Talal collapsed on the ground, clutching his throat, and bats poured from a hollow in the upper corner of the chamber.
The light from the flame rope faltered as bats—not as large as the first two, but still impressive—filled the room. Meisha sank to her knees, her back throbbing from wielding the dagger. She felt warm moisture that was not sweat soaking through her jerkin.
Stupid, Meisha thought. She’d reopened her wound. The bats would love her now. Talal was still on the floor, half-hidden by a cloud of dark bodies. Meisha felt the rush of air from leathery wings stir her hair and clothing. Bites stabbed her flesh, a few at first, but gradually increasing as the bats narrowed their attacks. By some luck, the choker faired no better. The bats did not discriminate in their frenzied biting, and choker screams rang out, echoing Talal’s frantic cries.
A bat hit Meisha from behind, pinning her on her stomach to get at the source of the blood. Frantically, she rolled, but her vision was all leather and claws. Meisha stabbed with the dagger, making a slit in the creature’s wing. Slashing diagonally, she split the leather curtain in half and scrambled free.
She crawled to Talal and rolled the boy onto his stomach. Slapping the bats away, she lay flush against his back. Blood from a dozen bites soaked her as she wrapped her arms around him.
“Close your eyes and don’t move,” Meisha said against his ear. Without waiting for him to comply, she chanted a spell and prayed the pain wouldn’t make her lose consciousness.
The flame column wavered and dropped, falling into itself like a water spike in a dying fountain. Plunging straight down, the fire emptied into Meisha’s spine.
The Harper came up with a howl, her back arching. Flames burst from her wound, her eyes, and her mouth, smothering the bats in a blanket of charnel heat. She hoped her body was enough to protect Talal from the upward blast of flame. The oily scent of burning meat filled the air as bats rained around her.
Meisha came down on her back, gulping air that tasted foul but felt sweet on her lungs. Dizziness caused the caverns ceiling to waver and bend, but at least there were no more bats.
She looked around for the choker and found it huddling out of range of the fire cloud, dangling from the stalactite where Braedrin’s body had been. Lambent eyes watched them in the flickering light from the burning corpses.
It was weighing how much of a fight they had left to offer, Meisha thought.
Angrily, she flung out an arm, focusing on her tingling fingertips, gathering power until … there, just enough. A tongue of flame sparked from her finger, illuminating her nail with a purple glow. She followed that glow with her eyes as she traced a circle above her head and around Talal’s shoulder, past their feet and back up, encasing them in a ring of power only Meisha could see.
“Trothliese!” she cried, and fire sprang up where her finger had traced. The ward would last, even if she lost consciousness, but if the choker got brave and crossed the flames or dropped down on top of them, they’d be dead. Meisha hoped the fire and the deep dagger wound would be enough to convince the creature not to risk it.
She lay back, letting the flames from the circle wash over her. Her eyes slid closed. She had no strength left.
She awoke sometime later as if from a fever dream. Sweat poured off her skin, yet she shivered with cold. The ward fire still burned.
“Are you spent?” asked Talal. He was sitting up, his knees drawn under his chin. He looked like a small, terrified boy.
Meisha angled her head to look at him. She smiled crookedly. “Hardly,” she replied.
She looked beyond the ward, but the choker was gone. Braedrin’s body lay outside the circle, nipped and chewed by the deep bats. His eyelids were gone, making the whites appear huge in his ravaged face.
“I think I can walk. We should get out of here.” Meisha pulled her gaze away from the chilling sight, just in time to see the dwarves walk through the cavern wall.
They came through in silent procession, armed, ringing the fire ward with their own protective circle. There were ten in total, but Meisha’s shocked gaze fastened on the leader—a dwarf in dented plate armor, holding a broken battle-axe.
CHAPTER TWENTY
“I remember you,” Meisha whispered, when the dwarf came to stand in front of her.
He shifted the weapon from fist to fist, and Meisha saw, in the hollow of a hairy throat, a translucent chain, as thin as a cat’s whisker. A pendant hung from the chain, with a carved scene depicting the figure of a mountain with a hole in its center.
Meisha had seen a similar pendant around the neck of a gold dwarf scholar, long ago. And before that, around the neck of the ghost that haunted her arrival at the Delve. It was the symbol of Dumathoin.
“Keeper of secrets,” she greeted the ghost.
“Bearer of the Harp,” he replied. He stood so close, his breath should have stirred the air, yet Meisha felt nothing.
The spectral circle fell back to flank their leader. The dwarves’ faces held no expression. Meisha wondered whether they saw her at all. When the leader spoke again, his eyes glowed with faint, silver light. Meisha felt the words scrape against her bones.
“Take the warning.”
Wetting dry lips, Meisha rose to her knees, which put her roughly at eye level with the ghost. She felt Talal scuttle behind her, pressing against her back. The dwarf paid him no attention.
“What warning?” Meisha asked. “Who are you?”
The dwarf didn’t move or make a sound, yet suddenly Meisha clutched her head. Screams reverberated in her mind. She looked back at Talal to see if he had heard them too, but the boy kept his eyes on the ground.
Meisha waited for the ache between her temples to pass before looking back at the dwarf. “Was that you? What happened here?”
“Secrets at rest beneath the earth stay buried, or come to light, according to Dumathoin’s will,” the dwarf intoned. “We violated that law and brought the beast upon this plane. Dumathoin charges us to put it right. Take the warning to other secret keepers,” he repeated, and swung his axe point level with Meisha’s chest. Flames from her ward came up through the blade, casting an orange glow on the spectral metal. He stretched out his other hand in a fist. “Do not venture here.”
“What did you—ahh!” Meisha’s hand flew to her chest. Coldness spread across her skin. She yanked back the fold of her jerkin where her Harper pin lay. The metal radiated a deep chill; her skin beneath the cloth was red with it. Meisha lifted the pin away from the tender flesh, but the dwarf had lowered his arm, and the cold began to fade.
“Take the warning,” he repeated.
Angrily, Meisha shouted, “What warning? We can’t take any warning anywhere! Were trapped here, just like you. Unless you can show us the way out, your message won’t go ten paces without hitting a wall and splintering into silence.”
The dwarf took a step forward. Talal whimpered, clutching at her clothes. “Stop. He’ll kill us. He killed Braedrin.”
“No, he didn’t,” said Meisha, shaking the boy off. “The choker killed Braedrin.” She looked back at the dwarf. “Something else killed him, something else broke his axe. Is that what you want to keep hidden—the fire beast?”
“And the magic that violates the stone,” said the dwarf.
Meisha felt Talal stir behind her, but he kept silent. “Varan’s tinkerings?” she asked.
“Magic builds upon magic, layer by layer, century upon century, until it is too bright and terrible to comprehend. We collected the power here, and the power brought the beast. It was not our intention, and now we must pay for our crime. We must keep him bound.”