‘Please!’ Reppin shrieked to the night.
Vindeliar made a small sound. For an instant, his concentration was broken and Kerf’s grip on my neck loosened.
‘She’s useless,’ Dwalia growled. ‘She’s dying, she’s whining, and she’s consuming resources that are already scarce. Don’t question my decisions, Vindeliar. Look what happened to all of us the last time you did not obey my commands. Look how many dead, and all your fault! Pay attention to me and hold tight or you, too, will be left behind!’
Kerf’s grip on me tightened and Alaria’s fingers ground the flesh of my arm against the bone.
I suddenly grasped the danger. ‘We should not do this! We should follow the road. It must go somewhere! The standing stones are dangerous. We may not come out or we may emerge as mad as Kerf!’
My shouted warnings went unheeded. Dwalia pressed her gloved hand to the stone’s carved face. It seemed to draw her in like a slice of ginger sinking into warm honey. The light from our abandoned campfire showed her sliding into the stone. Vindeliar followed, panting with terror as his hand, his wrist, his elbow vanished into stone. He whined as he was drawn in.
‘We swim with the dead ones!’ Kerf shouted, grinning his madman’s grimace. ‘On to the fallen palace of a dead duke!’ He seemed to enter the pillar more slowly than Vindeliar had, as if the stone resisted him. I hung back but his grip on my neck stayed tight even when the rest of him had vanished into the stone. I looked up as I was dragged toward the pillar and lost my breath in horror at what I saw. The additional marking on the stone was not new. It was not scored as deeply into the stone as the original runes, but there was no mistaking its intent. Someone had deliberately marked a deep straight scratch through the rune, as if to forbid or warn anyone who chose to use that face of the portal. ‘Da!’ I cried out, a desperate call that no one could hear. ‘Da! Help me!’ In the next moment, my cheek touched the cold surface and I was pulled into tarry blackness.
FOUR
Chalced
Because of our studies of many old scrolls, including translations we have done, I am convinced that the legendary Elderlings of our myths and legends were a very real people who occupied a large territory for many generations before their cities and culture eventually fell into decay long before Buckkeep Castle was founded. Additional information gained from a library of what we call Skill-cubes has only convinced us that we are correct.
Why did the Elderlings, a people of wisdom and powerful magic, fail and disappear from our world? Can we tie that failing to the vanishing of the dragons, another event for which we have no explanation? And now that both dragons and perhaps Elderlings have returned to the world, how does that affect the future of humankind?
And what of our legends of an ancient alliance between Farseer and Elderlings, the very alliance that King Verity sought to revive when he led his expedition to the Rain Wilds? Were they living Elderlings he encountered or the stored memories of what they had been? Questions that we may find the answers to if we continue to mine the memory-cubes for information.
My mother used to do this to me. When she wanted to move me.
A dim recollection. A den, a mother who carried me by the scruff of my neck. Not my thought, but it was a thought and the first one I had. Someone gripped hair, skin and shirt collar. The collar was the part that was choking me. I was dragged up and out of a mire as someone protested, ‘There isn’t room. Leave her! There isn’t room.’
The blackness was absolute. Air on my face. I blinked my eyes to see if they were truly open. They were. No stars. No distant firelight. Nothing. Just dark. And something thick trying to pull me back down.
I was abruptly glad for the choking grip on my collar. In panic, I clutched one-handed at someone’s shirt and crawled up and onto Kerf. He was prone on his side beneath me. I lifted my head and it hit against something. Worse, someone had hold of my arm and was pulling on it as they crawled up to join me. The man beneath me shifted onto his back. I fell off him to lie wedged between him and a stone wall. It was a snug fit and instinctively I pushed at him, trying to gain more room. But I could not move his bulk and I heard Alaria gasp and then utter small shriek after shriek as she scrabbled up to take my place on top of Kerf.
The shrieks turned into gasped words. ‘Let go! Let go of me!’ She was thrashing on top of Kerf.
‘You’re kicking me,’ Vindeliar protested.
‘Let go!’ Alaria cried.
‘I’m not touching you! Stop kicking!’ Dwalia ordered her. ‘Vindeliar, get off me!’
‘I can’t. I’m stuck! There’s no room!’ He was panting with terror.
Where were we? What had happened to us?
Dwalia tried for a tone of command and failed. She was breathless. ‘Silence, all!’
‘I’m sick.’ I heard Vindeliar gag. ‘That was awful. They were all grabbing at me. I want to go home. I can’t do this. I hate this. I need to go home.’ He blubbered like a small child.
‘Let go of me!’ Alaria, her voice gone shrill.
‘Help me! I’m sinking! Please, make room! I can’t climb past you!’ I heard and smelled Reppin. The infection in her arm stank. She had probably broken the wound open in her struggle. ‘My arm … I can’t climb out. Pull me up, someone! Don’t leave me here! Don’t leave me with them!’
Where were we?
Be calm. Discover what has happened before you try to make a plan. I felt Wolf Father’s steadiness suffuse me. My breathing that had become bellows in my chest. But his voice was so calm in my mind. Listen. Touch. Smell. What can you discover?
It was hard to be calm with the slapping, panting struggle going on right beside me. Alaria begged, ‘Let go! There’s no room! Don’t pull me back! Ah!’
Reppin did not shriek. She gave a long moan that was suddenly quenched in a sound like pulled heavy stone dropped in from muck. Only Alaria’s panting broke the silence.
‘She was pulled back down into the stone.’ More a statement than a question from Dwalia. And with it, I recalled that she had dragged us into a Skill-pillar.
‘I had to! I had to push her away. There’s no more room! You said to leave her. It’s not my fault!’ Alaria sounded more defensive than sorry.
‘Be silent!’ Dwalia’s voice was still pinched with breathlessness. ‘I speak. Vindeliar, get off me!’
‘I am sorry. I am stuck here. Kerf pushed me onto you as he crawled up. I can’t budge. A stone presses down on me.’ He was on the edge of hysteria. ‘I am so sick. I cannot see! Am I blind? Lingstra Dwalia, am I blind?’
‘No. It is dark, you oaf. Don’t dare to vomit on me. You are crushing me. Give me room.’ I heard a struggle of shifting bodies.
Vindeliar whimpered, ‘There is no space for me to move. I am crushed, too.’
‘If you cannot be helpful, be still. Chalcedean?’ She was gasping for air. Vindeliar was not a small person and she was trapped beneath him. ‘Kerf?’
He giggled. It was a terrible sound coming from a man’s deep chest in the darkness.