Matabar

Book II. Chapter 34 - The Long Night (Part 5)

Ardi went back to the wall all the same, to the place where the entrance had been, and ran a hand across its surface. Just as in Baliero, all he could feel was crumbling plaster beneath old, slightly damp, and frayed wallpaper. That, and the smell of mustiness and stagnant air. Not a single one of his senses could honestly tell its owner that the wall was anything but real. Only his memory, time and again, whispered about the doors that had been here just a short while ago.

His memory, and the tingling in his fingers, a subtle song hinting at the magic of it all.

“Well that’s hardly Star Magic,” the young man whispered to the quiet air, rubbing the pads of his fingers.

He had begun to suspect this ever since his last encounter with them—the trick with the doors was a result of the art of the Aean’Hane. And given how sharply his fingers tingled in the wall’s immediate presence, it most likely also possessed the properties of a trap. It would be a nasty surprise waiting for anyone who found themselves locked in here and also possessed enough power to try and break their way out.

His signal medallion was dead, of course. Perhaps it was the sheer noise in the Ley-field, a cacophony caused by the dozens of kilometers of cable laid out within the walls, or perhaps it was the generators humming somewhere deep beneath the manor.

“Just splendid,” Ardan repeated and turned back to the gaping maw that had opened in the floor, that dark invitation of a seemingly bottomless shaft.

He managed, somehow, to tuck his staff under his jacket and behind his belt so it wouldn’t get in the way. Standing at the edge of the chasm, Ardi dropped into a crouch and stretched a hand out over the dark emptiness. A faint, cool breeze licked his skin and was then gone, carried away into a weave of abandoned corridors.

“Ventilation…” Ardi mumbled.

It wasn’t so much that he wanted to talk out loud, but the sound of any voice, even his own, was a balm on his nerves, a steady rhythm against the wild drumming in his chest.

“What do they need ventilation for?” Another whisper, this one with a low growl to it, resonated off the walls.

There were several possible answers. And each of them was no more optimistic than the last. It could be the start of a complex system of obstacles, laid out in the path of a presumed intruder to weaken them, or it could lead to laboratories, which did little to paint their prospects in brighter colors.

Ardan glanced down at his belt, where only a few spare accumulators glinted shyly in the dim light. It was a wholly-insufficient supply of materials for climbing, in the most dreaded sense, into a black maw.

Then again, even if he’d had enough accumulators to open his own shop, it still wouldn’t have been enough. What could his two Stars possibly manage in a place that had been prepared for Edward Aversky himself… Even without the limitations (both in terms of materials on hand and his own Stars rejecting more than four each) on how many accumulators he could use, it seemed hopeless.

“If that’s what this really is,” Ardi drew the words out.

If his and Milar’s theory was right, then why had they bothered with all those “ghosts” and this “kidnapping?”

The young man straightened and looked toward the main hall. Perhaps he shouldn’t have come back to the shaft after checking the wall. In manors like this (Ardi had studied the standard blueprints for the Mansionhills’ buildings right after the incident at Irigov’s estate), there was always a rather spacious attic, used not just as extra space, but also as a thermal gap.

Maybe he could get out of the building that way? It was worth a try, at any rate, as this plan sounded a good deal more realistic than descending into a black abyss from which not a single sound had emerged. And this was considering the fact that two operatives who were far from the ranks of “ordinary Cloaks”—if such a thing even existed in the Black House—three mages who possessed no small number of Stars and rays, and, to top it all off, an investigator as well, had all plummeted into it.

Ardi had just taken a step back toward the hall when the dark shadows of the magical illusions, which had previously been loitering along the walls, froze in the air and turned in perfect sync toward their lone “guest.”

A moment passed, then another, and nothing happened. Ardi even thought that he had imagined it, that the shadows had been gazing at him all along with that slight touch of disdain in their empty eye sockets, which glowed with a red haze. But it only took a single second more… for a savage howl to erupt from them, after which the shadows, baring claws that were far from illusory, rushed toward him. The final point in this simple “equation” was put in place by the panels that began to slide shut with a metallic clang, gradually cutting the dark abyss off from the floor.

“Ahgrat!” Was all Ardan had time to shout before he tumbled, like a fledgling fallen from its nest, straight into the trap.

He made it just in time, a mere breath before the ghosts’ claws would have shredded his back. Not claws of metal, of course, but of compressed and accelerated air, though that would have made it no easier to endure them. Just as it would have been no easier if the steel plates of the closing “hatch” had crushed his bones and shattered his spine instead.

But Ardi only had time to think about all that, and to even feel a spike of fear at all, after he instinctively stretched his arms and legs out to opposite sides, just as Ergar had taught him long ago among the rocky ledges and crevices. It looked as if he were stretching out to his full height on a bed.

His staff scraped against a rivet in the seam of the plates lining the shaft and almost made Ardi arch his back, which would have sent him plummeting down like a stone.

Gritting his teeth and straining the muscles of his abdomen, thighs, arms, and back, Ardan held himself in that absurd, stretched position. In the end, after the initial impact, his staff was even helping in a way. As a child growing up among the expanses of the Alcade, where his native earth had aided him, Ardi had never once injured his hands performing this trick. Now, above his head, where his palms had slid, half-meter-long bloody streaks had been left behind, and the young man let out a barely audible growl as his fingers started throbbing like they’d been scalded with boiling water.

Several of his nails were bent back at an unnatural angle, and every breath he took made Ardi remember Indgar’s threats. That day, at the abandoned factory, the orc had not been deceiving him at all when he’d told him stories about what a wretch feels when their nails are torn out, or when something is shoved beneath them.

Breathing heavily, dripping with sweat and drool, Ardi, just as he had been taught, waited a few seconds to let his body grow accustomed to the new situation. His body and, more importantly, his eyes. Far below, at the very bottom, a small light flickered. It would have been enough for Ardan’s forest friends to navigate the darkness as easily as if it were broad daylight. Ardi, however, could barely make out the silhouette of his own hands in the gray gloom.

The most insulting part, Ardi complained to himself in his own thoughts, is that I’m still on vacation.

Carefully, making sure to watch where he placed his palms and, most importantly, the slippery soles of his dress shoes, he went down. Slowly, remembering all of Ergar’s instructions and… also the curses in several languages he’d learned in Atta’nha’s library, Ardi descended lower and lower, heading toward the small light.

Out of all the people who had flown into this shaft, perhaps only Din Arnson, had he been a bit taller, could have managed this as well. Alexander was likely too heavy for it. As for the mages, they’d probably not only fail to reach the shaft walls with their staves, but it would have simply been useless to even try.

With every second he spent in the middle of the metal “crevice,” Ardi felt a growing hum between his temples. It was as if someone had taken a hammer and begun to strike him on the back of the head, harder and harder, giving their all to the task. This was a sure sign that the shaft was made of a Ley-insulated material. So, whether you struck the walls with a staff or not, the result would still be the same.

“One might get the idea that the shaft really was made for Edward,” Ardan mused, dripping sweat and blood.

Ergar would not have praised him for this. He’d been taught that, in this kind of situation, one should think only of where to place one’s paws, not about their prey, and certainly not anything even related to tomorrow’s thoughts. But that had been during a hunt for an ibex that had climbed too high on the cliffs. Not when you were willingly (if one could call it that when there were no other options) climbing into the dark maw of the unknown. And so Ardi was trying to distract his own imagination from painting vivid pictures of the possible danger ahead.

“I’ve seen something like this before,” Ardi reminded himself. “In the Main Menagerie, in the Old Park district.”

Yes, at first glance, you could hardly find any similarities. But if you thought about it… The Menagerie, just like this manor of some “ancient vampire,” both stood on a hill. They both, from the street, looked like unremarkable buildings that wouldn’t attract much attention. They both tried to ensure that the gaze of a curious passerby wouldn’t latch onto something that broke up the familiar routine of a day filled with work, family, and the drawn-out calls of unhurried trams.

“These are guide rails,” Ardan squinted, noticing the characteristic grooves inside the metal sheets. Judging by their design, they were meant for bearings. Or something similar, but functionally identical.

A moving, mechanical platform inside a trap? It didn’t quite fit with the theory of a trap set for Edward. It did, however, support the idea that this manor could be connected to the missing children, Lusha and his family, and the fact that Irigov’s house was relatively close by...

Feeling his shoulders begin to tremble from the strain, Ardan, after descending just a few more meters, found something that reinforced his new theory. His mangled fingers, sending a wave of throbbing pain through his entire body, caught on something not at all smooth and sloped, but quite rectangular. And it was this very corner that had snagged the exposed skin under his nail.

Almost howling, Ard froze again for a short while. He only opened his eyes when the goosebumps stopped marching down his back, and the instinctive desire to clutch at the wound was replaced by the understanding that obeying this impulse would not end well for him.

Opening his eyes, Ardan allowed the cool darkness to envelop his body, which was stretched out over the abyss, until the sparks stopped falling from his eyes like shooting stars. Having marinated in the dark for long enough, the young man made out the outline of a service hatch. It was in a small recess so that its edges wouldn’t catch on the platform. Professor Convel, during one of their practical sessions, had shown them blueprints of the Ley energy generation compartments on large military ships. They made similar constructions there.

All that remained was to figure out how to get inside the hatch, which opened from the inside and was sealed as hermetically as possible from the outside.

“In the future, whenever you try to Speak, place a needle between your fingers.”

“Why?”

“To learn how to ignore the world around you,” Atta’nha had explained. “When you can Speak without paying attention to the needle, immerse your feet in boiling water. After that, when you can still Speak even with that distraction, the final test will be a claw,” she held out her hand, said something, and a swirl of snow spun across her gray fur, leaving behind a claw of blue ice. “Plunge it between your ribs and try to speak.”

“Now I understand why the Aean’Hane have all these training exercises involving pain,” Ardi sighed. He didn’t often devote time to such practices. Not because he was lazy, but because life itself kept presenting him with one situation after another where he had to do something despite the obstacles set by the world around him.

Like right now. Twisting his body sideways in a cunning maneuver, extending his shoulders as far as possible, and pressing his right palm against the wall as hard as he could manage, Ardan carefully, checking if he could hold on first, took his left hand off the blood-stained iron. Immediately, it felt as if a young, but well-fed bull had sat on his back.

He clearly wouldn’t last long in this position.

Not to mention…

Without closing his eyes, Ardan placed his palm on the hatch. Atta’nha hadn’t taught him many of a Speaker’s tricks. He knew how to light a star chart, how to call an ice lightning, how to hide in the shadows, how to call upon the moon in the middle of the day, and… how to get past locks and locked passages. Ardan had used that last skill only once, in Senior Magister Paarlax’s office. But back then, he hadn’t been stretched out over an abyss, his nails hadn’t been bent at a ninety-degree angle, and his own blood hadn’t been dripping onto the top of his head.

Even so, Ardan listened to his senses. He brushed away fear, pushed down his exhaustion and the simple desire to take a nap, and then dispersed a whole swarm of unconnected, foolish thoughts. They always followed him wherever he went and whatever he did. It was a ceaseless buzzing, filled with books about magic and images of a red-haired singer.

All that remained in Ardi’s consciousness were the sparks of his own Ley, burning within his two Stars. In their second semester, in the History of Magic class, they were told that Ley-insulated prisons couldn’t hold mages of four Stars and above. They didn’t go into much detail on the topic back then, but if you applied Paarlax’s theory, it all looked quite logical.

Even cut off from the external Ley-field, mages of four Stars and above still possessed too strong a personal potential, which they could use.

Ardi didn’t possess four Stars.

But he didn’t need them.

This small hatch had no Name of its own. Perhaps hatches as a whole had one, but not this one specifically. Why? Because Ardan could feel its absence. Just as he could feel that although the hatch had no Name, it had a purpose. Its essence.

The metal, once mined from the earth, had been melted and forged, given form, tempered, and processed with one single goal—to make a round, hinged door. A door whose reason for being was to open and close. And nothing more.

Ardan, stoking his Ley and pouring it into his will, reached out with… those not versed in the art of the Aean’Hane would’ve said that he “reached out with his mind,” but Ardi had long since set foot on the path of the Magic of Names. No, it was not his mind. It was something else. Something simultaneously far more ephemeral, but, on the other hand, also more voluminous… more expansive… something that no words in any language of the world could describe. And if such a language were ever to be found, mortals would be able to neither speak nor hear it.

Ardan didn’t simply touch the cold steel. He grasped something beyond not only the tangible world, but also the one studied by minds like Erzans Paarlax. And when Ardan touched this “something,” he called out to it not by its Name, but by its essence. Channeling his Ley and investing his will into his desire, he offered the hatch a chance to perform one of its functions.

He did not demand that it do so, but asked it to. It had not been opened for so long, stuck in a state of indefinite oblivion, not knowing when the world would need its very reason for existing once more. This was not the longing experienced by those with reason; it wasn’t pride and… not emotions or thoughts, but more like… if ice had found itself unable to melt, the wind had found itself unable to blow, and time had stopped its relentless march.

The world would become completely different if that happened.

And so, the hatch opened because it was too small and insignificant compared to the universe to dictate its will to it. It knew how to open and close. And so it opened. Because it had been closed, and it was asked to do otherwise, and…

“I’ll probably never be able to teach anyone how to Speak,” Ardan smiled at his own jumbled thoughts. Twisting deftly, he grabbed the handle on the other side of the hatch and pulled his exhausted body inside.

Climbing down the grated steps, the young man locked the hatch behind him, and for a while, he either lay or stood on the ladder (it was that steep), catching his breath. The tangible noise in his head gradually subsided and his breathing evened out, but his Stars had lost several rays. The green one had lost two, and the red one all four that had still been within it.

Only after his heart had calmed its deafening gallop did Ardan look around. As he had suspected, the hatch had led him into a service corridor. It was cramped and low… by Ardan’s standards. He would have to walk with his head slightly hunched into his shoulders, otherwise any rash movements could cost him the skin on the top of his head.

“Good thing I left my hat in the car,” Ardan sighed.

His clothes, after so many adventures with Milar, were now government issue, and tailored for his convenience by Tess.

Along the ceiling, if you could call the not-so-well-executed, and in places bumpy, welding seam that, snaked a pair of Ley-wires, upon which lightbulbs gleamed. As befitting a service corridor, they burned dimly, but constantly.

And this whole section in general, though it left much to be desired not only in terms of construction but also in terms of engineering forethought, still looked better than the generation bay on Le’mrity and Man’s airship.

Whoever built this, they know their way around Star Magic. Making a mental note, Ardi pulled his staff out from under his jacket and belt and, opening his grimoire, moved forward down the corridor.

The floor under the worn-out soles of his shoes creaked slightly with rust and loose rivets. Due to design flaws, this structure was unlikely to stand the test of time. One could blame this mistake on a meager budget or the client’s greed, but Ardi was more inclined to believe that whatever was here was a temporary solution at best.

Listening to his senses, Ardan stopped for a moment. Ahead, beyond a wide turn (so wide you could wheel a cart around it), something was dripping. The young man sniffed the air. A faintly salty smell pinched his nostrils. It was not of the sea, but rather, of industrial water. Perhaps it had been reused and directed to cool the generator units. And so, despite being initially fresh, after passing through a full cycle, it had acquired that unique smell.

Carefully approaching the turn, Ardan stood at the edge and listened. Besides the steady dripping and the rattling of a pipe hitting the steel “ceiling” of the corridor, the keen ears of his Matabar half caught nothing else.

The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.

Peeking around the corner, Ardan saw nothing but another hatch. This one was much larger than the one that had led into the shaft. He also spotted a puddle, and a rusted sheet of metal from which water was seeping.

Now I see why everything here is rusty, Ardan nodded at his own thoughts.

Just in case, he skirted the puddle, walked up to the hatch, and, pressing down hard on the locking lever, almost started cursing the engineer who had designed all of this. The mechanism, which was situated in close proximity to the leak, had rusted so much that the lever was more likely to creak and tremble than to go down properly.

“At least… they had the sense… to make it… open… from the inside,” Ardan grunted as he exerted himself.

Every time he encountered such a “design solution,” he understood Professor Convel more and more. The man seemingly had every right to be extremely skeptical and apprehensive about anything that worked with Ley energy.

As the professor would say: “I know who built and designed all of this—I expelled most of them myself.”

Finally, the lever gave way, and Ardan, praying to the Sleeping Spirits that the hinges wouldn’t announce his actions to the entire world, pushed the hatch forward. Perhaps the Spirits had heard him, or perhaps the Star Engineer hadn’t violated quality standards here at the very least.

The hinges didn’t make a single sound, and soon, Ardi was locking another hatch behind him. He found himself in a much wider corridor than before. And it wasn’t lined with curved iron sheets.

Of course, it still smelled of dampness in here, and in the dim light of the rare few Ley-lamps, an ordinary person would hardly have made out anything beyond their own elbow, but apart from that, the room looked quite appropriate. As appropriate as a stone ceiling, with walls made of boulders the size of a boar’s head, and a floor that had been polished by other people’s feet for centuries could look. He assumed it was centuries because there was no other way to explain the almost mirror-like shine of the path trodden into the stone.

Out of the many books, both related to Star Magic and not, that Ardi had read over the past year, he had almost never bothered with books on the history of magic (unless the question concerned old research or something that belonged to the schools of magic forbidden by the Al’Zafir Pact), but after the incident in the underground grotto, he had read a few.

The Metropolis, like most capitals, had become one not only because it was located on the banks of a large river, which had made it a trade hub since ancient times, but also thanks to certain special places. Ancient humans and Firstborn had considered such places to be where many Ley Lines converged. Mages had built their towers there; powerful feudal lords had built their castles there; and sometimes, temples to the Old Gods had been erected there as well. And not only temples…

In books that you couldn’t get without special clearance, various sects, secret orders, and other unpleasant stains on the history of mankind were sometimes described. They’d worshiped entities that had long been erased from all texts, and even from half-forgotten myths. All that remained from those times were the schools of Star Magic forbidden by the Al’Zafir Pact, the Dark Aean’Hane, and the distant Makingia.

Ardan, upon finding himself in the stone corridor, was inclined to think that he was perhaps in a place where they’d worshiped the gods of a forgotten religion—the kind that had been turned into simple holidays and the parts of various rituals that no one understood.

Everything here was… somehow not right. It wasn’t a natural cold that bit at his skin. Ardan had been underground more than once or twice, and he didn’t remember any of his previous descents feeling as if someone’s rough, writhing tongue was sliding along the back of his neck. Here, every breath filled his lungs with a viscous substance that was almost like glue into which stagnant water had been poured.

The shadows cast by the Ley-lamps whirled in some kind of eerie dance, sometimes taking on the shapes of otherworldly figures that had no place in the enlightened world of the sixth century since the Fall of Ectassus. There was no room among the steamships, locomotives, buses, cars, and underground trams for those terrible creatures that the forbidden treatises had hinted at. And yet, it was their silhouettes that Ardi saw on the walls.

These were distorted, soul-chilling forms, created not by nature, but by someone’s evil and perverted consciousness, which…

Ardan shook his head and, as Skusty had taught him, pictured the icy peaks of his native Alcade. He heard Ergar’s growl. He felt the snow give way under his paws. And when the young man opened his eyes again, he was in the middle of a grotesque, heavy, and in places moss-covered and moldy, but otherwise quite ordinary stone passage built at the intersection of many Ley Lines. That was why his Speaker’s senses had sharpened, showing and suggesting what everything here really was.

To the left and right of him, spaced out in a staggered pattern, arched doorways curved, leading into small rooms. Once, followers of… that creature in whose honor the structure had been erected had lived in them. Ardan didn’t even want to remember the names and descriptions of the entities that Lady Talia Malesh had studied. As Atta’nha’s scrolls had taught him, thoughts of demons, of real demons (not just Fae who had lost their way), could open not a path for them, not exactly, but a small thread to the soul and consciousness of a Speaker and an Aean’Hane.

Ardan looked at his wrist, where the outline of her lips gleamed. The Sidhe of the Cold Summer Night… Shaking his head, he headed forward down the corridor. Every now and then, he would peek into the little rooms, trying to find a branch, a secret area, or anything that would suggest where the way forward was.

The rooms were mostly empty. Here and there lay rotten, almost completely decayed pieces of furniture from the last millennium, and sometimes skulls or piles of bones stared at him silently. The remains were both human and not quite human. Occasionally, he came across well-kept, tidied-up rooms.

The largest were allocated for laboratories, where Ardan noticed several quite decent alchemical tables with a lot of specific equipment. A couple of times, he even came across rooms meant for Star Engineering, where someone had clearly gathered their research and tools in a rush. Their haste was evident thanks to the burnt scraps of paper that they hadn’t had time to take with them, and so, they had burned them. Right here. On the stone floor.

He also came across broken arithmometers, shards of glass, and in some places, spilled liquid that had left multicolored traces on the stones. In one of the rooms, Ardan even found something resembling an attempt to recreate Paarlax’s generator, as well as his chamber for collecting purified, concentrated Ley. This one had also been smashed to pieces with a sledgehammer upon whose wooden handle marks resembling claws could be seen.

“Professor Lea…” Ard whispered, putting the sledgehammer back on the floor.

Apparently, this was where she had worked on her project, and in order to ensure that it wouldn’t fall into the hands of the Puppeteers, she had destroyed everything to the point where no reverse engineering would help.

Ard went back out into the corridor and passed a few more rooms. In the last one, the most spacious, he saw books scattered on the floor. Many books. He found:

“Darmas’ Two-Star Malefaction.” “Necromancy According to Pravish.” “Necromancy as a Principle of Bio-construction.” “A Comparative Analysis of the School of Chaos and the Tazidahian School of Destruction.” “A Method for Implementing Malefic Magic into a Biological Object.”

And many more publications that could get you a one-way ticket to a remote penal colony if you owned them. Why one-way? Because you don’t come back from such crimes.

Ardan suppressed a momentary impulse to take off his jacket, tie the sleeves together, and take everything that would fit into the improvised bag with him. In any case, he had the necessary clearance, so after they got out of here, he would simply request copies of the seized books from Dagdag. The Black House, of course, wouldn’t destroy them, but would send them to the Archive instead, where people like Mshisty would carefully study everything. Of course, they’d only do so in order to develop countermeasures and-

“Ahhhhh…”

Ardan spun around sharply and raised his staff, but didn’t bring it down. Next to the exit of the cave, grotto, corridor, or whatever this place was, he found one last room. At first, it hadn’t caught Ard’s attention, and that in itself was very strange.

And it was strange because, in the cage there, which looked more like a box, sat a hunched over… naked woman. She may have been attractive, but it was difficult for Ardфт to judge that. The only member of the opposite sex he was interested in like that was already engaged to him.

But still, the same as when one looked at a painting or a sculpture, he could appreciate her appearance itself. She had a narrow waist, wide hips, a perky chest with neat, small nipples, and slightly slanted, almond-shaped eyes. And her hair… It was too black to belong to a native of the western continent.

Before him, locked in a cage, sat a petite girl of about twenty, with sallow, but not sickly, skin, black hair, and unusually-shaped eyes.

“Nan ti ka?” Ardan said with an accent so thick it could’ve been mistaken for the quacking of ducks.

The girl leaned forward and grabbed the bars of the cage, almost hitting her forehead on them.

“Ti ka! Nanshi pam pa! Atak Ta! Kari-”

“Wait, wait,” Ardan waved his hand. “I don’t know anything else in Lan’Duo’Ha except for the greeting.”

During their lectures on the History of Magic, the professor had made the students learn how to say “Hello” in almost all the official languages of the world. Fortunately, there weren’t that many of them… relatively speaking.

“Mage Empire, yes?” The representative of the distant country of the eastern continent continued in broken Galessian. “Help. Beg. Food. Water. Please. Ambassador. Tell.”

She apparently knew only some words, and couldn’t form phrases. However, the meaning of the message was obvious.

“Just a second,” Ardan took a step forward and then froze. He stared at the cage in front of him, his thoughts racing.

Lea Morimer had died almost eight weeks ago. And apparently, no one had come here since then. Which meant that this girl locked in a cramped cage could not have received any food or water. And yet, she didn’t even look properly exhausted when she should have, even with all the possible theoretical “buts” taken into account, died by now.

And the most important detail…

Ardan couldn’t hear her heartbeat. And it wasn’t that it “wasn’t beating,” like Cassara’s or the hearts of other vampires. Not at all. Ardan couldn’t hear hers at all. There was nothing. Not a single sound. And not a single smell, either.

Even when the girl had grabbed the bars desperately, he hadn’t heard the characteristic metallic clang.

“Three times I will repeat myself, and three times you will hear me,” Ardan recoiled and grabbed the place where his oak totem and his mentor’s fangs hung. The words of a ritual in the Fae language escaped his lips. “You have no power over me and my paths.”

Slowly, unhurriedly even, the fingers unclenched, releasing the cage. And just as smoothly, almost floating, the girl herself retreated into the shadow, and before she completely dissolved there, long, bony claws slashed across the bars.

“Young Speaker,” two red embers lit up in the gloom, and beneath them, a snow-white, fanged smile stretched out.

Ardan could barely see the outlines of the demon’s silhouette, only some indistinct borders. The creature seemed to be smoking, or perhaps, like the Wolf of Blazing Darkness, was made entirely of fire.

After standing there for a few moments, Ardan turned and headed for the exit. He had already touched the doorknob when he heard from behind him:

“That’s a bad idea, young Speaker.”

Everything Atta’nha had taught him was screaming at Ardan to not listen to the creature, to walk out of there and go search for his colleagues. But still, for some reason not entirely clear even to himself, he stopped.

“And since you are going against your mentor’s words, you can feel it, too,” the demon’s voice literally got under his skin. It ran like a swarm of ants along his bones, like a naughty child plucking the strings of his nerves, and a dull knife scraping against the glass of his consciousness. “There’s a trap for a human mage there, set by an ancient vampire.”

“I know,” Ardan replied for some reason, although he had been taught not to talk to demons.

“Yes, young Speaker, I can hear that knowledge in your heart, but…” The demon laughed. This wasn’t the laugh of the insane, but how insanity itself laughs. “You don’t know who he is.”

Despite everything, Ardan turned around. The demon was still hiding in the shadows. And even if you were to turn all the Ley-lamps in the room on it, the shadows wouldn’t disappear. Because it had created them itself. It had done so while constrained by this small cage, where every bar was inscribed with a hundred Fae runes, and on the floor, hidden under the base of its “prison,” was a ritual seal that locked it in.

“Three times I will say this, and three times you will hear that I need neither a deal nor a gift from you, Lost One.”

The snow-white smile of dozens of fangs only grew wider.

“As you wish, young Speaker. You know the words of the rituals. But you don’t know that there is a Dark Aean’Hane there, one who voluntarily set foot on the paths that lead through the night. And his blood magic is so strong that even I,” the claws slashed the bars again, “cannot free myself from this cage.”

Ardan did not show his surprise. Before the invention of the Seal of Long Years, Star Mages seeking a way to extend their time in the mortal world had sought various ways to achieve their cherished goal.

Some had created phylacteries and become vile, terrifying, but powerful liches, others had sought answers in deals with demons (usually becoming only a lesson to other hopefuls… a very sad and bloody lesson), and some had indeed chosen the fate of a vampire. But such individuals lost access to their Stars. The only magic left for them was Blood Magic. Ardi had not yet gotten to the texts that described its principles, so he had a poor understanding of its essence.

“I can see that you don’t believe me, young Speaker, even though you know that the only Law we obey even when we lose our way is that we always speak the truth and only the truth.”

The demon’s tone became insinuating. It was like the quiet rustle of autumn leaves over a sleeping child’s cradle. Like a fervent youth’s promise of eternal love. Or like the barely-audible scrape of a knife being drawn from its sheath in a dark alley.

“And yet your truth is more deceptive than a lie,” Ardan parried. “Just like the Fae’s… And I don’t know a single Firstborn who would voluntarily renounce the sun.”

“The fact that you don’t know of something, young Speaker, doesn’t mean that it doesn’t exist or is impossible,” the demon said quietly.

Ardan flinched like he’d been slapped. He remembered…

…“The fact that you don’t know the rules of the game doesn’t mean it doesn’t have any.”…

“It’s you…” Ardan breathed out and held his staff out in front of him. “The Puppeteers summoned you in the Le’mrity Tower.”

And once again, there was that laughter. It was as if reason had left Ardan’s head and now only madness resided there. Madness and a thirst for something that could neither be seen nor felt.

“Le’mrity…” The demon licked its lips, and its tongue resembled a soft blade. “Yes, I have heard that mortal name.”

“You could have heard it anywhere and from anyone!” Ard cut it off.

“Yes, but I heard it in a tower of metal and glass that mortals call a skyscraper. I heard it at the moment when I was pulled from the darkness into the light, when my True Name was called. And with me, there was also the Sidhe of the Burning Dawn, who hid among his illusions and remained unnoticed, while I…” The demon spread its female hands out, which had appeared from the darkness. “was not so lucky. I tried to escape. I almost succeeded. But I couldn’t get far.”

Ardan didn’t know what to think. Demons really did not obey the laws of the rulers of the City on the Hill. Except for the one that forbade them from lying. Why? Atta’nha had said that it was because this law was rooted so deeply in the essence of every Fae and Sidhe that even after becoming a demon, they still couldn’t reject it.

So, the demon wasn’t lying. It really was the one the Puppeteers had summoned in the Castle Tower. But then… This demon had to possess simply incredible power.

Ardi carefully walked to the opposite wall, skirting the cage.

His hunch had been correct.

Pipes stuck out of the stone cage. Within them, severed Ley-cables hung limply, no longer connected to a broken device that had once been attached to the bars.

So, that was where Professor Lea had gotten such an insane amount of purified, concentrated Ley energy from. And also the answer to the question of why the Puppeteers had needed to summon a powerful demon. They’d used it as an accumulator.

In a way, it was even funny.

“Three times I will ask, and three times you will hear me. Why are you telling me this, Lost One?” Ardan asked.

“Because I want to,”

was the answer.It was the most honest and the most deceitful answer one could imagine.

“You clearly want something from me,” Ardan returned to the corridor. “But you’ll be able to free yourself soon enough. The device is broken. Your powers are returning to you. And when they do-”

“Then I will go back into the darkness, young Speaker,” the demon interrupted him. “Do you know what it means to be Lost, student of the Ice Princess? To wander in the darkness, where there is neither space nor time? But with every step, with every hour, you feel hunger. It grows. It grows. It grows. It grows… until it becomes you. And you no longer know who you are. You only know Hunger.”

The claws scratched the bars again in a futile attempt to reach Ard.

“I don’t want to go back there, young Speaker,” something akin to sadness could be heard in the demon’s tone… which was impossible, since demons didn’t remember what feelings were. “Those mortals, without realizing it, gave me a gift. Along with my power, they took away my darkness. And I remembered how flowers smell. I remembered how the hands of poets, queens and prophets touched me. I remembered a time when I was a woman. When I was a man. When I was a bird, a song, and the wind. I remembered the light of the stars, I remembered the smell of the sun. I remembered myself. But I feel it all slipping away, disappearing into the darkness. It’s coming back for me. And I’m falling. Disappearing. Soon, I will be Lost again among the timelessness, student of the Ice Princess. And I don’t want to be. I want to stay here a little longer. Where there is life. Where there is Light.”

The main rule of the Ley-field and reality in general was that the stronger a demon or a Fae was, the less often they visited the mortal realm. And their time here was more limited. The world would push them back. Back to where… Ardan didn’t know. And Atta’nha hadn’t been able to explain it.

The Sidhe built their castles and palaces, which shielded them from the influence of the Ley-field, and they could live there for centuries. Demons, on the other hand, they…

Ardan looked around.

Demons, the ones hungry for power and knowledge that did not belong to them, built dark sanctuaries.

“Is this your temple?” Ardan asked. “Was it erected in your name?”

“I don’t remember, young Speaker,” the demon shook its “head.” “But the longer I stay here, the more it seems to me that yes, it was.”

Ardan felt a chill run down his spine. If this place had really been built for this… creature, then its powers were beyond the capabilities of even Mshisty. When such entities broke through into the mortal world, they could, even in just a scant few hours, cause so much trouble that it was hard to even comprehend. They would need to be sent back “there” by the joint efforts of several powerful Aean’Hane or Star Mages. And before the Empire, the Sidhe had done this. When, of course, they’d cared to do so.

Ardan was about to open his mouth when he suddenly stopped and asked a completely different question.

“How do you know that I am a student of the Ice Princess?”

“I know it because I can hear the echo of the Name of Ice and Snow within you, young Speaker,” the demon answered immediately. “And only one Sidhe, besides the Winter Queen herself, possesses it to such an extent that she can teach it to someone. Atta’nha, one of the daughters of the Winter Queen. And that means you are a Matabar and her student. But for some reason, you are not in the City on the Hill, but here, among the mortals. And I don’t know why that is. But it is so.”

Ard didn’t know why, but he felt like the demon was not telling him the whole truth.

“You will soon return to the darkness,” was all Ardan said as he turned once again toward the exit.

“Wait! Wait, young Speaker!” A hurried voice, reminiscent of the cry of a drowning man trying to grab a lifebuoy thrown to him, came from behind him. “You won’t be able to handle that vampire. And those sparks of the Ley that I sense won’t be able to handle him, either. You know that. And I know that.”

The demon wasn’t lying. This was a vampire mage. An ancient one. And a former Aean’Hane to boot—that was definitely not an opponent you could defeat unless you wielded the might of a Black Star Mage. And even then…

And yet…

Ardan glanced toward the Ley-wiring.

Vampires had some weaknesses. If he could buy Mshisty and the other mages a few seconds, that might be enough.

“Their sparks are already flickering, young Speaker,” the demon added suddenly. “Those you came with won’t last much longer. You won’t even have time to find your way to where they are fighting now. Soon, they will walk the paths of the Sleeping Spirits. And you know I am not lying.”

Ardan gritted his teeth. He really had no idea where to go next. Considering how deep the shaft went… probably somewhere down. But that was all the information he had.

Atta’nha had warned Ard never to do this, but he had already broken the rules of his forest friends so many times that he had lost count. And besides, all of this was being done in order to avoid delivering six death notices to other people’s families.

“What do you want?” Ardan forced out the words.

The young man was ready for anything. For almost any price it might demand. But not for the one the demon named.

“For you to know my True Name, young Speaker,” the creature said pleadingly. “Not the one I am called in the darkness, but the one I can still remember.”

“But-”

“You want to know why?” The fanged smile faded slightly, and the red embers briefly turned a heavenly blue. “As long as you remember my True Name, the Darkness cannot take me back, not anytime soon. And I will be here. Among life and Light and, maybe, if I’m lucky, I will be able to find a way to return here forever. To truly remember who I am. And to find my way back to the City on the Hill.”

What Ardan had just heard sounded more absurd than any of his great-grandfather’s fairy tales. A demon who regretted parting with its essence and now craved redemption? Even the legend of Marenir didn’t seem so ridiculous in comparison!

But…

Ardan looked at the broken device that had once been attached to the bars of the cage.

If you thought about it, such a metamorphosis fit into Erzans Paarlax’s theory on the Ley-field.

“You have almost no time left, mortal!” The demon shouted. “I can feel their sparks fading!”

Ardan cursed.

“Name yourself,” he said.

The demon spoke its Name. Not with words. And not with sounds that a simple mortal could hear. Even so, the demon spoke, and Ardan Listened.

He Listened to its Name.

Within it, Ardan heard the rustle of crumpled sheets under the sweaty bodies of newlyweds. He felt the touch of Tess’ hands on the back of his neck and the way his fingers tangled in her hair. He heard his own cry of delight when he rejoiced at solving another difficult Star Magic problem. He heard the laughter of his mother and father when they’d told their adult, incomprehensible-to-a-child jokes. The voices of his forest friends. The gurgling of mountain streams. He heard the wind rustling over the steppe, where there are no paths or roads, only the sun and the endless expanse.

“Elani’atie,” Ardan whispered. “Sidhe of the Joyous Memories.”

The bars of the cage did not crack, nor were the wooden lid and base suddenly reduced to splinters. It was simply that Ardan had been standing opposite a demon locked in a cage a moment ago, and now a naked girl was next to him. The very same one whose form the… demon… Sidhe… something in between? Had taken. Ardan didn’t understand what exactly he was dealing with and-

“We have little time, Speaker,” Elani’atie said in perfect Galessian.

She reached out and grabbed Ardan’s wrist. The outline of Allane’Eari’s lips flashed and Elani’atie hissed in pain, but she did not let go. And the next thing Ardan knew was the sensation of being pulled through a meat grinder.