I even explored the guard room, hoping to find a suitable weapon to bring with me. Yet after finally settling on a saber and then slashing it several times through the air, something Sister Lachmi once said swelled in my mind.
“Never carry a weapon you do not know how to use,” I quoted aloud to the Rook, who watched me from atop a suit of armor. “It is more likely to be turned against you than provide any actual defense. Well”—I flung a pointed look at the bird—“I certainly do not know how to use this saber, nor anything else in here. What do you think? Should I go empty-handed?”
The Rook fluffed his feathers in what could only be deemed agreement.
I’d already made up my mind anyway. I had my Sightwitch Sister knife; it would have to be enough.
The last thing I did before forging into the mountain was crawl back up to the telescope and survey the Nubrevnans one last time.
In hindsight, I shouldn’t have checked. It was just an excuse to dally, for part of me—a rather large part—hoped that another vision might appear. Something to show exactly how to enter the mountain.
But no such vision came, and instead, a scene of chaos and death met my eye through the telescope’s lens.
The storm had decimated the Nubrevnans. Their new tower had cracked clean in half, and one of their ships was smashed, while the other two were missing entirely.
“Oh, Sleeper,” I whispered, my hands moving to my throat. “Oh, Sleeper, oh, Sleeper.”
A cyclone had clearly charged through, and there was no missing the corpses laid in a crooked row upon the riverbank—one of which, I thought, had to be the Airwitch captain, for the man was nowhere in sight.
For some reason, this made me sad.
To make it worse, rain still fell. The soldiers and civilians left behind, the ones forced to reassemble this hell-scape, could not even get a funeral pyre lit. Wet smoke huffed into the air where they tried.
I almost abandoned my course to go help. I had food, I had shelter, I had Firewitched matches that could burn through even the toughest of Sirmaya’s storms.
No. The word blasted through my mind, and I rocked back from the telescope. Not only would it break almost every Convent Rule to invite those people behind the glamour, but Tanzi and the Sisters needed me.
“Helping them is not your path right now,” I told myself, fists clenching as I walked stiff-backed away from the telescope, off the ledge, and down to the scrying pool, where my satchel and a waxed-canvas cloak awaited me.
By the Twelve, though, it is impossible to watch suffering and not want to extend a hand.
As I shrugged into my cloak and tightened the satchel’s straps around my shoulders, my chest, my waist, I recited four words: “Firmly gripped upon it.”
Then again as I rang the Summoning bell. “Firmly gripped upon it.”
And again when no answering bell tolled.
Each step I took out of the observatory, then squelching up the mountain path to the Crypts, I said those words.
The Rook flew ahead, a patch of black in a world of gray, until at last we reached the chapel.
I stepped inside; the sound of the storm reared back. No more rain to pelt my hooded head.
The Rook followed me inside, where he settled atop a crooked brick over the Crypts door. He watched while I checked one final time that I had everything I needed.
I was ready.
“You can’t come with me,” I told the Rook as I shook off my sleeves. I was already cold from the rain, and the journey had scarcely begun. “I have no idea what I’ll face in the deeper levels, much less once I’m inside the mountain.”
Assuming you can get inside the mountain at all, said a voice at the back of my brain. I shoved it aside.
“You need to wait up here, Rook—”
He bristled.
“The Rook,” I amended hastily, finally glancing his way. He looked decidedly displeased, his beak turned down and his eyes locked on mine. “Someone has to keep an eye on the Convent while I’m gone.”
I advanced one step toward the door.
He clacked his beak and opened his wings.
I stepped again, and this time he screeched. A clear threat of, “I will dive at you if you do not let me join you.”
“Please, the Rook,” I begged, mimicking Tanzi’s best pity-me face. “You know how much you hate the ghosts—they’ll only be worse in the deeper levels.”
That seemed to give him pause. His wings slumped.
“And there won’t be any sweets for you to eat either. No jam or honey cakes.”
Now he looked mildly appalled.
“Plus, the passages will be so narrow, you probably won’t be able to fly. You’ll have to hop everywhere!”
Finally, his wings furled entirely and his head sank. But rather than feel triumphant, a prickly sadness unwound in my chest.
I would have liked to have his company. Especially since the words A LONE SISTER IS LOST were carved into a wall mere paces behind me.
I gulped, fists clenching, and whispered, “Firmly gripped upon it.”
Then before my courage could falter, I pushed into the Crypts and left the Rook behind.
Y2786 D218
MEMORIES
Cora distracted me today, humming to herself as she always does. We were in my workshop, for I still have much to do and the girls can study their books here as easily as they can in the Convent.
Lisbet sat bowed over a Memory Record, and Cora was practicing her letters, her quill scratching in time to one of the skipping songs I taught her last week.
“One by one into the tombs,
One by one for sleeping.”
Yet Cora added a new verse—words that sent chills down my back. When I asked her if she made them up, she simply said, “It is how the song ends. That’s what the ghosts told Lisbet.” Then off she went, chanting again to herself:
“One by one into the tombs,
One by one for sleeping.
Shadows, fissures, cleft in two,
As one by one comes creeping.”
When I asked Lisbet if she truly had heard these new lines from the ghosts, her response only made the chills worsen. “Of course, Dysi,” she said in that serious way of hers. “Don’t you hear them saying it too? They certainly want you to hear.”
“They want me to hear,” I repeated, trying to sort out what her words might mean.
She took it as a question, nodding sharply. “Oh, yes. It’s a warning for us all, but no one ever seems to listen.”
LATER
I noticed tonight at the evening meal that Lisbet’s eyes are clearing.
Yes, already. She has not even been Summoned to the heart of the mountain, but already flecks of silver speckle her hazel eyes.
I do not know why this frightens me, and when I draw the cards, they offer me no help.
LATER — 9 hours left to find Tanzi
I was a fool to worry. The lower Crypts were not so different from the higher levels.
Yes, the Firewitched lanterns were fewer and farther between. And yes, the air turned heavier, the weight of the mountain pressing ever harder. The biggest difference, though, was how quickly the temperature plunged.
Level 6, I was comfortable enough. Level 7, less so. By the time I was halfway across Level 8, my teeth were chattering and my breath plumed. I had to huddle deep in my cloak with my hands stuffed into my tunic pockets.
Gloves, I thought. I should have brought gloves. I puffed an exhale, and it twined around ghosts that flittered close.
Fewer than I’d guessed. Far fewer. As if the memories here were so old, the ghosts had finally settled back onto the page.
I was especially regretting the absence of gloves when I reached the stairwell down to Level 9. So dark was its snaking tunnel that I had to stop and rummage the lantern from my pack—a Firewitched lantern, for at least in this regard I had come fully prepared. No flint nor flame to worry about. Just a whispered “Ignite.”
Then down I wen
t.
When I eventually stepped out of the stairs and onto the balcony of Level 9, I drew up short. Where the ghosts had been silent and absent before, now they rushed at me. A tidal wave of whispers and wind that sent me doubling over.
I couldn’t see a thing. Only the fan of yellow light that sprayed out from the lantern at my feet.
The cold, the pressure, the ghosts, and the darkness—this is what death must feel like. Trapped, with chains of ice and whispers to pin you down. I wanted to return to the blessed silence, just for a moment—
“No,” I spat. “I am firmly gripped upon it.” Though I lacked the Sight, I knew how to follow rules. How to do what needed to be done.
After scooping up the lantern, I set off once more. Ten paces—that was as far as I could see ahead. Enough to descend the steep stairs onto the main floor of Level 9. Enough to set off down the central thoroughfare that bisected the shelves exactly like every other level.
The ghosts followed, clotting thickly. A haze to dampen my lantern’s glow. A roar of indecipherable voices and angry memories that somehow turned sharper, louder with each step I pushed forward.
Whatever records were on this floor, they were not happy ones.
Onward I slogged. One foot in front of the next. I lost all concept of time, all concept of space. It was simply me, the ghosts, and the cold.
Until abruptly it wasn’t anymore.
Between one row of stone shelves and the next, the ghosts fled. With a shriek that set my skin to crawling, they burst into a spinning wind. It knocked against me. I lost my footing and fell to one knee.
Then they were gone. Just like that. No more ghosts, no more furious memories—only the resounding quake of their final howls to shimmer in the air.
I knew in an instant that this was bad. Whatever could scare away ghosts had to be bad, bad, bad.
Gulping in air, I shoved myself to my feet and thrust out the lantern. Left. Right. Nothing but shelves, stone, shadows, and tomes.
“Ryber,” trilled a voice behind me. High-pitched and singsong.
I lurched around, light streaking. Pulse keening. But there was nothing.
“Ryber,” called a second voice, slightly deeper and from a different direction.
Again, when I twisted toward it, I saw nothing. Only swaying beams of lantern light.
“Ryber,” came a third. The highest tone of them all and coasting toward me from behind.
I didn’t want to look, but I knew I had to.
I turned. I saw.
Three women glided toward me. Solid. Real. And so very, very wrong. They wore silver tunics, their bare feet peeking out from the bottoms …
Feet that did not touch the ground. They hovered. They flew.
And where there should have been faces, there was nothing at all. Just black skin, brown skin, and pale skin.
It was their arms and hands, though, that were the most unnatural. Stretched to their feet and with fingers three times as long they ought to be, the women’s hands scraped over the stone as they floated toward me.
“Ryber,” they harmonized in a minor chord. “You should not have come here, Ryber.”
Every muscle in me shook with the need to move. To run. Yet it was as if ropes held me down. I could not look away. I could not turn or move or do anything at all.
“Why did you come here, Ryber?” Closer, closer. “This is not where you belong.”
No, I thought, it isn’t. And with that one thought, my body finally ignited.
I turned. I ran.
The women followed.
Not that I could see them. Forward was all I saw, pack clanking and lantern light bouncing. Shelf after shelf, rough tile after rough tile.
But I heard the women, chanting my name over and over, all while their fingers scratched louder across the floor.
What the blighter were they? And how the blighter was I supposed to get away from them?
“Ryber, you don’t belong here. Ryber, Ryber, you’re not one of us.”
Somehow, in the panic that spurred my legs ever faster, I came to the conclusion that if I could just reach Level 10, these creatures would stop their chase. That some barrier would keep these … these Death Maidens locked on this floor of infernal ice.
In hindsight, I don’t know why I assumed this. Desperation, I suppose. An incentive to keep sprinting toward—a goal to reach.
I hit the stairwell and dove in. Two bounding steps at a time I rounded down. My name skittered after me. My pack banged against the wall, the ceiling, my back. This tunnel was even narrower than the one before. Twice I stumbled. Twice my ankles popped and I had to bounce off the walls to keep upright.
Still they chorused my name. Still their fingers clawed across stone.
Then I was there. To the balcony of Level 10.
Out I shoved, and thank the Goddess I did not slow. Not yet, at least.
I charged down to the main floor before I allowed my foolish feet to drag to a stop. Then I rounded back, staring. Praying nothing would appear in the darkened exit from the stairs.
Of course my assumption was wrong, for they were already in the room, staring down at me from atop the balcony.
They cackled. No more harmony. Just giddy, hungry laughter.
And unlike me, they did not need the stairs to descend.
Up they flew. Then over and down.
Never have I spun so fast in my life. Never have I reached such a speed so quickly. I launched from frozen and gasping to a knee-kicking charge, my lantern’s beam swinging in all directions. I couldn’t see where I was going, and I just had to pray that Level 10 was shaped like every level before it.
It wasn’t.
I learned that when I sprinted directly into a wall.
As if that wasn’t bad enough, when I veered sharply right, barely preventing a crash into the stone, a crunch sounded.
Then another and another, and before my shaking eyes, rubble punched out of the wall … followed by hands.
Human hands that grabbed at me. Two snagged hold, and I barely managed to yank free before two more had latched on.
Oh, how the Death Maidens laughed at that.
“No one wants you here,” they trilled. “You simply do not belong.”
“No!” I shrieked, using all my force to hitch free and fling myself back into a sprint.
But of course, the hands weren’t finished with me. Now they burst free from the floor. I had to hop and twist and dart and leap as fingers, fingers everywhere, tried to haul me down.
No time for thought, no time for strategy. Just forward. Just away from the Death Maidens still hovering behind.
Their cackles were much, much too near.
Somehow, though, I had chosen the correct side of Lady Fate’s knife by turning right at the wall. A jagged maw of a doorway glowed ahead. Fat fronds of foxfire reached out from the rock, giving my Firewitched lantern a greenish glow—and giving the clawing, reaching hands a rotting sheen.
This time, I did not make the mistake of believing the next level would save me. At least, though, there were no more hands to punch free from the rock. Just walls so close that my shoulders touched and my pack hit the ceiling as I careened faster down.
The cramped space slowed the three monsters. Their singing, “Ryber, Ryber, Ryber,” faded slightly as I barreled ever onward.
Level 11. I fell onto the balcony, hands windmilling to keep me upright.
Light. Foxfire. Everywhere it shone, bright enough to burn my eyes. Enough to slow me for half a desperate breath as my vision adjusted.
I almost wish my vision had never adjusted. Then I might not have seen the worst of the horrors to come.
As tall as the cavern and propped up like a spider—but with four human arms to hold it high—stood a beast with a head that spun my way. Then kept spinning, bones clicking with each turn. Skull-like, it had black sockets for eyes and a grin that spread wider, wider, wider. All the way around to the back of its head, the smile stretched.
> It heaved its massive fleshy body toward me, shockingly nimble. Shockingly fast.
And behind me, the sound of my name bounced closer.
I had no choice: I had to keep moving forward.
Down the stairs I vaulted. My eyes were not on where I stepped but where the Skull-Face ahead was moving. It was fast, but it was also big. If I could stay close to the space between walls and shelves, then it could not reach me.
My plan was a poor one, which I realized the instant I pitched for the right wall.
Hands, hands—the same thrice-damned hands from Level 10 began to break free. Grabbing, ripping, towing me down.
Why, Sirmaya? I wanted to shriek as I cut down a row of shelves. Why is all of this here? What were these hands? Or the massive beast now scrabbling toward me, its head spinning and spinning?
No time for answers. Just running. My breath seared. My muscles had gone from tired to numb. Everything moved of its own accord. Distant limbs that kept pumping even as my mind was a useless jumble of terror.
Then I saw it, as I reeled onto the main path and a smell like festering flesh roiled over me—Skull-Face needed a bath—I saw the end of Level 11. It was closer than previous levels, and rather than a darkened doorway in the wall, a chapel waited.
Surrounded by brilliant foxfire, it looked exactly like the chapel at the entrance to the Crypts, now so far behind me.
Yet unlike the chapel outside, this one had a door. Twice as tall as me and with no latch or knob.
Doesn’t matter, I decided between one crashing step and the next. I would figure out how to open it when I got there. That was really the only path left to me.
I did not look back, and I did not need to. The sound of the monster’s spinning face clicked louder; the stench of death weighed hea-vier.
And, of course, the chanting call of my name, broken up by syncopated laughter, still followed too near.
The door waved and swam ahead, its edges glowing with a strange blue light. I’d thought that was light from the foxfire, yet the closer I ran, the more I realized it was not a natural light but a magical one.
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