Guild Mage: Apprentice

The soldiers at Jagan's side stiffened; Liv knew they couldn't understand her words, but she hadn't bothered to hide the anger in her tone. For the first time, she wondered whether the commander had deliberately chosen to bring men with no knowledge of Lucanian. He, General Mishra, Vivek Sharma - all of them had learned the language. Surely there were ksatriya at Akela Kila who had learned even a few phrases? Wouldn't they have been a better choice?

Unless, of course, you didn't want your men to be able to understand anything Liv or her friends said. This way, Jagan and Arjun were the only ones who could communicate with those two soldiers: if Liv tried to say anything directly, she'd be limited to simple phrases such as 'what is your name?'

"If you thought that I, or my men, had come to help you accomplish a task I fundamentally disagree with," Commander Jagan responded, "that error is your own. I told the general that if he was going to allow you to descend to the bottom of the Well of Bones, we should at least have someone with you to report back on what happened. I would prefer that this foolhardy expedition turn around immediately."

"And what, you'll be willing to watch us die?" Liv asked, doing her best to temper her tone.

Jagan shrugged. "It would be unfortunate. But in the end, this course of action is your choice, and the fault would be your own. I will not risk my own men to save you from your own recklessness."

"But we came here at your request!" Isabel protested. "General Mishra asked for our help."

"To assist against the eruptions, which you have done," Jagan said. "Personally, I am not convinced even that was necessary. Our men would have retaken the fourth gate eventually."

"I suppose if you don't mind piling up bodies to get it done," Wren commented.

"Does this change your estimation of success?" Jagan asked, his tone infuriatingly smug. "If you were relying on spending my men's lives like coin, to get whatever you were after down there, I can tell you now that it will not happen. Make the intelligent choice. Turn around now, while all of you are still alive."

"We're not turning around," Liv said. "Come on." She set off down the stairs, and after a moment, Arjun, Wren and Isabel followed. When she glanced back, she saw that Jagan and his men let them open up a bit of distance before they began descending. A few feet of stone steps felt like a gaping chasm.

"You should just put up a wall behind us," Wren whispered, walking close enough that Liv could hear her clearly. "We can't trust leaving them at our backs."

"If you do that," Arjun said, coming up on Liv's other side, "he will simply go back to General Mishra and report that you barred their passage because you want to claim whatever is down here for yourself. It will be an excuse to move against you when you return."

"Politics." Liv couldn't help but scowl.

"The ksatriya are as skilled at politics as at war," Arjun explained. "Both are expressions of power. The priests stand aside, for the most part; they consider such things too worldly."

"So what do we do?" Isabel asked. "Look, I'm the daughter of a tanner. It's what my family's been doing for generations. Politics is for nobles."

"We don't count on them for anything, and we don't trust them," Liv said. "They can follow us as long as they want to. But from here on, as far as we're concerned, we've got a team of four."

"What if they're in danger?" Arjun asked. "Do we help them?"

"Or let them die?" Wren asked. Liv had a feeling she knew which option each one of her friends would choose.

"We help them if we can do it without getting ourselves killed," Liv said. "We're not their enemies, even if Jagan's not convinced of it." It was a somber note to end their impromptu conference on, but she couldn't think of a better, and eventually the simple business of putting one foot in front of the other occupied all of her attention.

They stopped to rest some time after the wall of grasping hands and the crumbling stairs had been left behind them. Liv thought they might have been walking for half a bell at that point, but it was only a guess without a horologe to track the passage of time, or being able to mark the passage of the sun or the moon in the sky.

They didn't break out any food yet – it was too soon for that, and Liv didn't want to waste what they were carrying – but everyone had a few sips from the flasks of watered wine they all carried. It occurred to her, sitting on the ancient, crumbling stones with her back against the wall, that if her grandmother had been there, she would have been able to use her magic to tell them exactly how much time had passed. Liv ruthlessly shoved down her feelings of frustration at not having learned the word yet: she had three words of power to work with, and two of them she'd been practicing less than a year. She was in no position to rush forward and learn a fourth word. But still, it would have been convenient.

When they resumed their descent, with Arjun's oil lamp now lit and passed to Isabel, Liv noticed that both the wall and the steps were becoming more and more wet. It was almost like the walls were sweating, and the rock glistened in the flickering light of the lamp. Shallow puddles began to appear on the steps, and that only slowed their passage down further, as they had to be careful where they placed their feet so as not to slip.

"I'm not looking forward to walking back up all of this," Isabel groaned, pausing for a moment to massage her legs with her hands.

"Maybe we should fly back up," Wren suggested, shooting Liv a grin.

"We'll see," was all Liv said in response. She didn't want to count on having enough mana left to do that. Of course, there was mana all around them: if she reached out and took it, like she had under Bald Peak, there would be more than she could possibly use. It could also kill her. Instead, Liv practiced her breathing, allowing mana to enter her body only at a measured rate, only as quickly as she could handle without danger. As they walked, she coached Isabel and Arjun as best she could.

The ksatriya couldn't understand her instructions, with the exception of Jagan, and since he seemed to be opposed to anything Liv said on general principle, she didn't think there was much chance he would translate. When she looked back, she tried to get a glimpse of the men's hands, to see whether or not the mana poisoning had begun, but they were too far back, on the edge of the lantern light.

Finally, after what Liv judged was more than a bell of walking down the treacherous steps, they came to a level section of floor. Isabel held her lantern up, trying to get a look ahead, as their party moved off the long stair.

"Go slowly," Liv cautioned them, "and stay together." She'd sheathed the loaned driftwood wand, eventually, rather than carry it the entire way, and she'd long since allowed her blade of ice to melt away. Now, she pulled the wand again, just in case it was needed.

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As they all walked forward, the globe of light cast by the swaying lantern moved with them. The stone floor here was in no better condition than the stairs: time had broken and crumbled it, and moisture accumulating in puddles had only accelerated the process. The space must have been carved out of the rock, for it extended out laterally beyond the shaft itself. Still, Liv saw, not everything here was made of stone.

A curved metal bar, broken into sections like a gate on a garden fence, warded off the shaft to their right. From the ceiling of the chamber they'd reached, long white strands of – roots, perhaps? – hung down, not far enough to brush their heads, or even quite to reach. To the left, the cavern opened up into a corridor, and for the first time there was light other than what came from the lantern. Set into the juncture where the ceiling met the walls of the corridor were mana-stones, glowing softly and well fed by the ambient mana of the depths.

Liv turned her steps to the corridor and the glowing stones. Once she was close enough, she could see that there should have been more, but they had broken over the years, leaving only jagged pieces behind that couldn't contain enough mana to shed noticeable light. The walls and floor of the corridor were sheathed in metal, and just like the ruins beneath the reef at Coral Bay, there was an odd pattern of 'v' shapes in rows of alternating directions. Liv knew from experience that they helped boots to keep purchase on metal that could otherwise be slick.

"This way," she called back to her friends. "If we go far enough, we should be able to find a map." Or, at least, that had been the way of things at Coral Bay. Jagan and his men had placed themselves between the corridor and the shaft, and did nothing but watch what Liv and her friends move about.

"There's a kind of metal platform here," Isabel responded, from where she was leaning over the barrier at the edge of the shaft. "It runs along the inside, just below the edge of the stone here. And I can see metal stairs going further down."

"Leave it for now," Liv said. She watched long enough to see Wren and Arjun coming her way, and that Isabel was turning around, before she went back to peering down the corridor. If things followed the building pattern of the ruins at Coral Bay, the first intersection of corridors was where they would find what she was looking for. She'd just put her foot onto the metal floor when a scream came from behind her.

Liv spun back around to see the half rotted corpse of a massive, shaggy creature, arms as long as its legs, back hunched, shoulders hulking, coming up out of the shaft. One decaying hand grasped the metal fence, while the other had come down over Isabel's head. With a wrench and a sickening crack, it snapped her head backward, and the girl's scream cut off. The monster threw her corpse down into the shaft behind it, and the body fell along with the lantern that Isabel had been holding.

It happened so quickly that Liv hadn't even had time to react, and there was screaming and shouting all around her as the chamber plunged into darkness. "Get to the light!" Liv shouted, raising her wand. If she launched a spell without a clear shot, she might hit one of her own friends, rather than the monster that had just come up out of the Well.

Wren sprinted into the dim light of the ancient mana-stones, dragging Arjun along by a grip on his collar. A moment later, Jagan and his two soldiers joined them, backing in with their shields raised.

"We have to go back!" Arjun shouted, struggling against the huntress' grip. "I might be able to heal her!"

"She's dead, kid," Wren said, and muscled him back into the corridor behind Liv.

"Quiet," Liv said. Jagan and his two men weren't much of a front line, but right in this moment, she'd take them. The three men crouched with their shields raised, hammers and clubs at the ready. Everyone waited for long moments, straining their eyes and ears for any sign of an attack.

Then, with a roar, the massive beast charged into the light from the tunnel. Liv was surprised there was enough left of its lungs to make a sound: the creature must have died relatively recently.

It crashed into the raised shields of Jagan and his men, and for the first time Liv actually heard the ksatriya use their words of power. Almost like a chorus, all three of the men shouted the same phrase: "Verō Aiveh Æn' Mæ!"

Liv expected them to be crushed by the overwhelming power of the immense beast, but instead, the soldiers gritted their teeth, leaned into their shields, and somehow did not fall. Their boots scraped against the steel, but caught on the textured grip of the metal. The man on the end swung his hammer with his right hand, crushing the kneecap of the monster, and it's leg dropped out from beneath it, unable to support its weight any longer.

"Celent'he Aiveh Aimāk Scelis'o'Mae!" Liv shouted, thrusting her wand over the shoulders of the men who held the corpse-beast at bay. A needle thin shard of adamant ice shot forward, taking it through the face and blasting out the back of its skull in an explosion of bone chips, decaying flesh, and hunks of brain matter.

The monster fell backward, and the three ksatriya were on it in a moment, smashing their clubs and hammers into its arms and legs, breaking bones so that it wouldn't be able to rise, no matter what happened. As they worked, Liv scanned the darkness. The awful image of Isabel's death threatened to spill up into her mind and blot everything else out, but she had no time to think about what had happened.

"Light," Liv said. "Arjun, light another lantern, I need to be able to see."

With a quick recitation of the spark charm, Arjun got a flame on the wick of Wren's lantern, and warm light spilled out from the corridor into the chamber beyond. There, climbing up over the lip of the Well, and the metal fence, came a horde of corpses. Some were little more than skeletons, while others were only partially decayed.

"Back!" Liv shouted. "Into the tunnel!" She stepped out in front of the ksatriya, pointed her wand at the ground, and spoke another incantation. "Celent Ai'Veh Creim!" A wave of ice crystals rushed out from the mouth of the corridor, her father's spell sweeping out into the oncoming rush of corpses, trapping them in between sharp, growing clusters of crystal, where they were ground and sliced to pieces.

Still, the monsters came on, and it was all Liv could do to wait until everyone was behind her, safely inside the tunnel, before she raised a wall of ice to seal off the entrance. She made certain to anchor the slab close against every surface, the walls, floor and ceiling. When Liv judged the fortification thick enough to hold, she took a deep breath, and turned to face her remaining friends.

"You've cut off our escape," Commander Jagan said. "You've killed us all, girl."

"Arjun," Liv said, "please translate what I'm saying for the soldiers." She didn't raise her wand, but she also didn't return it to her sheathe. "Tell them that we're in this together. If we can't rely on each other, we really will all die down here. But they've shown they can work with us, just now. If they're willing to fight by our side and help us, we'll do our best to get them back to the surface safely."

She felt a twinge of guilt as she said the words: now that they were close in front of her, and illuminated by a nearby lantern, she could clearly see how dark the men's veins had become. Arjun spoke in Dakruiman, continuing for a space after she had finished, and Liv could see the soldiers exchanging doubtful glances.

"These men are under my command," Jagan practically spat at her. "They will follow my orders to the death. You cannot turn them against me. Still," he said, straightening up and shifting his shield to a more comfortable position, "you are right about one thing. We are trapped down here together, and we all want to see the surface. We'll work with you long enough to escape the Well." He turned to his men, and spoke a few words.

"He's telling them that we're all in this together, until we make it back to the surface," Arjun told Liv.

"You still can't trust them," Wren insisted, quietly. "And now we don't have the advantage of numbers."

What was worse, Liv could feel that she had less than half her mana remaining. She hadn't wanted to use so much magic so quickly.

"It doesn't change anything," she told them. "We're here with them now, and we need to press forward. Follow me." Liv tried not to let herself think about how they were abandoning Isabel's body, how there would be no funeral pyre for the girl.

Their footsteps echoed on the steel floor of the corridor, and Liv set a quick pace. The wall was dense as steel, and with the chill this far underground, it wouldn't melt any time soon - but she also didn't want to assume that kind of barrier would stop the tide of corpses forever. When she saw the crossing corridor ahead, with the familiar pane of glass set into one side, Liv smiled.

"I've seen this kind of thing before," Wren told her in a quiet voice, coming up to stand shoulder to shoulder with Liv. Liv traced the glowing Vædic sigils on the glass with one finger, stumbling over words that were unfamiliar. "Under the mountain, in Varuna."

"We're here," Liv said, stabbing her finger at an intersection. "And I think this –" she moved her finger over two inches to another section of the map, " – is our way out."

"What is it?" Commander Jagan demanded, crowding up behind the two women.

"If I'm understanding this correctly," Liv told him, "it's a waystone."