LATER — 9 hours left to find Tanzi
I was a fool to worry. The lower Crypts were not so different from the higher levels.
Yes, the Firewitched lanterns were fewer and farther between. And yes, the air turned heavier, the weight of the mountain pressing ever harder. The biggest difference, though, was how quickly the temperature plunged.
Level 6, I was comfortable enough. Level 7, less so. By the time I was halfway across Level 8, my teeth were chattering and my breath plumed. I had to huddle deep in my cloak with my hands stuffed into my tunic pockets.
Gloves, I thought. I should have brought gloves. I puffed an exhale, and it twined around ghosts that flittered close.
Fewer than I’d guessed. Far fewer. As if the memories here were so old, the ghosts had finally settled back onto the page.
I was especially regretting the absence of gloves when I reached the stairwell down to Level 9. So dark was its snaking tunnel that I had to stop and rummage the lantern from my pack—a Firewitched lantern, for at least in this regard I had come fully prepared. No flint nor flame to worry about. Just a whispered “Ignite.”
Then down I went.
When I eventually stepped out of the stairs and onto the balcony of Level 9, I drew up short. Where the ghosts had been silent and absent before, now they rushed at me. A tidal wave of whispers and wind that sent me doubling over.
I couldn’t see a thing. Only the fan of yellow light that sprayed out from the lantern at my feet.
The cold, the pressure, the ghosts, and the darkness—this is what death must feel like. Trapped, with chains of ice and whispers to pin you down. I wanted to return to the blessed silence, just for a moment—
“No,” I spat. “I am firmly gripped upon it.” Though I lacked the Sight, I knew how to follow rules. How to do what needed to be done.
After scooping up the lantern, I set off once more. Ten paces—that was as far as I could see ahead. Enough to descend the steep stairs onto the main floor of Level 9. Enough to set off down the central thoroughfare that bisected the shelves exactly like every other level.
The ghosts followed, clotting thickly. A haze to dampen my lantern’s glow. A roar of indecipherable voices and angry memories that somehow turned sharper, louder with each step I pushed forward.
Whatever records were on this floor, they were not happy ones.
Onward I slogged. One foot in front of the next. I lost all concept of time, all concept of space. It was simply me, the ghosts, and the cold.
Until abruptly it wasn’t anymore.
Between one row of stone shelves and the next, the ghosts fled. With a shriek that set my skin to crawling, they burst into a spinning wind. It knocked against me. I lost my footing and fell to one knee.
Then they were gone. Just like that. No more ghosts, no more furious memories—only the resounding quake of their final howls to shimmer in the air.
I knew in an instant that this was bad. Whatever could scare away ghosts had to be bad, bad, bad.
Gulping in air, I shoved myself to my feet and thrust out the lantern. Left. Right. Nothing but shelves, stone, shadows, and tomes.
“Ryber,” trilled a voice behind me. High-pitched and singsong.
I lurched around, light streaking. Pulse keening. But there was nothing.
“Ryber,” called a second voice, slightly deeper and from a different direction.
Again, when I twisted toward it, I saw nothing. Only swaying beams of lantern light.
“Ryber,” came a third. The highest tone of them all and coasting toward me from behind.
I didn’t want to look, but I knew I had to.
I turned. I saw.
Three women glided toward me. Solid. Real. And so very, very wrong. They wore silver tunics, their bare feet peeking out from the bottoms …
Feet that did not touch the ground. They hovered. They flew.
And where there should have been faces, there was nothing at all. Just black skin, brown skin, and pale skin.
It was their arms and hands, though, that were the most unnatural. Stretched to their feet and with fingers three times as long they ought to be, the women’s hands scraped over the stone as they floated toward me.
“Ryber,” they harmonized in a minor chord. “You should not have come here, Ryber.”
Every muscle in me shook with the need to move. To run. Yet it was as if ropes held me down. I could not look away. I could not turn or move or do anything at all.
“Why did you come here, Ryber?” Closer, closer. “This is not where you belong.”
No, I thought, it isn’t. And with that one thought, my body finally ignited.
I turned. I ran.
The women followed.
Not that I could see them. Forward was all I saw, pack clanking and lantern light bouncing. Shelf after shelf, rough tile after rough tile.
But I heard the women, chanting my name over and over, all while their fingers scratched louder across the floor.
What the blighter were they? And how the blighter was I supposed to get away from them?
“Ryber, you don’t belong here. Ryber, Ryber, you’re not one of us.”
Somehow, in the panic that spurred my legs ever faster, I came to the conclusion that if I could just reach Level 10, these creatures would stop their chase. That some barrier would keep these … these Death Maidens locked on this floor of infernal ice.
In hindsight, I don’t know why I assumed this. Desperation, I suppose. An incentive to keep sprinting toward—a goal to reach.
I hit the stairwell and dove in. Two bounding steps at a time I rounded down. My name skittered after me. My pack banged against the wall, the ceiling, my back. This tunnel was even narrower than the one before. Twice I stumbled. Twice my ankles popped and I had to bounce off the walls to keep upright.
Still they chorused my name. Still their fingers clawed across stone.
Then I was there. To the balcony of Level 10.
Out I shoved, and thank the Goddess I did not slow. Not yet, at least.
I charged down to the main floor before I allowed my foolish feet to drag to a stop. Then I rounded back, staring. Praying nothing would appear in the darkened exit from the stairs.
Of course my assumption was wrong, for they were already in the room, staring down at me from atop the balcony.
They cackled. No more harmony. Just giddy, hungry laughter.
And unlike me, they did not need the stairs to descend.
Up they flew. Then over and down.
Never have I spun so fast in my life. Never have I reached such a speed so quickly. I launched from frozen and gasping to a knee-kicking charge, my lantern’s beam swinging in all directions. I couldn’t see where I was going, and I just had to pray that Level 10 was shaped like every level before it.
It wasn’t.
I learned that when I sprinted directly into a wall.
As if that wasn’t bad enough, when I veered sharply right, barely preventing a crash into the stone, a crunch sounded.
Then another and another, and before my shaking eyes, rubble punched out of the wall … followed by hands.
Human hands that grabbed at me. Two snagged hold, and I barely managed to yank free before two more had latched on.
Oh, how the Death Maidens laughed at that.
“No one wants you here,” they trilled. “You simply do not belong.”
“No!” I shrieked, using all my force to hitch free and fling myself back into a sprint.
But of course, the hands weren’t finished with me. Now they burst free from the floor. I had to hop and twist and dart and leap as fingers, fingers everywhere, tried to haul me down.
No time for thought, no time for strategy. Just forward. Just away from the Death Maidens still hovering behind.
Their cackles were much, much too near.
Somehow, though, I had chosen the correct side of Lady Fate’s knife by turning right at the wall. A jagged maw of a doorway glowed ahead. Fat fronds of foxfire reached out from the rock, giving my Firewitched lantern a greenish glow—and giving the clawing, reaching hands a rotting sheen.
This time, I did not make the mistake of believing the next level would save me. At least, though, there were no more hands to punch free from the rock. Just walls so close that my shoulders touched and my pack hit the ceiling as I careened faster down.
The cramped space slowed the three monsters. Their singing, “Ryber, Ryber, Ryber,” faded slightly as I barreled ever onward.
Level 11. I fell onto the balcony, hands windmilling to keep me upright.
Light. Foxfire. Everywhere it shone, bright enough to burn my eyes. Enough to slow me for half a desperate breath as my vision adjusted.
I almost wish my vision had never adjusted. Then I might not have seen the worst of the horrors to come.
As tall as the cavern and propped up like a spider—but with four human arms to hold it high—stood a beast with a head that spun my way. Then kept spinning, bones clicking with each turn. Skull-like, it had black sockets for eyes and a grin that spread wider, wider, wider. All the way around to the back of its head, the smile stretched.
It heaved its massive fleshy body toward me, shockingly nimble. Shockingly fast.
And behind me, the sound of my name bounced closer.
I had no choice: I had to keep moving forward.
Down the stairs I vaulted. My eyes were not on where I stepped but where the Skull-Face ahead was moving. It was fast, but it was also big. If I could stay close to the space between walls and shelves, then it could not reach me.
My plan was a poor one, which I realized the instant I pitched for the right wall.
Hands, hands—the same thrice-damned hands from Level 10 began to break free. Grabbing, ripping, towing me down.
Why, Sirmaya? I wanted to shriek as I cut down a row of shelves. Why is all of this here? What were these hands? Or the massive beast now scrabbling toward me, its head spinning and spinning?
No time for answers. Just running. My breath seared. My muscles had gone from tired to numb. Everything moved of its own accord. Distant limbs that kept pumping even as my mind was a useless jumble of terror.
Then I saw it, as I reeled onto the main path and a smell like festering flesh roiled over me—Skull-Face needed a bath—I saw the end of Level 11. It was closer than previous levels, and rather than a darkened doorway in the wall, a chapel waited.
Surrounded by brilliant foxfire, it looked exactly like the chapel at the entrance to the Crypts, now so far behind me.
Yet unlike the chapel outside, this one had a door. Twice as tall as me and with no latch or knob.
Doesn’t matter, I decided between one crashing step and the next. I would figure out how to open it when I got there. That was really the only path left to me.
I did not look back, and I did not need to. The sound of the monster’s spinning face clicked louder; the stench of death weighed hea-vier.
And, of course, the chanting call of my name, broken up by syncopated laughter, still followed too near.
The door waved and swam ahead, its edges glowing with a strange blue light. I’d thought that was light from the foxfire, yet the closer I ran, the more I realized it was not a natural light but a magical one.
This door was not going to open without some kind of key.
The bell. That had to be the way in, for there was a small belfry over the chapel, just the like one aboveground.
With my one free hand, I fumbled Hilga’s bell from my belt. The earth shook as the fleshy, grinning Skull-Face clambered close.
Its shadow slithered over me before I even had the Summoning bell free.
The Death Maidens simply laughed and laughed and laughed.
Then the bell was unfastened, and without looking back—yet still sprinting as fast as I could—I clanged it.
Once, twice. Hard, hard. A peal that rippled outward until the chapel bell answered, loud enough to drown out all that chased behind. The sound split my brain, and relief erupted in my chest.
If I kept running, I would make it out of here.
Except that the door was not opening. I was almost to it, yet the blue light still glowed and the carved wood had not budged an inch.
I rang the bell harder; the main bell tolled once more.
Still nothing happened.
Three paces from the door, I shoved all my strength and terror into my gait. I slammed against the wood.
It didn’t move.
Harder I pushed, but to no avail. The bells were not working, and now the monsters had reached me.
I whipped around, back pressed to the door. It was so much worse than I’d feared. Skull-Face leaned down. Its skin writhed as if worms crawled underneath, and its smiling mouth parted to show …
Nothing. Nothing at all but darkness.
Slithering beneath the beast’s belly were the Death Maidens, their arms raised and claws grasping.
“Ryber, Ryber, Ryber.”
I dropped the bell. Knife, knife—at least if I had my knife gripped tight, I might be able to do a some damage to these monsters before I left the world forever.
Right as my fingers gripped the hilt, a sound carved through the chaos: a squawk and the flapping of wings.
The Rook shot down, an arrow aimed for Skull-Face’s eyes.
The monster roared, then reared back, one hand leaving the ground to swat at the Rook.
But the bird had already looped aside and now flew for the Maidens—who no longer sang, nor laughed, nor reached for me. Instead, they heaved at the Rook and screamed with voices too high-pitched to fully hear.
I had one breath, maybe two, while the monsters were distracted.
I would not waste this gift.
Whirling about, I grabbed the bell and started clanging once more. Meanwhile, my eyes—my Sight-less, pall-covered eyes—swept over the door. Up, down, side to side. There had to be a way to get through.
Skull-Face’s hand crashed down to the earth beside me. The world shook and I finally saw what I needed. Just as I’d thought before, this door wasn’t going to open without some kind of key.
A key like I currently held: my Sightwitch Sister knife.
In a clumsy thrust of speed, I slid the blade into a thin slot. Blue light flashed and the amber on the hilt flared gold. Then a squeal like metal on metal erupted, and with it came the groan of ancient, unwilling wood.
The door creaked wide; only darkness waited beyond.
I didn’t care. I didn’t think. I simply sprang forward, shouting for the Rook to come on.
Then I was through, spinning around while the Death Maidens hurled toward me. Skull-Face no longer smiled but only screamed and screamed and screamed.
When there was nothing but a sliver of light shining through the closing door, the Rook darted through. A flap of wings, a gust of familiar must to briefly erase the stench of rot.
Half a beat later, the door rattled shut. Darkness and silence took hold.
I was finally inside the mountain.