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“All these were shamans?” The soldier bearing her legs whistled, a low sound that echoed through the mountain. “Great Tortoise. How long have they been here?”
“As long as this Empire has been alive,” Daji said. “And they’ll be here long after we’re dead.”
“They can’t die?”
“No. Their bodies are no longer mortal. They have become open conduits to the gods, and so they are trapped here so they don’t destroy the world.”
“Fucking hell.” The soldier clicked his tongue. “That’s rough.”
The soldiers halted and lowered Rin’s stretcher to the floor. The one at her head leaned above her; his teeth gleamed yellow in the torchlight. “This is your stop, Speerly.”
She stared past him at rows and rows of empty plinths, stretching farther into the mountain than Rin could see. Her mind was half-gone with fear. She flailed, helpless, as the soldiers unstrapped her from the stretcher and hauled her up toward the nearest pedestal.
Her eyes flashed to Daji, begging silently to no avail. Why isn’t she doing anything? Hadn’t this charade gone on long enough? Daji didn’t need Rin immured. She only needed safe passage to the Chuluu Korikh. She had no use for the Republican soldiers anymore; she should have already disposed of them.
But Daji was just standing there, eyes lidded, face calm, watching as the soldiers positioned Rin on the center of the plinth.
A horrible thought crossed Rin’s mind.
Daji hadn’t just been bluffing.
Daji needed safe passage to the Chuluu Korikh. She needed Master Jiang. But nothing about her plan required Rin.
Oh, gods.
She had to get out of here. She wouldn’t escape this—there was no way she could make it to the door and down the mountain ahead of them in her state, not with her legs bound so tightly. But she could get to the edge of the corridor. She could jump.
Anything was better than an eternity in the rock.
She stopped struggling and slouched against the soldiers’ arms, pretending she’d fainted. It worked. Their grip loosened, just barely enough for her to wrench her torso free. She ducked beneath their hands and lunged toward the ledge. Her legs were tied so tightly she could only manage a lurching shuffle, but she was so close—it was only mere feet, she could evade them just two paces—
But then she reached the edge and saw the yawning abyss, and her limbs turned to lead.
Jump.
She couldn’t.
It didn’t matter that she knew eternity in the Chuluu Korikh was worse than death. She still couldn’t do it. She didn’t want to die.
“Come on.” Strong arms wrapped around her midriff and dragged her back from the edge. “You’re not getting off that easy.”
The soldiers pulled her legs up so that between them they carried her like a sack of rice. Together, they flipped her up into a standing position and arranged her on the pedestal.
“Stop,” Rin shrieked, but her words came muffled and meaningless behind her gag. “Stop, please don’t—Daji! Daji! Tell them!”
Daji didn’t meet her eyes.
“Make sure her feet are in the center,” she said calmly, as if instructing servants on where to move a table. “Prop her up so that she’s standing straight. The stone will do the rest.”
Rin tried everything to escape—kicking, thrashing, writhing, and going limp. They didn’t let go. They were too strong and she was too weak—famished, injured, dehydrated.
She had no more outs. She was trapped, and she couldn’t even die.
“Now what?” one of them asked.
“Now the mountain does its work.” Daji began to chant in Ketreyid, and the rocks came alive.
Rin watched the base of the pedestal in horror. At first its movement seemed a trick of the torchlight, but then she felt the icy touch of stone around her ankles as the plinth crept up and consumed her, solidifying into an immobile coat over the surface of her skin. She had no time to struggle; in seconds, it was up to her knees. The soldier holding her upright let go of her arms and sprang away when the rock reached her waist. Her upper body was now free but it made no difference; much as she flailed she couldn’t break the stone’s hold against her legs. Moments later it reached her chest, arrested her elbows where she’d bent them, and crept up her neck. She tilted her head up, desperate to get her nose away from the rock. It didn’t matter. The stone crawled over her face. Closed over her eyes.
Then she saw nothing. Heard nothing. She did not feel the stone against her; it had become a part of her, a natural outer coating that rendered her completely still.
She couldn’t move.
She couldn’t move.
She strained against the rock but nothing budged even a fragment, and all that did was flood her nerves with such anxiety that she strained harder and harder while panic exploded inside her, intensifying second by second with no possible release.
She couldn’t breathe. And at first she was at least grateful for that—without air, surely she’d soon lose consciousness, and then this torture would end. She could feel her lungs bursting, burning. Soon she’d black out. Soon it’d be over.
But nothing happened.
She was drowning, forever drowning, but she couldn’t die.
She needed to scream and couldn’t. She wanted so badly to writhe and flail that her heart almost burst out of her chest and even that would have been better because then she would at least be dead, but instead she hung still in a never-ending moment stretching on into a definite eternity.
The knowledge that this could and would continue, for days upon seasons upon years, was torture beyond belief.
I should have jumped, she thought. I wish I were dead.
The thought repeated in her mind over and over, the only salve against her new and terrifying reality.
I wish I were dead.
I wish I were dead.
I wish—
The mere thought of oblivion became a fantasy. She imagined she really had jumped, imagined the short, euphoric fall and the satisfying crunch of her bones against the bottom of the pit, followed by a blissful nothing. She repeated the sequence so many times in her mind that for brief seconds at a time she fooled herself into thinking she’d really done it.
She could not sustain her panic forever. Eventually it ebbed away, replaced by a dull, empty helplessness. Her body at last resigned itself to the truth—she would not escape. She would not die. She would remain standing here, half-dead and half-alive, conscious and thinking for eternity.
She had nothing now except for her own mind.
Once upon a time Jiang had taught her to meditate, to empty her mind for hours at a time while her body settled into the peaceful daze of an empty vessel. That was, no doubt, how he had survived in here all this time, why he had ever entered this place willingly. Rin wished she had that skill. But she had never once achieved that inner stillness. Her mind rebelled against boredom. Her thoughts had to wander.
She had nothing else to do but probe through memories for entertainment. She pored over them, picked them apart and stretched them out and relished them, prolonging every last detail. She remembered Tikany. Remembered those delicious warm afternoons she spent in Tutor Feyrik’s room discussing every detail of the books he’d just lent her, stretching her arms to receive more. Remembered playing games with baby Kesegi in the yard, pretending to be every known beast in the Emperor’s Menagerie, roaring and hissing just to get him to laugh. Remembered quiet, stolen minutes in the dark, brief interludes when she was all alone, free of the shop and of Auntie Fang, able to breathe without fear.
