Elysium, page 21
"Always," Sol says in quiet promise, and he clasps Pharaoh's hands.
The second their hands lock, the ground drops away. It takes Pharaoh and Sol with it. I call after them, but my voice is yanked away by the wind as a new world falls into place around me. Wheat fields and open sky are replaced by stone walls. I am alone in a tunnel, and the only light comes from scattered bits of luminescent moss.
That pinprick in the distance might be a trick of my eyes, but I'm hoping it's the way out. I put my hands out to the wall for balance and set off as carefully as I can. Within a few minutes the growing light tells me I'm going the right way, but my cautious optimism dies the second I reach the opening. Four massive snakes are waiting for me.
"Oh, she is quite sssstrange, isn't she?" one asks. "Interessssting."
"Evolution in the making," another agrees. "How unpleasant for ussss to live through it."
I risk a look down and find the ground only a short slide away. Before I can take the first step out of the tunnel, though, one of the snakes puts its giant head in my path.
"Careful, child. You do not know where you sssstep."
I look out past them, but all I see is a gray desert. "Where am I? Where is Sol?"
"You are at the wesssstern gate. Brimsssstone was routed to the north. It is their favorite."
Last I checked, snakes couldn't smile, but the looks these four give me is pretty damned close. I'm not sure if they're laughing at Sol's predicament or my misfortune, but right now I have to worry about me. I fold my arms over my chest and look from one snake to the next.
"Why did you split us up?"
"Why?" the snakes chorus, and one continues, "We did nothing. You brought thissss on yoursssself."
"I had nothing to do with this. I only halfway know what the wastes are."
"Perhapssss it was not your intention, but that does not change factssss."
"Is it ssssuicide or foolishnessss? The Nightmares would bleed dry to avoid thissss gate."
"Three pairs they've losssst here already, yet you expect to ssssucceed alone?"
I swallow hard against dread. "Can't you send me to Sol and Pharaoh?"
One snake tsks. "Too late. You have already arrived."
"You cannot turn back now," the second agrees. "You can only go forward."
"You musssst go forward," the third says. "Be careful, death Dream. There are rules. Your firsssst sssstep putssss you in play, and you cannot sssstop again until you win or die."
"You musssst not stop."
"If you do, you are lossst, and you will never find your way."
This is sounding like a worse idea by the second, but I can't see a way around it. "What did you call me?"
"We only call you what you are. Are you not pleased?"
"Not really," I say.
"Neither are we," one admits. It smacks me in the forehead with a quick dart of its tongue. "The Nightmares control sssso much already. Perhapssss it was inevitable they would come to take what is ours. We expect you will be a lessss toxic masssster than the one who came before."
"Adam," I guess. "Is Notte here?"
"Here? No. Fathom is in the catacombssss where he does not belong. We should like him removed, if you do not mind."
I'm treated to another creepy smile. "You do not mind, do you?"
"That was the plan," I say. "I'm here to kill him."
"How bold is the Dream with no Nightmare to call her own."
"These are the wastes, right?" I ask. "Sol said Nightmares' powers are muted here."
"In the wasssstessss, yes. The catacombssss are a little lessss friendly to your kind."
"A Dream with no one to protect her will surely die."
"Thanks for the vote of support," I say, and look out at the wastes again. My nerve is threatening to fail me, so I look for the only thing that can get me moving toward a certain death: "Does he have a girl with him?"
"Oh, the girl. Isn't she beautiful?"
My heart stops. "She's alive."
"She lives," the snake says, "and cries. Any Dream raised in the catacombssss would."
It feels like Madtown all over again, a sucker punch to every nerve ending in my body. There's a deafening ringing in my ears as I slowly come back to myself again, but it takes an eternity before I can look at the snake who spoke. I dig my fingers into my shirt, trying to feel my scars through the dirty cotton. For a blinding moment I'm sure I feel the hole the gatekeepers left in me.
"You're lying."
"Ssssee for yoursssself, but you will not like what you ssssee."
I scramble down the rocks as quickly as I can go without breaking my neck and take off across the desert.
The snakes' laughter follows me for miles.
THIRTEEN
The wastes are a colorless, washed-out expanse of gray. There are no solid edges, even in the mountains that line the distant horizon. Everything is blurred just a bit, as if someone sneezed while taking a picture. More disturbing than that, though, is the complete lack of sound. There's no wind, no pat of my shoes against the ground, no distant birds or rustling creatures. The silence is oppressive, and when I clear my throat to break it I feel deafened by my own noise.
I run until the stitch in my side forces me to slow to a hurried trot, but I don't seem to make any progress. The skeleton trees in the distance draw no closer, and the horizon doesn't change. Only the absence of the snakes and the western gate behind me prove I've moved at all. I can't help but keep looking back for that reassurance, but the absence of my footprints in the sand creeps me out too much to let my stare linger. All I can do is point my eyes forward and try to keep going.
I'm afraid to speak against this quiet stillness, but the silence just makes my thoughts louder.
"She's not a Dream."
She can't be, but even as I refuse to entertain the thought I know she's the best answer to the biggest remaining questions: why Notte risked capture to steal her from me and how he's stayed alive this long with neither Meridian nor me to prop his gift up. Sol has said over and over that a Nightmare cannot have a second Dream, but Notte's attempts to get Pharaoh killed are proof he is willing to replace Dreams for the Nightmares' sake. He left me behind for Sol and took Ciara for himself.
I think about Nevere and Yasmin and the agony that fuels Sol's powers, and the thought of Notte introducing a baby to that world has me screaming myself hoarse.
"I'm going to kill him." It's a rough whisper that does nothing to make me feel any better. I shriek it at the unchanging horizon next: "I'm going to kill him!"
Minutes turn to hours that blur together in a meaningless hum. I walk until I can't feel my feet anymore, until my legs throb with every step and I have to beat a rhythm into my aching thighs. Rage fuels me when the rest of me would have given up; hate helps me put one foot in front of the other as I stay the course. I don't care how tired I am or how long it will take me to get to the catacombs from here. Notte turned that power on our newborn daughter, and I am going to kill him no matter the cost.
I walk nine hours through the wastes, then ten. Eventually soreness dims to a bone-deep exhaustion, and I do whatever I can to chase away the fog in my mind. I name every cocktail I can think of, rattling off ingredients and proportions, then list my customers and all of Elysium's tenants. I name and spell all fifty states, give a half-hearted guess at naming the capitals, and count until my tongue is too numb to continue.
The world remains unchanged.
I've been walking almost a full day when I start falling asleep standing up. At first I keep myself awake by pinching my arms, sometimes hard enough to draw blood, but a couple hours later not even that can keep my eyes open. I talk to myself again, but I'm so tired the sound of my own voice is infuriating. I just want peace and quiet and rest.
Every time that angry feeling starts to win the argument, I whisper Ciara's name. It's enough to pull me back on task, at least for now. I am sure I drift off for a minute here and there, but my body keeps moving, and that is all that matters.
My second day in the wastes, something moves. I'm running before I even realize what's happened, booking it back the way I came. Surprise offers a temporary jolt of adrenaline and wakefulness, but I'm a quarter-mile away before I realize what I'm running from. I wheel around and go back, eyes wide and searching for the anomaly.
Somewhere between me and the eternal horizon is a moving figure, and as I jog that way the shape grows larger and closer. It's a woman, pacing in circles and toeing at the ground. When she notices me in her peripheral vision she goes still and looks up to watch my approach.
"Don't stop!" I call, horrified.
She gapes, then runs to meet me halfway. I slow my pace and she falls in easily at my side. Before I can tell her the snakes' warning about stopping down here, she points an accusing finger at me and says, "You can see me. How is that possible?"
"What?"
"You're in the wastes," she says, a tad impatiently. "How did you get here?"
"Same way you did?" I guess.
"Not likely. I've been dead six years at least."
It takes my tired brain a moment to understand. "You're a ghost."
"And you're a psychic, which means you shouldn't be here."
"I came with two others, but we got separated."
"You got lost, you mean," she says, and clucks her tongue in sympathy. "Terrible way to go."
"I'm not lost. I'm still on the path."
Her smile is a tad too pitying for my tastes. "How's that trail working out for you?"
Her attitude leaves much to be desired, but I'm so desperate for company that I let it slide. "It's horrible. I've been on it for over a day and there's just—nothing." I make a wide gesture to indicate the unchanging world.
"Only a day?" she asks. She shields her eyes from a nonexistent sun and peers out at the mountains. "I followed a Dream and Nightmare once, when they made the mistake of coming into the wastes through the west. They made it three days, you know. Almost four. I tried to keep them awake, but they couldn't see or hear me. They only had each other, and in the end it wasn't enough. He carried her for a couple miles at the end, and then she made the call he couldn't. She sang them both to eternal sleep."
"Three days," I say bleakly. "No problem."
"At least you have me," she says brightly. "I can't sing half as well, though."
That's absolutely no comfort. "Which pair? The Dream and Nightmare, I mean."
"No idea. Does it matter?"
"Sol will want to know, I'm sure," I say. "I'll tell him when I catch up."
"Catch up?" she echoes. "You can't, not if you got separated. The wastes reset for every living party that passes through. He could be standing twenty feet from you and you'd never know it. The only ones with freedom between the layers are the dead."
"Fantastic. Got any good news for me while you're at it?"
"I'm dead and you're in the wastes. What do you think?"
I bite my lip so hard I taste blood. "I hate my life."
"Not for much longer." She shrugs when I glare at her, then says, "Jessica Laurell. My name," she explains. "You didn't ask for it."
"I didn't," I agree, and we continue on in silence.
I half-expect her to leave when I opt for ignoring her, but I'm probably the most interesting thing she's seen since the Dream and Nightmare died down here. She keeps pace with me, picking at her fingernails and humming to herself now and then.
Horror over my predicament has to give way to inevitable exhaustion, and within two hours I'm falling asleep standing up again. I dig my thumbnails into my tear ducts. I can risk sleepwalking again, or I can strike up another conversation with a woman who's just waiting for me to die. Neither one feels like a lesser evil right now, but Ciara matters more than any of this.
"How long is this path, anyway?" I ask.
"That depends," Jessica says. "Last time I walked from gate to gate, it took twenty-three days, but it could be longer by now. The wastes are always growing, you know?"
I almost give up on the spot, but her misunderstanding is a spark of much-needed hope. "I'm not going gate-to-gate. I'm heading to the catacombs. How far are they?"
She cuts a sharp look at me. "You can't be serious. You're going the wrong way." At my dumbfounded look, she stabs a finger at the ground. "The catacombs aren't on this layer. They're one down. The northern layer's the only direct route if you can survive the trip, and even that takes a day and a half if you're not familiar with it."
"No," I say, voice raw. "There has to be a way from here."
"If you're that keen on dying you might as well just wait up here with me. The catacombs have been a righteous mess for years now, courtesy of their half-mad king. Better to sleep in this wasteland than be eaten alive in that, don't you think?"
"I have no choice," I insist. "My daughter is down there. I have to find her."
I expect laughter or mockery, but Jessica looks stricken. She drops her gaze to her hands, and I follow her stare to the wedding ring on her finger. It's my only shot at getting out of this hellhole, so I press the advantage with a quiet but insistent, "If you were ever a mother, you know I can't stop now. Help me find my baby girl. There has to be a way down from here, a trapdoor or something the dead use to go back and forth. Let me use it."
"There's no guarantee it'll work for you."
"I'm the death Dream and a psychic," I say. "It will work."
I sound a lot more confident than I feel, but she doesn't call my bluff. She gnaws on her lower lip for a moment, then abandons the path to cut straight out into the desert. All I can do is follow after her and hope she's not leading me astray. A glance back shows the trail disappeared as soon as I left it. My stomach clenches a bit in cold fear and I jog to catch up to her.
We continue on like this for an hour, almost long enough for me to well and truly panic, and then Jessica stops and gestures for me to go ahead.
"It was fun while it lasted," she said.
I step through a patch of cold air to a world of thick, warm fog. I'm almost startled into stopping and cast my arms out to either side in an attempt to find support. I graze a thick rope with my left hand and flail around until I find its companion on my right. The ground dips and sways under every step, but I'm so disoriented and tired it takes me a minute to realize I'm on a suspension bridge. I slow to a cautious pace, not wanting to rock off the side. I can't see further than my nose, and I lose sight of my legs around my knees. It's probably for the best that I can't see whatever chasm the bridge goes over.
The air tastes so much cleaner than the stagnant death of the wastes, but the warmth here is dangerous. It lulls me to sleep despite my best efforts to stay awake. I tilt forward more than once, but each startled jolt awake does little to keep me from doing it again a few seconds later. I rake my hands over the ropes, hoping the friction burns will sting a bit of clarity back into my mind, but it's a dull annoyance my body is happy to tune out.
Muffled footsteps echoing behind me are a little more helpful, and I slow down a bit to listen. They're gaining on me, and there's definitely more than one person. I stare hard at the fog, trying to see, then set off as quickly as I dare. The only sound I hear now is the pounding of my heart in my ears and the soft click of my shoes against wooden planks. If I can just make it across the bridge, I can run for it, though god only knows where I'm supposed to go from here.
It's not a great plan, but it's all I've got, at least until my foot comes down on a plank that doesn't exist. My leg drops through to open air and I fall after it. I hit my shin blindingly hard against the planks and the rotting wood splits open beneath my weight. My arms snap taut and I cling to the rope for dear life as I fall through the bridge. I attempt to pull myself up only once before stretching my legs out in search of nearby support.
"Help! I call. "Help!"
The footsteps come again, faster this time, and then hot hands seize my wrists. I know this heat, but I only have a split-second of realization before I'm yanked back up to the relative safety of the bridge. I scrabble at the ropes for a second, reassuring myself that I've got a better grip, and then reach out blindly to the pair that's caught up to me. I can't see Sol, but I find his shoulder on the second try, and I cling to him until my legs stop shaking.
"Your timing's getting better," I say weakly.
Pharaoh speaks from further back: "Jules says she routed you through the western gate. No one survives the west. How did you get down here?"
"A ghost showed me a backdoor," I say, then cry out. "Oh! We're not moving. The snakes said we couldn't stop moving or we'd be lost. What have I done? What are we supposed to do now?"
"That rule is for the western wastes," Sol says. "You are nearly to the catacombs from the north."
Relief almost takes me off my feet. "Sol, I'm so tired."
"You cannot sleep yet," Sol says. "We are too close to stop now."
I know he's right. My head and my heart say we're past the point of no return, that I can't stop when Notte and Ciara are finally within reach. My body tries to beg and compromise, because how are we supposed to be at all effective against Notte in a fight if we're falling asleep standing up? I stare numbly at the space where my feet should be, incapable of deciding either way. For a wretched, selfish moment I'm willing to lie down and die here if it just means I can rest.
"I've got her," Pharaoh says, and then his fingers are little spots of heat on my temples. His magic lacks the violent edge Sol's has, but it feels twice as deadly as it streaks through me. There are bugs in my veins, I think, and for a split second I swear I see my skin shift over their scurrying bodies. Then my body is as it always was, and my brain comes wide awake. The world is still a dreary mess, but it feels like morning to me, and I am rested as if I spent the last day sleeping.
