As they quickly marched, Jaston pointed upward. “Cassa Dar has gone to scout the tunnel ahead, to see what lies at its end.”
Er’ril spotted the small winged child gliding toward the entrance.
As Jaston hobbled to the side, Elena mumbled, “We already know what lies at the end, don’t we?”
Er’ril saw the same recognition in Meric, Fardale, and Tol’chuk. There was no forgetting this tunnel.
“We’ve come full circle,” Meric said in hushed tones. “All of us again, missing only the mountain man this time.”
Er’ril nodded. Of the original gathering, only Kral was absent, his war charger left behind at the og’re encampment. Er’ril stared ahead. Long ago, at the end of this tunnel, the group had discovered the crystal statue of De’nal, the boy-mage who had been one of the three to give their lives to the forging of the Blood Diary. That statue was gone, its Chyric essence given up to ignite the book’s magick. Now, Er’ril sensed with icy certainty that a new statue lay beyond this tunnel—not of crystal, but of black stone laced with forked veins of silver.
An ebon’stone statue . . . the last Weirgate.
“Full circle,” Er’ril repeated as they reached the threshold to the tunnel, all of them limned in the silvery light. Elena’s hand found his. They had walked this path together once before, a girl-child and her knight. Now they would face it together again, joined by more than just oaths and prophecy.
Elena’s fingers squeezed his. He felt the love in the small gesture.
Down the tunnel, a winged shape disappeared into the glare.
Er’ril stepped to follow. “It’s time to end this.”
As they started down the passage, Mogweed sat within his dark prison, staring out with Fardale. With everyone distracted by the descent into the pit and the fall of the windship, no one noticed the strange twist of circumstances.
Fardale marched with Thorn, their senses focused outward. They kept their bodies fluid, ready to transform at a moment’s notice. And with Fardale’s attention on the tunnel, even he failed to note the change in their condition.
Mogweed grinned darkly. No walls confined him now. He could control the body the pair wore. To confirm this, he carefully shifted Fardale’s foot to trip on a loose piece of shale. His brother, ever agile, kept his balance and continued on, none the wiser.
I am free! Mogweed realized, barely containing his glee.
On this strange day, when the full moon and the sun shared the same sky, the walls between the two brothers had fallen. It was neither true night, nor true day. Both sun and moon ruled the skies, as the two brothers did this one form.
But only one brother was aware of the change. And as Mogweed had learned long ago, there was much power in secrets.
He settled into his cell. He would wait until the time was right, and watch for a moment when one last betrayal could win his true freedom.
I will be free of you yet, Brother.
Cassa Dar lay in her bed in Castle Drakk, a shadow of her former self. Maintaining the connection to her creation far to the north had taxed her body and spirit. Her skin sagged, her color had paled, and even her breathing was a ragged rasp. But worst of all, she felt her ties to her own lands fraying. Her well of elemental powers was running dry.
Day and night, children came to her chamber, feeding her, bringing water and wine. But there was no balm for the ebb of her spiritual energy. She was spread too thin, stretched across half the world.
She closed her eyes and drifted between the boggy damp of her castle tower and the steamy warmth of the shrouded pit. She knew she risked her life in this endeavor, but the entire world was in peril. She would not simply wait for the end here in her isolated castle. She had spent centuries hiding in her swamps, pretending she had a full life with all the creatures of her lands. It was only after finding Jaston that she had remembered the world beyond her bogs and marshes. And once awakened, she knew she could hide no longer. The Dark Lord had enslaved her people and consigned her to this lonely tower. If this was the final battle with the fiend, then—risk or not—she would act with all her will and substance.
In her castle chamber, she lay as weak as a babe atop her blankets. But far to the north, she felt the wind in her wings, the flow of currents through her hair, the strength of young muscle and the certainty of firm bone. She glided down a tunnel shimmering with silver light.
She knew this light. It bathed her, and for the first time since entering the misty pit, her connection to her swamp child grew stronger rather than weaker. The glow was the shine of pure elemental energy, untainted. The swamp child flew through the light like a fish through a bright stream.
Through her connection to the child, this energy flowed back to Cassa Dar. She sighed in her chamber as the well inside her slowly filled. She had never felt such purity. Tears rolled down her cheeks. She knew where she headed; she had read of it in her texts. Ahead lay the confluence of elemental flows, a mixing of channels draining from both the Northern and Southern Fangs. It could be nothing else.
She was drawn toward the light like a moth to flame. Her essence ran out along her connection to join more fully with her swamp child. Without hesitation, she shot out the passage and into a vast chamber beyond. The roof arched high overhead, while the floor was a great bowl under her. It was a spherical chamber, dug from the heart of the granite highlands. Below her, the basin of the bowl churned with a whirlpool of silver, two shades of brilliance swirling toward the center, stark against the black granite. The pattern reminded her of the whorl of mists atop the pit here, a slow eddy spiraling downward.
She wafted out over the glowing basin, a quarter league across. On the far side, she could discern dark openings, other tunnels and passages. She also noted that the edges of the silver pool were fringed with bleached bones, like so much driftwood on a seashore. They were piled high, but the thickest patches were washed up near the tunnel entrance.
But her attention drifted from this foulness and focused back on the pool. It was empty—except for a dark figure in the exact center—a black well into which the swirl of silver drained.
Cassa Dar arced away from it, sensing the danger. Even from this distance, she could make out the black wings, spread wide, and the cowled head lifted in menace. Without a doubt, it was the Wyvern Weirgate, the last of the foul sculptures. She banked back toward the tunnel to report her discoveries when movement caught her eye.
She spiraled back around, hovering. A figure labored near the statue. He searched about with casual indifference, bending on a knee here, leaning to inspect something there. His movements suggested he was unaware of her. She narrowed her eyes, focusing her vision.
Maybe it was the clean well of power swelling inside her, but she dared glide a bit farther over the swirling bowl for a closer look.
It was a mistake.
From her vantage high over the floor, she saw the trap a moment too late, and like a fly in a spider’s web, she was caught. With her attention on the whorls of silver and the danger at its center, she had failed to note a matching swirl of darkness across the bow of the roof, a dark reflection of the one below.
From this black eddy, tendrils of power lashed out and down, snatching her in midair. The more she struggled, the tighter the cords wrapped. She was dragged toward the roof, caught as firmly as an ant in molasses. She stared toward the dark whorl before her. The center, positioned directly over the Wyvern Weirgate, was a dark hole in the ceiling, leading to where she didn’t know.
Then she spotted the slight dribble of water trickling out of the hole and falling toward the Weirgate below. The hole must extend all the way to the surface. But why? To what purpose? Could she escape by that route?
She looked down as she swirled higher in an ever-tightening circle. The figure by the statue had stopped its inspection and stared up at her. Closer now, she made out the scarred ruin of the man’s face. A stubble of black hair grew out from the roiled flesh. He smiled up at her, his eyes burned s
ockets. He bore a staff, a length of pure ebon’stone. Cassa Dar had heard of Shorkan’s burning as he fled an Entrapment ring. With certainty, here stood the architect of the trap that had snared her, a trap meant to snare the others who followed.
As if to confirm this, he lifted his staff and stirred it through the air. Her trapped form spun faster toward the malignant center of the whorl, where damnation surely lay.
She knew she should withdraw her connection to the child, sever it before she herself was caught, too. But if she broke that thin tether, then she could not warn Jaston and the others of the trap set to snare them.
That wasn’t an option.
So she did the only other thing she could. She poured more of herself into her creation. Shorkan thought he had caught himself a small child of middling talents. She meant to see how he dealt with a full wit’ch.
From her bed, she cast out her essence, leaving only the thinnest thread to follow back. She flowed in a heartbeat into her creation, filling it with her poisonous magicks. The dark tendrils that held her sizzled and frayed from contact with the venom oozing from her.
Down below, the smile on the darkmage’s face dimmed to wary confusion. He pointed his staff at her, and the tendrils of darkness thrashed, renewing their assault.
She ignored the cords and continued to pour herself into her vessel. The child grew among the writhing black snakes, maturing from child to woman in a matter of breaths. The childish trace of consciousness faded, replaced with her own.
Mama, the child called to her as she faded. Cassa touched her essence. I love you, my sweetness. Now sleep.
Then the child was gone.
Below, Shorkan hissed, his words easily reaching her. “Wit’ch! You’ll never escape with mere elemental trickery!”
Cassa Dar stared down, a bare span from the whorl’s center. She smiled calmly, done with running, done with hiding. “Who said I was escaping, mage?”
She opened her mouth and vomited the poison from her belly. It was not only her childish form that had matured, but the creature inside her. The swamp child, now woman, was nothing but a skin. The reptile inside was her true connection here.
Cassa Dar fell out of the trap. Shedding from her skin, she dropped in her true form. The king adder, grown to its full length, writhed through the air to land in a tangle about the darkmage.
Shorkan screamed as she wrapped tight coils around him, writhing up to face the scarred visage. A forked tongue hissed from her lips. She opened her jaws, unhinging fangs as long as a dragon’s. Poison flowed from the venom sacs at the base of the snake’s skull—and from the core of her being.
She knew she was no match for the darkmage, but she could still strike and do damage. She hissed, spitting poison into his face, then struck as he dodged the spray. Her fangs sank deep into his neck, pumping all the poison she could before he lashed out at her.
Latched to the demon, she felt the venom knock him to his knees, but what would have killed an ordinary man in less than a heartbeat, he survived. She heard a spell tumble from his lips.
Her coils suddenly ignited with a searing fire. Dark flames flared out from the mage—balefire. She knew her death was but a moment away. But still she drained her poison into his being. She heard him gasp, fall to his hands.
As the snake form incinerated, she smiled a venomous grin and fled away—but not down the thread that led to her body back at Castle Drakk. She knew she’d never make it there. That bridge was burned behind her. Instead, she fled to the only place her heart knew well.
A heart that beat in rhythm to her own.
Jaston fell to his knees in the tunnel. He knew the moment she passed beyond. “Cassa . . .”
The others rushed to his side, but he was blind to them, deaf to them. Her essence filled all his senses. The scent of moonblossom swelled around him. The taste of her lips appeared on his tongue, the brush of her hand on his cheek. “Cassa, what have you done?”
What had to be . . . She bathed him in all she was, holding him nearer than she ever could in life. But fear not. Hold me in your heart; remember our time. I’ll always be no more than a breath away.
“No,” he moaned.
Now go. You all must hurry. Images filled his head: a trap untangled, a wounded demon, weakened for only the moment. Fight for the world, my love. It is too beautiful to pass into darkness.
“Cassa, wait . . .”
Her breath was a kiss on his neck. I love you. I always will.
Then, like a brush of wind, she vanished. He held a fist against his chest, sobbing, wondering if his heart could continue to beat. But it did . . .
He lifted his head and faced the others. “She’s gone.”
Er’ril knelt over Jaston as the injured man explained what he had learned. “If Cassa Dar has indeed wounded Shorkan, then we must hurry.” he said. “Now may be our only chance. We cannot let her sacrifice be in vain.”
Harlequin spoke from near the back of the group. “I’d say we have no choice.” He faced the other way down the tunnel. From the direction of the pit, screams still echoed to them, but now the scrabble of claws on rocks sounded, too. If the skal’tum legions were headed down the tunnel, the only way was forward.
“Hurry!” Er’ril ordered.
Nee’lahn and Meric moved to Jaston’s side. “You go ahead. Let us slow the monsters.”
“Just the three of you?” Elena asked.
The two elementals shone in the silvery light, faces bright. Nee’lahn glanced to Meric, who wore a sly smile. “We’ll be enough. Now go. See to the Wyvern and its protector.”
Er’ril nodded and started down the hall. “Tol’chuk, take the lead with Magnam and Harlequin, but don’t leave the tunnel until we’re all together.”
Tol’chuk grunted his assent and headed out at a faster clip.
Er’ril turned to Elena. “The Blood Diary—maybe we should keep it closed until we’ve destroyed the Wyvern Gate.”
He read the understanding in her face. Cho had been growing wilder lately, especially when near her lost brother, Chi. If the Wyvern Gate lay ahead, then so did Chi. From Elena’s narrowed gaze, she clearly remembered what had happened when the group had confronted the Manticore Gate. Cho had possessed Elena, taking her over and almost killing her in the process.
Er’ril could not risk a repeat of that event. Until this last gate was broken and Chi was free, he did not trust the spirit of the book. It put its own needs and desires above all else, even Elena’s safety. And in the battle to come, he had enough to contend with.
Elena patted her cloak. “I’ll only open it once the last gate is broken.” As she spoke, her other hand closed over the rose hilt of her blood sword. She had enough magick at her command already.
Er’ril glanced behind them. The shape-shifters flanked Joach. Elena’s brother clutched his staff, its length already white with the touch of his bare fingers.
Er’ril frowned. Brother and sister . . . both bore blood weapons. He prayed they were strong enough to control such talismans.
Joach met his gaze unflinching, but the smallest blush of shame colored his cheeks. The two had shared few words since the second demise of Greshym, the trust between them wounded.
A hiss drew his attention back around. Tol’chuk waved them forward; the others had reached the tunnel exit. Magnam and Harlequin crouched by some rubble, haloed by the silver light.
Er’ril hurried to join them. Beyond the exit, an impossibly vast chamber opened. The floor was a wide basin of silver, while across the roof flowed a similar whorl, this one black as ink, a shadow of the one below.
“The Wyvern Gate,” Tol’chuk said, pointing a thick arm toward the center of the silver pool.
Though a distance away, the black shape of the ebon’stone bird could not be mistaken. At the statue’s feet, a figure cloaked in black lay facedown on the floor, stark against the silver.
“Shorkan.” Er’ril stood and started into the chamber. To reach the brilliant lake, he had to c
ross a shore of granite, piled with yellowed bones. “Elena, keep behind us. I don’t know if Shorkan is feigning his collapse or is truly wounded.”
He didn’t get any acknowledgment, so he glanced behind him. Elena stood frozen at the tunnel’s exit. Her gaze was not on the Wyvern Gate, nor on the collapsed darkmage, but on the bones underfoot.
“Elena,” he tried again.
Her only reaction was a widening of her eyes. “The bones . . . They’re goblin bones.”
Er’ril finally noticed the piled limbs and skulls. From the tiny size and pugged muzzles and fangs, Elena was clearly right. “Rock’goblins.”
“The ones I slew.”
He crossed back and took her arm, walking her through the graveyard of bones. “We must move forward,” he said, pulling her away from those painful memories.
Once past the boneyard, Elena shuddered, shaking off the shock. They stood at the edge of the bright lake.
“Elemental silver,” Joach said, “like the river beneath the Southwall of the Wastes. The energy here is tremendous.”
Er’ril stepped onto the silver cautiously. “The Dark Lord’s minions must have scoured through the granite, exposing the source. Here is where they mean to tap into the heart of the world and corrupt it.”
“Unless we can stop them,” Elena said with returning vigor.
Er’ril nodded. “Everyone stay alert. We don’t know how effective Cassa Dar’s poison was on the mage.”
Fardale and Thorn melted in their cloaks, becoming a blend of wolf and man. “We’ll run forward. If the monster is feigning his weakness, let us be the ones to discover it. We can move the quickest to escape any hidden trap.”
Er’ril waved them on. Before he could lower his arm, the pair of shape-shifters were already off. They raced across the silver lake, short swords in hand, but prepared to shift fully into beasts if necessary.
“Let’s go!” Er’ril said and followed at a fast clip. He made sure Elena stayed behind their phalanx of weapons.
Harlequin hung back with Er’ril, to stand on Elena’s other side, a pair of daggers in hand. The small man’s eyes, narrowed with worry, were on the roof.