“Move!” one of the turncoats ordered, shoving me from behind.
I noted with disgust that one of the rebels had draped himself over the throne my father had commissioned. The turncoats seemed upset when I didn’t trip again. I didn’t have time to be clumsy. I looked about the room with urgency until my eyes fell on my husband.
Willian. Wonderful, wonderful Willian. He was held back by two men, who gripped his arms as he tried to lunge toward me. Our eyes met, and for the smallest of moments, the cacophony of voices in my mind silenced. My husband had always had this effect on me. This was why I loved him so, for these brief, precious moments of peace.
Willian was forced to his knees. The Voices started up a chant that drowned out the rebel’s demands. Such foolish demands, as if land and money had any sort of meaning. As if my resignation would make any difference.
“No,” I said, forcing myself to speak against the will of The Voices.
“What did you say, Queenie?” One man asked, his voice laced with danger. Where had this nickname come from? I despised it. The Voices took my anger and gave it fuel, dancing in my mind as they watched it grow.
“You will get nothing from this tyranny,” I said. “Release us and return to your homes.” I felt no fear in my declaration. I already knew how all of these men would die.
One of the men slapped me. The pain was exhilarating, and then it was consumed, and I was left with nothing, not even the anger. I sought out Willian to feed the emptiness.
“Don’t make her angry,” Willian was begging. “You don’t understand. Don’t frighten her!”
The rebels mocked him. “What is she going to do to us?” they cried with drunken glee. “Will she tell us off again like we’re children?”
The man who had dragged me from my chamber spat in my face. I did not bother to wipe it off.
“Aerona,” Willian said. I looked at him again. I wanted to fall into his eyes and stay there forever, where The Voices would never find me. He said what he always said to me. “I will never leave you.” And I knew that he meant it. Willian’s love was the only thing I knew for certain.
I watched as a rebel stabbed his knife into my husband’s back.
The emotions that ripped through me were more than The Voices could handle. They stepped back at exactly the wrong moment. The emotions they should have never allowed me to feel overwhelmed me with such force that the tiny amount of control I had fought so long and hard to maintain snapped with the force of a boulder crashing to the earth from a great fall.
I remembered in sudden, vivid detail all of the times my dear Willian had held me in his arms and told me that he would never leave me. I remembered all of the nights of tears and strain. I remembered the pain of giving my daughter away, of vowing never to lay a hand on either of my children. I remembered my infant son, and for the first time in my life, I had the emotional power to feel love for him. The love ached. I remembered the heartbreak and struggle of it all. I remembered the sacrifices I had made to protect these people, the very people who had just destroyed what little good there was left in my world. Their betrayal hit my heart as surely as their knife hit Willian’s. Time moved slowly as I watched the light fade from my husband’s eyes.
I couldn’t stand it any longer.
I screamed. The Voices rode the torment of my emotions and tore me apart. They consumed every life in the room in the space of a heartbeat. The Voices sang with glee. They claimed every empty body in sight, greedy to feel whole again. Even Willian became theirs. The sight of Willian’s body standing upright, alive and dead altogether, was the last thing I saw before my head hit the cold stone floor.
I was the first and the last to die.
Izayik, get up.”
The voice was muffled as if I heard it with my head underwater. I vaguely recognized this voice, but couldn’t place where I had heard it before. The horror of my mother’s memories still swirled in my mind.
“Izayik!” The voice was more urgent now.
I lay beneath the body of the queen, which had decayed into a skeleton. Mist swirled above me so thickly that I couldn’t see the ceiling. I sensed struggle around me, but for a moment, I couldn’t quite remember where I was.
My body ached. Lethargically, I tossed the Deadman Queen’s corpse aside. I rolled my head to the side and saw, just past my feet, the shape of a body.
My senses returned to me in a rush of horror.
Rath.
I struggled to my knees and stumbled closer to my friend. He lay wretchedly still. I didn’t dare touch him. What if he was somehow miraculously alive and my touch killed him?
A deadman knocked Mel off of her feet. I heard the clatter of her staff as it hit the floor. Mel was the only one still fighting, and she was quickly being overcome. Zarra was thrashing and groaning, overwhelmed by the mist. Mel was exhausted and Rath — Rath was…
Mel began to sob. Without the fire of her staff, the mist was closing in on her, playing games with her senses.
One of the deadmen seized my hair, yanking me backward.
Was this how I was going to die?
Then I remembered a dream I once had. In that dream, Banash was sitting by a pool of water, talking about life and death. She had handed me her fife and told me to call her if I was ever in trouble.
I was definitely in trouble right now.
The deadman crawled on top of me as I reached into my pocket and seized the fife. The deadman wrapped its fingers around my throat as I raised the fife to my lips.
It was in that moment that I realized something important: I did not know how to play a fife. I thought it would be something like a whistle, but apparently not. My frantic puffs of air produced no noise. I blew a couple desperate raspberries against the mouthpiece as the deadman throttled me. With my last breath, I managed to make a sound sort of like a squeak.
Banash appeared immediately at my feet. She danced around me and dived for the deadman. I heard it shriek in pain and rolled out of the way.
My heart pounding, I ran through the mist in the direction I had last heard Mel. I scooped up her staff as I passed it, holding it out in front of me like a flaming battering ram as I approached the deadmen clustered around Mel’s convulsing body. I twirled the fire staff like Zarra had taught me, rocking forward on my heels and lighting three deadmen on fire in one swoop of the fiery staff. The flaming deadmen’s bodies collapsed on top of Mel. I kicked them away and dug her out, beating out the flames that caught her clothing.
Mel clung to my shirt, breathing deep breaths as she fought off the mist. I saw flashes of golden light from Banash as she moved around the room, her long golden braid swinging over her shoulder. The deadmen were no match for her. So much vala pulsed from her presence that the deadmen couldn’t get near her.
Banash stopped moving. She stood perfectly still, gazing into the dark shadows in the corner.
“Beware the shadows,” said the same voice that had roused me from my mother’s memories.
“What?” I looked up and around.
“Izzy?” Banash’s voice was loud and clear in the stillness. Since when were we on such familiar terms? “You need to go,” she said.
All around us, the deadmen were frozen like statues. They reminded me of rabbits who sensed danger and stood still in hope they wouldn’t be noticed.
Mel had recovered enough to grip the handle of her staff. I stepped away from her and stood up, moving slowly. In my pocket, I found what was left of the candle Rath had given me the day before my execution. I rubbed the wick with lighting powder between my fingertips until the friction made it light.
“Does ‘beware the shadows’ mean anything to you?” I asked Banash.
“Oh no.”
“No, it doesn’t? Or ‘oh no’, it does, and it’s not good?”
“Not good!”
Did I sense movement? I narrowed my eyes, but I couldn’t really tell. It was too dark in the corners.
“Izzy, I need you to do something for m
e,” Banash said. “The circlet that you took from Aerona’s head — I need you to hold onto that. Don’t let anyone touch it, understand?”
“Why?” I asked. I could see the circlet lying on the ground next to what remained of my mother’s body.
“That circlet was made by the reapers a long time ago. It has the highest concentration of sys left in this world. If anyone other than you touches it, they will die on contact. Do you understand?”
I nodded. I realized she probably couldn’t see me in the semi-darkness, so I added, “Yes.”
Mel spun quickly as if she had noticed something that wasn’t there. The flickering fire on each end of her staff sent weird shadows all over the walls. There were places that light should have touched, but didn’t.
Movement.
Just Zarra, climbing to her feet.
Where was my pitchfork? I had dropped it next to the Deadman Queen — next to Rath…
“There are haunts here,” Banash said.
Cold dread made the hairs on my neck stand on end.
“Haunts are corrupted spirits, Izzy,” she explained. “They are dangerous, even to you — especially to you. They are far more dangerous than a deadman.”
Light flared as Zarra lit her torch, revealing a moving shadow on the wall. There was a brief flash of red eyes opening. The shadow descended on Zarra. She shrieked.
I lunged forward and jabbed my candle at the shadow, which retreated from the light. I could sense it nearby, waiting to attack again.
The sleeve of Zarra’s tunic was shredded with scissor-like precision. The light of my candle illuminated her dark skin, quickly soaking with blood from a frighteningly exact cut around her upper arm. It was as if the shadow had been holding a very, very sharp blade.
“It wants her arm,” said the voice in my head.
I pulled the shred of her sleeve aside so I could see the cut. Rath would know what to do to help her. Mel would be able to sew this up. All I could do was stare at the wound and wave my other hand wildly in the air to fend off the shadow. I was afraid to touch her.
“Look out!” Banash cried.
Suddenly, all of the fire in the room went out, and we were plunged into the kind of absolute darkness in which a shadow would thrive.
I heard Zarra groan in pain. Mel shouted. I felt the touch of a horridly cold fingertip on my cheek. The skin on my jaw split as if beneath a razor’s blade.
Light pierced the blackness as Banash scraped the one gauntlet she wore against her shield, sending up a shower of golden sparks. The shield began to glow, illuminating the walls around us.
“Get the circlet,” Banash commanded.
I stumbled forward and scooped the circlet off the floor. It pulsed with energy. I stuffed it into the pocket of my coat.
“Now get out of here!” Banash said.
“But—” I moved toward Rath’s body, but Banash cut me off.
“Go, Izzy! These haunts will rip you all apart. Run while I have them stunned!”
Mel grabbed my hand and tugged me toward the door.
“Rath!” I cried.
The last thing I saw was a mass of darkness descending on Banash, blocking Rath’s body from sight.
We ran.
I was grateful that Mel and Zarra were both so level headed. They dragged me through the city while I stumbled beside them. I barely saw anything we passed. My mind was still stuck on the remnants of my mother’s memories, experiencing again and again the tragedy of her last moments — and the Rise of the Deadmen. I didn’t know what to do with this new information. Safford was right. My mother’s death had brought deadmen into this world. And in the midst of fighting off her possessed body, I had killed Rath.
I killed him.
I was jerked to a halt as we rounded a bend in the road. The mist was so thick here that I thought I would choke on it. The fire of Mel’s staff did little to keep the mist at bay. Both women took quick, frightened breaths. Zarra began to twitch as the mist affected her.
Fear cleared my mind. I saw shapes in the mist.
Deadmen.
Lots and lots of deadmen.
Mel’s staff clattered to the broken cobblestones. She groped at her neck, trying to ward away invisible hands. As usual, I was unaffected.
It was difficult to see the deadmen through the thickening mist, but they were coming. I was unarmed, disoriented, and Rath could no longer protect me.
This was the first time I had really felt fear in my entire life. I could actually die here, and Mel and Zarra would die right along with me.
“St-stay back,” I stammered, putting myself between the shadowy figures and my two struggling companions.
As if talking to them would do any good.
The nearest deadman lunged toward me, its rotting face appearing in sudden, stark clarity through the mist. I gasped and stumbled backward, almost tripping on Zarra, who had fallen to her knees.
“Stay back!”
More of them. I could hear their shuffling feet and low, aching moans.
“Stop!” I shouted.
I don’t know what I was shouting at exactly. At the deadmen? At my pounding heart? My racing mind?
To my great surprise, the deadmen stopped. They tilted their heads as one. Though they had no eyes, I could feel their gazes on me.
And then the deadmen spoke.
“Take … us … home.”
“What?”
Deadmen couldn’t speak!
“Take … us … home,” the deadmen repeated. More of them were speaking now, their voices joined in a haunting chorus.
“Are you — are you talking to me?”
“You … can …” They labored to produce human speech. They spoke despite their loose and rotting jaws. It was as if they were simply moaning, but the mist surrounding us took their sounds and formed it into words — words that I could understand: “Set … us … free.”
“I don’t know what you mean.”
The deadmen shuddered as one, a movement of disgust and frustration that rippled from the ones nearest me back through the gathered throng, as far as I could see.
“Take us … home.”
“I don’t know what that means!” I swiped Mel’s fallen staff from the ground and held it in front of me. The deadmen stared blankly. Did they even understand that this fire could kill them — that I was threatening them?
“I don’t know how to take you home,” I said, “and I certainly won’t learn how if you kill us here! Leave us alone!”
There was a long silence. I could hear my heart hammering in my ears over the sounds of Mel gasping for breath behind me. Then the deadmen turned away. I watched in astonishment as the entire mass of them slowly shuffled off into the mist.
No time to think. I grabbed Mel and Zarra by the sleeves and hauled them away.
“Not safe here, not safe here,” I muttered under my breath as I scouted for a place to hide. Mel and Zarra swayed, still under the spell of the deadmen’s mist.
I found the remains of a shop that was mostly free of mist. I threw my shoulder against the door. The wood gave way beneath my weight, and I guided Mel and Zarra inside. I half carried, half dragged them up a creaking flight of stairs and into what had once been a loft above the store; the storekeeper must have lived there at some point. I guessed that deadmen weren’t coordinated enough in general to handle stairs and that we would be safe long enough for Zarra to regain her senses. Then she could Step us away.
Except she didn’t have the boot anymore.
My stomach twisted when I realized she’d never recovered it. I laid her on her back on the floor and checked, just in case. She wore nothing but a thick, wool sock on her foot.
She stared at the ceiling with glassy eyes, returning to her senses, but still stunned. In her hand, she clutched the handle of my bloody pitchfork.
“Zarra,” I groaned. “You remembered to grab the blasted pitchfork, but you didn’t think to grab the boot?!”
“Boot.” Zarra blink
ed, coughed, then sat up, her body wracked with gasping breaths. “The boot!” She stared at her foot with wide eyes. “I didn’t see where it fell. And then those things … and I—”
“We’re stuck here,” Mel finished for her. She had recovered quickly and quietly. I was beginning to suspect she was more used to the effect of the mist than she let on. She was the daughter of safeguards, after all.
“We’re stuck here,” I repeated. “We don’t have the boot, we’re lost, and Rath—” The horror of what I had done crashed over me like an ocean wave. I sank to my knees.
“Rath is dead,” I said. My voice sounded hollow. The horror tasted like bile in my throat. “I killed Rath.”
Saying it aloud didn’t help. It only made it more real. I doubled over, pressing my forehead against the warped floorboards. My strength drained away as if I were the old pot Ma had thrown out — the one with all the holes in it.
I started crying and couldn’t stop. My body convulsed with sobs. I cried for everything. I cried for my parents and their terrible deaths. I cried for my second family, who I assumed I would never see again. I cried for Rath, for his empty death at my hands. My whole life, he had protected me, and I had repaid him by stabbing him in the back.
Mel knelt beside me. She touched my shoulder with an anxious hand.
“Don, it wasn’t your fault,” she said.
“Not my fault?!” I laughed without joy. “What part of that wasn’t my fault, exactly?” I pushed Mel’s hand away and sat back on my calves. “It was my idea to come to this accursed place. Rath warned me that it would be dangerous. I just didn’t think — for him. I guess I thought he was invincible. And now he’s dead, and it’s my fault.”
I tried to think of anything I could have done differently, any way I could have prevented his death. If I had only been better at defending myself, Rath wouldn’t have needed to get in the way.
Mel smoothed my hair. “Don, we were all in danger in there. You couldn’t help—”
I grabbed Mel’s wrist, too overcome with emotion to formulate words to ask her not to touch me.
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