The Forgotten City (27 page)

S
he didn’t just run for her life – she flew on her feet, pursued by men and fire – Omarians – crashing along the black rock corridors of the Castle Scorn. Every hallway looked the same, every turn ended in another, with nowhere to hide and no one to help her, until the last corridor narrowed to a tunnel and became a maze. Its walls were too high to climb and Silho felt like she was running in circles, with the voices of her pursuers echoing from every direction. Then one voice came through clear and sinister.

“There’s no way out of here, and there’s nowhere to hide. I’m coming for you, Silho Brabel.”

Lecivion – it sounded like he was right above her. Silho crashed through the maze, fleeing the feeling of his hands and the flames in his eyes. She’d seen death in that fire. Finally she found a fracture in one of the walls with a hollow space behind it big enough to crawl into. Even as she scrambled inside, she realized she was trapping herself, but her mind was spinning so fast she didn’t see any other choice.

Silho huddled in the dark, gasping and trying to get control over the fear that had blurred out her rationality. The fierce heat of the place was terrifying, smoke and sulphur choked the air, and the sharp ache of her burns and injuries were starting to overwhelm her. A flashback flared in her mind, of when she was trapped inside the Mazurus machine, burning alive. She clutched her head, trying to block it out. Somewhere beyond her panic, she heard the Omarian voices closing in on her – it sounded like they’d formed an organized search and were moving methodically through the maze. She knew she had to move – now – but couldn’t force her body into action. Light-form, her greatest strength, was useless here and she felt completely helpless. Her mind went to the trackers, to Copernicus. For a moment she thought she heard his voice somewhere in the maze, but when she focused her listening, the words were gone, just an echo in her mind –
Claude animus meus
. Close my mind.

It was the Illusionist enchant Copernicus had taught her so that she could focus her mind and survive the Skreaf. She whispered the words and as soon as she did, the sounds of the Omarian soldiers, of her rushed breaths and even the pounding of her pulse faded out, until it was silent in her mind and she felt her resolve and reasoning returning to her, her training kicking back in. She realized she was still gripping her head and lowered her hands, holding them out in front of herself. As she stared at them, a thought came clear to her – while light-form may have been her strongest skill, it wasn’t her only skill. She could touch the walls and see what they saw and everything they’d seen in the past. She could find a way out of this maze and out of Lecivion’s castle.

Silho placed her hand on the wall beside her, but immediately pulled away – the black rock was scorching hot. Silho forced herself to touch it again, and she found, although it was burning,
she
wasn’t burning. It actually didn’t hurt at all, and her burns from Lecivion had stopped aching, already healed. Silho breathed in deeply and easily despite the smoke. She’d been too panicked to realize before, but it occurred to her now that her body was made for this environment – and here she was stronger, not weaker. She’d said to Lecivion that he had thought too little of her – now she had to believe that herself. Instead of letting the memories of being trapped and burning cripple her with fear, she focused on that fact that she had defeated the Skreaf – and if she could destroy an army of demons, she could survive one crazy Prince.

Silho focused on her hand touching the rock and allowed her skills to channel in. Through her mind, she sprang from her hiding space, out to another wall and all along that, searching for a way out, until she found something that made her pause the flow of images. It was a break in the maze, a hidden doorway. She ventured through it in her mind and found it led out into a wide corridor, lit by globes of lava embedded in the rock. It was her escape. Silho zoomed backward, plotting the path that she needed to run to get there. It wasn’t far, but the Omarians were closing in fast. She only had the briefest window of opportunity.

Silho smashed out of the hollow and tore through the maze, two turns, three … halfway along the fourth she came to a sharp stop in front of the hidden doorway. Omarian voices sounded just beyond where she stood. The wall in front of her looked completely solid, but she trusted what she’d seen and stepped into it and through, out of the maze and into a corridor made of the same porous black rock. It stretched into the distance on both sides. Silho pressed her hand against one wall and jumped along in her mind, checking which way to go. On one side she found Omarian soldiers heading toward her, but the other way was clear.

She turned and ran with a steady pace, not pushing herself beyond her limits, wanting to reserve strength to fight or sprint when she needed to. She kept a fingertip skimming along the wall, checking ahead of herself the whole way. She wasn’t sure if Lecivion knew the extent of her skills, but she hoped he didn’t. Glancing up, she searched the ceilings for I-eyes and spyers, but didn’t see any glimmers of reflection. It was possible that this realm didn’t have the same technology, but that wasn’t to say they weren’t tracking her through other methods. The thought spurred her on.

At the end of the corridor, the path split into two. She saw through the walls that one way led back to the warehouse facility from where she’d escaped; the other side headed into cave-like tunnels at the heart of the Castle. She took that side and ran into the cave-tunnel, the heat intensifying the further in she went. Silho stifled her first reaction of fear and took deep breaths of the fierce air, reminding herself she wasn’t burning. The echo of Omarian voices spoke from deeper in the caves and Silho pressed into the shadows, following a path down toward the sound. In her mind she was thinking, if she could somehow isolate and incapacitate a soldier, she could steal his portal painting – provided they all actually carried one, not just specific people. If she could get a portal, she could jump back to Aquais. The memory of Lecivion stabbing Copernicus forced itself into her mind and her panic crept back up on her, but she repeated the Illusionist enchant and regained her control. Copernicus was alive. He and the others were searching for her. That was the only thing she’d allow herself to believe.

She slowed her pace as the voices grew louder, until they sounded just beyond the next corner. Silho edged forward and peered around. Two Omarians stood beside a chute in the wall, grabbing things as they slid out and throwing them over the edge of a cliff down to a river of surging lava below. The lava radiated a scorching heat and cast a red-orange glow all around the cavern. Silho squinted through the hazy shadows, trying to see what the men were disposing of. It looked like bags of something. She inched further forward, moving her head to see around the back of one of the soldiers. She focused as another object came through the chute – and then she saw it – a face. Silho’s throat tightened. They weren’t bags, they were women and baby boys – corpses – all the failed attempts to produce another half-Omarian female like her. The sight sickened Silho to the heart of her. At first she felt paralyzed, just like when she’d first gone out with the team into the war zones after her recovery. There were so many horribly injured and screaming people that she’d literally not known who to help first, and had just ended up turning in circles and crying. Copernicus had seen her and said, “Pick a place and start there, that’s all we can do.”

He’d pointed and she’d gone, and begun, and he was right – it was the only thing they could do, when it was so difficult to determine who needed help the most. Remembering Copernicus’ words calmed her again.

The chute rumbled and clanked and another woman came tumbling out. As she thudded to the ground, Silho caught a twitch of movement. She was still alive. The Omarians grabbed the woman up roughly as though she was no more than a pile of garbage. Moving on instinct, Silho seized a rock and rushed out at them before they could throw the girl over. She smashed the closest soldier in the back of the head, instantly dropping him. The other one saw her coming and tried to trap her with light-form. She dropped to a crouch and grabbed him by the legs, dragging them out from under him. He hit down hard and she leaped up, landing a kick to the side of his face, but it wasn’t enough to knock him out and he struggled up with a roar, raising both hands. The Omarian bone blade broke out from one of his wrists. 
Silho knew that if he got her in light-form, she’d be dead. So she did the first thing that came to her mind. She rushed him, slamming a shoulder into his chest and knocking him off the edge of the cliff. For a moment he looked shocked and then he plummeted out of sight. Breathing hard, Silho knelt down beside the survivor, who had slumped over onto her stomach. She was naked and had the rainbow skin and golden star bloodlines of an Ohini Fen. It made Silho’s mind immediately jump to Diega. She took the woman’s arm and carefully rolled her over onto her back. She was cut open, low down, from one side of her stomach to the other. The wound was grotesque and the colors of her skin had faded out almost to white.

Silho went to rip off her jacket to bind the wound, but found she wasn’t wearing it. All her clothes were gone, replaced with a surgical-type gown with nothing underneath.

“It’s okay. You’re not alone,” she whispered, trying to tear some of the fabric off the gown. “We’ll get you help. Everything will be fine.”

The Fen looked up at her with desperate eyes, gasped out and died.

Silho stared, her hands releasing their grip on her gown. Behind them the chute thudded and another dead woman rolled out, then a baby, then another woman and another and another … Silho watched them pile up, feeling numbed by the horror of it. How many women had Lecivion abducted? How many families were searching for daughters, mothers, sisters, never to see them again, never to know their fate?

The echo of tumbling rocks broke Silho out of her thoughts, and she turned fast toward the sound. She touched the ground and leaped forward in her mind, back upward to the entrance of the caves – to where a troop of Omarian soldiers were entering the tunnels. There was no choice. She had to leave the bodies and run. She jumped up and started to go, but then doubled back fast. She’d forgotten to check the unconscious soldier for a portal. She rolled him over and patted him down rapidly, but found only one small knife. With such powerful skills and inbuilt blades, Omarians didn’t have much need for external weapons, and there was no sign of a portal. Silho took the knife and ran to the other side of the cavern, where she found a narrow ledge jutting from the rock wall. She followed it, blinking down at the fiery molten rock rushing beneath her. She almost lost her footing and forced herself to concentrate ahead, where the path wound around to another tunnel leading up.

As she stepped off the ledge and into the tunnel, a wave of dizziness swept over her and she staggered, slumping against the rocky wall. She felt a sharp pain in her side and touched a hand to it. Her gown felt damp. She looked down and saw in the dim glow that half her dress was red with blood. Her fingers found a wound in her side and she groaned with pain. She hadn’t realized, but during the fight, when she’d rammed the soldier, he must have stabbed her with his bone blade before he’d fallen. Silho cursed and her sight started darkening. She was losing too much blood. Gripping the wound tightly, Silho touched the wall with her other hand, still holding the Omarian’s knife. She searched for where to go and saw in the memories of the rocks another doorway up ahead, leading into a hidden room. It stood empty, but there were marks on the floor that suggested crates had once been stored there. Silho staggered up toward the doorway. She needed to try to stem the blood flow before it was too late.

She stumbled through into the room, its rock floor smoothed out and walls lit with the lava globes. Before she could take a step further, her knees gave way and she dropped to the ground, the weapon clattering down beside her. She had a high pain tolerance, but this was too much even for her. Fighting to keep consciousness, she tried to bunch up the gown to hold against the wound, but it was already drenched and the blood seeped straight through. Gasping, she fell forward on her hands. She’d never thought, after surviving so much, that she would die so easily. Tears stung her eyes and she dug her nails into the rock, trying to force herself up, but her body didn’t have the strength. With heavy eyelids, she looked toward the door, part of her certain that Copernicus would appear and save her.

Moments passed and he didn’t come, and in the numbness of her mind, she realized he never would – she was on her own. No one could save her but herself. Her eyes closed and she slumped down, hands pressed against the floor. Images flickered and flowed behind her eyes as her mind looked into the memories of the walls. Silho drifted, clinging to the last of her strength, while the blood pooled around her. Suddenly the images stopped on the memory of a girl walking down one of the castle hallways. Silho recognized the wary green eyes and tangle of curly blonde hair, much longer then than Silho had ever seen it in pictures. Her mother, Oren Harvey. Silho immediately noticed that Oren had no bloodline marks on her arms. In the memory, her mother turned through a doorway and stopped, seeing a man standing in the room with his back to her. He glanced over his shoulder and Silho recognized the hollow eyes and angular face, the arrogant expression.

“Oren,” Lecivion said.

Her mother didn’t move, just stood watching as Lecivion stepped toward her – heel-toe, heel-toe with his pointed black boots. He stood staring down at her face and spoke quietly, but there was a danger behind the words. “I hope you understand that everything I’m doing is for your own good. If you’re allowed to continue to visit your land, you won’t ever start to view Omar as your true home.”

“I understand.” Oren replied immediately, but her voice was flat, and Silho could sense her restrained anger.