"Agnus Dei!" Kyrie shouted beside her. He began tossing rocks aside.
"There, move that boulder!" Lacrimosa said. A boulder the size of a man blocked their way. "Help me."
My daughters. No. Please, stars, please, don't take them from me.
She grabbed the boulder and pulled. Kyrie strained beside her. It wouldn't budge.
"Statues of Requiem!" Lacrimosa called. "Do you hear me?"
Had any statues survived? They had all entered the mine before her. Were they all crushed, as dead as the burned mimics?
"Statues, come help us," Kyrie shouted, but they did not emerge from the wreckage. A few more rocks tumbled, and then the dust settled.
Lacrimosa released the boulder she'd been pulling.
"It was a trap," she said.
Kyrie was still tossing rocks aside. In the light of her torch, Lacrimosa saw that his eyes burned and his cheeks were red.
"Agnus Dei!" he shouted. "Do you hear me? Gloriae!"
Lacrimosa wanted to scream too, to attack the wreckage, to cry and shout. No. She steeled herself. She refused to panic. Stay calm. Think. If the twins are alive, I have to stay calm to save them.
"It was a trap," she said again. Her fingers trembled, but her voice was steady. "This was not the main entrance to the mine. It was built for us."
"What are you talking about?" Kyrie demanded. "Lacrimosa, come on, help me move these boulders. Hurry!"
She clutched his shoulders and forced him to stare at her. "Kyrie Eleison! Listen to me. Think. Dies Irae knew we'd come here. He knew we'd crawl down the shaft. He rigged the tunnel to collapse onto us. But he wouldn't destroy his only entrance to the mines, not if he wants more Animating Stones. There must be a back entrance somewhere. If the girls survived... if they're trapped somewhere down there... we have to find it. Now come, hurry! Back to the surface."
Kyrie's eyes blazed. He looked ready to argue. Then he squared his shoulders and nodded.
"Let's go."
They began climbing the ladder out of the collapsed mine. Scratches and bruises covered them, but Lacrimosa barely felt the pain. My daughters. A vision of them crushed and broken flashed through her mind. Lacrimosa tightened her jaw and banished it. Don't panic. Stay calm. Save them. There must be another entrance to the mine. There must be. If the girls are alive, I'll find them.
Soon she and Kyrie climbed back onto the crater.
Mimic dogs awaited them there.
The creatures howled and lunged at them.
They were stitched together from various dead animals. Their heads were canine, but some had the bodies of goats, and one had human arms instead of legs. One had the body of a flayed pony, and another had an arm for a tail. They all barked, drooled, and bared their teeth.
Lacrimosa swung Stella Lumen, slicing into them. Kyrie fought beside her. They swung their torches too, burning the creatures. The dogs swarmed and leaped, their eyes blazing in the night. Their fur burned, but they kept attacking. One bit Lacrimosa's arm, and she screamed and beat it off.
"Lacrimosa, look!" Kyrie said. "Between those burned trees. It looks like a path."
Lacrimosa torched another dog and stared. Yes. She had missed it earlier, but now, with the blazing dogs casting their light, she saw it. A rough path led from the crater between the burned trees.
"You think Irae made the path?" she shouted over the howling dogs.
"It might lead to another shaft. Let's go! This dog and pony show is getting boring anyway."
They began to run, slicing and burning their way between the throngs of mimic dogs. Her arm bled, and her head spun, but Lacrimosa forced herself to keep running. They raced out of the crater and onto the path, the dogs in hot pursuit. Burned branches snapped under her boots.
My daughters. Please, stars, please. Don't let me lose them like I lost my husband.
The dogs yapped behind her. As she ran, Lacrimosa nocked an arrow. She spun, knelt, and fired. A dog yelped and fell. She kept running.
"Damn it!" Kyrie shouted and skidded to a stop.
Lacrimosa fired her last arrow. Another dog fell. "What is it?"
"A hole in the ground. I nearly fell in."
Lacrimosa ran forward and held her torch over the ground. Hidden under charred logs, a shaft led underground.
"Climb down," she said. "I'll hold back the d—"
Before she could finish, three dogs leaped onto her. She beat one back with her torch. The other two knocked her down. They snapped their teeth, and Lacrimosa banged one's face with her sword's hilt. The other bit her arm before Kyrie stabbed it. A hundred more mimic dogs came running from the forest.
"Into the mine!" she shouted. "Hurry."
Kyrie nodded and climbed down. "Come on, after me."
Lacrimosa clubbed two dogs with her torch, then leaped into the shaft. A ladder led into the darkness, and she began scurrying down. The dogs surrounded the opening, barking, but dared not jump down.
"Think we'll find the girls down here?" Kyrie shouted below her. She could barely hear him over the howling dogs.
Lacrimosa closed her eyes as she climbed into darkness. Please, stars. Please. Don't take my daughters from me. Her fingers trembled around the rungs of the shaft's ladder.
"I don't know, Kyrie. Hurry."
The ladder seemed endless. She descended into darkness—the darkness of the earth, and of her fears. She had only just buried her husband. If she now had to bury her daughters, how would she continue? How could she revive Requiem, if only she and Kyrie now lived? How could she find strength to live on?
"No," she told herself again. "No, don't despair. Not when your daughters might still breathe, might still need you."
She forced herself to think only of every new rung, every new step into the belly of the earth. They descended until finally, shivering with cold and fear and injury, they reached solid ground.
"Agn—!" Kyrie began, but Lacrimosa elbowed him.
"Quiet, Kyrie," she whispered. "Let's move quietly."
They ran down a tunnel, struggling to keep their footfalls as soft as possible. Soon they heard hammering, grunting, and digging ahead. Red light glowed in the darkness. They rounded a corner, and Lacrimosa cursed and leaped back.
"Wait," she whispered and held up her arm, stopping Kyrie. "Peek."
They stuck their heads around the corner, and Lacrimosa exhaled slowly. Stars.
"There must be hundreds," Kyrie whispered, knuckles white around his sword hilt.
Lacrimosa nodded. "And hundreds more get their hearts here every day."
The cavern ahead was as large as Requiem's old halls. Torches and scaffolding covered its walls. Wooden bridges criss-crossed its depths like spider webs. Iron wagons screeched in and out of a dozen tunnels, moving on tracks, their wheels sparking. Everywhere she looked, Lacrimosa saw mimics. They covered the walls like bats. They dug in the cavern floor. They rode the wagons and manned the bridges and hollered as they worked.
"Look, Lacrimosa," Kyrie said and pointed. "That tunnel, over there."
Lacrimosa squinted. A fist seemed to grip her heart and squeeze. Far below and across the cavern, twenty or thirty mimics crowded around the entrance of a tunnel. It was hard to see in the darkness, but it seemed like the tunnel was blocked. Rocks and boulders filled it, and dust still poured from it.
"That must be the tunnel that... that...."
That my daughters escaped from? That my daughters died under? She did not know how to finish that sentence. Before she could say more, the mimics around that collapsed tunnel shifted, and Lacrimosa glimpsed two figures on the ground.
"No," she whispered, tears budding in her eyes. "Please, stars, no."
Lying on the ground by the tunnel, covered in dust and blood, were her daughters.
Kyrie made to race down into the cavern. Lacrimosa grabbed him and pulled him back.
"No, Kyrie!" she hissed.
He looked at her with wild eyes. "Lacrimosa, they... stars, they might be hurt, they need us,
they...."
"We can't help them by dying," she said. "Wait, Kyrie. We watch. We hide. If we rush into this cavern alone, we're dead. If they're still alive, we'll save them, I promise you, Kyrie, I promise you. Now is not the time to rush to battle."
Panting, Kyrie knelt beside her. His fists clenched around his weapons. Lacrimosa placed her hand on his shoulder, and they stared silently from the darkness.
As they watched, a figure emerged from shadows and walked toward the collapsed tunnel. Cloaked in darkness, the man stood over the bloodied girls. A mimic held a torch near him. Its light glinted on jewelled armor and an arm of steel.
Lacrimosa's heart seemed to shatter inside her.
"Dies Irae," she whispered.
DIES IRAE
He stood in the cavern, arms crossed, and stared down at the girls.
The twins.
His daughters.
Finally, after all this time, he had them.
Gloriae was unconscious. Blood speckled her armor, and when Dies Irae removed her helmet, he saw her eye and forehead swelling.
My beautiful sweet Gloriae, Dies Irae thought. Why did you have to disobey me? You were once so beautiful, so pure. You could have ruled this glorious empire at my side. Now you will serve me as a mimic.
He turned to look down at Agnus Dei. Blood trickled down her forehead. Her eyelids fluttered weakly, and her mouth kept opening and closing. Bandages covered wounds on her arms and legs. Fresher scrapes peeked from the tatters of her clothes.
And Agnus Dei, my freakish daughter. You have never served me. You have always hated me. You will too will become a mimic of rot and worm.
Dies Irae turned to stare at Lashdig, chief of his miners. The hunchbacked, warty mimic stared back, his one eye large and blue, the other squinty and black. Matted red hair grew between scars on his head.
"Tie them up," Dies Irae told him. "And gag them."
Lashdig bowed his head. "Yes, master."
The stooped mimic barked a few commands, mimics shuffled, and soon ropes bound the twin girls. Lashdig stuffed bloody cloths into their mouths, which he secured with more rope. The girls began coming to, and started to struggle, but their screams were muffled, their limbs too weak to break free.
Dies Irae caressed Gloriae's cheek. "Why do you struggle, sweetness? You will become a beautiful mimic, a slave girl to my warriors' desires."
Her eyes blazed with hatred, and Dies Irae laughed. He turned to Agnus Dei, the dark twin.
"And you, Agnus Dei, why do you struggle so?" He chuckled at the sight of her squirming and screaming into her gag. He leaned down and kissed her forehead. "You too will become a beautiful mimic, Agnus Dei. Lashdig himself here will enjoy thrusting into you, he and all his miners."
He straightened and faced Lashdig again. "What of the other weredragons?"
Lashdig stared from his mismatched, rheumy eyes. "The tunnel swallowed them, my lord, as you planned. Their beastly stone mimics are crushed too."
"Find me bodies. If you have to scrape them off stones with a shovel, do it. I want their blood. I want what's left of their bones. Find me the weredragon whore and the boy."
Lashdig bowed. "Yes, my lord." He turned toward his workers. "Mimics! Dig. Dig well. Find us the weredragons. Their blood will feed our new children."
A voice spoke behind him.
"The blond one. Is that Gloriae?"
Dies Irae turned to see Umbra, the Blood Wolf assassin, walk toward him. She held a drawn dagger, and her eyes blazed. In his chambers, at his insistence, she was always nude. Today she wore black leggings, a black bodice, and five more daggers around her waist.
"This is her."
Fast as a panther, Umbra pounced atop Gloriae. She snarled and backhanded the young woman's cheek. Gloriae grunted into her gag. Her lip split, and blood trickled from it.
"You murdered my husband," Umbra hissed. "You burned my brothers." She backhanded Gloriae again. "I will make you suffer." She brought her dagger close to Gloriae's face. "I will make you suffer like they did."
"Umbra!"
Dies Irae's voice rang across the cavern. He grabbed her shoulders and pulled her off Gloriae. She struggled in his grasp, but he held her tight.
"Umbra, control yourself. That is an order."
She hissed and spat. "She will pay for her crimes."
Dies Irae nodded. "But not at your hands, Umbra. If you kill her, her pain ends. Once we make her a mimic, her pain will last forever."
Gloriae moaned, blood trickling down her chin. Agnus Dei screamed into her gag and thrashed. Umbra laughed.
"Very well, Irae," the Blood Wolf said. She tossed back her hair and sheathed her dagger. "I will keep her alive. But once she is a mimic, Irae... I will hurt her, again and again, a thousand times for every Blood Wolf she slew."
Dies Irae nodded. And I will hurt you, Gloriae, for every nightshade you released from the abyss. And I will hurt you, Agnus Dei, for every man a weredragon has slain.
He turned toward Warts and Bladehand, two of his finest warrior mimics. They rustled with bugs and stared at him with bloodshot eyes.
"Lift the girls," he told them. "While Lashdig and his miners dig for the others, we'll take these two to the camp. We'll dissect and stitch them there. Soon you will have fine, rotting bodies to enjoy."
Warts and Bladehand hissed and drooled. "Yes, master. As you command."
Bladehand grabbed Gloriae and slung her over his shoulder. Warts lifted the writhing Agnus Dei. Both girls screamed into their gags, a beautiful sound. Dies Irae began walking across the cavern, and the mimics followed behind. All around him, the miners dug, tunnelled, and sifted for Animating Stones. The red crystals glowed in wagons, thousands of them, thousands to keep building his armies.
One will be for you, Gloriae. And one for you, Agnus Dei.
As Dies Irae walked across the mine, the twins screaming behind him, he smiled thinly.
GLORIAE
Everything hurt. Bruises and cuts covered Gloriae. Her head pounded. Stars shone above between naked branches. As the mimics carried her through the burned forest, every jostle shot pain through her.
"Move faster, my lovelies," Dies Irae called out, marching ahead of the column. "I want to hit the camp by sunrise."
The mimics growled around him. Fifty of them, maybe a hundred, snaked through the forest. They carried crackling torches. Tied up and gagged across one's shoulder, Gloriae couldn't see much, only burned trees, thumping mimic feet, and glimpses of Agnus Dei tossed across a second mimic's shoulder. She kept trying to meet her sister's eyes, but only caught glimpses of the girl's flopping, dusty hair.
Are Mother and Kyrie dead? Or are they captured too? Worry for them gnawed on her, worse than her pain. The entire tunnel seemed to have collapsed behind her. It seemed unlikely that Mother and Kyrie could have survived.
"You will be my slave," hissed the mimic who carried her. Its hand grabbed her thigh and squeezed. "I will take you deep, and break you."
Gloriae glared down at its chest, the only part she could see. Oozing wounds stretched across that chest, slapping against her cheek as it ran. Gloriae closed her eyes and tried to ignore the stench and pain.
If Mother and Kyrie are dead, so is Requiem, she thought. Kyrie is our last male. Unless... unless his child truly quickened within me, and is a boy, and can still survive. That too seemed unlikely to Gloriae. She had not bled since lying with Kyrie two moons ago, or was it three now? But she had also barely eaten, barely slept, barely rested from battle. Those more likely dried her blood than any life within her. Tied and gagged across a mimic's back, Gloriae lowered her head, and her soul seemed to sink into her belly.
So it's over. We lost the war. And soon... soon I and my twin will be mimics too, maggot-ridden and cursed for eternity.
Gloriae wanted to find hope. She struggled to grasp any ray of it she could find. But how could she? How could she escape death yet again?
A bird cawed.
A second bird, acro
ss the road, answered it.
Whistles cut the air.
With thuds, flaming arrows slammed into a dozen mimics.
"The Earthen." Dies Irae spat the word in disgust. "Mimics! Find them."
More flaming arrows flew. Gloriae grimaced. One arrow flew so close, it singed her hair. She stared through narrowed eyelids, but saw only shadows in green cloaks darting between the trees. Green cloaks. Earth God priests.
Twenty mimics raced into the woods, firing their own arrows and swinging their swords.
"Bring me their heads!" Dies Irae shouted. "A hundred slaves to any mimic who brings me Silva."
Gloriae sucked in her breath. Silva the Elder? She had heard his name whispered in the halls of Flammis Palace. Dies Irae had called him an outlaw, a crazy old man, a disgraced follower of a false god. He had killed Silva's siblings, toppled his temples, hunted him across the land. Did the priest still live?
More arrows flew. Three mimics fell dead. The battle raged through the forest, mimics and Earthen clashing swords and firing arrows.
Green shadows leaped from the burned trees, racing toward Gloriae with raised swords. Will they free me from the mimics? Or will they kill Gloriae the Gilded, she who had hunted and killed so many of their number? She remembered the tavern last summer, where she had hunted Kyrie; she had killed an Earth God priest there, one Tilas, or Talis, or Taras. She had forgotten his name, but would these Earthen remember her crime?
Bladehand grunted and tossed her down. She landed with a grimace, banging her elbow against a rock. Warts tossed Agnus Dei down; her sister slammed against her, yelping. The two mimics snarled and clashed blades with the Earthen.
She lay, Agnus Dei atop her, watching the fight. It only lasted minutes. Growling, Bladehand tore into an Earthen's face, then stabbed his chest. Warts sliced off a woman's arm, grabbed her throat, and clawed out her eyes. Soon they were feasting on Earthen entrails. The other mimics came walking back from the forest, carrying severed heads, chewing on human organs.
Dies Irae nodded. Blood covered his mace and splashed his armor.
Song of Dragons: The Complete Trilogy Page 63
