Chapter 1 #3
She huddled against the rock, sea spray misting her legs, the wind threatening to whip her right from her perch and into the ocean as she carefully picked her way after them.
The king and his son walked much faster, confident and sure, like the wind and the spray and the threat of the dark were nothing to them.
By the time her feet hit the cold, sinking sand at the base of the steps where the icy water lapped at her toes, the king and the prince were already at the cave’s entrance.
They were far away, so she couldn’t hear their words, but she saw when the king pushed his son past the oppressive darkness blanketing the mouth of the cave.
She saw when the prince’s glitterstone flickered out, and the darkness swallowed him whole like a starving, salivating beast.
She saw the King of All stretch out a kink in his neck, stepping backward as though he was about to pivot and stride to the staircase.
With nowhere else to go, she dashed to the side of the steps, the frigid little waves now licking at her knees as she stumbled and lurched a few steps through the sinking sand until she could press her back against the side of the staircase, one hand covering her own mouth as the other gently cupped the glitterstone, dimming its light.
Her heartbeat was loud as thunder, fear seeping into her chest and causing her small limbs to tremble against the rough stone at her back.
Eiko, Eiko, are you scared?
The voice inside her mind whispered and hissed, painful claws scraping, scraping, scraping …
Is that you, trembling?
Is that you, hiding?
Heavy, booted footsteps clumped along the stone above her head, drawing further and further away.
She let her hand fall from the glitterstone, light washing over her again as the sound of the ocean swallowed up her small cry of relief.
She sloshed back to the beach, falling to her knees in the sand, her breath sawing and her heart thudding too fast inside her chest.
She had survived the Quiet, brief as the swallow of darkness had been.
She had survived.
It was the first time darkness had completely swallowed her for longer than a brief breath, and she had felt the full force of those hooks sinking deeply and painfully into her mind.
Relief had tears springing to the corners of her eyes, but her body quickly froze over again.
The young prince was screaming.
She snapped her head back to the staircase, but the king didn’t pause or turn around. His steps didn’t even falter.
It was hard to imagine those tortured sounds coming from the stoic boy with the fierce eyes and the grinding jaw.
The screams barely sounded human. They blended with the whip of the wind and the crash of the waves, just another force of violence drawn from the atmosphere, crackling and severe like thunder, unsettling like lightning, unrelenting like the storms that battered giant-fisted tantrums against the mountain.
She couldn’t bear to hear such otherworldly sounds of pain, but she crept closer to the thick blanket of darkness that covered the mouth of the cave. Inside were starless shadows echoing with whispers she could barely hear, words she would need to draw even closer to understand.
And then closer, still.
Closer and closer until it was too late.
She didn’t know why it was called the Quiet, because it never was.
It whispered threats and vows, deals and menaces. It could promise the world, or it could steal you from it.
You never knew what you would get from the Quiet. Silencing wasn’t guaranteed. Silencing wasn’t even likely. Silencing was what her grandmother called a “fool’s errand.”
As the prince screamed, she drew closer again, waiting for him to emerge. If he Silenced one of the monsters, he would survive. At least for a little while.
Maybe.
He would get magic.
Maybe.
He would be forever bonded to one of those horrible monsters, their voice forever in his mind.
However long his forever lasted.
The prince screamed and screamed, and Eiko waited, panic and fear itching across her skin.
She was brave—Kaito said she was brave, her grandmother said she was brave, her best friends in the whole world said she was brave—but listening to those sounds echoing from the hungry wall of darkness … she wasn’t so sure they were right.
And then she realised the prince was dying.
It was a note in the song of pain he sang. A whisper of finality that wept like rain. It was a sound she had never heard before, but somehow, she knew what it meant, and she realised she couldn’t wait any longer.
She was just a brave little fool who stepped into dark.
She rushed into the cave, and the assault was immediate. The light of her glitterstone was gobbled up by ravenous black, and the darkness pressed in, oppressive and cold, like icy snakes that slithered around her, wrapping her up tighter and tighter until it felt like her head would explode.
Eiko, one of the monsters crooned into her mind. Naughty little Eiko. Let me in. Think of all the trouble we could get in.
She forced her legs to move. The longer she stayed, the more dangerous the Quiet would become. She stumbled into a body on the ground, and it wasn’t until she dropped beside it that she realised the screaming had stopped.
“Your Grace?” she whispered.
He was unmoving. His face was wet, his clothes were wet, and his hair was sticky, but the ground beneath her knees was dry. It made no sense. “Prince Chasin?”
I could give you gold, the monster whispered to her, words as sharp as knives. All the gold you could ever need. We could travel the world together, Eiko.
For a brief, horrible moment, she paused. The monster would give her what he promised. They always did. Their promises were binding, even if they were sometimes tricks.
She could be a traveller.
Or a warrior, the monster agreed. A beautiful golden battlemaiden.
No, that wasn’t right. Her skin was more dusky than burnished, her hair dark like coal, her eyes more soot than gold.
She was not a golden battlemaiden. She wasn’t a blessed Goldmoor noble; she was all the colours of the mountain, the rich brown soil was in her skin, the darker black rock was in her hair, and the sunsets that washed over the stone of their home shone in her eyes.
Just the same as everyone else in Stonesigh. She wasn’t special or different.
I could change it all, the monster promised gleefully. I won’t just give you gold, I’ll make you gold.
She shook her head, trying to fight off the vision of a gilded, golden version of herself, kissed by the gods like the royal family …
but the vision persisted, bursting into her mind in a flood of colour.
She was older, a battlemaiden atop a horse in the middle of a crossroads, each road leading to a different realm of Lyra.
This way for Suntide, this way for Ironglade, this way for Frostwail, and this way for the magnificent capital, Goldmoor.
Would you like to see the capital? the monster asked, his slimy voice dripping and dribbling with gleeful indulgence.
With an immense effort, she found the prince’s boots and began to tug at him, dragging him closer to where she hoped the cave’s mouth was. That way, she could see little pinpricks in the disconcerting black, like viewing specks of colour through a film of dark gossamer.
Eiko, Eiko, just let go, the monster whispered, clawing deeper and deeper into her mind. The boy is dead, the boy has bled, let me into your stubborn little head.
The weight she dragged grew twice as heavy, forcing sweat to break out across her brow.
“No,” she grunted, her small voice full of trembling force. Her chest hurt with the effort of dragging the much larger body.
“Bull-headed,” her grandmother liked to say. “Stubborn. Impossible. Like a stone.” She would knock against Eiko’s head and say it was just as hard as the mountain.
The monster seemed to agree because he began to snarl with a kind of rumbling anger she felt all the way to her fragile bones.
Stop, he commanded. Go no further, or I will make you pay.
Her fingers were almost numb, her body straining with the effort of her task, her muscles threatening to tear. It shouldn’t have been so hard. He shouldn’t have been so heavy. Everything was wrong.
STOP! the monster screamed into her mind, just as she spilled from the darkness of the cave and her glitterstone fluttered back to life.
The prince’s stone also flared outward in a sudden glow, illuminating the deep gouges and lacerations that were slashed across his throat, upper arms, and torso, tearing his clothes to ribbons, opening up gaping wounds that cried fat, scarlet tears, leaving a slick red path back to the cave.
The monster that had latched onto his mind must have been unbearably violent.
You will pay, the disembodied voice echoed through her head a second before the world was plunged back into darkness. You will see. The echo tapered into a faint ringing of laughter. Oh, you will see what you have done, wild one.
She stumbled, her arms swinging out. “W-What—”
She was outside the cave, but the darkness had descended once again.
“Eiko?”
That was Kaito’s voice calling in the distance.
She staggered towards it, her heartbeat hammering in fear, her breath a rasp of terror.
“Kaito!” She screamed his name, tripping and stumbling across the sand, her arms flailing.
“Someone said they saw you creeping down h—” He was suddenly there, holding her, his hands gripping her face. “Your eyes,” he croaked. “Eiko … what happened to your eyes?”
“Everything is black,” she wailed, fear rolling over her like one of the big waves she could hear crashing up against the rock staircase.
She could hear it, but she couldn’t see it.
Because the monster had rendered her blind.
Suddenly, all she could think about was that song she loved so much. The song that made her shiver. The sensation of fear she enjoyed, because, of course, those things would never happen to her.
The Quiet would never get to her.
Not her.
Quieten your cries, close your eyes,
What you fear is already here.