“You can’t just throw them away like that,” she said, shocked at the thought.
“Why not?”
“If they let you command the Siheldi? How could you? You could stop them from ever attacking people again. Ever killing again. You have a duty.”
“To put you out of a job?”
“That’s not important. Think of how many lives you could save.”
“Can’t save anyone if we’re both dead,” he said shortly, shifting his attention to the ledge at his feet, trying to see if there were enough handholds to easily find a way down.
“Arran – you can’t just throw them away,” she said solemnly, putting her hand on his arm.
“Can’t I?” he asked, frustrated. “I don’t know how to use them, I can’t seem to keep them hidden, and you won’t let me get rid of them. That puts me in a right awkward position, Miss Inspector Prinsthorpe. What exactly am I supposed to do?”
“We’ll figure it out,” she replied. “We can fix this.”
“I wish I had your conviction.”
Megrithe smiled a little. “Me too. Bartolo is certainly a mad man,” she said, growing serious again. “But you are not. If there’s something to be done to stop him from hurting people…”
“Then I will do it if I can,” he assured her. “Even if it’s not exactly what you want me to do.”
“Promise? A real promise.”
“I swear it. I truly do.”
“Good.”
“Now take off your clothes.”
“I beg your pardon –” she started indignantly, but he cut her off.
“Your jacket, at least. The stones are sharp and hot. You’ll cut your palms to ribbons if you try to climb down without protecting them.”
“Who says I’m climbing?” she asked, folding her arms around herself as she peered nervously over the edge. “I’m not a fairground acrobat.”
“No, but you certainly can be a pain in the ass,” he muttered, ripping off one of his own shirtsleeves and then the other as he wound the fabric around his hands. “I don’t know how you’re not boiling in that damn thing anyway.”
“I am,” she admitted, reluctantly shrugging out of the garment. The dress underneath was rather low-cut and a little too tight around the top, as if she had borrowed it from someone with a smaller frame. “I was wearing it for a reason,” she mumbled, trying to pull the collar higher to cover herself. “It’s not mine.”
“Thank your friend for me, then,” he said, grinning at her discomfort as her face went red.
“Oh, do shut up before I fetch you that wallop.”
“Yes, ma’am,” he said, trying to rip apart the brocaded silk with some difficulty.
“Let me, you idiot,” she said, taking the jacket back and turning it before tearing it easily into strips. “You have to go with the grain.”
“Just wrap it tight,” he said as he sat down and dangled his legs over the edge of the cliff, feeling for somewhere to put his toes.
“Wait – just wait a minute,” she said as he dug his boot into a foothold and let himself hang downward to test its strength, disappearing from her view.
“It’s easy,” he called, searching for the next indent in the smoothly rippled wall. “Ain’t you ever climbed a tree?”
“When I was seven, maybe,” Megrithe replied, gathering her skirt and levering herself over the rim to join him.
“Just follow what I do. Put your feet in exactly the same place, if you can. If it’ll hold me, it’ll hold you.”
The descent didn’t pose much of a problem for Arran, but he was pleased to see that Megrithe showed no fear and little hesitation after committing to the ordeal, following him as quickly as she could. He tried not to look up her skirt.
It only got hotter as they reached the bottom of the bowl, and the air was thick and fetid with the stench of the belching gasses. Arran untied the fabric on his hands and immediately wrapped one piece around his nose and mouth instead, for what good it would do him, motioning for Megrithe to do the same when she joined him.
“Try to take shallow breaths,” he said, putting his foot on the edge of the stone bridge and pushing as hard as he could. It didn’t budge, but its solidity didn’t make him feel all that much more comfortable as he peered into the boiling river below it.
“Thank you. I wouldn’t have thought of that,” she said, leaning down to gather her skirt in her hands, hiking it up past her knees. “If we’re going over this thing, I’m going first,” she added, moving in front of him and squaring her shoulders as she gauged the narrow span’s length.
“Be my guest,” he told her. “Carefully.”
She nodded, forgetting to be annoyed at his instruction as she stepped onto the stone expanse. He watched her closely she walked on tiptoe, trying not to let the heels on her shoes or the hem of her dress hinder her motion as she balanced caution with speed. They were very nice knees. The rest of her wasn’t too bad either, now that he thought about it – not that this was the time or the place to do so.
“Are you coming?” Megrithe called from the far end a moment later, safely on the other side.
“What? Oh, yes. Just a moment,” he replied as she let her skirt drop again and settled it back into place.
The bridge had held her slight weight perfectly well, but that didn’t stop him from running across as quickly as possible, his teeth clenched and every sinew in his body willing itself to weigh less and be more agile as he placed one foot in front of the other, trying his hardest not to look down into the certain, horrible death that awaited him if he took a misstep.
The rising heat of the central pit brought with it even more choking fumes that curled around them like lovers’ whispers as they stared at the bright and bubbling brew.
“We might not have to wait for the Siheldi to kill us,” Megrithe said as he joined her, coughing as she tried to clear her lungs.
“Speaking of which,” Arran said, craning his neck to look at the tall boulders that stood in stark, silent rings like sentinels awaiting their duty. “You’d think they’d have been on us in an instant already. Where are they?”
“Don’t say that. You should be glad they’re not here.”
“I just don’t know what they expect us to do,” he said as he examined the closest stone. The monolith was pure, milky white, slightly translucent but shot through with opaque veins crisscrossed with fracture lines. It was twice as tall as he was, too large to put his arms around, and completely cool to the touch when he placed his hand against the smoothly polished surface.
“I wonder what –” he started to say, but his words were drowned out by a deep, throaty rumbling like an earthquake, the mountain’s floor shaking under their feet, making Megrithe fall with a little shriek as Arran lurched forward into the bounder, smacking his forehead against the hard stone. Behind them, the delicate span of rock started to crack and crumble, collapsing into the fiery river in an instant.
“What did you do, you idiot?” Megrithe cried as the tremor continued, making the molten stone in the cavernous pit spit upwards in great plumes that rained down again with a crackling hiss. Her eyes went wide with fear as she realized their only link with the comparatively safe tunnel had been destroyed. “What did you do?”
“Nothing,” Arran shouted, stepping away from the stone and rubbing his head, blinking hard to clear away the dim suggestion of sluggish movement from deep within the boulder, trying to keep his feet as a shower of dusty ash coated his hair. They were trapped now. There would be no escape. “I barely touched it.”
“Well that was stupid,” she replied, letting him haul her upright as the ground stopped swaying back and forth. “You obviously made something angry.”
“Wouldn’t be the first time,” he said, brushing the powder off his shoulder, glancing back at the monolith, but the shadow had disappeared.
But it will be your last, said a bodiless voice as sharp as a whip crack and as close as his own soul. He gasped as the sound rippe
d through his mind – ripped out from his mind, maybe, because he would swear on his father’s grave that it was already inside him.
Megrithe was looking around with her jaw hanging open as she tried to find the source of the words. It was a relief that she could hear it, too. Maybe he wasn’t entirely mad. Not yet, at least.
“Who are you?” he said, looking instinctively towards the bubbling crater even though there was nothing to see.
I am all.
“Right,” Arran replied uncertainly. “Um. What does that mean, exactly?”
I am Siheldi, the voice replied. I am all.
“What do you want with us?” Megrithe asked, tight and terse, her fists balled at her sides.
The voice laughed, and Arran slammed his hands over his ears, grimacing as the bellowing mirth rang through his bones. You know what I want with you, it said. The question is: what do you think you will do with me?
Arran took the brass tube and shook it out into his palm, being very careful to feel the two invisible weights settle into his fingers before he closed his hand tight around the stones. “I have these,” he said to the empty air.
You have nothing, the voice spat in its contempt. Playthings for babes. False hopes for the sea wretches that think they have imprisoned me here.
“Imprisoned you?”
They cannot hold me. I am Siheldi. I am all.
“They can’t control you,” Arran probed carefully. “Not without the stones.”
Not with them. Not at all.
“But you’re trapped.”
The ground shook again as the Siheldi expressed its rage and displeasure. I am everywhere. I am you. I am all, it repeated, but it sounded more like a litany of self-comfort than a boast or a threat.
“You are not me,” Arran told it. “You prey on us.”
Yes, the voice said, and an instant later Megrithe screamed.
“Get off! Get it off! Arran, help me!” she cried, her shriek careening up into the voiceless pitch of fear as she fought an invisible foe, writhing on the ground and kicking, scratching, trying to scramble away from something that she couldn’t see.
Her face was filled with panicked dismay when she turned towards Arran for no more than a second – turned to him while he was standing there, frozen in disbelief, watching her helpless suffering without a single thought in his head.
All of a sudden his feet sprang into action, sprinting towards her without any input whatsoever from his brain. “Keep your head down,” he shouted as he tried to pull her out from under the creature, crippled by the stones he clutched in his hand and dared not relinquish, rendering one arm useless. “Protect your throat.”
Megrithe tried to do as he bade, but her fear was overwhelming: an unnatural, instinctive terror that trampled her better thoughts. Arran didn’t blame her. He had seen it before. He had seen it before and it always ended in death.
There was nothing for him to fight. To Megrithe, it would feel like a ton of lead crushing her heart, a beast of horn and scales and fury slicing through her sinews and slavering blistering venom as it gnawed at her marrow. To him, the creature was just a puff of air – a collection of nothingness with no solid form to grip or hit.
“I can help you,” he yelled towards the ceiling, screamed towards the central well, trying to buy some time for her. “I can free you. Let me help you.”
You are nothing, the voice hissed. You can do nothing.
“Please,” he begged as Megrithe’s struggles quieted, the blood draining from a face that had started to go slack and dim. The Siheldi laughed again as Megrithe went limp, her head rolling sickeningly on her neck, as loose as a broken doll, a nearly silent moan escaping from her slack lips.
“If you want someone, then take me. She isn’t even supposed to be here. It was my mistake. I’m the mistake. Please.”
You are, it agreed, and Arran felt fingers, cold as a dead man’s breath, closing slowly around his neck. It was toying with him. He knew it must be, or he would already be dead. He stiffened and stood completely still, numbness spreading outwards from the tightening grip, an aching frost creeping through his veins as he tried desperately to catch the slightest stirring of Megrithe’s chest from the corner of his eye.
“Tell me what to do,” he managed, holding up the gems.
Are you such a fool? the Siheldi asked softly, the sound close by his ear. He tried to breathe a sigh of relief. That meant it wasn’t near Megrithe.
“Probably. Tell me what I need to do.”
You need to die, Arran Swinn.
“All right,” he said, trying to swallow his fear but failing to get very far as the grip forced his throat closed. “Fair enough.”
You would give up your life to save this woman?
“Why not? I already pledged it away to save myself,” he replied, and the rose printed on his arm started to burn with the memory of what he had said in the eallawif’s den. “I already promised…”
What are you doing? the voice asked, irritated and more than a little confused about the fact that he was now laughing harder than he had ever laughed before.
“You may have me,” he said loudly, practically shouting, hoping she could hear him. “I give my all to you. I am yours. I am yours alone,” he repeated, grinning like a maniac who had just heard a very funny joke. “I renounce all other bargains,” he added, and instantly the mark on his arm began to flame like he had held a glowing iron to the spot.
The twinge of it made him double over, clutching his forearm to his chest and trying not to groan, but it was a beautiful, brilliant thing, because he knew it was working. It was working. The eallawif would come.
This ends now, you fool, the Siheldi hissed, and this time Arran did cry out – he screamed almost as loud as Megrithe had done – at the new sensation that joined his burning mark. It was pain and more than pain. It was fear and the rending shame of being afraid. It was the grief of every life cut down by the spirit’s insatiable hunger, bleeding through into the crevasses of his mind like poisoned honey.
It was a pure and exquisite hopelessness, long and lonely; the indescribable ache of a child grown stunted in twisted darkness, never sparked into blossoming, and never touched; the slow, merciless hammering of disconnection on a heart steeled against pain, nevertheless ringing in keening sorrow for his broken mother and his broken home – his cracked and fractured hope for a chance to discover what piece of him he was missing, what grand lesson he had failed to learn, that had sent him down a path of empty adventure and false triumph, phony freedom and hollow joy.
It was enough to make him want to die despite the fact that his body was still whole – he thought it was still whole: the Siheldi rarely left a mark on the flesh, and now he knew why. They didn’t need to pierce the skin with blades or crack the bones with teeth and claws. They needed only a touch to make their victim beg for death.
Arran had always thought it looked like a horrible way to die, and now he was finding out for sure. He just needed a moment – he just needed to take a breath, and the eallawif would be there. They were not bound by rules of time or travel, and could appear at the ends of the earth in an instant if it suited their fancy. Arran just hoped that his renunciation was important enough for her to put in the effort.
“Please,” he gasped as he lost the sensation of his arm in a sea of boiling agony. “Mistress, I implore thee.”
“What right have you to implore me?” the eallawif asked, suspending his suffering for an endless, golden moment as hope bloomed, tiny and fragile, in the pit of his stomach. For just an instant, as if trapped inside a bubble that could be shattered with the prick of a pin, the pain eased and he was face to face with the angry eallawif, sheltered in some pocket of timelessness that held them as she vented her rage. “Traitor. Speaker of falsehoods. Breaker of promises. You are fit only to die.”
“I have broken no promise,” he replied, finding he could speak again, digging in his pocket for the scraps of paper Bartolo had allowed him to
keep. “No more than you have, at any rate. You tried to trick me first.”
“There is no trick. Your fate was bound before you came to me.”
“Maybe so. You wanted my luck, but it has clearly run out. I have none of it left to give you. This is what I thought it was,” he said, holding out the ribbons of parchment stained with the blood of his birth. “This is all that is left to me. I offer this to you in fulfillment of our bargain. My luck. My downfall. Mistress, I implore thee to accept my gift.”
The eallawif paused, poised in thought as she gazed on the paper with her inscrutable, lifeless eyes. Arran could feel the Siheldi’s fingers ringing his neck, pressing on the veins that gave his mind its sustenance, choking him slowly but surely as the slowed arc of time ticked on.
She could not keep him suspended forever – she could not deny the Siheldi its desires for very long. She would have to decide, and every straining fiber of Arran’s being willed her, begged her, beseeched her to comply.
“I will accept your gift,” she said eventually, and Arran almost started to cry with relief. “You may consider the bargain fulfilled.” She reached out to take the shreds of parchment, carefully avoiding touching his hand.
“Thank you, Mistress. And now I would like to ask a new favor.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“Mistress, I want a new bargain.” She looked at him as if he had a fever of the brain, mad and moaning to be locked behind doors. “Is there a prohibition against it? Our first deal was fulfilled to your satisfaction.”
“There is no prohibition,” she acknowledged slowly.
“Then I ask for you to save the life of this woman, Megrithe. She is innocent, more or less. She does not deserve this death.”
“And in exchange?”
“Take me,” he said simply. “Take the soul you wanted. Don’t let the Siheldi have me. Just end my life. I will not give it to them.”
“You just did,” she pointed out, looking over his shoulder to where the Siheldi would be if it was visible. “You willed yourself to the Queen.”
Dark the Night Descending (The Paderborn Chronicles Book 1) Page 21