No one knows what Master Ôrun said to his students on the last night. The Thirteen were gathered in a ring around the seal, and what happened in that ring was never written down. When morning came, the seal was closed, and Master Ôrun was gone, and none of the Thirteen ever spoke of it.

The Chronicle of Anglia, Volume II, chapter on the end of the War

Chapter 27

Beneath the Mountain

The passage went downwards.

Not steeply. Slowly, a gentle slope that drew us deeper into the mountain with every step, and the walls were of black stone that was smooth and cold under my fingers when I touched it to keep my balance. My palm stung every time. The air changed with every step: colder, heavier, saturated with a Dherak so dense that it prickled on the skin and lodged in your teeth and tasted of copper and something older.

Alôpex ran ahead of me with her nose to the floor. Her fur shone faintly in the dark, and her ears turned constantly, forward, back, to the sides, and her body was tense and low, and she said nothing in my head, and that silence was worse than words.

Ahead of us there was light. Orange, flickering. Niram's torch, far ahead, already deep down in the tunnels. And Kalmin's footsteps, fast and desperate, somewhere between us and them.

Behind us the entrance was drawing together. Slowly. The stone creaked low, like ice working on a lake at night. It wasn't a door you opened and closed. It was a wound trying to heal.

"The entrance is getting smaller," said Nihil behind me. He was still hanging on Retia's shoulder, and his voice was flat with exhaustion.

"I know," I said.

"Then we'd better be quick. If we're going to get out again."

"Yes."

Retia walked at his side, leaning on her staff, with Fulmen on her shoulder. Her face was drained of colour, and her steps were shorter than usual. Her Dherak was used up, all of it, and the only thing keeping her upright was will. Pure, stubborn, Retia will. She held Nihil, and Nihil held her, and neither of them would have admitted who was holding more.

Ahra walked ahead of us. Faster than everyone else. His eyes were fixed on the place where his brother's footsteps were still echoing, and Lynx ran at his side with his ears flat.

The tunnel opened out.

We came out into a chamber bigger than anything I had seen underground. The ceiling was so high that the torchlight didn't reach it, and the walls were covered with symbols, hundreds of them, carved with the same precision as the wreath of hawthorn outside. They glowed faintly, bluish, and their light was enough to see by, and what they showed was a room that was round and deep and built by someone who knew what they were doing. The air was dry and still and tasted of dust.

In the middle of the room there was a spring. Round and black and perfectly still, an underground branch of the river, and the water was so clear that it was hardly there. On the bottom lay a sword. It hadn't rusted.

The ancestral sword.

I knew what it was the moment I saw it. Not because I had seen it before. It was like hearing your own name in a room full of voices. You don't know who said it. You just know it was you being called.

But I didn't get to it.

Niram Caritas was already standing at the spring. His two men stood behind him with raised hands and dark magic glowing in their fingers. And behind the spring, in the rock face, there was another symbol. Bigger than all the others. It pulsed with a depth that said whatever was behind it was close. Very close.

"The heart of the seal," said Arcanus at my side. He hadn't pulled his hood back up, and in the blue light his young face was grey. "This is where they shut it in. This is the door that must never be opened."

Niram looked up from the sword. His eyes found mine in the blue light. Then they slid down to my hand, to the blood, and back up again.

"The sword is yours," he said. "Take it. And go. This isn't about you."

"What is it about?"

"About something that was done wrong three hundred years ago. Something that has to be put right."

"You mean to open the heart of the seal," said Arcanus. He stepped forward with his hands raised, and his spell glowed between his fingers. "We won't allow it."

"We?" Niram laughed his low, bitter laugh and flung out a hand towards us. "You and four children? Against me and mine?"

Kalmin stepped forward out of the shadow at the side of the chamber. His sword was in his hand, and his face was quiet and determined. His scent of dry oak bark and ink was denser now, sharp with adrenaline. Above him, beneath the ceiling, a raven was circling. Dark and large, with silent wingbeats. It looked like the raven from my windowsill. Nihil had seen it too, just as I had. There wasn't time to think about what that meant.

"Not just four children," said Kalmin. "Section XIII."

The fight in the chamber was different from the fight outside.

Outside there had been room to run. In here there was only the stone and the light and the echo. Every blow and every scream came back off the walls, as if the mountain itself were shouting along.

Arcanus went for Niram. Not with spells. With pure Dherak, white against red. Two currents collided in the air between them, and the sparks burnt holes in the black stone. Arcanus moved with the precision he always had. Every move landed. But Niram was stronger. Heavier. His dark Dherak pushed the white light back, step by step.

Kalmin went at the two men with his sword. Quick, clean movements. Strike, parry, a step forward. The raven dived at the men's faces, pulled up and dived again, and Kalmin used every split second. He drove them back towards the wall.

Nihil let go of Retia and raised his staff. "Scutum!" The shield came, smaller than outside, but denser. Harder. He placed it in front of Retia, and he stood behind it himself, shaking. Along the wall behind him something white ran, low and silent.

Ahra stood in the middle of it all with a broken staff. His brother was fighting to the left. His friends were standing to the right. Lynx stood in front of him with his teeth bared, waiting for someone to come close enough.

And I went to the sword.

My feet carried me. My body knew what to do, even though my head was too overwhelmed to think. Alôpex ran at my side, and her presence in my head was a steady, warm pulse that said: go. Take it. It's yours.

I reached the spring and walked out into it without thinking about it. The water was so cold that it didn't feel like water. It came up to my knees and stood perfectly still around my legs. The sword lay on the bottom in the bluish light, and it was beautiful in the way old things are beautiful: worn and carried and full of more than you can see. The blade was narrow and long, and the hilt was wrapped in leather that was dark and smooth from many hands.

And the water had a scent. Not of stone. Of them. Of hands that had laid this here, and hands that had taken it up and laid it back again. Men and women I had no names for, layer on layer, so old that they had almost become water themselves. And on top, closest, one I knew without having met him. Candles and parchment, like Edrin. But not a room someone had just left. A room where someone still was.

My father. I had never smelt him before.

It wasn't the sword that did it. It was my nose, and the water that remembered.

I bent down into the cold and took it.

The warmth that went through my arm as my fingers closed around the hilt was the kind of warmth that isn't temperature but recognition. It lay in my hand as if it had been shaped to fit it. It wasn't the sword that knew me. It was the hands that had held it.

I waited for something more to happen.

Nothing happened. No light, no voice, no sudden power. It was a sword, and it was heavy. My own sword stood beside my bed, with the white line along the edge. This one hadn't been forged for me. It had been forged for those before me. In the stories this was the moment when the hero raised the blade and everyone stopped. I stood there with an heirloom in my hand and didn't even know how to hold it properly.

Behind me, Kalmin screamed.

I turned round. And saw it happen.

A man had come into the chamber. Not one of Niram's. He had come from another passage, a black opening in the wall that none of us had seen, and he was standing behind Kalmin with his hood pulled far forward and black light between his fingers.

His scent reached me over everything else. Not burnt wood and ash. Dry chalk and something sweet and heavy, like apples that have lain too long in a cellar. And under it something I didn't have a name for. I couldn't place it. I kept it anyway, the same way I keep names and faces. Without deciding to. The figure who had stood with Kalmin in the passage in November had smelt of nothing at all. This man did.

Kalmin was facing the wrong way. He had parried a blow from one of the two men, and his back was open.

The black magic hit him in the back.

It wasn't like when Nihil was hit. It was worse. Kalmin's body arched backwards. A sound came out of him that wasn't a scream. It was deeper, from the place where magic lives. His sword fell and rang against the stone. His knees gave way.

The raven screamed. A single, piercing sound that filled the chamber and echoed out through the tunnels. Then it folded its wings and plunged. It swept past my face so close that I felt the air from it, and for half a second there was a smell of something I knew. Home. The same as the feather on my windowsill. Then it was past and down on the man, and he struck it aside with a blow of black light. It hit the wall and fell to the ground and lay still. Whether it was breathing, I couldn't see.

Ahra was there before Kalmin hit the floor.

He caught his brother by the shoulders and held him, and Kalmin hung in his arms with his eyes closed and a face that was already losing its colour. Lynx stood over them both and growled, but it wasn't a growl of anger. It was a lament.

"Kalmin," said Ahra. His voice was a voice you only hear once in your life. "Kalmin, look at me."

Kalmin's eyes opened. Green and clear, and completely calm. They found his brother's face.

"Little brother," he said. His voice was a whisper. "You shouldn't... be here."

"Shut up," said Ahra. The tears were running down his face. "Shut up and stay here."

Kalmin smiled. A small, faint smile that cost him everything he had. His hand found Ahra's cheek and lay there for a moment, warm and trembling and weaker with every second.

He said something. Quietly. Only for Ahra. And Ahra's face changed. What it was, Ahra never told anyone.

Kalmin's hand fell. His eyes closed. His chest stopped moving.

Lynx laid his head on Kalmin's chest and closed his eyes.

The mountain shook.

Not like an earthquake. Like a breath.

While we were all looking at Kalmin, Niram had got past Arcanus. Arcanus was down on one knee, and the dark light of the two men was wound around his arms like rope. Niram stood at the heart of the seal with both hands on it. The red light pulsed so strongly that the symbols on the walls turned red at the edges.

And the heart cracked.

A thin black line, from the top of the symbol downwards. Cold air streamed out of it. It smelt of stone that had never seen light, and of something living. Behind the line something was pressing. It was like standing at a door and feeling someone lean against it from the other side.

"Chris," said Alôpex. She stood perfectly still at my feet. "It's opening."

I was the closest. Three steps from the spring, four from the heart, with the sword in one hand and the other hand still open and bloody from the thorns outside.

Nihil's voice in our room. "Someone with Godrand blood is needed to open it. Or to close it again."

I didn't know what it would cost. I only knew it would cost something. Nobody was looking at me. Arcanus was down. Ahra was sitting with his brother. The eagle had flown for Edrin, and nobody had come yet. I could have stayed where I was, and nobody would ever have said a word about it.

Outside, I had opened it. This one I was going to close.

I laid the blade against my palm and drew it through. It was the only thing the sword did that night. The cut was clean and cold, and then it was warm, and the blood ran down my wrist.

Then I took the four steps and laid my hand on the heart. Right next to Niram's.

It took.

Not just blood. It took what was under the blood. My Dherak, all of it, drawn out through my hand like water through a hole in a bucket. The cold ran up my arm and into my chest. It hurt in a way that had no particular place, it just hurt everywhere. My knees gave way. My hand stayed on the stone. I held it there.

I didn't push. Niram pushed. I just gave, and kept on giving.

The black line drew together. Slowly, then faster. Whatever was leaning against the door slid away from it. The red light under Niram's hands flickered, and then it went out.

And then I felt it go further. Out of the heart. Out into the stone. Up through the tunnels we had come along, all the way up to the opening my blood had made outside, the way your fingers follow when you close your hand. It wasn't only the heart that was closing.

Niram snatched his hands back as if the stone had burnt him. He looked at my hand. The grey eye and the blue. One second. Then he turned and ran for the black opening in the wall, and his men let go of Arcanus and ran after him. The man with the sweet, heavy scent was already gone. Shadows vanishing into shadows.

I took my hand off the stone.

My whole palm was red and swollen, and across it, white in the red, was the wreath of hawthorn. Every thorn. As if someone had pressed it into the skin with a hot iron. The mark in my hand looked like the man's from the market, and yet it didn't. Blood dripped from my nose onto the stone floor. My hands were shaking so badly that I nearly dropped the sword.

Where my Dherak used to hum, there was silence. Not empty like the three days in bed. Emptied. Like a well someone had drawn dry.

Alôpex pressed herself against my chest. Her fur was warm, and her heart was beating fast.

"I'm here," she said.

Arcanus pulled me to my feet. His fingers were hard around my upper arm. He looked at my hand, and something crossed his young face, and then it was gone.

"The tunnels are closing," he said. His voice was sharp and quick. "We have minutes."

The stones creaked. Dust fell from a ceiling we couldn't see. The symbols on the walls went out, one after another.

"We have to get out," said Retia. She was standing with Nihil's arm around her shoulder and hers around his, and they were holding each other upright. Her face was white, but her voice was firm. "Now."

Ahra didn't move. He sat on the stone floor with his brother's head in his lap and his hands in his hair.

"Ahra," I said. I pushed the sword in under my belt and went down on my knees beside him. "We have to go."

"I can't leave him."

"We'll carry him. Together. Not without you."

The stones above us creaked again. A piece of the rock ceiling fell ten metres from us and smashed against the floor with a sound that boomed through the whole chamber. The cloud of dust hit us. I coughed, and my eyes streamed.

"Ahra. NOW."

He looked up. His eyes were dry now. Not because he had stopped crying. Because the tears were used up.

"Help me," he said.

Arcanus took Kalmin under the arms. I took his legs. My arms were shaking, and it felt as if I were carrying stone. Ahra's hand lay on his brother's chest the whole way. Lynx walked at his side.

By the wall lay the raven. Motionless. I looked at it once, over my shoulder, and then we were in the tunnel.

We ran. Upwards. The ceiling fell behind us, piece by piece. Stone against stone, like thunder coming closer. Alôpex ran ahead and found the way. Fulmen flew low above Retia's head. Retia staggered, but she stayed upright and kept Nihil upright with her. Twice Nihil turned and threw a Scutum behind us, and the stones bounced off it with a sound like hail on a roof.

We reached the passage leading up. It was narrow. Narrower than when we came in. Too narrow for two people carrying a body.

"You go first," said Ahra.

Arcanus opened his mouth.

"He's my brother." Ahra took Kalmin's body from us. Alone. Over his shoulder, the way you carry a sack, but his hands held him carefully, tenderly, and his body bent under the weight but didn't break.

Arcanus looked at him for a moment. Then he stepped aside.

"Ahra, you can't..." I said.

"GO."

Retia went first. Nihil followed. Arcanus went after them and looked back. I stood in the passage watching Ahra bend under his brother's body and start to climb, slowly, one step at a time, with Lynx walking ahead of him and looking back with yellow eyes.

The ceiling fell behind him. Stone grinding and crashing and filling the passage with dust.

I went. Upwards. My legs were soft, and my arms were numb, and the sword knocked against my hip with every step. Everything smelt of dust and copper and blood.

We almost made it out.

Retia and Nihil were through the opening. Arcanus was through. I was through. The night air hit my face, cold and clean, and the stars were there, and the surface of the mountain was under my feet.

Ahra was ten steps behind me. Ten steps and a brother's weight.

And the passage closed.

Not slowly this time. With a crash. The stone slid together in one blow, fast and final, and there was a wall where a passage had been a moment before. Ahra's face was the last thing I saw before the stone closed: his blue eyes, looking at me with something that was more than fear.

I beat my hands against the stone. "AHRA!"

The stone didn't answer. It was stone again. Cold and smooth and unmoving.

"AHRA!"

Alôpex stood at my feet looking up at me with her black eyes, and her breathing was fast, and her tail was low.

"He's in there," she said. "Him and Lynx and Kalmin."

Retia stood behind me with her hands over her mouth and tears running. Nihil stood at her side with a face that was grey and closed. Brúma sat up on her hind legs on a rock by his foot, white in the dark, and she wasn't looking at him. She was looking at the wall. Arcanus stood a little way off with his hands at his sides and a face that said he had seen this happen before, once, a long time ago, and that it hadn't got any easier.

I laid my bloody hand flat against the stone. The hand that had opened the seal out here, and closed it in there. I waited for the warmth. For the pulse. For something.

Nothing. The stone was cold, and there was nothing left in me to give it.

Arcanus's hand closed around my wrist. He didn't pull it away. He just held it.

"What your blood opened, your blood also closed," he said quietly.

Your blood.

I looked at my hand. At the wreath of hawthorn, white in the skin. I had felt it in there: the hand closing, and the fingers following. The tunnels we had come along. The opening. This one too.

It wasn't the mountain that had shut Ahra in. It was me.

I laid my forehead against the cold stone and closed my eyes and felt the mountain under my skin, the slow, deep pulse that was still there, muffled now, shut in again, and somewhere behind that pulse, deep down in the dark that was full of old magic and old stone, was my best friend.

"Ahra," I whispered. Not to the stone. To the night. To everything between us that couldn't be shut in behind a wall.

The stone didn't answer.

But deep down in the mountain, faint and far away and barely audible, Lynx growled. And that said they were alive. That Ahra was sitting in the dark with his brother's body and his lynx, waiting.

For what, none of us knew.