Aenir Page 12

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  "It is not sensible to try and rescue your brother now," said Milla calmly. "We should take the Codex to Ebbitt. Then I will go on to the Ruin Ship."

  She did not mention the Ice. That was left unsaid between them.

  "No," said Tal stubbornly. "I have to rescue Gref! That's the whole point! I have to look after my family. It's what my father "

  "You have not asked about him," said Milla suddenly.

  A movement caught her eye and she whirled, her hand on her sword. But it was only Adras and Odris, getting used to their new shadow-selves. They had already learned how to make themselves almost solid, and the reverse, to drift through stone. Now they were practicing shooting shadow-lightning.

  Fortunately, unlike the real sort, it was not accompanied by thunder.

  Milla waved at them crossly, pointing at the doors. They got the message and resumed their guard duty.

  "No," said Tal quietly. "I haven't asked. I'm . I'm afraid of the answer."

  Milla nodded, but she didn't really understand. Her parents were long dead.

  "I suppose I should," he added. But he made no move to do so.

  "I have made too many mistakes," said Milla. "My mistakes, since I do not believe everything is directed by some great Reckoner, and I just a piece upon the board. I should have returned to the Ruin Ship as soon as I had the Sunstone. I should not have crossed to Aenir"

  "I know, I know," interrupted Tal. "I

  am sorry"

  "You do not understand," Milla resumed. "I have decided that one more mistake will make no difference. I will help you rescue your brother. But we will have to hide the Codex here. And we cannot roam your Castle looking as we do now. And I need to eat and drink."

  "We can get clothes and food and so on from an

  Underfolk store," said Tal. "It's the middle of the night, so if we stick mainly to the colorless corridors in the midlevel we can get across to where I think they're holding Gref. It's… it's near the Hall of Nightmares…"

  Milla shrugged. Unlike Tal, the Hall of Nightmares held no particular terrors for her. She had proved immune to the Nightmare Machines, calling on the Crones to protect her.

  "I hope we catch Fashnek by himself," she said, referring to the creepy keeper of the Hall of Nightmares.

  "I don't," shuddered Tal. "We can't afford to start any sort of fight."

  "Let's go, then," said Milla. "First we eat, and then we fight… or we sneak."

  "We have to hide the Codex," said Tal. They walked over to it. Tal started to pick it up, but Milla didn't move.

  "You must ask," she said. "The question will hunt you in your dreams if you do not."

  Tal nodded. He desperately wanted to know that his father was alive, but he also desperately feared that the Codex would tell him he was dead.

  "Ask!" urged Milla.

  Tal put his hands together in an arch and scratched his nose. Then he cracked the knuckles on his left hand. Finally he asked the question, his voice gruff.

  "Codex. Is Rerem Abitt-Erem still alive?"

  Tal stopped breathing as letters swam to the surface. At first he didn't understand the answer. He had expected a simple yes or no.

  What he got was

  Not dead and not alive.

  "What do you mean?" Tal asked hotly.

  Not dead and not alive.

  Tal shook his head.

  "What did it say?" asked Milla. Once again, before Tal could answer, the Codex supplied a translation in Icecarl runes.

  "Codex. Where is Rerem Abitt-Erem?" Tal asked.

  In the

  Orange Tower. Above the Veil.

  Tal choked. His father couldn't be there! There was nothing up there but the Sunstone nets.

  "How… how can he be not dead and not alive?"

  He is the Guardian of the

  Orange Keystone. It has been unsealed and so he does not live. Until or unless the Orange Keystone is sealed again, he does not live. If it is sealed, he will live again.

  "I don't understand," said Tal. What was the Orange Keystone?

  He was about to ask another question when Odris suddenly came sliding back across the coffins, calling out in what she imagined was a whisper.

  "People and shadows! Lots of them, coming here!"

  Tal and Milla did not stop to talk. They picked up the Codex and slipped it into the coffin. It adjusted its shape as they pushed it down and slid the heavy stone lid across.

  Then the Chosen and the Icecarl ran toward the Underfolk exit, where the servant sculptors worked. According to Ebbitt there was another way out there.

  They had just left the Mausoleum when a great crowd of Chosen entered. Light filled the ancient hall, and many real Spiritshadows slipped in to mingle with the shadows cast by the statues on the Chosen tombs.

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  Milla had to lead Tal away from the Codex. Not because of his wounded leg, which did slow him down. Because of the news about his father. How could he be in the

  Orange Tower? What did it mean that he was the "Guardian of the Orange Keystone"?

  As explained by Ebbitt in his letter, Milla found the small door at the rear of the toolshed used by the Underfolk stonemasons. It led down a narrow corridor to a more usual Underfolk corridor. Like all such ways, it was only dimly lit by tiny Sunstones of inferior power.

  Tal recovered himself enough at this point to take the lead. He was so rattled by the Codex's revelations that he didn't mind admitting to Milla that he didn't really know much about the Underfolk's corridors and storehouses.

  However, he did manage to find his way to something he did know about: the laundry chute that he and his friends used as a shortcut between levels. And where there was a laundry chute, there was laundry. Dirty clothes, but what a Chosen called dirty now seemed clean to Tal, after the disgusting furs he'd been wearing.

  Tal chose to throw all his Icecarl clothes into a basket and got dressed in a Chosen child's basic uniform of white trousers and shirt, though these ones had blue cuffs and collars that didn't match his rank.

  Milla, however, put on a Chosen matron's dress over her armor and furs, a huge sack of a thing in solid yellow, with tiny Sunstone chips around the lower hem. She then ruined it by cutting a long slit at each side so she could run.

  As instructed by Tal, Adras and Odris made an opaque wall between the two as they undressed. Not that Milla cared. But nudity was frowned on by the Chosen and Tal had not totally gone over to Icecarl ways.

  Suitably disguised, they dashed across a colorless corridor and into more Underfolk passageways. Tal got lost for a while, and they had several close encounters with Underfolk, all of whom were pushing carts of food, or clothes or items made in their workshops far below. But every time the Underfolk drew near, Tal had Adras and Odris loom up, and the servants would avert their eyes and scuttle past in fright. The Storm Shepherds were easily the largest Spiritshadows Tal had ever seen, save for the Empress's Sharrakor. They also looked strange, if not particularly horrifying, unlike many spiky, fanged Spiritshadows. Adras and Odris looked like puffy giants, but their size alone was intimidating.

  It was a bitter realization for Tal that he had found a powerful Spiritshadow after all, one that would have probably gained him automatic promotion to Yellow or even Blue. Only he had not bound Adras as a proper Chosen should. He had broken the law and gone to Aenir. He had given a Sunstone and a Spiritshadow to a non-Chosen.

  Strangely, it didn't worry him. But he was growing more and more anxious about Gref. What had they been doing to him, off in some distant chamber where no Chosen or Underfolk would ever hear a cry for help… or a scream?

  "Where now?" Milla asked, breaking into Tal's thoughts. They had arrived at an intersection. The Underfolk corridor branched left and right, but there was also an open doorway to an Orange level. Orange six, Tal saw, noting the arrangement of Sunstones in the ceiling.

  Clo
se to home. His mother was not far away, on her sickbed. Lost and dreaming. He wanted to see her, too.

  "Which way?" Milla repeated.

  Tal pointed down the left Underfolk corridor. His hand was shaking and he could not steady it.

  They had to follow the Underfolk corridor and go down into the topmost Red level and then across into the White Rooms.

  It took another few hours, because they had to cross almost from one side of the Castle to the other. As it got closer to morning, the Underfolk corridors got busier, too, and Tal was sure some of the Underfolk looked at them even as they bowed. But Tal wasn't worried about Underfolk. They never spoke to Chosen unless they were spoken to. They probably wouldn't remember the strange Chosen and the large Spiritshadows.

  Milla didn't share this opinion. Some of the Underfolk looked very smart indeed, and Milla was certain they would gossip. She contented herself with glaring fiercely at any who dared to glance up at her. Hopefully this would make them think twice about talking about her.

  The White Rooms were different from the rest of the Castle. Long abandoned, they were colder, darker, and much less clean. Dust rose as Tal led the way down one corridor, though there were halls and other corridors that seemed better traveled.

  Finally, they came to a vast, cold hall where no Sunstones shone in the vaulted ceiling. The upper reaches were totally dark, and the only light spilled in from the three corridors that led there from south, east, and west.

  Tal looked around suspiciously, but could see no reason for the lack of light, other than the usual failings of the White Rooms. Since no Chosen lived here, nobody bothered to replace the Sunstones or direct the Underfolk to clean.

  "The room is on the far side of this hall," said Tal, pointing to the door on the northern side. He spoke softly but his voice echoed in the chamber. "A good place for a prison, I guess. No one would come here by chance."

  "This could be a trap," Milla said suspiciously. She looked around the dark hall, noting the other two lit corridors and the footprints in the dust ahead of them. Unfortunately, she did not know enough about tracks in dust on stone. They were human footprints… but that was all she could tell.

  "Maybe," said Tal. "But Gref's over there and I have to get him out."

  "There must be guards somewhere." Milla drew her Merwin-horn sword. Tal noted that its glow was not what it had been. Merwin horns faded slowly but surely once they were cut from the heads of the beasts that grew them.

  Tal made his Sunstone shed a low light and limped forward. "Adras. Go ahead of me."

  Adras complied without asking questions, for which Tal was grateful. The Storm Shepherd still wasn't bound to obey, since he was a free-willed companion.

  So Tal had broken yet another law of the Chosen, bringing Adras back to the Castle.

  "Sometimes some laws have to be broken to save greater ones," Tal whispered. He'd heard that somewhere, though he had the sinking feeling it might have been his enemy Shadowmaster Sushin who had said it.

  They were halfway across the hall now, and the light from the corridors was distant and weak. Milla kept looking up and around, expecting warriors to drop through a hidden trapdoor or come up from a secret way.

  But no one did. They crossed the Hall and stood outside the door that the Codex had said was the entry to Gref's prison.

  The door looked normal enough. Like most doors in the Castle it was made of thin metal leaves riveted to a frame in overlapping lines. It had a long handle of polished bronze.

  "Adras," said Tal, "can you open this door?" Adras shrugged. He leaned forward and turned the handle. The door did not budge.

  "No," said the Spiritshadow.

  "I mean break it down, or go through and open it from the other side."

  "I'll do it," said Odris. She lay down and grew more translucent, and then slid under the door. A few seconds later, she slid back out.

  "It's locked on both sides," she said. "I don't know how. There is no keyhole."

  "Is Gref a boy in there?" Tal asked eagerly.

  "There is something in the corner," said Odris. She sounded puzzled. "I'm not quite sure "

  Whatever she was going to say was cut off as Adras made himself as solid as possible and slammed into the door. It splintered into hundreds of individual metal leaves as the Spiritshadow slowly bulled his way through, dragging the broken frame, leaves, and hinges after him.

  "That wasn't that loud," said Tal hopefully.

  He'd hardly finished speaking when a deep horn blast sounded above their heads, the sound echoing throughout the hall. Startled, Tal and Milla looked up at a hidden recess above the door. It contained a pulsing Sunstone and a complex arrangement of pipes, leading to one huge pipe that opened out like a flower at the end.

  "A wakened" Tal cursed. "Just like in the Lectorium." "I knew it was a trap!" Milla shouted.

  Tal wasn't listening. He ran in after Adras, boots clinking on the broken metal leaves.

  The room was not very big. There was no bed, no furniture at all. A single medium-sized Sunstone shone in the ceiling.

  But Gref was there. The small boy hung suspended in a strange cocoon of shadow in the corner of the room. Tal could see his face, which was relaxed as if in sleep. But the rest of him was surrounded by a shape of darkness.

  As Tal stepped forward to look, the shadow moved. Gref slid down until he was sprawled on the floor. The shadow shook itself, and formed into a shape both Tal and Milla recognized.

  It was a Hugthing. A Spiritshadow Hugthing. A free shadow, for there was no sign of its master.

  Tal backed away, his Sunstone ring raised. He had to blast it before it wrapped itself around him, he knew. But Gref was right behind it.

  Adras was not so careful. He roared and stepped forward, gripping the Hugthing by one shadowy corner. Instantly it wrapped around his powerful arm and started to squeeze.

  "Odris!" yelped Adras.

  Tal and Milla ducked to the sides as Odris charged into the room. The female Storm Shepherd grabbed another corner of the Hugthing.

  Then they both pulled.

  Tal dived under the tug-of-war and crawled over to Gref. His brother still hadn't woken up. Tal touched his face. It felt cold, far too cold to be normal.

  He took Gref's hand. It hung limp and lifeless.

  Then he put his ear to the younger boy's mouth, hoping for the faint touch of breath.

  There was none.

  Tal slowly stood back up. He felt a million years old and tired, so tired that he wanted to go to sleep right there and then and not wake up until everything was right again.

  But nothing ever could be right again. Gref was dead.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  The noise of the fighting Spiritshadows and the still-sounding wakener faded. The light dimmed. Tal stared down at the still form of his little brother from far away, his eyes fixed, unable to blink.

  Behind him, the two Storm Shepherds roared as the Hugthing split in half with a horrible squeal. Then Adras and Odris stood on the halves and ripped them into quarters and then into smaller and smaller fragments of shadow. All these pieces flopped and rolled about the floor, unable to get a grip or do anything. A few tried to join together, only to be ripped even smaller by the furious Storm Shepherds and the tiny bits stuffed into cracks in the walls.

  The wakener kept on blasting its single note every few seconds. In the silence between the blasts, shouts could be heard, close by. Orders being shouted. Not the surprised response of ordinary Chosen.

  Milla knelt by Gref. "He's dead, Milla," Tal said slowly. "He's dead."

  Milla quickly touched Gref's throat, two fingers feeling under his jaw. She kept them there while she spoke urgently to Tal.

  "There are Guards coming up the south and east corridors."

  Tal didn't answer. He had totally and utterly failed. Gref's life was the price of his failure.

  "We'll have to try the west corridor and fight our
way out if we must," Milla declared. "Now, before they gather their full strength."

  "I can't… I can't leave Gref here," said Tal dully. He couldn't think what he had to do, but he couldn't just run away. "You"

  Milla suddenly bent closer to Gref and pushed her fingers in harder.

  "He's not dead!" Tal couldn't believe what he was hearing.

  "He's not dead," Milla repeated. "He's sick… or poisoned. Come on!"

  Tal bent down and tried to pick Gref up, but his leg gave way. Milla had already turned to leave, but she looked back and shouted, "Get Adras to carry him, you idiot! Ready your Sunstone to fight!"

  "Be careful with him," Tal instructed Adras. "Very careful."

  Adras cradled the boy gently and ducked down to go through the door. As he bent down, light suddenly flared all around the doorway and on Gref's wrist. The Storm Shepherd staggered back and looked at Tal.

  "I can't go through," the Storm Shepherd said. "Something is stopping me."

  Tal saw what it was. There was a bracelet on Gref's wrist. A bracelet set with Sunstones. He looked at it carefully. The Sunstones were all quite small and they had been especially put together to create a particular effect.

  Gref was obviously in a more secure prison than Tal had imagined. Unless he could get the bracelet off and it was a single piece or deactivate the spell, Gref was trapped there.

  Milla looked back in to see what was holding them up.

  "Come on!" she said. "There are Guards in the west corridor now! We have to attack and punch through!"

  "I can't get Gref out," shouted Tal.

  "Then leave him!"

  Tal looked at the Sunstones set into the doorway. There were six of them, all welded deep into the stone. He'd have to pry all six out to annul the spell. It would take too long.

  "Put him down," Tal said, though he choked saying it. He pointed. "Carefully."

  Adras put Gref back down in the corner. "Go!" said Tal.

  But Tal lingered a moment. He raised his Sunstone ring and a hot blue ray sprang out. It cut into the stone and with a few decisive movements, Tal carved his name on the wall in letters a stretch high.