20. Chapter 19
Nyxiana
Nothing up here stops the wind.
The founding ground runs straight and open for a long stretch, ending in a stand of trees too far off to be anything but a dark line.
Bare rock, old fitted stone, grass worn down to almost nothing.
And a cold that comes up through my boots and stays there.
Flat stones are set into the near edge, walked on until the corners went round.
One of them sits apart from the others. Bigger, set deeper, low in the grass, with the ground grown up over three of its sides.
The old layer runs strongest under that one.
I stand three steps behind Valen and keep the far side in the corner of my eye. Most of them went back toward the buildings when the Alpha did. A dozen stayed on the lip, a hundred feet off and haven’t moved since I came across.
Valen goes down, carefully, on one knee at the square stone.
He’s testing it before he settles his weight onto it and goes still.
I watch his hands instead of the stone. His fingers are open above the rock, not quite steady.
I put my eyes back on the stone, staying three steps back.
He sets his palm on it. The hum starts underneath the rock.
It comes up through my boot soles into my knees. It holds steady. His back goes rigid.
On the far side the dozen on the lip turn toward the stone.
Lines come up in the rock around his hand.
They run out from under his palm in every direction, thin and white.
The lines don’t spread the way a crack does, they follow channels cut into the rock a long time ago, turning at right angles, stopping where the cut stops, starting again a hand’s width over.
Inside half a breath there’s a pattern under him a full stride wide.
It goes on past the edge of the stone into the ground on all four sides.
Behind the wolves on the lip, along the settlement row, door open. By the time the pattern under Valen stops spreading there are more wolves on that edge than stood there to watch him cross, and the Alpha is at the front of them with two more at his shoulder.
I send my senses down into the ground while it’s open.
I go down through it a layer at a time. Grass and soil at the top, thin, maybe a hand deep.
Below that, fill somebody carried in and packed down by hand.
I can feel where the loads stopped and started.
Then the founding itself, worked stone laid tight.
Under all of it the rock this whole range is built out of.
There’s a layer missing. Not worn off. Not lost. Cut out, sealed over, with the founding laid back down on top so the join comes up clean unless you happen to be standing on it while it’s open.
I go along the edge of it as far as I can reach. It runs the whole width of the ground and keeps going under the trees. It’s the same absence I found in the Drakorian records. Same depth, same clean edge.
“Drakoria was missing this same layer,” I tell him. “Cut out and sealed over the same way.”
He doesn’t look up. “How sure are you?”
“A hundred percent. One realm is an accident. Two is a decision.”
“Then it’s wide.”
His voice comes out low, wind taking most of what gets said up here.
It doesn’t take that. The hum climbs and the heat coming off him reaches me three steps back, through cold air.
It gets stronger the longer his hand stays down.
His breathing changes, becoming deeper and slower, like a man working himself up to lift something heavy.
His shoulders come down while his hand stays where it is.
On the far side the Alpha turns his back on us facing his own settlement with the light coming up out of the ground behind him.
Not one wolf on that lip turns with him.
Valen looks up at me - white crosses the gray of his eyes and is gone.
Nothing in his face moves. The ground isn’t doing anything to him.
It’s whatever is in him that’s coming up to meet the missing layer, the two of them fit.
I’ve known what he is since the first time I saw him but I’ve never watched it answer something.
I put my attention back on the ground and hold it there.
It lasts about four seconds. Then it’s on his hands again.
I look away from him, make my breathing even out.
My fangs come down. I close my mouth and will them back up.
I don’t want him. I’ve been telling myself that all summer - they stay down.
“It’s not the ward.” His says, his hand staying where it is. “I know what the ward feels like. So, what is this?”
“The map answers to you,” I say. “The reading has to run through you because there’s nowhere else for it to run. The oldest layer answers whatever carries it.”
None of that is the whole truth. I’m standing a step nearer to him than I was when he asked.
The hum sharpens, stops being a hum. It’s coming up through my boots hard enough that I can feel it in my teeth.
Nothing about it holds steady now. The stone under his hand cracks.
It splits along the lit lines, not across them, and opens wide of his hand.
The crack goes a finger wide, then wider.
Pieces of the square stone drop into it without a sound.
Cold comes up out of the opening, colder than the wind.
With it comes the smell of earth that’s been shut down there a long time.
There’s a corner of something down there.
Dark stone, flat sides cut with a chisel, not broken off.
The ground takes more out of him. Valen goes down onto both knees over the opening.
His right hand stays on the lit rock. The left comes down beside the opening to hold him up.
His head drops between his arms and stays there.
Sweat drips off his face into the crack.
The heat coming off him is worse. It’s like standing near an open stove door while the cold still comes up through my boots.
On the far side nobody moves. They just watch. Not one of them has ever stood on this ground in his own skin.
The hum changes again under my feet, the glyph-work is waking up.
The lit lines mark how far the ward reaches.
I’m outside them - one step across and it has me.
I stretch a hand over the nearest line. The pressure finds my palm before my fingers are past it.
It’s the same thing that hit him at the near end of the causeway.
It’s waiting on contact. I take my hand back.
He hasn’t lifted his head. His arms are shaking where they hold him up.
I cross the lines. Two steps before I go down on my knees beside him with my hand closed around his wrist. His sleeve is wet through, I don’t let go.
He goes still under my hand, his head coming up, his eyes meet mine and stay there.
The white is gone out of them. He’s closer to my face than he’s ever been.
I can see what the ground is taking out of him.
His hair is dark with sweat where it falls over his forehead, there’s grit on his cheek from the rock.
His mouth is open because he can’t spare the air to close it.
His hand on the stone has gone white at the knuckles.
The wind goes over the top of us, light comes up out of the ground between his knees.
His pulse is beating fast under my fingers.
I get one whole breath in and out before anything stops us.
Then the stone in the opening moves, the dark corner comes out of the ground on its own.
An inch, two, then it stops and the lines under my knees go hot.
This ground knows Valen. He paid out on the causeway, it doesn’t want me in here.
The pressure starts against my skin, as it did on my palm so I take my hand off him and get off the lines.
He catches himself over the opening with both hands.
I’m back outside the lines, the pressure sliding off my skin, heart pounding. Now there are four feet between us.
Valen reaches into the opening and lifts the stone out. Cut, four-sided, dark. It matches the one out of Drakoria.
He turns it over once and looks at me. “You came in over the lines,” he says. “It could have hit you.”
“I needed to be closer to read it.” The reading was finished before I moved but he doesn’t say anything about it, just looks down at the stone in his hand.
I could tell him what’s in him, right here, with it still under his skin and nobody near enough to hear.
But I’m not telling a man what he is on the strength of nothing.
“Valen.” He looks up and waits for the rest of it. My fangs are still down. I put them up before I open my mouth which takes longer than it should.
“We take it and go.”
He gets up with the stone in his hand. The heat still hasn’t gone out of him when I take the place at his shoulder, putting myself between him and the far side. A stride. I started this morning at three steps. We cross back over. Nothing touches either of us.
The pack has come the whole way to the near end of the causeway to watch us come off it. Nobody speaks or moves until we’re close enough that they have to. Then they open up and let us through. The Alpha isn’t with them.
I walk down off that ridge beside him and say nothing the whole way. It’s harder than it was this morning.