Barb Hendee - Through Stone and Sea

Wynn had vanished beyond his reach, but he did not care. She and her companions had likely embarked on another pointless foray. He had overestimated the sage's intelligence, but she had served one purpose in the last few nights: Sau'ilahk had found a better link to the texts' whereabouts.

Duchess Reine Faunier, Âreskynna by marriage, would go below tonight. He would follow, finally gaining a way to the underworld.

Come , he whispered with thoughts.

An orange-red glow rose in the passage's side wall.

His stone-spider surfaced, its single glass-lump eye radiating bloodred. It clung there, watching him, as ripples spread in the rock beneath each point of its four legs. Another ripple snaked along the floor. This one rose at his feet.

It broke the floor with more ripples in stone, arching upward like a rope-size worm of rock-plated segments. Its round mouth oscillated, tasting the air that filled its limbless body.

Neither of these two was the one he had sent to track the duchess.

He had left more than one corpse in the seatt's forgotten corners in order to call and keep all of his compound servants active. At halfway to midnight, a curling twist of black smoke rolled in under the lip of the passage's ceiling. It spread along the high stone, clinging to that surface in its progress, until it hung above Sau'ilahk's cowl.

It gathered itself into a mass, and like black steam, it spread over his cowl.

Each of his trio of servitors was endowed for its special purpose, couched within a spark of sentience. The spider of Stone, Fire, and Air could see and hear. The worm made of Stone, Water, and Air could smell and taste. And the smoke, that blending of Air, Fire, and Spirit …

Show me , he commanded.

It curled over his cowl, into its opening. Within the black robe—within Sau'ilahk's incorporeal form—it spread.

The passage vanished from his awareness.

He looked down upon the wide columned tunnel of Breach Mainway from high above, hanging somewhere within the great crag by which it had been named. Below, the duchess and her people turned into the passage toward Off-Breach Market.

Sau'ilahk, submerged in his third servitor's recordings, drifted out of the high crag, curling along the passage's ceiling, and followed. The market was closed, empty and quiet, but the duchess passed all the way across to one rear tunnel. He followed inward, wafting along the new path's side wall.

The duchess walked amid her entourage with slow, sluggish steps.

No one spoke. It was a strange, silent procession.

Sau'ilahk's servitor flowed down the wall and surged forward along the dark passage's floor. It—he—spread around the rear guards' clomping feet and gathered about the duchess's smaller ones. All Sau'ilahk could see in the servitor's recording were the swish of the elf's white robe and the pounding of the captain's boots. But he felt …

Fear clung to Duchess Reine.

More than that, there was the pain of loss. Two emotions matched and joined to Sau'ilahk, as if one led to the other and back again. She feared the loss might repeat, all the worse for it.

Sau'ilahk did not understand and wished someone had spoken during his creation's surveillance. Anything to illuminate this clinging odor of dread and remorse might have proved useful.

The duchess coughed, slowing. Ahead, the elf's footsteps drew to a stop.

Sau'ilahk's smoke servitor slipped away along the floor. As it rolled up the side wall to the ceiling, he saw the duchess turn with her hand over her nose and mouth. The elf sniffed the air twice and wrinkled his long nose as he looked up and down the passage.

"Someone passed this way with an open torch," he said. Before he expressed more, she waved him onward, and the procession continued.

Soon, Sau'ilahk saw a passage wall of cut stones roll inward after five touches from the duchess. He would not need to deal with the passage as she had.

Banish!

The smoke within him thinned to nothing. He no longer needed that one and, unlike the other two, it could not swim through stone to keep pace with him. He now knew where to go and carefully envisioned his destination.

Follow, he commanded, and winked through dormancy.

Sau'ilahk reawakened before the passage wall, its fitted stones returned to their proper place. He waited only long enough for his two remaining servitors to catch up.

Wynn clenched her chattering teeth. Her feet were numb inside her boots as she slogged through knee-deep water. Shade's breath, like her own, echoed in the tunnel in shudders. Wynn tried not to look back too often.

The encroaching tide gained on them every time they stopped to face yet another gate. So far, Chane had broken through five more. Though these hadn't been as stout as the first, it took him longer each time. He hadn't used the hoop on the first three. When he did so for the last two, it took him longer to bend the heated bars. She worried that even his strength wouldn't hold out if they ran into another. The last one had taken great effort, and he'd faltered three times.

Wynn couldn't fathom why the Stonewalkers bothered creating and maintaining this hidden way if it needed to be so impenetrable. Every gate had an oval of Chein'âs metal in its lock plate.

She forced one foot after the next, with no idea how much time had passed. It felt as if they'd been struggling up the freezing tunnel for half the night. She and Shade were now trapped by the tide. But all that mattered, if—when—they made it through, was locating the texts.

"Have you been counting?" Chane suddenly asked, his voice a hoarse whisper.

"Five gates … since … the first," she managed between shivers.

"Paces," he corrected.

Wynn sighed in exhaustion. "More for me … your legs are longer."

"We have traveled almost a league, at a guess."

She didn't need to hear that.

"Do you need to rest?" Chane asked, glancing sidelong at her.

He stopped walking. His face looked even paler in only her crystal's light, and the anxiety on it was smothered under a wrinkle of anger.

"Your lips are blue!" he hissed, and then shook his head. "This was foolish … foolish! I never should have allowed this."

"You? Allow?"

How many times had she reminded him that this was her mission? Even if he found the texts on his own, he certainly couldn't read most of their content.

Shade whined up ahead. Much as Wynn empathized with Shade's suffering, she couldn't stop shaking herself. Shade huffed twice more.

Chane turned and took a few more steps.

"Odsúdýnjè! " he cursed.

Wynn didn't have to ask. She sloshed forward and peered around his side … at another gate.

Sau'ilahk watched from a far vantage point as Duchess Reine stepped into the lantern-lit end chamber of the downward-curving tunnel.

The two dwarven guards above in the entrance room had not been an issue. He had simply pushed his cowl through the wall of moving stones until he saw the hidden space. He quickly withdrew before the guards noticed a subtle change of shadow on the inner wall. That brief glimpse had been enough to judge distance and position for whatever space lay beyond the door within.

He had waited for the duchess and hers to move on, and then blindly slipped through stone around the room. Lost for only a moment in groping to an exit, he emerged slightly below the head of the downward-curving tunnel.

Once his servitors followed, he trailed the duchess, remaining out of sight around the tunnel's wide curve. She finally reached the end chamber, and he was forced to remain far back. She faced two more armored dwarves framing another door, and Sau'ilahk barely contained his exhilaration.

Had she reached the underworld?