23. Song Stone
Song Stone
Once inside the tomb, it was like stepping directly into the maw of the underworld. No light shone through the open archway. The air Cypress breathed smelled of brimstone and putrid sulfur, burning her nose.
The stairs themselves seemed hewn from the ground, uneven and broken in several places, and incredibly steep. When Cypress put a hand out to steady herself on the wall, she nearly let out a shriek of surprise, feeling the cold, damp moss and lichen, the spiderwebs coating them in a thick shroud.
After that, Cypress kept her hand tucked closely to her side. Torren still hadn’t released her other hand, leading them deeper and deeper into the embrace of the tomb.
“Have you been down here?” Cypress whispered, unable to hold back the question.
“Once, when I was a lad. And once more, after the wards alerted A'aravos Paravale of the disturbances.”
“If the beast is gone, why does this place still feel so…” Cypress started, unable to place the feeling the tomb gave off.
“Haunted?” Torren chuckled quietly. “Any place made into a resting place of eternally restless beings is bound to feel the effects, Lass.”
At the condescending tone of his voice, Cypress had to resist the urge to shove Torren down the stairs.
The descent seemed to take an age; the stairs circled around a chasm in a tight spiral.
Cypress peeked down the chasm a few times. Nothing more than a quick glance or a few stolen looks, but even that little glimpse was enough to set her instincts on edge, for her stomach to roil in anticipation.
When they finally reached the bottom of the ancient stairway, Cypress and Torren entered what must have been the actual tomb.
Rubble crunched under her feet as Cypress walked in a small circle.
The walls were all made of the same black stone as the outer walls, while the ceiling was made of whitestone, carved with the image of a crescent moon.
The center of the room, though, held a mass of broken stone, as if something had erupted from beneath the tombstone slabs.
Words were scrawled into the broken stone. She wasn’t able to read the script, but Cypress assumed the words would be in the language of Faerie.
Cypress could only assume the proof she was looking for would be the broken tombstone slabs and the empty tomb. She mentioned as much to Torren.
“Yeah, I would say the empty tomb would be a real good fuckin’ indicator that something was amiss, Lass.”
“Don’t be rude,” Cypress reprimanded.
She bent to look at another large hunk of the tombstone, the words etched into it.
After a moment, Torren joined her, lowering himself to a squat to survey the rubble as well.
“What did this say?” Cypress asked, handing a hand-sized chunk of the tombstone to him.
“It is a song. One meant to keep the Hound’s spirit resting in eternal sleep, so they cannot hear anything else.”
“But if the Old one wakes and calls them, it would be pointless for this to be here,” Cypress countered.
“Not if the Hounds can’t hear anything other than this song.”
“So, you’re telling me that the entirety of Faerie’s plan for containment with these things is a lullaby?"
“Don’t forget the guardian,” Torren said, hooking his finger over his shoulder toward the spiral stairs.
“What good is a guardian that apparently just lets its charge escape?” Cypress countered, picking through the rubble to see if there were any clues, anything that would suggest the Hound was freed, rather than having escaped on its own.
Torren scoffed. “The guardian wouldn’t have just let it escape, Lass. On the other side of the tomb pyramid outside is the carcass of the other Gilamesh, who tried to keep the Hounds contained.”
“I’m sorry, Hounds, as in plural?”
Again, Torren laughed. “There are thousands of the Winged Hounds, Lass. Surely you didn’t think there were thousands of these burial sites hidden all across the continent?”
Cypress pursed her lips, sucking on her teeth. “Well. When you put it that way.”
He shook his head. “You can admit you were wrong, you know, I won’t tell anyone.
Cypress snorted. “Like I’d give you the satisfaction.”
Then, she wandered closer to the center of the rubble, where a large black hole waited. Truly, the stone did appear as if something had clawed its way out, exploded through the tombstone slab from below.
The claw marks on some of the stones sent a dizzying wave of apprehension through Cypress.
The marks were made from a large animal, that much was obvious.
The marks that tore through hard stone were thicker than Cypress’s wrist. She couldn’t help but run her hand over one of the marks to feel the depressions in the jagged rock.
Cypress was extremely out of her depth. Truly, she didn’t believe she had any business traipsing through the Wylds to verify the rising of the Old ones, which she now knew to mean the Wyld Hunt.
And, these winged hounds were just the beginning of it, if Torren’s words were to be trusted.
Cypress couldn’t help but think that Caelith should have just given the scepter to Torren.
“Is there anything else to be seen in here? Anything else, I would be compelled to inform the King about to aid your assertion that the Old One was waking?” Cypress asked.
She wanted to leave this place.
“Do you want to go into the hole?”
Cypress blinked. “Are you asking me if I want to get inside of a mass grave?” she hissed, sure she hadn’t heard Torren correctly.
He smiled. Actually smiled. “Yeah. You can see it for yourself.”
“Have you been inside?” She asked, unable to contain the morbid curiosity erupting in her middle.
Torren nodded. “It’s not bad, Lass. Just dark,” he shrugged, still grinning at her.
Cypress sighed in resignation. “I suppose I should, just in case.”
“Atta Lass,” Torren said, and then disappeared down through the opening of the large, black hole where the rubble had exploded from.
Cypress heard him land seconds later, and then Torren called up, “Come on, Lass. It’s safe.”
Gathering her courage, Cypress rolled her shoulders, then said to herself, “Here goes nothing.”
She fell for only a few moments before being caught in Torren’s embrace, her knees hooked over an arm, the other supporting under her shoulders.
“I got ye, Lass,” Torren said, just before placing Cypress gently on her feet.
Then, he said a handful of words in the Faerie language, and a small orb of light hovered just above their heads.
What she’d thought was only a hole in the ground was almost like a large, cavernous grotto. While the hole wasn’t too far above their heads, the rest of the space seemed to go on forever.
She would never admit as much, particularly not to Torren, but Cypress felt terribly out of her depth.
And to think, she was supposed to have Fair Folk blood running in her veins.
Cypress thought she could do a little with their unflappable disposition. Torren seemed unaffected by the tomb, the guardian, the atmosphere– none of it.
Cypress drew herself up to her full height and set aside her reservations to focus fully on her task. She was here to verify Torren’s claims as a Knight of Grethnah, Captain of the Prince Guard.
She could do this.
Cypress slowly took stock of the grave, the cold, haunted feeling of the space.
It was as if the stones had absorbed the Hound’s essence and were reverberating it back to them.
She felt as if there were thousands of eyes pressing in on her skin, as if this were a trap, ready to spring at a moment’s notice.
The rocks all looked as if they had been clawed at for years, centuries even. The jagged markings from the talons covered nearly every surface. She could scarcely imagine the power these beasts would have to be able to make such a marking in the hardened bedrock.
“Was there anything of note in here when you came the first time?” Cypress asked, wandering a little farther from the entry hole. Torren’s globe of light followed her movements.
“When I first visited this place, the Song Stone was intact. After I was informed of the breach, what I saw is what you’re seeing now,” Torren shrugged. “It’s all important, if you know what you’re looking at.”
“Meaning?”
“Well,” Torren started with a sigh, rubbing the back of his neck with a hand. “The claw marks, for one, don’t reflect a, shall we say, peaceful rest. I would wager the Hounds have been awake for some time, clawing at the enchantments that kept them here.”
“The wards, you mean?”
Torren shook his head. “No. Those are to keep intruders out. There are separate enchantments that make it so the Hounds cannot utilize the powers of the Hunt in order to escape.”
“And so when that didn’t work…” Cypress started, guessing how everything played out. “They turned to finding a weak point in the lullaby. The seal, so to speak.”
Torren grunted his approval. “That is what I surmised, as well.”
“Have you sent any of the Fair Folk out to inspect the other tombs? Have all of the Hounds awoken, or just this–” Cypress hesitated, unsure what to name the group that once resided here. “–pack?”
“Three other packs have escaped, in addition to this one.”
“So four out of how many?”
“Thirteen.”
Cypress sucked in a breath.
“And were they all this size?”
“This was the first to be breached, then the others fell in succession. So far, this cavern is the largest of the ones we’ve searched.”
Cypress nodded. If this was the largest, it likely held the most Hounds. If the others were breached quickly after, then it was only a matter of time before all of the Hounds would be released from their bounds.
“Torren…” Cypress started, a startling thought sending ice through her veins.
“Lass…” Torren drawled in response, giving her an odd look.
“What happens when the Hounds are all awake, but the Old One still sleeps?”
Cypress couldn’t tear the image of a thousand winged, feral hounds running rampant through villages, slaughtering humans without regard from her mind.
“By the look on your face, I’d wager you figured it out yourself, Lass,” Torren said quietly. Pity coated every syllable.
She swallowed, anxiety rippling through her core. They needed to get out of here, back to the Keep and inform Caelith. She had to be there to protect the Prince. If the Hounds were eternally searching for their first betrayer, then none within the human lands were safe.
Fuck, none within any of the lands were safe. Torren said Faerie is ravaged by the Hunt, too.
“How do we get out of here?” Cypress asked, straightening her spine. There wasn’t time for the panic, there wasn’t time for her to get lost in the meaning of all this.
Cypress had a job to do. She would not fail Cade or Caelith.
She refused to.
“You’ll have to get on,” Torren said, throwing his thumb over his shoulder.
“I’m sorry?” Cypress said, blinking at him.
He grinned at her. Glee coated his expression, all of his teeth showing.
“I’m your ride out, Lass,” Torren said, waggling his eyebrows at her.
Cypress sighed. Of course, it would be something as idiotic as this.
Of course it was. Why wouldn’t it be?
She stalked over to him and said, “I swear, if this is some sort of joke, I’m going to strangle you when we get out of this fucking tomb.”
Torren laughed, but bent slightly for her to hop on his back and wrap her legs around his waist.
“I knew I’d get those thighs wrapped around me eventually,” he said, just before he jumped impossibly high and began climbing out of the hole.
Cypress let out an undignified shriek at the sudden leap, but clamped her teeth shut when she heard Torren’s deep, rolling chuckle.
“I hate you,” she said, holding tight to Torren as he heaved them up and out of the hole.
“Now who’s being rude, Lass?” Torren asked when they were once again standing amid the piles of Song Stones.
Cypress sent him a glare as a response and marched over to the spiraling staircase.