“Don’t turn,” I told him. “You’ll break the circle.”
“Are you all right? What happened?”
I tried to see around him without needing to release his arm, but could not. “Did the splatter not hit you?”
On my left, my father hissed. “It hit me.” I could see where it had struck his hand. An angry red boil began to form, and I lifted a frantic prayer that this was not the start of the second plague.
“We need to move faster,” William said. “I don’t see anything on my clothes, but it could be the talismans protecting us. Lorenz? Samia?”
“None on mine,” echoed Lorenz.
“Nor mine,” said Samia. “But increasing our pace would be unwise. A misstep could be fatal, which these droplets have only made clearer.”
I agreed with Samia, and though I did not desire to be burned further, I wished even less to meet my end in these red waters. Since we saw only a wall of repugnant red before and behind us at this depth, we had no concept of how much distance remained until we reached the shore. I hoped the earth would slope upward soon, and that we would not be led in circles as we were in the banquet room.
The banquet room, where we left my sisters.
I did not mean to trip over my own feet.
I had not meant to be reminded of my vile stepsisters, either, but it happened nonetheless.
My steps faltered, and our party lurched forward. My stomach dropped as we stumbled to catch our balance, and my father and I clung to Samia and William for dear life. For one terrifying moment, the tips of my fingers slid from William’s arm, and the edges of my vision turned dark as I imagined a wall of blood crashing down on me—but then William’s free hand closed around mine and held me in place. We hadn’t fallen into the blood, and it hadn’t consumed us as I’d feared. I took a shuddering breath. We were all right.
“Is everyone ready to start moving again?” William asked. Samia and my father replied in the affirmative, and I squeezed William’s hand to indicate the same.
That was when I realized we had not heard from Lorenz.
20
The Realization
I turned my head to see why, then screamed. The wall of blood had closed in tightly enough behind us to nearly swallow my father and me whole. Less than a hand’s width of dry ground remained between us and the blood wall, and the gap between blood and paladins at the front and sides had shrunk to a single pace.
“Go,” said my father. “Move quickly. Mind your steps. We don’t have the liberty of protection at our backs any longer.”
“I can swing around,” Samia suggested, but as she shifted, so did the circle of protection for my father.
“Stop!” I cried. “If we shift too far or take a wrong step, we’ll all be lost. I don’t advise that we experiment with our formation, not now. If Lorenz was caught by a small stumble, a single talisman’s protection isn’t enough.” My heart broke for William, for Lorenz, for the loss of a man I did not really know but who had always been good and kind and loyal. How much more could we endure?
“Is he really gone?” William’s voice cracked as he choked on the words, and I nearly crumbled. My poor beloved. I had not asked this of him. He, his paladins, they didn’t need to be here. Their deaths were on my head.
“I’m so, so sorry.”
“We have to keep going,” said my father, and as we had no other option, that is what we did. Without Lorenz to keep the boiling river from our backs and his ring to enhance the effects of the combined talismans, however, the consequence of being surrounded by boiling liquid became quickly apparent. It was warm. Too warm. Hot.
As we moved, my face and back and everywhere in between became coated with a thin film of perspiration. I struggled to focus on maintaining contact with William and my father, but my palms grew slick and sweat stung my eyes.
My fingers kept slipping and my steps slowed as the heat caused my eyelids to droop. I was tired. So, so tired. I told my limbs to move but they had ceased to listen, and though my mind screamed in terror that I could be consumed at any moment, my body didn’t care.
“Not long now,” my father muttered, though I didn’t miss how his breath labored and his arm drooped from its place curled around mine. “Once the way clears, we’ll see the shore.”
“You’re certain?” William spoke with hope, but his voice sounded raw and hoarse.
“If he says it is near,” I began, but the dryness in my throat caused a fit of coughing. A metallic tang slid down the back of my tongue, the taste and scent too similar to the walls around us. “If he says it, it’s true.” Because he knows things about this place that he cannot and should not, I wished to add, but my sluggish tongue refused to form the words.
And then Samia stumbled. And William. And before any of us could recover our footing, we all dropped to our knees in a heap.
The river began to arch like a dome above us, red tendrils stretching and growing as though pulled together by an unseen force. Had we truly come so far to be wholly defeated by a monstrous river? Had we journeyed to the depths of the underworld only to be drowned in a substance that should give life, of all things?
Unacceptable.
I hardly thought before I acted next. I might have learned by then to hold my tongue and repress my will before thrusting forth either, but ask anyone and they will tell you restraint is a lesson I’m still learning.
With the walls of red blood ready to crash overhead and consume us, I called.
Oliroomim had wanted to come, hadn’t he? He had answered of his own free will, and even if he refused this time, another would come. I would make sure of it.
But he did come, quickly and without delay, his voice bouncing around inside my skull like a child’s rattle.
And what would you have me do, mistress? I wondered if the spirit-child spoke inside my mind because he couldn’t enter the river, either.
Make a way, I returned to him in thought. See us through to the other side, unharmed.
It is not such a simple thing, he replied. What power have I over the Styx? It may consume me, too.
Make a way. It was not a request, and I felt something bubble up within my chest and infuse my demand. Beside me, William grunted, but I hardly heard it over the hiss from Oliroomim. I had displeased him.
You dare to force my hand in this place?
Find another spirit to assist me or do it yourself, I care not which. Make a way to dry land. Do it now. I pushed my will and the screech of an angry spirit filled my skull.
And then, as though cut by a hot knife, the river split apart. Before us lay a path of dry ground, red walls on either side, and the shore in sight—very close, in fact. Close enough that to have perished here, so near to our escape, would have been an even greater tragedy than we’d perceived.
Not that we had escaped tragedy by any means.
“To our feet,” I urged, and we roused together. “It’s only a short way. Quickly, before we’re boiled alive.” Or before Oliroomim found a loophole in my instructions.
We stumbled to the shore, the walls of blood growing shorter and shallower as we approached. As soon as we’d crossed the edge, our legs gave out and we collapsed on the ground, crawling away from each other across the cool earth, trying to repel the heat that radiated from our bodies and rose like steam off our skin.
With my eyes closed—for they were so hot and dry that I never wanted to open them again—I dug my fingers into the chill ground, wishing to wrap my body in its refreshment. The earth felt strange to the touch, however. Spongy, like soft leather.
I felt movement beneath my fingertips. I tensed and froze.
Something moved again.
My lids, gritty as though coated in sand, protested as I pried my eyes open to see. And then I retched because I could not scream.
Hands. Arms. Legs. Feet. Not bone, like the shore we’d left behind. The limbs beneath my own were covered in gray, puckered flesh. Some wer
e still connected to their bodies, others scattered and strewn, all lying like pieces of a puzzle and forming the ground upon which we’d been spat.
The earth was made of corpses that refused to die, and they wished to add four more.
Gray fingers curled around my own. A hand, cold and damp, grasped my ankle, and another slid across my stomach. A muffled groan rose from beneath me, words I could not make out, and even if I could have understood I did not want to hear it.
With a hoarse screech and my remaining strength, I kicked at the hand around my ankle, yanked my wrist and hair and clothes from the deathly grasp, and scrambled on hands and knees across the shore.
A rocky stretch of ground was not far beyond. I needed to reach it, to climb upon it and escape—
Another hand closed around my leg and my forward momentum ceased. My fingers scrabbled at the writhing limbs beneath me, but the corpse ground grasped hold again and pulled. I began to sink into the earth.
It drew me down, inch by inch, to join these gray bags of flesh, to become another body to line the ground and grasp at travelers who thought themselves too capable to fail, too worthy to perish.
I tried to twist my head to see, to cry out to the others—had they too been taken? Were they also being hauled under?—when a cold hand gripped my chin and curled dead fingers over my lips and teeth.
I bit down as hard as I could. Pieces of decayed flesh tore off in my mouth. I spat and gagged, trying to escape the taste of death and disease, but as soon as the mutilated hand dropped away, another replaced it. And another. And another.
And then one crawled up the side of my face and tangled in my hair, inching toward my eyes. My legs were thigh-deep inside corpses touching me with their cold deadness, sensing the life in my veins and trying to claim it as their own. I wished we had died in the river of blood instead of here, trapped and consumed by decay.
I thought I had no more tears, no more screams, but I was wrong. As the sobs racked what parts of my body I could still feel, his feet—purple, misty, and mocking—stood on the rocks before me.
“Oh, mistress,” he said. “You appear to be inconvenienced by this place.”
“Help me,” I demanded. “Help us.”
He shook his head. “You asked only to be brought safely through the Styx. You said nothing of its shore.”
“I knew nothing of its shore.” I spoke around the fingers that kept curling across my mouth, praying he might understand me despite them. “How might we be freed?”
“It is not my concern.”
“You will make it your concern.” But my force of will had waned. My strength was failing. I felt it in the way my body refused to fight or struggle. Would it not be so much simpler to be resigned to our fates? To simply rest?
To be at peace once more?
It had been so long …
Oliroomim scoffed at my trials. “I would be better off if none of a necromancer’s doings were my concern.”
How had it come to this? Why did I constantly allow others to decide my fate for me? I was a necromancer, no matter how strange it remained to hear this truth, no matter how I still thought of myself as a merchant’s daughter, pious and prepared for a balanced life of work and leisure. How was it that I had been so violently thrust into a world of death and darkness?
Ah, but death and darkness had always been there, and would have been so even if I had not found The Book of Conjuring and chosen to act. Celia might have won if I had not. Evil might have taken it all, and my life as I had perceived it wouldn’t have been possible, regardless.
No, for me, the choices were to lie down and die, or act with the strength I’d been given.
If you can, run, I recalled my mother saying, the memory of her voice a reminder of her wisdom on dark days. If you can’t run, walk. If you can’t walk, crawl. Better to live on hands and knees than be consumed while standing still.
I was Ellison, cinder-Ella, necromancer, and I would use the powers I had earned, for they were mine.
Oliroomim, I thought to the spirit, for I could no longer speak. My waist and torso had slipped down, pulled by the dead, and I nearly retched again as my chin slipped beneath the surface. Cold, leathery flesh brushed my lips like a butterfly kiss.
I stared hard at the smug child-spirit on the rock.
Oliroomim, tell me what it is that steals my life. Are these souls? Are they mortals? Spirits? Some other creation of the Adversary?
They are the prideful dead, Oliroomim replied, and his voice filled with wicked glee. You waded through their blood and they smell it on your skin. Now they try to reclaim it, and they will drag you down where you belong.
The dead.
Yes, that would do nicely.
I concentrated, projecting my thoughts outward, screaming them inside my mind with my remaining shred of will. It bubbled in my belly like a welling of power and brought a rush of tingling strength to my limbs. I accepted its coming like a lover’s caress. From the tips of my fingers to the ends of my hair, I felt it. A thick darkness coiled at my center.
I had not felt this for a long time, and never as strong. Never as delicious. Never as intoxicating.
Rise, I commanded. Raise me up and release the living.
The grasping fingers stilled. I opened my palms, buried beneath, and pushed the dark coil outward. Tendrils of power surged through each limb and the dead began to scramble away, repulsed, frightened. No, the dead could not be frightened.
But they could be controlled.
Raise me up.
With a squelching, sucking sound that melded with the scrape of leathery palms, skin against skin, I rose. My chin crested the surface, then my shoulders, my chest. When my arms were freed, I clutched at the ground to pull myself the rest of the way forward and felt dead hands clasp mine, firmly like a friend or a brother, and pull for me.
With a final heave, the corpse earth freed me and raised me to standing. I looked over the shoreline to see my party, gasping for breath on the fleshly earth, shaken and spent. I swayed, but not from exhaustion. Rather, I felt a sudden, heady rush, like one glass of wine too many at a banquet feast, or winning three games of Glückshaus in a row. Like I had plunged my hands into the chests of a hundred stepsisters and torn out their hearts without resistance.
What are you, hissed Oliroomim, and I pulled my gaze from the gasping mortals to regard him.
“You thought to deceive me,” I said. “You thought that because this is your domain, your dwelling place, that you could wrest control. But you’ve forgotten that I didn’t gain this power lightly. I come here with practice, having earned my way, and you might consider from where this conjuring draws its power.” I leaned toward him, the coiled darkness in my belly beginning to roil once again.
If a spirit could grow pale, he did—his shifting form flickered and became insubstantial, until with an unearthly shriek he vanished in a puff of black smoke. And once he had gone, I remembered.
“William!” I shook off the stupor, but oh, it was a struggle. Something inside had begun to grow, and it craved release. Now that I’d had a taste of true power within this place, of what I could do and what it could become, the flavor lingered on the back of my tongue like an undissolved sweet.
I wanted it.
But this was not the time. Not yet.
I ran across the bodies to reach him, the corpses beneath my feet shifting to propel me faster. They remained under my control, connected. Bring the others to me, I commanded.
I knelt next to William and cupped his face with both hands to kiss his forehead and cheeks. “Are you well?”
He raised himself to his knees and when I thought he might respond, he began instead to pant and choke, as if his body was trying to expel the very memory of being pulled under the corpse ground. But nothing came up, not a bit, and instead he descended into a fit of coughs. We needed to find water, quickly. My father might have some in his pack, I remembered, but when my fathe
r and Samia were conveyed to my side on limb-woven palettes of dead fingers and toes that scuttled across the corpse earth, I saw no pack across his shoulders.
We had neither food nor water. We wouldn’t last long, and I couldn’t very well conjure a spirit to bring these things to me if there was nothing available to bring.
“William, are you well?” I repeated. He blinked as though trying to see clearly, then squeezed his eyes shut and opened them with a hiss at the dryness that had stolen all our tears. His complexion had dulled further, and his eyes were sunken as though he’d endured too many sleepless nights. Finally, his vision cleared, and recognition dawned.
“Ellison?”
“Yes, my love. You’re safe now. The danger is passed, for the moment.” My father and Samia coughed and spat as they hauled themselves upright. I noted, with a pinch of anxiety, that my father did not look worse for wear. Samia appeared aggravated, if not exhausted, as did William.
The moment she was able, Samia rose and scrambled from the corpse ground to the safety of the black rocks, far from the river. She also appeared to be vomiting, or at least attempting to. My father, however, frowned at me.
“We should be dead.”
I scowled at him in return. “You know very well that is not true.”
He shook his head. “I felt it, Ellison. I felt the moment you released your will. I grow stronger in this place too, but you … ”
“I have a source,” I said, taking William’s hand. I brushed my thumb across its back, enjoying its warmth, the sensation of life. I would shudder for a very long time upon recalling the feel of those diseased, dead fingers against my bare flesh. “The difference between us, dear father, is that I can use my gift here and you cannot.”
“Can you?” He raised a single eyebrow toward the prince. “He appears rather worse for wear, and has looked so since we arrived. Are you certain you do right?”
I bristled at his implication, and my stomach churned. “Perhaps we should ask William,” I said. “William, Your Highness, how do you fare?”
He coughed and spat, and a glob of red and yellow-green phlegm landed beside us with a wet splat. I stared at him in alarm. “I’m well,” he said, though I had trouble believing it. “I think we need to find water, though, or there’ll be more where that came from.”
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