Guyer stood in the main tunnel, staring at her watch. “We lost time. McIntire’s set already started.”
“Dangerously Dropped Under Lower Levels.” Jax shook his head, pointing back the way we’d come. “Are we at lower or levels?”
Guyer responded, but I couldn’t make it out. I was thinking about the flow of manna that I’d absorbed. It was delicious. “Serrow had a link to something down there. Might be more.”
“More what?”
I licked my lips. “More.”
“We don’t have time.”
I ignored her and pushed past Serrow’s unconscious form, stepping over the Barekusu as though she were a lumpy rug. Jax grabbed my shoulder, and I turned unfocused eyes on him.
“Are you with us, Carter?”
“I’m hungry.”
Jax looked past me. “Guyer! You still have that next gen manna? He needs to release what he took in!”
I was aware of them moving around me, but my focus was down the hall. I could smell the manna down there, as if it were the first thing I’d been aware of all day, and for a second I was a little kid, waking to the smell of cooking bacon and a father who was off-shift from the oil rigs. I dragged a hand across my mouth, and it came away wet. I thought that I’d split my lip in the struggle, but the liquid was clear. I realized I was drooling.
Guyer was there, digging in a pocket, and suddenly the smell was there, too. It dripped from the baton and the pin.
“It’s ready,” she said. “Now what?” But I was already plunging my hand into the threads that entwined the baton. I felt the tasty deliciousness of the threads, and had an image of myself at the center of a vast web, a spider scurrying toward tasty flies wrapped in thread. I blinked, and looked away, repulsed.
But I didn’t let go of the threads.
Instead, I exhaled and pushed the cold and cotton that packed my head into the threads. The hunger drained away with it, and I was left sweating, shocked by the sudden heat of the tunnels. Guyer jerked backward, and the baton whipped through the air, narrowly missing our heads as it collided with the wall, sending a shower of stone chips through the air.
“Imp’s blade,” she whispered, staring at the pin in her hand. Guyer tried to recall the baton, but the sudden burst I’d put into it had used up the manna that created the link, like kerosene speeding a bonfire. Once the manna was gone, the link turned on the materials themselves, and Guyer cursed as the plastic and metal crumbled to dust.
I tried to speak, but my throat was constricted. I swallowed and tried again. “Magic eats itself.”
Guyer only stared at me.
“We should go,” I said, and pushed down the hallway. Neither of them moved. I turned to face them. “There’s no time!”
I stepped closer. “That manna thread goes farther down the tunnels, not toward the entrance, and not to ground level. We didn’t run into Serrow on her way to the site.” I raised my voice as I began to walk away once more. “We ran into her coming back.”
44
I MOVED DOWN THE CORRIDOR. THE thread from Serrow’s staff had been drained but wasn’t extinguished. I followed it, walking with my left hand raised, as if following a safety lead on an oil rig. I’d gotten no more than a half-dozen steps when I was pulled backward. Jax clasped the collar of my lightweight jacket.
“Carter, the rhyme leads the other way.”
“But Serrow was down here.” I took another step, legs wobbling, still exhausted from the exhilarating rush and subsequent crash of channeling manna. “We need to trace her route.”
I slipped out of the jacket, abandoning it to Jax’s grasp, and pushed ahead.
Jax and Guyer hesitated, but not for long. Jax complained, but marked our way with spray paint anyway. Guyer retrieved my jacket. She pulled out the notepad and began trading a flurry of notes with Harris.
“There’s a dozen Barekusu on the street above us. So much for your theory that Weylan is a lone wolf. He says—” She swore viciously, like a parolee learning about activity restrictions. “I’m running out of room. Should’ve made more of these things.”
“Sure,” said Jax. “Less efficient than a phone call, and a couple million times more expensive. I’m sure they’ll catch on.”
The tunnel sloped gently upward, and we crossed into a space much larger than the others we’d been in. It had a domed ceiling, lined with hairline cracks and fissures. Our flashlight beams traced its dimensions, showing a width and height similar to the cavern that had opened up beneath the city center. The fissures were old, but indicated some structural weakness. It was another sinkhole, waiting to happen.
Gradually our flashlights converged, coming to rest on the center of the room. A single white rock the size of my head sat on the cavern floor.
I plucked the quivering, invisible thread in the air and imagined where its path led. “It’s connected to the rock. Could be something next to it, or maybe above it?”
“The other end of this thread,” said Guyer, “was it connected to Serrow herself, or to something she was carrying?”
I hesitated. “Probably that wooden rod she had.”
She spoke through clenched teeth. “You didn’t check?”
“You didn’t ask me to. Hells, you’re the sorcerer!”
“And you’re the anomaly that defies everything we learned in school. So forgive me for not covering your mental lapses.”
“Guys,” Ajax said. “Look at the rock.”
In the pale yellow of three flashlight beams, the rock wiggled slightly from side to side.
“I’m going to check it out,” I said, already walking toward it, aware that the stone beneath my feet and over my head was intended to collapse. With each step, I could see the stone in the room’s center more clearly. For a simple rock, it looked surprisingly familiar. I slowed as I approached, bringing my hands closer, and felt the tingling sensation of manna threads. There were wispy threads to the sides, and
