“There is no joke, child, unless it is a joke of the gods.”
She closed her eyes, remembering the people Jehenna had trapped in cattle pens to serve as dragon fodder. Some of them had been torn apart before her eyes. The rest of them had been freed, thank God, and now here she was again, being asked to do the impossible on behalf of a crowd of people she didn’t know. Her shoulders ached beneath the familiar weight of responsibility, but she said at last, “What do you need from me?”
“Find the Key—”
“That? Get in line. Everybody wants that freaking Key.”
“Find the Key,” he repeated, ignoring her interruption. “Open the Black Gates, travel through the shadowlands into the Forever, and bring back a cup of water from the fountain at the foot of the throne of the Dragon King. Only when that water is spilled on this plain will we be released.”
“You have got to be kidding.”
He shrugged. “As I said, this is beyond a joke. Here we are trapped, and here we will remain until it has been done.”
“And then what? If I succeed in this task—you all acquire eternal life and there’s an army of indestructible zombie Dreamshifters loose in the universe?”
“No,” he said softly. “If you succeed, then we will be able to truly die. Look around you. All are in some kind of hurt. Some for thousands of years.”
For the first time she noticed the jagged, bloodstained tear in the breast of his shirt. Looking beyond, she saw a hard-faced old man with a crater in his chest. She’d seen an image of him far too recently, trying to shoot his son with a rifle.
“Edward Jennings,” she said. “The man who destroyed his entire family. For you I have no compassion.”
“I regret,” he said. “I’ve had a long time to think on what I have done.”
“We are able to see,” her grandfather said. “To watch the struggle, but unable to intervene. He has been punished beyond measure already, Vivian. As have we all. If you do not help us, there is no hope.”
“I have the will,” she whispered at last. “I’m not sure I have the strength.”
“You must find it, child.”
“I need food, water—”
He shook his head. “I’m sorry, but we do not eat or drink. And I fear the water of this place would keep you here if you were to drink it. Now come. I will lead you to the path you must take.”
A woman stepped up beside him and touched his arm. She had been drowned, Vivian saw, water dripping endlessly from her clothing, her hair. “Perhaps it would be permitted for us to carry her, as far as the path. She is much wounded. Surely this much we could do to help her.”
“We will pay for it.”
“Let that be on us.”
The throng murmured, repeating “Let it be on us,” until the words swelled and became a chant. Two of the stronger men came forward and bowed to Vivian. “If you will permit, we will carry you.”
“I would be grateful.”
The two of them made a chair of their arms and lifted her. She placed her hands on their shoulders for balance as they strode out across the dry, dusty plain.
It was a strange and ghastly procession. As they walked, the undead parted to allow them to pass, bowing as they did so. So many different injuries marked them, all beyond any hope of healing. Vivian looked over her shoulder for Poe and saw that her grandfather had picked him up and was carrying him. The crowd closed behind him and followed, most of them bleeding, many of them lame.
Uneasy at first, Vivian became increasingly grateful for the lift as her human conveyance walked on and on. She could never have walked so far, and with the time to rest she felt strength gradually returning. How long the journey continued she had no idea. There was no day or night in this place, only the same dull, red light from the unchanging sky. Perhaps time did not even pass. She dozed and waked and dozed again.
A terrible thirst was on her, parching her throat, turning her tongue to sandpaper, and still they marched across the unchanging plain. Same dull sky above, same flat dusty earth beneath their feet, same halting, shuffling walk.
Then, at last, rock formations rose in the distance. These grew upward into cliffs and in one of the faces of stone she saw at last an opening. Light—real, white light—spilled through it. A draft of living air brushed against her skin.
The company came to a halt and her bearers lowered her to the ground. This time her legs held her, steady enough. Hope stirred, sluggish and feeble but alive, as she breathed in the sweetness of fresh air and fixed her eyes on the light.
“We can go no farther,” her grandfather said. “Do not fear what you are, child, or what you shall become.” He laid his hand over her heart. “This remains ever the same.”
Vivian only nodded, and did not speak. He was smaller than she, wizened and shrunken and so very old. But his eyes were the color of summer sky and his smile dazzled her, as unexpected as sun breaking through the clouds.
Garnering all of her small strength she turned from him and set off toward the promise of the light, Poe waddling solemn at her side.
Behind her, weighing heavy with their gray hope, the undead waited for her to free them.
Thirty-seven
Aidan rode the wind currents above the black mountain, allowing herself a moment of fierce joy. In her belly the Warrior’s seed had quickened into life, a white-hot flame that grew beyond the speed of any purely human child. Not long, only a few months, and she would bear a son.
It hadn’t been a part of the plan, but it was better this way. Her son was of the blood; he would grow to be a dragon slayer who would follow her bidding. She would hide him away as her mother had once hidden her, and when the time was right he would kill the King and help her rule the others.
Which meant she had no need of the Warrior, who had shoved her away in disgust as though she were some slimy scrap of refuse. Rage filled her at the thought. She hadn’t killed him at the time, believing she might still have need of him. But that was before she knew that she would bear a child. There was time to make him suffer, some special pain for him before he died. In the meantime, she ruled all of the dragons of the Between, and they would launch forays wherever she sent them. They were only pawns in this game, little more than primitive beasts after all of the years of inbreeding and the absence from the golden river. Their minds were full of nothing but hunting and flight. Docile and stupid, they flocked to her will like chickens in a farmyard. Most of them must die, of course, but once she had dethroned the King and taken her rightful place as Queen of the Dragons, those stronger and smarter would be allowed to live as slaves.
As for the giants, they too had fallen since the day they set the Black Gates in place and made the Key. Look at them—thousands upon thousands strong, just standing there on the plain before the Gates. Waiting. From this height they looked like rock formations, and would be about as effective. The sort of magic needed to create a containment like the Black Gates and the Key had been lost, long ago.
With the exception of Jehenna, the sorcerers—sorcieri, Allel had called them—had kept to themselves for so long that even Aidan had no idea what they were up to. Whatever it was, they were unlikely to interfere. Which meant there was nobody and nothing left to ruin her plan of destruction.
It had been so easy to kill the Guardian; she too had grown stupid and complacent over the years. Without the Guardian the dreamspheres would die, were already reverting to raw dream matter. People in the place called Wakeworld would die as their dreams winked out of existence. Any who survived would be unable to find a dream to enter. There would be chaos and insanity and war and the fools would destroy each other.