GODSWAR: The Spear of Athena, Chapter 10

Urelle was the only practical candidate... and now she must prove she is worthy to be a Salandaras.

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Chapter 10.

Urelle stared at the crescent of carven cylindrical columns before her, columns cut off in a manner that made them look like stalks of grass sheared off by an errant sword-stroke, and shivered. At the center of that crescent was a single dark, unadorned archway, ten feet high and wide.

The entrance to the Crucible of Children.

She glanced backward, saw the figures outlined against the dawn: the tall, angular shape of Quester, the broad crescents of Twin-Edged Fate over her aunt's shoulder, the tiny figure of Ingram watching tensely, and to the side, the simply robed form of Frederic next to the massive height and breadth of Druyar Salandaras. All of them watching.

And if I fail, Ingram's hope is gone.

No! His mindvoice showed he had heard her thought. Don't carry that around with you into the Crucible, Urelle! I … I'm more worried about you than my mission, okay?

Really?

Really. I mean… I'm terrified about what might be happening to Aegeia. My parents, my Clan, our countries. But I didn't travel with them through the Forest Sea, all the way to the Wanderer's Stronghold and the shore and back. You don't worry about me, or anyone but yourself. Understand?

She could feel a strange emphasis beneath his words, a current of thought that lent even greater weight to what he said. I understand, she answered, even though she didn't, not exactly.

"Hey," Druyar rumbled. "You doing that think-talk thing, yes? Remember, no doing that in Crucible. Just you, no one else, nothing else. Can't pass unless is all you. Right?"

"Yes, sir," she said. "Quester, can I … turn this off?"

"I can do so for you," Quester said. He advanced to her side. "Stand still for a moment."

The touch of his mind was not nearly so disquieting as it had been the first time, months ago, when the Iriistiik had first bonded them. There was a tingle, a chill – and suddenly the sense of the others near her was gone. She felt momentarily desolated, her heart itself gone cold. It's only been a few months… but I've already grown so accustomed to that connection.

She glanced at Quester as he moved off, and was abruptly seized with a powerful understanding, an aching empathic grasp of the depth of suffering Quester must have endured upon the loss of his Nest. I miss it terribly, after only a few months. He was born to such connections. Yet he has shown so little of the emptiness it must have visited upon him.

Urelle straightened and gave them all a smile. "See you in a while!"

She made herself walk steadily and calmly towards the entrance to the Crucible, gesturing with casual grace as she approached the dark doorway, summoning a gleaming orb of light to hover near her as she passed into the Crucible.

Immediately she slowed her pace. The Crucible was never identical from test to test, but there were many constants about it – one of them being that even the footing could be treacherous, or worse.

"Interesting."

Urelle whirled, looking everywhere, but the quiet voice had no visible source. At the same time, it was a voice, not something in her head. "What's 'interesting'?" she asked, managing to keep her voice nearly steady.

"You, child." It sounded like a woman's voice, someone about as old as her mother would have been. This time it spoke from above her right shoulder, and she restrained the impulse to glance that way. "It is long and long since one such as you entered the Crucible." The tone shivered along Urelle's spine; it was amused, cold, analytical. This was not a voice to comfort.

"You mean someone who wasn't a born Salandaras," she said, returning her attention to moving cautiously along. She muttered another set of arcane words, focused her will, and now she could see in the other forms of light; cracks around openings, she knew, would often become obvious in the vision of heat when they might be nigh-invisible in ordinary light.

"That, of course," the voice agreed, so clearly in front of her that her eyes tried once again to focus on something nonexistent. "But more, a magician. Rare they are in any of the Salandaras, and those adopted are usually of martial bent, as well."

Urelle sensed a sudden flare of power – not magic, but perhaps beyond that – and dove forward instinctively.

One of the great stone blocks of the ceiling dropped, a fifty-ton hammer sending a shock through the floor and pulverizing the rock below, a spray of grit and powder carrying the scent of heat and brimstone.

As she was completing her roll, Urelle saw a darker line on the ceiling, not two feet ahead, and checked herself with a spurt of fear. A metal grate slammed down not one inch from her left boot.

"Good reactions," the voice said calmly. "Perception and reaction, in efficient unity."

Urelle lay there, letting her frantic heart slow and her breathing steady. Balance, that was close! On both sides!

There was no moving the immense block behind her. Oh, if she took enough time she could find a way around it, through it, under it – magic did have its advantages, especially for a Shaper – but the point of this little trap had been clear: "you can only move forward, not back".

Of course, now a strong iron grate was telling her that she couldn't move forward, either.

"Who are you?" she asked finally, rising to her feet to examine the grate.

There was a pause, long enough that Urelle began to wonder if her unknown observer had departed. But then, "An interesting question. I am not sure I know the answer."

That was an unexpected response. "You don't know who you are?"

The grate was of a fairly standard design – a set of bars spaced six inches apart, inch-thick rods of blackened steel, set in a framework three or four inches wide, also of blackened steel. She'd caught a glimpse of wickedly sharp points as the grate came down, so from that momentary impression she deduced that the rods ended in about one and a half to two feet of steel below the framework now resting on the ground, pointed to impale anything below. The whole thing would weigh many hundreds of pounds, maybe more than a thousand.

"Child, I know who I am. But I am not sure of the answer that would tell you who I am."

"Are you the Salandaras' patron? Their god or whatever power they rely on and are bound to?"

"They have many patrons, the Blessed and the Cursed. Their fortune and misfortune have made them many friends indeed. But in the way you mean… yes, I am."

Urelle studied the perimeter of the gateway closely; squinting ahead, she could see a windlass or similar structure that could be used to raise it. There didn't seem to be any latching mechanism, although it was possible there was one hidden below the ground, where the ends of the bars were.

But if there wasn't, there might be a fairly easy way around this. "Do you speak to all of the children?"

"Not to all. To some. Those who need it, those who pique my interest. But it is not uncommon; even those raised in the Salandaras may find that they need someone to reassure them, in the darkness of the Crucible." The same chill amusement clung to every word.

"Begging your pardon," Urelle said, "but you don't sound comforting at all."

She focused on the grate. Just like the airwing spell. Airwing let her fly – not terribly fast – and part of that was negating her own weight. She had also done a number of spells involving moving objects around with magic.

Admittedly, those were generally small objects, and even with all her equipment Urelle wasn't sure she weighed a tenth of the mass of that grate. But on the other hand, she didn't really need to move it – just make it, for a few seconds, lighter than air, so it would float up of its own accord and let her pass.

"I did not say you were in need of reassurance," the voice answered. "You present a problem, Urelle Vantage. An interesting problem, even a worthy problem and candidate, but nonetheless a problem, a riddle to be properly asked and answered."

She brought up the magic, and began what was one of the most straightforward, yet difficult, Shapings: changing how the very shape of space saw something. She saw the grate surrounded by what seemed a whirling funnel that plunged sharply down below, the pull of the world upon the grate. She reached out and concentrated, feeling the weight not with her body but her mind, bearing down upon her like a blanket of lead and gold, a blanket that could not be grasped yet was more absolutely real than the actual metal.

Slowly she raised her hands, willing the whirling, immobile vortex of mass to quiet, to shrink, to rise.

"And I think part of the riddle must be asked now."

A door slammed shut on her mind, a door of krellin and ironwood a dozen feet high and three thick, and she screamed, a short, incredulous grunt of pain and shock. In the same instant, her mystic vision vanished, and the glow-orb was extinguished; darkness absolute as the grave rushed in to fill the void.

Minutes passed before she could recover from the impact of something she had half-expected, yet had never really imagined, had heard of only in ancient Adventurer's tales. "You… you shut away my magic!"

There was no reply, but somehow, she had a sense of distant laughter… and keen, icy interest.

Urelle touched her neverfull pack, found it sealed; the space between space that held her equipment could no longer be reached. Myrionar's Sword, that's going to be… what if the connection was severed?

She knew the answer, of course. If the enchantment that made the neverfull pack work hadn't just been temporarily inactivated but was destroyed, then she would likely never find anything that had been in there again; it would be lost between, found only by sheer luck or by the strange and sometimes lethal beings that prowled the shadows between the layers of reality.

On the other hand, if she didn't get out of here, it wouldn't matter if anyone found her stuff.

"All right. Forward," she said.

She wasn't at all sure where forward was at the moment; there was not the faintest trace of light in any direction. She thought she remembered seeing, just beyond the windlass, a shadow that might be a torch or light-orb holder, but that did her no good here.

Worse than the lack of light, though, was the lack of sense of the world. She had been aware of the magic since she could remember, and though it could not, usually, substitute for sight, it had always been there, giving her a clear awareness of existence, of there being walls and wind and iron, fire and light and dark, power and promise rippling in bright mists throughout the entirety of creation.

Now she was trebly-blinded within an hour – first losing her newest perception, the connection with her friends, and now bereft of sight and mystic senses.

All she needed, though, was light. The Crucible did not want to encourage her to magic her way through all obstacles. But she was still living; the stones were still solid and cool, the metal, when her hand found the grate, as smooth and immobile. Matter was still itself.

She backed slightly away from the grate, felt in front of her and brushed at the stone, carefully cleaning away every trace of dust or stone chips she could find. Then she reached into one of the pouches at her side, glad that she didn't carry everything in the neverfull pack… and that she always, always arranged her materials in exactly the same way.

Sure enough, the small vial she remembered was there and – she shook it – still filled with the essence of water. With infinite care she set the vial on the floor before her, and practiced reaching out to touch it several times, to make sure she knew exactly where the vial was. I have only one; I can't make a mistake here.

Alchemy should still work. Alchemy was bringing out the essences of physical materials, with some symbolism to focus the manner of expression of the essences. The field of enchantment, or whatever, that the Crucible's resident or overseer had put into place still left Urelle's spirit and thoughts untouched, left all the materials unchanged; Urelle was pretty certain that it couldn't inhibit alchemy to anything like the extent it shut down more separate and independent magical forces.

And, fortunately, this wasn't a difficult alchemical challenge. She needed a Vial of Light, and while there were many ways to make one, the easiest and most straightforward (if rather wasteful in terms of materials) was the Endless Burning Water, made from the essences of four of the five key elements – earth, air, fire, and water. The vial was already infused with the essence of earth, and it held the essence of water. That provided an anchor for fire, which could not burn alone, and water to shield and moderate the power of flame. However, water and flame together would result in flame being swiftly extinguished, so one had to introduce air, to support the flame, at the same time and in the same amount as fire.

Fire essence capsules – tiny spheres of glass filled with the essence – were very useful tools in any alchemist's kit, and Urelle had a tube packed with pearlseed fluff that cushioned six such tiny spheres. Larger spheres of fire essence, of course, were used as weapons; the False Justiciars had used them in the attack that had killed her parents. Her little fire essence spheres came from the far-right pouch.

On the far-left pouch – as far away as could be from the fire-essence capsules – were the air-essence capsules – similar in appearance, though fire-essence glowed a brilliant red and air a barely-visible blue-purple. Neither of them bright enough to be a light by themselves, unfortunately. One did not combine the two casually, since that could create an explosion as the air fed the fire in the most perfect conceivable fashion.

The real problem's going to be actually adding these. The thin glass capsules had to be broken inside the vial, after the top was sealed; you couldn't pour fire essence and air essence into a bottle like water or ground earth, at least not without a good lab and magical assistance she couldn't use here.

With extreme caution, she removed one fire essence capsule from its tube, sealed and replaced the tube, and then felt gingerly about until she found the little glass vial. She inserted the capsule into the neck of the vial by feel, and then let go; the lack of reaction, and the shimmering of the red-gold dot, told her the delicate capsule was still intact in the water essence.

She repeated the operation with the air essence; now the two capsules were where they had to be. But how would she break them, after she sealed the top? Not only that, but she'd have to break them both quickly. Oh, if the air capsule broke first, it wouldn't be a problem, but if the fire capsule broke first, there would only be a few seconds before the water essence extinguished it.

Holding the stopper in her teeth and the vial in her left hand, she moved carefully away from the grate and nearer to the fallen block. Her right hand touched the ground, felt around, locating several chips of dense rock. The first few were too large, but finally she found one that just fit through the neck of the vial.

She placed it in the neck, barely holding it up, and prepared herself. Then she let it go and whipped her hand up, grasped the stopper, and began screwing it into the top of the vial as fast as she could.

Nothing happened, which was a relief. She'd had to act as though the pebble would drop on one and break it, which probably would've been a disaster – she doubted that, fast though she was, she'd actually have even gotten the stopper positioned before the break happened. But now, with the stopper in place…

She bit her lip, took a deep breath, and then began shaking the vial as hard as she could. A few seconds passed, and then there was a red-orange flash. Balance! That's the fire capsule!

The momentary flash of light was already dimming, and Urelle redoubled her efforts, praying while the light guttered, faded…

And then flared out brilliantly as the air essence burst free from its capsule and filled the water-essence with its own flame-nourishing matter.

The Endless Burning Water illumined the area almost as brilliantly as her magical globe, with a cheerful warm yellow flame-light, burning within the liquid in skeins of rippling fire that danced, miniature dust-devils of flame, from the bottom of the vial.

The "Endless" was an exaggeration, of course; the Vial would eventually shatter, once the fire had consumed enough of the crystal to weaken it, but that would take days, weeks, perhaps months. She breathed a sigh of relief; she had been right about alchemy. That might give her a few more resources to work with – though precious few. She relied on the neverfull pack to hold almost everything. She then tucked the Vial into a loop on her belt and turned back to the grate.

It hadn't changed since she last looked, and she saw no way around it but that she would have to try to lift it by main force – and somehow get it high enough that she could duck under it before it fell. There wasn't anything big and strong enough to support it – the largest pieces of rock the fallen block had made were barely the size of her fist.

The silence in the Crucible felt deafening; she had never realized how used she was to some kind of sound, even merely leaves or grass rustling in a breeze, or how ominous their absence would be. She ignored the foreboding sensation and first removed her pack; without anything actually inside the main compartment, at least for the moment, it was easy to squeeze it through to the other side of the bars. She didn't want anything on her that might make her a larger target, or possibly snag on pointed steel bars as she was making her way through.

Then she put on the thin leather gloves that she had tucked in her belt, to protect her hands and give her a better grip, and started stretching, giving every muscle a little workout to wake it up, prepare it for the next few minutes. Finally, she stepped up, grasped the crossbar that was about a foot or so from the ground, and lifted.

She did not, of course, put her full effort into it yet. She wanted to make sure she had grasped it properly, that her feet were positioned just right to take the pressure, and so on. She'd done more than a few heavy lift practices with Lythos, and though both her brother and Kyri had done a lot more, she knew very well the risks and techniques.

And there was, at least, one advantage with the grate: it was set in guide channels. There was no chance of it unbalancing and tipping her forward or backward, or falling sideways on her. If she could lift strong and lift straight, it should come up.

If it wasn't too heavy for even a Vantage to lift.

She set her feet, gripped the bar again, and heaved.

For an instant, she thought it was too much, that it was not going to move. But then there was a quiver, and the gate grated upward an inch, two inches, and it was a hair easier now that it was moving, but by Myrionar it was heavy, feeling like she was lifting her brother and sister, one on each end of the crossbar, both in full armor, to boot. She heard her voice echo around the Crucible, a strained, gutteral groan as she threw more effort into the lift, felt the bar still rising, and there!

It was up, resting with grinding force on her palms that had now shifted under the crossbar. But below her was the base crossbar of the gate, and below those, still only a few inches from their sockets, were the spearlike points of the bars. She had to get it much higher. And that meant she was going to have to somehow lift it high enough, and then move fast enough, that she could get the bottom bar to her chest area – and then swap grip from the higher to the lower crossbar.

No time to waste. She already knew that she might never get it this high again if she dropped the gate now. She threw her full effort against the bar, and after another infinitesimal, terrifying hesitation, it ground upwards again. Urelle forced it up, past her face, past her head, and for an instant stood, arms above her head, the edge of the crossbar digging into her upper arms.

With a grunt she shoved upward on the bar, then dropped both hands down – ripping her left arm open on the steel as she did – and caught the bottom bar just as it began to descend.

     That very nearly ended her; she felt something starting to tear in her arm as she halted the downward motion, forced the grate to stop, then climb higher, higher. She gave another harsh groan, pushing with everything she had left, right bicep filled with a bright-flaming pain, and then fell forward, rolling. The gate rammed down behind her, nicking the heel of one boot.

She lay there, panting, her muscles twitching, feeling the hard, dusty stone under her cheek, the light of the Vial emanating streakily from underneath her. Urelle rolled over onto her back, rested a few more moments before climbing to her feet.

"Strength and control of mind and body. Good." The voice was a deep bass, accented with a hint of the far North, possibly Skysand.

Yet somehow Urelle knew this was the exact same speaker. "You knew I was strong before, I'm sure."

A laugh floated from above. "But I did not know how much was magic. Oh, there is strength beyond the mere muscle within you, but it is a part of you, one that simple magic repression can never touch; that, I see now, I could remove from you only if I were to unmake you."

These were interesting comments, but she had to concentrate on why she was here. Without magic, I'm at a real disadvantage if I have to fight, she thought. The records of the Crucible often mentioned various deadly creatures within the shifting maze.

She moved forward with care, looking around. There was the windlass, and in a niche to the side, a long lever that probably was used to trigger the descent of the grating if it had to be done by hand.

The lever interested her. It was long – four feet or so – and fairly slender. It was also held on only by a large setscrew, which Urelle rapidly removed with some of the tools she could still access.

The lever was somewhat heavy, but still acceptable for a staff or an oddly narrow two-handed mace. It was of thick rolled steel and could probably take a lot of punishment. All right, I'm at least somewhat armed. The air and fire capsules and a few similarly touchy materials would give her a few other options, though she hated to use them up.

"So you test people for … what? Strength, I guess. Resilience. What else?"

"Do you believe it is always for the same things?"

She paused, moving forward, seeing the corridor finally widening out ahead. That could be good or bad. "I'd guess that there are some things you're always interested in. The others… probably depends on the kind of person."

"Indeed. For those born Salandaras, I already know much of them – of their minds, of their bodies, of their ancestry, for all of them have passed through here; their mothers and fathers, the parents of their parents, and so, until the beginning.

"But you… you are a child of distant lands indeed, one with her own secrets – some she herself does not know, does not understand how to know." Another chuckle. "For you, the questions are many, if you would also leave here alive and take the name Salandaras as well as Vantage."

In the light of the Eternal Burning Water, she could now see that there was a chamber before her, one with three exits on the far side… and something else, a dark, sinuous form that shifted as she entered.

She gripped her improvised mace-staff tighter as the thing finished rising and turning. A valakass; a wild valakass, and a big one!

Tame valakass were riding lizards, low-slung but powerful mounts or harness beasts. They could be quite large – some up to five hundred pounds – and if angered were dangerous, but the domesticated ones really took effort to make angry unless they were starving.

Wild valakass were something very different – and could be much larger. As this one stalked closer, with the deceptively slow, smoothly-oscillating side-to-side gait of such large reptiles, Urelle swallowed hard, her throat suddenly tight, her mouth unexpectedly dry; this one was a monster, probably over a thousand pounds and fifteen feet long, maybe more. Its head came up nearly to Urelle's chest; dark, beadlike eyes glinted hungrily, and she could see the gray-green beaded skin shifting with the working of the muscles – skin that, she knew, was filled with embedded bone, armoring the creature against any ordinary blows. The wedge-shaped head tracked her movements, and the jaws parted for a moment, showing wickedly sharp, backwards-pointing teeth and ropy strands of venomous saliva.

She brought up her weapon and shouted as loudly as she could. I don't want to fight this thing – I've got to convince it that it doesn't want to fight me!

The hostile motion and noise did cause the valakass to slow, shift its pace slightly. It was still approaching, but on a curved path, circling her – maybe looking to see if she was vulnerable from some particular direction.

She turned to face it, judging angles and distances. She thought about trying to just run, but she instantly discarded that thought; that would mark her as prey, and she'd seen how fast even domestic valakass were. The thing would be on her before she'd crossed the room.

No. The only way out was to either convince it she wasn't prey… or beat it in a fight.

A smooth, forked pink tongue flicked out, pulled back, flicked out again, tasting the air, judging her scent. If it can smell my fear, it's going to really start thinking of me as prey. She remembered Lythos, his constant instruction on control, on perception, on action:

"Urelle, I know you do not intend to be a warrior; yet even those who are not warriors may find that they must fight. If you fight through fear, if you fight through anger, you will nearly always lose. You may feel fear; you may feel anger; but you must always discipline your feelings when it comes to battle. Draw from those feelings for strength, for swiftness, for determination and purpose; but never, ever allow them to dominate, to draw from you."

As the thing circled, she drew in a breath, let it out, imagining fear leaving her body in a yellow-green cloud, breathing calm blue in, exhaling bilious yellow fright. Her hands steadied just a touch, and she turned to watch the creature more carefully. It was huge, no doubt about it, although maybe she had slightly overestimated it on first sight. Still, from the point of view of fighting it, there was little difference between an eight-hundred-pound lizard and one three hundred pounds heavier.

She saw something – a tighter ripple in the muscles, a shift in the rhythm, a raising of the body for an instant – and lunged aside, as the valakass charged towards her. Even as she dodged, she swung the windlass lever as hard as she could.

The impact buzzed in her hands, almost made her drop the metal shaft, but there was a sharp thud! and the huge lizard hissed and shied away, scuttling back to its former distance.

"Come on! Go! Get out of here! Or just leave me alone!" she shouted. "I'm not prey!"

It hissed at her but continued circling. At the same time, though, she noticed it was favoring one front leg; she had struck it hard in the shoulder, and the blow had at least done some damage even through the natural armor.

I have to try to make some progress, maybe force the thing to change its approach or give up. As it circled, she tried to take steps to move her slowly towards the exits on the far wall.

It lunged at her again, but she had already thought through her response; she dodged in the other direction and this time brought the mace-staff down hard on its head.

It had shied away just as she struck, but this turned out to be a terrible mistake; instead of crashing down on the broad skull, the point of the long mace hammered with crushing force onto and into the right eye socket.

The creature gave a metal-tearing shriek and scuttled away, putting distance between itself and the little but powerful human. Okay! I've scared it now!

Still keeping an eye on the creature, which was both limping and moving more tentatively with only one good eye, Urelle began moving briskly towards the far exits.

But then the thing gave a louder hiss and whipped around, scuttling towards her with a confused but still powerful limping gait, fury deadly clear in its remaining onyx eye.

It’s limping, was the partially-formed thought, but she didn't wait for the whole thought; without a moment's hesitation, she turned and ran, sprinting all-out towards the central corridor.

The thing's claws made a scraping, stacatto rattle behind her – but not, at least yet, one getting closer. If I can just keep up this pace, it might run out of breath first!

But then, as the light from the Eternal Burning Water ran over the ground before her, she saw a line, a suspiciously straight line, crossing the path from one side to the other.

There was no time to stop; even if she could have seen it in time, there was a monster right behind her. So she did the only thing she could: gathered herself just as she reached the mysterious line in the rock and leapt up and forward.

She saw the ground pass below her, and another line across the hall – and yet another, ahead, getting closer…

She did not – quite – make it.

But it was the valakass that ran straight onto the trapdoor first.

A section of the corridor twenty-five feet across abruptly dropped away, and both giant lizard and little Adventurer plummeted downward.

In the light of the vial, Urelle suddenly saw the bottom of the pit was covered with ranks of sharp stakes, the points unnaturally dark, and twisted herself desperately in midair to try, somehow, to evade the spikes as they rushed up to meet her.

The valakass, unfortunately, had no possibility of doing so; in every dimension its body was wider than the maximum separation of the spikes, and its mass and the fifteen to twenty foot fall drove it onto the sharp points with irresistible force; it struck with a crunching, squelching noise and a suddenly cut-off shriek.

Urelle struck hard, feeling a twisting agony in her shoulder as she hit, and at the same time a tremendous burning, acidic pain ripped through her right leg.

She gasped, the red-bright pain blotting out her vision, almost taking her consciousness; several moments passed before she could even breathe enough to drive the shadows back from her vision. Hardly daring to look, she forced herself to look down the length of her body.

She had fallen almost entirely between the lethal spikes; only one had struck her, and that one through her right calf.

She recognized the pain and sense of wrongness in her shoulder. It was dislocated, not broken. She might be able to pop it back in place, somehow. But her leg…

"You sought fortune when needed, and fortune found you," said a rough, gravelly voice – a voice that was, nonetheless, the same as before. "A good indication."

"Fortune? I'm at the bottom of this pit with a poisoned spike through my leg!"

Another laugh, this one sounding the same as the others even though it also sounded like rocks grinding and splintering against each other. "That is still great fortune indeed, little Adventurer. To fall so that only a single spear touched you, and that one in but a single extremity? To have broken not a single bone in your fall? You might practice that for a year and never duplicate the feat. No, fortune smiled upon you in that moment." Somehow, a sense of a grim smile. "But still, it gives you a new challenge to face…"

Feeling the burning, acid sensation increasing, Urelle focused, lifting her leg. She could feel the spike dragging on her leg, and nausea rolled in waves through her. Can't stop now. Myrionar, help me! I don't think I can do this…

For just an instant, she suddenly felt… a presence. Not the ironic, cold one behind the voice, but someone… someone warmer, tall, strong, just behind her, almost holding her. You can do this, it seemed to say to her… and she had a phantom sense that the arms that encircled her were ones she knew well.

With a stomach-wrenching effort she pulled her leg free, fighting off unconsciousness and nausea with the memory of that moment, the echo of the hands gripping her shoulders. For a few moments she lay there, gasping, letting it bleed. It'll cleanse the wound some.

But she couldn't afford to lose too much blood. She gritted her teeth and sat up, feeling with her good hand for anything she could use to bandage the wound.

Bandage? I'll need two hands for that. I'll need two hands for just about everything.

Urelle felt her body shaking with shock, cold sweat trickling down her face, and for a few instants she just could not move.

But I am a Vantage. She knew what her brother would have done. She knew what her sister, her mother and father, and especially her aunt, would do.

Relax. She remembered Lythos talking Rion through reducing his shoulder, which had been dislocated in combat practice. "You can do this yourself – and should try to, now, for you cannot be certain of having any help elsewhere."

Relax the muscles. The pain tried to make her tense everything, fight the pain – but that would just make it worse, far worse. The entire trick to reducing, or re-setting, the shoulder wasn't a violent motion, or tense muscles, but the opposite: a slow, careful motion that began with the extension of the arm, and a gradual reaching around and behind the head, eventually to attempt to grasp the opposite shoulder.

 

Relax. She breathed slowly and evenly, despite her body's shock and pain and the blood flowing freely from her wound. She had her arm extended now, and it didn't hurt as much as she had feared. This helped her to keep the shoulder and neck muscles relaxed. Up now, slowly… A spark of pain, and she paused, breathing, concentrating. The pain faded, and she reached up, up, over… now her hand was down, rotated, as though she needed to scratch her own neck. Another breath, and now the final reach, towards her other shoulder –

Pop!

There was a spark of new pain, but instantly a far greater feeling of relief, of something wrong suddenly become right again.

She sat up and immediately looked at her leg.

There was a bloody hole an inch in diameter through the leg – or it would be an inch in diameter if the muscle held the shape. Bleeding badly. Healing draughts all in the unreachable pack. Don't have any actual bandages. Could improvise a tourniquet, maybe?

That seemed the best route. She could try to cauterize it with one of the fire-essence spheres as a last resort, but there were all sorts of ways that could go wrong. But she had a knife, strong cloth she could cut to a wide strip…

In a few minutes, she had cut a strip from her undershirt and wrapped it tightly around her leg above the wound. In one pouch she found a straight, strong stick she'd been thinking of enchanting into a luminance wand; that made a good windlass; she turned the stick multiple times until she was pretty sure the bleeding had stopped or at least really, really slowed down, maybe enough to clot. Another strip of cloth and another knot and the stick was anchored so it wouldn’t just unwind.

At last she let herself rest a few minutes – dug out a strip of dried fruit and drank water from her meager supplies. The burning from the wound had not stopped, and she could feel something wrong inside her. Poison… or maybe a really fast-acting infection.

I have to get out of here.

The pit's walls were sheer and while not polished, the rough stone offered little hope of purchase; there were no handholds she could see. The one-eyed corpse of the valakass offered no useful suggestions, and while big, it wasn't nearly large enough to give her any method to climb out.

A rope with a grappling hook, or something like it, would have worked … but all her rope and most other equipment was inaccessible now. Her alchemical materials might be useful for other things, but she didn't see any way they could provide her with a way to fly or climb out of a pit. Some of the ones she couldn't access might, but that was useless thinking.

Her hand strayed to another pouch – a small one, hidden behind her belt – which held just a single, precious object: the tiny Lens, the token the Wanderer had left her. Do I use this now? she asked herself. She was certain it would work, even here in a magically-suppressed area; the Wanderer would have made his token as best he could. And I don't want to follow what Ingram called the Parable of the Always-Worse. Things could get worse… but if I don't get out of here…

Finally, she shook her head. Maybe. But try again. The Salandaras and their patron don't want to simply kill the candidates. I have to believe that there is some way out of here if you survived the threat. For every threat evaded, there must be a way to move forward… involving solving another riddle, or facing another threat.

Urelle looked around, surveying the area more carefully. Aside from her and the dead valakass, there was nothing else in the pit except the carefully arranged array of spikes, separated by just barely enough space to walk between, arranged in a perfect, ordered array except where a few had been broken by the valakass' tail in its final convulsive thrashing.

Something about that nagged at her, but it was hard to focus with her leg throbbing and the uncomfortable hint of burning within the rest of her body. Think. Why is it significant that some of the spikes were broken?

No. It wasn't just that they were broken. It was something else… associated with her other thought.

Nothing else in the pit with us.

Now, it might be that the Crucible was an entirely magical place, literally shifting and rebuilding itself for every candidate. But she'd felt the effort of her unknown watcher to bring down the stone. That was a directed choice. It wasn't the feel of simply activating a known change, any more than the sudden suppression of her magic. Yes, that challenged her, but if the Crucible of Children were infinitely mutable for every entrant, it could simply have shifted to present her with appropriate magical challenges.

"That's why I presented a 'problem'," she said to herself. "Most of the Crucible is fixed. Maybe there's a lot of different paths through it, and each candidate gets a different combination of those paths, so no one candidate's likely to see the same things, but each path is real… and most of the challenges in the Crucible are made for strong fighting types. That's why my magic had to be shut down. And since they're children, they won't have much equipment on them, so my neverfull pack had to be negated too."

The unseen voice did not answer, but she pursued the thought, a cool excitement now balancing the heat of the poison or infection working its way through her. Nothing else here? Perfect except for where the valakass fell?

Someone had to maintain this pit. Almost certainly it would be Salandaras, or someone close to them, who did it. They could just climb down into the pit, but no matter how careful you were, that could be risky; you didn't want your maintenance people falling onto poisoned spikes.

So much easier if you could just walk in…

As soon as the thought was clear, she could see where the entrance had to be: under one of the two doors. There were no spikes directly under the open doors, leaving about three feet of clear space on each side – not useful for people falling, but for someone entering or leaving, it would be perfect. The pit was twenty feet deep, and with a twenty-five foot span that meant each door was only twelve and a half feet long; that left a space beneath each door that was seven and a half feet high – comfortably high for an exit or entrance door.

Knowing what she was looking for, it did not take long to find it: a narrow, perfectly rectangular crack on one wall, outlining a door. The question was, could it be opened from inside the pit?

Urelle thought it could. There were no marks anywhere on the walls, but there had been no list of allowed equipment, no discussion of what she was to carry; the children were evidently free to bring what they wanted. The magic-negating field on her had been a special action, not an ordinary one, so it might be that even neverfull packs were normally fair play. Some of the candidates must have carried rock-climbing gear, and those would leave marks.

So the maintenance people carried something, probably a minor stoneworking charm, that let them erase small piton holes or such. But that would also let them seal the door when they left, eliminating the cracks entirely.

The fact that they hadn't argued that they intended a candidate who survived the fall to have a way out, even if they hadn't brought climbing gear, as long as they were smart enough – or, more likely, methodical and determined enough – to search the walls.

With that deduction, it took only a few minutes to prove she was right by testing the nearby spikes and finding that one could be pulled up just a short distance and then turned. The door swung open with barely a whisper of sound.

Elation was also met by a wave of nausea; she did not – quite – lose her lunch, but it was a near thing. I've got to get out of here. My leg's hurting worse, and I don't have an antidote or healing draught for the whatever-it-is that the spike put in.

And I have to get out of here because unless I do, we can't go on.

Her will alone focused against her pain, Urelle Vantage gripped her weapon and moved forward into darkness.