Gruvrik growled as the door slammed shut, cutting off Errol, Maeda, Rashana, and Telyim behind them. He rushed over and smashed his cudgel into Stefano’s thigh. The man buckled and collapsed in a heap on the floor, where he curled into a ball to deflect the rain of kicks from the burly dwarf. He moaned in pain, but didn’t defend himself.

“Pull a stupid stunt like that again, and I’ll bash in your head,” Gruvrik roared, slapping Stefano’s shoulder to punctuate his words. Idiot man child is gonna get us all killed.

Rhae grabbed Gruvrik’s arm. “Stop it! He’s just trying to do what he thinks is right.”

Gruvrik shrugged her off, but didn’t hit the man again. “Aye, so am I.”

“Let him be, child,” Thenxi said. “This man hasn’t shown himself trustworthy in anything he’s done, but your uncle has. I’ll side with him.”

Stefano struggled to his feet. “I bear you no ill will, but I cannot allow you to reach your goal.”

Gruvrik pulled on the tufts of hair sticking out above his ears. “Why don’t you explain it to me again? Pretend I’m a five year old. Why can’t we reach the Stormorb?”

“As I’ve said, it will corrupt you—”

Gruvrik raised his cudgel, and Stefano clamped his mouth shut. “I’m not exactly the type prone to corruption, youngin. Let’s skip that part. What happens if it reaches out toward me with its vast and evil powers, and I do a jig and stick out my tongue, sling it in a sack, and haul back to Laurentum with my loot in tow?”

“Then Indara gets her hands on the device.”

“And that’s worth your life to prevent?”

Stefano nodded warily, eyeing the cudgel. Sweat dotted his brow.

“I like you, lad, despite your daft notions,” Gruvrik said, and he realized he meant it. “I’m not opposed to updating mission parameters on our return, if that makes ya feel better. But even if Indara can’t be trusted—and that ain’t too hard for me to believe—she’s right that the storm’s changing. This noble guardian shtick might have been a good idea years ago, but right now it’s liable to get us all killed, and I take umbrage to that sort of notion.”

A weight seemed to slough off the dingy-faced man. He nodded, motioned for the others to follow, and turned on silent feet to pad toward another narrow doorway. The whole place was filled with far too many doors and hallways, as mazelike as a rabbit warren. Gruvrik shivered at the thought. He’d been stuck in a warren once. Took him weeks to get out. He’d only survived by gnawing on dried carrots and drinking—well, nevermind. Not a pleasant memory.

“Finally getting somewhere, eh?” Gruvrik said to Rhae, winking at the Qeren. She was a proper height, unlike the spindly humans who tottered around too far off the ground. Good girl, if a bit soft in the head. He could forgive a little compassion, seeing as she called him Uncle. Kind of nice to have a little family vacation on the Bridge.

Gruvrik stopped counting twists and turns once he ran out of fingers. Book learning was all fine and good for others, but he couldn’t be bothered to keep track of numbers this big. Sure, he’d figured out how to read when he had to, but as treacherous as words were, they weren’t as bad as numbers.

“How about after?” Gruvrik asked Rhae. “Does my niece have any big plans when she’s back home?”

She skipped a step, almost tripping, then flung her arms around him and squealed. “Are you really going to be my uncle? Da used to ask me all sorts of silly questions like that before he passed, but now I don’t have anyone to check up on me. Will you come back to the Bard college and talk to my teachers when I’m in trouble? I get in trouble a lot, but I don’t know why.”

Gruvrik extracted himself from the hug and nodded sagely. “I have no problem believing you get in trouble. Right from the start I picked you out as the mischief maker of the team.”

“No!”

He broke into a laugh at Rhae’s crestfallen face. “Oh, aye, lass.”

Rhae brightened. “You’re teasing me.”

“So I am.”

“You’re a good Uncle, Gru.”

Beside them, Thenxi was as silent as a tomb. Gruvrik had been keeping an eye on her as they followed Stefano deeper into the tower. Dread seemed to build up on her face the longer they walked. She worked her jaw from side to side, not meeting his gaze. Her eyes flicked up and down the hallways, like she was looking for something. He didn’t trust her one bit, even though Rhae liked her. Guilt made people do funny things.

He knew that from experience.

Up ahead, light marked the end of the dank passageway. The pearlescent floor tiles took on a new hue, changing from the color of crushed mulberries to a soft, pale amber. Dark stones formed the lintel and supports of the doorway. He squinted at the construction as they passed to the next room. The walls and doorway were completely seamless, like glass blown into a shape by a craft worker. He got the sense that the building had been grown, not built.

They emerged into a circular room with flowing scripts ringing the walls. Across from him, a round portal glowed with dark, virulent light. That must be the target. It reminded him too much of the maw of that Dhambro Shade.

Above, softer, more natural light emanated from the ceiling, which curved in a golden dome, streaked through with flecks of fire. Wherever a crystalline line of light appeared, like a vein of golden ore, the darkness of the tower shrank back, peeling away as though burned by the amber lights. They appeared to be embedded in the original structure of the tower, not the purple coating of the darkstorm’s corruption.

Gruvrik combed his thumb and forefinger through his beard, weighing the possibilities. He tapped into old memories of evil, of parasites that grew up around their host. If he was right, then the dark, glass-like structure was simply a chrysalis surrounding the ancient control tower. This was the locus of the storm’s power; most likely it was why the Shade only haunted this part of the Bridge, and why it had resurrected after they killed it.

For the first time, he worried that Stefano might be right.

He thumped the scrawny man on the back and jutted his chin toward the gaping portal. “We gotta go through there, huh?”

“I will take the lead,” Thenxi said, unfolding her hands from within her robe. She lifted a pendant and held it before her as she approached the entrance to the heart of the storm. “Rhae, please come with me. You have a role to play in this before the end.”

An intimation of unease slithered in Gruvrik’s gut, but he waved the girl onward. “Best do what we came for, lass.”

The two walked hand in hand to the other side of the room. Thenxi raised the pendant up to the rippling surface of the gateway and thrust out her hand.

Gruvrik braced himself for a surge of power, but nothing happened. The trinket bounced off the portal, denied entry into the control center. Thenxi swore and tried again. Again she failed to enter.

A cloud passed over her face. She handed the pendant to Rhae. “Perhaps you must use the key. It seemed to quicken when you sang in its presence.”

Rhae unslung her harp and struck a few chords. She lifted the pendant while the sounds reverberated and tried to walk through the portal. She collided with it and grunted like she’d run into a brick wall. Brave girl. Not always the brightest, but brave. Gruvrik could respect that. She had a good future, He’d make sure she lived to enjoy it.

Stefano cackled, a touch of mania slipping through the cracks of his composure. “All this time, you didn’t even know how to get in? You just thought you’d waltz up and open the door?”

Thenxi spun to face him. “This key is a treasure of my people. We have handed it down for generations, waiting for the day when we would take the power of storms. This is our destiny, our bloodright. What do you know of such things?”

“That’s rich, Bridge Seer. What do you know of the outside world? Far less than what I’ve learned of your little Bridge, I assure you. Years of study led me at last to a clue about the storm. When I took my findings to Indara, she threatened to execute me to keep the truth of Elumunor a secret,” Stefano said. He paused, frowning at Thenxi. “I see from your face that you know that name. Was he the one who passed down your heirloom?”

“He was the greatest Seer in our history. He helped us survive the storm’s arrival and the schism of the tribes. Thanks to him we have the power of seers, the crèche system, our wings, moveable platforms—and hope.”

“What’s this about Indara?” Gruvrik demanded. “What did she know that she didn’t tell us before sending us out here? I don’t like secrets.”

“Probably not much,” Stefano admitted. “I may have been overly theatrical.” He turned to Thenxi and shrugged. “But you’re wrong about Elumunor. He didn’t help you survive the storms. He made the storm.”

=+=

Rashana leaped forward and struck the door with a fist. It flung her backward in an arc of power that left her dazed. Roaring, she transformed her hand into a mallet and tried again. This time she lost the hand, a shower of sparks exploding into the air where the metal sheared in half with the force of the feedback from the warding.

Jarkoda sprinted over to the arm, retrieving it for her. Anger swirled in his eyes. Already a flame gathered in his throat. He drew in a breath and unleashed it at the door. The fire spent itself against the barrier, sputtering into smoke.

Maeda growled and punched a fist into her other palm. She scrounged through her pack, pulled out a flint and lantern, and struck a light. “That Qeren is useful in this wretched place. If I have to walk by the light of those purple lamps, I’ll claw my eyes out before we reach the end.”

Rashana melded her severed arm back together, taking inventory of their situation. Their reunion had been short lived, but she already felt wistful at losing Rhae’s companionship. They shared a bond of otherness that their humans teammates couldn’t understand.

“We’ll never get through that directly,” Maeda said. She pointed toward the protective line around the lintel. “Better to destroy the ward instead.”

As they gathered to examine the flowing words, Rashana realized that Errol and Telyim had gone missing. They hadn’t passed through the doorway. Rashana was certain of it, but just to be sure, she replayed the memory, confirming that both the Eel and the Seer had been trapped on their side of the arch. So where was she now?

Maeda and Jarkoda were arguing over the best method to break the ward, so Rashana left them to their endeavor. She loped around the perimeter of the room, scanning for the Seer. If Telyim had a way out—or ulterior motives, particularly against their leader—then Rashana wanted to keep an eye on her.

She came up empty and rejoined the other two. “Telyim slipped off while you two were busy screeching about who’s got the bigger weapon.”

Maeda flushed. “Why’d you let her get away?”

“Don’t deflect blame just because you’re scared. She took Errol with her; I'm worried about him. She shouldn’t be strong enough to overpower him, but who knows in this cursed place? She is a Seer, and he’s young and impressionable.”

“Our circle of allies grows smaller,” Jarkoda sighed. “Let’s not cut each other, too. We’ll get through this if we work together.”

Rashana relented and allowed him to guide her through their thought process so far to destroy the ward. She made a slight alteration to the plan, then forged her blades again to cut into the wall at just the right spot. She steeled herself against the possibility of further feedback and thrust the sword arm into the stone.

Putrid smoke bled from the rock in great mottled gray gouts. With a whine and a pop! the ward shattered, bleeding power. The fractured script lashed out, shaking the walls around them. The stone tower rocked and shuddered around them, then grew still. The pressure emanating from the doorway lessened a little, although Rashana could detect it with her instrumentation augments. Now she could risk another assault on the archway.

This time the ward didn’t activate. She touched the door with tentative fingers, searching for purchase so she could haul it open. Nothing. The dark hull felt like polished glass, smooth and unrelieved.

No time to fool around with deciphering the scripts, she decided.

Rashana willed her fingers into needleblades. She pierced into the slick surface, pushing against a network of resistance. The stone appeared to be reinforced with wire netting. Rashana attuned to the alloy, shifting the edge of her cutting implement to deal with the tougher materials. She pressed her weight against the door, shoving through the outer shell of stone and into the reinforced cabling.

Internal klaxons sounded. Her energy reserves were fading, reaching danger levels.

“Jarkoda . . . do you have any more strength to spare? I’m afraid that I’m more parasite than friend.”

Jarkoda rested a hand on her shoulder. “I will do what I can, but we’re all struggling right now. Give me a moment to meditate.”

Breathing deeply, the halfdragon slipped into a seated position, legs crossed. He closed his eyes and held his hands out in front of his chest, palms facing. A low thrum filled the air, and a trickle of spirit spun into existence between his long, black talons. Jarkoda sang in deep tones. Though the song was wordless, an image sprang into Rashana’s mind of fire and the relentless march of time.

The energy coalesced in a ball of flame. Jarkoda’s eyes snapped open, blazing with the same fervor. He stood, arms shaking with the strain of restraining the power, and presented her the concentrated dose of his life force.

Maeda drew in a sharp breath between her teeth. “You offer too much.”

Jarkoda’s ignored her, unrelenting in his focus. The energy rushed into Rashana, refilling her stores, flowing through her limbs with potential. She checked her power meter and laughed incredulously. The gauge had only moved a few percent, but she felt stronger than ever as the fire took on shape and solidity. In a surge of joy, she flung the door aside.

“Follow, friends. We have a storm to wrestle.”

The dank, narrow passageway beyond proved less exciting than she’d hoped after her grand announcement. She searched for traces of the others, but she couldn’t detect their trails of life force residue. It was like a spirit custodian had mopped the place clean. Twice now that had happened here on the Bridge—perhaps it was some property of the place?

She took off down the hallway at a sprint, leaving the others behind, eager to catch up to the team and settle things with Stefano. The way forward split into two passages. Without a trail to guide her, she veered right and kept running, relying on her memory modules to map where she’d been and how to get back if she took a wrong turn. Moments later, she skidded to a stop, facing a glossy black stone wall.

Rashana retraced her steps, meeting Jarkoda and Maeda at the fork. They were locked in a heated debate, trying to figure out which way was the correct course of action. “Not the right passage,” Rashana called, winking at Maeda.

Jarkoda puffed fire, but turned to the left and started to trot. Fifteen or twenty paces later, he slowed, facing another set of branching hallways. This time five options faced them, although the two archways on either end led to stairs up and down; Rashana was fairly certain the control room was on this level, although she couldn’t quite explain why. It just felt right.

“Left again?” Jarkoda suggested with a smile at Meada as a peace offering.

Maeda clapped him on the shoulder to seal the treaty. “We’ll do it your way this time, but for the record, I think the middle passage is the one we want.”

The left passage turned sharply to the right five times. Rashana’s mind map clanged out a warning at her, displaying an error that the input was logically invalid. Jarkoda agreed at once to abandon the impossible hallway, but he couldn’t resist a barb at Maeda that this time the right door would be the right choice. Sure enough, after trying Maeda’s suggestion to take the middle tunnel, they reached another dead end only moments into the passage. Jarkoda snorted flames as he laughed.

Rashana snarled and smashed a fist into the stone wall, cracking it under the force of her enhanced blows. “Maybe we can just beat our way inside. That’s my kind of problem solving in action.”

Maeda took her elbow and led her back to the small room they’d just left. “We’ll figure it out soon. If that crazy man could find the Heart, then we will, too.”

Rashana turned toward the third tunnel, and drew up short, alarms blaring. The tunnels were gone, replaced by a single ladder leading down into an unlit hole.

Jarkoda made a sign to ward himself from evil. “This place preys on our minds. We are playing into the illusions. Let me meditate again to find clarity.”

Maeda rolled her eyes. “If it were an illusion of the mind, chances are that it wouldn’t be able to affect Rashana. Chances are good this is a straightforward enchantment. If we can find the script Stefano used to set it up, we can disable the defenses.”

“Wise counsel,” Jarkoda said. He bowed to Maeda. “I concede.”

The human smirked at the halfdragon. She opened her mouth, no doubt to fire off a barb at Jarkoda, then turned back to Rashana, eyes snapping wide open. “Any clues from Indara? If you share any of her memories, perhaps you can see if she knows something about Stefano.”

Rashana delved into her memory cores. She could only see fragments, disjointed pieces of life back in Laurentum—Imperial events, the occasional ball, functions of Empire—but none of it fit into any semblance of pattern. She shook her head, adopting the human’s mannerisms. “No coherence. It’s all just a jumble.”

“Know anything about his family?” Meada asked.

Rashana ran another query, but her local memories didn’t turn up much the others didn’t already know. The Dell’Attis were wealthy, an ancient family with only moderate political power; traditionally, they were patrons of the arts, not bureaucrats.

On a whim, Rashana quested out through her ring, reaching for the Testing Stone’s library. A torrent of details assaulted her. She refined her search parameters, trying to focus on anything related to magic or the arcane, but the results trickled away to nothing. Apparently, Stefano had kept his interest in the esoteric a well-guarded secret. Unlike some of the fashionable aristocrats in his social circles, he had no history of joining a mystic cult or commissioning a flattering bit of prophecy from soothsayers.

Still, everyone had a tell. Something had to be useful in the piles of information. Rashana projected some of the scenes into the air in front of her for Maeda and Jarkoda to review. “Help me find a clue. I don’t know what I’m looking at, honestly.”

Maeda whistled. “What other tricks you got?

“That’s . . . that’s it.”

“Well, it’s a nice trick. Handy having you around,” Maeda said, staring at Rashana as if to suss out her secrets.

They skimmed over the information, looking for anything that seemed portentous, but the sheer volume of possibilities soon proved overwhelming. Rashana turned off the projection. She folded her legs underneath her, sitting in a meditative pose. “Perhaps I can match the schematic that Indara provided us against the maze I’ve mapped out so far.”

Jarkoda growled. “We’re wasting time. Our minds have been deceived, so any map you try to make will be corrupt. Let’s just try each possibility. And if that fails, we’ll burn our way into the control center.”

“We’re just as likely to break open a hole to the outside and fall to our deaths as we are to find the control room,” Maeda said. “I suggest that we form a real plan.”

Reality flickered around them in waves of violet and silver.

When the lights settled back down, Rashana found herself staring at a wall a few inches away from her face. Cracks marked where she’d punched the wall—apparently they hadn’t even moved when she thought they were exploring. She bumped into Jarkoda when she tried to turn around in the confined space.

Maeda laughed at her, pulling her out of the small closet she and Jarkoda now occupied. “Burn our way into the control room, eh?”

Jarkoda hung his head sheepishly. “I’ve never had an experience like that. Imprisoned in my own mind—it’s a sobering reminder that the world is bigger than I realized.”

“Stefano is a good deal more dangerous than you thought,” Maeda said. “I should have warned you that if he could ensnare the Bridge Seer, then you probably didn’t stand a chance. I suppose I should have anticipated that myself. I’m guilty of dismissing her competence, too.”

Footsteps sounded against the tiled floor. Rashana recognized the cadence. “Telyim’s on her way. Suspicious timing?”

The Seer walked around the corner and hailed them. “The way is open now. Once I saw what that little bird-like man could do to Thenxi, I went in search of his lair. The walls of his room were covered in strange words, so I cut them to pieces. I’d like to get my hands on him, next. He has no right to this sacred place.”

Rashana hissed, extending a bladed arm. “Where’s Errol?”

Telyim held her hands up and took a step back. “I don’t know for sure. He told me that he sensed people coming from below. Enemies, I think. He told me to find the others, then ran back to the stairs. He looked worried.”

Maeda clapped Rashana’s shoulder, stepping between her and her prey. No, not prey. Not yet. Just Telyim.

“Errol has his own plans,” said Maeda. She turned toward Telyim with a gracious smile. “Excellent instincts. We’ve been trapped in some sort of mind-altering maze until you destroyed the runes. Welcome back.”

They all stared at each other, silent. Tensions finally ebbed when Jarkoda chuckled. He shook his angled, scaled head and padded to the end of the hallway. Carefully, he cracked open the door, movements slow and stealthy. He shut it just as gently and trotted back to the others, his slitted eyes hooded in pleasure. “We’ve found them. Let’s finish what we began.”