What I saw was almost beyond belief.
It was a vast, vertical tunnel—one that had enormous proportions. It was at least a quarter of a mile wide and beautifully cylindrical. The tunnel’s walls were lined with perfectly spaced archways that divided it into different levels, and each one appeared to be an entrance into a chamber of some kind, although most of them were dark so I couldn’t see what lay within. But there was a stunning symmetry in the construction here, because not only did each arch appear the exact same size, but it also lined up perfectly with the one above and below. A wide, continuous ramp wound around the wall and linked all the levels and rooms, and it drew the eye downward. It was a long drop. Although there had to be at least fifteen levels above me, there were at least another fifty below that I could see before the darkness simply got too deep to penetrate.
But the thrumming noise I could hear seemed to be coming from somewhere close to that deeper darkness.
Saska had said the queen and the breeders lay at the heart of the apiary, within earth that still held life and heat. But there was no life in the walls I could see, no voices to be heard. Did that mean this shaft held the workers, and that the queen, breeders, and perhaps even the witchlings they’d bred lived somewhere else?
No, said the wind. They reside in the chambers above the current flood line.
There’s water at the base of it?
Yes. The vertical tunnel once had another fifteen levels, but over the generations, the water that leeches through this dead rock has flooded them.
How close will this tunnel get me to the queen’s level?
Not close enough.
Which again was not what I wanted to hear. I shifted sideways and tried to see what was nearby but there was nothing to be seen. It was almost as if nothing had been built into the tunnel’s walls along this section.
The path does pass by three feet below your position, the air said. But because all the old mining shafts near here are unstable and constantly flooding, the Irkallan decided not to use this area.
I blinked. And how would the collective consciousness of the air know something like that?
Because we asked the earth.
Air can’t interact with earth.
Unless there is a conduit. You were that for Saska; when her death ended the weight of three ruling that we were not to help you, that ability to interact with earth was opened to us.
Interesting. So the earth is aware of our approach?
Yes. But it cannot help until you once again step onto ground that holds life and hope.
Which again, wasn’t overly useful when to get to such a place I’d also be in the midst of the queen’s lair.
I thumbed the sweat away from my forehead and eyes, and then squeezed past the rockfall and continued forward. But the mine shaft was narrowing, the going getting rougher, and though I had no idea how much time had actually passed in the world above, I had a bad feeling it was running out, for both me and for those soldiers who were to provide diversionary midmorning attacks. This place had at least sixty-five levels of Irkallan and who knew how many inhabited each level. In some ways, it didn’t even actually matter; the truth was, the Irkallan could put forth a force far greater than any of us had imagined, and their queen had already shown a willingness to waste her soldiers if it achieved the desired outcome.
Unless I did something about it—unless I diverted the queen’s attention away from the upcoming attack—the outpost forces would be overrun and slaughtered.
I continued out down the ever-narrowing mineshaft, but it was becoming increasingly difficult. Rockfalls were more frequent and the pathway so slick with water and slime that I had to grab the roughly hewn walls to keep upright. Despite the heat in the air, my feet were so cold from constantly being in the water that I was beginning to lose feeling in my toes and it forced me to keep stopping so I could rub some life back into them.
Inevitably, I reached a rockfall that there was no getting past. But it had, at least, brought some of the inner sanctum’s wall down with it. The gap wasn’t quite wide enough for me slip through, but given the wet decay gripping the rock surrounding the fall area, I didn’t think making it bigger would be all that hard.
I squatted on my heels and carefully peered out. I was five levels above where I needed to be, but at least I could see the water now. It was a vast lake that lapped at the edges of the circular path that swept down into its ink and then disappeared. Its black surface was mirror smooth—I blinked. This was the black mirror Saska had mentioned. It wasn’t any sort of magic; it was a lake that was at least fifteen stories in depth and getting deeper. A lake the Irkallan feared to go near.
And that one fact made it the perfect place to hide the bracelets, because surely if the Irkallan could have drained this lake they would have rather than letting it slowly consume their home. And those bracelets, with their ability to control the thoughts and actions of others, were surely better left in some place where they were never likely to resurface than taken back to Winterborne where they’d undoubtedly be studied and perhaps learned from. Such technology had already proven to be dangerous in the wrong hands and—from what I’d witnessed over the last few days—there seemed to be more than a few such hands in amongst those of the Upper and Lower Reaches.
I studied the areas immediately above the water line, trying to find some indication of where the queen was. After a second, I spotted an arch that not only broke the symmetry of the rest, but also looked newer. If the Irkallan were constantly having to retreat from the water line, perhaps that newer arch was an indicator of where the queen and her breeders now lived.
The levels immediately above this larger arch were as still as the rest of them. Although I had no doubt there would be guards I couldn’t see, it was odd that there was very little in the way of movement in this place. Of course, that might just be because the sun would have risen by now and, while the Irkallan weren’t nocturnal, they did tend to be more active at night. It was a fact that might also explain why soldiers hadn’t flooded the tunnel when I’d killed those two Irkallan. Maybe there’d been no one close enough to hear their cries for assistance.
I leaned forward and saw that the curving path passed by this breach in the wall. Getting out of this mine shaft wasn’t going to present much of a problem, but working my way down the remaining five levels of the vertical tunnel to that larger arch would be fraught with danger. I really didn’t like my chances of doing so unseen.
My gaze returned to the unmoving surface of the lake. Five stories was a hell of a jump, but it was also a survivable one into water, especially when I was Sifft rather than an ordinary human. Stronger bones came with the heritage. And if I dropped into the water quietly enough, they’d barely see or hear me enter the lake. The problem was the water itself, and the fact that I wasn’t the world’s greatest swimmer. Hell, I could barely even dog paddle—a fact that had amused Ava and April no end whenever we’d spent our days off in the sea over at West Range.
But it was the best choice. Taking the winding pathway might be dryer, but it also came with a bigger risk of being seen.
I glanced at the wet and fractured rock. I needed to widen the seam by another foot, at the very least, if I was to have any hope of getting my shoulders and butt through it. Thin, I was not.
Wind, can you keep an eye on things outside and warn me if there’s any movement nearby?
Yes.