Bone Palace, The - Amanda Downum Page 0,50

but it was also the best of her options. If she retreated now the vrykoloi would move their hiding place, and that would cost too much time.

The way back up was less perilous, if slow and painstaking. By the time they returned to the lowest level of sewers she was caked with sweat and grime, and the ache in her legs nearly dwarfed the sharp throb in her head.

Isyllt wasn’t sure when the feeling began. At first it was lost beneath the nausea and tinnitus, one more tiny unpleasantness amid the aches and bruises. If the lantern bled painful colored halos and sounds echoed queerly, that was only to be expected after a blow to the head. Then her ring began to itch—not the chill that bespoke death, but a greasy crawling sensation like she’d dipped her hand in oil. Soon after a tingle spread across her scalp and nape. Then she saw the first of the sigils traced on the walls, glowing softly to her otherwise sight: wards and warnings, designed to contain the twisted magic and caution intruders.

She wasn’t the only one discomfited: Spider’s eyes flickered back and forth and his shoulders drew up like a vulture’s. Azarné’s delicate jaw clenched and she fretted with her tattered skirts. Was mortal magic as alien to them as their glamourie was to her?

She’d felt this before—all students at the Arcanost were taken to the ruined palace early in their studies as an abject lesson of magic gone awry, and she’d helped set the yearly wards once or twice. You could still catch traces of it in the inner city if the wind shifted the right way. But it was milder above, faded by decades of sun and rain and clean air. Here the wrongness echoed from the stones.

Khelséa didn’t twitch like the others, but her frown grew the farther they went, till finally she set the lantern down and crouched to consult the map. Isyllt knelt beside her and leaned close, but the ink writhed and blurred across the page and wedged splinters behind her eye sockets. She closed her eyes for an instant and would have fallen if not for her death grip on Khelséa’s shoulder.

“Do you know where we are?” She didn’t have to shout here; the water pipes had been diverted, lest the presence of the palace taint them.

“Near the center of Elysia.” From the inspector’s pinched expression, she could have given a more precise answer.

“Can you feel it?” Isyllt asked.

“The palace?” The unhappy lines around her eyes deepened. “No. But knowing it’s there is bad enough. Can you?”

She nodded. “The stones are steeped with it. Old, sour magic.”

Khelséa’s lips thinned. “Lovely. Is it dangerous?”

“We won’t run mad or fall over dead. Probably. The wards seem to be working. But stagnant magic breeds things the way stagnant water does, and attracts little nasty spirits. And vampires, apparently.” She stood carefully and pried her fingers free of the other woman’s jacket.

Khelséa shook her head as she rose. “And they just kept building the city around it. Like it was a tree no one wanted to cut down.”

“Even dead trees have deep roots,” Azarné said. “And I can’t imagine this attracting anything sane, even demons. I would chew my own limbs off to escape this feeling.” She glanced at Spider and he nodded sharply in agreement. “I can only imagine that Myca and his accomplices hide here to avoid being found. Or because they have already gone mad.”

“Well,” Isyllt muttered, leaning against the wall. “That’s something to look forward to.” Her left hand scraped stone, feeling the sour magic through her glove. And the quiet strength of centuries, as well. Erisín had endured, and continued to endure. It would outlast the blight. Affection for the city warmed her, and she closed her eyes against a sudden prickling in her sinuses.

Saints and specters. Head wounds really were dangerous.

She glanced up to find two sets of yellow eyes and one of brown watching her, their expressions ranging from concern to the elaborate disinterest of a well-fed cat watching a wounded bird. How long had she been standing there?

“Come on,” she said, pushing off the wall. A blink cleared the glaze from her vision. “I’d rather not breathe this in longer than I have to.”

The tunnels grew quieter and quieter the nearer they drew to the ruined palace. The great copper pipes were corroded and caked with verdigris, and the sewer canals held only a low thick sludge that smelled of mud