Page 162 of A Tower of Half-Truths
Alain was too shocked to say anything. So, too, were Mavery and Ellice, judging by their slackened jaws. Neldren, however, threw back his head and laughed. The sound was almost deafeningas it reverberated through the small high-ceilinged chamber.
“After all this,” he said, wiping tears from his eyes, “it’s fuckingempty!Looks like someone beat us to the punch and kept the treasure all to himself.”
“No,” Alain whispered, shaking his head. “Those wards, that strange magic… No one could get through that unscathed.”
“Butwedid. Apparently, someone else did, too. I’ll bet they got past the wards, looted the place, and reset the defenses.”
“What about the anchor?” Ellice asked. “They left all that copper to guard an empty building?”
Neldren shrugged. “Stranger things have happened.”
“This can’t be right,” Alain muttered.
For centuries, this place had eluded the continent’s best scholars. Until not quite an hour ago, it had been shrouded in some of the most powerful magic Alain had ever seen. All that effort for what was, effectively, a Necromancer’s storage shed that had long been cleaned out?
“No, there must be more to it than this…”
Mavery appeared to agree. She began running her hands over the walls. When that proved fruitless, she gazed upward, searching the ceiling for answers. Alain followed her gaze but could see only his orb of light against a backdrop of gray stone.
“Watch it, Mave!” Neldren cried.
Alain turned to see Mavery standing with her back to Neldren’s chest. Neldren had her by the shoulders, steadying her. She looked down at her feet, then gasped. She pulled herself out of Neldren’s clutches and got down on all fours.
“Nowwhat are you doing?”
“It’s a fabrication!” she said, sweeping her hand in a broad arc across the floor.
Ellice leaned over and placed her hand beside Mavery’s. “She’s right. I’d know that feeling anywhere.”
Alain approached, bringing his orb of light closer. In the dead-center of the floor was a round stone that was slightly offset from the rest. It was rimmed with a thin band of metal. Iron, from the look of it. A faint pulsation emanated from it. It had the rhythmic quality of a Gardemancy spell but at a more rapid tempo.
“Our Sensing spell only works on warding magic,” Alain said. “That’s why only Mavery can see it. What kind of fabrication do you think it is?”
Ellice shrugged.
“Only one way to find out,” Mavery said. She pressed her palm flat against the fabrication, furrowed her brow as she fed it a bit of arcana. The fabrication itself did not change, but the walls trembled.
“Oh, gods, it’s a trap!” Ellice cried. “The whole godsdamned building is going to collapse!”
Mavery pulled back her hand, and the trembling stopped.
“Wait a minute…” she said.
She fed the stone more arcana, and the building shook again, more forcefully this time. Ellice shrieked. The floor now vibrated as well. Alain looked out the archway.
“It’s not collapsing,” he said. “We’reascending!”
The more arcana she fed the fabrication, the higher in the air they rose. Alain knelt beside Mavery and placed his hands on the fabrication. His arcana, combined with hers, sped up their ascent. As the ground vanished, Mavery emitted a low groan and honed her attention on the fabrication. Alain recalled that she had a fear of heights. She’d revealed that only days ago, when they were in the High Council’s—
He gasped.
“What is it?” Mavery asked.
Before he could answer, the building jerked to a halt, then the fabricated stone rattled beneath Alain’s palms. It slid to one side, disappearing into a slit within the floor, and revealed a stone spiral staircase. It was too dark to see how far it descended, but there was no doubt another level—likely several—below this one.
Alain took Mavery by the hands. He shook with excitement as he beamed at her.
“Have I mentioned lately how brilliant you are?”
