26 #2

The name came from her. Ydrael had shown a mark on metal, two hands approaching at different times, and a door that remained closed.

“Does he have the key?”

A pressure of rejection came, followed by the hand wearing the commission’s colors. The other had brushed the seal and withdrawn.

Isolde kept the sequence. The key was still linked to Varek; someone bearing Cael’s mark had reached part of its route. She would have to verify it outside that chamber.

A crack opened in the column.

“Thirty seconds,” Oren shouted.

Isolde set a hand on the third wheel.

“What do you want from me?”

Ydrael showed her the empty chairs.

Then he showed her nine chains cut from outside, one by one. None led only to his neck. From each link came people, dragons, and rivers of fire returned to the earth.

He wanted freedom. He also wanted to end the mechanism feeding on other captives.

Isolde showed him the nine packets leaving the coast, the families from the pass, and Aelyn behind a book.

“We’re learning.”

Ydrael closed his eyes for one heartbeat.

The third wheel revealed a hollow. Inside was a cylinder of red stone engraved with three lines.

“Does this shut down the station?”

One chain loosened.

Isolde pulled the cylinder free.

The column went dark.

Silence arrived with the mountain’s full weight.

The door began to close.

Isolde ran for the stairs.

She climbed five steps before the platform tilted. A chain came loose above and struck her back. Her safety rope caught.

Beren leaned over the edge.

“Cut the rope!”

Isolde reached for the empty sheath. She had left the knife beneath Nara’s chain, in the slot on the platform.

She pulled at the rope. The knot was out of reach.

The platform dropped another handspan.

Ydrael opened one eye again.

His presence entered the fallen chain. The metal tightened away from Isolde. The pressure lifted the rope enough to free it.

Ydrael had chosen to stay in the bond until she got out.

Isolde climbed.

Oren and Beren caught her by the arms. They crossed the platform with Nara between them. The door had left a narrow gap.

Isolde turned sideways to enter it. The stone caught her jacket. Beren cut the fabric.

The door closed.

Ydrael’s last pulse traveled through the quarry.

A wordless voice, separate from her own, remained beneath the stone.

Kaoran waited inside the outer arch.

“Twelve riders are coming from the south,” he said. “Tavra counted two plates and a cage.”

Isolde handed the cylinder to Oren.

“How long?”

“Fifteen minutes before they enter the quarry.”

Beren laid Nara on a blanket. The woman’s eyes were open. She tried to breathe through her mouth, though her throat was swollen.

Kaoran knelt carefully and checked her pulse.

“She needs water in small amounts.”

Isolde looked at the closed door.

“There are two bodies inside.”

Beren held their tablets.

“Tarem Is, West-5. Juna Ser, Mildar quarry. I’ll come back for them.”

“We’ll come back with their families,” Oren said.

The stone breathed again.

The interval had changed. Six heartbeats.

Oren examined the cylinder.

“Removing it shut off the transmission, but the station is trying to restart.”

“Can you stop it?”

“We have to block the nine outer channels.”

“That will take an hour.”

“With the right wedges, twenty minutes.”

Tavra appeared at the quarry entrance.

“Ten riders. The other two took the western exit.”

“We have less than fifteen,” Kaoran said.

Isolde looked at the circles around the arch. Each received energy through a small channel carved in the ground. Snow melted over the lines.

“The water feeds the pressure,” she said.

Oren nodded.

“The confluence enters through the channels.”

“We can change its course.”

The quarry had an old drain in the north wall. Beren cleared stones while Tavra prepared their exit. Kaoran arranged a stretcher for Nara. Isolde and Oren struck the channels with pickaxes.

The first channel opened toward the drain.

The corresponding circle lost its light.

They worked around the arch. At the fifth, Isolde’s pickaxe bounced back. Fire answered beneath her hands. The stone wanted to conduct it toward Ydrael again.

She remembered the still claw.

She waited.

The pressure changed direction on its own. Ydrael was pushing from the other end to keep the energy out of the channel.

Isolde struck.

The stone gave way.

“He’s helping,” she said.

Oren stopped working for a heartbeat.

“I thought the responses were the prison’s reflexes.”

“So did I.”

“What did he ask for?”

“For us to free the people feeding the chains. He wants us to shut down the nine stations.”

“And his freedom?”

“It’s part of the same request.”

Oren raised his pickaxe again.

The ninth channel broke as the first horses entered the quarry.

The door stopped breathing.

The water changed course and flowed out through the north wall. Snow collapsed over the new channel. Steam covered part of the quarry.

Kaoran pointed to an ore ramp.

“Way out.”

Beren and Tavra lifted the stretcher. Oren put away the cylinder. Isolde brought up the rear beside Kaoran.

“Go ahead,” she said.

“I know this position.”

“So does your lung.”

“I can manage a ramp.”

An arrow struck the arch.

The riders dismounted in the steam. They wore masks over their mouths and oilskin cloaks. Two technicians searched for the channels.

“The station has been tampered with!” one shouted.

“Take the workers!”

Isolde entered the ramp.

The tunnel descended toward an ore depot. An old cart’s wheels still stood on the rails. Kaoran released the brake with his foot.

“Put the stretcher inside.”

“The cart could tip over,” Beren said.

“The second bend has a counterweight. Pull the red rope when you see it.”

“How do you know?” Isolde asked.

“Quarries share lazy architects.”

They lifted Nara in. Beren and Tavra climbed in with her. Oren sat behind them.

Kaoran pushed the cart.

It began rolling. Kaoran hauled himself over the edge and sat beside the stretcher.

Isolde climbed in at the last moment and caught Kaoran around the waist. They picked up speed in the darkness. Behind them, the soldiers entered the ramp.

The first bend sent sparks flying from the wheels. The second appeared like a wall.

“Now!” Kaoran shouted.

Beren pulled the red rope.

A stone block rose inside a recess. The cable absorbed some of their speed. The cart took the bend with two wheels in the air and dropped back onto the rails.

Kaoran coughed into his sleeve.

Isolde saw a red stain.

“Breathe slowly.”

“I’m busy surviving my own plan.”

The exit opened ahead.

The cart burst through a wall of snow and overturned on a mound of sand. Isolde shielded Kaoran with her shoulder. Beren held the stretcher. Oren fell sideways with the cylinder clasped to his chest.

They all got out.

Tavra pointed to the tunnel.

“They’re coming.”

Isolde looked at the rails’ main support. She heated two bolts until they glowed red. Tavra struck the wood with a bar. The support gave way.

The rails fell across the exit.

The collapse closed the tunnel without reaching their pursuers.

“They’ll have to go back through the quarry,” Beren said.

“We take the forest,” Isolde ordered.

Kaoran tried to stand. The whistle in his chest had worsened.

Isolde draped his good arm over her shoulders.

“This time, you’re part of the stretcher.”

“Nara needs it.”

“We’ll make another.”

“That slows the group down.”

“It also stops you from reopening your lung.”

Kaoran looked at the blocked tunnel.

“Acceptable argument.”

They built the second stretcher among the pines.

The patrol searched for the rest of the day. Tavra left tracks toward the river and returned over stones. Oren hid the cylinder inside a hollow log. Beren took Nara along a hunters’ trail.

Isolde and Kaoran followed.

Every time he coughed, she checked the color of the blood. The stain stopped growing at dusk. Air was still entering both sides of his chest.

“The healer said an occasional cough would be normal,” Kaoran murmured.

“She also said to avoid mine carts.”

“That part was very specific.”

“She knows you well.”

They took shelter in a resin house. Its owner had died over the winter. His nephew maintained it for travelers and knew the three knots. He lit a small fire, heated soup, and closed the shutters.

Nara drank honeyed water. Her voice returned during the night.

“I heard… tapping,” she said.

Beren sat beside her.

“From Ydrael?”

“At first I thought it was machinery. Then he learned my name.”

Oren stopped cleaning the cylinder.

“He spoke to you?”

“Images. My house. A door. He looked for things I could understand.”

Nara touched the marks on her temples.

“The technicians wanted me to push him toward the center. Every session showed me where the chain was. I was supposed to pull.”

“Did you?” Beren asked.

“Until he worked out how to prevent it. He showed me a beach. I thought of the sea, and the pressure turned aside.”

Isolde came closer.

“He was protecting you.”

“He paid with a blow afterward.”

Nara looked at her.

“Today I heard another voice.”

“Mine.”

“You asked him to move away. I felt him pulling on the chain when he chose to stay.”

Isolde lowered her eyes to her hands. She remembered the iron lifting the rope that trapped her.

“I wanted to spare him the discharge.”

“He wanted to get us out. We’d been there for months.”

Kaoran moved beside the fire. His rib forced him to find another position, and he took time to speak.

“He heard you. Then he chose.”

“The chain was still closed.”

“That’s why he had so few choices left,” Nara said.

Isolde brought a bowl closer so the woman could drink without lifting it. She waited until she finished.

“Next time I’ll ask what he can hold.”

“And listen if he changes his mind.”

Kaoran lay back again. Isolde left the bowl within Nara’s reach and sat where she could see the fire without feeling an order to act in every spark.

Oren finished cleaning the cylinder. Its three engraved lines matched western routes. When he heated it, six more appeared.

“It’s a shutdown matrix,” he said. “Each line records an active station.”

“How many are left?” Tavra asked.

“Eight.”

One mark had gone dark.