Muse of Nightmares (Strange the Dreamer #2_UK)

by Laini Taylor

  “That bodes well,” said Feral, deadpan.

  “What’s she done to it?” demanded Ruby.

  They all felt the same protective anger—as though the citadel were alive, and the stranger who’d stolen it had harmed or frightened it.

  “I’m just glad it’s here,” Sarai breathed, swallowing her fear. “Let’s go get it back.”

  They flew toward it. In Weep, it had been full daylight, but here it seemed a gloaming time, maybe dusk, maybe dawn. Or maybe there wasn’t night or day here, but only perpetual half-light. Sarai couldn’t shake the feeling of having slipped not through a cut in the sky, but into a stranger’s dream—or nightmare, more like.

  There was the sea with its lurid blood color, its violent froth and roar. Silhouettes of great beasts moved dark beneath its surface, vying and clashing in savage attacks that seemed to make the water roil redder. The massive bristling white stalks were awful for their sheer improbability, and the ceiling of mist seemed as much a barrier as the sea, too dense, too dark to navigate.

  The silk sleighs were quiet, making only a low, steady shhhhh as air streamed from the propulsion bladders on their undersides. The warriors held their swords at the ready. Thyon drew his dueling blade and felt like an impostor. Ruby conjured palmfuls of fire, and glanced more than once out of the corner of her eye to see if the humans were impressed—the golden one, especially. She couldn’t get enough of the sight of him, which had not gone unnoticed by Feral.

  Minya held the mesarthium shard; they had passed it around, taking turns holding it to keep their magic fresh, but she was never easy until it was back in her possession. She stood in the prow of the sleigh, small and straight, and looked into the face of the seraph as they approached it.

  She felt a strange kinship for it. The rage in that frozen scream spoke to something deep within her. As she had lived inside the citadel, so, too, had she lived inside her rage. Every thought she had and every feeling had been filtered through it. But now it was as though she had taken a step backward and could see it there like a red haze. And she saw the fear at the heart of it, too, like a thorn deep in a festering wound. Everything looked clearer now. She was even able to understand that what she saw on that immense metal face was a reflection of the woman who had altered it, whether consciously or not.

  Which meant that the flutter of kinship Minya was feeling was for her.

  Where was she, though, the real woman? They approached the citadel with caution, coming up from behind, over the wing to the left shoulder. Their options for entry were limited by the seraph’s huddled pose. With its arms clutched around itself, the doors in the wrists were cut off. And even if they’d been able to get in that way, the corridors would have become vertical shafts, too smooth to try to climb. There was only the garden and its arcade.

  They were afraid to approach directly, lest there be guards on watch. They would have to ease around from the back and try to get a look in without giving themselves away. Sarai was afraid the sleigh wouldn’t be able to reverse quickly enough if someone was there. With its bright red pontoons, even a glimpse of it would draw any remotely vigilant eye. Still, they would have proceeded, had Calixte not proposed another solution.

  “Let me off,” she said. “There.” She pointed to the seraph’s shoulder. “Let me climb around and scout it out first. I’ll be much less conspicuous.”

  “Climb?” The godspawn were astonished. “It can’t be climbed,” said Feral with authority and the lightest whiff of disdain.

  “Maybe not by you,” replied Calixte in kind. “We all have our strengths, and that’s mine. That and assassination.” She winked over her shoulder at Thyon, who had never given any credence to that claim, but was now rather wishing it were true. He wouldn’t mind if Calixte were to slip away for a few minutes and quietly solve their problem.

  Sarai knew who Calixte was, both from her dream explorations and Lazlo’s descriptions. She knew all about the tower and the emerald, and even her practice climbing the anchor in Weep. Still, she looked at the place Calixte indicated, and the thought of her climbing overboard onto sheer mesarthium was terrifying, especially since she knew all too well what it was like to slip over that surface and not find a handhold. But Calixte insisted. “Furthermore,” she added, “I can finally win my bet with Ebliz Tod.”

  Her fellow delegate and countryman had wagered that she couldn’t climb the anchor. Well, the anchors were no more, but the citadel itself seemed a suitable substitution, especially considering the risk of sliding off into a red sea filled with monsters. “And anyway,” she concluded decisively. “This is why I’m here.” She paused and sketched a quick glance around. “Well. Not here here. But in Weep, at least. Eril-Fane brought me along in case I might come in handy. I haven’t yet, so let me.”

  And so it was decided. Sarai looked to Tzara in case the warrior might object or at least look alarmed, but she only embraced Calixte and kissed her and stood back to watch with fierce pride as Calixte did what she had, after all, come halfway round the world to do: climb.

  Feral, somewhat chastened, maneuvered the sleigh closer to a spot on the wing that Calixte indicated, near the shoulder blade. She climbed over the railing, her slight weight not tipping it at all, and...stepped off. None of them were expecting it. Their breath caught in a unified gasp. Sarai rushed to lean over the railing and look down, sure she would see the young human reeling down the metal, scrabbling desperately for a handhold.

  But she wasn’t. She was scaling it as easily as an ordinary person might walk across a street.

  For a moment they just watched in awed silence. Then Ruby asked simply, “...how?”

  “She’s part spider,” Thyon said, remembering she’d told him that.

  “Come again?” said Ruby.

  Tzara smiled, her eyes never straying from Calixte. “It’s quite scandalous. Her great-grandmother apparently fell in love with an arachnid.”

  “Well, that makes us seem positively normal,” said Sparrow as they all watched Calixte make her way up the curvature of the angel’s shoulder and lower herself over the other side, vanishing from their view. They stayed out of sight, and could only stare fixedly at the last place they’d seen her, waiting for her to reappear and either motion them nearer or...perhaps not reappear at all.

  But she did, after five minutes that felt like an eternity. Her head popped up, followed by a beckoning arm, and they all let out their breath as one. How easily, Sarai mused, they’d all fallen into rhythm. Adjusting her valves, she set the silk sleigh to scud gently forward, and followed, full of trepidation, as Calixte led them over the edge and all the way down into the garden. Their garden. Their home. Their plum trees and kimril patch.

  At first it was a surprise to see it crowded with metal creatures, but then Sarai remembered—this wasn’t Nova’s doing, but Lazlo’s. He had brought their guests up on the beasts of the anchors, and here they were with Rasalas.

  Her hearts were pounding as she made her descent, expelling enough ulola gas to bring the silk sleigh down to rest on the very same patch of anadne flowers where her body had been immolated. She was conscious as she did so that they would be unable to re-ascend, and could not now reach the portal to make the return journey home. They were committed.

  “Aren’t they here?” she asked Calixte in a whisper, looking all around, furtive.

  “Ye-e-es,” Calixte said, the word unfolding like an accordion. “They’re here.” And, with a hushing gesture, she led them to the arches of the arcade.

  Sarai, following warily, caught a glimpse of movement from within and flattened herself against a pillar, gesturing to the others to halt or hide.

  “It’s all right,” said Calixte, then reconsidered her words. “Well, no, it’s really not. But anyway, you’d better look.”

  Sarai peered around the pillar, and the whole ungodly scene was revealed.

  Chapter 58

  A Dying Wish

  The gallery wasn’t empty. As Calixte had sai
d, they were here, all of them: Nova, Werran, Rook, Kiska. And Lazlo.

  Lazlo.

  He was in a cage far too small for his long frame, his head bent and his legs shoved into an agonizing crouch. Sarai longed to run to him, to wrench the cage open, but there was no chance of that. The mesarthium cage would yield only to Lazlo’s gift—whoever possessed it—and anyway, she wouldn’t be able to get to him.

  A faint iridescent bubble enclosed him, like the one that had held Eril-Fane and Azareen as they endured their deaths over and over. Kiska and Rook were trapped inside it, too, and this was the movement Sarai had glimpsed. Lazlo, in his cage, was still. It was Kiska and Rook who were in motion—the same motion, the same few seconds repeated, so that Sarai and the others were witness to the moment of their mutiny.

  It could only be that.

  Kiska was in profile. Sarai saw her hand clench into a fist as she lowered her chin. There was intense focus in her one visible eye— the green one—and then it was gone as her head snapped back and she was thrown off her feet to collide with Rook, who caught her with one arm, the other reaching out in the same spell-casting gesture Nova had made earlier, as though he had tried—and clearly failed—to create a loop of his own.

  His target was still right where she must have been then: at the head of the table.

  “She’s in my chair,” Minya whispered with stiff displeasure.

  And she was. She was asleep in it, slumped forward over the table with her head cradled in one arm and the other hanging limp, as though she had finally succumbed to an exhaustion so profound she could do nothing but sink down where she was and lay down her head.

  After neutralizing the threat of her own people who had turned against her.

  Werran too. He wasn’t caught in the time loop. He was just outside it, the worse for wear, because he was caught in a serpent’s mouth.

  The beast was mesarthium, like Rasalas and the others in the garden, but it was inchoate, half formed out of the metal of the floor, from which it appeared to emerge, like a breaching sea creature, to capture its prey in massive jaws. Werran’s feet hung out one side of the beast’s mouth, his head and shoulders from the other. One arm was free and had fallen still, as limp as Nova’s, and blood-encrusted from an earlier wound. When he caught sight of them in the arch, he renewed struggling, though feebly.

  Sarai remembered what his gift was—that terrible, soul-scouring scream—and tensed, but he made no sound.

  He couldn’t, of course. She saw that that was the point. The serpent’s mouth was crushing his chest. He could barely breathe, let alone draw enough air to scream.

  “They must have tried to help Lazlo,” Sarai whispered, and she was so glad. She’d hated believing they’d been betrayed by their own kind.

  “They’d better,” Minya said, grim. “To take the side of Korako’s blood over their own? I would be very disappointed.”

  Sarai experienced a flutter of sympathy for the three of them, to be torn between loyalties to Nova and Minya, two terrifying forces of nature. The scenario in the gallery suggested they’d chosen sides.

  It also suggested that they’d been effortlessly thwarted, and didn’t stand a chance against Nova.

  Did anyone?

  She was asleep, or more like passed out, which could be counted a distinct advantage on the part of those crouched in the archway, but for one thing: Wraith.

  The bird was perched on the back of Nova’s chair, huge and white and very much awake, watching them with its gleaming dark eyes.

  Eril-Fane had told them the truth about Wraith, and it was so strange to think that all these years, the ghostly white bird had been...what, exactly? Not Korako, but some shred of her, some echo? Did the bird even have a consciousness, or was it just acting out a set of old patterns, old hopes, without comprehension?

  Sarai wondered if the bird was naught but a dying wish, flying endless spirals, just waiting and watching for an avenue to open that would allow it to fulfill its purpose. Had it been, all this time, just trying to get to Nova? Would it act to protect her?

  She had to assume it would. “What do we do?” she breathed.

  “Kill her,” Minya said, but she didn’t say it with relish the way she might have before, and Sarai saw that her hands were fists, her fingers moving over the slickness of blood on her hands.

  Sarai had to admit that was the obvious answer. And yet, through no love loss for the woman who had wreaked such havoc, nearly cost Sarai her own soul, and trapped Lazlo like that, it still felt wrong. She hoped that killing would always feel wrong. “I don’t think Wraith will let us near her,” she ventured.

  “We don’t have to be near her,” said Minya, gesturing to Tzara, who held a bow at the ready. “Are you good with that?”

  Tzara’s affronted look said that yes, she was.

  “Would she die instantaneously?” asked Feral. “Because if she takes even a few seconds, we could all end up in snakes’ mouths like him.” He gestured to Werran, and they all noticed that he seemed to be gesturing to them.

  His free arm, which had been hanging limp and bloody, was now making a frantic beckoning gesture. Sarai, exchanging a quick look with the others, said, “I’ll go. You all stay here.”

  With a look at Wraith, she took her first tentative step. Immediately the bird deepened its protective hunch over Nova, its wings fanning out at its sides. Sarai froze.

  She gave up walking, and simply floated, venturing very slowly into the room. When Wraith just watched her, she continued, slow and steady. It was so hard to see Lazlo frozen in that agonizing pose. She wanted to pop the shimmering time loop like a soap bubble and pull the cage apart with her hands. What a power was Nova’s, to be able to do that and more.

  Wraith followed her with its eyes, but made no further move as Sarai, with ghosts’ grace, approached Werran.

  Up close, she could hear the wheeze of quick, shallow breaths as he struggled to draw enough air into his compressed lungs to keep himself alive. There was desperation in his eyes as though he was fighting a losing battle. Sarai’s hands fluttered uselessly toward him with the urge to help him, but there was nothing she could do. He was wedged deep in the broad metal mouth, the serpent’s fangs curved and interlocked around him. The serpent, at least, was inanimate, no more than a statue. Sarai didn’t think she could have stood it if it was watching her with its slit-pupil eyes.

  Werran was trying to say something to her, but he couldn’t do much more than shape sounds with his lips. He had so little breath to work with he could barely whisper. Sarai leaned close and made out the words “...don’t...kill her...”

  She was chastened. Planning to kill somebody was what Minya did, and she hated the feel of it in her mind. “I don’t want to,” she whispered back, defensive. “But if she wakes up, we’re all finished. If she were dead, Lazlo would get his gift back and free you from this thing.”

  With urgent impatience, he shook his head. “. . . loop...” It took him a few wheezes to be able to form the next whispered words. “...only...she...can break...”

  It took a moment for Sarai to understand what he was telling her. “Are you saying that if she dies, they’ll be trapped like that? But...their gifts will go back to them. Rook...”

  But Werran was shaking his head. “... loop...” was all he could say.

  Sarai turned to watch the loop play out another iteration. Kiska’s fist clenched. Her head lowered. She was thrown backward. Rook caught her, raised his arm. He was trying to use his magic and failing. And as long as he was caught in the loop, he would keep on failing, just like Eril-Fane and Azareen had kept on dying. These were the seconds that were preserved. And all the while, Lazlo was motionless, powerless, cramped in his cage. Would he stay that way forever? Or would he die slowly of dehydration, starvation, while Sarai was just steps away, unable to reach him? Either thought was unbearable.

  “What can we do?” she asked, helpless.

  Werran’s desperate eyes told her that he could
suggest no plan. All he managed in his airless whisper was, “...help.”

  Chapter 59

  A Game that Kill Could Not Win

  Help.

  Werran might have been trying to plead “Help me,” or even “Help us,” and run out of breath, but it was the single word that rang in Sarai’s head.

  Help. Help. Help.

  It seemed to take up position opposite kill, as though they were facing queens on a quell board. This was a game that kill could not win—or, if it did, it would be an unbearable win that destroyed the very meaning of winning. If they killed Nova, they were sentencing Lazlo, Kiska, and Rook to either eternity in the loop or to dying in it, while Werran would suffocate in the serpent’s jaws. The rest of them would be alive, trapped in this terrible sky instead of Weep’s, and here they would stay until Sparrow could grow enough ulola flowers to refill the silk sleighs’ pontoons with lifting gas, and then what? Go back to Weep? Make some sort of life? Leave the seraph here, leave Lazlo here, alive or dead in that shimmering bubble for strangers to find some day in the future?

  It was, all of it, unthinkable. There had to be another way.

  Sarai went back to the others, still clustered in the archway. She told them what she’d learned and let it sink in. In their stricken silence, she felt her own desolation deepen. Perhaps she’d hoped that someone else would see a way out that she wasn’t seeing.

  Calixte ventured, “Maybe she won’t kill us when she wakes up?”