Darkness Splintered

“The end is nigh,” Azriel said, after a few more minutes.

“I hope you’re talking about the tunnel and not anything else,” I muttered, and yelped as a particularly nasty stone caught my left breast. I rose on my tiptoes, squeezing past it without damaging my other breast, then sighed in relief as the tunnel immediately widened.

We finally came out into a cavern that had been hacked out of the stone and earth by something other than nature itself. The floor was mainly stone, and in the middle of it stood two massive stones. They were more than eight feet tall and a good four feet in diameter at their base, but rising to an almost needlelike point at the top. Unlike the stones we’d discovered in the other tunnel, which were mostly gray, these two glowed as brightly as a harvest moon. The flames of the two swords sparked the quartz within the stones to life, and sent rainbow-colored flurries across the earthen walls. These stones, like the others, were etched with symbols and markings. It was a form of cuneiform, and an ancient and powerful language that people from a long dead civilization had once used to call the Aedh to Earth.

My gaze swept the cavern’s floor. Surprisingly, these stones weren’t guarded. Not by a protection circle, at any rate.

“Perhaps not,” Azriel said, “but there is some form of magic active here.”

He took a cautious step forward. Energy trembled across my skin, its touch light and yet oddly distasteful. “Azriel —”

“I know.” He raised a hand. Sullen orange sparks danced across his outstretched fingertips as he moved to the left, feeling out the barrier’s dimensions. Predictably, it ringed the two stones completely. “I cannot feel any sort of break in it.”

I crossed my arms. “Unsurprising given neither of us knows much about magic. Do you think she’s already been here?”

He stopped beside me. “No. There is no lingering resonance in the air, and there surely would have been had these stones – positioned as they are on a major ley-line intersection – been used.”

I frowned. “So where the hell is she? I mean, she has to know we’re onto her now. You’d think her first port of call would be these stones and the gray fields. Surely she’d want that gate opened before we could stop her.”

“That is presuming, of course, she has created only one gate.”

I glanced at him sharply. “What makes you think she’d have more than one gateway?”

“Because, in many respects, it would make sense to do so.” He cupped my elbow and tugged me over to the far wall, away from the tunnel’s entrance and out of the immediate sight of anyone who might enter. Not that, I suspected, he actually expected anyone to enter.

“Why? I mean, creating gates that size” – I waved a hand toward the two stones – “has to take a lot of power, even if it is standing in the middle of a ley-line intersection.”

“Yes, but does it not seem odd to you that we found this building very easily? It’s not as if a great deal was done to conceal its presence.”

I frowned. “Well, it wasn’t exactly easy. I mean, the paper trail alone was hell —”

“Yes, but if she really wanted to hide it, she could have done so magically. Also, neither Ilianna nor the witches could find any great energy output coming from this area.”

I sat on my haunches and leaned back against the wall, even though my feet itched with the need to move, to do something other than just sit here. “Which was explained by some sort of spell restraining any visible output.”

“Perhaps.” He half shrugged, but his expression suggested he wasn’t buying it. “It also occurs to me that the Aedh” – he paused, his expression suggesting even the mere thought of Lucian was distasteful – “was never one to leave anything to chance. His actions in trying to impregnate you, Ilianna, and indeed the sorceress herself were indication enough of that. He would not be foolish enough to rely on only one entrance to the fields.”

Especially when he’d had centuries to plot every little detail of his revenge on both the Raziq and my father. “Yeah, but I thought gateways were straight-line things. You know, point A to point B with no offshoots or detours. And there’s only one gate here.”

“Yes, but a ley-line intersection holds enough power to create more than one gateway into the gray fields, so why would they not do so? The Aedh undoubtedly knew enough about magic to siphon the intersection’s energy down lesser lines. I cannot believe he would not have done so, especially given he knew – at least from the moment he became involved with you – that both your father and the Raziq were well aware of his presence.”

“And doing fucking nothing about it,” I muttered.

“They did not see him as a threat. In their eyes, he was lesser than he was, and therefore unimportant.”

And that lack of foresight had cost them – and us – the first key and might yet cost us the second.

Although to be fair, Azriel, at least, had seen Lucian’s true colors from the very beginning.

“If there’s more than one gateway, surely the Raziq would be watching both,” I said. “They want to stop this bitch – or bastard, depending on which form she’s wearing – as much as we do.”

“But what if the sorceress’s gray fields gateway is in the one place no one would ever think to look?”

“But there’s nowhere —” I paused, suddenly realizing what he was implying. “Surely even Lucian wouldn’t be that devious.”

“Why not? Are not the quarters he shared with your father as his chrani the perfect position for such a gateway? Your father cannot enter the temples without alerting the Raziq to his presence, and the Raziq cannot enter your father’s rooms. Nor would they even think to look there, given they do not think the Aedh a threat.”

“I wonder if that’s the reason he left the coordinates of that warehouse. It wasn’t so much the coordinates here on Earth that mattered, but the positioning on the fields.”

“It is possible, although that would mean there is a gateway somewhere in that warehouse.”

I jumped up. “We’d better go investigate —”

He caught my hand. “It would be useless to do so because we have not the means to get in or out of your father’s rooms.”

I frowned. “But if we find the gateway, it will take us into them.”

“Yes, but the private residences of the Aedh within the temple areas are all shielded. You cannot get in or out without the correct means of doing so.”

“Fuck it, why can’t something be simple in this damn quest?”

“Because that is not the way of your world or mine.” His voice held a slightly bitter edge. “However, your father said he was creating a means by which you could freely access his rooms. Perhaps you should check if anything has been left at your home while we were away.”

“That means going back through the damn tunnel. And risking the sorcerer coming here when we’re gone.”

“That is a risk, yes.”

Great. Damned if we did, and damned if we didn’t. I bit my lip, then half shrugged. “I guess we just have to take the chance.”

“We are right in this, Risa. I’m sure of it.”

I wasn’t, especially given lady luck hadn’t been all that generous to us to date. Still, what else could we do? It was either stay here – and risk losing her – or chase down our theory and hope like hell we were right. And at least with the latter, we were actually doing something.

Even if it ultimately proved to be the wrong something.

We made our way back through the tunnel. Progress was slow, and the delay ate at my nerves. The longer we were stuck here, the more chance there was of the bitch escaping us.

Although if Azriel’s theory was right, there was a good chance she already had. Our only hope lay in the fact that she hadn’t yet figured out which of the four items she’d stashed in her case was the key in disguise.

We finally reached the pit. I stood near the outer ring of stakes and glared up at the floor high above