Page 113 of Suffer No Fools
Something itched along his spine as the path leveled out. Hugo sensed a watchtower weave meant to make trespassers wary. Once again, he wished he was a spectral weaver.
He heard Niall's voice ahead, and Efren's, and then the itch of the watchtower weave between his shoulder blades disappeared. He wanted to shout his thanks, but another worry overtook him, the closer they got to the palace.
Did Coryn have yet another battalion of her undead army here in the tunnels? She must have known they existed after they left through the one Klaus described beneath his throne. Hugo couldn't believe a means of escape had been so close the entire time he'd lived here. He hadn't known about the entrance behind the screen in his bedroom, either. If he had, he would have slipped Coryn's grasp years ago.
Finally, they came to a huge cavern with many intersections well beyond the academy grounds. Hugo felt lost, but Nola continued past two cross tunnels to a third. "It's this one."
It helped that there was a symbol for fire carved in the stone.
"Where will this take us?" Hugo asked.
"The throne room."
"Is there another path back to my room? It's closer to the courtyard we need."
Yvette frowned. "What courtyard?"
"The one with the sentinel tree."
"There's a sentinel tree here?" she asked.
"Yes." Stan came to stand beside Hugo in the wider tunnel. "When we replaced the one on Stony Eel, it spoke to us and shared the others' locations."
"She doesn't plan to have the earth weavers make the stone from scratch," Yvette puzzled aloud.
"She's going to siphon spectral weaves and rend the tree to ash," Hugo said. "Then, she'll send it to the academy to combine it with the tower to build a replacement monolith."
"She doesn't have a spectral weaver anymore," Efren reminded them.
"She's also hemorrhaging loyalists," Hugo said. "Her next option is to make her way through the people she's trapped in the dungeons." Hugo had only been to the dungeons once, but it was enough to know he never wanted to end up there. After his mother had died, Coryn had dragged him to the dungeons after he'd claimed she was holding him prisoner.
"This is what prisoners look like,"she said, dragging him past cells stinking of unwashed bodies and excrement."This is how prisoners are treated. If you wish to be treated like a prisoner, I can arrange that."
Hugo had never said she was holding him prisoner again.
He heard footsteps behind them, and Nola's call was answered by Vadim.
"It's about time," she said.
"There were more than I thought," Klaus said. "We could probably search the library for books on healing now."
Nola scoffed. "Don't tell Yvette. She fucking loves libraries."
"Klaus," Hugo called as they continued to walk up the incline toward his room. "How many weavers are in the palace?"
Hugo could sense a few loyal to him through his bond with Embertide, but not enough to overthrow Coryn and her loyalists.
"Thousands." Klaus frowned. "I can't feel the undead, which seems strange. There were at least a thousand in the courtyard when we were here last. Why would she move them?"
"She may have given them enchantments," Hugo said.
They were about to find out. As they spilled into his bedroom, they were not alone. The room was filled with mundane soldiers armed with swords. Hugo searched their necks, wrists, and ankles for chains holding the anti-death-weave amulets, breaking all he found.
Vadim ushered everyone back behind the door and ordered Hugo to lock it with a fire weave, leaving only Vadim in a room full of armed guards. He heard the clatter of metal on metal, of punches falling and kicks landing, and then the sound of dozens of bodies hitting the floor at the same time.
"You can come out now," Vadim called.
Hugo opened the door to pure carnage. There was blood splattered everywhere. Very little of it was Vadim's, though he could have healed in the time it took Hugo to open the door.
