“See here, Big King? Dese be the worst of dem. And another, here.”
My chief engineer, Ghat, scurries along the wall, a lorst crystal attached to a band around his thick skull. It casts an aura in the darkness as he leads me through the deepest levels of the palace, among the foundation stones. He pauses at one stone through which deep cracks have formed and puts his whole hand down into one of the fissures. His arm disappears all the way to the elbow.
Pale beady eyes glitter up at me in the crystal light. He looks more excited than terrified, as though he’s made a fascinating discovery. Meanwhile, a pit of dread opens in my core.
It’s been a long two lusterlings and one eternal dimness since my people dug me out of the queen’s chamber. I emerged into chaos. I’ve been in motion ever since, meeting with members of my household, soothing fears, receiving reports, putting on a kingly air, issuing commands and official statements, making decisions for both major and minor repairs. No time to rest, no time to eat. Scarcely enough time to breathe.
The initial word from the lower city is encouraging. A handful of deaths, the loss of a few ramshackle dwellings on the outskirts, no major damage. One bridge is potentially compromised and has been barricaded, all traffic diverted. Otherwise, the reported destruction appears to be relatively minor and should be cleared up within a few days.
The city itself seems to be in a state of frozen shock. It’s preternaturally calm, as though the citizenry as a whole have drawn a collective breath and still hold it. Waiting to see what I will do. Waiting to take their lead from me.
I’ve had my chancellor put together an official statement and sent runners into the streets proclaiming the message that I am looking into the cause of the disturbance and encouraging everyone to go about their daily business. A statement of calm, order, and reason.
Then Ghat summoned me to the lower palace. Which is why I find myself here, watching as he shows me the various cracks in our foundations. Some are mere hairline fractures. Others, like the one his arm is now sunk into, are more significant.
He turns his broad, stone-skinned face to me, one corner of his wide mouth tilted severely down. “I been watching dis one for some time now,” he says. “Last time I been down here, it were scarcely big enough to fit me fat thumb. Now . . .”
He doesn’t need to finish. I can see for myself. I run my hand over the wall, gliding my fingers along the edge of the crack. I can’t help feeling it wouldn’t take more than a good grip and a single hard tug to make this break run straight up through the palace and bring the whole thing crashing down upon my head.
Ghat watches me. His hard eyes blink slowly, one after the other. “Is bad, Big King,” he says, in his distinctive low-stone dialect. “I seen cracks like dese in some of t’other big buildings inna city. The temple. The old watch tower at lower east bridge. The base of Urzulhar Circle.”
“Indeed?” The Urzulhar Circle is one of the oldest, most sacred sites in all the Under Realm. I chuckle mirthlessly. “I assumed the Circle would be protected by the gods.”
“’Fraid not, Big King.” Ghat shakes his heavy head. “If dese stirrings go on, the Circle be first to fall.” He sets a second lorst in a holder so that it casts a pool of light over the floor. Taking up a measuring rod, he begins to draw in the thick dust at my feet. In a few quick strokes, he renders a rough but accurate and recognizable map of the city. Ghat may be crude and stone-hided, but he is a genius in his own right.
“Here and here,” he says indicating points on the map. “Another here. Dese be where big breaks will start when time comes. East city gonna fall first. The rest will crumble soon after. When it goes, it all gonna go.”
I study his drawing. My vision is dull, uncomprehending. I don’t want to comprehend. I want to stomp my foot in the center of those sketches, kick them, smear them, obliterate even the memory of them.
“It were always gonna be,” Ghat says at last, stepping back and surveying his work. “Sometimes I fink the plan for the city’s fall were built into the city itself. No stopping it.”
“How long do we have?”
He shrugs. “If dere be no more stirrings, could be another thousand turns of the cycle. More even. But if the stirrings gonna increase at the rate dey’ve been . . . I wouldn’t give us one more cycle.”
I don’t respond. I can’t. My stomach has dropped, my throat closed up. It’s all I can do to stand there, staring at that map. Staring at those grooves he’s driven through the sketched-out lines of the city I love. “How far will the destruction go?” I ask at last, my voice rough. “Do you mean Mythanar alone?”
“Oh no. When we go, we all gonna go. The Big End will start here—right here.” He points to the Urzulhar Circle. “The city fall in a few hours at most. Once it start, it spread fast. Before dimness, whole Under Realm be broken into . . .” He pauses, his eyes rolling back in his head as he does a quick calculation . . . “I ‘spect ‘bout four hundred small-bite islands. Maybe seven big‘uns.”
“Will any of the cities be spared?”
“Unlikely. Maybe Valthurg? It be closer to the surface, away from any big cracks. But the others . . . no. Dey done for.”
“And what are our options?”
Ghat shrugs, the rough stone of his shoulders mounding. “Prayer?”
I harden my jaw. “Evacuation.”
At this, however, the chief snorts. “And where you fink we gonna go, Big King? Aurelis? Noxaur? Troldefolk don’t belong anywhere but with other troldefolk.”
“Perhaps the human world,” I say slowly, hardly liking to admit the thought out loud. I did not enjoy my brief time spent in that world, but it boasts many high mountain ranges beneath which no humans have dared to delve. Perhaps we could find a place of sanctuary in the caverns and deep places.
Ghat, however, laughs outright. “Good luck making troldefolk follow you. Far from quinsatra and all dat make good life. No, no.” He wipes a hand down his broad flat face and shrugs again. “When I go, I gonna be buried under rock and rubble as is my home. It not so bad an end. For troll. Some say it the only good end.”
Troll. I note the word but do not call it out. Instead, I growl, “You sound like Targ and the Cult of Arraog.”
Ghat grunts. “Umog Targ be strange but he make good sense. Why fight what can’t be fought, eh?” When I offer no answer, he reaches out, claps me on the shoulder. “No worry, Big King. Most folk never gonna see city fall.”
“Really?”
“’Course not! Most folk gonna die of poison long before.”
On that word of encouragement, I thank my engineer and make good my escape. It’s a long climb back up the many steep stairs to the lived-in floors of the palace above. As I go, I could almost swear I feel the stones around me expanding and contracting in a slow, rhythmic pulse, like deeply drawn and exhaled breaths.
Closing my eyes, I rest my hand on the wall and lean in. Trying to sense that Presence. Deep, deep down. That unfathomable consciousness, so utterly unaware of me and all my kind. There’s no understanding a mind like that. I have a better chance of connecting with a rockflea mere moments before squashing it under my boot.
Setting my jaw, I pull away from the wall and continue up the stair. As Ghat said, there’s no point in fighting what can’t be fought. But I’m not done fighting just yet. I have a few more maneuvers to play. Somehow, I must bring the Miphates to the Under Realm. I have heard tales of the staggering feats these human mages have achieved as they use their words to draw magic directly from the Source and manipulate it to their will. If there’s any truth to those tales, surely they can use such power to help Mythanar.
But if I’m going to get the Miphates, I must have leverage over Larongar. Which means . . . Faraine. Faraine, whom I promised to send home. Faraine, who has faced death three times now since coming to my realm. Who still insists she wants to stay.
Faraine.
My life or my doom.
“Are you really going to march right past me like I’m not even here? Or have I blended into the rockwork rather better than usual?”
I stop. Turn my head slowly to the shadowed alcove on my right. There I can just discern my brother, leaning against the wall, all insouciant grace and dangerous grins.
My heartrate quickens. I draw a short breath and remind myself that Sul is not my enemy. Not my proven enemy in any case. He is still, for better or for worse, my brother. “Well?” I say, choosing not to respond to his quips. “Did you find her?”
Sul pushes away from the wall and saunters from the shadows into the light of the lantern hanging from the high ceiling. “Sorry, my brother.” He rubs the back of his neck, his expression chagrined. “I’ve had my people scouring the palace. She seems to have disappeared following the stirring. Her description is exactly like any number of other working girls in the bathhouses. With no other distinctive qualities or marks to inquire after, I cannot get so much as a name.”
I regard my brother silently. Sul answers my look with one equally stony before finally shaking his head and growling, “Gods above and below, Vor! Don’t give me that disappointed-elder-brother stare of yours. Don’t you think I feel guthakug enough about the situation as it is? I put you in a vulnerable position. I know that. Never in a million turns of the cycle did I expect that girl to be used as another vessel for poison! If there’s any truth to your theory to begin with, that is. You must admit, it does sound rather implausible—”
“Tell me how else it was accomplished, then.”
At the sharpness of my tone, Sul takes a half-step back. “I don’t know.” His eyes narrow. “While it may surprise you to learn it, my sources of information aren’t infinite. I’m working with the best I have and will get you what answers are within my power to grasp.” He snarls then, cursing softly. “I’m just relieved you didn’t do something that would have put us all in danger.”
Resisting the impulse to grab him by the front of his shirt, I turn abruptly and continue on my way down the passage. I know what my brother is saying; his hints are broad enough. He’s not in the least concerned that another dose of raog poison nearly drove me to murder Faraine. All he cares about is that the marriage to Gavaria’s princess remains unconsummated. Had I gone through with the violent lusts the poison stirred inside of me, I would have bound myself and all of Mythanar to the terms of the written agreement between myself and Larongar. The written word of humans holds power over all the fae. The deed would no sooner be done before I found myself marching into war in the human realm with the best of my warriors. Leaving Mythanar under threat. Without a king.
It was close. Too close.
Sul hastens to catch up, matches his stride to mine. “Brother,” he says and puts out a hand. I stop abruptly and turn another cold stare upon him. He offers a mirthless smile. “Come now, do you still suspect me? Is that what this is about?”
I don’t answer.
Cursing again, Sul steps back and throws his arms wide. “What do you want me to do? Would you feel better if you pinned me to the ground again? Shall I lie prone and offer up my neck for your royal foot? Because I’m perfectly happy to humiliate myself as many times as it takes to make you trust me.”
His eyes are wide, sparking with the passion of his words. But there’s something else, something about the set of his jaw, the tension in his brow. Something I cannot name. I don’t like it. I don’t like not being able to read my brother as I used to.
The truth is, Sul is the one who handed me that goblet of poison. Sul is the one who arranged for the bathhouse girls. Who else could have poisoned me except for Sul?
“Chancellor Houg has received word from the cities of Ulam and Jolaghar.” My voice is abrupt, devoid of emotion. “But not from Hoknath.” Sul blinks, momentarily disoriented by the conversational shift. I continue relentlessly, giving him no time to find his footing. “Ulam and Jolaghar both report only minor effects from this most recent stirring. Lord Korh of Hoknath has sent no message.”
“It’s only been two lusterlings since the quake, Vor.” Sul shrugs one shoulder. “Korh may be distracted with his own recovery efforts.”
It’s true, of course. I know how busy I have been, managing Mythanar’s needs these last two lusterlings with scarcely a moment to eat, to close my eyes, to breathe. Hoknath is the nearest city to Mythanar, and if it suffered similar shocks, Lord Korh is likely pushed to his limits. But he should have found time to send a message to his king.
“Chancellor Houg is concerned,” I say. Then, with emphasis: “I am concerned.”
“Send couriers of your own then, if you’re so impatient.”
“Good idea.” I tip my chin, looking at Sul from under my brows. “Take Hurk and Jot with you. Go by riverway and return as swiftly as you may with word.”
My brother blinks. Then he angles his head to one side. “So that’s it then. You’re sending me away. To Hoknath.”
“I require news of our sister city’s situation. I need someone I can trust to retrieve that information. You are the logical choice.”
Sul scoffs. “Be honest, Vor. Is this some precursor to my ultimate banishment? Are you trying it out for size to see how it feels?”
“My only concern is for my kingdom.”
“Morar-juk it is!”
“And what does that mean? Speak plainly, brother.”
“I think I’m speaking plain enough.” Sul takes a step closer. Now his face is mere inches from mine. His brow is dark, his eyes spears of accusation. “It’s been a long time since Mythanar and the Under Realm was your first concern. Since the moment you snatched that mortal wench off her feet and placed her before you in your saddle. As long as she is here, you’re not the monarch your people need. And you know it.”
His words lance into my head, red hot and burning. Perhaps all the worse because they are true.
I keep my voice low and hard. “If you set off at once, you may be back by tomorrow dimness. I shall await what news you bring with interest.”
Sul draws a long, ragged breath, his nostrils flaring. Then he steps back, runs a hand through his hair, smoothes it back from his forehead. “My King,” he says and offers a salute. Only the faint curl of his lip betrays his true state of mind.
The next moment, he turns on heel, marches down the passage, turns the corner, and vanishes from sight. I remain alone. Standing beneath the vaulted ceiling under the cold, revealing light of the lorst lantern. Feeling the weight of an entire nation threatening to bow me under it. Never in my life have I felt so alone.
How long can I stand it before I must inevitably break?
