Chapter 38 #2
“The wheels,” Desmond says. He squeezes my hands, then lets go. He sloshes to the wheels on his side. The fear that I’ll never feel his touch again closes around my throat like a chokehold.
I let myself have one last look at him, then wade to my wheels, forcing my legs to obey despite the chill biting down to my bones. The water has reached my mid-calf.
Three wheels stand against each other, the smallest in front and the largest in back. The runes engraved at even intervals make it clear that this is the puzzle we must solve—otherwise we’ll die.
“The order of my runes is carved beneath the riddle,” I call out. A foreboding feeling in my gut screams that this is too easy.
We grab the smallest stone wheels and turn them. I cry out as the stone resists me, heavier than I expected. It takes a minute to align the right symbol with the first one on the wall. A minute and a half to turn the middle wheel.
The freezing water reaches my knees.
“I’ve aligned mine!” Desmond shouts over the roaring jets.
I grit my teeth, turning the final wheel. “Almost there!” My arms strain.
Victory flutters through my chest as I align it. Then I stare at the stone slab sealing the exit on Desmond’s side. It doesn’t move, nor does the water stop pouring.
Gods, either the mechanism is broken, sealing us in here, or we failed to solve it. “Maybe they go in the opposite order!” I suggest, furiously thinking.
Desmond looks at me, hesitation flickering across his face, but we’re too far apart for me to feel what he’s thinking. “Let’s try it.”
Minutes pass as we turn the wheels again. I’m already tiring, slower this time as the freezing water makes my body feel like lead. It’s reached my hips, and my legs are numb.
Still nothing.
Desmond swears.
Pain grips me like a vise. I’ve never faced a puzzle I couldn’t solve. Not until this one.
“What are the runes on your side?” he shouts. “Mine are strength, water, tree!”
I look at the runes inscribed on the wall before me. My heart thunders as I realize I have no idea what they mean. I may know Old Avedoran, but I’ve never seen these runes before. “I don’t know. I’ll have to tell you what they look like. The first is two touching triangles.”
A beat of silence passes. He’s probably thinking the same thing I am—my lack of knowledge might kill us. “That’s birth,” he says. “The next?”
“An X. The third is a single vertical line.”
“The riddle says one sees and the other hears. Maybe I need to align my wheels to your symbols.”
It’s worth a try. Anything is when we’re minutes away from drowning. “Do it!”
Desmond groans as he turns his largest wheel.
He has to hold his breath and sink beneath the surface to read the runes on the other two.
My teeth are chattering; the water has reached my chest. The current threatens to throw me toward the grate, and I grip the largest wheel with my numb fingers so I don’t get swept away.
He breaks the surface and gasps. “They’re aligned.”
I hope for a click, some sign that we’ve completed half of the puzzle, but nothing happens. Maybe nothing is meant to happen until my wheels are also aligned. I have to hope. The water is at my collarbone, and I don’t know how much longer I can hold on as the water swirls toward the grate.
“First is a vertical line with a triangle facing right at its top!” he shouts. “The middle rune is a tilted X, the first line slashing left to right and the second one vertical.”
Holding my breath, I pull myself beneath the surface.
My trembling fingers slip on the wet stone, and I clench it until my bones feel like they’ll snap.
My eyes burn as I keep them open. Every instinct inside me screams to swim to the surface.
I force my panic down into a box and lock it.
I turn the smallest wheel with my magic, the strain and cold making me dizzy.
Bubbles escape my nose as I turn the middle wheel. Then I climb up the largest wheel, gasping as my mouth finds air. “The large wheel?” I yell over the roaring torrent.
“Two mountain-like shapes nestled into each other.” His voice trembles. He’s clinging to the wheels, his shoulders violently shaking.
Nestled into each other? “Describe it more!”
“Arrow heads without the shaft, facing opposite ways. The right is lower than the left, tucked into it.”
I can’t picture the rune. It doesn’t help that the frigid cold has seeped into me. I can no longer feel my limbs.
“It’s a rectangle at an angle, its two L-shaped halves broken apart and slid toward each other!”
I’ll know it when I see it. I have to believe that. If my feet were touching the floor, the water would be at my neck.
Please, Elowyn. Let this work.
My magic thrums through me with every gasp, turning the wheel as I hold on. The runes on this one are still above the water, thank the gods, and it takes two turns to find the rune I think he’s describing. “Done!” I scream, my cold body shuddering so hard every breath is a gasp.
The water doesn’t stop. The slab doesn’t lift.
We’ve gotten a rune wrong.
Panic bursts inside me, breaking free of the box I shoved it into. It devours me. We’re going to drown. We’re going to die here and the draugr will feast on our bodies and—
“Cynthia!” Desmond yells. “Deep breaths! Do not panic. We will survive this.”
How can I believe him? The water has risen above the largest wheel, maybe five feet left between the surface and the ceiling.
“Are the two triangles on your wall touching in the middle like wings or up and down like an hourglass?”
I drag my gaze to the wall. The white, angry froth of the water has covered it. “Like wings, I think!”
He swears. “It’s dawn, not birth! I turned the small wheel to the wrong symbol.”
Dread threatens to stop my pulse, if the cold doesn’t first. He’ll have to dive to reach it.
Four feet of air above us. The water is too high to hold onto the wheels and stay above the surface. I let go, and the current throws me against the grate, my back hitting it with a pain that vibrates through my head. My fingers shake, so numb that they refuse to grip the bars.
I hear him gasp. He’s diving down.
Seconds pass. Ten, then twenty. Thirty. I don’t hear him resurface.
A bang shakes the grate. I grip it with my magic, using it as leverage to force my body to flip so my chest is pressed against the bars.
Desmond’s body is a dark shape beneath the surface, unmoving, every limb pinned by the current. His head lolls to the side, unconscious.
A desperate scream claws up my throat. I have to grab him, pull him above the water before we run out of air and—
No. If we can’t turn the final wheel, it won’t matter that he’s not breathing now. We’ll both still drown.
My magic pulses through the water, finding the wheels on his side even though I can’t see them.
It travels like unseeing hands down the large wheel, then the middle, and finally the smallest. As hard as I try to feel the dip of the carved runes in the stone, I can’t.
I’ll have to turn the wheel until the water stops.
Cold—so cold it burns. My breath is sharp, hard to control. The wheel feels heavier with every turn, like the stone itself is resisting me.
Please let this be the only wheel we’ve made a mistake on.
A third turn. A fourth.
I run out of air as the wave crashes against the ceiling. The water hits my face like a blade, and my lungs burn. My body yearns to give in—to let go and let the numbness take me.
For Evie. For Desmond. We will not die today.
One more push.
A loud click vibrates through the water. Then the slats beneath us open, unleashing a current I can’t fight. The water roars, dragging us with it like we’re nothing more than debris. Our bodies are helplessly pinned as the freezing water drains.
Then my mouth finds air. I gasp, then cough so hard it feels like my lungs want to escape my body, water spitting from between my quivering lips. I roll onto my side, then stare wide-eyed as the grate separating us retracts into a slit across the ceiling.
Desmond.
His fingers are blue, and he’s still not breathing.
I rush to his side, my whole body shaking as I place both hands on his chest and push. The cold has made me weak, but I desperately push again, every second I count choking me with fear.
I press my lips to his, so soft and cold, and pinch his nose to breathe into his mouth. He doesn’t stir. I pull back for more compressions, then seal my mouth against his again.
If only I were a water-wielder. I could easily pull the water out of his lungs. If only I weren’t born with untethering. If only the gods had pitied me.
Desmond jolts, and I scramble back as he sits up, coughing and gasping, a man back from the grave.
“You’re alive,” I rasp, then throw my arms around him and squeeze.
He looks at me, relief shining in his eyes as a tear rolls down his cheek. His hands shake as he caresses my face, seeking proof I’m really here.
“We did it,” I tell him. “We survived.”
His blue lips quiver as a laugh trembles through him. “Cynthia,” he says so softly, like a prayer to the heavens.
Then he kisses me.