Prince of Dogs (Crown of Stars #2)

Prince of Dogs (Crown of Stars #2) Page 93

There! Creatures move and crawl among the tunnels, misshapen knuckles tamping down soil clawed from the dank walls. Like the Eika, they seem fashioned more of metal and soil than of the higher elements, trapped forever by the weight of earth that courses through their blood and hardens their bones.

When she at last finds the burning stone that marks the gateway to the old sorcerer, he no longer sits beside it rolling strands of flax into rope against his thigh. He has left that place, and she does not know where to find him. But she has to keep looking. Because he is one of the Lost Ones, he is not human and surely therefore not bound to human concerns, to human intrigues and jealousies, to human lusts for power and possession. He might know the answer. He might know the pattern of the paths she must unravel.

Perhaps Da left her a message here, secreted in the labyrinth in such a way that she alone can find it. He must have prepared for this, knowing he might be gone and that she yet lived. Behind the locked door in her tower in her City of Memory there burns a fiery light; is it Da’s magic, hidden away? Is it the living manifestation of the spell he cast over her? If she had the key, could she open the door? Did Da hide the key here, somewhere in these halls whose pathways she cannot trace unless she explores them?

And yet, what will happen if she does unlock the door?

A whisper of breath touches the back of her neck. She shudders. Her back stings as if, simply by closing in on her, the creature blisters her with its poisonous intent. Is this what Da felt? Some thing always getting closer, always coming up behind him? Did he know it would kill him in the end?

She begins to run through the halls seen in the vision made by fire, although on the realm of earth her body sits silent and still in front of a roaring campfire. But the creature is stronger than she is, here, in this place. It knows these paths, and it is looking for her.

“Liath.”

It knows her name. She flees, but there is nowhere to go. Da used his magic to conceal her from their eyes on the realm of earth, but here she is vulnerable to their sight— and there, where she is hidden from them, she is vulnerable to Hugh.

Fear leaps and burns in her heart like wildfire. She is lost. Gasping, weeping, she forces herself to stop. She turns to face what stalks her, but she sees no thing, no shadow, no creature or human form; yet she knows it has marked her and that it closes in. It wants her. The air itself carries the sound of her breathing, the simple heat of her being, to the ears of that which listens for her.

This—one creature or many working in concert—killed Da.

She feels their breath like air stirred by an arrow, an arrow whose sharp point seeks her heart. In this place, she has no weapons.

Nay, she has one weapon here: the gift given to her by the old Aoi sorcerer.

“Ai, Lady,” she breathes, a prayer for strength. Closing her hand around the gold feather, she escapes the maze.

3

SIDE paths fainter than the breath of a dying baby teased Antonia’s vision, but she could catch only glimpses of what lay down their paths: halls piled with treasure; a sleeping boy; a young woman running in fear; the fading image of an old, old monk with one hand laid tenderly upon a book while the other lifts to ward off the clutching fingers of daimones whose insubstantial hands reach right inside his body for whatever secret he has hidden within his heart. A hound barked. An owl hooted and struck in the depths of night. A man—no man, but an elven prince armed in the style of the ancient Dariyans—fought to save a burning fort from the assault of the savage Bwrmen and their human allies. A dragon slept in enchanted sleep beneath a ridge of stone. A young man sat in sunlight and surveyed the quiet sea. Did she recognize him? The vision was too brief for her to look more closely.

Were these glimpses of the past or the future or the present?

She could not know. She was entirely lost; she knew that she existed only because her son dragged at her cloak. At least his terror was so great that he was mercifully silent rather than gibbering prayers and psalms.

God would see them to safety, or God would see them dead.

If the first, then certainly she would discover the secrets of this place and bind to herself the knowledge of how to coerce daimones down from the upper air and lead unsuspecting souls into a prison as torturous as this. She fully expected the Abyss to open at her feet at any moment and give her a gratifying vision of the punishment of the damned.

If the second, then she was content to know that her soul—and that of her son, of course—would ascend as did the souls of all the righteous to the Chamber of Light beyond the seven spheres.

Stairs opened before them. Wind brushed her face. The pale round moon wavered before her eyes, high above, and she realized with a start that she was looking up the stairs to the world above, to an actual night sky now shot through with stars. Behind her, Heribert moaned slightly as she had heard laboring women do when the child was, at long last, finally and safely birthed.