There! Creatures move and crawl among the tunnels, misshapen knuckles tamping down soil clawed from the dank walls. Like the Eika, they seem fashioned more of metal and soil than of the higher elements, trapped forever by the weight of earth that courses through their blood and hardens their bones.
When she at last finds the burning stone that marks the gateway to the old sorcerer, he no longer sits beside it rolling strands of flax into rope against his thigh. He has left that place, and she does not know where to find him. But she has to keep looking. Because he is one of the Lost Ones, he is not human and surely therefore not bound to human concerns, to human intrigues and jealousies, to human lusts for power and possession. He might know the answer. He might know the pattern of the paths she must unravel.
Perhaps Da left her a message here, secreted in the labyrinth in such a way that she alone can find it. He must have prepared for this, knowing he might be gone and that she yet lived. Behind the locked door in her tower in her City of Memory there burns a fiery light; is it Da’s magic, hidden away? Is it the living manifestation of the spell he cast over her? If she had the key, could she open the door? Did Da hide the key here, somewhere in these halls whose pathways she cannot trace unless she explores them?
And yet, what will happen if she does unlock the door?
A whisper of breath touches the back of her neck. She shudders. Her back stings as if, simply by closing in on her, the creature blisters her with its poisonous intent. Is this what Da felt? Some thing always getting closer, always coming up behind him? Did he know it would kill him in the end?
She begins to run through the halls seen in the vision made by fire, although on the realm of earth her body sits silent and still in front of a roaring campfire. But the creature is stronger than she is, here, in this place. It knows these paths, and it is looking for her.
“Liath.”
It knows her name. She flees, but there is nowhere to go. Da used his magic to conceal her from their eyes on the realm of earth, but here she is vulnerable to their sight— and there, where she is hidden from them, she is vulnerable to Hugh.
Fear leaps and burns in her heart like wildfire. She is lost. Gasping, weeping, she forces herself to stop. She turns to face what stalks her, but she sees no thing, no shadow, no creature or human form; yet she knows it has marked her and that it closes in. It wants her. The air itself carries the sound of her breathing, the simple heat of her being, to the ears of that which listens for her.