In all my years as Thamaos’s chosen prince, I’ve never commanded magick without a source. Then again, I’ve never been sent here, where my lord’s power still clings to the living world like fresh rain.
Power that knows me. Just as he said.
“You don’t think we should’ve brought Gavril?” Bron asks. The warm light of her torch adds a golden glow to her pale skin and silvering copper hair.
A scoff leaves me before I can restrain myself. “If a sorcerer were all we needed to protect us from the creature beneath these grounds, she wouldn’t be here. We just need this,” I pat the God Knife strapped to my hip. “And you, of course, and Thresh to carry her out. As long as she’s willing and doesn’t try to kill us, this should go smoothly.”
We leave my entourage behind and cross the grounds where gardens once flourished with renowned beauty, or so say the paintings in Min-Thuret’s library. Now the land is covered with thorny bushes, weeds, gravel, and dirt. The dead version of what once was.
I visualize the old map Bron and I studied on the journey from Min-Thuret and move accordingly. Thresh lags a handful of steps.
“This was the famed monastery?” Bron asks, holding up her torch. Her life since she arrived in the Territories two decades ago, fleeing the North’s complacency, is one of luxury at my palace, not the outskirts of a dirty city.
For the first time since I came to know her, I hesitate to answer. Given the events of the last few weeks, I’m wary. Unsure who I can trust. Even Bron.
Especially Bron.
Thanks to her son’s treason in the Northlands, there’s been plenty of reason to doubt her, much as I don’t want to. She passed the Brotherhood’s tests and questioning, but I’m no fool. If Rhonin Shawcross didn’t act alone, and if betrayal is indeed in the air, I will sniff it out.
“Yes, this is the monastery,” I reply. “Five hundred years old. Transitioned into the original scholarada where many of King Gherahn’s young recruits trained. Only a select group advanced to the Order of Night at the school in Quezira.”
“What happened to the rest of them?” she asks. “The ones who weren’t chosen to advance.”
“Conscripted to the guard. Unless they died in training first.” I give her a sidelong glance. “At least my army isn’t so brutal with its youth.”
She says nothing, no doubt disagreeing after what happened with her son.
We pass the old dormitories’ rubble. Though bandages hide beneath my trousers, protecting the healing burns along my calves and thighs, I join Bron and Thresh and crawl over the refectory’s crumbling wall. Together, we walk through the infirmary and stumble over what’s left of the bath house’s cobbled tiles as a shortcut. While it requires a bit of care, particularly on my part, the trip across the decrepit acreage isn’t half as dreadful as I imagined. At moments, it even feels nostalgic. Not a rush of memory like that night at the library, but as though I’m connecting to a part of my ancestors’ past.
Until we reach the temple ruins.
“This feels dangerous, Your Highness,” Bron says as we stare at the haunting remnants of the worship hall. The stone glows, bathed in the golden hues of a fading sunset.
I take the torch from Bron and aim it toward the darkness waiting before us. “Yes, well, best make friends with danger. It will be a constant companion in the days ahead.”
Careful, I duck beneath a deteriorating stonework beam that bisects the opening where the main entry used to be. Bron keeps close as we step into gloomy shadows and walk inside a pool of torchlight, swatting our way through dense cobwebs, climbing over mounds of rocks, debris, and shattered mortar.
I imagine the hand-crafted stained-glass windows and granite altar that must’ve been here once upon a time, the wooden pews carved by men and women who revered their god and felt sure their work would have greater meaning in the future to come.
Gone now. Turning to dust. All of it.
What is the meaning of life if even time can steal our legacy?
Soon, we find the old hatch that leads underground. Thresh goes first. Once we’re beneath the earth with the heat of our torches on our faces, my captain strains against the old iron door leading to the cells buried further below.
There’s no magick down here that I can break through with a simple Elikesh order, but there was never a need. Thamaos’s outer protections surrounded this entire property, and beyond that, this place is a crypt, sealed by a door that, without an ability like Bron’s, is an immovable slab.
Though we’re cramped inside the small space, I sweep my arm between Bron and the door. “Your turn, my dear.”
She takes a deep breath and steps forward as Thresh shuffles out of the way. Her concentration is single-minded, her stare eerily intense. For several minutes, she studies the curved line where the door meets stone, seeking threads within the metal’s structure, threads that I’ve never been able to find, no matter how hard I look.
“Lana suun revius,” she finally says. The Elikesh rolls off her tongue, smooth as unfurling silk. “Lana suun sal.”
With a wave of her hand, the door drags open, painfully slowly. Mice scatter as the bottom edge scrapes the gravel, and the hinges screech their ages-old protest, reluctant to grant us more than a couple feet through which to enter.
But it’s enough.
Truly admiring the way she’s learned to dominate metals over these last years, I say, “See? Why would I want a dramatic sorcerer snipping at my heels when I have you?”
