• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

“Why did you abandon the village?” Stephen asked.

Adhrekh shrugged. “We vowed to live in the mountain, to keep guard there, and we have. It is our way.”

“You live in the Alq?” Zemlé asked.

“That is our privilege, yes.”

“And it was Brother Choron who asked you to guard it?”

“Until his return, yes,” Adhrekh said. “Until now.”

“You mean until the return of his heir,” Zemlé corrected.

“As you wish,” Adhrekh said. He moved his regard back to Stephen. “Would you like to see the Alq, pathikh?”

Stephen felt a chill, half excitement and half fear. ‘Pathikh’ meant something like lord, master, prince. Was Zemlé actually right? Was he really the heir to this ancient prophecy?

“Yes,” he said. “But wait. You said the khriim was here. Do you mean the woorm?”

“Yes.”

“You’ve seen it?”

“Yes.”

“In the valley? Where?”

“No. Once you led it near enough, he was able to find his way. He’s waiting for you in the Alq.”

“Waiting for me?” Stephen said. “Maybe you don’t understand. It’s dangerous. It kills anything it touches, anything it comes near.”

“He said he wouldn’t understand,” said another of the Sefry, this one a woman with startlingly blue eyes.

“I understand that if the woorm is in the mountain,” Stephen said, “I’m not going there.”

“No,” Adhrekh said, his face melancholy. “I’m afraid you will, pathikh.”

“Qexqaneh,” Anne gasped, hoping she remembered the pronunciation correctly.

The thing in the darkness seemed to pause, then press against her face like a dog nuzzling its master. Shocked, she swatted at it, but there was nothing there, although the sensation persisted.

“Sweet Anne,” the Kept snuffled. “Smell of woman, sweet sick smell of woman.”

Anne tried to collect herself. “I am heir to the throne of Crotheny. I command you by your name, Qexqaneh.”

“Yessss,” the Kept purred. “Knowing what you want is not the same as having. I know your intention. Alis-smells-of-death knows better. She just told you.”

“Is that so?” Anne asked. “Is it? I’m descended in a direct line from Virginia Dare. Can you really defy me?”

Another pause followed, during which Anne gained confidence, trying not to reflect too closely on what she was doing.

“I called you here,” the Kept murmured. She could feel the vastness of him contracting, drawing into himself.

“Yes, you did. Called me here, put a map in my head so I could find you, promised me you could help me against her, the demon in the tomb. So what do you want?”

He seemed to withdraw further, but she had the sudden feeling of a million tiny spiders nesting in her skull. She gagged, but when Austra reached for her, Anne pushed her away.

“What are you doing, Qexqaneh?” she demanded.

We can talk like this, and they cannot hear us. Agree. You don’t want them to know. You don’t.

Very well, Anne mouthed silently.

She felt as if she were whirling again, but this time it wasn’t frightening; it was more like a dance. Then, as if she were opening her eyes, she was standing on a hillside bare of any human habitation. Her body felt as light as thistledown, so flimsy that she feared any breeze might carry her off.

All around her she saw the dark waters, the waters behind the world. But this time her perspective seemed reversed. Instead of perceiving the waters as flowing together—trickles building rinns, rinns pouring into broohs, broohs into streams, streams into the river—Anne descried the river as a great dark beast with a hundred fingers, and each of those fingers with a thousand fingers more, and each of those with a thousand, reaching and prying and poking into every man and woman, into every horse and ox, into each blade of grass, tickling, gesturing—waiting.

Into everything, that is, except the formless shade that stood before her.

“What is this place?” she demanded.

“Ynis, my flesh,” he replied.

Before she could retort, she realized it was true. It was Ynis, in fact the very hill upon which Eslen stood. But there was no castle, no city, no work of Man or Sefry. Nothing to be seen.

“And these waters? I’ve seen