“Is that why you’re helping me?” Cricket asked.
Something about the starlight gave me a burst of honesty. “I guess it is,” I admitted. “I couldn’t save Cassandra. Once I looked at her again, I broke the amulet’s spell. The cancer killed her instantly. But I always believed she was alive somewhere. I could feel her. Minikin used to tell me that nobody ever really dies, so I knew all I had to do was find her. Then I found the Story Garden.” The memory chilled me. “She was alive. Just like Minikin said.”
Cricket’s eyes got big. She was quiet for a moment, thoughtful. She put her head against me sleepily. “That’s how I feel sometimes. Like Cassandra. Like a prisoner.”
“Because you can’t remember?”
“Yes,” she whispered.
She felt warm against me. Not a lover’s warmth, but a child’s. I put my arm around her. “Do you remember what I told you when we started out?” I said. “Your memories are here. Somewhere. Just like me finding Cassandra. I knew she was there, so I kept looking. That’s what we’re going to do-keep looking. We’ll find them.”
“I thought so too at first. But now. .” She shrugged. “I don’t know.”
“We will,” I said confidently.
“We only have a week.”
“No,” I said in a hush. “Plenty of time. You’re young, and I’ve got all the time in the world.”
She didn’t laugh at my dark joke. She just rested in the crux of my arm. I laid there against the tree, unmoving, studying the constellations until she fell asleep.
* * *
All the next morning we followed the river. The sunlight had broken our melancholy moods, and we stopped for a time to watch fish jumping in the chop. It was a remarkably beautiful day for the Bitter Kingdoms, the first one I could remember since laying eyes on Isowon. Once again the landscape was changing, shifting from the bleakness of Akyre to southern greenery. We were less than a full day’s ride to Fallon’s palace, and only an hour or so from the dell where the tomb lay. The river meandered toward the valley where we’d first encountered the monster.
When we saw the valley, each of us fell silent.
It was Cricket who first sniffed the air. Once, then again, deeper. I did the same, but couldn’t catch a whiff of the pile of bones and flesh that had greeted us last time. Cricket, who’d already seen her share of horrors, braced for another. This time, though, we’d prepared ourselves. My mind touched Malator as he stretched out over the dell, looking for the creature. Through his eyes I saw him racing through the trees and around the rocky enclaves, like a wild bird set loose from a cage. This time, we were determined to find the monster first.
It’s nowhere, said Malator. His frustration grew. I don’t sense it anywhere.
“It’s daytime,” I said. “It must be here.”
Just because it kills at night doesn’t mean it won’t move about in the day. It’s a spirit, Lukien, not an owl.
“Check the tomb,” I said as I continued riding toward it. “Do you see it?”
It’s just ahead. But I don’t feel the monster. I would if it were here.
Perplexed, I turned to Cricket. “It’s not here,” I said. “Malator can’t sense it.”
“He’s sure?” she asked.
“Seems to be.”
I am, Malator replied. It was unmistakable last time.
“Then where is it?”
“Maybe eating,” suggested Cricket. “We saw all those bones last time. Like they were licked clean.”
“Malator, do demons eat?”
Maybe. If they get hungry.
“Quit joking,” I snapped.
I’m not. This creature isn’t like me, Lukien. It’s here in your realm as flesh. It shouldn’t be, but it is. Maybe it gets hungry, cold. .
“Lonely?” I scoffed. “Maybe we should sing to it.”
Malator suddenly flashed out of my mind. The next second he was standing in front of me, glaring and frightening my horse.
“Are you an expert on the realms of the dead?” he asked. He folded his arms over his shimmering self. “We’re here to learn about this creature, aren’t we?”
I nodded. “Yes.”
Malator glowered at Cricket. “You?”
Cricket just looked overwhelmed to see him. “Uh-huh.”
“Then do as I say. Get down from your horses. We’ll go on foot from here.”
I was uncomfortable but trusted Malator. The two of us dismounted, then reined the animals to a nearby tree. We were at the edge of the dell, but coming at it from the north this time. I could see the river cutting across the valley, disappearing in places amongst the evergreens. We walked downhill, skidding over loose rocks until we came to the river again, moving sluggishly toward a hillside where it disappeared into a cave.
“That’s the tomb,” said Malator, pointing toward it.
The way the river cut through the hill surprised me. The cave was open to anyone who dared enter. I supposed the river came out the other side somewhere.
“It’ll be dark in there,” said Cricket. “The sun won’t help much.”
“Leave that to me,” said Malator. “Stay close.”
We were in his hands now, so we did as he asked, following him toward the mouth of the cave, the rocks like teeth rimming a jaw. Cricket walked rigidly beside him, determined not to bolt. I still didn’t know if the knock on her head had helped or harmed her. Her eyes were steely and alert. Malator paused right at the edge of the cave, his feet disappearing into the water without disturbing the river at all. He peered inside in an oddly human way, as he himself didn’t trust his Akari instincts. Then he let out a breath.
“All right,” he said. “It’s clear. I’m sure of it.”
I unsheathed my sword anyway. “Go.”
Once the darkness touched him, Malator’s body began to glow. His figure was like a torch inside the cave, shedding its soft light on the damp walls and gravel. He turned up his palm and lit a flame in it with his mind, the way I’d seen him do before. Then he turned to Cricket.
“Take this,” he told her.
Cricket took the flame without hesitation, marveling as it flared in her hand. “It’s not hot,” she remarked. “Almost cool.”
I remembered the sensation myself. Malator was full of tricks these days. But I didn’t want a flame of my own, just my sword. I pointed ahead with it. “Look.”
Through the gloom I saw the river rounding a bend in the cavern. Where it turned was a gash in the wall of the cave, like a doorway. Slabs of rock had been moved away from the opening, discarded into the river.
“Fallon,” I whispered. “He must have used horses to move the slabs.”
Cricket leaned forward with a squint. “That opening is barely wide enough for a person. How’d the monster get out?”
I wondered about that myself. “Somehow it squeezed itself into those bones,” I remembered. “It changes itself, maybe.”
“We can get through,” said Malator. “Me first.”
He floated over the river where the slabs lay like tombstones, then slipped easily through the crack. His iridescent body appeared on the other side, lighting up a vast chamber beyond.
“Lukien, Cricket.” He turned and smiled at us through the portal. “You have to see this.”
Cricket stomped anxiously through the river. She barely had to turn sidewise to make it through the opening. When she did, she gasped.
“Whoa!”
I felt like an explorer. I sheathed my sword in a hurry and squeezed myself through the gash in the rocky wall, scraping my nose and breastplate. Fallon had obviously rushed his excavation. But once inside, every sense of tightness fled. Suddenly I was in a vast chamber with a sky-high ceiling and a finger of the river running through it. A hundred stone eyes watched me, the glorious work of long-dead sculptors, awash in Malator’s magic light. Cricket held up her flame for us to see. I saw dozens of sculptures, all of them animals, cut into the walls of the tomb or built up high on pedestals, like a lush jungle of wild cats and birds. Faded paintings in gold and scarlet decorated the walls, depicting battles and forests, a landscape of an Akyre that no longer existed. The entire chamber was filled with vases and urns, their contents turned to dust. Another chamber echoed to our left. The little tributary disappeared into its darkness.