Page 22 of A Queen Of Broken Realms
Since then, there’s been no food, no sleep, no worthwhile entertainment. No sense of Ashen at all in my mated mark. Not even for a moment. No Ediye, though I’ve tried and tried andtriedto summon her through the pendant. The key Ashen gave me before I ran seems to have no power here, not that I know how to use it anyway. No successfully offing myself either, thanks to Ashen’s spell in Ravello, that fucker. Not for lack of trying. So it’s only been the constanttick, tick, tickof the rings on the wall as they shift. And then, once a day, as the words on the rings come closer and closer to aligning, the whisper ribbon.
And this time, I’m gonna get that fucking stone.
The first day, I tried to just go for it. I walked right up to the obsidian wall and grazed my fingertips on the tourmaline sphere and it shot me back across the cavern.Rejected. I guess technically I did sleep a little that first day, because I hit my head so hard it knocked me out.
Day two, I tried to swim out the hole. Hooktopus was having none of it and tentacled me right back in here.
In all the days since, I’ve tried pretty much everything to get myself out. I’ve hunted through the cavern for clues or hidden hatches. I’ve pushed the rings. Touched the letters. And I’ve watched, trying to learn the pattern of the rings and the meaning of the silver glyphs. The text emblazoned in each once is unfamiliar, same as the whisper ribbon that twists around me like a transparent scroll of sheet music. I can actuallyseethe words in those last few moments, just before they slip through the narrow space that opens around the stone when the rings align. But thesound…some words sound almost like Sumerian.
And I might have figured it out.
Maybe.
If not, at least I’ll probably whack my head hard enough that I’ll get to sleep for a while.
It’s not long now. The ticking grows louder as the convergence approaches. The glyphs will start to glow brighter. And then the whisper will surface from the rings themselves and drift around the cavern like a snake of words.
And right on time, the glyphs brighten.
I stand in front of the stone, close enough to reach out and touch it. But I don’t. Not yet.
The ticking grows like a pulse, reverberating through my chest. The whispering comes from everywhere around me. It shifts and twists through the cave as though testing its boundaries. It moves like a specter. It becomes a transparent, scrolling, curving line of text and sound. I start to chant with the repeating words, even though I don’t know what they really mean.
Hursanu y aabba
Ziana y anzu
Os naru nibiru insabatu
Elu lo zaqru
Nadna lo sagzal
Mitusitum
Over and over. Louder and louder.Tick, tick, tick.
Timing is everything.
I reach out and grab the ribbon as it shoots toward the opening of light that expands around the stone. I wrap it around my hand, chanting the words that still flood the space around me as I twist the scroll up my arm like a band of cool silk. The rings shift closer to alignment.
Three.
Elu lo zaqru.
Two.
Nadna lo sagzal.
One.
Mitusitum.
I reach out and grab the stone with my bound hand and tear it free of the light.
I’m blown down with the force of it. It knocks me on my back, but I’ve got it. It’s clutched to my chest and I’m not letting it go.
I sit up as the rings shift, layering one on top of the next, from the center moving outwards. My feet are unsteady as I rise and step closer, the veil of light growing more transparent until it shimmers like a diaphanous curtain.
