Twenty-seven
Vivian opened her eyes to complete and utter darkness. Someone seemed to be pounding her head with a hammer, in perfect time with the beating of her heart. Her throat felt bruised, her mouth so parched she could barely swallow. The air was cold, musty, heavy with the stink of human waste, sweat, and despair.
Memory showed up a few heartbeats later, reminding her that she was locked in a cell in the dungeons, that she wasn’t going to find a way out. Cold silver circled both wrists, controlling her, blocking her ability to create a door, to use the Voice on a guard, to do anything to help herself.
Alive, but not for long.
With a groan, she pushed herself up to sitting, waited for the storm of agony in her head to settle, then tried to make sense of her surroundings.
She sat on a pile of damp, rank-smelling straw. Her bare feet reached out and found clammy stone. It took three attempts for her to get onto hands and knees, and from there to stagger up onto her feet and stand, swaying. When the pain in her head eased back to what she was coming to think of as normal, she limped cautiously forward on her bruised and aching feet.
Five tottering steps brought her to a stone wall. She felt along it for maybe ten paces before it intersected with another wall.
Definitely a cell. She went over it again and again, exploring every reachable inch with her hands for anything that could be used to help her escape, but there was nothing. No cracks, no loose stones. At last she sank back down on her pile of straw, remaining perfectly still except for the necessary act of breathing.
There would be no rescue attempt.
Prince Landon might have tried, but he was locked away with Isobel. The Warlord, if he was still alive, would not be free to come for her. Last she’d seen him, when the guards dragged her away, he’d been lying on the floor with Jehenna still standing over him pressing the tip of his sword against his bared breast.
Tears threatened, but Vivian blinked them back.
Her thoughts flickered in and out, short-circuited by cold, hunger, and fear of the unknown. Would she be sacrificed to the dragon? Or would she be left here to molder away, slowly decaying in the dark? It would take ten days, more or less, to die of dehydration. A month or more to die of starvation if they decided to bring her water. She feared this more than the dragon, she realized. It was too much like Isobel’s fate, locked away with her guilt and failures with no hope of setting them right.
Footsteps sounded in the hallway, slow and halting. She had time to picture a deformed monster come to torment her before there was a soft grating sound, and a flickering yellow light illuminated the line of a half-open door. Above it, distorted by the shadows, Jared’s face. No, not Jared, she reminded herself. Gareth.
“Come to gloat, or to finish what you started?” she asked. Automatically she reached for the knife, but her pocket was empty. Of course, Jehenna would never have left her something that could be either defense or a means of self-destruction in the face of torture or starvation.
Gareth flinched as though she had struck him. He entered the cell, a lantern in one hand, pushing the door not quite closed behind him. “I never wanted this.” His voice sounded, just for the moment, young and a little bit lost. He bent his knees as though he would sit beside her in the straw, then changed his mind with a little gasp of pain.
Vivian kept silent, waiting for him to declare his purpose.
“Is there anything I can do to ease you?”
Water, food. She bit her lip rather than ask him for anything. “I didn’t expect you to be up and around quite yet.”
One of his hands twitched protectively to rest on his buttocks. “No permanent damage, the healer said. But it makes sitting difficult.”
“Why are you really here, Gareth?”
“I came to tell you you’ll be sacrificed to the dragon at dawn.”
“Always the bearer of good news.”
“Not just you—the Warlord as well, if he’s not already dead.”
Her heart skipped a beat in mingled hope and dismay. “What?”
“One rumor says he’s in the dungeon awaiting punishment. The other that she’s killed him already.”
Vivian found that she couldn’t speak.
“My Lady?”
“You’ve delivered the message. You can go and tell her I’m quivering in terror.”
A strangled sound escaped him, somewhere between a laugh and a sob, and then he did lower himself, very slowly, to sit beside her in the straw. “That’s not why I came.”
“So why are you here?”
“To explain. The thing that happened with your bird. She ordered me to do that. Said the creature must be removed.”
Vivian’s temper flared, but she kept her voice even. “And now—what? You want my forgiveness before I die?”
“Yes. I mean no—I don’t want for you to die, at all. She said the key was dangerous for you, that once it was safely in her hands you would be safe. I heard that she had found the key. That you had been locked in the dungeon. I went to her; I asked that she would keep her promise. She—laughed. She said that now she has the key she has no need of you…”
“If you’re so sorry, get me out of here. Free me.”
He moaned, buried his face in his hands. “I can’t. There are guards everywhere.”
“People are dead because of you. Esme was eaten by the dragon last night. Did you know? She spattered. A great deal of her is now stains on my gown. And now it’s my turn.”
“You have power. Can’t you do something?”
Vivian stretched out her wrists, the silver bracelets glinting in the lantern light. “She has bound me.”
Gareth took one of her hands and ran his fingers over the silver. A familiar touch. In the darkness she could almost imagine that he was Jared, that perhaps he loved her. Almost. But Jared’s hands had also turned against her. She shuddered but would not give him the satisfaction of pulling away.
He turned one of her wrists, held it closer to the candle, and bent his head to examine the clasp.
“Look. You’ve said what you came to say. Go back to your chambers. Get some sleep. Tomorrow morning comes early. You won’t want to miss the show.”
Turning aside, he set the lantern down, well away from the straw, and then took her right wrist in his hands again. Pressure. A click. And the bracelet fell away. He took her left hand and repeated the action.
Vitality flooded back into her body. Voices shouted in her head, as though a switch had been turned on. The weight of responsibility settled back onto her shoulders; the harsh flicker of hope beset her heart.
“Why would you free me?” she asked.
“You were right—what you said about the dreams.”
Vivian closed her eyes to shut out his face, walling off a cyclone of emotions that she had no time to sort out. Too many lives hung in the balance for her to indulge in vengeance in this moment. Clenching her fists, she steadied her breathing and her voice.
“What did I say?”
“That I was a better man in my dreams. I—have loved you, I think.”
“Whatever it was, it wasn’t love.”
“She made me, you have to believe that. I had orders…”
Vivian wanted to believe him. But he hadn’t acted like a man under duress. She thought about the Warlord, the way he’d fought the compulsion. The cold sweat, the way his face had twisted in hate and resistance when he’d been forced to obey.
She shook her head. “No, Gareth. You acted as you wished to act. She gave you the opportunity to live your own dreams. You took it.”
“My Lady—”
“Go back to your bed.” Half-unconscious, she used the Voice.
He stiffened as the command jolted into him. Picked up the lantern and took a step toward the door. “But I freed you.”
“Did you expect a reward? Get out, before I make you hurt yourself.”
Her own words echoed with the other voices in her head as the door closed with him, shutting out the last glimmer of light.
You acted as you wished to act.
There was truth in these words. Surmise was not entirely of Jehenna’s making. Each dreamer here bore some responsibility for the way things played out. They made choices, even in dream, and Surmise shifted and changed because of them. Things could be altered; nothing was set.
Perhaps it was not necessary to die.
Curling back into the straw, she tucked the bracelets into her pocket. Her brain spun in circles, trying to make sense out of Surmise and the Between. At last the voices carried her off into a fitful sleep, in which she dreamed of Poe, and the key, and of soaring through a cold night sky on wide strong wings.
She woke to the sound of boots echoing in the corridor. Time, then. She fumbled for the bracelets and slipped them onto her wrists, where they dangled loosely. Her body went weak at the touch of the silver.
When the door opened, it revealed a withered crone standing in front of three guards. Off to the side and a few safe paces back, a young girl waited, something white and diaphanous draped across her outstretched arms.
Two guards took up positions on either side of the open door; the other entered the cell, followed by the old woman. Her face was sun weathered, creased into lines so sharp they looked like they could cut.
“I’m guessing it must be almost dawn,” Vivian croaked. She swallowed, trying to moisten a throat parched with thirst.
The crone grinned, revealing a mouthful of brown and broken teeth. She gestured for Vivian to get up.
No reason not to comply, except that her first effort failed, her legs giving away and dropping her into a heap. The guard seized her by the wrists and hauled her bodily onto her feet. She braced herself, her aching head making the room spin.
A gesture from the old woman, and the guard pulled a canteen from his belt and handed it to Vivian. Water. Warm and stale, but gloriously wet. She drank long and deep.
The dizziness receded and the pain eased to a tolerable throbbing.
Another gesture, and the guard stepped behind her. She flinched at the touch of his fingers as she realized he was unfastening the gown. But even when he bent to lift the skirt and pulled the gown up and over her head, she offered no resistance, only taking care that the loosened bracelets didn’t catch on the sleeves and slide off with the torn and bloodstained garment. The guard’s eyes, even his hands, on her naked body were a small thing, meaningless in the face of what lay ahead.
But he didn’t touch her, only stepped back. A page appeared in the hallway with a basin of water, and the old woman’s gnarled hands bathed Vivian from head to toe and then raked a comb through the tangles in her hair.
Another gesture, this time to the maiden waiting in the corridor who entered the cell, carrying a white, trailing gown.
Every tapestry, every painting, in the castle depicted a maiden wearing a white gown such as this. And every maiden wearing a white gown stood face to face with a dragon. As Vivian donned the gown she felt the first cracks in her unnatural calm. Her insides trembled as though a small and private earthquake were taking place within her.
Clawed old hands smoothed the dress, fluffed her hair, turned her from side to side to see that all was in order. And then the old woman nodded once at her handiwork and, without ever speaking a word, turned and hobbled away down the corridor, leaning on the arm of the maiden.
This left Vivian alone with the guards.
They watched her closely but kept a respectful distance.
Again she heard footsteps, and a moment later the priest stood framed in the doorway, clad in his scarlet robes. The lantern light reflected in his eyes. He thumped his staff onto the stone with a sharp return like a gunshot. Vivian flinched in spite of her best intentions.
“Is the sacrifice ready?”
He was apparently speaking to her. She didn’t answer.
“Maiden, do you give yourself willingly as a sacrifice to the Dragon, that the people of this land may walk in safety, that the doors may be safely closed between this world and the others that may do us harm?”
“F*ck you,” Vivian said.
The priest’s narrow face paled. A faint sheen of perspiration appeared on his forehead. “I ask you again—do you give yourself willingly as a sacrifice?”
“No. And whatever sort of twisted game this is, I’m not playing. Do you hear me? I am not a volunteer.”
“But it’s traditional—”
“Oh come on. Are you going to call off the sacrifice because I haven’t said the right words? What do you suppose she will do to you then?”
“This is a rite. A holy ceremony, conducted for the good of the people…”
He faltered under her steady gaze, shuffling his feet a little in the silence that followed. “Bring her,” he said. Without further debate, he spun on his heel and led the way down a long, dark passage. Level, not sloping either up or down.
Vivian followed, pacing between the guards. Still they did not touch her. Behind them followed a procession that had arrived with the priest—maidens in white, long hair loose on their shoulders, all bearing candles.
The maidens began a slow, heavy chant. Vivian found herself thinking that a dragon chant should be sharp and so clear it can cut. It should soar high and dip low in the spirit of freedom, not bondage in the darkness. A reluctant empathy for the old dragon stirred in her, pity for the change wrought by the long years in the dark. She, too, had been twisted by Jehenna’s meddling.
It wasn’t a long walk, not long enough given what waited at the end. A door opened, framing a rectangle of bright daylight. Thunderous noise swept into the passageway through the open door—voices shouting, hands clapping, feet stomping. It sounded for all the world like the crowd at a football game.