Kingdoms of the Cursed, page 5
“Goddess,” she repeated.
“A dark goddess,” he murmured. His voice was almost hypnotic. “A goddess of death, of the gateway to oblivion. When the mighty fall from the High and Faraway, it is here they land, before passing into the Reign of the Departed. My realm is not so vast as the Kingdoms, I grant you. But it has many charms. You are neither of the Kingdoms nor of the Ghost Country, Veronica. You are like me, both quick and dead. Immortal. Above life and death, right and wrong, good and bad. Be my queen, and I will love you as no other ever can.”
With every word he spoke, she wanted to shut her ears and hear no more; for every word he spoke she wanted a hundred more. Everything he said made sense. Before, she had been the Creek Man’s slave. But in the Kingdoms, she had felt her potential, the power she might have. She loved Errol, but he expected so much of her. So did Aster. She did not tell them the truth about the urges she had at night, the hungers that came upon her, the deeds she imagined.
Shandor already knew, and not only did not care, but shared those predilections. He only expected her to be herself, and for her to let him love her. Here, she could behave as she wanted, and no one would try to make her feel bad about it.
What was wrong with that?
Maybe nothing. Maybe everything. She didn’t know. But she did know something was holding her back, just as something had held her back in the Kingdoms, every time she was on the verge of losing herself to her power.
And there was something else. Shandor was perceptive enough, and earnest. But he was also smug and self-satisfied. She could tell from the look on his face he believed it was impossible for her to refuse him. And that was hard to abide. He did not know her as well as he thought he did.
“That’s a very kind offer,” she told him. “I’m sure it’s very flattering, and some other girl would eat it up. But not me. I must say no.”
Shandor leaned forward.
“You must understand, I am very determined. Since the moment I saw you by the creek, my yearning for you has been constant.”
“That’s, wow—a whole day,” she said.
He leaned back. “You will see,” he said. “There is no hurry.”
“Great,” she said. “But in the meantime, I have things to do, parties to attend, and so on. So, if you could point me toward my friend Aster, that would be lovely.”
He regarded her silently for a long time, long enough that she began to wonder if she would be able to kill him if it came to that. He had suggested he was like her, but in what way, exactly?
Finally, he turned to the girl who had returned to her place at the edge of the candlelight.
“Take her to her friend,” she said.
The girl came, took her hand, and lead her from the tent.
“You don’t mind your boyfriend gettin’ all flirty with strangers?” she asked, once they were outside.
“He is my brother,” the girl replied, leading her through the encamped caravan. “He has no mate. He has never courted one before. Only you.”
“I bet that’s what you tell all the girls,” she said.
Shandor’s sister didn’t reply. A few moments later they came to a black, horse-drawn carriage, complete with two horses.
Aster was inside, apparently asleep. Veronica leaned close, until she could feel her life pulsing.
“That’s it?” she said to the girl.
“My brother bids you take the carriage,” she said. “Tell the horses where you want to go.”
“Tell your brother he is very kind,” Veronica said.
The girl nodded. “You’ve made a mistake, you know,” she said.
“If so, it’s really not the first,” Veronica said. She opened the door to the carriage and nudged Aster.
“Wake up, Sleepy,” she said.
Aster stirred, but her eyes didn’t open.
“Some kind of spell on her?” she asked.
“Yes,” the girl said. “It will dissipate by sunrise.”
“Okay,” Veronica said. She climbed in and shut the door.
“Horses,” she said. “Take us out of here. Take us to Errol.”
The beasts shifted restlessly but did not move.
“You must name a place,” Shandor’s sister said. “Or at least a direction. They know much, these horses, but not the location of every person in the Kingdoms.”
“Oh,” she said. “Okay, then. Horses, take us out of here, into the nearest Kingdom.”
The carriage lurched into motion. Soon they were on the open road, beneath the stars, the lights of the camp and the town dwindling behind them.
Aster woke to unfamiliar motion. She found she was resting against the wooden frame of an open window. The dark trunks of gigantic trees passed by beyond, the deep orange light of the rising sun occasionally visible through them. Between the trees and the sunrise were more trees, morass, and occasional open water. A gigantic grey heron raised up its neck and turned its head to watch them pass by.
She remembered riding on the carousel, the change in motion as they moved in-between—then nothing, or at least very little.
She turned her head, slowly. The window was in a carriage with two seats upholstered in earth-toned paisley fabric. She was in one—Veronica lay on the other. She leaned out of her window and saw the vehicle was drawn by two horses but saw no driver. Through the other window were more trees and swamp.
Since nothing dramatic or terrifying seemed to be happening, she took a moment to open her backpack and check her possessions. Everything seemed to be there, including the little silver orb she’d found at the merry-go-round.
That settled, she nudged Veronica with her toe. When that didn’t get results, she pushed a bit harder.
Veronica cracked her eyes open.
“Beauty rest,” she mumbled.
“Just—what’s going on?”
Veronica closed her eyes again.
“We got waylaid by a cute guy named Shandor,” she murmured. “He offered to make me his queen and fulfill my e-ver-y wish. I told him to scat because I’ve got a boyfriend. He wept and pleaded, I very was strong—no sir, mister! Then he gave us this carriage. I told it to take us into the nearest Kingdom. The end. Now let me sleep.”
“Oh,” Aster said. “I see. So now we’re . . . ?”
“On a road in the middle of a big swamp,” Veronica said. “Unless we aren’t anymore. Now you know everything. Tell the horses where to find Errol, if you know, or to go somewhere we can ask someone if you don’t. Good night.”
“It’s morning.”
Veronica rolled over so she was facing the back of the seat.
Aster started to nudge her again and thought better of it. She wasn’t happy about being out of it; whoever this Shandor was, he must have been waiting for them, and he must be awfully powerful. But he must have also let them go, unless the carriage was taking them to a destination of his choosing. Veronica didn’t appear all that worried about it, and Aster was sure Veronica would fill in the details later.
One thing she felt in her bones: they were well beyond the Pale, and no longer in the Marches. They were in the Kingdoms again. She not only remembered her Whimsies, Adjurations, and Decrees, but also a number of Recondite Utterances, which she could never recall until there was enough elumiris present to pronounce them.
But the Kingdoms were fantastically large. They might be headed in absolutely the wrong directions.
She took out the sphere again.
“Pendí,” she told it.
It stirred and warmed in her palm. It rolled toward her middle finger, hesitated a moment, then moved back and over to her pointer, to her pinky, and again to her thumb.
The sphere came to her from her mother; there were other spheres, and they were supposed to be able to seek each other out. Unless she knew the names of the others, there was no way to make hers seek a specific one.
So, she had four choices. Any of them or none of them might bring her to Errol. She was assuming that whoever had left hers at the carousel had one, too—that it was a deliberate challenge for her to follow.
But that might not be true. The sphere might as easily be meant to mislead her to some distant doom.
She glanced back at Veronica for a moment. She was still asleep.
There was something else she could try now that they were in this deep.
She spoke a few soft words and lifted the sphere to her right eye, closing the left. She felt a slight push, and suddenly she was staring out from a height over a lush garden, waterfalls, a winding river, a city of pyramids.
At her command, the scene changed. A mountain, riddled with caves beneath a nighttime sky. Next, a seashore, seen from a height, and what was either a rising or a setting sun.
Then an arch of stone, and beyond it ruddy light. She felt a sort of tingle and, in her vision, turned to see a man on a throne of brass. He wore a robe and crown of gold and copper.
It was her father.
“There,” she whispered to the globe. “What is that place?”
And the globe, in its way, told her a name.
“Horses,” she said. “Take us to Ghartas Essenas.”
The horses tilted their heads to look back at her. A few moments later, they reached a crossroads, and the carriage turned northeast, leaving the swamp, moving uphill through a forest thick with brambles.
SEVEN
A FUNERAL SCENT
With no sun to tell the time, Errol couldn’t be sure how long he’d been walking, but some time had passed. The armor was heavy, and his body still had a long way to go before it was recovered from months in a coma, so he had to stop frequently.
When last he had been in the Kingdoms, in the body Aster built for him, he had been tireless and strong. A hero. He had marched for days, carried heavy loads, battled monsters. Now he knew that if it came up he wouldn’t be able to fight his way out of a wet paper bag.
Now and again he wondered if he shouldn’t go back and get the wooden armor. Just from touching it, he knew it would make him stronger—maybe as powerful as he’d been before, maybe even more so. That would be great, if he was sure he would be able to take it off, which was anything but a given. The idea of being stuck in a wooden body again didn’t appeal to him.
So he didn’t turn back.
As long as he was following the wash, things weren’t too terribly bad. He could douse himself in the cool water and rest beneath the shade of the tall, reedy trees. Along with her armor, Dusk had packed some food—dried fruit, hard bread, nuts that resembled hickory nuts but were sweeter.
But eventually, the tracks left the wash and traveled off across the desert sands.
He stopped to rest, which turned into a short nap. Then he filled Dusk’s waterskin as best he could from the shallow stream and set off along the trail. Soon the hospitable canyon with its shade and water was far from sight.
In very short order, the unmoving sun became more of a nuisance than ever. He was still in the green shirt and pants of a Laurel Grove “inpatient,” which was fortunate in that they were light cotton—but it was very hot. He resisted the urge to take the shirt off. His dark skin didn’t burn easily, but he knew in this perpetual high noon he would blister like cheese toast under a broiler. His exposed arms were already starting to hurt.
He had to rest more often, but rather than restoring him, each time it was more difficult to get back up. He began to wonder if he could make it back to the wash if he wanted too, but he stubbornly pressed on. The horsemen had to be going somewhere, and wherever that was would have water, he reasoned, and hopefully shade.
His eyes began to hurt from the glare, and since there was nothing but sand, he kept them closed about half the time, opening them often enough to make sure he was still following the trail. When he felt a breath of wind on his face, he thought he was imagining it. But as he came over the next dune, a welcome sight greeted him. The horizon was grey, with darker streaks angling toward the ground, and blue-white flickers of light in the anvil-shaped thunderheads high above.
Rain was coming his way. Water. Coolness.
But as it drew nearer, his elation began to fade, because the wind was picking up, and he saw the approaching storm was driving a wall of yellow before it. A sandstorm.
The only thing he knew about sandstorms was what he had read, but he knew they were bad in lots of ways. People got buried in them, for instance.
At the very least, the tracks he was following would be blown away, or washed off by the rain. Then what would he do?
Running was obviously no use, so he continued forward, keeping an eye out for shelter, any shelter, as the wall of sand darkened more and more of the sky.
He came over the top of a dune and stumbled going down the other side, sliding and tumbling until he reached the little valley before the next mound of sand. He wondered if he should stay there; would the dunes shelter him from the storm, or help to bury him?
The latter seemed more likely, so he hitched his pack back up and was preparing to scale the dune when he heard someone shouting. It sounded like it came from off to his right.
He broke into a slow jog but wasn’t able to maintain it for long. The call came again, louder this time, and he was able to make out the word “help” rather clearly.
The wind was stronger now, and the smell of the coming rain intense.
A few hundred paces or so later, he turned a bend between the dunes and saw a little boy, maybe eight, crouched against some rocks. When the boy saw him, he shouted again.
“Help, please!”
“I’m coming,” Errol shouted.
The boy was even younger than he had first thought. He was dark skinned, swathed in yellow robes, and he looked both exhausted and terrified.
“What’s the matter?” Errol asked.
“Please,” the boy said. “I can’t walk. An asp bit my foot, and it hurts too much.”
Errol saw the boy’s foot was indeed swollen and a nasty purple color.
Errol dropped the armor bundle and quickly retied it so he could drag it by a line on his waist. Then he picked the boy up. He was light, very light, but still almost too heavy for Errol to manage in his current state.
“Do you live nearby?” he asked. “Is there some shelter? We’re about to be in for it.”
“Yes,” the boy said. “Not too far, that way. Thank you, thank you, sir.”
“Hang on,” Errol said.
The wind was moaning now, and the sky no longer visible. Dust devils kicked grit up along the valley floor, and thunder crashed in the distance.
He followed the boy’s pointing finger as the storm found them; the sand felt like tiny sparks, striking his exposed skin. It began to sting his eyes and cake around his nose and mouth. In minutes, he could hardly see.
“There!” The boy shouted.
Errol thought the boy was just pointing at a dune, but then he realized there was some sort of structure there, built of stone nearly the same color as the sand and mostly covered by it. The boy was gesturing at a dark hole that led into it.
A blast of wind knocked him from his feet. He struggled to get back up, but then the dune shifted and sand came pouring down over his legs, trapping him.
The kid was still free, though.
“I’m sorry!” Errol yelled. “I don’t think I can get you there. Can you crawl the rest of the way?”
“It’s okay,” the kid said. He stood up and grabbed Errol by the hand. His grip was so strong, Errol yelped in pain. Then the boy started pulling him. He yelled again as it felt like his arm was going to dislocate, but then he came free of the sand, still towing the armor. He couldn’t see anything at all anymore, or even open his eyes for more than a few seconds.
He felt himself drawn along, and after a bit the wind dropped away, and the air was still.
Very still, and very dark. The boy was still dragging him—no longer over sand, but across smooth stone.
“Hey,” Errol said, spitting dust out of his mouth.
He realized it was growing lighter. It wasn’t daylight, or firelight, a but a sort of blue-green radiance.
Eventually it was bright enough to see that the boy was taller than he had been.
“Let go!” Errol shouted, beginning to struggle. He tore at the fingers with his free hand, but they felt like wire.
They entered a room lit by what appeared to be glowing sapphires arranged on the ceiling in the form of constellations, and now the thing pulling him let him go and faced him.
His mouth was far too wide, and he grinned, so Errol could see it was full of triangular teeth, like those of a shark. His eyes were mostly white, with little black pinheads in the centers. His fingers were very long, with nasty, sharp nails.
Errol started to scramble to his feet, but the thing moved quickly, grabbing him by the neck with both hands, stopping his breath instantly. He fought, but it was useless. It was so strong, and he was so weak . . .
“Release him,” a soft of voice said.
The monster frowned. “But lady, I am hungry.”
“Release him, I said. This one is not for you.”
But it didn’t; if anything, it tightened its grip.
“Release!” The voice shouted.
And finally, it did. Errol collapsed to the stone floor, gasping for air.
“It isn’t fair,” the thing said. “He should be mine.”
“I sent you after him, remember?” the voice said. “He is not for you.”
Errol’s head was still spinning, but he was able to sit up.
“I tried to help you,” he told the thing.
“That is your failing,” the creature said. “If your weakness was jewels, I would have promised you treasure.”
“He cannot help what he is,” the other voice said. “No more than you can help what you are.”
Errol rose unsteadily to stand.
“Where are you?” he asked.
“Back here. You may approach.”
By now, Errol had had a bit of time to absorb his surroundings. The bejeweled ceiling was vaulted, the rest of the chamber rather squared off. In the center of it was something that looked suspiciously like a person-shaped box without a lid. Beyond that, against the far wall, was a stylized statue of a woman with wings, painted in what would probably be bright colors if the light was better.
