Blood of Dragons

She held tight to him and opened her eyes slowly. He wore the moon necklace now. The light it cast was faint and yet bright in contrast to such utter darkness. She looked away from it, trying to let her eyes adjust.

They stood together in the bottom of the shaft. Looking up, she was startled to see distant pinpricks of light. Stars. The walls of the shaft were almost smooth, the seams of the stonework fine and straight. They stood on rubble of metal and pieces of ancient wood preserved by the cold. ‘Stoop down,’ she requested in a whisper. When he did, he brought the light with him as she bent beside him. Squatting, she touched the long-broken platform beneath their feet. Here was a piece of a gear. ‘This is the part that went up and down in the shaft. It must have broken and fallen a long time ago.’

The necklace moved slightly with his nod. ‘It did,’ he said. ‘In the quake. The last big one.’ There was a clutter of sticks that crunched as she stepped on them. Something gleamed among them. Silver?

He caught his breath as she pushed the sticks aside with her bare hands and then peered more closely. ‘It’s a ring,’ she said. She picked it up and her touch woke it. Elderling-made. A flame-jewel lit with a pale-yellow gleam in a jidzin setting. Jidzin. She knew it for what it was now, Silver trapped in iron. She held it between two fingers, using it as a tiny lamp. ‘All kinds of stuff on the ground down here. But no Silver. Just earth.’ She peered closer. ‘Rapskal, look here, where we can see past the broken platform. The bottom of the shaft is paved with stones! That makes no sense for a well! Think how we lined our drinking-water holes on the way here. We wanted the water to seep up from the bottom and in from the sides. We filtered it, but we didn’t block it. Why would they make a shaft this deep and close it off on all sides from the Silver? It makes no sense.’

‘I don’t know.’ His voice was shaking. ‘This is the first time I’ve ever been down here. I wanted to come down here, but I couldn’t.’ He swallowed.

‘Well, we’re both here now.’ She recalled Carson’s frequent words. ‘Everything the Elderlings did, they did for a reason.’ She turned in a half circle. Her boot snagged on something: a piece of dirty fabric. ‘Someone’s old tunic is down here. Did they throw garbage down here when the well went dry?’

‘No,’ he whispered. ‘No.’

She tugged at the dirt-caked folds. ‘Look. Here’s a glove. No. It’s a gauntlet.’ She picked it up by a fingertip, shook it free of dirt and sticks and studied it.

‘There’s the other one,’ he said, but made no move to touch it. He crouched with his back braced against the wall, watching her. She found the mate, and tugged it from under a stone that had trapped it. The stone rolled slightly and tapped against the wall with a hollow sound. She turned to look at it.

‘Amarinda,’ he said, and his voice choked on the word. She leaned closer. It was not a stone she had dislodged. It was a skull, brown and cracked. She stared, feeling the pressure of a scream build inside her. Then it died away to nothing. She took a long careful breath.

‘These were her gloves. For working the Silver.’

He nodded. She heard him gulp back tears before he gasped, ‘After the quake. I couldn’t find her. I was desperate. I even went to Ramose. I threatened him, and he finally told me that she might have gone down the well when it hit. To make it safe somehow. Everyone was running, trying to get on the boats, pushing toward the pillars, trying to be anywhere except in Kelsingra. In the distance, the mountain was smoking. They feared mudslides and floods. It had never happened here but other Elderling towns had been buried that way. So many people were fleeing, but I couldn’t go without you. I came here, but the mechanism was broken, half of it fallen down the shaft and no one answered my shouts. My shoulder was broken. I tried to move the debris but I couldn’t. I shouted myself hoarse, but no one answered. Then the second quake hit.’ He cradled his arm, his face creased with a memory of old pain. ‘I wanted to get down here somehow, to be sure. But I couldn’t. I went back to our home, hoping to find you. Someone told me they had seen you, leaving through one of the pillars. I knew it was a lie, knew you wouldn’t leave without me, but I hoped it wasn’t. I left you a message in my column by our door. And I went with the others.’ He shook his head slowly. ‘We all meant to come back. We knew the streets would mend themselves and that the walls would heal if we gave them time. The Silver in them told them what they must be.’

His voice died away. He looked around the well shaft blindly.

‘I must have died before I ever returned. Where or how, I’ll never know. After the message I left for you, no other memories are stored in the pillars. Nothing from me. Nothing from you.’