by Sara Wolf
“Is it always like this?” Fione marvels.
“No,” Yorl asserts before Malachite can. “This is very unusual.”
“High alert.” Malachite makes a tsk noise. “Probably because of the refugees.”
“Not like they’d shoot them, right?” I ask nervously.
“Nah. But the Fog Gate is ceremonial—which is as close to ‘sacred’ as beneathers get.”
“And it’ll kill anyone who goes in unwittingly,” Lucien reminds us. I smile.
“Including us!”
“Especially us,” Malachite corrects. An extravagantly robed figure walks through the guards and he ducks farther behind the boulder. “Vachiayis. Bloodpriest.”
“What are they doing upworld?” Yorl’s whiskers droop with his frown.
“No clue,” the beneather spits. “Sorry—can’t wave the bloodline around here. They know.”
“How bad would it be if you walked up and tried it?” I ask.
“I mean, my aunt had my father’s side of the Olt’reya house branded an eternal traitor to the spiral—”
“Sooo…” I trail off. “You’re a criminal, then?”
I practically hear the cogs line up in Fione’s mousy-haired head next to me. “Perfect, Zera.”
“What’s—” Yorl stops, mouth twitching. “Oh.”
Lucien laughs a little, shoving Malachite out from behind the boulder. “Go on. We’re right behind you.”
It takes Malachite a bewildered few steps to get it, all of us trailing behind, but when he does he rolls his eyes and grumbles, “Shut it. This brain shit isn’t my strong suit.”
“We love you all the same,” I tease. Fione’s giggle resounds, and even Yorl’s muzzle pulls into a faint smirk. Lucien pats Mal on the back reassuringly. But the hard-won moment of laughter fades the closer we draw to the Fog Gate, every pair of beneather eyes on us. We fall silent—a cool arrow stepping over the dry riverbed, drawn tight with sheer determination, Malachite spearheading us with his best fiery glare.
27
HUNGER
LIKE FIRE
I skid on my elbows onto the vicious stone floor of the Fog Gate.
“Ow!” I shout at the beneather guards retreating into the white light of the cavern’s mouth. “You didn’t have to arrest us so exuberantly!”
“As if a scraped knee matters to you,” Malachite scoffs, wiping blood from the corner of his mouth. He took several fists to the face in the scuffle to make it all look convincing.
“I happen to like that knee, thank you,” I sniff. “It’s the sexy one.”
“I’m surprised they didn’t question why you’d returned so specifically now, and with so many friends.” Lucien dusts himself as he gets up, offering his hand to me. I wave him off and he gives it to Fione, instead. She takes it, frowning at some invisible scratch on her cane.
“Mindlessly following orders makes people feel as if they’re accomplishing something with their lives,” she says. “Ask any of the polymaths who worked with Gavik.”
Another thought rests unspoken on my tongue: Varia’s killed far more than Gavik. She destroyed Vetris, razed it to the ground. She destroyed Helkyris. Yes, she’s under the influence of the Bone Tree. Yes, she had no idea just how strong it would be, how much it would consume her mind. But she still made the choice. The princess still reached out and touched the Tree, hoping to change the world.
Just like I made that choice to kill all those men, when I was first turned.
When she gets back, there will be much to atone for. And, just for a moment, I wish I could be there to show her how.
We brush ourselves off, the Dark Below yawning huge and cold in the descent of the Fog Gate’s throat, the gray light from outside fading into pure velvet darkness. Lucien passes around his waterskin to each of us, a thoughtful gesture that gently says “prepare yourselves.”
“The guards didn’t even hesitate to throw us down here.” I marvel.
“The Fog Gate kills all who do not know,” Yorl recites. I puff my chest out and draw Father’s sword, striding down the slope.
“Right, then,” I say. “Ladies and undead thralls first. Lady undead thralls first of all.”
“Be careful, Zera, please,” Lucien calls, boots scrabbling on the stone to catch up. Not being able to sleep on the ship wasn’t a problem for the Heartless part of me—my body’s primed and ready to go. But it’s a moderate difficulty for the Weeping part of me—my brain is buzzing with disorderly thoughts, with fuzzy worries and tangled strings of plans. The background chatter of the hunger isn’t loud because I’ve been eating organs, but trying to ignore it or push it down feels like lifting an iron carriage with only my pinkies.
I grasp for silence, for any shred of the quiet peace of Weeping, but my own mind fights against me, a tight, close, me-shaped chamber lined with dagger-teeth, every prick worth a scream that echoes eternally.
The farther down we go, the sharper the Dark Below sinks its fangs into us and the more the blackness becomes impenetrable, until Lucien finally has to witch-light his hand, his purple-black fire lighting a faint sphere around us. The cavern walls aren’t smooth anymore—faint carvings like runes peek out from between the moss and unfathomable age of the place.
“Sound-activated traps,” I hear Malachite murmur. “I don’t make noise when I walk, but the rest of you sound like horses.”
“I object,” Yorl hisses. “I’m far quieter than you.”
Malachite pauses, listens, then nods. “Okay, not bad. But unless the rest of you grow hairy feet like Bookworm over here, we’re going to trigger one of the sound traps sooner or later.”
“I can muffle us,” Lucien offers.
“Isn’t that difficult?” Fione asks. “Three people, for who knows how long?”
“Not as difficult as you’d think. The stone down here is hungry for anything—sound most of all.”
“Whatever that means.” Malachite shakes his head. “Just go easy on yourself, Luc.”
The witchfire suddenly illuminates a split in the path—one tunnel going left, the other going right. Malachite stops us, he and Yorl listening carefully with their long ears.
Yorl looks at him first. “Nothing.”
“The other way, then,” Malachite asserts.
“But—” Yorl stops, listening to the other side. “There’s nothing there, either.”
“There is,” Mal insists. “Faint clicking. You just can’t hear it.”
“Clicking?” Fione’s voice cracks nervous. “Doesn’t that mean there’s a trap down that way?”
“The ancestral council is made up of beneathers,” Yorl says. “Beneathers have the best hearing in the world. They can hear the clicking as no other mortal can—not even celeon.”
“It’s how I used to spy on you two.” Mal grins at me and Luc. “Didn’t even have to be close. Could be blocks away and I’d still hear every word of your vapid flirting. There’s a trap both ways,” he clarifies. “Probably. It’s just one of them beneathers can hear, and the other is silent. So we go the beneather-way.”
“If it was that easy, every beneather not on the council would’ve navigated the Fog Gate by now,” Lucien points out.
“S’not gonna be easy to disarm the trap,” Mal agrees. “But it’s better than nothing.”
“If we get lost down here—” Fione starts.
“We won’t,” I assure her. I try to summon the Weeping again as we walk down the imperceptibly clicking left path. If things go wrong, I can always dig into the stone with my claws, create them a shelter or a new tunnel. Nothing of this place looks valkerax proof, and certainly not Heartless-valkerax proof—
“What was that?” Yorl stops. I freeze at the front, peering uselessly into the dark ahead of us.
“The clicking,” Malachite says.
“It’s
getting louder,” Yorl agrees. “But it’s…that’s not mechanical—”
I take a single step forward, Father’s blade at the ready. Behind me I hear Malachite unsheathe his, too, and the metallic ring of Fione’s crossbow unfurling echoes.
Lucien’s eyes widen at my side, and he sucks in a breath as he stares down the tunnel. “It’s alive.”
“What is? Is it a valkerax?” Fione whispers, loading a bolt.
“No.” Malachite narrows his eyes, and I see his pale hand shaking around the hilt. “Something worse.”
Worse? I grit my teeth and step forward, the clicking finally loud enough to reach my ears. It’s getting closer. And faster. Not a valkerax—not in the slightest. Something far quicker, and with far more legs.
“The stone down here might be hungry, but the darkness is well-fed,” Lucien mutters, sweat beading on his temple. He strains, fingers turning dark as his witchfire struggles to spread its sphere of light outward. I step forward without thinking, my boot crunching something—bone. A skeleton hand; human or beneather or celeon, I can’t tell. Gnaw marks deep in the bone. Bones as far as the witchfire can illuminate—thousands. Ribs, feet, legs, half-mangled skulls.
The whole of the tunnel floor is made of mortal bones.
Fione suddenly releases a shot, the bolt whistling past my ear, and I expect it to clatter down into the empty darkness, the bones, but there’s a wet crunch and fear eats me alive. Close. So close. No cry of pain, no sound other than the clicking getting faster, angrier. Somewhere in my brain, just before the chaos, a clear and rather helpful thought rings out.
How is it moving through the bones without making them clatter?
Two impossibly long spears jut at me out of the darkness, and I move to intercept them with my immortal body, but they don’t pierce. They give softly around me, slithering past me like tentacles, or whiskers. No—antennae. Fione cries out, recoiling, and I hear Malachite swallow the most uncharacteristic whimper as one curls up his face. He’s stared down full-grown valkerax effortlessly, but this thing has him frozen in fear.
“It comes!” Lucien bellows.
The rest of it bursts into the light, smooth and long and brown and glinting like polished armor, every part of it, every part of it segmented, millions of legs clicking against the stone of the ceiling and clinging to it effortlessly. Its head, nearly as big as the tunnel, glints with a set of massive serrated mandibles the width of two of me. The head waves madly back and forth, a bolt stuck in its plate-size eye bleeding blue.
It’s not a valkerax at all.
“A migtratus!” Yorl snarls. “The mandibles are deadly venomous!”
It’s charging for us with a single-minded fury—right for the mortals. This tunnel is even smaller—even worse than when Evlorasin escaped and Malachite and I stopped it. There’s no space to fight at all, the tunnel essentially a feeding tube funneling right to the giant insect. Definitely a trap.
We can’t back up. It’s so fast—so much faster than I’d be able to dig a hole through the stone. I have to stop it here. Right here, where it meets my blade, because the mortals are lined up behind me like a row of perfect sweetrounds. I don’t know how thick the armor on its head is, but I don’t have a choice—
I feel Lucien’s hand on my shoulder just then, a liquid warmth running down it and through my body, curling up my arm and lighting the darkness brighter—witchfire. Purple-black witchfire slithers up my arm, unburning, and moves to my hand, wrapping around the hilt of Father’s sword and up to the blade.
“Run,” Lucien whispers.
And I trust him.
I trust him, to the end of the world and back again.
Cloaked in black fire, I hold the sword high through the fear, running full tilt at the insect. The fire banners out like a flag, the tip of the sword grinding sparks against the stone ceiling, and I can see every hair on the thing’s body now, every drip of poisonous saliva glinting on the mandibles, every hexagon of its unwounded eyeball, its blood the smell of tar and vinegar, and with all my Heartless strength I brace and let out a roar, my hands death-gripping the sword’s handle for all they’re worth. I feel it hit, blade meeting between the mandibles, the fire burning into what the blade can’t reach.
we are hungrier than you.
A second of resistance, a hitch. It writhes against me, the force of its long body condensed into this one point. I strain with all the words and muscles and teeth the song gives me.
“I am…hungrier than you!”
And then the give.
Freed, the sword carves through the insect and I sprint, cold black blood raining down on me but unable to extinguish the witchfire, to extinguish my momentum as I slice through all of it, the whole length of it until the spiked tail.
For a moment, the insect still clings to the ceiling.
And then the split; the long, twitching corpse falling to the ground.
Panting, I look behind me, the witchfire lighting up Lucien’s face—the gentle curve of his beaming smile, the rise and fall of his likewise panting chest, the way his eyes glint out like black diamond from the other end of the tunnel. We’ve done it. Together.
I can taste the kiss he’s giving me without ever touching him. His expression in this second is clearer than any signpost, any flag.
He loves me. Me. The hungry me, the fighting me, the blood-stained me. I cup it like a desert-dying man cups water—preciously. I’ll always be here, with him. I know that.
But I will miss this look.
Malachite has to sprint through the bones and between the bisected body of the giant insect to get to the other side.
“Massive wyrms with six eyes and an ancient bloodthirst, no problem,” I say, catching up with his hurried steps down the tunnel. “But give you something with more than six legs and you suddenly take issue.”
“Don’t even start,” he snarls, face even more bloodless than usual. “I’m not proud of it.”
“Who would be?” Fione asks as she, too, catches up. “I gather no one on Arathess is partial to giant insects.”
“They aren’t insects,” Yorl corrects. “A common mistake—they’re more akin to crustaceans. It’s a clever trap of the ancestor council’s—they’re highly repelled by the scent of juniper. You could walk through a tunnel full of them with a single bough and they’d all scatter.”
“Remind me to pack an array of very specific tree branches next time,” I chime.
“Whatever they are, whatever they hate, they’re horseshit,” Malachite mutters.
Lucien draws even with him. “You did well, Mal.”
“Ugh. Don’t patronize me, Luc.”
“I think it’s kind of cute, actually,” I tease, wiping the black blood off my mouth with Lucien’s offered handkerchief. “The most badass of badasses in all Vetris is weak to creepy-crawlies!”
“What did I just say about the patronizing?” the beneather snaps.
“Everyone has a weakness,” Fione agrees. “Yours is understandable, at the very least. I’ve known him since nursery, but I still don’t understand Lucien’s obsession with fictitious novels.”
“Or yours with the color pink,” Lucien drawls.
“Or mine, with cake!” I add. “Actually, I understand that one intimately.”
“A pink room filled with cake and novels,” Yorl murmurs. “Why not arrange it when this is over?”
Lucien beams at the celeon. “A fine idea. Maybe a rousing duel for Mal, and what will it be for you?”
Yorl waves his paw. “I require little. But I do indulge in a peppermint cordial from time to time.”
The pleasant idea floats around us all, sanding down the grumpy look on Malachite’s face and warding off the growing chill of the Dark Below as we press on. They don’t know if they’ll die here, or later, or at all. They think none of them might survive. It’s a br
ave thing, to think about a nice future in the terrifying present.
I smile to myself and lead on, first in line for the deadly traps; my friends are so brave. Brave and silly.
Of course they’ll live.
Because I’ll make sure of it.
28
THE DURANCE
OF THE
ANCESTORS
The other traps of the Fog Road are no less gut-wrenching—and occasionally, actually gut-wrenching. I look down at my flayed-open stomach and at the bit of hanging intestine there with faint amusement through the ripping pain.
“H-Hello again. I’d n-nearly forgotten what you looked like.”
The heavy, rhythmic thwump of the blades swinging in and out of slots in the wall drowns out Lucien’s shouts to me. We’ve tripped something accidentally, and the blades don’t seem to be stopping. I dodge out of the way of another swinging for my head, blood squelching down my legs. Five, six—seven of them, all of them longer than my entire body and sharper than my most deadly incisors. How do I stop them? The mortals will never make it through here, and Lucien can’t teleport us—his witchfire has been flickering wildly the farther down we go. Magic is hard to do in the Dark Below; Varia had the same problem when she was trying to capture a valkerax to find the Bone Tree. Malachite swings his broadsword with a weighty overhead strike, meeting the first swinging blade head-on, and for a second he makes it pause, the veins in his biceps and forehead straining.
“Go!” he bellows. Fione and Yorl and Lucien all duck beneath it, to the space between it and the next blade. I claw into my mind, trying to pull up the Weeping, but it’s even harder than it was near the surface—like someone’s been moving it away from me bit by bit this whole time I’ve been walking. Malachite whirls, letting the swinging blade go and joining the others in the in-between space.
“Body!” the beneather mouths at me. “We trade off!”
His ruby eyes flick to the next swinging blade, and I get it. I don’t like it, but I get it. Lucien hates it, but his shouts for me to stop are drowned by the grinding of metal and stone.