“Where are you going?” I hiss.
“Back the way we came?” asks Lem.
“No, you’re heading the opposite way we came, toward what sounds like the middle of the valley and the Cauldron.”
Lem is still for a moment. “I probably shouldn’t move,” he says. I feel a sense of desperation. Lem and Tig? Who will act as my eyes? What have I done coming here? A swirl of ash blows in my face and chokes me for a moment, but my eyes are safe behind my blindfold. I smooth the silk and tighten the knot in the back. Tig starts to purr a few yards away. He sounds like he is sitting. I breathe a tiny sigh of relief. I just hope he stays.
“What are you doing?” asks Lem.
“I’m going to try to do what we came here to do,” I say.
“How?”
“The only way I know.” The acrid smoke burns my nose, and I cough if I try to breathe through my mouth. “To the Cauldron then, I guess,” I say, mostly to myself. I don’t know what else to do. I guess I had hoped that Lem could fly over the Cauldron, and we could drop the sunfire in, and that would be it.
A splashing gurgle comes from off in front of me and then subsides into a soft bubbling. If I had to guess, that sounds like a cauldron to me. I swing my pack over one shoulder. My other hand grips my new medallion. I take a deep breath and scramble up and over the embankment in front of us. I am on a slope that drops off toward the bubbling of the Cauldron. I feel a charred stick under my foot. I pick it up. About three feet. Good length. I hope it’s a stick and not a spindly forearm. That would be gross.
I move slowly forward, swinging it in front of me. I wince when I poke something soft off to my right. Whatever it is doesn’t move, but it smells like it is rotting. Some kind of big insects are buzzing through the air. They sound bigger than wasps. I hear the furious clicks of millions of what I can only assume are some kind of bugs. I try to hurry on, but each step proves more treacherous than the last. I wish Tig were here. He would tell me if I am walking up to a dragon or down a deep dead end ravine or if I am about to walk off into a slime pit. I shake my head and continue. The bubbling has a rhythm to it, a throbbing drum-like heartbeat that guides me forward.
Each second I expect some attack. I don’t have much of a plan except to hope whatever pounces on me tries to take on my leather armor first. With each step down the slope the throbbing increases. The ground I am walking on shakes from the beat. Sweat runs freely down my face. I whisper to myself. Find the Cauldron.
The stories said the crater was in the center of the basin. It seems that I am on the right track. The slope is heading straight for the throbbing gurgle that seems to be coming from or near the Cauldron. A hot wind whips my hair, and the stench almost makes me sick. I stop and gag. Where are the hunters? Something’s protecting this Cauldron—where are they?
As if in answer I feel the ground shaking. Several large somethings are charging me. I cringe and scream, pointing my stick toward the onslaught. They pound closer and closer, then, just as they are almost on top of me I hear a tremendous impact as if a giant has run into a stone wall. Something close to me roars, and I feel its hot, sour, breath, directly between me and the Cauldron.
I don’t know what to do. I want to turn and run. I take a tentative step forward and hear a heavy grunt and claws scrambling in the rock shards. I take another cautious step and now I am sure of it: I am pushing something just by walking. I almost grin, but a wave of noxious fumes kills my smile. I can hear the furious click of insect wings above me, but they stay just out of reach.
I realize I am clutching my pack to my chest so hard my fingers hurt. The sound of a drop of water comes from my pack. A second of confusion gives way to a wave of amazed relief. I rip open the pack and pull out the portal, touching the cool surface with a trembling finger.
“Ess!” It makes me jump even though I know it’s coming, that fun filled voice. I know that voice. “I’m sorry. I wanted to contact you earlier but they caught me, and I just got away a few minutes ago.”
“I can see you! The thing in front of you looks like a bull with three horns and, well, it’s ugly. I’ll stay as long as I can, but they’re looking for me and the wave portal I’m using is, uh, borrowed. Do you need help?” I want to tell her to run, to not worry about me, but I can’t. I grip the portal and nod, my whole body shakes, tears stream wet into my bandana. At least she can’t see that.
“It’s really good to have you here,” I say, and I am surprised at my voice: dry and cracked, barely audible.
“It’s nothing,” she says. “You’re trying to get to that black pool, right?” I nod and turn the portal so that Illiana can get a good view of what is in front of us. “You’ll need to get around the ugly horned thing in front of you then.”
“I can push it,” I say, my voice not quite as choked as it was a second ago. I demonstrate by taking another couple of steps forward.
“Nice!” she squeals. “Quick, go forward a few steps.” I walk forward and hear the grunting creature scratch and scrape the rocks with its claws as it is pushed back.
“Ess, your medallion will probably run out of magic soon, too. I don’t know much about them, but I know the shield doesn’t last very long.” The splashing gurgle is close now. The thing in front of me bellows and scrambles to the right.
“You’re right in front of the pool, Ess,” says Illiana. “Take a couple of steps closer, and then stop. You don’t want to get any closer than that.” I hear the creature behind me now, backing off and then charging. I turn the portal so that Illiana can take a look.
Illiana chuckles. “It’s being hurled back every time. It doesn’t learn very quickly. It must be a boy.”
It charges again, and this time I feel a gentle push. The magic is weakening. I take a couple of tentative steps closer to the Cauldron. In front of me the Cauldron starts to churn like an angry river, but it’s much too thick to be water. It bubbles and sloshes. I feel a new wave of heat, and a sickly mist burns my face and hands.
“Hold on, Ess. You’re about six steps from the Cauldron. Take the sunfire and throw it into the Cauldron. Don’t worry about throwing it too far, the Cauldron’s pretty big.” I claw open my pack. The beast behind me snarls and hurls itself at me again. It slams against the shield created by my medallion, and I feel a definite impact this time.
“The shield!” I yell.
“Find the sunfire, Ess, and then get out of there!” Illiana’s voice is not at all laughing now. It is tinged with desperation. I find the hard globes at the bottom of the pack, wrapped in cloth. I pull out one of the packages, and my fingers tremble over the knot.
“Forget the wrapping!” screams Illiana. “Just throw it!” I throw as hard as I can toward the churning boiling fumes. It makes it. I hear it plop in the Cauldron. Nothing happens. Absolute terror grips my heart. It was supposed to work!
The Cauldron sucks the air around me into itself. I throw myself backward to avoid getting sucked into the pool. I am still being drawn toward the Cauldron. I drop my pack and claw at the ground for a something to hold onto when the Cauldron reverses, blasting me backward in a wave of cool air. I roll over, scrambling to my knees, clutching the portal. An otherworldly shriek of fury from high above cuts through the valley. The wind is howling around me, the ground shakes, but not from the monsters scrambling around me. A deep tremor runs under my feet. The ground tips, buckles, and slides forward.
“Hurry, Ess,” Illiana calls, “the ground is breaking up. It looks like you need to go forward, now a little to your right, too much, there you go.” I scramble away from the rocks grinding and earth tearing behind me.
“Stop!” Illiana shouts. Her voice catches, and then she manages to get out, “The daemon.”
I freeze and try to pick out anything above the grinding, breaking rock. There it is. A footstep. And another. Big. Way bigger than a horse.
“Essie Brightsday.” It is a statement. The voice is smooth and almost feminine. My pulse quickens.
“It’s in front of you about ten steps,” says Illiana.
“For now,” says the smooth voice, now in a deep masculine tone that makes me jump. “I can’t let you walk away from my cauldron. Not after what you’ve done. Tsk, tsk. Now I’ll have to start another one. You’ll do as a cauldron starter.” His smooth voice and calm explanation have me shaking so badly I can barely stand.
Queen Leonatrix interrupts from the portal in my hand. “You can’t kill her, daemon. She held sunfire. She still has the burn. If you touch her you will be undone.” The queen’s voice propels my hand into action. I dig through my bag and find the other globe.
I hear the daemon shift in front of me. “Leonatrix. You think you are clever. Always sending someone else to do the work.” A leathery rasping sound, like a tent being folded comes from the daemon. “So you destroyed the Cauldron with sunfire? I presumed sunfire no longer existed in this world. How did you manage to find some? Stealing again?”
“Enough of your banter, daemon,” the queen is brisk. “Essie, you can destroy this daemon immediately. I can help you channel the energy of the sunfire. Repeat the words ‘staed reth.’”
The words ring in my ears. “S-s-taed reth,” I stammer. An enormous thump is followed by the daemon’s ragged, raven-like scream.
“You have immobilized him for the moment. Forward child, touch the daemon, and he will be finished.” Rocks grind behind me, and the ground heaves. I am thrown off balance and fall to my hands and knees.
“Essie!” screams Illiana. I lurch back to my feet and stagger a few steps forward. I can sense something large in front of me. I hear the heavy breathing.
“Leonatrix isn’t telling you everything, girl. She rarely tells all.” The daemon’s smooth voice is close. I smell rotting flesh. A wave of nausea passes over me. I stumble again as the ground drops. I try to stand but can’t. I crawl forward with one arm outstretched, the globe throbbing gently, hot in my hand.
“Not only will I be undone but so will you,” says the daemon.
I hesitate. No, I guess the queen didn’t mention that. “Your majesty?” I ask.
There is a second’s pause, and then, “Of course, child,” Queen Leonatrix snaps. She sounds as if she has been holding her breath. “You are lost already. Cauldron’s Crater is collapsing. Destroy the monster.” I shake my head. “Quickly, Essie, you have seconds to act!” shrieks the queen.
As if confirming this statement the ground under me drops again and tilts at a crazy angle. “You must destroy the daemon!”
“She still fails to tell you, girl. You have not yet touched sunfire. You may have been near it, but you have not touched it. It would kill you just as it would me. Just as I am a creature of the dark so you have the dark in you. It is a part of who you have become.” I bite my lip. I wanted to see Dad. I wanted to ask him why he didn’t at least tell me. I reach out again and crawl forward.
“So you would kill us.” The daemon sounds only feet away. “Of course you should. I am chaos and darkness, but,” the oily voice drops an octave, “your father decided to let me go.”
My heart catches in my mouth and I stop crawling. “H-how—”
“H-h-how,” mocks the daemon in a voice that sounds exactly like my own. “You had been cursed by the Daemon’s Dusk.”
“I know!” I scream. “You tricked him, and he gave it to me!” Hot tears pour down my face, and I hate the thing in front of me. This is the cause of all the hurt and the questioning and loneliness and darkness I have faced. It chuckles. I choke on another scream and scramble forward. I don’t care if I die, this daemon will go as well.
“Your father let me go because I am the only one who can remove Daemon’s Dusk.” The hot breath washes over me. Sickening, nauseating, rotting. I can feel the breath on my hand, still outstretched.
“What do you mean?” I whisper.
“When your miserable father transferred the curse to you he could instantly see again,” snarls the daemon in such a fierce tone I instinctively jerk backward. “He, too, used sunfire. He took advantage of the moment and could have destroyed me. Sunfire would have been my demise.” The daemon pauses. I can’t move. The ground shifts again, and I feel myself slide a few feet away from the daemon.
The smooth voice is back, high and oily again. “In that second I saved myself. I told him the truth. I told him that only I could remove the Daemon’s Dusk.”
“You lied!” I scream, but without the conviction I had a few moments ago.
“Kill the daemon, Essie!” the queen rages.
“I did not lie! Leonatrix will tell you, even now, only the caster can remove Daemon’s Dusk! I broke your pitiful father’s will. He made me swear to remove the Daemon’s Dusk in exchange for my life. Then I lied.”
“Leonatrix? Your majesty?” I shout. “Is it true?”
“What does it matter, child, you are dead! You will never see! Kill the daemon!” I try to crawl forward again, but my will is too broken. Seconds ago my life seemed a small price to pay, but the thing in front of me has found a desire deeper than my life. The desire to make things right with Dad. To fit in. To remove the curse. It is all one.
“I just want to see!” I sob.
I hear the ground under me groan again and the tilt adjusts the other direction. The whole area feels like it is floating. The ground rolls and tosses me a few inches to the right. I hear a thud in front of me and feel the ground shake.
“Essie, again,” the queen shouts, “‘staed reth!’ He is getting away!”
“Please?” I scramble to my feet. “Remove the curse?” Huge feet tromp toward me, stopping just out of reach. I hear a rasp and the sound of the wind playing with its leathery wings. A roar and hot fetid breath hits my face, and I topple backward.
“Your father did not choose to transfer the Dusk to you. He chose the woman. I chose you. And so as I escaped last time your father also attempted to bargain.”
The daemon laughs, and I feel the spray hit my face. He leans in close and drops his voice to a whisper. “I do not bargain well. Listen to me, all of you, I have not been beaten. Only delayed. I am chaos. I am darkness. I am pain. There are no heroes in my wake, only broken husks. We will not meet again, Essie Brightsday.”
I feel a blast of wind and the ground heaves in front of me as the daemon prepares to launch himself into the air. “I will not remove your curse. You will die in my darkness.”
I make my decision. The sunfire in my hand is losing its heat. I clench my fist as hard as I can, crushing the capsule in my hand. The warmth runs up my arm and through my body. The heat, the noise, the fear slow to a crawl and then to a stop. My pain and blindness fade. White light invades my darkness. I launch myself at the daemon, arm stretched as far as I can reach with no thought for coming back to earth. I will not die in darkness. I will die in light.
He should have been there, but he isn’t. I hit the ground hard, unready, and it knocks the breath out of me. He chuckles from my left.
“You may be resourceful, Essie Brightsday, but I am not without my tricks. Never trust an illusion.” The rock under me cracks and shatters as he leaps into the air, the leathery beat of his wings carrying the daemon further off to my left. The sound is quickly drowned by the grating of rock and earth. I hear a splashing behind me.
“The Cauldron, Essie.” It’s Illiana. “The whole area looks about to boil.”
I collapse to my hands and knees again. “Where can I go? Illiana! Help me!”
“I’m so sorry, Ess,” Illiana sobs. “I don’t know. You’re trapped. You’re too close to the edge, move a step to your right . . . there. I shouldn’t have helped you leave Aeola.”
I feel the land I am on heave again. I lay down to keep from tipping over an edge I can’t see. “My dad let him go, too,” I say, mostly to myself.
“Yes,” says Queen Leonatrix, “he was a greater fool than I thought.”
“He wanted to make things right.”
“In the moment it mattered most he fai
led,” snarls the queen. I let the portal slip toward the edge of my floating chunk of ground.
“Most of us do, at some point,” I say. “Goodbye, Illiana. It was good meeting you. I wish we could have done more.” I think of Dad. My thoughts are tumbling over each other like the ground around me. He loved me.
“Goodbye, Essie,” Illiana whispers. The portal slides away, dropping off the ledge. I roll onto my back and let my body go limp. Almost done. I wish I could have told Dad that now I know. It doesn’t make it okay. But it helps.
“Essie!” I bolt upright. Tig. I feel the beat of the air again, but this time it is the rustle of smooth feathers above me. Lem. His hooves pound down next to me.
“I’m going to kneel for you. Just this once and don’t tell anybody I did it!” he says. I reach out and find him on the ground at my level.
I clamber up and pat the glossy hide on his neck. “Thanks.” I bury a hand in Lem’s mane and grip with my knees. Lem scrambles to his feet, and I feel him crouch for the takeoff.
I reach around and rub Tig’s back. “It’s good to have you back.”
“If you don’t mind,” says Tig, and I feel him bury his claws in my leather belt. I once thought that Tig’s most important role in my life was as my eyes. In this moment I know differently. Tig is first and foremost my best friend. Lem launches himself into the air, and Tig groans. The rumbling behind us grows louder, followed by a deafening crack. I grab Lem’s mane with both hands and yelp. Even my feet kick convulsively. Lem springs forward, urged on more by the sounds behind us than my feet, I’m sure.
Tig yowls. “Lightning!” I want to ask more, but we are doing all we can to hold on while Lem pounds the air with his wings, soaring over the crunching rock.
Another crack. “Tig, what is it?”
“The biggest clouds I’ve ever seen,” yells Tig. I hear him hiss and spit. “There’s a downpour starting over the Cauldron. It’s starting to flood. I never thought I’d say this. Lem, turn up the speed!” Tig describes the scene. The rain pours over the Burning Cauldron and spreads outward in a wave. Lem has his neck stretched out and his head low. I lean forward over his neck. My hair is whipping behind me, but I can’t do anything but hang on now.
A Hero's Curse Page 22
