“Professor is a rank bestowed—”
“Say it!”
“I’m going to pass this exam, Professor Rynax.” Delmin looked over to the door. “Things are heating up. All right, now or never.”
Asti pulled out two knives. “You still got that knife I gave you, right?”
“Yes, but—”
“Just keep it in your hand. Let’s hope it doesn’t come to that. No matter what, you get up there. And you run.”
Asti creeped the door open, and slipped into the machine chamber. Mouse quiet. He’d done a dozen sneaks harder than this. They were going to make it.
A steam piston extended on the machine, and the rings around the cages started spinning.
Delmin winced and stumbled. Asti grabbed him before he fell. Then he saw something new with the machine.
The machine was occupied. There was a metal platform in the center, where two people were shackled together: a man and woman. The man was wiry, hairy, with spectacles; the woman, Asti had seen before. The reporter he and Verci had met a few months back.
And the cages each held a child.
Asti swore under his breath.
“Change of plans,” he told Delmin.
“What are you going to do?” Delmin asked.
“Something stupid,” Asti said.
“Wait,” Delmin said. “The numina is building up. Maybe I can do something about that. So, my stupid plan, then your stupid plan.” He set his jaw.
“What’s your stupid plan?”
“Make a ruckus even the Thorn will hear.”
Suddenly a green glow surrounded him and the machine, and the glow around the machine grew sickly as his became brighter.
“What is happening?” someone on the other side of the machine shouted.
Asti dove toward the machine, going for the cages. The rings were spinning too fast, he’d be torn to pieces if he tried to get close. He had to figure out how to stop them. That meant the machine controls, and the dozen hairy grotesques between him and them.
So be it.
Delmin held his hands out and yanked them in close to his body, and as soon as he did the entire room shook and echoed with thunder. And with a terrible pop, Delmin vanished from sight.
“Kid!” Asti shouted. He was skunked now, that was certain. As the creatures started to lumber over, he ran over to where Delmin had been.
“Look out!” a tiny voice said at his feet. He looked to the ground, and there was Delmin, the size of a mouse.
“What—” was all Asti had a chance to say before one of the monsters was on him. Its horrible hands, swollen and shrunken at the same time, grabbed onto him, as its half-mouth roared. Asti drove both blades into its throat.
Fortunately, this one did not have skin that Asti couldn’t stab through.
“Help!” Delmin’s tiny voice called.
Asti pulled his knives out of the dying beast’s neck, and threw one knife at the next monster. But they were coming too fast. Asti dove in a roll to get out of the way of one of them, scooping up tiny Delmin in the process. “I got a crazy idea, kid.”
“What’s that?”
Asti focused on dodging out of the way of the creatures so he could get to a place where he could see the tunnel they came in. He just needed to hold out a few seconds, and then he could tear his way through these bastards. Or die trying.
He placed tiny Delmin on the hilt of his knife. “No matter what, get out, get help. You hear? Hold on.”
“Hold on what?” Delmin shouted. Then he seemed to get the idea, and wrapped his arms and legs around the grip.
Asti flipped the blade once in his hand, and then threw the knife as straight and true as he could at the tunnel opening, twenty feet above him. He heard it land and skitter inside the tunnel.
Then a fist smashed his head. He went flat down to the ground. That massive hand picked him up by the skull and lifted him off the ground.
“Asti.” The delusion of Liora Rand was in front of him again. “Asti, you have to survive.”
“What is this interloper?” he heard someone else say. Asti was carried by his head around the machine—he saw it was stopped again, so that was something—to a thin and dark-eyed fellow who just looked evil. Even the way he spoke was filled with malice.
“Just looking out for the neighborhood,” Asti slurred.
“Asti, you will die, listen to me,” the imaginary Liora said.
“This fellow has no power in him,” the man said. “He couldn’t have done that.”
“I’m full of surprises,” Asti said. He drew another knife, despite being suspended by his head, but the evil man just waved his hand and the knife flew away.
“Petty thing. Feel free to kill him.”
“Asti, listen,” Liora pleaded. Asti was shocked. He had never known Liora—especially this vision of her that haunted him—to do anything but taunt him. “If you want to live, you have to say—”
“I don’t have to—” he slurred. He was hurled onto the stone ground. Now he saw—the great oily giant was above him, as well as several of his monstrous friends. They all raised their arms to pummel him into nothingness.
“I demand an audience with the High Dragon of the Nine! Say it!”
Somehow, before they smashed him, he found his voice and repeated her words.
They all froze.
“What did he say?” the evil man asked.
The giant spoke. “He demanded—”
“No, I heard.” The evil man crouched next to Asti. “Then I suppose we’ll comply with his demand.”
Amaya had spent the evening hours at the chapterhouse completely restless. The Initiates had all had dinner and were starting Contemplation Exercises, and Jerinne was nowhere to be seen. Amaya was a bit worried for her safety, but not much. She was with Dayne and Hemmit and the others, and the girl could handle herself.
But the curfew for Initiates had passed. There was no way to pretend that Jerinne was just elsewhere in the chapterhouse. Her absence in Contemplation had surely been noticed by the other third-years,
