47. What Was Lost
Chapter 47
What Was Lost
18 th Day of the Blood Moon
Ilnaen – Winter, Year 3081 After Doom
Footsteps and heavy breaths filled every passing moment as Calen and the knights descended into the tower’s depths. Each step seemed to grow steeper and steeper, moving ever downward. Calen walked with his right hand trailing the wall, his left out in front for balance. One misstep and he would go tumbling. He quickened his pace. Forward and only forward. Down and only down.
As he moved, his vision flickered to that of Kollna treading the same path, her head scraping the arched ceiling, her hands trailing the wall as Calen’s did, her steps slow and steady. Ahead of her, Alvira descended with purpose, her stride clean and unflinching, her hands at her sides.
He shook his head, trying to loose the images from his eyes. It was a disorienting thing, to have his mind drift between centuries, between the sight of the world in front of him and the sight of things that had long since passed. If he’d had even the slightest of control over the visions, it wouldn’t have disoriented him so much. But he was helpless, a feeling he knew too well, a feeling he despised.
By the time the white light of the baldír illuminated a smooth floor some thirty steps below, Calen had almost given in to the thought that the stairwell descended into the pits of the void itself.
The floor belonged to some sort of antechamber with more long-dead lanterns occupying nooks in the walls. Armoured skeletons lay strewn about, steel rent and bones snapped. The fighting had raged even there in the depths of the city.
It looked as though a massive door had once been built into the wall at the far side of the chamber. All that remained was a gaping hole in shattered rock that stared into an endless abyss.
Calen’s steps echoed as he crossed the chamber, the baldírlight illuminating the dead. Most were clearly Uraks, but many were Highguard or Draleid or elves or Jotnar. They had died here in this dark desolate place, and here they had remained for four hundred years. He wondered if anyone had ever searched for them, if anyone had waited for them to come home.
“What is this place?” Lyrin asked. He, Haem, and Ruon walked beside Calen as they approached the opening in the wall.
Calen’s vision shifted between the world in which he stood and the world that had already ended. Through Kollna’s eyes, he saw Alvira standing where he stood. Before them was an enormous circular door of hewn white stone, the symbol of The Order inlaid in black glass at its centre.
The door flickered before him, solid one moment, in ruins the next.
Alvira pressed her hand against the black-glass symbol of The Order’s insignia. At her touch, a white light spread through the glass, runes glowing. A click sounded, and a low vibration thrummed through the stone beneath Calen’s feet. The door split into spiral segments and receded into the wall, warm light spilling through.
The world shifted again, and the door was gone. Calen once more stood before the gaping hole, darkness before him, his hand stretched out, palm open as Alvira’s had been.
Ildris now stood a few feet in front of him, Soulblade gripped in his fist, its green light illuminating a plateau strewn with rubble, bones, and black glass, a parapet-framed walkway stretching into the darkness.
Before Calen could speak, the world again shifted before his eyes, the shadows fleeing the warmth of a hundred lanterns.
Beyond the door was a cavern that reminded Calen of the wonder and awe he’d experienced when he’d first laid eyes on Durakdur. The walkway connected the circular door to a central platform that ran for hundreds of feet and from which countless other walkways sprouted.
On the outside of the parapet, the ground fell away, dropping into a chasm that seemingly held no bottom. Massive plateaus of hewn stone rose from the chasm between the walkways. Each held a white stone carving of a dragon egg at its centre, as wide as Calen was tall and double that in height. Four braziers blazed at the corners of each plateau.
Rows of pillars on the central platform supported another platform above it, and another above that, and so on for five storeys. The walkways that moved outward from each of the central platforms connected to open corridors that looked out into the cavern, doors and stairwells lining their walls.
Everything was smooth stone and sharp angles, not an inch of bare rock in sight. The entire place had been cut with the Spark, carved with purpose and intent.
Once more Calen knew he looked through Kollna’s eyes. He knew this place, knew it well. It was a vault. The only one of its like in Ilnaen. A place where only the Draleid and the Drac?rdare were welcome. Elves, humans, and Jotnar moved along the walkways and the platforms, the flaming egg of the Drac?rdare embroidered into their tunics and robes.
A Jotnar approached, shorter than Kollna, with long white hair and dark eyes. Black robes hung from his shoulders, white trim along the edges and the Drac?rdare insignia on the left breast. Calen knew him – or rather, Kollna knew him. He was Umildan, son of Indara – Prime Keeper.
The Jotnar bowed deeply. “Archon Alvira Serris,” he said, each word slow and steady. “Daughter of Tamira Serris.” He turned his attention to Calen. “Draleid Kollna, daughter of Luan. It is an honour to welcome you both to this sacred place. I am told you wish to inspect the eggs and pay your respects.”
Calen’s vision blurred again, the lights of the lanterns and braziers growing bright before dimming and vanishing, leaving only the pale light of his baldír and that of Ildris’s Soulblade to hold the shadows at bay.
Calen squinted, traces of the lanternlight flashing in his eyes, playing tricks on his mind. “Whatever Alvira hid, she hid it in here.”
“You’re sure?” Kallinvar asked.
Calen didn’t answer. Instead, he pulled deeper from the Spark, pushing more energy into the baldír as he summoned it to rise and float above their heads. The pale light illuminated the vault, casting the walkways, platforms, and stone dragon eggs in dark shadows.
“By Achyron,” Ildris gasped, staring up at the open corridors to the right, his gaze lowering to fix on one of the many carved egg statues.
Calen moved onto the plateau and past Ildris and onwards to the walkway that connected to the central platform. Just like the rest of the city, skeletons adorned the walkway, many missing limbs, faces shattered, bones snapped. It felt almost wrong to Calen to be walking there, to be walking across their resting place. And yet another part of him thought it fitting that a Draleid be there to bear witness, to remember the cost of what had come before, to remember those who had fallen.
His vision flickered again, the skeletons vanishing to be replaced by Drac?rdare moving across the walkways. Their robes flowed behind them in a way that made it look as though they were hovering, the lanternlight casting shadows around them. Some carried food and wine, others pulled small carts of wood and kindling or moved in pairs carrying chests between them, chests Calen knew contained dragon eggs.
A few moments and the lights and colours muddled once more, the chamber returning to the dark tomb it had become.
Calen wondered how many souls had found their final rest in Ilnaen. How many souls were simply never seen again, their corpses left to rot or the skin and flesh burned from their bones in the fires that had consumed all the Svidar’Cia.
A sigh touched his lips, warmth wrapping around his bones as Valerys pulled their minds together. The past could not be changed. It was stone and steel and iron, and it was set and cast. The dragon urged Calen onwards. They had come here for a purpose. And despite all the loss and death, that purpose must not be forgotten.
“I had no knowledge of this place.” Kallinvar’s voice carried in the open chamber as he caught up with Calen.
“I believe that was the intent,” Calen said, looking along the platform at the many walkways.
“Which way?”
Calen knelt by the Jotnar remains, faded and time-decayed robes still draped around the fleshless bones. He pressed his hand over the brittle fabric, hoping for… something. Expecting it. But nothing came. The world didn’t shift or blur, the colours didn’t muddle, and the lights didn’t flicker. And so he stared into the hollow caverns where the Jotnar’s eyes had once been, then rose, feeling sightless for the first time since coming to Ilnaen. “I don’t know.”
“I thought you said you could see the paths they walked?” Frustration crept into the Grandmaster’s voice, his stare hardening. “Thought you could see where Alvira hid what she hid?”
“I have no control over it.” The admission grated at Calen. What good were these visions if he could not call on them when he needed them? This place was enormous, and it rose for five storeys, and even if they searched every shadowed corner and shard of split stone, there was no guarantee they would find any trace of what they were looking for.
A realisation dawned on him. What if whatever Alvira had hidden was already gone? What if Eluna had come here centuries ago and brought the pendant back to Vindakur?
He pushed those thoughts down. They would do him no good. “There are nine of us,” he said, rising and looking around at the knights. “If we break into groups, we can cover ground quicker. I may yet see something as we search, but there is no sense in us standing here arguing.”
Kallinvar stared into Calen’s eyes for a long moment, then nodded. “Agreed. Though there are more than nine of us.”
A light flickered behind the Grandmaster, and the portal Haem had called the Rift appeared, its green light sharp against the pale stone of the platform. One by one, Sister-Captain Arlena and her five knights stepped through the Rift.
“What are we looking for?” Kallinvar asked once the Rift had closed.
Calen read through Alvira’s letter in his head, thinking. “Alvira said that Kollna cast the runes. So wherever this hiding place is, there will be Jotnar runes nearby.” He fingered the pendant that hung around his neck. The key. He held it up. “And anything that looks similar in shape and size to this pendant. A slot, or a symbol, or anything at all.”
“That’s a start,” Haem agreed, Ildris nodding at his side.
Once broken into groups, Calen and the knights set about searching the vault-turned-tomb. Only he could cast a baldír, but the knights’ green Soulblades acted as lanterns well enough and allowed him to spot their movements across the walkways.
Calen, Haem, and Lyrin crossed to the open corridor on the left side of the cavern and ascended a stairwell to the second storey. To Calen’s left, doors and openings were set into the stone all along the wall and off into the shadow-obscured distance. On the right, a parapet rose as high as Calen’s navel. Arched openings ran along the ceiling and connected to the low wall, providing a clear view of the open chamber.
Calen placed a hand on the parapet and stared out into the darkness, the glow of the knights’ Soulblades moving across the walkways and along the opposite corridors. The world flickered again as he stared, the sound of footfalls and conversation echoing all around him, the lanternlight warm against the stone, the walkways alive once more.
Then it was gone, and the vault returned to being pale, and cold, and silent, and dead.
“Best to work away from one end to the other,” Haem said, eyeing Calen curiously. “We could be a while.”
Calen nodded, then pulled his hand from the parapet, allowing his gaze to linger on the open chamber just a moment longer.
The closest door was nothing but splinters and twisted steel, the stone shattered where the hinges had been torn away. Calen drew a long breath and prepared himself for what he feared he would find inside.
The light of his baldír crept across the stone floor, the shadows seeming reluctant to retreat at its touch. Bones and steel were the first things he saw, black bloodstains marring the white stone. Calen loosened his threads of Spirit within the baldír, allowing more light to shine through. They stood in an antechamber as wide as The Gilded Dragon but only half as long. Five braziers of black iron lined both the left and the right walls, evenly spaced. Ornate golden boxes sat between each brazier, the symbol of the Drac?rdare worked into their sides, each stuffed to the brim with coal.
Lyrin ran his gauntlet-clad finger over the iron of a brazier, brushing the dust away. He looked from his finger to the skeleton draped over another brazier a few feet away, a prong of iron sticking through its ribs, its skull and arms black as night from the flames.
Calen looked to the second door at the opposite end of the room. That, too, had been smashed from its hinges, gouges clawed into the stone.
Bloodmarked . Calen had faced the creatures enough now to know their work.
Haem must have seen the look on his face, must have known what Calen had expected to find inside, for his brother shook his head. “I’ll go.”
“I need to see it.” Calen’s voice was just short of a whisper, and he felt Valerys in the back of his mind, the dragon’s heart beating quickly as he soared over the city.
Calen moved past Haem and stepped through the doorway. In the shadowed depths of the room, beneath dust and stone, fragments of broken dragon eggs shone in the white baldírlight.
A wave of sorrow washed over him from Valerys, and memories of Vindakur, of the broken eggs in Eluna’s office, flashed between them. Seeing through Kollna’s eyes, he had known what he would find in this place. But knowing and seeing were two entirely different things.
Calen moved further into the room, the ache in his heart growing deeper with each new shattered shell that met his gaze. The eggs in Vindakur had been but a grain of sand.
The room stretched onwards for almost fifty feet before the baldírlight revealed a wall at the end, and the ceiling rose twice as high, ladders connecting to the top sections.
There must have been thousands of shards of broken dragon eggs, the pale light reflecting a sea of colours as it hit the scales. So much beauty in such a horrific thing. So much colour in such a dark, lonely place.
More bones lay amongst the shattered eggs and the rubble. A pair of legs was half-buried on Calen’s right, a severed spine jutting from between crumpled stone. To Calen’s left, a skeleton sat headless against the collapsed shelves, the remnants of two eggs still clutched in its arms.
“Gods…” Lyrin’s hushed voice echoed softly, drifting over Calen’s shoulder. “This has all just been sitting here for four hundred years…”
Calen knelt, letting out an exhausted grunt as his knee hit the stone. He touched the gleaming sapphire scales of the egg clutched against the skeleton’s right breast.
The baldírlight dimmed to black and the world blurred around Calen before the sounds of pure chaos crashed against his ears.
He stood in the thirteenth egg chamber, in the vault beneath Ilnaen’s western hatchery tower. The same place he had been standing when the shouts and screams had rung through the chamber.
“What do we do?” Frincisca asked frantically, her hands shaking. She’d been that way since they’d rushed out to the corridor and seen the Uraks swarming into the chamber below, slaughtering everything that moved. “Mirk?”
It had seemed a pretty reasonable reaction to him, but strangely it was not how he himself had reacted. No. He had stood in the chamber, staring about at the eggs without a word leaving his lips.
Frincisca grabbed his shoulders, her short brown hair hanging down over her bloodshot, tear-filled eyes. “Mirk… what do we do? What… where do we even…” She stared into his eyes, her grip growing tighter, then loosening all of a sudden. “We’re going to die here, aren’t we?” Her breaths quickened, slicing through her words. “We’re… go-going to die in this place… Who will tell Olban? If I don’t come home… he’ll… my children… Tua still needs milk… She’s not seen a summer… Olban told me I needed to step down, but I couldn’t. I…”
Calen didn’t have the heart to tell her that if the Uraks had come this deep below Ilnaen, Olban and her children were likely dead, dying, or close. If they were this deep, in those numbers, then the whole city was likely dead. He didn’t know how it had happened, or why, but those two questions mattered little in the face of the fact that it was happening.
He rushed to the door and slammed both bolts across, pressing the flat of his back against the wood. Sweat rolled down his forehead, screams and shouts echoing up from the lower levels.
Frincisca still stood in the middle of the vault, muttering to herself, shivering.
Calen’s throat was dry as dust, and he couldn’t for the life of him seem to find even the slightest dribble of spit. He’d never been in a fight before, much less a battle. He’d joined the Drac?rdare when he’d seen but ten summers. He wasn’t a fighter, but he’d always wanted to be a part of The Order, be a part of something greater than himself. And to care for dragons? Dragons? What man wouldn’t jump at a chance like that. An idiot, that’s who.
He drew slow breaths, trying to think. There had to be something he could do. There just had to be. Even if the city had fallen, The Order had a hundred strongholds across the continent. Ilnaen was only one place. They just needed to stay calm, take as many eggs as they could, and get free of the vault. If they could do that, the Draleid would see them safe to Caelduin, or Anadine, or Thurinsil. There was nothing in this world that could stand against Draleid.
With one last long breath, Calen pulled himself from the door and sprinted to where the leather sacks lay in a heap by the wall. They used the sacks for moving tools and books and all sorts of whatever they needed. They never used them for eggs. The eggs were always carried by hand or mounted in golden chests. But there was a first time for everything.
He snatched an egg off the nearest shelf – orange scales and spots of blue – and shoved it into the bag with such haste the Prime Keeper would have slapped him back into the Age of War had he witnessed it.
“What… what are you doing?” Frincisca stared at him, seeming to have regained some semblance of composure.
He stuffed another egg into the sack – muddled brown, dark at the roots, light along the scale edges.
“Something,” Calen muttered as he tried and failed to shove a third egg in with the other two. The damned sack was too small. He pushed the sack into Frincisca’s arms. “Take it. Keep them safe.”
“Mirk. What are you doing?” she repeated, incredulous, looking down at the worn leather in her hands.
“I’m doing something ,” he snapped. He regretted that the minute he’d done it. She was a kind soul, if a little dull. He slowed for a moment. “I’m doing something, Frinny. Anything. These eggs are ours to protect. We can’t protect them all. But if we can take some and climb to the upper levels, then maybe we can escape through the ventilation tunnels. There has to be a way. I’m not just going to stand here and die. I’m not. I am a Drac?rdare, and I have a duty – we have a duty. Now either you help me or get out of my way.”
Calen stuffed two more eggs into a second satchel that he then laid at his feet. He made to fill a third when he realised he’d only grabbed two.
He plucked an egg, ruby-red, from the shelf, then turned back to Frincisca, who was still staring at him in bemusement. “Well? What’ll it be?”
“I’m not… I… Mirk. Mirk, I’m scared.”
Calen sighed softly. He often forgot the woman had seen but twenty-six summers to his forty. “I’m scared too, Frinny. I’m so terrified that if something catches me by surprise, I’m afraid I might shit myself. And I wore my white trousers today. Not ideal.”
That broke her, a laugh escaping her throat, a smile cracking her lips. Neither lasted long, but she’d calmed a little. Jokes always calmed her.
Calen placed a hand on her shoulder. “I’ll not lie to you. We might die this night. But if we have any chance, we need to take these eggs and get out of here now . Are you with me?”
Frincisca sniffled as she nodded, clutching the leather sack close to her chest.
“Say it.”
“I’m with you.”
“Good.” Calen brushed a tear from her cheek with his thumb. “Tua and Rin need their mother.”
Calen turned back to the shelf and took one last egg – sapphire streaked with deep crimson. He would have given a hundred gold to see the beauty of the creature that would hatch from that egg. “All right. Let’s?—”
A clap of thunder boomed through the vault, accompanied by a light so bright it blinded him. Calen slammed back against the shelves, his head ringing, shrieks and screams and wails flooding into his ears. A pain shot through his spine as though he’d been trampled by a horse.
“Frinny?” He clambered upright and peeled his eyes open but saw only rays of lanternlight piercing a cloud of dust. The ringing noise still echoed in his ears, unceasing. He dragged in a sharp breath, hacking a cough as the dust filled his lungs.
“No Frinny,” a harsh voice answered, cold and deep.
Calen lifted his arm, his right eye stinging as he brushed the dust away with his shoulder. At first, all he could see were sprays of red and orange light, but after a second or two, shapes took form.
His blood froze in his veins. Two Bloodmarked stood in the vault, massive and hulking, their runes burning a red glow into the air. A third creature waited between them, its skin white, lips cold, eyes black – a Fade. He’d never seen a Fade in the flesh before, but he’d read enough to know one.
The Fade ambled through the vault as though savouring the scents of a flower garden in spring. But all Calen could smell was coal, fire, and dust, the taste of blood on his tongue.
Calen clutched the two eggs closer to his chest, stumbling backwards, pain shooting through his left leg. There was no other way out.
“Frinny,” he called again, panicking, his stare fixed on the Fade.
The creature’s thin lips cracked into a broken grin, its black eyes drinking in the light.
Calen swallowed hard, then pulled his gaze away from the Fade.
A sinking feeling set into his stomach. Two feet stuck up at odd angles, blood pooling on the stone. It took all the courage he could muster to lift his head a little further and see Frincisca’s shattered spine protruding from the lump of torn flesh and bone that had once been her hips, innards slumped in a pool of blood.
The top half of Frincisca’s torso lay almost ten feet back, her right arm crushed between the stone and the door that had been launched off its hinges. Bits of her were everywhere.
“No…” Calen turned back towards the Fade, his chest numb, his jaw quivering.
The Fade tilted its head to the side. “Oh, to be so insignificant.” It narrowed its deep black eyes. “How does it feel? Nobody will ever find you. Nobody will even remember that you were flesh and bone. That is what you creatures crave, is it not? To be remembered?”
Every instinct in Calen’s body screamed at him to run, to fight, to do something. Instead, he froze, his limbs ignoring his command, his pulse deafening him.
The Fade stretched out an open hand towards the ground. Black fire moved over his palm in a slow, unnatural roll until it formed a sword, black flames dancing along its edge.
Calen took another step back, his legs finally responding. He pulled the two eggs closer, his fingers pressing tight into the scales. “Heraya embrace me,” he whispered. “Varyn protect me. Achyron guide my hand. Heraya?—”
“You pray to gods who abandoned you long ago.” The Fade’s black eyes stared deep into Calen’s. “When you pray and a god does not answer, why do you keep praying?”
Calen stared back wordlessly, his mouth ajar, his mind still processing the question.
“No matter.” The creature moved in a flash, the black-fire blade slicing through the air.
Pain burned, and the world erupted in a flash of light.
Calen fell backwards, his arms jarring as he braced himself against the stone. He snapped his head around, reaching for The Spark as he did, but found himself staring back at Lyrin and Haem, concern in their eyes.
“It’s all right.”
Haem’s voice was steady as he reached out a hand, but Calen recoiled, his vision flashing between his brother and the Fade.
“It’s me,” Haem said, taking a step closer to Calen. “I’m here.”
Calen looked about at the shattered eggshells and rubble, his breaths deep and ragged. He could still feel Mirk’s fear in his heart, in his bones. His heart felt as though it were about to leap from his chest.
“What did you see?” Lyrin asked.
Calen slowed his breathing as he recounted the vision to them, his eyes never leaving Mirk’s bones.
He pulled himself to his feet and pressed his fingers into the creases of his eyes, hoping to rid himself of the images that clung to his mind. He, Lyrin, and Haem searched the rest of the vault and found nothing – no runes and nothing that looked related to the pendant.
They moved along the corridor, searching every room and passageway. Some lead deeper into the earth, some were no larger than the room Calen had slept in back home. There were more vaults, chambers for sleeping, privies, baths, kitchens.
But in them all, one thing remained consistent: death.
As Calen stepped through the next doorway, a chill crept up his spine and the back of his neck, a shadow shifting somewhere down the corridor.
Haem raised an eyebrow.
“I…” Calen narrowed his eyes, staring down the corridor. Had he imagined it? It was almost impossible to tell. He could barely trust his own eyes. More than once the world had shifted and turned skeletons to fresh bodies, blood leaking, screams ringing out. “Nothing.”
He allowed his gaze to linger on the shadows before stepping into the room. All he found inside were bones, shattered eggs, and sorrow. Just like all the others.
“This is pointless,” Lyrin said as they searched the next room, which appeared to be another antechamber, bare except bones, armour, and old sconces on the walls. “There are hundreds of these rooms in here. By the time we find what we’re looking for, the war will be over. That’s if there’s even anything here.”
Again, the hairs on Calen’s arms and neck stood on end, a chill creeping over him. For a second, he could have sworn the light from the baldír dimmed.
He rubbed at his eyes, the steel of his gauntlet cold against his skin. A shout echoed from the main chamber. All three men glanced at each other before darting back into the corridor.
“Here!” another shout bellowed. The green light of a Soulblade waved back and forth from the fifth storey.
When Calen and the others reached the top level, they found Sister Ruon kneeling by a pile of rubble, Sylven and Kevan at her side.
“What did you find?” Kallinvar, Varlin, and Ildris arrived only moments after Calen.
“This…” Ruon stood, touching her palm against a section of exposed wall where rubble had been removed.
“Ruon…” Lyrin took a step closer, tilting his head to the side and biting his lip. “I don’t mean to alarm you, but that’s a wall.”
“Well observed, Brother Lyrin. Is there anything else your genius mind has discerned?”
“There are a lot of walls in here.”
“There’s something missing,” Haem interrupted, staring at the section of wall upon which Ruon’s hand rested.
“Precisely.” A soft smile touched Ruon’s lips, stretching to a smirk as she looked at Lyrin.
“The chambers and passageways are all evenly spaced along the corridor.” Haem looked up and down along the corridor, his gaze lingering a few moments as though counting something. He tapped his fist against the stone. “There should be a door here, an arch… something.”
As the others debated, Calen pulled the pendant from around his neck. He remembered what Pellenor had called the glamour in the dungeons below Berona: a touch glamour.
Just as he had then, Calen pictured the lock in the chest that had sat below his bed back in The Glade. As he did, he pushed six threads of Spirit through the pendant in his hand and onwards into the wall before him. With the threads in place, he opened the lock in his mind.
The rubble piled against the wall tumbled as the ground shook beneath Calen’s feet, drawing shouts from the knights.
“A little warning next time?” Lyrin pushed himself upright against the wall.
Calen didn’t answer. The wall was gone, vanished as though it had never been. In its place was a corridor with three sconces set into the walls on each side and a tall metal door at the end.
Six Urak skeletons were strewn about, along with seven smaller sets of bones, their deaths marked by long gouges in the stone and shreds of time-withered carpet.
Calen studied the skeletons as he approached the door, the knights following in his wake. Clean holes had been punched into two of the Urak sternums and one skull, while the others were missing heads and limbs. The other bones appeared to be humans or elves.
Calen knelt beside the skeleton that lay slumped against the wall near the door, the battered plate of the Highguard resting on its bones. He placed his hand against the symbol of The Order worked into the plate. As he did, he cast his gaze at another of the remains and the worn, hooded cloak around its shoulders. The fabric tore at the slightest touch of his finger, time having wreaked havoc on its constitution. Calen could feel something odd about the cloak, something… wrong.
“Fades,” Kallinvar hissed. “Even now the stain of their souls inks this place.”
Calen snatched his hand back, then rose and turned towards the door.
In sharp contrast to everything else in the vault, the door was simple and plain and built entirely from what looked to be solid steel. Calen had not seen anything of its like. Where he’d expected to find a keyhole instead was a small circular alcove containing a spiral pattern.
Calen flipped his pendant over and looked at the brass back. The pattern on the back matched that of the alcove in the door. Rokka's riddle sounded in his mind.
A City once lost, found it needs to be.
Ilnaen.
A gem, a jewel, a trinket of sorts, but truly more a key.
The pendant.
Not a door that it unlocks, a secret to be revealed. A trick, a mask, a painting over truth, thought forever sealed.
The glamour.
In that brief moment, Calen had a realisation that he might not want to find out what lay on the other side of the door. Whatever it was, Rokka had led him there. The man had not told Calen that riddle out of the goodness of his heart. And Calen couldn’t shake the feeling that one more soul was trying to tie strings around him, and yet there was nothing he could do. He could not simply tell Kallinvar and the knights that he wouldn’t open the door because he had a ‘feeling’ or because he hated the idea that he was doing another man’s bidding.
He reached forwards and pressed the pendant into the alcove.
It snapped perfectly into place.
When nothing happened, he noticed that the symbol of The Order was upside down. He turned the pendant to the right. It resisted slightly but moved, turning in place. A click sounded when the symbol was right way up.
The sounds of metal sliding and cogs turning rumbled from within the door. With one final click, the door moved, less than an inch, and silence followed. Calen looked to Haem, who gave him a short nod.
He pushed open the door.