CHOSEN (16 page)

Beneath him on one side stood the forest of sticks. Behind him on the other side, the land sloped downward until it met a narrow plain before climbing again. There were a lot of hills and dells. Everything was covered with the dead.

Dynan tried to find some correlation to where his home should be but couldn’t do it. He couldn’t place where he was at all. He thought maybe to get to the other hill, but that meant crossing an open space that had fewer bodies to hide under, and going the same way as the wraiths.

***

The dead man behind him was very giving. The long plain was slightly less terrifying with him, but no less difficult. Dynan crawled the entire distance, pulling the body along by an arm until the arm came off. The other arm didn’t last much longer. The legs held up better, but it was harder to move, until Dynan tied the limbs together at the ankles.

“I'm sorry,” he said to the corpse as he went, and wondered what kind of soul he'd have left if he ever made it back home.

He kept low and moved carefully, keeping an eye on the wraiths already on the ground ahead of him. He used the body to take cover whenever they turned around.

It was the ones flying overhead, raking by without warning that were most difficult to avoid. Dynan kept still when they were aloft. He even fell asleep, or some version of sleep that meant he closed his eyes and didn’t move. He saw things though, grotesque recreations of death and dismemberment that jerked him back awake and made him not want to close his eyes again.

He reached the other side of the plain covered in grime and other things, stinking of it, but all in one piece. He left what remained of the dead man’s body at the foot of the hill. Using the dead already in place, he climbed to the top to look over.

A dry wind blew up from the base, carrying with it the smell of something he couldn’t place. He didn’t know it, except to know it was foul. He thought for a second about the wind off the Wythe Sea hitting the tall cliffs the Palace stood on, rattling the windows. The desire to breathe the salt rich breezes from his home was so suddenly overwhelming it made breathing in the stench unbearable. There was physical pain with the thought, like hot stabbing knives. It was a punishment for seeing a thing of beauty in this place of horror. He put the thought of home out of mind.

There was some benefit to making the arduous trek across the plain and up the hill. He recognized where he was. It still didn’t have much correlation to Rianamar and the Palace. Everything was backward or slightly off where it ought to be. The city didn’t exist. Neither did the Palace or the Temple, but the land was mostly in the right place. It made him feel like he was in some kind of alternate universe, but then he supposed purgatory qualified.

Cutting through the low valley, as it did through Rianamar, was the Wyvern River, only there seemed something distinctly different about this version. Polen said there wasn’t any water and yet there seemed to be a river of it.

The dryness of his mouth intruded. Thinking about water was a bad idea too.

He became obsessed with it, the thought of it driving him down the hillside and halfway across the valley toward it before the realization that he was out in the open struck him still. Slowly, Dynan sank down to his knees, willing himself to be as small as possible.

There weren’t any bodies all the way to the riverbank. The longer he sat out in the open, the faster the Six would find him. He lost track of them the moment he came down the hill. He didn’t know where they might come from next.

He pulled to his feet and kept going, hunched over, half running and then racing to get there, the hair on the back of his neck standing up. When he turned around, still running, there was nothing there when it felt the Six were right behind him.

He reached the riverbank, recoiling as the realization came. He understood the saturation of salt in the air. He wondered how he’d ever be able to live with the smell of the sea again, standing there on the edge of a river of blood.

He started throwing up from it, only there wasn’t anything inside to come up. He leaned over his knees, retching in spasms.

The desire to drink didn’t leave him. His mouth was parched. His tongue felt twice its normal size. He didn’t have any spit to swallow.

Dynan sat down and hugged his knees on the riverbank beside a pile of something that resembled bodies but was distinguishable only by a jumble of protruding limbs. Polen had been right about getting used to it.

“I’d like to know,” he said under his breath, “what the hell I did? Was it sneaking out of the Palace a few times?” he asked the air and then didn’t know why he was talking out loud. “Getting my guard killed?”

He put both palms into his eyes to try and stop what was coming, and succeeded to a degree.

 “I really wish you were here,” he said of Colin Fryn, but then couldn’t believe what he was thinking.

The idea of bringing anyone, living or dead into this horror ought to have been the last thing on his mind. He tried hard not to think about Dain, afraid Polen was right about that too. Dynan was alone though, with no one to rely on but himself. He didn’t know how he was supposed to accomplish the task he’d been given or even how he was going to get across this river.

Nearly drowning at the age of three meant he avoided water at all costs. The rest of his family enjoyed the annual trip to the beach. It wasn’t that he didn’t know how to swim. Dain made him learn, and then later, just last year, Dynan decided to get better at it. He forced himself into the pool and practiced, but Dain was always with him. It was the only way he could do it.

Dynan hugged his knees a little harder. There weren’t any bridges. There wasn’t any wood to make a raft, or even a few boards to string together to hold onto. He doubted the bodies would float. Dain wasn’t there.

It hurt more than was endurable to cry without crying. It made him want to pull his eyes out of his head to get rid of the agony.

“Bad idea,” he said.

Dain would know what to do. Rash, maybe, but Dain was fearless too. He was smarter, stronger, better at everything. Dynan didn’t begrudge him that, wishing he could trade places with Dain permanently. He’d be King instead, and be better at it.

Dynan looked at the flowing blood, a deep brownish red, the current swirling in places, but mostly sluggishly meandering. He wished for even a second of Dain’s courage. His brother wouldn’t think anything of this, except as an impediment to the objective.

“I don’t know why I have to cross the damn thing anyway,” Dynan said. “Getting to the other side doesn’t count as a good enough reason. Maybe finding Alurn isn’t good enough. Well nothing seems good enough if I put it that way. What the hell.”

He closed his eyes against another round of gagging nausea that was more painful than tearless crying. He wondered if he’d make it across without taking a drink, suddenly afraid if he did, he’d never escape the place. He’d stay here, damned for all time.

“All right,” he told himself, trying to drill up the courage to get on with it before he really was driven to pull his eyes out. In this place, nothing horrible was impossible. “You’ve been in the pool at home dozens of times now. It’ll be like that. Well not really, but...All right, really, it’s not like that at all. It doesn’t matter. You have to do it anyway. Just start. You can do this.”

“Great. Now I’m talking to myself.”

“At least I’m talking, so shut the fuck up, already.”

“And I’m telling myself to shut up. I guess that means I’ve lost my mind too.”

“How about you just stop talking. Stop talking. Boy, I didn’t think I’d ever hear myself say that. Just get on with it, would you? All right, I’m going. Right now. I’m going to get in this nasty river. And I swear, by the Gods, I will never swim across or in anything, ever again. Ever.”

The bank was slippery with little to grab hold of that wasn’t a grisly mess. He went up to his waist faster than he wanted, and when his feet hit the bottom and slipped, he almost didn’t stop himself from going under. He dug his fingers into the muck, regaining his balance slowly.

Fumes rose around him, gagging in their intensity, filling his nose and mouth with the taste of rotting flesh. He couldn’t stop breathing. He started throwing up again. He retreated backward, defeated already, but the bank was too steep to climb out.

His sole purpose became getting to the other side as quickly as possible. His boots weighed him down and he thought he should have gotten rid of them. The bed of the river was uneven. Up to his waist in blood, it was hard to walk without tripping, and too shallow to swim. He couldn’t tell what he was walking on until they started bobbing to the surface.

Bodies. Heads. Dismembered limbs.

“Oh come on! Okay, just don’t look at them. What is that? Another head. And a hand to go with it. That's nice. Oh, wait a minute. They're...Shit...”

It was his imagination, he told himself. “No, they're not. They are not. They are
not
alive. ”

The hands really weren’t trying to grab hold of him, but the next instant he saw one clutching his shoulder, latched on like a leach.

Dynan started rushing, not caring what he was stepping on as the grasping bodies surrounded him. He shoved past them, half swimming, half running across the riverbed, kicking up more of them as he went. Before too long the whole river was covered with them. He was only halfway across.

He wrenched off the clinging hands, throwing them away from him. They came back and they started to pull. At the same time the bottom fell out from under him. He went in up to his neck.

Panic set in. These things, dead, mutilated and somehow sentient were trying to drown him. It was his greatest fear.

Something latched onto his leg, crawled up to his knee, tightening its grip as it went. He had the presence of mind to pull in a lungful of air the second before he was pulled under.

He kicked and thrashed against it, trying to ignore the need for air that grew more desperate by the moment. Dynan opened his eyes, a mistake, and couldn’t see at all. He couldn’t tell which way was up.

He remembered Dain telling him to relax and he’d float, but Dynan couldn’t follow the advice. The next instant he was going to breathe and fill his lungs with blood. The hands on him rose up to his shoulders. He tried one last time to get them off, and met a whole body.

He head broke the surface and a hand clamped over his mouth right after he dragged in a gasp of air, right after he made sure he wasn't going to suck in a mouthful of blood.

“Don’t make a sound,” a voice hissed in his ear - after it was too late.

Faulkin Yeld shook his head at him and pulled him back under. Just before he had to squeeze his eyes closed, Dynan saw a wraith wheel around, aiming for them.

Relief flooded through him anyway, even as the presence of the wraith increased to a pitch, swept over them, and then lessened. Faul tugged on his arm, and met him at the surface.

“One more time,” Faul said. “Swim toward shore. And whatever you do, kid, don’t drink it. You’ll be puking it back up for days. Pol is already across.”

“How?”

“There’s more than one hole out of that tunnel. When you get to the shore, get out and get under cover. The Six are half-blinded by the taken, but you’re a damn magnet to them. Go under.”

The news that Polen was all right made it easier. The wraith turned another way the next time up, and didn’t come back. Polen met him on the bank.

As Dynan reached a hand up he saw for a second in Polen’s face something that made him hesitate. Polen had his teeth together and breathed through his nose. There was something else in his eyes too, but Dynan was so happy to see him, the realization didn’t come until it was too late.

Polen reached for Dynan, taking his hand. Abruptly, he melded into Adiem Telaerin.

Dynan was yanked from the river. Another hand descended to take him by the throat. The Six stood around in a disjointed circle, some as men, some as wraiths coming in to land. He wouldn’t escape them this time. Everything Polen Forb had feared would happen. They’d get all three of them, Alurn, Dynan and Dain, and they’d release the demon on the world.

Adiem reached down and drew a finger along side Dynan’s face, grinning in delight, and showed him what was coming.

~*~

Chapter 15

There was a lot of screaming.

There was darkness, pain and anguish combined.

There were visions.

People were packed into a space not large enough to hold them. Thousands of them jostled for a more comfortable position when there weren’t any places left to stand. They walked over top of others who’d given up. Every one of them was naked to the elements. It rained in some places, snowed in others, both falling red. There was hail and lightning, all squeezed together on a plain of misery.

Dynan knew he would spend the rest of eternity there.

The terrible vision faded. The sound of moaning stopped. There came the sensation of movement and awareness of being carried on something. He was shaking again while the rocks slid by. They were trudging along a stone path, climbing up into the mountains, though Dynan didn’t know which mountains.

The rock was as red as the river. Gray light was sucked from the sky, replaced by black swirling inky darkness that obscured sight. An occasional patch of light came through and told him what caused the dark. Adiem smiled down at him.

Dynan instantly moved to roll off the cot carried by four untaken men, but he was shoved back down. Adiem shook his head. “It’s best if you conserve your energies. You’ll need them later. The river crossing took quite a bit out of you.”

Dynan looked down, following Adiem’s gaze. A black worm the size of his finger had attached to his hand. It was fat and dug into skin. When Dynan tried to pull it off, skin started to come with it, and it wouldn’t let go. He saw another on his other hand, another on his wrist, under his shirtsleeve. He felt one at his neck. They were all over him. He could feel one sinking into his leg.