Chasm of Fire

  Table of Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chasm of Fire

  the Quintana Trilogy Book #3

  by Michael Wallace

  Copyright ©2019 Michael Wallace

  Balsalom Publishing

  cover art by Jeff Brown

  The Quintana Trilogy

  Book 1: Wandering Star

  Book 2: The Luminoso

  Book 3: Chasm of Fire

  Chapter One

  Green letters appeared one by one across the gleaming black surface of the coal seam. Each letter was roughly two inches tall, and it seemed to Iliana that an invisible hand was stamping them into the surface. The letters emerged from the blackness like gaslights flaring to life, each in sequence, before settling into a softer, cooler gleam as new letters continued to march across the surface. There was no smell or heat—no sharp tang of burning coal—but neither Iliana nor her companion reached out to touch the letters, afraid all the same.

  “Well?” Iliana asked. “Can you read it?”

  Thiego was leaning forward, peering at the letters with his lips moving. The cabalist had agreed to visit the mine when told about the mysterious writing, and his posture gave her hope that he could decipher the mystery.

  “Not in time.” Thiego’s tone was blunt. “Look, the first part is already fading.”

  It was true. Even as new letters continued to flare to life and fade to a duller green light, the earlier words were beginning to disappear entirely. She stepped as close as she dared in order to illuminate the wall with her helmet lamp and see if there was any mark left in the coal seam after they’d vanished. Nothing.

  “Stay back,” Thiego warned. “There might be residual particles from a lead fire.”

  “I don’t know what that means.”

  “It’s called radioactive energy, and it’s an invisible poison that enters the body.” He removed a flat, smooth object from his satchel, unfolded two wing-like attachments, and waved it across the face of the coal seam. After a moment, the tension eased from his face. “All right. We’re safe enough here.”

  “Fine, if you say so,” Iliana said. “But I need to figure out what those words mean. Is it a warning? A challenge? If there’s another artifact down here getting ready to spawn witherers, Lord Carbón must know as soon as possible. You told me you could read the old tongue.”

  “After a fashion.”

  “That’s not what you said at the temple.”

  “You didn’t mention that the letters vanished.” Thiego shrugged. “I’ve been studying the old tongue since the . . . well, since you started work on the Great Span last fall. But there are other . . . priorities.”

  Iliana gave him a suspicious side glance as he peered at the letters. The young cabalist from the temple had accompanied her to the mines, and then down the shaft, and had seemed surprisingly calm, considering their destination. The previous time he’d entered the mines, he’d nearly died, and watched Salvatore, his former master, burn alive when the artifact burst out of the shaft and flew into the Rift in front of a blast of fire.

  “Something’s different about you,” she said.

  “Shh, I’m trying to pick up what I can.”

  “I mean it. You’ve changed.”

  Thiego turned to her, and she caught a glimpse in his face of the young man he’d been before, when he brought his abacus to the estate and helped her with complex thermal calculations in return for coin to pay his devotions at the temple.

  After the battle for the city walls, and the struggle in the Quinta that had nearly overthrown the city’s hierarchy, Thiego—timid, worried—had delivered an unsigned message, which she’d given to Lord Carbón. Iliana’s master later shared the contents with her.

  Be careful, friend. Do not leave the Quinta unescorted. There are those who wish you harm.

  Now, Iliana saw a flicker of warmth and concern in the young man’s expression before the steadier, more guarded look returned. Something had hardened in him since last fall. He looked away and studied the writing.

  “It’s a warning,” he said. “I can decipher that much.”

  “Yes, but what kind of warning?”

  “I don’t know, Iliana. It could be anything.”

  “Last time we found something in the mines, it spawned witherers, closed the mines, and burned Salvatore to a smudge.” She hesitated. “I’m serious, you’re different.”

  “I don’t know what you mean.”

  “Cautious, guarded. Has something happened in the temple?”

  “It’s a dangerous time,” Thiego said. “People who haven’t adapted to the current situation don’t fare very well.”

  “Have you been in hiding?” Iliana asked. “Is that why I haven’t seen you?”

  “Not at all. Busy. Studying, learning.”

  “When was the last time you saw the work on the far side of the Rift?”

  “I met Grosst two weeks ago,” Thiego said. “Kara and I helped her inspect steel beams shipped up from Basdeen, then test the tensile strength to make sure they’d carry the load.”

  “What does Naila Roja think of the work?”

  “Hmm.”

  “Does she support it,” Iliana continued, “or is she looking for ways to undermine what we’re doing? Maybe even literally. Could be she wants the bridge to fall into the Rift. Maybe you did something to that steel when you were supposed to be testing it.”

  He gave her a sharp look. “That’s ridiculous. Nobody wants the Great Span to fail. That would destroy us all.”

  “Not even the Master of Whispers?”

  “Especially not her. Naila’s power would fall with the bridge. As for the rest, what I know or don’t know, I can’t share that with you. Not considering the current uncertainty.”

  “If there’s uncertainty, it’s Naila’s doing,” Iliana said. “We’ve reached out several times. Directly, then through Lady Mercado—a neutral party.”

  “Nobody’s neutral,” Thiego said. “Not anymore.”

  “This is exactly what I mean. You’re different. Cynical. Hard. Something happened, didn’t it?”

  He looked like he wanted to say something, then fell silent and turned back to study the wall. The last letters had glowed to life, and the hollow at the end of the shaft was already growing dimmer as the words faded in turn. Soon, there would be nothing to illuminate the mine shaft but the little flames on their boiled leather helmets.

  It was damp and chill, and Iliana shivered. There were no workers this deep in the mine, down numerous shafts, hundreds of feet into the ground, and the sounds of clanking picks and screeching wheels from the mine carts had given way to a profound silence during their final descent. She wanted to run back to the surface, where it may be chilly as a late cold snap had hit the plateau, and their boots had crunched a rime of frost after departing the carriage, but at least there was daylight.

  Naila Roja.

  The woman was lurking like a spider in its lair, waiting for an opportunity to attack. Iliana had urged Lord Carbón to make his move first. The wo
man had either been involved in or the outright mastermind of every ugly moment from the murder of Iliana’s brother to the attempted overthrow of the Quinta. She must be stopped.

  “Not yet,” Carbón had told her. “Not until the bridge is stabilized and we know what’s going on at the bottom of the Rift.”

  Thiego cleared his throat and pulled Iliana from her brooding thoughts. The final words had faded, but he continued to stare at the coal seam. Flickering lamplight caught the man’s face, but his expression was unreadable.

  “You said this happened before?” he asked.

  “Three times. Well, four, counting today. It seems to be triggered any time someone approaches the end of the shaft.”

  “I wish we had a way to capture it. The Elders had a device that would turn an image into a physical object that you could observe whenever you wanted. Like having a mirror that maintained a record of what had happened at any given moment. Or a painting, but with a real image.”

  She shook her head, not sure she understood. “What kind of magic is that?”

  “Magic that has been lost, unfortunately. It would have been useful to get these words down. I could study them later, using books and with all the time needed to get it right.”

  Thiego carried a satchel slung over his shoulder that was bulky enough to make her suspect it contained artifacts from the temple vaults. He reached in and removed several sheets of paper and what looked like a lead nub.

  “But we have the second-best thing. Magic we’ve never lost—the ability to write.”

  “If you can’t read it, how would you be able to write it down?” Iliana asked. “You’d have to scratch the letters out one by one. How many times will you have to come in and out of here to get it all?”

  “Not as many times as if you weren’t with me. You’re going to read the letters to me and I’m going to write them down as fast as I can.”

  “But I don’t know how to read it, that’s the whole point. I wouldn’t have asked a blasted cabalist for help otherwise. The last thing I need is for this to get back to Naila.”

  If her sharp words bothered him, he didn’t react. “Our language has changed since the end of the Third Plenty, but it turns out the written form is more conservative—our letters have barely changed. Look, I know you pretty well by now—you’re smart enough to pick it up quickly. Here, let me show you.”

  He pressed the paper against a side wall and wrote out two letters. The first was the letter B. The second looked like the letter W, but oddly curved on the ends.

  “We’ll start with this letter,” he continued. “It’s a good example of change.”

  “Why not the letter A?”

  “It turns out that the first letter hasn’t changed at all. In fact, the books say the letter A dates back from before the First Plenty, and has always come first in the alphabet. But the letter B is now in a different position—the tenth letter of our alphabet—where it was the fifth at the end of the Third Plenty.”

  “And that’s the letter W?” she asked, pointing to the second one he’d written down.

  “No, that’s also the letter B. The first is ours, the second the old style. The letter used to lay flat on its back like that, and was open, instead of closed. Turn it like this and you can see what I mean.”

  Thiego flipped the paper around, and she understood what he was talking about. She’d never given much thought to the old ways of speaking and writing, but found herself interested to see such an obvious connection. Thiego wrote down several other letters.

  “This is the first letter shift. See how they all follow the same pattern?”

  “The ones that were standing have fallen and opened up,” she said, excited, “and the ones that were on their side have been stood upright and closed.”

  “Excellent.” He sounded pleased. “Now look at these three letters and see if you can pick out any pattern.”

  They continued like this until they’d worked through the entire alphabet. Two of the letters had changed entirely, but everything else was either close enough to be recognizable at first glance, or followed one of several different patterns. Unfortunately, there was a second round, and that was to pick up what Thiego called the difference between major and minor letters. In the old system, major letters had led off sentences and been attached to certain names and terms.

  She followed as well as she could, and repeated what she’d worked out as Carbón had taught her. That helped fix ideas in her head, and identified where her understanding fell short.

  At last Thiego nodded. “Very good. There isn’t one cabalist in twenty who could have worked that out as fast as you did.”

  “I’ll take that as a compliment.”

  “Still doesn’t make you an expert in the old writing system, so don’t get too worked up. I know cabalists who can transcribe letters to the current writing system, and if you’d let me bring one of them it would have been a lot easier. It’s understanding the words that’s the problem.”

  “I didn’t trust anyone else,” she said. “And I’m not even sure I trust you, to be honest. The Luminoso has been nothing but hostile since Naila proclaimed herself its leader.”

  “That has nothing to do with me.”

  Iliana didn’t want to get into an argument. “Go on.”

  “Look, I can’t write down letters as they appear and erase themselves, not even with you helping. So we’ll go out, we’ll come in again, and you’ll read them off as fast as you can, using these notes as your guide. I’ll scribble them down.”

  “I’m not sure I can do it fast enough.”

  “I’m not expecting you to. In fact, I figure it will take several times coming in and out of here to get it all, but it should go faster as you get more comfortable with the letters.”

  “So then what? You can’t read it here, right?”

  “A little, but no. Not most of it. I’ll take it back to the temple and decipher it word by word.”

  Iliana felt a fresh twinge of suspicion. “I want a copy before you take it. We’ll write the first one for you, then I want it copied exactly the same on a different piece of paper for me.”

  “How is that going to help you if you have no way of knowing what it says?” Thiego asked.

  “I don’t know. Maybe someone from Basdeen knows it.”

  “Not likely. And you shouldn’t be showing it to foreigners in the first place. I’ll give you a copy, for all the good it will do you, but you’ll have to trust me.”

  “I wish you’d give me a reason to do so.” And yet Iliana couldn’t see an alternative, so she nodded reluctantly. “Fine. Let’s hurry up so we can get out of this pit before we’re chased out of here by witherers. If it comes down to that, I’m running for my life and leaving you to find your own way out.”

  She said this last part lightly, and Thiego responded in the same tone of voice.

  “These are your mines, and you led me down here. Advantage, you.”

  “Believe me, I don’t know these mines as well as you might think.”

  They retreated up the mine shaft about thirty feet, and Thiego stood over her shoulder while they went over the list of letters one more time by the guttering flame of their helmet lamps. When Iliana felt ready, they descended and approached the wall a second time. Here it was that the miners had abandoned their work in terror when the letters began to appear on the face of the coal seam. Within moments, the wall began to glow afresh as the ancient writing reappeared.

  Iliana read off the letters as fast as she could, while Thiego pressed the paper against a side wall and wrote them down. When she hesitated, struggling with a letter, he urged her to continue, tone impatient. By the time the words began to fade again, starting with the first that had been written, and eventually bypassed her work, she’d covered fewer than twenty letters. Looking up from his writing, Thiego got two more on his own before it was too late.

  “That didn’t go as well as I’d hoped,” he said, sounding just short of reproachful. �
��Nothing more to do than back up and try again, and hope you get better with time.”

  They retreated and waited about twenty seconds for whatever magical device it was to reset itself, then tried again. This time, Iliana made it slightly farther, but still failed to reach the end of the first line by the time the letters had faded. The problem wasn’t just the unfamiliar letters, but that the script itself was unfamiliar, and even the letters she already knew took too long to recognize.

  Thiego groaned. “We’re going to be here all night at this rate. I thought you’d be picking it up faster than this.”

  She fought down her own irritation at his impatience. “It’s actually daytime, remember. Anyway, the oil in our helmets isn’t going to last that long.”

  “Should have brought spare oil.”

  “We should have, but we didn’t,” Iliana said. “We’ll have to climb back to the mine entrance to get more when it runs low. Unless . . .” she began, as something occurred to her. “Do you have enough paper to waste some of it?”

  “I do.” He shrugged. “So?”

  “So the letters are written from front to back and then erased the same way. Once it catches up to me in the front, I’ll start reading again from the end, and you can write it backwards on the other sheet of paper. We’ll work from both ends, and stick them together when we meet in the middle.”

  “Chancellor Diamante, you may be a slow learner, but you’re clever enough to be a cabalist.”

  “Is that a compliment or an insult? I can’t tell.”

  “Compliment. Ever give thought to joining the Luminoso?”

  “Hah.”

  “All right, let’s try it again.”

  This time, she seemed to be getting the hang of it, and once the words began to vanish, they picked up another ten or twelve letters from the back end before it was too late to continue. Unfortunately, they discovered upon leaving and reapproaching the wall that they couldn’t trigger the writing again. Finally, Thiego suggested they retreat once more and wait a longer period before trying again. She used the opportunity to study the list of letters and try to fix them better in her mind.

  Meanwhile, Thiego took out more paper and began to copy what they’d already written onto a single page. As he did, he muttered to himself, as if trying to work out what it said. After a couple of minutes, they tried again, and to their relief, the letters reappeared. By now, she was reading off the letters at nearly twice the rate as at first.