“I don’t believe you,” the Guardian said, but he didn’t move. “And even if that’s so, you need me for the same reason.”
“I don’t think so. I’m a bit more imaginative than your brother. The dead who exist are enough for me.” The fog coiled around itself, forming a thin smokelike column. “Not that I wouldn’t prefer to increase my subjects, and let you alone. If you’l do the same. We can come to an agreement.”
“You kil ed my brother,” the Guardian said.
“Yes. And I’l kil you, too, if I must.” The fog thinned, and suddenly Clarisse was in the center of it, dressed in a violet gown, her golden hair stil tumbling in arranged curls down her back. “It should be easier. There’s nothing immortal about you, after al . Al you have to protect you is a suit of armor.”
“And this sword,” the Guardian snarled.
Clarisse floated downward, laughing. Her feet were inches from the ground when something slashed through her from behind, and she screamed and crashed the rest of the way to the rocky floor.
The man behind her slashed the silver dagger again, this time through her back. Darri wondered wildly if she was hal ucinating.
Varis’s other hand shot out; Darri reached out and caught a second dagger by the hilt, almost before she realized that he had thrown it. She stared at it, at the undisguised gleam of silver.
“Go,” Varis snapped. “Before she recovers.”
The pit yawned behind her. Varis, of course, didn’t know how deep it was. Or that there was no way she could survive that fal .
No way anyone could survive that fal .
She glanced quickly at the Guardian, the creature who had started al this, who had dragged her sister into it.
I remain trapped in life forever, so that the spel can continue to be channeled through my mind.
Maybe there was more than one way to end the spel .
Darri didn’t hesitate. She threw herself sideways, into the Guardian, and the two of them plunged over the edge of the clif .
For a moment there was only the rush of the air, the shock of terror. The Guardian flailed, his iron arm hit ing her in the head and knocking her away, so she was fal ing alone. The wind whipped up past Darri’s ears and streamed her hair straight up above her. Her scream caught in her throat, the ground rushed up to meet her, and then two thin arms wrapped themselves around her.
Darri’s scream ripped loose just as the sickening impact of iron on rock thudded through the cavern. Her hands closed instinctively on the arms that had grabbed her, stopping her fal only yards from the ground. Her fingers closed in on themselves, nails digging into her palms, as Cal ie’s arms turned insubstantial. Darri dropped the last few yards to the ground and pitched to her hands and knees.
For a moment she couldn’t move; she couldn’t even breathe. Her whole body felt bruised, her head stil rang from its impact with iron, and the fiery pain in her arm was bone deep. Then she looked up at her sister, who was staring past Darri with her blue eyes wide.
Darri got to her feet, ignoring the stinging in the knuckles of her right hand, which was stil clenched around the dagger’s hilt. She turned to fol ow Cal ie’s gaze. The Guardian’s armor had broken when he fel ; the iron mask had come of , and rol ed into the corner. Blood seeped slowly away from the crushed white thing that had been behind the mask. Darri was glad it was too dark to see much of it.
“Are you crazy?” Cal ie gasped. She edged farther from the spel as she spoke, her jaw clenched, as if just being this close to it was hurting her. “You would have died!”
“I thought kil ing him might end the spel ,” Darri said, turning back.
“Wel ,” Cal ie said, her voice brit le, “I guess it didn’t, since I am stil here. Sorry to disappoint you.”
“Wel ,” Cal ie said, her voice brit le, “I guess it didn’t, since I am stil here. Sorry to disappoint you.”
Behind Cal ie, the streams of white rock cascaded down from the darkness, so convincingly Darri thought at first they were actual y moving; but the wal was eerily stil and silent, motion frozen in time. Darri met her sister’s eyes.
“It’s not too late,” she said. “Not now that I’m stil alive. Thank you for that.”
“Darri—” Cal ie’s throat worked. Her face twisted, and Darri couldn’t tel if what was causing her pain was the spel , or the words she was trying to say. “Darri, you can’t. The other ghosts don’t think like we do. They’re here, and they don’t want to vanish.”
“Here and unhappy.” Darri shifted her grip on the dagger’s hilt. “What was done to them was wrong. No one asked them if they wanted to be brought back like this.”
“Are you asking them if they want to be ended like this?” Cal ie shook her head. “What was done to them is already done. It was done, and they are here, and they cling to the semblance of life they have. It’s not your place to rescue them.” She took a deep, almost sobbing breath. “Or me.”
“I have to—” Darri stopped. What was the point? She couldn’t change her sister’s mind. It wouldn’t mat er, if she changed something far more fundamental.
She turned and walked up to the spel .
Up close, the spiral of rock lost its beauty and became merely grotesque. As she walked, the air around her grew thicker, and her nostrils flared at the smel of rot. She could see clearly where the strands of rock had twisted together, coiled around something. Something they were protecting. The smooth rock glowed with a faint light, casting eerie shadows around the already eerie structure.
The silver dagger was heavy in her hand. Darri swung with al her might. At the first stroke, the colored rock seemed to shudder, and a hairline crack spread along the length of a black-speckled gray coil. Behind her, Cal ie gasped.
Powerful and fragile, the Guardian had said. Like life itself.
Darri’s breath caught in her throat. She lifted the dagger to strike again, and a hand closed around her wrist and pul ed her back.
It was so unexpected that only the tightness of her grip kept the dagger from flying across the cave. Darri whirled and yanked her arm out of Cal ie’s grasp. Her sister stared up at her.
“Don’t do this,” Cal ie said.
Her face hadn’t changed: it was stil smal and round, wide blue eyes and coiled blond hair. Perhaps it was Darri who had changed, had learned to recognize what was in front of her eyes. Because for the first time, Cal ie truly looked dead.
“I’m doing it for you,” Darri said.
“Because you think I could live again.” Cal ie stepped back, let ing her hand drop. “It’s not true, Darri. The Guardian lied. I’m gone.”
“You don’t know that,” Darri said. “You’re just afraid to hope. Don’t you see, Cal ie? This could change everything, make it like it should have been. This could bring you back. You—and al of them, al the ghosts— you could live again.”
“And if we al just vanish instead? You’l be commit ing mass murder.”
“A mass murder of people already dead?”
“They exist,” Cal ie whispered. “They think and speak and feel. If you cause them to cease to exist, you’ve murdered them.”
For a moment, the only sound was the hiss of Darri’s breathing. Cal ie wasn’t breathing at al .
“You’re doing this for me,” Cal ie said. “I know you are. And I’m asking you not to. I don’t want to bear this guilt.”
“It’s not your guilt,” Darri said. “Because you can’t stop me.”
Cal ie drew in a deep, shuddering breath. This time, when Darri turned her back on her, she made no movement. Darri took a step sideways, out of Cal ie’s reach, and held the knife steady.
Her hand looked strange to her, brown and bony, inhuman. The hand that would wipe a plague of the dead of the face of this earth. It didn’t mat er if they might al stop existing because of what she did. They shouldn’t exist in the first place.
But they do.
She thought of al the ghosts in the castle above her, going through their pretenses of life: eating and drinking and dancing and talking. She thought of al of them suddenly ceasing to be, plates and goblets crashing to the floor, dancers staring at their suddenly abandoned arms, sentences cut of to never be finished.
Of the empty spaces that would stud the castle, where the ghosts used to be.
Where they never should have been.
But where they were. Right now. Until the moment she swung her dagger.
She thought of Cal ie alive beside her again. Of the two of them racing across the plains, her sister’s joyous laugh floating back on the wind.
Her hand moved back, ready to strike. It hovered there for a second, shaking. Then she stepped back and let it drop to her side.
Behind her, Cal ie drew in a deep breath. Darri took another step back. Her fingers were clenched so tightly Behind her, Cal ie drew in a deep breath. Darri took another step back. Her fingers were clenched so tightly on the dagger’s hilt that they hurt.
Everything hurt, her heart worst of al . She had just betrayed her sister for the second time. Cal ie’s existence here was a gilded cage, warped and twisted and inescapable.
But stil real.
“Darri?” Cal ie whispered.
Darri looked up, barely seeing Cal ie. Her sister, now gone forever. Her eyes swam with tears, and even as she struggled against them, she heard them drop one by one onto the dry earth. And then she heard the first of her own wrenching sobs.
It was over. Every step she had taken, from the moment in the plains when she mounted her horse and turned east, had been for this: to save Cal ie. From Ghostland, then from death itself.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered final y. She could barely get the words out.
Cal ie reached for her hand and said, her voice steady, “I’m not.”
As her sister pul ed her up past the waterfal of stone, Darri’s tears fel past her feet, down down down. If they made a sound when they hit the bot om, Darri never heard it.
Chapter Twenty-One
The packhorses were ready and waiting down in the stable-yard, but Darri sat on her bed with her saddlebag in her lap, rearranging its few contents over and over. She didn’t know why. Cal ie had vanished last night, the instant they had landed on the cavern floor to find Varis and Clarisse stil locked in bat le; and she hadn’t reappeared when Clarisse disappeared in a swirl of smoke, or on the long, silent walk back to the castle, or through the sleepless day that had fol owed. She was hardly likely to come say good-bye now, when Darri should already have been at the stableyard.
Al the same, when her door slid open, she stood up so fast her saddlebag spil ed onto the floor. But it was Kestin, dressed in a diamond-studded doublet, who stood at the entrance to her room.
“So,” he said, stepping inside and closing the door behind him. “You are returning home?”
She nodded shortly and bent to gather up her scat ered belongings. Before she had finished, Kestin was crouched beside her, helping her. She looked up, startled; and when he turned to meet her gaze, his eyes were dark and hol ow, like a skul ’s eyes in bone-white skin.
Whatever he saw in her face, it made Kestin rise and step back. Not until she had finished, and risen to her feet as wel , did he say, “I wanted to give you one more thing to take with you.”
Darri recognized the parchment as soon as he held it out. She made no move to take it. Instead she met his gaze and said, “Why?”
“For al the reasons I told you before,” Kestin said. “And because it’s not real y over. Unless we have a clear basis for al iance, your brother wil be back.”
Darri smiled tightly. “Even if you do . . . I wouldn’t trust him. Conquest is safer than al iance.”
“I have no intention of trusting him,” Kestin said. “But I’d like to trust you.”