The Drowned Vault

by N. D. Wilson

  “Gil.” The old man snorted the name. “Gil, Gil, Gil. Doesn’t listen.” He pointed the granola stub at the room high on the column. “That one is chained. Chained up tight. For now.”

  The man squeezed the last piece of the bar into his cheek and looked back at her bag, hopeful.

  “That was my last one,” Antigone said. “Please, talk to me. Who are you?”

  The man went back to pulling at the hair on his throat. “Mentor,” he said.

  “Okay …,” Antigone said. “I don’t know what you mean.”

  “Mentor,” the man said again, tapping his chest cheerfully. “My name. I’m Mentor.”

  “Mentor? Really? Like … will you be my mentor?”

  “Exactly. Correct. Me,” the man said. “A name, and my name, and mentoring is named for me.” He tapped the side of his nose and waggled his eyebrows.

  Antigone tried to catch any glimpse of a joke in the man’s eyes, but he seemed serious enough. He also seemed homeless and behind on his meds.

  “So you’re one of the transmortals?” Antigone asked. “You’re in the Ordo Draconis?”

  “Ordo. Or-do? Or-don’t!” He laughed. “Or-die. The dragons do their dragooning.” Mentor tapped his nose, then yawned slowly. “Dragons for the young. Steam and fire and fits. Too much for Mentor. Too much too muching. And Gil.”

  Mentor grew serious and looked around secretively. Then he whispered the name again and nodded importantly. “Gil. Doesn’t care about books, Antigone. Nor the bottles sleeping in the cellars. Sleepy cellars. That’s where Mentor sleeps. With the bottles.” He touched his nose and yawned again. Antigone fought back a yawn of her own.

  Mentor nodded at the tall stone column, capped with the two-walled bedroom. “Fits, fits, fits. Fits and thunder. And dragons. And wolves and heroes. The old world, Antigone Smith.” He leaned forward. “Put to bed, Antigone Smith. It was. Tucked into tombs and corners under cobblestones and cobblewebs. Brendan’s children sang the lullaby. Lulla-bye-bye.”

  The old man slid out of his chair and walked toward her, scratching at his Soccer! “Dragons sleep, Antigone Smith. They sleep long.” He was close enough for her to smell his breath—a smell like dirt and mushrooms and wine. The old man touched his nose again. “But they wake. They do. And when they do, listen to Mentor, listen. Do what needs doing.”

  “I’m listening,” Antigone said. “What needs doing?”

  Mentor hissed a whisper into her face. “When the chains break, when the dragons wake … run.”

  A door slammed. High above, pigeons fluttered. Mentor spun and raced away in his socks and flip-flops, disappearing between the shelves. Antigone waited. She could hear heavy feet. Many feet.

  “Hey!” she yelled.

  She listened. The feet were approaching.

  “Gil!” she shouted. “If you hurt him …”

  Gilgamesh of Uruk stepped into view between the rows of shelves. There were others behind him in the shadows. The bloody body of Rupert Greeves—gripped by the back of his shirt—dangled from Gil’s right hand.

  As he approached, Antigone could see the patches on Rupert’s shoulders. His shirt was on inside out, and blood was soaking through it.

  Antigone couldn’t speak. Her eyes welled up as Gil dropped Rupert at her feet, and she chewed back a sob. Rupert was motionless. She couldn’t see the rise and fall of breathing.

  “If I hurt him?” Gil asked, grinning.

  Light flashed on the table behind Gil. All the transmortals turned.

  The Quick Water was moving.

  eighteen

  IN THE BONEHOUSE

  ANTIGONE WATCHED THE QUICK WATER roll out of the pouch. She watched it twist and spin itself into a hundred strings. The strings wove themselves together and flattened until they had formed a glistening sheet like a pool on the tabletop.

  Sunlight erupted out of the Quick Water, casting a vertical pillar of gold straight up through the dusty air to the distant ceiling.

  “Gilgamesh?” The voice was female, but strange, almost metallic. The pool rippled as the center rose from the table, forming a tent, and then a balloon, and then the fluid statue of a head and neck—the miniature glassy face of Arachne, alive with sunlight.

  While Antigone watched, liquid Arachne looked around the room, at her, at Rupert’s body, at the pillar room of Radu Bey, and finally, at Gil, painting him with light.

  “Gilgamesh,” the water girl said again. “What have you done?”

  Gilgamesh hooded his eyes against the sunlight and moved closer to the table.

  “The dragons have the same question for you, Arachne,” Gil said. “You shielded the Smiths in Ashtown, you strengthened the weave of their sinews, and then, when the treaties were voided and the world became ours, you fled with our enemies.” He snorted. “You’ve woven Angel Skin for the girl, and you question me? Radu has sealed your treason on the pillar beneath his throne room.”

  “His throne room is a cell,” Arachne said. “It is justice. Ask Radu what oath I have broken. Ask the dragon what pledged allegiance I have betrayed. Gilgamesh, you are a good man. You could be a good man.”

  Gil’s ribs heaved as he laughed. Pigeons rustled high above in the rafters. “A man? Did a man strike off the head of Khumbaba? Did a man best Enkidu? Did Inanna fall in love with a mere man?”

  “I do not know what you are anymore,” Arachne said. “Men die to become their true selves. Wine and life cannot remain bottled forever. They sour.” She paused. “Have you?”

  On the floor at Antigone’s feet, Rupert groaned. His hand flexed and moved. Relief flooded through Antigone, and she tugged forward, wishing she could reach him.

  “I know where you are, Arachne,” Gil said. “The Smith boy carries Radu’s ring. I stood in the throne room and looked down on you from the sky. We will come, little weaver. It will be best if you are not with the children of Brendan when we arrive.”

  Gilgamesh stepped forward and raised his hand to crush the liquid head.

  “Wait!” Arachne said. “Gil, your war is with Phoenix. The Smiths are nothing more than an old grudge. They do not hold the tooth. We can show you where Phoenix is. Cyrus carries the ring. We will lead you there.”

  “Why would you do this?” Gil asked.

  “Phoenix is an enemy to all. We will lead you to his lair, and you may do what you will with him, but give us Rupert and the girl … alive and well.”

  Gil looked down at Rupert and then at Antigone. He scratched at the hair high up on his cheek, and then turned toward Radu’s pillar room. Finally, he nodded.

  “Fine,” Gil said. “We leave as soon as you’ve shown us where the dog is hiding. Go quickly, or the log mansion in the mountains burns along with the forest around it.”

  “Bring them,” Arachne said. “The girl and Greeves. When you come.”

  Gil nodded again.

  “And, Gilgamesh, I—”

  Gil slapped the Quick Water flat with his wide hand. It splashed up through his six fingers, found itself in the air, and slapped down onto the table, quivering and quaking, a glowing sphere once more. Gil rolled it into its oilcloth pouch, cinched it tight, and pocketed it.

  The other transmortals stepped out of the shadows. A man almost as large as Gil moved to the front. He had a red beard down his chest and a long, thick braid down his back. When he spoke, his voice was deep and wild—part growl, part waterfall.

  “The dragon has his plans, Gilgamesh. We cannot take these two along.”

  “We won’t,” Gil said. He nudged Rupert with his toe. “Strap him up. Then we wait. The little spider will show us Phoenix.”

  Antigone bit her lip as Red Beard lifted Rupert off the ground and slammed him against the brick wall. A slender, worn-looking woman with silver hair stepped forward and cinched the straps tight around his arms and legs.

  Red Beard looked into Rupert’s face. “You’ll give us the maps, Avengel,” he said. “And the Burials will empty.”

  Leaving Rupert, Re
d Beard sniffed at Antigone. He bent slowly, lowering his face to hers. Antigone held her breath, trying not to smell. His eyes were swampy green. He raised a hand to her face and rubbed the back of it against her cheek—it was covered with red hair as thick as pig bristles.

  Antigone jerked and turned her head. Red Beard grabbed the top of her head and twisted her face toward him. He smiled, baring two teeth in his huge lower jaw that were unnaturally long. But they were blunt, more like tusks, not fangs.

  “Strange,” he said, “a pretty little Smith wearing Angel Skin. Unfit for devils.”

  “Enkidu …,” Gil said.

  “You had your play, Gilgamesh,” Enkidu said. “I shall have mine.” He drew a long knife from his belt. “We test the spider’s weave.”

  Antigone’s heart pounded. She wanted to spit in his face, to scream. But her throat clamped shut. She felt the tip of the knife creep into her stomach, barely muted by the Angel Skin.

  “Enkidu!” Gil boomed. “We spend her later. Come!”

  The huge redheaded pig grunted, then backed away. He and the rest of the transmortals followed Gil through the shelves and into shadow.

  “Well done,” Rupert said quietly.

  Antigone turned her head, surprised. Rupert was looking at her. His face was swollen and bloody. Patches of his beard had been torn out. But he was smiling.

  He looked around the huge room and up at the pillar. “I’ve heard tales of Radu’s room,” he said. He spat blood on the floor. “From my Keeper, the Avengel before Robert Boone. This pillar was originally in the caves of Slovenia. But we are not in Slovenia now.”

  “How do you know?” Antigone asked. “I wasn’t conscious when they brought us here, were you?”

  “I know, as you will learn to,” Rupert said, straining against his straps. “From the tilt of the earth beneath my feet and the pull of true north on my bones.”

  “Rupe, do you think … the others …?”

  Rupert Greeves relaxed in his bonds. “I don’t know,” he said. “And I did not know that John Smith had so deeply bonded himself with Radu Bey. I made a terrible mistake in going to wake him. He had four chains in his Burial, as Radu did in his. Three are now broken.”

  He shook his head. “I was a fool. I told Cyrus to loose all four when they were all that still bound the last Dracul.”

  “Wait,” Antigone said. “John Smith was chained up, too? And Cyrus was supposed to unlock them?”

  Rupert nodded. “And he must have unlocked three. Radu still wears one chain.”

  “But that’s good,” Antigone said. “Or better than it could be.” She nodded up at the room. “He’s still stuck in there.”

  Antigone swallowed hard and leaned her head back against the bricks. “What are we going to do?”

  “This is the valley of the shadow of death,” Rupert said quietly. He smiled slightly. “We will fear no evil.”

  “Valiant! Valley, valley, valiant.” The scrawny old man shuffled back into view. He sat down at the table, then pulled up the hood on his sweatshirt and cinched it tight around his face. “I will listen to your speeches.”

  Rupert leaned his head forward, squinting beneath his bloody brows. “Who are you?” he asked.

  “He says his name is Mentor,” Antigone said. “He stole a granola bar out of my backpack.”

  The old man winked and clicked his tongue. “My belly borrowed it,” he said. “Sorrowful poor, my belly. Always borrowing.” His hood-puckered face grinned. “Borrowing and sorrowing.”

  Dixie Mist opened her eyes in the darkness of her new cell. She hadn’t slept more than a few exhausted minutes all night. Her wrists and ankles were raw from twisting in the bonds that strapped her tight into her chair. She’d read about people who could dislocate their joints to slip free of cuffs and ropes and chains.

  Turned out, she wasn’t one of those people.

  The noise had kept her awake. All night, there had been footsteps and shouts. Sometimes a scream and sometimes laughter. Sometimes snatches of music. There had even been applause—cheering. She couldn’t imagine what anyone would cheer for in this place. Nothing good, she was sure. Nothing good at all.

  Men had carried Oliver away in his chair hours and hours ago.

  Though there were no windows in her room, she knew the sun was up. Her body had anticipated her old alarm clock. She’d even imagined its ring. It felt like a whole world had passed since she’d last heard that clock. Like maybe, somehow, she wasn’t Dixie Mist at all. She was someone else in a very different life, a life gone wrong.

  Hours had passed since then. Boots were thumping down the hall outside her door, but she closed her eyes and tried to ignore them. She tried to picture her mother’s face. It was hard. The more she had stared at her mother’s photo, the more the photo was all she’d been able to recall. She wished she’d known, back when she’d had her mother, that she would need to remember everything, that memory would be all she would have. She would have done nothing but stare at her mother every minute of every day, stamping memories with her mother’s smile, her eyes, her hair, her voice, her smell.…

  Smell. In a rush, Dixie remembered. She could see her mother slapping flour off her apron after rolling piecrust. She could smell her perfume—she was going out with Daddy soon—mixing with the cinnamon and lemon that she’d put on the apples Dixie had helped her slice. She could see her mother smile as she pulled back her hair; she could see the little lines at the corners of her bright bayou-emerald eyes, and the light catching those long gold earrings against her dark perfect neck. Her daddy came into the room, and she could hear her mama begin to sing.…

  The heavy door rattled open. Light filled the room, and Dixie was back in the world gone wrong.

  Two men stepped in, shadows against the lit doorway.

  “What’s he want with this little swamp rabbit?”

  “Does it matter?”

  Tattooed arms picked up her chair and carried her out into the hall. Lined up in a neat row along the wall were unconscious men in orange jumpsuits.

  The tattooed men carried Dixie into the old cigar-rolling room with the freezers and the bodies and the girl with the rope hair.

  The freezers had been pushed back; their electric cords ran up into the ceiling in bundles. Five shallow glass pools had been arranged on the floor like the five dots on dice.

  The men set Dixie down against one wall, then backed away to the other side of the room, where many more tattooed men were waiting. Some of them looked normal, like hard old truck drivers or swamp loggers—like some of her daddy’s friends. But some were different. They were taller and leaner, the muscles on their bare arms netted with strangely symmetrical veins. Small flaps of skin like fish gills fluttered on the sides of their necks. All of the changed men were dripping wet.

  Behind them, beside the wide track door she had jumped out of with Oliver, was a jumbled pile of bodies in orange jumpsuits. Two men began throwing the bodies into the river below.

  Oliver. Where was Oliver?

  She looked back at the pools. Four of the pools held a tattooed body; the center pool held Oliver, floating with his eyes shut and his arms extended, his face barely breaking the surface of the water. His ribs were rising and falling slowly as he breathed.

  One Hand hobbled out from behind the freezers. His dirty white coat was dripping. His black hair was slick wet, clinging to his face. His eyes were glittering with excitement. His one hand leaned against his bamboo cane. Hanging over his stump was a bundle of loose thin wires attached to long needles.

  Dixie watched as he set the needle wires down beside Oliver’s pool, then hobbled to a bench against the wall, making sure to circle far around the chained Pythia as he went. She was facing a corner, wrapped tightly in her hair.

  On the bench there sat an old-style record player. One Hand lowered the machine’s playing arm onto a record that was already in place and spinning. The sounds of an orchestra jumped from the speaker, filling the room.

&n
bsp; One Hand swayed cheerfully as he limped back to Oliver’s pool. He knelt beside it and began to insert the needles into Oliver’s pale flesh. He worked several in at every joint, then placed others in lines along his limbs and torso.

  When all the needles were satisfactory, Phoenix muttered to himself, and the thin wires attached to the needles uncurled and stood up straight, five feet tall, swaying and twisting in the air like swamp grass in the breeze.

  One Hand moved to the other bodies, setting needles, humming, conducting the music with his stump.

  When all the needles were set and the room was full of the strange, swaying wires, Phoenix shut his eyes and stretched out his good arm, running his hand slowly across the tops of the wires, whispering as he did. The water in the pools began to seethe, bubbling cold, and the bodies in the pools began to twitch. Dixie watched as Oliver’s skin boiled and rolled. His muscles knotted and bulged like exploding tumors. His joints unhinged and folded backward.

  Dixie shut her eyes and tucked her chin against her chest. She thought about her mother, about her father’s laugh and the sound of the odd songs he’d sing while he worked, the whir of his saw and the crack of his hammer, anything but the loud music and the bodies splashing and thumping and One Hand’s terrible whispered groaning.

  Dixie couldn’t say how much time passed. She sent her mind racing elsewhere and elsewhen. She spent whole days with her parents, whole weeks at her grandmother’s. She hopped through summers, and the life spans of two pets. She rearranged her rooms in three different houses. Until finally, she noticed that the room around her had grown still.

  The music had stopped, but she could hear the record player still turning. One Hand was breathing hard. Sniffing.

  Feet moved past her, and finally, she opened her eyes.

  The wires and needles had been collected and carried away. The bodies they had been connected to had changed. Tattooed arms had lengthened. Necks were gilled. Muscles bulged strangely. Joints and limbs were bent akimbo. Men who before had looked like floating sleepers now looked dead and violently broken. Oliver was the least changed, but still his back was twisted. One of his legs was hanging over the side of his pool and bent sharply back at the knee.