I was terrified that I would someday end up exactly like them.
The night was just cold enough to be uncomfortable. Despite me best efforts, I couldn’t sleep.
This was the first night since leaving Hazeldown that I wasn’t numbed by Rath’s sleeping draught. I had made the mistake of asking him for more than the usual amount he gave me each night. He had looked at me strangely and then told me I needed a night off to prevent something he called “dependence,” so doomed to a sleepless night, I volunteered for guard duty while the others slept. I sat curled against the doorframe, staring out at the night. Every perceived movement made me flinch.
When I was young, Old Man Keller dug up his whole garden and put down fresh soil. Out behind Ketcher’s Place was a huge mountain of loose dirt from the reworked garden. Of course, it attracted the attention of all the young boys around. My friends dared me to climb to the top. We made bets on who would slide down first. I remembered the way my feet sank clear to the bottom as soon as I tried. But that didn’t stop me. I was determined, and I kept pushing forward. The dirt was so loose that I couldn’t get any handholds. My feet churned up a choking cloud, but I made little progress. Instead of climbing valiantly to the top, I thrashed helplessly at the bottom until I was waist deep in dirt and had to be rescued by my friends. I felt like that right now — like the things I kept trying to overcome were just burying me instead.
I kept expecting to see the Imposter’s spirit in the dark, staring at me, tormenting me. To everyone else, death was so final. Death was the most reliable way to get rid of someone. But the dead had never really left me alone. They were always there, always watching. I was paranoid now that the man I had killed would come back for me.
But he didn’t show up, and I sat stewing in the darkness alone. How many more people were going to die before this was all over? And then I considered the more haunting question: would this ever be over? Would I spend the rest of my life running, trying desperately to save my family from a doom that was ultimately inevitable?
Safford’s words haunted me. I didn’t consider myself particularly dangerous, and yet Safford was scared enough by me to risk sending his daughter away to protect her from me. He was absolutely convinced that Willian and Aerona were responsible for the Rise of the Deadmen. What if he was right? What would I find when I returned to the Old Capital?
I hoped that I would find nothing.
Maybe we’d get lucky and the whole place would be empty: no spirits, no deadmen, no haunts. Or maybe there would be lots of spirits and deadmen and haunts, and worse, and we would all die horrible deaths. It could go either way, really.
I watched the others sleep with envy. Rath lay flat on his back with his hands folded over his chest. He looked just like a body ready to be burned at the funeral pyre. The thought made me shudder. Apparently, this was the way all mainlanders slept, ready at a moment’s notice to leap out of bed and grab a weapon. Mel actually slept with flint and steel clutched in her hands.
It was dark out here, so far from the lights of any village. Only the stars and a thin crescent of moon offered any light. In the almost total darkness, I could see that Rath’s skin gave off a faint glow. Was that the vala shining through?
“Don.” Mel crouched beside me. “Get some sleep. I’ll take over for you.”
I shook my head. “I won’t sleep tonight,” I said.
“Then at least let me keep you company,” she insisted.
I scooted over to make room for her beside me. Together, we stared out at the darkness.
“Am I a fool, Mel?” I asked.
She snorted. “Always.”
“No, really. Am I going to get us all killed?”
Mel was thoughtful. “The way that I see it,” she said, “we’re all going to die anyway, right? We might as well die trying to make a difference.”
“But what if we don’t make a difference? What if we go into the Old Capital and don’t find anything? What if we all die for nothing?”
Mel hugged her knees. “Then at least we tried,” she said.
“Mel?” I asked, “Why did you come? You could have stayed in Hazeldown and been spared all of this.”
“Spared? Don, I think you underestimate the powers of the imagination. What if you and I switched places? Would you want to be left behind? I would rather be here with you than at home with your family, wondering if I had already lost you. Being left behind takes courage and faith. I’m just not that strong.” Mel took my hand in both of hers. She ran her thumbs over the pads of my palm. “I would rather die beside you than live without you.”
I wrapped her hands in mine and gave them a squeeze.
“Maybe,” I said, “if we die tomorrow in the Old Capital, when our bodies become deadmen, maybe we’ll stay together. We can terrorize the world as a pair.”
Mel half laughed and half snorted. I wrapped my arm around her shoulder and pulled her close. She had never let me hold her like this before. It felt right.
“That’s the dream,” she said.
Are you sure about this?” Rath asked me. We had spent the previous night preparing for our trip into the Old Capital. The Old Capital was still a whole day’s walk away, but I refused to waste any more time. I was willing to risk another burn from Zarra’s boot if it meant getting in and out faster.
“I have to do this, Rath.”
He looked grim, but resigned. “You may see things you never wanted to see,” he said.
“I understand. I’m ready.”
Rath nodded curtly, but the anxiety never left his eyes.
The sun was just rising over the distant mountains, orange forks piercing the sky. Everything was washed in a gentle blue. My mum called this particular shade “good morning blue.” Sunrise had always been her favorite part of the day.
“Here’s the plan,” I said. “Zarra will take me first and come back for Mel. If I’m in any danger—”
“I’ll get there quickly enough,” Rath finished for me.
“If anyone wants to back out, now’s the time.” I looked around at our small group. No one spoke up. “We’re either the bravest people in the world,” I said, “or the dumbest.”
We had to go quickly. I just needed to find a place on my body that I didn’t mind getting burned. I rolled up my pant leg. Zarra jabbed her boot against my calf, and we were off.
I would never get used to Stepping. It was always a terrible experience. I was still nauseated when we landed. The sound of wind screaming past my ears melted into the sound of actual screams. The world hadn’t even stopped spinning yet. I felt Zarra shove me against a cold stone wall. I heard the hiss of metal on metal as she drew her sword. Apparently, we had already found danger, though I couldn’t see it since my face was squished against the wall. At last, Zarra released me. I turned to find a headless deadman at our feet.
This deadman was different than the ones I had seen before. It had clearly been dead for a long time now. Its flesh was all but rotted away, its eye sockets hauntingly empty. It wasn’t much more than a skeleton with the remnants of clothing hanging from its gaunt body.
“We almost landed on it,” Zarra said. She pulled flint and steel from her pouch and bent over the body.
While she worked, I took a look around. We stood in the largest corridor I had ever seen. It was wide enough that several adults could lie head to foot across it and so tall that my mum would lose her mind trying to get the cobwebs down. The balcony high above us suggested a second floor. Tall, thin windows let in the early morning light in stripes of color that illuminated the remains of paintings that had once hung on the walls. Their frames were now twisted and charred, the canvasses destroyed.
“Where are we?” I asked.
“I aimed for the castle,” Zarra said, frowning up and down the corridor. “Judging by the size’a this place, that’s exactly where we are.”
Our voices echoed in the big empty space. The noise put me on edge. We had run into one deadman already in the short am
ount of time we had spent in the castle. Certainly, there were others who would be attracted by the noises we were making.
“Any spirits yet, Highness?” Zarra asked.
I squinted at the darkest corners. “Nothing,” I said.
There were no rooms in this big empty corridor, so we chose a direction and walked until the corridor turned, dodging thin patches of mist as we went. Here, the corridor was thinner and shorter, with doors all along one side and windows along the opposite wall looking out into a rectangular courtyard that was overgrown with tall grasses and wildflowers. Zarra took every turn before me, her sword held ready to slash any deadmen that might accost us.
She threw her arm out as I rounded one corner, and I collided with her. Here the mist was much thicker. No way were we going that direction.
We doubled back and found a twisting stone staircase to the second floor. The first door we found had been smashed in. Pieces of splintered wood hung forlornly from rusted hinges. Beyond the door was a small bedchamber with an overturned cradle lying on the floor. The pallet on which a servant would have slept beside the cradle was torn to pieces. One whole wall of the room showed signs of fire damage. Looking around made my head hurt. I remembered this room somehow. Rather, I remembered remembering this room.
“This was my room,” I said.
This cradle with its stained, moth-eaten lace had been mine. It was from this cradle that my father had seized me, blankets and all, and dumped me into Rath’s arms. It was in this room that my father had been captured, so intent on my safety that he didn’t care for his own.
Zarra gestured for me to follow her toward the window on the opposite wall.
“Take a look at that,” she said.
The view from the window was incredible. I could see the Old Capital sprawling around us in all directions. Its roads coiled around buildings of various sizes and shapes. It was a city older than the country itself. I could almost hear the hustle and bustle of life on the other side of the river that separated the castle from the city. But, of course, there was none. The only movement I was likely to see would be deadmen coming to wrap their brittle fingers around my throat and squeeze the life out of me. This enormous city was completely abandoned by humanity. For all I knew, we were the first to venture into the castle in seventeen winters.
Zarra patted me on the shoulder.
“Welcome home, Highness,” she said.
I could have stood there all day, staring at the empty city that had once been full of my parents’ subjects. Would I have grown up playing in those streets? Or would my parents have kept me safe inside the castle walls? Would I have been trained as a warrior? A diplomat? Would I have been raised by a nursemaid like the young Prince Aleksander?
“So, Highness?”
My hope had been that we would somehow miraculously find my mother’s spirit as soon as we arrived, but so far, no luck. I hadn’t seen a single spirit.
“We need Rath,” I said. “He’s the only one who knows his way around this place. Get the others. I’ll be safe here for a moment.”
Zarra inspected the room briefly, gave me an awkward bow, and Stepped away. I held my breath and listened hard, but I heard nothing. Maybe a single deadman was all we would find in this old building.
Alone now, I crouched beside the cradle. Lying on the floor was an old doll. I scooped it up and turned it over. It was tiny in my large hands, made of stitched-together fabrics with little mismatched button eyes sewn on a vacantly smiling face. I thought I would remember it, but I didn’t. I didn’t remember anything about this place that I hadn’t learned from the vision the seer had shown me all those winters ago.
The dainty little cradle was covered in dust, but I noticed that the floor wasn’t. Had deadmen paced these rooms, destroying every bit of life they could find? Something about this place was just so off. It was too quiet, too still.
I saw no spirits.
I always saw spirits, everywhere. I assumed in a place with such a violent history that spirits would be in abundance, but I couldn’t see any, even when I strained my eyes. If there were no spirits lurking in the corners, then where were they?
My breath caught when I glanced down and realized I was knee deep in mist. I spun toward the door. My heart caught in my throat.
A deadman stood in the hallway, staring in at me. Mist streamed from the holes that had once been its mouth, eyes, and nose. My hand flexed on the handle of the pitchfork, but before I could move, I heard a sound to my right. I turned my head and saw another deadman, limping slowly toward me from the connecting room that had probably been my parents’ bedchamber.
“Are you the welcoming committee?” I asked. I held my pitchfork with both hands, widening my stance just as Zarra had taught me.
The first deadman gurgled and stepped forward, reaching a bony arm toward me. I crouched, ready to spring forward as soon as it was near enough. While I faced the first deadman, the second lunged at me. I spun, whacking the deadman in the face with the handle of my pitchfork. Its head fell off.
Gross.
As the headless deadman stumbled blindly, I flicked the pitchfork toward the other one and got the tines tangled in its exposed ribs. I tried pulling the pitchfork out, but only proceeded in pulling the deadman closer. Panicked, I shoved forward instead. I heard a snap like a dry twig as the deadman’s spine broke. Its upper body fell unceremoniously to the floor.
“Yeah!” I cheered.
But the deadman’s legs kept moving, and when I looked down at the ground, I saw that its upper body was crawling forward, pulling itself along on bony arms.
“Gross!” I cried and smacked my pitchfork against the ground. The headless deadman tripped over the second deadman’s torso as it tried to grab me. I found myself desperately scooping determined body parts away from me with my pitchfork. I now realized why it was so important to burn bodies instead of bludgeoning them to pieces.
“Don!” Mel cried from the corridor.
A flaming arrow flew at me, igniting the disembodied deadman’s legs. They caught fire but didn’t stop moving. The legs came running straight for me. I didn’t even know deadmen could run, but apparently, without the added weight of their upper bodies, deadmen were fast. Very fast. And these legs happened to be on fire.
In the time it took me to turn my pitchfork on the flaming legs, the deadman’s upper body managed to get a vice grip on my ankle. With a gasp of surprise, I stumbled and fell on my back. I held the flaming deadman legs off of me with the pitchfork while its upper body climbed my leg. No attempt to kick it off would dislodge its sharp, bony fingers.
A blast from Rath sent the fiery legs flying over my head. They landed on the overturned cradle, which quickly caught fire as well. I spun on my back and shoved my leg into the fire. The deadman screamed and loosened its grip on me enough that I was able to wriggle away.
I dodged aside just in time for the other deadman to fly past me into the fire, which had spread to the pallet and up the curtains.
The fire burned away the mist. Mel charged into the room and helped me smother the flame on my pant leg.
“I was gone for like three heartbeats,” Zarra said. “How do you manage to get into trouble so fast?”
“Whose heartbeats, yours or mine?” I asked. My heart was racing so fast I thought it would kick its way right out of my chest.
The fire had nowhere to spread beyond the curtains. It greedily consumed the old cradle and what remained of the deadman bodies, and then burned itself out.
Fortunately, my boots had prevented the fire from singeing my skin. But this was only the beginning. I had encountered three deadmen already. What else stood between us and my mother’s spirit?
We stepped into my father’s bedchamber and found another deadman. Mel and Rath made quick work of this unfortunate soul.
“See anything?” Rath asked.
“No,” I said. There were deadmen, yes, but still no spirits.
Apparently, my parents hadn’t sh
ared a bedchamber. Rath explained that toward the end of their lives my mother spent most of her time alone, wallowing in illness and insanity. I felt pity for them both.
Rath led us down the corridor, up a flight of steps, and around a corner to Queen Aerona’s bedchamber. I couldn’t help but notice how far removed her room was from everyone else’s. We held our torches high to burn away the mist. Mel kept an arrow nocked and ready to fly.
Rath flattened himself against the wall outside the queen’s room. He glanced inside, nodded at us, and preceded us into the room. As we crept into the bedchamber, I noticed movement out of the corner of my eye.
“Look out!” I said as a deadman dove through the bed curtains, wrapping its bony arms around Zarra. Rath shoved his palm at her. The deadman flipped and landed in a heap in the corner. Rath floated closer.
“Not the queen,” he reported. “Go ahead and burn it.”
Mel threw some lighting powder over the writhing deadman and tossed a lit candle at it. It struggled, shrieking, and then went limp. It had been a woman, judging by the remains of a long, pink dress.
“Any sign of your spirits?” Rath asked.
“Nothing. I don’t see anything at all.”
It was apparently accepted knowledge that my mother had perished in the throne room. Rath thought we might have more luck searching near the room she had actually died in. He led us down more stairs and yet another corridor. I was completely lost, but Rath floated ahead of us with confidence.
It was brighter on the first floor than the musty rooms upstairs. The tall windows let in the light, and there was little mist to be seen. We saw no other deadmen as we neared the room where my parents had taken their final breaths.
As we approached the large double doors, I had the strangest sensation of having seen them before. I squinted and saw the lightest shimmer of blue.
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