The foreign words came out of Pru’s mouth easily.

  Nefri let out a harsh shriek. It was the first time Steven had heard her vocalize anything.

  She shredded her shirt, but got away, only she didn’t run. She hurled herself at Pru. The dark elf caught the Texan and pushed her down. The Wayne sisters were so surprised, neither fought back.

  Pru gazed up into Nefri’s face, a look of wonder there, but something else, a certain glow.

  Nefri shoved her face into Pru’s. Her purple eyes were ablaze with fury.

  Pru didn’t smile, and she didn’t seem to be breathing. She was caught up in Nefri’s sizzling hot stare.

  Chazzie finally came to her senses. She shoved Nefri off her sister.

  The dark elf gracefully danced back.

  Mouse had the Slayer Blade out, but no fire licked its edge.

  Nefri slammed two fingers into her temple and pointed at Steven.

  He was going to call her bluff. “I’m not going to waste the Animus. Pru is right, isn’t she? You grew up Lyra, but something happened.”

  “And they went underground,” Mouse said. “High elves live in forests and castles on the surface, but not dark elves. They are below the surface.”

  Nefri knew her face was giving away her secrets.

  Up went the mask, down went the cowl. She stepped back and crossed her arms.

  Uchiko came ambling up. The ninja simply ignored the Shadow Archer, who had slung her bow over her shoulder, and looked about as friendly as a hangry pit bull.

  Uchiko spoke in a quiet voice. “I found the entrance to a city beneath this city. You should come and look. There is writing. And there is something wrong about it.”

  Chapter Thirteen

  UCHIKO HAD BEEN OE Uchiko, the daughter of a daimyo, hundreds of years before. There had been war, and Uchiko’s family had dishonored themselves by giving her to an enemy daimyo. She had walked into the home of Muramasa Gin feeling like a stranger, a stranger forced to live married to an animal far beneath her. Uchiko had murdered Muramasa Gin in the end. And yet, she remained a stranger in a strange home, now a widow.

  That was how she felt on this new world, which was every bit as strange as her time staying with Muramasa Gin. There were similarities to the worlds she’d left, and yet, those ended at the vast entryway at the southern edge of the city, near where the river rushed over foam-flecked black rocks. Those black rocks had been stacked into a pile, the leavings of a quarry. An archway had been created in the rubble, and ornate steps led down into the darkness. Images had been carved into the stairs; it looked as if they had been rarely used, so every figure was crisp. The walls were hardened clay covered with plaster.

  Across the archway was elegant script amidst the rough and tumble boulders lying on top of it.

  Darkness swirled out of Steven’s eyes. He was using a spell to talk with the archer bitch. The ninja had the Hellstring over a shoulder. In her hands was her sickle-chain, ready to bash Nefri’s skull in with the weight at the end of the chain.

  Steven spoke. “Nefri can read the words on the archway. In the Darkness, Light, in the Light, Shadows. In the Shadows, Safety.”

  “It doesn’t even rhyme.” Chazzie rolled her eyes. They’d left their gear at the confluence courtyard. Uchiko hoped they didn’t camp out in the ruins of the city. The place was full of ghosts, or at least that’s how it felt. Homes should hold people. Otherwise, it would only be a matter of time until they held something else.

  “Why would it rhyme, Chaz?” Pru asked. “It’s in a different fucking language.”

  “In the movies it would rhyme,” Mouse pointed out. She called to Nefri, “Hey, Our Lady of the Blues, did that shit rhyme in elvish?”

  Nefri tilted her head. Then nodded.

  “Ha! See?” Mouse said.

  Chazzie stuck out her tongue at the blonde.

  Pru brought her big M60E60 machine gun around on its strap. Uchiko thought she must be burning Animus to be able to handle that big weapon without it killing her muscles.

  “Well, now,” Pru said. “It looks like I was right. Not like that’s a surprise.” Pru kept gazing at Nefri when she wasn’t looking, which was odd for the Texan twin, and yet Prudence hadn’t been herself since they left the airport. Did she miss Sabina? Uchiko could understand that.

  What the ninja couldn’t understand was how weak and afraid Pru had become. Even when the ninja had been exiled with the Onari Guard, taking care of Mathaal, she’d heard of the brutality of the Wayne twins. They’d been legends even before they’d joined Steven’s Escort.

  Chazzie gripped her own machine gun. “Ah, there’s my Prudence Pride, back with us, and ready to take the fight into the underworld. If we see Charon I’m going to blow his bony butt off.”

  “We want it all,” Pru agreed.

  “And we want it now,” Chazzie finished.

  “Ha! And you said no catchphrases.” Mouse tsked them. “Hypocrites.”

  Steven snapped his fingers. “Focus, guys.”

  Uchiko was glad he took charge. These American women liked to blather on and on. They thought they were so clever. That was another reason why Uchiko liked to take off on her own; she didn’t have to suffer through all the jokes. She didn’t catch most of what they said, and what she did understand wasn’t funny, so the whole affair was a lost cause.

  Nefri wasn’t about to leave them. If she could, the archer would run and only come back to steal from them again.

  Steven went first. “Magica Incanto!” His sword, Samael’s Lash, ignited with light. It was a strange weapon, made from the scales of dead medieval dragons, connected by a steel cable.

  He started down the stairs, and Mouse followed him, then Nefri, and then the twins. Uchiko went last. Since she was in the rear, she thought a ranged weapon would be a good idea. She carried her kusarigama looped on her shoulder. In her hand was the Hellstring, with a white arrow to the string. That arrow would hit like a lightning strike, thanks to sweet Tessa.

  Uchiko tried to get a sense of the artwork on the steps. It showed a progression: elves, in their fine clothing, came from the heavens, out of the sunshine itself, or so it seemed. They built cities, chased huge antlered creatures, and avoided what looked like carnivorous trees.

  The cities thrived. Then, in the windows of the artwork, in the doorways, she started to see familiar sculptures—talons, teeth—and they reminded her of the friezes in the Americos Chamber.

  Tessa had told Uchiko a story about how the barista and Sabina had spoken in a strange, harsh language in the Denver portal when the Zothoric drew close. Only Tessa had thought that wasn’t just the demons, but the mother of the demons. Pru had called Zothora Mama Z. Uchiko didn’t even like to think about such a creature, much less make fun of her name? It didn’t seem wise.

  A hundred feet down, the clay walls turned into rock. The artwork on the stairs ended, as if the artists had grown tired. And yet, in those steps, Uchiko saw something familiar. Three Dragonsouls, or were they Dragonknights? Either way, an elf queen walked with them. She rose up out of a lake to confront them.

  Uchiko knew that story. Quinnestri had helped Icharaam hide his cache of weapons, which the Europeans had called the Holy Grail. The ninja Warling wasn’t sure if the same elf had done the same thing on multiple worlds, or if there were multiple versions of the Lyra, and each one was different.

  Trying to comprehend the nature of such a vast set of universes was not something Uchiko liked to do. It made her uncomfortable. Besides, there were more intelligent women in Steven’s Escort to deal with that.

  The steps turned and then spiraled down, going around, around, around, how many feet? How many miles? Uchiko didn’t know.

  They emerged on a ledge that overlooked an excavated chamber. Uchiko saw that it wasn’t so dissimilar to the city above. Instead of spires rising into the sky, the rock had been fashioned to be underground artificial stalactites; the perfectly round towers hung from the ceiling. Sculpted windows showed darkness, and some of the skybridges had fallen apart. On top of that, a thousand years of water running down had lengthened all the towers until the mineral deposits connected the tops of the towers to the floor down below. A floor? No, that looked like water. Was there an underground ocean down there? A river?

  Steven and his Escort bantered more, but Uchiko ignored it. What she was seeing was so alien and strange. An underground city as vast as the city above, as big as Denver, hanging from the ceiling in a place the elves must’ve dug themselves. Was it the Lyra? Or had it been the Ohkreela?

  After any number of jokes and witticisms, the twins dropped their backpacks and sprouted wings, turning into Homo Draconi. Pru set her bag down, then took off. Chazzie followed, her machine gun ready.

  Pru struck a flare and let it fall in. The red light sparkled off towers, giving them a view of the upside-down city.

  In the center, hanging from chains, hung a vast platform fashioned out of black rock.

  Steven came over to her. “Do you mind riding Mouse over there?”

  Uchiko shook her head. She didn’t know what else to say. There was a heaviness to the air, and a stink from the water and from the clusters of rotten rock dripping with muck.

  Steven shifted into his True Form, flew up to the ledge, and invited Nefri to climb onto him. She did, and they soared off.

  “That leaves you and me, your ninjaness,” Mouse said.

  Again, Uchiko was at a loss for words. She and Mouse hadn’t really interacted, and they seemed so different. Mouse could be almost cruel in her sarcasm, and yet, she had been willing to sacrifice herself, again and again, for Steven and his wives.

  “Hai,” Uchiko said.

  “I won’t make the dumb joke.” Mouse groaned and then burst out, “Hello to you, Uchiko. Damn, I made the joke. Hai as in hi. Never mind. This fucking tomb makes me nervous.”

  Minutes later, Uchiko leapt off Mouse’s back onto the hanging platform. The amber-colored dragon flew around the towers before landing on the black stone. Four sets of big black chains held up the circular platform. In the middle was a basin, almost an exact copy of the one they had seen in the chamber under Sloan’s Lake.

  This one was empty, however. The empty basin lay at the bottom of an amphitheater. Seven layers of seats rose to the top, where there were seven huge thrones. Were there seven thrones for seven elf kings?

  Steven stood at the top, holding onto a chain, in his True Form. Samael’s Lash lay in front of him, still giving off light.

  Mouse was human, holding the Slayer Blade’s green fire high. Also human, Pru and Chazzie scattered flares around. They had plenty of light. There just wasn’t all that much to see.

  Nefri approached the basin.

  Uchiko watched her closer. The dark elf seemed baffled by what she was seeing. She turned and shrugged at them.

  “Hey, twins.” Mouse’s voice seemed like a squeak compared to the vast chamber around them. “Do you think this was for politics or dinner theater?”

  “I hope it wasn’t for dinner theater,” Chazzie said. “And if anyone starts singing anything from The Sound of Music, I’m going to lose my shit.”

  Mouse, of course, sang something about a female deer.

  Pru shushed her. “Now is certainly not the time.” The Texan’s freckled skin seemed gray and lackluster. “We need water in that basin. I think that’s clear enough. And I don’t want to mess with that water down there. This place smells like shit and feels like a toilet.”

  “Those two things do go together,” Mouse said.

  Chazzie grimaced. “Gross. Stick with your sarcasm.”

  Steven rumbled thunder above them. “If I breathe ArcticWind and someone else breathes fire, we can create water. We did that for showers in a Safeway not too long ago.”

  Mouse gave Nefri her flaming broadsword. “Here. Hold this. And don’t cut yourself.”

  Nefri did her kissy face thing.

  Mouse marched up to the chain, shifted into her True Form, and then growled, “Are you sure you have a blizzard in you, Steven?”

  “I’m going to try,” he replied.

  Chazzie set her machine gun at Uchiko’s feet. “We’re going to go help. Keep your eyes open.”

  The ninja Warling nodded. She felt exposed on the suspended amphitheater. Did something move in the windows of the building over there? Could it be a ghost? Did the elves have ghosts? The shifting light made the shadows do unexpected things.

  Did something hiss or was that just a flare?

  Uchiko’s sweat turned clammy in the chill of the vast cavern.

  The twins stood as pink dragons at the top near their own chains.

  Steven coughed out a cloud of cold, but nothing formed. Uchiko felt bad for him, yet she knew that he would not stop until he mastered all the Exhalants. And he could work miracles with his magic. On top of that, he was the most courageous Dragonlord she’d ever met... and the most kind.

  Mouse, however, breathed out a shining winter of icicles and snow. Chazzie and Pru struck that cold with Inferno. The resulting moisture drizzled down into the basin.

  Nefri backed up until she was standing next to Uchiko. The dark elf turned. Fear was in her purple eyes. Fear and loneliness. For a second, Uchiko felt her own loneliness keenly. She’d been as lost. Steven had asked her to have compassion for the Shadow Archer just as he had had compassion for Uchiko.

  Nefri then glanced down to her hand, not the one holding the Slayer Blade, but her other hand. And there was her middle finger, extended.

  Uchiko scowled.

  The dark elf chuckled noiselessly. She reached out and patted Uchiko’s back. For the briefest flicker, it felt good, and then Uchiko took three big steps to her right, away from the meanness of that blue thing.

  A foot of water filled the basin.

  Steven exhaled again, and this time, it wasn’t just a little cloud of cold, but a stream of icy wind. It struck Mouse’s ArcticWind, creating a wave of cold, even as the Wayne sisters’ fire struck it, creating a show of light and heat.

  Uchiko was thrilled at the spectacle. They were bringing back fire to this place. They were burning away the darkness. Even Nefri seemed awed.

  The basin filled until it threatened to gush over.

  Then, all at once, something shimmered in the water.

  The Dragonsouls stopped their Exhalants. A hush fell over the amphitheater.

  From out of the water emerged shapes of flame, squiggly, writhing. At first, Uchiko thought they were living snakes or fire worms. The lines were fire, and they came together to form a map of continents, a map that was familiar.

  It was Earth. Uchiko found Australia, she found Japan and then the coast of California, all the way down to the Baja peninsula. The fire flickered, odd and beautiful. Uchiko searched for signs of any markings, but there weren’t any. The lines on the map shifted as the flames began to turn color.

  The red flames turned blue, dancing there, glimmering with a neon-like flicker. The lines came together in script, the same writing that was above the archway. Letters formed words in blue flames. They gathered in a rectangle, not unlike words on a page.

  Nefri breathed in. She moved to grip Uchiko’s black gi, pointing.

  The dark elf grinned at her.

  The blue-fire words turned cold until they froze over, flipping around and becoming stranger, not that Uchiko could read the words. And yet, she had the idea that the letters had changed.

  Nefri let out a grunt, frowning. She still held onto Uchiko’s clothes. Uchiko breathed in the sweet stink of the dark elf, and it was odd, yet nice, and a little arousing.

  Now, the strange script was ice on the page, hanging above the water. And that ice was melting, fast, dripping back into the basin. The water plinked, plinked, plinked down.

  “Divinatio!” Steven roared. His huge eyes turned black as the shadows of the spell leaked from his skull. “Nefri says she understood the writing at first, but then it changed, and she can’t read it now. She says it talks of two island fortresses, one to the south, one to the north, that will lead us to those who still walk in the light. She couldn’t read all of them, since she was so surprised. Then the letters changed to ice. They changed, and she has no idea what those symbols might mean. Not a clue. But she thinks she knows where the southern fortress is. She called it Coronado, no, Keereeneeda.”

  “Which is it?” Mouse growled.

  “I’m hoping for Coronado,” Chazzie said. “We spent a week there naked at some point. What was the name of that nice general we were with, Pru? Or was he an admiral? Or air force? What do they call the brass in the human air force?”

  Pru didn’t respond to any of the questions. As a slender pink dragon, she didn’t have an expression on her face.

  Another thrill went through Uchiko. Aria and Tessa had told her the story of finding the truth about Steven’s heritage. They’d followed a map, solved riddles, and now, on another world, Uchiko was on a similar quest.

  The water in the basin exploded upward. A face appeared there, a beautiful elven face, and Uchiko recognized it at once. Quinnestri.

  The face made of water spoke in a loud voice that thundered through the vast cavern. “The eyes are ever searching. The eyes are ever closed. The dream you seek is nothing but a dream. Chase away to other worlds and leave Aqualyra alone.”

  Like before, that water was changing, becoming ice and then solidifying into a long cylinder, like a scroll. Though the face was no longer there, the voice continued to talk. “Hidden in dreams, death protects those who walk in the light. As for those on the dark path, arise, and fulfill your terrible destiny.”

  Howls tore through the air, the screams of a thousand voices, rising in a fevered pitch. The spectral shrieks froze Uchiko’s soul.

  The windows of every building vomited evil, such evil, Uchiko knew the cavern had become their tomb.

  Chapter Fourteen

  UCHIKO RAISED THE HELLSTRING even as Nefri grabbed the machine gun. Chazzie was already flying through the air as a pink Homo Draconis.