“Your brother’s murderers fled into that tree,” he said. “They must be brought low.”
Brask turned away, his voice a clenched knot. “Then I’m done casting stones.”
Wryth followed, worried he might have pushed the commander too far. Brask’s next words confirmed this.
“I’m going to drop a Hadyss Cauldron atop them. When I’m finished, there will be nothing below but a smoking crater.”
* * *
WITH HER HEAD still ringing, Nyx stumbled through the cavernous expanse hollowed out of the alder’s trunk. Jace kept to one side of her, Aamon on the other, both panting hard. She had regained most of her vision and some of her strength, enough to be able to move on her own.
Behind her, smoke rolled into the dark chamber and rose to smother a dome swathed in glowing mosses and fungi. The only other illumination came from tiny lamps that revealed tall figures at the cardinal points of the room. They appeared to be carved out of Oldenmast’s trunk.
Dala had told her how they represented the Kethra’kai gods. To honor her friend, Nyx glanced all around, setting it to memory before it was lost.
As she crossed the sacred chamber, she identified each god. Vhatn of the waters stood with her hands cupped, from which the trickle of a hidden spring flowed into a basin near her bare feet. The heavy-browed Jar?vegur, of loam and rock, looked more boulder than man. Vyndur, of the air, held clouds over his head, inset with silver lightning bolts. Then Eldyr, she who was fire, stood entirely cloaked, with only her eyes glowing from under a hood, lit from within by a secret flame.
Nyx shivered as she passed the last. That fiery gaze seemed to follow her, to accuse her. Past the ringing of her ears, she heard the flames roaring outside.
Xan kept alongside Nyx, thumping with her cane near Aamon. The elder noted her attention, maybe her shiver. “Fire can also be cleansing. It is flame that clears a forest and burns cones to cast new seeds.”
A resounding crash echoed from outside, marking one of the mighty Reach alders toppling somewhere in town. Nyx could not imagine how any of this ruin could serve a useful purpose.
Frell drew up to her, with Kanthe at his side. The prince’s face was a dark shadow of fury. “Where do we go?” the alchymist asked.
Xan pointed her cane toward a pair of Kethra’kai scouts who had run forward and swiveled open a round door that looked like a knot in the trunk’s wood. The pair also carried lamps.
“Down to Oldenmast’s deepest root,” Xan explained. “It’s why I brought her here.”
The elder glanced over a shoulder to the clutch of Kethra’kai who supported the bronze-painted woman. The shadows and smoke made it hard to discern her features. It looked like she wore a metal mask. The woman’s presence still made no sense. Nyx remembered the ancient filaments, glowing a tarnished bronze, that had flowed out with the woman’s song.
Nyx also noted the other strangers who helped or hovered at the woman’s side. One, from the finery of his clothes and dark skin, appeared to be a Klashean tradesman. The other’s shorter stance and thicker limbs marked him as Guld’guhlian, same as the hard woman with chopped blond hair and a perpetual scowl.
“Quickly now.” Xan drew them all to the door that stood swiveled open, pivoting around a pin down its center.
The elder climbed over the threshold and took the lead. Even the two scouts fell back, as if knowing this was her place.
They all followed Xan down a winding stair carved out of the center of what must be a thick root—maybe the taproot of the alder. The grain of the wood was gold against a silvery white. As they continued, round and round, the veining vanished and left only a snowy wood that felt as ancient as the rock of this land.
As they continued, the roaring fires overhead faded to a solemn quiet, disturbed only by their footfalls, hard breaths, and the pad of Aamon’s paws. Other doors and dark passages led off the main stairs, heading in all directions.
Xan spoke into the thickening silence, maybe to dispel their discomfort. She waved to one of the side tunnels. “The Oldenmast may seem like one tree, but in actuality, it makes up all the trees of this grove. The Oldenmast’s roots extend outward in every direction. From this tree’s ancient suckers, all the other trunks of this ancient grove sprang forth.”
Nyx tried to picture that spread of roots and trunks. She stared up and around with amazement. This entire grove is one tree.
Kanthe took a more practical view of Xan’s words, peering down a dark passageway. “Does that mean we can use those same spread of roots to go anywhere in this town? Maybe even slip past the fires above?”
“And escape those who hunt us,” Jace reminded them.
Frell turned to Xan. “Is that why you had us come down here?”
“No.” The elder waved her cane. “These cellars and passages grow thinner and scarcer the farther out you go. I fear you’d still end up within that trap of fire and ash above.”
“Then where can we go?” Frell asked.
“To an even more ancient root, one belonging to the old gods,” Xan answered cryptically. “We should—”
The world jolted all around with a crack of thunder that deafened and crushed chests. They all tumbled or fell across the wooden steps. A great ripping accompanied it, as if the very ground was being torn asunder.
Before Nyx could stand, a wall of fiery smoke, wretched with sulfurous brimstan, blasted over them. A rumbling accompanied it. Then a torrent of rocks came rattling down, bringing with it a flow of sand and dirt.
Kanthe grabbed Nyx, hauled her up, and hollered to everyone, “Go! Keep going!”
The scouts ran forward. Ignoring their earlier obeisance, they scooped Xan up and hauled her bodily down the stairs. The rest of the group raced after them, with Aamon loping and growling at Nyx’s side.
Dust and grumbling rock chased after them. Then a loud splintering boom shattered above. The stairs bucked under her, nearly tossing Nyx back down. She caught herself on Aamon’s flank to keep her footing and continued downward.
Still, she stared back up, picturing the great golden-boughed breadth of Oldenmast crashing across Havensfayre.
We should’ve never come here …
Finally, the rumbling and rattling settled to groans that fell farther behind them. Dust still hung in the air, but it thinned as they fled deeper. The spiral of the stairs also grew narrower, pinched as the taproot thinned around them.
Frell noted a disconcerting detail. “We’ve not passed any side tunnels since the blast.”
Jace looked back, his eyes huge, his face streaming with sweat. “That means we’re trapped down here.”
“Still,” Kanthe added, “that also means those hunters can’t reach us. If that’s any consolation?”
From Jace’s aghast expression, it was not.
After several turns of the stairs, the way grew so tight that they had to continue single file. Xan freed herself from the scouts’ help and stamped the last of the way down on her own. Finally, the stairs exited the giant root and entered a domed chamber. Overhead, an arching vein of burnished white wood cut across the roof. The rest of the room was polished black stone.
Nyx stared up. She recognized the vein of wood was actually the trailing end of Oldenmast’s taproot, the one they’d been climbing through. It dove past this chamber, as if avoiding it, and vanished back into the rock. It was as if this room was a stone lodged in a dark river.