Eight Will Fall, page 21
The scenery shifted as the channel narrowed, and they drifted through alcoves and lagoons of glowing fungus and lichen, the tang of rich earth filling the once-stale air. Threaded silk spun by insects gleamed in the soft light. It seemed like the closer they got to Kyran, the more vibrant and enchanting the Reach became.
When the current slowed, they meandered through the river. Jacque sat pinched within the boat’s bow, Elf on top of the stern as if it were a throne. Larkin and Amias balanced the craft in the middle.
Black water splashed the side of the boat, the sound of it all that held the silence at bay. Larkin’s memory held her hostage. The orb of her torch in the distance, the grease of her fingers smeared across the mirror.
Kyran, his message.
Tell them.
She shook her head, but the memory continued. Tamsyn’s scream, Casseem’s fingers, the click of talons.
Amias slid next to her, facing her, their legs touching. Larkin ached to let him hold her, but it would invite questions she couldn’t bear to answer yet.
They had been six strong since Bianca’s village, the deaths so abrupt that Larkin’s face was still damp from crying. Kyran could as easily claim her life, or Amias’s. She’d grown close to the others only to be corroded by grief.
His calloused knuckle pushed up against the bottom of her chin. Clusters of crystals above gleamed traitorously, exposing her stained and swollen face.
Amias moved his hand, and the pad of his thumb brushed the bridge of her nose, the curve of her cheek. His face tilted toward hers as he caught a snaking tear.
A delicate scar split the edge of his lower lip. If they had been anywhere else, Larkin would have closed the distance. Parted her mouth, blindly learned the shape of the scar with her tongue.
The scar would only be the beginning. Her eyes drifted to the cusp of his ear, trailing his jaw to the slope of his neck. Kiss me, she wanted to say. Kiss me before it’s too late.
She could surrender to her every craving for him. She could surrender, and he could die.
Larkin’s skin buzzed as Amias dropped his hand and pulled back, the mask of his calm still strong but not impenetrable. He hadn’t stifled his fear quickly enough.
Larkin wondered if he feared her longing like she feared his comfort. There was too much to lose.
“Once,” Elf began, “when humanity was new to Demura, magic was free.”
“A story,” Jacque said, intrigued.
Larkin’s shoulders relaxed. She couldn’t take comfort in Amias, but she could in Elf. She closed her eyes and let Elf’s words sweep her away.
“The ports held ships with sails of vibrant reds and blues and golds. Markets dotted the trading routes. Strangers built homes in the fields of the vale. Some built with pine and iron; others conjured.” Beneath the faded crystal light, Elf’s brow furrowed. “Empaths were indistinguishable from those who did not possess magic. Magic was born everywhere. Magic was governed, until a miner discovered a beautiful glimmering mineral within the hills, and magic—the ability to wield or subdue it—became power. Fear grew alongside the power, and the dynasty closed the docks and built up an army, defending the isle from Empaths and outsiders alike.” Elf arched her back until her shoulders grazed the water, hooking her feet beneath the lip of the boat. She began to speak again, her voice measured. “Maybe those who can’t wield it are right to be so terrified. Without the mineral, we are limitless if we are not alone.”
“We haven’t been given a chance to govern ourselves in a very long time,” said Larkin before Jacque hushed her.
Elf hung off the boat for a long while. When the lagoon ended, she pushed herself back up, settling back into the boat.
One by one, delicate bones peeled away from her shoulders.
Larkin had seen the pattern before, on the skeleton of a bird. Her jaw went slack.
“Sweet Ilona,” breathed Jacque. “What have you done to yourself?”
They aren’t finished, Elf had told Larkin.
Wings. Elf fanned her wings, the bones threaded by sinew and cartilage. She released a breath as though she’d been holding it for miles.
A strangled noise escaped Amias. “It’s…”
“Beautiful,” Larkin finished, her eyes welling again. The wings, the boat, the way Elf so easily mined love from their memories. How strange she’d been acting after the village. “Elf … is Bianca’s.”
She wanted to weep, knowing Bianca’s guess had been right. They were the descendants of Kyran and his disciples.
And Larkin did not belong to Bianca.
“I didn’t say anything because I knew you wanted to be hers.” Elf slid down to Larkin and touched her shoulder. “I didn’t want to hurt you.”
Guilt curled poisonously within Larkin’s gut. “You don’t have to protect me.”
“I want to,” Elf said brightly, but her expression fell, her alarm sharp and vibrant. “There’s—” She broke off, a gasp escaping her.
As Larkin watched, Elf’s face crumpled. Her eyes slid out of focus.
“There’s something terrible ahead.”
A chill crawled up Larkin’s spine. She turned to the expanding river, straining her eyes until they ached.
Far off into the distance, an orange dot floated in the blackness, the shadows before it splotchy and shapeless, but something was there.
Amias grabbed her hand. “I smell death.”
Larkin inhaled; the stench was metallic and sickly sweet. The hush of Jacque’s sword leaving its sheath broke through the river’s quiet trickle. The soldier climbed over the boat and dipped her leg into the water, surprised. She hopped out of the boat with a splash. The water only came up to her knees.
Larkin lit a torch and sank into the water. She waded cautiously out to the nebulous shadows. Flame licked along dark, red ripples. Pink foam clung to her legs.
Blood.
TWENTY-SIX
As the shape in the water sharpened, Larkin retreated to the memory of Melay’s banquet.
Before them, crimson water engulfed a marble table, its shadowy dinner guests unmoving. Dead, she thought, bridging the distance. Jacque and Amias flanked her sides, Elf behind them.
Her light pooled over intricate floral patterns carved along the marble’s edge. Delicate dishes lay empty and gleaming. The illusion evaporated as they inched closer, and Larkin caught sight of the cartilage crushed between the marble tabletop.
Not marble. The entire table was bone.
Her breath rattled. Another step, and the light cast over slumped bodies. They hadn’t been dead long. Their skin still carried color, their hair rich and lively. The eyes of one were gouged out. Another was missing its lower jaw, tongue flopping limply.
Jacque screamed, her terror shattering through Larkin.
Larkin caught Jacque’s elbow as the soldier sank into the blood.
“Jacque!” Larkin fought to find balance. Even with the worst of the mutilated bodies, the soldier hadn’t reacted like this. “What is it?”
“Gods,” Amias cried, his dread beating through her. “Risa.”
Larkin released Jacque and followed Amias’s stare to the woman with no eyes. Her golden hair was matted and stained pink at the ends, her lips scaled.
“Bastard.” Larkin waded toward the bodies, heart pounding in rage. Sadistic monster.
“He’s taken her from the Surface,” Jacque wailed. “No, no, no…”
Larkin’s skin flushed with sweat. She inched around Risa, the table’s length infinite, torchlight rolling across each guest.
“I can’t—” Amias jerked back violently, his horror threatening to drag Larkin downward. Her flame passed over a pretty girl across the table with her throat torn out. She looked just like Amias.
Skye.
Larkin wanted to comfort him, but her body felt cast in iron. The ringing in her ears muted Jacque’s screaming, grief dulling her senses. If Risa and Skye were here …
Mum.
An arm’s length away, Larkin’s mother was slumped over her plate. Her mouth was slack, and blood dripped from her blank eyes.
Black dots prickled Larkin’s vision. A scream bubbled inside her.
Mum. The ground fell out from beneath her feet. Larkin bit through her tongue, blood flooding her mouth. Her torch fell from her hand and rolled to the center of the table.
Mum. He’d murdered her. Mum … Mum … She had a birthmark on her neck in the shape of a berry. Her mother had a bump on her nose. Her mother had a scar near her temple.
This wasn’t her mother.
“It’s not real,” Larkin whispered. She whipped around and searched for the rest of her party. “It’s not real! It’s a conjuration!”
The ringing in Larkin’s head had died, and her ears once again roared with sound: the whoosh of the current, Jacque’s tired sobs … Amid the grief, she sensed Elf, calm and collected.
The winged girl knelt and pulled Jacque up. “It’s not Risa.” She pointed to the table. “There’s my troupe mate Oggy, the one missing his arms. But he’s safe, just like Risa. I promise you.”
Jacque clung to Elf, burying her face between the girl’s boned wings and her shoulder.
Larkin spotted Amias near the boat, his arms folded close to his chest, and went to him. The color had drained from him, his shallow breaths rising in a vapor. She stood on her toes, her lips pressing against his cheekbone.
Pulling away, she whispered, “I will kill him for this.”
It had been Larkin’s mission all along. Kyran had stolen hundreds from the Surface, claimed thousands of soldiers within the Reach. He’d slaughtered Bianca and her descendants, and Devon and Brielle and Casseem and Tamsyn.
But this. He was threatening them, showing them what he planned to do.
Larkin left Amias, thrashing back through the water. She gripped the false Risa and threw her into the water. She yanked on Skye’s chair until it toppled backward, and then Oggy’s.
As Larkin hovered over the lie pretending to be her mother, she noticed one more shadow looming at the edge of the ring of light. She felt the table, her trembling fingers wrapping around her torch.
The final dinner guest was wearing nothing other than a pair of ratty, bloodstained trousers. Grub-white skin draped his bones. His arms rested on either side of his plate, and his wrists tapered into hands layered on top of hands, bony and blood crusted.
Larkin let out a cry when he peeled open milky eyes.
“Larkin?” Amias called out, wading toward her.
Larkin stood frozen. Though his face was slashed with new red wounds, he was clearly a man. Or had once been.
Words hissed horribly from an opening in his neck.
“Make yourself at home.” His voice was a raw gurgle. “Our lord has collected your friends.” He gestured to her mother. A terrible laugh escaped the slit in his throat.
She tasted bile. “Where is Kyran?”
“I am here to speak for our lord Otheil. He has created me in his own image. Everyone from my battalion is dead, but I have been chosen. I am his.”
She sensed Amias’s revulsion. “Larkin, his mouth. His hands…”
At first, Larkin thought that Amias was pointing out the deformities, and then it struck her.
Our quartermaster’s wounds have sprouted new limbs.
The journal. The story of the soldier’s battalion, and the first to go insane.
This was the quartermaster.
The quartermaster grinned from both mouths, blood trickling from behind pink-stained teeth. He cocked his head to the side, the bones in his neck cracking. “This is where everything ends.”
“He’s been tortured,” Elf said, more awestruck than afraid.
Was it possible? Had Kyran destroyed bits and pieces of this man until he could do nothing but submit? The flesh stripped from Brielle’s arms … If Kyran hadn’t killed her, perhaps this would have been her fate.
The quartermaster’s milky eyes seemed eager, but Larkin sensed nothing from him. He was alive without his humanity. Did he have free will? Obviously not, she thought. He’d referred to Kyran as our lord.
She played along. “What does he want from us?”
“What does he want?” The quartermaster pressed his lips shut, humming. “This isn’t about what he wants; it’s about what you do.”
Larkin darted her eyes around, checking to make sure she wasn’t being purposefully distracted.
“It’s about how you prove yourself to him,” the quartermaster insisted. “The choices you make.”
Larkin tensed.
Leading means making choices. You won’t survive without making one. Kyran’s words, spoken to her in the mirror. If she had to choose, then her choice was to put this creature out of his misery.
Larkin siphoned and projected before she could think about the consequences. She crushed his head, blood and slime slipping down his chest before the body fell sideways and into the water.
“Why did you do that?” Jacque yelled. “Now we’ll never find where Kyran is!”
Larkin looked back at the three other remaining party members, resolute.
Amias’s frustration slid across her skin. “You killed him because you were impatient?”
Her anger flared. “I made a choice, per his request. I wasn’t going to play his game of riddles.”
Why didn’t Amias understand?
Elf grabbed Larkin, her fingernails digging into Larkin’s wrist. “That terrible thing I told you about on the boat—the one I sensed—the quartermaster wasn’t it.”
Larkin followed Elf’s eyes to the darkness past the table. The passage was silent except for the slosh of water at her feet.
“Larkin, I can’t do this,” Jacque whimpered. “I feel ill.”
It was unlike Jacque. She probably hadn’t recovered from seeing Risa dead, but Larkin couldn’t stop. Kyran wasn’t done with them. But she was done with him. This needed to end.
“Then stay back.”
Emotion struck Larkin hard in the gut. She stumbled, the sensation nothing she’d ever felt before. She was being boiled atop a raging fire, crushed within an ore mill.
She felt like dying.
“No,” Amias groaned. He staggered away from her side and fell into the water, his eyes darting across the darkness. His shoulders rose and fell in short, shallow breaths.
Larkin hurried to him. She could barely sense his panic beneath whatever lay ahead, but she knew it was strong. “Amias, what’s wrong?”
“This is death.” His eyes fogged over.
He couldn’t succumb to whatever this was. She needed him.
“Amias, look at me.” Sweat poured from his face. Gods, she thought. He’s sensed this level of anguish before.
“Stay with him.” Elf skated into the darkness, the skeletal fingers of her wings swaying. The light caught on a giant mound in the water up ahead.
“Elf, wait.” Larkin laced her fingers with Amias’s, dragging him upward. Jacque wasn’t far behind them, clutching her stomach.
Hells. The two of them were falling apart.
As Larkin neared Elf, the shape in the water took form, and she realized what had been piled to the ceiling of the channel.
Armor.
Clutching Amias’s hand, Larkin followed Elf around the pile. There wasn’t just one. There were dozens—rotted leather and rusted steel. A monument of every soldier Kyran had consumed.
Jacque retched. “I’m going to be sick.”
Fighting her own nausea, Larkin climbed out of the water and onto solid ground. The piles of armor ended. Carnage sheeted the ground; the gore glistened against the light of her flame.
They moved. Breathed.
Before her, a sea of bodies stretched before her endlessly, their limbs intertwined like a knit cloth. Their breaths rose and fell rapidly in unison. Long claws grew from crooked fingers. Fleshy tubes punctured their abdomens and wound around the bodies, disappearing into the walls. They were being kept alive.
Skin had grown over some of their faces, as with the Reach creatures she’d seen, while others still looked human.
The lost soldiers—they were Kyran’s monsters in the making. He’d stolen them.
“He’s tortured them.” Amias’s voice broke. “Not just the quartermaster. All of them.”
“Larkin,” Elf whispered.
Larkin glanced down and realized that at some point she had released Amias and was already wading through the bodies, possessed by her horror to get closer. Up ahead, one of the bodies did not breathe in sync along with the other silent ones, its wretched scream locked in her throat.
Larkin looked back at Elf, the winged girl struggling to hold Amias up.
“Prepare yourself for what it will say,” said Elf.
A shudder seized Larkin’s shoulders. Elf knew what she was about to do.
Larkin maneuvered around limbs and knelt near the woman who tried to speak. Her teeth rippled beneath her mask of flesh—open, close, open.
Larkin lifted a trembling finger and projected. The mouth yawned wide as the mask ripped apart.
The woman’s teeth were stained with blood, her tongue chalk-white. “Seaside Port,” she babbled. “Second in rank, right of the lieutenant.”
What in all hells. Larkin stood, turning back to her party, and repeated the woman’s words.
“That’s my rank,” Jacque gasped. And then she released a bloodcurdling scream.
TWENTY-SEVEN
Jacque’s shriek tore through the air, deafening. She stripped off her cuirass and threw it into the water.
The front of her tunic was doused in blood.
Jacque lifted up the hem of her shirt. The open sore across her abdomen grew before Larkin’s eyes. Her skin was dissolving.
“No!” Jacque shrieked, stumbling backward. “You can’t let him take me!”
Elf launched herself at Jacque, grabbing the soldier by the arm.
Larkin whirled and raised her torch. Kyran was here. He was in the room with them.
“Where are you?” Larkin yelled into the darkness. She hurried deeper, trampling over bodies. She spotted a viney mass creeping along the wall, the corpses hardened into a form of their own.
The beckoning hand protruding through the Reach wall. The twisted arms she had seen in the labyrinth. The mass that Elf had broken through.
