Page 25 of Invocation

“No. They’re pretty docile once they’ve been trained.”

He shook his head. “You’re braver than I am,” he decided.

They came to the other side of the cavern, which opened into a wide balcony over the forest. As they broke away from the crowd and stepped up to the balustrade, Novikke stopped, staring.

They were standing on a cliff face. Not at the top of a cliff, but on the side, sticking out of the middle of a vertical slope. An impossibly high wall of stone stretched above and below them, dropping down into the valley.

The city had been hewn from the side of the cliff. It was like it had been carved by the gods, a single sheet of stone intricately cut into a thousand balconies and spires and windows, all connected with delicate and precarious stairs and ramps and bridges. Firelight and mage lights glittered in windows and on pathways all along the wall.

It was astonishingly beautiful.

What was it Neiryn had said? Something about huts and caves? Novikke laughed aloud, stunned. He couldn’t have imagined this. She’d have a lot to tell him when she got back.

If she got back.

When she looked over again, Aruna was grinning with uncharacteristic youthful excitement as he watched her react to the view. When she looked over at him, he pressed his lips together, suppressing the smile. Her eyes were drawn to his mouth, and lingered there. She swallowed, trying to think about anything other than kissing him.

It was only then that she realized how much he’d wanted her to not hate Vondh Rav. He wanted her to be impressed, to see the beauty in it, especially after what had happened earlier. He wanted her to see it the way he saw it. He wanted her to believe it was worth protecting.

“It’s… impressive,” she admitted. “There’s nothing like this in Ardani.”

His smile crept back up.

Even with everything that bothered her about Vondh Rav, she found herself growing more curious about it the longer they stayed. She wanted to know everything about it.

“I wish we could have come here without a time limit,” she said. “I wish you could show me all of it.”

He came to take her hand, looking up at the city above with her. “Maybe someday,” he said. He gave her a sad smile. “We should keep moving. It’s this way.” Reluctantly, he turned toward a set of stairs descending from the balcony.

The stairs ran along the side of the cliff. Beyond an iron railing that did not feel sufficiently large or secure, empty air stretched down farther than she could see through the darkness.

“Gods above,” Novikke murmured, peering over the edge. “Isn’t this dangerous?”

Aruna looked amused and pointedly set a hand on the railing. “Are you afraid you’re going to fall?”

“No.”

“That’s good. This is not the city for people with a fear of heights.”

He brought her down the stairs and around the corner into another cavern, this one smaller and much quieter.

The buildings there were bigger and covered in detailed reliefs and ornaments. People were dressed in expensive-looking clothes. It was the only place so far where she’d seen people wearing brightly colored fabric, which must have been either carefully bleached and dyed or illegally shipped in from outside the forest. There were no shops. A residential area.

She spotted more guards, too. She made a note of where they stood so that she could keep away from them.

She paused as they passed someone pinning a sheet of paper to a large bulletin board on the side of a building. It was lined with flyers covered in an alien curling script. Apparently the translator only worked on spoken words, not written ones.

The person moved away, and Novikke’s attention was drawn to the paper they’d just posted. It had a trio of portraits drawn on it. A trio of familiar portraits. She ventured closer, filled with dread.

There was an etching that was a surprisingly accurate likeness of Aruna. Below it were two smaller etchings of a sun elf man and a human woman that did not particularly look like Neiryn and Novikke, but they could not have been anyone else.

Aruna had wandered ahead, and came back when he realized Novikke wasn’t following. He began to speak, then saw what she was looking at. He frowned, his eyes flicking over the words. “That isn’t good,” he murmured.

Novikke looked up to see if anyone was watching, then tore down the paper, folded it, and tucked it into her pocket. “Maybe we should do whatever we’re going to do here quickly.”

He cast an apprehensive glance down the street and pulled his hood closer around his face. “This way.”

They went down a series of remote streets. Aruna stopped on the doorstep of a tall, narrow house. He sighed. “I was going to ask you to stay outside for this part. But I don’t want to risk you being seen while I’m not here, so you’d better come in with me.” He knocked on the door.

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