The room was nearly empty, except for the dais and the orb. There were chairs around the table, tall enough to lean over to gaze at the crystal. The room was lit by eye catchers, softly glowing near the ceiling. Trenyth motioned for us to take a seat. Camille slid into the chair next to him, and I sat on the other side.
I wanted to ask what we were looking for, but a crackle sounded from the orb and the light began to spin. Camille leaned closer. I wanted to say “back away” . . . I wanted to shout “get out of there” . . . but there was no time.
The spinning blue light swirled into a vortex that rose over our heads. It spread out, clouds filling the room, flickering silver with sparkles of blue mixed throughout.
“Pretty . . .” Camille sounded entranced. She stood and reached up, as if to touch the mist. As Trenyth realized what was going on, he dove for her, as I tried to make my way across the table.
The clouds began to spin again, faster and faster, filling the room, expanding out, forks of miniature lightning flaring out to attach themselves to Camille. They began to attack her, racing up and down her body as she tried to slap them away.
Trenyth lunged, trying to protect her as I tripped over a hidden flange on the table and went skidding over the edge, hitting my chin on the floor. We all went down, with the lightning focusing on Camille. A moment later, as we scrambled for the door, the room shook and a sound like crashing thunder rolled through the air. The storm clouds we were facing shrank and vanished.
“Fuck, what’s happening?” Camille managed to pull herself by holding on to one of the chairs.
I followed suit, realizing that the floor was rolling under our feet. “Earthquake!”
Trenyth panicked. “The Queen! I must get to her side!” He turned to us.
“Go—we’ll find our way out. Just go.” I shoved him toward the door and he stumbled out as the quaking went on and on. The sound grew from thunder to freight train, and I thought I could hear screams racing by, a blur in the mayhem.
Camille made her way over to the door, crawling on her hands and knees. “We need to get in the arch!”
But the door had swung shut again and there was no visible handle, no way to open it. We were trapped in the room. On the plus side, our nasty lightning storm seemed to be gone, but on the other hand—so did any escape. And the rumbling beneath our feet continued to grow.
“Get under the table, it looks strong enough to shield us.” I grabbed Camille by the arm. We crawled under the dais, which was made of solid marble. If it cracked on us, we’d have one hell of a headache, but if it held, we’d be protected from falling debris. And given that the quake hadn’t stopped, I doubted we’d get through without something breaking off and tumbling down from the ceiling.
The rumbling became more violent. Camille and I held on to each other, cowering against the center pedestal. I could hear her whispering something under her breath but couldn’t tell if it was a spell or a prayer.
Rolling in waves, the floor rippled beneath us, like an ocean of marble, fracturing as a network of faults ran through it. And then, a loud crash, and out of the corner of my eye, I saw something thunder to the ground in a shower of dust. Another crack, and another shower of dust.
I had no clue how long the quake had been rolling through the palace. It felt like forever, like it would never end, and my stomach lurched with both fear and nausea. The worst boat ride in the world would be better than this. And then . . . slowly, the noise began to fade, and Camille squeezed my hand as the rolling slowed and—finally—stopped.
We waited for a moment, then scrambled out from beneath the table. The eye catchers were still glowing, but the dust clouded our sight. Only a few feet away, one of the stone figurines ornamenting the walls had tumbled to the floor, barely missing the table. It was big enough that it would have smashed us flat, for sure, if it had hit.
Coughing as the clouds of dust and debris filled the air, we stared at the destruction. The room was unrecognizable. Whatever decoration there had been lay in ruins, and the floor was a mishmash of broken marble. Camille inched her way closer to me and I took her hand, afraid to move for fear of setting off something.
Just then, an aftershock hit. Camille let out a scream as another one of the statues in the room toppled toward us. I grabbed her and ran, pulling her along with me by the wrist. Seconds later, the marble figurine landed right where we’d been standing, smashing into huge chunks and shaking the room.
“We have to get out of here. How are we going to get that fucking door open?” We skirted debris until we were at the door.
Camille stared at the huge gray obstacle. “I can get us out.”
Her voice grim, she reached into her cloak and brought out her unicorn horn. A powerful artifact, given to her by the Dahns unicorns, it was one of eight in existence. The Black Unicorn, the father of the Dahns race, shed his body every few thousand years, and in return for playing the fire to his phoenix, Camille had been gifted with his hide and horn. It was an incredibly powerful weapon, with limited usage, and it needed to be recharged every month under the dark of the moon.
I backed away. “Get to cracking, then, because I doubt that will be the only aftershock we’re going to feel.”
Her gaze narrowed as she gauged the door. “I just hope I don’t bring on the next one.” She closed her eyes, sliding into trance.
I didn’t understand the full mechanics of the horn, but I knew that there was a spirit inside of it, and that she’d caused havoc with it before.
A moment later, she raised the horn into the air, aiming it at the door. A wind seemed to rise in the room, growing steadily stronger. Another moment, and the floor began to shake again, though I didn’t know if it was from another aftershock, or the powers from the unicorn horn.
Camille’s hair rose in the wind, streaming back as if she were facing a giant fan, and as the tiles beneath the door began to collapse, creating an opening of about two inches below the door, the wind increased until it became a howling gale. I made sure I wasn’t in the path of anything that might blow over on me, and crouched to the ground, holding on for dear life. How Camille managed to stand in the force of the winds she was raising was a mystery to me, but stand she did.
The doors creaked and shifted, groaning as they began to open. Slowly the winds pushed them inward. Inch by inch they moved, and with a hurricane gust, they slammed open so hard that the walls cracked, and a shiver of fractures ran through the gray stone, shattering the gates. Another huge cloud of dust swept into the air, blowing past us, from the rubble that cascaded to the ground.
As the winds began to die, Camille motioned to me. She looked dark, a dour expression on her face, and I wasn’t sure what was running through her mind, but there was no time to sit around and chat. We headed through the broken remnants of the doorway, just in time for another aftershock.
This one was bad, perhaps as bad as the first one. I tripped, slamming against a wall. Camille went tumbling in the opposite direction as the world shifted. She landed hard and I heard her shout “Fuck!” but then we were plunged into darkness as all of the eye catchers faded and there was no more light.
The shaking continued, and all around us the sound of crashing stonework continued to reverberate through the air. I scrambled to get on my hands and knees, trying to regain some of my equilibrium, but up was down and left was right and it was one big blur of motion and sound.
“Camille? Can you hear me?” I held my breath, praying to Bastus that she would answer.
“Yes, I’m over . . . I’m here, trying to dodge the rubble.” She sounded petrified, but at least she was alive.
“We need to get up to ground level. If this continues we’re going to be buried alive. Which way did we come? Do you know where we are?”
After a moment, she answered. “When we first arrived, the room was to our right. So we need to make sure to head left if it’s behind us.” A pause, “Am I right?”
“Right? I don’t—Oh! I know what
you mean.” I thought for a moment. We’d barely exited the room when this aftershock hit. I flailed around in the darkness, and found the wall. Following it, a few crawls forward gave me the opening to the room on my right. Okay, then, I had to turn around so the entrance was on my left. Then I’d be aiming on target. I positioned myself as best as I could, with the wall to my left shoulder, and then waited.
“Camille? Follow my voice. I’m pointing in the right direction. If you can find me, we can try to crawl out of here. Once the shaking stops, get the fuck up on your feet and we hurry as far as we can till the next one.”
“Continue talking so I can follow your voice.”
I didn’t know what to say, so instead I began singing “Godzilla,” by Blue Oyster Cult.
“Oh Kitten, can’t you pick something else?” But there was an edge of a smile in her voice and the next moment, she was beside me. I got her positioned in back, just as the shaking stopped.
“Fuck, how long did that go on?” Camille’s voice rose, and I realized she was standing up.
I followed suit. “Come on, keep your left hand against the wall at all times. We need to make certain we’re not headed in the wrong direction.” Without further chitchat, I started out.
“Delilah, be careful—if you go too fast, you might run into debris and hurt yourself—”
She had no sooner spoken when I hit my foot against a piece of what felt like marble that had lifted up from the floor.
“Fuck, oh fuck! Geez, I may have just broken my big toe!” I wanted to hop up and down as the pain raced through my foot, but I also realized that a broken toe was nothing compared to being buried under tons of rubble, so I sucked it up. “Be careful, there’s a big block of marble right in front of you—well, as soon as I skirt it. It’s. . . .” I paced it out until I was able to stand flush against the wall again. “It’s five paces long. Six of yours, probably.”
“One . . . two . . . three . . . four . . . five . . . six . . .” Camille counted them off and then grunted. “Yeah, that’s about right. You okay? How’s your toe?”
“Hurts like hell but forget about it.” I tried to remember how long it had taken for us to get to this area. “Damn it, I forgot we came through so many turns . . .” I paused. There was an opening to my left. “Stay here for a moment. Don’t move.”
I turned, still keeping my hand against the wall. I distinctly felt the floor begin to slope upward. It made sense. There had to be more than one hallway leading up to the main floor. Hesitating, I realized we would never find our way back using the labyrinth through which Trenyth had led us. We had to take the chance.
“I think we should go this way. Make a left, turn at the corner,” I called back.
“Done.” Another moment and Camille was behind me. We headed on, trudging up the incline that was steeper than the one we’d originally descended to reach the seers’ quarters. As we journeyed in silence, my thoughts ran to Shade. He’d be all right—I was sure of it. He could shift into the Ionyc Sea if necessary. But what about Trillian? And Chase and Sharah? Sharah was pregnant. What if she went into labor due to this, in the dark and the mayhem? And Menolly . . . well . . . not much could affect her unless a beam struck her through the heart. She could be hurt but she would heal.
“You’re thinking of them too, aren’t you?” Camille’s voice softly echoed through the darkness.
“Yeah. Do you think . . . Never mind.” I didn’t want to ask. I might not want to hear what she had to say.
“I know. Trust me, I know.”
It was hard to gauge time, but after a while, the floor began to shake. “Drop! We don’t want to be standing if there’s another big one.” I slid down the wall, keeping it to my left, and pressed against it. I could hear Camille’s breath coming in soft puffs, as if she were trying to control her fear. Neither one of us spoke as the rumbling started again, but this time it lasted only for a little while—probably twenty seconds. Too long, but less than the first two shocks. The moment it subsided, I pushed to my feet again.
“Let’s go. We’ve been lucky but who knows how much time that’s going to continue?” And on we went, Camille murmuring a soft prayer for protection as we worked our way through the darkness. I hit my toes several times, but my boots were thicker and better able to handle the damage than Camille’s sandals. Luckily I was able to warn her about the dangers.
And then, I seemed to see something like a light ahead. It was glowing brighter as we neared it. At first I thought it might be the moon, or a hanging chandelier that had been spared, but I suddenly found myself out of the hallway and in the middle of a large court, and I realized it was nothing of the sort. We were back to the main level of the palace. There were gaping holes in the roof—huge and yawning, but no moon shone down to light the way.
No, instead, the sky was lit up with red and orange streaks, like a ghastly aurora, as blue streaks of lightning forked through the night, illuminating against the crimson backdrop. Thunder rolled through the air like a wave of drumbeats, and fear stole into my heart as I watched the fiery display.
“The storm—it has broken.” Camille came up behind me, wrapping her arm around my waist. “This . . . this is what I felt. It’s a monster, a terrible, horrible beast.” She moved beneath one of the holes and I shouted for her to get back, but she wouldn’t listen. Her gaze was rapt, a blur of horror and awe, as she reached her arms into the sky and began to laugh.
“Camille—stop! Do not do this—you can’t touch the power without bringing it down to rain on you!” I raced forward, knocking her to the side as a bolt of lightning ripped through the hole, striking where she had just been standing. I smelled smoke. Smoke from the left, smoke from the right. Queen Asteria’s palace was on fire.
“Camille! Get up. The palace is on fire.”
Camille shook her head, dazed. “What the . . . Holy fuck, I can’t believe I almost did that. That . . . that . . . thing up there is alive. We have to get out of here now!” She scrambled to her feet as I glanced around, trying to find an opening to the street. And then I saw it, just ahead. We had to cross the courtyard, but off to the right, there were stone steps leading into one of the gardens.
“Come on—that way.” I grabbed her hand so we wouldn’t be separated, and we headed toward the opening. We were just clearing the archway when a huge aftershock railed the land. But this time, we could see what the hell was happening.
Outside, to the right of where we were headed, a lightning bolt seared down through the night, striking the ground with a force that must have far exceeded the trillion watts of the average bolt. It slammed into the soil, raping it deep, and the ground split where the fork burrowed in. And then, the steps buckled as the ground rolled.
That’s what was causing the quakes—they weren’t all aftershocks. The storm was attacking the city. And, according to Camille, the storm was an entity. I jumped off the steps, dragging her with me. We went down hard on the walkway in front of the palace, but I didn’t stop to see if anything was broken. My alarms were ringing full tilt, and I grabbed Camille’s wrist and yanked her to her feet. We took off through the grass, but she stopped me for a second to kick off her shoes. Then we were running again, putting as much distance between the palace and us as we could manage.
Behind us, a horrible rending split the night. Camille and I stopped, frozen in our tracks, as we turned to witness what was happening. The storm roiled over the palace—the entire city it seemed, but the central whirlpool centered over the Court. And then, out of the storm’s core, a huge-assed lightning bolt appeared—this one as big as a vortex, as big as a tornado, slicing through the air with a piercing shriek. I stared, tears running down my cheeks as the point of the bolt struck the center of the palace. With a thunderous crash, the lightning split the marble dome, and the columns supporting Queen Asteria’s court began to crumble. As they crumbled, the walls and roof disintegrated, and the entire structure imploded in a massive wall of dust.
Camille let ou
t a strangled cry. “Menolly . . . Trillian!”
She started to run forward but I grabbed her, holding her back. “You can’t go. There’s too much danger. We have to trust that they’ll get out of there.”
“Chase, Sharah—you know they can’t survive something like that.” She was sobbing now, screaming at me. The anger in her voice was almost as frightening as the storm, but I knew she wasn’t aiming it at me. But her magic, if she unleashed it . . .
And then, she reached for the horn. She thrust it into the air and looked up at the storm. “You fucker! You can’t have them!”
“No! You can’t use the horn—even the power of the Black Unicorn can’t fight against whatever the hell this is! Camille, use your common sense. You’ll only get us both killed.” I wasn’t getting through. The fury was rising in her eyes and I knew we only had seconds before she let loose with the full force of whatever power remained in the horn. And if she did that, she’d turn the eye of the storm on us.
“I don’t want to do this!” I grimaced as I backhanded her a good one. My hand landed against her cheek with a resounding crack, startling her long enough that I was able to grab the horn from her. She raised her fingers to touch where I’d hit her—she’d have a nasty bruise, that’s for sure—and then burst into tears, collapsing on the grass beside me.
As I knelt down, tucking the horn securely back in the pocket of her skirt, she gazed up at the sky, a horrified look on her face.
“What are we going to do? What the fuck are we going to do?”
I sucked in a deep breath. “I don’t know. But we have to get out of the open. We have to get away from the city. Because I have a nasty feeling this is only the precursor to something far worse.”
“You’re right.” The familiar voice washed over me like warm rain, soothing and clear. We looked up, and there, standing over us, was Trenyth. He leaned down to help Camille to her feet. “Come. I know some place we can hide.” His face was strained, and he looked like he’d aged a century over the course of the evening.