Chapter 4 – The Ungulion

 

Mom came in with a glass of ice water and hovered by my bed as if she would stay. Damian gave her a rather pointed glance, and to my surprise she withdrew with an understanding nod. For some reason I felt strangely glad that Damian was staying with me. It just seemed safer with him there. He sat at the foot of my bed, leaning back against the wall, silent. I watched him over the rim of the glass as I sipped the water, letting it trickle down my parched throat. He wanted to say something, I could tell. I wanted to say something too, but couldn’t. I dropped my gaze to the faded hues of my handmade quilt.

Finally I asked, “What happened to me?”

“I don’t know. Mr. Dansy got there before I did. He said he thought you might have passed out.”

“Did he say, was there anyone else around?”

He frowned. “Not that he mentioned. Why?”

“I thought someone… Never mind.”

I held the cup to my lips to avoid speaking. Damian sighed and turned away.

“Where did you get that picture?”

I glanced at the wall where he was pointing. A watercolor had been taped up, a badly drawn image of what looked like a golden man or maybe a strange-looking angel surrounded by stars. It had never been there before, but somehow its appearance didn’t startle me.

“I made it,” I said. “I don’t remember when.”

“Looks like it was recently,” he said, nodding at the desk.

My paints lay open on a stack of papers, next to a cup of brown water with a brush stuck in it wrong-way down. I wondered why Damian had to be so observant.

“Last night.”

“Interesting picture for someone to make in their sleep. I can’t imagine you woke up to do it. You’re a better artist than that.”

“No. I don’t even remember making it.” I pressed the heels of my hands against my eyes. “I said something to you, earlier. I can’t remember what.”

“I don’t either, if that’s what you’re wondering. Lots of he’s and them’s and me’s in there, you know?”

“I need to know. I can’t remember! It had just come back to me, and now I forgot again.”

“Don’t worry about it. It was the heat, that’s all.”

I dragged my hand from my forehead and slammed it on the bed. “No! Damian! I told you, I have to know. But it’s like something wants me to forget.”

“Mer, this is totally not like you. You’ve been awfully close lately. Why won’t you just talk to me?”

I turned over on my side and drew my knees up, burying my face in the sheet. I can’t…

Damian sighed and pushed himself off the bed. “Was that all you needed?”

I don’t want to be alone…

I nodded into my pillow.

“Well, whatever it was, I’m sure you’ll remember if it’s that important. You know what they say – don’t chase it. It’ll come to you.”

I shuddered.

Damian left me, and I closed my eyes. Time wavered. And the strangest feeling crept over me, as if I were somewhere else, but at the same time not…

Darkness first. After a moment I distinguished a camp, flickering torches. Then the memories came rushing back, and I sobbed with terror or relief or sadness – or all three. Yatol and another guard stood in front of the tent that had been mine. The guard seemed terrified, shifting his weight, eyes darting back and forth. Yatol, jaw set, eyes like steel. Then suddenly a low sound wreathed through the night, long and terrible. I covered my ears and bowed my head, but still I saw them. The men in the camp scattered, vanishing so quickly that I couldn’t see where they had gone. The guard fled too. Only Yatol stayed, rooted outside my tent, braced for battle. Something in his hand flashed in the firelight, a small curved knife. That was it. That was the only weapon he had.

“Yatol!” I screamed, but my voice was lost before it left my lips. In my mind I cried, “Yatol, go! I’m not there! Go!”

The shadows loomed over the camp. Yatol lifted his arms and cried something into the night. Blinding light fractured the shadows, then nothing.

I sat up, shaking and sweating and gasping for breath, my hands locked onto the blanket with whitened fingers. I steadied myself, caught my breath and tried to focus. Couldn’t. And before I could stop myself, I slipped unnoticed out of the house and headed for Mr. Dansy’s shop. Again.

He stood behind the counter, motionless, watching the door like he was expecting me. As I ran up to him, I barely swept a glance over the store to make sure no one else was there.

“What happened to him?” I cried. “They were attacked!”

“So, you’ve chosen.”

His words brought me up short.

“I couldn’t stop them,” he whispered. “They forced on through at the last moment. Too many…” His eyes widened, and he stared off into the distance, muttering to himself, “He had to get her away. Couldn’t wait. Too dangerous. It was right.”

“But what happened to him?” I closed my eyes, realization sinking in. “He sent me back, didn’t he? I thought I came back because I was griping, but he sent me away.”

Mr. Dansy turned away. “You should go, before they come looking for you.”

“No.” I backed away from the counter. “They won’t be coming back. They’re waiting for me.”

“Merelin…”

“Don’t worry,” I said thinly. “I want to go back.”

I want to go back. I left the shop fighting the strange dizziness, the world swarming with grey. My heart pounded, joy tinged with terror. Too late to back out now – Mr. Dansy was right. I had chosen. I stumbled to the dark magnolia and leaned against the trunk. My vision blanked.

Someone, or something, caught me, a feather-light touch in a golden haze. And then we were moving, moving incredibly fast in a place without direction. No turns, no ups, no downs, just on and on. Suddenly I realized I had stopped moving, that everything had gone dark only because my eyes were closed.

I rolled onto my back and stared up at the strange sky, relieved, terrified, and somewhere behind it all, strangely disappointed. No one had come to meet me this time. I couldn’t even tell if I had been left in the same place. I pushed myself up and glanced around, but nothing seemed familiar. Or it looked all too familiar because it was just as bare and nondescript as the first place I had arrived. The sand swept away to every horizon, flat and unchanging except to my left, where great white dunes rolled in vast drifts. The sky overhead shone crystalline blue, and oppressive heat weighed down on me. Where was I? If I shouted, maybe someone would hear me, but no voice came to my lips. I sat in silence staring over the sand.

Where was Yatol?

The minutes slipped by. I didn’t know what to do. A flash of panic seized me, but I forced it back. I knew I was in deep trouble – no water, no destination, no bearings at all – but panicking wouldn’t solve my problems. I just needed to take a few minutes to think, and maybe something would come to me. Right.

I drew a hand across my blistering lips, watched a shadow pass over me. It stretched on, longer and darker, until it blanketed me.

A shadow.

Yatol?

I lurched upright, a cry of joy forming on my lips as I twisted around. It faded into a gasp of terror.

I couldn’t see the face. The hood of the cloak concealed it. But I knew it wasn’t Yatol. I knew it even before it lifted its head and showed its dead eyes, gleaming with a hollow red light. Its dark robe undulated in the windless air, passing right through the space its body should have occupied. It didn’t seem to have any legs, but thick metal boots pressed into the sand, like they magically appeared where the cloth stopped. It had hands too, long and black, rotten, with bits of flesh drooping from moldy bones.

They moved, suddenly. Reached out toward me.

That thing is real. I’d been sitting there staring at it like I was watching a movie and – oh, God. It was real.

A low long whine escaped the lipless mouth…speaking, commanding, cajoling…

I couldn’t tear my gaze from the noisome head, the cold empty eyes. I tried to move, but my legs pressed into the sand, heavy and numb. It took one pace toward me, and I did the only thing I could think of. I threw all my weight backwards. I felt myself flipping over, saw the shadow disappear, the terrible eyes disappear, the land disappear. It all gave way to reeling cloudless blue. My legs uprooted, kicking up a cloud of sand as my back hit the ground with a jarring thud. As soon as I landed I writhed onto my stomach, trying to gain my footing, frantic to get away.

The most horrific feeling shot through me, shocking me like a surge of electricity. My back arched violently and I crumpled back onto the sand. It felt like the moldering fingers were stabbing into my head, clawing at my mind. I could almost smell the death-rot, see the curling grey nails picking at my thoughts. I heard a cry of anguish – mine. The eyes gleamed into my soul. I struggled to close my thoughts, scraping fingers against my forehead as if I could dig his voice out, but still his words wormed into my mind. I screamed in rage and scrambled to my feet. And I ran as hard as I had ever run.

Shadow fell over me.

* * *

The first thing I sensed was a faint, musty smell, then warm stone beneath me. I opened my eyes against searing pain, and a strange rusty cloud receded to the edges of my vision. I could barely see, but then, there wasn’t much to see. Just a pile of rank straw-like bedding, high grey walls, a barred window admitting slats of dusty light. Everywhere silence. And stench. The air reeked, metallic like rust and old blood, putrid like rotting flesh. I gagged and covered my nose with my hand, trying to breathe through my mouth without smelling.

If I tucked my chin, I could just see an iron grate in one wall, revealing a narrow corridor of roughhewn stone and shifting shadows. I was in a cell. Like a real dungeon cell, only the sight of blue sky through the window told me I wasn’t underground. I groaned and put my hands to my throbbing head. After a moment I managed to pick myself up and move to sit against the wall, too numb from pain and shock to feel any fear. I was just glad to be alive.

My face flamed suddenly with pain, and I dabbed at the skin. It felt stiff, mask-like, and when I withdrew my fingers they were covered in moist, sticky blood.

Blood. How had I gotten bloody? I closed my eyes, made the painful effort to recall what had just happened.

Mr. Dansy. “So, you’ve chosen.” His words echoed in my thoughts against a sudden rush of images. A golden haze, tumbling through space. Empty desert, moldering bones. I felt the clawing fingers in my mind again, the hellish eyes seeing inside of me. Felt the terror, the shifting sand that wouldn’t let me run. Darkness. I reached up to rub my burning eyes, found them wet with tears.

“It’s not supposed to be this way,” I gritted, slamming my palms against my thighs. The sound of my voice in the viscous silence made me jump.

“Merelin?”

“Way to think you could just come back and save the world. You got caught! It just figures…”

“Merelin!”

This time I heard the low, rough voice, and I caught my breath. Someone was here who knew my name. Now that I thought of it, I couldn’t remember telling it to anyone here. Not Yatol, not the silver-haired elder. No one. But I wasn’t alone, and somehow I wasn’t sure whether to be relieved or scared. I edged away from the wall, heart pounding, and crept to the cell door. My head splintered with pain, almost making me retch, but I choked back bile and let my weight sink against the grate.

“Who’s there?”

“Yatol.”

Yatol! His voice came muffled from the other side of the wall where I’d been sitting. My heart leapt, sending a shivery chill all through me. Butterflies, really? Now? I tried to force the feeling away. Somehow I made it back to the wall, kneeling and resting my hands against the rough stone.

“You’re here? I saw what happened…somehow, I don’t know. I’m so sorry! I tried to tell you I had gone.”

“I knew.”

I swallowed, hard. “You sent me back, didn’t you?”

“Yes.”

“Then why did you stay? You could have gotten away. I don’t understand.”

“It’s my task. They would have followed you if they’d found the way you’d taken.”

“The way I had taken?”

“Yes.”

Wow, that helped a lot.

“But why did you send me back?”

A brief silence, then his voice, low, “So they wouldn’t catch you.”

That shut me up for about a minute. My face flushed with regret and dismay. He had risked himself to get me to safety, and what did I do? Turn around and get myself caught. Win.

“Yatol, what are they?”

“We call them the Ungulion, but I don’t know what they call themselves.” I heard a scrabble against the rocks and he said, “No time now for history lessons. Look, by the floor.”

I found a small dark hole in the wall. “The hole? What about it?”

“These walls are centuries old, and the heat makes the stone weak. It crumbles easily.”

I put my finger into the gap and tugged at the stone. As Yatol had hinted, once I pulled hard enough a large piece of rock broke away. I shivered, then laughed, a weak and quavering little laugh. The idea that the rock could be dismantled by my puny strength made me suddenly nervous about being surrounded by it. I heard Yatol pulling rocks away on his side and figured I ought to help with whatever plan he had hatched. The work got more difficult as the gap got deeper, but I found that kicking worked fairly well to dislodge chunks.

“Well, this is really convenient,” I said eventually.

“Yes.”

Mentally I groaned. “What exactly are you planning on doing?”

“You’ll see. It’s almost large enough now.”

“And I’m sure the whole wall will cave in over us when it is,” I said, trying to sound funny but only sounding sardonic.

“That would make things easier,” came Yatol’s voice. I could imagine his wry smile.

“So, why would someone build a building out of rock that you can break?”

“There was no need to use anything stronger.” A pause, then, “Most people don’t try to pick apart buildings. Not generally.”

I grinned and worked faster, ignoring the rawness in my fingers where the rock had abraded them. Yatol must have had a good deal of the hole already broken up from his side, because the work went faster than it should have. We broke through at almost the same time, I kicking rather too viciously at the wall and narrowly missing his hand. When the gap measured nearly a foot and a half square I put my head down to peer through.

“Here,” Yatol said, moving back from the wall before I could see him. “You should be able to get through now.”

“Me? Are you sure?”

“It’s more than large enough for someone so…”

“So what?” I asked sullenly. “Scrawny?”

“Slender.”

My mouth twitched in a smile and my cheeks burned. Slender was a nice word – much nicer than what anyone else had ever called me. I dropped onto my elbows, then flat on my stomach and stared through the hole. I jumped when Yatol bent to see me.

“While you’re over there, get all the bedding you have and push it through to me.”

“Gross, what for?”

No answer. Surprise. I made a face as I gathered up the straw and shoved it through the hole. When I’d gotten as much of it as I could, I gritted my teeth and lowered myself down to follow the bedding through. The gap seemed small to me, but as I inched forward my shoulders just cleared the sides. The wall was thicker than I expected, and the thought of being surrounded by rock made me shiver. But there wasn’t anything else to do, so I took a deep breath, let it out, and started slithering through.

It was slow, painstaking work. I crept along inch by cautious inch. I stretched out my arm once and froze, afraid I’d gotten it stuck. Trying not to panic, I carefully eased it back under me. Oh God, I’m not meant for this kind of thing.

I had gotten nearly halfway through when a faint rhythmic tapping met my ears, sharp, echoing. It made the stone hum around me, vibrating under my hands. I saw Yatol tense and straighten up.

“Yatol? What is that?”

The noise was getting louder, and I didn’t wait for his reply. I knew what it was. I pulled away from the hole, hitting my head and bruising my shoulders as I squirmed free. Heart racing, I started shoving rocks back into the hole. I worked as fast as my arms would move but the gap just wouldn’t fill. As the steady beat drew nearer I started blocking just the opening. The footsteps rang in my ears. I shoved one last piece of rock into place and flung myself over the remaining stones, shaking with exertion and terror.

Silence. Such a long silence.

“You again, is it?” came a low, sibilant voice, mocking.

I lifted my head, but couldn’t see the Ungulion. He was talking to Yatol, not to me, but for some reason the realization made me cold all over.

“It is always you. How long has it been this time?”

Yatol said nothing and I heard a harsh bang, as if the Ungulion had kicked Yatol’s cell door.

“Look at you already. And it has only begun. This is the last time, for you,” the Ungulion said, rasping with anger.

Then Yatol’s voice, quiet but impressive, “Aye, it is.”

The Ungulion struck the bars again, louder this time so that I clapped my hands over my ears. But I couldn’t block out the clash of iron keys, the terrible squealing of rusting hinges. My heart dropped clear to the soles of my feet. I scrambled to the door of my cell, pressing my forehead against the bars. I couldn’t make out what I was hearing – shuffling feet, voices, rattling metal.

Suddenly Yatol lurched into the corridor, catching his balance just before he fell into the wall with its gruesome iron spikes. The Ungulion stepped out of the cell after him, rigid and unmoved, stretching out a noisome hand to grab Yatol’s arm. Yatol jerked away, all fire and fury. I wondered why he didn’t fight, until I saw the glint of chains on his wrists. I clutched the bars of my cell, tears and sweat streaming down my face. I desperately wanted to call out, but my throat clammed up, choking me.

Yatol glanced at me, just as the Ungulion turned him down the corridor. I couldn’t decipher that look, not through the blur of tears. Then he was gone. The tap of footsteps faded into the shadows. I sank onto the ground, shaking, sobbing, hugging myself as if I were cold, though the walls seeped so much sticky heat it felt like a sauna.

The minutes dragged by.

What were they doing to him? I tried not to think about it, blocked the images. What did the Ungulion mean, it would be the last time? I rolled back onto my knees beside the grate, craning my head to peer down the corridor. The rough metal abraded my cheek, reeking with the stench of rust. Such a deafening silence.

A sharp clang shattered the stillness, followed by the rasp of metal hinges. Footsteps. Finally I caught sight of them – the Ungulion, tall and straight, half-dragging a slumping figure beside him.

“Yatol!”

Yatol’s head lifted, just ever so slightly, not nearly enough to let him see me. I didn’t care. He was alive. I kept saying those words over and over, even while I heard the Ungulion slam open the cell door and shove Yatol back inside. The key clanged in the lock.

My momentary relief vanished in an eruption of new terror. I sank away from the bars, hiding my face in my knees and listening, breathless, while the tapping resumed. Three steps, four…

“A newcomer, I see.”

I couldn’t look up. The key turned in the lock, the door whined open. Two more steps and I didn’t have to open my eyes, I could feel him standing over me. The smell of death hung around him. The air grew colder, then suddenly a moldy grey hand seized my wrist.

“Get up!”

I pulled back but the hand wouldn’t release. I wondered how bones and rot could have so much strength. Then an iron ring clamped shut around my arm, the chain dripping toward the ground in a rattle of cold metal.

“Please let me go,” I whispered.

The Ungulion tugged the chain, trying to get me to stand. In a moment he would grab my other hand. On a sudden impulse I reached into my back pocket, babbling nonsense all the while. Pyelthan felt like ice. I pulled it out, slowly, trying not to make any abrupt movements. With my hand still behind my back, I shoved the coin into the pile of rocks. Just as I let go, the Ungulion jerked me to my feet, clapping my other wrist in metal.

Before I realized it, he had propelled me into the corridor. A scrabbling sound came from the next cell, then the door shook as Yatol threw himself against it.

“No!” he cried, hoarse. “Leave her alone!”

He stretched one arm into the corridor, the other hand clutching the bars, white from effort trying to hold himself up. The Ungulion lashed out a metal-clad boot, kicking the grate so hard that Yatol reeled back. I caught his gaze, just for a moment. I saw his features marred and gruesome in the dim light, but I couldn’t comprehend the terror in his eyes. In another minute we had passed his cell, and I stumbled numbly beside the Ungulion, down a hall through utter darkness.