Chapter 54
While Khephnes attempts to tutor me in magic, Bianca spends most of her time among our fellow captives, feeling out who might be a trustworthy ally and who might turn us over to the guards for whatever small favors they might glean.
After Khephnes explains a bit about the types of spells he might teach me, I consult with Bianca, who suggests I concentrate on frost and cold.
“The Swarm are a bit like woodlice,” she observes. “Perhaps the cold will slow them down.”
Her words alarm me. “We aren’t going to fight them, are we?”
“I certainly hope not. But we should be prepared, just in case.”
“I vowed not to kill anyone after the—after a war I was in.” Does that apply to inhuman creatures that remind my friend of woodlice and me of lobsters?
The idea of pacifism seems to take her aback; it was likely no more popular in Renaissance Italy than it is in 1926 America. But she only says, “What makes you think we could manage to kill one of them?”
Her words don’t exactly relieve me, but I throw myself into learning the sort of magic she suggested. Unfortunately, I’m far less adept at magic than at language.
“You don’t have a natural talent for it,” Khephnes agrees one day, when I’ve failed yet again to conjure frost on the small rock I’m practicing on.
The stone is unevenly broken, with carving on one side, and looks to have once been part of a bas-relief.
“But don’t fret—very few do. It tends to run in families, particularly those with inhuman blood. ”
“Inhuman blood?”
His trunk flashes pink with amusement. “There are many things in this world that are neither humans nor the Swarm, my friend.”
Of course there are. Why do I even bother to be surprised at this point?
“But with enough study and hard work, most people can learn to cast spells,” Khephnes goes on. “I had no natural inclination myself, only the desire to succeed. Never fear, it will come to you eventually.”
I don’t know how long it takes—months, I think—but the first time I conjure a skin of frost on the stone, I want to shout with joy.
I made something appear from nothing with my will alone, guided by a few words. The feeling is heady beyond anything I’ve ever experienced.
I did this. Me.
I practice every day from then on, careful not to let the guards notice what I’m doing. Though their primary concern seems to be preventing us from injuring the bodies we’re in, I don’t know how they would react to one of us learning sorcery.
In the meantime, I keep a sharp eye out on the signage every time the Swarm take us out of our room for our periodical trips to the top of the ziggurat.
I don’t see any handy arrows labeled This way to the archive, but the building we’re held in seems to have begun life as a sort of barracks for soldiers.
The writing on the papyrus the guards gave us speaks of warring factions, so perhaps the barracks were emptied once peace descended and fighters were no longer needed.
Thanks to the signs, I eventually begin to learn the layout of the ziggurat—and realize the guards seldom take us the same way twice.
Either because individual guards have their own preferred routes, or so we don’t memorize the floor plan and try to escape, I can’t say.
Whatever the reason, it means I can gradually build a map of the immediate area in my head, adding on to it a bit each time we’re led out.
And then, one day, I see it. A small, simple sign, almost lost amidst the crumbling murals, that reads Hall of Records.
My excitement is such I have a hard time remaining calm in front of the guards. As soon as we’re returned to our room, I hurry to Bianca’s side and tell her what I’ve found.
“At last,” she says, her trunk strobing with colors. “Stay here. No, wait, go over and tell Khephnes, and I’ll get the others.”
I do as she asks. Khephnes turns all five eyes on me. “Well done—I didn’t notice the sign at all.”
“It wasn’t as prominent as the others.” If I’m right about this being a barracks, soldiers would have had little need to go to such a place, and the sign had been intended more for lost scribes or whatever the Swarm equivalent was.
Bianca joins us with Titus and another captive I don’t recognize. “This is Yrsa.” Bianca gestures to the newcomer. “Yrsa, Sterling and Khephnes. They’re helping us.”
I expect Khephnes to disagree and remove himself, but he doesn’t. Perhaps the months spent teaching me first language, then magic, have changed his outlook.
“Now that we have a destination, our first hurdle is to get out of this room without any guards,” Bianca says. “We need to lure them away from the door so a few of us can slip out while they’re distracted. The question is how to do that.”
“I have a couple of ideas.” Titus holds up a right foreleg. “One, we start a fight. Any damage to one of us will get their immediate attention.”
“And get both combatants locked away in isolation for the rest of their time here,” Khephnes warns.
“It’s a sacrifice, but a worthy one.” A left foreleg joins the right. “Two, one of us pretends to be injured or sick. It would have to be a dramatic performance to get both guards to leave their posts, but it probably wouldn’t end up with the person in a small cell.”
“Oh!” Yrsa perks up. “We once traveled with a troupe of performers for a few weeks—my father and I are merchants, we’ve gone all the way to Italy—and I play-acted with them after we’d camp for the night.
Father wanted to be furious, you know what they say about actors, but he was laughing too hard.
” She wilts a bit. “I hope he’s all right.
He’s not young anymore, and I do most of the work these days. ”
I’ve managed to keep myself from worrying too much about James, but there are nights I lie in my mossy bed and remember that Zebulon Hart had been expecting him instead of me. The Swarm in my body was supposed to be in his, and I’m afraid what they might do to him in my absence.
There’s nothing I can do to help him now, so I focus on the moment at hand. “So you want to pretend to be sick, Yrsa?”
“I can do it,” she says, confidence filling her mind-voice.
“It’s safer than staging a fight,” Khephnes agrees. Titus seems a bit disappointed, but doesn’t protest. “I caution against injuring your body in some way, though.”
A memory from the war flickers into my mind: a fellow private whose name I can’t recall, thrashing helplessly in the mud.
He’d recovered, but been shipped to the nearest hospital.
I don’t know what happened to him after.
“Pretend to have a seizure. That should be alarming enough to bring the guards running.”
“When should we do it?” Yrsa asks.
“After dinner, just as we’re all settling in for the night.” Bianca clicks her forelegs together thoughtfully. “The Swarm are daytime creatures like us, so there should be fewer of them moving about in the corridors.”
“Let’s do it tonight, then,” Titus says. “There’s no sense in waiting about, letting our nerves get the better of us.”
I agree—waiting for an action to start was the second-worst part of my experience as a solider, the worst being the action itself.
We scatter, Bianca and Yrsa to chat to others among our fellow captives, Khephnes to stare out his window, and Titus to perform his daily exercises.
I try to distract myself by re-reading the inscriptions on the walls.
Hopefully by dawn tomorrow we’ll have answers. What good the answers will do us, I don’t know—can’t know, until we have them.
Dinner arrives, and I force myself to eat, despite the nerves curdling my gut. After, I swim in the pool a bit, then return to my bed as the light outside the windows fades. Most of the other prisoners do as well, and there’s only the faintest murmur of movement when I crawl into my bed.
Time passes, and those around me settle into sleep. Has Yrsa’s nerve failed her? Has she fallen asleep by accident? Has—
Yrsa lets out a horrible, chittering sound—made by her carapace, since the Swarm have no vocal cords. She tumbles from her bed, limbs flailing, segments whipping wildly about.
It’s a convincing performance, at least to me. To the guards as well—they both scuttle in her direction, but are hampered by the other prisoners rushing to aid her.
“Out of the way, please!” one trumpets into our minds.
I slip off my bed and scurry to the door, moving on all limbs both for speed and to lower my profile. Bianca is already there, and within a half second we’re joined by Titus…and Khephnes.
I’m surprised, but there’s no time to dawdle. The door is unlocked, and we’re out in a moment, shutting it behind us. Bianca gestures to me with her trunk, and I realize I’m the only one who knows where to go.
Trying to be both swift and quiet, I lead the way through the corridors, the others behind me as I follow the signs. Soon we’re in a part of the ziggurat we’ve never been in before, going down long sloping ramps, deeper into the earth.
Cold blue light illuminates the underground passage, generated by the crystalline globes the Swarm use.
The murals here are badly degraded, perhaps by the damp, and no one has tried to restore them.
Hieroglyphic signs appear at every juncture and we follow them, until at last the hall ends in an ornate door.
Grim determination fills me. We’re finally going to have answers.
The door is unlocked. We slip inside and Titus quietly shuts it behind us.
The Hall of Records is enormous, holding thousands of papyrus scrolls tucked into shelves, most of them covered in a thick layer of dust and rotting to pieces.
Khephnes and I could spend days in here and only read a small fraction.
Closest to the door, however, is a jumble of crumbling papyrus; marks in the dust show someone was here within the last few months, at least. Was this the pile the guards took the papyrus from to give to Khephnes for my lessons?
“No one’s been here for a long time,” Khephnes observes.
“Wrong.” Titus points just ahead of us, and I finally notice a path straight down the middle of the room that is entirely free of dust. “Let’s see what they’ve been looking at in here.”
We follow the clear path, which leads to another door. It’s already half-open; we push it back the rest of the way.
The room beyond is small and has no other entrances or exits. It’s entirely empty except for a plinth that looks inexpertly patched together from miscellaneous metal rods and parts.
Floating above the plinth is a glowing purple orb of what seems to be pure light.
“Magic,” Khephnes says, trunk flashing red and white in alarm. “I’m not sure what it is, but it’s very powerful.”
“This has to be what they don’t want us to see.” Bianca takes a step forward, as if drawn to the light.
“Probably.” Unease fills Khephnes’s mind-voice. “It might be safer to stick to the papyrus. The pile near the door—perhaps we might learn something from them.”
“We don’t have time,” I say. “The guards will notice we’re missing sooner rather than later. This is our only chance. We can’t waste it on papyrus scraps.”
Bianca waves her trunk in assent. “This orb is what they’re hiding from us. If it can help us learn anything about them, we have to take the chance and do it now.”
Before any of us can react, she stretches out her trunk and touches the light.
Her body goes instantly rigid, and the glowing orb brightens. Titus calls her name, but I’m the closest, so I instinctively grab her with my trunk to pull her away.
Purple light fills my mind, blanking out everything else.