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She had an elfin quality, his mum. Small and slender, she was the source of his trim physique. But she was Southern, and rather than Náli – and his father’s – silver-pale coloring, had come to the North golden-haired and pink-cheeked. Living in the Fault Lands, without proper access to the sun so long, had rendered her sallow and drawn. She’d been a flighty bride, according to Keep gossip, and had grown into a shrill and unhappy woman in her dowager status. She wore a high-necked, gray wool gown trimmed with white fox fur, her small hands clenched together before her as she glared at them.
“Hello, Mother.”
Her brows drew tighter together, wrinkles marring her skin. “Náli.” Her tone was as stiff and formal as ever, head kicked back a fraction so she could meet his gaze from his position in Mattias’s arms. Even with all his Guard, and her small stature, she managed to make him feel small. “You’ve been negligent.”
“Yes, Mother, I know. If you haven’t noticed, there’s a war happening in our kingdom.”
Her lips pressed together. “And how do you expect to help that war effort if you aren’t at home, minding your post?”
“I’m a prominent lord of the land. Would you have me sit at home, hiding?”
“I would have you keep this fucking mountain from blowing up!” Her chest heaved, and her eyes blazed, and she was furious…and afraid.
“I’m here now, aren’t I?”
“Are you going to the well?”
“If Mattias is carrying me, where else could you think I was going?”
She did actually blush – a little. Her hands fidgeted together. “You wouldn’t have to be carried if–”
“My lady,” Mattias interrupted.
Náli had the pleasure of watching his mother’s nostrils flare in shock and outrage.
“Time is of the essence,” Mattias continued. “It’s imperative to get Lord Náli to the well. If you’ll permit.”
Mother made an ugly face, but finally stepped aside. “Yes. Well…”
Mattias pressed on, and Náli squeezed his bicep in thanks.
Down, down, down they went, past bowing servants, and open rooms with cozy fires, and past tapestries stitched with the likenesses of his ancestors. Until, finally…
Mattias kicked open…
The Door.
It had no handle for this reason, but needed a strong show of force. It swayed with a groan, and stuck, somehow, to the opposite wall. The scent of damp stone and salt rushed out to greet them.
Náli sucked in a sharp breath.
Mattias shifted his grip so he cupped the back of his head. “Same as ever,” he murmured. “It’s all right.”
It was far from all right, but Náli clutched at him, his diamond a weight against his chest, and let himself be carried down the ninety-two steps from the Keep to the well.
When Mattias’s boot touched the worn-smooth granite of the cavern floor, a warm pulse like a heartbeat started up in the diamond pendant. Náli’s skin hummed and buzzed, shifted over him like he wore a suit of bees. He failed to bite back a distressed grunt, and Mattias shifted him in his hold so he could see what lay before them.
Naus Keep had been built up from a cave fortress, yes, like the Palace at Aeres, and most strongholds of the New Age in the North. But in the other castles, the caves housed hot springs, or wine storage, or root cellars, or escape tunnels. In the Fault Lands, it housed the well. Náli called it that because his father and grandfather had done so before him; in truth, it was a wide, shallow underwater lake, still as glass, white as chilled milk.
It called to him, that well. Not in words, but in the thousand, discordant screams of the dead.
Náli pressed his ear to Mattias’s chest, and clapped a hand over the other, though he knew it did no good. The screams were only in his head, inside his own personal well of magic, laced through all his bones and tissues since the first time he’d breached the surface of that awful white pool. He still covered his ears, though, just as he’d done in his earliest boyhood. Like then, too, Mattias carried him to the edge of the water, though he wasn’t supposed to. Mother had screamed at him about it, years ago. The Corpse Lord was to enter the pool alone. But there were times, like now, when Náli had waited too long, used too much magic; times when he couldn’t stand, and so Mattias carried him…though it cost him.
Mattias paused at the edge to toe off his boots, and then, with jaw set grimly, he stepped down, and then down, descending the shallow stone steps that led into the well.
He’d never said how badly it hurt, or whether or not he could hear the voices, when he was wet to his knees, the tendons standing stark in his neck, his hands tightening where they gripped Náli.
Náli closed his eyes and rubbed his cheek against the warm velvet of his tunic, one last stolen moment of human contact before he was given over to the dead.
