Page 77 of Hearts Lost

ALOSERIN

THE TREKKER’S CURSE

Istagger backward once, then again, until the cool stone of my parents’ impossible basement hits between my shoulder blades. My dagger trembles in my hand, an unmistakable sign of weakness, but I can’t seem to stop it. I try to focus on the dagger, to focus on my hand, as horror rolls over me like the pounding surge of a waterfall, dragging me further and further beneath the surface of the world I once knew.

My parents have a dungeon in their basement. My dagger shivers like a leaf in the wind. My parents have a dungeon in their basement, and they also have Ithronel. And there’s something else, a great, shimmering mass of air twisting itself into something impossible against the far wall. I let my eyes slide past the shivering air, past what can’t possibly be, what has to be, and settle on Ithronel.

It’s not the trekker’s curse, is it,Orryen said when Ithronel wasn’t in the palace this morning. And it wasn’t funny, because despite being old enough to know much, much better, the trekker’s curse still scares the shit out of me. I’m terrified of the idea that those who enter the void never truly leave, that even if they make it back to the Crystal City to share their stories or sell their artifacts or paint their recollections, they will all eventually return to the void, vanishing without a trace, abandoning their friends and family and lovers.

My parents have a dungeon in their basement. A dungeon with six cells. And they also have Ithronel.

My father’s words float back to me yet again. Anyone you choose will have to be fully vetted. I never bothered to find out what fully vetted implied, because by then I’d already decided that I’d never subject anyone I cared about to the crushing weight of my family’s expectations. No, it was much easier to avoid caring about romantic partners in the first place. I’d have a quick tumble with someone and then move on, staying leagues ahead of any conversation that might conceivably involve the words fully vetted.

But whatever my father meant by fully vetted, it couldn’t be this. No, this is something more. This is a voids-damned dungeon and one of King Galan’s trusted magicians and a type of magic I’ve only ever seen once in my life. In Orryen’s tower. On the day he woke up. The day I was sent into another world.

I raise my eyes and see my mother standing before the churning air against the wall, her back as stiff as iron in her black dress. My father stands next to Nyana, one of King Galan’s magicians and a close friend of our family for as long as I can remember.

My parents love to invite trekkers to their estate. They hardly ever invite anyone else, but any and all trekkers are welcome. They have the largest collection of artifacts from the void outside the void itself, as my father loves to say, usually over a glass or three of brandy.

And how often do those trekkers go home, I wonder? Or is my parents' estate their last stop before the trekker’s curse claims them, before they vanish forever from the Lands Below? Understanding crawls through my brain slowly, like a rat dragging a trap behind him. I don’t want to look at it, but I can’t turn away.

The truth has sharp edges, my father always said.

My father and my mother are the trekker’s curse. Why else would they have a dungeon hidden beneath their estate? Why, if not to collect trekkers?

My gut lurches forward, and for a heartbeat, I think I might be sick. My parents collect trekkers like they collect black pebbles or blades of blue grass. But why? What possible reason could they have for abducting anyone who’s been to the void? Including Ithronel, my mind whispers. My Ithronel, some part of me insists, although I have absolutely no right to call her that. I knocked her unconscious and then ran away, like an asshole.

But, why? What possible reason—

An answer begins to form in the restless churn of my mind, something that ties together the six dungeons and Ithronel’s beautiful, tear-stained face, and the trembling air against the far wall. Something that I really, really don’t want to look at. Ithronel’s eyes catch mine, yanking the breath from my throat, and the churning mess inside my brain and heart freezes.

Voids below, I love her.

Somewhere between the explosion in the teleportation hub and the top of the waterfall where I’d panicked and pulled her under with my magic, I fell in love with this fearless woman from the Worlds Above. The woman who laughed at the void.

And then I left her. I knocked her unconscious. I wasn’t there when she woke up. I didn’t give her a chance to explain, to see if what had happened between us was all a sham or if there was some dim chance that at least some of what we’d shared was real. I hadn’t even asked her for an explanation.

No, I’d run. I’d abandoned Ithronel to the palace and to my parents and to everything else. Like the fucking coward I am.

Guilt twists like a dagger in my gut as Ithronel’s eyes burn into me. I want to say I’m sorry, to apologize for everything I’ve ever done to the woman from the Worlds Above who captured my heart, but how could words ever be enough? How could anything ever be enough?

Ithronel’s lips part and she whispers something into the heat and magic swirling through my parents’ impossible basement. It sounds likefuck. It should be fuck, given the circumstances.

But it’s not fuck. It’s fish.

The word slides through my chest like a blade between my ribs. If it’s too much for you, I’d said on the shores of the river in the void, my heart full, my lips tracing her neck, tasting her heartbeat through her skin. Say something, I’d said.

Sayfish.

My heart drags me forward with no thought, no plan, just the screaming need to reach Ithronel, to help her, to somehow make this better. I stagger toward her on legs that I’m not sure will support me, and there’s a sound coming out of somewhere, perhaps my lips, perhaps my heart. It’s a low, horrible ripping, like something essential is being destroyed. And it’s getting louder.

I drag my eyes up, toward the shivering air between my mother and the far wall. The strange metal spires on that wall are glowing white-hot with some complicated magic, and the air in front of the wall has grown so thick that their incandescent burn is the only part of the far wall I can make out.

My blade shivers in my fist, and my throat is dry. I know what I’m seeing, I just don’t want to accept it. The truth, I think, and once again I’m a boy in short pants standing before the forbidden door and tugging on its iron handle.

The truth has sharp edges.

The truth is that’s a portal.