Chapter 18 #2
“Of course you would. You’re my niece,” I said with pride, and had to restrain myself from ruffling her hair.
She’d allow it at times, but for the most part, she’d outgrown that when she was thirteen and decided it impugned her dignity.
“But we don’t know what Artifice they have access to, and Alvar is clearly capable of using it. ”
She smiled crookedly. “Naturally. But, as you say, there is a question of what he’s doing. So…I shall put my ethics aside until we’ve determined Alvar’s precise goals.”
I snorted with derision. “Looking for weapons he knows nothing about in a silly, poorly-planned effort to overthrow my rule and take the Rivers for his loyalist sycophants, all while under the mistaken impression that your father will simply sit back, nod, and accept the breaking of the Accords and my death with nothing more than a smile and a wave.”
It was almost funny to think that Alvar could have found everything he was seeking in a single human, the young woman attending the Collegium alongside him.
She alone had designed a weapon capable of forcing a fiend to his limits—her golem.
It was his loss that he had not gone seeking her expertise, and my gain, in more ways than one.
“Yes, but…” Marrion frowned, gazing at the sleeping man with a furrow between her brows. “Is he really?”
“What do you mean, dear one?”
She tapped her fingertips on the cup, still staring at Rasmus but no longer truly seeing him.
“Uncle, we scouted a clear path through the city and there were no signs of habitation, nor stockpiles. No signs of the structures being entered. No signs of looting.” Marrion looked at me.
“It doesn’t make sense to me. There’s untold treasure right here, weapons even, locked in these ancient towers, and yet…
he chose to go deeper, to far more dangerous places?
I don’t think he was looking for mere gold and weapons, Uncle.
Perhaps his foolish plan began that way, but something drew him further Below, and at this point…
well, to be frank, I would be utterly astounded to find him alive, and yet Rasmus is convinced that he’s perfectly fine.
We could seal this all behind us, and leave him to his fate.
Because, truth be told, whatever it was that lured him deeper…
I don’t know that I want to see it for myself. ”
“He wanted a curse-stone,” I murmured, stoking the fire again. “A crystcore. What could he want with that? How could he possibly transport it?”
Marrion shook her head. “This is something I’ve been pondering since we found Rasmus.
I’ve heard tell from Aunt Wyn that it's theoretically possible to transport a crystcore in a lead-lined casket. But as to why one would want to…I haven’t the faintest idea.
One mistake means an awful death. Unless that is the weapon he intended to find. ”
“Precisely that,” a husky feminine voice said, and I started, looking up to find Jesamin standing across the fire, holding a blanket tightly around her shoulders. “He wanted it to power Artifice.”
She sat down cross-legged, her eyes huge and wary behind her spectacles.
All the languid relaxation had left her limbs; all signs of the giggling menace from the bath were gone.
“I got the distinct impression of immense occult energy emanating from where this ‘crystcore’ was stored. Like fulmen, only…greater. Far greater.”
“Yes, they do generate energy—they were named for their appearance, literally ‘crystal cores’, by those who first discovered them. Needless to say, the discoverers all died terrible deaths, but the name stuck. The miasma itself is actually a by-product, as far as we can tell, not the purpose. My people deliberately blocked routes leading near crystcores and kept the bastions as far from them as possible, as the miasma will seep into the earth, air, and water around it, and utterly poison them.” Marrion tipped her head, studying Jesamin.
“Are you related to vampires in any way? A sanguimancer in the bloodline, perhaps? Has anyone else in your family been able to sense the emanations of other objects?”
Jesamin frowned. “No. Not that I know of. If that was the case, I suppose I would be able to feel Talos’s anima, but all I sense from him is the seed of fulmen stored in his heart.
” She let out a heavy sigh. “I suppose I’ll just spill my Guild’s secrets.
That’s the secret of Artifice. The inherent intuition, the ability to sense occultism and energy.
All of us feel it. When I create fulmen in my clockwork, it feels like a tiny spark of power.
But the curse-stone…the crystcore, I mean…
if the fulmen is a spark, then that stone was…
unimaginable. An ocean of power. I have no words to explain it.
But I can tell you that it is energy, and knowing what I know of the Fae’s advanced Artifice, I feel confident in saying that they were able to power some Artifice of vast complexity. ”
Marrion and I stared at her in silence.
“The kind of Artifice we could not create for ourselves, even if every Master Artificer in Veladar were able to come together to design one great machina,” she said softly.
“Have you noticed that this entire city is one massive piece of chthonium? And the quartz lines funneling fulmen all emanate from a central point. I can feel it out there somewhere, humming and buzzing beneath us, and it feels much like the crystcore above us. This entire city is Artifice. One titanic, singular piece of Artifice.”
“So a crystcore could power an entire city.” I dropped the poker, the coals sending sparks towards the ceiling. “Or it could power a weapon that could level an entire city.”
Jesamin nodded stiffly. “That’s what I fear.”
“Marrion.” My voice felt heavy, as heavy and tired as my limbs. “Prepare that geas now.”
Rasmus’s eyes snapped with fury, but he kept his fool mouth shut. The mark on his forehead pulsed with his heartbeat, not painted on, but buried beneath his skin.
Marrion had prepared her compulsion, pulled a thin thread of blood from her own veins, and fed it into Rasmus’s eye like a parasite while we held him down.
He had screamed his voice raw as it crept through capillaries, taking up residence where Marrion commanded it to go, and now Rasmus had no choice but to lead us precisely in Alvar’s footsteps.
A single strong intention was far more binding than a convoluted demand, such as not leading us toward harm.
He would not be able to deviate from the path he had once taken.
Jesamin hiked her pack up on her shoulders, Talos gleaming shiny and clean at her back. While Marrion invaded Rasmus with her blood, Jesamin had taken the golem upstairs and scrubbed him down with the last of the soap.
She gave Rasmus a look of wary consideration, tinged with concern.
“I can’t believe you let her do this to me,” he said to her, rubbing the pulsing mark beneath his flesh. His lips curled bitterly. “Damn you.”
“What else was I supposed to do?” Jesamin asked, her voice cool. “If you wanted to avoid all this, all you had to do was tell your brother no! But you can still live to see the back of us, Rasmus. She’ll dissolve the geas and you’ll go your own way.”
“You’ll go straight to the dungeons,” I muttered, and Jesamin shot me a warning look before turning her gaze back to Rasmus.
“I wouldn’t have expected it of you,” she told him, her disappointment more cutting than her fury.
“You, of all people. You were always kind, Rasmus. You never harmed another soul, and now so many people have died because of you. Why? Why give in to him? Oh, wait—I remember now. Fame and gold.” She laughed, sharp and cold.
“You can’t believe I let them do this? Well, I can’t believe you made your brother something to turn people into living fucking puppets, and never questioned what he might do with it! ”
She spun on her heel, leaving Rasmus looking stricken behind her, and would’ve strode right out into the open streets of Liuridar if I hadn’t taken her arm.
Jesamin looked up at me, exhaled slowly, and planted herself firmly where she was.
The knights had neatly packed and stacked all the extraneous supplies, and the building would remain warded by Marrion’s blood. They slipped out into the street, followed by Marrion, with the open Eye painted on her palm with fresh blood. I shoved Rasmus out the door after her.
Jesamin followed at my heels, Talos bringing up the rear.
“Where was your brother’s excavation?” I asked the boy, acknowledging Jesamin’s angry huff with one twitch of my ear.
Rasmus trembled, fighting the geas, and then started walking, stiff but sure. “To the north.”
We spread around him, allowing the boy to take point, Marrion at his back with the Eye watching all.
Nothing leapt out at us, and I noticed that of the creature and the man he had killed last night, there was not so much as a drop of blood left.
Whatever had collected their bodies had left no trail, and nothing was watching us; as Nikos had also noticed, the relics were growing more intelligent.
After a mile of steady walking, with the hive-like, twisted buildings looming over us like watchers, Rasmus turned a sharp corner and Marrion’s hand twitched.
“Yes, they passed this way,” she said dreamily. “Loaded with crates. Pickaxes. Chisels. All afraid, so terrified, yet determined. There he is, the prince in gold, leading the way. I smell his fear, but his hatred is stronger.”
Her hypnotic stream-of-consciousness became the background sound to our footsteps.
Jesamin stepped closer to me, her arm brushing mine. She kept one hand on the butt of her pistol, eyes darting behind her lenses. As Rasmus led us out onto what looked like a broad avenue, her shoulders stiffened.
“You can almost see it,” she whispered. “The past, as it was.”
And yes, if one squinted and ignored the ceiling of endless earth overhead, one could almost see Liuridar as it had been thousands of years ago.
Spindly metal vines grew from the street and arched high overhead, holding cracked round crystals that still gleamed with eerie blue fulmen.
The withered remains of ancient trees still jutted from hollows in the ground, long-depleted dirt clumped about their roots.
Desiccated creepers hung from the frilled, web-like balconies of chthonium overhead, and all over the streets there were bits of ephemera left behind, the residue of past lives.
Beings beyond us had designed this place. And humans had lived here, calling this place home. Less than pets, greater than livestock, the unseen ants crawling through the bowels of this city to keep its masters fed and warm.
Marrion sucked in a breath, and Rasmus groaned ahead of us. They had both abruptly stopped, and Marrion’s voice had gone throaty as she muttered.
“Pry open the gates,” she groaned under her breath. “Take your chisels, fit them between the doors! Don’t worry about the cold iron, lads, you just worry about the cold hard gold waiting on the other side.”
She shivered, hand twitching as she forced her fingers to close and shield the Eye.
The avenue ended at the top of a set of wide stairs, descending in a vast maw of a cavern, and at the base were the Gates.
The Gates looked like they belonged in a castle made for giants, both doors nearly thirty feet high, the witchwood stained so black with age they seemed to absorb the ghost-light of the city.
They had been thoroughly covered with cold iron charms, reminding me forcibly of Bane’s Rift-kin and their propensity to line every door, window, and mineshaft with the material.
The cold iron chains, which had guarded these doors for nearly six hundred years, had been broken and lay discarded in the dust.
“The ancients did this,” Marrion said, sounding young and awe-struck.
“Those who went beyond the Gates were thought lost, until…they came back. With all the might of their sanguimancy, the remaining highbloods sealed the Gates with cold iron and blood, and put down those who had returned as something other. Right here…this is where my ancestors stood. How many others alive today can say they’ve laid eyes upon these doors? ”
Now I saw the tracks in the dirt, where the Gates had been pried open wide enough to admit the men and their crates.
Rasmus swallowed hard, his throat clicking in the silence. “They’re in there,” he said, shivering. “Alvar has a man he sends with instructions…but I haven’t seen him in a while. Not since the vault. He…he probably thinks I’m dead.”
For the first time, Marrion looked at him with something almost akin to pity. “Not even the most terrible of our kind walked beyond those doors unscathed. There is a chance your brother is no longer himself.”
Rasmus was already ashen with fear and the lack of sunlight, but he managed to go paler, closing his eyes and biting back a sob.
“I’m so sorry,” he whispered. “I never mean for any of this to happen. I didn’t mean for it to go so far.”
Jesamin reached out, as though to touch him, but let her hand drop and glanced at me.
“Do you want to reseal them?” She sounded unsure, and I knew she was thinking of the orchard, and those from Lonmire who might still live.
Or the royal highbloods, who came back with something else wearing their skins.
Or perhaps she was thinking of that final map, with a single point inked in violet, warning that nothing but despair lay within.
She met my eyes, her gaze troubled.
I stared grimly at the Gates, the doors to Hell, that my ancestors had given their lives to close. So much blood had watered that witchwood. The cold iron still gleamed through the rust-colored flakes.
Damn Alvar. Damn his hate, and his pointless ambitions. Damn him for breaking the chains that had held for centuries, and for forcing me beyond this point.
If there was a chance his victims were still alive, I needed to find them.
“No. We go on.”