“Maybe his faith keeps him from feeling the pain,” Blazer said.
“You will be defeated. The over father will smite you down for invading our temple to Him. He knows you are here, even now. He will find you.”
A sonorous clang rang up from below. Others immediately followed.
“Speaking of bells in clock towers…” Duck muttered.
“The over father knows you are here,” the man said again, his eyes burning with some inner fervor. “And the dragon god shall rise and slay all the infidels.”
“Would it be evil to throw him over the railing?” Blazer asked.
“From this height, I believe so,” Rysha said.
“What if we went down a couple of levels?”
The man’s eyes rolled up into his head, and he pitched backward, away from Rysha’s sword. Startled, she didn’t grab him in time to keep his head from cracking against the wall.
“Loss of blood catches up with you, no matter who your god is,” Blazer said.
Shouts drifted up from below, interspersed with the clangs.
“Do we go down after the others or just get out of here and trust them to escape?” Rysha peered over the railing and frowned at the levels above and below them.
“Kaika and Trip are providing a distraction so you can explore,” Blazer said. “You’ve got to want to rub more things.”
Rysha glanced at the railing. “You’re right. I do.”
“Good. Trip will be glad to hear that.” Blazer waved for them to follow her down the stairs, as if she wasn’t worried at all by the clamor coming up from below.
“That’s disgusting, Major.” Duck ran down the stairs behind her.
Rysha ignored the joke and kept pace with them.
“What if someone was rubbing your things?” Blazer asked over her shoulder. “Would it be less disgusting then?”
“Maybe. That wasn’t an offer, was it?”
“Sorry, Duck. You’ve got nothing I want to rub.”
“That’s disappointing, ma’am.”
As they continued downward, Rysha glimpsed arms and shoulders on the stairs several levels below. All covered in white clothing. They were only three or four floors down and coming up rapidly.
At the next landing, Blazer veered through a doorway without a door on it. She sprinted down a long, tiled hallway and turned left at the first intersection. If Rysha hadn’t known better, she would have guessed Blazer had a map of the place memorized. But she was probably just trying to get as far from the mob as possible, the mob that might be chasing Kaika and Trip even as Rysha and the others ran in another direction.
Rysha winced at the idea of abandoning them, using them for a “distraction.” But Blazer was right. Rysha hadn’t had time to decipher the pieces of words she’d gotten yet, but she doubted a rubbing of a stairway railing would contain ground-shattering information.
The clamor faded from Rysha’s hearing as they raced down another hall. This one ended at a window slit allowing the fading daylight from outside to enter. Blazer ran up, peered through it with one eye, and backed up.
“We’re not going that way,” she said.
Rysha peeked through and saw the ocean far below. They were still hundreds of feet above the water.
Blazer pushed on one of two wooden doors on either side of the corridor. It didn’t open. The hinges were rusted into almost unrecognizable brownish lumps. Rysha tried the other door. Its hinges were in a similar state, but it creaked and opened an inch under her shoulder. Duck and Blazer joined her, and they shoved it open a foot, enough to slip inside.
Dust assaulted Rysha’s nostrils as soon as she stepped inside. The urge to cough competed with the urge to sneeze.
“You brought us to a bedroom, Major?” Duck whispered, peering around, his nose also twitching. Another slit in the wall allowed in light. “Are you sure you don’t have rubbing in mind?”
“Well, Ravenwood is cute when her nose wrinkles like that.”
Rysha brought her sleeve over her nostrils to stave off the dust. And to hide her wrinkling nose as she considered their surroundings.
Rat droppings covered the floor, and the straw mattress that likely once sat on the chunky wooden bed frame must have been eaten or otherwise decomposed over the centuries. Not much of the frame remained, either, the wood rotten and chewed.
Rysha doubted it was original to the dragon-rider era, so she didn’t bother investigating it. She wandered around the room, poking her lantern into the dim corners, including what must have been a closet carved into the stone. Though she doubted this had been anything more than some guest bedroom, she hoped she might find more carvings.
“This dragon the broken cogs here worship,” Blazer said, “it isn’t Trip’s papa, is it?”
“I don’t know.” The thought had crossed Rysha’s mind, but there wasn’t any evidence yet to support it.
A lot of dragons would have come and gone in the heyday of this outpost, and others may have lived on the continent, magic dead zone notwithstanding.
“So far, the only thing that led us here was a letter Trip’s mother sent back home,” Rysha said. “She wasn’t even looking for dragons. At least, she didn’t mention it in any of the letters to her parents. She was an herbalist, and she was seeking out exotic ingredients to try in her tinctures. She was interested in investigating some mold here.”
“We’re here, dealing with a bunch of lunatic cultists, because of a dead woman’s obsession with mold?”
“Her obsession was medicine. Mold was just an ingredient.”
“Mold medicine. Sounds appealing.”
“Actually, mold and bacteria are natural enemies, and in the last decade, numerous medical researchers at Northern Pinoth University have started experimenting with harnessing strands of mold to kill bacteria that infect and can even kill humans. The research is very promising, I understand. Trip’s mother may have been ahead of her time. Did you know—”
“Is this a laundry chute?” Blazer asked, peering into a large square hole on a tile-filled wall.
“I’m finding it extremely difficult to educate that woman,” Rysha told Duck.
He was standing guard by the door while they investigated.
He shrugged. “At least she likes your nose.”
“I’m not sure that’s a positive development.” Rysha pointed toward the hallway. “Has it quieted down out there?”
“I can still hear the alarm bell sounding, but not the shouts. I don’t know if that means they all ran outside or if we got far enough from the stairwell so we can’t hear them.”
“It is a laundry chute,” Blazer said, her voice muffled. Her head and shoulders had disappeared into the hole, and her toes dangled above the floor. “Duck might have to tape his ears to the sides of his head, but I think we could all fit into it.”
“To what end?” Rysha asked as Duck touched one of his largish ears.
“Alternative stairwell. It’s tight enough that we wouldn’t need a rope. We can just walk ourselves down it. It must go somewhere, probably to the lower levels.”
“What if it’s a garbage chute that drops us into the ocean?” Rysha asked.
“We’d see some light coming up if it did that, right?”
“It could bend. There could be a flap.”
“Stay here, then. I’ll check it out. Here.” Blazer pulled herself out, tossed something at Duck, then turned to enter the chute feet first. “Update Leftie on our status. If you don’t hear me cry out in pain or alarm, follow me down. If it takes me to the lower level, I’m not climbing back up to get you two.”
Duck opened his palm, revealing the softly glowing communication crystal Trip had removed from his flier. “Update him on our status?” Duck shrugged and thumbed the crystal. “Leftie, you there?”
Several seconds passed before he answered. “Yes, Captain. Dreyak and I are throwing rocks at seagulls to keep them from pooping on the fliers.”
“Is that as exciting as it sounds?”
r />
“More so. What are you doing?”
“Blazer is in a laundry chute, and Ravenwood and I are in a bedroom.”
“Unless you and Ravenwood are doing something horizontal in that bedroom, it sounds boring. I guess I didn’t need to be jealous about not being invited along.”
“Have you seen Kaika or Trip?” Duck asked. “We separated, and there’s an alarm going off in here and people are running all around.”
“Did Trip cause it?”
“We don’t know.”
“Ten nucros says he did.”
“Keep an eye out,” Duck said. “If you see a mob running down to the beach with Kaika and Trip sprinting in front of it… Well, let me know. We’ll try to get out there as soon as possible so we can all take off. You might have to buy time by taking off and flying over the mob, pretending like you’re going to shoot.”
“Pretending? If mobs are chasing my friends, I don’t pretend to shoot.”
“Just keep me updated, and be ready for action.”
“Yes, sir.”
Rysha poked her head into the laundry chute. She didn’t hear anything.
“Major Blazer?” she called down softly. “Are you making good progress?” Seconds passed without an answer, not so much as a scuff. “Did you fall into the ocean?”
Duck leaned out into the hallway, but only for a moment. He lifted his hands, as if to shut the door, but probably remembered how hard it had been to open it. Instead, he jogged to Rysha’s side.
“Two people are heading down the hall toward us,” he whispered. “They’re looking in all the rooms along the way.”
“I hope that means they haven’t found Kaika and Trip.”
“It means they’re going to find us.”
“Not if we’re not here.” Rysha nodded to the chute. “Do you want to go first, or shall I?”
Duck grimaced and looked toward the closet alcove, but it didn’t have a door or curtain. “Is there an Option C?”
“…check in there,” came someone’s order from the hallway, only a room or two away.
“I don’t think so,” Rysha whispered.
“Damn.”
10
Trip watched in horror as Kaika’s grenade lofted into the air and out over the gathering of people. That gathering was charging toward the doorway under their balcony—or maybe they would climb straight up onto the balcony—but he didn’t want to hurt dozens of people.
Kaika grabbed his arm, pulling him back into the chamber behind the balcony. The grenade exploded in the air high above the heads of the white-clad cult members. The boom reverberated from the walls, and light flashed as the explosive unleashed its power. As she tugged him away, Trip realized she’d held it for a few seconds after pulling the pin, long enough to make sure it would explode before landing. Smoke filled the room, and bits of rubble struck people, but his senses told him nobody had been dismembered or killed.
“Nowhere to hide?” Kaika looked around the huge chamber they’d crossed through minutes before. The spiral staircase leading up was the only thing in there besides them.
“Here.” Trip pulled her to the wall and pressed his back to it. “The soulblades will keep them from seeing us.”
“I don’t think—”
People swarmed in from an open doorway near them, and Kaika clamped her mouth shut. She froze next to Trip, her fingers clenched around her pistol.
You can camouflage us, right? Trip silently asked the soulblades.
Already done, Azarwrath said as more people streamed in. Dozens of them. Some women, but mostly men, some dark-skinned, like the ones Rysha had shot up top, but others pale-skinned, like Iskandians. They were all armed, some with swords and cudgels, others with old flintlock pistols, others with modern pistols from Cofahre or Iskandia. Be careful not to speak or move. That makes it easier for people to see through the illusion. Also, those with dragon blood can often detect something awry, but I’ve only noticed one person like that so far, the man who was standing on top of the table.
The cult leader? Wonderful.
The first two-dozen men raced for the stairs and charged up, not hesitating or even looking around. Some of the others followed more slowly, peering left and right toward open doorways as they followed the leaders.
Can you make a noise or something upstairs so they’ll believe we went that way? Trip asked.
We could, Jaxi replied. But the rest of your team is up there. They just had a battle on the stairs.
Rysha did? Do they need help? Trip stepped away from the wall before thinking better of it.
Kaika must have heard Azarwrath’s instructions because she grabbed his arm, her grip like a vice as it held him in place.
A big, sunburned man with a long black dagger strode out of a doorway. His hood was back, and Trip recognized him even before his senses told him he had dragon blood. It was the cult leader. The man who’d stood on the table, intending to sacrifice—to kill—that young woman.
There are only a few people left in the river chamber, Jaxi said. If he runs up the stairs, we should be able to get down there and free the prisoners.
Good news, but the leader did not run up the stairs. He halted halfway to them, his head coming up as if he were a dog that had caught a scent.
Kaika fingered her pistol, but the man wasn’t alone in the chamber. Several of his people were jogging past and heading for the stairs. Others ran through as they checked connected chambers.
Trip’s first thought was to add his meager efforts to strengthening the camouflage the soulblades were providing, but he realized this man might have the answers he sought. This cult might have nothing to do with Trip and his sire, but one of his hunches plucked at his senses, and he strongly felt that it wasn’t unrelated.
He unlocked his bank vault and mentally strode out, opening his mind for whatever the man might be projecting. But unlike the other people racing about, from whom Trip sensed outrage and a determination to get the invaders spying on their secret meeting, the leader kept his thoughts locked down, protected by a bank vault of his own.
Trip tried to break through it as the cultist continued to peer around the chamber, as if he was certain the intruders were here with him. Trip imagined having an auger, such as one used to cut through ice for winter fishing, and he envisioned applying it to the man’s vault door. But that wouldn’t do against steel. He swapped out the simple ice auger for a massive steam-powered tunnel-boring machine. As soon as the drill bit got up to speed, he rammed it against the cultist’s mental defenses.
Not truly expecting it to work, Trip twitched in surprise when the figure dropped to one knee, gasping and grabbing his temple. He hadn’t meant to hurt his foe, but reminded himself what this man had been about to do. Glaring, he sent his thoughts into the hole in the cultist’s defenses and searched for information, for everything the man was thinking about and had been thinking about recently.
Memories of dozens of recent sacrifices blasted into Trip’s mind, of young female virgins and also of any of the leader’s own people who had dared question him, dared doubt that this was the way to call back the dragon god, the god who’d founded this religion in the desert mountains ages ago, who’d spread his seed among his human subjects, blessing them with vitality and great power. The descendants of those subjects longed for the kind of power their ancestors had once possessed. The leader had promised it would be theirs, if only they followed and believed, and prayed and chanted to the dragon, pleading for his return. Back when the dragon god had lived among them, he’d enjoyed being attended by his followers, and he’d approved of the sacrifices of all those who weren’t believers. He’d reveled in the blood of the dead bathing him, just as the blood of the young woman would have bathed his statue today. And the cult leader—Xarishtar—would have bathed in it, too, knowing it was what his god wanted, feeling ecstasy at that knowledge.
Kaika shook Trip’s arm, and he stumbled back, his shoulder blades thudding against the wall. He’d
lost himself in the vividness of the man’s visions—his memories—and hadn’t noticed when Xarishtar regained his feet. Trip sensed the soulblades’ camouflage still wrapped around them, but the cultist was staring right at him.
What is your god’s name? Trip asked, throwing all the power he could muster into the question, urging the man to blurt the answer without hesitating.
Xarishtar again dropped to his knees, grabbing his head with both hands. His face contorted with pain, but also with defiance. It is blasphemy to speak the name of a god!
What is his name? Trip roared into the man’s mind.
Blood dripped from the man’s nostrils. Agarrenon Shivar!
Still on his knees, Xarishtar hefted his knife to throw it at Trip.
Kaika fired. Her bullet slammed into the man’s forehead.
The cultist tipped backward, dead before he hit the floor.
Trip braced himself against the wall, his hands trembling. His whole body trembling.
He’d had a hunch, hadn’t he? And all along, there had been hints that the dragon who’d fathered him was… a complete asshole. This shouldn’t have come as a surprise.
“Shit, Trip. You look worse than he does.” Kaika waved to the dead man while squinting at him.
She didn’t hold that squint for long. As Trip drew in shaky breaths to steady himself, she reloaded her pistol and watched the exits and the stairs. The chamber had emptied while Trip had been scraping through the cultist’s mind, but that gunshot would bring people back again. Even though a clanging alarm continued to sound, that noise would have risen above it.
“We should get out of here.” Kaika gripped Trip’s arm again, looking like she would sling him over her shoulder if he didn’t move quickly enough. She was probably strong enough to do so.
Trip nodded and pushed away from the wall. “We have to free the prisoners first. Oh, wait.” He halted, remembering what Jaxi had said about Rysha and the others being engaged in a battle up the stairs, in the direction the mob had gone.
Jaxi? Are they all right? As he asked, Trip sent his own senses upward, trying to find familiar auras among those of the cultists, men and women who’d branched out to search all over the place.