Page 38 of The Jasad Heir
I didn’t recognize our surroundings. If I had truly slept for eleven hours, they would have had time to take me entirely out of Omalian territory. The majority of Essam was unclaimed by any kingdom.
“If you’re quite finished,” Wes said. “Slacken your muscles and brace your knees.”
I’d heard those instructions before, typically right before Hanim shoved me off a bluff. I glanced at Jeru questioningly. He pointed at my knees.
The ground crumbled beneath us, and I dropped straight down.
Landing on my heels, I coughed at the explosion of dust. The guards hit the ground smoothly.
He wanted to train me underground? Baira’s blessed breath, I would need a miracle tonight. Each passing minute made my prospects of escape more and more unlikely.
Not that it mattered. Unlikely or not, I did not plan to spend a single night in this… living grave. I had a complicated relationship with luck, but after the last few days, it owed me.
They led me through a complicated series of tunnels. The halls narrowed the longer we walked, until I had to duck my head to avoid brushing the ceiling with my hair. Stale air tickled my nose. Alabaster tiles covered the walls, their edges emanating an iridescent light. I grazed my fingers over the glowing tiles with no small amount of awe. The evidence of magic was everywhere. Who had these tunnels belonged to? Even Jasad’s wealthiest wilayahs wouldn’t have expended the amount of labor and expense needed to build all of this beneath Essam. An underground network of this scale was beyond their eccentricities.
Just as I started to think the goal was to suffocate me, the hall ended at the threshold of a towering silver door. Etched along the door’s round frame were intricate gold letters, winding through and into one another. Was the writing… Resar? I squinted at the letters, trying to make out any words. I couldn’t stand this Resar writing style, where the words were written to appear elegant and, as such, made almost unintelligible.
Before I could decipher more than the wordnahnu, Jeru and Wes extended their fists in unison and knocked twice. A piercing shriek sounded as the door heaved to the side.
When I hesitated at the threshold, Wes prodded my arm. “Go on.”
With leaden dread, I stepped through the door. The sight that greeted me nearly took me to my knees.
High above us, a glass ceiling swirled with pillowy clouds. They moved around an invisible wind, floating halfway down each side of the enormous room, at which point a lively, verdant courtyard overtook the walls. The courtyard of Usr Jasad.
Every detail of the palace had been captured. Seven gold pillars soared toward the clouds, supporting the awning curving around the front of the magnificent palace. Beneath them, the staircase stretched almost a quarter of a mile wide, one banister at the first pillar and the second at the last. Silver flames danced beneath the translucent steps, chasing the footsteps of the climbers. I’d spent countless hours darting around those steps, trying to outrun the flames. Guards wearing Jasad’s uniform patrolled at the foot of the stairs. In the courtyard in front of the Usr, children chased a rabbit hopping in midair, just out of their limited reach.
Beneath the shade of a fig tree, Niyar flipped the pages of his book. Palia stood on the palace steps, watching him with her hands on her hips.
The scenes were alive. As though I could reach out to pet the rabbit or pluck a ripe fig from the dangling branches.
The mirage wavered almost imperceptibly. Niyar’s thumb halted on the page; the children’s arms blinked from existence. A flicker of time, and the scene began again. A perfect moment looped for infinity.
“These tunnels were discovered a year before the siege. We believe they were commissioned as a school for talented Jasadis during Niyar and Palia’s reign,” Jeru said. “For those whose magic made them promising candidates for the Jasad army.”
Palia’s chin lifted at something—a breeze, a bird’s song, the children’s laughter—and the permanent furrows in her brow smoothed for a brief instant. My heart squeezed. I never thought I would see my grandmother again.
A soft mat replaced loose soil, absorbing our tread. I allowed myself another lingering glance at the specter of my grandfather. His royal ring caught the sunlight, the golden kitmer glinting on his finger. I struggled not to turn around when we exited to the hall.
“This room is yours,” Wes said, gesturing at a door indistinguishable from the dozen others lining the hall. “The kitchen is around the corner, three doors past the lavatory. You will report to the training center after first light. There is only one exit, and it is monitored. Questions?”
Several, but I started with, “How do you suppose I shall see first light from a windowless underground room?”
Wes glanced at Jeru. His mouth pinched. “Your… kind. Have an attunement to nature.”
I nodded, somber. “Of course. Most mornings, the sun—I call her Beatrice, actually—taps my shoulder and invites me to tea with her and the mountains. She’s quite the gossip. Tragically, however, I don’t know how well my ‘attunement’ will hold against several layers of dirt and stone.”
The cough Jeru stifled in his fist skirted suspiciously close to a laugh. If Wes soured any more, they could squeeze him over a broth.
“Someone will come to fetch you,” he said.
“Excellent.” I shouldered the heavy door open, coughing at the resulting billow of dust. The room was bland, perfunctory: crumbling walls and bare floors carrying a constant chill, and a circular table near the wardrobe with two sturdy wooden chairs. My back ached simply looking at the narrow bed in the center of the room.
Jeru and Wes lingered outside the threshold.
“We were instructed not to enter your quarters under any circumstance,” Jeru explained. “For your comfort.”
My comfort, which roughly translated to “no guards in the room so Vaun can’t smother you in your sleep.”
