Down a Lost Road (6 page)

“
Yatol!” I screamed, but
my voice was lost before it left my lips. In my mind I cried,
“Yatol, go! I’m not there! Go!”

The shadows loomed over the camp. Yatol
lifted his arms and cried something into the night. Blinding light
fractured the shadows, then nothing.

I sat up, shaking and sweating and gasping
for breath, my hands locked onto the blanket with whitened fingers.
I steadied myself, caught my breath and tried to focus. Couldn’t.
And before I could stop myself, I slipped unnoticed out of the
house and headed for Mr. Dansy’s shop. Again.

He stood behind the counter, motionless,
watching the door like he was expecting me. As I ran up to him, I
barely swept a glance over the store to make sure no one else was
there.

“
What happened to him?” I
cried. “They were attacked!”

“
So, you’ve
chosen.”

His words brought me up short.

“
I couldn’t stop them,” he
whispered. “They forced on through at the last moment. Too many…”
His eyes widened, and he stared off into the distance, muttering to
himself, “He had to get her away. Couldn’t wait. Too dangerous. It
was right.”

“
But what happened to him?”
I closed my eyes, realization sinking in. “He sent me back, didn’t
he? I thought I came back because I was griping, but he sent me
away.”

Mr. Dansy turned away. “You should go,
before they come looking for you.”

“
No.” I backed away from
the counter. “They won’t be coming back. They’re waiting for
me.”

“
Merelin…”

“
Don’t worry,” I said
thinly. “I want to go back.”

I want to go back
. I left the shop
fighting the strange dizziness, the world swarming with grey. My
heart pounded, joy tinged with terror. Too late to back out now –
Mr. Dansy was right. I had chosen. I stumbled to the dark magnolia
and leaned against the trunk. My vision blanked.

Someone, or something, caught me, a
feather-light touch in a golden haze. And then we were moving,
moving incredibly fast in a place without direction. No turns, no
ups, no downs, just on and on. Suddenly I realized I had stopped
moving, that everything had gone dark only because my eyes were
closed.

I rolled onto my back and stared up at the
strange sky, relieved, terrified, and somewhere behind it all,
strangely disappointed. No one had come to meet me this time. I
couldn’t even tell if I had been left in the same place. I pushed
myself up and glanced around, but nothing seemed familiar. Or it
looked all too familiar because it was just as bare and nondescript
as the first place I had arrived. The sand swept away to every
horizon, flat and unchanging except to my left, where great white
dunes rolled in vast drifts. The sky overhead shone crystalline
blue, and oppressive heat weighed down on me. Where was I? If I
shouted, maybe someone would hear me, but no voice came to my lips.
I sat in silence staring over the sand.

Where was Yatol?

The minutes slipped by. I didn’t know what
to do. A flash of panic seized me, but I forced it back. I knew I
was in deep trouble – no water, no destination, no bearings at all
– but panicking wouldn’t solve my problems. I just needed to take a
few minutes to think, and maybe something would come to me.
Right.

I drew a hand across my blistering lips,
watched a shadow pass over me. It stretched on, longer and darker,
until it blanketed me.

A shadow.

Yatol?

I lurched upright, a cry of joy forming on
my lips as I twisted around. It faded into a gasp of terror.

I couldn’t see the face. The hood of the
cloak concealed it. But I knew it wasn’t Yatol. I knew it even
before it lifted its head and showed its dead eyes, gleaming with a
hollow red light. Its dark robe undulated in the windless air,
passing right through the space its body should have occupied. It
didn’t seem to have any legs, but thick metal boots pressed into
the sand, like they magically appeared where the cloth stopped. It
had hands too, long and black, rotten, with bits of flesh drooping
from moldy bones.

They moved, suddenly. Reached out toward
me.

That thing is real
. I’d been sitting
there staring at it like I was watching a movie and – oh, God. It
was real.

A low long whine escaped the lipless
mouth…speaking, commanding, cajoling…

I couldn’t tear my gaze from the noisome
head, the cold empty eyes. I tried to move, but my legs pressed
into the sand, heavy and numb. It took one pace toward me, and I
did the only thing I could think of. I threw all my weight
backwards. I felt myself flipping over, saw the shadow disappear,
the terrible eyes disappear, the land disappear. It all gave way to
reeling cloudless blue. My legs uprooted, kicking up a cloud of
sand as my back hit the ground with a jarring thud. As soon as I
landed I writhed onto my stomach, trying to gain my footing,
frantic to get away.

The most horrific feeling shot through me,
shocking me like a surge of electricity. My back arched violently
and I crumpled back onto the sand. It felt like the moldering
fingers were stabbing into my head, clawing at my mind. I could
almost smell the death-rot, see the curling grey nails picking at
my thoughts. I heard a cry of anguish – mine. The eyes gleamed into
my soul. I struggled to close my thoughts, scraping fingers against
my forehead as if I could dig his voice out, but still his words
wormed into my mind. I screamed in rage and scrambled to my feet.
And I ran as hard as I had ever run.

Shadow fell over me.

* * *

The first thing I sensed was a faint, musty
smell, then warm stone beneath me. I opened my eyes against searing
pain, and a strange rusty cloud receded to the edges of my vision.
I could barely see, but then, there wasn’t much
to
see. Just
a pile of rank straw-like bedding, high grey walls, a barred window
admitting slats of dusty light. Everywhere silence. And stench. The
air reeked, metallic like rust and old blood, putrid like rotting
flesh. I gagged and covered my nose with my hand, trying to breathe
through my mouth without smelling.

If I tucked my chin, I could just see an
iron grate in one wall, revealing a narrow corridor of roughhewn
stone and shifting shadows. I was in a
cell
. Like a real
dungeon cell, only the sight of blue sky through the window told me
I wasn’t underground. I groaned and put my hands to my throbbing
head. After a moment I managed to pick myself up and move to sit
against the wall, too numb from pain and shock to feel any fear. I
was just glad to be alive.

My face flamed suddenly with pain, and I
dabbed at the skin. It felt stiff, mask-like, and when I withdrew
my fingers they were covered in moist, sticky blood.

Blood. How had I gotten bloody? I closed my
eyes, made the painful effort to recall what had just happened.

Mr. Dansy.
“So, you’ve chosen.”
His
words echoed in my thoughts against a sudden rush of images. A
golden haze, tumbling through space. Empty desert, moldering bones.
I felt the clawing fingers in my mind again, the hellish eyes
seeing inside of me. Felt the terror, the shifting sand that
wouldn’t let me run. Darkness. I reached up to rub my burning eyes,
found them wet with tears.

“
It’s not supposed to be
this way,” I gritted, slamming my palms against my thighs. The
sound of my voice in the viscous silence made me jump.

“
Merelin?”

“
Way to think you could
just come back and save the world. You got caught! It just
figures…”

“
Merelin!”

This time I heard the low, rough voice, and
I caught my breath. Someone was here who knew my name. Now that I
thought of it, I couldn’t remember telling it to anyone here. Not
Yatol, not the silver-haired elder. No one. But I wasn’t alone, and
somehow I wasn’t sure whether to be relieved or scared. I edged
away from the wall, heart pounding, and crept to the cell door. My
head splintered with pain, almost making me retch, but I choked
back bile and let my weight sink against the grate.

“
Who’s there?”

“
Yatol.”

Yatol! His voice came muffled from the other
side of the wall where I’d been sitting. My heart leapt, sending a
shivery chill all through me. Butterflies, really? Now? I tried to
force the feeling away. Somehow I made it back to the wall,
kneeling and resting my hands against the rough stone.

“
You’re here? I saw what
happened…somehow, I don’t know. I’m so sorry! I tried to tell you I
had gone.”

“
I knew.”

I swallowed, hard. “You sent me back, didn’t
you?”

“
Yes.”

“
Then why did you stay? You
could have gotten away. I don’t understand.”

“
It’s my task. They would
have followed you if they’d found the way you’d taken.”

“
The way I had
taken?”

“
Yes.”

Wow, that helped a lot.

“
But why did you send me
back?”

A brief silence, then his voice, low, “So
they wouldn’t catch you.”

That shut me up for about a minute. My face
flushed with regret and dismay. He had risked himself to get me to
safety, and what did I do? Turn around and get myself caught.
Win.

“
Yatol, what are
they?”

“
We call them the Ungulion,
but I don’t know what they call themselves.” I heard a scrabble
against the rocks and he said, “No time now for history lessons.
Look, by the floor.”

I found a small dark hole in the wall. “The
hole? What about it?”

“
These walls are centuries
old, and the heat makes the stone weak. It crumbles
easily.”

I put my finger into the gap and tugged at
the stone. As Yatol had hinted, once I pulled hard enough a large
piece of rock broke away. I shivered, then laughed, a weak and
quavering little laugh. The idea that the rock could be dismantled
by my puny strength made me suddenly nervous about being surrounded
by it. I heard Yatol pulling rocks away on his side and figured I
ought to help with whatever plan he had hatched. The work got more
difficult as the gap got deeper, but I found that kicking worked
fairly well to dislodge chunks.

“
Well, this is really
convenient,” I said eventually.

“
Yes.”

Mentally I groaned. “What exactly are you
planning on doing?”

“
You’ll see. It’s almost
large enough now.”

“
And I’m sure the whole
wall will cave in over us when it is,” I said, trying to sound
funny but only sounding sardonic.

“
That would make things
easier,” came Yatol’s voice. I could imagine his wry
smile.

“
So, why would someone
build a building out of rock that you can break?”

“
There was no need to use
anything stronger.” A pause, then, “Most people don’t try to pick
apart buildings. Not generally.”

I grinned and worked faster, ignoring the
rawness in my fingers where the rock had abraded them. Yatol must
have had a good deal of the hole already broken up from his side,
because the work went faster than it should have. We broke through
at almost the same time, I kicking rather too viciously at the wall
and narrowly missing his hand. When the gap measured nearly a foot
and a half square I put my head down to peer through.

“
Here,” Yatol said, moving
back from the wall before I could see him. “You should be able to
get through now.”

“
Me? Are you
sure?”

“
It’s more than large
enough for someone so…”

“
So what?” I asked
sullenly. “Scrawny?”

“
Slender.”

My mouth twitched in a smile and my cheeks
burned. Slender was a nice word – much nicer than what anyone else
had ever called me. I dropped onto my elbows, then flat on my
stomach and stared through the hole. I jumped when Yatol bent to
see me.

“
While you’re over there,
get all the bedding you have and push it through to me.”

“
Gross, what
for?”

No answer. Surprise. I made a face as I
gathered up the straw and shoved it through the hole. When I’d
gotten as much of it as I could, I gritted my teeth and lowered
myself down to follow the bedding through. The gap seemed small to
me, but as I inched forward my shoulders just cleared the sides.
The wall was thicker than I expected, and the thought of being
surrounded by rock made me shiver. But there wasn’t anything else
to do, so I took a deep breath, let it out, and started slithering
through.

It was slow, painstaking work. I crept along
inch by cautious inch. I stretched out my arm once and froze,
afraid I’d gotten it stuck. Trying not to panic, I carefully eased
it back under me.
Oh God, I’m not meant for this kind of
thing
.

I had gotten nearly halfway through when a
faint rhythmic tapping met my ears, sharp, echoing. It made the
stone hum around me, vibrating under my hands. I saw Yatol tense
and straighten up.

“
Yatol? What is
that?”

The noise was getting louder, and I didn’t
wait for his reply. I knew what it was. I pulled away from the
hole, hitting my head and bruising my shoulders as I squirmed free.
Heart racing, I started shoving rocks back into the hole. I worked
as fast as my arms would move but the gap just wouldn’t fill. As
the steady beat drew nearer I started blocking just the opening.
The footsteps rang in my ears. I shoved one last piece of rock into
place and flung myself over the remaining stones, shaking with
exertion and terror.