Chapter 9 #2
At first, it isn’t too bad. Then I’m reminded of how little I move around nowadays as my heart drums harder and harder and my lungs drag in sharper breaths.
I lean on the wall, grimacing as my thighs make good on their earlier promise of pain.
Still going, I lose sight of Drystan’s well-tailored back.
When I reach the top, clammy and gasping for air, there’s no sign of him, just a door.
As soon as I step through, the wind blasts me, chilling my sweaty skin and whipping hair into my eyes, but I see enough to understand I’m at the top of a tower.
Curious, I approach the crenelated wall and try to tame my hair so I can take in the view beyond the white-clad rooftops of the buildings huddled within the fortress walls.
A moment later, the wind stops and I can catch my breath without it being stolen by the icy air.
“This is Mordren,” Drystan says from behind me, blocking the wind.
I push the hair from my eyes and take in my first glimpse of the world beyond the fortress walls.
To left and right, chasms drop away into an unfathomable darkness I can’t see through. I wonder if even fae eyes, able to see at night, are able to penetrate it. Behind us, sheer rock rises into a forbidding mountain range. No escape in that direction.
And ahead, snow shrouds everything, from the walls, down the narrow stone causeway leading from the gates to the plain lying beyond. It coats the dark tree trunks, and clumps at the edge of an icy-blue ribbon that carves through the land—a frozen river.
There isn’t a single spot of green. The Underworld must be in the depths of winter. I bite back a sigh.
I don’t necessarily have a problem with the land, it’s more the cold. Already my wrists are achy and experience tells me my knees will soon follow. At least if there were signs of spring below, I’d have the reassurance that this weather won’t last.
Not that I plan to stay here long enough for it to matter. I have to keep reminding myself of that. The king might think this is all set in stone, but I’m less sure about the bargain. If there’s one thing I’ve learned from the old stories it’s that there are always loopholes. Always.
Something moves on the plains. Deer, weathering the cold? I squint and lean over the battlements.
Drystan’s presence at my back shifts. “The River Arawn,” he says in my ear, breath shockingly hot compared to the chill air. “It once cut us off from the plains where the dead roam. Now we have only our walls.”
My mouth drops open. Not deer. Too upright. And his words—is he trying to reassure me? “You mean… they’re the dead?”
“What did you expect from the Underworld?” He sounds amused, then his hand closes on my shoulder, while the other points ahead and his face appears alongside mine. “They pass through here on their journey to the Next Place. You see their paths?”
The figures move slowly, dark shapes against the snow, but they make steady progress in the same direction. Light gray tracks cut through the white landscape. “I see them.”
He lowers his hands and we watch for a while.
I have to admit, it’s kind of beautiful in an unearthly way.
This world has a bright, silvery moon not unlike our own, though when I look up at it, my stomach drops in surprise.
This moon’s craters form patterns I’m not used to.
Similar, but not the same, casting this chilly world in ethereal light.
I find my gaze tracing the paths of the dead, counting the figures I spot. Ten. Eleven. Twelve. A constant stream of death. One day I’ll just be another one passing by. Unremarkable and unmarked.
How bloody gloomy.
I grit my teeth, not only because of the cold, and square my shoulders. I won’t be unmarked. I will be home with the people who love me, and that’s enough.
I squint to the left, where the paths disappear into the distance. “How do they get here?”
“By… dying?”
“But I mean… are their bodies here? They must be solid to leave prints in the snow. But people don’t disappear when they die. Unless they—”
“Their souls come here, where they become solid.”
“Hm.”
“Some get lost or linger, wanting to stay. Sometimes they become dangerous. Sometimes they’re just… sad.”
I frown out at a knot of figures gathered together. “I suppose they have left behind everyone they know.”
This time he makes the thoughtful sound but gives no sardonic response.
He’s different from last night. I put it down to the fact we’re alone, so he isn’t playing the part of the king.
As I scan further and further into the distance, I realize I was wrong earlier. Snow doesn’t cover everything—a strip of gray lies beyond it… and a smear of green, too. “What’s over there?” I point out the blurring horizon, where there seems to be a building. “Is that another fortress?”
I don’t realize how close he’s been standing, the warmth that’s been leaching across from him to me, until now when it fades. I feel him stiffening—a subtle shift in the air like the heaviness before a storm.
“That’s my brother’s realm.”
That cuts short our tour and seems to cut out his tongue, because he says nothing more as he escorts me to my room, with one of the Twylth stationed outside the door. Another person to watch me. That will be a problem for my inevitable escape attempt.
But I’m kind of glad there’s to be no more walking tonight, because my thighs and backside are sore from climbing the stairs, and the cold has ground my bones to dust—at least that’s how it feels.
Yet I can’t help wondering why his kingdom is frozen and stark while his brother’s has been spared this deep, dark winter.