Chapter 4
Cassandra peered down the ridge at the valley below. It looked much the same as it had before the explosion. Before he’d shown up. Her mouth twisted.
Arphaxad crouched beside her in the brush, and she did her best to ignore his presence.
The inviting glow of the enchanted orb fire at the mouth of the cave was gone, disintegrated by the explosion. Gray silt still hung suspended in the air, obscuring the cave entrance almost entirely from view. It was just as well. She found it incredibly hard to look at—as if something had shifted about the earth below, something vast and inexplicable and wrong.
People had emerged from their houses, gathering in packs and talking in harsh whispers as they stared in horror at the inky blackness of the cave mouth.
“Idiots!” one of the chanters growled as he ran toward the cave. His graying hair was long and tied in a tail at the nape of his neck. “We should never have agreed to this. They’re going to destroy us all!”
A few other chanters peeled off from their respective groups and followed him, their faces grim and drawn. Men were stumbling out of the cave now, their robes and tunics crumpled and streaked with dust. One of the men hung limply between two others as they dragged him into the open air, and Cassandra could see blood encrusted in his dark hair. Another man clutched at his arm, wincing with every step he took.
“It was Akil,” one of the men gasped. He was young, younger than Cassandra even, with curling dark hair and a slim build. “He—his chant slipped. He’s gone.” He leaned over and vomited.
“Damn novices,” one of the chanters muttered.
Horror washed over her in a nauseating wave. Arphaxad had said that the explosion had been caused by magic. Were the chanters teaching the Inetians? She had caught wind of their conversation earlier, but she hadn’t wanted to believe it. It couldn’t be. Surely the emperor, as ruthless as he was, wouldn’t condone something like this?
The white-haired chanter emerged from the cave a moment later, his mouth drawn in a grim line.
“Gustav!” the graying chanter snapped. “We told you this would happen, but you made the Archer-forsaken deal anyway!”
“I don’t have time for this, Victor,” the white-haired chanter—Gustav—said evenly. “We need everyone with the strength to create a circle in the cavern, now.”
Victor opened his mouth as if he were going to say something more, but the woman beside him laid a hand on his arm, and he snapped it shut.
“Now, Victor,” Gustav said, his voice taking on a tone of danger.
“We’re all going to pay for your folly,” Victor muttered. He pushed bodily past Gustav, his shoulder knocking against the shorter man’s, and was swallowed up by the silty haze.
Cassandra glanced over at Arphaxad. He was poised like a cat, worry gathering in his jaw. This whole situation had been unimaginable only a few hours ago. But now here she was, working with the man she had sworn to keep one step ahead of, trying to contain a threat that might bring about the end of both their kingdoms. If the Inetians wanted the chanters’ power for themselves—she shuddered.
The group of chanters was disappearing into the lingering smoke at the mouth of the cave now, but no one rushed forward to help the staggering men.
“Are they going in there to...fix whatever it was that happened?” Cassandra asked in a whisper.
“I don’t know,” Arphaxad breathed beside her.
“We’re going to have to go in there.” She took a step along the ridge, then froze as his fingers closed around her wrist.
“Wait,” he said. She tensed, ready to throw his grasp—and break his arm—if she had to. He let go and retreated a few steps.
“Wait,” he said again.
“For what?” she snapped. She wasn’t used to working with other people—let alone with him. And if he insisted on slowing her down, then this—whatever this was—wouldn’t last for very long.
“Let them get farther in. We don’t want to risk getting caught. The passageway looks narrow. If we run across anyone...it won’t go well for us.”
She sighed. “It might be better if I went in alone. I’m smaller than you are. There are more crevices in which I can hide.”
He sorted. “You’re insane if you think I’m going to let you go in there alone.”
Her mouth quirked. Of course he wouldn’t. Neither of them could risk losing sight of the other. Even with whatever strange sort of peace lay between them.
“Fine, then,” she said. “But don’t get left behind.”
They crept along the top of the ridge, careful to keep out of sight of the villagers below.
“So, you trust me now?” he whispered. His voice was low but still dripped with that maddening arrogance.
“Absolutely not,” she returned. “But you haven’t tried to kill me yet, so that’s something.”
Arphaxad snorted. “I’ve had plenty of chances to kill you before, Cass.”
She bit back the “ha” that rose in her throat. She’d had plenty of chances to kill him before too. But she hadn’t.
The group of chanters that had gathered at the opening had disappeared inside, and the haggard, wide-eyed men who had stumbled out had made their way to the other side of the enclave, as if they wanted to get as far away from whatever they had witnessed as possible.
“There,” Arphaxad said, his voice hardly above a whisper. She followed his finger to the boulder perched just outside the cave entrance. It was large and flat, wide enough to hide them both.
“I see it,” she said, as way of confirmation.
She followed him down the ridge, acutely aware of his presence ahead of her. He moved carefully, quietly, hardly making a sound in the stillness of the woods.
He reached the boulder before she did, and she dropped into the space beside him. The crushed, blackened shells of the enchanted orb fire lay scattered by the cave. Dust coated her tongue, sulfurous and cloying, and she pulled the edge of her cloak over her nose to help her breathe. The strange white glow that had hung over the valley after the explosion had faded. Cassandra shuddered. She had entered a lot of unsavory spaces in her time as shadow, but this . . . something about this seemed much, much worse.
Arphaxad slipped around the bolder and dropped into the cave entrance. She followed half a beat later.
It was dark inside, and the entrance narrowed as they moved swiftly along, the damp stone ceiling dropping until it was only a few inches above Arphaxad’s head. There wasn’t time to feel their way slowly. They needed to get in, find the information they were looking for, and get out.
The sense of wrongness intensified with every step, pressing against her temples until her head felt like it would crack apart. For a moment, it was hard to breathe, and she forced herself to take slow, steady breaths, just like Andre had taught her.
“I chose you for a reason,” her mentor had told her. “And not just because you are the queen’s sister. You have a level head on your shoulders and a fighter’s spirit. Those are things that can’t be taught.”
The orange glow of orb fire flickered like a pinprick in the distance, casting distorted shadows up against the rock. Something crinkled beneath Cassandra’s boot. She froze, then leaned down to pick it up. A letter, crumpled and boot-marked, with a blank wax seal. She shoved it into her belt.
A moment later, a dark alcove dredged into the rock to their left, and Cassandra caught sight of a flat makeshift writing desk. Paper had been blown every which way—probably from the explosion—and was likely why the letter had flown out into the hallway. She ducked to pick up a few more of the scattered pages. She jumped when she realized how far ahead Arphaxad was, then hurried after him. She had to pull up sharply when she almost slammed into his back.
“Shh,” he said.
Voices echoed from somewhere ahead—a mix of men and women—but it didn’t sound like the standard hum of chatter. The voices moved together in a grotesque, pounding rhythm, the words a mash of sounds, intoned, but moving together as one. A chant.
Cassandra swallowed. Andre may have spent years preparing her to take on the role of queen’s shadow, but she wasn’t sure even he could have prepared her for the wrongness of this.
Arphaxad signaled for them to begin moving again toward the glow and the rising sound of voices. They rounded the final corner and found themselves looking out into a cavern. The path dropped suddenly away, and a narrow wooden staircase tapered down the rock deeper into the massive cavern.
Toward the back, a group of chanters stood in a tight circle, their hands joined as they swayed together in the rhythm of their speech. She could see the pale, white-haired chanter among them, as well as the man who had expressed his disgust for the Inetians. Power crackled in the cavern, a force she couldn’t see but that she could feel pressing deep into her bones.
Horror swirled in the pit of her stomach. There, behind the swaying chanters, was something—a rift, a tear, a distortion, that hung grossly in the air. It was a jagged black gash that pulsed a few feet above the cave floor, a twisted, sucking, vile thing.
She had heard the stories of the monsters that lived in the realm of shadow, a domain of darkness beyond the physical world, one that could only be accessed by magic so powerful it tore apart the fabric of reality. There the shadows fed on the living, and if a rift were fully opened, they could break through with the power to destroy the world.
The rift pulsed, as if trying to tear itself open wider, expanding its reach. The chant rose and swelled, beating back at the crackling darkness.
Arphaxad had called it magic gone awry. Cassandra thought that had been a gross understatement.
Something moved in the cave to the left of the chanters. A thin line of light erupted in the darkness, then slowly widened until it was more than five feet across. Cassandra’s heart beat wildly as, a moment later, one man and then another, both dressed in the gray robes of chanters, appeared as if from nowhere. Cassandra could see the faded outline of the rocks of the cave behind the ripple of light. A moment later, the light drew back together and disappeared with a snap.
Around the cavern, more men appeared, and it was then that Cassandra noticed the doors—twelve in all—that pulsed between filamented forged-metal frames set into the rock, portals to elsewhere. They stood at equidistant intervals around the space, one sitting hardly fifty feet behind the garish rift, its metal frame already warped—but the door still flickered with life.
The rift crackled again at the increase in power as the new chanters joined the circle, and a wave of nausea at the strangeness of the magic rolled over her, hot and fast. They needed to get out of here, now.
She tugged on Arphaxad’s sleeve. He turned, and she could see that his face was as ashen as hers had to be. He gave her a quick nod, and they turned and fled the cave.
They burst out into a cool, radiant afternoon. Cassandra didn’t stop moving until they had darted past the boulder and clambered back up the ridge. She didn’t stop until her foot snagged on a root and she almost went down.
She caught herself, then whirled to face Arphaxad under the trees. The sun was no longer directly overhead, and the forest was flooded with a deep orange glow.
“What was that?” she said.
Arphaxad was breathing as heavily as she was, and his usually composed features were ashen. “It’s a rift. A tear in the fabric of the world. It’s what happens when magic gets out of control and . . . and consumes the user. Whoever that unlucky Akil was . . . it looks like he’s gone.”
“Inside that thing?” Cassandra said, trying her best to keep her voice even.
Arphaxad nodded, his face grim. “Trapped forever. A fate worse than death.”
Cassandra waved her arm in his direction. “How do you know all this?”
Arphaxad shook his head. “It’s my job to know what’s going on in Medira. The enclave has always been part of that.” He frowned. “Except this . . . this is very, very bad.”
“I can see that,” Cassandra snapped. “What about the other chanters? That white light. The—the metal frames around the room. It was like they appeared from nowhere.”
Arphaxad hesitated.
“We’re in this together now, Phax,” she said, her voice low. “I need to know. It looks like this isn’t just about just Medira and Rendra anymore.”
He glanced back toward the valley. “It’s their magic. That’s . . . how it works. They can open doors between two places and walk through, as if distance doesn’t exist.”
Cassandra stared at him, trying to comprehend what he had just said. So that was the dangerous earth magic the Sorothi chanters dabbled in. A power that could make whatever nation wielded it too strong for any other nation to match.
“But that’s . . . that’s impossible.”
“Obviously not,” he drawled, the arrogance back in his voice. “It’s dangerous though. Too dangerous, as you can see. If the chanters hadn’t been there to beat the rift back . . . well, it could consume this entire valley. And who knows if it would stop there.”
“So that’s why their magic is outlawed,” Cassandra whispered.
Arphaxad nodded. “Yes. But the Sorothi chanters believe it’s a magic worth pursuing on their own terms. And so far, none of them have gone out of their way to abuse it.”
“Until now,” Cassandra said.
“Until now,” he agreed.
They stood in silence for a moment, watching each other in the afternoon light. A light breeze picked up in the trees, rustling the leaves in an eerie hush. For the first time, Cassandra realized that there was no birdsong.
Arphaxad huffed out a breath. “I don’t understand why, though. Why would the Inetian emperor take this kind of risk? Ineti has everything it could ever need—power, wealth, ships, men, weapons, food. Why send soldiers to learn something that’s been outlawed for good reason?”
Cassandra shook her head. “I don’t know that these men are acting at the behest of the emperor.”
Arphaxad watched her for a moment. “Cass,” he said slowly, “you took something, didn’t you?”
Her mouth curved as she pulled the crumpled pages from beneath the band of her tunic. “What?” she said sweetly. “You mean this? It looked like a written in Inetian to me, so I . . . removed it.”
Arphaxad’s eyes glowed, and the corners of his mouth tipped up in an approving smile. “You really are delightful sometimes.”
She snorted, pushing down the sudden warmth that rose in her chest. She glanced down at the letter and carefully unfolded it. She froze. There at the bottom of the page was a name signed in black ink: Sethos Amanakar. One of the sons of the emperor of Ineti.