by Sara Wolf
you are only human, after all, the hunger taunts, an odd edge of pity to its voice.
“Only human, after all,” I whisper.
The breach yawns open before me—bent metal rimming a crevice sundering deeply and darkly into the earth. I hold my lantern high and press into it. It’s absurd, to only realize certain things much later than they need to be realized. I thought I had half a brain. I thought I knew things, the important things. But there are bits and pieces of thought that fall from life, and we scoop them up and desperately try to make a whole picture of them, sometimes long before we’re ready to see what that picture is.
Pushing into the dark tunnel, I slide the last piece into its slot. Yorl is not the valkerax. And now, for the very first time in my Heartless life, I start to think, solidly and wholly and clearly:
I am not the hunger.
18
The Wyrm
and the
Bene’thar
When I finally catch up with Malachite, he’s so far down the tunnel, I can smell the stale age of the dust in the air. I’m panting with the effort of so much running and so little oxygen, but the beneather is making no noise at all, crouched low even though the scar the valkerax made is wide and tall enough to accommodate him.
“So,” I start breezily. “Got any tips? You know, from your entire culture of professional valkerax killing?”
For a moment, I don’t think he’s heard me, and then he speaks, low and hoarse. “If you feel the air grow hot, you’re about to die.”
“Good.” I draw Father’s sword, my hand only mildly shaking. “I was hoping you’d say something sweet and sultry like that.”
He doesn’t laugh. He doesn’t so much as look back at me. But I can see his eyes glowing, the red irises spilling a bloody haze of light in the otherwise utter pitch-black in front of him.
“I-I thought you said your eyes glowed only on full moons?”
“Or if we catch the scent of valkerax,” he manages, every word sounding labored, as if he’s trying to keep his mind together in one place. He suddenly holds up a pale hand, and I freeze. “The light,” he demands. “Put it out.”
I scrabble with the oil lamp, extinguishing the tiny flame. Instantly we’re plunged into perfect darkness. Malachite’s breathing is suddenly close to my ear.
“There should be eleven others of my kind standing here with me,” he says. “But all I’ve got is you.”
“I’ll do whatever you want.”
He’s silent.
“I’ll put on a funny hat and dance a godsdamned Helkyris waltz in its mouth if you need me to,” I insist. “Anything. Anything at all. But we have to get Evlorasin back.”
“You’ve said that word before.” Malachite’s voice frowns. “Is that its true name?”
I curse myself. “Look—just tell me what to do. I’ll do it. I’m immortal. Whatever you need, I can do it.”
“You’ve been talking to it,” he muses. “That’s the only way you’d know its name. Why? They’re madder than a drunk old man on New God’s Night. They speak only non—”
“We just need to find it.” I make my voice hard. “Now.”
To my relief, Malachite backs off with the questioning and darts ahead of me. The ground of the hastily dug tunnel isn’t level, but even when I skid and fall on the rock and dirt, I jump to my feet again. Warm blood on my gravel-skinned knees and stone-cut shins lasts only a second as Varia’s magic heals me. The pain is nothing.
we’ve been through far worse, the hunger slithers loudly. we are far worse.
“You,” I quietly correct it, gripping Father’s rusted sword tighter to my side. “You are far worse.”
“We’ve got visitors ahead,” Malachite warns me. Sure enough, in a few spans, panting and groaning that isn’t mine or Malachite’s resounds from up the tunnel. I can’t see them, but they sound like celeon. I hear Malachite speaking with them lowly, and situate myself against the tunnel wall until his voice makes an appearance in my ear again.
“Ten of them and two of us are much better odds.”
“Normally I’d agree with you, but we should send them back.” I frown and turn the lamp back on. “They’ve been through enough already—”
“With every beneather bone in my body, I can tell you right now that you and I alone will not be enough to retake this valkerax. It’ll ignore us completely. We need sufficient body heat to draw it in, tempt its predatory instinct.”
I bristle. “These guards aren’t toys, Malachite—”
“And they’re not children to be coddled, either,” he fires back. “Everyone here has made their own choices. Do you want it to run? Or do you want to capture it?” He throws his hand up. “You make the decision—I’m just the muscle. I’m telling you how it is; two people won’t be enough to make it stop running. And at the rate it’s digging…”
He trails off. Father’s sword suddenly feels ice-cold in my hands, my eyes skittering over the furred faces of the apprehensive celeon in the tunnel. They’re royal guards. They serve the royal family unerringly, until they die. Varia ordered them here, to guard the valkerax. I can feel the strings attaching my hopes to my heart growing thin, fragile, unsteadier the farther away Evlorasin digs. Mother’s face is a blur, but it had been so clear. So perfectly clear, better than a painting.
I clench my fist and look back at Malachite. “The moment I tell you to run, you take them and run.”
He rolls his eyes. “And of course leave you behind, right?”
“I’ll make it out somehow.” I change the subject quickly. “What did you talk about with them back there?”
Malachite pauses for a moment, and I just faintly see his long, bladelike ears twitching in the light emanating from his bloodred eyes. “They were saying the valkerax dug in a bunch of different directions trying to find a way out, so all the tunnels look the same. They lost the trail. The scent of Vetris’s wastewater system is strong right here. It cuts everything off. But I’ve got better hearing than a celeon. It’s far to the west. It’s digging, and injured.”
I think back to the six celeon bodies—with their strength, their sacrifice, there’s a good chance they did injure Evlorasin. Malachite orders the celeon to file out in front of us, quietly, and we move as one stealthy group, my human gait the loudest against the stone by far.
“My fellow guards.” Malachite’s voice is thin and yet audible in all the quiet. “You’ll harass the thing. Strike any lanterns you might have, any torches—its eyes don’t do well with bright light. Stab between the webbing of its feet if you can—it’s a weak spot. I’ll try to get on its back in the confusion and go for its neck.”
A murmur of assent goes around the celeon group, and they ready their lanterns and halberds.
“We need it alive!” I hiss up ahead to the beneather. Malachite’s chuckle is like his old self, before he knew of my betrayal—golden and cheeky.
“And I clearly need a raise. But here we are.”
“Mal—”
“If you think a few neck stabs will kill it, then I’m the spiritsdamn Emperor of Pendron.” He sighs. “I’m aware killing Varia’s pet would be the best way to book myself a caravan ticket back to Pala Amna and away from Lucien. So relax.”
I can’t relax. Not when Evlorasin is getting farther and farther away from me. Not when my heart is tied flush with the valkerax’s very fate.
“So what do I do?” I ask. “Stand there and look tasty?”
“Yorl said to get those shots as close to the throat as possible, right?” Malachite tilts his head. “Inside it? If I can create an opening, you should go for it.”
A cold sweat beads my neck, and it starts to run in rivulets when I pick up the sound of deep, sonorous, fragmented breathing. I’d know that sound anywhere—Evlorasin. From the complete darkness ahead that we march into, a pinprick of orange light starts to grow, and a c
rackling wave of heat evaporates my sweat in a flash.
The air is growing hot. But that means—
Malachite turns, eyes a blazing red, and shouts at the top of his lungs, “Get down!”
The celeon all scrabble backward in a frenzy, pushing past me and down the tunnel’s slope as the smell of burning air gets stronger. The celeon hit the ground, curling around themselves in a protective stance. The telltale paper-rip noise of the fire as it tears through the tunnel quickly turns deafening. I throw myself to the ground before the cluster of celeon, some panic-numbed part of my brain knowing I could take the brunt and soften it for everyone behind me, but I feel someone slam themselves down beside me and pull me into them, cradling my body within theirs.
The fire screams over us as a jagged plume, bright yellow and blazing so hot in the middle, it appears white. The heat scrapes against our skin—singeing what feels like the very flesh off my face—and yet it’s gone in an instant. I hear the celeon scrabbling to their feet, and then a voice echoes in my ear.
“As if I’d let you take all the glory.”
I roll over to see Malachite sitting up, brushing the gravel off his chainmail. He…protected me?
He straightens and calls to the celeon, “Stand and take up your arms; the valkerax is here!”
I leap to my feet, and the celeon press in around me, drawing their swords and holding their halberds aloft. All of us stare at the tunnel where the fire came from, the tension making the musty air suffocatingly thick. I’d seen Evlorasin’s jaws, and the image of them haunts me now—that mouth could come barreling down the tunnel at any moment, open wide, the spiraling teeth ready to consume us all. There’d be barely any room to run or maneuver.
The tight knot of mortals and their scared breaths are dwarfed by Evlorasin’s broken, thunderous breathing, and a sound I recognize starts making itself known—the sound of valkerax claws scrabbling frantically over stone and dirt.
Out of the blackness, Evlorasin comes.
It’s just a white blur at first, but with every blink of mine, it gets rapidly bigger. The celeon growl, their hackles rising as it approaches at a breakneck speed. The lantern light catches the feathered mane flaring around its head, taking up the entire tunnel’s width. Evlorasin’s six white eyes catch the light, one of them badly bleeding, but its wounds don’t deter its speed as it scratches madly for us. Its mouth is open, its long spiral of shin-long teeth gleaming.
Malachite pulls his broadsword from his back and raises it high, waiting unflinchingly. The thought of the mortal celeon behind me has me walking forward, too, the heavy brass crossbow raised in my arms.
I can’t understand Evlorasin’s words because I haven’t drunk the serum, but I can hear its voice, screeching and hissing in equal measure as it barrels closer. I pray for it to stop, to the Old and New God to listen for once. Nervously, I check Yorl’s crossbow. Even though it’s not a weapon I’m familiar with, I think I can handle—
My finger catches on the trigger on the bottom, and a single vial shoots out, shattering on the stone floor.
“Vachiayis!” I spit the swear. I have only five of those! Yorl said it would take all five—
“Tragya!” Malachite shouts next to me, starting forward and pointing his hefty blade at Evlorasin with one spidery hand.
“What?” I can’t tear my eyes away from the approaching valkerax, but I can see him grin out of the corner of my eye.
“It’s a swear beneathers use when they drop something expensive. It means ‘damn the ground.’ Much more fitting than ‘ox balls’ in this case, don’t you think?”
He’s so calm, even here. Especially here. Our back-and-forth eases just a fraction of my nerves; the valkerax is so close now we can smell its rotting breath, the strength of it vibrating the dirt free from the ceiling in great clumps. We stare down death, flickering in and out of oil lamplight. It’s huge. I knew it was huge this whole time, but seeing it now, in the light…it’s so incredibly enormous, it feels like ten times a giant. It’s the color of old ivory laced with blood. And it’s not going to stop.
In this moment, Evlorasin is the thing that brought the world to its knees a thousand years ago.
But in this moment, Malachite is the thing that has hunted Evlorasin for a thousand years.
Malachite pushes me out of the way and makes a great leap at the approaching valkerax, sinking his blade into Evlorasin’s open mouth. Evlorasin rears its upper half, suddenly in pain, white feathers from its mane flying, the momentum throwing the rest of its long body forward. I barely manage to avoid the thick coils of white muscle as they fling past me. A flood of white scales crash into the celeon guards, who thankfully all have the incredible reflexes to dodge in quick measure. Faster than any human, they spread out in the seemingly impossibly small tunnel and descend on the valkerax, jousting with its flailing body parts before I’m even on my feet again.
I spot Malachite perched atop Evlorasin’s back, huge double-handed swings of his broadsword biting into the valkerax’s thickly armored spine. I aim down the sights of the crossbow, right at Evlorasin’s rearing throat as it tries to get Malachite off, but suddenly I feel the air grow hot again, and I manage to get behind Evlorasin’s mouth just as the valkerax belches forth another gout of white-hot flame, scorching the walls I was standing in front of not moments ago to ash and cinder. The heat has nowhere to run, baking into the dirt, and I watch the dry walls collapse in on themselves, completely burying one, two—too many celeon.
“Move!” I shout at a celeon close to me, but she’s too busy stabbing at Evlorasin’s feet to see the earth behind her shift, surge forward, and bury her whole.
It hits me then; Evlorasin is not trapped in here with us—we’re trapped in here with it.
This tunnel is far weaker than it looks. The earth displaced in the valkerax’s thrashing will kill us before its fangs do. Malachite sees that, too—our eyes meet in an impossibly quick moment. That one lapse in concentration is all it takes, and Evlorasin slams its back into the dirt, Malachite peeled off like a fly. He hits the ground hard and doesn’t move, and it feels like all my blood drains out through my feet at once.
I bolt for him, but as if it’s slowed time on a sandclock, Evlorasin raises its massive paw, claws hanging sharp, and hovers just above Malachite before slamming down on him.
I grip Father’s sword, knowing it’s not meant to be thrown, knowing it’s all I have left of him, and give a mighty heave, the blade spiraling over itself. My aim is only half true, the blade sticking into Evlorasin’s knuckle, but it’s enough. It’s enough, and the valkerax makes an ear-splitting shriek, recoiling away from Malachite. The beneather is still one moment and then stumbling to his feet the next. He blearily squints at me, the red glow thinned, and then he regains himself.
“The mouth!” His shout pierces, simple and straightforward and leaving me to make guesses. He turns on his heel, broadsword in hand, and I understand only when he draws Evlorasin’s attention by stabbing it in the chest. The metal of his blade barely sinks beyond the scales, but it sticks there, irritating, and the valkerax does a complete turn on him instantly and roars, its mane bursting forward around its face in its full intimidating, pearly-white spectacle of a million feathers. The beneather rams himself, shoulder first, into the mouth of the valkerax, the countless razor teeth stopped by his sheer strength. I’ve held that same mouth open, once, as best I could, with all my desperate hunger-strength, and I could barely hold it aloft a few inches.
Malachite holds it above his head, fully open.
“Now!” he bellows at me, every muscle in his wiry body beating out against his paper skin.
I’m not Fione. I can’t make a shot with any accuracy, especially not at a target that’s writhing in incredible pain, and Malachite knows that. He holds open the valkerax’s mouth, the soft pink throat lining ripe just beyond him, below him. But if I miss—
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He’s counting on me not to miss.
He’s trusting me.
Evlorasin’s five white eyes flicker to me, the lower left one bloodied and burst, and in that moment it’s never been clearer to me that we are chained by the same thing.
Hunger.
I aim the crossbow and fire, four times, as fast as my finger will pull the trigger. One of them grazes Malachite’s ear, lodging in the valkerax’s gums, but the second, third, and fourth all land squarely down its throat, disappearing into the salivating darkness.
Malachite’s ears prick at the fourth shot, and he collapses backward, his bite-pierced hand and both his feet bleeding through his steel boots and gauntlets. Evlorasin gives a gasp, its thrashing suddenly taking on a random, twitching quality, spasms running through its body as Yorl’s powerful concoctions make themselves known. I run to Malachite’s side, but he just ruffles my hair with his unbloody hand, laughing breathlessly.
“You did it. You actually did it, you little whelp!”
I grin back. It feels good coming from him, but it doesn’t last long—he catches himself, remembering who I am and where we are, and his laughter fades. The two of us watch warily as Evlorasin’s panting slows. I lost one of the vials, but thankfully, just four seems to be affecting it. Those five huge white eyes droop, rolling back into its skull and showing the black of its sclera. Finally, finally, its gargantuan body collapses to the ground, bleeding softly from its wounds, its velvet nose at Malachite’s feet.
The beneather, looking too exhausted to move, suddenly sits up with a perfect posture, knees beneath him, and makes a gesture with both his hands—reverent, careful, precise.
“Af-balfera, ansenme kei-inora,” he says.
We dig out the royal guards buried—a few legs broken but none of them dead, and I thank the gods with promises of excessive spiritual kisses—and bandage their injuries. Malachite won’t let me bandage his, instead doing the dressing himself. Eventually we help the injured make it down the tunnel, two celeon leaning on Malachite and one on me.
