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Trenyth lunged, trying to protect her as I tripped over a hidden flange on the table and went skidding over the edge, hitting my chin on the floor. We all went down, with the lightning focusing on Camille. A moment later, as we scrambled for the door, the room shook and a sound like crashing thunder rolled through the air. The storm clouds we were facing shrank and vanished.
“Fuck, what’s happening?” Camille managed to pull herself by holding on to one of the chairs.
I followed suit, realizing that the floor was rolling under our feet. “Earthquake!”
Trenyth panicked. “The Queen! I must get to her side!” He turned to us.
“Go—we’ll find our way out. Just go.” I shoved him toward the door and he stumbled out as the quaking went on and on. The sound grew from thunder to freight train, and I thought I could hear screams racing by, a blur in the mayhem.
Camille made her way over to the door, crawling on her hands and knees. “We need to get in the arch!”
But the door had swung shut again and there was no visible handle, no way to open it. We were trapped in the room. On the plus side, our nasty lightning storm seemed to be gone, but on the other hand—so did any escape. And the rumbling beneath our feet continued to grow.
“Get under the table, it looks strong enough to shield us.” I grabbed Camille by the arm. We crawled under the dais, which was made of solid marble. If it cracked on us, we’d have one hell of a headache, but if it held, we’d be protected from falling debris. And given that the quake hadn’t stopped, I doubted we’d get through without something breaking off and tumbling down from the ceiling.
The rumbling became more violent. Camille and I held on to each other, cowering against the center pedestal. I could hear her whispering something under her breath but couldn’t tell if it was a spell or a prayer.
Rolling in waves, the floor rippled beneath us, like an ocean of marble, fracturing as a network of faults ran through it. And then, a loud crash, and out of the corner of my eye, I saw something thunder to the ground in a shower of dust. Another crack, and another shower of dust.
I had no clue how long the quake had been rolling through the palace. It felt like forever, like it would never end, and my stomach lurched with both fear and nausea. The worst boat ride in the world would be better than this. And then . . . slowly, the noise began to fade, and Camille squeezed my hand as the rolling slowed and—finally—stopped.
We waited for a moment, then scrambled out from beneath the table. The eye catchers were still glowing, but the dust clouded our sight. Only a few feet away, one of the stone figurines ornamenting the walls had tumbled to the floor, barely missing the table. It was big enough that it would have smashed us flat, for sure, if it had hit.
Coughing as the clouds of dust and debris filled the air, we stared at the destruction. The room was unrecognizable. Whatever decoration there had been lay in ruins, and the floor was a mishmash of broken marble. Camille inched her way closer to me and I took her hand, afraid to move for fear of setting off something.
Just then, an aftershock hit. Camille let out a scream as another one of the statues in the room toppled toward us. I grabbed her and ran, pulling her along with me by the wrist. Seconds later, the marble figurine landed right where we’d been standing, smashing into huge chunks and shaking the room.
“We have to get out of here. How are we going to get that fucking door open?” We skirted debris until we were at the door.
Camille stared at the huge gray obstacle. “I can get us out.”
Her voice grim, she reached into her cloak and brought out her unicorn horn. A powerful artifact, given to her by the Dahns unicorns, it was one of eight in existence. The Black Unicorn, the father of the Dahns race, shed his body every few thousand years, and in return for playing the fire to his phoenix, Camille had been gifted with his hide and horn. It was an incredibly powerful weapon, with limited usage, and it needed to be recharged every month under the dark of the moon.
I backed away. “Get to cracking, then, because I doubt that will be the only aftershock we’re going to feel.”
Her gaze narrowed as she gauged the door. “I just hope I don’t bring on the next one.” She closed her eyes, sliding into trance.
I didn’t understand the full mechanics of the horn, but I knew that there was a spirit inside of it, and that she’d caused havoc with it before.
A moment later, she raised the horn into the air, aiming it at the door. A wind seemed to rise in the room, growing steadily stronger. Another moment, and the floor began to shake again, though I didn’t know if it was from another aftershock, or the powers from the unicorn horn.
Camille’s hair rose in the wind, streaming back as if she were facing a giant fan, and as the tiles beneath the door began to collapse, creating an opening of about two inches below the door, the wind increased until it became a howling gale. I made sure I wasn’t in the path of anything that might blow over on me, and crouched to the ground, holding on for dear life. How Camille managed to stand in the force of the winds she was raising was a mystery to me, but stand she did.
The doors creaked and shifted, groaning as they began to open. Slowly the winds pushed them inward. Inch by inch they moved, and with a hurricane gust, they slammed open so hard that the walls cracked, and a shiver of fractures ran through the gray stone, shattering the gates. Another huge cloud of dust swept into the air, blowing past us, from the rubble that cascaded to the ground.
As the winds began to die, Camille motioned to me. She looked dark, a dour expression on her face, and I wasn’t sure what was running through her mind, but there was no time to sit around and chat. We headed through the broken remnants of the doorway, just in time for another aftershock.
This one was bad, perhaps as bad as the first one. I tripped, slamming against a wall. Camille went tumbling in the opposite direction as the world shifted. She landed hard and I heard her shout “Fuck!” but then we were plunged into darkness as all of the eye catchers faded and there was no more light.
The shaking continued, and all around us the sound of crashing stonework continued to reverberate through the air. I scrambled to get on my hands and knees, trying to regain some of my equilibrium, but up was down and left was right and it was one big blur of motion and sound.
“Camille? Can you hear me?” I held my breath, praying to Bastus that she would answer.
“Yes, I’m over . . . I’m here, trying to dodge the rubble.” She sounded petrified, but at least she was alive.
“We need to get up to ground level. If this continues we’re going to be buried alive. Which way did we come? Do you know where we are?”
After a moment, she answered. “When we first arrived, the room was to our right. So we need to make sure to head left if it’s behind us.” A pause, “Am I right?”
