Chapter 35

CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

MAEVYTH

S tars twinkled, as I lay curled on my side, staring through the barred window. In the muck of memories I wanted to forget from home, the ones I most loved were of the nights I would sing to Aleysia while staring out at the stars. Tears formed in my eyes, and closing my lids over them, I hummed her favorite song, fighting to hold back the trapped tears as my voice hardly carried over Dolion’s snores in the next cell. Covering my ears to drown the noise, I raised the pitch, and for the briefest moment, I was back in my own bed, with my sister lying beside me.

When the song ended, I opened my eyes, and caught a flicker of movement from the shadows, only noticeable beneath the sconces burning outside my cell. Frowning, I sat up, trying to discern what it was I’d seen.

Quietly, I waited.

Was it a mouse? A mouse I could’ve dealt with. Even a rat, as awful as the thought might’ve been.

Not daring to step off the bed, I watched that corner of the cell for what seemed like minutes. Still, nothing appeared.

I exhaled a sigh and fell back against the pillow.

Perhaps I’d imagined it.

I went back to humming the song, and as I prepared to close my eyes, something shifted in my periphery again. My first thought was of the Deimosi that Zevander had told me about, and I hesitated to look for a moment. Then I turned my head, and the breath deflated from my lungs. A black spider, perhaps the size of a cob loaf, stared at me from the other side of the bars, the sight of its long, hairy legs casting a shiver down my spine. I let out a shaky breath, my eyes scanning for something to throw at it, but all I had at my disposal was the book Dolion had given me and the firelamp on the table beside my bed.

My thoughts wound back to the cell with the guards and the bug that had multiplied into hundreds of smaller bugs, and another shiver rippled through me. In as subtle a gesture as I could muster, I reached for the book, knowing hundreds of little beady eyes were watching my every movement.

Just as I raised the book, the spider slipped back into the shadows.

“Oh, shoot!” I shifted on the bed, scrambling to the foot of it for a glimpse of where it might’ve scampered off to. When nothing moved again, I hummed again in hopes of drawing it out, assuming that had been what’d drawn it both times before.

The spider skittered to the side out of the shadows again and, unless I was imagining it, seemed to sway with my singing.

Frowning, I lifted the book as I kept on with my humming, ready to throw the damn thing if it attempted to come inside the cell.

Instead, it remained where it was, staring, seemingly lulled into a trance.

The book slipped in my hands and something sharp bit into my finger. All I imagined were spider fangs piercing my skin, and my head spiraled into a panic “Ouch! Damn it!” I dropped the book to search for the culprit, and glanced back to see the spider scampering off again.

Scrambling for the firelamp, I turned it up to full flame, but found nothing in that corner of the room. Exhaling a breath, I turned to my finger to where a tiny drop of blood slid over my skin, falling onto the cover’s maze. The blood slipped through the maze quickly, like a bead of mercury moving of its own will, until it filled what looked like a skinny vial, no bigger than a grain of rice. A click echoed through the cell, and I flinched, my muscles still on edge as I glanced back toward where the spider had stood moments before. Thankfully, it hadn’t bothered to return.

The machinations of the book quickly became clear, as small gears wound on their own and the bird’s eye opened over a lever. I stared at it a moment, attempting to puzzle its purpose, then reached into the eye and turned the lever with a click.

The cover popped open.

Why I hesitated, I couldn’t say, but after a moment, I flipped the cover open to an elaborately illustrated image of people and bird-like creatures and dragons that spanned across two pages. One so rich with detail, my eyes could scarcely focus. At the center of the image stood an impressive castle with stone walls and creeping vines. Silver, embossed markings beside it appeared illegible, but when I ran my finger over them, they shifted on the page.

My breath hitched with a gasp, and I snapped my hand back, watching the word fade to its original form. Hesitating, I touched it again, and the markings shifted to the word a second time, in a stretch of letters I understood. Corvus Keep . A breath of a laughter escaped me as I tried it two more times, marveling at mystical movement on the page.

I studied the illustrations of the people in the image, who wore thick furs, their hair pulled back in tight braids. Painted over their eyes was a shadowy depiction of a black bird. A raven. Each carried a crude weapon that looked like a handheld scythe, while some wore quivers strapped to their backs.

More markings lined the bottom of the image, and I ran my finger over them, somehow changing their shape with the contact, just like the first.

The ashes of our dead protect us in battle, the goddess, in death.

Tracking to the right showed a woman with long, black hair, surrounded by a white mist and black birds flying around her. I thumbed the strange symbols beside her, revealing the word Morsana .

“Morsana,” I whispered, noting the striking silver of her eyes that seized my attention.

Above her flew bird-like dragons, colossal-sized beasts that made the humans look small by comparison. Some flew in the sky, breathing a silvery flame as they circled overhead, while others attacked armored figures, whose severed heads and limbs lay scattered about in pools of red. Each creature carried a silver marking, like the one I’d seen on Raivox—a crescent moon.

The same mark that marred my eye.

I dragged a finger over the peculiar symbols beside the creatures, like the ones before, which reminded me of etched runes.

Corvugon appeared.

“Corvugon.” Fascinated, I caressed my fingertip over the bird, and it flapped its wings.

Another gasp locked my lungs, and I stared as the bird sprang to life on the page, attacking an armored man with its beak and horns that sliced through the metal with ease. A strange, moving picture that animated the attack, as if I were standing there in the thick of it.

I touched the lower part of the image, and one of the warriors with the raven makeup lurched into motion, running toward an armored figure who sat perched on a horse. The armored figure raised his hand, and the warrior shot backward to his original position as if by some invisible force.

How? How was this possible? Pictures didn’t move that way; they captured a single moment in time.

A tingling sensation prickled my fingertips, and with both hands, I smoothed them over the image, and the entire scene came to life, as if I were watching it firsthand. A battle.

The cluster of markings to the right flickered to words I understood.

The men with yellow hair and steel weapons came upon us in the night. They sought the vein. But we did not relent. For this land is ours. By the strength of Morsana, we defend it.

I watched in horror, as the raven people fought with lesser weapons and were slaughtered by the armored men. A violet glow drew my eyes to a crevice that ran along the castle, and when I glided my finger over it, a white-hot sting pricked my fingertips.

“Ouch!” I drew back my hand, frowning.

Within the dark and scorching chasm, black fire flickered and moved, and a figure rose up, as if some being had been swallowed by the flame. Had become part of it. It lashed out at the armored men and turned them to ash. Careful not to touch the flame, I slipped my thumb across the symbols beside it, and Deimos appeared.

Something about the name sent a shiver down my spine. I studied the figure in the flame a moment longer, and for reasons I couldn’t explain, my heart clenched.

Feathered dragons in the sky battled with golden scaled beasts that breathed fire, but they were no match for the raptors who flew right through those flames. The two beasts clashed, claws tearing flesh. The silvery flames of the black dragon birds sent the golden dragon riders plunging toward the ground in a fiery ball of death.

All at once, everything stilled, and the image flickered. In the next breath, all the figures returned to their original positions, like when I first opened the book.

Yet, the questions lingered in my head. Who were the armored men? What had happened to the raven warriors? Had they survived? What was trapped inside that black flame?

And how in god’s eyes had the image come to life that way?

Again, I stared at my fingertips where a tingle still hummed beneath my skin.

I turned the page to a new puzzle–a raised wooden circle with symbols etched both within and outside of its edges. Other strange symbols adorned the edge in deep, black carvings, the arrangement of it reminding me of a multi-faceted clock. I ran my fingers over the symbols, thinking they might change, as the other markings had, but they remained. And for the life of me, I could not begin to imagine what they meant individually.

Eyes burning, I sighed and double blinked to stave off the exhaustion tugging at my eyelids. I needed sleep. I’d have to save the next puzzle for the morrow.

As I closed the cover of the book, the wooden circle slid down into a depression, flattening itself so the cover would close again. A genius design. Something one might find marveled by scholars at a university, and it left me wondering how Dolion had acquired such a thing.

Before lying back on the pillow, I glanced over to where I’d last seen the spider and performed a quick visual sweep of my room. While I may not have minded the presence of mice, spiders, on the other hand, terrified me.

When I finally lay back on the pillow, I forced my mind to think of something else. Something that would chase away the image of that spider sinking its fangs into my flesh.

The first and only thought I could summon was Zevander.