Nightspell (18 page)

stepped back.

Cal ie acted as if she hadn’t noticed. She took the lure from the falcon and flung it out through the cave

mouth. Deftly, she unhooded the bird and let it loose. The falcon let out a cry that sounded eerily like a human

scream and flew out into the sunlight.

“They’l come eventual y,” Cal ie said. “Varis, if no one else. We should go deeper into the cave.”

Darri glanced once at the thick darkness swal owing up the faint light, and then at the ghost who wanted to

lead her into it. “You arranged al this just to talk to me?”

“And so you could see where it happened.”

“Where it—”

Cal ie gave her a tired smile. “The lake you’re picnicking at is where I died.”

The words fel like rocks. Darri swal owed hard and said, inadequately, “I’m sorry.”

“That I’m dead?” Her sister’s voice held a chal enge.

“Yes.”

“And that I’m stil here?”

She had never lied to Cal ie. Even if this wasn’t real y Cal ie. “Yes.”

Cal ie made a sound somewhere between a laugh and a sob. “You can barely stand to look at me, can you?”

Except it was Cal ie. She sounded exactly the same. Darri thought of Kestin in the lit er, swal owing his grief,

and wil ed herself to do the same. She looked straight at her sister, consciously imitating Kestin’s forced

composure. She kept looking as the seconds stretched into a thick silence, until her skin had almost stopped

crawling.

Cal ie wrapped her arms around herself. “Thank you. But you don’t have to pretend. I know how you feel. I

was hoping you could bear it long enough to help me.”

No need to ask with what. Warmth rose in Darri’s throat. Despite everything, Cal ie stil needed her; Darri

could stil take care of her, stil save her. Even if they would never ride out of this country together the way she had planned.

The warmth turned into an ache, and she breathed around it, forcing back her sense of loss. There would be

time to mourn later, when things were simpler. She drew in the next breath, waited for the knot in her chest to

loosen, and said, “How did it happen?”

“I was at the lake.” Cal ie rubbed her forehead. “I used to go there often, just to look across the water. To

see a stretch of sky. I didn’t tel anyone; they wouldn’t have understood. I didn’t think anyone knew.”

Darri reached for her, almost involuntarily, but Cal ie stepped away. Darri drew her hand back. “What

happened?” She stopped, flushed. “I mean—”

“I know what you mean. I don’t remember. One second I was standing there, and the next thing I knew I

was floating above the lake’s surface.” Cal ie hesitated. “I . . . I don’t want to remember that. It was several

nights after my death, and it was dark; I wondered why so much time had passed, but not why I was floating.

That part felt normal. I dove into the water, and it didn’t feel cold to me. I had no trouble breathing. Because I wasn’t breathing at al . Then—” Her voice wavered, and Darri’s heart cracked. “Then I saw my body.”

“Cal ie—”

“Don’t,” Cal ie said.

Darri turned away, so Cal ie wouldn’t see her face. Shadows shifted on the rocky ground as an outside breeze

ruf led the bushes, but the breath of air didn’t reach inside the cave.

When Darri spoke, she was surprised at how even her voice was. “Someone must have hit you on the head

from behind and then thrown you into the water. Who was it?” She said it a second before realizing it was a

stupid question. If Cal ie knew who had kil ed her, she wouldn’t stil be here.

Cal ie drew in a breath. When she let it out, it sounded like a sob. “It must have been one of the living,

because it was daylight. But I don’t know who. I don’t even know if they intended for me to rise afterward.

Many people didn’t think a foreigner could come back as a ghost.” She hesitated, then said in a flat voice, “I

hoped they were right. That if I died, I would stay dead.”

Darri faced her sister. Cal ie’s round face was very stil , her eyes large and dark in the dimness. She looked

so alive. “Who would have wanted to kil you?”

“I don’t know, but I don’t think it was because of anything I did.” Cal ie lifted her chin. “I think it was

because of whatever Father’s planning. The reason you’re here.”

“I don’t know what Father is planning,” Darri said. “But I’m here for you.”

“It’s too late,” Cal ie whispered. “I’m sorry, Darri.”

“It’s too late,” Cal ie whispered. “I’m sorry, Darri.”

Darri dragged her feet forward, pushed her hand through the stil air, and closed her fingers around her

sister’s hand. Cal ie made a tiny jerking motion, but didn’t pul away. She looked down at their linked hands,

so that al Darri could see was the top of her head, the unruly frizz of her blond hair.

“It’s not your fault,” Darri said fiercely. “And it’s not too late. I can stil save you from this.”

Cal ie lifted her face, blue eyes wet. So ghosts can cry, Darri thought, and al at once it was impossible not to think about what she was holding. Her sister’s dead hand.

She pul ed away; she couldn’t help it. Cal ie’s lips parted, but before she could speak, they were interrupted.

A loud rushing sound fil ed the cavern, as if an invisible waterfal was crashing down around them. At the

same time, cascades of white misty forms shot down from the stalactites on the cave’s ceiling, fal ing in endless gentle sprays.

Ghosts, landing al around them.

For an awful moment, Darri thought her sister had led her into a trap. Cal ie’s form shimmered like the lake

surface, her face as white as the gleam of sunlight on water. The ghosts swooped around them, but—to Darri’s

intense relief—came nowhere near them. One and al , they landed behind the larger stalagmites, or in the

shadows cast by the irregular rock formations. When the air was clear again, the cavern looked as it had before.

Darri stared at her sister. Cal ie, who had gone solid again, looked nearly as spooked as Darri did.

Of course, she also looked as alive as Darri did. Everywhere in this country, appearances deceived. The

cavern was silent as a grave, but Darri’s skin crawled at the thought of al those dead eyes upon them. Her

fingers itched for her silver dagger, but she thought of how her father’s honor guard preceded him everywhere,

and then stood like statues awaiting his arrival. These ghosts, invisible and silent, were preparing the way for

someone else. She forced herself to stand stil .

Clarisse slid down the longest stalactite and flew through the air in a graceful arc, landing lightly at the far

end of the cave. She moved toward them in a smooth, seamless motion that made Darri think of waves of grass

rippling in the wind. The edges of her body were blurred and slightly whitish, and her hair floated behind her

in a streaming cloud of gold, even though there wasn’t a breath of wind in the cold damp air.

“What are you doing here?” Clarisse demanded, and there was something too smooth about her voice as

wel . “This is our place. You don’t belong.”

In the shadows of the cavern, things stirred and mut ered in what sounded like agreement.

Darri’s hands shook. She was seeing the dead for real now, stripped of the guises and pretenses they put on

for the living. Clarisse, despite her familiar face and form, looked less human than when she had been

at acking Jano with fangs and claws. And the murmuring al around them sounded more like howling wind

than like human voices.

I knew, Darri thought helplessly. I knew they were worse than they appeared.

“We were not aware of that,” Cal ie said, and Darri looked at her sister with a sensation like glass breaking.

Was Cal ie, too, worse than she appeared? She looked the same, smal and brave despite the ridiculous clothes

and bright makeup. Even the expression on her face, fear trying to hide behind defiance, was familiar.

“Yet here you are,” Clarisse said. “I’m afraid we can’t al ow it.”

The murmur swel ed in hideous anticipation. Clarisse smiled, and Darri got the impression that her teeth

were filed into points. When she looked closely, they weren’t, but she stepped back al the same.

“What makes this place yours?” she asked, needing to say something chal enging.

Clarisse’s eyes fixed on her. “That’s a stupid question, Princess. Our bodies are buried beneath the earth;

beneath the earth is where we belong. Here we can be truly dead, can discover the powers our minds possess

when they have no bodies to concern themselves with. Even the Ghostland living are not ready to discover

what we can do. The older dead al come here eventual y, to stand guard.” Her lips snapped shut, but words

kept coming through. “And now you are here. Alive. Foreign. We do not permit it . . . unless you’ve come to

join us?”

The nonexistent wind ricocheted among the rocks, harsh and eager. Darri couldn’t speak. She could barely

breathe.

Cal ie snorted. “Not that this isn’t very spooky, but if you’re al that powerful, how is it you don’t know that

I’ve already joined you?”

The murmuring stopped as if cut of by a knife. Clarisse jerked her head to stare at Darri’s sister.

“How?” she demanded.

“Drowned,” Cal ie said.

The two ghosts faced each other for a long, silent moment. Darri was uncomfortably aware of just how silent

it was. She knew they were surrounded; she had seen the shadows, heard the whispers. But now she could not

hear a single breath except her own.

“Wel , then,” Clarisse said. Her voice was suddenly brisk, and the fuzzy edges of her body sharpened back

into clearly defined lines. Her hair fel heavily against her shoulders. “This is more complicated than I thought.”

“So it appears,” Cal ie said.

Clarisse smiled at her, baring straight-edged teeth. “Wel beyond me.”

“We can simplify it,” Cal ie said.

“By walking away? No, I don’t think so. He already knows you’re here. He’l decide what to do with you.”

“He?”

“He?”

But Clarisse had already turned and swept into the darkness at the back of the cavern. The air behind her

shimmered vaguely, and a faint unreal sound, like the shadows of sighs, fol owed her into the blackness. Darri

turned to the cave entrance and found it blocked by a wal of bones, skeletons crushed together into an

impassable barrier, their empty-eyed skul s leering at her.

Cal ie looked at Darri and rol ed her eyes. Feeling vaguely comforted by that, and also knowing that she had

no choice, Darri stooped and pul ed the disguised silver dagger out of her boot. It was a comfortable weight in

her hand as she fol owed her sister and Clarisse over the slick, dimly lit stone and into the pitch-black

passageway beyond it.

Varis found Darri’s falcon in front of a cluster of bushes, happily ripping apart the corpse of a field mouse. A

quick examination told him the falcon hadn’t kil ed the mouse by itself, and from there it was fairly easy to

find the entrance to the caves.

Varis let his own falcon go with faint regret, the motion making his injured shoulder clench. That was two

birds sacrificed to whatever crazy ruse Darri had dreamed up this time. No mat er how many years they spent

in captivity, falcons were never real y tamed. They would go wild in the blink of an eye, as easily and

completely as if they had never sat on a man’s arm or had their food given to them in cut-up pieces. Neither of

these birds was ever coming back.

He hobbled his horse next to Darri’s and wrenched the torch from the saddle pommel before pushing his

way through the bushes. Once his eyes adjusted to the dimness, it took him only a few seconds to make out the

faint trail of footprints on the rock floor. He fol owed them to where the cave bent into darkness. Faint

glit ering specks were scat ered on the damp rock, barely discernible even when he lit the torch, but good

enough. He smiled grimly.

The smile flat ened into a hard line as he fol owed the trail deeper into the dank darkness of stone and

earth. Where in this unnatural place was Darri going?

Chapter Thirteen

The farther they walked into the labyrinthine passageways, the more Darri felt the dead gather around her,

fil ing the air with sibilant whispers that seemed imagined rather than heard. Her skin crawled, but she kept

walking.

It was the hardest thing she had ever done. The death around her was thick enough to choke on; so clearly

inhuman, so clearly wrong. Hundreds of human spirits, trapped forever beneath the earth, misshapen and

confused by their unnatural confinement. She kept glancing sideways at Cal ie, who complicated what should

have been clear. Her younger sister seemed no dif erent. But Cal ie was a part of something twisted and evil,

no mat er how badly Darri wanted to forget that.

Invisible fingers stroked against her skin, worming around her ankles and neck. Darri bit back a scream,

knowing it was probably only her imagination—which wasn’t helped by the way Clarisse insisted on floating

several feet above the ground, body glowing with a faint white light. Darri tried to tel herself it looked sil y, but it was hard to find anything amusing. Final y her unease got the bet er of her.

“Not to interfere with the mood you’re trying to create,” she snapped, “but could you just walk?”

Clarisse looked over her shoulder, hair floating about her face. “Why? Do you find this frightening?”

Darri chose not to answer.

“It’s an easier way to travel,” Clarisse said, “for those who are no longer made of earth.”

“Is that what they’re cal ing it these days?” Cal ie said.