Chapter 17 The Dark Door
THE DARK DOOR
KINGFISHER
THEY ROLLED IN on a skittering black tide.
Up the steps. Over the walls. Crawling out of the stonework.
Hundreds of them. Thousands.
Vorath Shah threw back his head and laughed as they came. He knew they wouldn’t hurt him . . . but the same couldn’t be said for us.
The first prick came at the back of my neck. A trail of fire blazed up into my head, fireworks going off right between my eyes.
“Ahh! Shit!” Carrion hissed, his body jolting as he, too, was stung.
His hands were still glued to the ground in the entrance of the octagonal room, though, so he couldn’t brush the scorpions away as they crawled up his arms and into his hair.
“Kingfisher!” he called, a note of panic rising in his voice. “A little help?”
But I couldn’t help him. The scorpions were under my armor, crawling up my back, stinging me as they went. Each individual sting was like a hot bolt of lightning, racing along my nerve endings, stealing my breath.
The scorpions were many, but they were also one.
The demons of old weren’t spoken of very often anymore, but I still knew of them.
I’d spent countless afternoons in my mother’s library while the rain hammered at the windows of Cahlish, reading the books my mother set out for me.
Old legends. Tomes on old magics, written in Old Fae.
Tales of grand heroism and good prevailing over evil.
And then stories about the old demons who had once plagued the lands of Yvelia.
She had read them to me over and over again, giggling with me as she’d tucked me into bed, pretending to be one demon or another as she “attacked” me.
When she had been Joshin, demon of the desert, fractured into his multitude of stinging scorpions, she had pinched me lightly, tickling me, all the while demanding as she always did, “And how will you stop me, sweetheart? What will you do to send me scattering into the dark?”
I hadn’t been able to breathe then from the tickling.
I couldn’t breathe now from the pain.
As a boy, I had panted, “The—the li-li—”
Now, I did the same. “We need to let—let in the li-light!”
Joshin, Lord of the Desert, King of the Dark Dream, couldn’t bear the light.
That’s why he had chosen to hide inside this black, windowless tower.
Why the demon trap had been laid for him here on the floor as well.
Whoever had etched the Alchimeran runes into the floor of the room up ahead had known this would be the only place a beast like Joshin could seek refuge.
“Light,” I gasped. Gods, even being eaten by Morthil in the maze hadn’t been this painful. “We need . . . light.”
Shah cackled. “This place is a tomb. No cracks in the walls. No holes in the floorboards. Joshin will come! Joshin will feed!”
Ahh, fuck this. I wasn’t being eaten by another demon. Not this time, when the magic of Malcolm’s cursed maze wouldn’t bring me back from the dead.
Carrion sprawled out on the floor and started screaming. The pain was total. No breath. No thought. No way out. The smuggler wasn’t used to it.
A carpet of glistening, oily black carapaces and vicious pincers swept over him, swallowing him from view. And then he was gone.
Fuck.
We didn’t have much time.
I wasn’t trapped by the snare that had been etched into the floor. Not yet. Two paths stood before me: I could turn, and I could run. Or I could enter the demon trap and commit to the dark nightmare that was already unfolding in my blood.
If I left, I could find the silver on my own. I could find Hayden Fane and drag his ass back to Yvelia. But if I left, the smuggler would die a horrific death—one I knew all too well—and I would have to explain to Saeris that I had abandoned her friend.
“Orillith ken mas cree, Carrion Swift,” I spat under my breath. I hadn’t cursed in Old Fae in centuries, but sinners, did the situation warrant it.
I stepped over Swift’s prone body and into the demon trap.
The ground seethed, lit up by the glowing runes. With every step, I felt the crack and the give of the scorpions beneath the soles of my boots.
Now that I’d entered the demon trap, I saw the trunks stacked high on the other side of the room.
Ten of them. More. Jewels, coins, and beaten golden cups spilled out from the closest trunk, reflecting the light cast off by the shining marks etched into the walls.
The body of a man lay curled in the fetal position close by.
His clothing was torn to shreds. Flesh still clung to his bones.
Joshin had obviously been savoring his last meal.
“Fisher!” Carrion’s cry was panicked.
Darts of agony struck all over my body. The scorpions stung through my pants. They were in my boots. In my hair. I crossed the room, slowing with each step, bile rising hot up the back of my throat.
“Hate to be . . . a bother,” Carrion wheezed. “But if you’re not in a position to . . . save me right . . . now, then . . . could you possibly kill me instead? This . . . really sucks.”
Gods, how was he still talking? I couldn’t even think.
“Oh no, he can’t kill you. No, no, no,” Shah chattered. “Joshin wants his prey alive. Joshin prefers it that way.”
I was going to flay Vorath Shah. Just as soon as I tore a hole in the side of this bell tower. See if I didn’t.
The very fibers of my being were alight and burning by the time I made it to the wall.
Tears streamed down my face, but even so, I could see Vorath had been right.
There were no cracks in the stonework. No seams between the blocks of sandstone.
The room had been sealed by magic. The only thing that could counter this kind of magic was magic itself—the kind of magic that would hurt.
I drew back my fist and took a deep breath.
“It won’t work,” Shah said in a sing-song tone.
“Joshin couldn’t break the wall. That was before he knew, though.
Two suns. I told him, I did. Two suns and no night.
No safety from the light. A thousand years, he tried.
I heard him pounding from the tunnels. That’s how I found him. Boom. Boom. Boom.”
I had thought he was just evil, but there was more to it. Vorath Shah was mad. He crowed with delight as I brought my fist forward and sent it crashing into the wall.
“Joshin didn’t have . . . my magic,” I grunted. My shadows could only do so much. They could either protect my fist from the impact, or they could shock the magic that was spelled into the walls.
I sent all my power into the wall.
“Oh gods. Fisher?” Suddenly, Carrion wasn’t screaming anymore. He sounded very concerned.
I brought my fist back and smashed it into the wall again. A ripple of shadows fanned out over the stone, and an answering ripple of black energy chased after it. I frowned at the sight, not trusting what I was seeing. Why was my magic pulsing twice?
“Kingfisher. The scorpions,” Carrion rasped. “They aren’t stinging me anymore. They’re . . . they’re leaving.”
Again, I drove my fist into the wall.
Again, a shock wave of my magic shot across the surface of the wall, and again, a secondary wave of shadows chased after it. I gritted my teeth against the rope of pain that shot up my arm, into my shoulder, my jaw. “They’re not leaving, Swift,” I said grimly. “They’re coalescing.”
“What the hell does that mean?”
I reached deep and commanded my shadows to gather.
I gave the strike everything I had. My knuckles split open this time, leaving my blood smeared on the sandstone when I drew back.
I was going to break bone at this rate. From head to toe, I was raw.
The throbbing behind my eyes intensified, making my vision swim.
“They can be many,” I said through gritted teeth. “Or they can be one. Right now . . . they’re becoming one.”
“I do not like the sound of that. Should I be worried?”
I pulled back and hurled my fist at the wall. “Most definitely.”
“He is magnificent. You should both be honored by his presence,” Vorath said in an awed tone.
I knew what it would look like—the mass of writhing flesh and bone in the darkened corner of the room. I shouldn’t have looked. But I did.
If my mother’s books had contained illustrations of the demon, she hadn’t shown them to me.
It was a horrible vision, all forming teeth and twisted, wet, glistening meat, pulsing and fibrous.
The scorpions scuttled up the growing mass and split open along their backs, fusing with the gathering, bleeding shape.
Arms were forming. Legs. A bulbous body, rising into a vaguely humanoid-shaped torso.
“Ugh. I think I’m going to throw up,” Carrion groaned.
He would definitely be throwing up soon.
He had just been hit with a monumental amount of venom.
It was a wonder he wasn’t hallucinating already.
The edges of my vision were dancing with a shimmering green light that did not bode well for the next few hours, and Carrion had been stung way more than me.
I gathered my shadows faster, whispering to them, urging them to help me break the magic that protected the wall. I struck the stone again, again, again, and finally felt the bones in my hand give way.
“Wendalith cohmerin tas.” The rumbling sound shook the entire tower—many rushing, whispering, shouting voices, intertwining and layering on top of each other.
It didn’t resemble the voice of any Fae or human.
This voice belonged to something far, far older.
A creature not born but constructed from the base elements of hell itself.