Hannah crossed to the bed, becoming indistinct as her body blocked out the grey streaks of dawn slipping between the drapes. He couldn’t make out the look on her face. It had been surprise when she caught him watching; was it anger now? Probably.
‘Hey.’ Her voice was soft, an unnecessary whisper. She reached for his shoulder, felt it moving, saw him crying in the darkness. ‘Oh, Hoyt, I’m so sorry.’
‘Please,’ Hoyt said, burying his face in the pillow.
Hannah dropped her tunic and stepped out of her underwear. ‘Hoyt,’ she whispered, drawing back his blankets.
‘No,’ he wept, ‘please, don’t.’
‘Yes,’ Hannah said quietly, ‘it’s all right.’
He pushed his fingertips through her hair and down the ridges of her back. She tugged down his underclothes as his hands stroked her back. He felt the smooth, muscular curve of her backside and gripped her, guiding her onto him. He held his breath…
Hannah took him in one hand, firm but gentle, and drew him into her, engulfing him in her moist, warm embrace.
Hoyt thrust his hips up in desperation as, still sobbing, he came with a shriek, a cry that was lost somewhere in the gulf between despair and joy. Hannah ground her hips down into him, over him, thrusting for him until Hoyt was through.
Later, their arms and legs entwined beneath the blankets, Hoyt finally whispered, ‘I’m sorry, Hannah. I’m so sorry.’
‘Don’t be,’ she said. ‘We’ve been to Hell and back, Hoyt. If we can take comfort from strangers, we ought to be able to take it from friends.’
‘I hate thinking about what those creatures might have done to him.’
Hannah felt her own tears well behind her eyes. ‘Then let’s not think about it.’
‘Can we… stay here a bit longer?’ He swallowed dryly. He was embarrassed to ask but he would have been happy to have the world come to an end at that moment.
‘Hold me now,’ Hannah whispered in his ear. ‘Go back to sleep. Later, we’ll eat too much and try to forget where we are.’
‘I don’t want to forget.’
‘Hush now. Go to sleep.’
To his surprise, Hoyt did, drifting off into peaceful slumber for the first time since Churn fell.
Hannah held him, lying awake as morning crept into their chamber and the candle burned itself out on the bedside table.
THE RIVER SNARE
It was difficult for Steven to overcome his natural buoyancy to maintain his position in the current. He’d been trapped down here once before, and he didn’t relish the idea of another wrestling match with Nerak’s watchdog spell. To make their excavation even more difficult, Steven found that he couldn’t stop himself from continually checking over his shoulder in case one of the bone-collecting creatures might be coming upriver to tear him and Gilmour to bloody tatters. He appreciated what Gilmour had done for his underwater vision. Being able to see clearly, despite the turbid clouds of silt they were kicking up, helped him feel slightly more confident: at least if one of the cthulhoid monsters did materialise, he or Gilmour would spot it coming.
Steven circled the rock formation until he found the jagged cavelike opening he and Garec had nearly been dragged into the previous autumn. He waved at Gilmour to get his attention, then indicated this was the place.
He felt an ominous sense of foreboding as he hovered before the inky-black crevice. With a thought he increased the water temperature around them, but even that did little to mitigate the cold emptiness of the cave. There were no fish swimming past, not even the ungainly, crippled creatures that had been lurking about last time. A glance across the riverbed confirmed that there were no plants either; nothing grew within eyeshot of the crooked pile of rocks and fallen trees. The moraine was powerful, so compelling that Steven had once knelt before it, awed by its perfectly random majesty. He realised now that it was something more than just a glorious piece of sculpture. There was evil here, and the closer the two magicians swam to the obsidian breach in the rocky wall, the more Steven understood that they needed to be extremely careful or they would die.
Then Gilmour swam about twenty yards out from the cave and plunged one of his hands into the riverbed, startling Steven so badly that he nearly lost control of the spells protecting them. In a moment the old sorcerer was trapped.
Steven nearly inhaled a lungful of water as he shouted, ‘Gilmour!’ What came out was a garbled mouthful of bubbles and vowels.
Gilmour was gesturing. Steven watched him tug fruitlessly against the riverbed a time or two, then he grinned, a sinister smile, as if everything was working out according to some maniacal plan.
Steven shrugged as if to say, I have no idea what you’re doing.
Gilmour pointed to himself, made a twirling motion in front of his face and then pointed at Steven, who looked blank. He repeated the gesture: pointed to himself, twirled two fingers near his mouth and then pointed to Steven.
You’re telling me. You’re telling me what? You’re telling… you’re teaching me! You’re teaching me? What are you teaching me? How can this be teaching me anything other than how to commit suicide? Christ, what timing…
Reading his mind, Gilmour gestured again: motioning downwards with his free palm – calm down – and pointing to his head – and think.
Okay. Okay. All right. I must know what to do. He wouldn’t have done this if I didn’t know how to get him out of here. I must know… I must have done this already. Okay, I get it; I’ve done this before. When? Where?
And then Steven remembered: Sandcliff Palace, with the almor. The magic hadn’t come to him until he needed it. He had been nervous and frightened – I’m nervous now! – and the magic he needed to find and kill the demon hadn’t emerged until he had placed himself in a position of need. He had been so worried, so confused as to which magic to use, his own fledgling power or that of the hickory staff, that he had not been focused on what was most important: finding and killing the creature. He’s right, Steven thought. The lunatic sonofabitch is right again. The magic had come to him when he cleared his mind and stepped into the snow; it would work again.
You’re focusing on the wrong things, he told himself. You’re worried about the bone-collectors, you’re frightened of the cave; it’s the almor all over again. Get into the snow, Steven. The magic will come when you step off the landing and into the snow.
Steven managed a shaky grin and plunged his own hand into the silty mud. Before he could think about retrieving it, he was trapped as well.
Mimicking Steven’s earlier gesture, Gilmour smiled and gave a thumbs-up.
Steven shot him an incredulous smirk. Oh, yeah, sure. This makes perfect sense, you crazy old bastard. I’ll call you from Hell and let you know how things worked out.
But despite his troubling lack of confidence, Steven’s own magic swelled in a gust of protective power. There was no need for them to be concerned with air or warmth; Steven’s initial spells went on without interruption. Now there was only the riverbed and the moraine, the burial ground for the Larion Senate’s most powerful tool. Steven watched as the thin strip of mud separating the rocky cave and the underwater altar came into crisp focus.
He felt Nerak’s old spell.
It was there in the mud, running back and forth between his wrist and the cave. A connection had been established, a linking of two powers, the magic to hold them fast and…
They started to move.
… the magic to drag them beneath the rocks.
Holy Christ, Steven thought, gotta work quick, gotta figure this out -
Just as it had when he had been trapped here with Garec, the underwater moraine began reeling the two sorcerers in, dragging them immutably towards the narrow breach in its foundation. They would soon become a permanent addition; Steven wondered in horror how many others they might find buried inside.