Twenty-six
Strands of spider silk clung to Vivian’s face, wrapped around her wrists and neck. She thought she could feel spiders in her hair, crawling down her back, over her arms. She heard herself whimpering a little with every breath, wanted to break into a full-out run but it was too dark.
“Three hundred fifty-six paces,” Landon whispered, “and you’ll be clear of them.”
Vivian counted each step in her head. Left, one. Right, two. Left, three. On and on. As the Prince had promised, when she reached three hundred fifty-six, the webs stopped. She stopped, too, scrubbing spiderwebs away with her hands, searching out the spiders she was certain were crawling all over her. She found three, the largest the size of her fist, and flung them away into the darkness. She began to walk again, but still her flesh quivered with the sensation of legs and feet, always crawling, weaving phantom webs into her hair.
Even with company, the darkness pressed in, overwhelming. She began to feel it would never be light again, that she had entered hell and would walk through this darkness for eternity. Her eyes ached with the relentless search for a gleam of light. Her bare feet hurt, heels and toes rubbed raw from constant friction with stone. The voices in her head muttered endlessly, close to comprehensible but never quite understood.
Once or twice she thought she heard footsteps but could never be sure.
As they moved deeper into the dungeons, the voices began to grow distinct once more. She understood a word here, a phrase there. Strange sensations began to plague her. An itching of her skin, as though it were too tight. A heat in her belly. Her senses sharpened; she became aware of subtle scents—clean sweat from Landon, the earthy smell of the stone, a distant dripping of water.
And definitely now, footsteps somewhere behind them. She looked back but could see nothing in the darkness. Landon seemed unaware.
She kept on walking.
At last they rounded a curve and saw a gleam of light ahead. Vivian’s nostrils flared with a scent of unwashed bodies, a faint contagion of fear. Beneath it the rich, salty heat of blood. Appalled, she felt her mouth flood with saliva, her stomach stir with sudden hunger.
The darkness lightened to a dim gloom, and her eyes began to pick out details. She could make out jagged stone above her head, a widening of the passage. And then, all at once, the corridor opened out into a massive cavern. Roughly carved pillars supported a vaulted stone roof. Hanging lanterns illuminated a path that spiraled downward and inward.
The cavern was enormous and awe-inspiring.
The prisoners were something else entirely.
Barbed-wire fences ten feet high lined the path, and between them and the stone wall behind them, hundreds of people sat, stood, or lay. They didn’t speak, didn’t look up at the sound of approaching footsteps; no curiosity dawned in their faces. They simply watched, or not, with nothing—neither fear nor hope—behind their eyes.
Vivian stopped. Moving forward against the weight of all of that humanity seemed to her in that moment impossible. Her eyes scanned over the throng of faces in horror. Men, women, children. And even the children sat silent. No cries, no speech, no games.
“What has been done to them?” Vivian’s breath felt harsh and ragged.
Landon’s voice broke when he tried to answer. He swallowed hard, drew a deep breath. “She says it is a kindness to take away all will from them when they come here.”
“Sedated and penned like cattle.” Rage simmered in her belly.
“Cattle is precisely what they are.”
After a moment, without another word spoken, the two of them began to move forward once again. Out of the sea of humanity, a young woman caught Vivian’s eye. She sat cross-legged next to the fence, one hand curled loosely around a strand of wire. Her hair hung in a tangled mass over her shoulders, once flame bright, now dulled by dirt. A bruise purpled her right eye, and her upper lip was puffy and flecked with dried blood. Her left cheek was disfigured and swollen.
Vivian exhaled sharply between her teeth. “Esme.” Pulling away from Landon’s restraining hands, she darted over to the fence. The girl’s eyes remained focused on nothing, empty, not so much as a flicker of recognition. The fingers twitched once and were still.
“Esme. Wake up!” Vivian squeezed the limp hand, trying to pull the girl’s mind back. The bloody lips parted, revealing broken front teeth, and Vivian leaned forward to catch any whispered word, but they closed again, without a sound.
An old woman clicked toothless gums together in a meaningless, arrhythmic sound. A small boy, maybe five years old, dirty and thin, twisted a strip of rag between his fingers, endlessly winding and rewinding. He looked at Vivian but didn’t seem to see her. A woman held a baby in her arms, without affection, and the small creature did not even whimper, its eyes moving without interest or focus in a pinched and dirty face.
“There is nothing we can do here.” Landon tugged at her arm. “Come.”
Vivian heard his words layered over the multitudinous voices, as something far away and without meaning.
“We have to get her out.”
And then, in her mind she felt the dragon stir and wake. Felt the creature’s suppressed rage, her hunger. A new voice spoke directly into her head, this time clear, articulate.
Come, hunt with me.
An answering hunger stirred in her own belly, and with it a startling and unwelcome thirst for blood. A heavy dragging sound reverberated through the cavern, louder and louder.
“Dragon,” Landon warned.
This time, Vivian felt no desire to run.
The creature emerged through a great arch at the back of the fenced-in area. Beyond old, once diamond-bright scales dulled by uncounted years in the dark. A webbing of fine silver mesh circled the scabrous belly and bound the wings.
Unexpectedly, Vivian felt a pang of loss, born of a yearning for the sky and the keen, bracing winds over the mountains. Something in her vibrated in response, and she pressed closer to the fence, feeling awkward and strangely heavy, as though her shadow had weight. They faced each other over the witless victims, the woman and the dragon, for time out of mind.
Change, the creature said into her mind. Be Dragon.
No.
Is this not why you have come?
Vivian shuddered, feeling her flesh respond to the dragon’s words. The coal of rage in her belly glowed white hot. Her skin tightened over muscle primed to fight.
“Never,” she said aloud.
A cry issued from the dragon’s throat, a sound that would have once dropped Vivian to her knees. She felt the Prince stagger off balance, but she felt no fear. The dragon lumbered toward her, crushing bodies beneath her great feet. Bones snapped with a sound like dry branches breaking. Crimson wounds opened where sharp talons caught an arm, a chest, a thigh.
The horned head darted out snakelike on a long neck. A crunch of bone, a wet splattering of blood and viscera, and nothing was left of a man but his legs. Blood and tissue drenched the woman next to him, but she continued gazing into the distance, absently wiping the wetness from her face with her hands. The dragon trampled more inert bodies.
Vivian lusted for blood. It was a deep and primal desire that sprang up from a darkness she had always kept buried in the unplumbed depths of her soul. These were human beings, she tried to remind herself, but the voice of rationality was obscured by a furnace in her belly. Something about her shoulder blades felt wrong. She twitched them restlessly, feeling the fabric slide cool over her skin, half-expecting the catch of something sprouting, growing into wings.
Esme’s finger traced idly through the dirt, her tangled hair screening her face.
The dragon’s eyes focused in her direction.
Vivian reached for the Voice, the command that must be obeyed, but had somehow lost the capacity for words. Her tongue felt thick and too large for her mouth. Instead, she spoke directly into the dragon’s mind.
Leave that one alone.
The dragon raised its head and looked at her. That won’t work on me, human. I go deeper than your sorcery.
Vivian’s body was too large for her skin; in a moment she would burst through it, take on a different form and shape. Her hearing had sharpened. She could hear her own heartbeat, Landon’s, Esme’s, the suss and flow of blood through arteries and veins. Again she found she could almost taste the hot salt of flesh and blood, with a growing desire to rend and tear. Flesh was only flesh. Food. These were cattle, penned for the taking.
She pushed against the fence, felt it begin to give against a body grown awkward and clumsy, impervious to the prick of the barbed wire.
Awareness of the door exploded on her consciousness an instant before it appeared in the middle of nothing, a black door, stone. It opened, and Jehenna stood there, no longer robed as a queen but wearing a black gown identical to Vivian’s.
“Mellisande, hold.” Jehenna’s voice lashed through the cavern.
Vivian felt the command strike the dragon’s silver bonds, cringed away in sympathy from the web of pain that immobilized the creature in her tracks.
Negligent, Jehenna waved her hand. “Esme, awake.”
The girl blinked and looked around her. Fear distorted her face and she cowered back against the fence at the same time as she began to scream in absolute terror.
“Come here,” Jehenna commanded.
Esme got to her feet and staggered over to the Sorceress, who pressed a stone knife against her pale throat.
“Now, Dreamshifter. Get yourself under control, or I will kill her.”
Vivian struggled to hold on to herself in the middle of overwhelming and warring sensations.
Kill. Eat. Burn.
Save the girl.
She was aware of her identity sliding away, of the dragon self growing stronger, all compassion dissolving. The world was hard edged, brilliant hued. Somewhere above these dungeons a vast night sky promised the exhilaration of flight.
No, I have to do—something. Something small, insignificant…
“Vivian.”
A familiar voice that caught and held her rapidly fading memory.
Again the name that held her, spoken by a tall man bearing a bright sword. He strode toward her and laid a hand against her face. Cool. It stirred memories, faint and distant, of pleasures other than blood and flight.
His eyes burned into hers, and he spoke the name for the third time. “Vivian. I name you.”
She breathed in, deep, felt the coolness of the air ease the fire within her.
The man bent his head and pressed his lips against hers. He tasted of something precious, remembered and lost, a sweetness that drew everything she was and ever had been, in all the worlds, into one long, lingering kiss.
When at last they parted, Vivian’s knees buckled and she clung to the Warlord, breathless and trembling, her cheek resting against his chest, letting his strong arms support her.
His voice low and intimate, whispered in her ear. “Are you yourself again?”
“I—think so.” She felt small and frail. “How did you find me?”
“I thought you would come here. I followed you.”
“Perfect,” Jehenna said, applauding. “Well done, Warlord. Had you allowed her to change, she could have killed me—now she is mine.”
Vivian turned out of the Warlord’s arms to face her enemy.
Jehenna still held Esme in front of her, the knife pressed against the girl’s throat. Whimpering noises escaped from between lips blanched almost white.
“Now, Dreamshifter. The key.”
Still disoriented and shaken, Vivian shook her head. “I—it isn’t here.”
Jehenna’s eyes narrowed; her nostrils flared. Vivian felt a touch on the surface of her thoughts, light, persistent. “Of course. Tell me where it is.”
“Let Esme go.”
“You dare give orders to me? Let me teach you your place. Come here and kill her yourself.”
Vivian felt that slight tug as the Sorceress used the Voice, but it was a small matter to shrug it off. “No.”
“You cannot refuse me. Now. Kill the girl.”
“Your sorcery doesn’t work on me, Jehenna.” Then, speaking from that place of power newly discovered, Vivian used the Voice herself. “Let her go.”
The hand holding the knife began to shake. Jehenna’s jaw tightened; a spasm traveled across her face. Her arms dropped to her sides and the frightened girl scuttled away, sobbing, toward the fence and the promise of protection.
Vivian felt a brief bright flare of victory that faded at once. Jehenna’s face was pale with fury, but it held an expression far from defeat. She smiled. “Child, you are so young. Power you may have, but you know nothing. This servant girl, that you claim to care for so much. Here she is, living. And yet you refuse the one thing that will keep her alive. All I ask is a thing. A small object. A key. So little in exchange for a life.”
“I won’t let you hurt her. I’ve just proven I’m stronger than you.”
“Are you, truly? I wonder.”
Vivian knew, knew in her gut and her soul before the voices could shout a warning, that a blow was coming. But she didn’t know from where, or how to counter the unknown.
The Sorceress walked over to the dragon and laid a hand on the scaly skin, just above the creature’s knee.
Through the unspoken bond with the dragon, Vivian felt a flash of hatred in reaction to the touch, but Mellisande stood unmoving, docile, controlled by the silver web that bound her wings.
Esme had scrabbled over to the fence and pressed against it, heedless of the barbs tearing into her clothing and skin. “Help me,” she pleaded, reaching her hands through.
“It’s cruel to keep the poor thing suffering,” Jehenna continued. “Don’t you think? So much kinder to allow her the dullness, that she might not know what is going on.”
“Leave her alone,” Vivian said. She took Esme’s hands in hers, clasped them tightly.
“My Lady, help me.”
“Hang on, Esme. We’ll get you out.”
“One way or another,” Jehenna said. She smiled. “Mellisande. Dinner.”
Before Vivian could even draw a breath, the dragon’s head shot forward and Esme disappeared into her gaping jaws. Hot blood sprayed over Vivian’s face, blinding her, mercifully, to the rest of what followed. She felt the crunch of teeth on bone reverberate through her own body. Her hands still gripped Esme’s, but when she managed to blink the blood from her eyes, she saw that the hands ended in bloody stumps of protruding bone.
Doubled over, vomiting up a bitterness that burned her throat, her nose, Vivian heard a warning shout from the Warlord. Heard Jehenna’s voice, right behind her, far too close, commanding, “Warlord, sheathe your sword.”
Something cold snapped around first one wrist and then the other.
An instant weariness came over her, as though she’d been ill and bedridden for days, as though she’d run for miles through desert heat. Breathing hard, wiping blood and vomit from her face with the backs of her hands, Vivian straightened, swaying, but still upright.
The Warlord’s hand was clenched, white knuckled, around the hilt of the sword he had been forced to sheathe. The Prince stood beside him, his breathing as ragged and raw as Vivian’s own. She refused to look at what lay just through the fence, at either the dragon or whatever remained of Esme. Each of her wrists was encircled with a bracelet of silver.
“Ah, Dreamshifter.” Jehenna shook her head. “If only you had given me the key. I asked you courteously. And now we have come to this. Look at what you have done.”
The compulsion burned through the bracelets and into her wrists. She could not close her eyes or turn away but was forced to turn her head, to see the wreckage of what had been Esme. Mellisande stood listless, head hanging low to the ground, bloodstained and hideous. One human leg, shattered femur bone protruding, lay in a pool of gore, half under the fence. At Vivian’s feet, where she had dropped them, Esme’s severed hands reproached her, fingers still curled and clinging now to empty air.
Vivian’s stomach heaved and she swallowed, hard. Her breath came in small, sobbing gasps.
“Now, about that key.”
“I can’t,” Vivian said. To her horror, she found that she was sobbing and could not stop. Now, when she most needed to be strong, she was falling apart like a small and frightened child.
Zee stepped forward and circled her with his arm. She felt his solid strength, inhaled it into her body. Landon stood on the other side, taking her hand in his.
Jehenna’s face darkened.
She stepped forward, stroked the Warlord’s cheek with her fingertips. Beads of sweat stood out on his forehead, the muscles corded in his neck as the fingers traced the network of scars. “You have betrayed me,” she said. “What shall I do with you now?”
“I betrayed my men. My self. You never had my loyalty to begin with.”
Jehenna jabbed her fingers into an unhealed wound, dug deep. Blood welled, making a trail down his cheek like crimson tears. He stood expressionless and impassive. She slapped him.
“Leave him alone.” Vivian’s voice sounded fragile to her own ears, powerless and small.
“He is mine, little Dreamshifter, to do with as I wish. Shall I show you?”
“No. Please.” She hated herself for pleading, but it was all she could do.
“Kiss me, Warlord.” The voice of command, with a purring undertone of seduction.
Vivian felt a jolt go through him, as though he’d been struck by a current of electricity. The arm around her waist went rigid and then fell away. Slowly, he bent his head and pressed his lips, brief and dry, against Jehenna’s.
Again the Sorceress slapped him, raking her fingernails over his bleeding cheek. “Kiss me like you kissed her. Show her how you want me.”
Sickened, Vivian watched helplessly as he followed the command, crushing his lips against Jehenna’s, passionate, demanding. His hands caressed her, stroked the length of her back, pulled her body hard against his. The Sorceress molded herself around him.
There was nothing Vivian could do except close her eyes. Anybody she loved, anybody she cared about, Jehenna would torture. Would kill in the end. She felt Landon’s hand squeeze hers, warm and steadying.
“A casual observer might think you jealous, My Queen,” he said. His tone was casual, conversational. “Desperate, even. A kiss given under duress will never equal one given in love.”
Jehenna stiffened and broke the embrace. Her eyes flashed with fury.
“You. Poor little prince. Hiding in the dark and mourning his lost love. Are you challenging me at last?”
Landon sank onto one knee. “No. I am offering myself. Let these two go.”
Jehenna’s laughter was a cold and evil thing, winding its way through Vivian’s brain and making a darkness of every memory where there had ever been light and love. “Ah, my little lordling. I have a surprise especially for you.”
Vivian fought the sickness and the weakness, searching for some way to fight back. Jehenna began to mutter under her breath, words rhythmic and incomprehensible. The air thickened until it was difficult to draw a breath. A door appeared, its edges shimmering with green light.
It opened on a bare room, scarcely larger than a cell. White walls, white floor, harsh white light. Isobel sat in a corner, curled over her knees, rocking. Her hair fell tangled over a tear-streaked face. Lost in torment, she did not even look up.
“Isobel!” Landon cried. He flung himself forward. Green light flared as he struck the open door, bounced him backward to lie dazed on the cold stone. Vivian stepped forward cautiously, put her head close to the barrier, not quite touching.
“Isobel!”
“She can’t hear you,” Jehenna said. “No sound in there. Nothing to see, or touch, or feel. No passage of time. Not a thing but what is already in her head.”
Vivian, knowing something of what was in her mother’s head, swept her hand across the invisible barrier. A shock of pain, a flash of green light. Her hand and wrist went numb; her arm ached.
Landon moaned and pushed himself back up onto his feet. “Isobel.” All the long years of separation were in his voice.
Almost she seemed to hear him, pausing in the rocking and raising her head to look around. Then she made a small sound of despair, like an exhausted child, and began rocking again.
“Let’s make this more interesting,” Jehenna said. She tossed something through the doorway, a thing that clattered and skidded across the floor, bumping up against Isobel’s bare foot.
A knife.
Again Vivian tried to press her way through to her mother. Green flame from the edge of the doorway grounded into the silver bracelets. Her muscles convulsed in an agony of fire that dropped her to the ground where she lay, twitching and helpless, able only to watch and do nothing.
Isobel stopped rocking. She picked up the knife, turned it in her hands. One finger tested the blade. She smiled, ran it delicately the length of her forearm, laying open the flesh with surgical precision. Again she ran a finger along the blood-wet edge, testing, then set it against her skin once more.
Jehenna laughed, releasing them all from the force of her will as she focused on the suffering woman.
“Now, Landon!” the Warlord shouted. He thrust the blade of his sword into the force field. Green light arced and writhed around his hands, his arms. His entire body went rigid and convulsed as the force field grounded itself through him and into the cavern floor. The Prince flung himself forward. For the length of one long breath he hung motionless in the air, his body outlined in green, flickering light. But then he was through, clasping Isobel tightly, tightly, removing the knife from her hands. She buried her face in his shoulder and clung to him.
Jehenna hissed through her teeth, her beautiful face distorted by rage.
Vivian drove her shoulder into the Warlord’s chest, pushing him backward and away from the current that held him. Released, he sagged onto the floor, unconscious, the sword clattering to the stone beside him.
Down on her knees, Vivian checked his vital signs. There was a pulse, faint and thready, but he wasn’t breathing. Tilting his head, she sealed her lips around his and breathed into him. Once, twice, three times.
He drew a deep shuddering breath on his own. And then another.
When she looked up, the door was gone, and Isobel and Landon with it.
“They’ll be sick of each other soon enough,” Jehenna said. “The knife will come in handy, years and years from now, when they’ve had nothing but each other and the love turns to hate. I couldn’t have planned a fate so perfect.”
“Why?” Vivian asked. “Why do you hate your own daughter so?”
“She was always her father’s more than mine. I bore her to please him, but it wasn’t enough. He turned against me, locked me away into that room. Do you understand what that means? One hundred years of nothing but my own thoughts and memories. Every long empty minute I worked to build my power. So much time to plan revenge. It was perfect. And when I broke free—”
“You killed him.”
Jehenna kicked the unconscious Warlord in the ribs, a sharp and vicious blow. “I weary of this game,” she said. “Perhaps I will kill him with his own blade.” She bent and picked up the sword from where it lay beside him. “Bare his chest.”
And Vivian felt her own hands moving, unable now to resist the Voice. She unfastened the chain mail shirt, lifted the tunic beneath it. Gasped at the network of scars marring the skin of his chest.
“Such a foolish man to punish himself so.” Jehenna positioned the tip of the sword in the space between two ribs, directly over the heart. “Shall I?”
Vivian’s own heart keened in her breast. “Stop,” she croaked. “Please.”
The Warlord’s eyes flickered open, those beautiful agate eyes.
“Where is the key?” Jehenna demanded.
“No,” the Warlord said, “My Lady, no—”
Bound with silver, her will not her own, Vivian could no longer refuse. “I have it.”
“Give it to me.”
Knowing that great evil would follow, Vivian unbound the fabric strips that strapped the key to her thigh. It felt extraordinarily heavy in her hand, almost as though it was sentient and resistant to the exchange.
“No,” the Warlord whispered.
But the thing was already done. With a cry of exultation, Jehenna took the key from Vivian’s hand and pressed it to her lips.