping them together as he implored her.
“Ana, it was never supposed to go this far. You know me, you have to believe that,” he said. “I-I fucked up, but I was never—”
“Was that before or after you tried to put the blame on my sister? Before or after you tried to entrap her in your treason?” Anadae held up Calya’s branded palm, her voice hard.
Brint winced. “I panicked! I panicked, okay, but I wouldn’t have left her—”
Anadae took a step closer. Tiny ice crystals gathered in the air around her, popping and re-forming with menacing crackles. “I warned you what would happen if you came after her. Consider yourself lucky the Sentinels need your testimony.”
Eunny nudged Calya. “I love it when my baby gets mad.”
Calya’s shoulders jerked with smothered laughter. “I’m never fighting my own battles again.”
“We’ve known each other forever, Ana,” Brint pleaded. “We cared for each other once. We were engaged. We were friends. That still means something to you, I know it does.”
Ezzyn joined them, coming to stand behind Anadae. He wrapped his arms around her, and she leaned back into his embrace, shivering as he pressed an open-mouthed kiss against the side of her neck.
Calya scoffed. “Pee on her leg while you’re at it, Sor’vahl, I don’t think your intent was clear enough.”
Anadae flicked her wrist. “You should’ve thought of that, Brint. Many times over.”
This time, he didn’t resist when a Guardsman propelled him on.
Lieutenant Orren approached Calya next. “We were only able to intercept the Coalition’s ship because of you. I’ll be sure my captain knows.”
“I appreciate that,” Calya said. “We got our answer in the end, Orren. About your loyalties. Though I am sorry it ended this way.”
“He made his choice.” Orren bowed. “If I can ever be of assistance to Helm Naval, I’m yours.”
Calya murmured her thanks, swatting at Eunny when the other woman tried to nudge her again.
“You are a menace.” Putting Anadae between them, Calya asked, “Does this mean we’re leaving soon, too?”
“Almost.” Anadae hooked her arm through Calya’s. “Come see what Zhen’s managed with that journal you saved. Plus, we still need to get your rock.”
The cavern had been transformed. It was almost…
nice? The earth mages had done most of the work, opening holes in the upper parts of the walls and ceiling to let in light.
Air mages kept the atmosphere less stagnant.
The glass sphere was still in the crater, but even that looked less oppressive.
Six mages occupied the sphere now, and though they still floated motionless, as Calya got closer she saw that furrows of dirt filled neat, sculpted rows tracing across the floor of the sphere.
Small plants sprouted from the ground. Grassy clumps, their green blades edged in gold light, waved gently within the enclosure.
Even the mist swirling within seemed friendlier, a warmer gold than murky yellow, and the creepy white splotches were replaced by motes of glowing light.
Zhenya and several other mages stood around the glass ball.
She had a fine chisel and small hammer in her hands, carving a rune into the top of a ward embedded into the sphere’s surface.
A familiar looking ward—one of Anadae and Ezzyn’s design.
The Grae U mage from the dungeon held open the small, battered notebook from Brint’s office for Zhenya to use as reference as she carefully made her marks.
Golden light glowed around her hands as she worked, and it lingered in the engraved lines even after she’d finished.
“You’re just in time,” she called out. “I’m about to apply the ink.”
Calya eyed the glass bubble, then glanced at Ezzyn, who’d entered alongside her and Anadae. “Truth. If this had popped, would it have been as bad as what’s happened in Rhell?”
His jaw worked, gaze going skyward as he mulled over an answer. It was Zhenya who spoke up.
“Probably not,” she said, “since Graelynd doesn’t have a wellspring. However it was made, the source poison has… it has an intrinsic purpose built into it. It wants to destroy a wellspring, and the fake one here wouldn’t satisfy that.”
“How can you tell?”
Zhenya indicated the small notebook Calya had recovered from Brint’s office. It was incomprehensible scribbles to her, but Zhenya handled it with reverence. “This talks about it. A little. I can’t actually read most of it, but once we get back to Sylveren, I’ve got some people to ask.”
“Super secret notes?” Calya asked.
“I think it’s from an Eyllic mage. From the time they figured out how to make their wellspring.”
“Regardless,” Ezzyn cut in. “If this monstrosity broke, it would’ve destroyed the ley lines in Graelynd all the way up to the Valley.”
Zhenya nodded grimly in agreement.
Calya mulled over the implications, her mind tired despite her rest but equally incapable of letting go. “Think your word will be enough to convince the Upper Council to axe the Coalition? I’m filing a complaint.”
“I’ll be your cosigner,” Ezzyn said. “I imagine we can find quite a few interested parties to join.”
Zhenya went to a side table that had been set up in the cave, then returned to the sphere clutching an inkpot and a brush.
She dipped her finger in the ink, adding a few drops of her magic to the vessel.
Then, wetting the tip of her brush, she filled in the runes carved into each of the five wards embedded around the sphere.
“So,” Calya said, eyeing the old notebook where the Grae U mage had left it on the table, “you can read Eyllic?”
“Parts. Mostly just words that relate to inkmaking, some plant biology, that sort of thing. The writing in that isn’t modern Eyllic as far as I can tell, but some of the runes and sequences are things we still use,” Zhenya replied.
“After studying the process used for the fake wellspring, and with the source poison available to us, we should have everything we need now.”
Calya looked between her friend and Anadae, who was smiling and nodding along with excitement in her eyes.
“Since we have you here, could you bring the culture closer?” Zhenya indicated a stool she’d been using to reach higher on the sphere.
Calya retrieved the poison brick from where she’d left it days ago, though it had been removed from the leather bag.
It was still heavy as shit, but either the brick had lost some of its will or rest had restored a sizable amount of her strength, for Calya was able to carry it over with minimal huffing and puffing.
“You were able to touch it?” she asked, looking around at the gathering as she set it on the stool.
“Enough to access it,” Zhenya said.
“Self-preservation’s a foreign concept for Zhen if there’s research to be done,” Anadae muttered. The white-haired inkmaker blushed, but she didn’t refute the comment.
Lowe joined them in the cave, coming to stand beside Calya. “The Rhellians want me to go back with them,” he murmured.
Calya ignored the twinge in her chest, keeping her voice as soft as his. “Then you should.”
“You’re… okay, with that?” Confusion flickered across his face before his expression went back to a careful sort of neutral.
“Why wouldn’t I be?” she said, her opaque tone giving way to a tiny, sly smile. “I’m all out of Scarlett Kisses, at any rate.”
He snorted but was kept from answering as Zhenya inked the final line on the sphere.
“There!” She stepped back and added a dot of ink to the brick.
One by one, the runes on the wards began to glow a brilliant yellow-white, filling the air with a soft, pleasant buzz.
The mages within the sphere reacted, fingers twitching even though their eyes remained closed.
Their magic, which previously had been floating freely around the sphere, now came together.
Lines of light flowed from their hands down to the quartz stone in the floor, concentrating into a single, braided cord.
The dot on the block went from matte black to shimmering gold, and the poison cube within shuddered.
“Calya,” Zhenya said, “can you press the source against the glass?”
She complied, having to grip the block with both hands when it suddenly vibrated upon touching the sphere. “Whoa!”
A small spot the size and color of a grain of sand detached from the poisonous cube encased in the block and floated toward the edge of its ice-like containment.
It touched the surface with a flash of light far bigger and brighter than its size suggested, causing a series of answering flares from the embedded wards.
Calya stumbled back, dropping the brick back onto the stool.
Lowe’s arm went around her shoulders, steadying her.
Slowly, he let his arm fall back to his side, but didn’t step away.
Calya glanced sidelong up at him, her lips tensing with a tiny smile before she looked back at the sphere.
She stayed where she was, close enough to subtly lean into him.
The plants within the sphere began to sway more vigorously, as if a gust of wind blew through the glass.
Then, just as abruptly, they stilled. A single droplet of light formed at the tip of a blade of grass like a bead of magic-laced dew.
It swelled to the size of a grape before it finally detached, floating up, bouncing gently on invisible currents in the sphere.
With painstaking slowness, it wound down to the quartz set into the center of the floor, which was still surrounded by a ring of blighted ground.
The golden bubble touched down at the edge of the corruption, not bursting but slowly sinking in as if sucked into the rock—absorbed like a water drop into paper, but instead of a splash it left behind a perfect circle of unblemished stone.
The murky green veins of corruption continued to pulse around the quartz focus, licking at the edges of the small dot of cleansed ground. But it didn’t penetrate.
Somewhere off to the side, Calya heard Ezzyn’s hoarse curse. An oath murmured not in fury but wonder. Zhenya turned around, eyes alight.
Eunny stepped up and clapped the younger woman on the shoulder. “Guess the Empire kept up at least one part of their deal.”
“But the wellspring didn’t work,” Calya said. “The Coalition sold out the Valley, sacrificed their own people, for a lie.”
“I’m not denying that part.” Eunny indicated the glass sphere, the wards set into the walls, and the plants growing inside with a slow sweep of her hand. “They gave us everything to make a poison just like what they unleashed in Rhell.”
“So we have everything to make a cure,” Anadae said, taking up Calya’s branded hand. “Ready to have this off?”
“Goddess, yes.” Calya glanced at Lowe, a question in her eyes.
Lowe nodded once. “I’ll be there.”
Calya turned back to her sister. “How soon can we leave?”