Beyond her was the crack in the red stone. From it poured the stench of Death.
“No,” the Chronicler said. Then he screamed and pulled and struggled, but there was no escape from the strong arms holding him. Another slave stepped forward and bound his hands with a thick cord that bit into his wrists. Still he would not have relented, save that a big man picked him up by the back of his shirt, lifting him like a helpless kitten dangling in its mother’s jaws. The humiliation overwhelmed him, and though he kicked feebly, he had no heart to continue the struggle.
The high priestess stepped before him, her mouth hard beneath the black blindfold. She spoke and he understood nothing she said. But he thought—and the thought surprised him, especially in this shameful moment suspended before the door of Death—that there was heartbreak in her voice.
He heard the name, “Halisa,” and knew what they were about to make him do.
The next moment he was plunged, without the protection of a blindfold, into the darkness of the Diggings.
The slave carried him for the first several paces, then put him down and let him walk, led like a lamb to the knife and the fire. He had listened incredulously when Mouse told her bizarre tale. Unicorns and temples and underground passages . . . none of it fit within the range of belief he had always known. He scarcely believed it now as he set one foot down before the other, following the slave and the high priestess, lost in the midst of the procession.
He was thankful in that moment to be so small and so surrounded by his enemies. Their shadows and their long robes provided a shield against the darkness beyond them. The Diggings were vast, and the footsteps of the priestesses and slaves echoed forever. The passage they followed was broad and descended quickly into a great cavern, a cavern that could not be seen for its vastness no matter how many torches were held aloft. Other passages branched off from this, twining away like snakes.
If the Chronicler allowed himself to hear anything beyond the tramp of feet and the breath of his captors, he could have heard the voices of the lost crying out from the depths.
His stomach jolted with the pain of realization. This place, where slave miners had spent the short span of their lives in search of a legend, rested in the Between. Just as the Wood itself stood between worlds, so this realm stood between the world of life and that of death.
He could deny belief in magic swords. He could rebel against the very idea of chosen destinies, of kingship, of stars come to earth or doors opened.
But this much was true beyond doubt: There was life, and there was death, and no one could survive between.
Suddenly there was a loud crash and clatter. A horrible sound in that darkness, a sound that must draw all the phantoms of the lost teeming to this place where the living dared walk. The Chronicler startled, for it was the slave beside him who had fallen suddenly, his torch clattering from his hands.
It was like the burst of a storm. The acolytes screamed, and the priestesses cursed them ineffectually to silence. Eunuchs rushed to the fallen one, and weapons were drawn, and frightened faces, many of them blindfolded, swam before the Chronicler’s vision.
Then he was faced by a pair of black eyes that he knew.
Mouse drew a knife from the sleeve of her dark robe and cut the cord binding his wrists.
“Run,” she said, and in this darkened realm, he understood her. The next moment, she was gone, vanished into the crowd of screams and curses.
Life and death swam before the Chronicler’s eyes. He felt the pull of the Netherworld, the lure that must have driven a hundred or more miners to madness. For the space of a breath, he resisted.
Then he was running. Ducking under arms, dashing between pressing bodies, and he knew that even if they were aware, they would not catch him. The pull of the Netherworld was too strong. He would enter it.
And he would be lost.
7
WHEN I WOKE AGAIN, I was filled with fire, brighter than life, brighter than death, brighter than the sun or the moon. I stood there in the darkness of my Dark Father’s realm and turned to face him on his throne.
“Look at me!” I cried, raising my wings. “Look at my fire! Look at my power! Am I not glorious beyond description?”
“You’re bright enough,” Death-in-life replied through flame-wreathed teeth. “But don’t forget your place. You are my child and you will do as I say. You will kill the Brothers Ashiun.”
The heady marvel of the strength I felt was more than anything I had ever known. Greater than when I had stood before my brother’s dead body and felt the sudden surge of queenship inside me. Greater than when I first took the Dragon’s kiss and destroyed that mortal maid. I was a force like the wind, like hurricanes, like earthquakes.
“I am Hri Sora!” I proclaimed. “I am the Flame at Night! All the worlds will tremble before me, for never has there been such a fire as mine!”
“Whom do you serve?” the Dragon asked me.
“None but myself!” I cried.