Chapter 57 #2
Only a moment later, I step into a large open space and, for the first time, find myself too stunned to carry on.
After all the dark, cramped tunnels, the cavernous space is overwhelming.
It’s easily as big as the bottom of the Sunken Temple, but unlike the arena where our Retterheld vows were taken, this does not open up to the sky, and there are no layered seats for spectators.
It is cut off from the outside world, and the stench is vile.
But unlike the rest of the tunnels I’ve walked through, there are half a dozen lanterns fixed to the walls that cast a faint light over the shadowed shapes below.
Pillars of some sort. Pillars over ten times my raven height and made of a material I don’t recognise.
I hop along the floor, moving towards one of the closest columns, my eyes still locked on it when all the heat drains from my body.
Yes, the pillars are mammoth to me, but that is only because I’m so diminished in size.
The air quivers in my lungs.
If I were still in my human body, I would have seen it sooner.
I am not looking at pillars … but people.
Not ordinary people, I realise in terror as I look at the one closest to me. The skin of its face and limbs is mottled green.
Rottings.
An absolute fuck tonne of Rottings.
Instinctively, I feel for my dagger, but there’s nothing at my side other than a mass of feathers. Of course I don’t have my weapon – I’m a Godsdamn bird right now.
Panic swells through me, and for the first time since I slipped here, I am desperate to be back with the others.
Wake up. Wake up, I shout in my mind, trying to command myself, even though I know this isn’t a dream.
Come on, Fen, I urge. Call me back! My heart is hammering against my hollow ribs hard enough to crack them. But it makes no difference. Nothing happens.
I don’t know how long I stand there, waiting for my dire wolf to yank me back to my body or for the Rottings to awaken and tear me feathered limb from limb.
But nothing happens. Fen does not call me back, and the Rottings remain utterly stationary, exactly as when I entered. Motionless. Pillars of rotting human flesh.
With my pulse still rattling, I debate what to do. I should head back into the tunnels. Find the staircases and not stop until I see daylight. That’s what I should do, and yet I can’t seem to draw myself away from the cavern. Whatever the Gods want from me, I haven’t achieved it yet.
And so I move forward, walking between the pillars. It is easier to think of them as that.
I weave a path through the figures, and not a single Rotting moves. Not so much as a tilt of their head in my direction or anyone else’s.
If I couldn’t hear the gentle wheezes of their breath, I would think them dead. But they do breathe, do live … though to call it that makes the bar indescribably low.
With no direction set in my mind, I quickly find myself lost in the labyrinth of effigies, but as I turn around to decide which way to go, something makes me stop and, for a reason I can’t fathom, I lift my head upward.
I look up … and gaze upon a familiar face.
No! No sound leaves my lungs, but my heart clenches with such force I feel pain spear through my entire frame as tears blur my eyes. I shake my head in denial, praying that somehow I’m wrong. But I know in my heart that I’m not mistaken.
Noleen. Ruben’s mother is here, her eyes open, her lips parted, her skin mottled green.
How? How is Noleen here? The priestesses took her, said she was hours away from passing, that she would be buried, and yet here she is.
Galvanised by what I have seen, I leap up into the air and sweep low between the statue shapes, searching for more familiar faces.
And I find one.
Evelina. My old neighbour.
Fresh tears clog my throat. She doesn’t deserve this fate. No one does.
How is this possible? Why are they here?
Why?
The question rips from my throat in something close to a scream and I bolt upright and realise, with heart-stopping relief, that I am no longer in my borrowed avian form.
I could not pull you back, Little Raven, Fen says, and I can feel the echoes of his panic that he could not reach me.
I’m okay.
I felt your fear, your horror.
I bury my hands in his fur, unable to even express to him what I saw. How can I when I barely understand it myself?
Kyor is beside me in a blink. ‘Rose? Are you okay?’
I shake my head once. Twice. Like that might knock the images loose. Make me unsee the horrors I saw.
‘Rottings,’ I manage. My voice sounds strange to my own ears. Too high and thin. ‘It was … a room. A huge underground cavern like the Sunken Temple. Full of them.’
Benny’s face hardens. ‘How many?’
‘Too many,’ I whisper. ‘They weren’t moving. They were standing like … like statues.’
Ruben steps closer, eyes sharp with dread. ‘What do you mean?’
My throat tightens. ‘They were there, but not … there. Not talking, not eating, not living. Just columns of flesh. Waiting.’ I shudder.
‘Waiting for what?’ Caz asks.
‘I don’t know. But they came from Wrohelm,’ I tell her. ‘At least some of them did. My old neighbour was there, Evelina.’
Ruben gasps.
‘I thought the priestess had taken her,’ I continue. ‘They did take her. But she was there. And she wasn’t alone. N—’ The single consonant flies from my tongue before I can stop it, and silence drops like a blade.
Ruben’s face drains of colour so fast it’s like watching a candle go out.
‘My mother? Noleen? You were going to say Noleen.’ He shakes his head as he shifts back away from me. ‘No, that’s not possible. She can’t be …’
‘I know,’ I say hoarsely. ‘I know it shouldn’t be. And I’m sorry – I’m so sorry – but it was her. I’m sure it was. I wouldn’t say if I wasn’t sure, Ruben.’
Kyor’s hand tightens around mine, grounding me, but even his touch can’t warm the cold that crawls under my skin.
‘Why?’ Ruben’s voice cracks. ‘Why would she be there? Why would she be one of them?’
I have no answer.
Only the image I cannot stop seeing and the certainty that something is terribly wrong, and we have somehow walked into the thick of it.
‘It was an army,’ I whisper. The rest of the words are swallowed up, the fear of what they mean too terrifying to consider, let alone say aloud, because armies are only ever needed for one thing.
For war.