from his shoulder.
Asper could but stare as they continued towards Irontide. Asper could but stare as such a force continued towards her friends.
Dreadaeleon seemed much less indecisive.
‘Come,’ he said, brushing past her with a forcefulness that she might have gone agog at, were she not already dumbstruck. ‘We have to go.’
‘What?’ she gasped, breath returning to her. ‘Now?’
‘That longface is a heretic.’
‘You don’t even know what religion he is.’
‘Not a heretic of whatever made-up god you choose to serve,’ the boy snarled at her. He gestured towards the ship. ‘Look at him! He’s not even breathing hard!’
Asper frowned; she could sense his calm well enough, as she had sensed his power before. Without seeing the longface, she knew Dreadaeleon was right. Dreadaeleon, of course, wasn’t waiting for her approval. He waded out from the shore, inhaled deeply and blew a cloud of frost over the ocean. In the few gasping breaths that followed, a small ice floe had formed, bobbing upon the surface.
‘It violates all laws of magic, all laws of the Venarium.’ The boy climbed upon the white sheet, surprisingly sure-footed. ‘That, at least, is worth getting involved over.’
‘But not your friends?’ Asper asked, raising a brow.
‘Friends die. Magic is for ever.’ He glanced down at her, extended a hand that seemed far too big for him. ‘Are you coming, or would you rather sit and savour the irony for a bit?’
She glanced out over the sea at a sudden stirring. The male was up and at the prow again, she sensed, his hands outstretched. She felt with her arm the explosive power boiling between his palms. She saw with her eyes the prow aimed at Irontide’s great, rock-scarred wall.
Waiting to see what he was about to do seemed decidedly unwise. With a grunt, she waded into the surf and took the boy’s hand.
‘It’s not ironic . . .’
Twenty-Five
THE PROPHET
The explosion came to Lenk as a muted thump, shaking the stones in the ceiling and sending gouts of dust to lie upon the black water. He rose to his feet, scrambled to the wall.
‘Kat?’
The wall gave no answer.
‘Kataria?’
The stone offered no reply.
‘Kat! Denaos!’
His fist against the rock slab was half-hearted, all his energy drained from previous pummellings with nothing to show but throbbing fingers and a stone that seemed to smile at the futile effort. He did not expect it to miraculously crumble under his desperation, but the dull rumble spurred him to action.
If his pitiful attempts could be called such, he thought.
He had heard only faint noises since the slab had fallen behind him: the gurgling sounds of the Abysmyths, a shrill whining and the collective croak of the frogmen. Of his companions, he had heard nothing; nothing to suggest they had heard his furtive cries, nothing to suggest they were still alive.
What, he wondered, had made him not listen to Denaos? What had made creeping into a demon-infested, dying fortress seem the logical choice? Greed? Some bizarre, misplaced desire to do the proper thing? No, he told himself, that doesn’t work for adventurers.
A lust for some breed of unpleasant death, then?
That seems more likely.
Whatever the reason, the stone did not answer. With no more hope to drive him to beat answers out of it, he sought to bring it down with his head. Sighing, he rested a hot brow against cold rock, giving up on it as he had given up trying to find a way out of the forsaken chamber.
He had wondered, when panic had dissipated and calm prevailed, if there was a mechanism of some kind to make the slab rise. After all, he had thought, something must have made it fall. That hope was foetid and rotting now as calm gave way to futility. He swept his gaze about the large, circular room; if such a device existed, he’d never find it.
What floor there was extended ten paces before him into a stubborn outcropping of rock. The rest had long disappeared, swallowed up by a pool of black water that writhed like a living thing. Torches burning emerald lined walls that rose high to form a domed ceiling, glistening with a macabre shimmer of green and ebon.
Whatever had operated the slab before was long-decayed or long-drowned.
The meek thought of searching the waters had been banished long ago. Black enough to eat even the emerald light, there would be no way of finding anything in its depths. The thought of something lurking in there, like the somethings he had seen lurking in brighter waters, was