Muse of Nightmares (Strange the Dreamer #2_UK)

by Laini Taylor

  Nova’s wrath exploded. Was the girl stupid? Did she think she could best her, and with all this metal just waiting to be quickened? She felt its energy all around. It seemed to vibrate with an urgency to become. But become what?

  More strangling serpent collars? A thousand biting spiders shining like evil gemstones? No sooner did Nova think it than they were. As the two women grappled in the hollow of the orb, its curve gave birth to an arachnid swarm. The smooth surface dappled with sudden texture. Then the texture disengaged, grew legs, and crawled free. Hundreds of spiders surged up. Nova was on her back, pinned down. The spiders climbed over her shoulders onto the girl’s hands, then swarmed up her arms into her dark red hair. She let go then. Nova shoved her off, right into the swarming mass. They skittered over her and in seconds she was cloaked in living metal—a thousand spiders, eight thousand legs, and how many teeth between them? Just before the girl was submerged by seething, multitudinous spiders, Nova saw her eyes—her shining, full-red eyes—flare wide with horror. She felt a distant stab of the same horror for what her mind had birthed with a mere skim of her will. But it was smothered by triumph.

  She’d dreamed of the day she’d steal Skathis’s gift. It had taken the place of her earliest dream—the one she’d shared with Kora, in which Servants came to Rieva and chose them. She had dreamed that dream for sixteen years, and this one for more than two centuries.

  In it, she didn’t kill him, but stole his gift, and stole him, too. She would set Kora free, and they would seize this ship and keep Skathis in a cage too small for him to stand up in. She imagined it as a birdcage hanging in a corner, and they’d torment him relentlessly. They would be his hell, and they would use his gift to sail the skies of all the worlds and be untouchable.

  Did this girl think she could beat her? Did she think she could keep her from Kora? No one would ever do that again. The girl was swallowed by the spiders. A clamor of voices screamed and pleaded, but it all sounded distant and alien. And in the next second, the impossible:

  The girl turned to smoke. She was drowning in spiders, only her hands visible, clawing them away. Then she was floating up as they all fell through her to scrabble over the orb’s curve whence they’d been born a second ago while she rose, weightless, made up of wisps, and came together again, whole and flesh and fury.

  Nova gaped. She’d taken her gift. It was in her possession. She could feel the weight of it, along with the others—the drain of them all on her power. So how in the name of Thakra had she done that?

  The spiders forgotten, the orb resorbed them. The girl surged forward, through the air. Nova unleashed a wave of godsmetal to knock her back, but when it broke over her, she turned to smoke again. She couldn’t pass through the solid metal, but melted into wisps that streamed free of its path and came together again on the other side of it, still coming for Nova.

  She reached her, and seized her once more by the shoulders. Werran and Rook, the two men of Nova’s cohort, thrust their lightning prods at the girl, the charge flashing between the prongs, emitting its deadly crackle. But the rods passed right through her and came close to jolting Nova instead.

  Struggling to get free, Nova kicked out with one of her heavy boots, but her foot went through her, too. She could feel the girl’s realness in the grip on her shoulder, and yet her foot passed through her like vapor.

  “What are you?” Nova snarled.

  The girl was speaking, fast and urgent. Her language was mellifluous, and though Nova understood not a word, she could hear the pleading plainly. Her eyes weren’t red now, but clear-sky blue. Her teeth weren’t a horror. They were even and white. She was young. She was weeping. Then she pointed back toward the bridge, where the smith was on his knees choking.

  She wanted her to save him? In what world would a girl beg for that monster’s life? “You’re pleading for Skathis?” she spat, her lip curled.

  The name registered. The girl might not understand her language, but she knew that name. She recoiled from it.

  A voice spoke inside Nova’s head. It wasn’t the treacherous whisper. It was her telepath, the third of her cohort, speaking directly to her mind. Her voice was clear and calm. She said, Nova. That’s not Skathis.

  As soon as Nova heard it, she knew it was true. She’d been blinded by vengeance and the mad rush of finally breaching the portal that had kept her out all these years. She looked at the smith now, his face dark, his eyes desperate, and she saw similarities, but differences, too. “Then who is it?” she snarled, unable to comprehend what it meant: a different smith here in Skathis’s ship?

  I don’t know, but, whoever he is, you’re killing him. Is that what you wish?

  If it was what she wished, they wouldn’t object—her loyal cohort, her crew. She’d killed to free them. She’d killed to take what they needed to survive. She’d killed for safety, and honor, and spite. She always had her reasons, some of them better than others, and they knew what this moment meant to her.

  Only everything.

  Only Kora. Only the missing half of her very soul.

  Where was she? And if that wasn’t Skathis, who was it? What had happened here? Why had the portal been closed for so long?

  Nova eased up on the serpent collar. Its tail slipped out of its mouth and it came open. The smith flung it away and took a choking breath. The girl let go of Nova and flew to him. She caught him and held him while he sucked in air, his purpled face returning to Mesarthim blue. He was holding his throat, his eyes red and streaming. The two human warriors stood guard on either side of him. They were tense, still wielding their blades. The older woman was clutching the railing. The other three Mesarthim were clustered round the smith. Nova had assumed they were Skathis’s crew, but she saw now how young they all were—barely more than children, perhaps the same age as she’d been when she was sold to an old man for five coins.

  It felt as though cinders were burning a hole in her. Who were they, and where was Kora?

  Where was Kora?

  WHERE WAS KORA?

  The smoke-girl, shape-shifter, whose magic defied theft, looked up and asked a question. Nova asked one right back. In her head, the question thundered, but it came out small and plaintive, because it took every ounce of her anger to quell the treacherous whisper that was telling her, always telling her, Too late.

  . . .

  “Who are you?” Sarai implored. “What do you want?” Nova asked, “Where’s my sister?”

  They couldn’t understand each other. Their languages clashed like alien armies, one harsh, one fluid, both raw with the same awful, bloody suspense. They stared at each other in mistrust and confusion. Across worlds and through portals cut long ago by angels, their lives collided right here. Both came to this place seeking something.

  Sarai and the others were trying to discover what they were, why they were, and what had happened to the ones who came before them.

  And Nova, she just wanted her sister.

  Sarai and Lazlo had joked about meeting strangers at crossroads to swap answers to mysteries. Now here they were. This was a crossroads of sorts. Two groups faced each other. They were strangers, and they held each other’s answers. But this was no laughing matter, and these weren’t the kind of truths you could trade and walk away from.

  They were explosive, and they couldn’t all survive them.

  Of all of them gathered here—five godspawn, three humans, four Mesarthim invaders—only Eril-Fane understood. For three years, he had been Isagol’s pet. He still had nightmares in her language. To hear its harsh sounds picked scabs off old wounds that were only just beginning to heal. But worse by far than the sounds were the words.

  My sister, said the intruder.

  She wasn’t Korako. She was looking for Korako. And who knew better than he that she was never going to find her? His hands were slick with sweat, and in that moment it felt like the blood of old murders that would never wash off.

  Wraith chose that moment, circling overhead, to let out on
e of its haunting wails that sounded like a woman lamenting her fate.

  And, of all of them, only Eril-Fane knew that, too. Not just what Wraith was. Nova knew that: her sister’s astral self, projected into the world. And not just that Korako was dead, because all the godspawn and humans knew that. But only the Godslayer knew both and understood that the ghostly white eagle was the last shred of the dead goddess’s soul, cast adrift when the knife pierced her heart. If the bird had been in her when she died, then surely it would have ended with her. But it hadn’t been. It had been on wing, and it remained, left behind like an echo that refuses to fade, or a shadow outlasting its caster.

  All would come out. Eril-Fane’s throat was tight, his fists tighter, and his hearts felt huge with a sudden, immense, uncomplicated love—for his city, his people, his mother, his wife, and for these beautiful blue children who had survived all on their own. Ever since Isagol, any feeling of love had triggered other feelings—unspeakable, crippling ones that filled him with shame and revulsion. It was like stroking the pelt of a magnificent animal—soft, sun-warmed, a marvel of creation—to find it crawling with maggots, its glassy eyes rolling as it was devoured from beneath. She had done that to him.

  But as he stood there in the heart of the citadel, witness to this collision of stories in which he himself played such a part, he felt no shame and no revulsion, just love—simple, pure, untainted love.

  And a terrible clear-eyed certainty that his reckoning had finally come.

  Chapter 42

  “Dead” Was the Wrong Answer

  Sarai had been so fixed on the pale-haired, wild-eyed Korako apparition that she’d hardly looked at the three who came behind her. Then one of them spoke up—the second woman, and she spoke in their language, the language of Weep. Her voice faltered, and her accent was strange, but the words were plain enough.

  “Who are you? Where is Skathis? Where is Korako?”

  Sarai looked at her, and whatever thoughts those questions stirred in her, she forgot them as soon as their eyes met. Recognition sparked in her, sharp as a shock. Like all four marauders, the second woman was armed and black-clad, her expression severe. Her blue face was plain, her hair brown, and one of her eyes was brown, too. But the other...The other was green.

  Sarai felt light-headed. She was overpowered by a sudden certainty that she was still trapped and wandering inside Minya’s dreams. “Kiska?” she asked, unbelieving.

  The woman blanched with surprise. All the severity fell away, and she looked even more like the little girl from the nursery. “How do you know me?” she demanded.

  Ruby audibly sucked in a breath. Feral and Sparrow stared. They didn’t know her face, the way Sarai did from the dream, but they certainly knew her name. Minya had kept the names of the lost alive, all those she could remember. She’d made sure the others remembered them, too. They had a litany of them, in reverse order: Kiska Werran Rook Topaz Samoon Willow, and on.

  “Your eye,” replied Sarai, dazed. Then something clicked into place in her mind, and her gaze flashed to the two men.

  During the scream, she’d been too distraught to put it together, but now it clicked. The boy taken away before Kiska, his gift had been a war cry to flay minds and wreak havoc. “Werran?” she asked, her eyes darting between the two men. One looked sharply at the other, whose face showed the same surprise as Kiska’s. The hard varnish of his ferocity was softened by confusion. He seemed to be about Lazlo’s age. In fact, he looked a little like Lazlo. They could almost be brothers.

  Or, they could really be brothers. Because it was clear from their reactions: These invaders in their oil-black garb with their lightning prods—these strangers—were the last godspawn taken from the nursery. They were kindred.

  Sarai’s hand flew to her mouth. A thrum of wonder filled her, along with an unexpectedly sweet surge of gladness, in spite of all the fury and fear from the violence of a moment ago. Perhaps it was all a misunderstanding! She dropped her hand from her mouth to her hearts, and looked at the second man. He was young, too, sharp-featured, with dark hair and dark eyes and a shadow of beard growth. Repeating the litany in her head, she said, “I don’t suppose you’re Rook.”

  She saw from his rapid blinking and hard swallow that he was. “You’re alive,” Sarai breathed. All her life this mystery had hung over them, but she had hardly dared hope that she might learn the truth from the lips of the missing children themselves. Could it be so neat? The last three taken, all returned together?

  “But who are you?” asked Rook.

  “We’re like you,” she told him. “We were born in the nursery, too. We’re...we’re the last.”

  “The last,” repeated Kiska, taking in the five of them. Her brow furrowed. She was thinking of the last thing she saw as Less Ellen dragged her to Korako. She was thinking of Minya, and the rest— the toddlers they’d swung in their makeshift hammock. “But there were so many more.”

  The fate of those others hung heavy over them all, and so did the fate of the rest, all those who came before. “There were,” Sarai said, their loss a part of her forever. “But what happened to you? Where did they take you? Are all the others alive, too?”

  Kiska turned to Nova, whose ferocity had softened not a whit. Her pale brows were pinched together, her eyes slitted and flinty. They spoke, quick and harsh. Sarai couldn’t tell how much of the harshness was anger and how much was just the language. Kiska gestured toward them while she talked, explaining who they were.

  Nova’s voice grew harsher still, and Kiska, flustered, nodded once, and turned back to face Sarai and the others. Sarai saw her compose herself and put her severity back in place like a mask. A chill went down her spine. Whatever kinship there was between them, she was setting it aside in favor of her allegiance to this woman. “Answer me,” said Kiska. “Where is Skathis? Where is Korako?”

  If her voice had been less cold, they might have told her, but no one did. The way Nova was looking at them, it felt like a knife to their throats. What answer did she hope for? A new wave of fear washed over them all, and none of them spoke. At least, not out loud. But their minds answered the question in chorus: dead they’re dead they’re dead they’re dead. The words were echoing in Sarai’s thoughts when she saw Kiska stiffen.

  She remembered then what her gift was.

  Kiska was a telepath, and it was clear from the look in her eyes— the dismay, the sorrow, the fear—that “dead” was the wrong answer.

  . . .

  Nova saw Kiska’s look, too, and she knew it could only mean one thing. The treacherous whisper broke loose from inside her.

  too late too late too late too late

  Nova had peered into a volcano once, in some world whose name she’d forgotten. She’d seen magma, hot and bright, churning in its core, and that was how she felt—her gorge, like magma, rising, her rage ready to erupt. She didn’t wait for Kiska to spit out the words, stammering and sorrowful. She seized her gift.

  She was already holding four gifts, and each one was a drain on her power. Kiska’s made five, as many as she’d ever held at once, and she felt the strain, but didn’t hesitate. With Kiska’s telepathy, she threw herself at the strangers’ minds and plunged right into them.

  It was like flying into a tornado. She’d used Kiska’s gift before, but not often enough to get used to it—the whirl of thoughts and feelings. Fear, anguish, confusion, uncertainty assailed her eightfold and she almost recoiled. She heard the same words that Kiska had heard, but she didn’t know what they meant. Words were meaningless, but there weren’t just words. She could see their memories, too, a messy, mad tumult of them, like reflections in boiling water. There was so much chaos, so many images, but the one she wanted—or rather, the one she didn’t want, the last thing she ever wanted—was there among them. She saw, and she could not unsee, and she could not undo.

  too late

  She saw the life leave Kora’s eyes.

  too late

  She felt the knife as th
ough it entered her own heart.

  too late

  Nova saw her sister die in the killer’s own memory.

  forever and always too late

  She let go of Kiska’s power. Kiska felt its return like a punch, and staggered with the blowback of Nova’s feelings. She wasn’t ready, and the raw emotion was crushing.

  Nova was shaking all over. Her eyes had become pools of fire. The air was thickening around her with a cloud so dark it looked as though it had been pulled from a night sky with night still clinging to it. And as she shook, the room shook, too. The walkway heaved and juddered. Those on it had to grasp the rail.

  “You killed my sister!” Nova wailed. She wasn’t using Werran’s scream, but her own voice was nearly as wild.

  Eril-Fane heard and understood. He might almost have been waiting for this. That didn’t mean he wanted it. If he hadn’t always been sure, now he was: He wanted to live. That didn’t mean he believed he deserved to, but he wanted to, so very much. He even thought that he might be free, finally, of Isagol’s curse, because as he faced his reckoning, there was no more shadow to his love, no maggots feasting at its soft underside, but only love so pure it burned.

  Whatever happened to him, though, he would protect all the others as he had failed to before. Azareen, the children. He had another chance to do that, at least. “Get out of here, all of you,” he told them. “Go!”

  Little Sparrow was beside him. He gave her a nudge back up the walkway toward the door. She grabbed Ruby’s hand and tugged her along, both of them clinging to the railing as the walkway shuddered underfoot. Lazlo was still on his knees, Sarai crouched beside him. Eril-Fane took his daughter’s arm, pulled her upright, and urged her, “Go,” as he pulled Lazlo up, too. He was a commander. His voice brooked no dissent. Feral wrapped a protective arm around Suheyla and braced her between himself and the railing as they made their way back toward the door. Azareen did not leave Eril-Fane’s side.