A Dawn of Dragonfire: Dragonlore, Book 1 (22 page)

"Mori, you're shivering," Bayrin said.  He looked at her, his black cloak now white with snow.  Snow even coated his eyebrows.  And yet he began to doff his cloak.  "Here, wear this too."

She held up her hands.  "No, Bay.  You're cold too.  Keep your cloak, I'm all right."

His words, if not his cloak, warmed her.  She wasn't sure why, but since battling Acribus underground, Bayrin had seemed much nicer.  He sighed and rolled his eyes less often.  He made fewer quips.  He even held her hand when they stepped over ice—the hand with six fingers, which he would mock so much back at home.  Had something happened underground to change him?  Maybe he was only scared too… scared that the other Vir Requis were all dead, that the city of Nova Vita had fallen, that they would die out here.

Mori did something she never thought she would dare, something that a moon ago would terrify her.  She stood on her tiptoes, leaned forward, and kissed Bayrin's cheek.  His red stubble tickled her lips.

"But thank you, Bay."

He raised his eyebrows and whistled.  "Oh my."  He made to remove his boots.  "Here, take my boots too!  And my pants and shirt.  Would you like some nice warm socks?"  He wiggled his eyebrows.  "Does that get me a kiss on the lips?"

Mori couldn't help but giggle.  She shoved him back.  "It'll get you frostbite, that's what."

As they kept walking, Mori hugged herself and wondered:  What would it be like… to truly kiss Bayrin on the lips?  Mori was eighteen already, but she had never kissed a boy.  Her mother had been married at her age, and Lyana had kissed her first boy at age fourteen, but Mori had always feared it.  Would it be painful and cold like… like when…?

She shook her head wildly, scattering snow. 
No.  Don't think about that, Mori.  Love isn't like that night, and if I ever kiss a boy, it will be for love.  He would love me, and I would love him, and it will feel like those old days, when I'd sit by the fireplace and read books with maps.

She slipped on some ice, and Bayrin caught her hand to steady her, and she let him hold it as they kept walking.  The forest spread cold ahead, as far as she could see.  In the distance, upon the eastern wind, she thought she could hear a phoenix shriek.

 
 
LYANA

They walked down a twisting tunnel.  Its floor was rubbery like skin and strewn with eyeballs like pebbles.  Shattered spines rose in ridges along the walls, seeping blood.  Fingers rose in tufts from nooks and crevices, nails cracked, snagging at them.

Lyana could see only several feet in each direction; shadows pushed deep around her, swirling and cackling, red eyes blazing in their depths.  When the tunnels forked, Elethor did not hesitate, but always chose the path that sloped deeper down.

"Do you know where we're going?" she asked him.

He stared ahead, holding his tin lamp high.  The flames flickered.  They had oil enough for another day, two days at most.

"This tunnel is steeper," he said.  "So that's where we go.  Deeper into the darkness."

"You don't know that'll take us to the Starlit Demon," Lyana said.  "This labyrinth is vast, Elethor.  It might be larger than Requiem itself, larger than the world.  According to the stories, the Starlit Demon is locked behind the Crimson Archway, and I haven't seen a single archway here.  We need to find a map, or a source of knowledge, or—"

He spun toward her and glared.  "Lyana, what map?  What 'source of knowledge'?  The last creatures we met who could talk were dangling on cobwebs, mumbling nonsense about numbers not lining up, and hairs that grew too slowly, or stars know what else."

"So your answer is to just walk blindly?" she demanded, voice rising now.  She swept her sword around her.  "Elethor, we are getting lost down here.  You have no idea where to go.  No idea what to do.  No idea how to get back home.  You—"

"Well, do you?"  He raised his eyebrows.  "Do you have answers?  You're just as much in the dark.  So unless you have suggestions, keep walking."

"Well, I…"  She searched for words but found none and fumed.  All her life, she had always had an answer to any question.  She knew everything about geography, heraldry, warfare, swordplay, history, astronomy.  She was the smartest person in Requiem, she was sure of it; yet now she felt so lost, so afraid.

She raised her left hand and shivered.  Bandages covered her fingers, hiding the gray, withered flesh.  A day ago, only her fingertips had been shriveled and pale.  Now lines of rot stretched from under the bandage, spreading across her palm to her wrist.  The skin looked old, spotted and wrinkled, the bones beneath it brittle.

Elethor looked at her, his eyes softened, and he sighed.

"Does it hurt?" he asked quietly.

She shook her head.  "I can't feel my hand anymore.  At least there's no pain."

She shivered and lowered her eyes, remembering the withered creatures back at Nedath's lair.  She had hung among them for hours.  Most were no wider than snakes, nothing but spines with loose skin, their limbs wilted stalks.  Their skulls had long crumbled to dust, leaving loose faces like old rags.

"We are the Shrivels," one had told her, swinging on its cobwebs.  "We are the lost ones, the cursed, the counters of the numbers… or maybe the numbers themselves."  It grinned, showing toothless gums.  "Soon you will be one of us, soon you will help us count, we will count all the numbers, we will line them, or she will hurt us, she will eat us, she will feed upon our sweetest meat."

How long will it be?
Lyana wondered.  She no longer doubted that their curse infected her.  How long until her palm withered completely, and the disease spread to her arm, then her body, and finally left her a shrunken creature that could not die?  Would she remain here in the Abyss, mumbling of shattered teeth that must be found, screws to turn, and more ramblings of the dark?  Or would they hang her on a post in Requiem, a thing to pity, and she would linger there as the seasons turned, unable to die?

Suddenly she laughed.  She couldn't help it.

"Imagine it, Elethor!" she said, tears in her eyes.  Laughter shook her.  "Me, only a piece of shriveled skin on a hook!  Would you hang me by your throne so I could still watch the court?"

She laughed so hard that she didn't realize she was crying, that her laughter was becoming a panicked pant.  She jerked when Elethor touched her shoulder, sure for an instant that it was her, Nedath, the demon who had bitten her shoulder and spoken of sucking her bones.  She found herself wrapped in Elethor's arms, like the cobwebs had wrapped her, and she wept against him.

"I won't let that happen," he said softly, stroking her hair.

She shivered, unable to stop her tears from falling.  "I'm so scared, Elethor.  I saw things in there, in the darkness she showed me.  I saw… there was a black hill, and a black rose on it, and horror filled the air, as if fear were a physical thing.  And… Elethor, I have to stop the bones from lining up!  I have to
count
them, Elethor.  I have to count the hairs that are growing sideways."

He shook his head, eyes narrowed.  "What, Lyana?  What do you mean?  There are no bones.  There's nothing to count."

She sobbed, body shaking.  "I don't know!  I don't know, Elethor.  But…"  She sniffed.  "If my teeth fall from my gums, I…"  She gritted those teeth and rubbed her eyes.  "No!  No.  I can't think like them.  I can't talk like them."  She clung to his clothes with her good hand, staring into his eyes through her tears.  "I won't turn into a Shrivel.  Promise me that, Elethor.  Promise you won't let me go."

He held her.  "I promise you, Lyana.  As King of Requiem, I will do whatever I can to cure you; I will summon healers from across the world, from Salvandos in the west to Leonis in the east.  I won't let you turn into anything."  He touched her hair.  "Do you remember how, when we were children, we'd go to Lacrimosa Hill, eat walnuts from a pouch, and look at the stars?  You and Mori would whisper, and Bayrin and Orin would laugh, and I'd try to tell you all about the stars, but you'd never listen."  He smiled softly.  "We'll do that again, Lyana.  We'll go stargazing, and eat walnuts, and laugh…"

He fell silent.  They stood holding each other, and Lyana tried to remember those days of her youth, the glow of the stars, the warmth of the breeze, the sound of her laughter, and she knew those days could never return.  Orin was gone now.  Mori was hurt, maybe too much to ever recover.  As for herself… could she ever be the woman she had been?  When fire rained, and darkness clutched her, was there still a path home?

"Let's keep going," she said and pulled back from his embrace.  She raised her lamp, casting its light upon a dead, dark land.  "Let's find this Starlit Demon and go home."

They walked across the grass of fingers, crushing them.  They moved through darkness, lashing their swords at red eyes that blazed around them.  Shadows swirled, taking the shapes of bloated dragons that burst, shedding bodies of smoke from their bellies.  Ribs rose around them, framing the tunnels, columns of dead cathedrals.  Bodies hung from the walls on meat hooks, their faces burnt.  Some bodies looked almost like Orin, others like Lyana's parents, some like herself.  Their bellies were split, revealing nests of transparent eggs, snakes moving inside the shells.  Hatched snakes squirmed along the tunnel floor, bloated, screeching, laughing, mocking them.

"Walk deeper, weredragons!" spoke the bodies on the hooks.  "Enter our darkness.  You will hang here too!  You will rot and burst and feed our hatchlings."

The bodies' faces twisted, mouths gasping.  They screamed, begged for death, and wept tears of blood.

"Don't look at them," Elethor said, jaw clenched.  "It's not real, Lyana.  It's just a dream.  It's just a nightmare they're showing us."

Lyana nodded, desperate to believe him.  When bodies rubbed against her, she shoved them aside and stabbed them, shedding blood and pus and maggots.  Their stench filled her nostrils.  Their flesh against her felt hot, sticky, too real to be a vision.  Yet she kept walking, forcing herself to stare forward, to ignore them.

"They're just a dream," she repeated through stiff lips.  "Just a dream."

"Are we just a dream?" asked a hanging body, speaking through a gaping wound in its rotted face.

"You have been kissed by Nedath!" said another, the skinned body of a man with a bull's head.

A snake coiled toward her, spine peeking through rents in its skin.  It hissed and stared with blazing red eyes.  "The Guardian of the Darkness bit her, children!  She will soon be a Withered One.  Look at her arm!"

The bodies on the hooks stared and hissed.  Tongues thrust out from their wounds and licked their blood.  Lyana looked at her arm and saw that Nedath's disease had spread to her elbow.  Her forearm was now thin as bone, her flesh gone, her skin dangling.

"Can you cure her?" Elethor said, raising his voice over their cries and laughter.  "How can we stop the curse?"

The bodies on the walls growled, revealing fangs.  "Feed us!  Feed us and we will tell you.  We know of a cure.  Feed us and we will help."

Fingers trembling, Lyana opened her pack.  She had brought food from Requiem: sweet apples, grainy rolls of bread, cheese, oranges, and dried fish.  Maggots filled the food now, and Lyana grimaced.

"I have food for you!" she shouted.  The bodies were twitching around her, legs kicking, as if trying to escape the meat hooks.

"We do not want your food of sunlight and soil!" one said.

"Feed us ourselves!" cried another.  "Let us feast upon our comrades, upon our sweet hands and feet!"

They opened their maws wide, drooling, begging for meat.  Those with arms reached out and pawed at her.  Their bellies bloated, pulsing with eggs.

"Stars, they're cannibals," Elethor whispered.  He was pale and his sword wavered in his hand.

Lyana wanted to gag, to weep, to run.  How could she do this?  To take a squirming body from the wall, hack it apart, feed it to its comrades?

"It would be like cutting meat, just like cutting meat!" they begged.  "Feed us, feed us our comrades!"

"Tell me of a cure first!" Lyana shouted.  Their voices rose so loudly, her ears hurt.  "Tell me how to cure Nedath's curse and I will feed you then!"

A halved body, ribs white and twisting, hissed at her.  "You must find the Feasting Table!" it said.  "You must eat there from the sweet meats.  Then you will be cured.  Then you will be a Withered One no more.  Then you must feed us!"

Elethor shouted, swinging his sword to hold back the groping arms.  "Where is this Feasting Table?"

The bodies pulled aside, like sweeping curtains of flesh, and revealed a gaping doorway.  Lyana could see nothing but shadows through it, but scents hit her nose.  She could smell… food,
real
food!  Fresh bread, and cakes, and fruits.  The scents mingled with the stench of the hanging bodies, a sickening mix of the delicious and rotting.

"Enter and feast, child of starlight," said the bodies.  "But choose wisely, so we may feast too."

Lyana looked at her arm.  The disease was spreading up to her shoulder.  Through her hanging skin, she could see the bones of her elbow, pale and full of worms.  She no longer cared for danger.  She rushed past the bodies into the dark chamber of scents.  Behind her, she heard Elethor follow.

They walked for a moment in darkness until they saw candles burn ahead.  The craggy walls widened, revealing a chamber with a tiled floor, white walls, and a chandelier.

A table stood in the room, and upon it lay a feast—such a feast as Lyana had never seen, not even in the courts of Requiem.  Golden platters, bowls, and plates held roast ducks on beds of mushrooms, glazed hams, grapes and apples and peaches, thick gravy, bread still steaming from the oven, stewed vegetables, and every other delight Lyana could imagine.  She realized that she was famished.  Her mouth watered.

She would have leaped toward the food, were it not for the figures that sat around the table.

Seven chairs surrounded the feast.  In all but one sat a Shrivel.  Their limbs had atrophied into mere twigs wrapped in loose skin.  Their spines were slung across the chairs, and their heads dangled over the backrests, forever looking at the walls behind them.  Their faces gasped and sucked at their toothless gums.  Dark liquid dripped from them, forming pools below their heads.  The last chair, the one at the head of the table, was empty.