Four Roads Cross (Craft Sequence #5)(103)

51

“Boardrooms,” Shale said as they entered the mountain. Circles of light from their hand torches played over blast-hewn tunnel walls. “We should expect boardrooms and arguments, you said on the flight. You didn’t mention mines, or undead beasts.”

Tara led the way, thankful for her borrowed boots, which were large but at least had traction. In the flats she brought, she’d have broken three bones by now. Water dripped from a wall seam to the tunnel floor. “If I expected this, I would have packed for it.”

“If I expected this, I would have—”

“Stayed home? Let me do my job?”

“No.”

“I didn’t think so,” she said, and checked her watch, as she had three times since arriving in camp. If it took them more than an hour to find Altemoc, they’d miss the evening flight back to Alt Coulumb. Another flight left the next morning, and after that nothing until sunset. Miss both of those, and she’d not make the court date, with or without the deal. She snapped her watch shut. “Shouldn’t you be happy? This seems like your kind of place.”

“Unfinished stone?” His face twisted in disgust. “I was born in Alt Coulumb. My block was quarried from a moonlit pit and weather-shaped on rooftops. Descending into living Rock—it doesn’t feel right.”

“You’re made of stone.”

“You’re made of meat. Maybe after this we can find a nice tight wet dark meat tunnel for you to squeeze down.”

“Point taken.” Her stomach unclenched slowly.

They reached a three-way fork in the tunnel. Each path led down, and all were smaller than the main concourse they’d followed so far. Tara folded and unfolded the map until she found the relevant square. Altemoc’s route continued straight.

She set one hand on the stone and closed her eyes. Lightning spun spiderwebs around her and down into the bones of the world. “Ms. Batan said her team went for the mine offices while Altemoc led his into the depths. Batan heard the scream, went to find him, but ran into a ‘wall of shadow.’ She pushed at the wall; it tried to pull her in, but she escaped.” She frowned. “Huh.”

“Problem?”

“The Craftwork in these tunnels is weaker than it should be. Something draining it would explain the slurry leaks, the revenants. But I don’t see any trace of shadow walls or the other stuff Ms. Batan describes.” The mountain pressed around them, blacker than black, squeezing tiny lines of human Craft, which quivered like seaweed as a leviathan moved through—“Shit.” She grabbed Shale’s wrist. “Run!”

He did, as the tunnel walls began to glow. Ore veins shone brilliant red, and Tara smelled ozone. Red light chased them down the tunnel, casting crimson shadows. Behind her, a roar issued from no throat. Tara glanced back and saw blinding fire. Her boot struck a jutting rock. Her ankle turned. She stumbled, swore. Shale had pulled ahead of her. She skipped three steps, tried the ankle again—sound, though gods and demons did it hurt.

The roar was nearer. She heard a lightning crack. She could not outrun the coming fire.

She tried, though, dammit, even as the hairs on the back of her neck stood up and her skin charged with the memory of fire.

A stone hand pulled her into a side tunnel. The thunder ate her squawk of protest. She brought her knife around, brilliant in the shadows, before she recognized Shale in stone form—though not the healthy sculpture she remembered. Moonlight bled from deep wounds, from the missing corner of an ear and a hole in his right wing.

Red lightning carved grotesque shadows from the dark. Tara woke her glyphs, more for reassurance than out of faith they’d save her if whatever-it-was in the tunnel struck them.

Lightning jumped between crystal veins in the tunnel wall. Another bolt followed, and a third, and then they came too fast to count, arc after arc crisscrossing fractal dense. Her brain constructed figures from their dance: bison-headed men and goat-legged somersaulting acrobats, artifacts of spark and flame, the roar their laughter.

She did not know until the lightning passed how bright it had been, or loud. Her ears rang. For a long time all she saw was the red that endures when the eye is overwhelmed.

She returned to herself through the silver of Shale’s wounds.

Light seeped from him. His stone felt cool as ever, but the light, when it dripped onto her fingers, was warm. He pulled back from her touch, bared his teeth, snarled; her ears had not recovered yet, but she felt the sound in her bones.

“Thank you,” she said.

She heard his voice as if through a pillow: “One second.” His stone twisted, inverted, melted to skin again. “There.” His voice was not so loud as before, but her hearing had recovered to match.

“I didn’t know it was that bad,” she said.

His grin would have had a different effect were his teeth still long and curved and sharp. “They don’t hurt as much when I’m like this.”

“You should have stayed home. Taken care of yourself.”

“Aev and the others are resting before the battle. I can work in flesh, for a while.”

“How long?”

“Long enough.”

“No macho jerk answers, please. Be honest with me.”

“This stone, unworked as it is, helps a little. I can handle another day. Which is all we need, one way or another.”