The Fifth Vertex (The Sigilord Chronicles) (10 page)

Murin reached into the water, his face strained. With a single, swift jerking motion he finished off the man Urus had so sloppily failed to kill.

War and battle were part of the Kestian way of life. Urus had never killed anyone and, unlike all other Kestians, he didn't want to start now, despite the lives of everyone in Kest being at risk.

"Some of them will have heard the splash," Murin signed in standard Kestian tradesign. "What happened to your oar?"

Urus blinked. In all the commotion he hadn't noticed it slip out of the iron ring and into the water. Surviving had been his only priority.

Murin handed Urus one of his oars. "Row, fast," he urged, signing to Goodwyn, who had managed not to lose either of his oars.

Goodwyn rowed, pushing on toward the far side of the cistern. Urus looked back at the shoreline near the dungeon, suddenly nauseous. He wasn't sure if it was the fight or the motion of the boat.
 

Attacking straw men with dull weapons was easy enough, but fighting a real man with a real weapon who probably had a real family was something Urus hadn't been ready for. Maybe that was why he'd deserved to be culled. All the instructors and students told him that he lacked the "killer instinct" and now he knew what they meant.
 

He was a liability in battle.

"How much farther?" he asked aloud, hoping he'd managed to keep his voice down to a whisper.

Goodwyn shrugged. "I'll know when we get there."

Murin chuckled. "I had forgotten how amusing it is to be in the presence of a quiver."

"Enough mystery," Urus said. "You're going to tell us what a quiver is."

Before Murin could answer, the cavern shook. Pieces of rock cracked away from the cave ceiling and crashed into the water. Jagged black lines spiderwebbed through the glowing yellow arches and aqueducts.

Urus watched in awe as twice more the cavern shook and waves formed in the water. He looked again at the far shore. Two four-man boats were pushing off from the dungeon entrance and were headed their way.

"What was that?" Goodwyn asked.

"Ballista. Kest is under siege," Murin said, eyeing the stalactites, their razor-sharp tips ready to plummet down and kill anything below them. "Keep rowing." He stabbed the water with his own oars.

Again the cavern shook. This time whole stalactites broke from the ceiling and dropped. One of the arches supporting the cavern ceiling twisted and snapped in two, taking half of the aqueduct with it, setting the water churning.

"None of the attacking armies have siege weapons that can do this kind of damage," Murin said, furiously rowing now. "The Loderans certainly did not bring catapults with them when they left the north. The Order is behind this."

They frantically paddled the boat to the far shore, no longer concerned with staying quiet. One of the boats following them had been destroyed during a tremor and the other was short a man and having trouble steering around the fallen debris.

"Up there, in that cave." Goodwyn pointed to a dark spot ahead, then leaped out of the boat as it slid ashore.
 

Urus squinted at the spot in the distance, but it just looked like a dark smudge on an even darker canvas of browns and blacks.

Murin swung his legs over the boat and stood up as if the water were just a puddle. Urus stumbled over the edge and dropped like a stone into the shallow water. Finally, on all fours, he managed to gain dry ground. He would much rather feel clumsy on land than flailing in the water.

Following Goodwyn's lead, the three made their way into the dark spot that did indeed turn out to be a cave, the only light the soft glow of the cistern sunstone filtering in from the cavern. Murin grabbed Urus's hand and pulled him further into the chamber. Urus lunged forward and tripped over something, hand scraping against stone as he fell. A cool blue light enveloped the chamber, seeming at once to come from everywhere and nowhere in particular.

"Where did the light come from?" Urus asked.

"You," Murin said, facing a slab of stone in the center of the room. Though only a hand thick, it ran from floor to ceiling. "Fascinating."

"What do you mean, it came from me?"
 

"You triggered the light. This chamber was originally built by the sigilords," said Murin.

"Once we get out of here, you're going to explain all of this stuff. You're not making any sense," Goodwyn told him.

Urus stood up to look at the slab, but his eye was immediately drawn to a shelf carved into the stone wall at the back of the chamber, a shelf filled with thick, leather-bound books.

"Books," Urus gasped and ran for the shelf, plucking the first book off like ripe fruit dangling from a low tree branch. He held it in his hands and turned it over, taking in that wonderful musky smell of old hide.

He tried to open the book but its cover wouldn't budge, held fast by a golden clasp. Chiseled into the clasp was a symbol, an expert carving of a circle, within it two hook-like shapes on top of a square. All the books had the same clasp with the same symbol.

"Open it," Goodwyn said.

"I can't, it's locked somehow," Urus replied. "I'll bet these are the family journals Uncle Aegaz said were down here. He said there might be clues about our magic in them."

"Your magic?"

"Boys, we are here for the vertex," Murin said, stepping between them and the bookshelf.

Still clutching the book, Urus stepped closer and examined the stone slab. It was covered from top to bottom in strange writing, carved with unbelievable precision deep into the stone and then colored with some kind of dark blue dye. For a stone as old as Murin said it was, the etched writing showed little sign of aging or erosion.

"Why do these Sanguine Crystal people want this door?" he asked.

"They want to destroy it and all the others. We cannot allow that to happen," Murin replied, running his fingers methodically along each row of writing, white eyebrows furrowed.

"There are more doors?" Urus asked.

"Five in all," Murin said, still inspecting the stone.

Goodwyn paced around the stone slab. "How can we keep them from destroying it? There are four armies attacking Kest. All they need is another of those tremors and this stone will crumble."

"Precisely," Murin said. His head jerked to face Goodwyn. "That is
exactly
what they are doing. If they bring this whole place down, they will not have to find the vertex; it will simply crumble when the chamber collapses."

"Vertex?" asked Goodwyn.

"Can we not be here when that happens?" asked Urus simultaneously.

"We need to move it." Murin leaned into the stone with his shoulder. "Help me see if we can slide it out of place."

Together they strained and pushed but the stone didn't budge. Eventually they stopped, worried they might crack or crumble it themselves while trying to force it out of position.

"I need a moment to consider this problem," Murin said, stroking his scraggle of a beard and circling the slab.

Urus took another look at the writing, then walked to the far side to study it. From there he could see past the stone slab, outside into the cistern, beyond the water to the faint orange glow of the dungeon entrance.
 

Uncle Aegaz was in that dungeon somewhere, and so was Kebetir.

The writing was every bit as beautiful as it was indecipherable. There were distinct units, probably symbols, but he didn't know if they stood for letters, sounds, or words. He hoped they didn't stand for sounds.

As he scanned the stone for patterns, he stopped at a symbol that looked oddly familiar. The lines carved into the stone were in the same position as the tradesign symbol for the word
open
, like two open hands touching, palms up, each with fingers outstretched, thumbs pointing in opposite directions.

He touched the symbol, and a blue arc surged from the symbol to his fingers.
 

Urus gasped aloud and stepped back.

"What is it?" Murin asked.

"My fingers," he said, pointing at the symbol. "They did that thing again."

"You must not touch anything else, do you understand? Especially not any of those symbols. The consequences could be dire."

Urus nodded. As he looked back at the symbol, again movement beyond the stone caught his eye. There, far away on the shore at the dungeon entrance, he made out the distant, but familiar shape of a man. It was Aegaz, running, splashing into the water, the Loderans in close pursuit. At the head of the group of Loderans, Kebetir charged into the water after him.

"Uncle!" Urus yelled, pointing. Murin and Goodwyn's gaze followed his finger to the shoreline. He watched helplessly as Kebetir leapt onto Aegaz's back, plunging something into his uncle's neck. They both went down in a splash, Kebetir on top.

"No!" Urus shouted, reaching forward, stumbling against the stone. A searing heat ran from the stone through his palm, all the way up to his shoulder. The
open
symbol flared bright. The brilliant blue blossomed, growing until it was the only thing he could see.

Suddenly the whole world was only blue light and heat and pain.

8

"Stay close and pay attention, Aerlissa," said Anderis, his hands clasped behind his back as they waited before the great iron door. Cailix had spent the better part of the morning following her new custodian from the surface through the caves below the mountain. She was hot, sweaty, and covered in soot, while Anderis seemed unaffected by the climate, his white garments pristine.
 

"My name is Cailix," she quipped. The only thing that infuriated her more than the uncomfortable journey was that insufferable alias.

"Cailix was the name given to you by insignificant fools who did not know your true potential. Aerlissa is a new name for a new person, a strong and powerful young woman."

"Yes, master," she replied in the way he liked. He was no different from the monks. All she had to do was figure out what motivated him and she could manipulate him.

Anderis gave her a skeptical glance. "Watch and learn, Aerlissa. People respect power, and when you have power, you are beholden to no one. With power, you do not have to rely on anyone for what you need; you simply take what you desire."

Cailix nodded. She had never considered what life might be like without relying on others. Before the monks she'd been in an orphanage, before that the ward of a minor noble whose territory extended only to the end of his farmland. She had few memories from the time before that. She knew nothing of the parents who had left her as a baby on the front steps of a church.

A cog in the center of the door spun. Then, with a great sigh and a belch of foul-smelling air, the door rolled to the side, slowly disappearing into a slot in the side of the cavern. From the size of the iron door, Cailix expected to see some giant or troll lurking behind, but instead there stood an odd-looking little man. He stood two hands shorter than she, wrapped head-to-toe in thick, soot-stained leather, a pair of tinted goggles strapped on top of a smooth black helmet.

"The assistant will take the blood witch to see the foreman now," said the little man in a voice deep enough to belong to someone twice his size.

"I've told you people to stop calling me that," Anderis said. Then he straightened his immaculate robe and continued, "Lead on. I am pressed for time."

The little man ushered them through the door and they descended further below the mountain, rounding countless spiral staircases and ladders.

"Have you ever seen a briene before?" asked Anderis as their diminutive guide knocked and waited for another door to open.

"If that strange little man is a briene, then no, I haven't."

"Don't let their size fool you. They are as strong as two upworlders, but their real power is building. We are about to enter the foundry. Pay close attention to what you see in there. The briene are clever beyond words and, with a little guidance and prodding from us, build machines most of the world has never seen before."

As if on cue the foundry door opened out at the top of a chamber so vast and tall that Cailix almost forgot she was underground. Lit by the red glow of molten metal, there seemed to be no need for lanterns. Stairwells and scaffolds interwove in a tangled web of steel and iron, briene filling every nook and cranny of the place. Huge cauldrons hung from chains near the ceiling of the foundry, their bottoms aglow with the heat of the molten ore within.
 

Machines spread out across the floor, contraptions of all sizes and shapes, some like metal chariots and giant dragonflies, others with shapes that gave no clue as to their purpose.

"This way," their guide shouted over the cacophony of hammer banging and ringing steel. He hopped into an iron bucket strung from a massive cable that ran the length of the foundry's ceiling. Anderis followed and lifted Cailix in after. Wasting no time, the little briene stood on tiptoes to grab the top of a giant lever and pulled it.

The bucket creaked into motion, rolling below the cable as it soared above the foundry. After passing over the cauldrons filled with molten ore, they drifted above an area where flashing blue-white lights arced between enormous steel tubes on opposite sides of a catwalk. A pungent odor like burning sand permeated the air.