Ethan rounded on him and that was that; an argument to last a lifetime. I had just tuned them out when the singing started again and I shifted through the bodies, running my hand along the desks and drawing lines in the dust. Something moved in the corner of my eye and I turned to face it. Instead of a person it was just a platform, like the one in Ethan’s library. I climbed a few steps up to an old, partly-cracked mirror that stretched from above my head to just below my ribs. Gehn, I looked sick. Though I’d avoided the mirrors at Willow’s house, I took the time to study the shell of a woman I’d become.
There was little colour in my cheeks, and I’d grown thinner despite my bottomless appetite. My dull, brown eyes had lost their spark and the deep, purple welts beneath them were darker. Apparently the night terrors were destroying my body as well as my mind. I scoffed, wishing I could smash the damn mirror into a thousand pieces. The singing stopped so abruptly that it made me jump and I turned to scan the room. When I looked back my blood ran cold.
In the mirror a woman stood just behind me. A river of silken, black hair flowed over her shoulder and below her breasts in a neat plait. If I had to guess she couldn’t have been older than thirty in Gnathian years. Her beautiful, blue eyes locked onto mine and for a moment I didn’t breathe. I daren’t. And then the woman moved. Approaching me from behind, she curled her fingers gently around my shoulder, smiling sadly. I shivered as the strange cold seeped into my skin. Seeing spirits wasn’t exactly a new thing but I’d never had one lay their hands on me fully before. I didn’t think any of them could. What kind of spirit was she? The question was answered abruptly, however, as my mind was flooded with the woman’s memories.
All around her people were screaming and running. It had been her daughter’s cry that alerted her to the oncoming danger but it had been too late. She slashed at the Berserker’s face with her blade and he howled with pain. After ripping the child out of his clutches she barricaded herself in the study. What sounded like a thousand hands beat against the doors as the wooden bar slipped across the metal fastener. It wouldn’t hold for long. Her husband spoke softly to her as tears slipped down both of their faces. She faced him, and her fear for their lives raced through her like wildfire but he merely smiled, his eyes crinkling at the corners. He brushed a hand over his daughter’s hair and kissed her forehead, muttering a prayer.
The doors pounded more fiercely and the wooden bar began to splinter. They had run out of time. Adrian mentioned her name and kissed his wife for the final time then pushed them away. The woman sobbed but neither of them looked back as she ran to find safety for their child. The sound of Adrian unsheathing his sword echoed in her mind but despite her grief she continued to the end of the study.
I gasped as I emerged from the memory. The woman was gone but the feeling of her hand remained and I walked hurriedly to the other side of the study, tracing the woman’s footsteps. When I came to a set of large bookcases set along a narrow path my breath caught and my mind flooded again.
The sound of wood breaking, and more Berserker cries than she’d ever heard before filled the air. Adrian yelled and his sword sang out above the sounds of death. With her child laced gently in her arms she pulled the fourth torch on the left hand side and a bookcase rolled backwards. She took the torch from its post but it didn’t matter, they would break through soon enough. Once the bookcase swung back into place behind her she ran to the only place the beasts could not enter.
I grasped onto the shelf beside me to steady my trembling form and walked to the end of the row. On the left a gaping hole stood open where a bookcase used to be, its books spilled out and trampled in the dark corridor. I peered inside but it was fruitless, the gloom was too thick to penetrate by eye. Beside me a long-extinguished torch hung on the wall and I had an idea.
“Ethan,” I called, walking back along the corridor. He hurried to me. “Can you light this? I don’t have any matches.” I held out the torch and waited hopefully.
“Ava-”
“Please?” I asked. Begrudgingly, he grasped the wick and it fizzled beneath his palm; a few seconds later it was alight. “Follow me.”
Ethan gestured to the others and they followed close behind. I stepped carefully down the corridor and paused at the entrance of the passage. The darkness seemed to breathe morosely around the intruding light and suddenly I was afraid. I’m not afraid of the dark, I told myself over and over. But this was different. This was heavy and suffocating like tar sticking to the walls. Then the singing started again.
Warmth wrapped itself around me, reassuring that everything would be okay. My breathing steadied and I stepped forward into the gloom.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
THE DIRTY, STONE ground beneath us was coated with shifted gravel, torn pages and dried blood; lots of dried blood. Both sides of the passage’s walls had been scratched and battered by what looked like a couple of dozen Berserkers, and ahead there was nothing. Nothing but a dead end and impatient, bloodied handprints splattered against the stone.
“What-?”
My sentence was cut short as the torch slipped from my fingers and the memories came again.
Adrian was dead. She’d heard the final blow silence his battle cries and take him from her. Not for long though. She would see him again. Catriona reached the end of the corridor and stared at the dark, solid wall. It was her only chance.
Beside the door, on the left, there lay an indentation in the rock just large enough for a man to lay his hand. She kissed her daughter’s palm and pressed her hand to the stone, praying to the Daeus that it would work. Behind her the crashing had started on the bookcases, though she hadn’t ever expected it to deter them for long. She willed it to work. It had to work. After too long the symbol beneath her child’s hand blazed and the heavy door slid open. She kicked the torch down the steps and jumped inside as a familiar voice pierced the air with malicious cries. The Berserkers broke through.
“You will never hurt my child!” Catriona screamed as the door slid shut between them.
My balance faltered and I pressed my fingers into my temples when pain laced through my head. Daeus, it hurt. Ethan grasped my upper arm and helped me to my feet, refusing to let go.
“What was that?” he demanded.
I couldn’t clear my mind. That symbol: I’d seen it before. I grasped Ethan’s left wrist and pulled the embellished cuff away. He protested heavily but I wrenched it back nonetheless. The branded skin was beautiful, despite its ugly creation and I marched him over to the bloodied wall, feeling around the left-hand edge until my hand stumbled across a dent. The edges of it had been scratched away like someone had desperately tried to force the mechanism to work. It was warm beneath my fingers.
“This is going to sound crazy,” I started, “but I think Catriona has been showing me how she escaped from the massacre.”
“That does sound crazy.” Ethan tried to pull his hand away but I clung to it.