Page 18 of Invocation

Chapter 5

It was the next evening when Novikke saw rectangular shapes looming between the trees in the distance.

The narrow path had widened until it resembled a road—something she hadn’t thought existed in Kuda Varai. She could only guess that this meant they were coming to someplace important. And there was only one place of real importance in Kuda Varai.

Aruna stopped and wrote in the notebook. “Vondh Rav is ahead,” he’d written, confirming her suspicions.

“How do we get in without being seen?”

“We don’t.” He gave her a guilty glance. “I go in through the front gate, with my captive.”

She frowned at him. He reached inside his pack and pulled out a coiled length of rope, which he showed to her as if asking permission. Suddenly she understood why he hadn’t explained more of the details of his plan earlier.

“And after we get in?” she wrote, realizing it was only going to get worse once they were inside the city.

He pressed his lips together and bent over the notebook as he wrote. “No one will give you a second glance if they think you’re a slave.”

Novikke’s lip curled. But he wasn’t wrong. Like Neiryn had said, no non-Varai went to Vondh Rav except as slaves. There was no better way for her to blend in.

She held out her arms. Aruna gave a short nod and pulled her hands behind her. She almost protested when he took Zaiur’s sword from her and strapped it to his hip, but bit her tongue.

“Just like old times,” she muttered. She twisted her wrists, testing the rope. It was looser now than it ever had been when they’d first met. She’d be able to get out of it on her own, if she wanted to. But the sensation of rope around her still gave her a sense of Panic encroaching on her thoughts.

Aruna wrote something, and held the book up for her to read. “Thank you.”

He pulled up his hood, shrouding his face, and put a steadying hand on her arm as they proceeded.

As they went farther down the path, buildings climbed out of the dim of evening. Just a few scattered homes at first, and then more. It was nothing like Rameka. As they went farther down the road, they grew larger and more closely packed.

It was much like the area surrounding the walls of Valtos. The notable difference was the way that trees and brush grew between buildings and even in the road. Wherever they could be left alone, they were. The Varai only cut the trees that they absolutely had to.

Night was falling, and people were just starting to wake and emerge from houses. A few of them tossed Novikke angry looks when they saw her.

Just the sight of her was enough to anger them, and she wasn’t even wearing her Ardanian uniform anymore. She wondered what they thought she’d done to deserve their ire.

Ahead, the road came to an abrupt dead end. Bizarrely, a wide set of stairs led into the earth where the road ended, covered by an ornate stone overhang and guarded by several armed and armored men and women. As they approached, Aruna’s hand tightened on Novikke’s arm. She didn’t have to work particularly hard to look nervous.

She was willingly walking into Vondh Rav under the supervision of a Varai man, who she’d allowed to take her weapon and bind her hands. It occurred to her that she might be the most foolish person in the world. She was sure Neiryn would agree, at least.

The guards barely looked at them as they passed. There were no extra security measures to get into the city, evidently. Being Varai was enough to be granted entry.

She breathed out a shaky breath as they left the guards behind and started down the stairway. Aruna squeezed her arm a little, and she silently cursed him. That had only been the beginning. An entire city full of people who wanted to kill her awaited them.

The stairs descended deep into the ground, down a long, straight tunnel lit with torches that were too far apart for her human eyes to make use of. Twice she slipped over an uneven stair and would have fallen if Aruna hadn’t hastily pulled her upright.

At the bottom of the stairs, the tunnel opened up into a cavern. Novikke gaped.

They were in an enormous underground city square, dimly lit by fire and mage lights. Buildings were made from stone blocks or carved from the stone of the cavern itself. Apartments built into the walls lined the sides of the cavern. Novikke saw a woman halfway to the ceiling emerge from a doorway to shake out a rug over a balcony. Lines of drying laundry hung across windows.

Suddenly there were night elves all around, entering or exiting the square through tunnel mouths that led deeper into the earth. A group of children played near a patch of trees and ferns that were somehow growing here, in the dark, in the middle of the cavern. In the distance beyond the trees she could see something resembling a marketplace.

She’d thought there were a lot of Varai at Rameka. This was another experience entirely—one that she had not been prepared for.

She’d expected more hateful stares, but hardly anyone looked in her direction. Scanning the space, she saw a few other pale-skinned heads sticking out of the crowd. Perhaps her presence here was not as noteworthy as it had been outside the city.

Aruna had paused at the base of the stairway, allowing her to take everything in.

She turned and made a motion with her arms, drawing attention to her bound wrists. The other humans she saw were walking about freely, unrestrained. Aruna scanned the cavern until he spotted another human. He glanced at Novikke and nodded toward the man, then pointed to his own neck. It was then that she noticed that all the non-Varai were wearing identical leather collars.

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