Page 93 of Queen Demon
Power flowed down the dark hallway in a suffocating wave. It took Kai’s breath, his thoughts. The next instant he realized he was crouched on the floor, Tenes beside him clutching his arm.
Arnsterath sprawled nearby, both hands pressed to her head. “That wasn’t the Voice,” she rasped out, shuddering. She had been there too, the day the Hierarchs used the Voice to destroy the Saredi and their allies.
Kai pushed it aside, made himself stand and draw Tenes up with him. There was only one thing that could be. “The Hierarch’s dead, there’s nothing, no one—” He couldn’t get the words out because he didn’t want to say them. The Hierarch who had hidden here all those years was dead. There was no one else who could make the Well do anything, except…
Arnsterath looked up at them, her face stark and unfamiliar, her hair loose and disheveled. “He made himself a Hierarch.” Her expression contorted in disgust and anger. “Can you feel it?”
A cold wind swept dry dust down the hall. Kai felt it tug at hismooring to this body, tug at the well of pain inside him. Tenes gasped and signed,We have to kill him.
Kai stared at her. Yes, kill him. “You’re right again,” he said, and closed his eyes briefly, smothering the panic. “Come on.”
As they started down the corridor, Arnsterath stumbled to her feet and followed.
Eleven
They reached the Well chamber through the same archway Kai had used last time. Not that he could tell by looking, because all the firepots had been extinguished and the huge room was now dark. Except for the clear glow of an Immortal Blessed light near the center of the platform. At least that meant that Highsun was still there.
They stood in the archway, silent, listening. Kai could hear nothing except a slight shifting that might be the grate of a boot sole against stone, the crackle of paper. Kai stepped back and whispered, “He’s made himself a Hierarch, but he doesn’t know how to use the Well yet.”
Arnsterath argued, “How do you know he doesn’t know how to use it?”
She was right, Kai didn’t. He conquered the urge to stab her and said, “Because if he does we’re all dead so there’s not much point in doing anything, is there?”
Arnsterath bared her teeth at him. “So what do we do, then?”
Tenes gestured upward and signed,He needs to remove the roof without burying the Well.
That was probably what Highsun was working on, but that crackle of paper had sent a chill through Kai’s veins. Presumably other Hierarchs were available to teach the new ones who were consecrated. If Highsun had managed to find records, accounts written by expositors or servant-nobles that might give him some clue how to draw on that power now… They could stand here paralyzed talking about it or they could do something. He said toArnsterath, “I want you to distract him while I get close enough to kill him.”
Tenes turned sharply to him. She signed,You won’t—Not what Dahin came here for.
I won’t,Kai told her. He wasn’t sure it would work, for one thing. Killing Highsun was a far better solution.Ziede would kill me.
“Won’t what?” Arnsterath demanded. “Tell me everything, or I won’t help you.”
It took much of Kai’s strength of will not to just stamp off into the Well chamber and attack Highsun alone. But he would only get one chance and he couldn’t waste it. Gathering what was left of his patience, he said, “If a willing Immortal sacrifices their life to a death well, it supposedly destroys it.”
Arnsterath took that in, shaking her head, her expression turning suspicious. “How do I know you aren’t going to throw me in?”
“If I thought that would work, I’d do it,” he told her. Not that they had any proof one way or the other. But Kai couldn’t believe that if it had been so easy as to toss an unwilling Immortal in, someone hadn’t already tried it.
Arnsterath’s face contorted in indecision. Her clear struggle with distrust and fear didn’t endear her to Kai at all. Finally she looked to Tenes. “Are you going to help me?”
She signed,As well as I can. I’m too weak now to talk to the stone.
Arnsterath considered, biting her lip, and her expression was so much like Kai remembered Arn-Nefa, he couldn’t stand it and had to look away. She said, “All right. I think I know what we can do as a distraction.”
“Go toward the right,” Kai told her. “There are cages, and across from them are steps up to the Well platform.”
Arnsterath started away without another word. Tenes turned to Kai, grim purpose etched into her young face. She signed,Be careful.
You as well,he signed back.
She hurried to catch up with Arnsterath, and Kai took the opposite direction, around the other side of the Well.
Moving as quietly as possible, Kai ran, staying close to the wall of the platform. The cold radiating from it stung even through the sleeves and skirt of his thick coat. It was utterly silent and still, more so than any death well he had ever been this close to. It had obviously been quiescent before, even with the constructs ready to feed it with the scholars’ pain. Whether it had been the old Hierarch using the Voice or Highsun who had woken it, it made Kai’s skin creep with its power, the sense of something immense, a giant wound driven deep into the earth. Just the thought of what might be under his feet made his nerves twitch.
Kai would need to be opposite whatever distraction Arnsterath and Tenes created, but he couldn’t be sure where that was until they started. He would have to move fast once it did.
