She could no longer feel Dageus’s hand.
She could no longer feel her own hand!
She tried to open her mouth and scream, but she had no mouth to open. The white grew ever more intense and, though there was no longer any sense of motion, she felt a nauseating vertigo. There was no sound, but the silence itself seemed to have crushing substance.
Just when she was certain she couldn’t endure it one more instant, the white was gone so abruptly that the blackness slammed into her with all the force of a Mack truck.
Then there was feeling in her body again, and she wasn’t thrilled to have it back. Her mouth was dry as a desert, her head felt swollen and oversized, and she was pretty sure she was about to throw up.
Oh, Zanders, she chided herself weakly, I think this was a little more than just another loopy turn.
Chloe stumbled and collapsed to the ice-covered ground.
“Those who do not remember the past are condemned to relive it.”
—THE PROPHETESS EIRU, sixth century B.C.E.
“Those who do not remember the past are condemned to relive it.”
—MIDHE CODEX, seventh century C.E.
“Those who do not remember the past are condemned to relive it.”
—GEORGE SANTAYANA, twentieth century C.E.
JULY 24, 1522
• 16 •
There were voices inside his head. Thirteen distinct ones: twelve men and the jewel-bright tones of a sultry-voiced woman, talking in a language he couldn’t understand.
The voices were but a susurrus, a sibilant murmuring. No more than a stiff wind rustling through oaks, yet like a wind, it blew darkly through him, stripping away his humanity like a fragile autumn leaf no longer firmly anchored to its branch. It was the wind of winter and of death and it accepted no censure and would abide no moral judgment.
There was only hunger. The hunger of thirteen souls confined for four thousand years in a place that was not a place, in a time that was not a time. Locked away for four thousand years. Locked away for one-hundred-and-forty-six million days, for three-and-a-half billion hours—and if that was not eternity, what was?
Imprisoned.
Adrift in nothing.
Alive in that heinous dark oblivion. Eternally aware. Hungry, with no mouth to feed. Lusting, with no body to ease. Itching, with no fingers to scratch.
Hating, hating, hating.
A seething mass of raw power, unsated for millennia.
And as they felt, so Dageus felt, too, lost in darkness.
The storm was nature at her height of savagery. Chloe had never seen such a squall before. Rain mixed with jagged chunks of hail pelted from the sky, bruising her, stinging her skin, even through the thickness of her jacket and sweater.
“Ow!” Chloe cried “Ow!” A large chunk of ice struck her in the temple, another in the small of her back. Cursing, she tucked into a protective ball on the hail-covered ground and wrapped her arms around her head.
The wind soared to a deafening pitch, keening and howling. She screamed into it, calling Dageus’s name, but couldn’t even hear her own voice above the din. The ground trembled and tree limbs crashed to the earth. Lightning flashed and thunder boomed. The shrieking wind whipped her hair into a sodden tangle. She hunched in a ball with no hope but to endure it and pray it didn’t get worse.
Then suddenly—as abruptly as the fierce storm had arisen—it was gone.
Simply gone. The hail stopped. The deluge ceased. The wind died. The night fell still and silent but for a soft hissing sound.
For a few moments Chloe mentally tallied her bruises, refusing to move. Moving would mean acknowledging she was alive. Acknowledging she was alive would mean she’d have to look around. And frankly, she wasn’t sure she wanted to.
Ever. Thoughts were colliding in her head, all of them impossible.
Come on, Zanders, get a grip, the voice of reason endeavored valiantly to assert itself. You’re going to feel downright silly when you look up and see Gwen and Drustan standing there. When they say “Gee, don’t you hate it when a storm comes up so fast? But that’s how they are in the Highlands.”
She wasn’t buying it. She wasn’t certain of much at the moment, but she was pretty darned certain storms like that didn’t happen, in the Highlands or anywhere else, and furthermore, she didn’t hold out much hope that Gwen and Drustan were anywhere nearby. Something had happened in those stones. Just what, she couldn’t say, but something … epic. Something that reeked of a kernel of truth secreted in ancient myths.
After a few more moments, she drew her arms back and peeped cautiously out. Rain poured from her hair, dripping down her face. She braced her palms on the ground and suddenly understood what the hissing noise was.