"Codex. Is Rerem Abitt-Erem still alive?"
Tal stopped breathing as letters swam to the surface. At first he didn't understand the answer. He had expected a simple yes or no.
What he got was
Not dead and not alive.
"What do you mean?" Tal asked hotly.
Not dead and not alive.
Tal shook his head.
"What did it say?" asked Milla. Once again, before Tal could answer, the Codex supplied a translation in Icecarl runes.
"Codex. Where is Rerem Abitt-Erem?" Tal asked.
In the
Orange Tower. Above the Veil.
Tal choked. His father couldn't be there! There was nothing up there but the Sunstone nets.
"How… how can he be not dead and not alive?"
He is the Guardian of the
Orange Keystone. It has been unsealed and so he does not live. Until or unless the Orange Keystone is sealed again, he does not live. If it is sealed, he will live again.
"I don't understand," said Tal. What was the Orange Keystone?
He was about to ask another question when Odris suddenly came sliding back across the coffins, calling out in what she imagined was a whisper.
"People and shadows! Lots of them, coming here!"
Tal and Milla did not stop to talk. They picked up the Codex and slipped it into the coffin. It adjusted its shape as they pushed it down and slid the heavy stone lid across.
Then the Chosen and the Icecarl ran toward the Underfolk exit, where the servant sculptors worked. According to Ebbitt there was another way out there.
They had just left the Mausoleum when a great crowd of Chosen entered. Light filled the ancient hall, and many real Spiritshadows slipped in to mingle with the shadows cast by the statues on the Chosen tombs.
CHAPTER THIRTY
Milla had to lead Tal away from the Codex. Not because of his wounded leg, which did slow him down. Because of the news about his father. How could he be in the
Orange Tower? What did it mean that he was the "Guardian of the Orange Keystone"?
As explained by Ebbitt in his letter, Milla found the small door at the rear of the toolshed used by the Underfolk stonemasons. It led down a narrow corridor to a more usual Underfolk corridor. Like all such ways, it was only dimly lit by tiny Sunstones of inferior power.
Tal recovered himself enough at this point to take the lead. He was so rattled by the Codex's revelations that he didn't mind admitting to Milla that he didn't really know much about the Underfolk's corridors and storehouses.
However, he did manage to find his way to something he did know about: the laundry chute that he and his friends used as a shortcut between levels. And where there was a laundry chute, there was laundry. Dirty clothes, but what a Chosen called dirty now seemed clean to Tal, after the disgusting furs he'd been wearing.
Tal chose to throw all his Icecarl clothes into a basket and got dressed in a Chosen child's basic uniform of white trousers and shirt, though these ones had blue cuffs and collars that didn't match his rank.
Milla, however, put on a Chosen matron's dress over her armor and furs, a huge sack of a thing in solid yellow, with tiny Sunstone chips around the lower hem. She then ruined it by cutting a long slit at each side so she could run.
As instructed by Tal, Adras and Odris made an opaque wall between the two as they undressed. Not that Milla cared. But nudity was frowned on by the Chosen and Tal had not totally gone over to Icecarl ways.
Suitably disguised, they dashed across a colorless corridor and into more Underfolk passageways. Tal got lost for a while, and they had several close encounters with Underfolk, all of whom were pushing carts of food, or clothes or items made in their workshops far below. But every time the Underfolk drew near, Tal had Adras and Odris loom up, and the servants would avert their eyes and scuttle past in fright. The Storm Shepherds were easily the largest Spiritshadows Tal had ever seen, save for the Empress's Sharrakor. They also looked strange, if not particularly horrifying, unlike many spiky, fanged Spiritshadows. Adras and Odris looked like puffy giants, but their size alone was intimidating.
It was a bitter realization for Tal that he had found a powerful Spiritshadow after all, one that would have probably gained him automatic promotion to Yellow or even Blue. Only he had not bound Adras as a proper Chosen should. He had broken the law and gone to Aenir. He had given a Sunstone and a Spiritshadow to a non-Chosen.
Strangely, it didn't worry him. But he was growing more and more anxious about Gref. What had they been doing to him, off in some distant chamber where no Chosen or Underfolk would ever hear a cry for help… or a scream?
"Where now?" Milla asked, breaking into Tal's thoughts. They had arrived at an intersection. The Underfolk corridor branched left and right, but there was also an open doorway to an Orange level. Orange six, Tal saw, noting the arrangement of Sunstones in the ceiling.
Close to home. His mother was not far away, on her sickbed. Lost and dreaming. He wanted to see her, too.
"Which way?" Milla repeated.
Tal pointed down the left Underfolk corridor. His hand was shaking and he could not steady it.
They had to follow the Underfolk corridor and go down into the topmost Red level and then across into the White Rooms.
It took another few hours, because they had to cross almost from one side of the Castle to the other. As it got closer to morning, the Underfolk corridors got busier, too, and Tal was sure some of the Underfolk looked at them even as they bowed. But Tal wasn't worried about Underfolk. They never spoke to Chosen unless they were spoken to. They probably wouldn't remember the strange Chosen and the large Spiritshadows.
Milla didn't share this opinion. Some of the Underfolk looked very smart indeed, and Milla was certain they would gossip. She contented herself with glaring fiercely at any who dared to glance up at her. Hopefully this would make them think twice about talking about her.
The White Rooms were different from the rest of the Castle. Long abandoned, they were colder, darker, and much less clean. Dust rose as Tal led the way down one corridor, though there were halls and other corridors that seemed better traveled.
Finally, they came to a vast, cold hall where no Sunstones shone in the vaulted ceiling. The upper reaches were totally dark, and the only light spilled in from the three corridors that led there from south, east, and west.
Tal looked around suspiciously, but could see no reason for the lack of light, other than the usual failings of the White Rooms. Since no Chosen lived here, nobody bothered to replace the Sunstones or direct the Underfolk to clean.
"The room is on the far side of this hall," said Tal, pointing to the door on the northern side. He spoke softly but his voice echoed in the chamber. "A good place for a prison, I guess. No one would come here by chance."
"This could be a trap," Milla said suspiciously. She looked around the dark hall, noting the other two lit corridors and the footprints in the dust ahead of them. Unfortunately, she did not know enough about tracks in dust on stone. They were human footprints… but that was all she could tell.
"Maybe," said Tal. "But Gref's over there and I have to get him out."
"There must be guards somewhere." Milla drew her Merwin-horn sword. Tal noted that its glow was not what it had been. Merwin horns faded slowly but surely once they were cut from the heads of the beasts that grew them.
Tal made his Sunstone shed a low light and limped forward. "Adras. Go ahead of me."
Adras complied without asking questions, for which Tal was grateful. The Storm Shepherd still wasn't bound to obey, since he was a free-willed companion.
So Tal had broken yet another law of the Chosen, bringing Adras back to the Castle.
"Sometimes some laws have to be broken to save greater ones," Tal whispered. He'd heard that somewhere, though he had the sinking feeling it might have been his enemy Shadowmaster Sushin who had said it.
They were halfway across the hall now, and the light from the c
orridors was distant and weak. Milla kept looking up and around, expecting warriors to drop through a hidden trapdoor or come up from a secret way.
But no one did. They crossed the Hall and stood outside the door that the Codex had said was the entry to Gref's prison.
The door looked normal enough. Like most doors in the Castle it was made of thin metal leaves riveted to a frame in overlapping lines. It had a long handle of polished bronze.
"Adras," said Tal, "can you open this door?" Adras shrugged. He leaned forward and turned the handle. The door did not budge.
"No," said the Spiritshadow.
"I mean break it down, or go through and open it from the other side."
"I'll do it," said Odris. She lay down and grew more translucent, and then slid under the door. A few seconds later, she slid back out.
"It's locked on both sides," she said. "I don't know how. There is no keyhole."
"Is Gref a boy in there?" Tal asked eagerly.
"There is something in the corner," said Odris. She sounded puzzled. "I'm not quite sure "
Whatever she was going to say was cut off as Adras made himself as solid as possible and slammed into the door. It splintered into hundreds of individual metal leaves as the Spiritshadow slowly bulled his way through, dragging the broken frame, leaves, and hinges after him.
"That wasn't that loud," said Tal hopefully.
He'd hardly finished speaking when a deep horn blast sounded above their heads, the sound echoing throughout the hall. Startled, Tal and Milla looked up at a hidden recess above the door. It contained a pulsing Sunstone and a complex arrangement of pipes, leading to one huge pipe that opened out like a flower at the end.
"A wakened" Tal cursed. "Just like in the Lectorium." "I knew it was a trap!" Milla shouted.