I squeezed harder until I no longer heard her gasping breaths. “How is there power in letting a killer loose to keep killing?”
“I’m not saying that you shouldn’t stop her, that you shouldn’t win, that you shouldn’t save everyone. I’m just saying that there is another way that doesn’t involve you killing her in cold blood.”
“That’s how she’d kill me!” I spat. “She’d do it in a heartbeat, without flinching!”
He was nodding. “But you wouldn’t.”
“Wouldn’t your precious Dominar kill her enemies? What did she do to the ones who took her Dominion? What about your precious Ko’roi? What did he do?”
“Not this, Seleska. Not this.”
I was crying now. Crying because it felt like I was tearing in two. I wanted this so much. And I knew he was right that this was wrong.
“What would your parents say? Halana and Renny? What would they want?”
My grip loosened.
“What would Heron say?”
I sobbed.
“What would you want Nasataa to see?”
I choked on another sob as my hands fell away from her neck.
“What kind of person do you want to be, Seleska? What kind of world do you want to make?” But now his voice grew gentle, as if I were a child he was comforting. “You make the world all over again with every decision you make. Every single little choice makes a whole new future. What future are you making right now?”
I stood up violently, stepping back from Atura’s limp body as if she’d burned me. If I didn’t step back, I’d finish the job. I knew that.
“Too weak,” she gasped, but she didn’t move. “Too weak to do what you should have.”
Angry tears slid down my face. I felt no relief in mercy, no comfort in thinking that I’d done the ‘right’ thing, only frustration that I hadn’t ended her.
I ground my teeth and let the tears fall. Maybe there would be some comfort someday. Maybe this would all make sense someday. Right now, it just tasted bitter on my tongue. I hated mercy. I hated forgiveness.
I felt a strange mind touch me. It felt unfamiliar and very, very faint.
We come. Wait with patience.
Who was that?
Around me, the dark forms that had been still for so long, began to move again.
I’d lost my chance.
And I wasn’t sure if I was grateful not to have to make that decision again, or if I was disappointed for my loss. Revenge had tasted sweet. Mercy was bitter on my tongue.
And then I forgot all about the fight with Atura. Pain began in the center of my belly. Pain that filled me like water fills a glass. I began to scream and distantly, I realized that Atura was screaming, too.
There was no comfort in that, either.
The world went dark again.
Episode Nine: Underworld
Chapter One
I felt cold. I curled up into a fetal position, trying to warm my freezing hands and feet. Why was I cold? What was wrong with me? I blinked awake but it was dark out and the ground rolled strangely under me. With a gasp, I sat up and knocked my forehead hard on something above me. I felt it scrape at the skin.
Crying out in pain. I fell back again against whatever hard surface I was lying on. Something was around my waist. I felt for it and discovered a leather strap with a buckle.
I fumbled for the buckle in the dim barely-there light.
“I wouldn’t if I were you.” The voice beside me sounded ambivalent. “If you unbuckle the strap, they’ll all just stop and wait while you get strapped back in again. And I didn’t enjoy that part.”
“Atura?” I asked. It wasn’t like her to sound like she didn’t care about something. Any time I’d ever talked to her, she’d cared. Most of the time she wanted me dead, but she definitely wasn’t ambivalent.
“They’ll give us water soon. If you want to stretch, wait for that. It will be easier.”
“Why does the ground under us feel so strange?” It seemed to roll in a strange rhythm that I couldn’t quite grasp.
“Because it isn’t ground.”
Confused, I felt at the slick surface. It felt like smooth river rock. The strap held me to it in a way that made it impossible to move more than to sit up – and that hadn’t gone well last time. I reached up this time and something scraped across my hand.
“I wouldn’t do that, either. It will just scrape your palms.”
“Is something ...” I tried to swallow, but my mouth was too dry. “Is something rolling a rock above us?”
Atura’s laugh was harsh. “It’s the ceiling of the tunnel. There’s not even enough room to sit up. The Cavids fill most of the tunnel, but fortunately, they are smaller than the Draven, so there is room for us on their backs without being scraped off.”
“Why are you telling me all of this?” She should hate me. And I had thought she did.
The tone of her voice was like a verbal shrug. “I’m bored. I’ve been awake for hours and there’s no one else to talk to. Even the people they sent to put me back on the Cavid didn’t speak. They just strapped me back as if I was baggage.”
“If we both unstrapped, maybe we could run. We could get away before they strapped us up again.”
“Us? We?” she laughed, but there was no humor in her laugh. “Even if I planned to work with you, enemy of mine, it wouldn’t work. What do you think I tried? Do you think I unstrapped and just slid down and stood there? I am a warrior of the Saaasallla and a practitioner of life force magic and even I was unable to move. The Cavids caught me instantly. All those legs are good for more than walking.”
“Legs?” I asked in horror.
“Have you ever turned over a rock and watched everything crawl out from under it?”
“Yes.” I’d been a curious child. I’d turned over a lot of rocks.
“And do you remember some of the things that crawled out? Things with many legs?”
I shivered. “Yes.”
“Then you know what is carrying you. And if you have any sense, you won’t try to get a better look.”
“Ugh, ugh, ugh. See why I don’t like you, Atura?” I asked. “It’s these allies of yours. Either it’s Manticores with rotted teeth and mangy fur, or freaks all dressed in red with bubble staffs who try to suck the souls out of people, or creatures that should live underground who are up in the open. You just need better friends.”
“Is that an offer? Because I don’t think the friendship of a captive is terribly valuable.”
“Aren’t you a captive, too?”
“I think I’m a guest,” she said. “And we aren’t above ground. We’re underground. We’re in the world of the Draven now.”
I shivered again, and it wasn’t just the bone-deep cold that was troubling me now.
“Do you know how far we are underground?” I asked in a small voice. I didn’t want to admit it, but I was terrified. It felt like the roof might cave in at any time and trap me under rock and dirt. I’d die like that. Buried alive. I felt my teeth beginning to chatter and I wanted to make them stop but I couldn’t because now my imagination was spinning and all I could think of was a thousand crawling legs.
“I don’t know.”
“Do you know if ... if my friends were taken, too?”
“I don’t know.”
“Do you know if – ”
“I’m going to stop you right there.” She interrupted me. “I don’t know much more than you do. So you can save your annoying questions for someone who cares.”
I didn’t know why I asked her in the first place. We were not friends. Not even if I’d spared her life.
It was maybe an hour later that she spoke.
“Did you find him this annoying when he was alive?”
“Who?”
“Hubric. I thought you could see him, too. You were talking to him when he convinced you not to kill me – a bad move on your part, by the way. Trust me. I will kill you if I think it will benefit me.”
&n
bsp; “Yeah, I guessed that,” I said, putting as much bite as I could into it. “But I’m not you.”
“You were almost me – until his words got to you. You can’t hear him anymore?”
I waited a moment before answering. “No. Why, are his words getting to you?”
“No,” she said shortly. “What was that?”
“Are you trying to change the subject?”
But now I was hearing it, too. A human voice whistling.
And a bobbing light brighter than this constant eerie purple glow.
The ground under me stopped moving and the light drew closer. I squirmed to try to see it, but I froze the moment I caught sight of the figure in the light.
Chapter Two
Branson Kendark!
My jaw dropped.
“Trying to catch flies?” Atura whispered nastily.
His lantern lit his cruel face. He looked exactly the same as the last time I’d seen him – a prisoner to my parents and the others in our village. Only his clothing was fine and clean whereas last time they’d been drenched and dirty.
“Enjoy the ride, cousin?” he asked with a leer on his face. Or maybe that was just how it always looked.
But now there as a spike of fear in my belly and he confirmed that I had a good reason to be afraid with his next words.
“I left that little island of yours a wasteland. Not a tree stands. Not a rock remains unturned. That little port city? It’s matchsticks now. And your village – your friends – your parents – ” He let the words hang in the air so that I could fear the worst.
And I did fear the worst. I tried to swallow down the lump in my throat as one horrible image after another flickered through my mind. I knew he was heartless. That meant he could have done anything to my parents. Their only crime had been loving me – giving me a home and a future when I had nothing. He would have made them pay for that act of kindness.
“And now I get to do to you what I did to them.”
I cleared my throat. “And what is that?”
He laughed. “See? I enjoy that fear. I enjoyed it on their voices and I like it even more on yours. There’s something special about family, don’t you think? The special way that you can hurt them? The special way they scream? I’m going to enjoy that.”
“I think you’re all show,” I said defiantly my heart racing. Secretly, I believed him and it made my body want to run or fight. He would have hurt my parents if he could – and now that I’d seen one nation after another fall to the tides of darkness, didn’t it make sense that my island home would fall, too?
“Do you?” He asked but his smug smile told me he was excited by the question. “Was I all show when I betrayed Tambrel all those years ago?”
“That couldn’t have been you,” I said, pushing him. Maybe if he was angry, he’d reveal something. “You can’t be more than ten years older than me. And that happened ten years ago. Do you expect me to believe that a sixteen-year-old nobody destroyed my home?”
He leaned in close, holding the lantern over me so that I could see his face very clearly. His eyes were pure spite – though he was smiling – and they were only inches from mine.
“Do you expect me to believe that a sixteen-year-old nobody is causing world-wide trouble? Age doesn’t really make a difference, cousin. It’s actions that count. And I made my mark on this world.”
“How did you do that? Your nation was gone and all that you had left was a ship. And I found it really easy to sink that ship.”
I saw the hardening of his features that he tried to hide from me. I saw his jaw clench as he clamped down on his temper.
“I erased something. That is making a mark. And now I’m going to erase a lot of other things. Starting with your mind. Did you know that they can steal your memories with a single swipe of a wand and put them in a rock?”
In a rock? I felt my eyes widening as understanding struck. The rock that I stole from Atura the second time – the rock that I’d accidentally given Heron to swallow. The memories of his that were slowly coming back ...
I blinked back sudden tears as I realized what it meant. He was getting those memories back! It was possible that I could have him back. If I survived this.
“I see I’m moving you to tears, cousin. How sweet. And we haven’t even reached our destination. Well – we might have reached a destination. And we really shouldn’t keep our kind hosts waiting.”
“You work for these monsters?” I asked. It was a poor insult, but it was the best I could think of while my mind was still soaring on the thrill of realizing I could have Heron back. Was it wrong to feel so hopeful on the heels of the terrible news about our island home? But I didn’t want to think about that.
“I gave myself to the Draven a long time ago. It was meant to be a diplomatic trip to the Rock Eaters. They were near neighbors of Tambrel, you know,” he said as he began to unfasten the straps holding me into place. “And one day their Saaasallla asked for a representative to visit his great land – a tour, he called it. Well, your father thought that my parents and I would make a good choice for this tour. I guess he wasn’t very bright – something the two of you share as a trait. He didn’t seem to understand that for the Rock Eaters, a tour isn’t about looking at pretty mountains and flowers. Though, of course, there were some of those, weren’t there, princess Atura? But it was a different kind of tour. A tour of the management of their herds.”
“He showed you goats?” I asked dryly but my belly was burning the way it did when Octon’s ghost was reminded of his people.
Branson laughed roughly.
“Yes. Goats.” His mouth twisted with the lie. I knew he was talking about the people of the Rock Eaters. I knew it because Octon knew it. “Herds of them. And we saw them being slaughtered and harvested. And we saw how they were allowed to live, to breed, to serve. But mostly we saw slaughter. And then my parents were given a choice. Turn on Tambrel or join the goats. They were weak people. And they loved me far too much. So, they chose not to turn. Because they feared what would happen to me if they did. A bit ironic. Once they were added to the graves of the Rock Eaters, the same choice was offered to me and I had no qualms at all in accepting. I won’t ask you to do the same. That would be too easy.”
He lifted me down to the ground and I struggled against his grip, shoving him backward with all my might. He stumbled back and I felt a surge of triumph before my arms and legs were tangled up suddenly and I couldn’t move. I gasped.
“Told you,” Atura said dryly, as she slid down and moved to stand beside Branson. “They have a lot of legs.”
Chapter Three
Branson wasn’t any gentler with Atura than he was with me. The man seemed to think other people were tools for him to use. He shoved her in front of him at the same time that he made a strange sound that was half squealing, half hissing.
At the sound of his cry, the legs let go of me and he grabbed me by the neck and shoved me beside Atura.
“Turn and I’ll have them kiss you. You won’t like that. It sucks out a memory.”
I gasped.
“I have too many memories already,” Atura said boldly. I didn’t feel that way, every memory was precious to me.
My belly burned like it was full of hot lava. Octon must be really riled up. But what would he be trying to tell me so hard that his rock was burning within me? Was it something about stolen memories? I already knew that Heron was getting his back because he swallowed the rock. Was that what Octon was trying to tell me?
I couldn’t just let Branson Kendark push me around.
“I see you speak their tongue. Are they your relatives?” I asked. But I couldn’t say anything more. Sudden as a stab of a spear, I flinched as the pain in my belly ripped through me – ripping cramps that sent waves of pain through my belly down to my knees. I gasped at the agony of it.
“Uh oh,” Branson said, but he sounded more entertained than worried. “You’ve been bad girls, haven’t you? I see you doubled over i
n pain. Don’t think I haven’t noticed.”
I glanced beside me to see Atura’s face blanching as she stumbled forward with a hand clasped to her belly. She looked like I felt. Sweat formed across my brow, cold and clammy in the underground tunnel. We walked right beside the Cavids, barely squeezing between the rough rock and earth wall and their smooth carapaces. I tried not to think about all the legs fluttering just under that protective shell. Sometimes, they brushed my legs or arms and I would have shuddered, but I was too preoccupied with the nausea and pain that overwhelmed me, threatening to tear me apart.
“What do you mean, bad girls?” Atura said in words that were barely more than gasps.
My head swam in a sea of hurt.
“You haven’t just been swallowing memories, have you? You’ve been swallowing souls. And the Chair of Souls doesn’t like that. It’s like ... a big magnet. Do you know what a magnet is? Let me tell you.”
I stumbled, catching myself on the carapace of a Cavid and barely flinching. I felt light-headed and ill. So ill that I would have welcomed the embrace of their creepy arms if it could save me from this pain.
“A magnet,” Branson continued, shoving me forward. “It is like a rock that attracts metal. Attracts it so strongly that metal will move along the ground just to get near it. Maybe you’ve seen a compass work. They are powered by magnets. We use them to navigate ships. No? Never seen one? Well, you can put down a pile of metal shavings and sweep the magnet over them – quite high over them – and they’ll jump up from the surface of the table to embrace the magnet. It’s fascinating stuff. I wish I could show you. And in a way, I will. Because the chair is like that. Well, the humans who serve the Draven call it a chair, but Draven don’t really use chairs so it’s ... well, you’ll see. But whatever it is, it draws soul rocks to it like a magnet draws metal shavings. I’ve watched them burst right out of someone’s belly to get to the chair. Grisly sight. The poor man survived for ages afterward – though we didn’t have time to pay much attention to whatever it was he was trying to tell us so adamantly. So, you’d better hope that you can vomit up whatever you’ve taken before we get there.”
Dragon Tide Omnibus 2) Page 20