by Sarah Driver
Weasel thuds out of the black puddle on the ceiling and lands next to me, panting. ‘Curse this place!’ he mutters, grabbing hold of my arm.
Slime keeps catching in my throat and I bend double, holding my stomach as I cough and retch. When I look up, there’s a black stain on the ceiling, fading with every punch of my heart. I try to call out to the nearest boy, but the slime catches in my throat. Weasel tugs my arm. ‘Quiet!’
I kick his shin and reach towards the boy, and pull on his arm. But the boy don’t even look up. I try shouting to the others. When they don’t react, I dodge Weasel, dancing around in front of the desks. But . . .
None of them can see me.
Then Weasel grabs my arm, pulls it painfully behind my back, hauls me to my feet and drags me out of the room.
I startle, heart thumping into my throat – something bellowed, underneath the earth, sending a buzzing up through the soles of my feet. ‘What was that?’ I ask, trying to twist to look at the wrecker.
‘Keep it shut!’ he barks.
Ettler whimpers inside my pocket.
Every time we take another step, the noise comes again.
It’s like the same place, but different . . . like another Nightfall. I glance down at the slime on my cloak, to gift myself proof that I really was sucked through the floor.
Weasel pulls me through another door, into a passageway with shelves all over the walls. Glass bottles have been arranged on the shelves, all of them different shapes, lengths, sizes and colours. They’re held in place between carvings of animals, or children. Now and then one of the bottles quivers.
A few paces away, a door squeals open. Weasel stops, but he keeps his hand on my arm. Ettler is so frighted that my pocket is sagging under the weight of his ink, and drops of it plop through onto the floor.
A boy steps out of the doorway and starts walking slowly towards us. His limbs move stiffly and his eyes are blank, unblinking. I stare. Horror scratches and squirms through my marrow.
‘Get back, ghoul!’ whispers Weasel, hoarsely. It’s almost like – he’s frighted of him.
The boy reaches up to one of the shelves and takes a bottle neck between his fingers. Then he shakes it, puts it back, reaches for another bottle. The air crawls with dread.
‘What are you looking for?’ I ask.
The boy keeps on searching, arms moving stiffly. His face is set with determination.
‘I – can’t remember,’ he replies, frowning, voice dull and flat. He keeps sorting through the bottles.
I try to back away, but Weasel keeps hold of my arm and my skin twists painfully in his grip. ‘What—’
Weasel curses and mutters under his breath, dragging me along the passageway until we’re level with the boy. Then, with a shudder, Weasel grabs the boy’s arm in his other hand and pulls him along with us, through a set of double doors.
We’re inside a great hall, three times the size of the long-hall at Hackles.
And at the other end, an army stands frozen.
There must be a hundred bears, standing on their hind legs, faces fixed in twisted fury.
A hundred human children, faces glazed, mouths hanging open.
Weasel marches the boy towards them and shoves him into line. He clicks his fingers and the boy’s face shuts down. The boy is lost in a sea of blank gazes.
‘Welcome to the Hall of Moans!’ Akhund Olm stands in the middle of the room, grinning. ‘The heart of the New Order of the mighty Skadowan.’
My voice is krill-small. My heart stutters. ‘What is this place?’
Olm looks at me, grin dying. ‘I will show you.’ The way the word will creeps from his mouth makes me shiver. There’s too much force pressing on it.
Hands grab me. I’m bundled into a chair and leather straps are tightened over my wrists.
And hunters lead three chained brown bears into the room.
Underneath Nightfall’s City, its rotten heart beats. Being in a human dwelling with beasts fills me with horror. The bears are too wild-glorious to be here. Respect is their birth-right. Their frighted snorts of breath fill the room and their chatter clamours with cubssleepwarmthmeatwherehomewhereforest? The chatter swells inside my skull.
Olm’s pale eyes rest on my face. He draws a glowing amber jewel from his pocket and grips it between thumb and forefinger. Then he steps closer, leans down and slips a hand into my cloak pocket. Ettler squeals proper loud and zooms out, bashing into Olm’s chest and pinging off across the room. Fly away, Ettler! Quick! Go to the forest, find Leo!
The squidge sobs, flapping away, oozing ink when Weasel tries to grab him. He slips under a gap in the door.
‘Where are they?’ whispers Olm.
I glare up at him, and when he searches my other pockets I squirm, yell, try to bite, but before I can blink Olm’s sneaked the Sea and Sky-Opals out of my tunic pocket. He wipes the squidge-ink off them, tongue stuck out between his lips, eyes burning in the Opals’ light. He cradles the jewels in his palms. All three.
I should’ve told Leo I had them. I should’ve left them in the forest. What have I done?
When Olm finally rips his gaze from the Opals, the look he gives me oozes so much greedy glee that I shrink away, a whimper leaking from my lips. My feet scrabble uselessly against the floor and my nails dig into the arm rests. The salt of my snot tells my tongue what I’ve done.
Seek the scattered Storm-Opals of Sea, Sky and Land, before an enemy finds them and uses them to wield dark power.
One bear snaps her pain and fright into the iron muzzle clamped around her jaws. Another moans, brown eyes rolling back. The third snorts and paws the ground.
Olm clicks the bones in his neck. ‘Hold them down.’
‘No!’ I scream.
The hunters tighten the chains on the bears, pulling until their spines are flattened to the floor.
‘Mystik!’ calls Olm.
A hunched figure in a red cloak pushes through the doors and hurries to Olm’s side. Olm presses the Opals into the mystik’s palm, and the mystik extends a forefinger, crooking it into a slow beckon. Whispering claws my ears.
‘You don’t have to do his bidding!’ I shout at the mystik.
The bears growl, their fur jagging into spikes wrench against the chains, paws slipping on the polished floor. A smell weaves into the room, crackle-hot, decaying.
The noise of their fright is too painful. My beast-chatter rips out of my throat. I can’t keep it hidden. Fight it! I scream to them. Fight the pull! Lock into your bones and never let go!
But three tendrils of light snake from the Opals and along the floor towards the trapped beasts. And out through the beasts’ eyes drift soft black shadows, tall and pointed like pine trees, stealthy as the finest hunters. The shadows twine and tumble like cubs in spring, before slurping into Olm’s finger. He drips the shadows into the end of a black tube, shaking his finger to get every last scrap and drop. The shadows roll along the tube and into a glass bowl. When they drip inside, they turn into a dark purple liquid.
‘Fire,’ says Olm.
One of the hunters lights a flame underneath the bowl and the liquid begins to steam. Soon it writhes, bubbles and jumps.
A howling wind rattles through the pipe. There’s a trickling sound as a bright silver liquid is drawn off the purple, beads of it tapping against the glass.
The quietness makes me sick to my bones. The stealing of a soul should never be quiet.
It should roar.
‘Distil,’ chants Akhund Olm.
‘Refine,’ answer the hunters.
‘Separate!’ they declare, together.
Olm grimaces, showing small, sharp teeth and pale pink gums. ‘Improve,’ he purrs.
The bears’ strong bodies fall limp in their chains. And when each pair of brown eyes blinks open, they’re blank, dull and obedient.
Olm scuttles forwards, tips the silver liquid into a glass bottle and seals it with a bear-shaped stopper.
‘Add this to my
collection,’ he commands, passing the bottle to a hunter.
‘Success, Akhund!’ declares one of the hunters. He falls to his knees, awe spilling off him.
Olm stoops by a bear’s side and takes her muzzle in his hands. Her confused eyes reach for his face. I can feel her lost chatter, buried deep. Searching endlessly for something she can’t remember. Her home. Her family. ‘Oh, but you shall be so placid, now that your innate evil has been excised.’
Bile licks my tongue. ‘Don’t you dare touch her!’ I thrash against the straps on my wrists.
Olm’s giggle slithers into my ears. He turns to one of the hunters. ‘Have you sorted the poorhouses? Have you found orphans to elixirate?’
The guards nod.
‘You can’t do that!’ I scream. I remember when I asked him what the poorhouse was, and he sounded like he cared about the folk there . . .
‘I do tire of you.’ Akhund Olm turns to me, face changing, quick as a snake. Scorn lurks under his skin. ‘Try to think beyond your own needs, for a moment,’ he says. ‘Try to imagine how much more productive this world would be, without common people able to feel, or to think. Imagine how much harder they would work. How much faster.’ He rubs his papery hands together. ‘And consider, if you will, the sheer misery these people endure. What kind of a life do they lead?’ He shakes his head, a thing like twisted sadness plucking at his face. ‘Not any kind of life you or I would wish upon them. No longer shall they feel such despair at their lot.’ His pale fingers reach for my face.
I jerk away from him, but my head hits the back of the chair and he’s still too close, much too close.
‘And then we come to you, warrior queen.’
Fright digs bony fingertips into my eyes, trying to push my eyeballs back in my head. ‘I’m no warrior queen! I’m just a kid, that’s all!’
‘But that’s not all, is it?’ He smiles gently. ‘Stag was the most promising pupil I ever taught. And you are carved from a piece of him. You desire greatness as he does.’
‘You taught him?’
He smiles brightly. ‘Indeed, though he sought me as a man grown. He was rough as a clam, running from the people who had taken him in as a child, running from his second-born. Grieving. Out of control.’ He clears his throat.
I wanted to shoot her gloating Hunter’s Moon out of the sky. That’s what Stag said to Crow about me.
‘He was still so young, and – malleable. He became an asset to the Skadowan. He quickly learned to master his emotions, until it seemed that he had none at all.’ Olm giggles and steps away, looking lost in thought.
The leather straps dig into my wrists.
‘Do you know what this means?’ Olm raves, clenching his fists. For an odd beat I reckon he’s asking me, but then I realise he’s jabbering half to the hunters, half to himself. ‘Our army currently numbers merely this precious first collection—’ He gestures at the blank, silent figures standing in the room. ‘As well as our allies – a few at the Western Wharves, the Hill-Tribe fortresses, Castle Whalesbane, Wrecker’s Cove, the Northern Fluke, the Frozen Wastes – though time will tell how strong Stag’s hold is there.’
I scowl. Lost Hackles, though, ent you. Me and my crew saw to that.
‘Many more followers have been crawling from the woodwork, of late,’ says one of the hunters, eagerly.
‘Yes, yes,’ says Olm, eyes feverish. ‘All well and good. But their numbers are scant compared to what we will be able to achieve with these stones. Now, we will be ready to wage battle in a matter of days – the battle to win the war! The Marsh folk continue to bother our forces at what remains of the Icy Marshes – but now, we shall be able to elixirate them into obedience. We will crush the rebels in the forest, level it flat, and march on to conquer the lands not yet under our control. Assemble the other Akhunds, and the rest of those mad-dog mystiks. Tell them to prepare for war.’
The mystik’s face twitches, but he stays silent under the slap of Olm’s insult. The hunter salutes Olm and strides from the room.
I’ve got to warn the forest ! The blank faces of Olm’s army catch my eye again. There are so many of them, and something about the sad horror of the place starts the panic peaking and rolling through me, crown to toe, and my heart lollops in my chest like a dying fish and my breath comes too quick and ragged. I scan brown eyes, blue eyes, grey eyes. There’s yellow hair, black, brown. Dark skin, light skin, brown skin, curly hair, coppery braids, bundled on top of the head . . . With a sickening jolt I realise one of the figures is oak-tall, with light brown skin and green eyes. Eyes with all the light drained from them.
Kestrel. No!
I grip the arms of the chair. If this is what they’ve done to her . . . I swallow, and my mouth’s so dry my teeth stick to the inside of my lips. How will I ever get her back?
‘In the name of the Skadowan, we will draw out the volatile parts,’ Olm orders, pointing at me. ‘Let the great shadow pierce her brain and heart. We will coax her evil spirit out. Then she will do no more harm.’ He holds up his arm, pulls his sleeve up – and on his arm is a symbol, etched deep into his skin. It looks like the S rune for Sol, meaning sun, with a vine wrapped around it, like it’s strangling the life from the rune. The corrupted rune from Yapok’s manuscripts, blotting out the older, truer runes. The symbol of the Skadowan – the poisoned shadow spreading across Trianukka.
I fight until the last breath. I watch the mystik’s finger. I sense the beat when he’s about to bend his knuckle, to drag me from my body, and I do the only thing I can think to do.
My spirit flees.
In the dream-dance world, I watch the moment when Akhund Olm seethes with triumph. He barges the mystik out of his way and holds my jaw between his fingers.
But the triumph splinters into spitting rage, when he realises he can’t drip me into a jar. He shakes me by the shoulders, and I watch my eyes rattle in my head like a doll’s. ‘Where are you?’ he screams into the air, neck swivelling.
The mystik scans around with faraway eyes. ‘Her spirit has flown,’ he tells the Akhund. His eyes fix on me and sharpen, and I edge away from their piercing glare. He is seeing me. I can’t let him.
Crank. Click. Shush. The blood-jangling noise of the door unlocking. They’ve pulled my body out of the chair and now they’re dragging it from the room by the wrists. My eyes are sunken and my head lolls to one side.
I ping into the body of the nearest bear. I snarl, leap onto all fours, knock each hunter flying to a different corner of the room. Instinct pops all my claws out, and I thump Olm in the face, raking the claws through his skin. He screams, then falls backwards. He lies still.
Other robed two-legs race towards me. They’re going to kill the bear – me – if I don’t move out of her body right now.
I glance at Kestrel. I have to get her free, but my own body is being dragged further from me, so I snort a lungful of frustration and lope after it, swiping at the men until they let go of my wrists. Then I wade out of the bear’s body, drop into my own and growl, my voice all spirit-glooped and beastlike. The men shrink back as I jump to my feet and throw myself at the door, running.
Olm sends a blood-thickened shriek delving between my shoulder blades like an arrow. ‘Catch the vermin!’
I wrench open the door and charge the robed Akhund that enters, knocking him flat. Then I sprint down the shelf-lined passageway, but I know I won’t get far before they follow. I slide onto the floor, scraping my knees, and wedge myself into a space under the lowest shelf. Lying flat, my chin on the ground, I glance back the way I’ve come.
Sickening thoughts of the Opals blunder into my mind, but I push them away.
Akhund Olm marches through the door behind me, blood from the wounds I made dribbling down his chin. He grimaces. Then he raises a hand, clicks his fingers and elixirated Skadowan soldiers mobilise behind him, like they’re emerging from a dream. ‘Form up. Hunt the chatterer!’
Human soldiers are followed by rows of bears standing
on their hind legs, armour glinting on their heads and around their muscled shoulders.
They prowl closer. I squeeze my eyes shut, but that’s worse, so I open them again and stare at the feet as they march past. Don’t look down, I pray.
Then a thin sliding sound rasps behind me. I flinch, spine shuddering. A hand shoots out from the shadows and grabs my cloak. I tumble backwards, into a fug of freezing air, and there’s a soft thump as the light of the passageway is snuffed out by the closing of a small wooden hatchway. I push myself up to sitting, but the space is so cramped my head touches the ceiling. I’m in some kind of cupboard. ‘Don’t move,’ whispers a voice, close to my ear.
I turn and meet the eyes of a girl with mountains tattooed across her cheeks, and dark, furious eyes.
‘Egret,’ I gasp, head churning.
A silver tongue juts between her knuckles – a throwing arrow, tucked almost out of sight. Her eyes flick between me and the hatchway in the wall. She presses a finger to her lips. We listen as the sound of the marching army grows quieter.
‘What happened out there?’ she demands.
I tell her everything from when that black puddle sucked me through the floor, to now. ‘What are you doing here?’ I ask.
‘I was pretending to be part of their army,’ she whispers. ‘I couldn’t leave Kes. But one of the hunters realised I hadn’t been elixirated. I got away before they could do it to me.’
She tells me how they were posing as scholars when they were summoned by the Chief Akhund for Medsin – Olm – and knew they had been betrayed. They tried to flee into the forest, but were caught by guards at the city walls. Egret escaped again when they were being brought to the Hall of Moans, thinking Kestrel was right behind her – but they got separated. When she retraced her steps, Kestrel had already been elixirated. ‘I’ve been waiting for a chance to get her out of there, but there are always Akhunds or mystiks in that room.’
As I listen, my sorrows carve my chest in two. I’m crowded with aches for Kestrel, for the bears, for the poor folk drained of their souls . . . and for losing all three Opals, after everything. ‘Let’s get out there and find her!’