Angst (Book 4) (11 page)

King Tyr shook his head.
The magic may be forgotten, but
it isn’t lost
, he thought as he walked up to his largest closet and stepped
inside. He pushed the neatly arranged royal garments aside—half to the right the
other half to the left—and after ensuring they were evenly spaced, moved to the
far left of the back wall, which looked like it was made from solid granite
slabs. He pushed the stone in the lower left corner inward with his left toe,
and when it clicked into place, he walked over to the right edge of the wall
and did the same thing with his right toe. Then he moved to the center
block—the seventeenth stone from the left or right, five rows from both the
bottom and top—and used both hands to simultaneously push the blocks to either
side of it inward. When they clicked into place, he pushed on the blocks above
and below it until they clicked. Then he gripped the edges of the stone and
turned it a half turn to the right and backed quickly out of the closet. Three
seconds passed, and then the stones moved back to their original positions and
the wall slid down into the floor. Behind it, stacked neatly on shelves
according to their sizes and color, were row upon row of ancient texts
confiscated during The Taming. Somewhere in them was the conjuration spell that
would bring Sardach back. The index would tell him where it was, but who could
he trust to cast it? More to the point, was there anyone who would be able to
cast it at all? It was old knowledge, and the Wizards’ Schools had been
forbidden to teach that kind of magic after the incident that nearly destroyed
Wayfair. The laws decreed after The Taming ensured that, and only a renegade
mage might have the skills necessary to do it. Was there one he could trust?

The king frowned. He knew of only one renegade mage powerful
enough to risk such a conjuration, and that was Voltari. He couldn’t—he
wouldn’t
trust him. But Voltari had an apprentice. “Angus,” King Tyr muttered as he
stepped forward and reached for the index.

23

Embril’s shoulders ached from the tension that had been
building as they rode up the narrow road. It seemed like it had been chiseled
from the mountainside: the road was barely ten feet wide, and on either side of
it a sheer cliff stretched upward for hundreds of feet. Had some long-dead
wizard pulled the mountain apart so the road could be made? Giorge had said it
was a natural formation, but she couldn’t shake the feeling that the mountain
could squeeze back together at any moment. She knew it couldn’t, but…

Giorge slowed the horse to an easy walk as they neared the
summit. The road continued over it and dropped into the valley beyond, and he
turned in the saddle to look at her. “The temple ruins are in a valley just
over that rise,” he whispered. “If anything has claimed them, they will have
sentries posted there,” he pointed at the top of the rise—an ideal place for an
ambush—and added, “It is an easy place to defend. There’s an echo, which means
they probably already know we’re here.”

Embril nodded; she was already on edge, and if something was
waiting for them she was ready for it. As they edged forward, she brought the
magic into sharp focus and tried to push aside the glare surrounding Giorge.
The magic encasing him was a strange one, and its energy permeated through the
magic within him, blended with it in a way she had never seen before. Could a
curse do that? She wasn’t sure. Most of the knowledge about curses had been
lost after The Taming because the kings had confiscated and burned the books
and scrolls that contained anything related to them. If it was a curse, it was
old magic, and his aura suggested something of that sort. The spell—curse?—was
a complex, variegated pattern that contained every form of magic she knew, but
it wasn’t connected to the magic around them. It was as if a pocket of magical
energy had been separated from the nexus array, and that meant it predated that
array. The aura was quite distracting—almost captivating—and before she
realized it, they were at the summit.

She needed a better look at the magic if she were to be of
any use to them, so she leaned forward and whispered, “Wait here for a moment.”
Once he had stopped the horse, she slid out of the saddle and down to the
ground. She took several cautious steps forward, just far enough to escape the
glare from the magic surrounding Giorge, and turned her attention to the
landscape beneath her. The valley was nestled in among three mountains, and in
its center, enveloped by a matted-down field of grain, were the ruins of the
Angst temple. The wall facing them had collapsed, and there was no smoke or
other sign of habitation coming from it. There was a rich array of flame magic
visible even at this distance, but it didn’t look much different than the flame
magic near the nexus point under Hellsbreath. It was close, and it was
powerful, but it was also still under control.
Darby hasn’t found it yet,
she thought, turning back to Giorge and the horse. She took a step toward them
and stopped. At a distance, the magic wrapped around Giorge looked almost like
an apparition superimposed over his body. But if it was an apparition, it
looked almost exactly like Giorge.

While she stared, Giorge nudged the horse up to her and
reached down to help her back into the saddle. “What is it?” he asked, his
boyish face wrinkled with concern.

She shook her head and climbed back into the saddle. “It can
wait,” she said. “We have to stop Darby. He hasn’t found the nexus yet.”

Giorge hesitated a moment, then shrugged and urged the horse
to a gallop again. He kept up the pace until they reached the ruins. Darby’s
horse was milling around, nibbling on the grain outside the ruins, and when it
saw them, it whinnied and hurried to join them. It nickered excitedly as it
bumped up against their horse, and Embril held out her palm for the young mare
to nuzzle.

“We’ll have to leave the horse here,” Giorge said as she
rubbed the newcomer’s muzzle. “When we were here last fall, we couldn’t find an
easy path for the horses to get inside. There was too much loose rubble in the
way.”

They dismounted, but when Giorge reached up to remove the
saddle, Embril held out her hand to stop him. “We have to get to the nexus
before Darby does,” she said. “If we don’t, we may need to leave in a hurry.”

Giorge nodded. “This way,” he said, jogging over to where
they could climb over the rubble of the outer wall and into the temple grounds
beyond. At the top of the pile of settled stones, he pointed down at a
soot-ringed crater and said, “Angus did that. He didn’t tell us how, and we
didn’t think it wise to ask. It burned him pretty bad, though. If it weren’t
for the healing balm he had with him…” Giorge shook his head.

Embril nodded. Angus had told her to be careful with her
spells when she cast them near the nexus. He had said they would be more
powerful, but when she had asked him for details he crimped his lips together,
shook his head, and repeated, “Just be careful.” A trail of hardened slag led
from the crater and into the remnants of the temple, and Giorge hurried to follow
it. They were footprints.

The front wall of the temple had partially collapsed,
exposing a large room with a big hole burned through its ceiling. They were
still a few steps away from the room, when Giorge paused. He turned to her, and
a wry smile fell into place as he said, “I hope you aren’t squeamish. If you
are, keep your eyes on my back.” Then he darted through into the room and came
to a stop so suddenly that Embril nearly knocked him over. “That wasn’t here
before,” he said, pointing at a crumpled heap near the far wall.

Embril clenched her teeth as she saw the remnants of a
wizard, his broken bones sticking out through the rotting flesh and frayed
robe. She looked away quickly and saw two candles still standing upright in the
center of the charred floor.
A diviner,
she thought, wondering why he
had come here.
Be careful casting spells
….

Giorge hurried over to a bag leaning against the wall and
picked it up. He began rummaging through it, and Embril turned her attention to
the room. Someone—
Angus?
—very hot had been in this room, and he had
incinerated a number of fishmen. For some reason, he had also burned a hole
through the ceiling. The power involved…

Giorge finished searching the pack and joined her.

“We need to hurry,” she said, pointing at fresh footprints
in the dust and debris on the floor. “Darby’s been through here.”

Giorge nodded and reached down to pick up the two candles.
He used his flint and steel to light one of them. “This way,” he said as he led
her through an open doorway, down a corridor, and to a small room. He pointed
at an open trap door in the far corner and whispered, “We closed it when we
left. Either Darby found it, or that dead wizard left it open.” He handed her
the candle and moved up to the small opening, dropped silently to his belly,
and stuck his head into it. He brought it back out again almost immediately and
asked in a soft voice, “Do you know the Lamplight spell Angus uses? It’s sort
of like a little sun that he attaches to things.”

Embril nodded. “Yes,” she said, quickly casting it. The
strand of flame magic was more potent than any she had ever used, and the glow
of the Lamplight was brighter and hotter than the spell normally was.
How
powerful can the flame-base spells be in here?
she wondered, thinking about
the charred room they had passed through.
The Angst worshipped a fire god,
didn’t they?

“Good,” Giorge said. “Attach it to my shoulder and follow
after me. It’s a narrow tunnel that runs from this room to another trapdoor in
the room at the other end of the corridor. Halfway between them is a trapdoor
in the floor of the tunnel. We need to go down that one. There’s a big
octagonal room down there with a long spiral stairwell that we have to follow.
The stairwell is a trap; it collapses when someone reaches the bottom unless
they can see what Angus saw and do what Angus did. He said he saw some kind of
red shadow and pressed a part of it, but the rest of us couldn’t see anything.”

“All right,” Embril said. “Let’s go.”

“Wait,” Giorge said. “Did you notice all the footprints in
the dust on the floor of the corridor?”

Embril shrugged. “Not really,” she admitted. “Are they
important?”

“Well, most of them were ours from last fall,” Giorge
replied. “But the rest had to be Darby’s. It must have taken him awhile to
figure out how to open the trapdoor.”

“Good,” Embril said, brightening a bit. “He may not be able
to read the scroll!” If Darby’s knowledge of ancient dwarf was weak, he might
overlook the nuances of the language that Angus had used. Without an
understanding of them, he only had the thread in the scarf to go by, and that
meant— “We need to hurry,” she said. “He may not know where to go!”

Giorge shrugged and dropped down into the trapdoor. A moment
later, all but the Lamplight’s glow had disappeared, and Embril picked up the
candle and hurried to follow him. When she caught up to him, he had his head
and shoulders dangling through the next trapdoor, and when he retracted them,
he shook his head and said, “Darby left a rope dangling for us to use to lower
ourselves. I’ll go down first to see if it’s safe.” He paused and reached for
the candle and set it aside. “Take the Lamplight back. I don’t want it attached
to me if he’s waiting for us down there. I’ll call for the candle if I need
it.”

Embril nodded, reached for the little globe of flame magic,
and attached it behind her left shoulder. As soon as it was in place, Giorge
twisted around and lowered his feet over the lip of the trapdoor, got a firm
grip on the rope, and slid rapidly down to the floor below. She waited until he
came back before she dropped the candle down to him and climbed shakily down
the rope.

Giorge led her to the stairwell and hesitated. He looked at
her with a sly, hopeful grin, and asked, “I don’t suppose you can fly?”

“Why?” she asked.

He shrugged. “It will be faster than climbing down and might
not trigger the trap.”

Embril nodded, brought the magic into focus and squinted
involuntarily. The flame strands were brighter than they should be, and it took
several seconds to isolate out a strand of air magic to use for the spell. When
she finished weaving the spell, she moved in front of Giorge and bent down.
“Hop on,” she said. “Try not to strangle me.”

When Giorge hesitated she turned around. Before she could
ask what was wrong, he pointed at the Lamplight hovering over her left
shoulder. She nodded, reached for it, and attached it to his shoulder before
turning back around.

This time, he clambered onto her back wrapped his legs and
arms around her, and she dropped into the pit. She steered herself to the
center of the shaft and let them fall until she saw the bottom approaching. Then
she reached out to slow them until they were hovering a few feet above the
floor. As she eased down to the floor, Giorge let go and landed cat-like on it.

“Don’t release the spell,” He said as she landed beside him.
“We will need it if you can’t see what Angus saw and can’t open the door.” He
oriented himself and moved up to the wall. “I think the Angst symbol was about
here,” he said, gesturing at the wall just above his head. “He said it was like
a red shadow.”

Embril focused on the magic, but she saw no symbol; nor was
there any residual magic indicating a spell had been there. It was just a wall
permeated by flame magic. “I don’t see it,” she said. “There’s nothing but the
wall.”

“Maybe I’m wrong about its location,” Giorge offered,
looking around. “It will be about this high,” he said, holding his hand a few
inches above his short-cropped black hair. “I’m pretty sure he said it was red.”

Embril quickly scanned the circumference of the wall and
returned to where Giorge waited. “I don’t see anything,” she said. Could the
magic have been a temporary spell? One that only worked once? Or was it a
different kind of magic altogether? The Angst had disappeared during the Dwarf
Wars, and they had been a secretive sect to begin with, so maybe they had
discovered something that—

No. Angus had seen it. She should be able to see it, too. If
she couldn’t see it, maybe Darby hadn’t been able to see it either? A slight
burst of hope filled her, but it quickly disappeared. Darby’s trail had led
into the tunnel, but it hadn’t left. He was still down here somewhere. That
meant he had found a way to get through the door, and that meant the Angst
symbol had been there and he had seen it.

“If Angus saw something,” she said, “it wasn’t the magic I
know.”

Giorge frowned and then looked at her for a long moment.
“Could it be a different form of magic?”

Embril shrugged. There was old magic that had been lost
during The Taming—like the magic surrounding Giorge—and it could be something
like that. There could also be other magic that she didn’t know anything about.
“Possibly,” she admitted.

His frown deepened as he muttered, “Like the curse? Angus
said the magic of the curse was different.”

Curse?
she thought. It was the second time that he
had mentioned a curse, but now—

The sound of collapsing stairs echoed down from above them,
and the floor began its slow slide into the wall.

“Look,” Giorge said. “If you can’t find the symbol, we’ll
have to find another way inside. Do you have anything like Angus’s wand? It
blew a hole through Hellsbreath’s wall, and if we can make a hole in this wall,
it will bypass the trap.”

Embril frowned and bit her lip. If they didn’t find the way
inside, they would never be able to keep Darby from getting The Tiger’s Eye. If
he was inside—and there was every indication of that—then he had seen the Angst
symbol. That meant she should be able to see it as well. How would he have done
it? What spell could he have used to make it appear? What spells did he have
that she didn’t? He was a Truthseer. He could see past lies—and he could also
cast spells to obscure the truth.