The Vaultline
NOX
The Witchward had taken more than she expected.
It always did. That was the thing about memory stones. The making of them felt like nothing and cost everything. You walked away lighter than you arrived and did not understand why until hours later when the weight of it caught up with you.
She had made his first. An act of generosity she was already reconsidering.
The path back to Kelsey Castle ran along the ridge. She knew it well enough to walk without paying much attention, which was fortunate because she was thinking about Aviaryn. About whether the child had eaten. Or worn some fucking shoes.
The Slykar came from the left. She sensed it with her intunar. Admittedly, her intunar was the weakest of her abilities here in Morrath, but it was present enough.
Humans with gifts could rarely use them in Morrath, which meant that those powers of her that were human did not come as easily when here.
But she was a feeder and Umbrelai’s queen, thanks to Axar. Thus she could certainly defend herself.
Normally. In truth, she was weaker than usual.
She threw her power at the Slykar before she had fully processed what it was. The power came slower than it should have. The Witchward had cost her more than she had admitted, and she had considerably less strength than she had let on to Sevrin.
Two more came from the rocks above.
She fought them the way she fought everything, without wasted motion, without feeling. She was slower than usual and the ridge was narrow and when the third hit her from behind she went sideways and there was nothing to catch on.
She fell.
The slope was longer than it looked from above. She hit rock twice on the way down and stopped thinking about much of anything for a while.
When she opened her eyes it was dark.
Wonderful.
She lay still and counted what she could feel. Gash along her abdomen — deep, still bleeding. Shoulder cracked or bruised, she could not tell which and did not particularly want to find out. Her vision was unreliable.
She had been unconscious for hours.
Aviaryn.
She pushed herself upright before she had decided to, then sat still while the dizziness made its point and passed.
Aviaryn had Flagsar. She had the creatures. She had spent her entire life in Morrath and had survived it.
She usually had Axar, Nox thought, then set that aside. Worrying would not get her back any faster and she found worrying largely useless under most circumstances.
She looked at where she had landed.
The Vaultline.
A mountain with multiple vault entrances cut into its face, each sealed and guarded and accessible only to those whose purpose the Vaultkeeper deemed worthy. She had never had reason to come here before. She had never had anything worth locking away.
The gates were open.
She stood. Her legs held, which she chose to view as a personal victory.
She moved toward the nearest entrance because she needed water and blood and something to press against her abdomen and the Vaultkeeper's staff would provide those things if for no other reason than she was Umbrelai's queen and they would not enjoy the alternative.
Then she remembered.
Truthwater.
She stopped walking.
The water you drank before entering the vault rooms. Not optional.
You could not pass through a vault entrance without it.
It found whatever truth lived in the memory you were reaching for and brought it forward without asking whether you were ready, and when it was done it made you say aloud what you truly wanted.
Worse than a memory stone in her opinion.
At least with a memory stone you chose what it held. Truthwater chose for you.
She was in no condition for that and had no interest in dredging up another lifetime of memories while bleeding through her clothes.
She would rather be thirsty.
She kept walking because she was in no condition to indulge ancient rituals, and even less condition to die. The distinction mattered to her, at least marginally.
The guard post at the gate was empty.
She moved through it and into the passage beyond and stopped.
Bodies on the ground. Three guards by their uniforms, their postures carrying the particular wrongness of people who had not chosen where they ended up.
A Slykar rushed from the shadow to her left.
She hit it with what she had, which was not enough and had to be anyway. It fell. She stood over it breathing harder than she found acceptable and looked at the passage ahead.
The door at the end was open.
The Vaultkeeper lay just inside the threshold, face up, his expression frozen in something that read less like pain than like shock. Whatever he had seen in his final moments had exceeded his capacity to process it. His face was extremely clear on this point.
She stepped past him. She had no time to worry about the dead. She needed blood before anything else. She moved further in, her vision blurring at the edges, the wound in her stomach still making its opinion known in the persistent way of wounds that had not decided yet whether they were serious.
She thought of Aviaryn. Of the rare unguarded expression the child did not know she was giving when something pleased her. Of the gap in her teeth. Of the way she looked at people she was deciding whether to tolerate.
Irritating child.
She needed to get back.
She needed to get Aviaryn out of Morrath because it was now clear that what she had spent years preventing had finally arrived anyway.
There was no point in checking the vaultline to see if the amulet was there, because she already knew the answer.
She had felt it the moment she reached the Vaultline. In the bodies. In the open gates. In the Slykar numbers, far beyond what Morrath's normal dark could account for.
Dali had arrived.