Nightspell (26 page)

fil ed with light; he saw Clarisse standing in the center of a cavern fil ed with broken rock, one of which had

fal en point first through her. It was stil standing upright, quivering in the center of her translucent body.

Clouds of dust rose around her legs, and her eyes were alight with exhilaration.

Varis kept his gaze on her, not bothering to struggle or try to look behind him. His only move was to grab

the neck of his tunic to keep it from digging into his throat. The scent of decay seeped through the air around

him, like clammy fog against his skin.

“This is your of ering?” The voice was low and gravely, nothing like the unearthly rumble he had faced

down with the Guardian. “Your reason for triggering the spel ’s defense?”

Clarisse lifted her eyebrows. “Would you have preferred his sister? I think it’s safe to say he’s the more

dangerous of the two.”

“He’s not the one speaking to the Guardian,” the Defender snapped.

Clarisse smoothed down her flawless hair. “He figured out the truth about the spel , and that the Guardian

brought him here to break it. I had no choice.”

Varis let go of his tunic and lifted both his arms above his head. The silk neck dug into his jugular; he jerked

his head back before he could choke and snapped his shoulder blades together. He dropped right out of the

tunic, rol ed as he hit the ground, and came up with his back against the jagged wal .

The Defender looked like a man, as Clarisse had predicted he would. She had also said he looked like a

dif erent man every time she saw him. Tonight, apparently, he was a thin, dark-skinned man with a face that

was al smooth lines and angles. The man didn’t turn to look at Varis; he merely let the tunic drop disdainful y

to the ground.

“Are you more comfortable now?” Clarisse asked Varis.

“Yes,” Varis said, taking a deep breath. “Actual y, I am.”

“Wel , good for you.” She looked again at the Defender, whose lips were curved upward. The expression

had the appearance of a human smile, yet there was nothing human about it.

He likes to act alive, in front of the living, Clarisse had said. He pretends it’s for their sakes, but it’s real y for his.So far, she had predicted everything correctly—except for the minor mater of the stalactite trap, which she

had neglected to mention. Varis’s heart pounded with fear and excitement both. The stone’s edges were sharp

against his bare skin.

Clarisse walked through the broken stones toward them, her hair sparkling with rock dust. Her eyes blazed

in the dusty gloom. “Do I get to kil him?”

“If you wish,” the Defender said.

“If you wish,” the Defender said.

Clarisse swung her head around to look at Varis, whose breath tangled in his throat. He truly had no idea

which one of them she was going to betray.

“If I do,” Clarisse breathed, “he’l come back.” Her eyes looked like they were on fire. “That should make for

an interesting few centuries. Do you think I can stay a step ahead of him?” She uncorked the flask, took a swig,

and lowered it; the swift, unsteady movement made the wine swirl through the glass flask, sediment whirling

up into the liquid. She grinned as she extended it to the Defender. “It’s good wine. You should reestablish trade with the Green Islands, once you’re in charge.”

Varis might have spared himself the ef ort of control ing his expression. The Defender didn’t even glance at

him. He kept his deep-set eyes on Clarisse as he accepted the flask. “I haven’t had wine for years.”

“Wel ,” Clarisse laughed again, so easily even Varis almost believed she didn’t care, “it’s not a bad vintage to

start with.”

The Defender’s smile was a tiny bit closer to human this time. He took the flask from Clarisse, tilted it back,

and drank.

The Guardian’s scream echoed through the corridors: hol ow and endless and terrible. It froze the courtiers

mil ing in the marble hal outside the throne room. It froze Cal ie, who was leaning against the wal being

ignored by the courtiers.

It didn’t even slow Darri down.

Cal ie turned her head just in time to see her sister racing down the marble corridor, the hem of her yel ow

skirt stil dark with blood, the Guardian’s scream fol owing her down the hal . The courtiers watched her go,

wide eyed. No one was sure what was happening, and no one stopped her.

Cal ie didn’t know she was going to do it until she did: reach out with one hand and grab the trailing edge

of Darri’s silk sleeve. Her sister could have easily pul ed away and kept going. Instead Darri stopped and

whirled.

“What did you do?” Cal ie demanded.

“I don’t know,” Darri said. “He didn’t start screaming until I left.”

“And what,” Cal ie said, aware of al the eyes on them, “did he do?”

“Nothing. We chat ed.” Darri, too, glanced around at the courtiers. For the first time, none of them faded,

even though many of them were dead. Taunting the foreigner, apparently, was less fun now that they had seen

what she was capable of. “Why should he do anything to me? I kil ed Cerix at his request. And this country is a

bet er place without him.” She grinned, suddenly and savagely. “This country wil be a far, far bet er place by

the time I’m done with it.”

“What are you—” Cal ie began, but then a murmur rippled through the corridor. She looked up and saw

Kestin approaching the main entrance to the throne room. The prince met Darri’s eyes, and it seemed to Cal ie

that something flashed between them. Darri’s grin widened, and Kestin gave her a smal , sharp nod.

“We should begin the coronation,” the prince said, his voice raised to reach the courtiers, his eyes stil on

Darri’s face. “There is no reason to keep the dead waiting.”

“I couldn’t agree more,” Darri said, stil with that grin.

Kestin walked into the throne room. The courtiers, after a moment of confusion, fol owed him.

Darri looked at Cal ie then, and Cal ie realized she was stil holding her sister’s sleeve. She dropped it, but

Darri stil stood there, looking at her. A slow, sick fear swirled through Cal ie as she waited to hear what Darri had to say to her.

Darri smiled at her—an open, bril iant smile. Then she strode past Cal ie and disappeared through one of

the doorways lining the corridor.

The unexpected smile stunned Cal ie. She almost turned to go after Darri, to—demand? yel ? plead? cry?

She didn’t know, so she fol owed the courtiers. She was tired of worrying about what Darri thought and what

Darri felt and what Darri was about to do.

The throne room was large, old, and imposing. Thick stone pil ars fil ed the vast space between marble

floor and arched ceiling, dwarfing the dais and the king’s golden throne. Cal ie, whose father’s proclamations

were usual y made from horseback in front of a tent, stil felt awed every time she walked in.

By tradition, the floor space was reserved for the living, while ghosts twined about the intricately carved

pil ars. Cal ie started to float a half inch of the floor, and stepped heavily down on the black and white

marble. No one else noticed, but the impulse alarmed her.

She didn’t want to feel dead. Not yet.

Kestin walked through the crowd, and the spectators tried to bow, but most of them had no room. The room

was crammed with people, living and dead. He stepped onto the marble dais, where his father was waiting,

and bowed.

There fol owed what seemed like an hour of talking. King Ais publicly imparted words of wisdom to Kestin,

then someone else spoke about Kestin’s virtues, then someone else said pompous things about Ghostland, and

final y Kestin made a dozen long-winded vows.

When he was done at last, anticipation stil ed the restless courtiers. King Ais stepped forward, lifted the

crown from his head, and held it out. Kestin bowed once, reached over, and took the crown from his father’s

hands.

hands.

Al at once the air was ful . Cal ie, along with the rest of the crowd, looked up. The dead were layered one

upon another, fil ing the space above the living, gray and translucent. Some of them appeared barely human;

Cal ie fought an urge to look away, to avert her eyes from forms too grotesque to bear. Yet she couldn’t have

said what, exactly, was wrong with them.

The cavernous room was abruptly silent. The living—and many of the recently dead—cringed away, ducking

to get that much more space between themselves and the apparitions hovering above them.

The dead did nothing. They simply were, waiting, fil ing the space al the way up to the high-arched ceiling.

They outnumbered the living, and the ghosts who stil had the form of the living, at least tenfold.

The silence was dreadful. Cal ie blurred, her body fading, proving to the dead that she was one of them. She

couldn’t stop herself.

Without sound, the ghosts al bowed their heads to Kestin, who looked at them without expression on his

ash-white face. King Ais let his hands fal helplessly to his sides, and the first dead prince of Ghostland lifted the crown and placed it on his head.

A sound like wind rushed through the throne room, though there was no wind; a vast, approving

murmuring. It was low and unearthly, and it was the only sound in the room. There was no clapping or

cheering from the living.They stood as if turned to statues, watching the dead who outnumbered them so vastly.

And just like that, the coronation was over. The crowd around Cal ie began streaming toward the door—

whether to get away from the ghosts, or to get to the food and wine stil waiting in the banquet hal , Cal ie

couldn’t tel . She only knew what she wanted: to escape from those gray forms as fast as possible. She went

solid and forced herself to move with the crowd, pushing her way between the richly dressed nobles, pausing

only when one of the dead refused to move aside and she went through him. She took a moment to swal ow

her bile, aware of the glares around her. Walking through a person was extremely rude.

She went more cautiously then, sliding gingerly between the crowd until she made it to the banquet hal .

Only then, with the edge of her panic faded, did she feel the tears at the bot oms of her eyes.

That, above her in the throne room, was her future. She was not going to grow old, was not going to

develop aches and pains and rough skin and lose her teeth and then die. Instead she was going to forget that

she was human, lit le by lit le, and become one of those things, and be one of those things forever. Because

there was an end to life, but not to death.

She had known that for a long time; but everything about tonight—the pain on her sister’s face, the shock on

her brother’s, Jano’s hissed warnings, the goblet she had left in Varis’s room—stripped away her defenses, the

four years’ layers of sophistication and confusion she had wrapped around herself. She felt the spel holding

her down, felt the anguish that had torn through her when she first realized she was dead and not gone—an

anguish not blunted or faded, but merely buried, over the past weeks.

You’l learn to pretend, Jano’s voice echoed in her ear. It’s the only way we can bear being what we are.

She would learn to pretend; it was bet er, or at least less frightening, than vanishing into the unknown. Than

being nothing. She would watch how the others did it, and be like them. Like Jano, and Clarisse . . . her throat

clenched as she remembered the expression on Varis’s face as he snatched the goblet from her hand. Varis, at

least, stil thought she was his sister, no mat er what else she was.

Which should have helped, at least a lit le bit. But al she could think was, If he can accept it, why can’t she?

She knew the answer even before her mind had formed the question. Darri couldn’t accept it because Darri

cared too much. Because it wasn’t enough, for Darri, to accept Cal ie; she had to love her. And how could

anyone love a ghost?

Al at once Cal ie knew what had been bothering her about Darri’s smile, about everything that had passed

between them in the hal . Darri had met her eyes easily, without the faintest reservation, something she hadn’t

managed to do since the night she learned Cal ie was dead. As if there was nothing disgusting about Cal ie at

al .Cal ie final y had exactly what she so desperately wanted. For Darri to look at her, even though she was

dead, the way she had when Cal ie was alive. And now that it had happened . . .

She didn’t believe it.

Not so long ago, she herself had been ful y Rael ian, had felt her skin shrink from the very sight of a ghost.

She knew there was no way Darri could look at her dead sister as if nothing was wrong. Cal ie couldn’t even

look at herself as if nothing was wrong.

Darri had just gone back to what she had thought when she first rode into Ghostland, a rider with a mission.

That what was wrong with Cal ie was something she could fix.

Cal ie swore, using a word so filthy that a passing nobleman blinked. She turned her back on him and raced

through the hal and into the throne room. If anyone had been left there, she would have gone right through

them without the slightest hesitation.

But there was no one left—not at floor level, anyhow.

Prince Kestin stood alone on the marble dais. The crown, a heavy circlet of ruby-studded gold, looked like it

belonged on his head. It was also in danger of fal ing of . Kestin’s head was tilted far back as he watched the

gray mass of translucent forms that stil fil ed the air.

The dead were in no hurry.