She had poured her own life force into the stone and mortar to buy Fenrik time, to buymetime to return.
“You need a healer,” I said, my throat tight.
“I need you to run, girl.” Her fingers tightened on my boot, desperate. “The main stair is blocked... rubble. Go behind the tapestry of the Hunt. Fourth panel. There is a servant’s stair... it leads to the foundations.”
I nodded, scrambling to rise, but her grip didn’t loosen. She pulled me down, her eyes wide and frantic.
“Listen to me,” she said, her breath coming in ragged gasps. “Your mother saved this manor once. You have her gift. Don’t let it be in vain.”
The world seemed to tilt on its axis. The roar of the dying house faded into a dull, distant thrum.
My mother.Celia Emberlin died on a Tuesday. In our infirmary. I was twelve. I remembered the blood on the tiles, the smell of antiseptic. I remembered the familiar, a small wyrm with madness in its eyes, lashing out. I remembered my fatherscreaming. I remembered the cold, heavy weight of my own magic slamming into the creature, freezing its heart, but doing it seconds too late.
That was the story. I was too slow. My gift is dangerous. My mother died because of a routine accident I failed to prevent.
But Mrs. Crane was obviously speaking of this place. My father had said something about my mother doing brave and reckless things.
“What?” I said. “I’m not sure my mother ever came here.”
“She came,” Mrs. Crane gasped, her eyes sliding out of focus as her energy waned. “Thirteen years ago... the Collapse... she was the only one who could... quiet the surge...”
Thirteen years ago. The same year Fenrik’s parents died. The same year the curse began.
A tremor shook the floorboards, violent enough to knock a painting from the wall. It shattered, glass spraying across the parquet.
“Run!” Mrs. Crane said, her hand falling from my ankle. She slumped back, her chest heaving. “Save him, Lysa.”
“I will come back for you,” I promised. I pushed myself up. Now I also had to fight for the ghost of the woman who had walked into this same nightmare thirteen years ago. I turned and sprinted toward the tapestry of the Hunt.
I tore the heavy velvet from the wall. The fabric, rotten with age and damp, came away with a sound like tearing meat, dusting me in grime. Behind it, there was nothing. No door. No servant’s latch. Just solid, impenetrable greystone.
“No,” I hissed, slamming my palm against the masonry. It was cold and dead to the touch. “Open. Please.”
A clatter of claws on the parquet made me spin. Kirion skidded around the corner, his movement jerky and spasmodic. He was limping heavily, favoring his left foreleg, his wings dragging on the floor.
I dropped to my knees, my hands hovering over his shuddering flank. The bond between him and Fenrik was tearing him apart; he should have stayed with Maren where he was safe. Although, I wasn’t sure that he would be safe anywhere as log as his master were dying.
“How do you feel?” I asked, a stupid question, the healer in me unable to stop assessing even as the world ended.
He let out a chittering whimper, his amber eyes clouded with milky cataracts. Then, ignoring my hands, he lunged past me. He threw himself at the blank stone wall. He clawed frantically at the mortar, his talons sparking against the granite. He shrieked and head-butted the solid rock, demanding entry.
The manor answered and the stones retracted. With a grinding roar that shook dust from the ceiling beams, the masonry was sucked backward into the wall cavity. The gap revealed a spiral staircase, but these weren’t the polished steps of the upper manor. This was a rough-hewn throat plunging straight down into the bedrock of the cliff. The walls were jagged shale, weeping the sludge of waste magic.
The wyrmling dove into the dark. He scrambled down the uneven steps, his claws clicking on the stone. He stumbled, caught himself on a wing-joint, and kept going.
“I’m coming,” I said, and stepped into the earth. There were no sconces here, no golden light from the manor to guide the way. Only the faint, sickly silver glow of the wyrmling’s infected scales below lit the treacherous descent. I ran, my hand trailing along the rough wall to keep my balance. We kept going down, much deeper than the cellar I found Fenrik the last time he’d been messing with the wards.
Fifty feet down, the rough-hewn shale gave way to a texture that made my gorge rise. The walls here were warm and wet. The air grew thick, humid, and smelled like meat dissolving in a bowl of spoiled milk. I dragged my hand along the wall for balance and jerked it back. Sticky, translucent webbing coated the rock, shivering at my touch. Beneath it, the stone seemed to have softened, yielding under pressure. The spiral descent became a gullet. The steps, once distinct slabs, smoothed into ridges that looked disturbingly like fused vertebrae. We were climbing down the spine of some titan, deeper into a throat that was swallowing us.
Massive root systems from the manor’s gardens punched through the ceiling above, dangling in the gloom. They pulsed with a sickly bioluminescence, pumping the silver waste downward. I had to duck to avoid brushing against them, terrified that if I touched one, it would recoil.
Thump-squelch. Thump-squelch.The sound was vibrating through the soles of my boots. It probably was the heartbeat of the ley-line. This rhythm was a fluttering struggle.
“Kirion,” the little dragon had stopped ahead of me. He was crouched low, his belly dragging through a pool of the silver effluent that had gathered in a depression on the stairs. The stuff moved like mucus. I stepped closer and saw what had stopped him. The walls here had abandoned the pretense of masonry. They were calcified, uneven ribs of white minerals, and between them, the rock was raw and red, glistening with moisture. Veins of the silver corruption bulged from the surface, thick as my arm, and throbbing. One of them had burst.
The waste seeped, bubbling out and hissing where it touched the ground. The rocksizzled. I pressed a hand over my mouth, fighting the urge to retch.
twenty-three
