The Element of Fire by Martha Wells (top novels TXT) 📕

They reached the foyer of the Grand Gallery, where there was a heavy foul smell, reminiscent of bats in a deserted cathedral. Thomas whispered to Kade, “They could be in the walls all through here.”

She nodded. “Spriggans. They’re asleep. I hope.” She flitted past him into the archway. He saw her pause there, and as he came up beside her he saw why.

Light from the steps that gave onto the loggia illuminated the foyer, and the arched entrances provided a panoramic view of the Grand Gallery. The floor had been blown up from below and the back wall of windows onto the terraces had been smashed outward. This had to be the source of the explosion the night of the attack. This was the center of it then, Thomas thought, and beside him Kade said grimly, “They did a job of work in here.”

The orange trees between the pillars were frozen but still green, the cold had caught them so by surprise. Thomas sensed there was something alive here and looked up from the blasted ruin of the floor to the shadowy stillness of the vaults above. But nothing moved in the silence.

In the center of the room, the foundation stones had been pushed up from underneath by some powerful force and scattered on the bare twisted earth visible beneath. But not scattered randomly. Thomas took a few steps into the room, wondering at it, then climbed the dais so he could get a better view. As he had thought, the broken area of the floor was in the shape of a large circle, with an outline too perfect to be accidental. The shattered stones formed concentric circles within it. It couldn’t be anything but a fayre ring.

Peasants found them occasionally in the deep country, circles of trampled grass, stones, or strange growth, and avoided them like the signs of a dangerous infestation that they were. Stories about humans who blundered or ventured into them were not pleasant; usually they were found on the edges of the rings as dried withered husks, as if they had aged a hundred years in a moment. Any attempts to recover the bodies caused them to dissolve into dust.

If they were all like this Thomas couldn’t imagine someone foolish enough to wander into one accidentally. It felt dangerous, and it was as unmistakable as a sharp drop off a cliff.

Kade stood regarding the ring for a long moment, and now she followed Thomas up onto the dais. She said, “Fancy that.” She sounded more satisfied than anything else, as if the sight confirmed some hypothesis of her own.

Looking down at her, Thomas felt the beginning of a new suspicion. He said, “They used that thing to get in somehow, didn’t they?”

Still distracted, she nodded. “They came through it. With the wards confused and floating away, and no spells guarding it, it was the easiest way. I mean, not too easy, with the stones on top of it like that, but all of them together could do it.”

“Through it?”

“Yes.” She glanced at him a little warily, then explained, “It’s a doorway.”

“A doorway to where?”

“To Fayre, maybe. To lots of places.”

He looked back at the ring, its tumbled stones a silent presence in the shadowy room. Kade grabbed his elbow. “Listen.”

After a heartbeat, he heard it too. Voices, echoing down through the long galleries locked in cold silence.

Thomas hurried back to the archway, trying to pinpoint the direction. Tracking the sound echoing off so much stone and marble wasn’t easy. The men might be in any one of the several galleries and long halls that led up to the Grand Gallery. Neither he nor Kade had spoken in louder than a whisper, and it was doubtful that whoever was coming this way had heard them.

He motioned for Kade to follow and they crossed the spriggan-haunted foyer, and Thomas chose a smaller hall used for diplomatic processions, where the sound had for a moment seemed louder. They went down it, keeping to the partial shelter of its supporting pillars. The voices had ceased.

“I don’t think this was it,” Kade whispered.

“No, it must be another—”

They both heard the footsteps at the same time.

Kade looked around frantically. “There’s not enough glamour in here.”

Thomas searched hastily along the wall and found the unobtrusive servants’ door that was designed to blend into the paneling. He went to it, sliding his hand down the crack that marked it until his fingers touched the catch. He pulled it open. Inside was a cramped stair leading up into the wall. Climbing it, they came to a landing with a damask-curtained doorway and another broader stair leading down and away from the hall. Thomas pulled the curtain back and saw that the door led to a small musicians’ balcony, one of many spaced around the gallery.

He put his hat aside and crouched down, crawling out to look down through the balusters. Kade followed him.

Denzil and Dontane walked into the gallery from an archway below. So the bastard’s alive, Thomas thought, brows lifted. Dontane had been imprisoned in the Cisternan Guard House during the attack, and Thomas had assumed he had been killed with the others. The two men were arguing animatedly; they were trailed by three men armed as common troopers. The Albon knights who had accompanied Denzil at Aviler’s house were probably dead; they would not have betrayed Roland, and it must have been obvious at this point that the young Duke’s game was more serious than a petty attempt to disgrace the Queen’s Guard.

Denzil was dressed for battle, and Dontane still wore black court brocades. He made quick nervous gestures when he spoke, but it seemed to be more from intensity and anger than anything else.

The echoes were now a hindrance rather than a help. The two men were speaking more quietly after the first shouting that had revealed their presence, and Thomas couldn’t make out what they were saying. He heard Denzil mention Bel Garde, and he thought he heard Roland’s name, but the rest was inaudible.

He edged back and sat up on one elbow, pulling a pistol out of his sash and winding its mainspring. The faint click it made was disguised by the two men’s voices.

Kade glanced back at him, raising her eyebrows inquiringly.

He motioned for her to go back through the doorway and she crawled backward out of the way.

The range was not the best; with a pistol, closer was better. Thomas steadied the weapon on his arm and squeezed the trigger. Both men reacted to the sound of the blast; Denzil staggered. Thomas scrambled back out the door, shoving the empty pistol back into his sash. There would be no confusion about where the shot had come from; the white smoke hanging over the little balcony would reveal his presence like a flag.

Kade was already on the landing, and he followed her down the wider stair. It came out through another servants’ door in the foyer, and he could hear running footsteps and a man shouting. Drowning it out was a low humming sound that seemed to come from everywhere.

Looking around, Kade gasped, “Damn, but that woke them up.”

A gray-skinned spriggan with a face like a melted wax mask dropped out of nowhere to land within arm’s length of them; Thomas ran it through with his rapier almost before he realized it was there. It reeled away shrieking and more of the creatures appeared in the doorways, racing toward them down the halls. Something troll-like, squat, and hairy blocked a doorway, snarling at them.

If they could just get outside and out of the things’ sight, Thomas knew Kade could hide them with illusion. He thought of the broken expanse of windows in the Grand Gallery. This idea must have occurred to Kade because she was already dragging him in that direction.

They ran under the archway and toward the broken windows that led out to the terrace and the park. Skirting the torn section of floor where the ring lay, they were almost there when one of the clawed demon-horses leapt up the terrace steps. Thomas swore, spun around, and drew his last loaded pistol.

The howling pack of spriggans rushed toward them in leaps and bounds; Thomas fired into the group to make them draw back. They scurried and scattered as the ball tore through them.

Something shoved him from the side and he stumbled, then felt his bad leg give way. Unable to catch himself, he fell over the edge of the broken floor…

…and felt a rush of warm air as he landed in soft verdant grass. He gasped and pushed himself up. He was in a wide open field under a sky of an odd crystalline blue. Nearby Kade rolled to her feet and shook out her hair, dislodging only a small amount of the greenery caught in it. Around them was a ring of stone menhirs, each nearly ten feet in height and weathered by great age. It was warm and the grass was the deep green of spring, touched with splashes of red from poppies.

Thomas stood up, stumbled a little, and looked around. About a hundred yards away the craggy face of a cliff towered above them, dotted with grassy clumps and hung with a thick growth of ivy. In the distance he could see that the ground rose gently up in a gradually increasing grade, as if they were in a deep bowl-shaped valley. “Where in hell are we?”

“Knockma,” Kade said. She looked defensive.

He stared down at her. “Fayre?”

“No. Well, yes. In a way.” At his expression she burst out, “If you don’t trust me I really can’t think why, because I haven’t done anything deceptive for days.”

But Thomas had looked up at the sky, and barely heard her. The deep blue was there, and far above floated drifts of puffy whiteness that were clouds, but there was a barrier that seemed to hang at about the level of the cliff top. It seemed solid and yet malleable, and was transparent, allowing the sunlight in but gently muting it. He felt a soft breeze, stirring the grass with a faint rushing sound, and the barrier shimmered with it as if it were made of the most delicate glass or… He managed to tear his eyes away and looked at Kade. “Is this…the bottom of a lake?”

She bit her lip. “Yes.”

He was getting over the shock, and starting to realize exactly how angry he was. “You knew all along how the Host got into the palace.”

Kade paced around in a circle, not looking at him. “I knew about the ring. It was how my mother got there in the first place years ago, but Galen and Surete and the others added a spell to the wards that blocked it. The ring could have faded away; sometimes they do.” Though he hadn’t had a chance to reply, she threw her arms up in exasperation and continued, “All right, and I sent Boliver to fly over the palace last night and he said they must be using the old ring because there weren’t any new ones. I didn’t say anything because I wasn’t sure.” She stopped and shook herself. “No, that’s not true either. I don’t know why I didn’t tell you.”

“You could have mentioned what you were about to do.”

“There wasn’t time.”

“There was time when we were standing there staring at the ring before we heard Denzil and Dontane.” He looked around for his rapier and found it buried in the high grass a few feet away. It and his pistols had come