Count On Me

by Abigail Graham

  He booms to the assembled throng.

  “Tomorrow we hold trial. We will hear their cases, and judge them justly, and for the crimes of witchcraft, sorcery, and devilry, they will face execution!” He looks at the sword, gazing lovingly into its red depths.

  “By beheading.”

  14

  The Escape

  Roxanne

  Nina clings to my leg as they bind Conrad. They strap his arms together with thick hempen rope at the wrists and elbows then tie them back to his body. Adrian is bound behind his back. They take my arms and do the same, and lead us through the keep to a place I haven’t been yet.

  The dungeons.

  I don’t know what I had in mind, but this place is more sewer than prison. The stink is overwhelming. As we stumble down narrow stairs so steep I nearly lose my footing, the oppressive air makes me cough. Damp and musty and stinking of filth, it’s dark and cold. A thin stream of something foul runs down the middle of a narrow corridor between cells locked behind barred iron doors.

  As they start forcing us into them, separately, I can’t help myself. I beg.

  “Don’t separate us,” I plead. “Mercy, Manfred.”

  He laughs. “Fine, then.”

  He makes them shove us all into a cell together.

  The ceiling is so low that Conrad can’t stand completely, and when the door closes there isn’t enough room for all of us to even sit at once. The lock clangs shut.

  “Sit, Adrian,” Conrad says, nodding to me.

  I touch his shoulder.

  My head swirls. My son. I’m starting to remember now. I feel like I’ve been alive all these years. This must be what Conrad feels. A human mind isn’t meant to hold all these memories. They jumble together.

  When I remember our trip to Rehoboth Beach when I was eight, the last time I went with my grandparents, it mixes up with things that never happened in the life of Roxanne Giulimarco. I pass through the old FunLand amusement park into green fields, where my grandmother teaches me root and herb while my mother works simple magics to heal broken bones, cure ailments, produce fertility.

  The simple lessons my grandfather taught me, important lessons, mingle with another grandfather, somehow much the same man. Grandpa teaches me to tie a fly for fishing, a skill I never ended up using, while my other grandfather teaches me to conjure the sylphs, the spirits of the air.

  Magic. I knew magic. I know magic.

  Nina curls up in Adrian’s lap and I shudder. I named her. I gave her a name.

  Then I did. But I came back. I’m here again, and again, and again.

  I stand in a field of swaying grasses, and by my height I must be no more than nine or ten. Another life, another time. Hands rest on my shoulders, small and delicate but strong and hard from work. A woman’s voice. My grandmother’s, but I don’t know which grandmother.

  “Look up, child,” she says, and I do. “Do you see the scar?”

  I see it, the broken place in the mountains where the rubble is piled.

  “That is our sacred purpose. It must remain forever sealed. What lies within must never be set free. Remember this, even if it costs you your life, or more.”

  “What’s in there?” I ask, my voice tiny with fright.

  “Evil,” she says, gripping tighter. “The darkest evil.”

  I snap my head up.

  I wish they’d untied us. My shoulders already ache.

  “What did you mean?” Adrian asks me, his voice low and soft. “Above, when you told my uncle this had happened before.”

  I look at Conrad. He looks at me.

  “Tell him,” I say.

  Conrad shakes his head. “What’s the point?”

  “I’m sorry, my love, but if you don’t, I will. He needs to know.”

  Conrad shoots me a pained look.

  “How much worse can it be?” I ask.

  He shrugs and turns to his son.

  Our son.

  He tells the story. Adrian listens, his eyes widening with mounting horror, with dawning realization. He looks at me, at his father, and I see rejection, refusal on his face like a storm cloud.

  “No,” he says. “You are not my mother. My mother is dead.” He holds Nina tighter. “I held her hand while…while…”

  “It’s the truth,” Conrad says sadly. “I never sought to replace her, don’t you see? I never loved another.”

  “And I love him so much I came back,” I say, the weight of ages behind my voice.

  I kneel beside him and touch his hair. My boy. My precious boy. Tears slide down his cheeks, burning hot. With my arms bound behind my back, I cannot dry his, only add my own.

  “Manfred was listening to you,” Adrian says.

  “He was,” Conrad agrees. “I don’t understand.”

  I pull back, kneeling. “I need to ask you something. I don’t remember Saska.”

  “You wouldn’t.”

  I shake my head. “It’s starting to come back to me. All of it. I’m remembering things. When Adrian was four he came screaming through the castle one morning, covered with snails. Your favorite color, Conrad, is yellow.”

  “It is?” Adrian says.

  Conrad looks startled. “I never told you that.”

  “Not this time,” I say, softly. “I’m remembering things. I remember… God I remember giving birth and that is incredibly fucking weird.”

  Adrian blinks. “What’s that like?”

  “It hurts,” I say, glaring at him.

  He blinks.

  “Your voice, you sounded like… just for a moment you sounded like her again.”

  “I am her!”

  “This never happened before,” Conrad says, his voice soft as a whisper but louder than thunder. “You’ve changed something.”

  I stand up and face him. Stupid ropes.

  “I need you to remember,” I tell him. “What happens next. What is he going to do to us?”

  “I can’t. The only thing I remember is the slab, when they… cut me…” he trails off, shuddering. “You almost reach me, you’re so close, and then the sword… she kills you.”

  His eyes shoot open.

  “She.”

  “Who is Saska?” I demand.

  “I can remember birthing Adrian. You were there,” I stare into his eyes, “It took almost a day and a half and you never left the room, never slept. I remember birthing Nina. The blood. It hurt so much, knowing I wasn’t going to be here. I don’t remember birthing her. Why? Everyone says she’s my oldest daughter.”

  Adrian eyes me when I talk about birthing him, but I can see it in his eyes. He’s beginning to believe.

  “Who am I?” Saska says, her voice echoing through the dark.

  I whirl, and almost fall on my ass because my arms are bound.

  “Who are you?” I demand of her, approaching the bars.

  She smiles at me with small sharp teeth, her brilliant green eyes glowing in the dark, like a cat’s.

  A long sigh passes her lips. Her eyes flick up, as if I’d ask her why she didn’t finish her homework. She blows strands of dark hair out of her eyes and grins at me.

  “What are you?” I ask.

  “Oh I have so many names,” Saska says. “It doesn’t matter.”

  My eyes narrow. That does matter. I don’t know why but it does. Then I snap up.

  “It’s you. You’re the witch.”

  “Witch,” she laughs. “No, lovely Eliara. You’re the witch here.”

  I flinch back at the sound of that name. Eliara. Lily.

  That… that’s me.

  I fight it down, forcing my breathing even. I look up and eye her.

  “Then what are you?”

  She stands proud, fists on her hips, chin up.

  “I am the ruin of nations,” she declares. “I am the reason men fear the night. Behold, I am become death.”

  “You’re stuck here too, aren’t you?”

  She frowns, glaring at me.

  Conrad edges closer, putti
ng himself between me and the bars.

  “Put steel in my hand and face me, thing,” Conrad snaps. “We’ll see what nations you ruin after I run you through.”

  “You were outside, though,” I say. “How?”

  “I can travel as I wish, but I must leave my power behind.”

  Her power. What?

  My eyes narrow.

  Something is really, really fishy here. Why didn’t she do anything to me before we arrived? Unless…

  “The plane crash. Was that you?”

  She smiles enigmatically.

  “Enjoy your stay in the dungeons, lovelies,” she hisses, “I’ll see you in the morning for your executions.”

  Very softly, Nina begins to cry. She’s the only one with her hands free, so she hugs Adrian tightly and sobs into his chest.

  “Nina,” I say, rounding on them. “Nina, I need your help. Do you think you can untie me?”

  She looks up. Then she stands, and trundles behind me. I feel her fiddling with my bonds.

  Footsteps. We all freeze, watching the stairs as a light descends. Marta, in all her rotundity, barely fits down. She emerges into the dungeon with a torch and walks right to our cage.

  “The only oath I swore I mean to keep is the one to you, my lord,” she says, and thrusts a key into the lock.

  The door swings open, hinges screeching.

  “How did you deal with the guards?” Conrad says.

  Marta takes a kitchen knife and slices open the ropes binding his arms.

  “Osric gave me a little something to slip in their food. They will sleep this night and never wake.”

  Conrad nods. “God bless you.”

  “There is madness in your father’s house,” she says, her voice a plea. “He has debased himself, and this place.”

  Conrad sets his jaw.

  “This place debases itself.”

  “I must go. I will be missed.”

  Conrad nods, taking the knife from her. He tests its weight in her hand. It’s something. He cuts me loose, then Adrian.

  Marta heads back up the stairs, leaving us.

  Conrad ushers us out and closes the cell. Adrian starts for the way up, but Conrad pulls him toward the far end of the dungeon.

  “What are you doing?” he asks.

  “No lord worth his salt builds a dungeon he doesn’t know an escape from. This way.”

  Carrying Marta’s torch, he leads us through into another room. I gasp when I realize where we are.

  This is no museum, no house of horrors, no cheap carney show. This is real. We’re in a torture chamber. I stop to stare at a cruel looking device with iron spikes, meant to strap someone into. There’s a long table with chains at either end. A rack, the kind they used to stretch people.

  Malice radiates from every corner of the room. I can feel it, almost see it, like a faint red sheen all over everything.

  Conrad walks to the far end, to an iron maiden. A real one. An iron tomb just large enough for a person to squeeze through, it’s full of spikes, long enough to just pierce the skin of a person inside.

  Their skin and their eyes. The two wickedly positioned spikes are still gleaming with oil. I think it’s oil.

  “My father built this place. I told you. He had strange appetites.”

  Inside the metal sarcophagus there’s a chain. Conrad yanks it, and the bottom drops out.

  “We have to slide. Roxanne, will you go first?”

  I nod, glad I put on pants this morning. Ignoring the sharp spikes, I slide down a stone slope and catch myself at the bottom, and stand up. Nina slides into my arms and I pick her up. Then Adrian, and finally Conrad. As he slides down he pulls another chain, slamming the iron maiden shut.

  He stands up, surveying the tunnel with the thin light of the torch, as it starts to fade. He frowns.

  “I know the way,” he says, though he doesn’t sound so confident. “We’re under the east side of the keep. If we head straight ahead, we’ll find the way out. Follow me.”

  He goes first, holding the torch out in front of him as if it will ward off some evil. We follow behind. I let Adrian lean on me. He’s paler all the time.

  “Adrian needs help. He needs a doctor.”

  “I know,” Conrad says. “We must be quiet. We may be heard.”

  Swallowing, I nod.

  We move in silence. The sound, though, grows louder. Somewhere a band plays a jaunty tune, wafting through the tunnels. Conrad starts up, ascending a narrow staircase. He half-pulls Adrian up as I guide Nina. When we reach the top, Conrad stops.

  “What is it?” I whisper.

  He shushes me. A thin line of light cuts across the far wall. Conrad steps to the gap. Whatever he sees horrifies him, and he jerks away.

  “What is it?”

  I step up to the light before he stops me.

  The great hall. It’s full of people. Manfred is throwing an orgy. Saska bounces on his knee, half naked, molded against him, grinning.

  “I have the Count’s seat, the Count’s hall, and the Count’s daughter,” Manfred proclaims. “Under my rule this hall will know revelry again!”

  God, I can’t watch. I pull back and push on, pulling the kids with me. I won’t let Adrian see. Pushing on, we head through the tunnel.

  Behind us, I hear a loud, throaty scream. A cry of anguish and pain.

  “We must move,” Conrad breathes. “Faster.”

  We reach a junction. Conrad hesitates, then turns. I see the worry on Adrian’s face, too. Does he know where we’re going?

  I frown, but say nothing. We take another turn at another junction. It feels like we’re heading east, but…

  “Did you hear that?” Adrian whispers.

  Conrad freezes. I hold Nina still, a hand on her head to steady her.

  There’s noise in the tunnels. Footsteps.

  Conrad nods to us and touches his finger to his lips. He motions for me to put my hand on his back. I do, holding Nina to mine. Adrian takes my belt.

  Conrad crushes the torch out in the darkness, snuffing the flame and all light. We’re bathed in pitch black.

  He starts forward. I hear only the soft sound of boots and Conrad’s hand grazing the wall. He moves slowly, step by step, and I stay close behind, the world crushing in on me. I already feel like we’re buried alive.

  Buried alive.

  Doors open wide in my mind. Iron doors, banded with steel and studded with spikes. A gateway, a warning, a prison. Not to keep something out: to keep something in. Within it a light shines in the darkness, so pure and bright it hurts me to look upon it. The sins of my soul burn from it, but I must not turn.

  You have to remember.

  Roxanne. Katherine. Sarah. Linda. Cassandra. Moira. Melisande. Eliara. I have so many names, too. What did I do to deserve this?

  The light calls to me, sings to me. It is too pure for my dirty hands but someone must take it.

  “We’re going the wrong way,” I whisper, my voice just louder than a soft breath.

  “I know the way out,” Conrad says.

  “We’re not supposed to go out. We need to get to the cavern.”

  “They’re close,” a voice echoes at our backs. Adrian tenses. Nina sucks in a breath against my shoulder.

  “Forward,” Conrad says, so softly.

  He almost pulls me along. We are getting nearer to the way out, and we are going the wrong way. I can feel it, like I feel my love for him beating in my chest.

  “Listen to me,” I whisper to him. “I’m begging you. We have to—”

  Torchlight.

  “They’re coming,” he says, pulling loose. Without a second thought he adds, “I’m going to distract them. The rest of you, run.”

  “Conrad, don’t.”

  He looks at me. Then he kisses me.

  “I love you all so much,” he says before running back.

  Damn it. Damn him. I start after him.

  No.

  Remember.

  Is that my voice or some
one else’s? Some other me? It rings in my head. Remember.

  I grab Adrian’s hand. “This way.”

  “That’s the wrong way, Father said!” he protests.

  “Your father isn’t always right,” I growl.

  I can almost hear his look of surprise.

  Every fiber of my being aches to go back, but aches also to go forward, to find the way. To find the light that shines the way. She hid something from me.

  Buried alive.

  Another turn.

  Wait. I know this place. I know the way. We emerge at the base of the library stair.

  I run for it. I pull the kids along, hand in hand, until we reach the place where the mechanism opens the secret door, into the courtyard.

  We step through. I press my eyes shut, expecting bodies impaled on the branches when I open them; I find none. The tree stands alone, empty, in the dark. The only light is the strange fey-light of the pale torches and lamps, glowing in the dark.

  When I look up there is a dark void in the very center of the sky. That can’t be; it’s still waxing.

  “That’s no moon,” I say aloud.

  I glance at Adrian. Of course he doesn’t get it.

  The doors.

  “What are you doing?” Adrian says.

  “I have to do this,” I tell him, more sure of it than I am of the bones beneath my blood. This is it. This the answer to a question I didn’t know I was always asking.

  I step forward.

  “Alright. Open up.”

  Nothing. The doors just sit there.

  I edge closer. “Open Sesame.”

  Nothing.

  “Shazam!”

  Nothing.

  Adrian is staring at me like I’m a madwoman.

  “We need to find a way out. If they find us—”

  I run to the doors and pound them with my fists.

  “Open, damn it! Open up! Come on! I could use a little help here!” With each cry my voice grows more strained, and the agony twisting in my chest bears the fruit of despair. I came this far, only to fail.

  I hit it hard, and wince back. I cut my hand on one of the spikes.

  The doors groan, and slowly swing open. I back away out of their reach, gazing into the yawning darkness beyond.

  Adrian edges closer. I put my hand on him to stop him.