The tip of Malcolm’s sword rang against a cracked cobblestone. “They’ll chase us back into the swamp. I can’t . . .”

  “Malcolm.” Garrett used what Arianna had begun to think of as his Lord Protector voice. Firm, but kind.

  Malcolm swallowed audibly and raised his sword. “Yes, sir. I’m okay.”

  They all ignored how the blade trembled.

  One moment Uvili was at her side, the next she held one of the dead at shoulder and hip, ripped it apart, and bashed the halves together. Crushed bone fell in a circle around her like dirty snow. The hip bones became curved weapons to smash the next body apart. Bending under reaching arms, she grabbed both skeletal legs in one big hand and used the body like a club to knock the last three dead off their feet. As the dead she held tried to fold back toward her, she smashed it into a pile of stone. An arm flew past her and all three of the remaining fingers scored dark lines across her thigh.

  Garrett tensed to leap forward. Arianna grabbed his jacket and snapped, “She’s bleeding! What do you think they’d do to you?”

  “I can’t just watch . . .”

  “Try.” Arianna slapped his arm with the pad. “Stay out of her way.”

  His brow furrowed. “Why are you holding a . . . Skull!”

  Teeth clattering, the skull rolled toward them, bounced off an angled cobblestone, and gained enough height that it headed straight for Garrett’s knees.

  Norik swung his bow and smacked it hard enough to send it the rest of the way down the hill. Arianna heard a distant splash.

  “Two points.” Norik managed most of a grin at her expression. “You don’t play games in Gateway?”

  “We do, but . . .”

  “My lord!” Malcolm pointed, his whole arm shaking. “She’s cleared the way!”

  Uvili stood surrounded by bone. She glanced back at them and said, “Run.”

  “I can light . . .”

  “Run!”

  Arianna’s legs were lead and her wet skirts made it feel as though she had a child wrapped around each ankle, but she ran. Malcolm stayed by her side.

  The dead shambled out of broken doorways and climbed down fallen roofs, moving like lizards over the few remaining tiles. They came from behind as well as from in front, and there wasn’t always time for Uvili to break them into small enough pieces.

  Garrett’s sword swept down and took off a piece of Arianna’s skirt when a hand clutched the hem and began to claw its way up toward her. A moment later, she slapped her staff through a pile of leg bones as they began to reform. Blood trickled down her cheek and she could taste iron in every labored breath.

  Then Garrett was at the gate. A bruising grip on her arm flung her forward and through. She stumbled, fell into Malcolm, and they held each other up, watching Uvili stomp one last ribcage flat before joining them. As she passed through the gate, she brushed bone dust off her hands and relaxed.

  There were no more dead. Either they were all in pieces or the fence marked the edge of their territory. Arianna hoped for the former and would settle for the latter.

  Malcolm’s left ear was bleeding, the hair around it a matted mess. She shoved the pad into Malcolm’s hand, then slid out of her pack, kneeling beside it to pull out her kit.

  “Arianna?” He waved the linen rectangle.

  “Press it against your ear.” No need to set it on fire now.

  “You have a cut on your face.”

  “I know.”

  “Will Petre . . . ?”

  “Walk? No.” She had no idea. But she was good at sounding like she knew what she was talking about.

  His fingers white around the hilt of his sword, Garrett stepped away from Norik. “Was that . . .” He wet his lips and began again. “Were they there to defend the mage-tower or were they created by the Mage War?”

  Uvili shrugged and spread her arms. Dark blood dripped from wounds already beginning to close.

  NONEE.NOW

  Nonee had uncovered Destros and Ryan Heir when she threw off her blanket of dirt and rock, and the two men helped her uncover the others. Kalyealee who-could-be-heir had two broken fingers. She spat dirt and complained. Keetin Norwin-cee helped to dig as he coughed, lips and teeth streaked with mud. Gearing had ridden the collapse halfway back down the hill and Captain Yansav, her legs still buried, sent Destros to retrieve him.

  “Carry him if you have to,” the captain grunted, fingers scrabbling at the soil.

  Nonee wanted Destros to remain, but no one asked her.

  She realized she might not want him there for his ability to lift rock and let him go. He wouldn’t understand she wanted comfort.

  Servan bled from a bone-deep cut over one eye, but cared more that her bow was in three pieces. Sensible. Her skull remained solid. Bleeding could be stopped. Cuts healed. They couldn’t repair the bow.

  “No.” Nonee stopped Ryan Heir from shifting one of the rocks that pinned the captain. “See how it supports the rest?”

  He stared at the puzzle they’d uncovered. “It’s stopping that big rock from crushing her legs?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then by all means, my lord, leave it where it is.” Captain Yansav frowned, arms bent up at awkward angles to keep them out of the way. “I can move my right foot. There’s a space there, if that helps.”

  “Yes.” Feet braced beyond the rocks in question, Nonee squatted. “This will hurt.”

  The captain snorted. “Of course it will. Do it.”

  Bodies were flexible, rocks were not. Not even for her. Knuckles brushing against Captain Yansav’s armor, Nonee worked her hand between the scales and the rock, compressing the captain’s chest until her whole arm was between them and she could ease the rock away.

  “Daughter of a deceased goat!”

  Nonee remembered Shurlian curses. Captain Marsan had used the same one.

  “Ryan Heir, Destros, Servan . . . take hold of the captain.” She waited until the men had a grip high on both arms, Servan’s hands tucked into the captain’s armpits. “On three, pull. One. Two.” Her arm a spear, she thrust it deep as she lifted, the weight of the largest rock pressed against her forearm. “Three.”

  They lifted her upright as soon as she was clear, but the captain’s left knee couldn’t hold her weight. She dropped back to the ground. “It’s not broken,” she growled. “If I bind it, it’ll be fine.”

  Servan knelt by her side. “Cap, your sword . . .”

  “Buried.” With two fingers, the captain pressed the triangular fold of skin back into place on Servan’s forehead while smacking the archer away from her boot with the other hand. “My lord, if you could bind this before she bleeds to death.”

  “Harris . . .” Ryan Heir shook his head and scrambled for Harris’s pack, dragging it out of a loose pile of dirt, digging through it for the rolls of cloth. He froze, the cloth half out of the pack. “Harris was wearing this.”

  “And his clothing,” Nonee agreed. “The trap takes only bodies.”

  “Servan’s still bleeding,” the captain ground out through clenched teeth. “Nonee, can you find my sword down there?” Her skin glistened and her nostrils flared.

  “Only dirt and rocks. No sword. Nothing metal.” Nonee flexed her arm, rocks grinding together as she shifted them. She couldn’t fling the rocks, there were too many people around, so she yanked her arm free as they fell. A jagged edge gouged a trench into her flesh without breaking the skin. Her elbow ached, but the ache wouldn’t last long, so she ignored it.

  Ryan Heir pressed a folded cloth to Servan’s forehead and secured it in place in spite of trembling fingers. “Harris . . .”

  “Is in the workroom.” She straightened carefully, weight equal over both feet. Once a hill had fallen, it would fall again.

  “We have to get to him.”

  Him. Harris. He’d been kind. “Yes.”

  “It smells up here,” Kalyealee who-could-be-heir called from the safety of the undisturbed part of the hill. “It smells like rotten chicken guts.”

  “Specifically chicken?” Keetin Norwin-cee asked, binding her broken fingers to the whole finger beside them.

  She pushed at his shoulder with her other hand. “Shut up.” Tear tracks cut a line through the dirt on her face, but she hadn’t made a sound when Keetin Norwin-cee straightened the broken bones. Nonee was reluctantly impressed. Arianna said . . . had said that injuries of fingers and toes caused pain out of proportion to their size.

  As Nonee climbed up onto solid ground, she picked up a small boulder and threw it at the portal. And then threw another into the grass.

  No darkness rose at either trap.

  “They’re not working?” Keetin Norwin-cee asked, spat, ran his tongue over his teeth, and spat again.

  “They’ve not reset.” She smelled rot. The life anchoring the portal to the path had been released in the landslide, although the body remained. It would be close to the surface, but not, she hoped, exposed. She remembered what it had looked like when it was buried.

  Ryan Heir dropped Harris’s pack and straightened, wincing as the weight of his own pack shifted. “I can’t wait for Destros and Gearing to get back here. Nonee, can you carry me and run?”

  “Yes.”

  “I fail to see why she needs you.” Kalyealee who-could-be-heir stepped between them.

  Ryan Heir pushed past her, rocking her back on her heels. “The locks of the tower do not yield to the weapon. The Heir’s Chronicle? Maybe you should have studied it.”

  Kalyealee who-could-be-heir flashed fire with her unbound hand. Nonee liked the gesture. It saved a great many words. “And why don’t they yield? Because the mage who made her didn’t trust her.”

  “Mages don’t trust,” Nonee said flatly. “Not their creations. Not each other. Only themselves.”

  “And trusting in yourself, in your ability, is such a terrible thing.” Kalyealee who-could-be-heir tossed her head.

  “Only themselves,” Nonee repeated.

  “I heard you the first time.”

  Had she? Nonee wondered.

  Keetin Norwin-cee waved a hand toward her. “No offense, Nonee, but I kind of understand why they wouldn’t trust you. If they’d done to me what they did to you, I’d want to get some of my own back.”

  “If they’d made you indestructible? Essentially immortal?” Kalyealee who-could-be-heir jabbed her bound fingers toward Keetin Norwin-cee. “This prejudice, this skewing of history to see mage-craft only as destructive, is why expanding the Scholarship of the Broken Lands is so important!”

  Ryan Heir’s chin rose. “Enough!”

  “Agreed.” Captain Yansav sank to the ground and used both hands to shift her injured leg. “Nonee, take Servan. You’ll need someone who . . .”

  Nonee reached out and caught Servan just before she hit the ground.

  “Just dizzy,” she muttered as Nonee lowered her the last little distance. “I’m okay.”

  Nonee met the captain’s gaze. “Head wound.”

  The captain sighed. “Yes.”

  Keetin Norwin-cee coughed, wet and ragged. The captain could barely walk. Destros had not yet returned, held to either Scholar Gearing’s pace or the scholar’s weight.

  “Enough wasting time,” Ryan Heir declared. “I’m going in after Harris!”

  “No.” Kalyealee who-could-be-heir folded her arms. “You’re not going in alone. You could destroy irreplaceable scholarship.”

  “Or it could destroy him,” Servan muttered, fingers poking at the cloth wrapped around her head.

  Nonee sighed and tucked Ryan Heir under one arm. Blades couldn’t pierce her skin; she was safe from his fingernails.

  “Both of them?” the captain asked over protests, as Nonee tucked Kalyealee who-could-be-heir against her other side.

  Nonee met the captain’s gaze again. “She could be heir.”

  After a moment, the captain nodded.

  RYAN.NOW

  Ryan clenched his teeth to keep them from taking a piece of his tongue and tried not to puke. Traveling by ancient mage-crafted weapon was fast, but that was all it had to recommend it.

  Nonee didn’t slow, she stopped, and he opened his eyes as the ground came up to meet him. A few minutes on his hands and knees seemed like an excellent idea. An hour or two seemed like a better one, but he didn’t have the time, and before his stomach had fully settled, he sat back on his heels.

  The building he faced was enormous. He was too close to see the whole thing, but it looked like it had been made of six or seven large buildings shoved together, with nine or ten smaller buildings randomly attached. The walls were clad in wooden shingles, the roofs were slate, and although no two windows were the same size, they were all surrounded by the same carved wooden framing. A surprising number of the small glass panes were intact. A second look and he could see that the rambling, haphazard nature of the structure camouflaged extensive damage. The building had taken several solid hits during the Mage War. Weathered beams jutting up like wooden teeth showed where an entire floor had been ripped off the northwest corner.

  “Is it structurally sound?” Lyelee wheezed, on Nonee’s other side.

  “Some of it,” Nonee told her.

  Gripping Nonee’s wrist, Ryan hauled himself onto his feet and stumbled toward the large, arched door. He scrubbed at his beard, and, still not entirely sure he wasn’t going to throw up, asked, “What do we do to get inside?”

  The door had no visible hinges or latch.

  Nonee tapped the wood just right of dead center. “Press here.”

  Ryan pushed his palm against an area as unmarked as the rest of the door. He felt more than heard a double click as a piece of wood rose and slid to the right, exposing a small, square hole.

  “There’s an iron loop in the hole. Pull it.”

  “In my opinion . . .” Lyelee moved to Ryan’s other side. “. . . sticking your hand in that hole would be unwise.”

  “Do you have a better idea?” He wiped sweaty palms against his thighs.

  “We take a moment to study . . .”

  “Harris doesn’t have a moment.” He shoved his left hand into the hole.

  “Idiot,” Donal scoffed. “You could have broken a window and gone in that way.”

  “At least he used his non-dominant hand.”

  “He doesn’t have a dominant hand. He doesn’t have a dominant anything.”

  The sides of the hole pulled at his sleeve and scraped against his forearm as a fingertip touched metal. Teeth clenched, he shoved harder until he could hook a finger in the loop and pull.

  The door swung inward, pulling his finger from the loop and the wood from around his arm.

  Lyelee pushed past him, into the building. He leapt forward on her heels. As Nonee cleared the threshold behind him, the door slammed shut, plunging them into darkness.

  For a moment.

  “The mage-lights still work,” Lyelee announced, breaking the silence.

  Ryan glanced up and saw half a dozen balls of white light floating between the beams, just barely illuminating the long, looping lines carved into the dark wood, most of their light directed downward. The room had six wood-paneled walls, five doors, and a hearth. Four of the doors were single slabs of carved wood, the fifth was a wide double door with ornate steel handles. On each side of the double door was a tall window constructed from single sheets of impossibly large and impossibly clear glass.

  Nonee grabbed both handles and opened the door. Sunlight poured in. Outside was blue sky and sun-bleached grass. At the edge of the overgrown garden, Ryan could see where the road up the hill became a path.

  “Mage-craft,” Lyelee announced.

  “No flaming shit,” he muttered, then raised his voice. “Nonee, Harris!”

  Nonee ducked through the door to the right of the hearth, mage-lights flashing on when her foot touched the floor. Running full out, Ryan could just keep up. He could hear Lyelee complaining behind him, but he kept his attention on Nonee, half afraid he’d lose her if he looked away.

  As they slowed to descend a delicate spiral staircase that shouldn’t have been able to hold Nonee’s bulk but somehow did, the wall moved under his braced hand. Rocking back, he curled his fingers away from a writhing figure with too many arms that seemed to be trying, and failing, to break free of the wood. “Nonee . . .”

  “They bite,” she said, squeezing around the final turn. “And they don’t let go.”

  “Great. Lyelee!” He held both hands carefully away from the wall as he continued to descend. “Don’t touch the carvings! They’re dangerous.”

  “Mage-tower,” Lyelee yelled back. “Of course they’re dangerous. If you’d paid attention to . . .”

  Nonee reached the lower level and sped up, pounding footsteps drowning out Lyelee’s voice.

  Ryan followed her around a corner and another and another, and considered asking if the lack of doors meant there were no actual rooms in the mage-tower except for the workroom.

  Finally, they entered a hall so long the door at the other end seemed no more than knee high.

  “The workroom,” Nonee said, rocking to a stop.

  Harris was on the other side of that door.

  Gasping for breath, air burning in his throat, he pushed past her and had gone half a dozen steps when he realized distance had nothing to do with the size of the door. Another few steps, and he had to bend or brain himself on the lowering ceiling. A few more, and he had to crouch.

  “Ryan!”

  “Stay back, Lyelee! I’ve got this.”

  LYELEE.NOW

  Lyelee watched Ryan drop from a crouch onto his hands and knees. “Does he think the ceiling is coming closer?” The carvings along both sides of the hall watched him pass. Were they activated by proximity?