The Element of Fire, Martha Wells [books for new readers .txt] 📗

>Kade kneeled beside the chest and lifted the books from the top. It wasn’t even locked. She opened it and was disappointed by the sight of perfectly ordinary folded linens and fustian blankets.

Then she moved the top layer aside. It lay on a bed of cloth, a stone from the bottom of some streambed, rounded and smoothed by water, small enough to fit comfortably in her two cupped hands. The keystone was inert and silent now.

She picked it up, marveling at the symbols, letters, and equations incised into its surface. They started out blocky and large enough to read, then shrank as they wound around the stone, some obviously formed by different hands, becoming so tiny they might have been carved with a jeweler’s knife, ultimately shrinking until they disappeared from sight. Kade blinked and shook her head, dizzied. She could follow the sense of it for no more than a few turns of the stone, if that.

Well, Kade thought, rolling it from one hand to the other. So I’ve got it. Now find Thomas, and take this down to its place in the cellar.

She bundled the keystone up in the bag she had brought in a pocket and tied it securely around her waist, then started out of the suite.

Kade listened at the heavy wooden door a moment, hearing no betraying sounds, then opened it cautiously. The next room was dark, but she had expected that. There was the smell of must and dampness and, far away and barely detectable in the frozen air, of death.

Kade hesitated, one hand on the doorframe. The hackles on the back of her neck lifted.

If the black spraggat outside had been a guard, there would be a guard inside, as well.

She crossed the anteroom in three light-footed leaps and reached the opposite door. Let whatever it was come for her then; she had found the keystone. She could do anything.

Stretching before her was a suite of rooms, filled with silent shapes, distorted by shadows.

Kade slipped through the first room, sweat freezing on her back, the heavy lump of the keystone bumping her familiarly in the leg. In the second room she stopped. The cold had changed consistency. She felt it moving over her like a mist, clinging to her face and hair, her clothes.

There is something here. She touched the wall to keep her orientation, straining her eyes in the darkness and slipping the bronze knife out of the scabbard at her belt. Then something moved. She couldn’t tell if she was seeing it with her eyes or inside her head.

Kade eased back against the wall, her heart pounding. Whatever it was would attack her in a moment. She didn’t want to give it an advantage by bolting out of the room screaming.

The whisper almost made her jump out of her skin. It came from across the room, and she tightened her grip on her knife. The voice was low and harsh, and she couldn’t make out the words.

Kade hesitated, aware of precious time passing. Sweat was freezing on her forehead and she didn’t know whether to be afraid or angry, to try to push her way past the thing or retreat. Maybe that was its purpose, to keep her here while something else—

The voice was getting louder, and though she still couldn’t make out the words. It trembled on the edge of her memory, recognition barely a breath away.

Then she remembered that The Black Keys contained spells for necromancy.

Her father’s voice said, “Little bastard, why did your bitch of a mother bother to drop you? She didn’t have to leave you to devil me.”

Kade didn’t remember running; she wasn’t aware of anything until she was slamming the door of Grandier’s study behind her and leaning against it, shuddering. Her knees hurt and one of her gloves was ripped, and the burn in her palm had torn open. She must have gone over or through a piece of furniture, though she didn’t remember it.

Kade went to the desk, picked up the book on necromancy, and slung it through the window. It hit the open casement and smashed the glass, then tumbled out of sight. It was the first time in her life she had ever mishandled a book.

She paced the room because the liquid fire of fear and anger was in her veins and it hurt to stand still. She smashed an astrolabe and turned over the globe, and dug her fingernails into the open wound on her hand until she stopped sobbing. Then she asked all the old pagan spirits to visit their curses on Grandier, and the Church God to strike him down.

Kade stopped in the middle of the room finally, pressed her hands together, and thought. It was a test, a trick, a challenge. Grandier meant her to fail. Had he set the ghost here outside these rooms, or had it wandered the palace, to be drawn to her presence if she won a way inside?

The latter made more sense. But then… But then it could come in here. Kade was at the window in a moment.

She climbed out onto the sill, then stepped to the broad ledge. The black spraggat was no longer in sight though it might come back at any moment. She was in a poor position to defend herself.

The frigid wind tore at her, tearing the air out of her lungs. Kade edged her way along, fingers clinging tightly to the chinks in the stone. She hadn’t pinned her coat together again and the cold air poured down her back. She would have to cross the siege wall to get to the Old Palace anyway. Can I do it from the outside? Another laborious ten feet and Kade saw that she couldn’t, not without falling to her death. She would have to enter the North Bastion to reach the walkway along the top of the wall.

Finally Kade could stand the cold no more. She reached a set of windows she could push open, then almost fell through them onto the floor of a small bedchamber. Sitting up on the rug that was stiff with frost, she realized she had not even bothered to glance in first to see if the room was unoccupied. She could have landed headfirst among a whole tribe of spriggans, or a troop of Alsene soldiers.

She buried her head in her hands. He has you on the run. You’re playing into his hands again.

Kade pushed to her feet and went through the doorway to the next room. It was a beautifully arranged parlor, the wallpaper and upholstery of rose and gold. She didn’t know who this suite had belonged to or where she was, except that she was near the corner and would have to find the stairs that let out onto the siege wall. The light from the window in the bedchamber made no inroads on the shadows in the corners. The next room would be dark as pitch.

Kade dug in her pockets and finally came up with a tinderbox. She would light one of the candles in here and take it with her. She would have to do that anyway if she didn’t want to be running into walls and stepping on bogles. Coward, she thought as she fumbled with the flint. Bloody coward.

It refused to catch, and she pried the candle out of the lamp, sat down on the floor with it, and tried to light it with a spell. Her heart was pounding too fast, distracting her, but finally the wick began to glow gently with spell light. It was beginning to yellow to real flame when it went out, as if invisible fingers had snuffed it. “What?” she said aloud, and looked up.

It was there, in the darkest corner, looking at her. She could feel its gaze with the inner eye of her own sorcery. Her skin turned to ice and sweat dropped into her eyes. Then it whispered, “I could have you killed tomorrow and no one would notice. Perhaps I will—”

Kade was through the bedchamber, slamming the door behind her, and poised on the windowsill like a bird about to take flight before her wits caught up to her. She made herself stop, grinding her injured hand against the frozen metal of the casement, forcing herself to think. She could climb out and enter through another window, go around it. But it had taken so little time to find her. It would just follow her again. How could she find Thomas with the damn thing following her and freezing her blood—

Had it gone after Thomas too? He had helped Ravenna kill Fulstan. But Thomas had never been particularly impressed with Fulstan when the old king was alive; Kade thought it unlikely that he would be concerned about him now that Fulstan was dead.

It was coming after her because it could make her afraid.

Kade hesitated, considering the idea. Fulstan had been nothing in life and was even less in death. Thomas and Ravenna had disposed of him with less regret than a peasant would feel when putting down a mad dog. Kade nodded to herself.

That was the key to it.

She had not let the old bastard stop her from living her life. She was not going to let him stop her from finding Thomas.

Kade pushed away from the windowsill and crossed the cold room to the door. Her legs were trembling; her hand on the doorknob trembled. That was all right. She could shake, cry, scream, as long as she didn’t break and run. There was no one who mattered here to see her.

Outside the door she could hear the muttering of the voice. She opened it and stood on the threshold.

Light from the room behind her fell only a short distance, then seemed to hit a wall of blackness and stop. The voice rose, ranting at her, words of darkness forming all the old terrible nightmares she remembered. “Little lying bitch, my punishment from God for my sins.”

Anything to stop that. She said, “You’re nothing.”

It had no effect. The voice rose in volume. “Do you think your pathetic little brother could help you? He’d kill you himself if I ordered it—”

Roland do something you ordered? Kade found herself thinking. “Who’s the liar now?” she said. “He hates you more than I do.” And suddenly the words were just words. They hurt, but not with the sting of truth. They were the same words Fulstan had always flung at her, but she was not a child now. Perhaps she had not needed to return to the city of her birth to face her brother. Perhaps she had needed to return to face this. Her voice gaining strength, she shouted, “You’re nothing! Galen Dubell was more a father to me than you ever were. Thomas is more a husband to Ravenna than you ever were.” The voice went on, louder, and Kade’s voice rose to a shriek, drowning it out, all thought of concealment forgotten. “You were nothing to her, you’re nothing to me! She killed you because you got in her way and she wouldn’t put up with your stupidity anymore. Roland’s King now and he curses your memory whether he admits it or not. You’re nothing and you always were!”

On the last word she stalked forward—not running, not blundering in the dark—until she barked her shin on a chair. Cursing the pain, she fell against the other door, opened it, and stumbled through into the next room.

It had an open door leading into the stairwell, and wan yellow candlelight came down through it from somewhere above. The silence was complete.

She looked back and could see the gray daylight from windows