Kessa
The cage seals around Rhazek and then the transport begins to sink below the sands.
I push up from the stone before I realize I am moving. Syin catches my forearm and jerks me down, pulling me back below the ridge.
“Wait.”
“He’s going down,” I say, pulling free of his grip.
I barely keep myself from shouting. Syin has one hand on my back, holding me down against the rock and sand.
“I can see that.”
Below us, one of the masked figures turns toward the ridge. I stop breathing. Renn flattens beside me. Syin does not move at all.
The figure turns its head, scanning along the ridge. My chest tightens until it feels like my heart can’t beat because of it.
“We need to attack,” I whisper.
“No,” Syin says.
The figure’s eyes pass over where we’re hiding again as Rhazek disappears below the ground.
Anger burns hot but reason threads its way through the blind rage.
We don’t know how many of them there are.
There could be an entire army waiting below.
The most likely result of charging in now would not be rescuing him, but us needing someone to rescue us.
Finally the figure turns away.
The transport is almost completely beneath the sand. Green light runs along the cage frame. For one second I can still see Rhazek through the narrowing gap, his head bowed and his wings pulled tight behind him.
Then he disappears.
The black frame follows. Metal slides under the ridge and sand spills down after it until all that remains is a dark seam at the base of the cut.
“They took him underground,” Renn whispers.
“Really?” I ask, sharper than I mean to.
I force myself to breathe before I do something stupid enough to make Syin right about me. Rhazek is alive. He knew I was here. I can still feel the thing using my rhythm pulsing beneath my hands.
Once.
Pause.
Again.
Then the version that is almost mine answers like a faint echo, trembling beneath the sands. I close my eyes, breathe, and press my hands deeper into the sand, feeling the call. I open them when I hear Syin crawling.
He’s staring down at the seam. The suns glint off his scales, casting tiny rainbows into the air around him and giving him a weird mythic look.
“We go after him,” he says.
Simple. Plain. As if it is as easy as picking up a glass and taking a drink. Except this is Tajss and there is no such thing as a simple drink.
I know all that. But I don’t care. They have Rhazek. And if anyone gets to kill him, it’s going to be me. Not these bastards.
“Yes,” I agree, not rising to join him. He takes a step forward, heading down the side of the dune towards the seam. “No, not that way.”
He narrows his eyes and flicks his tail hard enough to throw sand.
“That is where they went.”
“Exactly.”
I crawl backward until the ridge hides us completely, then get to my feet in the shadow of the rocks. They follow in the same manner and rise out of sight like I did.
“They know someone followed,” I say. “Maybe they know it’s me. Maybe they don’t. Either way, that entrance will be watched and guarded.”
Syin’s jaw tightens. “Delay gives them time.”
“And rushing gives them us.”
I hate saying it. Every second Rhazek is in their control is a second they can hurt him, use him, or turn whatever they put in his body against him again. But wanting him back doesn’t change the facts or make the obvious route safe.
I look at the ridge instead.
Routes are not doors. They’re choices. Whoever built something under this much stone had to move people, tools, air, and whatever else they needed in and out. The transport seam is one way in, but it can’t be the only way.
“Spread out,” I say. “Stay close enough to see each other. Look for tracks, disturbed sand, heat coming out of stone, anything that doesn’t belong.”
Renn nods and moves toward the slope. Syin stays with me.
“I can search alone.”
“No.”
I glance at him.
“That sounded almost protective.”
“It was an order.”
“There’s my boy,” I say, giving him a half-smile.
He ignores me, which is probably wise. I’m not sure where I’d go with it next, if understanding or rage would answer whatever he came back with.
We work along the ridge instead of toward the seam.
I force myself to look at the ground and not back toward where Rhazek vanished.
Boot prints cut through a patch of loose sand, then disappear over stone.
A few body lengths away, Renn crouches beside a crack at the base of the ridge and holds up one hand.
Syin and I carefully make our way over to him.
Warm air touches my face.
Not desert heat. This comes in short breaths from inside the stone and carries the smell of metal, dust, and something bitter enough to coat the back of my tongue.
“There,” Renn says.
A green reflection flashes deep in the crack, then disappears.
Syin looks at me. “Another entrance.”
“Or they want it to look like one.”
The crack is too narrow for Rhazek and barely wide enough for Syin, but the stone around it is broken instead of carved. I step back and study the slope. A slab leans away from the ridge a little farther up, leaving a dark cut behind it.
I climb to it and find another boot mark pressed into the sand and dust.
“Here.”
The opening behind the slab slopes down under the ridge. There’s no guard and no alarm which bothers me. It makes this feel more like a trap.
Syin sees my face. “They want us inside.”
“Probably,” I agree, staring into the passage.
“And we are going anyway.”
“You have a better idea?”
Renn makes a quiet sound that might be a laugh. “Good plan.”
“I have worse ones if you’d like options.”
The two Zmaj look at each other, then say nothing. Renn’s wings rustle and Syin’s tail snaps across the sand. I pull the bone-handled knife from my belt and check the little packet of salt and ash in my pouch. Then I crouch and enter first.
The passage drops quickly. Sand gives way to black metal under my boots, old enough to be scratched and pitted but not dead. Green light leaks through narrow seams along one wall.
Once.
Pause.
Again.
Then a second pattern answers beneath it. The false version of my count. It’s close to what happens between us, but not quite. I stop.
Something pulls through the connection between Rhazek and me. Pain first. Then anger. Then a hard refusal that feels so much like him I nearly laugh. He’s awake and whatever they are doing, he’s fighting it.
For one heartbeat, I let myself feel it. His pain, his anger, his protectiveness wash through me like a cooling wind. Unseen, but definitely there. Then I keep moving.
The passage bends twice before it opens above a larger chamber. We crouch behind a low shelf of broken stone and metal, looking down.
The transport rig is below us, pulled off the descent rail and locked into tracks running across the chamber floor.
Rhazek is still inside the cage and for one second that’s all I see. I have to force myself to look at everything else.
The cage is fixed to the transport frame with heavy locking arms. Rhazek’s wrists are restrained and one wing is pinned low beside him. Green-black metal disappears beneath the plates at his throat and wraps his burned forearm. Blood streaks one side of his face and darkens his chest.
He is awake.
A cracked black console sits several body lengths from the cage. Green light moves across its surface and gathers above it in thin shifting lines. Beside it, a narrow rod pulses with the false version.
Once.
Pause.
Again.
A glass basin beneath the lights holds something that glows faintly blue-violet. The moment I see it my stomach drops.
No, no, no. Shit.
Epis.
Four guards are spread through the chamber. Two stay near the cage. One stands beside the console. Another watches the outer passage. None of them are looking for us, they’re waiting. But for what?
“I do not like this,” Renn whispers, shifting.
“Neither do I.”
Syin studies the chamber. “They know we are here.”
I look at the open stretch of floor between our position and the receiver. There’s cover on either side. A route toward Rhazek. Another toward the console. It’s all too convenient. It has to be staged.
Then I see it.
“Yes,” I whisper. “And they want me to choose.”
Syin adjusts his grip on his lochaber.
“Then let’s disappoint them,” I answer.
I study the room, specifically not focusing on Rhazek. The noise in my head when I see him trapped isn’t helpful.
There. The receiver is the problem. It’s a cracked black console that sits between us and the cage.
It’s close enough I can see the false rhythm moving through the rod beside it.
Thin green light runs from the console into the floor tracks under the transport.
Above the cracked panel, strands of light are gathering around the blue-violet glow from the basin where the epis rests.
They’re either testing something, or building something. A message, maybe, but definitely this is the proof they want to send off world. This is the message that not only is Tajss alive, but epis is growing.
“Receiver first,” I whisper.
Syin turns toward me. “Rhazek is first.”
I shake my head, not looking at him.
“No. If we go straight to him, we give them what they want.” I hate the words as soon as they leave my mouth. “Look at the room. A clean route to him and a clean route to that console? It’s a trap. They’re waiting to see which one I take.”
Renn glances toward the cage, then back to me. “So we take neither?”
I smile and I’m sure it doesn’t have a hint of humor to it.
“We take the one they don’t want us to break.” I point without lifting my hand above the shelf. “Renn, outer passage. Keep that guard from bringing friends. Syin, the one at the console. Don’t touch the glass basin.”
“And you?” Syin asks.
“I’m going to ruin their machine.”
His expression says he has a bevy of complaints, but he saves them for later. That is becoming one of my favorite things about him.
We hide, silent, waiting for the guard nearest the passage to look toward Rhazek, then I nod, fast and sharp. I stand up.
Every head in the chamber turns toward me.