She hesitated at the bottom of the ascent to the Keep. It was supposed to be hers, but it felt completely alien.
Coryn was gaining on her. The Companion was faster than Merris had thought, and more agile at sidestepping people and obstacles. Merris bit her lip and started up the slope.
Part of the way was straight ascent, and part was a series of steps carved in the rock. There were no guards at the gate above, but Merris did not make the mistake of thinking it was not watched. What at first she took for carved ravens perched on the summit of the arch moved suddenly.
One spread its wings. The other let out a single sharp caw.
It seemed she had rung the bell. With clammy hands and thudding heart, she passed through the open gate.
The Keep was deserted. The passages were empty and the rooms untenanted. Cobwebs barred windows and flung sticky barriers across doorways.
Merris searched from dungeon to tower with growing desperation. The only inhabitants were ravens roosting on the battlements. From the thickness of dust in the rooms, no human being had lived there for years.
She dropped in a heap on the top of the tower. The wind blew cool on her sweating face, even while the sun shone strong enough to burn. “I don’t understand,” she said.
Coryn squatted on his haunches next to her. She squinted, but he seemed real. He was out of breath, as if he had been running to catch her.
“How can it be empty?” she asked him. “There is a Lady, or someone who claims to be. She visits me every year. She sends my father gold and soldiers. I’ve had nurses and tutors. They’ve taught me all about this place, the staff, the servants, and who or what belongs in every room. How can it be deserted?”
“The Lady must have another residence,” Coryn said. “A manor, maybe.”
“Then why don’t I know about it?”
“I don’t know,” he said. Then he went still, as if straining to hear something faint and far away.
“After the sun goes down,” he said, “Selena says, look below.”
Merris frowned. “What? What does she mean?”
“Look below, she says. That’s all.”
“There are dungeons below,” said Merris. “Caves, really. Part of the river flows through them.”
“Then that’s where we’ll look,” he said. “We can rest while the daylight lasts. There’s no food here and I don’t trust the water, but I brought provisions.”
He held up the rucksack he had brought from Forgotten Keep. It was bulging. “Bread from the bakery in town,” he said, “and the water we brought from the spring at last night’s camp, and a few odds and ends. We’ll be comfortable while we wait.”
Merris was not hungry, but she was thirsty. She sipped from one of the water bottles while Coryn ate half a still-warm, crusty loaf with cheese melted inside.
It smelled so good that Merris was tempted after all. She managed a few bites. They helped more than she would have expected. She felt stronger.
When they had both had enough to eat and drink, Coryn said, “I saw beds below. Maybe we should get some proper rest.”
Merris shook her head. “I need the sun,” she said. “You go, if you’re too tired.”
“No,” he said. “I’ll stay with you.”
“But your Companion—”
“She’s down below,” he said. “She’ll be safe.”
“As long as it’s daylight,” Merris said, and shivered. He looked as pale as she felt.
They propped themselves against the parapet, side by side but not touching. Merris tilted her head back and let the sun bathe her face. Her eyelids drooped shut.
“Merris.”
She started awake. Coryn was bending over her. In the confusion of sudden waking, she wondered why he had been bathing in blood.
Before horror could consume her, she realized that it was not blood; it was sunset light. Coryn was his honest self, with rumpled hair and travel-stained clothes.
He was much more awake than she was. “I’ve been exploring. I found torches,” he said.
She nodded. There were no words in her. She took one of the torches, leaving him with the other two.
The sun was sinking fast. She did not need Coryn’s encouragement to follow him out of the open air into the dusty stillness of the Keep.
The shadows were thick there. Once or twice as they worked their way down from the tower, Merris thought she saw someone, or something, flitting around a corner. It must be a trick of the light.
No matter how often she told herself she had a right to be here, she felt more like an invader the farther down she went. She would have loved to run out the gate and away and never come back, but neither she nor Coryn paused there. They kept on going toward the entrance her maps had shown her, down below the gate in an empty and echoing hall.
Coryn lit the torches in that hall, laying a finger and a hard stare on each until it burst into flame. The light put the dark to flight but made the shadows somehow stronger. In its flicker, they seemed more like living shapes than ever.
Merris had to lead, since she knew the way. Coryn walked close behind her. He was a solid presence compared to the shadows that crowded thicker as they descended the narrow stair.
There was a cold smell in that place, like old stone and deep water. The air that breathed upward made the small hairs stand up on Merris’ body.
She desperately wanted to stop, turn, run back into the last of the daylight. Every part of her that was wise or prudent was shouting at her to do exactly that. But she had come to find out the truth. She had to know. She could not seal the bargain without some knowledge of what she was agreeing to.
And if it killed her?
Then it did. She had been bound to this since before she was born.
It was a long way down. Her legs were aching and her breath was coming hard, well before she came to the end of the stair. Her torch lit nothing but a tunnel carved out of the black rock, and steps descending below her.
They must be at least as far down as the river by now, if not even farther. She was stopping more often, and it was taking longer for her legs to stop shaking before she could go on.
Coryn had not said a word in all that descent. She kept looking back, terrified that he had vanished, or perhaps worse, that his spirit had been taken away and there was nothing left to follow her but an empty shell. Each time, he met her stare with one just as tired and almost as wild.
Just when she was about to give up, the steps ended. She almost fell down, but Coryn caught her and pulled her back onto her feet. He was breathing hard himself. Even in the ruddy torchlight his face was pallid.
He rummaged in the pack he was still carrying and pulled out a water bottle. She drank gratefully, then handed it to him so that he could drink, too.
They were still in a tunnel. The cold, damp smell was stronger. The only way to go was forward, unless they wanted to climb all the way back the way they had come.
Merris strained to remember the maps she had studied. Her memory was good, but the darkness muffled it. She should be at the level of the underground river, or just above it, but she was not sure which. The tunnel branched—at least, she thought it did. One way wound through a succession of caves to a blind end. The other led to the river.
First she had to get to the branch. Then she had to remember which direction to take. She raised her torch, though her arm was as tired as the rest of her, and pressed on.
Right, she thought. No, left.
The tunnel branched as she had thought. But which way? The wrong one would lose them both in the bowels of the earth.
She closed her eyes. In the dark behind her eyelids, she tried to picture the map. It had been in a book that Master Thellen gave her to study, tucked away in the back with the dry notes and the endless rambling appendices. She could feel the book in her hands, the worn leather cover and the crumbling pages.