The Rising Stones (Ihale Book 1) Page 5

  "I think the moss is edible." Rhyss was eyeing the walls with a considerable amount of trepidation.

  Bel regarded the moss with a queasy feeling. "I'm not starving, literally, just a little peckish, not really in the mood for moss, more for something that makes a good brunch. Oh! Heln. Maybe you can sense the Temple! Then—"

  "No."

  "Okay, it's customary in most cultures to let someone finish their sentence and only then refuse to go along with their plan." Bel looked up at him.

  Heln's expression was a closed door. "I knew what you were going to say and I knew the answer was no, so I saved some of your precious breath."

  "It is pretty precious," Bel conceded. "So, why not?"

  "I can't sense the Temple, it's specifically shielded from people like me," Heln explained. "And don't ask if I can sense an absence, because I still can't. It's not really… an exact science, and I'm not clairvoyant. Believe me, if I knew a way out of here I wouldn't be hiding it from you. I want to get out, too. Even if I could… I don't know, something about this place…"

  He trailed off, and something in his voice stopped Bel from asking any more questions.

  It didn't stop Rhyss. "What about this place?"

  "I don't know. It doesn't feel like normal magic, but the whole place is just drenched in it, more than a strengthening script. More than, well, I don't know. I think it has something to do with that carving."

  Rhyss's eyebrows rose. "Carving?"

  Heln gave Bel a sideways glance, like he was looking for permission. Instead she spoke for him.

  "The forest god's symbol." Bel straightened, despite her entire body protesting. "I don't know, maybe someone put it there later, but it was definitely its symbol. So. We need to get out of here really fast."

  It had looked just as old as the stone around it, but if Bel was anything she was an optimist.

  Rhyss shuddered at the mention of the old god and Bel couldn't blame her. "You're right. Okay. Rest for a bit, then we push on. I want to be out of here as soon as possible no matter who left that symbol."

  She didn't say "or what", but they were all thinking it.

  Chapter Six

  When they hit the dead-end, it was in a literal sense. At least, Rhyss did, letting out a shriek that let any creature for miles know precisely where they were. At first Bel thought she had to be dying to make a noise like that. It was only when she ran closer that she realized exactly what she was stuck in.

  From far away, the spider webs looked like more dimly glowing moss, but with Rhyss trying to pull free bioluminescence lit up every fiber of the tell-tale spiral with a blue light. Bel glanced up but didn't see any spiders. At least not for the moment.

  "Get it off! Get it off get it off get it off!" Rhyss's voice was raising in pitch with every word she said.

  "Calm down. Spiders that build webs are attracted to thrashing, it alerts them to the presence of food."

  "Bel if you think that is helping, it is not, it's not, you're the worst—"

  Bel grabbed her hand and pulled, but she was stuck tight. "Okay, I'm going to cut you out, so you're going to want to stand still anyway. I don't spend hours practicing with knives like you do so if I cut you then it's entirely your fault and you can't beat me up. Okay?"

  "If you're admitting I can beat you up then I'm probably about to die," Rhyss said almost too quickly for Bel to understand her.

  "Everyone knows you can kick her ass, even her," Heln reassured her. Bel drew Rhyss's dagger and carved out a jagged, Guard Trainee shaped hole in the spider web. She jerked back the moment she was free and did a little dance like it would help shake the webbing that trailed off of her hair and clothes like tinsel.

  "Oh gross gross gross gross."

  While Rhyss was busy with that and Heln was busy trying to calm her down without suffering blunt force trauma, Bel sent her illumination bubble through the filmy curtain of webbing.

  There were a lot of spider webs ahead of them, hanging like sheets off of unused furniture, old cobwebs coating the walls and floors and glinting dully like tarnished silver.

  "Eleti, what made these?" Heln asked. "How big are the spiders? Because I'm imagining spiders as big as Mabi, and I am not happy about it."

  "As great as having a pet spider the size of my dog would be, in reality they don't actually get that big." Bel flicked her wrist and her bubble rose into the webbing. Even she didn't want to meet spiders that came up to her waist. One of the spiders, no bigger than her outspread hand, shied away from the light, eyes glittering. "See? Cave spiders. They can make webs stronger than steel. We're lucky that Rhyss has an enchanted blade, but even with that we aren't making it through here."

  "We could light them on fire." Rhyss suggested, still brushing ineffectively at her arms.

  Bel sighed, rolled his eyes, and slapped her with a cleaning script. The webbing slid off in piles of silver silk around her feet. "No. That's a terrible idea. We are underground and I don't know about you, but I haven't exactly felt a fresh breeze in a while."

  "She's right, the smoke and heat would probably kill us faster than the spiders." Heln patted her arm. She glared at him and he stopped.

  "Besides, there's no point of forging through here when we don't even know if it's actually the right way." Bel reminded her. "Cave spider nests can go for a really long time, and if there are spiders here then there are other living things, too, and I don't really want to find out what they are, thanks."

  She withdrew her bubble when Rhyss finally grudgingly agreed with her, still rubbing her arms like the webbing was clinging to her. Bel ended up in front this time, with Rhyss silently taking the rear guard. She hoped that, if she ran into a spider web, Rhyss kept her head long enough to cut her loose instead of lighting the tunnel and the three of them on fire.

  They found their last intersection. It must have been closer to the surface, as tree roots clustered like thick, hanging vines, moss and mushrooms that let out a soft radiance clinging to their surfaces. Even with the light from the plants, the bubbles created crazy shadows on the walls that made Bel feel uneasy. The floor was even, at least, just covered in patchy moss and lichen.

  "Do you think we could dig our way out?" Rhyss looked up at the ceiling. "If there are tree roots it shouldn't be too far, right?"

  "That's a bad idea. There are so many protection scripts I doubt we could make a dent, and if we did… cave in. Probably." Heln was looking up at the ceiling, too. "Besides, we don't know how far it is."

  Rhyss shrugged. "Wasn't in love with the idea, anyway."

  Bel jumped at a shadow and nearly ran her face right into the first sign of life that wasn't a monster or a spider. "Guys! Guys look at this!"

  "If it isn't food or a way out I don't care." Rhyss warned her.

  "Fine. Heln, look." Bel pointed at the root. A huge snail with a whorl of blue in a shell that was bigger than Bel's fist was sliming its way across. "It's a snail."

  Rhyss looked like she was considering ripping a tree root from a wall and hitting her with it. Heln, at least, seemed to be interested, leaning in for a closer look when Bel moved over.

  "Wow, it has magic." Heln touched the shell and the blue lit up. The snail didn't seem to notice, or care, but Bel wasn't exactly an expert on snail emoting. "It feels like one of your barriers, Bel. I mean obviously not as strong or with the intent behind it, but it's similar."

  "Great, you found a magic powered snail." Rhyss had folded her arms and put all of her weight on one foot, tapping the other. "I'm sure that's absolutely fascinating. I want to get out of here, not study the flora and fauna, especially since it all seems to be bugs or monsters."

  "First of all, spiders and snails aren't bugs," Bel said.

  "Second of all?" She arched one teal eyebrow.

  "I don't know, you're mean."

  "What she means is maybe we should stop. It's a good place to set up a barrier, and there's plenty of moss around for her to carve into and for us to, uh, eat." Heln stepped
in, smoothly, which was good because Rhyss looked like she might have really murder on her mind. Though it was hard to tell, her eyes were bloodshot and she always sort of thought she had potential murder in mind, but this seemed more potent. "We're all cold, tired, and hungry. We need rest and what if there's another monster?"

  "Fine, but I'm not eating the snail." Rhyss unsheathed her knife and handed it to Bel.

  "Don't you dare eat Orin, he never did anything to you." Bel accepted the knife. "Besides, they are part of a completely undiscovered species, as far as I'm aware. If I had a safe way to transport them home I would. You don't just discover a brand-new species and then eat it, we're not savages. Well, most of us aren't."

  "Orin is in our class. I already said I wasn't eating it, get to work."

  "He's slow. That was a joke." Clearly the wonder of their find was completely lost on Rhyss, but that wasn't surprising. Bel grumbled but carved the magic script. She was so tired that her hand nearly slipped a few times. It took all of her focus to finish it up and cast the barrier. She'd made the circle a little lopsided, but it was wide enough for all of them and that was what mattered. When she looked up it felt like static was enveloping his brain.

  "There." Rhyss dumped a pile of moss inside of the barrier. "Dinner."

  "What did you do?" Bel looked at Heln.

  "Made sure she didn't leave us here." He shrugged a bit.

  Rhyss made no comment, just sat down and grabbed a piece of moss. She made a face but put it in her mouth, anyway. Bel would have to actually tell her how brave she thought she was later, because there was no way she would have been the first to eat it. At least it stopped glowing when it was cut away. She probably wouldn't have starved to death rather than eat something that was currently glowing, but it would have been a close call.

  Rhyss shuddered a bit as she chewed and swallowed. "It's not bad." Her voice actually cracked a little.

  "You are a liar and not even a remotely convincing one."

  To Bel's surprise, Heln took a piece, eating it without making much of a face. Once he'd swallowed his eyebrows drew together and he looked faintly ill. "She's right. It's not bad."

  "You're both really bad at this, lying and reassuring, just absolutely dreadful." Bel took some, anyway. She was already dizzy and she was doing her absolute best to not show weakness in front of Rhyss or any other potential creatures that weren't snails or spiders. Fainting from hunger would not be the best way to do that.

  The moss tasted faintly green and quite a lot like dirt, but the worst part was how stringy and tough it was. It wasn't as slimy as she first thought, which would have actually improved the texture. Instead it felt a little like chewing on damp cotton. Swallowing it wasn't much fun, either.

  "Well, I'm calling it. We're going to die down here." She accepted Rhyss's canteen. Despite the purifying ring around the mouth piece, the water still tasted bad, too. She realized her little joke had turned a gloomy atmosphere into a downright melancholy one and winced a bit. "Sorry."

  "Time and place, Bel." Heln didn't look up from the floor.

  "Not to say anything of audience."

  "True, that's always an important factor."

  "Both of you, shut up and eat your moss."

  They did that, entering a sort of numb, tired silence in the absence of their banter. Bel watched the snail for a while, but it wasn't really that extraordinary in the long run. When Rhyss became a fully-fledged Guard, she would meet all sorts of fantastical creatures. No one knew if the monsters in the forest were left over bits of magic that had gained sentience, or just creations of the ancient war that had raged around Old Ihale City for longer than memory could know. Either way, no one wanted them on the streets. The new city itself was ringed with defenses and a permanent barrier, but keeping something that large maintained and powerful enough to stop any threat took a lot of magic. Bel had looked into being a barrier specialist, but decided being called out at all hours and suffering possible intense magical burnout and death wasn't really the direction she wanted her life to take.

  Besides, it meant working closely with the Guard, and that just wasn't in the cards for her.

  Rhyss ate her portion of moss and curled up under her cloak. "I am sleeping. I don't care who takes watch but someone had better take watch."

  Bel supposed that was fair, the creature from the night before was proof that Heln was not going to be infallible when it came to anything down there, but she was bone deep exhausted.

  "Not it." She said, quickly.

  "I was going to offer, actually, you made the barrier." Heln smiled a bit and Bel immediately felt bad.

  "No, I mean, I can—"

  "It's fine," Heln told her. "Besides, I was going to… get the lay of the land, I guess. Yes, with my weird mind powers, thank you for your clarification. It'll be easier if it's quiet."

  "I'm not even going to touch upon the implications of that sentence, but know it's only because I'm tired, not because I'm ignoring it." Bel told him, feeling something that felt a lot like regret curling in her gut. It must have been the moss.

  Still, the odds of being nicer to Heln actively causing her untimely demise were pretty abysmal.

  "Goodnight." Heln told them.

  "Technically we don't know what time it is." She just couldn't seem to help herself.

  "Shut up and go to sleep," Rhyss practically snarled.

  Bel nodded even though she was turned away from her and curling up between two tree roots. It was cold, but only vaguely uncomfortable with the padding in her coat and her satchel propping up her head.

  She thought she would fall asleep right away with the exhaustion hanging off of her bones the way it was, but she found herself watching the snail for a while. It made its way steadily across the root to the tunnel wall, leaving a glittering trail like it was followed by stars.

  Chapter Seven

  At home, Heln's room overlooked the garden.

  He'd always found it too quiet compared to his place in the industrial part of the city with his mom; a tiny, cramped space right next to a buzzing and spitting light that was dim more often than not. His entire childhood could be mapped to the heartbeat of it running out of magic and the months it took for someone to refill it.

  At his father's house, he could still feel the magic lamps, but they didn't make any noise and they were regularly maintained.

  It wasn't until he was in the tunnel, the only noise the sound of two other people breathing, that he realized how much he was missing the sound of the wind through the trees, the crickets that would assault his room with noise as summer gave way to fall, the sounds of creatures moving quietly through the garden that his grandmother so lovingly maintained, even after she moved at the beginning of the summer to the senior community. His dad smiled and said it was just an excuse to see them. Heln hated gardening, but he would sit outside with her sometimes, listening to her talk about the way things used to be while she worked the soil with fingers that looked like old tree roots.

  He shook his head a bit and broke himself out of the doze he had been falling into. With nothing to distract him here in the cave, silence pressed against his ears. He wanted to hum, or maybe even attempt to sing despite being tragically tone deaf, but even if Rhyss wouldn't have killed him, the sounds were still stuck in his throat.

  Eventually he stood, taking his light stick and stepping outside of the barrier and sitting with his back against one of the larger tree roots. The barrier was safety, but the change in scenery was a balm against his raw nerves. Outside of the barrier he could see the glow of the strange little forest that had cocooned the tunnel. The whole place was alive with magic, even through his shields, feeding off of the scripts that had kept the tunnels preserved for possibly hundreds of years. He wondered if the roots had brought the moss, or if it had always grown there.

  It was beautiful, in its own way, and when he had been sitting still and quiet long enough he heard little noises, a soft chirruping somewhere that mig
ht have been an insect. He would have given anything to feel a good, strong wind. A small part of him wondered if he ever would again.

  The thought was too loud in such a quiet place, so he got to his feet and tried to walk around, hugging his jacket close and stamping feeling back into his feet when he thought he was probably far enough away to not disturb anyone. The chirruping paused for a long moment before it resumed farther away.

  He looked back at the barrier, a gem that outshone any bit of moss in the area. It was a little rough, he could feel weak patches when he concentrated, but Bel had been tired and the barrier was probably more of a formality, anyway, with how deep they were in the tunnels. The magic was bright, warm and familiar, the feel of it soothing despite its choppiness.

  And rather far away, now that he thought about it. He'd walked farther than he'd meant to, nearly back to the intersection. Even from here he could see the two arrows Rhyss had marked on the tunnel wall, dark strips cut from the vegetation. One for the first, two for the second, she'd explained when he'd asked. He didn't think it really mattered which one was first, but she was the survival expert.

  One of the pillars jutted out of the wall next to him, its cross beam lost in a tangle of roots and moss. The other side of the tunnel was choked with vegetation, but the pillar next to him was relatively free of plant life.

  He touched it and swore it felt warm for just a moment.

  The moss enshrouding the stone was easy to tear away. For a moment he hesitated, then ripped it all off. There was no flash of light this time.

  A fanged deer skull stared up at him with one gaping socket.

  He crouched down a little so he was eye level with it. It looked just like the carving on the pillar that Bel had pulled him away from. The skull was in profile, the antlers jutting up and around the pillar, framing spidery runes that he couldn't read. The soft blue light from the barrier was harsh in the recesses of the carving, turning shadows into knife points.