Chapter 19
Nineteen
Under my hand, Tallu jerked, his body pulling tight. I leaned forward on the balls of my feet, readying myself to move, my mind making calculations at the same time.
Vostop had been the one to tell us about the tunnel, but that might have been a trap in itself. Of course, if we hadn’t known about the tunnel, it was possible that the Dogs might not have been prepared for the creatures, and they might have overrun the Lakeshore Palace.
Another point on the “this is a massive trap, and we would be foolish to trust him” side was that he had managed to get the Emperor of the Southern Imperium alone, in the depths of the mountains of Krustau.
There was no rescue coming; even if the Kennelmaster managed to rally servants, they would still have to get all the way here and then find us.
Years of training told me it would only take a couple of minutes to kill us.
“I understand your hesitance,” Vostop said. His voice echoed unnaturally, bouncing off the stone. “But Empress Koque and Prince Hallu are quite eager to see you.”
Tallu put his hand on top of mine, squeezing my fingers. I tightened my hand into a fist in warning, and he stroked his thumb across the back of my hand.
Closing my eyes, I released him, letting Tallu step forward.
“We thank you for the kind invitation,” Tallu said, his voice sure, even if I could feel the tense line of his body.
“Yes, it was such a delight to get such a thorough exercise of my sword skills this early in the morning,” I muttered.
There was a shuffling further down the tunnel, and light danced around a bend. I picked up the fallen lamp and let Tallu relight it. By the time Vostop arrived with five men, we were both facing him, eyes searching the narrow cone of light provided by the electric lamp.
Vostop nodded, the lantern in his hand flickering as he moved. I was so used to the consistent glow of the Imperium’s electric lights that it was strange to see a lamp with only a candle inside.
“Well met, Emperor Tallu. Come, this way. Try to be as quiet as you can. There are more badgers in the depths, and the Shadow King might be able to hear us.”
Vostop glanced over both of us then gestured down the tunnel.
Two of his men loped ahead just past the line of his lantern, and three followed behind us, their faces shadowed in the light of Tallu’s lantern.
I could hear the clink of their armor, the soft rustle of their weapons as they shifted.
All five of them kept their hands close to their weapons, their heads moving back and forth in a constant search for enemies.
Their silent anxiety was like a poisoned miasma seeping up from the ground.
I felt myself worrying at every shadow, and in the dark, there were many shadows. I could hear whispers through the walls, soft growls that echoed in my ears. It sounded like an animal speaking, but I couldn’t understand the words.
Obeying Vostop’s suggestion, we didn’t speak as we followed him turn after turn through the rabbit warren of tunnels.
Every so often, we could feel vents of heat, the volcano that lived under the mountain making itself known.
Other than the whispers of animals I could hear in my head more than my ears, we didn’t see anyone. No dwarf or creature crossed our paths.
Finally, Vostop paused. For a moment, I worried he had lost his way, but ahead of us, his men took up a defensive position.
Vostop raised his free hand to what looked like a normal stretch of wall. Then, the stone under his palm shivered.
In the flickering lantern light, it was difficult for me to see what Vostop did. The earth crumbled away from his hand, revealing a low door, circular like the tunnel we were walking through.
Vostop stepped through, and I followed behind, Tallu bringing up the rear. Vostop’s men stayed in the tunnel along with two of the blood monks. Lerolian and another followed us inside, hiding in the corner to listen without interfering.
Inside was a comfortable room, lanterns set into the walls, the table set with places for three people.
Empress Koque had removed one of the cushions from the couch and was sitting cross-legged on the floor. She stood immediately, a sharp blade in her hand, her eyes fixed on us.
When she saw Vostop, her shoulders dropped, the blade clattering to the floor. In two steps, she crossed the room, enveloping him in a hug.
“Did he hear you? Did he know what you were doing?”
“No. I told you. I removed all of the stone along the route. I was right.” Vostop tightened his hands around her back, releasing her after a moment and stepping back.
He leaned against the small table, and Koque returned to her cushion on the floor.
Two other cushions had been placed across from her, the setup favoring imperial comfort over Krustavian practicality.
“Empress Koque,” Tallu said.
“Tallu.” The chill and arch malice of their earlier conversation was gone; all that was left was affection. “Are you well?”
“Yes.” Tallu hesitated. He had heard it in her voice as well: the warmth, the worry.
When they had been verbally sparring, their accusations had been so cruel that they might as well have been using actual blades. All that was gone today, the dueling blades exchanged for a mother’s love.
“Good, good.” She opened her hand, gesturing at the cushions, and Tallu took a stumbling step forward, righting himself before taking the seat.
Worry about his balance and health swamped me before I realized what the stumble truly indicated: he was so used to listening to her as one would a mother that his body had obeyed her silent command before he thought through whether or not he wanted to follow her direction.
“Explain.” Tallu’s order was short but I could hear all of his unease in it. He was so uncertain about what he did and did not know that he couldn’t use the pretty language of court to cover it up.
“There is much to explain,” Koque said. “What would you like to know first?”
“Why are we here?” Tallu asked, cutting to the heart of it. “Why was he talking about removing rocks? Where is my brother?”
“Hallu is ill,” Koque said immediately. “I do not think living in the mountains is good for him. He grows pale and cries at shadows. You are here because I wanted to have an honest conversation with you. And that is also the reason that Vostop removed the black rocks.”
“He cries at shadows? Is it the shadow itself, or is he seeing something that isn’t there?” Tallu’s words were intense, and Koque flinched, nearly recoiling before she straightened her spine.
She shook her head. “I don’t know.”
Tallu visibly forced himself to relax, and I reached over, putting my hand on his wrist. He glanced at me, his expression mellowing to its normal calm indifference. “Who can hear through the rocks?”
“You saw the throne of the Shadow King?” When we nodded, Koque continued.
“It was not always so. When the Shadow King… That is, recently… very recently, the king has been able to use the same stone that his throne is made from to hear anywhere in the mountain. And there is plenty of that stone in the mountain.”
I had touched the black stone in the Lakeshore Palace, wondering what secrets it held, but I had never anticipated anything like this.
“This range was made from an ancient volcano, and they say that it is where fire dragons were born, that they grew only where lava heated their nests. The dragons may be dead, but the lava still bubbles in the depths. It moves over time, leaving behind the black stone, and somehow, our king has learned to listen through it. He can hear a conversation half the mountain range away, if those talking are speaking near a shard of black stone.” Vostop glanced at the doorway.
“Those of us concerned for his behavior have removed as much as we could. We could not remove all of them—he would notice that. But there are areas of the tunnels that are free from his spying.”
“Was that who he was talking with?” I asked. “When we had an audience with him, he seemed to whisper to shadows.”
“No. Sadly, it is worse than that.” Vostop looked down, the heels of his hands resting on the tabletop. “Inor found something in the dark.”
He let his words hang in the air between us. Neither Tallu nor Koque spoke, leaving it to me. I thought of the monstrous creatures that had attacked us. Had those been badgers? “Something in the dark? The badgers you spoke of?”
“Inor used to be the greatest stone mage in our guild. In any guild. They said that he was so good at clearing stone that the badgers living in the dark would beg him to make their burrows in the winter.” Vostop looked away.
“And when the Imperium threatened our borders, he was sure the only safety dwarves would have would be going deeper into the mountains. It wouldn’t matter what the Imperium could do, if we could dig deep enough to escape.
He set out to prove that it was safe, that the stories of what was buried in our mountains were just tales from our grandmothers meant to scare us.
Instead, he found the very monsters that the animalia created the Krustavian Mountains to trap. ”
I frowned, blinking as I searched my memory for stories my mother had told.
“What creature was so terrible the One Dragon trapped it in the mountains?” I asked, thinking it was impossible.
“She did not trap it in the mountains. There was one among the animalia whose crimes were so perverse that the One Dragon had dropped a mountain range on top of the monster so that it might never escape.” Vostop gestured around us.
“Before that, there was no mountain range here. She created these mountains to trap the animalia they called Centipede.”
“Centipede?” I asked. “My mother never told me of it.”