Memory of Dragons
Page 19
For a moment, it felt like he was in free-fall. Then came the vague awareness of being on his side, of the book lying loose in his hands, and of either Corinna or the creature near him. He couldn’t tell which. Was it someone else? He couldn’t open his eyes!
A supremely focused effort let him peer through one half-closed lid. The struggle had taken him to the mouth of the exit tunnel. The half-broken beam rested under his shoulder. Between Austin and the darkness stood Corinna, her back to him as if protecting him from something. Even through the torpor, he could tell her own legs were buckling. He tightened his grip on the book. How could he stand when his own muscles rebelled against his every move?
“Austin! Get up!”
Austin nodded, sure she must be right, sure he had to try. He needed just a moment to gather the strength, collect his thoughts from the confusion. Then they would get out. Then they would get the book to Rhi.
“I think it’s used to the clothes thing,” he absently muttered, unsure if he had made the words audible. A morass seemed to surround him. He had to pull out of it! One foot under, then the other, pushing into the mud. Now up, he ducked between the beam and the wall. Any bump might send him down again.
“I can’t see it,” Corinna whispered. “I’m right behind you, just go-ohhhh, no!”
Austin turned to look. The motion tipped him into the wall where he caught a wobbly balance with one shoulder against it. Corinna now faced him on the other side of the beam, kneeling, reeling from another dose of the spriggan’s assault. It whined out in triumph from the shadows.
“Get up!” Austin urged. It came out a murmur. He started back to help, knowing even then that he could barely help himself. The lethargy subsided even more slowly this time, if at all. The spriggan was right behind her.
Corinna turned toward the creature’s grasping fingers and struggled to face it in a standing crouch. “Get back!” she yelled, reeling.
It took a step closer. “Hair-of-fire will stay! All will stay! Give back book!”
Austin started back for her. He put one foot forward and fell with a curse as his knee failed to hold his weight.
“Austin, take the book and get out! Now!”
“Not without you!” Not again!
The spriggan swiped through the air between them. Corinna stumbled back into the beam but held her ground on wobbly footing.
“You try to help and it’ll get us both! Go! It won’t get past me!”
He couldn’t just leave! “But . . . what do I — ”
“Bloody hell, Austin . . . Before it does it again!”
Austin opened his mouth to argue, continually expecting some strength to return, continually disappointed. He could hardly think. Corinna was right, wasn’t she? At least one of them needed to get out? He needed more time! It wasn’t right! Where was Rhi?
“Can you leave her, Austin? Can you sacrifice her for what she wants?” Was that Boden or his own fogged thoughts?
The spriggan leapt and collided with Corinna. It clawed past her at Austin as she grappled with it. “Just — go,” she gasped. “You let it get both of us and I’ll kill you myself . . .”
“She is right! You cannot help now! You must go!”
He couldn’t, but his mind was a fog and Corinna’s order alone shone through it. He had to! Rhi was out there, depending on him. Austin clenched the book to his chest and stumbled through the rest of the tunnel to the deluge outside.
NINETEEN
Austin stumbled, shivering, into the shelter of an apartment building’s awning. Though his body ached like he had spent a day mountain climbing, the fog in his mind had begun to clear. He had made it three blocks from the pub. Only a block ago had he realized Rhi was not waiting for him, that he was alone with Boden and the book, and, worst of all, that he had abandoned Corinna.
In truth, he had realized the last while struggling up the drain ladder. Panic, lethargy, or blind pragmatism had initially shielded him from the weight of it. Now, every step forced it further to the forefront, and he wanted to throw up.
He was alone.
He was a coward.
Boden’s question echoed Austin’s own thoughts. “What do you intend now?”
Austin inspected the book while fighting his nausea. Mud caked part of the cover, and he wiped off as much as he could. The pages within remained mostly undamaged. His eyes passed over the writing before he closed it again and sank down against the wall of the building, unable to go further.
“I’m going back for her,” he said.
“She told you to continue without her.”
“She told me to get out with the book. I did that. So I’ll find a safe place for it, and go back.” He pulled himself back to his feet and wobbled from the effort.
“Do not be irrational! You can hardly stand! If you return, you may meet the same fate. The book helps neither of you if you both perish.”
“She’s not dead!”
“You do not know that.”
“That’s why I have to go back!” Austin pushed himself back to the sidewalk. Where could he stash the book? “I can’t do magic. Maybe I won’t be able to do anything with the book at all! And if Maeron comes again? I can’t do this alone. We need her.”
The spriggan’s words continued to echo back to him. Doesn’t move, doesn’t eat, doesn’t breathe. Austin didn’t know if that meant death or merely some sort of suspended animation, but feared the former was more likely. How much time did Corinna have? It dwindled the longer he stood thinking about it.
“And should you fail? This Maeron plainly knows how to find others from Rhyll. The werespider! The thiesm! He will locate this creature eventually as well, if only to enlist its aid, and he will find my crystal with your dead bodies and claim me for his purposes!”
“Which will take him longer than tracking me down and taking it himself if I’m alone!” A passerby, startled by the shout, glanced at him warily. Austin shoved past him.
“The difference being Maeron must find you, whereas now you rush headlong into danger. You would discard Corinna’s sacrifice entirely.”
“Not entirely. What do you know about spriggans? Why did Corinna wish she had iron?” Austin hit on an idea and then rummaged into his daypack for his travel guidebook.
“Do you do this because you believe you will fail without her, or because you simply cannot bear for her to come to harm?”
“It can’t be both?”
“I speak of what it is, not of what it can be.”
Austin located what he needed in the guidebook and, finding the nausea abating, quickened his pace. “If you don’t know anything about spriggans, just admit it and save us some time.”
“I suspect,” came the protracted reply, “that my pre-crystal interest in such diminutive fey creatures was limited. My recollections of such now are therefore just as diminutive. That stated, they dislike iron.”
“More than they dislike inside-out clothes, I hope, because that didn’t help us very long.”
“Almost certainly. It burns them.”
“To touch?”
“Yes, to touch. Or worse, to be impaled with.”
“That’s not exactly remarkable.”
“I believe you would find them remarkably resilient should you impale them with something else. Fey creatures maintain a tenacious grip on their own life force. In Rhyll, even iron, as much as it might temporarily subdue them, may fail to kill them. In this world, that tenacity may be somewhat lessened.”
“There. Thank you. Usable data.”
“Indeed, I have done you the courtesy of granting this information. Now you will do me the matching courtesy of answering my question honestly: Do you take this course of action because you believe it necessary, or because you cannot bear to lose her again?”
The words written within the book were in a language he could not read. Was that a trigger for his decision to return for Corinna, or mere justification for it? When he had staggered away from the drainage grating, he
had grappled with the lethargic fog and the fear of failing without Corinna’s help. Or so he had thought at the time. Now, conscious that every heartbeat he delayed marked one less chance to save her, he knew he dreaded her loss.
Boden spoke before he could answer. “She reminds you of Rhi, doesn’t she?”
“She is Rhi! At least,” he added with a swallow, “for all that matters. She’s the last of Rhi that’s left. Even if she wasn’t, I couldn’t just abandon her for good. Are you saying you could?”
“Much like my person at the moment, what I could or could not do is immaterial. I do not scorn you for your reasons, but you must be honest with yourself about what those reasons are, or all is lost. Promise yourself, here and now, that you will save Rhi, held as she is within that young woman just as I am within this crystal. Promise yourself you will accept nothing less but success.”
Austin nodded. “Done.”
“Excellent. Now then. How shall we accomplish this?”
The mud at the bottom of the drainage shaft flooded Austin’s socks anew, this time with no shoes to stem the tide. His shoes, the one thing he wore that he couldn’t turn inside out, waited tucked into a dry nook in a wall on the surface. The rest he had reversed: socks, shirts, jacket, jeans, even his boxers, just to be certain. The out-turned jeans left him with no accessible pockets. He kept in his pack everything he needed, save for a newly purchased flashlight taped to his right forearm. Its light shone from beneath his wrist to illuminate the broken wooden beam that lay where it had when he had fled.
Corinna was not there.
Austin stifled the urge to call her name. He would stay silent at least until climbing to the upper level, where he suspected the spriggan lurked. By that point it would see his light no matter how silent he was. Before then: stealth. Would the spriggan talk at all, or would it attack?
He crept under the beam, then crouched there. His flashlight beam swept across the length of the lower room, through corners along both floor and ceiling. Nothing stirred. He scrutinized each pillar from top to bottom. No shadows shifted. No sound betrayed a presence.
His light reflected off the stone and lit a flash of color on the ground just to Austin’s right. He tensed and spun to face it, flashlight aimed.
Corinna’s jacket lay discarded in the mud.
Austin crouched. Taking his time, he turned the light back into the rest of the room and gathered up the jacket with his other hand. There was a tear in the right sleeve, streaked on its edge with blood. It was no longer inside out. Austin dipped a hand into the puddle in which he stood. Taking the water, he wiped the blood clean as best he could, then turned the jacket inside out again before tying it around his waist.
“Nnnnnnnhhh!”
Austin froze and waited another few breaths, but nothing followed. Though it might have come from upstairs, he couldn’t be sure. In a fit of inspiration, he removed his pack and slid his arms through the straps again to wear it across his chest. The crystal waited in the smaller pocket. The main pouch remained open. He tested how quickly he could grab its contents and, satisfied, moved on.
His heart pounded in his stomach.
Though Austin took care to keep his light from shining into the upper level, the stairs appeared clear. He could think of no way to check the ceiling above it without casting the light in places the spriggan would likely see from wherever it lurked. Then again, he thought, he would do better to know if it was ready to drop on him than to proceed into darkness and hope it wasn’t.
He pointed the flashlight upward.
The ceiling was clear. There came no response to the light. Maybe the spriggan was behind a pillar or tucked in a nook and had missed seeing it at all. He crept up the steps, moving from mud to dirty stone, hugging the wall. He climbed nearly to the second level. The white circle of light he shined on the top step shook from nerves that quaked in the cage he kept them in.
He paused.
A voice in the back of his mind told him he could still turn around. Withdraw and think of a better idea! But that was cowardice that wouldn’t help Corinna or let him live with himself. He recalled his plan, cementing each step into his path ahead. He reached the top unmolested and turned to face down the length of the room.
A distant scrape of something on stone called to him from the room’s far end. Taking a breath, he crept forward from the landing and swept the flashlight through those corners. The beam showed only debris, cobwebs, and a single, slim, white object protruding along the floor from behind a pillar. It didn’t move. Aside from a vague familiar quality, Austin couldn’t recognize it from that distance. He let it be, sidestepped around the low wall that bound the top of the stairs, and continued across the room’s narrow width to the nearest corner.
“Friend?” he tried, unable to think of how else to address the spriggan. He ached to follow it up with a call to Corinna, yet something told him that showing the extent of his concern would put him in a weaker position. Then again, did he really intend to bargain?
“Nnnnnhhh?” echoed the spriggan’s answer from somewhere at the other end. “Light-bearer returns, calls for friend. Why does he dare?”
Austin shined the flashlight toward the creature’s voice in the hope of blinding it, but the spriggan remained hidden. He swallowed. “Where are you? Show yourself.”
Austin moved forward along the outer wall. His left arm aimed the light. His right hung at his side, tensed to reach into his pack. He still saw no sign of Corinna. Was she wedged into some alcove? Walled up? Gone completely in some unspeakable manner that —
He refused to finish the thought.
“Where is book? You return book, then I will show.”
Austin moved past a pillar and risked a moment to check the spot where it met the ceiling, in case the thing could throw its voice, too. “That’s an interesting effect you had on me before. Powerful. Could you do that in Rhyll, too?”
An affirmative-sounding whine was its only answer.
“How long since you were in Rhyll?”
“Too long! Exiled. Unfair!”
Austin passed a second pillar, halfway to the end of the room opposite the stairs, flashlight searching. He spied a gap on the interior wall toward the far corner; the creature’s likely hiding place. He had yet to check behind the furthest pillar, but the closer he crept, the less the echoes seemed to come from there.
Austin let himself hope Corinna might be tucked back there somewhere, hidden but safe. He stifled the need to rush straight for it, instead sticking to his plan of being thorough and traveling the perimeter.
“Why were you exiled?” Austin tried. “Maybe I can help?”
“Help? There is no help! There is only sorrow and pain and remembering!”
Austin passed the final pillar and froze. A shout caught in his throat: A body lay slumped against the base, so desiccated as to appear mummified. Scraps of clothing still clung to it in places. Eye sockets were sunken, almost empty. The whitish protrusion Austin had spotted from the stairs earlier was its bare, bony foot.
It wasn’t Corinna. The corpse’s hair was blond, its clothing wrong. Even so, was Corinna lying somewhere else like this?
“You meet Visitor!” the spriggan cried. “Is friend to keep company, just like I told! He came, after I found book. I questioned, asked of Rhyll, of book, but Visitor lied! Pretended to know nothing! He reminds of book finding, of Rhyll . . .” There was a distant sniffing. “But you have morsels of Rhyll . . . Nnnnnn, how do you find these?”
Who was the visitor? Did he have anything to do with the book at all, or had he simply found his way in out of the weather long ago, never to return? Austin forced himself past, edging along the wall. Focus on the present, Austin told himself. He shined the flashlight ahead, toward the voice.
An impatient whine reminded him of the spriggan’s inquiry. “She didn’t tell you?” he answered.
“Nnnn . . .”
The question came before he could stop it. “Is she okay?”
Well, that was what he wanted, wasn’t it? Austin swallowed and inched his way toward the gap. He had to force himself to go faster. His right arm, still ready to draw out of his pack what he had brought, ached from tension. Relax!
“Where are you?” he asked.
There was no answer.
Austin approached the gap. It was formed by an archway not much taller than he. A narrow room extended beyond to its right. He did not enter — not at first. Instead, he pressed back against the wall to the right of the arch, out of view of the room’s depths, and crouched. A quick flash of the light up under the arch showed no sign of the spriggan. Austin stood, his back scraping stone. With a breath for courage, for Rhi, he spun around through the gap and aimed the light down the length of the room.
It was no more than a hall, really, ten paces long with a meager, disused chandelier dangling above on a rope a few steps ahead. Another chandelier lay broken on the ground further in. A deep, wooden bookcase stood along one wall, empty and sure to crumble if it tried to support anything more than dust.
A muddy shoe on a jean-covered leg extended out from behind the shelf’s far side. Austin’s breath caught in his throat. He cast the light about the room, rapid, anxious. There was no sign of the spriggan. He hurried forward, half certain it was a trap but unable to stop himself.
Corinna lay slumped against the wall behind the bookcase in much the same posture as the spriggan’s desiccated “friend” outside. Thankfully, she looked little worse than before. Austin shifted to face the archway and crouched beside her with his back to the wall. He barely thought to shine the light back toward the arch before checking her pulse. Her skin was warm. Her heart still beat. Relief washed over him as he took his first breath in seconds.