Page 225 of Of Empires and Dust
“In the tower.” The creatures must have moved through the city while Valerys was distracted by the eggs. But now the dragon could see them clear as day from the sky, hundreds pouring through the tower’s door.
“How did they?—”
“It doesn’t matter. They were waiting for us. There are too many, and we don’t have time.” Calen grabbed the last satchel from Haem and threw it around his neck with the other two. The weight pulled against him, pressing his armour down into his shoulders.
“There’s only one way in and out of here. You can’t travel through the Rift…” As Haem spoke, Calen could hear the realisation in his voice.
“There are ventilation tunnels somewhere on this level.” Calen remembered the tunnels from his vision through Mirk’s eyes. “Down the northern end. If I can get there, I can get to the surface.”
Kallinvar looked back at the Rift that floated behind him. For a moment, Calen thought the man would leave him for dead. “Go,” Kallinvar said, cracking his neck side to side. “We’ll hold them back while you get to the tunnels.”
“There are too many.”
“More for us to send to the void.”
Through Valerys’s eyes, Calen watched as the dragon folded his wings and dropped, the air whipping over his scales as a pressure built within him. With the rage of a burning sun, Valerys spewed fire from his jaws. Fire that turned sand toglass and melted steel and bone. Fire that ignited the air and incinerated everything it touched.
And when the flames cleared, the Uraks charged over the glass and ash.
Bolts of purple lightning tore upwards, and Valerys rolled, the light flashing past his eyes.
“There are mages.”
“Shamans or Fades.” Kallinvar gave a sharp nod. “Nothing we can’t handle. Go, now.”
As Calen made to leave, Kallinvar pressed his hand against Calen’s breastplate.
“When next I call, remember today.” He drew a sharp breath through his nostrils. “We want the same thing, Draleid.”
“Do we?”
“We want the ones we love to still be breathing when the next summer dawns. Thank you for trusting me.”
Calen sprinted down the corridor,his legs burning, the weight of the eggs and the armour taking their toll. He glanced over the low parapet to his left. Far below, on the first platform, green Soulblades flashed back and forth as Kallinvar, Haem, and the knights fought to keep the Uraks at bay – to buy Calen time. They would have to fall back through the Rift soon. Even they could not stand against such a tide.
As he moved, the light from the baldír seemed to dim for a moment before flickering back to life.
“Come on, come on…” He scanned the ceiling and walls, praying to Elyara he would find something that signalled the ventilation tunnels. His memories of Mirk’s vision were blurry.
There had to be an easier way of finding these tunnels. He stopped, shifting the satchels in their place and rolling his shoulders, muscles bunching and joints cracking. And then, justlike that, Falmin’s voice whispered in his ear.“We call it the drift.”
Even in death Falmin was his ray of light in the darkness. And Calen was absolutely sure that if he ever met the man in Achyron’s halls, Falmin would remind Calen of that fact a thousand times over – and Calen would welcome it.
Calen pulled on threads of Air and Spirit. The world thundered around him, the roars and clash of steel below as crashing stars in his ears. He closed his eyes and twisted his threads, thinning and spreading them, allowing them to drift on the air. One by one he filtered out the other sounds, fading them into his periphery. Then he heard it: the low whistle of the wind, the gentle push of the current as it flowed into the vault from the city above. There were multiple sources. He chose the closest and ran.
In the city above, Valerys rained fire and fury down on the Uraks who remained outside the tower. He laid waste to anything that moved while arcs of lightning tore past him.
Two of the beasts leapt from the roof of a building. Valerys twisted and snatched one in his jaws, the other falling, the ground taking it. Valerys tossed the Urak upwards, then beat his wings, rose, and ripped the creature in half with a single bite, blood and innards spraying into the wind.
Don’t stop moving,Calen urged the dragon. He’d seen what the Fade’s lightning had done in Kingspass. Valerys roared back in defiance, his rage aimed not just at the Uraks but also at Calen. It was Calen’s choices that had once again separated them, once again left Valerys unable to protect his soulkin.
Calen reached a point in the corridor where the whistle of the wind split. One path led left along the open corridor, the other led right through an arched passage. He didn’t have time for decisions. He turned right.
He followed the passage for about fifty feet and found himself in a circular chamber with a statue of an elven woman at its centre. She wore smooth plate armour, her hands resting on the pommel of a sword that pressed into the stone at her feet.
Sand had piled up against the wall behind the statue, and spread across the floor. Above the sand, two enormous rectangular iron grates were set into the wall. Each was at least ten feet across and five feet high: the ventilation tunnels.
He moved past the statue and wove threads of Fire into the iron grate on the right, pulling the heat from the metal. He may never have been anything but a shadow of the blacksmith his father was, but Vars would have looked down on Calen in shame if he’d not remembered that cold forced metal to shrink. After this many centuries, he was sure the grates would be more than stiff.
