The Iron Trial(43)

The ground would be more uneven there. She didn't say it, but she had to know Call would go slower and it would be harder for him, that he was more likely to trip and fall, especially in the dark. He took a shaky breath and nodded. She was right - being out in the open would be too dangerous. It didn't matter if the going was harder. He'd said he wasn't leaving her or Aaron, and he'd stick to his word.

Step by painful step, his hand going to brace against the trunks of trees, they followed Havoc as he led them on a path parallel to the dirt road. Finally, in the distance, Call spotted a building.

It was massive and looked abandoned, the windows boarded up and the black carpet of an empty parking lot spread out in front of it. A sign towered over the nearby trees, picturing a huge unlit bowling ball and three pins. MOUNTAIN BOWLING, it said. It looked like the sign hadn't been lit in years.

"Are you seeing what I'm seeing?" Call asked, wondering if the pain was making him delusional. But why would he dream up something like that?

"Yeah," Tamara said. "An old bowling alley. There must be a town not too far from here. But how could Aaron be there? And don't say something like 'working on his score' or 'maybe he's in a bowling league' or something like that. Be serious."

Call leaned against the rough bark of a nearby tree and resisted the urge to sit down. He was afraid he wouldn't be able to get up again. "I'm serious. It might be hard to tell in the dark, but I have my most super-serious face on." He'd wanted the words to come out light, but his voice sounded tense. 

They crept closer, Call straining to see if light spilled out from beneath any of the doors or the boards over the windows. They made their way around to the back of the building. It was even darker there, the bowling alley blocking the streetlamps along the distant road. There were Dumpsters back there, looking dusty and empty in the faint moonlight.

"I don't know  … " Call began, but Havoc jumped, pawing at the wall and whimpering. Call craned his neck back and looked up. There was a window above their heads, almost completely boarded over, but Call thought he could see a little bit of light between the boards.

"Here." Tamara pushed at one of the Dumpsters, inching it toward the wall. She clambered on top of it, then reached down to help Call up after her. He dropped his walking stick and scrambled over the side, hoisting himself entirely with his arm strength, his boots bumping the metal, making an echoing noise. "Shhh," Tamara whispered. "Look."

There was definitely light coming from between the boards. They were held to the wall by very large, very sturdy-looking nails. Tamara looked at them dubiously.

"Metal is earth magic -" she began.

Call slid Miri from his belt. The blade seemed to hum in his hand as he worked the tip under one of the nails and pulled. The wood parted like paper, and the nail rattled down onto the lid of the Dumpster.

"Cool," Tamara whispered.

Havoc leaped onto the trash bin as Call cut the rest of the nails free and threw the wood aside, revealing the smashed remains of a window. The glass panes were missing, along with the muntins. Beyond the window, he could see a dimly lit corridor not far below. Havoc wiggled through the gap, dropped the few inches to the hallway floor, and turned around, looking expectantly at Tamara and Call.

Call slid Miri back into his belt. "Here we go," he said, and climbed through the window. The fall was slight, but still jarred his legs; he was wincing as Tamara joined him, landing noiselessly despite her boots.

They stared around them. It looked nothing like the inside of a bowling alley. They were in a hallway whose floor and walls were made of blackened wood, as though there'd been a fire. Call couldn't explain exactly how, but he felt the presence of magic. The air of the place seemed heavy with it.

The wolf set off down the corridor, scenting the air. Call followed him, his heart thudding with dread. Whatever he'd imagined when they first set off after Havoc from the Mission Gate, he'd never imagined they'd wind up in a place like this. Master Rufus was going to kill them when they got back. He was going to hang them up by their toes and make them do sand exercises until their brains bled out their noses. And that was if they managed to save Aaron from whatever had him; if they didn't, Master Rufus was going to do much worse than that.

Call and Tamara stayed dead silent as they passed by a room with its door slightly ajar, but Call couldn't help peeking inside. For a moment, he thought he was looking at mannequins, some standing upright and others leaning against the walls, but then he realized two things - one, that their eyes were all closed, which would have been very strange for mannequins, and two, that their chests rose and fell as they breathed.

Call froze, terrified. What was he looking at? What were they?

Tamara turned and gave him a questioning look. He gestured toward the room and saw the look of horror cross her face as she followed his gesture. Her hand flew to her mouth. Then, slowly, she inched away from the door, signaling for Call to do the same.

"Chaos-ridden," she whispered to him when they were far enough away that she'd stopped shaking.



       
         
       
        

Call wasn't sure how she could tell without seeing their eyes, but decided he didn't want to know badly enough to ask. He was already so freaked out that he felt as though any movement was going to make him jump out of his skin. The last thing he needed was more terrifying information.

If the Chaos-ridden were here, it meant this had to be some outpost of the Enemy. All those stories that Call had heard, the ones that had seemed to be about something that happened long ago, the ones he hadn't worried about, now flooded his head.

The Enemy had taken Aaron. Because Aaron was a Makar. They'd been idiots to let him go outside the Magisterium alone. Of course the Enemy would have found out about him and would want him destroyed. He was probably going to kill Aaron, if he hadn't already. Call's mouth felt as dry as paper and he struggled to concentrate on their surroundings through his panic.

The corridor's ceiling was getting higher as they made their way farther into the building. Along the walls, the blackened wood became regular wood paneling, with a strange wallpaper above it - a pattern of vines that, if he looked carefully at, Call swore he could see insects moving inside. Shuddering, he tried to ignore everything but being quiet as he kept going.

They passed several closed rooms before Havoc went up to a set of double doors and whined, then turned back to Call and Tamara expectantly.

"Shhh," Call told him softly and the wolf quieted, pawing once at the floor.

The doors were huge, made of a dark, solid wood that bore a pattern of scorch marks, as if they had been licked by fire. Tamara put her hand on the knob, turned it, and peeked inside. Then she eased it closed and spun back to Call with wide eyes. He didn't think he'd ever seen her look so stunned, even by the Chaos-ridden.

"Aaron," she whispered, but she didn't look elated like he would have expected, didn't look happy at all. She looked like she was going to throw up.

Call pushed past her to look.

"Call -" Tamara hissed warningly. "Don't - there's someone else there."

But Call was already leaning in, his eye pressed to the crack in the door.

The room on the other side was huge, soaring up to massive, broad rafters that crisscrossed the ceiling. The walls were lined with empty cages, stacked on top of one another like crates. Cages made of iron. Their narrow bars were stained with something dark.

From one of the rafters dangled Aaron. His uniform was torn and his face scratched and bloody, but he looked mostly unharmed. He was hanging upside down, a heavy chain attached to a manacle on one of his ankles, rising to a pulley bolted to the celing. He was struggling weakly, sending the chains swinging from side to side. 

Standing just below Aaron was a boy - small, skinny, and familiar - looking up and grinning a nasty grin.

Call felt his stomach drop. It was Drew looking up at Aaron in his chains and grinning. He had a length of chain wrapped around one wrist. He was using it to lower Aaron toward a massive glass container filled with a roiling, roaring darkness. As Call stared at the darkness, it seemed to shift and change shape. An orange eye peered out from the shadows, shot through with pulsing green veins.

"You know what's in the container, don't you, Aaron?" said Drew, his features twisted up into a sadistic smile. "It's a friend of yours. A chaos elemental. And it wants to suck you dry."





TAMARA, WHO HAD bent down beside Call, made a choked sound.

"Drew," Aaron panted, in obvious pain. He reached out for the manacle around his ankle, then fell back as the chaos elemental lifted a shadowy tentacle. It took clearer form as the tentacle drew closer to Aaron, until it was almost solid, brushing his skin. He jerked and cried out in agony. "Drew, let me go -"

"What, you can't get yourself free, Makar?" Drew sneered, jerking on the chain so that Aaron rose a few feet out of reach of the chaos elemental. "I thought you were supposed to be powerful. Special. But you're not really special, are you? Not special at all."

"I never said I was," said Aaron in a choked voice.

"Do you know what it was like to have to pretend I was bad at magic? That I was a fool? To listen to Master Lemuel bemoan choosing me? I was better trained than all of you, but I couldn't show it or Lemuel would have guessed who'd really trained me. I had to listen to the Masters tell their stupid version of history and pretend I agreed, even though I knew that if it hadn't been for the mages and the Assembly, the Enemy would have given us the means to live forever. Do you know what it was like to learn that the Makar was some stupid kid from nowhere who would never do anything about his powers except what the mages told him to do?"