Before he could even strip off his cloak, Haddan had appeared with his father’s summons. Knowing it could not be refused, nor even delayed, Mikaen had headed straight back down through the ramparts with Haddan.
And they still had much farther to go.
Mikaen followed the stone-faced Haddan around and around the stairs, past where he had stabled his horse, and deeper again, going from mortared stone to raw rock. Finally, they reached a landing and a section of wall that looked no different than the rest. A crack hid a hole that Haddan unlocked with a black key. The liege general shoved a narrow door open and stepped across the threshold.
“Hurry now,” Haddan commanded gruffly.
Mikaen followed and pushed the door closed behind him. They strode down a long hall that sloped even deeper. Mikaen kept his head ducked low, sensing the weight of the ramparts over his head. No smoky torches lit their path, only softly glowing veins in the rock wall. It cast Haddan’s shaved pate into a sickly pallor.
Mikaen hated coming down into the Shrivenkeep, but he understood the necessity of secrets buried deep and how some dark knowledge was best locked away from the brightness of the Father Above.
At last, an open doorway appeared, framed in firelight.
Haddan increased his pace, seemingly as happy to abandon this hall as the prince. Or maybe it was the pull of what awaited ahead. Past the ebonwood door, a cavernous domed space opened up. Its obsidian walls had been fractured into a thousand mirrored surfaces, reflecting the ring of torches flickering before other ebonwood doors, all sealed, except for the one behind Mikaen and another to the right, where two figures waited.
Haddan rushed forward and bent a knee, bowing his head. “Your Majesty.”
Mikaen trailed him, but only by a breath. He dropped to the same knee. “Father, I’m sorry to have arrived so late after such a cowardly attack upon us all. I should have been here.”
King Toranth waved them both up. “It gladdens me to have you back at Highmount, Mikaen.”
The prince regained his feet. His father’s expression did not look gladdened. The white marble of his skin was ashen, nearly gray. His brow lay in deep furrows, shadowing his blue eyes into a storm. He had even shed the finery of his embroidery and velvets and wore a legionnaire’s boots and thin underleathers, creased at knee and elbow. It was a knight’s habiliment, one put on before he donned his armor. The only adornment was a simple dark blue tunic over his leathers, emblazoned with the Massif house sigil.
Here was a highking readying for war.
Mikaen appreciated his father’s garb and hard countenance. He could see the storm clouds building around the man’s shoulders—and made a silent promise.
I will do all in my power to be the bright lightning to your great thunder.
The king turned to the other waiting beside him, a figure who had haunted his father’s shadow for as long as Mikaen could remember. The Shrive’s tattoo-banded eyes stared hard at the prince, as if irritated by his intrusion here—until the king spoke.
“Wryth, take us to the prisoner. We’ve given Vythaas long enough to prepare.”
The Shrive bowed and turned toward the door behind him. “He should be ready when we get there, especially as we still have a ways to travel.”
The king and the general followed Wryth. Mikaen took a deep breath while no one was looking before heading after them. He had never been farther than this threshold into the Shrivenkeep, and he had hoped never to do so. He was the prince who shone best under the sun, helmed in bright armor. The clash of steel and ring of shields were his music. He preferred to leave such dark places to the creatures who shunned the Father Above. Its halls were said to be shivered by screams, both from the throats of men and those of daemons.
Still, he followed the others past the door and into the bowels of the Shrivenkeep. Wryth paused beyond the threshold to unhook a glowing lamp from the wall. It was quickly needed. The torches grew scarcer as Wryth led them farther and farther. They passed down narrow stairs worn at the edges by centuries of Shrive’s sandals. Every passageway was more crooked than the last.
In the upper levels, they swept past gray-robed Shriven who ducked out of their way, clutching dusty texts to their chests, likely forbidden tomes from the Black Librarie of the Anathema. One Shrive they passed had a hand wrapped in bloody bandages, being led by another, suggesting an experiment gone awry.
Eventually, as they delved deeper, the passageways emptied of Wryth’s brethren.
Mikaen’s ears strained for any screams, for daemonic howls, but instead there was a hushed silence, which grew to be as weighty as the stone overhead. His nose caught a faint whiff of sulfurous brimstan, which their group seemed to be following, like a thylassaur on a blood trail.
The source finally appeared down a long serpentine tunnel. Near its end, the passageway was riven by a steep-sided ravine, as if the god Nethyn had cleaved it open with his obsidian blade. A stone bridge spanned it, flanked by two black pillars.
Wryth led them toward those stone columns. As Mikaen followed, he saw a crimson asp, crowned in thorns, curled on each pillar. The two horn’d snaken faced each other, as if daring anyone to trespass between them, clearly marking the territory ahead as the domain of the dark god ?reyk, and thus the Iflelen.
Mikaen hurried past those dead-eyed serpents and across the stone bridge. He made the mistake of looking over its edge. The chasm stank so heavily of brimstan that it turned his stomach and watered his eyes. Still, he spotted a baleful shine far below. It was not the ruddy cheer of a fiery hearth, but the same sickly emerald of the glowing seams that ran through the black stones.
He shuddered and rushed the last of the way across the bridge, joining the others who gathered under an archway into a large tunnel. The stone of the arch was scribed with arcane symbols, all glowing that abhorrent green, as if the very veins of the rock had been bent to the will of the Iflelen to form those symbols.
Mikaen balked at that threshold.
“It is not far from here,” Wryth offered, as if sensing Mikaen was near to bolting.
The Shrive headed under the archway with his lamp. His father and Haddan followed, which left Mikaen no choice but to continue after them. He certainly had no idea how to get back on his own.
Finally, Wryth reached an iron door. He hung his lamp next to it and grabbed the door’s circular hasp—a ring shaped like a curled asp—in both hands. It seemed to take all of his strength to pull it open. As the heavy door swung on oiled hinges, fiery light flowed out to them—along with a scream that burst into the hall and echoed away, as if trying to escape.
Mikaen shivered, knowing that the cry had come from no daemon, but from someone being broken.
Wryth waved them inside and trailed in afterward.
Mikaen’s view was blocked by the broad back of Haddan, until the liege general stumbled aside with a grunt of shock. The entire chamber looked made of hammered iron, as if they’d stepped into an oven. Only the metal riveted to all the surfaces appeared blacker than any iron. At the back, flames roared from a small barred hearth.
A chair of the same iron stood in the center. Beside it, the withered form of Shrive Vythaas greeted the king silently, then bent over a spread of silvery tools atop a nearby table. The instruments were all sharp-pointed or bladed or spiraled like an awl. Many of them were wet with blood. But it was none of this that drained the heat from Mikaen’s body and left him icy with dread.