He held her close, his cloak falling over her. Her dream went dark, but not with evil and despair. She opened her eyes and found herself floating down onto a peaceful, starlit field. Pale grass danced in the warm wind, tickling her legs. No matter the deep black between the stars, she heard no Ur whispering in her head.
“Sleep, daughter.” Her father’s voice drifted down from the clouds. “Sleep so deep that tomorrow will seem less painful than today. Sleep, and do not forget. This was not merely a dream. This is what can be, what will be.”
As he asked, she did. Her dream crumbled into oblivion, and she slumbered as never before.
Much later, far from the white shores and starlit fields of her dream, she stirred to life atop her rock. Her waking thoughts burned as crisp and clear as a cloudless dawn, and her bodily aches were absent. Smacking her lips, she loosed her mightiest yawn and stretched her arms far above her head. She neither knew how long her slumber had lasted nor much cared. Against all expectations, she was happy to be alive.
“Rellen?” She climbed down from the rock. “Saul? Anyone else awake?”
The grotto lay in silence. She peered through the gaps between the limestone columns, but saw no fires, no lanterns, and no one sleeping. Alone in the dark, she meandered around the Thillrians’ bedrolls, able to see only by the grace of the Nightness. “Hello? Anyone?” she called into the dark. When no one answered, she fretted, is father here? No. I sense nothing. No hearts beating. No one breathing.
No souls stirred in the grotto. Fearful he might be disguised in the shadows, she imbibed a breath of cavern air and made ready for a confrontation. Her fingers were loose, ready to smother him with Nightness smoke. She backed against a limestone column and gazed into the gloom, waiting for a heart other than her own to beat.
Someone is here. I know it. Come out where I can see you.
And then she heard him.
The clap of two sandaled feet drifted to her ears. Nervous, she coiled around her stone column, clinging so close that even the sharpest eye could never have told her and the stone apart. The footsteps clapped closer, echoing like hammers into the grotto.
He comes. She held her breath. This is the end.
A light cut through the darkness, carving through the shadows like a sunbeam gone astray. The radiance was not from her father’s Ur lamp, but from a bright and lively flame dancing atop a long-hafted torch. The crackling blaze foiled her Nightness. Who? She narrowed her eyes to slits. Not father. Not Rellen. Not Saul. Someone much more dangerous. Grimwain?
She crooked her hands like killing claws, her heart thumping hot beneath her breast. The torch and its bearer moved closer. A man, long and lean and wearing two swords naked upon his belt, strode into her sights. She tensed, tasting the Nightness upon her tongue.
I should kill him. No. I should wait.
Her eyes adjusted to the light. She watched the man march into the grotto. She saw his hands, his swords, and his piecemeal Thillrian armor, but glimpsed no part of his face. It was then, even as she dreamed of what next to do, the man spun and drew out one of his swords. With one motion, she knew who he was.
Garrett.
When no other could have found her, Garrett did. He bounded through the darkness, hurled his torch aside, and tore her down from her limestone pillar. She squirmed beneath him, but he pressed his curved Sarcophage sword to her throat. He was not at all as she remembered. His eyes gleamed grey, lit with such savagery she had never seen before.
“You!” He snatched both her wrists with his left hand. “I should slit you open right here. Tell me where they are. Say it now and enjoy a painless death.”
She let out a stifled sob. His grasp burned like an iron cuff around her wrists.
“Garr…Garrett,” she sputtered. “I am me. No disguise. Just me!”
“Name something.” He pressed the cruel sword tighter to her neck.
“What do…you mean?”
“Name something only Andelusia would know.”
She went limp beneath him. Desperate, she conjured the first answer that popped into her mind. “The water...” she said, “…at night.”
“Meaningless.”
“The lake. In the Dales. I was not feeling myself. I tried to seduce you. I tried to…”
His gaze only slightly softened. He knelt over her, sniffing her as though she were his prey. “You could be him.” He grimaced. “You could be playing as her, playing on my weaknesses. Something so perverse would be no surprise.”
Suffocating against his sword edge, she hoped he would either release her or take her life so swiftly she would not feel it. “Garrett…the trees...in Gryphon. Your first day back…you were sneaking. I dropped my apples. I was…excited to see you. I hugged you, but…wanted more. Nothing made me…happier. You were home…all I wanted. Please…”
He jerked his sword away and loosed her throbbing wrists. His eyes still full of suspicion, he snatched his torch and held it treacherously close to her face.
“You seem to be you,” he said.
“I am me.”
“You could be a pretender.”
“No. I am just me. Please say you remember.”
“My memory ails me. Tell me more.”
She tried to sit up, but the heat from his torch drove her back down. “Ande…from Cairn.” She trembled. “I had a little room in the long halls of Gryphon, courtesy of Lady Sara. I loved the open grass, the trees beneath the summer sun, and sips of cool wine with my three favorite friends. These things are lost to me. My hair was scarlet and my eyes green, but I am now as the monster made me. I am a shadow. I am a witch. Slay me if you must. The world will be happier for it.”
He stood and sheathed his Sarcophage sword beside the Thillrian long blade on his belt. The look on his face was a perfect storm of coldness and consternation. Tentative, she rose before him, he who does not know me, he who bares his teeth at me like a half-starved wolf.
“Garrett…” she tried.
“Your master.” He glared. “Tell me where the warlock is.”
She opened her mouth, but her tongue betrayed her. She dropped her gaze to the floor, searching for the answer.
“Do not protect him.” His words washed like thunder over her. “You have betrayed yourself once already. Do not dream of helping him again.”
“I came here to…I was waiting for…we were going to catch him.”
“You lie.”
She knew something had changed in him. He is not himself. Meeting his restless, roving gaze, she saw darkness instead of light, and she sensed the calm within him destroyed.
“Garrett, what is the matter? What happened?”
“I might ask the same of you.”
“I…I made a mistake. I was a fool. I was weak. I believed things that were never true. Forgive me. Please.”
“Forgiveness is not what matters.” He turned a hard cheek at her. “I did not expect to find you alive, but it matters none. I have lives to take, slow sleeps to dole out at the end of my swords. You either know the answer or you do not. Tell me where the warlock is. Do not dare lie.”
His words carried the coldness of death, his gaze as empty as a grave waiting to be filled. “I do not know.” She winced. “It is no lie.”
“You know, but you refuse to say.”
“No! I was here with Rellen and Saul, but they left me. It must have been while I was sleeping. The Thillrians were here also, but even they have gone. Something happened, Garrett. I would never lie to you.”
She tried to meet his gaze with softness and a smile, but he stared right through her. I am a stranger to him, a wisp of wind. “Where have you been?” she begged. “What happened?”
“Follow me,” he commanded. “There is something you should see.”
An anxious mess, she trailed him through the grotto and into the worming tunnel above. His torchlight gutted the darkness, and he led her through the cold corridor as though he had always known the way. She hoped to see the Thillrians, or Re
llen and Saul, but the Undergrave gave her nothing. She stepped over piles of gear, clothes, and sacks of stale food, but nothing else. Where is he taking me?
Too suddenly, he halted at the entrance to a small, wet-floored chamber. She did not remember the tiny room. During eight days of waiting, she had never once noticed it.
“What am I looking for?”
“Go inside,” Garrett bid her. “Learn the truth.”
His seriousness made her shiver. Her blood thumping cold, she ducked beneath his torch and stepped into the small, dark chamber. She held her breath as she entered. Beyond Garrett’s flame, she allowed the Nightness to take hold of her.
What she saw hollowed her heart.
Against the chamber’s wall, between stalagmites narrow and pale, the dead awaited her. Bodies, freshly slain, lay stacked four and five to a pile. She recognized the Thillrians among them, their throats cut, their chests pocked with sword wounds, and their bones twisted and broken beneath their skins. She flashed one traumatized glance across their white faces and listless, wide-open eyes before staggering back into the tunnel. Her stomach turned, and beneath Garrett’s angry light she sank to the floor.
“Dead?” She quaked. “Dead? No. Say it is a lie.”
“Dead,” Garrett grimly replied.
She backed against the tunnel wall and crumpled again, sliding to the floor like blood trickling down a pane of glass. “Rellen?” She felt ready to die. “Saul?”
Hard as any part of the underworld, Garrett shook his head. “If Rellen and Saul are dead, their bodies are elsewhere.”
“No. Please…no…”
He knelt before her. The deadness in his eyes injured her. Am I next? Her horror became panic. Is he the murderer? Who else could kill so many? No. Garrett would never. Would he?
“You are not as I remember.” Her voice cracked. “You have turned cruel. Why are you here? Did you come to torment me? Are you even Garrett? Are you father?”
All at once, the winter in his gaze warmed.
He took her hand. She closed her eyes, certain he would hurt her. Though it seemed to strain him, his touch was tender, the better part of him waking as he helped her to her feet. “I am sorry to frighten you,” he said. “I am not here to hurt you. I came for someone else.”
She stifled a shiver. “You have the look of a murderer. Those men…those poor dead Thillrians. You frighten me, Garrett. Why are you this way?”
“I do not mean to be.”
“What is wrong?”
“Nothing is as it should be.” He glowered toward the grotto. “Strange magicks have lifted the dead from their graves and taken hold of living men’s hearts. Murderers roam the open prairie. Thillria is sick. I must undo it.”
He knows. He senses it. Father was right. He is one of us. “His fault,” she murmured. “The warlock.”
His face flushed. His jaw tightened. He backed away from her, the shadows at his feet trembling. “I should be happier to see you,” he rumbled, “but I am empty and my insides burned to nothing. I see only death.”
“He did something to you. I remember nothing after the grey men took you away.”
“Nor shall you.”
“So…you escaped. You hunted him here.”
“They say this is where he means to work his evil. They claim this is where he will come.”
“They?”
“A friend. Now fallen.”
Her mouth went dry and her heartbeat slowed to a crawl. The memory of her father’s miserable plan thickened like mortar in her mind. “He is already here. He must be.”
“Take me to him,” said Garrett. “Do not stall for him. Nothing you do can save him from me.”
“It would be pointless. You cannot harm him.”
“Do not be so sure. He slew the Thillrians in their sleep, but he has yet to contend with me.”
“No.” She peered across the tunnel to the chamber of the dead. “The Thillrians were not the warlock’s work.” The truth of what had happened became clear to her. Only one can kill with such precision. Only one can slay so many in silence.
Grimwain.
“This was no wizard’s work,” she shuddered. “I remember how Grimwain slaughtered the Uylen. It was the same for them. He piled their bodies after he butchered them. He slew scores, but never broke a sweat. And if he got to Rellen...”
Her body went limp, her horror drowning her. “The warlock tricked me. He put me to sleep so I would not interfere. He walked into my dream, but he was right here among us. And while I dreamed, Grimwain killed. How long did I sleep? Where is Rellen? You swear you did not see him?”
“Gone,” said Garrett. “Dead. Walk these caves long enough, and you will likely meet his ghost.”
How dare he? She glared at him, wanting to slap his stoicism off his face. “No! Never say that! Never talk about Rellen again!”
“What I say matters none.” His coldness infuriated her. “Tell me where the warlock is. Give him up, and walk back to the surface. It is the only way.”
“Down.” She cracked a miserable, heartbroken smile. “All the way. But you will never catch him in time. I am a fool, and so are you, Garrett Croft. Rellen was the wisest of us. We never should have come to Thillria. Hours from now, you and I will be dead.”
As will everyone else.
Isle of Glass
Alone, Andelusia knelt in the grotto.
A stranger comes to Gryphon. He seems like no one special. He looks not unlike a vagabond. Within a few days of arriving he tugs a lonely girl’s heartstrings and tells her she will be more than she ever dreamed. The girl is a poor, stupid creature. She is terrified of her marriage to come. She might love her promised prince. She might love another. The stranger plays upon her suffering. He sits before the board and moves the pieces as he likes. The girl misses the signs. Too absorbed with herself, she becomes as much a manipulator as the stranger is. She lies to those who love her. She tricks herself. She walks away from a life she adores.
The girl wanders into a forest. The trees are dead. The streams are blood. The dirt is dust and ash. She lies to herself again. A savior, she pretends to be. Someone powerful. A peasant from the Grae hills no longer. The girl has learned nothing. She saves herself from death not by skill or intellect, but by cheating, by using sorcery. The voices laugh when they see her fall into shadow. They know once she tastes power, she will be too weak to turn away. And they are right. She is.
The girl opens a book. She plays at reticence, but fools only herself. She reads slowly, but she reads all the same. She tells herself she will forget all she learns. A lie, she begins to live. The book consumes her. She consumes the book. She wants to hate the man who teaches her. But she wants him to love her, for she is alone. Rather than choose, she tears herself in two, in three, into a thousand little tatters. Weak. Foolish. Indecisive. A thousand names. One pitiful little girl.
The girl sits in a cave. She is alone. She will always be alone. She thinks many things. Something about her father’s plan feels wrong. Forced. Hurried. Reckless. She considers the meticulous nature of his preparations, his conquering of Thillria, his perfect playacting. She knows he spent years sharpening his plan, and yet she senses imperfection. The voices in her head belong to the Ur, she knows. She expects their excitement, their anticipation of freedom. But they remain calm. They are unhurried. They are patient, too patient. Their message is the same.
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