Hell was easily the strangest place she had ever been.
* * *
Since the Forging of the Oath, she had slumbered, waiting, a vouchsafe against the day when the Dragon’s Peace might fall and she would be awakened— Wait a moment. We’ve done that already. The Peace already has fallen. And then I awoke… Memories flooded back into the Flame of the Dragon, Keeper of the Oath. Recent ones. Brilliant pebbles of recollection set against the quieter smear of long ago. A girl. A bird. A fire. Then, with a sudden shift of thought, she remembered herself.
Mardu.
Mardu looked out at the world. She was in a box. A shell. A thin disk of entrapment. The Flame of the Dragon That Was, Keeper of the Oath, looked out at the sky beyond her barrier and smiled. At least it was still now. There was still time.
Her prison tasted like dragon.
* * *
The greatest challenge about being dead, it seemed, was figuring out what to do with all the me-time. Now, for the first time since Scraw and Mardu had been killed by the blast, Eliza came face-to-face with where that left her. What was she supposed to do now? Meeting Mardu had seemed to solve the problem of how to spend her blissful ever-after. The strange ghost-girl had provided her with a purpose and a direction, which had taken her mind off her own troubles for a time and held the unfairness tantrum at bay. But that had only lasted three days. Now she had no Mardu, no mission, and still no idea what the rules were in this strange land of death and crow-eating midgets.
Feeling lost and more alone than she had felt since first waking up here, Eliza wandered through the trees until she came to the edge of a stream and sat at its edge to pull off her borrowed boots. It was the same stream that flowed on into the clearing, she figured, but she didn’t want to think about what lay downstream just now. She just wanted to stand in the river and let it drag the sadness out of her through her toes. It seemed like as good a plan as any.
Lifting up the trailing bits of her dress-toga thing in one hand, Eliza stepped out into the current, and closed her eyes as it tugged gently at her skin. Her toes sank into the cool, sandy bottom. And in that quiet moment, the tears came. She didn’t know for whom, but they came anyway. For Scraw? For Mardu? Maybe. A little. But if she was willing to be totally honest, no, not even for them. There was something bigger, of course. The humongous thing. The thing she had been pushing away every time it had demanded her attention. Eliza wept for the one death she had not been able to let herself think about.
Her own.
It wasn’t fair. Why did God have to jerk things away from little kids? Had she been evil? Was there something she’d done that deserved a nonstop suck-hole life of constant punishment? Only to be followed by a suck-hole afterlife of punishment? What could she possibly have done to deserve that? Or did God just get his jollies kicking little kids, like a grade school bully pulling the legs off spiders?
She couldn’t remember her parents, and she’d gotten over losing them eventually, but that’s when it had all started. The first of all the badness. To be followed quickly by some judge throwing her to the Goodies, and then the years of drudging slavery on the fifth floor. Her friendship with Tayna had been the only good thing that had happened in all the years she’d been there, tortured and abused by those… ghouls. But even Tayna had turned out to be just one more thing to let her love and then take away. In all those years, she had dreamed a million dreams of getting out, of finding new parents and a new place.
And she had come so close, too! Less than an hour. Minutes really. Just another handful of seconds and she’d have become Eliza Nackenfausch. For real. Daughter of Ned and Sue Nackenfausch, and part-time intern at the Barbington Clinic for Toyfolk, providing full service health care to puppets, manikins, stuffies and dolls of all descriptions. That’s what Sue had told her, and she should know, because Sue was owner and chief surgeon of the place. To live with cool parents in a doll hospital wasn’t the life she’d always dreamed of, but that was only because her imagination had never been able to make up something that totally amazing. If it had been, then Eliza knew without a doubt that the Barbington Clinic would definitely have become her go-to happy place from the very moment she’d first conceived it.
But that life was gone.
All she had left was this stupid robe-dress and the water rushing past her. It felt good, flowing over her calves and ankles. Loose grains of sand suspended in the current tickled as they bumped over the tops of her feet. But as nice as it felt, standing in the stream wasn’t solving anything. It didn’t bring her life back. It didn’t bring her friends back. It just took. Rivers were like life, she realized. All they ever did was tear things away from you.
And with that sad thought rolling around in her head, her enjoyment of the current’s gentle tug flowed out of her, just one more thing to be snatched up and swept away by the water. She turned around and lifted a dripping foot up to climb out onto the bank. And then a movement caught her eye.
Eliza looked up and was surprised to see the Yeren watching her from the forest. She wasn’t spying or trying to hide. She just stood there, her big eyes open and filled with curiosity. Somehow she even made standing still seem an act of grace and elegance.
“Hello,” Eliza said. “I didn’t think you’d be coming back.” When the creature did not respond, Eliza shrugged and stepped up onto the mossy bank and began to negotiate with her boots.
Her feet had puffed up a bit in the water, and the scratches and cuts she’d accumulated during her barefoot phase still hadn’t healed, so even though the boots were a bit big, it was difficult to convince her feet to go back in. The scent of moss and then a quiet cooing sound told Eliza that the creature had come closer, but it wasn’t until a pair of white-furred hands reached out to probe gently at her sore feet that Eliza realized how much closer. She glanced over her shoulder, but saw only curious compassion in the creature’s eyes. No. Not creature. Woman? Eliza wasn’t sure, but she was definitely more intelligent than something you would call a “creature.” Although “woman” didn’t seem right either.
“Guess I’ll just have to call you Lucinda,” she said, as “Lucinda” continued to probe delicately at all the scabs and scratches that Eliza’s feet had been busy collecting over the last few days. And speaking of injuries, she noticed that Lucinda’s wrists were now each completely wrapped in a tight-fitting clay bracelet of some kind that hid the angry red sores that had been chafed into her skin. Eliza reached out and touched one of the bracelets, gently, and Lucinda paused to let her examine it. The material was dry, and rough like paper, but heavier to the touch, although it seemed to flex readily whenever Lucinda’s hands moved beneath it. A sort of bandage. Actually, an almost perfect bandage.
“Do you have one big enough for an entire foot?” Eliza said. “Probably not.”
She went back to trying to coax her feet into the boots when Lucinda suddenly looked downstream and cocked her head. A moment later, she stood up and hurried off down the bank toward the river’s bend and whatever sound it was that had drawn her attention. Just before she vanished, Lucinda turned back and gestured to Eliza in an unmistakable sign. Aren’t you coming? Then she rounded the bend and was gone.
Ignoring the aches and twinges, Eliza jammed her feet into the boots as quickly as she could and then hobbled off to see what the hubbub was all about.
* * *
Immediately after the bend, the stream flowed straight into the blackened clearing. Lucinda stood at the center of it all, on the island. Well, in the island, actually. A good bit of its soil had been flung away by the blast, leaving behind a cone-shaped depression, which is where the tall willowy creature now stood, visible from the waist up. She was peering curiously at something in the crater, near her feet.
“At least, I hope she still has feet,” Eliza muttered as she trudged across the charred landscape, sending up puffs of black flakes in her wake that smelled like barbecued hay.
She had to take a running jump to get across the ri
ver, onto the island, and she stumbled on the uneven ground of the crater, but Lucinda reached out one long white arm to steady her.
The crater was deeper than Eliza had expected. Maybe three feet at the center. But it was the shape huddled at the center that had captured Lucinda’s attention.
Mehklok. With the bodies of all three dead Gnomes arranged around him in a circle. And in his hands, the feathers of the crow were twitching and shuddering in the breeze. Then Eliza’s breath caught in her throat.
There was no breeze. Scraw was alive!
Eliza flung herself to the bottom of the crater and threw her arms happily around the Gnome’s furry head and neck.
“How did you do that?” she cried, but she knew he did not understand her words, and hoped only that he was picking up on her happiness. He held up his hands, offering the crow to her, and she couldn’t help but be embarrassed by the uncertainty in his eyes. Was he really that afraid of her? Moving slowly, to show him she meant no harm, she ruffled the fur between his ears. “Relax. I won’t hurt you. You did good.” Then she gathered Scraw up delicately in her hands.
“Are you okay, Little Buddy?”
But Mehklok had already turned away with a curious look in his eye. As soon as his hands were free, he dug down into the soil, feeling around below the surface. Then he pulled, hard. After a moment of straining, something let go, and Mehklok was at last able to drag his prize up out of the dirt.
Eliza hadn’t been paying close attention. Instead she’d stroked Scraw’s feathers softly, just glad to have the little guy back. He wasn’t flapping or scrawing yet, but he looked a lot better than the last time she’d seen him. A gleam of metal caught her eye, and she looked back to Mehklok as he held his hands out to her with a round, silvery disk. A dinner plate? Maybe. But strange. It shimmered like water and there wasn’t even a speck of dirt on it, despite having just been pulled from the ground. Mehklok seemed to want Eliza to take it, so she handed Scraw into Lucinda’s large gentle hands, and then reached to take the plate. But it was heavier than it looked, and she had trouble lifting it. Everyone crowded around to get a look, and they were all peering down at the strange disk of metal, when the earth beneath their feet began to moan.
And the world around them shuddered in agony.
* * *
With the great shudder of pain that shook the world, Mardu’s confinement exploded, like a doorway opening into a hurricane. In an instant, forces of magic tore through the portal, swirling her in a vortex of power that threatened to strip her unanchored self away and fling it to the edges of oblivion, as the magic of there, of Grimorl, thundered back through the wedge he had left in the doorway to here, his original home, and to where his magic had now been summoned. She was a leaf, caught in its tornado, and any moment she would be torn from her tree. She needed shelter. An anchor.
But through the maelstrom there could be no vision. She could see no faces, hear no thought-voices. There was only a barely palpable tug of firmness. Three firmnesses, any of which could anchor her to the world while everything else shredded away into the madness. The scream of forces grabbed at her being, pushing, pulling and tearing, all in the same instant, straining to fling her toward the wherever. It was so strong! Too strong.
Mardu gripped her mind furiously to the edge of the doorway, trying to make a plan, but the vortex shrieked in her mind, drowning out all thought. Find an anchor! But she could not tell who was who in the upside-down tumbling scream of other-vim. She could feel her grip weakening, instant by instant. No time! It had to be now, while she still had strength. She drew a mental breath and then—quickly!—released the focus of her nexus, forcing it to expand, then she let go of her entrapment, just as her nexus gave itself to the riptide and shot away. Mardu flicked desperately with her thoughts, flinging a last tendril of her nexus toward the closest anchor as it flashed by, willing herself to its center, dragging and clawing against the cyclone, heaving to get a second grip on it, and then diving within, yanking the nexus closed behind her.
Had she made it? Mardu shrugged the shoulders, and bristled as the host body resisted her control. She wiggled her existence and felt herself settle more deeply into the oneness. It had all happened so quickly! She expanded the chest and thrilled as the lungs drew breath. No resistance. That was better. She was centered. But where? Who?
Slowly, Mardu blinked the eyes open and peered out, trying to see in the brilliant stillness of reality. Two startled faces peered back. The wrong two faces.
“Oh no,” she said aloud. “Not this one.”
But it was done, and there was no going back.
Chapter 41
For a while, the climbing was not difficult. The rock face was almost vertical, but being near the peak, the stone was exposed and weathered. There were long cracks, and plenty of knobs and handholds, and Tayna took full advantage. But even so, she could not seem to make headway against the creature of darkness above her. And she didn’t have a screaming child over her shoulder to contend with.
On the other hand, he wasn’t exactly getting away. And he wouldn’t either. Not so long as Tayna had any strength left for the chase. The frightened little girl’s cries echoed down the mountain slope, like an avalanche of fear sweeping toward her, and they sent a chill through Tayna’s blood. They haunted her. Though she could not remember being taken from her parents, she knew now that she had been. She had not been orphaned. She had not lost her parents in a tragic accident, or to some crippling plague.
She had been kidnapped.
Even without a specific memory of the event, Tayna could remember the feeling of it. A feeling now brought back to her by the terrified shrieks of the little girl above. A little girl being carried away by the very same creature who had taken a young Tayna, and delivered her to this lifetime of misery and isolation that she was now living.
No, if Tayna could do anything about it, that little girl was not going to suffer the same fate.
She dug in her toes and continued climbing.
The rock beneath her hands was reddish in color now. She was on the Bloodcap—the famed location on which the kings of old had sworn their great pact, and to which every king crowned in the days since had returned to renew that vow. She smiled thinly as she climbed, remembering how Elicand had told her that some believed the Bloodcap to be the place where the Dragon Methilien’s blood still flowed through the stone of the mountain. Sorry. No dragon blood here. Just red rock. But thanks for playing. Better luck next time.
Tayna pulled herself up onto another ledge and paused to look up, dragging an arm across her sweaty brow and swiping again at the wet clumps of hair that kept slapping against her face. Mountain climbers must shave their heads. Above her, another shriek dragged her gaze upward. Blackness boy had stopped on the next ledge and was shifting the girl to his other shoulder, but he seemed to be tormenting her too, letting her think that he was tossing the girl off the edge, and then pulling her back. Tayna felt a growl escape her throat and she dug in with new determination. How sick was this guy?
Whether it had been two hours or three, Tayna couldn’t be sure. And there were several times when the slope got steep and the handholds melted away like frost in the sun, and she wondered what the hell she was doing climbing a freaking mountain in the freezing air, without any ropes, or, like, experience. But then the swirling winds would shift, and she’d hear a sob, or she’d catch sight of a powerless little fist beating against that smooth, black back, and it would be enough to keep her moving. Just one more reach. Just another wedged toe, one more scraped finger. And Tayna would climb on. Inch by inch. Yard by yard. Always going up, and always forcing the creature to climb higher again.
Towards the end, as he was rapidly running out of mountain, the dark figure slipped behind a raised thrust of ridge, and Tayna lost sight of him. She didn’t lose sound, though. The little girl’s terror had now fallen to a steady, almost rhythmic whimper, punctuated by the occasional sob. Eventually, even sheer terror gets monot
onous, and Tayna could only rage at the unfairness of subjecting an innocent child to such… monstery… badness. The ferocity of her anger had robbed her of even words, and her thoughts of rescue and revenge took more pictorial form in her head now, rather than sentences. Images of crushing and bludgeoning and black, pudgy person-messes being splashed into sticky puddles. Still she climbed.
And then suddenly, there was nothing left to climb. Tayna sidled around a column of rock, and there he was. Standing on the flat plane at the base of one last towering wedge of stone, with the girl slung over his shoulder, limp and unmoving. But it wasn’t the creature from her nightmares at all.
It was Abeni.
* * *
“No! You can’t be!” Tayna yelled.
In front of her, Abeni just smiled, but it was a smile full of sharpened teeth and murderous intent. The girl on his shoulder did not move.
“What have you done to her?” Tayna hissed, edging herself closer, one eye on the motionless child, but the other stayed fixed on Whoever-he-was.
He answered by lowering his arm, letting the girl flop backward. Her dark, curly mop of hair slumped over, and she stared up at Tayna with dull, lifeless eyes.
“NO! What have you done? She was just a kid!” Tayna reached out to shake the child, but Abeni’s arm flashed, and his massive Djin fist clamped around Tayna’s wrist.
“You will finish this,” he said, clearly. On his arm, the dead girl spoke too, echoing him in her high-pitched voice. “…finish this.”
Tayna’s eyes widened as she watched the pink little mouth speak the same words in perfect sync.
Oath Keeper Page 45
