“Haven’t thought about it.” He closed his eyes and focused, trying to sense it. The passage of that silent pressure, the swell of it moving around him, through him. For a second, he thought… but no. “Nothing.”
“I thought I did in the last room. But… I’m clearly just grasping at straws. Ready?”
He smiled at her. She looked nervous, blood smudged across one cheek, tall and gangly and young. “Hey. How old do you think Leonis was?”
She blinked. “At first, I thought he was older, but then I realized not. My age, perhaps? However old I am?”
“Same with Asha,” he said. “Same as me.”
“You’re right.” She bit her lower lip again. He was coming to recognize that habit. “I wonder if… never mind. But yes. Interesting.”
“Just a thought. We going to run?”
Her smile was grim, determined. “Like the wind. On the count of three?”
Scorio stared ahead. The walkway was but a couple of feet wide. Almost too narrow for a sprint. Almost. “On the count of three,” he agreed. “One.”
“Two,” she said, leaning forward, flipping her ponytail back over her shoulder.
“Three,” they said together, and burst forward.
Scorio leaped down to the walkway and plunged into the first band of brilliant light.
No pain. The light was harmless. But immediately he sensed movement, heard a metallic whisper, glimpsed something whipping out from the black slashes in the wall.
A gleam of steel, thin as paper, rippling fluidly as it curved out at him, slashing up in a great arc from the shins to the waist.
He hurled himself forward into a dive. Down into the dark, to hit the walkway roughly, crashing down over one shoulder and rolling up onto his feet, momentum carrying him forward and right into the next band of light before he could stop, could process what had just happened.
The black whisker-thin lines came to life as another blade was triggered. The urge to cross his arms before his face to block it was overwhelming, but instead, he dropped to his ass, falling backward to slide under the shelf of wicked steel that flashed out, nearly taking off his head.
He crashed down to the floor, slid out of the light, and cracked the back of his skull as he did so against the stone.
He lay there, dazed, then sat up, lost within the dark band between the second and third bright gashes of light. He blinked, then stared over to check on Lianshi.
She stood, hunched over, hand on the wall, having made it past the second band of light as well.
Something was wrong.
“Lianshi?”
No response. She was shuddering.
He swung his legs over the edge of the walkway and tried to stand. Only then did he see how the blood was soaking into the slashed fabric of his lower robe. Strange. He felt nothing. But the cut was deep, a diagonal incision down his calf.
“Lianshi!” This time his voice was a bark, demanding, refusing to let her just stand there like that, her braid slowly sliding, slowly sliding down her shoulder.
“Keep going,” she whispered, still not looking up. “Keep… going.”
He grimaced and forced himself to stand. His left leg felt as if it were stepping into a bucket of mud, sinking beneath him when he tried to put weight on it.
Nothing happened when he stepped onto the shadowed section of graveled path. He hobbled over to her, fighting the shock that was stealing over him, then paused, hesitant, before touching her shoulder.
She lifted her face at last, smiled bravely. She was so pale, her skin a bone-white blur in the dark. “Don’t… don’t think I’m going to get much further.”
Her hand was pressed futilely to her hip. Scorio couldn’t understand what he was looking at. Everything was red, the cut descending from just below her ribs straight into her pelvis.
He blanched, felt his bile rise up hot and thick.
There was no way he could bandage that.
Lianshi turned around, resting her full weight on her good leg, leaned back onto her shoulder blades, then slid down to the walkway.
Her wound gaped open.
“Don’t feel much,” she said. “Don’t worry.”
Tears burned his eyes. There was nothing to be said. No comfort he could give. This wound would claim her in a matter of moments.
“Keep going,” she said, voice low. “You can… make it. Stay on the walkway. I know…”
Her eyes rolled up and she leaned her head back.
“Lianshi,” he said, reaching down for her hand. All he could do was stand there, watching, waiting, as her breathing slowed and then stopped.
A moment later she disappeared, and he was left alone with the blood-soaked walkway.
He let out an explosive breath, almost a cry, and wheeled around to face the remaining four bands of light. The thin carvings that whorled across the walls.
The urge to just stride down the gravel path was overwhelming. But she’d told him to stick to the walkway. Why?
He stared blankly at the walls, and then realized. They’d each been attacked while running down, but only from one side. Perhaps moving down the gravel path would trigger both attacks at once.
Snarling against the pain, he hobbled back to his side and levered himself up, then bent over to examine his wound. It was deep. His thin boot was already soggy with blood. With a grunt, he tore a strip off his underrobe. Binding it around his calf as tightly as he could, he then straightened and stared right ahead.
The four trapezoids of light were pitiless.
And a deep resolve formed within him. A desire to get through this trap, to reach the far wall. To find out what lay beyond. To understand the logic of this place. Their imprisonment. To confront someone, anyone, and shove his fist as deep down their throat as he could manage.
He just had to get through the remaining four bands.
Carefully, he edged up to the next one and studied the black whorls. They interwove a complex path down the wall. If blades came out from every curve, he’d be cut into a hundred quivering chunks.
Turning, he studied the whorls through which he’d passed. Just as complex, but only a single blade had emerged.
Which meant not every black curve gave birth to a cut.
But how to guess which would?
He forced himself to breathe in deep, measured breaths. Then, on a hunch, following some blind instinct, he closed his eyes. Sought within himself. To reach for that emptiness he’d sensed before.
In his mind’s eye, he saw Lianshi shuddering against the wall, head bowed, propped up by one hand. Saw Leonis grinning at him in the burnished light of that amber beam, the warmth and easy sincerity of his expression. Asha as she’d lain on the floor, the bolt in her gut, her breath coming in ever slower hitches.
Come on, he thought. Come on. Whatever’s inside you, find it.
There. The impulse. Like turning in your sleep to reach for someone who has long been gone. The blind, native reflex.
But reach for what?
He tried to follow it. To go through with the motion, barely understanding what it was he was trying to accomplish.
To reach for something within himself. Something that should have been evident, should have been easy, something he felt he’d done a thousand times before.
Sweat ran down his face, dripping off his chin. He imagined his interior as a great dark space. And there, hanging in the center—what?
Again he felt that instinct, that reaching, and this time he thought he felt—or saw—a density. A mass. Cold. Ridged. A lump of something so dark it seemed to drink in the night.
Scorio realized he was holding his breath. He fought to stay focused a moment longer. To visualize this object, to see it with just a little more clarity.
His head was swimming, his mind feverish, but just before he let out an urgent gasp, he caught a flash, a sense of something the size of his fist, carved crudely from a black stone, all sharp edges and smooth, curved planes.
And then it was gone.
Scorio sagged against the wall, panting for breath. He was soaked through with sweat. His left foot was planted in a puddle of blood.