Forty-One

Flight followed, but very much not in the draconic sense: flight on foot instead, through a series of winding caverns too low even to run through properly. Flight with the sound of falling rock behind them and the earth trembling under their feet, all too aware of the weight of stone that likely lay overhead.

Why?

Erik couldn’t know. Had they, by taking dragon form earlier in a cave naturally too small for any such creature, broken through some vital support? Without the un-ark’s spirit to sustain it, was the temple’s natural structure enough of an affront to the world that it couldn’t survive? Or was the collapse one last trick of the spirit, a trap for any who might truly manage to destroy It?

Any might be true, or parts of each. There might be another explanation entirely. Erik could wonder all he liked, as his boots struck stone and he forced overworked muscles into yet more service, but the darkness gave him no answers.

The phantom town they’d come through before was desolate on their return. A few buildings yet stood as Erik and Toinette ran past, but they looked flat and simple: sketches from an untalented hand. Stairs climbed into a rock wall. Windows opened onto stone, or blank space. One of the roofs caved in behind Erik. The sound was softer than falling rock should have been.

Mostly, he didn’t look back. There were all kinds of stories about what happened to people who did, and he hadn’t even Orpheus’s reason. Toinette ran at his side when the path was wide enough, easily keeping pace with him. When they had to go single file, she was just behind, her ragged breath and running footsteps signs of her presence.

There was no longer a door at the end of the town. A cave entrance just opened onto the junction, and two more faced it. Erik could glimpse shrouded bodies through one of them, and through the stalagmites he thought he saw Adnet’s bones lying at rest. Goodbye, he thought, with no time to stop or breath to speak. God grant you peace at last.

Onward down the long passages they ran, and the world fell apart behind them.

“The ship,” Toinette panted. “How do we get back through it?”

The thought struck Erik mid-chest like a blow. He couldn’t stop to talk—even as they ran, he heard smashing behind them, the world’s longest and largest avalanche on their heels—and could barely manage to think. His blood pounded in his ears. “Find the portal ourselves. Force it. We’ll not have much time.”

He rasped in a breath and grabbed for what scraps of his power were left, but Toinette interrupted him.

“Visio dei,” she said. Her voice wavered considerably and was far higher than usual, but there was power in it.

Aware of how disorienting the visions were, Erik reached back and grabbed her arm, pulling her along the corridors with him. He hadn’t the leisure for gentleness, nor even to regret the violence of his grip, but he did hope he wasn’t injuring her.

She would heal, if he did.

Would either of them survive a rockfall? He didn’t know, and the thought of it was more horrifying than death itself. How far below the surface were they? Where were they?

“Here,” Toinette said abruptly, and gestured. “Down. The floor’s…not false, but…” She bent forward, chest heaving. “You have to think where you want to be.”

“Aye,” said Erik quickly, for it hurt his heart to hear her try to speak. “I take your meaning. Go.”

She slipped through the portal as if it were the surface of a pond. Erik jumped after her, thinking out of here, and then they were on rock, running away from the rotted hulk of a ship and toward a door in the middle of a beach made of stone.

Ah, said a part of his mind that sounded like Artair, shapes have power even in their death. Fascinating.

Erik wasn’t particularly fascinated. He looked away from the door only to glance at Toinette, seeing that she was still keeping up. Her leg dripped blood as she ran, but slowly, and she did run. That would have to be good enough. The ship was groaning as it died, wood buckling and twisting under no force that Erik could see; chunks of timber fell and flew, making him and Toinette duck.

The door crumbled at his touch, falling to fragments and becoming a cavern entrance. He’d just ducked through when he saw the lintel buckle. Again he grabbed for Toinette, but she was already leaping through, her foot clearing the doorway as the whole structure came down in a crash and a cloud of dust.

Destruction was moving faster.

* * *

In the great hall, the high table lay tipped onto its side. The figures were gone, and the hands with them. The other two tables were dissolving into the stone. They melted as Toinette saw them, like fog in sunlight. No great loss—but she looked away swiftly, dizzy from the sight.

All was failing beneath the earth. Or all was returning to the way it was meant to be. The world reclaimed the wreckage of twisted magic with a speed that might have been heartening had Toinette and Erik not been caught in its midst.

On and on they ran, dashing across the great hall and into the passage on the other side, past a cavern mouth with the ruins of a church beyond it. The symbol had fallen off the wall, and all the windows had shattered, revealing more stone beyond.

Toinette’s cut leg hurt less. At first she thought that fear had pushed her beyond pain—she knew the wound couldn’t have healed so quickly, not when she’d gotten it from the un-ark itself—but the rest of her body still protested every motion. Only her legs and feet had it easier than they had before.

The impact of feet against stone jarred less, she realized. There was less stone to jar. Even as the ceiling fell in behind them, the floor was growing softer.

Beyond shame, Toinette would have sobbed with terror, save that she had no breath to manage it. They were going to die. They’d come far, they’d won against all odds, and now, even in victory, they’d be buried alive, never to know air or light again.

Her mind gibbered. Her body, wiser or at least less complicated, bolted down passageways through rock that became gravel and then dirt. She had enough mind left to know that Erik was with her, and to keep making sure of it, glancing to her side every so often. Otherwise, she put her head down and ran like a spooked horse.

The great doors lay fallen from their frame, the metal twisted and molten. Some shapes lingered. Others didn’t. Toinette didn’t know why and didn’t care. She hurdled the wreckage and landed on the other side, almost stumbling in the loose dirt. It was falling down into the earth, filling the cavern from whence it had come. Like the tide, it tried to carry all before it.

Toinette’s vision went red halfway across the courtyard. Her face was wet; she wouldn’t have known sweat from tears then, or either from blood, and didn’t bother wiping the moisture away. She didn’t need to see. The edge of the steps was a few feet away, a few feet that felt as though she were treading water against the waves.

Dimly she thought of wings, but she had no strength to transform, and none to take off if she had. More weight would only have sealed their doom.

They made it to the edge of the steps and threw themselves over, running headlong downward. Halfway to the bottom, the dirt was soft and sucking as quicksand, and Toinette’s legs worked no longer.

She turned and grabbed Erik’s shoulders. “Jump,” she managed.

They clung to each other and leapt, not down but outward as far as their collected strength could manage.

Toinette felt her feet leave the sand. Through a red mist she saw the distance between them and the steps grow, and the steps themselves collapse in on themselves, buckling and bending in a way that no stone had ever done. She felt Erik’s arms tight about her, and buried her face against his neck, shielding the back of his head with her own arms.

She closed her eyes.

They landed hard, with a solid crunch and a stab of pain through Toinette’s wounded leg, not to mention a blunt impact that jarred her whole body. Her teeth clicked together with enough force to chip one; her shoulder hit a good-sized rock, which tore through the cloth of her gown and half the skin of her upper arm.

But they did land, on firm, solid ground that moved not at all. They landed, and lay for a while as the temple’s final collapse roared behind them.