Chapter 20—Hrathbern

Even though her hatred had cooled, it still remained, and she had accepted that it always would. A foundation of a mortal life abused by men followed by an unknown amount of centuries reveling in their destruction could not be erased by the kindness of one.

Still, that hatred had taken her freedom, her children, and inevitably her life. Thus, to protect what she held dear, she took that still glowing ember and buried it within a prison of rock, which she then buried deep in the earth. Yet it had eaten up so much of her soul that what remained behind was little more than a spirit, unable to form outside her opal let alone grant wishes of any kind.

Even so, she was content with this. Because, after so long of being eaten alive by that poison, she could finally exist as what she had always meant to be: happy. And rest had been a long time in coming.

She never expected anyone else to find her buried malice, let alone use it.

***

“So…that’s Hrathbern.”

On the other side of the cliff was a blocky tower hewn into the cliff’s face. It’s tiny, dark windows were but mere squares set high up from the ground. Over the year of its abandonment sand had piled up in the doorway. It was several feet in front of this that they stood, unconsciously huddling together. Something cold, heavy, and ominous emanated from the building. The shadows in those tiny, empty black windows seemed to shift, as though with some faint fire.

Izz shuddered.

“How do we know they threw him in there?” she asked. “I mean, honestly, who would be able to stand it long enough to get someone in anyways?”

“If we’re lucky, then, he’ll be near the entrance,” said Abal.

Hasna shook her head. “No, then it wouldn’t be effective. Then he could’ve just crawled right out.”

Badra agreed with her. “If any boy were to have spirit, it’d be that one. They’d have to stuff him deep.”

“You gonna ignore me?” said Izz. “How do we even know those cretins really put him in there? What if they just took him away once they got here because they were too chicken? Huh? We can’t just dive in without know’n!”

“He’s there,” murmured Fa. None of them turned to look at her, but their eyes flickered to her briefly.

“And what’s your reasoning?”

Fa simply looked at Izz, her face impassive. Her hooded eyes flashed with a deep intelligence in the dim light of the stars.

“This place would be the most deserving of him, to them. Their hearts are irrational except for this.”

“But—“

“Enough, Izz,” said Abal.

“But why do we even—kah! Mother! Whatever! I’m staying out here!” she folded her arms tightly. “We need a watch anyways.”

“Nu uh! I came all this way to watch you squirm,” said Hasna, jutting her tiny, freckled nose into the air.

“Then be my guest and go in yourself. I’ll be doing plenty of squirming then, squirms of disbelief,” said Izz.

“That doesn’t even make sense,” said Hasna.

“Bye.” Izz waved.

Hasna scowled. “No! If you’re staying, I’m also staying. He’s probably already dead anyways.”

Kyanna’s breath caught. Badra’s eyes flickered to her, eyebrows tilted in concern even as she kicked the sole of Hasna’s boot.

“What?” Hasna glanced at Kyanna, at least a little apologetic. “You know that might be the case, right?”

“Don’t worry. If he is, we’ll find you five more men just like him,” said Izz.

“You girls don’t know when to shut up,” said Abal, her mouth tight with irritation. “Fine, stay out here and babysit each other. If anything happens, you know the call. We’ll hear you.” She then turned to Kyanna. “Whatever we find in there, we’ll be with you. No one here’s a stranger to loss.”

Badra put her hand once more to Kyanna’s arm, tall forehead puckered with sympathy.

“Don’t worry, Kyanna, he’s the most stubborn guy we’ve ever met. He got the opal from us, didn’t he? There’s a good chance—“

But Abal slapped her hand away and took a stern step between her and Kyanna.

“No matter what happens, I need you to keep your head on if you want to get out of this alive. Hrathbern’s magic preys on weakness—fears, sorrows, regrets, guilt—and makes living nightmares out of them. If you let these take over your heart its shadows will find you and smother you till you become one of them. Do I make myself clear?”

Kyanna hesitated. “Actually, that was all rather vague. Are you saying there’s, like, monsters in there?”

“It’s not empty,” said Fa from behind.

A collective shiver went over the group.

“How do you know?” asked Hasna.

Fa didn’t answer.

Abal cleared her throat. “Point is, what we do know from looting on the lower levels is that it’s important to keep your emotions under control and to not dwell on dark thoughts. Any bad memories you may have, shove them out.” Abal lifted a finger. “And keep your sword nearby. The mother will guide your blade if you are open to her. But if you have given up, nothing can guide you.”

“Given up?” Kyanna frowned. “Why would I give up?”

Izz growled impatiently, but Abal silenced her with a look before pointing to the square, dark windows.

“Do you see any bars on those windows, Princess?”

Kyanna squinted. “No.”

“Exactly. Because there are none. There was no reason to have any on the windows because there were plenty of bars around the prisoners’ own minds. That is the curse of Hrathbern. That is why it’s so dangerous. And the magic is only stronger now because of its desolation. It’s hungry.”

“You speak as though it’s a living thing.”

“Magic usually is,” said Badra. She stepped aside Abal and took her hand. “If it gets too dangerous, we have to turn back, okay? Listen to Fa. She’ll know when we have to leave. She’s really aware of these sorts of things, I think the word Karpathians have for it is ‘empath.’”

“How do we know when we need to get out?”

“You won’t,” said Abal.

Kyanna looked back up at the prison looming above them. Those dark windows became eyes that watched from beneath heavy lids. As her head tilted back farther, the carved stone seemed to totter towards her, threatening to smash her beneath its weight. She shook the image from her mind and filled it with Einar.

She commanded her body to cease its quaking.

“I know I need Fa,” she hesitated. “But is there any chance I can go in there alone? I don’t want to risk you just for—“

“No,” said Abal, in a tone as hard as diamond.

And that’s all that was said on it. As the others prepared torches, Hasna took one look at Kyanna’s dagger, snorted, and pulled out a spare scimitar from the saddle bags to give to her. Its weight felt foreign compared to the dagger, but Kyanna didn’t complain. With a gesture from Abal, Badra, Fa, and Kyanna collectively climbed their way over the sand and into the broken doorway, their small flames held aloft.

All that she could see or feel at first was sand and stone, along with a chill from the loss of the sun. The room felt cooler, not unlike a cellar or a basement would. It was large. Very large, stretching far beyond the reach of their torch’s light. A thin smell of water and something not quite sulfuric pressed up against her mouth, humid as a coming storm.

After some steps, their light came upon the rotted and shattered remains of a table.

“The war only ended last year,” said Kyanna, poking her toe against the wood. “But this place looks like it’s been abandoned for decades. There wasn’t even a door.”

“Wood is valuable out here,” said Abal. “Any left would have been taken. We’ll most likely find more on the next level, though, since after the second or third floor few leave on their own.”

“We’re together, so we should be able to go farther,” said Badra. “But, still, let’s hope he’s only on the first or second floor.”

“Wait, are you saying there are bodies in here?”

“More than likely,” said Abal, as though mentioning the color of the walls.

Kyanna shuddered.

Badra patted her back. “Hey, don’t worry, they’re most likely really cool. Bodies in the desert dry up like jerky, so all their skin and hair is left behind and sometimes even their last expressions.”

“That just makes it worse!” said Kyanna.

“No, really, it’s fascinating at least on a disgusting level, like, when you have an infected toenail or something and you push out all the pus—“

“Ugh.” Kyanna covered her face.

“—and it oozes out in a perfect pool, or better, like a snake—“

“Stop. Just stop. I don’t need to be sick on top of terrified.”

Fa chuckled from behind them.

Kyanna wrinkled nose. “I never thought I’d be having these conversations as a princess.”

“Then being a princess sounds boring,” said Badra.

Kyanna smiled. “It is. It really is.”

“Well, you can always come home with us. I have the best view in my room, right on the shady side of the waterfall—“

“Hush. Talk about that later,” said Abal. “Best we not draw attention to ourselves to whatever is in here. We’re nearing the stairs.”

Sure enough, a set of rocky steps went up and just within reach of the light. Kyanna glanced behind her to find, with a jolt of her stomach, that the daylight through the doorway and windows had become mere dots in the darkness. She snapped her head back, biting her lip, wishing she had seen something other than stone in the darkness. Now that she was so close to seeing Einar and ending all this, her chest ached something awful.

The sound of their feet on the steps and the moving air around the torches were swallowed by the silence, not even an echo remained, which Kyanna found odd with the emptiness and stone walls. A few steps onto the second floor brought to light more rubbish of rotten wood and rusted bits of metal with the occasional chain.

She found herself missing the sound of Badra going on about pus when her ears began to feel pressed in, as though by a change in altitude, by the quiet. Not even a rat squeaked.

Then her eyes fell over a set of feet; dark brown feet with the skin sucked to the bones and the nails jutting out like claws.

Her heart leapt to her throat in a squeak. But she found she couldn’t look away, her eyes trailing up to ragged, too large leggings and a sunken gut, its raisin-like bellybutton underlined with the impression of vertebrae and canopied by a leather tent of ribs. Collarbone, a startlingly thick throat, a chin—

Kyanna sucked in a breath.

“What—what happened to its face?”

Abal stopped, but only for a moment before moving on.

“Don’t look at it.”

But Kyanna found she couldn’t have turned away even if she wanted to. Unlike the rest of the body, which had been mummified, the face looked almost malformed and masked, with the flesh around the jaw swollen up and over where a nose had been until only a dark hole remained where the mouth had been, and clean holes stared out where the eyes had once been.

The head lolled to the side, staring back at her.

Badra grabbed Kyanna’s chin and twisted it back around. Her golden eyes met Kyanna’s, her usual humor gone.

“It-it moved—“

Badra slid a finger over Kyanna’s mouth and shook her head. She then moved Kyanna to her other side, her scimitar in hand without Kyanna recalling her unsheathing it.

Kyanna clenched her torch till it hurt. Her breath whistled as it picked up speed, but she didn’t dare make a sound. Her vision seemed to waver with a rush of blood to her head.

She barely felt Badra’s cool hand.

“Don’t be afraid,” she whispered. “It’s just jerky. And my sword is very sharp.”

But with each step, Kyanna found herself seeing more and more bodies in every awkwardly shaped stone or flickering shadow. Though she knew saw nothing, her eyes shivered, and her heart thumped madly against her chest.

Yet, even as every spike of cold fear inside her screamed for her to turn around, the ache in her chest at the thought of seeing Einar kept her moving.

Unbidden, an image of him, dried and eyeless, rose to her mind.

Kyanna put her free hand to her mouth.

Badra pulled it off and clenched it in hers.

“It’s okay. Just think about pus snakes.”

Kyanna thought to smile, even opened her mouth to scold her, but a low, long moan from behind froze her in place.

A whisper of blade on leather as Fa unsheathed her scimitar.

Badra frowned and tugged Kyanna onward. “Fa?”

A clatter of chains—a slide of feet—and Fa gave a closed mouth shout.

The rest of them whirled around to find Fa with two halves of a mummified corpse at her feet, cut at an angle from the shoulder to the nonexistent kidney, straight through the bone.

“We need to hurry,” said Abal.

Only Badra’s tugging broke the ice over Kyanna’s knees. Her mind had turned off, fuzzing over with something wide eyed and jittering.

“It moved.”

“Hush, Princess.”

“It-there had been—“

Badra put her fingers over her mouth.

But the image of Einar dried and dead now drowned her thoughts, more and more details becoming clear: dirty blond hair like wet wheat about his head, skin turned to light leather, neck unequally fresh compared to the skeleton poking out beneath a dirty shirt.

With it, came an overwhelming impression.

Jeremy won’t accept you now.

A sensation like hot tar coated her insides. How disgusting must she be to think that when her husband’s possible corpse floated around in her head? She had chosen Einar, hadn’t she? She could see Jeremy for who he was clearly now in the face of the kind-hearted and earnest Einar. She had—

Taken the best for yourself. A flippant heart, disloyal and selfish.

But what did it matter what kind of lover she was? She was a princess. All that mattered was that she continued on the royal line, preferably in the form of sons. She’d already done her duty in getting married. No need to think she needed morals or worth beyond that.

Badra’s hand squeezed hers.

When they reached the other end of the room, they doubled back to check the far wall where their torches had been unable to reach. More dried limbs lay across their path. Swollen faces turned in the corner of Kyanna’s vision. But none had blond hair, and all had been there long enough to dry.

Finally, they came back to the end, where the staircase up to the third floor stretched up into the ceiling.

“He’s not here,” said Abal, uncharacteristically soft.

Kyanna said nothing. The ache in her chest had grown till it reached the tips of her toes and fingers, where in thrummed in time with her slowing heart. Fear of the corpses had somewhat dulled, perhaps because she had seen more, or perhaps because Kyanna found herself feeling that there were much worse things than their fingers wrapping about her. Einar was probably one of them anyways.

She’d been an idiot to come all the way out here.

“Fa?”

“We can go up, but then we should turn around.”

Abal didn’t nod. She just looked up the staircase, the tip of her dark braid dropping down to her thighs. Her shoulders seemed to slump down with it, like willow branches.

The next floor had cells. Walls of stacked stone and thick, black bar doors. None were open, though two ahead had dried arms splayed out from inside, their nails yellow and clawed.

What had happened to her guard Bartra? What would happen to him when her father found out he escorted her out into the desert and into the hands of Soan, who were practically their enemies?

He’d die, of course. What a stupid question. He’d die because of her. Why hadn’t she thought of that? Or had she and just didn’t care?

It took a minute before Kyanna realized she had gone ahead, past Abal, and that her hand had slipped from Badra’s grasp. One of those dried arms stretched out just past her foot, still and brown.

“Just to the end,” she said.

The other’s said nothing, though the steps behind her had slowed. Kyanna stepped over the arms. The yellow nails did not shine. She didn’t know why she expected them to.

More of the swollen faced bodies resided in the cells in various positions. Some hung from walls, some were simply latched to loose chains, others slumped against the bars, as though they had fallen asleep and never woke. Kyanna found herself looking at them longer, her repulsion dulling into something akin to apathy. Jerky indeed.

Then, the end of the long hall came, and her heart gave a hard, painful thump, like a punch to her gut.

No Einar.

“It’s time to go,” murmured Fa.

She turned to face them, meeting their gazes in quick, fleeting dips. Their pupils had eaten the gold of the iris and shadows scooped beneath their eyes. They looked older and tired, Abal especially.

“I’m sorry,” she whispered.

Kyanna just nodded but didn’t move.

What was the point?

Her hand tightened about her torch, pressing the grain of the wood deep into her soft skin.

“I have to keep going, even if it’s only to get his body.”

The golden rings looking back at her understood too much, even as they scowled in unison.

“Don’t be a fool,” said Abal. “He is only one man. There are many out there.”

“And I am only one woman,” said Kyanna. “His gender does not decide his worth.”

“I thought you were a princess,” said Badra with a small smile. “The only one of your kind, even. No siblings to speak of. Don’t you have a kingdom to take care of?”

“Dynasties come and go—“

“—and people along with them,” broke in Abal. “But you return, and no one will have to deal with the unrest following your disappearance.”

Kyanna sighed. “What do you care? It’s not like it will affect you guys any.”

None of them answered that.

Kyanna hooked a hand on her hip. “Look, I won’t be able to live with myself if I don’t find him. He…he’s done everything for me. If there’s even the slightest chance he’s alive…”

Abal pinched the bridge of her nose. “Kyanna—“

“The Mother told us to honor agency above all,” said Fa in her ever-quiet voice.

“And we have the agency to stop her,” retorted Abal.

“I’ll go with her.”

The three of them stared at Badra, who still had her little smile.

“As long as she’s not alone she can go a little farther, right? They wouldn’t have been able to go in too deep and risk being caught themselves. It shouldn’t be much farther.”

“Badra…” said Kyanna in dismay.

“Hey, it’s fine. We blondies got to stay together, yeah?”

Kyanna returned her weak grin.

Abal just sighed again. “Fine. Keep your swords out, even you, Kyanna, skill-less as you are, it’s still better than nothing, and swear to me you will return, or by the Mother I’m finding explosives and blowing this whole thing down.”

Badra put a hand to her mouth. “With us inside? I never took you as the blow everything up type.”

“How hard can it be? You light the string and run for it.”

Fa’s mouth twitched. “Abal, we shouldn’t waste time.”

“Yes, yes,” the older Soan gave Kyanna and Badra a steely look in turn. “Swear it.”

Kyanna and Badra both bowed their heads and did so.

“Swords.”

Once Badra had her scimitar in hand and Kyanna her borrowed blade, she gave a curt nod.

“We’ll be waiting for you on the first floor.”

With a brief, but warm, squeeze of their wrists, Abal and Fa headed back down the hallway.

Badra nudged Kyanna’s side with her elbow.

“Let’s go rescue your boy.”

The next set of stairs came with a dropping of several degrees in temperature and opened up to another hallway filled with cells. The corpses were different here, though Kyanna couldn’t quite pick out why, and the silence was edged with a slight whistling. Kyanna thought she could hear the echoes of the moans that brought with them the image of black hole-eyes, sunken within a rotten face with a hole amidst a bloated face. Beside her, Badra turned her head in all directions, eyeing the shadows their torches couldn’t reach, the knuckles on the grip of her scimitar white.

Still, her tone was light-hearted when she asked, “How did your boy convince you to marry him?”

“He didn’t.” said Kyanna, glad for the distraction. “My father arranged it. I hated him, at first.”

“You hated him? Well, an arranged marriage and all, I guess that’s enough of an excuse, but was there another reason?”

Kyanna glanced into a cell, regretting it instantly when she found a body not even fully decomposed slumped against the bars, its milky eyes watching her. A jolt spiked through her acquired apathy.

“I was in love with someone else.”

“Wow. Drama. When did you marry him anyway?”

“About two weeks ago.”

“What? And now you’re hunting through death itself for him? I thought you just said you loved someone else.”

The cold sank deeper into Kyanna. Even Badra thought the same. She really was flimsy hearted. A familiar feeling tickled her, however, and it was that same emotion when she had looked out across the horizon up in that birch tree. Before she could really consider an intelligent answer, she said to Badra, “Because he made me feel good about myself. He made me feel…free to do or be whatever I want to be, whether it was yelling at him or climbing trees or…”

Free. Free to make apple pies, free to swim in her underwear, free to be embraced and called the “Apple Queen” beneath a tender thing of a smile.

Badra gave her an understanding grin. In the darkness her hair looked just as dark as the others rather than its usual orange, and Kyanna was reminded of the Soan Mother of her dreams. The only man that had earned her respect and loyalty did so by giving her freedom and allowing her to do as she desired. Perhaps…but Kyanna couldn’t finish the sentence. Her thoughts felt sluggish. It didn’t matter what he gave her, really. She’d do her duty. Or he was probably dead anyways.

At the end of the hall, instead of another staircase, they came to three doors and a hallway running deeper into the stone. Badra and Kyanna stopped hesitantly.

Badra gestured with her torch. “Pick a door. Any door.”

A clank of chains echoed from behind them. The hair on Kyanna’s neck stood on end.

Against her better judgment, Kyanna glanced behind her, but all she saw was darkness and empty cells.

“Did…did that body really attack Fa back there?”

Badra shrugged but pressed her lips tight.

Kyanna looked up and down the doors. There were five in total, if she looked down to the depths of the branching hallway. Somehow, the one at the end scared her most of all.

A sliver pricked through Kyanna’s thumb, but she hardly felt it.

“Badra, what if…what if he’s one of them?”

“Don’t think that,” said Badra sharply. “Remember what Abal said. We can’t let our emotions carry us away in here. Our weaknesses will call to the shadows.”

Somewhere, chains whispered against stone again. The image of the blue, wide-eyed corpse came to her mind once more, but she pushed it away. Badra was right. She had to control herself.

Her mind scrambled for a comforting thought. Anything. She thought of horses, the smell of straw and her father’s big, warm hugs. Above all these, however, rose the image of the Soan dancing in the bright desert sun and found herself longing for that hot-metal heat. How would it feel to hug the sky in her arms as she twisted and shimmied her hips, sweeping her long hair past her back and arms like a veil?

What is it that you desire?

A flicker of red and gold moved in the corner of her gaze. Startled, she looked down the new hallway, but saw nothing.

“Did you see that?”

“See what?” asked Badra.

A wisp of warmth, like a ribbon, passed by her neck. A scent of warm sand, like the mildest of incense, pierced through the wet musk of the prison. It was coming from down the hall, from the direction of the single door. Her feet moved; her hands reached out. Yes. Yes, she felt something. A warmth, that smell.

“Let’s do this one.”

Badra followed her down the dark hall to the lone door. With her heart thumping loudly in her ears, Kyanna reached out a trembling hand to the oddly hot metal of the handle and pulled open the door. The firelight from their torches rushed in to fill the small, single stone room. And within, surrounded by bones with his arms bracketed above his head…

Was Einar.