Free The Crystal Mountain by Thomas M. Reid

neither can you.”
    Kaanyr nodded and said, “I know, but would you if we could? Is there still enough of the old you in there somewhere that you could see yourself slipping away with me, starting over again, without… without all this?” He gestured around the two of them. “We didn’t have such a bad life together, did we?”
    You’re just figuring this out now? Aliisza fumed. Only now, after using me as your personal skeleton key? She looked away and fought her frustrations at her lover’s misguided ambitions. Instead of answering his question, she asked, “Where would we go? How would we escape this?”
    Kaanyr shrugged, and. a look of consternation crossed his own face. “I don’t know,” he said. “Does it matter? I just thought—”
    “I’m sorry,” Aliisza said, realizing she was spoiling the moment. “Yes, of course I would go with you. If none of this was happening, if there weren’t other lives dependent on us for survival, and we could just slip away, steal back our place in the world, I would go with you.” Maybe.
    Kaanyr’s smile returned. “I miss us,” he said. “I really do.”
    That time, Aliisza couldn’t help herself. “Then why in the Nine Hells would you do what you did to me?” she asked, her voice plaintive. “Why would you put me through all this? I never crossed you. I deserved better.” She looked down, biting her lip.
    Kaanyr laughed, then, a deep, long chuckle that made him shake. Aliisza glared at him, but she knew why he was laughing. That didn’t make her any less angry about it.
    When he finally caught his breath, he said, “You may never have crossed me, but you were hardly loyal, wench. You plotted your own course all the time, my instructions be damned.” He saw her fury and softened his tone. “But that’s exactly why I loved you so much,” he said, taking her face in his hands. “That’s what always drew me back to you, time and again. You may have kept your own counsel more than I would have liked, but you always had spirit.”
    Aliisza tried to cling to her anger, but his praise made her blush, and she couldn’t help but smile. “You always knew how to flatter a girl,” she said. “You know, maybe, after all this”—she gestured around the ruined chamber-—”is over and we get away from everything, we can—”
    A thump in the floor interrupted Aliisza. Kaanyr felt it too.
    “What was that?” he asked, spinning in place. “Let’s find out,” Aliisza said and walked to the opening in the wall.
    As she strode to the hole and peered out, another thud, stronger than before, reverberated through the rotunda. It came from overhead, and it dislodged a chunk of stone from the fractured ceiling that landed very near Tauran’s head before bouncing away.
    “What is that?” Kaanyr demanded, moving beside her.
    The other bubbles that had been drifting along beside their refuge had gathered together. They all jostled one another as they bobbed and flowed in the wake of the massive bubble with the mysterious figure inside. To Aliisza, it felt as
    though the current they followed had picked up speed, and the wash streaming behind the massive form had grown more turbulent. She had nothing by which to judge it, of course. No landmarks drifted by to give her any sense of speed or scale. It was just a gut instinct.
    “I think we’re getting close to something,” Aliisza murmured, trying to stare in the direction she thought they were traveling. The effort was made more tricky due to their constant rotation in the void—it hurt her head too much to try to imagine the rotunda doing the spinning. “It feels like we’re about to go down a drain or something.”
    “Wonderful,” Kaanyr grumbled.
    He turned and cast a withering glance at Zasian. “Is the bubble going to hold?”
    Zasian shrugged. “He’s dying. I can’t stop it, only slow it down.”
    “How much time do we have?”
    The priest shrugged again. “I don’t know.”
    Aliisza could sense