Cythera shook her head. “No, your majesty. I mean we must leave the Vincularium altogether.”
Aethil’s brow furrowed. She didn’t seem to understand. “But we can’t do that. This is where we live.”
“It will be your tomb,” Malden told the queen, “if you like.”
“I must consult with the Hieromagus,” Aethil said. “Surely this cataclysm was enough to bring him back to the present.” She stood up on her tiptoes and looked around the hall. “Where is he?”
Malden searched the crowd of milling elves for the priest-wizard but could find him nowhere. “Aethil,” he said, “he’s gone.”
“Impossible. He wouldn’t desert us at a time like this.”
Malden might have argued with her further, but just then the floor of the hall split open. Cracks ran crazily between the flagstones, and an elf fell into the gap between two stones. His screams filled the air for a moment, then ended abruptly.
Cythera exhaled in frustration and grabbed the elf queen’s forearm. She twisted it, hard. When Aethil turned to face her with a look of rage, Cythera said, “You can save your people. Right now. Or you can wait for his approval. Are you a queen, or not? Do you lead the elves?”
“I-” Aethil stopped in mid-thought. “There was a time when my forebears, the ancient queens of the elves, had that power, but-”
Slag stepped forward and took her hand gently. “My love,” he said, and swallowed thickly. “It’s time to restore your authority. Before we all get fucking crushed to death.”
Aethil’s face slackened for a moment, and Malden was sure she would lose her composure and start screaming. Well enough, he thought. At least he could count on Cythera and Slag to act rationally. And he had done his best to convince the elf queen. If the elves perished now, it was their own fault.
Yet something strange happened then. Aethil straightened up and seemed to grow an inch or more in height. Her eyes snapped into sharp focus and she reached up to straighten her gown.
Then she walked out into the middle of the chaos and started shouting for everyone to listen to her.
And they did.
“Friends. Subjects. Fellow nobles-the Hieromagus is nowhere to be found. So we must proceed without his counsel. You must come with me.”
The elves all turned to watch their queen with a kind of reverence and respect Malden had never seen in human faces. The poor folk stood up straight and rushed toward Aethil. The nobles stopped shouting at one another and gathered their families together.
“We will be leaving this place that has always been our home. Any other place has been forbidden us, for a very long time. Now,” Aethil said, as the hall shook all around her, “we have been given a sign. The ancestors have given their blessing. Together we will return to the world above, and there we will rebuild our former glory.”
There was more to the speech, but Malden bent to confer with Cythera and Slag. “The best way out is probably the escape shaft on the other side,” he said.
“Forget it, lad,” Slag told him. “There’s no way we’ll make it over there before this place collapses.” He sighed deeply. “Such a waste.”
“Surely we can’t reach the main entrance on the top level either,” Cythera said. “No. We must exit by Aethil’s secret grotto.”
“But that’s blocked by the growths of crystal,” Malden pointed out.
“With enough hands, we might clear a way,” Cythera pointed out. “The crystal is delicate. We can smash through.”
“Doubtful,” Slag told them.
“Perhaps,” Cythera went on. “But I’d rather die in the attempt than die here because we wouldn’t try it.”
“That, lass,” Slag admitted, “is an excellent fucking point.”
“Good, we’re agreed,” Cythera said. “Now let’s find Croy and go!”
Chapter Ninety-nine
“ roy! No!” someone shouted.
Someone who sounded like… Cythera.
After escaping from the cart, Croy was beset by warriors on every side. It had been all he could do to fend them off. And then half the ceiling had fallen, and was suddenly free of his attackers. Either they’d been crushed by falling debris or had run off in terror. He’d been deeply confused for a moment-and then rocks fell on him, and a small mountain of dust, and he lost consciousness again.
Now hands were reaching for him, dragging the rocks away from his sore and bruised body. He tried to fight the hands away at first, thinking the elves had come back for him, but eventually he realized he was being rescued.
By then he had overcome most of the influence of Prestwicke’s drugged dart and could think again. He at least knew where he was. He saw Cythera and embraced her passionately, though she seemed strangely impatient to escape his arms.
“I thought you were dead,” he told her. There were tears in his eyes.
“I always believed you were still alive,” she told him. “Croy, please, there’s no time-we need to talk, but only once we’re out of here. Morget did something-he started some kind of avalanche or… I don’t know what, exactly. But Slag insists the entire Vincularium is about to come down on top of us.”
“He used the dwarven weapon,” Croy said. Cythera didn’t seem to understand. “I’ll explain later. Slag is right-I know that much. We need to leave, now.” He looked around and saw the entire nation of elves screaming in terror and running for the exits. “But how will we fight our way through all these soldiers?” he asked. He reached down to touch the hilt of Ghostcutter. Even panicked and in wild disarray, there were far too many of them for comfort.
“We don’t,” Malden told him. “Right now we’re all on the same side.”
Croy frowned. “But… they’re elves. They’re evil. They consort with demons.”
Cythera sighed deeply. “Croy-the ceiling is about to fall in.”
“Let me try,” Malden said. He grasped the knight’s shoulders and looked right into his eyes. “Those weren’t demons. Those things you fought were ghosts. Ghosts of the elves, of their ancestors.”
“Oh?” Croy said. He didn’t understand what that meant, but he didn’t doubt Malden was telling the truth. “But the things I did… I thought they had killed Cythera. And you and Slag. It’s why I did what I did. Normally I would never have-”
“I understand,” Malden said, “but right now you need to grasp this. Everything you thought was wrong. The elves are decent folk, and they’re going to die.”
He stopped talking then as a series of explosions like very close thunder tore across the roof of the hall. Beyond the gallery, the central shaft was a cascade of falling rock and dust, so Croy could no longer see the far side. He turned and looked back at the thief, raising one eyebrow in question.
Malden sighed and closed his eyes. Croy wished he understood what was going on. “We have a couple hundred good, innocent people here who are about to die,” the thief said, “and if they do, it’ll be a tragedy of historical proportions, and-”
“Innocents? In peril?” Croy asked, his heart singing. That was all he needed to know. “Let’s go! We must save them!”
He charged forward, in the direction the elves were already headed. Then he stopped at the cart and gathered Balint into his arms. She didn’t look like she could walk.
“ She betrayed you,” Malden pointed out. “And she tried to kill Slag. Not to mention me. Several times.”
“She’s a dwarf,” Croy said, wondering why Malden didn’t understand. The law required one to protect dwarves. That was enough for the knight.
The great surge of elfinkind headed up a long ramp and into a region of tunnels that were far too irregular and rough-walled to have been made by dwarves. Croy expected the crowd to back up and stall in the narrow tunnels, but someone seemed to be leading the elves from the front and doing a very good job of it. They passed
