But she had no eyes, and her skin was stretched tight over her cheekbones. Her mouth was too large, peeled back over exposed teeth.
The woman reached out a hand. As if she were beckoning or entreating.
Ryn stumbled, tripped over her own feet. A wordless sound burst from her lips and she found herself crawling away.
The woman was—dead.
She’d been dead long enough for her skin to stretch tight, for desiccation to set in to the flesh, yet not so long that her hair had lost its shine. It had been recently brushed, and it was that detail that stuck in Ryn’s mind.
Her hair had been brushed smooth, every strand lovingly cared for. Her nightgown was pristine. She was taken care of.
And she was dead.
The door swung open and Catrin walked inside. She carried a cup of something hot, tendrils of steam trailing behind her. When she saw Ryn, she smiled.
She smiled.
“I see you’ve met Mother,” she said warmly.
Mad. Catrin had to be mad. And reckless, if she were keeping a bone house here, in her home. “She—she—” Ryn began to say, her voice shaking hard.
“Mother,” said Catrin, laying a hand on the dead woman’s shoulder, “don’t be afraid—she’s a guest.”
The dead woman tilted her head, her sightless eyes fixed on Ryn. That gaze seemed to freeze the blood in Ryn’s veins, and she felt sick with it.
“What are you—” Ryn began to say, but she faltered again. “She—she’s one of them—”
Catrin’s smile wavered. “Of course she is.”
As if Ryn should have known. As if it were not some terrible secret.
“You knew,” said Catrin slowly. “Isn’t that why you came? That’s why everyone comes here.” She met Ryn’s eyes, and there was a terrible kind of joy in her face. “Death cannot touch this place,” she whispered. “If you are dying, if you have a father or a sister or a spouse who is dying… you can come here.”
Or a mother, Ryn thought, but did not say.
“Your husband,” said Catrin. “He—he is the one who is dying, isn’t he? I saw how he moves, as if his whole back pains him. I saw the willow bark he chews. You came here so as not to be parted from him.”
Ryn opened her mouth to say all sorts of things: that Ellis was not her husband, and he was certainly not dying—
Was he?
Well, it would explain why he did not fear dying in the mountains. Death was cheap in a place where the dead rose every evening. He could simply come back and—
That was when she understood the encampment.
People did not come here to live.
They came here to die.
They came here so loved ones would continue on, silent, rotting versions of themselves that would rise every night. So they could cling to the remnants of loved ones. So that they would never have to put a body in the ground, and flowers on that grave. It was foolish and dangerous and—
So very tempting.
“We didn’t come here for that.” The words spilled out of Ryn. She could barely hear herself; her attention was wholly on the dead woman sitting in the chair. She looked so calm, so peaceful.
Ryn remembered the dead woman she’d encountered in the fields. She had been dead, but she had made no move to attack. She had merely wandered, her gait unsteady with her broken ankle. Wandered, as if searching for something.
Family?
Home?
“People only come here to live with their loved ones,” said Catrin gently. “And they stay because the magic won’t work from afar.”
Ryn had thought the cauldron’s curse twisted the dead into something they were not. It made them attack, made them into monsters. But what if it had done no such thing? Her uncle had always been vicious, and it was not difficult to imagine he would try to drag Ceridwen out of their home to hurt her. The dead man who had attacked Ellis might have been a robber or a murderer. As for the soldiers of Castell Sidi—perhaps they had attacked merely because they were soldiers.
If death did not change a person…
A shudder ran through her.
She thought of the dead she had dismembered. She had placed bodies in the forge, thinking they were little more than unthinking monsters. If they were not, did that make her a murderer?
She could not think of that. Not now, not with a dead woman watching her and a living one waiting for her to explain.
“Neither of us is dying,” said Ryn, and hoped that wasn’t a lie.
Catrin’s face was drawn with confusion. “Then why are you here?”
Her answer came haltingly. “We—we’re… the mine. We’re going through the mine.”
Catrin’s confusion flickered into the sharpness of realization. “You’re going to Annwvyn. But that’s—no one goes into the mountains. There’s no reason.”
“That’s where the cauldron is,” said Ryn.
Catrin’s face drained of all color. For one moment, Ryn thought it was concern for her. She was so used to people believing she would die in those mountains, it was the first conclusion that came to her. But then she saw the way Catrin’s hand tightened on her mother’s shoulder. That pristine gown draped over the dead woman’s bony frame. Such care was due to the dead—and Ryn respected that. But there was something sickening about the image of Catrin washing and dressing her mother, helping the dead woman with fastenings that her rotted hands could not manage.
“You’re—going to take the magic from this place,” said Catrin, very quietly.
Ryn did not answer. She could not, because in that stretch of silence, she understood her mistake.
Catrin remained frozen for a heartbeat.
And then she threw herself at Ryn.
CHAPTER 18
MUSIC RANG THROUGH the encampment.
The song began slowly, the first few notes drawn out, before the rhythm took shape and dancers began to swing around and around, hands clasped and hair shining in the light of the fire. Ellis watched from a distance, his arms at his sides, listening to the pleasant music. The man playing the crwth was half shadowed by the awning of a cabin. He sat in a wooden chair, the instrument cradled to his chest as the bow moved lovingly across the horsehair strings.
“Not one for dancing, are you?” asked a young woman, stepping toward Ellis. Her golden hair was bound in a knot, and her smile was a bit too knowing.
Ellis gave her a polite little bow of his head and shoulders. “I fear I’d do your feet an injury, my lady.”
“Well, you’re a sweet-tongued lordling,” she said, her smile widening. “None of that ‘my lady.’ We’ve all left our titles behind.”
That was interesting. Some of them had once had titles. Ellis would have thought that the squatters had been poor farmers or those who’d escaped servitude—those with nowhere else to go.
“Where’s your companion?” asked the young woman. “Gone to bed?”
“Yes.” He considered saying that he’d wanted a moment of solitude, but that would sound rude. “The music is lovely. I wished to hear more of it.”
“Caradoc.” The girl nodded to the man whose thin-fingered hands were a blur over the crwth. “Some say he played for princes before his horse bolted. A cart ran over his foot—the wound sickened, and he had barely enough time to make it here.”
Ellis blinked. He wouldn’t have thought the encampment’s healers would have the skill or the supplies to treat an inflamed wound—but again, he remained silent for fear of offending this woman.
“Now he plays only at night,” she continued, “but it’s better than never at all, right?”
Ellis nodded.
One song bled into another. This one was slower, a tune that seemed to tug at something in Ellis’s chest. “Come now,” said the woman. “Surely this tune would not cause too much injury.”
Before he could truly understand her meaning, the woman slipped her hand into his, and led him among the dancing couples.
He had learned to dance, of course
. The prince saw to it that all noble children in Caer Aberhen knew the traditional steps. Even Ellis, who did not enjoy the scrutiny of his instructor, nor the effort it took to raise his left hand above his partner, had been saddled with lesson after lesson. Now he found himself whirling amid the other dancers, one hand twined with the young woman’s, and the other rested lightly on her waist. She was smiling, as if overjoyed to have a new partner, and the other dancers made room for them.
At first he stumbled a bit. He could not recall how to move, where his feet should go. But as the song shifted again, memory slid into place. They spun—if not wholly gracefully, then at least enthusiastically. The light of the fire cast shadows and flickers all about them, throwing the other dancers into strange contrasts. One gaunt man with deep-set eyes moved past them, and something about his face made Ellis pause. But the man was gone before he could study him more closely. None of the dancers were truly skilled, but their enjoyment was infectious.
The music sped up, and Ellis’s heartbeat kept pace. Something about the wild dance made him want to smile—and suddenly he was caught up in the rhythm of it. Thought fell away, and he realized this was why people enjoyed dancing: Because when it was done right, there was very little thinking to it. His mind retreated, and all that was left was movement. It was as heady as drink, as a stolen kiss, as all the things he’d been too afraid to try.
The shadowed figures moved through the firelight, spinning round and round, until he was smiling in earnest. The young woman was grinning, even when his shoe caught the hem of her dress. They stumbled together beside the fire pit. The heat flushed his bare forearms and neck. “Not bad,” said the young woman with a careless little laugh. “And here you said you’d injure me.”
He rubbed the back of his neck. The skin was damp, and sweat rolled between his shoulder blades. In the brightness of the fire, he could finally see the man playing the crwth. He was bent over the instrument, fingers darting as he finished the song. “I was sure I—”
His words strangled out.
Because at that moment, the man lifted his head. His fingers slowed, the bow gliding across the strings, and the tune ended. Cheers and cries for more rang out, but Ellis did not hear them.
The musician did not have thin fingers.
He had fingers of raw bone.
They were polished smooth and brown, like driftwood on a shore. His face had deep hollows—because there was no flesh beneath the cheekbones. The mouth grinned a skull’s smile, and the man’s high collar nearly hid the ridges of his spine. Only his hair remained glossy, well cared for and trimmed.
Shock rooted Ellis to the hard-packed ground. It was not fear—not yet. There was no room for fear. His mind was clawing for an explanation. Surely these people had not noticed. They must not have noticed, because otherwise they would have run. They would have reacted like those in Colbren, who took up arms to defend their homes and families. They would not have continued to dance.
But now he truly looked at them.
There was a child wearing a red gown and whose hair hung in ringlets around her shoulders. Her face was tight, as if the flesh had begun to pull away from sinew. Her mouth was a rictus of a smile. Then there was another man—an old man with a bald pate and eyes gone milky. And that man he’d seen before—not with deep-set eyes, but with no eyes at all.
Three, no four of them. Bone houses were dancing all around him. The hands of the dead clasped with those of the living, whirling in glorious abandonment.
“You all right?” asked the young woman. But her voice was light, unconcerned. A mere formality now that her partner had gone unnaturally still.
He had been dancing among the dead and never even realized.
The dead man put bow to crwth, every movement sinuous and practiced, and the music began again. The young woman tugged at him, but Ellis slipped from her grip, shaking his head in silent refusal.
What is this? he wanted to say. What is this?
The words remained behind his teeth; his jaw ached, and he realized every muscle of his body was drawn tight. His shoulder clenched in pain, but even that seemed distant.
For the first time, he was glad he had not found his parents among these people.
He strode away from the circle of firelight, from the movement and the song, toward Catrin’s home. The shock was draining away, and fear rapidly swelled to take its place. A tremble began in his legs, but he forced himself to keep moving. He did not run—not out of any bravery, but because he wasn’t sure his legs would not simply collapse.
He had to find Aderyn. He let that thought center him. He would find Aderyn and tell her that something was wrong, that they needed to leave, and—
His fumbling fingers found the latch, and he shoved the door open.
The interior was lit only by the embers of the dying fire. There were no candles, no torches, only a dim orange glow.
Even so, he saw the fight at once.
Aderyn was on her back, legs kicking wildly as Catrin pressed her to the floor. The woman’s hands were on Aderyn’s shoulders, gripping with bruising force, and she was saying “—can’t, you can’t—” as if this were a conversation. Aderyn snarled and threw an elbow, cracking into Catrin’s chest. A pang of phantom pain went through Ellis as Catrin clutched her collarbone, staggering up onto her heels. Aderyn began to scramble upright, but Catrin seized her ankle and yanked.
Ellis started forward, and the movement must have caught Catrin’s attention, for her gaze jerked up to meet his. He expected anger—but what he saw was terror. “We can’t let them leave,” she gasped. “Mother—”
At first, Ellis thought she must have gone mad, to refer to him in such a way.
Then pain flared across the base of his skull. The world went red at the edges, and he heard himself cry out, the floor driving up to meet him. He landed hard, jostling his shoulder. It was like kicking a hornet’s nest to the ground—agony burst within him, burning and stinging through his collarbone, extending down his back.
The pain might have been debilitating—if he had not had a lifetime of it.
If Ellis knew anything about himself, it was pain. He knew how to sense it, how to avoid it, how to soothe his aches with heat compresses and herbs. He let the pain roar through him now, breathing in short bursts, and then he used his good hand to push himself upright. He glanced up to see his attacker.
It was an old woman in a nightgown, a wooden rolling pin in hand.
No, that was not right.
It was an old, dead woman in a nightgown, wielding a rolling pin.
That was slightly less embarrassing.
Ellis had little experience with fighting. But even he knew that when it came to reach, he had the advantage. He lashed out with one long leg, catching the old woman in the knee. He hooked his foot around, jerking her weight out from under her. The woman crashed to the floor, mouth open in a wordless snarl. Behind him, he heard the sickening sound of fist on flesh, but he could not help Aderyn. Not like this—unarmed and unprepared. He shoved himself to his feet and dashed for the ladder to the loft. Gritting his teeth against the pain, he hauled himself up and over, fingers scrabbling for his pack. He threw Aderyn’s pack over the edge, heard it hit someone, and then heard a cry of surprise. His own pack went over his shoulder.
He hit the floor with both feet, settling into a crouch, his crossbow cradled between both hands. “Stop,” he snapped, and aimed the weapon at Catrin.
She and Aderyn were in a tangle on the floor—Aderyn gripped Catrin’s hair and had one leg hooked around the woman’s arm, grappling for the upper hand. Catrin had scratches down her face but did not seem to notice. Blood spattered the floor beneath them, black in the dim light.
And the dead woman was struggling to rise.
“Let go of her,” he said to Catrin. She went still, her eyes fixed on the crossbow. Her chest rose and fell in uncontrollable spasms, then her fingers unclenched. Aderyn crawled away on hands and knees, reaching for her fallen pa
ck. Her hair was mussed and there was a red welt beneath her left eye. Her axe rested on the floor, and she scooped it up.
“I would have thought that’d be your first response,” Ellis said, with a tight little smile. Aderyn glanced down at her weapon, then back at him.
“I’m not a murderer, for all my faults,” she replied. Her voice was ragged but firm. “And I think—I think I’ve had enough hospitality.”
“Let us walk out of here,” said Ellis, turning his gaze on Catrin. “We walk out, and no one is harmed.”
Catrin took half a step toward them. “No—you can’t.”
Ellis’s finger touched the trigger, and she flinched.
“The magic,” she said haltingly. “You can’t take it. It’s all that’s keeping these people alive. Mother—Caradoc. They’re—”
“Rotting,” said Aderyn.
Catrin closed her eyes for a moment, then reopened them. “They’re aware. They can’t talk, but they know who they were. What they want. They’re not a danger to anyone. I’ve heard—we’ve heard rumors of other risen attacking other people, but none of them do that here. They came here for a second chance.”
Aderyn threw her arm out, pointing at the dead woman. She had managed to right herself, and her sightless gaze drifted between Catrin and Ellis, as if she could sense what was going on. “You call this a second chance?”
“Yes!” snarled Catrin. “You wouldn’t understand. You’ve never lost someone. You’ve never had to see the end coming and know there are no other options. We came here because I couldn’t lose her.”
Her words rang with a terrible certainty.
Aderyn trembled; it was slight, but Ellis saw the way her axe shook. “The bone houses—”
“Don’t call them that,” snarled Catrin.
“The dead,” said Aderyn roughly, “are dead.”
Catrin took another step forward. “But they don’t have to be!”
A flicker of emotion passed over Aderyn’s face.
Ellis gazed at her—and a certainty struck him. He had seen her in the shadow of the forest—how her body canted toward the mountains, her face peaceful. For someone with little fear of death or magic, this place must seem a haven to her. A place where she would not have to lose her loved ones, where they could rise with the moon, silent and constant. She must have thought of her buried mother. It would be a temptation. It was a temptation.
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