She thought the raft might be sinking lower, the ancient wood soaking up water and losing its ability to float. Pieces broke off occasionally, whirling away in the cold water and quickly lost from sight. Her shivering had grown so violent that Mari wondered if that alone would break the decayed wood. Don’t think about it. Just keep going. You can do this.
Mari bumped up against a flat surface and just stared at it blankly. Alain’s hands were on her shoulders, then his arms were around her waist, helping her up a short, steep slope that abruptly leveled out onto a flat surface littered with the leavings of battles over a century gone. They were on the other side of the river, on the clear area edging the river wall. Mari huddled into a tight ball, her clothing soaked, shaking uncontrollably from the cold.
A warmth grew around her, surrounding her body as if she were encircled by gentle fires. Mari yanked her eyes open, astonished, to see Alain kneeling nearby and staring at her. “W-what are you d-doing?”
He spoke slowly, concentrating on his effort. “I am making the air around you heat up. Not enough to harm, just enough to help.”
“I–I kn-knew that h-having a M-mage for a b-boyfriend would c-come in handy s-someday.”
She just lay there for a while, the heat soaking in, her shivering subsiding and her breathing growing calmer. “Alain, I know this takes a lot of work. Please stop. I’ll be all right now.” Getting her arms under her, Mari pushed herself up to a sitting position.
Alain looked weary but he was smiling at her, the expression clear enough that anyone might have noticed it. “You are a brave and remarkable woman, Mari.”
“I’m not half as brave and remarkable as my Mage is.” Feeling embarrassed by his praise, she forced herself to her feet, then offered Alain a hand. “Come on. We need to keep moving, just in case those sub-humans have another way across the river.”
He took the hand and stood up, almost overbalancing her. But she managed to stay up, too, then laughed. “Hey. We forgot to fill our water bottles.”
“Other issues had our attention. Can it wait?” Alain asked.
“Yeah.” Mari pointed. “The current carried us downstream. The old Mechanics Guild Hall should be right over that way.” Walking along the edge of the river at the best pace they could sustain, they saw the building they sought once they had climbed up and over a pile of rubble where a waterfront building had collapsed outward.
Mari led the way, her eyes searching the remains of the old Guild Hall. “Yes. That’s definitely it. What happened to it?” She paused to rest, breathing heavily under the weight of her pack, hands resting on her legs. “It looks like… I bet they did.”
“Did what?” Alain asked. He was standing beside her but once again looking back the way they had come. “I do not recommend spending a lot of time unmoving like this, Mari.”
“I know.” Mari straightened. “I think my Guild blew up the place. Maybe after the rebels captured it. The way the walls have fallen outward in several places make it look like internal explosions did the job.” She started walking. “There should be a couple of ways down to the basement vaults. If we’re lucky one of those will still be usable.”
As they got closer, Mari pointed off to one side, where once-impressive buildings had collapsed in on themselves long ago. “That must have been the old Mechanics Guild academy. It looks like it was once identical to the one I attended.” Mari shook her head, overwhelmed by a strange feeling, as if she were a ghost haunting the ruins of a place where she had lived long ago. “It’s so bizarre, seeing that. Less than a year ago I left the living, breathing buildings of the new Guild academy, and now here are identical buildings wrecked over a century in the past. It looks like they were gutted by fire.” She swallowed, imagining the chaos, the destruction, places she would have recognized, hallways which would have seemed familiar, all sharing in the death throes of Marandur.
“It happened many years ago,” Alain said, his calm voice a comfort. “Your imagination gives new life to what has long been dead.”
“So I need to stop thinking about it.” Mari turned her face grimly from the brooding ruins of the old academy, concentrating on picking out a path to the tumbled remains of the old Guild headquarters next door.
When they reached the front of the building after crossing the rubble-littered courtyard, Mari found a solid wall of debris where the main entrance had stood. Working their way around to the side entrance, they discovered it too was completely blocked where part of the upper stories had simply slid down on top of it. Crossing her fingers, Mari led the way to the back entryway.
There she stopped for a moment, unable to believe their luck. Then she took another look. “Somebody cleared this.”
Alain studied the ruins before them. “You are certain?”
“I think so. It must’ve been quite a while ago, but look at the way some of the wreckage has been shifted to clear the entry.” Mari knelt to examine the dusty surface. “I don’t see any sign that anybody has used it in a long, long time, though.” Moving carefully, she started forward, crouching to get past low areas in the cleared passage. The light dimmed as they went inside and down, so she paused long enough to open her pack and extract the hand light. Her pack was as watertight as Mechanic art could make it, but a little moisture had made its way inside during the river crossing. Fortunately, the hand light was dry. Mari clicked it on, then started walking again. Alain followed close behind. Mari could see he was still devoting most of his efforts to watching their trail for signs of pursuit.
She paused to study the ruins, running her light across their surroundings. “I could be wrong, but it looks like there were two stages of destruction. Part of this looks like it collapsed, then the rest came down on top of it later.” Mari frowned as she turned sideways to slip through an area where the path was barely still open. “The second collapse came after this path was cleared, though. I’m sure of it.”
The first door they came to had long ago fallen off its hinges. The second had been shoved aside, its splintered remnants heavily coated with dust. Mari froze as something creaked alarmingly somewhere overhead in the wreck of the building and a fine haze of more dust trickled down from the bent ceiling above them. An occasional scuttling noise marked small creatures fleeing from Mari and Alain’s approach, but nothing large seemed to have laired here. Mari sniffed, catching the faded scent of industrial chemicals, wondering if the poisons liberated by the destruction of the building had kept it free of invading plant and animal life. “Don’t touch anything unless you have to,” she cautioned Alain.
Moving ahead again with great care, they reached the steel door leading to the basement area. It, too, lay askew, but had been wedged to one side to help support the cracked door frame. Mari pointed to old, dark smudges on the ceiling. “Soot. Somebody was down here using torches.” Or somebody had been down here burning something else. How much soot would have been created by priceless technical texts turning into ash? She tried not to think about that possibility, feeling sickened by the idea of so much knowledge being destroyed.
The stairs leading downward were slick with dust but otherwise sturdy enough. Mari took a moment to bless her Guild’s obsession with excavating foundations, basements and subsurface stairs from solid stone whenever possible. Reaching the bottom, she gave Alain an anxious look. “The vaults should be right up this way.” She wondered why she whispered, then realized she felt worried about noise somehow causing further collapse of the ancient ruin. Then, too, there was a sensation of disturbing a place where living humans were no longer welcome.