“What I made is outside what’s on top of us. It can’t hold the roof up.”
“Lemme have a look,” offered the boy.
They waited. When Tris inhaled again, Daja and Briar followed suit. Once they had the rhythm of inhale, hold, exhale, they reached into the coal, feeling a multitude of tiny layers, pressed hard together. Daja felt its promise of fire to come; Briar felt the smug pleasure of ancient plants that had managed to change themselves into something different.
What do you think, Daja? His inner voice felt/sounded like pine needles in her mind.
Push up, with your magic. To Briar she felt/sounded like hot coals. I’ll push up with mine.
Together they breathed in, deep. Briar thought of a trowel, tamping down earth, and thumped their roof briskly. Daja thought of a bellows, pulling it open all the way to get the most air inside. The coal crunched and shifted upward.
Sandry cried out, but the others were too deep into their power to hear. Tris, sorting more earth-waves to widen her airway, broke through the ground’s surface in three places. Water poured down one; hurriedly she closed it with a shock wave and stone. The other two openings were good; she felt air trickle into the space.
“Let’s try moving me,” Daja whispered to Briar. He slid out from under her, tucking himself between Sandry and Tris. Little Bear huddled in Sandry’s lap. Very, very carefully Daja let her knees bend. She knelt, listening. The slab of coal didn’t move. With a relieved sigh, she rearranged herself until she sat on the ground, hugging her knees.
“It’s holding,” she whispered. “And the protection outside is still there.”
For a long moment none of them said a word. They listened, or prayed, or wept silently, not wanting the others to know. There was no trace of light in their refuge. Every sound was important, a promise that they might die yet, just as the feeling of someone else’s side, or foot, or tail meant they were still alive.
“Y’know, Bag, I woulda swore you didn’t have a scared bone in your body,” Briar croaked at last.
“Well, now you know,” replied Sandry. “I’m scared of the dark.”
“Just now I couldn’t argue,” Briar told her. In spite of her fear, Sandry grinned. “Is it because of you being in that cellar, the first time you did magic?”
She nodded, then remembered that no one could see. “I—I’m sorry. I’ll try to do better, but—” In spite of herself, she sniffed, lips trembling. “This is even worse than it was there. I had a little more room, for one thing.”
“But they found you,” Briar pointed out. “You were all right then.”
“No,” whispered Sandry. “They had to blindfold me. The light hurt so much that I screamed. For a long time I didn’t want to do anything, not eat, not work, not breathe. I got better in most ways, but—I hate the dark. I have to have a lamp by my bed at night.”
“I don’t want to upset anyone,” Tris said, fighting to sound calm. She was grateful they couldn’t see each other: what she felt in the earth around them was making her sweat. “The stones are talking. I can’t explain, so you just have to believe me. Something very big and bad is coming at us from a long ways off. Can we—”
“Another quake?” interrupted Briar.
“Mostly a quake,” Tris replied. “And—maybe this is odd, but—it feels like there’s magic all wound up in it. We have some time, but it’s coming. Daja, I’m not sure the thing you did for us will hold.”
13
For a moment none of them spoke. It was overwhelming news.
“We’d better do something fast,” Daja said. “It’s that or die. Tris, can you try anything with what’s coming? Can you turn it around, or stop it? No, forget I said to stop it. I know you can’t.”
“All that power has to go somewhere,” Tris replied. “And there’s magic in what’s coming—that complicates things. I don’t know what I’m doing with my own magic, let alone someone else’s.”
Daja sighed. “Look, we must try. I’ll find metal—”
“Maybe I can get plants to help us,” said Briar.
Three sets of lungs inhaled. Briar let his mind branch through the earth, feeling a million traces of green in the distance. He strained to reach them and failed. Daja found traces of iron, copper, and lead scattered through the soil. She called them together, hoping to make a metal cage around her box. They shuddered, wanting to obey but unable to.
Daja opened her eyes, gasping. “I need heat,” she said. “I can’t shape metals till I run them through a forge. Where do I find such heat, or control it?”
“Fire the coal?” Briar asked.
Tris was ill. Tension grew in the stones as the wave of strange force thundered their way. Her stomach was protesting. I can’t throw up now! she thought fiercely. “Don’t burn the coal, unless you want us to go with it!” she snapped. “We can’t use real fire. Below, where volcanoes are born—it’s heat. It’s the essence of fire. Daja, if you control that heat—if you keep it off the coal—”
“My box—our protection. It’s outside the coal right on top of us, so that’s safe. I can keep it from the rest of the coal in this ground—I hope,” replied Daja, coughing. She inhaled and sent her magic out with her exhale, reaching for the heat that Tris had described. Soon she came back. “I can’t,” she told them, trying not to think of time running out. “My reach won’t go that far.”