The Rising Stones (Ihale Book 1) Page 6

  Runic magic hadn't been used since the new city had been built in the aftermath of the Great War. A few Ihalins studied it, according to his professor of magical script, but it was a dead and frankly uninteresting art. The runes no longer held sway over magic, but there was too much superstition surrounding them and how they were abused during the fighting. Heln had never really had much interest in them; they were just another fact he'd had to know for a test.

  The skull was another matter, the sign of the lord of the forest, or the bone peddler as it was sometimes called. Even small children knew about it. A bogeyman, a creature that had once been a powerful force, but had faded into shadowy myth and legend around the time that the new Ihale City was built. When he was very small his mother used to tell him that the forest god would swallow him up and add him to its collection of bones if he didn't eat his vegetables.

  Despite the silly, childish threats and the obscurity of legends, it was common knowledge that the forest god should be avoided. That its symbol marked places of death and destruction. Legend had it that hundreds of years ago when a plague carved a swath through the population of the city a deer skull was used over the doors of the houses of the infected.

  Heln dropped his shields slightly, extending his senses. The pillar contained magic, but as far as he could tell it was just to keep the tunnel from collapsing, old magical signatures layered on top of each other until they were a looping scrawl that he couldn't trace.

  Not that it would matter, even if he could figure them out. All of the casters had been dead for a long time.

  The thought made him feel off balanced. It wasn't that he'd never sensed permanent scripts before; his light stick was considered a permanent script, but the old magic had always been overpowered by any recharges or renewals. Or a new script all together.

  This was different. Even the final layer of magic was ancient, older than any other script he'd sensed. His fingers felt like they had a residue on them, like he had been tracing the letters in old books for too long. He rubbed them absently against his pants. It did little good. Even with the cleaning script they were physically dusty and grimy.

  Heln had never thought about what happened to a script after the caster of it died. Now he couldn't stop wondering if Bel's shield would stay without her to take it down, or whether it would slowly run down when his magic wasn't there to feed it any more.

  He could tell that the tunnel magic hadn't been recharged for years and he had no idea what kept the scripts feeling strong.

  Heln shuddered and looked back at Bel's barrier, trying to look anywhere but the skull or the walls. The light stick was smooth and cold in his hand. He hadn't activated it in hours. Maybe days. He slid his thumb over the activation script. The crystal came to life with a gentle, yellow glow and the tube warmed almost instantly until it felt hot in his freezing fingers. Shadows leapt away from him and painted themselves in dark lines against the bare patches on the walls and ceiling. His father had charged it before the Festival. It felt like him, if a little muffled from being filtered through crystal and carved script.

  The chirruping noise stopped.

  The stillness in the air thickened. Heln's eyes were drawn back to the skull carving. In the new light it looked darker and more defined. The raised ridges of the skull and antlers shone like they had been freshly gilded.

  A sharp, bright light swung in the empty socket, jerking in his direction, and Heln made a noise that echoed off of the walls, jumping back and slamming up his shields in the same moment.

  When he looked again there was no light, the socket was simply a slightly shadowed recess in the stone.

  His heart was pounding out an erratic rhythm against his ribcage. He turned away from the socket to just breathe, ignoring the crawling sensation working its way up his skin.

  Ahead of him the tunnel stretched on. Nearly every thirty feet, another pillar jutted from the wall. Most of them were covered, but on a few of them he could see the dark, tell-tale lines of runes and something else.

  Behind him in the first tunnel was a soft noise, almost imperceptible above the still slowing beat of his heart. He held his breath.

  It sounded like footsteps. For one delirious moment he thought it might be rescue. If Vin had survived, a fact Rhyss seemed sure of, it wasn't too far-fetched to think he had sent a team after them.

  It was still too dark for him to see anything alongside the footsteps.

  Heln switched off the light stick, holding it like a dagger and inching forward. Without the light stick it was even more dim, the plant life losing some of its luster until his eyes adjusted.

  There was no light in the other tunnel. The unease already sliding across him rose, the hairs on the nape of his neck when he heard the noise again, closer.

  A rescue party would be loud, despite the monster in the first chamber. Voices would be calling for them, lights would be everywhere and they would be sending out search scripts.

  This had none of that.

  It had to be something else, Heln realized, and he didn't want to find out what by running right into it. He backed away slowly, trying to keep an eye on the tunnel and where his feet were going at the same time, slowly lowering his shields.

  Dead, empty magic.

  In the darkness at the end of the tunnel, he saw two sparks of emerald light flared to life, much closer to the ceiling than he cared for. Heln dropped to the tunnel floor. His first instinct was to turn and run for the barrier, but the construct would catch him with ease and would likely toss him past a handful of pillars.

  Maybe Rhyss could land that, but he certainly couldn't.

  Heln felt vulnerable on the floor, soft moss pressed against his face, but at least he wasn't a low Ihalin cut out of darkness in front of the barrier. The barrier that the construct would be inevitably drawn towards while he wasn't there to warn his friends.

  He heard it shuffling, its footfalls surprisingly quiet for something that must have been roughly twice his height. He glanced up and saw the outline of it looming near the end of the tunnel, blocking the two arrows that pointed straight at the barrier. As it turned he carefully got to his feet, trying to stay low. He was ready to press himself flat the moment he saw a hint of green. He was halfway certain that it didn't matter, the thing had to hear his pulse. It was hammering loudly enough in his own ears that he wasn't sure if he was making any noise trying to get back to the barrier.

  Could they even hear? He didn't know.

  His question was unfortunately answered when he tripped, stumbling backwards over a root he hadn't felt with his hands. The thing whipped around and made a horrible noise.

  Heln gave up on stealth, scrambling to his feet and sprinting for the barrier. He nearly tripped again, this time close enough that he ended up careening into the barrier head first and stepping on Bel, barely managing to catch himself on the wall before he fell down.

  "Ow!" Bel sat up. "Ow! What in the—?"

  "Shut up, shut up." He slid down the wall and covered Bel's mouth with his hand, which earned him a muffled protest. "Construct. Right outside. Please shut up."

  Bel went still at that, her one visible ear twitching slightly. Rhyss had also woken up during their exchange, staying silent as she rose to a crouch, her knife already in her hand. He wasn't entirely sure how she had done that. He was very sure that he didn't want to know.

  Silence that seemed to last an eternity stretched around them. Heln realized he still had Bel's face in a death grip and pulled his hand away.

  The silence was finally broken by a scraping sound just outside of the barrier.

  Rhyss spoke first, her voice a low murmur. "Bel, can you create another barrier?"

  "No." Bel shook her head. "Not this fast. It's this one or nothing for at least a few hours."

  "That's fine." Rhyss did not have the face of someone who thought that it was fine. "I just thought I'd ask."

  Heln tried to sense what it was doing, but all he could feel beyond Bel's magic w
as a vague sense of wrongness.

  A giant hand slapped down on the barrier, near the top. The barrier should have let off sparks of magic, at the very least. Nothing happened for a moment, then the hand began to press in, like it was pushing against cloth. The top bubbled down violently.

  The wrongness of the power outside intensified, invading Bel's magic.

  "It's pulling the barrier down!" Heln used the wall to pull himself up. "We need to go!"

  Rhyss didn't need to be told twice, she had their bags ready for them and they all stumbled out of the other side of the barrier just as it shattered like glass against the onslaught, sparkling and fading in the air. Heln stumbled, pain crackling around his skull. Rhyss shoved him, keeping him more or less on his feet, and they ran.

  It would have been more reassuring, somehow, to have heavy footfalls behind them, but the construct didn't make much noise at all. There could have been one or twenty, and he wasn't sure if he would have known the difference. Heln felt Rhyss gathering magic and releasing it behind them, unformed and fast.

  "Keep watch ahead!" she told Bel.

  Heln nearly fell again and Rhyss passed him, snagging his wrist as she did and hauling him behind her, heedless to roots that seemed to reach out at them to pull on their ankles and snag at their clothes.

  "There's light ahead!" Bel announced. Rhyss put on another burst of speed. Heln felt like she'd stabbed him in the ribs with her knife but he couldn't slow down, trying his absolute best to keep pace with her.

  He somehow found more speed, somewhere deep down inside of him. There was light. It was faint and a little watery, but it wasn't the dim glow of the tunnel. He couldn't tell if there was a breeze or if it was just the air moving as he ran.

  Bel stopped, silhouetted by light for a moment before Rhyss careened into her and they both fell, dragging Heln down with them.

  Chapter Eight

  Heln stared up at the sky.

  The grass underneath him was soft and the darkness above him was littered with stars that blazed like lanterns. They were outside. They'd finally made it out.

  Something was wrong, though. At first he thought maybe he had hit his head, or his glasses had fallen off, but they were still somehow miraculously on his face and while his head ached he didn't remember hitting it on anything.

  The stars were wrong; their light was too steady, and there were no patterns that he recognized.

  He wasn't looking at the sky, but at a ceiling, far above him. It was dark and littered with glowing filaments, possibly more moss. They hadn't fallen nearly as far as he'd thought. At most it was a few feet. Heln could see the tunnel in the wall above them, if he stood up he'd be able to reach it.

  Rhyss was already on her feet, spinning an illumination bubble and sending it up into the tunnel. His heart stuttered when the light made a tree root shadow look a lot more menacing, but the tunnel itself was empty.

  "Where did it go?" Her voice was only slightly higher than normal. "Why didn't it follow us?"

  "This room is coated in protection scripts." Heln could feel them, like the lights on the ceiling. "Really old, really powerful ones. I don't think it can come in."

  Even as he said it, he knew it was true, like the room was talking to him. Or he was overhearing magic having a very intense, whispered conversation and picking up bits and pieces of information.

  "You think?" Rhyss put a hand on her hip.

  "I know."

  "Yeah. Okay. That's great and mildly ominous, which seems to be your… thing." Bel waved a hand to gesture to him.

  Heln wasn't really surprised Bel thought that. He'd never really fit in — not at school and certainly not at home. His own mother had left him with a father that he had never even met. Tavlyn, his dad, was trying, but it was clear he didn't really understand Heln, either. Sometimes, Heln didn't even really understand himself. Most of the time he didn't mean to be even mildly ominous, it just happened.

  Bel wouldn't care about any of that. "Thanks?"

  "You're welcome!" Bel said, brightly, like it was a compliment. Maybe it had been, in her own weird way. "Either way maybe we should move away from the creepy tunnel full of death?" Bel suggested. "Wow. Look. Stairs. First step was kind of a doozy."

  Heln had thought they were on a ledge, but Bel was right, they had fallen onto a step, a long, broad square of stone that tapered off into steps like the ones in the tunnel, long and shallow, hugging the wall and descending into a dim twilight. He could see a landing below them, and then the stairs curved back in on themselves, hugging the wall of the cave until it descended into darkness.

  The cave itself stretched on so far that Heln couldn't see the end. Farther out was a bright point of light that shone down what looked like spires of stone rising from the shadows, bathing them in silver like a ghostly moon.

  "Last chance to go back." Bel reminded them. It almost sounded like a question.

  Rhyss didn't say anything, just started walking down. There was nothing to do but follow her.

  The stairs were wide, but Heln still walked close to the wall, not trusting himself without a railing. If he fell onto the other set of stairs, he would probably die.

  "I could send a light down there," Bel offered.

  "Yes, and then we can talk really loudly and maybe throw off a few fireworks so we can really let whatever is down there know that we're on our way." Rhyss gave Bel the most sarcastic smile Heln had ever witnessed, which was saying something when he was related to Bel.

  "At least they'd be ready for us with tea, maybe a nice cake." Bel's return smile was sweeter than the imaginary dessert.

  Heln almost groaned out loud, almost. He wondered if Rhyss and Bel actually listened to themselves. He had assumed that Bel only talked so much because she was in love with her own voice, but maybe it was just the sound of it.

  He had never understood why anyone would want to even bother with romance and he was suddenly grateful. The way they interacted looked and sounded absolutely exhausting.

  "Or you could both stop flirting so I could concentrate on making sure we're not walking into some ancient magical bog that eats Ihalins for lunch. Or something."

  "I will, but only after I protest that flirting comment, because it was out of line and you should apologize," Bel said, but she didn't sound very serious.

  "I'm sorry, Bel." He was only sorry he had to be the one to point it out. He knew absolutely nothing about romance and even he knew they were flirting. "And you, too, Rhyss."

  "Thank you." Rhyss didn't sound like she had been all too concerned with his thoughts on it.

  "Better, anyway." Bel still stuck her tongue out at him and Rhyss rolled her eyes, but they both fell silent after that.

  A few minutes later he almost wished he hadn't said anything. The bickering was annoying, but at least it filled up the empty spaces that began to buzz with anxiety and terror when they stretched too widely.

  The staircase curled back in on itself and Heln felt a different sort of tension in the air, a different sort of magic.

  "There's something," he told them. "I think it's coming from the middle of the room, where those weird stone things are."

  "I hear something, too." Bel was looking down into the darkness below them, her head leaned slightly to one side like it would help.

  "A low hum." Rhyss drew her dagger, but didn't activate any of the script. "Heln, stay between us."

  "I like the wall, thanks."

  "You can stay near the walls, just between us on the steps." Rhyss sounded like she'd much rather push him down the stairs, but he could tell she was attempting to be patient.

  A few steps down from the landing a soft breeze stirred his hair.

  "It's wind. That's what we're hearing. And those are trees." Bel sounded excited. "We're not going into darkness, it's just trees. But how? We're still underground. Maybe there's a way out on the other side…? Maybe it opens up!"

  "I don't know." Rhyss shifted the grip on her dagger slightly. "Heln, a
nything different?"

  "I think I'll have to be closer."

  She nodded and led them down the rest of the steps. They broke through the trees and the glowing from the ceiling nearly cut out, but it didn't matter.

  Beneath the initial dark canopy everything seemed to have its own light, putting the tunnel behind them to shame. Flat, shelf-like mushrooms ran up the trunks of the twisted, gnarled trees, flowers bloomed like frozen points of fire, and every single little plant or insect had its own radiance. Even cracks in the bark of the trees were glowing patterns. It felt different than it had in the tunnels, the tension was still there, but this was a sacred place.

  "It feels like the Grove." Heln looked up at the branches crisscrossing above them. "Maybe those aren't weird stone things, maybe it's a building."

  "Makes sense, we should head there, I bet it's the center of the room and we can get our bearings. How does that sound to you, oh fearless leader?" Bel looked at Rhyss.

  If Rhyss kept rolling her eyes every time Bel said something that supposedly annoyed her, Heln was pretty sure she'd end up with some sort of permanent eye strain before they got home. Which was kind of stupid, because he knew that she wasn't nearly as irritated as she let on.

  "I suppose, I think it's stupid, but…"

  "But you don't have a better plan." Heln supplied for her and nearly pressed himself into the wall when he was treated to the full heat of her glare.

  It cooled off faster than he expected, and she turned away. "You're right, I don't, so let's go. Maybe there's a way out on the other side of the room. Maybe the center is full of magic eating monsters. I don't know, and that's the problem. I would scout ahead to make sure it's safe but that would be leaving two defenseless civilians behind, and I can't do that."

  "Oh so now I'm—"

  Heln elbowed Bel in the side before she could finish that sentence. Enough flirting was enough. Now really wasn't the time. "It's okay, Rhyss. We'll be fine if you want to go, these stairs seem safe enough, or we can all go together."