A Queen of Ice (A Trial of Sorcerers #5)

Chapter 35

35

“ I don’t like this,” Alyss muttered what they all were thinking after Eira had filled in Ducot on what awaited them.

“Do we go in?” Cullen murmured.

“Of course we do, there’s only forward.” Olivin was as determined as ever.

Despite knowing it was rooted in all the wrong motivations, Eira was forced to agree. They couldn’t go back now, even knowing it?—

“It’s a trap,” Cullen literally finished her thought.

“What else are we going to do?” Olivin gave them all a pointed look.

Eira sighed. “He’s right. But we’re going to be careful about this.”

“I can scout ahead,” Ducot offered. “No one expects the mole.”

“They might.” Eira’s mind was a whirlpool of thoughts, swirling deeper and deeper. She’d be pulled under, smothered by endless options and hypotheticals, if she wasn’t careful about keeping her heading. “They’ve infiltrated the knowledge of the Shadows.”

Olivin had good news for once. “Lorn said he destroyed the records before the Pillars could get to them.”

But… “There are a lot of ways to acquire information on others beyond Lorn’s written collection.”

“We’re wasting time debating.” Olivin’s patience was running thin. Really, it was a wonder he hadn’t already charged in.

“Go, Ducot, but not too far and report right back.” Eira squeezed his forearm. “Noelle would never forgive me if I let something happen to you, so, please, be careful.”

He nodded and, with a step, was in his mole form. Eira’s heart was in her throat for every scamper of his tiny feet. She held her breath the entire time from when he disappeared into the perfect darkness of the archway to when he reemerged—blessedly in one piece.

Ducot slipped back into the alcove they had pressed themselves against before shifting back into his more human form.

“Good news and bad.”

“Good news is rare, can we start there?” Alyss begged.

“There’s no one inside the tunnel, so far as I can tell.”

“Then what’s the bad news?” Eira resisted the urge to celebrate too soon.

“It’s a shifted world—just like the morphi demonstration during the tournament.”

Eira remembered that night all too well, her eyes drifting to Olivin unbidden. He held her stare, his own gaze softening some. How simple things had been, then…if only there was a way back to that place.

“Can you unshift it?” Eira suspected she already knew what the answer would be.

“No…it’s powerful magic. Ancient and secret, even—it’s like the shift around the Twilight City itself, which is far beyond my abilities.” He leaned against the wall, spine curling with an invisible weight. “How did they get a morphi to do it?”

That soft question stilled all of them.

Historically, Ulvarth had been unfriendly toward anyone that wasn’t an elfin of Meru because they were not “chosen” by Yargen. It had been under his orders that Ducot’s hamlet had been burned.

“He worked with the draconi; it’s possible he cut a deal with the morphi, too,” Eira suggested to Ducot with an encouraging hand on his shoulder.

“Or he gave someone no choice.” Ducot’s fist was clenched so hard it trembled. “I’ll find out and someone will die for it…either the morphi that crossed our people and willingly worked for him, or Ulvarth, for whatever he threatened that got someone to do it.”

“First we have to get through there.” Eira released him and looked back toward the wall and its archway. So the darkness wasn’t just the night playing tricks on the eyes and the mind.

“I could make a staircase to go over it?” Alyss offered.

“Impossible, the shift extends upward,” Ducot said, dismissing the notion.

“We’ll go through—there has to be a way for Ulvarth’s own people to do it. We’ll find the path.” Eira held out her hand. “Form a chain. We’ll keep ourselves illusioned until we’re inside.”

Hand in hand, they made their way to the wall, Eira’s magic draped over them. She focused on her magic and movements, rather than anyone else who might be near. But the streets remained empty, the night silent, and with barely a whisper of clothing, they were plunged into a space completely void of light.

“I don’t like this,” Alyss said under her breath. “I’m blind.”

“You get used to it,” Ducot said.

“Oh my gosh, I’m sorry.” Alyss apologized profusely. Ducot laughed, clearly unoffended, but the sound didn’t carry. “What I meant was more than sight… I can’t feel anything. There’s nothing for my magic to sink into…it’s…”

“Nothing,” Cullen finished. “Even the air is still; it’s almost like there’s no air at all.”

“How do we know we’re going the right way?” Alyss asked, doing a poor job of scrubbing the panic from her voice.

“Let me shed some light on the situation,” Olivin said.

“I doubt—” Ducot didn’t have a chance to finish. There was a flash of Lightspinning that followed Olivin’s command. Like a spark of flint. Bright. But only there for a second. Olivin tried again, to no avail. Ducot sighed. “This is a shifted space. It is not quite the world we all know any longer…the same rules cannot be expected to apply. The rules that govern this space were designed by the morphi who made it.”

“Well I hate this even more,” Alyss muttered.

“Don’t let go of each other’s hands,” Cullen said firmly. “If you do…we might never find each other again.”

“You’re not helping,” Alyss sighed.

“Can you give us any headway, Ducot?” Eira asked.

“My magic is as lost as yours.”

She pursed her lips and carried on. There was nowhere to go but forward. Though it was impossible to tell if they were making headway at all. With no landmarks, no light, no sound or wind…they could be walking in circles for all she knew. But Eira remained confident in her abilities to keep a course and, soon enough, there was a whisper.

“What was that?” Ducot asked.

So it hadn’t just been in her head… “Be on guard,” she breathed, continuing.

Another voice. Another pause. But no one emerged from the darkness. There was no light or signs of any other living creature.

“What’s happening?” Alyss asked. Though no one answered. None of them had an answer.

“Maybe we’re close to the other side.” Eira sounded more optimistic than she felt.

The whispers grew, more and more voices joined. It was a disorienting murmuring: every step there was a new voice, like a room of ghosts all having a conversation at once. Even though no one individual voice was loud on its own, the void had become deafening. There were prayers to Yargen and praises for Ulvarth. There were utterances disparaging those beyond Meru as forsaken and evil.

“What is happening?” Alyss shouted.

“There must be a way through it.” Olivin’s remark wasn’t an answer to her question. But it was a good point and kept Eira focused.

“You’re right.” She couldn’t see him behind her, but she knew he was somewhere in the darkness along the chain of hands held tightly. “There has to be some secret to it.” If there were no guards on the outside then it must be because the Pillars presumed the contents within to be guard and protector well enough.

“Maybe they’re telling us how to get through in code?” Ducot said.

“Great, if that’s the case we’re screwed.” Olivin’s muttering was almost entirely drowned out.

True to form, Alyss looked for a solution, undeterred by the disheartened remarks. “Perhaps there’s some kind of riddle, or passcode, hidden in the remarks!”

“Or we’re supposed to follow one voice?” Cullen suggested as the whispers faded in and out.

One voice . “Cullen, you might be on to something,” Eira stated.

“What?”

“Really?” Alyss was just as shocked as he was.

“How will we know which one?” Olivin asked.

“We don’t have to listen for any of the voices woven into the shift,” Eira said confidently. “We’re going to look for the ones that aren’t. Keep your hands tight and stay with me. I suspect when we’re on the other side, we’ll need to run for cover quickly.”

She took a deep breath and exhaled slowly through her nose, using it as an opportunity to steady herself. The world around her was carved magic. But there was a consistency in that. It wasn’t the reality she was used to, but it was reality, of a sort. And that meant there should be echoes.

With her magic, she reached out and tried to ignore all the other whispers and murmurs, focusing only on what her magic said to her. The world fell away and the void consumed her. The only tether was her hand wrapped firmly around another, but even that felt far away.

Like a cloth across spilled ink, she swept away the chaos and looked only for what was real . There had been countless people who must have traversed through these passages. The original person to make it…one of them would’ve left an echo.

There .

We’re following only the prayers, right? one disembodied voice asked another as an echo in the back of Eira’s mind. Yes. They changed what the voices said again .

Eira didn’t release her hold. Instead, she moved toward the point at which the voices originated. If the Pillars were changing the words within this labyrinth of whispers then she couldn’t trust that prayers were still the right way. So, instead, she staked her hope on the path itself being set. The guideposts might change, but not the directions. That where those people stood had once been the right course.

Once she arrived at the source of the murmurs, Eira stopped, and repeated the process. Using her magic, she sifted through the churning whispers, working to find what was real and what was fabricated. Her free hand twitched, like she was plucking the strings of an invisible harp.

Time felt like fleeting moments and ages simultaneously. Every pause, turn, and slow march was uncertain progress. There was a time when being plunged into darkness of the Pillars’ making would tug at the threads of her mind. But now she moved with confidence. With the knowledge that her friends and her magic were at her side and with them she was unstoppable.

At last, they beheld a dim point of light in the distance and the whispers began to abate.

“Is that…” Alyss didn’t finish.

“An exit?” Cullen heaved a sigh of relief.

“We’re not out until we’re out,” Eira cautioned them, her focus on the archway ahead. Now that they were a bit closer, it was easy to make out the roadway and houses beyond. “We’ll go out under the cloak of illusion once more. Be ready for anything.”

Heart hammering in her throat, Eira shifted the focus of her power to settle over their shoulders like winter’s embrace. She readied herself for what awaited them on the other side of the wall. The moment they emerged, Eira found herself stopping short—face-to-face with a Pillar.