A Hero's Curse (18 page)

If I start to think about it, it makes my head hurt.
We are at the top of a mountain, going up?
I mention this to Tig. He grunts in response and hops up another stair. He has been quiet for a while now. My legs start to burn, then ache, then they feel like each one weighs an extra hundred pounds. Tig continues to follow along behind, letting me lead through the inky darkness. It feels weird being in the lead with him bumping against the back of my legs. But I have practice with this game.

In a large way it was Tig who prepared me to take this role. He taught me to appreciate the night. When the sun dips below the horizon the advantage that was the world’s is taken away, and it’s others who trip over uneven ground I can stalk with confidence. It’s at night when the dust of the day that mutes sounds and smells fades, leaving the air clear and sharp—air that carries news. I can’t count the number of raids I have followed behind Tig, barely making any more noise than he makes, hearing the rustle of dry grass and the whisper of small feet. Of course he points out that my weight gives me away to smaller creatures, so I’ve learned to stalk with agility that even Tig admires.

I guess I’m just surprised that Tig still used his sight so heavily. During our coaching sessions I think I always assumed that he was at least partly blind in the dark as well. I’ll be the first to admit that this darkness is different. It presses in on all sides. Our footfalls and whispered voices bounce weirdly off the stone, echoing where they should fall flat, or rebounding off the walls in an eerie imitation of mocking laughter.

I have lost track of time again when the stairs finally end. I gave up counting steps a long time ago. We walk into a huge cavernous space. The echoes bounce out around us in such a wide pattern I can’t tell how big the room is. I would like to follow the sides, but I feel the smooth stone trail lead out away from the walls.

“Can you see anything?” I ask Tig.

“No.” He sounds irritated.

“Hear anything?”

“I can hear you asking me dumb questions.”

“I’m hoping you have something helpful to contribute—” I cut myself off in the middle of my sentence, listening hard. “Did you hear that?” I ask. We both hold our breath, listening. We haven’t been quiet. Our breathing has been loud, and even our whispered voices are noisy in the quiet of the mountain. I’m sure if there is anything in here it has heard us coming. I hear Tig take in a breath to hiss something back at me, but then he hears it, too. A scrabbling in the dark.

An animalistic and guttural voice calls to us from a distance away. “Wait! Theofthat good stop!” More scrambling.

I reach out for Tig, and he crawls up my shoulders. “You’re shaking,” he whispers.

“Shut up!” I hiss. “It’ll find us! What do we do?”

Tig takes charge of the situation. “Stand still. This is your domain. You’re the hunter here.” Stalking, I drop to a crouch. Hands out on the ground, one knee down, five points of contact. I am stable. I slow my breathing. My hands feel tremors and help my ears. I listen to the darkness. The scrambling stops, too. It is on four feet. I feel Tig shift off my shoulders, crouching, ready to pounce.

“Hello? Take with. I been thefor long,” comes the voice again. This time the guttural accent has a pleading edge to it. “I forgotten name,” the voice pauses, “butam good and mean no,” another pause, “is good hear voice a person,” it continues a second later.

I knit my eyebrows. Another talking creature? Is this how King Mactogonii marks his trail? By giving every animal he bumps up against the ability to speak Lingua Comma?

“Please,” the voice whines. I hear gravel shift and then comes a loud thump. I feel the thump. It’s big. It sounds like it just sat down.

“I you still,” it says a little uncertainly. “You imagine horrors thewhenis one toto.” I pin its location. It is twenty paces to our right and about four paces forward. “You a light?” It asks in the same deep, guttural voice, almost at a shout. “I wish see light!” it yells, and I feel myself jump. Tig gives me a soft hiss. “Anything see loved of sun!” It starts a sniffling sob followed by what sounds like rocking back and forth in the gravel.

The hair on the back of my neck is standing on end. The more this thing speaks the less human it sounds. The pauses are all wrong and the subtle inflections that are used in language are gone. Instead it puts emphasis on all the wrong syllables and words like it somehow knows some of the words of Lingua Comma but has no idea how to use them properly.

“Down the path,” Tig whispers in my ear. I stand and move down the path on the balls of my feet, Tig following behind on his string. My boots give me away. I don’t ever try to stalk in boots. I go barefoot. But I can’t take them off now.

“Do go!” it cries. We freeze. “We it sun! That what light!” Tig taps my leg. I stoop and let him back on my shoulders.

“This thing is weird,” I whisper.

“It defines weird. I don’t like its cave, either,” replies Tig.

“Take with! I go you!” it shouts, and I hear it jump up and shamble toward the trail, but ahead of where we are standing. It moves with a heavy back tread and a lighter front. It sounds like it has big hind feet and uses its hands as extra points of contact for greater speed and agility. A traveling musician in Nob once had a monkey that moved that way. A shower of gravel is followed by a significant smack as the thing apparently trips over something. This more than anything confirms to me that it can’t see in the dark.

“Ooofff!” I hear it spit and slap at itself. “Wherever go will serve as I.” Another long pause ensues. “Please?” comes the voice again. “I see darkness.” I suck in a breath. It is terrible to be unable to see in a place like this. I can sympathize. Yet here in this cavern I can see better than it can. The world of darkness is my world. I decide.

“How can we trust you?” I say into the echoing black cave. Tig hisses and swipes my ear.

“Swear,” it says.

“By what?” I call.

It pauses a moment, thinking. “I by brightness theand by Kingdom Mar.”

“You mean Kingdom of Mar? Do you know King Mactogonii?” I ask.

“Yes do. No not. I not,” it whimpers. “Hard, hard dark.”

I’m silent. I’m willing to bet it is something that met King Mactogonii. “Tig?” I whisper.

“It’s your problem now,” says Tig, uncharacteristically leaving me the reins. But I hear the answer in his voice, and he isn’t saying we should all group hug. I want to walk away and never have to deal with this thing again. I don’t know what it is or if I can trust it, but I can’t stand the thought of something trapped in darkness. Not if I can help make a difference. The thing sounds pitiful. I know Tig has excellent instincts; we both read people and situations well. He is, after all, a cat. But I am a girl, and I have pretty good instincts, too.

“Let’s go then,” I say. “Come with us, whatever you are, and maybe you can help us find our way out of here.” The scrambling gait gets within about four feet.

“That’s close enough, thing!” I command. It stops.

“What are you?” I ask.

“Forgotten,” it says. “Forgot.”

“No, I mean, what kind of creature are you?” I ask again.

“I not anymore. Knew one!” it says in a confused rush.

“You don’t know?”

“Not even.”

I dig through my pack and pull out a small pile of berries and leave them on the ground, backing up several steps. “I’ve put down some berries.” I’m still nervous, and I’m not pleased that it shows in my voice. The shuffling creature advances, and I hear it brush the ground with its feet until it finds the berries, followed by munching. It sounds like it uses its feet to pick up the berries, again confirming that it must walk like the monkey I was thinking of.

“Is delicious,” it says, smacking its lips. “Am humble.”

I stifle a laugh. “Then follow behind, at about ten steps,” I say. “And let’s go find the Kingdom Above the Sun.”

T
en steps is enough for me to hear it try to leap forward. I have already decided on my action. As weird as the echoes are, I can tell that my left is on the same level with the trail for quite a distance. I’ll duck to the left off the trail and crouch. If needed, Tig can attack, and I will slip off far enough so we can lose this thing.

“Since you don’t have a name,” I say over my shoulder, “I’m going to call you Shuffles.”

“I have name, simply remember I called,” says the thing in a deep gargle.

“Right, you forgot your name,” I say.

“Can’t tell you how many times I’ve done the same thing,” Tig says in a sympathetic voice. “I’d forget my own tail if it wasn’t attached.”

“Okay, Tig,” I mutter. “You’re laying it on a bit thick.” He just gives me a dark chuckle.

“I’ll just call you Shuffles until you remember it, okay?” I call back again.

“Course. May me atat can out darkness.”

“Oh, we can call it ‘atat’ now,” says Tig. “Whatever an ‘atat’ is.”

“I’ve been listening to the way it moves, how it carries itself, whether or not it has fur,” I whisper to Tig. “It has a lot of hair, but its hind and front feet are bare. It might be a ground ape,” I say, a little worried.

“It doesn’t move very well for a ground ape,” says Tig. “And ground apes are usually hairless, remember?” I’m not completely convinced and the thought that we might be followed by a ground ape—the fanged, white, hairless, creatures the Urodela called “grundlers”—is not comforting. I have second and third thoughts about having invited it along.

For a little while Shuffles keeps up a constant stream of conversation, but most of it is unintelligible and nerve-wracking. Its pitches and syllables struggle out of its mouth in bizarre ways, making much of the speech sound like a foreign language. We have been walking through this darkness for several more hours, and I’m sure evening has come and gone. I want to rest, but I feel so uncomfortable with this thing behind us that I keep pushing ahead.

“So exactly you going?” it asks.

“We’re trying to find a way out of this black hole of a mountain,” whispers Tig in my ear. “Have any helpful hints? Oh, wait, you can’t even remember your name,” he mutters.

“Tig, play nice,” I warn.

“We’re trying to find the Kingdom Above the Sun. I wouldn’t have even believed it was real, but here we are in the mountain. Someone told me that we could find help there.” Poor Chatter. I hope she’s okay.

“Help what I?”

I shake my head in the darkness. “No, I don’t think you can help. We need someone to stop a daemon. He’s building an army that’s marching toward our Kingdom of Mar.” For a second the only sounds are the shuffling of feet through the darkness. “Built an army,” I correct myself.

“That nice,” it says in a high- and then low-pitched grunt. I shrug in the darkness. Must be nice to have no idea what you’re talking about.

“Burning Cauldron,” it says. I stop, and it comes a few steps too close before I yell at it.

“Stand back! What did you say?”

“Sorry lady, did toon toes! Please send back darkness,” it wails.

“I’m not sending you away. What did you say about the Burning Cauldron?”

“The Cauldron?”

“Yes, that.” My breathing comes a little quicker. Now I’m sure King Mactogonii ran into this creature.

“I know. What them. Army mean. Burning. Stop and stop army. Ha say! Do know?” It giggles. Not a pleasant sound. “Being you helping my. Beto own cup soup.”

Tig puffed up when it got too near, and now I feel him relaxing again. “We don’t have any soup,” Tig says, loud enough for it to hear. “But if we find some you’ll be the first to know.”

The trail through the cavern we are in winds and even doubles back at times, but always at the same upward slope.
How big is this peak?
I wonder silently. The worn and smooth path is easy to follow. I might have passed a trail branching off from this one, but I don’t think so. I have been watching, gently tapping or dragging my stick on the edge of the path. Almost as suddenly as we found the cavern, we find another arch and face another long set of stairs. I pause in front of the new tunnel. When the thing behind us called out from the darkness, I understood that it wanted to be rescued.

A long time ago I, too, had lost my way in the darkness. I can feel Tig’s resentment that I have invited this thing along. It could still be dangerous. It hasn’t been able to help us at all. In fact it makes much more noise than we do, possibly alerting other creatures in the dark. Yet Tig hasn’t tried to take charge. In here, I lead. But as soon as we pass into the stairway any escape from the thing would be impossible. There is no ducking off the trail here. And so I must make another decision.

“It’s just . . . we didn’t have much hope left before you came.”
Cheeps’ whistling voice echoes in my head. It almost makes me smile. A blind girl brings hope.

“How’re you doing, Shuffles?” I ask.

“Well, you asking,” it replies.

“That’s good, because we’re about to climb some stairs.” The stairs are similar to what we came up hours ago, but this time there are more splits. A two-way choice, a three-way, or even circular landings with one set of stairs leading down and four more leading up in several directions. At these intervals I wait for the right door. Usually I know within a few seconds. A breath of air, a hint of music, the floor just a bit smoother—always some clue pulls me forward.

After we have been climbing for what seems a long time I stop and lean against the wall, panting. Tig, just behind me, apparently lost in his thoughts, jumps a step and bumps into the back of my legs.

“Stop!” I command. I hear Shuffles stop and sit down several steps below us.

“Yes, your majesty,” says Tig. I’ll bet he even did a bow.

“I’m sorry, Tig,” I gasp. “I have to rest.” I sit down on the next step and slump against the wall. Tig taps my knee with his paw, then, rather clumsier than usual, hops up on my lap.

“I do like it when you say ‘your majesty,’ though,” I say, “And yes, you may sit on my lap.” He turns around and sticks his tail in my face.

I massage the back of Tig’s ears and scratch down his spine. That will just about make him purr even if he doesn’t want to. Sure enough he starts rumbling. The thing down below us starts humming to itself with a deep, mournful tone that is so soothing it takes me by surprise.

I let Tig’s rumble and the sorrowful humming from below wash over me. The magnitude of what needs to be done grows and crashes around me like the wind at the bottom of the Red Giants. Up to this point the full plight of the Kingdoms of Crypta and Mar haven’t been real, because they haven’t been my problem.

I feel things are different now. I have accepted some level of responsibility. Not in a sweeping gesture with fanfare and trumpets. I’ve taken it up by degrees and through slow, hesitant, sometimes faltering steps, hundreds of them.

I whisper to Tig. “I just want to be at home, Tig. With things back the way they used to be. I want to hear the birds and feel the soft new grass under my feet, the way it used to grow in the old days down by the river. And hear the Mar running full. I want to hear Mom and Dad’s voices, and feel them hug me again. But right now, this is where I need to be . . .” I trail off. Tig flicks his tail and turns back around, pushing his face into my hands. My bandana is tickling the top of my nose so I rub the ticklish spot and adjust my red silk blindfold. I drag my pack around and paw through the contents.

“Wish I could see,” I mutter, looking with my fingers for the water skin under the berries, nuts, and pine needle packing.

“Well,” Tig says in a muffled voice, “you’re not missing anything right now. No one can see in here.”

I let my mouth twitch. “Thanks, Tig.” I find the water and take a deep swig. Tig licks a little, too. I think about offering some to Shuffles, but it is still humming, and I don’t want it to stop. I also don’t want it to get too close, and I rationalize that it must have been surviving in here somehow. Maybe it doesn’t need water. I pull my knees up close and hug Tig to me. I don’t mean to, but I slip into a fitful sleep. My body twitches, and I surface for a few seconds. I feel Tig sitting on my lap, his unseeing eyes continuing to scan the impenetrable darkness. He listens for the thing below, with only an occasional flick of his tail betraying he, too, isn’t carved from the inky black stone. I let myself go back to sleep, with Shuffles still humming his mournful song.

Music jerks me awake. Tig hisses and arches his back until he realizes we aren’t under attack. I heard it: the sound of hope. Not Shuffles’ mournful humming. This time I know it was real. I feel a welling up inside me that almost has me in tears. This is it after all; this is the right arch—even if it is a tiny narrow passage with an inordinate amount of stairs. The strains of music rise again and then fade, but now I am awake. So is Tig. My heart is beating fast.

“Bad dream?” asks Tig.

“We’re close, Tig.” He hasn’t said anything positive about this arch since we started. I wait for the retort.

Instead he says, “That’s good, because these stairs are getting me super muscly, which isn’t necessarily attractive in a cat.” I squeeze him gently. Not gently enough. He bites at my hand. I grin, and we scramble to our feet.

“Shuffles?” The thing is snoring gently, clicking its teeth or fangs.

It wakes with a shout. “Of topping. Evening itis. Rather wish tobe.”

I shake my head. “Come on.” Tig lets me lead again. I sense the doors that lead off to the left and right at intervals. Our stairway continues to wind around and across, still occasionally doubling back, but always up. Now I can follow the smells as well as the music. He hasn’t said anything, but I think Tig has caught it, too.

I have a hand on the wall and am climbing from one stair to the next when my foot misses a step. I tumble forward, hands outstretched to catch myself against the next steps, but instead of steps I tip headlong onto the ground. The fall isn’t bad. In fact, it’s probably the best fall I’ve had on this entire trip. I feel the ground. It is firm, but as soft as grass and has a texture like water, smooth and liquid. I recognize it immediately. The silk from Mom’s dress—the piece she gave me that is now around my eyes—cloud silk. A breeze tussles my hair.

“Tig?” I whisper.

Tig doesn’t answer. Instead the music surrounds us, beautiful, but haunting. This is the Kingdom Above the Sun. No one has to tell me. And now I have come too far, and the music is too beautiful. So for the thousandth time since I found myself running from the mercenaries at our farm, I wish I could see.

“Welcome, Essie Brightsday,” booms a voice that is ancient and huge, like a piece of the mountain speaking, but smooth like deep water.

I jump at the greeting and scramble to my feet. “What do you see?” I hiss at Tig.

“I still can’t see anything,” Tig replies. “I can’t see at all. I know we are out of the mountain. I feel the breeze on my whiskers, and I like what they’ve put on the ground.”

I feel the air around me to see if I am standing near anything. The voice speaks again with a calming effect. “What is your business in Aeola?” The question isn’t harsh or angry, but it is rich and commanding.

I draw a breath. This is it. “Sir, I can’t see—”

“None gaze on Aeola without permission,” he interrupts. The voice resonates around us after he has finished speaking.

“State your purpose, that I may best serve you,” says the voice, rippling over me.

My thoughts race. What purpose? I stammer a quick, “I d-d-don’t know. Who are you? Is this the Kingdom Above the Sun?”

“I see,” says the voice. “Yes, you have found the Kingdom Above the Sun, which is the name some of those from the land below have given Aeola. I am Kael, Keeper of the Door of the Mountain. I am death to those who enter without invitation. But today, I am your way to the queen. She will see you, despite your lack of purpose. Come, follow me.”

I gasp as loops of the same silky material wrap themselves around my wrists and neck. I scoop Tig up and onto my shoulder and then with a slight tug we are led across what feels like a very large lawn. I ask Tig automatically “What do you see—oh, right—sorry.”

It was one thing to have Tig unable to see in the mountain, but out here, in the Kingdom Above the Sun, interacting with a very big sounding Keeper of the Door of the Mountain is different. Tig is quiet and sits hunched on my shoulders, flinching. He flinches sometimes when he is mad, but this is different. I hear Shuffles’ awkward gait alongside us. I assume he has the loops around his hands and neck as well.

Kael stops us with his rich resonating voice. “Stop. We are on a platform. Sit down.”

I sit down obediently and hear Shuffles flop down next to me. “Say, quite trip? I see much a black atnot say would anything seeing tothe sun, are ofthe mountain we? But not able look and seeeeee.”

I join Shuffles’ shriek. Our platform is moving quickly upward. Tig digs his claws into my pack and yowls.

Kael laughs in a deep boom that dances in the air around us. “Easy, little ones. This is an air lift. It will take us to the queen’s courtyard.” My stomach has been left behind, somewhere far below. I hug the ground on all fours, and Tig hisses and spits for all he’s worth. We slow to a stop, and my stomach catches up to me with a lurch. I can’t speak, and for a second I panic, thinking that now I am mute as well, but then my voice catches up to me.