A door cut into the rock led Zoe and the others onto the ground floor of a massive stadium of cells. Level after level stretched so high above her that they blurred. The vastness of the space was shocking, especially after the narrow artery of the tunnel.
In front of Zoe, a dozen rivers cut across the rocky ground, as evenly as the lines on a clock, then spilled into a circular cavern in the center. From the cavern itself rose the most arresting sight of all: a stone statue of a face screaming in agony. The head, a man’s, was bald and colossal. It was tilted back, its mouth opened hideously wide. Zoe could see the teeth, the tongue, the roof of the mouth. Cracks in the gray stone ran down the face and neck like scars. The statue didn’t look like art—it looked like a cry of pain. When Zoe stared up at the cells again, she imagined someone howling inside every one.
The cells were worse than anything X had ever described. They were essentially black-iron caskets standing in rows. There were no bars to let in light, just small oval openings at eye level. Here and there, prisoners dangled their fingers out of the eyeholes to feel the air. Or maybe they thought they could somehow pull the light in themselves.
Hundreds, probably thousands, of souls noticed Dervish and the guards’ arrival. They began pounding on the inside of their doors, as if to say … As if to say what? Zoe wasn’t sure. Maybe just, We exist! It occurred to her that the name of the place, Where the Rivers End, was an understatement. This looked like a place everything ended. It was her first true glimpse of the Lowlands—the scale of them, the cruelty.
“How come there’s nobody but prisoners here?” she asked Dervish.
She was thinking of the model of the Lowlands that X had once made in the snow. He’d used Jonah’s orc figurines to represent the guards in the hive where he himself lived, T. rexes for the lords.
“Oh, there’s no need for peacekeepers here,” said Dervish. “We never let these souls out of their boxes. Some have been standing for two thousand years.” When Zoe blanched, he added: “You think us cruel, do you?” He gestured to the horrible Screaming Man, and smiled. “But we gave them a statue!”
A guard who hadn’t been with Dervish’s squad rushed through the door now. He was portly—his stomach swayed in front of him as he ran—but he had such a disproportionately small head that Zoe wondered for a second if it’d been shrunk by a witch. For a weapon, he carried a broken lamp.
He approached Dervish obsequiously.
“Guvnor, if I may?” he said. “Regardin’ X and Regent and the others, if I may? They’re comin’, sir. They’ll be enterin’ frew that tunnel over there was I ta guess”—he pointed with his lamp toward a curved archway—“and I ’aven’t been wrong about a single fing yet, ’ave I?”
The guard waited, obedient as a dog, for his reward. His face crumpled when Dervish turned away without thanking him.
“It is time to assemble our mousetrap!” Dervish told Zoe. “The moment has come! Oh, do not scowl, little girl, you shall have the PRINCIPAL role—you shall play the cheese!”
He ordered five guards to stand on the walkway above the arch so they could rain down on X and the others when they entered the stadium. He split the rest of the squad in half, telling the men to crouch in the nearest rivers. These guards would rush “the enemy” from either side and crush them in a kind of vise.
Adrenaline shot into Zoe’s blood. She knew she should try to reason with Dervish, but also knew it was useless. All she could come up with was, “You don’t have to hurt them.”
“And YOU need not have come to the Lowlands to watch me do it,” said Dervish.
He prodded Zoe toward the center of the arena. She understood: he wanted her to be the first thing X saw when he entered the stadium. When Zoe tripped, Dervish grabbed her up, and shoved her onward.
“I warned you that love always ends in tragedy, did I not?” he said. “That is the wisdom of a lifetime, and I bestowed it gratis! All that our hearts shall ever do is wound us when we’re young—and kill us when we’re old.”
They neared the immense circular canyon with the Screaming Man. The rivers crashed down into it.
“Do you want to know the true—the ONLY—difference between Regent and myself?” said Dervish. “When Regent witnessed the death of all love and hope, he was devastated. When I myself did, it liberated me forever.”
Zoe felt Dervish’s hand on the small of her back, as he pushed her toward her place in the trap.
“I wonder,” he said, “which it shall do to you.”
twenty-one
Halfway to the center of the stadium, Dervish stopped and turned Zoe so that she faced the archway. He slid a hand around her neck. Zoe found that she couldn’t make a sound now, not even a gasp. Dervish didn’t want her warning X about the ambush.
He was beaming.
She was bait.
The guards in the rivers crouched so low that Zoe could only see a row of hats and helmets, like vegetables just starting to grow. Up on the walkway above the arch, the rest of the squad killed time by trading weapons—a wrench for a whip, a hammer for a bowling pin. Tree, who was one of them, looked afraid. The others all whispered giddily, thrilled about the coming fight.
It was going to be a massacre.
The plan that had come to Zoe in the tunnel started to seem very small and insufficient. She didn’t know if she’d get close enough to Regent to whisper it, or even if he would agree to it. Zoe watched the archway for X. She was scared, exhausted, overwhelmed, but she pushed past all that to access her fury—at Dervish, at the guards, at the inhuman cells spiraling up and up. Anger was what she needed now. It was energy. She could work with it.
Suddenly, there was a torch in the tunnel. And two voices.
Neither was X’s. Judging from the accents, it had to be the servant and the Ukrainian guard.
Dervish signaled the men above the arch. They lifted their weapons, and jostled for position. Zoe knew they’d beat X first and worst, just to impress Dervish. Even Tree would be forced to join in.
Zoe struggled in Dervish’s grip, and felt his skeletal fingers tighten around her neck.
She saw the Ukrainian and Maudlin emerge from the tunnel. The guard wore a red Adidas tracksuit. The servant held her cat against her shoulder.
“Want to know true fact?” the Ukrainian was saying. “All cats would rather be dogs. Do not dispute, you will only sound silly.”
Maudlin laughed.
“Vesuvius and I are ignoring you,” she said.
They stared at the ground as they walked out of the tunnel. It was agony waiting for them to look up.
And then they looked up.
They froze. If Zoe could have screamed, she would have screamed, Run! But Dervish wouldn’t let her so much as turn her head. His men waited for his signal.
Maudlin darted back the way they’d come—to get Regent and X, Zoe guessed.
The Ukrainian stood his ground. He spread his feet and glared at Dervish, like he was trying to intimidate him.
“What a delusional little person,” said Dervish.
Regent rushed up from behind and entered the stadium. He saw Zoe and stopped dead.
Dervish was clearly waiting for X to show himself. The men on the ledge leaned forward hungrily.
At last, X came out of the tunnel, with Maudlin close behind. Zoe saw him shade his eyes at the sudden light. She saw him take in the massive tower of cells. She saw him recognize Dervish.
She saw his eyes fall on her.
He stepped back in shock.
Then he moved toward Zoe—warily at first, as if he still disbelieved what he saw. Regent reached out to stop him, but X brushed him away.
“Dervish, what have you done?” said X.
“I did nothing—she followed ME!” said Dervish.
“Liar!” said X.
His voice was weaker than Zoe had ever heard it, and his face was covered with bruises she didn’t remember. She had never seen X when he was … human. No stronger than anyone else. Ordinary.
“A liar?” said Dervish. “Me? Now you’re being hurtful!”
X took off his coat, and let it fall as he came closer. Had his shirt always been so filthy and torn? Had he always winced as he walked? Zoe feared for him in a way she never had.