Aethersmith (Book 2) (33 page)

Juliana sighed. She took several books off the bookshelf,
and hid
The Warlock Prophecies
in the rear, placing the removed books
back in front of it. She stepped back and gave the shelf an appraising look.
She pulled a few more books off the shelf and replaced them as well, just so
that the one section was not the only one to have been disturbed.

She moved to the mirror to see whether she was fit for
public viewing. As she smoothed her hair into less of a tangle, she saw a
disheveled bed behind her in the reflection. It was a testament to the fact she
had not yet left her chambers that morning, for as soon as she left, servants
would sneak in and tidy everything up properly.

Iridan had returned the prior night, quite late. She had
been asleep but awakened when he entered the room. It was dark, so she just
remained motionless and listened, not even turning to the aether to see him
properly. She heard him change out of his travel-stained clothes, and realized
he was planning to stay. He had not even realized she was awake until he
climbed into bed next to her. He did not seem surprised, just shy. The only
thing he said was “I am sorry,” to which she had answered, “Me, too.” They had
curled together as they fell asleep, sharing each other’s warmth in an unspoken
agreement that they would both try to make things work between them, though it
was rather likely Iridan and she had different ideas of how that would play
out.

Since she was going to see the warlock, it was likely she
would be seeing either Iridan or Brannis—quite possibly both of them. She
wanted to look good in any event. Once she was satisfied she had done her best
toward that end, she swept out of the bedchamber, trailing the messenger in her
wake.

“Where are we meeting the warlock?” she asked, not bothering
to slow her pace or look back. The messenger was just an annoyance.

“The dungeons,” was the reply.

Juliana’s stride faltered but she kept on following the
messenger.

* * * * * * * *

“What are we doing down here?” Kyrus demanded.

He, Iridan, and Rashan were in the lowest level of the
palace dungeons, a desolate, deserted warren of stone passages, lined with
cells. It was lit with a dim, angry, red glow that Kyrus knew to be magical and
not the light of the demonic furnaces it tried to resemble. The world Brannis
knew looked so different to Kyrus’s eyes, with the added depth of seeing all
that was magical for what it truly was.

“We are waiting for one more,” Rashan replied, looking at
neither Kyrus nor Iridan as he stood with them.

“And then what?” Kyrus pressed. He was not liking his
surroundings and liked being kept in the figurative dark more than he disliked
the actual shadowy darkness he found himself standing in.

“I would like to say that you have learned a little patience,
but she is almost here,” Rashan commented dryly.

Iridan said nothing. He was not in a mood to be stepping
into an argument involving the warlock, even if Brannis was one of the few to
ever come out on the winning side against him.

The messenger departed with a bow as soon as Juliana had
gotten within sight of the warlock. Kyrus had studiously avoided paying her too
much attention as he lay in his supposed sickbed, but now he had no such
excuse. She looked like every dream Brannis ever had of her, with her
reddish-gold hair and bright, mischievous eyes shining green. He had to shake
himself mentally to stop from filling in the missing details that her clothing
hid.
She is Brannis’s, or Iridan’s now, I suppose. She is not for me. There
is a book in Rashan’s office that tells of the eligible sorcerers for marriage
and I was ruled out. I cannot be hers, could never be hers, will never be hers.
The thoughts rang hollow; he could not deceive himself. Those decisions had
been made when Brannis had shown no signs of talent—of magical talent at least.

“What is this all about?” Juliana demanded to know. She was
among the scant few to dare using that tone with the warlock. For whatever
reason, he allowed her continued transgressions to pass unchallenged.

 “Well, now that we are all here, I only have to explain
this game once,” Rashan began.

“Game?” Juliana asked. “What game?” She had saved Kyrus the
trouble of asking the same thing.

“I have before me the three best, unrealized talents that I
know of in the Empire. I am not saying the most talented, mind you, but rather
the ones whose ultimate potential I am least sure of. Today we are going to
take a step closer to finding out just what I have in the three of you,” Rashan
explained, sounding like a lecturing instructor from the Academy, which Kyrus
supposed he was, or at least once was.

“You don’t have me at all. I told you as much already, or
don’t you remember?” Juliana snapped.

“This is different. That was for my personal service, this
is for the Kadrin Empire, and there is no refusing such service, unless of
course you would prefer to live elsewhere,” Rashan informed her, darkly.

Kyrus (largely via Brannis) had never been able to quite
round up the way Rashan could put such a dreadful weight behind his words. He
was like an actor or an orator; when he wanted to convey an awful fate, he
needed no awful words by which to do it. All three of them understood
thoroughly that refusal was not an option.

“So what is the game?” Kyrus asked, trying to get them back
to the task at hand and away from veiled threats and apparently unsettled old
arguments.

“A simple one to explain,” Rashan told them, beginning a
slow walk down the cell-block corridor. “And a less simple one to succeed at. I
believe you all have the potential for success, though I suppose it is unlikely
any of you will achieve it. You will each go inside one of these cells.” Rashan
had led them down to where the doors were no longer made of iron, but of stone,
hinged with magic.

“Wait a moment, thove are the—” Iridan objected, or began
to.

“The warded cells. Yes. Step inside a moment and I will
explain the rest. One to a cell, mind you. I do not care who goes where. There
are five cells and three of you, so take your pick.”

Rashan handed a waterskin to each of them, and shooed them
in. Iridan went in sullenly, resigned to yet another hopeless task set before
him by his father—and after his morning had begun so well. Kyrus paused a
moment, and considered objecting, but his mind was already working at the
problem before it had even been explained. He stepped in warily but without
complaint.

“No way. I’ll take a failing mark right now, if you please,”
Juliana protested.

Kyrus had never seen her look so apprehensive—he had never
seen her at all actually; it had always been Brannis, but he had not seen such
a sight, either.

 “Oh, nonsense.” Rashan grabbed her by the arm, and marched
her inside. His grip was like stone. Kyrus knew he was a demon, but it always
seemed incongruous how strong he was, and it had caught him off guard again.
Scrawny as she was, Juliana looked like she ought to have been able to shrug
off the boyish warlock. She did not try to follow him back out, but Kyrus heard
her breath coming quickly even from his own cell.

“Now all you need do is get out after I have sealed the
doors,” Rashan said. “You all have given me some reason to think you might
manage it. Juliana, you have a strange way with drawing aether that may help
you deal with the runes’ own draw. Iridan, you are excellent with runes
yourself, and you have the most control among the three of you. Brannis … Well,
let us just say that I think you just lack the motivation to show your
capabilities. This ought to motivate you. Now if any of you manage to get out,
just come find me; I will not stand here waiting. If any cannot manage their
own exit, I will return in five days’ time.”

At that, three doors slammed shut and sealed, the runes that
kept sorcerers trapped springing to life.

* * * * * * * *

Five days? He cannot mean that,
Iridan thought.
This
is a test of patience. I can wait him out.
Iridan had heard about the
secure cells in the dungeons, though he had never worked on them personally. He
sat himself in the center of the cell, where he knew the pull of its draw to be
weakest, feeling it gnawing at the edges of his Source and trying to keep from
his mind that it felt like flies swarming about him, drinking his blood a
fraction of a drop at a time.

* * * * * * * *

You deceitful son of a whore!
Juliana had made a leap
for the door at the last moment when Rashan told them that it would be five
days before he came to release them. She beat a hasty retreat when the draw of
the walls began to claw at her Source. She had never felt anything so powerful
from so close. She had kept well back from Jadefire, but it was like what she
would have imagined a dragon’s draw to be like. Even the Staff of Gehlen had
not felt like it was trying to burrow into her Source to drink from it, the way
the cell's runes did.

Planting herself on the floor in the middle of the room, she
was able to reduce the effects on her Source enough that she could meditate. It
was something Soria had done rarely since leaving the Temple of the Sun.
Juliana had meditated in the Tezuan manner only a few times ever. Still,
calmness and ease of mind were things she badly needed to recover. Tezuan
techniques were all she could think of to manage that.

In the dark, wandering the avenues of her own mind, she lost
all sense of time. She hungered a little by the time she felt calm enough to
address her problem rationally, so she supposed it had been a few hours. She
vaguely recalled the ground shaking a bit once while she had been in her
meditative trance, but she could think of no daily event to match it with that
could help her mark the time. They were too far down for it to have been the
kitchen staff or the goings-on at court, and anything else she could think of
would have been farther still. She decided to worry about it once she was free.

Her aether-vision was acute, but the runes on the walls were
writ small, at least the most important ones. It was at least a three-tiered
rune structure, she could tell. Large runes had smaller runes carved within
their thick lines, and those in turn had runes carved within them as well. The
problem was that she could not get close enough to them to make out the details
of the smallest ones without hurting herself. She could fight back against the
cell’s draw, but only barely and not for very long. She could easily kill
herself trying, if she was not careful.

She pursed her lips, and carefully reached behind her,
drawing one of her new daggers. It was the heavy one, not the fast one; she
never remembered which name went with which. She held it out at arm’s length in
front of her, watching to see if the cell walls devoured the aether from it.
Nothing. She leaned forward, braving the milder effects of the cell’s draw to
dangle the blade farther yet into the dangerous area. Nothing.

Smiling in self-satisfaction, she looked in the area of the
door for a point in the runes that seemed vulnerable. Not finding any obvious
weaknesses, she picked a target arbitrarily, and loosed the dagger as hard as
she could. It cracked against the wall satisfyingly and ricocheted away.
Juliana crawled over and grabbed it before hurrying back to the center of the
cell again.

Once she had calmed herself again after the harrowing
scramble into the cell’s draw and back again, she examined the wall to see what
damage she had caused.
Well, there is a chip missing. A day or so and maybe
I can break a rune, if my aim is good and I can keep hitting the same spot.
Still, that is better than five.

She threw the dagger again.

* * * * * * * *

This is my fault. Had I just drawn as hard as I could
earlier, he would not have felt the need to test me—to test us—like this.
Brannis had heard Rashan’s tale about escaping from the very cells in which he
was now trapped, but Kyrus knew little else about them. The runes were
intricate, and covered nearly every surface in the cell. They had a bit of a
draw of their own, keeping the cell dry of stray aether.

Kyrus noticed initially that the cell seemed to be trying to
draw from his Source as well, but he could hold it back with a bit of effort.
With a chagrined chuckle, Kyrus could not help but liken the effort to ignoring
the need to urinate; it was a minor biological annoyance that could be set
aside with a bit of effort, and maintained without having to concentrate on it.

Unaware that his companions were having a rougher go of it
in their own cells, Kyrus stood close and examined the runes in great detail.
It was fascinating. He had studied the stone folk’s runes, which layered
themselves within folded metal, and found the runes-within-runes concept to be
a variant with similar intent. Unfortunately, without a year or three to study
them, he doubted he would puzzle their workings out from the inside.

The runes keep the door closed. My task is to get out.
Runes need aether.
Kyrus stretched, and shook out limbs that had grown
stiff as he had been largely stationary—for how long he could only guess—as he
lost himself in thought examining the cell’s workings.
Time to find out who
has the stronger draw, Wall, me or you.
While Kyrus had not worked out
everything about how the runes worked, he realized that for it to have its own
draw, it had to be an open structure; there were ways to pull the aether back
out.

Kyrus put his hands on the wall next to the door. Taking a
deep breath, he drew as hard as he could, as he probably should have when
facing Iridan in the courtyard. All the aether that his Source normally gave
off was sucked back in instantly, denying the cell its continued sustenance. As
Kyrus drew, the cell groaned in protest, a low, pained resonance as its
workings were abused, and aether dragged through it the wrong way as if ripping
prey free from a shark’s angled teeth.