Yes, it was madness to believe we would find the key to reaching some supernatural being buried in a room deep under the lake. Almost every part of me knew that whatever was in there, it was unlikely to improve our plight. But one stupid, senseless bit of hope remained that Hadrea was right. And, honor-down, I didn’t want to return just yet to the disaster waiting for us above.
I went through first, feet first on my stomach, heading into the unknown. I shuffled backward, pressing my body over the rough stones and trying to calm the panic inside me at every tiny sound. I wished it weren’t so easy to picture us being trapped, pinned beneath rocks here, left to starve or suffocate.
“Pass me the lamp,” I said, coughing to disguise the squeak in my voice. “And my bag.” I dared not descend farther without seeing where I was going.
This side of the tunnel looked much like the other. A cascade of rubble sloped down from a gaping wound in the ceiling, ending around knee height against a door. By the fortunes, I hoped that door opened inward, or there would be no chance of clearing a path to get it open.
Hadrea squeezed through next, and though it was wildly inappropriate in the circumstances, I appreciated her tightly curved backside leading the way. “You’ll start a whole new fashion, walking around in those trousers,” I muttered, helping her down the slope.
She grinned. “Keep your focus, Jovan,” she said. “The door. Is it locked?”
“That’s the least of our problems.” I tugged out my small roll of tools from my bag. I could pick the lock, but it would do no good if the door opened the wrong way. I held my breath as I balanced on the wobbly ground and held the lamp up to the edge of the doorframe. No hinges, which meant it probably did open inward.
The lock was corroded, and didn’t require much picking. I supposed whoever had last been here hadn’t been worried about its integrity, since they’d planned to collapse the tunnel anyway. It didn’t take long to deal with the lock, but it took both our full weights against the door to get it open—first pushing, then kicking, then eventually throwing ourselves against it—so warped had it become over the years in the damp.
We both fell in a tumble when it finally burst open, and I almost smashed the lamp. I picked it up, gave Hadrea a hand, and then, heart pounding, held the light up to illuminate the Os-Woorin room.
Silence.
Hadrea looked at me. “What is it?” she asked.
I held the lamp up again, mouth dry. “I have no idea.”
* * *
By the time we reached the surface, the dull roar from above had grown to ominous levels, and without discussion we increased our pace. And as we came out of the sewers up near the north gate, fear solidified into a hard lump in my stomach.
Dawn had broken, and the Finger’s gate had fallen.
Whether by the relentless force of their catapults, which we’d failed to destroy, or some other more direct means, like a ram, the gate and half the base of the tower were a crumpled ruin. The rebel army swarmed the bridge, fighting to get through the gate and out of the range of our arrow fire. Hadrea and I ran along the shoreline, half-deafened by the screams and cries of battle. Our soldiers clung to the remaining structure of the wall and tower, half shooting down arrows, some fiery, the other half hurling the miscellaneous contents of the great barrels stacked up behind the wall. The foul stench made me gag as we came closer. Order Guards yelled instructions to our troops in the trenches, preparing them for when the fighting moved to the shore. Among the rebels on the bridge I spotted several of the unarmored women adorned with symbols—Speakers?—their arms raised up and outstretched. Above them the wind whistled wildly, carrying dirt and rubble with it just as it had outside the walls. The maelstrom flew at our troops on the wall, knocking arrows out of their path and blinding them with debris as if the Maiso itself had come into the city and did the Darfri women’s bidding. The screams of the fearful and the dying split the air. This is it, I thought, numb as I accepted a misshapen sword from someone. This is the end.
Then another, different, roar from the south made me turn. Our own men and women, cheering in defiance, for this short time drowning out the drums and the cries from the bridge and west shore. It took a moment to see why.
Tain strode along the river bank, dressed in ceremonial armor. He looked a magnificent sight, with his gleaming conical helmet, a bright cloak billowing after him and shining sword glinting in the dawn. No one would have known the armor and cloak concealed injury or that his poise masked his weakness. They saw him as a shining leader here to give them heart in the worst moments of their lives, and they did not care that they had not seen him for a week or more, or that only last night they had been muttering about him having fled the city. He was here now, and somehow his presence converted a scared rabble into a united force. I raised my hand and my voice as he came near, along with everyone else. Perhaps it was stupid, but whatever surged through the crowd surged through me, too. Maybe together we could get through this.
I turned to Hadrea. She had not cheered. She was looking at the clash of people defending the tower base, eyes wet. My brief burst of Silastian pride fizzled away with no more than a whisper. For Hadrea, this was no glorious defense of the city. These were her own people, perhaps even friends and family, dying for a war they had been pushed into against a population that had wronged them. If we saved ourselves today, what would be the cost?
And then Tain was upon us, tailed by Bradomir, Varina, and Javesto, even old Budua and Marjeta, all armored. I hoped the missing Councilors were engaged elsewhere and not dead or hiding. Even Lord Ectar, whom I hadn’t seen in days, was here, with his servants, ready to fight.
“How are you—” But I broke off, already guessing what Tain had done by the wildness of his eyes and his quick, jerky movements. “You found my darpar.” I shook my head; too late to worry about what it might do to him now. “Try the peace flag again,” I begged, surprising myself with the strength of my desperation. “Before it’s too late. The mercenaries in charge won’t listen, but now it’s face-to-face they can’t shield everyone from your words.”
He shook his head. Up close, there was no hiding the toll this performance was taking. His skin looked more gray than brown and his eyes were bloodshot. “We tried, Jov. They shot an arrow through it. They won’t talk peace. They won’t even take our surrender—I’m not too proud.” He looked back to the bridge. “They’re going to break through any moment. We have high ground but they’ve got the numbers.”
“A lot of people are going to die today,” Javesto said. His usually animated face looked dull and numb. I guessed he too saw the cost on both sides as a loss to all.
“Unless we can think of something to stop it,” Tain agreed. He glanced at the other Councilors. “A moment, please,” he said, and steered me away. From inside his breastplate he pulled my family’s battered journal. “You left this under the lamp, Jov. Whatever you did, it worked eventually.”
I took it, pulse thumping at the sight of the revealed words: pages of tiny, neat notes. “The heat, of course. It needed a bit more heat.” I’d not factored in the age of the paper.
“Jov, did you and Hadrea find the Os-Woorin room?”
I nodded. “But it’s … I don’t know what it is. It’s not a shrine. There was nothing Darfri in there. The whole room is some kind of machine.” A great metal wheel, a sealed chamber. After all that digging, Hadrea and I hadn’t come out with any understanding of what we’d found, or its relationship to the spirit of the lake. She had been disappointed but my disappointment had been mingled with some relief, as well. Perhaps I wasn’t ready to be directly confronted with something that couldn’t be explained. “I don’t know what it’s meant to do.”