Chapter Twenty-Four

 

"May the shadows keep us safe."

Vasilisa found herself mumbling the saying as a ward against the dangers ahead. Lee Travic and his gang were back a hundred feet, past the retaining walls. The rocks groaned, threatening to collapse. Shifts sent streamers of dust into the passageway.

"I can't believe this is another realm."

She turned to her brother. "That's what you're thinking about?"

Emilio shrugged. "Better than thinking about what's ahead."

Around the corner, the rocky terrain turned back to the runed-covered walls they'd seen at the entrance. The sharp angled lines that made up the maetrie language matched their spoken words and the alienness of their fae backgrounds.

"Do you feel that?" asked her brother, grimacing.

She nodded. A high-pitched whine, almost too high to hear, made her squint.

"It's awful. Sounds like a motor that's off-balance and going to fail soon."

"Worse," said Emilio, shaking his head. "Like that, but much, much worse."

"What do we do?" she asked, shifting her backpack off her shoulders and digging inside for a headlamp. The ambient bluish lighting had faded. After clicking on the light, she examined their surroundings, checking above them.

"It looks like the earth collapsed on this structure, burying part of it," she said.

"What do you think the maetrie were doing here?" asked Emilio.

"I think we'd have to ask Pandora about that."

"I doubt she'd know. This is old. Well, old for us, not the maetrie."

Vasilisa approached the wall with her hand out, palm flat and vertical.

"What are you doing?" asked her brother.

"I don't know. They said there are wards. I was hoping I might be able to feel one before it blew up on us, or whatever they do."

"You're trying to get past them?" he asked.

"Got a better idea?"

"Like escaping," he said.

"I doubt we can get out from here. Or they wouldn't have let us come back this way," she said.

He exhaled deeply. "I hate that you're right."

"Hard to know that your little sister isn't so little anymore?" she asked.

"I blinked and you became a young woman." He hung his head. "I know I've said it before, but I'm so sorry about what happened with Andy. I would have liked to have met him."

She tilted her head. "Emilio. We're not going to die."

"What?"

"None of this last comments bullshit. Focus on getting us out of here," she said.

Emilio pursed his lips. "You're more and more like Val every year."

"What do you think?" she asked, holding her hand a few inches from the wall. "Safe to touch?"

"How would I know?"

"Use your amber, you wayhos."

Her brother blinked twice, before sighing and approaching the wall. He crouched down, examining the structure with the intensity she recognized as use of his amber.

"That humming is coming from deeper. I don't sense anything here except some water running in the rock."

Vasilisa brushed the stone with her fingertips, pulling back as if she were testing a live wire. The rock was dusty. Once she'd confirmed it was safe, she ran her fingers across the markings.

"If there were wards here, they're probably long gone. The collapse broke whatever magic they contained," she said.

"You don't know that, but come on. Let's see what's ahead."

The passage was wide enough they walked side by side. As she studied the formations, she saw how this entire area had been a larger complex, but then the ceiling had partially collapsed. Around a corner, they found an area marked off by Lee's team. Caution tape wrapped around iron rods drilled into the ground demarcated a space before a wall that seemed newer than the others.

"No dust," she said. "It looks more recent. The wards must be active."

Vasilisa held out her hand, but there was nothing to indicate the latent, and probably dangerous, magic. She held out the illusionary hand, the one generated by the metal cuff on her left wrist, out of curiosity. The verisimilitude of her fingers broke down as they entered the invisible field. Her flesh bent awkwardly like light refracted through water.

They went wide around the caution tape. The way split into three directions. Her brother pointed to the leftmost passage.

"I can hear that noise again, coming from this way."

They found a skeleton in the next hallway. A shoulder and arm partially stuck out from the bottom of a wall that had collapsed long ago.

"Maetrie bone?" asked her brother.

"Would make sense. No one else knew this was here, and if they were using a portal to get in and out, then a city fae would be likely."

After wandering through the partially collapsed tunnels and narrow passages through the rocks, they were surprised when they came upon an intact room with an opening leading deeper into the complex. The section leading up to it appeared like it'd been excavated recently, with scratch marks on the stone from digging equipment.

"I feel it," she said, seeing Emilio's scrunched-up expression.

"It's like having a hive of bees in my head. It's awful."

Vasilisa grabbed a small rock and tossed it ahead. It bounced along the floor, coming to rest near the wall. After the pebble test, she extended her illusionary hand and cautiously shifted forward, looking for signs of change. When they passed through the opening, they were greeted by a larger space with strange equipment she didn't have words to describe.

"What is this?" exclaimed Emilio.

On a large table lay a metal golem as if it were a patient in a hospital. A crimson gem glowed faintly in its chest.

"I don't like the looks of that," he said.

"No dust on the floor," said Vasilisa.

There were two openings out of the room. The equipment along the wall looked like stone boxes covered in maetrie writing with metal knobs and levers. After confirming no wards with her illusionary hand, Vasilisa examined the golem up close.

"Don't touch it," said her brother.

"I'm not stupid."

She marveled at the construction. She knew the mages of the Hundred Halls made arcane constructs or modified beasts for their own perverse purposes, but she'd never seen one. While faez crystals had changed the Undercity, they'd done so in an almost invisible way, unlike the flashy and sometimes catastrophic magics of the Halls. Or the maetrie, it seemed.

"Check out this next room," said Emilio, sticking his head through the opening.

"You should let me lead. I can check for wards," she said, holding out her illusionary hand.

The ruby in the golem's chest surged with light for a split second. It happened fast enough she wasn't sure if it'd been her imagination or not, but it made her want to move on quickly. She joined her brother in the next room, which contained more strange equipment, but no table or golem.

"The noise is coming from that direction," he said, pointing through an opposite opening. "It's making my teeth hurt."

Vasilisa massaged her own jaw. "It's making me nauseous."

The excitement of wandering through an old maetrie complex deep in the Undercity was tempered with the idea that ancient magics might rise up and kill them.

The next room had more old arcane equipment that gave no clue to its function. It appeared that some stuff had been looted, by the faint outlines left on the walls and floor. A wide crack let in a puddle which covered a corner, but grew no larger because it was tricking through another crack in the stone.

"The water is louder here. Must be a stream wandering through the rocks above us," he said.

"What if it isn't a stream?"

Emilio stared back blankly. Their silence was interrupted by a rumble in the earth. Barely a shiver, but it put a squeeze on her gut.

The next area had Vasilisa wanting to double over. "That noise. It's awful. What is it?"

"No idea."

Before her brother could move forward to investigate, she held him back.

"Let me check."

She used her illusionary hand to confirm no wards ahead. She wasn't sure it would work for all kinds of magic, but at least it was better than nothing.

"Is this where they were checking?" asked Emilio.

"What do you mean?"

"They said something about a retaining wall collapsing. This area seems clearer than the others. I think they were working in a different section." He looked over his shoulder. "Should we go back?"

"Let's explore a little further while we're here," she said, leaning her head through the gap in the wall. A heavy trickle meandered down the stone. It'd worn down the rock, which showed how long the maetrie complex had been in the Undercity. Vasilisa craned her neck, spotting the curve of a pipe through the hole about ten feet above her head.

"I think I found the source—"

She leaned out of the crack at the same time a heavy thud startled her to silence. Emilio was in the next room, but he hurried back, shining the handheld flashlight into the opening that led the other way. When a second, unmistakable footfall sounded, she knew they were in trouble. Ponderous footsteps followed. The massive golem that had been on the table stood in the doorway, its ruby gem bursting with crimson light. The construct raised its fists menacingly before charging.