There it was. She almost lost it, she was so glad to have found it. She struggled to keep it steady, then to focus on the part that she needed.
Right. She should turn right. She almost turned left out of sheer doubt and panic, but she gritted her teeth and followed her first inclination. The cold smell was stronger in that direction, or so she told herself. It must be the smell of the underground river.
The passage widened some distance past the turn. Coryn moved up beside her. Her hand reached out and clasped his. His fingers were as clammy as hers, but they warmed with the contact. Hand in hand like children, they went on into the dark.
The tunnel did not divide again, which gave Merris hope that it was the right way. It twisted and turned like some vast worm’s trail, sometimes doubling back on itself. Their torches began to burn low.
Merris was beyond exhaustion. One more turn, one more doubling—just one more. Then she would worry about the one after that.
She walked straight into a wall that should not have been there. Only slowly did she realize it was a door. She pushed. It gave, swinging outward.
There was the hall she remembered from the map, and there was the dark, oily slide of the river running through it. If the tunnel had been a worm’s track, this had the look and feel of a dragon’s lair.
All the stone in the Keep and the tunnels had been black, but this hall was golden red: the same color as the stone that Mistress Patrizia had given Merris. Curtains and streamers of waxy stone streamed down the sides and pooled in columns on the floor. It almost looked like flesh—even to the veins that ran through it.
It was calling to Merris. Even the little time that she had worn the stone had been enough. It had marked her—bound her. And, she realized in a kind of despair, it had brought her here.
Coryn’s fingers tightened on Merris’. His breath hissed.
Merris willed him not to speak. There was something in the center of the hall. It looked like a depression in the floor, a long, shallow oval, with a statue standing over it.
The statue moved. Like the crows on the arch of Darkwall Keep’s gate, it was alive. Slowly, in the fading torchlight, it took shape as a tall, narrow figure in a dark cloak.
The hood slipped back. Darkwall’s Lady looked directly at Merris. She was the same as Merris remembered: gaunt, aging, not beautiful, though her features had a certain stark elegance. Her graying hair was loose, falling on her shoulders.
She smiled. “Welcome, my child,” she said. Her voice echoed in the cavern, reverberating from wall to wall and back again, over and over.
Merris gasped and clapped her hands to her ears. Coryn had fallen flat.
“Your eagerness is charming,” the Lady said. The echoes were fainter now, fading away. Merris dared to lower her hands from her ears.
The Lady spoke again, this time without echoes at all. “Come here.”
Merris found she could not resist. She left Coryn lying and walked slowly across the hall. It must be her imagination that the Lady’s cloak was made of dark scales, and the bottom of it wound away in a long tail. It was her shadow, that was all.
The torch was guttering badly now. Both of Coryn’s had gone out when he fell. That must be why the river looked as if it ran not with water but with blood, and the basin in front of the Lady brimmed over with glistening darkred liquid.
“There’s no one in the keep,” Merris said. “All your gold and soldiers—where did they come from?”
“I do have a manor,” said the Lady, “and loyal men in my villages.”
It sounded like an answer, but it did not feel like one. When Merris tried to back away, she found she could not move.
The Lady came toward her. She could swear she heard the rustle of scales. The Lady’s gait was eerily smooth—but ladies were trained to walk so, gliding in their long skirts. She could not be slithering over that too-smooth floor like a great snake.
Her hand brushed Merris’ cheek. It was warm and dry. “So young,” she said. “And growing quite lovely. We have not always been blessed with beauty. Your bravery is impressive, though some might call it foolishness. Is that your young man yonder? Or a loyal servant?”
“A friend,” Merris said thickly. “It’s just a friend.”
The Lady’s smile was as patronizing as any adult’s in the face of a child’s silliness. “Just a friend. Yes. We may keep him, if he pleases us. Every Lady needs a friend.”
Merris bit her tongue. There was no way she was going to tell the Lady what Coryn really was. She had been very, very foolish—just how foolish, she was only beginning to understand. If she lived through this, she would never again sneer at a character in a story for doing something so demonstrably stupid that the veriest idiot would know better.
And no, she was not going to blame Coryn’s Companion for getting her into this. She had done it herself, with or without anyone else’s advice.
The Lady’s hands came to rest on her shoulders. They applied no pressure, but they held Merris rooted. Her eyes were black, glittering in the waning light. “So lovely,” she said. “So young. Blood so sweet with innocence—and just a tang of arrogance. You highborn are so sure that the world is yours to own.”
“And you’re not highborn?”
The Lady blinked. Had it startled her that Merris could still speak? But then she laughed. It was not a pleasant sound. “I am much, much older than your Lords and princes.”
Merris fought to get away. She could not move at all. The Lady’s nostrils flared, as if Merris’ anger and frustration and her swelling terror had an intoxicating scent.
“So sweet,” the Lady said, almost a purr. “So strong. I did well when I chose you. Young blood is precious, but young blood that is strong—that serves me very well indeed.”
“I’ll never serve you,” Merris said through gritted teeth.
“No,” said the Lady, “but your blood and body will. It was most enterprising of you to come early. Convenient, too. Pomp and circumstance have their amusements, but the crowds can be distracting—and there are so many questions. I’ll take you now, then, with many thanks.”
Her grip tightened. Her smile had grown wide—unnaturally so. Her face was changing, stretching. It had a strange look.
A snake, Merris thought, getting ready to swallow its prey. Except, why swallow her own heir? What—
A snake also shed its skin. Suppose it put on another one. Younger, prettier, stronger—able to feign the appearance of humanity, and thereby to avoid suspicion while it fed on its people.
The Lady did not want Merris. She wanted Merris’ body. And Merris had walked straight into her lair.
She must have been doing this for years—centuries. Life after life, body after body. But . . .
“Where are the children?” Merris asked. “The old people, I could see why they would go to feed you, but if there aren’t any children, where is the next generation?”
The Lady stopped. Her face was almost but not quite stretched out of recognition. She could still talk, though the words sounded odd. “I was hungry. Had to feed—keep the body alive. The cattle will breed more. Soon. Now the new body is here.”
Merris fought with every scrap of will she had, but she was bound fast. The Lady was not human any more; she was all mouth and supple, scaled body. She rose above Merris, maw gaping wide.
The world exploded in white fire. Someone was shouting—screaming words that made no sense at all.
The spell on Merris let go. She dropped like a puppet with its strings cut. A white wall reared above her. Silver hooves struck, battering the great worm.
It burst like a bladder. Black blood sprayed. The stink of it turned Merris’ stomach inside out. Everything that had ever died or rotted was in that stench, and every festering sickness.