Castle (The Seventh Tower 2)

"That's not… oh, never mind!" snapped Tal. Why had he bothered to waste his breath?

It took a long time to reach the next intersection. Not because it was a long way, but because they were both so sapped of energy by the heat and the lack of air.

Tal was so busy concentrating on keeping the lantern up and keeping himself moving forward that he forgot to look ahead. He actually ran into the skeleton before he realized what was going on.

When Tal did look to see what he'd bumped into, he backed up so quickly that he smacked into Milla. She cried out angrily and for a moment there was a tangle of his legs and her arms before Tal calmed down and Milla moved back.

"What… is… it?" she said, speaking with effort, taking a breath between each word.

"A skeleton," puffed Tal. He twisted the knob on the lamp to open the weave, letting more light from the luminous moths shine out. Tal's shadowguard slid back under his feet as he did so, to fall behind like a real shadow. Milla shuffled back still farther, so the shadowguard couldn't touch her.

The skeleton had obviously been there a long time, or else it had been scoured clean by scavengers. There were no scraps of clothing, or anything that might be a clue to who it was. Probably not an Icecarl, Tal thought, because there were no signs of any weapon. He'd never seen an unarmed Icecarl.

They would have to climb over the skeleton to get past. Steeling himself, Tal closed his eyes and reached out, but as his fingers touched bone he pulled them back. He couldn't help imagining that it was still someone's arm, and the skeleton would sit up and shout.

"Let me do it!" ordered Milla, but Tal wouldn't get out of her way.

He reached out and tugged at one arm, to pull the whole skeleton flat so they could crawl over it. But as he tugged, the arm came off, and then every individual bone fell apart. Tal gasped and dropped the arm. Something else fell, too, and clinked on the stone.

Tal saw it fall between his feet and roll behind him. A finger bone, with a ring stuck on it. A ring with a large jewel.

A Sunstone!

CHAPTER

EIGHT

Tal pushed his back against the tunnel wall, ignoring the heat of the rock, and looked behind. Milla was picking up the finger bone and sliding off the ring. As she touched it, the jewel suddenly blossomed into light, swinging wildly through every color in the spectrum. It was so bright that Tal had to close his eyes.

When he opened them again, Milla had closed her hand around the Sunstone ring. Light leaked out between her fingers and made her hand translucent.

"Give… it… to… me," said Tal. It was what he needed, what he had climbed the Red Tower to get a new, powerful Sunstone, which he could use to become a full Chosen, to enter the spirit world of Aenir and save his family.

"No." Milla started to turn around.

"Wait!" Tal croaked. He twisted around, but Milla was quicker. She had already gone several stretches along the tunnel. "You don't know how to use it! And you'll… get… lost!"

Milla kept going. She probably remembered the turns, Tal thought. But he had to have the Sunstone. He could always get her another one later. He looked down at his shadowguard. Milla would never forgive him if he used it… but if he didn't…

"Shadowguard, shadowguard," coughed Tal. "Grab that girl, as quick as you can."

The shadowguard shot out from under him, growing long and thin, like the shadow of a slender giant. One arm grew even longer, and the hand on the end spread wide. It snatched at Milla's ankle and gripped tight.

Instantly, she rolled on her back, flexed forward, and struck at the shadow with a bone knife that sprung out of her sleeve. But that couldn't hurt the shadowguard and it held fast.

"Traitor!" hissed Milla. "You swore!"

Tal had sworn with his own blood and Milla's to get a Sunstone for the Far Raiders. He had the triple scar on his wrist to prove it. But he hadn't sworn to hand over the first

Sunstone they came across.

"You swore, too," he said. "To help me reach the Castle. We aren't really there yet. Besides, that Sunstone isn't tuned."

Milla hesitated, but only for a second. She thought they were close enough to the Castle. Then she started crawling again, dragging the shadowguard with her.

"I saved your life!" Tal panted out desperately when Milla didn't stop. The shadowguard wasn't strong enough to hold Milla for long, and he didn't want to tell it to hurt her. "You owe me."

Milla stopped as if she had run into a wall. Tal had saved her life when his shadowguard had bound her wounds after the fight with the one-eyed Merwin. Arguably, she had saved his by killing the Merwin, but that was not so certain.

"I need that Sunstone," coughed Tal. "Come with me and I'll get you another one. If I can't within fourteen sleeps… I'll give it back. For the ship and… the clan."

Milla's knife disappeared up her sleeve. Then she opened her hand. Tal had to shield his eyes from the Sunstone's light as she threw the ring back to him.

"Fourteen sleeps!" Milla conceded angrily. "But I no longer owe you a life!"

"Agreed," said Tal. He picked up the ring and focused his mind on the Sunstone. It flared up again, then gradually dimmed as Tal took control. When it was no brighter than the moth-lantern, Tal tried the ring on his middle finger. It was too big, so he fastened it to the chain around his neck, next to the chunk of blackened rock that had been his old Sunstone.

The Sunstone in the ring was very old, but it had lost none of its power, lying unused here in the dark. The Chosen - for the skeleton must have been a Chosen had made it go dormant before he or she died. That surprised Tal. He knew no Chosen of his time brave enough to die alone in the dark, just to save a Sunstone.

"Shadowguard, shadowguard," he muttered. "Come back to me."

The shadowguard let go of Milla and hastily retreated, flowing back into a regular shadow. One arm kept moving, waving backward and forward.

"What?" Tal asked. His mind felt a bit fuzzy.

The shadowguard waved again and Tal realized it was telling him to hurry. At the same time, he became aware that Milla had caught up to him again, and he hadn't even noticed. He must have blanked out for a few seconds.

"Air," Milla gasped. "Bad air."

She pushed at him. Tal turned and started crawling again.

They crawled for what seemed like hours but couldn't have been more than minutes. Then they were at yet another intersection. Slowly, Tal got out the bone map and tried to work out where they were. The red glow was bright, but not bright enough to read by, and for some reason the moth-lantern had dimmed. Tal shook it to liven up the moths, but that didn't work, and the spaces in the weave were as wide as they could go.

It was hard work to set the lamp down and get the new Sunstone out instead, since Tal's hands seemed to be weighed down and wouldn't go where he told them to. He finally managed it, and after a few bright flashes he did get the Sunstone to

shine at a useful level.

In its light, he saw that all the luminous moths in the lantern were lying still on the bottom, their green abdomens fading. The moths were asleep… or dead. Sluggishly, Tal passed the lantern back to Milla. It was an Icecarl tool. She would know what to do with it.

He looked back at the map. It took some time to remember where they were. A right turn, and then a symbol that might represent a ladder, or perhaps a ramp. A way up, anyway.

Tal hoped.

Unless they were only at the intersection before that, in which case they should take a left and then a right. But they'd already done that, hadn't they?

Tal turned the map the other way up. Now that he looked at it, he wasn't sure that he hadn't had it upside down the whole time.

"On!" whispered Milla."We must… go on!"

Tal couldn't remember which way they had turned, but after a while they came to an opening in the tunnel ceiling, and a ladder of the same crystal as the Crystal Wood in the Castle. Tal tried to direct a beam of light at it to make it sing, but for some reason he kept missing. Different-colored beams shot out everywhere from the Sunstone, but none hit.

It made Tal laugh. He couldn't help it a choking giggle came out of him that sounded so strange, he looked around to see whom it might belong to.

Dimly he was aware of Milla pushing past him and starting to climb, then of his shadowguard pulling at him, placing his hands on the ladder and his foot on the lowest rung.

The ladder was strangely cool, here where everything was hot. The shock of it cleared Tal's head a little, and he realized with sudden panic that there was something poisonous in the air, fumes from the lava down below, that made his head strange and his limbs full of lead.

The shadowguard pulled at Tal's wrist, urging him to climb. Milla was only just ahead of him, climbing very slowly. She almost slipped a few times, but the shadowguard was watching her, too, and it zipped past to put her feet or hands back on the ladder.

Tal started seeing double. He reached for rungs that weren't there, and his fingers closed on air instead of crystal. His arms grew too tired to reach up. Slowly, ever so slowly, he put his legs through the ladder and sat, fumbling with his belt. He couldn't go on, but he could try and strap himself to the ladder so he wouldn't fall.