Instead, he wandered along halls and stairs, farther than he’d gone before, into the burned northern portion of the building. It looked like the fires had been partially damped out with water, and he wondered how it had happened if all the Weshen were gone.
The only possibility he’d come up with was that Graeme’s soldiers must have both started and ended the destructive fires. But none of that explained why.
Why wouldn’t Graeme want Weshen City to burn to its very dirt?
He pushed deeper into the bottom rooms of the mansion, beneath the ground where the fire hadn’t reached. The halls here smelled musty and foul, like piss and vomit. Nik didn’t know what the men could have been keeping down here, but he feared he might be finding more dead bodies.
Turning a corner, he was forced to stop before a mess of caved-in beams. A thick layer of ash and broken pieces of stone were piled in the hall, blocking any progress.
Nik stared up at the dark hole in the ceiling, wondering how close he was to the edges of the mansion. He’d never explored it all, but he knew there were several sprawling wings.
Sighing at the amount of work this would take to clean and repair, he kicked idly at a fallen beam. Even if they cleaned up the bodies, it would take a year’s worth of solid work to rebuild all that had been lost to fire and destructive shifting. The beam slid down a little, and Nik coughed away the cloud of dust that rose.
When he stopped coughing, he heard a sound, like the mewl of a tiny animal.
He stilled, even holding his breath to hear better. His heart began a crazy rhythm as the noise reached him again, and he swiveled, pinpointing the location. It was behind the wall of debris. Something was down here with him. An animal, perhaps?
Nik closed his eyes, sifting carefully through the sources closest to him, then farther. Wood. Stone. Plaster.
Human.
His eyes flew open, and he dropped to his knees, tearing apart the rubble, using both hands and his shifter magic to fling away the pieces. A gap opened swiftly, but it was still too dark to see.
“Who’s there?” he called, keeping his voice gentle. “I can help you. Call out!”
A croaking noise vibrated through the air, and Nik realized his hole was too far left. “Stay still. I need to shift more debris away!” He made quicker work of the job now that he knew where to open a path. Ducking into the larger gap he’d made, he found himself in a cellar storage room. Everything was still so dark he could barely make out the huddled shapes before him.
They were small.
Much too small to be adults.
Nik’s heart swelled and cracked with impossible hope and crushing fear. Were these Weshen children? Young boys hidden here from Zorander Graeme’s army? It had been so long, though. How could someone have survived in such a place for so many weeks?
“I need to return with a light,” he called and was met with a whimper.
“Help,” a whisper came, yanking his heart from his chest. “Stay.”
Nik knelt and crawled toward the faint breath, feeling his way along the floor. Twice his hands brushed the cold flesh of a body, and he recoiled, memories of dungeon cells pricking at his determination. But he crept forward, deeper into the room.
Finally, he found the source of the whispered plea. Still unable to really see what he was doing, Nik patted his way up the body, which was much too warm, but breathing, thank the Magi. He wrapped an arm around narrow shoulders and hips and scooted backward as best he could without disturbing anything or anyone.
Stumbling into the hallway, Nik hugged the child close to his chest. “Are there others?” he murmured to the boy.
The child’s head lolled lifelessly back against Nik’s shoulder, and he felt his memories tugging his senses back in time to the night Coren had rescued him. Leaning against the wall to steady himself, Nik could clearly hear the crack of the whip across his bare flesh. His legs were sluggish and heavy as if they were covered in mud and rising water.
Nik gritted his teeth against the sensations, screaming at his reeling mind that none of it was real anymore. He wasn’t with the slavers or the witches now. None of that mattered anymore. What mattered was the Weshen boy in his arms.
He had to deliver this child to the women upstairs, find a light, and return to the bowels of this safe-house turned prison turned tomb.
He hauled his body up the stairs, feeling like time had simultaneously stopped moving but was still speeding inexorably backward. He reminded himself again and again how he needed to get this boy to safety, but the shouts of the slavers were too close behind.
There wasn’t any safe place in these woods. They would find him: they always did. He’d run so many times.
They always found him.
No, Nik ground out. He was here in Weshen City, not in the woods of Riata.
“Lorenya,” he called, his voice hoarse and hollow in the halls. He heard distant laughter from the kitchens. “Lorenya!” he yelled, slumping against the wall at the top of the stairs. A decorative railing hit his back, and he jumped away as though a whip had touched him. His grip on the child slipped, and the boy’s weight moved dangerously.
Nik fell, his knees cracking into the floor as he struggled to balance without dropping the child.
Footsteps, finally.
“Nik?” a voice called.
“Here!”
Lorenya rounded the corner and gasped, freezing for one long breath before charging forward to gather the boy from Nik. She knelt next to Nik, cradling the child to her chest.
“Amden!” she yelled, but Amden was already entering the end of the long hall, the other women trailing behind her.
“Where? How?” Lorenya stuttered, brushing the sticky, damp hair from the boy’s burning forehead.
“Downstairs. More. Need a light,” Nik gasped, squeezing his eyes shut against the emaciated form in Lorenya’s motherly arms.
The women immediately mobilized, scattering to gather torches and blankets and flasks of cool water. Nik stood, resting both hands against the wall and calming his breathing. He knew he’d have to help, but he was paralyzed at the thought of going back down there. He could feel the cracks in the chest where he’d locked all those memories. He didn’t know what would happen to him if he had to relive those horrors again.
Reaching down, he grasped Lorenya’s elbow to help her stand. Her grip on the child never faltered.
“I’ll care for him. You go,” she assured Nik. Reluctantly, Nik nodded. But he forced himself back down the stairs, the women following him with hushed whispers he refused to decipher.
The caved-in ceiling came into view, and someone gasped.
“There may not be more alive,” Nik cautioned.
“There may be,” Amden replied, narrowing her eyes at the dark doorway before them. She ducked low enough to enter, and her torch threw the stretch of shadows into the corners.
Nik followed blindly, barely avoiding bumping into Amden’s backside. The other women crowded into the small space, and together their lights brought the scene to life.
A dozen or more tiny bodies leaned against the walls, draped and toppled over each other, some at unnatural angles that made the idea of finding life down here seem ludicrous.
Nik reeled, his past surging into his gullet like a tidal wave of bile. Hunching in the nearest corner, he retched until his throat was raw, emptying what little food he’d consumed earlier.
A soft hand patted his back, and he flinched so hard his skull connected with the wall before him.
The shadows danced with the torchlight before his eyes, recreating a scene he’d hoped had been locked away permanently.
But no. The magic had only hidden it, not stripped it.
Nik heard his own voice echo in his ears, hoarse with cries and tears, but he wasn’t sure if it was real or memory. He couldn’t tell where his body was. His arms were chained, aching wrists wrapped in the vile, spelled iron links that kept his shifter magic from manifesting. The moans of the oth
ers near him were constant, the screaming and crying incessant.
None of them would make it out of their cells alive - and they knew it. But some still hoped. Sometimes, he did, too.
His best friend, Shander, lay slumped beside him, his head hot on Nik’s shoulder, too heavy and damp with sweat for Nik to bear. He tried to shrug it off, but when Shander swung up to look at him, his eyes were wild with the insanity of starvation.
Nik tried to scurry away, but there were only so many links, and his friend lunged for him, sinking his teeth into Nik’s forearm. Both boys shrieked, and the hunk of bloody flesh Shander had torn away fell to the stone floor of the prison with a wet plop. Nik howled, yanking his arm inside his threadbare sleeve, pressing it as hard as he could to staunch the bleeding.
But Shander.
Nik couldn’t tear his eyes from his friend, who had finally gone mad. It had happened to many of the children - they could only take so much hunger. The boy was hunched over, chewing the flesh and licking the floor. His eyes snapped up, and for a brief second, Nik saw the boy he’d known. A flash of horror entered his friend’s eyes.
Then something slid back down over those faded blue orbs, like a brewing stormcloud passing across the blue sky.
Nik cowered farther away, but he knew Shander could still reach him. Nik kicked out as Shander connected with Nik’s thigh, ripping at the thin fabric to find the meat that might stop him from starving to death, but which would surely kill Nik.
Nik’s foot caught Shander on the temple, and his head snapped back, cracking against the iron loop holding both of their chains. Shander dropped as quickly as he’d risen up, and Nik trembled at what he’d done. What his friend had done.
How would any of them ever survive this?
“Nikesh!” The jailer’s voice crawled all over Nik, paralyzing his young limbs with the acceptance of punishment. Death.
“Nikesh!” Another voice broke into the cell’s darkness, but this one was full of light. Full of love.
Gentle hands gathered his shoulders, not cruel fingers or the harsh slice of a braided leather whip. Soft, clean hair brushed down his cheek and whispered murmurings drew him to a memory even farther back, so inaccessible it was made only of color.
His mama. Warmth and soft lavender and orange like the first mimose flowers of spring.
Nik sunk down into the touch, his tears for Shander soaking into his mother’s bosom as she rocked him gently.
“Nik,” she said, tucking a finger under his chin. “Nik, can you walk?”
“Walk?” he echoed. How could he walk with these chains? But he blinked down, feeling his arms. The chains were gone. Fingers caressed the tears from his cheeks.
“Can you make it up the stairs?”
He blinked. Was he home with Mama, then? Their home didn’t have stairs. But he allowed her to pull him up, and he blinked harder when his form stretched taller than hers.
He wasn’t taller than Mama when she died.
Gentle hands swiveled him through a dark room and pushed his head beneath some sort of low beam, so he wouldn’t knock his forehead. A long hall, then yes, stairs.
“Where?” he whispered.
“Nik, this is Weshen City. Don’t you remember? I’m Lorenya.”
He startled in her grasp, nearly knocking her down the stairs. So, he wasn’t at home. He glanced around again.
He was thankful he wasn’t in the Sulit prison, either. His mind struggled, swimming sluggishly through the layers of memory to find the surface.
It was several long moments before he could again process where he was, and then the most recent memories clicked into place.
“The boys,” he said, remembering what had forced him back into his childhood trauma.
Lorenya drew in a breath, relief washing over her face at his returning clarity, followed quickly by the shadow of pain. “We were too late for many.”
Nik leaned his head against the cold wall, willing there to be more children alive. “Some?”
“Three more,” she whispered, a tear sliding down her cheek.
Nik’s chest shuddered, but he found the strength to level his eyes with hers. “Do I need to go back down there to help?”
“No,” she said, too quickly. “The others are taking care of the bodies. Do you want to help me with the ones upstairs?”
It was like she was asking if he wanted to slip a knife between his own ribs and continue to walk.
“How could we not have known they were down there?” he managed.
“Nik, I don’t think we could have done any better.”
“We should have searched the house first,” he burst out, anger flooding away the lingering nausea and sad helplessness. He should have sensed their tiny bodies in the bowels of the mansion. His power was strong enough.
Instead, he’d been too busy rolling himself in Sy’s blankets, choking himself to sleep each night with self-pity. All while children starved to death two floors beneath him.
A sob racked his body, and Nik cursed at himself.
So weak. Always so, so weak.
But he didn’t resist when Lorenya guided him up the rest of the stairs and into Sy’s bedroom. He simply let her push him into bed, give him a swallow of water, and tuck the blankets around him.
He had no strength for anything else.
Chapter 15
ALL NIGHT, THE JOURNAL had pulsed with a heavy sort of magic, even tucked deep in Coren’s mattress. She slept fitfully, waking often to find it humming in her ear.
She finally just got up, her bare feet silent on the wooden floor. She shifted apart the mattress and retrieved the journal. As soon as her fingers touched the book, she felt a wash of relief, as though simply holding it calmed her nerves. She knew this wasn’t normal, but it felt right - like something she was supposed to have.
She walked to the window, her fingers flipping the edges of the pages gently.
Stars were still massed in the dark sky, but they had faded, and a slim streak of light blue cut the horizon. Coren wished the window faced west, and Sulit, so she could better imagine Penna and Kosh asleep under the same moon. Staring into the star-dotted vastness, she prayed Kashar and the witch would be able to keep them hidden.
They would be turning eight very soon, and if they developed magic as early as Jyesh, or as strongly as Coren, there would be many powerful beings drawn to the Sulit woods. Coren chafed at the irony that she was soon to become Queen of all the land she could see, yet she still had not been able to bring her family together.
Queen, Queen, of everything...
The words were like a singsong whisper brushing gently against her ears, and the tune was the same that had woken her all night. She whirled to look behind her, but the room was dark and quiet, except for the blessedly even breaths of Sy and Resh.
Queen, Queen, of everything. Of all you see...
Coren trembled as the whisper danced across her eardrums again. Were the cursed brothers coming after her now? She should wake Sy and Resh.
“Resh?” she called, but he didn’t stir.
The journal grew warm in her palm, but she found herself compelled to hold it, still. Were all its odd symbols written with dark magic instead of simple Sulit spells?
She should have left it in Mara’s throne. It could be dark magic left by the Queen to harm the finder. Even as she thought this, it rang false in her mind. Whatever magic this book had was strange, but natural, like her shifter magic had felt in the beginning.
Coren turned back to the window and leaned against its cool glass, her whole body warming now with the fine perspiration of fear. The journal seemed stuck to her fingers, and the pages ruffled open on their own, falling flat to a blank page.
No symbols appeared like before.
A trace of gold in the window caught her eye, and she pressed her cheek to the glass, trying to see beyond it. Was there a light in the gardens below? She lost it in the navy and purple of the early morning shadows.
But when s
he straightened, it was there again. Coren gulped. Not in the gardens. Not beyond the glass. The golden light reflected something behind her.
Her heart was pumping so fast she grew dizzy as she turned slowly to look at the room.
Queen, Queen, of everything...
The pinpoint of golden light widened, but unlike candlelight, it did not light up the room.
Coren cringed back toward the window glass, ignoring the flare of heat from the journal. She had no weapon on her. Could she even fight a spirit? Sy certainly hadn’t been able to.
She braced herself for pain, but none came as the light gathered itself, growing more and more human-shaped. This was a spirit, but she soon realized this wasn’t one of the brothers who plagued Sy.
It was a woman, shorter than she and bent with age and gnarled bones. Her face was a blur of mist and pale light, but a sharp glow appeared where her eyes should be, like embers unearthed from the heart of a fire.
“What are you?” Coren whispered, noticing her heart had calmed. “Spirit?”
The face moved up and down as though to nod. It floated a bit closer, but it didn’t move to touch her or speak. Coren felt none of the twisting agony Sy had described. She felt like she was in the presence of a friend like Maren.
“Who are you?” she asked, noticing how her voice seemed to travel only as far as the light, as though Sy and Resh were now sleeping behind a window. “Can you speak? Can my friends see you?”
Coren pushed her shifter magic toward the light, trying to sense the woman’s form. She sensed something different about the air within the light, but she couldn’t differentiate sources or shift them at all.
The woman’s face flickered and the whispered song from before began to echo again in Coren’s ears. Still, Sy and Resh slept on, as though an enchantment had been woven, netting them firmly beneath their dreams.
The journal grew warmer still, nearly burning her skin, and the spirit’s bright, hollow eyes focused on it. The pages glowed softly with the same golden light.
Dream of Darkness and Dominion Page 14