The Hierophant (Book 1 in The Arcana Series) (25 page)

— 57 —

Kyla pushes Ishmael’s body off of me with a heave. “Ana? Ana? Are you okay?” she cries, voice high, almost a whimper.

I sit up, dazed, as my brief conversation with Nikolai fades and the just-passed-immanence of the skirmish returns. I grab onto Kyla like a lifesaver. “Oh, God, Kyla. Are
you
okay?”

“I’m fine,” she insists, pulling back to look at me. There’s some blood smeared at the corner of her mouth, and a welt of broken blood vessels along her cheekbone, but she seems otherwise fine. “What about
you
?”

I ignore Ishmael’s body and stand up, pulling Kyla with me. “It doesn’t matter. I just want to rescue Trebor and get everyone the hell out of here. Lykos?”

He shuffles forward, clearly trying not to show how distraught he was at not being able to help. “How can I be of assistance?”

“Get Kyla home.”

“What?” Kyla balks. “I’m not leaving you here—”

“What choice do you have, Ky?” I look her in the eye. “I have to go down there alone. You don’t have a chance of finding him. So rather than risk you getting hurt while I’m gone, just go home where you’re safe.
Please.
”

She takes a deep breath, shakes her head as she stares at me, but doesn’t argue.

“If what Faye said is true, then when Trebor wakes up his body won’t be able to remain in Sheol. It’ll push through the veils to the nearest tolerable world—Iritz. Our world. I think so long as I’m touching him, I’ll go with him.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know, it just seems to work that way, like how you used to be able to see Sura, kind of, when you touched me. He was able to bring me into the pocket where the Crimson Oak is just by being near me. If I touch him while he’s invisible to other people, my hand turns invisible too. Lykos? What do you think?”

Lykos nods his head. “For you and Trebor, it’ll work.”

I don’t ask him what the qualifying condition has to do with it, but I nod.

“Where should we meet you?” Kyla asks, frowning, squeezing my arm.

“I guess…wherever you come out from here…wait for us. If we’re not there in ten minutes—”

“Shut up. I’ll see you there.” She frowns harder and embraces me, holds me tight. “I hope you know why you’re doing this, A.
Don’t half-ass it
. I will never forgive you if you get stuck down there.”

“I know.”

“I love you.”

I smile, but it’s only to cover for the fact that I want to cry. “I love you too.”

Kyla pulls away, steps back, next to Lykos.

“Good luck down there,” the psychopomp says. “You know I’d get you in and out of there myself, if I could.”

“I know. Thank you, Lykos.”

He gives me a sad smile, and with a snap, they’re gone.

I swallow the lump in my throat, stare at the place Kyla and Lykos once stood, and feel terribly alone. A breeze hushes through the rocks. My heart hammers. It feels as if Sheol is holding its breath in anticipation—or preparing to pounce the moment I turn my back.

When I do turn, the Black Gash whispers before me, no current, no waves. In the quiet, I struggle to find the focus to summon the magic in my veins. I’m so weary, fatigued—from the dark magic of Sheol, or from lack of sleep and a car accident, I don’t know. I hurt all over, and my body wants nothing more than to sleep—but my heart is crying out, a one-winged moth searching for its counterpart. So I scrounge up every last ounce of strength I have and tell the magic to direct me, to show me exactly where Trebor is.

It flows together from faint veins of purple and blue, to form a bright orb over the river, about twenty feet in front of me. The orb pulsates with the rhythm of my heart—our hearts—and fades from autumn gold, to spring green, then sky blue, and back again.

Trebor
, I sigh with my heart, and walk away from the bank. When I’m about thirty feet away, I stop, turn back, and take a deep breath.

I’m coming
.

I sprint toward the Black Gash. In an instant, I’m airborne, still pedaling through the air even after I leap from the bank. I manage to get about fifteen feet out from the shore before I hit the darkwater with a
crack
and begin sinking into the cold. Out of habit, I hold my breath. I’m terrified of inhaling, because for all the lack of water it still
feels
like water against my skin, and I still feel weightless in its grasp. My hair streams out behind me, and as I propel myself downward, I must kick and stroke with my legs and arms, just like I would in a real body of water.

But I’ve got to breathe. I know I must. I just need to test it—a little breath—a small, tiny...

It hurts. It burns and stretches the fabric of my lungs, flowing down my throat like the syrupy magic in my veins. But the dense air does what it is intended to do, and it keeps me alive despite the discomfort.

I keep pushing downward, blind. I knew when I jumped in that the water was dark—pitch black, even. But now the concept is pressing on me. I feel my face for a moment to make certain my eyes are open—they are—but not being able to see my own fingers as they poke and prod my face is disturbing.

I have to stay calm. I can’t get distracted.
Down, forward, down
, kicking, throwing the darkwater behind me. It’s colder the farther down I go, just like in real water. I wonder how far down am I now? How far out?

Am I certain I’m still pointed in the right direction?

How do I even know if I’ve been moving at all?

My chest tightens. I can only make a vague guess as to which direction is up.

There’s no way I turned myself around,
I try to convince myself. I’ve been following the same trajectory the whole time.

I try to shift my focus and call on the magic to help me, to make a beacon for me to swim towards, but nothing happens. I look for the spark of magic in my veins—it’s still there, stinging twice as badly with each searing breath...but that’s all. I can feel it in my own body and blood, but there’s nothing in this river to draw from.

And then I remember what Lykos said:
I’d get you in and out of there myself, if I could
. I had just assumed there was some good reason why, maybe having to do with wavelengths, like how Irin can’t come to Sheol while they’re conscious. But now I know the truth of what he meant.

There is no magic down here.

Without magic, I’m just an average human girl, adrift in the Black Gash, blind in the darkwater, with absolutely nothing to guide me.

Despair clutches at my heart, and the darkness lurking there threatens to fill me. “No,” I whimper, and the sound is distorted and sharp, like a whisper played backwards. “
No!
” It’s a shout now, but it comes out mangled, an audiocassette tape stuck on fast-forward. I can’t let this stuff beat me. Trebor is down here somewhere, and my friends and family are up there somewhere. I can’t let any of them down. I can’t.

“Trebor!” I cry out, a muffled hiss of sound. “Trebor! I’m coming for you!”

But my body no longer wants to cooperate. The depths—fathoms?—of darkwater weigh heavily on me, pressing down hard. I’ve twisted about, I think. I don’t know. I’m terrified of moving in the wrong direction, of wasting precious time, of making a fatal mistake. But there’s no way I can be
sure
, no way I can be
certain.

So I float, drowning in my indecision. For all I know, my soul has already parted from my body.

I can’t tell if I’m awake or asleep, dead or alive.

But I still care, damn it. I care about this quest more than anything else in the world. That’s enough, right? In fairy tales, that’s always enough. But, if this were a fairy tale, there would still be the option of a happy ending.

It doesn’t matter, because caring is
not
enough. It takes much more than that.

I have more than that.

But if I admit to it, my heart might die of exposure when the time comes (because I know it will come).

And if I don’t, both of our hearts will wither and die at the bottom of this river.

I swallow and close my eyes. I think I can feel tears on my cheeks.

Yes. I know it’s true. I’ve always known, from the second he pulled me from the water and saved my life. The very first time he said my name, I knew it. The very first time I saw him, without knowing him, without even knowing his face, I knew it. I
had
been going crazy.

I had been falling in love.

Something brightens beyond my eyelids. When I open my eyes, I’m almost blinded by the brilliance of the light. Where is it coming from?

Oh. How appropriate
, I think.
Maybe this
is
a fairy tale, after all.

The light radiates from my heart, casting a wide glow that slices through the pitch like beams of concentrated moonlight. I move to bring my hand to my eyes, to rub the tears away so that I can better see through the brightness, and my hand brushes against something.

My instinct is to pull away, but as my eyes adjust, I see the blue-green shimmer of dragonfly wings below me. A hand is floating, limp and lifeless, attached to an arm, attached to a body. It’s as if it has been reaching for me this entire time.

I grasp his hand, palm fitted against palm, fingers twining hard and firm until I can’t tell his from mine. “Trebor!” I cry out, and for the first time, my voice is clear beneath the darkwater.

He doesn’t stir. Trebor’s face, pale and gaunt in the cool white light from my heart, is as still as death. But I know he’s not dead; his pulse is strong in his fingertips, and it matches my own. His shirt is torn and bloodstained, and the lines of his tattoos—his
wings
—are thinner than usual. I peer down, around, looking for a way to free him...and I gasp.

We aren’t alone.

There are others here. They’re obscured, too distant from my heart-light to make out their features, but their waif-like, wasted forms stand loosely in the riverbed around us, swaying, as if dancing to some slow, hypnotic melody. They are ghosts down here, no longer human or even Sura—only shadows, trapped in an even greater darkness, ever darkening…

My light is fading. I can waste no more time.

I draw my eyes back to Trebor and pull on his arm. The motion drags me down, to the bottom of the riverbed. He’s anchored somehow, so I wrap my arms around his chest, under his arms, and I push away from the ground with all my might, until he breaks free from the black earth beneath us, and we float upward as a single entity.

“Trebor?” I ask, looking directly at his face. I pat his cheek, shake his shoulders, try to tickle him. I even go so far as to slap him, but he doesn’t wake up.

My light dims further as a deep weariness settles over me, encroaching, like the shadows I’ve been holding at bay far longer than I thought was possible. “Trebor, please, wake up. That’s all I ask...I’ve come so far for you. Please...” My voice is muffled again.

Tears come to my eyes and float away with the darkwater, drops of saltwater that shine like silver pearls in my fading light. I apologize to Trebor for crying, though I know now that he can’t hear me, can’t feel my pain. I shake him again, crying out in desperation.

I’ve run out of ideas. I have to get us out of the Gash, if there’s even enough time to do that.

I kick as hard as my tired body allows, propelling us upward, but as my strength wanes, my light wanes twice as fast. I was exhausted and broken before I entered the darkwater, and now I am simply spent. The shadows are creeping over my heart, seeping into my veins, weighing me down. Before long, my legs are barely twitching.

We’re sinking.

I’ve come so far, fought so hard, and admitted the thing I feared to admit the most. But I’ve still failed.

I’ve failed.

Crying, I hold myself against Trebor’s limp form and feel our hearts beating in our chests, separate and the same, one more time. I press my cheek to his cheek, feel the chill of his skin, the stubble on his jaw. “I’m so sorry,” I whisper, but the words are an incomprehensible murmur.

Somehow, I find the strength to lift my head one more time, before the darkness completely overtakes me. I rest my forehead against his. Our feet hit the bottom of the riverbed; the ground gives way. But I stare into Trebor’s face in the last of the glow from my heart, even as we sink into the earth and it claims us as prisoners.

I wonder if I might be able to find him when the nightmares overtake us—if maybe, somehow, we can turn our eternal darkness into a dream after all.

“Goodbye, Trebor,” I whisper, though the words are lost to the darkwater as my light extinguishes. “I’m sorry I wasn’t as strong as you had hoped.”

My eyes close, lips brush the corner of his mouth.

There’s nothing left to lose but this.

I press my mouth against Trebor’s, a delicate pressure, a soft touch begging for the fire of a frenzy I no longer have strength for. He still smells like sunshine and pine trees, even in the darkest depths of existence, and he tastes like iced black tea and honey. My fingers run up the black lines that decorate his chest, to his neck. I trace the contours of his jaw, his face, one last time.