Court of Fives

Page 95

“It’s a trap! An illusion. Our eyes deceive us, and our fear makes us quail.”
I press forward and they creep after. In a mere twenty strides, the false painting ends and we reach the far shore and enter a vaulted chamber with four ramps leading into further passageways.
“Why would anyone want to frighten and confuse people like this?” Amaya whimpers as she huddles on the floor, clutching Cook’s leg for comfort.
Maraya turns to look back the way we came. A wall of wide arches gives us a view onto the lightless gulf we just traversed, a maw of darkness.
“That is a very good question, Amiable,” she says in a brisk voice. “Who built this place originally? When it was buried, why was it not totally filled in with rubble? Think how strong the roof must be to have not collapsed under the weight of a hill.”
“What are those lights?” asks Mother, twisting out of Ro-emnu’s supporting arm. She shades her eyes as against the sun. “What haunts us?”
Out on the gulf of night, sparks of blazing light dance like a swarm of fireflies. They spin through hypnotic circles and spirals and all in a silence that wraps us like swaddling clothes. Their uncanny glamour paralyzes when we should be running away.
As with an inhaled breath the lights collect into a pulsing mass. They spill toward us in a flood. Too stunned to move or speak, we stare helplessly. Like fiery locusts the sparks pour through the arches in such numbers that their brilliance blinds us. Sparks tumble hotly through my flesh like a thousand million falling stars. Their radiance dissolves me; my being becomes mist. Unmoored, my heart comes unanchored and slides toward the ocean of eternity.
My shadow frays and tears where it attaches to my heels. I forget my name. My breath ceases.
In the shadow-ridden flesh of my dead brother, a fierce spark lodges with a hiss of steam.
In an eyeblink the lights vanish. Silence crashes down over us like the fist of voiceless thunder, a force that jolts the whole world. My knees buckle, and I pitch forward, barely catching myself on a hand. The sling flops sideways, cloth flapping open to uncover his face. My little finger brushes the bow of his tiny lips. His mouth parts under its pressure, and an answering force clamps down.
I suck in a harsh breath, heart thudding madly, as I realize what I am feeling.
My dead brother is suckling on my finger. He is alive.
30
My fingertip offers no milk. A mewl of infant indignation frets him. When I look down, the baby’s eyes are open. An expression no innocent baby could ever have mars the unblemished features: he is aware and he is afraid. When I met my baby sister’s gaze, the threads of our hearts tangled. This stranger stares at me as if he is trying to figure out who I am and if I mean to hurt him. His eyes squish up, his chin trembles, and he wails.
A hand presses on my shoulder as the awful sound swirls around us.
“Give him to me,” Mother says in the strongest voice I have heard from her since I first entered the tomb. “He’s hungry.”
I can’t bear to touch him. I just want to fling him away. So I am relieved when she takes him.
My body aches like it has been torn apart and stitched back together. Limping to the arches I lean against the smooth stone and rub my forehead as I stare out at the stone bridge. All the lit sparks have come to rest like butterflies on the supporting arches beneath the roadway. Their light illuminates a sandy floor, not a fathomless sea. The vast cavern we crossed is nothing more than a large chamber with vaulted ceilings, not nearly as big as I imagined it. In the murky shadows concealing the far end of the span I see the mouth of a passageway but not the door we came through. There is no wooden bridge. Everything I thought I saw has vanished.
“Jes? Are you all right? I saw you stumble.” Kalliarkos hurries up, and I open my arms so he can walk right into them.
“Will we ever find Bettany?” I whisper as I put my head on his shoulder.
“We’ll find her,” he promises. “We’ll do it together, Jes.”
I rest there, feeling his heart beat against mine.
After a short silence he speaks again. “I’ve never seen oil flare so brightly as when the reservoir shattered. The flames blinded me. Unfortunately most of our reserve oil burned up so we have to move on soon.”
“The flames?” I look over at the others clustered together around the lit lamp. The ceramic jug with its reservoir of oil is indeed broken, and leaked oil has spread across the floor. “It was the sparks that blinded us.”
“Sparks? What sparks?”
“Don’t you see them?” The sparks gleaming along the bridge start to fall. One by one they plummet onto the sandy floor and wink out of existence to become just another grain of sand.