He said it all so glibly – like it didn’t matter to him whether we lived or died. Maybe it didn’t. I felt like I was dying already.
We stepped out into a wider cavern and a space gloriously free of Cavids. They still surrounded the space, their legs waving eerily, but they left enough room for us to stand without having to touch them.
“I’ll be back in a minute. Try not to die until I get back,” Branson said flippantly and then he was squeezing between the Cavids.
Atura grunted angrily and threw herself after him, but the gap between the Cavid’s closed and the ones who closed it grabbed her with dozens of legs and threw her back into the circle. She stumbled into me and we both fell to the ground together.
It took the last of my strength to struggle out from under her, ending up on all fours, gasping in each breath of stale air as if it were my last while the pain made me moan for death.
I never wanted to steal a soul. It had been a mistake. A mistake I regretted with all my heart. And now I would pay in pain.
My belly burned hotter – so hot that it felt like I had swallowed fire. I leaned my forehead against the ground looking for any coolness that might bring relief. I might have been crying. Or choking. Or dying. I couldn’t tell anymore.
Seleska?
Chapter Four
Octon! I could hear his voice as plainly as I’d heard Hubric’s!
No time for surprise. I will leave you soon. I tried to help as I could. But there is something more.
I began to heave, my whole body clenching as nausea overwhelmed me.
The memories! Octon screamed in my mind. The key is the memories. All the memories they stole from us all before –
My body gave a sudden, powerful heave and I vomited until I was certain that nothing was left in me. A second attack and I heaved again and this time I was choking on something massive and then it shot from my mouth, pinging off the stone and shooting through the masses of Cavids.
I heard an insect-like squealing sound and something thick and liquid splashed. And then it was over and I was left trembling all over, weak as a kitten but the pain was relieved. I spat and then stood up, wavering, wiping my forehead on my sleeve. It had taken everything out of me – even Octon. I laughed at that. I must be loopy. I must not be in my right mind.
Beside me, I saw Atura lying weakly on the stone ground, her face pressed against the rock. She moaned clutching her belly – but she hadn’t been sick yet. And that wasn’t good.
“I guess it’s your lucky day, cousin,” Branson said, squeezing between the Cavids and grabbing my arm. He was still holding his lantern high – an island of gold light in a world of darkness and strange purple haze.
“I would say it’s anything but lucky,” I said, swaying as he pulled me after him. None of this felt real – not the illness or the strange Cavids that surrounded us, not Atura’s pained moans or the way I felt ten pounds lighter with Octon gone. “Where are my friends?”
“Atura is back there. If she’d lucky, she’ll vomit her stone, too. If she isn’t, she’ll pay the price.”
“I don’t mean Atura,” I said, stumbling as he pulled me roughly between two Cavids. They didn’t even bother me anymore. “I meant the others.”
“Dead,” he said matter-of-factly as my heart stuttered to a halt. “All your guards, all your allies. Their swords were of no use. We strung them up to a man in underground gallows and hanged them. You’ll have no help now.”
My heart began to beat again.
He was lying. The only one of my allies who could be called a man was Heron, and he didn’t use a sword. Bareena, Nasataa, Olfijum – they were not men. That meant Branson knew nothing about them. Which meant they weren’t here. They hadn’t been taken with us.
But that didn’t mean that they were alive.
The ground beneath us rocked as we skirted a mass of ooze on the floor. Beside it, one of the Cavids lay on his back, twitching, a thousand legs the thickness of my arms were raised in the air, spasming in a wave-like seizure.
I gasped.
“I told you those stones cause harm. Be glad you vomited it first before it destroyed you.”
I stared at him, so stunned that I didn’t know what to say. The stone. It had killed this Cavid. I was lucky to be alive.
“Told you. It’s your lucky day.”
He pulled me by the arm again and I followed, but now the Cavids were opening up to a narrow, spiraling staircase that climbed up through a huge cavern to a central pillar. Around the cavern, the walls seemed to almost be carved like balconies but they went so high up that I lost sight of the different levels. I could see nothing on the balconies. Nothing but blackness.
The cavern was oddly silent.
“Why is it so dark?”
“They have to stay far enough back to allow sight or sound. And a human ally must conduct the test. Otherwise, the whole thing is meaningless,” Branson said smugly.
Draven. I felt like the blood was rushing from my face. Little flecks of black dotted my vision.
“Oh, don’t take it so hard. You were going to die anyway. Isn’t it nice to think it will at least be entertaining and not some anonymous death that no one ever hears about in the hold of a ship or somewhere in the depths?”
He was crazy.
“What do they want?” I asked in a gasp as he led me to the first step and began to climb.
“The keys, for starters. We found only one key in your personal things. And it is not the key we are looking for. We found many keys among Atura’s things and we do not know which of them might be correct.”
“What if none of them are right?”
“Well, that will be very anticlimactic after all this, don’t you think?”
I snorted. He couldn’t be serious – could he?
“I think you’ll find it hard to use the keys,” I said.
“Tsk, tsk, Seleska. Save that information until it can spare you some pain.”
I felt a thrill of fear shoot through me. “Won’t I escape pain if I just tell you?”
His laughter made me feel ill all over again. “That’s adorable. But no. I will soften you up first – get you truly broken and malleable. Then we’ll ask the questions.”
“That’s not necessary,” I gasped.
“No – but it’s the part I’ve been looking forward to. Do you know how I was punished when my six-year-old niece escaped the slaughter at Tambrel? I was given memories – memories I didn’t want and wished I’d never had. Memories that have driven me – well, not mad exactly, but troubled might be a good word. You did that to me. And now, I will do it to you. Fair is fair. And I’ve been waiting for fair for a very long time.”
Chapter Five
By the time we reached the top of the stairs, my legs were like jelly – not just from the climb but from the fear that had sunk deep into my very bones. I’d expected this to be bad, but with every step, I realized it was probably worse than I could imagine. These entities stole souls and memories for fun. They fed on other sentient creatures. They had overrun our world intent on our destruction. They had no concern or sympathy for Atura – one of their own allies – who might die from the rock in her belly. And they had stated that they wanted to see me in pain – broken, malleable.
If that didn’t terrify me, then what would?
I tried to force courage into my steps and strength into my heart, but the more I forced it, the more the fear seemed to grow.
We reached the top of the stairs and Branson’s hold on my arm solidified, as if he was afraid I would leap from the platform at the top of the stairs to my own death. I almost laughed from the nervous thought.
But wait. The only other way off the platform was through the stairs he was standing on. He couldn’t think I meant to try to flee down them. Maybe he really was afraid I’d kill myself. Did that mean that death would be less painful than what was coming? I tried not to think about that.
The platform was more like a bowl with a flat sto
ne at the center and thousands of small stones surrounding it in the bowl. Branson led me across the small stones. I ignored how they crunched underfoot, trying not to ask myself if Octon’s stone would be among them.
He placed me on the center stone and now that we were there, I could see that there were manacles on that stone. He clamped the metal rings around my feet so that I couldn’t move more than a step in any direction – I certainly couldn’t get off the center stone.
From a pouch at his side, he pulled out a metal collar, fitted it around my neck and clicked it shut. I reached up – almost instinctually – to feel it. It was cold and heavy and it fit so closely around my neck that I’d never be able to pull it over my head. In the center was a keyhole.
“Don’t fight it and it will be faster,” he suggested but then he shrugged. “Or do fight it. It makes no difference to me.”
And then he was gone, walking back across the stones to the top of the stairs in his puddle of light.
And I was left in the inky darkness, surrounded by stones which – I noticed now – glowed very softly in the darkness.
I crouched down and tried to reach for one.
“On your feet!” Branson’s voice was like a whip crack and I obeyed before I thought.
A second later, I was glad that I did, as the rocks rose from the dish and started to spiral around the center stone at lightning-fast speeds. I clutched the collar in both hands, worried that it would be like that magnet Branson had talked about, drawing the stones to me. They whirled so fast that I couldn’t see individual rocks at all – only the blur of all of them moving at once.
There were hundreds – maybe even thousands spinning.
In the distance, I thought I saw Branson through the blur. He was leaning toward me, his mouth open like he was screaming something, but no words reached me.
Instead, my mind filled with visions, flashing lightning-fast so that at first all I saw were colors and impressions, but then they began to lengthen and I got longer glimpses. Only it wasn’t like I was watching them – it was like I was remembering them, like they had happened to me.
I was holding my firstborn child. She was so beautiful, her tiny lips a rosebud.
I was sweating as I worked in the field, pulling a heavy plow beside my best friend. He winked at me through the dirt smeared across his face.
I was washing reeds as I prepared to weave a basket.
I was cleaning fish, their bright round eyes staring up at me with silver gleams.
I was wading through deep water with a minnow trap in my hands.
I was dyeing silk, puffs of steam clouding the air as I stirred the pot with a heavy paddle.
I was kissing my lover. I melted into the embrace.
I turned away from a friend, stinging with betrayal. She’d promised me!
I exulted as a flag rose into the air.
One memory flowed into the next so quickly that I couldn’t parse them out. I didn’t know which belonged to which or who I was or what I loved. I was a mother, a child, a father, a brother, a sister, a baby, a taskmaster, a prince, a Bubbler, a Manticore, a Sentry, a dragon.
I was everyone and no one. I was everything and nothing.
And then the memories lengthened. Hadn’t there been a voice saying something about pain?
As they lengthened, I understood what that voice had meant about making me feel pain. There was no way to stop the memories as they filled me, weaving regrets and agonies through me like fine stitching.
My sister – dying in my arms, shot through with an arrow. Above us, Dominion dragons circled and flamed and blood rained down.
The stitches pierced through my soul.
My mother, cold as I crawled to her in the lashing winds of the sandstorm. Her arm was missing from where the Manticore had shredded it.
The stitches were stronger now – one overlapping another.
My child, limp in my arms as the Winged Prince’s men fought to defend us from the black moving wall of evil. She had been so beautiful, my precious dark-eyed Kalira. I missed her already with a yearning that filled me more than life.
Those stitches were permanent now. They’d never come out again.
My neighbor – old Elder Lutrind – found dead where the prisoners had escaped our impromptu prison. The palms of our island home burned around his body.
Why did that one feel even more painful than the others? Why did that stitch seem brighter?
My entire family lined up along a ledge. I was watching their faces for what I knew would be the last time. Our friends were already dead in the graves below.
“Jan!” my father called to me. “Look at me. Don’t look at them. Look at me.”
His eyes were full of love. The last thing I’d ever see.
I cried out. And the stitch drove in, tying this forever to me.
Memory after memory – each tinged with its own color of painful loss – filled my mind. I was each person whose memories I held. I felt each loss as if it were my own – it was my own! I bled with each family and I hurt, hurt, hurt at the agony of it all as each memory was stitched into me.
My eyes ached but I could cry no longer. I’d cried my tears away hours ago.
And still the memories went on.
I fell to my knees, gasping, clutching my head in my arms, but it did not ease the flow.
Someone hadn’t wanted me to leap off the edge of the platform. And now I understood why. Because if it could stop the memories, I would leap in a heartbeat. Leap and think it a blessing. I pled for it. Pled with chapped, bleeding lips.
But no relief came.
Chapter Six
“And now, the keys,” the voice said.
I was trembling so hard that I couldn’t seem to hold myself up. My face kept falling to the flat stone in front of me as I tried to lift it. I’d been driven down to all fours as I survived the lashing of memories. Memories? What memories?
A dark haze filled my vision and with it, thought disappeared and then it came back, blurry at first.
I didn’t know what tragedy I was crying about – which one had left me soaked in my own tears, my lips and eyes fat and swollen. Which one was real? I flinched at the thought. They all were. Every agonizing second was real. Every precious life lost was real.
I had died a thousand times. I had watched my beloved die a thousand times. I just wanted to die for real now. Nothing was worth this pain. Nothing.
I sniffled, resenting the breath that kept me alive.
“The keys,” the voice said. “You will give them to us.”
Keys? I didn’t remember keys. None of the memories had keys.
“Look at me.”
I couldn’t raise my head.
There was a crunching sound of boots on gravel and then pain seared through my head as someone gripped my hair and tugged me up to my shaking feet. I didn’t mind that pain. It was clean, sharp, momentary. It didn’t hurt like the soul-deep pain I was suffering in echoing waves through my heart.
I wasn’t going to survive such sorrow. And that meant that I didn’t really care if my head felt like the hair was being pulled out by the roots. I almost welcomed it. It made me forget what had come before.
“Look at me.”
A face swam into my vision. A cruel face. A face that looked the same as dozens of others I’d seen before. Oh, those faces had different hair framing them. They were different colors and shapes with different eyes and noses – but they were all the same masks of cruelty. I knew those faces. They were the faces of humans who weren’t human anymore. They were the empty shells of nothing people.
I looked, without seeing.
“Is this the key to the Haroc?” He was holding up a little metal key with an arrow on the top. Funny – I remembered that key. It had been in the memories. And it did unlock something – something precious – just not the Haroc.
“No,” I whispered.
“Where are they?” He shook me.
Pain seared through my head
and I clung to it – clung to the blinding sensation that drove out the memories. Please, don’t let it stop!
But it did stop.
“Is it one of the keys Atura has? She says it is not.”
Atura? Which one was she? I had a faint memory of a woman being hauled off. She was going to be burnt alive. She kissed a small child named Atura as they hauled her away, watched the heart in those huge brown eyes break in the last second she had to watch them.
My bottom lip quivered.
Atura?
Beloved by her mother. Precious beyond precious.
“The girl who was with you. Her Manticores carried hundreds of keys with her. Were they for the Haroc?”
“Haroc?”
He made a frustrated sound in his throat and threw me to the ground, throwing the metal key at my prone form as he stormed away. I reached out and took it, looking at the arrow on the top. That arrow meant something. I remembered that now. But how had it ended up in that cave of keys? Could all of those keys have been so important?
I couldn’t stand again. My limbs were not listening to me anymore. I just lay on the cold stone and tried not to remember. But it was impossible. I could remember everything.
Had I been worried that they would steal my memories?
I shouldn’t have been worried about the memories they could steal. I should have been worried about the memories they could give.
It was a long time until I heard the man speaking again.
“The witness says that you both received keys. In your minds. Is this true?”
“Yes,” I gasped.
I couldn’t see him, because I couldn’t move to look up. But I did see when the rocks rose in the air again.
“No,” I moaned. “No, please, no.”
And then they were swirling again as I whimpered on the ground. I couldn’t bear more memories. Please. Not more memories.
But no new memories came. Instead, I felt a sifting in my mind as my own memories began to surface again. Memories of the pool where I was given the first key – but I couldn’t remember what it had looked like. Something tugged at my mind, pulling hard at it and then it was gone.
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