“Her sister.” She placed her palm against his chest. “Younger by three years. Our father has many children, but only two of us are girls, and only two by mothers of the old blood.”
Her touch both chilled and warmed him. I will suffer for this, he assured himself. I cannot resist her.
She slapped him lightly on his cheek, awakening him. “I am not a ghost, Garrett. I am real, more than this prison. You’ll die a slow, awful death unless you let me help you. Forget what you know. Trust in what I tell you.”
“I have heard this before,” he rumbled.
She cracked her lips to answer, but her voice never escaped.
Something shattered the silence in the darkness beyond the cell. Both he and she snapped their gazes toward the Ur light. The dreadful noise drew nearer, sounding like bones scraping against the cold stone floor.
“I am not expecting visitors,” he warned her. “I have already had my meal today. You should run.”
She backed away.
“Go.” He rattled his chains again. “Run. Use your magic. Get out of this place.”
“No.” The way she said it reminded him of Andelusia. “That thing out there is real. Father brought them in from the outside. There’s no sense in running. You’ll have to kill it!”
She stood upon her tiny toes, planted a quick, powerful kiss on his lips, and smiled at him. “I came to free you, Garrett, and I mean to do it.” She smacked her lips with satisfaction. “I need you to trust me. I need you to know I am no longer his slave. Will you listen?”
“I will.” His heart pounded from her kiss.
“This is Midnon.” She regarded the walls, the obsidian bars, the chains binding his ankles and wrist. “No one on the outside can see in, just as no one inside can see out. Our bodies aren’t really here, only our minds. We’ve only to believe it to escape.”
“A grand illusion.”
“Yes and no. It’s real, but not. We’re in the fortress of his mind. Along with all his other lies, he’s spent years perfecting it. I wasn’t sure until my sister escaped.”
“No keys, no doors,” he understood. “The perfect prison.”
“But not so perfect,” she corrected. “We’re just tiny parts of Midnon. You have to un-believe it. You have to pretend none of this is real.”
He closed his eyes, and then reopened them. The shuffling sounds in the darkness drew near. Three shapes lurched into his sights, three of the warlock’s hulking dead. The first was rankest, its flesh the same hue as a dead, decaying fish. The next two were much drier, their half-armored husks bare and white, their dead skin pulled like dolls’ masks over their skulls. Each of the things dragged a rusted, tooth-bladed sword, scoring ruts along the Midnon stone.
“Garrett, your chains…” Ona’s voice quickened. “Your chains aren’t real. Un-believe them. Take a breath and pretend they’re not here. Hurry!”
And yet they are so heavy. He could not swiftly doubt that which he had worn so long. He lifted his manacled wrist, feeling the chain drag on the floor like half a mountain.
Ona tugged at his free arm, fresh tears welling in her eyes. “No, Garrett! Let it go! It’s not there! It’s not real!”
The Sarcophages halted in the Ur light. With four brutal strokes of its thousand-toothed sword, the putrid one shattered the lock and sawed through the bars. The stinking, rotting thing squelched into the cell, shoved Ona to the floor, and raised its sword above Garrett’s head.
“No!” screamed Ona. “Garrett! Please!”
Her cries gave him courage. Her passion is real, he realized at last. He remembered who he was, what I am. Death will wait another day.
The Sarcophage’s stroke came. He was ready. He stepped aside and whipped his manacled arm up, catching the creature’s sword in a bundle of links. Rolling his wrist, he swirled the chain three times around the blade before tearing it loose with his free hand and using it to strike the Sarcophage’s head from its shoulders. Headless, the monster shuddered and collapsed, its bones dangling loosely from its festering sockets.
The next Sarcophage creaked forward. Dressed in the tattered shroud of a long-perished knight, its dry, toothless jaws chattered, while its ribs popped and groaned with each step. Rings jangled on its fleshless fingers, a dozen amulets and talismans tinkling like chimes. Looming in the gateway, the fiend seemed to momentarily smile, giving Garrett a lipless grin before attacking.
The first Sarcophage’s sword was a heavy, clumsy weapon. Garrett minded it none. No matter his ankle chains dragging, he struck like lightning from an awakening tempest, blocking the second Sarcophage’s stroke and hewing off its sword hand, scattering rings and finger bones upon the floor. The Sarcophage reached for his throat, grasping with a hand that might have crushed stone into powder, but Garrett ducked beneath it and swept his sword through the monster’s knee, severing bone and sinew, toppling the beast upon its splintered stump.
The third Sarcophage, its face masked and its armor heavy, lurched through the gateway. “Garrett! No!” cried Ona.
He would have worried about the third, but the second was still ambulant. It grabbed his right leg with its remaining hand and squeezed, its fingers as frigid as frozen steel, its grip like the maw of some unthinkably-sized serpent. Blood ran in ropes from Garrett’s calf. A scarlet puddle spread at his feet. Screaming inside but making no sound, he smote the monster’s rusted helm from atop its yellow skull. He felt its fingers dig deeper and the muscles in his leg begin to seize. He hammered again and again at the creature’s skull, and still it tightened its grip.
And now I will die.
As he writhed in pain, he felt the third Sarcophage’s shadow fall across him. It raised its black blade high, scraping the ceiling, and after a clack of its jaws it swung for his neck. At the last possible moment, Ona threw all her weight into the creature’s flank, shouldering it just powerfully enough to make it miss, buying me another breath.
Again her courage gave him strength. Swimming in a sea of blood, bones, and coiled chains, he struggled with the second Sarcophage, and after tearing its fingers off his leg, he jammed his fingers into the monster’s mouth. He felt its teeth break. Like a winch, he jerked its jaw open until its flesh tore apart and the sinew holding its jaw together snapped. The Sarcophage grasped his leg again, digging its fingers like daggers into his flesh. He cried out, and with a final spasm tore the monster’s head from its spine. He held its skull in his hand for but one breath before dropping it to the floor. He felt the death grip upon his calf relax, his blood draining from his body faster than before.
The third Sarcophage hurled Ona aside.
For a dead man, the monster was swift. And after all these months, I am slow. Though the Sarcophage wore a mask, Garrett swore he saw it smiling. He rose and stung away the monster’s first stabs. He countered with withering hacks, but each blow fell against the Sarcophage’s armor, breaking none of the bones beneath. The monster carved the air to tatters, its sword hissing in the shadows.
Garrett stood tall in his heavy chains and deflected many blows that would have shattered other men’s wrists. His back against the wall, he considered the likelihood of his death. He ducked beneath a slash that scored the obsidian wall, and black dust rained upon him. He heard Ona scream again. She screams for you, he thought. She screams like Ande.
He remembered his strength. After sweeping aside another three strokes that might have ended him, he advanced. He swatted off the monster’s mask, crushed its pauldrons, and caved its breastplate in. No matter his chains, he ducked and wove and slid beneath his enemy’s strokes, and with a flurry of his own dismembered the monster’s swordarm. Clacking its jaw, the monster glared, and in the small space between breaths Garrett whipped his chain twice around the monster’s neck. The Sarcophage tried to clack again, the coffin dust in its throat clouding the dungeon air, but in one fluid motion Garrett leapt back and dragged the Sarcophage to the floor. The monster tried to stand, but no sooner did it rise to its rickety knees
than Garrett whipped his chain, making powder of every bone in the creature’s neck.
The Sarcophage collapsed, its skull rolling to a stop against Ona’s naked foot.
“Are they dead?” she shuddered.
“Dead again.” He slumped to the floor.
He dropped his sword, the ugly thing clattering to a stop in a pile of chains, bones, and blood. Ona came to him. “You…you are hurt,” she fretted. “Your leg.”
He felt no pain, only dizziness. He felt warm, though less from fighting and more from the pool of blood he sat in. The Sarcophage had punctured his leg deeper than he knew. His dizziness became faintness. He felt weak and weary, craving sleep in a way he never had.
“More monsters will come,” he said to Ona. “I will not be able to stop them. You should go.”
“No. You’re coming with me.”
He could hardly hear her voice. The world closed in around his ears, muting her. He felt his vision darken at the corners, his senses drowning. If this is death, so be it. I leave as I lived. In blood.
He felt Ona clasp her hands upon his. She pawed at him, pulling at his shirt and slapping lightly at his cheeks, but her touches felt like blows from a pillow, encouraging him to tumble asleep. He heard her voice drum softly inside his head, sounding too distant to be real. “Don’t leave me,” he thought he heard her say. “Garrett. Garrett? Garrett!”
He gazed lovingly at her. Like Ande, but not, he remembered thinking. Different, but the same. Perhaps now I am dreaming. I will wake, and nothing will have changed. He spilled a few nonsensical syllables from his tongue, and then, the blackness in his eyes complete, he collapsed.
In the realm that greeted him, he breathed out all his life’s concerns, waking to a world where pain had no meaning. He rose on a cloud in the night sky. He saw scarlet clouds racing across the stars, oceans frothing above him and below. Angelic arms, pure as sunshine, scooped him up and laid him down in a bed of blue-bladed grass. He eavesdropped as a choir of whisperers puffed his name from their mouths like smoke from a thousand pipes, and though he tried to answer, he could not. Words were unnecessary. The world after Midnon, so calm and comfortable, was made for his pleasure. I need do nothing more.
Grey Grass
In death, no wind blows. And yet I feel the breeze upon me.
“Ona,” he murmured without opening his eyes.
“Yes, Garrett.”
“We live.”
“Yes.”
“I smell rain. I hear thunder.”
“The trees will protect us.”
“My chains are gone.”
“Your chains never existed.”
“We live.”
“Yes.”
“I will not ask how.”
He opened his eyes. Raindrops fluttered onto his face. He looked up and saw leaves dancing on orchard limbs. He looked to his left and saw Ona, lying beside him in a bed of grass. For an instant, the moonlight cut through the clouds. He looked to his right and glimpsed the cabins and lawns of the same village Hadryn, the warlock, had brought him to many months ago.
“I know this place,” he said. “Trees. Houses. Apples. The village of Rose.”
“Another of his lies,” Ona sighed.
“You dressed my wound.” He touched the black bindings on his leg. “Our bodies were not in the warlock’s prison, you said. Only our minds.”
Ona sighed again. “I was wrong.”
He sat up. He felt weak and dizzy, but far removed from death. His prime discomfort was his hunger, growling like a bear beneath his ribs, panging in his gut as though he had not eaten for many months. He stood and stretched his wobbly legs, but saw nothing to eat nearby. The orchard is empty, he observed. Every apple is gone.
On feeble legs, he limped into the shadows. Crunching through the autumn leaves, he shambled to the nearest tree and leaned against it. I live. His wounded leg throbbed. But I am purposeless. I knew this day would come. A wonder it took so long.
After a while of watching the clouds slither across the stars, he returned to Ona, who lay in the grass waiting for him. He watched her breaths rise and fall beneath the tatters of her ebon gown, and he understood his feelings for her, for she is so like Andelusia.
Lying down beside her, he saw her smile. She sang to him, and soon drifted back to sleep. The night wandered by. He remembered nothing.
“Garrett?” he heard Ona’s soft summons many hours later. “Garrett? Are you still with me?”
“Still alive,” he murmured.
“I thought you’d sleep forever.” She touched his chest, and he felt her warmth spreading through him.
“A few more days might clear the cobwebs.”
“We should rest somewhere else. It’s morning, but the clouds are angry again. I don’t think we should stay here.”
He opened his eyes. The dawn was just as Ona described, the sun muted by a sea of clouds. “You helped me.” He sat up and rubbed the soreness in his neck. “And here I thought never to wake again.”
She sat beside him, her hands folded demurely in her lap. “It was my fault you were captured in the first place.” She slumped. “Father lied to me. He used me. I know I’ve said it before, but I mean it. Do with me as you wish. I’ll not resist.”
“I forgive you.”
“You do?”
“If you play false again, life will be no worse than before.”
“I would not.” She flushed. “I never did.”
He patted the grass beside her. “Best if we leave it be. I will never know your heart, nor any woman’s.”
He closed his eyes again, not to ease his aching head, but to refocus. My freedom is hollow, he decided. I am out of the shadows, but lost no less. And my enemy…he will not forget me. “I need something from you,” he said to Ona.
“Yes. Anything.”
“Your master, tell me where he is.”
Ona pushed her dark hair from her cheek and gazed upon the wet grass beneath her. “I wish I knew.” Her voice was but a whisper. “It’s not so simple. He hasn’t come to me in the flesh since the beginning. In my world, he strides about as a shade, a hooded haunt in my dreams. And now, he loves me not. He loves my sister. She is the powerful one. She is his chosen.”
“Do not protect him.”
“I would not!” She looked wounded. “I tell only the truth. He could be anywhere. We’ll never find him unless he allows it.”
Beneath the dreary dawn, he sat as motionless as the trees. A dark and terrible vision of the future thrummed inside him. The ways he might finally die felt innumerable. “Your father took Rellen and Saul away,” he said at length. “Not to the place he imprisoned me, but somewhere else. Tell me where.”
“The Undergrave,” Ona gulped. “He always talked about it. It’s in the east, where the sun forgets to rise. He sent all his prisoners there. And he sent his warlord, Grimwain, the man who never sleeps. When Andelus…my sister escaped, she meant to go there, too. We shouldn’t follow. We should flee.”
Andelusia. Ona’s words left him unsettled. No matter his wounded leg, he clambered to his feet.
“Where are you going?” Ona popped up beside him.
“I need a sword.”
“Why?”
“You know the answer.”
“You’re still hurt.” She clutched his sleeve. “We should find a safe place to rest. There’re farmsteads nearby. Someone will help us.”
Dark Moon Daughter Page 36
