Leaves of Flame (14 page)

Snow had begun to fall—light and fine— by the time they’d dug enough to reveal the top of the tunnel’s entrance. No intricately carved mantle or steps marked it; Gaurraenan hadn’t been interested in art or architecture. The rock around the door was rough, chisel marks plain, smoothed only by the elements.Twenty feet wide,the door itself was a single stone, its face also rough, without markings, but Colin knew it was finely crafted.As soon as it was free,he stepped forward to where Vaeren inspected the crack between door and mountain, the others clustering behind him.

“How do we open it?”Vaeren asked.One hand brushed lightly across the door’s surface.

Colin smiled. “We push. It isn’t locked or warded or sealed. Gaurraenan never expected to use it more than once, and Cortaemall sealed the halls from the far side to keep the Alvritshai in the north out. He didn’t feel the need to seal this side.”

“But it will take all of us to move a door of this size!” one of Aeren’s Phalanx exclaimed.

“Gaurraenan was practical, but not stupid. The door is weighted. I would never have been able to come this way the last time if it weren’t. We only need to get it started.”

Colin set his hands to the door, Vaeren and a few others following suit, even though Colin could have done it himself, and then they shoved, hard.

With a hiss, the ice that had formed between the door and the mountain cracked, showering them with fine crystals, but then the heavy stone began to shift, grating against dust and debris on the floor on the inside as it moved. A gust of air blew past Colin’s face, smelling of cold granite, dry and ancient, and something deeper, something darker, like fresh blood. He glanced around to see if anyone else had noticed it, but all of the Alvritshai were leaning forward, peering into the darkness beyond. Vaeren actually stepped forward to the edge of the weak light, his hands on his hips, then turned back.

“We’ll need the torches.”

Colin stepped out of the escalating winds of the storm and stood beside Vaeren as the guardsmen scrambled to unpack the torches. The smell of fresh blood grew stronger inside the entrance and Colin swallowed against rising nausea. Vaeren watched him as he stepped out beyond the light,frowning as he vanished into the darkness.The guardsmen searched for him, shifting uncomfortably, then stilled when Colin spoke.

“I’ve been here before, remember?” Colin said, humor coloring his voice. “I know the tunnel proceeds straight for about a hundred feet, then begins to slope downward. We won’t reach the first set of stairs for another hour.”

Vaeren scowled.

Behind him, light fl ared as one of the torches caught, harsh yellow flame flickering in the gusts from the doorway. Two more followed, the darkness receding enough to reveal Colin.

“We’ll need to move swiftly if we want to have enough torches left for the return trip,” he said.

The halls were empty, barren, and uninteresting for the first day, the tunnel carved from the rock with no attention paid to aesthetics or elegance. It had had a single purpose: to take Lord Gaurraenan’s Phalanx to the southern edge of the mountains. That purpose could be seen in the sharp edges of the cut stone, in the crudeness of the stairs as they descended, in the abrupt change in the path as the ancient quarrymen ran into impediments and obstructions in the mountain itself. At one point the tunnel veered away sharply, curving around a wall of what appeared to be ice, but was actually some kind of crystal, veined in blues and greens that glowed in the light of the torches. Clear in places, it almost seemed as if something were moving deep within the crystal, although no one could tell if that were true or if it were simply shadows caught by the refracting light. Later, the tunnel opened up into a huge cavern, circling a wide pit on one side, the entire room smooth, as if it had been hollowed out by running water. When they reached the far side of the immense room, they found a waterfall emerging from a crack in the granite near the room’s ceiling, the snowmelt pouring down and across the floor to the open pit,where it vanished in another fall.They forded the stream, the stone on either side slick with hoarfrost and ice, and entered the tunnel on the far side.

The smell of blood wavered as they moved, sometimes strong enough Colin nearly gagged, at other times fading so that he barely noticed it. It became obvious he was the only one who sensed it. As in the pass, he caught fl ickers of Tamaell Cortaemall’s men as they made their way along the same path. They’d camped in the enormous cavern, their fires flaring in the darkness to either side of Colin’s small group, the phantom light highlighting the ancient Alvritshai warriors’ angular faces in sharp relief. Colin felt their presence against his skin, the same shudders he’d felt in the pass coursing through his body as they moved through the insubstantial camp. Sweat broke out on his back, prickled in his armpits and on his neck, but he tried to shrug the sensations aside. When he’d traveled this way before, over sixty years ago, the resurgence of these events hadn’t been so powerful. He’d caught glimpses of the battle in the pass, heard the clash and screams of the fi ghting, smelled the blood and death on the air. But inside the tunnel, he’d sensed nothing until he’d reached the bridge across the underground river and the halls of Gaurraenan’s House on the far side.

That’s where the slaughter had truly begun, where the hatred and death had scarred the stone enough to leave a permanent echo.

When they passed beneath an intricately carved arch— Alvritshai words etched into the stone high above in a style and form long dead—a draft of wind blew from the tunnel ahead, carrying with it the stench of thousands of dead.

Colin gasped, drew in another breath unconsciously, then gagged and staggered to the side of the tunnel, nearly collapsing. Through the sound of rising screams, he heard someone cry out, heard scrambling feet, and then he was surrounded, someone holding his arm. He realized he’d bent forward at the waist and knees, his entire body trembling.

“What is it?” someone barked—Vaeren or Petraen, he couldn’t tell through the echoing shouts from the tunnel ahead. “What’s happening?”

“It’s worse than I thought it would be,” Colin gasped. “Far, far worse.”

“What do you mean? What’s worse?”

Colin looked up into Aeren’s face, the lord kneeling in front of him. But it hadn’t been Aeren who spoke. Eraeth was the one holding his arm, keeping him from slipping to the floor entirely. “They’re dying,” he said, his voice weak and shaking. “I can hear them dying.”

Aeren frowned, glanced toward Eraeth.

“What’s he talking about?”Vaeren demanded.He stood behind Aeren, arms crossed over his chest as he glared down at them all uncertainly. The rest of the Phalanx and the Flame clustered behind him, the torches held high.

Colin tried to straighten, managed to rise using Eraeth’s help. He met Vaeren’s eyes, drew a few breaths to steady himself, then said harshly, “When I came through here before, I could see what had happened in the past. I could see Cortaemall’s slaughter of the House of Gaurraenan. I could smell it, hear it, practically taste it. Back then, I managed to force myself to continue. But this time. . . .” He drew in a ragged breath. “I can already smell the carnage. I can already hear the screams of the dying. And we haven’t even reached the bridge that leads into the main halls yet.”

“Are you saying that we’re surrounded by spirits? That the Gaurraenen dead are waiting for us?” The derision in Vaeren’s voice held the faintest tinge of fear. Some of those behind him shuffled and glanced down the black tunnel ahead of them, drawing closer to the torchlight.

“No,” Colin said, setting his staff on the floor for support and pushing away from the wall.After a moment,Eraeth let Colin’s arm go,but he didn’t step back.“These aren’t ghosts. They aren’t reenacting the past.
What I’m seeing is the past.
”

Vaeren stepped back from the vehemence in Colin’s voice, his eyes widening, even though Colin trembled as he spoke.

“I didn’t realize that was how it worked,” Siobhaen said into the awkward silence that followed.

Colin glanced toward her.“It isn’t.”He frowned,his eyes ranging over them all.“Normally I control where I am,how far back I go, what I want to see. But since the battle at the Escarpment, there have been places where I’ve seen the past without willing it. Usually places where there were many deaths, but also where something incredibly painful or horrific occurred.”

“But why since then? Why not before?”

Even though it was Siobhaen who spoke, Colin turned to Aeren. “I think it’s because I’ve spent so much more time with the Well. Its taint has spread. I can feel it sinking deeper inside me.”

Someone muttered,“Shaeveran,”but no one else spoke.

Aeren rose and caught Eraeth’s gaze, his look troubled. “So what do you suggest? Should we turn back? You are the only one who knows the way through the halls of Gaurraenan’s House.”

“No,”Vaeren barked.“We are not turning back.”At Eraeth’s glare, he stiffened. “It would add weeks to the journey!”

Before Eraeth could respond, Colin cut in. “Vaeren is right. We can’t turn back. I don’t know what the return of the storms to the plains means yet, but we can’t afford to waste any time finding out. Not if they are already as violent as they seemed from the roof of the Sanctuary.” He drew himself up, squared his shoulders. “I survived this once before, I can survive it again.” At the looks of doubt, he scowled. “I was caught by surprise. I wasn’t expecting it to happen this soon. I wasn’t prepared. But now I’m on my guard.”

He wished he felt as confident as his voice sounded. He could still smell the blood, its taint slick in his throat. The screams had died down slightly. But he knew it would be rougher once they were within the halls.

Everyone hesitated.But then Vaeren said,“Let’s move.”

They struck out again, moving faster than before, Colin trying to breathe shallowly as he suppressed the urge to gag. He tasted bile at the back of his throat, but swallowed it down. Aeren and Eraeth stayed close, the others split both ahead and behind. As they drew closer to the end of the tunnel and the bridge that crossed the underground river that marked the boundary of the Alvritshai halls, the air thickened and grew dense. The screams from ahead grew louder. Sweat sheened his face as he fought against the echoes, against their intrusion into the present that only he could see. The tremors that passed through his body increased, as if he were locked in the throes of a fever.

A moment before they emerged onto the landing of the bridge, he drew in a sharp breath. The tunnel’s walls were splashed with blood, the dark reddish sprays glistening in the torchlight, dripping down the stone. Alvritshai guardsmen lay on the floor on all sides, wearing the ancient armor of House Gaurraenan,their throats slit.They’d been caught by surprise.

Then the tunnel ended,and Colin drew up short.Vaeren and Siobhaen were already halfway across the bridge, the light of their torches illuminating the far walls.

The river coursed through a massive cavern that stretched out to either side before narrowing into a low passage, the water churning just beneath the ceiling where it narrowed. But the roar of the water wasn’t enough to drown out the sounds of battle coming from the numerous openings on the far cavern wall. Balconies, windows, and doors had been cut into the stone, some of the openings connected to each other by stairs and walkways jutting out from the main wall. The massive bridge—at least forty feet wide—arched out over the raging waters and drove into a doorway twice the size of the one they’d used in the pass to enter the tunnel. Unlike the tunnel’s entrance, these doors were finely crafted, chiseled into a pointed arch at least fifty feet high, the stone carved into many smaller arcs, all reaching from the center of the door to the sides.The doors stood open, one slightly wider than the other.

Bodies were strewn everywhere—on the landing, along the bridge, and in the doorway. Colin saw where they had fallen, their blood pooling and flowing along the floor, faces staring up into the torchlight from the lanterns and sconces that lit the bridge and the wall of windows and balconies beyond. Shadowy figures played along the walls in that light as the fighting raged in the halls and corridors beyond.

But he also saw what remained of the bodies now—the armor that appeared collapsed, the body inside it decayed, nothing left but bones.The stone beneath was stained black where the blood had dried and flaked away.

“They didn’t burn them,” Aeren said. The anger in his voice startled Colin out of his paralysis.“They didn’t release them to Aielan’s Light. They left them here to rot. No wonder you can still see them,can still feel their pain.They were never returned to Aielan!”

“Cortaemall had declared them ora-khai,” Colin said. “They no longer deserved Aielan’s Light.”

Aeren shot him a vicious glare. “These people were innocents,” he spat.

“Not in Cortaemall’s eyes.” Colin swayed where he stood, light-headed. He sucked in a sharp breath and caught himself. He motioned Aeren and Eraeth forward. “We should move. Vaeren is already at the main door.”

They ran across the bridge, Aeren’s escort following behind, dodging the scatter of the long dead. Colin tried to stay clear of the blood as well, tried not to look at the men as he passed. But the stench—