Firesoul Page 14

  Then the air grew even more crowded.

  They fell from the sky, brown furry bodies and black wings, needle teeth flashing in red mouths. The cloud of bats smashed into the mosquito swarm, biting and tearing with all the simple fury that the spirits Jiri had called could push into them. Their leathery wings whipped around Jiri, driving the mosquitoes back, but only a little. There were simply too many of the insects, and each of them was almost as big as the bats that were attacking them.

  We can't fight these things. Cupping a hand over her mouth, Jiri shouted, "Through the water! Into the Pyre!"

  Charging forward, she crashed into the dark water. It washed around her, warmer than her blood, the mud beneath it pulling at her feet. She shoved her way deeper, feeling the water rise, pouring into her armor, catching her and slowing her as the swarm pursued, swirling around her head. She took a breath and ducked beneath the surface, almost dropping her spear as she reached up to jerk away the parasites that still clung to her head and neck. Her legs thrashed, half running, half swimming. Praying to all the spirits that she was wasn't just spinning in circles beneath the murky water, she pulled herself forward until her shin slammed painfully into something hard.

  Lungs burning, Jiri shoved her feet down onto stone and muck and pushed herself up. Out of the water, and the Pyre was there, rearing up right in front of her. Morvius already stood on the stones, breathing hard as he snatched bugs out of the air, crushed them and flung them down. There weren't so many here, and when Jiri turned she could see that main part of the swarm still buzzing over the water behind her. Through the head-aching whine of their wings she could hear splashing, could see the water moving where Sera dragged her armor through it. The paladin must have been tall enough to keep her head above the water, because she was moving steadily forward, but Jiri couldn't see her. All she could see was Sera's shield, raised like a steel roof over her head to ward the vicious insects away. Not far from her, the water seemed to smoke, white vapor pouring up from it. Through it and the swarm Jiri could glimpse the shadows of arms moving, and she heard a brittle crunching noise and Linaria's voice, cursing.

  "Linaria?" Jiri felt a mosquito latch onto the back of her neck and slapped it away, swung her spear and cut it out of the air. It fell, spilling her stolen blood across the Pyre's black rock.

  "Stay back," Linaria warned.

  The swirling not-smoke came closer and Jiri could see Linaria standing up, her hands pulling clear shards of ice out of her white hair. The pale flames still surrounded her, and Jiri could feel a chill even though the half-elf stood well over a spear length away. The swarm wasn't trying to feed from her.

  "Come," Jiri said. She crossed the slab of stone that had sealed the Pyre for so long, then began to climb the rough stones, heading for the rock wound that was the Pyre's door. She moved, but the swarm didn't follow. By the time she reached the spot where Linaria's spell-wrought stone wall had once stood, all of the insects had circled away, leaving Jiri alone but covered in huge welts, a painful dimple in the center of each one weeping a trickle of blood. Morvius was behind her, then Sera. Linaria came last, keeping her white flames between them and the swarm.

  While they made their way up the stones, the swarm pulled in, circling over the water until it had calmed. Then it landed, thousands of the insects resting lightly on the surface of the water, waiting.

  "I should freeze them all," Linaria said. The half-elf had the fewest bites on her of any of them, but one sat next to her left eye, swelling it shut.

  "Save it," Morvius said. He had sat to pull off his boots, dumping out water and the broken corpse of one of the bugs. "They're not chasing after us, and we might need that magic later."

  Jiri eyed the settled insects, then forced herself to turn her back on them and face the Pyre. The stones around them were covered in soot, and a dull heat radiated off them, as if they had been in the sun all day, even though they were in the shade. Life may be coming back to the area around this place, but it will be a long time before it comes near these stones. Even life warped by feeding on what was left of that demon.

  "We have to take care of these bites," Jiri said. Or tried to say. She had bites near her lips and on her cheek, and her face was so swollen she had trouble shaping the words. "The bloodhaze carry the sleeping sickness," she slurred.

  Sera understood her, though, or at least understood why Jiri was digging through her bag, hunting for a salve that would help clean the wounds.

  "We don't have the time for that now," the paladin said. Setting down her shield, she slid the steel and leather gauntlet off her hand.

  Jiri stared at her, wary, but didn't duck when Sera reached out and pressed her palm against Jiri's forehead.

  The paladin's goddess hit her like a thunderclap.

  The immensity of the spirit staggered her, a vast force that burned out everything else around her, left her alone in a world of golden light. For a moment, or an eternity, Jiri stood balanced on a sword blade that stretched from one end of the sky to the other, and there were eyes on her. Eyes like Sera's, judging eyes, but so much more, eyes filled with knowledge and courage and wisdom and pain, eyes that flicked across Jiri and knew her, from the depths of her soul up. Those eyes touched her, and Jiri wavered on the thin blade, trying to find her balance, her purpose. Then they were gone, the light whirling away, and in its diminishment Jiri could see something tiny in the center of the goddess's power, something plain and small and ordinary in all that brilliant light. The soul of the human that goddess had once been, buried beneath all that divine power. She saw that, and she could breathe again.

  Jiri opened her eyes. She was sprawled on her back, the stones of the Pyre hot against her palms, Sera staring down at her.

  "What did you do to her?" Linaria stepped forward, putting herself between Jiri and Sera.

  "I asked my goddess to heal her wounds, and to cleanse her of the vermin's disease," Sera said, still watching Jiri. "And she did."

  She did. Jiri could feel it, the burning itch that had been starting in her face gone, the skin of her face and neck back to normal, unswollen. "I'm fine, Linaria. I just...Gods and crocodiles." Jiri smiled slightly as she realized what she'd just said. "Two things you don't want to surprise you."

  Jiri scrambled up, ignoring Sera's staring. Does she have any idea what she's sworn herself to? It didn't matter. She needed this woman, and the vast spirit of righteous justice that pressed its power through her. "Heal the others, if you can. I'll see what I can find here."

  Sera watched her a little longer, than reached her hand out to Linaria. Jiri, watching surreptitiously as she moved around the opening melted into the stone wall they had tried to seal the Pyre with, saw the others flinch when Sera touched them, but they didn't react like she had. Do they just not feel her power, or did Iomedae pay some special attention to me? That thought didn't help anything, and Jiri pushed it away and focused on her search.

  Past its rough exterior, the Pyre was obviously a made thing. The walls of the passage that started here were marked with thin lines, the almost invisible joints between huge stones. These stones formed the corridor that ran down into the stone. Unlike the outside, the stone in here was gray, not marked by char except for right at the end, where that thing had melted through Linaria's stone wall.

  Jiri stepped back to the entrance and called to the spirits. When she felt their regard, so small and familiar, so different from the goddess's, she reached out and scooped a little bit of sunlight out of the air and fixed it to the tip of her spear. Its light was weak with the sun flashing off the water outside, but the stone throat of the passage stretched into darkness. The others were healed now, skin unmarked, unswollen, including Sera.

  "Well," Morvius said. "Shall we see what's up for the rest of the day?"

  ∗ ∗ ∗

  Sooty ghosts of small clawed feet marked the stone just beyond the entrance, humanlike but inhuman, and so familiar.

  "A biloko." Jiri knelt on the smooth ston
e floor, tracing one of the smudged marks.

  "How old?" Sera asked.

  "I don't know." Jiri looked at the tracks, dark near the door but rapidly getting lighter. "Sometime in the last few days, obviously."

  "Did it leave?"

  Jiri stood. "I can't tell. It's just dust on stone here, and Patima and her friends stirred all that up. But I'm betting it did."

  "You think it might be the one we fought yesterday?" Sera said. "The one that threw fire at us?"

  "I think so. When it spoke to me..." Jiri trailed off. She stared down the stone passage, so dark and silent, its stones still warm. She didn't look at Sera, or Linaria. "I thought I saw it holding something, something that reminded me of the thing I saw Patima holding when she ran out of here."

  "That thing you can't describe, because you barely saw it? This other thing, that you think you maybe saw, it looked just like that?" Morvius snorted. "Are you holding out on us, runt, or are you an idiot?"

  "I didn't see either clearly, but I had a feeling from both. A sense of power, of something dangerous, something...alive. Call it idiocy if you want, but that's what I felt. And that's what I feel coming from down there." Jiri pointed her spear down the passage that slanted away in front of them.

  "Good. It's better if these evils share the same roots. It makes them easier to tear out." Sera settled her shield, dropped her hand to her hilt. "I'll take the lead now."

  Jiri stared into the darkness. All her life, she had been warned to stay away from here, that disturbing whatever mistakes the ancestors had chosen to seal away was dangerous, to herself and all she loved. Warnings that had proven themselves true. But her ancestors' mistakes had already been released, hadn't they? Taken and carried away by Patima and the Consortium so they could be traded for gold.

  "You can, but I should. There's something here, but it isn't the thing that destroyed Thirty Trees. Whatever that was, it's moved on, and we're here to find its track." Jiri looked at the paladin. "I'm your tracker, aren't I?"

  "You are." Sera pulled her sword, the scrape of its steel loud in the stone passage. "So you can lead. But I can fight, so you should be ready to get out of the way. Morvius, you watch our rear."

  "Don't say it," Linaria said, falling in behind the paladin. In a line they started down, boots and sandals scraping against the dust and stone, obliterating the last few faded marks of the biloko.

  ∗ ∗ ∗

  The passage curved more and more as it dropped, circling in on itself. Jiri thought they must be below the level of the pool outside, but the walls stayed dry, the almost invisible seams between the great blocks free of moisture. There were symbols carved into each block, line after line of charms chiseled into the stone. They were echoes of the symbols that Jiri had run her fingers over on the walls of Kibwe, the marks of her ancestors' lost arcane alphabet, and she could feel the magic that they had once spelled out into these stones. Spells of strength, of confinement, of concealment, ancient charms that had once kept this place secret and sealed.

  Charms whose magic had long ago fallen apart into dust and ash.

  Age and heat had broken them. Centuries had rolled over these stones, and entropy had taken its bite, breaking the careful pattern of charm and spell. That, Jiri could understand. But the heat—it was in every stone, like the last ghost of a conflagration, and somehow it had consumed most of the magic that had been woven into the stones, left it gray and broken.

  The heat was breaking her companions, too.

  "All the gods damn me," Morvius cursed. "This isn't a ruin, it's an oven." The fighter had stopped, leaning over. His face had turned red, and sweat ran like rivers through his dark hair.

  Jiri wiped her own damp braids out of her face and set down her spear. Stepping past Sera, whose prayers kept her cool as ever beneath her metal and leather, and Linaria, sweaty too but not so red, Jiri went to Morvius.

  "I was saving this for myself, in case I needed it, but since biloko red isn't a normal color for you, I think you need it more." Jiri whispered to her spirits and felt a breath of coolness gather in her hand. Then it was gone, wrapping itself around the tall man. Morvius immediately heaved a great sigh of relief and straightened.

  "Now that's useful magic," he said. "Why can't you do that, Linaria?"

  "I can. The cool comes all at once, though, and you'll have pieces breaking off after." The half-elf raised her hand and held it close to the warm stone. "This heat isn't volcanic. It's not natural. Are you sure that thing isn't down there?"

  Sure? How am I supposed to be sure about any of this? Jiri didn't let her doubts into her answer.

  "It's not. But it smoldered here a long time, and the stones remember."

  Down the corridor, Sera started moving forward again. "Let's see if they remember anything else besides heat."

  Jiri rubbed the sweat from her eyes, cursed the chafing heat of her armor, and hurried after, pausing only long enough to scoop up her spear. By the time she slipped past the paladin the corridor had taken its last curve. Beyond it, Jiri's pale light revealed two statues of dark soapstone, a man and a woman standing before a wall of stone. Their hands were raised, and Jiri saw the same command carved into them that the Mango Woman had. Stop. Go no further.

  Forbidden.

  Between the statues, the stone wall had been broken, large blocks shifted out of place, leaving a low, narrow gap to what lay beyond. Jiri stared at that gap for a long time, her ears straining to hear anything.

  Silence and nothing, nothing and silence. When Sera shifted behind her, impatient to move, the creak of her armor sounded like a shriek. Jiri held up her hand and crept forward. From the sound of it, Sera waited only a moment before following.

  The gap was just three blocks, broken and hauled out of the wall, but Jiri could see the cracks running through the stones that still made up the wall, wide black veins that disappeared into the ceiling. The Consortium team had smashed something low into this wall until they had broken one block enough to haul it out, then taken two more. This close to the gap, Jiri thought she could feel the last weak remnants of the old magic of the symbols still crackling, broken with the stone carvings that had channeled it. Ignoring the antlike tickle of its touch, she pushed her spear forward through the gap.

  A room stretched beyond, large and circular, an empty pocket beneath a shallow domed ceiling. Sliding carefully through the gap, Jiri held up her spear, throwing light across it.

  The stone walls here were not covered with symbols. They were a jungle, and a city.

  Stone trees stretched up the walls, their branches and leaves tangling over the dome. Behind their trunks were the carved walls of a city. Symbols were etched into those walls, tiny and intricate, and over them rose towers and rooftops. The walls pulled at Jiri's attention, but she forced herself to stare out across the room at the debris that littered the polished granite of the floor.

  Stone carnage covered everything. Pieces of onyx, granite, and soapstone lay everywhere, some the size of her head, others chips of gravel. The bigger pieces still held onto the shapes of their carvings. There was a hand, fingers and thumb curled around a piece of a spear. The smooth lines of a man's chest and part of his belly. The lower part of a leg and a foot, missing its toes. The feathered edge of a wing. A snarling, tooth-lined jaw. A snake's head, mouth gaping, fangs and forked tongue broken.

  Statues, Jiri thought. What's left of them. There were four short plinths standing over the debris, empty low pillars that reminded Jiri of the taller ones that held the statues high in Kibwe. Each of them stood before an arch that had been carved into the wall, a stylized city gate like the one Jiri had come through, and which her companions were slipping through.

  "Looks like Corrianne and company didn't like the art," Morvius said, rolling a broken head over. It had a man's face, but instead of a nose and mouth it bore a hooked beak.

  "I think the art didn't like them," Linaria said.

  "Golems?" Morvius stared around the room, as if expecti
ng the stone fragments to begin moving.

  "Lots of them," Linaria said.

  Besides the four plinths, there were empty spaces in the carved walls. Among the tree branches and vines that rose up the walls and covered the ceilings, there were gaps, niches of smooth stone shaped like the shadows of the animals that had been carved there once. Monkeys and parrots, jaguars and eagles, a crowd of empty spaces.

  Linaria bent and picked up a broken piece of stone, an eye and part of an ear, and whispered a spell over it, wrapping light around it. That cool blue light blended with the gold of Jiri's and brightened the room. Now Jiri could read the marks of the fight that had happened here. Dark scorches marred the walls and ceiling, and in one spot the stone floor was pitted and etched, as if with acid. Sliding aside a stone leopard paw, Jiri found a dagger, small and wickedly sharp, its point bent as if it had been thrown into a stone wall—or stone body. Nearby, there were dark spots on the floor, rust-brown spots that led to a wide, dry stain. Jiri found a handprint smeared beside it, small as a child's.

  "I think Mikki got hurt here," she said.

  "Too bad she wasn't killed." Morvius said. "Even Amiro wouldn't resurrect her scrawny ass."

  "She should have been killed, though. They all should have." Sera kicked one of the stone chunks across the room. It hit the wall with a crunch and shattered into dust and gravel. "One of my instructors told me of a fight he had with a stone golem. It almost killed him, and did kill two clerics and another paladin. He described the thing as deadly, not brittle."