Chapter 31
“WHY THE SWITCH?” Damion asked in her ear as they flew north. “Prince getting too familiar?”
“None of your business,” she said. “Are you holding up all right?” She nodded down to the bundle swinging below Gur’s belly. The rope was secured around Damion’s waist. It seemed the safest way to transport it.
“This is nothing,” he said, giving the rope a tug. “I’m more worried that we are yet again delayed.”
“This isn’t a delay,” she said. “It’s necessary.”
“That’s what you said the last time, and how many times have you almost died since then?”
“That seems to be a form of employment for a Rae,” she said.
Below, white frothy lines etched the gray steel of the ocean.
The air grew cooler as they traveled. Far behind them, the rocky jut of the peninsula—the southern finger of the Eastern Cliffs—proved a welcome site.
Anqa, with Honey and Kaelan, flew ahead and above, joined by some drafting gulls.
None of the birds came close to Gur though.
“Do you really think Eris will help us?” he asked.
“Eris will help anyone for a price,” she said.
“Don’t give it all up,” Damion said. “We’ll need something to trade for supplies, and bribes.”
“I still have the ichor-gold glove. We can sell that if we need to,” she said. “And Honey has the panchress.”
Damion lapsed into a heavy silence, which she guessed meant he was placated.
“What did he do to you, coz?” he asked after a time. “What did that Elf wench mean about the heart-place?”
She chewed on her answer, not sure she wanted to talk about it, not with him, not with anyone.
But since Damion had pledged his life to her, she felt she owed it to him.
“Right before Kaelan died,”—the wind tore at her words, forcing her to raise her voice, though it was hard enough to speak at all—“he gave me a piece of his heart.”
She could hear the sneer in his voice even though she couldn’t see his face. “A piece of his heart?”
“Not literally, of course,” she said. “Some energy of his heart’s essence, I suppose.
I don’t exactly know how it works. And neither does Kaelan.
He didn’t mean to. He didn’t know what he was doing.
Apparently, giving away their hearts in this manner is expected of Elven Princes.
Supposedly, it strengthens them, so long as the place they choose remains unharmed.
It's also a part of their Ascension rite. A Prince cannot become King if he hasn’t given away pieces of his heart. ”
“So you still have it? A piece of Kaelan’s heart?”
“Yes.”
“What does that feel like?”
She touched her chest reflexively. The bruise was fading. “I can’t feel it as much now as I did.”
“So when he died, that’s why you were so . . .”
“Yes. That’s why. It was as if . . . I had died too.”
“And is that going to happen again?”
“We’ll see what Eris has to stay about it,” she replied.
“But I thought he was in love with the nymph.”
“He is.”
“Are you sure about that?”
“I told you. It was an accident. He doesn’t even know what he did. If she had been there with him, it would’ve been her, not me.” She twisted, throwing a grin back over her shoulder. “It could’ve been you.”
He drew back, lip curled. “Yet another reason not to get too close to an Elf.”
They flew the rest of the way in silence, until the Eastern Cliffs threaded along beside them and night began to rise. Then she had Gur fly ahead and signaled to Anqa to follow.
Gur and Anqa deposited them in one of the old cliff dwellings and then flew off to hunt.
In the damp cave, Damion laughed, patting what remained of a sculpture carved out of the soft red stone—the bust. “It’s been years since I explored these cliffs, since I was a boy.”
“Since my mother declared them off limits,” she clarified, moving quickly away from the cave opening and the crashing roar of the ocean below.
At the back of the cave, carved steps descended into winding passageways and endless rooms, some grand as Froenz’s hall, and even more intact.
“People lived here?” Honey asked, gazing up at the wall where the remnants of a mural barely showed—little more than the sinuous black lines of dancing figures.
“A long time ago,” she said, “before the sea swallowed the great cities.”
“When the gods walked the Lands,” Kaelan said.
She nodded, though in the deep blue light of encroaching night, she wasn’t sure he could see it.
“We all sleep tonight,” she said.
“No guard?” Damion scoffed.
She set Hero down. The cave floor was littered with dust and the dried grass of bird nesting and small deposits of bat guano. “Hero will stand watch tonight. He will wake us. We all need to sleep.”
“No fire?” Damion asked.
“No fire,” she said. “We leave before dawn.”
She scraped a spot clean with her boot and dropped down onto it, resting her back against the wall.
Closing her eyes, she drifted.
Later, a voice prodded at her.
“Wake up. They’re asleep.”
She groaned and stretched her sore neck. Hero’s nose brushed hers. She stroked his head.
“Thank you. Stay. Watch them,” she said to him.
“Where will you go?”
“There’s just someone I need to see. I’ll be back as soon as I can.”
Quietly as she could, she rose. Every rasp of her boot on the loose grit of the cave floor made her wince.
Damion slept flat on his back, mouth open, starlight kissing his scars.
Honey slept near his feet, in a huddle. Kaelan had moved deeper into the cave, nearer to her, taking up post along the opposite wall and using Endreas’s coat as a pillow.
Keeping her distance from him all day had helped weaken their connection.
She couldn’t tell if he was sleeping or not.
She would just have to trust Hero, who since waking her had delved into the shadows along the edges of the cave.
Turning, she descended the steps.
Down and down. Rustles of rats and bats echoed from connecting chambers.
The drip of water and the salty rawness of the sea grew distant behind her as she descended into the chill of stone and places untouched by the sky.
She moved swiftly, allowing that habit-place deep in her mind to lead her through the black tunnels.
As keen as her eyes were, they found no scrap of light. But she didn’t need any.
Eight years had passed since she’d last traveled these tunnels, but she knew every corridor, every set of stairs. As a child, she’d spent many long hours mapping the old city’s routes.
Finally, she came to the door. In a labyrinth of nothing but dark tunnels and open doorways there stood a bronze beast of a door. She ran her hands over the cold, filigreed panels. Few people knew about the door or the chamber beyond, except those who had a chance of someday residing there.
Twisting the heavy ring handle, the lock thunked, echoing low and deep through the darkness.
With a grunt, she pushed open the door. Magical guardian flames wove a flickering wall before her, silver and blue.
She shut the door and stepped through the fire, unscathed.
She was a Rae. These were her lands. She did not fear its magic—she was its magic.
The fire died behind her. The torches on the walls lit up and up and up in a spiral of flame that dissolved into the looming darkness. The top sat hundreds of feet above. When her father had been buried, she’d peered down over the edge—until vertigo had set in—attempting to see the bottom.
The Well of Souls. The burial chambers of the Raes and Princes of the Eastern Cliffs.
The main entrance to the Well tunneled all the way from Stonehigh, miles and miles.
The Well itself was hidden under the moors and the Ironwood, which was home to, amongst a few other creatures, a breed of raven that gained higher knowledge by eating the eyes of unwary travelers and thus absorbing all that they had seen and learned in their lifetimes.
But the ravens were not the most dangerous creatures in the Ironwood.
The trees themselves were deadly. Not only sentient and very easily annoyed, they were of a rare composition.
Their wood could not be burned or penetrated, because into their living pulp a type of iron was fused.
Rightfully, most steered clear of the Ironwood.
But the Radiant’s secret stores of knowledge held some particularly unusual information concerning ironwood that was not widely known.
A Pixie could touch ironwood and possess it without suffering ill effects, but if she were pierced with it, even a splinter, death was almost assured.
Grasping the climbing rungs, Magda started up.
For a time, she lost herself in the climb, not thinking about Lavana or Endreas or Kaelan or anything, focusing only on the steady inhale and exhale of her lungs, the firm beating of her heart, the sweat rolling between her shoulder blades.
At last, she reached the ledge she’d been seeking, hurrying along its narrow span without looking down—more out of habit than fear.
The entrance to the tomb was like all the others. Only the name carved above differentiated it.
Magda ducked into the passage, which had been bricked into a narrow slit after her mother’s death.
She had to shuffle through sideways until she reached the chamber proper.
The room was small, stone walls painted with scenes of the living, inscribed with prayers to the gods, heavily laden with chests of gold and silver, swords and shields and spears and axes on the walls.
Golden bowls full of gem-encrusted fruits and vegetables were placed amidst similarly opulent goblets and pitchers.
Silken clothes and dusty armor hung on forms. Once her people had believed that they needed all of these things in the Godlands.
While that belief no longer held, they continued the ritual of it.
As she approached the sarcophagus, she recalled her mother railing against the absurdity and wastefulness of grave goods.