The Traitor's Heir

Chapter Thirteen

"Those all sound bad. Really bad. "

"They are. But you heard the crashing. It was horrible. It was certainly far more than books falling off of shelves. Oh the library!" Lina was sitting up. She shook her head as she pictured the state that the library was likely in after being racked with the waves that had shaken the palace and the entire City around it. Then she stepped forward so that she could peer up the ladder and survey the doorway above.

"This is without a doubt the very, very worst thing that possibly could have happened. I mean short of the ceiling collapsing and us being crushed all at once. Or maybe that would have been better. Because this. This is bad." Lina was standing, staring at the ceiling. Her words came out in short half sentences and she took a deep breath between each one, as if steeling herself against what she was seeing.

"What is it?" Quara was finally sitting up.

"See for yourself." Lina moved towards the ladder. "Maybe it isn't as bad as it looks. Maybe I can budge it somehow." Quara rolled to the edge of the bed as her sister continued speaking and stood on shaking legs, moving towards the middle of the room.

Casting her eyes upwards she followed her sister's slight form as she moved quickly up towards the doorway, or at least, towards the space that had once been the doorway. Now, in the place where the door opening had once been, there was a solid wall of grey slabs, broken here and there, and with one gap, hardly larger than her hand, near the top that led away into darkness, or just as likely, into the center of an enormous pile of splintered and broken stairs. Lina reached the top of the ladder and held tightly with one hand while pushing on a few promising looking stones with all her strength.

"Be careful, Sis." Quara called the words out, feeling as though one of the rocks had sunk deep into the pit of her stomach. The rocks above didn't budge even a fraction in any direction, no matter how she pushed. After trying every surface that she could reach, Lina climbed down, far slower in her descent than she had been when she scrambled upwards, and sank onto one of the two chairs that stood next to the small table. "Well. This adventure has certainly taken a turn, hasn't it?" She chose her words carefully, watching her sister's face, "Because at the moment it looks like we're trapped."

"The best case scenario would be if they break through and find us. But we can't count on that possibility. I was in the City for a year before I came upon this place. And while there's more of them than there was of just me by myself, and while, if they end up in the city they'll nearly certainly head straight for the palace, we can't depend on that fact. Because we don't even know if they've made it in or if they're chasing some vein of gold deeper down under the City."

"The City's mines lay mostly to the south and east of the City. There's a fair chance that they'll miss us altogether. I mean of all the directions they could go how likely is it that they'll take the one that brings us exactly to the point that they need to be at to break through. Besides the fact is that we have no idea if there are any defenses beyond the city's natural stone walls. Are they reinforced in any way?" Lina had sat in the chair for nearly five minutes before she began to speak again and as she spoke Quara was struck by the distinct feeling that she was mostly speaking aloud to herself.

"I'd be surprised if they weren't. I don't imagine the builders of this great city leaving absolutely anything at all to chance. Do you?" Snapping out of her monologue she turned to her sister and looked at her expectantly, waiting for a reply.

"I don't know. I can see the walls not being reinforced. I mean this city is deep, deep within a solid granite mountain. Isn't that protection enough? What other protection would they need? I can see the gates being reinforced. I imagine they were quite grand, but the actual walls deep below the surface, buried under all that granite? What could possibly reach them here if it wasn't through a tunnel? And with tunnels that exist, what need would there ever have been to barrel through solid stone to get here when paths, like the one we came through, already existed?"