Diomere's Exile

Chapter Ten

Chapter Ten

Nadia pressed her eye to the hole in the tunnel’s stone wall to make sure the healer didn’t have a patient. Geeta sat before the hearth, her head resting back against her chair, while Jon knelt beside her, his face lined with worry. Nadia hesitated then knocked before pulling the lever to hurry into the healer’s home.

“Just wait until you see what I’ve discovered,” she said, striding to stand before the couple.

Geeta smiled, though it didn’t reach her eyes. “Do tell.”

“No, you have to see this for yourself.”

Jon placed a hand on Geeta’s shoulder. “You should rest, dhana.”

Nadia met his hard gaze. “I think I’ve found something that will help her.” She glanced at Geeta’s tired face. “I hope.”

Geeta placed her hand over Jon’s and squeezed. “Let me change—”

“Don’t bother. Where we’re going, they’ll just get dirty anyway.”

Geeta’s brows lifted. Nadia smiled and plucked a fresh bloom from the potted plant hanging near the window, then waited as Jon lifted an unprotesting Geeta into his arms. Nadia turned away before they could see the fear for her friend written on her face and led the way back into the tunnel.

Voices and laughter greeted her as she stepped into the main cave hidden behind the Emerald Mermaid. Lanterns hung from hooks they’d embedded in the cavern ceiling, lighting the space used for meetings, meals, and the general revelry of the guild’s members. She nodded as she passed a group of men and women lounging around long tables near the side of the cave they used as the kitchen. Others sprawled in a sitting area near a large fireplace which had been carved into the cave’s wall.

Pell separated from a conversation with another guild member and stepped in front of her, his back ramrod straight. Nadia stopped.

“Where have you been?” he asked, voice clipped. “I’ve been looking for you all afternoon.”

She bit back the invitation to join them she’d been about to issue, his surly tone prompting her not to include him in her newest discovery just yet. “I wasn’t aware I had to notify you of my every movement.”

His frown deepened. “The nightingales sent word that Prime had an important meeting tonight.”

Nadia smiled. “Excellent.” Pell continued to stand in her path, and Nadia lifted a brow. “Was there something else?”

He exhaled loudly through his nose. “I’ll send someone to attend the meeting.”

“No need.” She moved forward, forcing Pell to move out of their way. “It’s already taken care of. Have a good evening.”

Waving off anyone else’s attempts to stop her, she moved across the cave, stopping at a storage cave for several lengths of rope, before leading the way to her private chamber. Closing the door behind Jon, she crossed to the tapestry and pulled it aside.

Geeta gasped. “You found another one.”

“I found more than another cave. Come.”

Nadia ushered them both through.

Geeta’s eyes widened, a tiny spark lighting her dull green gaze. “Lightboxes!” Her smile stretched across her face. “I never thought to see them outside Diomere’s royal palace.” She looked over at the gate. “What is this?” Jon carried her to the pillars. When Jon stood directly before them, she tilted her head back and closed her eyes. “It feels like home. I can breathe again without pain.”

The healer inhaled and the deep lines around her mouth smoothed out while they watched. Nadia and Jon exchanged an astonished glance. Geeta’s face glowed with health. She opened eyes that now shone without the fevered brightness of the past days.

Nadia touched Geeta’s cheek. “I believe it’s Thuno’s lost gate to Mondami. And it has somehow cured us of whatever was making us sick.”

Geeta’s gaze unfocused. “I don’t think I’m cured. It feels more like I received a dose of the medicine I need. The weakness is still there.” She turned to her heartbonded. “Jon?”

“I feel de same.”

“Let me down,” Geeta said, and Jon lowered her to her feet. She faced the pillars. “This gate pulses with a’mi. If we could only figure out how to make it give more to us.”

“I’ll send a note to Lareina asking her to find out everything she can about how they work.”

Nadia frowned. She knew she was completely healed, that her a’mi pooled inside her at full strength. She didn’t feel any lingering effects of the illness. Was she missing something? Could it be because her two friends had been sick longer? Nadia shook her head, unsure. Hopefully, Arriana would know. She pulled Geeta away from the gate. “But that’s only part of what I brought you to see. Come, you can study the gate later.”

She opened the doors to the underground palace. “Needs a good dusting and the spider webs”—she shuddered—“need to be pulled down. Other than that, it’s as if it’s only sat here untouched weeks rather than hundreds of years.”

“What is dis place?” Jon asked.

“I believe it is the Gate Keeper’s Palace,” Nadia said. She allowed them to look around a moment, then led them back into the gate cave toward the other set of doors. “Jon, I need your assistance. This beam is too heavy for me to lift myself.”

They each took one end of the beam. Counting to three, they heaved, sending a heavy cloud of dust into the air as the beam lifted free. They set it aside and pulled the doors open, revealing a tunnel lit with more lightboxes.

Entering the tunnel, she pushed cobwebs from her hair and face with a shudder, as tiny spiders scuttled away as fast as their creepy legs would carry them. She rolled her eyes at herself.

Geeta burst out with her old full-bellied laugh, and Jon’s glistening gaze met Nadia’s. “The Guild would roar with laughter to see their tough guild boss fear a few harmless spiders.”

Nadia blinked away the moisture and mock scowled at the older woman, then quickly checked that no creepy crawlers decided to try to make a meal of her. Her gaze snagged on elaborate drawings decorating the passage’s walls. On her right, black silhouettes of the A’mi creatures she’d seen on the pillars walked in single file away from the cave. The cobwebs and their creators forgotten, she looked to her left and saw the painted silhouettes of the non-magic Sa’i walking in single file toward the cave.

Geeta traced the image of a large jungle cat. “This really is one of the Gates between the worlds.”

Nadia nodded. Making a mental note to sketch the drawings for her sister, she moved farther down the long hall. Jon and Geeta, who’d been close on her heels, fell behind as Geeta stopped to trace a finger along the twisted limbs of a tree nymph’s silhouette and the edge of one of the lightboxes that lined either side of the tunnel. The drawings ended at a pile of tumbled stones and boulders, a ray of sunlight shining through a small hole near the top.

Jon stepped forward to look through the hole. “Leads outside. De backside of de mountain, from de looks of it.”

“Those who wished to travel through the gate would have had to trek around the mountain to get here,” Nadia said. “Thunoans obviously didn’t have an open relationship with the A’mi even before the gates were closed.”

Past the stone pile stood another set of golden doors with hand indentions and the water symbol. Nadia placed her hands in the indentions. On the other side, more lightboxes revealed an intersecting hall. One direction descended deeper into the mountain. And the other led to a stone stairway which climbed farther up.

“This cave system is a gift that keeps on giving,” she said, smiling.

Jon looked up the stairs. “Do you think de lead to Thuno’s royal palace?”

“I wouldn’t be surprised.” Her a’mi pulsed inside her, pushing toward the tunnel that led deeper into the mountain. “But I’d like to see what’s down here first.”

Jon nodded and they continued down the descending tunnel. She’d gone another five hundred paces when the sound of running water echoed from down the tunnel. For the first time in two years, she felt her true form waiting to be released. Geeta grabbed Nadia’s arm, her face stretched into a wide smile.

She picked up her pace as they descended toward the last bend. Geeta gasped behind her. Stretched out before them, a large lake spread across a cave lit along its entire perimeter with more lightboxes. Water poured from a hole the size of her head in the cave’s ceiling, creating a musical accompaniment to the peaceful lake which lapped gently against the stone shore. Sunlight speared through the hole, reflecting from the pool’s calm surface. Basking in the tranquil scene, she forgot about the tunnel she’d seen with her a’mi until Jon tapped her shoulder and pointed at it and the river of water which disappeared into its dark depths.

“Do you dink it merges into one of de twin rivers or even de sea?” John asked.

“That’s why I brought the rope.” They knelt by the underground lake, and Nadia gently set the bloom upon the water’s surface. “Thank you, merciful Meren, for this gift.”

Her skin, dry and tight over her muscles, yearned to feel the water slide against it. She gave Geeta and Jon a wide smile and laughed as they began to yank their clothes off and toss them into a careless pile. Nadia threw herself into the pool’s cool embrace first, the other two right behind her. Closing her eyes, a scale with pails of a’mi on each side appeared in her mind. Pulling a’mi from the heavier of the two buckets, she surrendered to a surge of power stronger than she’d felt since before she’d left home.

The power shimmered around her. Heat flashed in waves until it became just short of unbearable. When it subsided, a fish’s tail and gauzy green fins replaced her hips, legs, and feet, covered in iridescent scales of emerald green shot through with swirls of black. Her long black hair swirled in the water around her, each shimmery strand seen separate with the enhanced vison of her Mer eyes.