by James Maxey
Brand asked, “Should we wait until daylight to—”
Sorrow didn’t wait for him to finish. She swung her feet forward, then slid into the gap.
“Let’s think this through,” said Brand. “We’re both exhausted. I don’t have it in me to fight another dragon.”
“I’m just going to peek,” said Sorrow, placing a hand on the stone wall as she stepped gingerly down the stairs. She knew Brand was right. The smart move would be to wait until she could build a new golem and use it to explore the space. But she’d come to the Witches’ Graveyard expecting her life to change forever. She felt certain she’d arrived at a pivotal moment of her quest.
The steps opened into a circular chamber twenty feet across and six feet tall, the walls, ceiling and floor hewn from a single piece of slate. A glorystone was set into the center of the slate floor, no bigger than a pea yet sufficient to fill the chamber with light. Alas, the chamber appeared to be completely empty. There wasn’t even any dust. Her heart sank, disappointed that such a promising lead had come to nothing.
She clenched her fists. This couldn’t be all there was. There must be some hidden passage. She moved to the nearest wall and rapped the stone with her fingers, then turned when she heard footsteps on the stairs. Brand crept down, with a dagger drawn.
“It’s safe,” she said. “Give me your knife.”
“This was worth guarding with a dragon?” he said, crouching as he entered the room to hand her the dagger. “I mean, the glorystone will bring a good price, but—”
“This isn’t about treasure,” she said, tapping the wall with the hilt of the dagger as she held her ear close to the stone.
“What are you doing?”
“Checking for hollow spaces,” she said.
“Right,” he said, drawing another blade. He started tapping the ceiling as she worked the walls.
They worked for ten minutes, not speaking, just tapping.
“Wait,” she said, holding up her hand.
“You got something?” he asked.
She tapped the wall, pressing her ear to it. There was a definite hollowness to the sound. “I think so.” She ran her fingers across the slate. “This stone is perfectly smooth. No mason could have finished it to this precision. It has to be the work of a weaver with command over stone.”
“How do we open it?”
“I don’t know. I’ve never even heard of a slate weaver. It must be a lost art. A witch with power over slate could simply will the stone to move aside.”
“Where there’s a will, there’s a way,” said Brand. “Wait here.”
He darted up the stairs. Sorrow scraped at the slate with her dagger blade, marring the finish, then began to hunt for another space behind the stone. Three minutes later, Brand came panting back down the stairs with a pick-axe in hand.
“Where was it?” he asked.
She pointed toward the mark she’d made.
He lined himself up. In the low space, he had to swing sideways. The pick-axe struck sparks and bounced off the wall. The force of the blow caused Brand’s back to straighten and his head bumped the ceiling.
“Ow, ow, ow,” he said, rubbing the top of his scalp. He ran his fingers where he’d struck the wall. “Barely even a scratch.” He sighed. “The pick is more of a digging tool than a smashing tool. We need a sledgehammer.”
“Go get one.”
“I couldn’t find it. Your golem was carrying it when the dragon tore him apart. Maybe it’s under the tree.”
“Give me,” she said, grabbing the pick-axe. “I can’t mold stone, but I’m an artist with iron.” The rigid metal turned as soft as clay between her fingers. Brand looked impressed as she squished, squashed, and sculpted the relatively slender arms of the pick-axe into a sturdy hammer-head.
When she handed the hammer back to him, he said, “This should do the job.”
This time, he got on his knees, shifting his grip on the hammer to allow for an overhead swing. The hammer hit with a thunderous CRACK and the slate splintered into a dozen shards.
The space revealed was no bigger than a breadbox. Within was a glass bottle, lidless and seamless, inside which was a rolled-up sheet of parchment.
“A message in a bottle,” said Brand.
“A message only a witch can open, as there’s no stopper,” said Sorrow as she carried the jar into the light.
Brand snatched it away from her. “I think you may be overlooking a more direct approach.” Before she could react, he smashed it on the ground, then bent down to pick up the parchment.
“Give me that,” she grumbled. He offered it to her with a grin on his face. It was closed with a small band of silver. She could have used her powers to remove it, but decided to simply slide it off the end.
She unrolled the thin leather sheet. From its color and texture, she had the uneasy feeling the scroll might have been made from human skin. Brand looked over her shoulder at the looping script written upon it.
“I can’t read a word of it,” he said.
Sorrow frowned. “It’s weaver script. Unfortunately, I can only read a little.”
“They didn’t teach you the secret code in weaver school?”
“I’m mostly self-taught,” she said. “I’ve picked up bits and pieces of the script here and there, but never studied with anyone fluent in the language.”
“Can you make out anything?”
“I recognize this symbol,” she said, tapping on a small mark that looked like a sword or dagger. “It’s the symbol of the Witchbreaker.”
“The knight?”
“Either the knight or his sword. His sword was almost more feared than the man.”
“Why?”
“Legend has it that the sword was forged from iron stolen from the gates of hell. Supposedly, this gave the sword the ability to open a direct path to the underworld for the soul of anyone it killed.”
“That’s worthy of a legend, I guess.”
She traced her fingers over the symbols adjacent to the sword. “This is the symbol for death. I think... this symbol here is rejoice, or celebrate. And... hmm. I think this reads, ‘Rejoice, sister, the Witchbreaker is dead.’”
“Maybe that was him buried in the grave,” said Brand. “You might have spent the better part of the night saving the life of your greatest enemy.”
“Maybe. But probably not. I can’t understand why they would have saved his body.” She furrowed her brow as she tried to puzzle out more symbols. “‘In the midst of defeat, we have,’ um, cooked? Tasted? Feasted on victory? I think it says ‘we have feasted on victory.’” She ran her finger further down the page. “‘But... they must abandon...’ uh, ‘abandon the... weapon’?”
“The sword?”
She shook her head. “No, I know that symbol. This is kind of a blend of the symbol for tool and the symbol for war. I’m reading war-tool as weapon. The symbol after it stands for ‘man.’ Maybe war-tool man is the way they wrote ‘warrior’?”
“Keep reading,” he said. “Maybe it will make sense in context.”
“The... um. Hmm.” She scratched her scalp. “The first one? ‘The original is ours’?”
“The original?” he asked. “The original what?”
She sighed and shrugged her shoulders. “I’m lost. I got off to a good start, but I’m guessing at three out of four words. I think these are instructions to leave the ‘war-tool,’ whatever that is, and meet up at the ‘dancing castle,’ wherever that is.”
“Dancing castle?” asked Brand. “That sounds kind of fun.”
“I’m probably reading it wrong. But one thing I’m sure of is that I know this mark.” She touched a skull-like symbol at the bottom of the parchment. “This was signed by Avaris herself.”
“The old Queen of Witches?”
“Maybe the current queen,” said Sorrow. “It’s common folklore that Avaris is still alive, made immortal by her powers, living in a hidden castle until her enemies eventually perish. I guess if you�
�re immortal, you can just wait people out.”
“Immortal or not, she’s got a long wait. The Church of the Book is still anti-witch, and it’s not going anywhere soon.”
“It will if I have a say in it.”
“Right.”
“But my task would be easier if I could find Avaris, and have her teach me the full arts of weaving.”
“Maybe the dancing castle in the letter is her secret hideout,” said Brand.
“Maybe. And maybe some of these symbols I can’t read are directions. I think this might be the symbol for ‘east.’” She tapped the page. “On the other hand, it might be the symbol for ‘star.’ A lot of these glyphs look alike.”
Brand chuckled.
“What’s funny?” she asked.
“You weren’t happy with the idea that the church could help my brother. What if I told you the church could help you?”
Sorrow frowned.
“There are monks who spend their whole lives studying dead languages and copying ancient documents,” said Brand. “I’m guessing somewhere in the church there’s a monk who could read this letter.”
“I can hardly stroll into a monastery and ask,” she said.
“I could,” he said. “My father is a great patron of the church. I’m guessing a little name dropping and a few coins in the poor box would have this thing translated in no time.”
“An interesting theory,” she said, keeping her voice neutral. Would it be that easy? Could she risk placing such a potentially valuable document into the hands of her enemies?
“I need to think about what to do,” she said.
“Whatever.” Brand shrugged. “It’s past my bedtime. I’m dead on my feet.”
“There might be more hidden chambers,” she said.
“Holding letters we can’t read? That’s totally worth staying up all night.”
“There’s no need for sarcasm.”
“See you in the morning,” he said, going up the stairs.
As soon as he was gone, Sorrow scratched her thighs beneath her buttocks vigorously. She listened carefully at the stairs to make sure he wasn’t coming back, then undid the buttons on her pants. Slipping her britches down her hips, her heart froze when she found both her thighs now oily black, covered with smooth scales. Her genitals were still untouched, but only just barely.
Had the changes stopped? Her skin itched almost to her belly button. Worse, the bones of her legs ached, as if invisible vises were clamping down, slowly warping them, the way her toes had been fused and reshaped into a tapering point.
She pulled up her pants and sat down on the stone floor. She took a deep breath. She’d always known that her quest for power would involve sacrifices. She’d forever scarred her own scalp, reworking her very brain with self-inflicted surgery. If she wound up covered in scales, well, what of it? She would pay any price.
Just as her father would have paid any price for what he believed in.
Was Brand right? Her father still had the physical form of a man, but at some point he’d turned into a monster. Had he felt the change? Had he understood the moment when humanity slipped away from him? Would she know if she herself crossed such a threshold?
She swallowed hard. Her vision blurred as she looked down at the letter. She wiped tears from her cheeks. “Don’t be silly, girl,” she whispered to herself, her voice trembling. “You’re stronger than this.”
She didn’t feel it. Brand was right; she was exhausted. She lay flat upon the stone floor, staring up at the flawless black of the slate roof. It was like an endless void, and she felt as if she were perched upon a precipice, ready to fall into the dark.
She turned her head, staring at the glorystone, a small fragment of the sun. She idly reached out and ran her fingers along its faceted surface. She wondered what had become of Stagger. During the height of the blizzards, she hadn’t been able to tell if the sun was following its normal path, though now that the storms had withdrawn the length of a day felt right to her.
She sat up as she heard a faint voice say her name. Craning her neck, she saw she was still alone. Had it only been her imagination?
Stranger still, she recognized the voice. She placed her fingers on the glorystone once more. She said, quietly, “Stagger?”
And then she fell.
CHAPTER FIVE
ART THOU A DEVIL?
THE SLATE CHAMBER vanished as Sorrow once more found herself falling through blue sky toward a vast green ocean. Before, she’d been only a disembodied spirit, affixed to Rott by an ethereal silver cord. Now, wind rushed across her skin and her stomach lurched as she tumbled. She landed with a splash in the warm ocean, gasping for breath as she floundered to the surface. She shuddered in horror as she looked down.
Her legs were gone. Her hips now flowed into a black, serpentine neck leading to Rott’s body. Her still human torso served as the primal dragon’s head. She had little to judge scale by in the trackless ocean, but she felt as if the human portions of her conjoined body had grown to giant size to better mesh with her draconian half.
She looked around and found the ocean empty. None of the other islands were present. Above, the golden disk of the sun hung motionless.
“Stagger!” she shouted.
A giant face appeared in the disk of the sun, with a scraggly beard and a mostly bald scalp. The face opened its eyes in a look of surprise. “Sorrow?”
“Where are we?” she shouted. “How did we get here?”
“I don’t know!” Stagger said. “Something happened like this a few days ago, but I thought I was daydreaming. Things are a little boring up here. My mind wanders.”
“I had the same dream!” she said. “The primal dragons were debating whether or not to destroy mankind!”
“The Black Swan told me she was trying to stop the dragons from wiping out mankind,” Stagger said. “But, except for Hush and maybe Kragg, the dragons didn’t seem keen on the idea.”
Before they could speak further, the sea erupted in the distance as steam and stone shot into the air. In seconds, a mound of glowing stone rose from the boiling ocean. Flame spewed from the tip of the still growing mountain, curling and coiling into a giant serpent of fire.
“Greatshadow!” Stagger shouted.
The flame-dragon nodded. “I see you’ve learned to journey to the convergence on your own.”
“The convergence?” Sorrow asked. “What is this place?”
“This is neutral ground,” said Greatshadow. “Here, we dragons may meet in private without doing great harm to the world. If we met in the material realm, our combined might could shatter the earth beneath us.”
“How did we get here?” asked Stagger.
“You must have called one another,” said Greatshadow. “Do not do so again. When the other dragons learn that the two human interlopers have met in private to scheme against them, they will not be happy.”
“We’re not scheming against anything,” said Sorrow. “I don’t even know what I did to come here, or why I look like this.”
“Your form reflects your truth,” said Greatshadow. “When you first joined your spirit with Rott, only the faintest trace of your soul seeped into his elemental form. But as you’ve continued to use his power, more and more of his essence bleeds into your world, finding purchase in your body. In exchange, more and more of your spirit flows into his form. Rott’s mind perished long ago. He survives only as a bundle of instincts; his chief drive is hunger. As he consumes you, Sorrow Stern, your mind will flow into the vacuum of his now absent will. For a time, you will be the intelligence in command of his power, until the entropy destroys your mind as well.”
“There must be some way to stop that,” she said. “Help me avoid that fate!”
“If a thing can be avoided, it was not truly fate,” said Greatshadow. “For now, I bid you both to depart. You’ve each stumbled onto the discovery that, like other primal dragons, you’re no longer bound to a single physical body. I recommend that you m
aster your new abilities quickly. You may need to defend yourselves sooner than you guess.”
“From what?” asked Stagger.
“Return to whence you came,” Greatshadow said, turning his back to them.
Sorrow’s eyes snapped open. At first, she thought she was blind, until she realized she was simply staring up at featureless black stone. She sat up and banged her head against the rock. She rubbed the top of her head, utterly confused. Had the ceiling gotten lower or had she somehow gotten taller?
She looked down and began to scream.
SORROW SLID THROUGH the hole that led from the top of the stairs into the grave. Already she could hear Brand’s footsteps as he ran toward the pit. She pulled the flat slate slabs surrounding the hole closer, concealing her body from the waist down. She finished just in time. Brand skidded to a halt at the edge of the pit a moment later, his body a dark silhouette against the pink morning clouds.
“Are you all right?” he asked, panting.
“Of course,” she said, faintly. She swallowed hard, then said, in a louder, raspy voice, “Why wouldn’t I be?”
“We heard screams. We thought it was you.”
“Oh, that,” she said. She did her best to force a feeble smile. “I had a nightmare. I’m fine now.”
“It sounded like you were being murdered!”
“Obviously I wasn’t.”
Brand looked skeptical. “Are you sure you’re okay? You’re voice is kind of quavering.”
“I slept all night on cold stone,” she said. “I’m a little congested.”
Brand nodded. “Come on out and we’ll warm you up with some breakfast.”
“I’m not hungry,” she said. “And I don’t want you spending any more time at my camp. Pack your things and go.”
“Your camp? Aren’t you being kind of possessive?”
“Nothing of the sort,” she said. “But... having thought further about our discussion last night, I’ve decided that I no longer care for the company of a person who thinks that I’m in any way like my father.”
