“What do you mean?” I looked again, the words were as clear as day.
“This language hasn’t been so much as uttered for at least a few hundred years. Very few of us can understand it,” he said quietly.
I thought he was joking as I raised my eyebrows at him. When he stared at me perplexed and serious I scanned the title again and placed the book down in a hurry. Another oddity.
“In Wetherdon my mother told me stories of terrific legends: one of them was The Witches of Monterreny Moore. It was one of my favourites. This book looked similar to a one I had as a child. The artist’s pictures are the same,” I covered. It wasn’t a complete lie. Mother had told me such stories, but I’d read the book title clear as if I’d written it myself. Ethan eyed me questioningly but didn’t press. “Can any of you read this?” I steered the question away.
“I can read a little bit.” Ethan clenched his jaw.
“The peasant folk tended not to be able to read or write in such a complicated language. Our mother tried to teach us once, but my brother and I couldn’t quite grasp it before she died,” Daniel said.
“I heard the Eldryn folk still use it,” Ric intervened, shooting Ethan a darting glance. “Most of them,” he corrected.
“And yet a girl as young as Terra was reading these?” I said. “Incredible.”
“These could have been stories read to her.” Ethan closed the cover. “Though, history states that she was smarter than Demons four times her age. Hence why people are still so adamant she survived the attack.”
The room suddenly grew cold as a woman’s voice filtered in around us, singing a familiar song. Such a sweet lullaby it was. I had almost forgotten the beauty of its words. Something occurred to me then, impossible as it would be: What if the words I used to sing were not in our language? Thinking back to how my father had scolded me for singing it around the farm, it did make some sense – and at the same time it made no sense at all.
I tore my eyes away from the door and looked at the others. Why had no one reacted? With their senses there was no chance they couldn’t hear it. They were deep in conversation and not one of them showed any sign that something was out of the ordinary. Gathering my courage once more I slipped out into the corridor and followed the ghostly melody.
It was when I came to a corridor that I finally stopped. The rounded walkway fashioned aged grey stone and climbing wildflowers, even in such a damp climate. I reached out to touch the purple flower gazing in from the window and tried to remember. I’d been there before, in a dream not long after I’d arrived in Vremia. The little girl’s hands were still clear in my mind, her terrified scream drowned out all other sounds in my head, and step by step I walked down the small corridor, tracing the path from my nightmare.
To the left of me a loose floor stone could trip someone up. I rattled it with my foot and felt myself drain of colour when it moved. The great wooden door ahead was even big to me, let alone how it must have looked to the little girl. The black iron handle was cold against my fingers and I turned it. No give. Something snaked down my spine then; a feeling of sheer terror.
Once I’d reached the door, the man behind me—
No, not a man. A beast. Howling and hideous as it ran at me and I turned to wait for its appearance. The only creature to fly around the corner, however, was Ethan, ready to give me the scolding of a lifetime. Ric was close on his heels and Daniel behind him. At that moment I don’t know what it was but I hated his face and that garish red eye. It constantly reminded me of the Berserkers, yes…and something I couldn’t place.
“Ava,” Ethan said roughly. “For the love of all things holy, will you stop wandering off? You’ll be the death of me-”
“Can you open this door?” I asked him, ignoring his previous comment.
“Why?”
“I think it’s blocked from the other side.”
Ethan hesitated at first as I stood back, and eventually grabbed the handle. He pushed on the door with feral strength until it shifted, and poked his head inside. The first thing to hit us was the smell. Daeus above, I could have heaved up my stomach contents if there was anything in it. Like the rest of the house it had an underlying smell of damp mixed with rotting meat. It didn’t take a genius to guess what was behind the door.
Ethan’s irises were suddenly alight with mercury and smoke as he leant back into the corridor. “Are you sure you want to see this?” he asked, the collar of his shirt pressed against his mouth and nose.
I gulped, “Yes, I’m certain of it.”
He paused briefly and pushed the door further open, his face impressively blank.
Inside there were countless bodies. Considering the sheer amount in the room, it was surprising that the smell wasn’t worse. I pulled a section of my cloak around my face and breathed through it. The air inside swirled thickly with spores and panicking insects, and I could understand why. Despite the chaos that must have occurred the windows remained intact, with one of them cracked open a fraction, and the door was the only way in or out. For hundreds of years the room had been barricaded shut, and all of its decay, bugs and larvae with it.
We moved carefully through the bodies, sometimes shifting a hand or shoulder away to find an empty spot on the floor. Most of the corpses had decomposed cleanly, but others still held traces of their living state, and one stood apart from the other for his remnant shred of beard hair and his fine battle clothes. The house crest sat atop his chest proudly, the embroidered design still brilliant despite the passing centuries. His rings and silver helmet were the only things that truly differentiated him from the other soldiers around him. The striking colour stood out against his withered flesh, but his silver sword still pointed up from his hand in a silent, ageless defiance.
“Adrian had always been a brave man,” Ethan said. “My mentor knew him well.”
I was about to ask about him when Daniel cut in. “Quite cowardice to haul himself up in the study while all of his men fought and died outside,” he scoffed. Ric and I fell into a painful silence, both of us exchanging our surprise. Since he’d stepped into the building, Daniel had almost become a different person – or maybe that was just my limited experience with him.