“He can save you.”
“It’s not a he. It’s an it. An it that tried to make me kill my friends, filled my head with. . with something horrifying.”
“To protect you. He only wants you to live. Your flesh is too weak.”
“It’s been strong enough so far.”
“It has not. You didn’t hurt the tentacle, did you? You couldn’t hurt her.”
“That’s not-”
“And you never could. He hurt the demons. He killed the Abysmyths, through you. Without him, you will die. And not by her hand.”
“What do you mean?”
“Look at your shoulder.”
He did. Even the unearthly blue light was not enough to mask the sickly coloration of glistening pink and blackening flesh from where he had attempted to cauterize his own wound. An infection, thriving.
“It was. . it was fine earlier!” he said. “I didn’t even feel it.”
“He mended it. He kept you whole.” Her voice quaked, something else seeping in. “But you sent him away. You may not even survive long enough for Ulbecetonth to have a chance to kill you.”
“Then I’ll find the tome first, keep it from happening. They need that to summon her, right?”
The girl said nothing.
“Or. . if worst comes to worst, I’ll just. . leave. I’ll go somewhere else.”
“You had the chance to do that. You had a dozen chances to do that. You could do that right now, but you won’t.”
“He doesn’t command me! Neither do you!”
“No,” the girl said. “Neither of us. But you’re still here. You know what Ulbecetonth will do when she returns. You’ve seen what her children do without her. You could leave, you could leave it all, you could watch everything drown.”
He said nothing.
“But you won’t,” she said. “And you won’t survive without him.”
“I don’t believe in fate.”
“Fate and inevitability are not the same things.”
“I don’t believe in that, either.”
“Very hard to lie to someone who can look into your head.” Her sigh sent a cloud of fog across the face of her tomb. “Go, Lenk. The chasm ends soon, rises up to the place you need to be if you follow it. But you know you won’t get far without him.”
He stared at her. She stared through him. He glared. She grinned. He sighed, turned on his heel. He had taken two steps before he paused and asked without looking back.
“Who is he?”
She said nothing for a moment. When she spoke, her voice trembled.
“If you really want to know. . ask me again. And I’ll tell you.”
He did not ask.
He walked away.
Trying to ignore the pain in his shoulder and the light that chased him.
TWENTY-THREE
“Will you just wait up?” Kataria called after him from far away.
He wouldn’t, so he didn’t bother to call back “no” this time. He kept going, jogging through the chasm. Admittedly, he should be nicer to her given that her scent was still all over him, but he trusted she would understand why he wanted to leave a dark, brooding chasm in which he had nearly died and then spoken to a dead girl.
Of course, he hadn’t told her that last part.
So she hadn’t understood when she awoke and found him hurriedly dressing, taking a quick swig of water, finishing up the remains of a fish they had managed to catch, and telling her to come with him. Nor did she seem to understand now as they leapt over rock and coral, over skeletal hand and rusted sword, hurrying farther into the darkness with no end in sight.
He would explain later, he told himself, when they got out of the chasm.
Explain the dead girl living in a block of ice in a room filled with tentacles as she spoke of how a demon queen from beyond hell was bursting out from her prison and the only way to stop her was to bring back the voice in his head that apparently had a gender and other people he occasionally took up residences in so that his shoulder didn’t rot off and kill him first.
Or maybe he’d just tell her he needed some fresh air.
That would be good, too.
Of course, before any of that could happen, he had to find the way out. The girl had said to follow the chasm and that’s what he had done.
He came to a halt, casting a stare up and down the chasm.
But which way had he been following it?
All right, he thought. Let’s think about this a moment. You passed the skeleton, the purple coral, the purple kelp, then the other skeleton. . in that order? Or did you pass the. . He scratched his head. So this is why people draw maps in their books. Okay, there was a dead shict somewhere and that was back the way you came and you didn’t pass that dead shict. . unless someone moved the body. Or ate it. Do shicts eat their dead? Is that true or did we just make that up?
He cast a long, curious look at Kataria as she came jogging up, breathing heavily. She shot him a glare.
“What are you looking at me like that for?” she asked.
“Do you eat-”
Don’t ask her, stupid!
“Nevermind.” He looked up at the jagged rent in the earth. “How much farther do you think it goes?”
“Oh, is that what we’re trying to find?” Kataria snarled. “Maybe if you had told me instead of running off, I could have figured something out.”
“Can you figure something out now? I’m kind of getting tired of this.”
“Well, so long as you’re getting tired of it.” She sighed, followed his gaze up to the sky. “No, I have no idea how and I have no idea why you think following this thing will lead us anywhere, anyway.”
He frowned, stared down into the emptiness of the chasm and muttered under his breath.
“I can’t believe she would lie to me.”
“Who?”
“The dead girl.”
“Who?”
What was that? You don’t have voices in your head anymore! You should be saying fewer weird things!
He opened his mouth to explain and some jumble of words that sounded vaguely like an excuse tumbled out. It was with some relief that he saw her looking over his head, clearly not listening. Relief that quickly turned to fear as he saw her reach for her bow.
His sword was in his hand by the time he turned around and stared into the yellow eyes staring back at him. It was those eyes-and only those eyes-that betrayed the creature as a Shen. The rest of it, bent back, dirty robes, drooping cowl from which ancient smoke and dust emanated, were so impossibly decrepit they might as well have been lifted from the dead.
It stood there for a moment, watching them. It made no other movement, said nothing, did not blink. And they, in turn, made no move to release arrow or tighten grip on sword. For the moment, anyway.
“Should I shoot it?” Kataria asked.
“It hasn’t attacked us,” Lenk replied.
“Ah.” The bowstring groaned a little. “So. . do I shoot it?”
“Give it a moment. It might know a way out.”
“And why would it tell us that as opposed to, say, splitting our heads open. . you know, like all the other ones try to do?”
“Because it’s retreating.”
“Slowly shuffling away” might have been a better choice of words for what the creature was doing, even if it didn’t carry the same disdain for how brazenly it turned about and slipped into the darkness, tail dragging behind it.
“After it!” Lenk barked. “It could lead us out of here.”
“Should we give it a longer head start?” Kataria asked. “The thing wasn’t exactly in a hurry.”
Yet even as they hurried after it, the creature seemed ever in the distance. Even as they charged, even as it shuffled, it seemed to draw farther and farther ahead of them, moving from shadow to shadow as a man moves through doors. By the time they were out of breath, the creature was still yards away, disappearing into the shadows once more.